Susan Gerstein's Blog - Posts Tagged "stalin"
Writing Under Dictatorships
Bard College in Annandale-on-the-Hudson has a summer festival of music and theater. During the upcoming 2013 season they are planning to perform a dramatized version of Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”, a novel he wrote in the late nineteen thirties, one he never saw published. He died – surprisingly, of natural causes – in 1940; Stalin somehow missed his chance of killing him for his writings. The novel is a masterpiece, a tragicomic romp in the surreal world of the Moscow of the dark Stalinist days preceding the Second World War. Prior to this defining book on which he worked for the last decade of his life, Bulgakov wrote several works that danced on the edge of the permissible, the tolerated. His play “Moliere, or a Cabal of Hypocrites” (seen in a brilliant New York production at the Collonades Theater many years ago that used the title “Moliere in Spite of Himself”) portrays Moliere in the court of Louis XIV: the battle of the writer with the dictator as he goes from favorite court jester doing the bidding of the powers-that-be to finally rebelling and refusing to continue the charade. Whether it is Moliere vis-à-vis the King or Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn, Isaac Babel and countless others vis-à-vis Stalin, or Stephan Zweig, Robert Musil, Joseph Roth during Hitler’s reign, or, for that matter, our own days of the death threats, fatwas that writers face if they dare defy the orthodoxy of some regimes, the fate of such people varies from simply being unpublished, unperformed and silenced to being jailed, tortured and often killed. Certainly in the Stalinist gulag the number of writers who were deemed to have defied the system were legion.
I grew up in that system. There were the Party stalwarts among the writers, performers and administrators of the arts; everyone knew who they were and their work was perceived as tainted by their loyalty to the brutal dictatorship. There were the openly defiant artists who had no chance of being heard or seen: they disappeared into silence or worse very early on. Then there was a vast middle ground: the accommodators who walked the edge, carefully following the line between the permissible and the forbidden, using code words, double entendre, metaphor, humor: anything to test the line and see what they could get away with – and yet stay alive, unjailed – and published. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not. Many a walker on this tightrope fell off it, over some perceived overstepping of the line. This was sometimes inadvertent – but there were times when a tightrope walker decided to defy gravity intentionally. All this made the role of writers in that world immeasurably more important than it is in free societies: we all knew the game, waited for the next poems, the next novels to tell us where the perimeters of the permissible were at that moment. Revolutions could be caused by a group of writers who simultaneously decided to defy the limits.
“The Master and Margarita” was finally published 26 years after Bulgakov's death in Russia and was translated and published in other languages soon after. By then Stalin too had been dead for thirteen years.I read it shortly after it appeared and saw “Moliere in Spite of Himself” in New York some years after that. One wonders, had Bulgakov not died of illness in 1940, how far would he have pushed? Would he have ended up in Stalin’s death camps along with Solzhenitsyn and his ilk, to die there – or perhaps survive and see the collapse of Communism?
I look forward to seeing “The Master and Margarita” in its reincarnation as a play.
I grew up in that system. There were the Party stalwarts among the writers, performers and administrators of the arts; everyone knew who they were and their work was perceived as tainted by their loyalty to the brutal dictatorship. There were the openly defiant artists who had no chance of being heard or seen: they disappeared into silence or worse very early on. Then there was a vast middle ground: the accommodators who walked the edge, carefully following the line between the permissible and the forbidden, using code words, double entendre, metaphor, humor: anything to test the line and see what they could get away with – and yet stay alive, unjailed – and published. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not. Many a walker on this tightrope fell off it, over some perceived overstepping of the line. This was sometimes inadvertent – but there were times when a tightrope walker decided to defy gravity intentionally. All this made the role of writers in that world immeasurably more important than it is in free societies: we all knew the game, waited for the next poems, the next novels to tell us where the perimeters of the permissible were at that moment. Revolutions could be caused by a group of writers who simultaneously decided to defy the limits.
“The Master and Margarita” was finally published 26 years after Bulgakov's death in Russia and was translated and published in other languages soon after. By then Stalin too had been dead for thirteen years.I read it shortly after it appeared and saw “Moliere in Spite of Himself” in New York some years after that. One wonders, had Bulgakov not died of illness in 1940, how far would he have pushed? Would he have ended up in Stalin’s death camps along with Solzhenitsyn and his ilk, to die there – or perhaps survive and see the collapse of Communism?
I look forward to seeing “The Master and Margarita” in its reincarnation as a play.
Brilliant Performances
This is a small detour from my usual reading-related commentary: it is about two shatteringly great performances I have seen within the last two weeks, a rare confluence of events. One of these is opera: the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”; the other is an off-Broadway revival, by The New Group, of David Rabe’s forty year old play “Sticks and Bones”. Both, in their own way, comment on devastating events that destroy the lives of ordinary people; both are performed brilliantly and in a way that, in spite the shattering subject matter, allows one to leave the performance elated by the sheer genius that creative people are capable of at their best.
The opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” forever carries the legend of Stalin’s extreme displeasure with it, the cancellation, after initial success, of all subsequent performances after 1936, and Shostakovich’s fear for his very life as a consequence. One did not displease Stalin with impunity. The Metropolitan Opera did not get around to putting it on until 1994, when the astonishing staging by the British director Graham Vick premiered, conducted by James Conlon; it was revived during the 2000 season, as it is now, another fourteen years later, in the current fall season. I have seen it each time. The first time, in 1994, was a revelation: discovering the witty, expressive music and the equally witty, surreal staging made an enormous impression. It did so again in 2000, this time conducted by Valery Gergiev. Fourteen years have passed: the current revival was much anticipated.
Not only did it fulfill all anticipation, it surpassed it. This performance will remain as one of the most memorable in my long opera-going experience. James Conlon conducted again, as he did twenty years ago, and a cast of such perfection was on stage that one was simply mesmerized. Katerina Ismailova, the central character in the drama was the Dutch singer, or I should say singing actress Eva-Maria Westbrock who surpassed all her excellent predecessors: she was the very embodiment of the bored, oppressed provincial wife who succumbs to sexual passion, kills for it and pays the price. The men in her life, oppressors and exploiters one and all, were each not only great singers but, like her, superb actors as well: Brandon Jovanovich, her seducer, Anatoli Kotscherga as her horrible father-in-law, Raymond Very as her ineffectual husband, the great Vladimir Ognovenko as the police sergeant, Dimitry Belossensky as an old convict, Oksana Volkova as the nemesis at the end, were simply mesmerizing. The great Metropolitan Opera chorus deserves a whole chapter all to itself: not only are they a gloriously cohesive singing group under the leadership of Donald Palumbo, but they perform individually as actors, so that the stage is full of vivid background characters that enhance the action at all times. The production design is one of the very best the Met has on its stage: from the semi-farcical beginning to the heartrending, tragic end, one’s eye is riveted by an evocative, ever-inventive background that moves with the music and enhances it. Bravo, one and all!
David Rabe’s play “Sticks and Bones” was first staged as the Vietnam War was winding down in the early seventies. Though it received very good reviews, I remember making the deliberate decision not to see it: it was too close to the then current events, I was perhaps too young, trying to shield myself. – When the current revival appeared, I was ready to see it.
I don’t know how I would have reacted to the play forty years ago. This time it struck me straight to the heart, no small thanks to the fact that it was directed magnificently by Scott Elliott and performed by a cast that could not be surpassed. The eponymous Ozzie and Harriet whose carefully constructed suburban dream of a life is shattered by the return of their blinded elder son from the war are Bill Pullman and Holly Hunter, who will simply break your heart with performances that could hardly even be called that: they become the clueless, helpless pawns in a world they cannot comprehend. The play has assumed a patina it may not have had in its original incarnation when the wounds of the Vietnam war, and its effects on American society were still too raw; it now seems only partly about the war, it is equally about the dilemma of Everyman, of the tragic breakdown of communication between parents and children, between couples, the loneliness of each of us and fierce desire to protect the small turf staked out that makes going on at all possible.
Bravo, again.
The opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” forever carries the legend of Stalin’s extreme displeasure with it, the cancellation, after initial success, of all subsequent performances after 1936, and Shostakovich’s fear for his very life as a consequence. One did not displease Stalin with impunity. The Metropolitan Opera did not get around to putting it on until 1994, when the astonishing staging by the British director Graham Vick premiered, conducted by James Conlon; it was revived during the 2000 season, as it is now, another fourteen years later, in the current fall season. I have seen it each time. The first time, in 1994, was a revelation: discovering the witty, expressive music and the equally witty, surreal staging made an enormous impression. It did so again in 2000, this time conducted by Valery Gergiev. Fourteen years have passed: the current revival was much anticipated.
Not only did it fulfill all anticipation, it surpassed it. This performance will remain as one of the most memorable in my long opera-going experience. James Conlon conducted again, as he did twenty years ago, and a cast of such perfection was on stage that one was simply mesmerized. Katerina Ismailova, the central character in the drama was the Dutch singer, or I should say singing actress Eva-Maria Westbrock who surpassed all her excellent predecessors: she was the very embodiment of the bored, oppressed provincial wife who succumbs to sexual passion, kills for it and pays the price. The men in her life, oppressors and exploiters one and all, were each not only great singers but, like her, superb actors as well: Brandon Jovanovich, her seducer, Anatoli Kotscherga as her horrible father-in-law, Raymond Very as her ineffectual husband, the great Vladimir Ognovenko as the police sergeant, Dimitry Belossensky as an old convict, Oksana Volkova as the nemesis at the end, were simply mesmerizing. The great Metropolitan Opera chorus deserves a whole chapter all to itself: not only are they a gloriously cohesive singing group under the leadership of Donald Palumbo, but they perform individually as actors, so that the stage is full of vivid background characters that enhance the action at all times. The production design is one of the very best the Met has on its stage: from the semi-farcical beginning to the heartrending, tragic end, one’s eye is riveted by an evocative, ever-inventive background that moves with the music and enhances it. Bravo, one and all!
David Rabe’s play “Sticks and Bones” was first staged as the Vietnam War was winding down in the early seventies. Though it received very good reviews, I remember making the deliberate decision not to see it: it was too close to the then current events, I was perhaps too young, trying to shield myself. – When the current revival appeared, I was ready to see it.
I don’t know how I would have reacted to the play forty years ago. This time it struck me straight to the heart, no small thanks to the fact that it was directed magnificently by Scott Elliott and performed by a cast that could not be surpassed. The eponymous Ozzie and Harriet whose carefully constructed suburban dream of a life is shattered by the return of their blinded elder son from the war are Bill Pullman and Holly Hunter, who will simply break your heart with performances that could hardly even be called that: they become the clueless, helpless pawns in a world they cannot comprehend. The play has assumed a patina it may not have had in its original incarnation when the wounds of the Vietnam war, and its effects on American society were still too raw; it now seems only partly about the war, it is equally about the dilemma of Everyman, of the tragic breakdown of communication between parents and children, between couples, the loneliness of each of us and fierce desire to protect the small turf staked out that makes going on at all possible.
Bravo, again.
