Salvage

The Coast of Utopia #3

by Tom Stoppard

Salvage is the third part of The Coast of Utopia , Tom Stoppard's long-awaited and monumental trilogy that explores a group of friends who came of age under the Tsarist autocracy of Nicholas I, and for whom the term intelligentsia was coined. Among them are the anarchist Michael Bakunin, who was to challenge Marx for the soul of the masses; Ivan Turgenev, author of some of the most enduring works in Russian literature; the brilliant, erratic young critic Vissarion Belinsky; and Alexander Herzen, a nobleman's son and the first self-proclaimed socialist in Russia, who becomes the main focus of this drama of politics, love, loss, and betrayal. In The Coast of Utopia , Stoppard presents an inspired examination of the struggle between romantic anarchy, utopian idealism, and practical reformation.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Historical Fiction, Theatre, British Literature, Fiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published August 5, 2002

About the author

Sir Tom Stoppard was a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.

Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard left as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946, having spent the previous three years (1943–1946) in a boarding school in Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas. After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright.

Stoppard's most prominent plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Night and Day (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Arcadia (1993), The Invention of Love (1997), The Coast of Utopia (2002), Rock 'n' Roll (2006) and Leopoldstadt (2020). He wrote the screenplays for Brazil (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Russia House (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Enigma (2001), and Anna Karenina (2012), as well as the HBO limited series Parade's End (2013). He directed the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), an adaptation of his own 1966 play, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the leads.

He has received numerous awards and honours including an Academy Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, and five Tony Awards. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". It was announced in June 2019 that Stoppard had written a new play, Leopoldstadt, set in the Jewish community of early 20th-century Vienna. The play premiered in January 2020 at Wyndham's Theatre. The play went on to win the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and later the 2022 Tony Award for Best Play.

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since this is a trilogy of three plays that tells one story, I thought I would wait until I finished all three before putting down some thoughts. One can't help but greatly admire what Stoppard had achieved here, and I'm sure that one stage, the grand scale of all this is deeply seductive, but I'm not sure if my feelings go much beyond admiration. Part of that may be my fault, as I came to these plays knowing next to nothing about Bakunin and Herzen, the historical figures at the center of this, so I already felt a bit at arm's length from the proceedings. My main difficulty, though, is that, while there are magnificent moments here, the massive scope of this (months and years passing between scenes let alone plays) lessened my ability to connect with the characters and their revolutionary struggles. It felt like Stoppard was trying to serve two masters here--character and history.

[Alireza · Rating 3 out of 5]

این آخرین کتاب از سه‌گانه‌ی «ساحل آرامنشهر» است که نمایش‌نامه‌ای تاریخی با شخصیت‌های تاریخی است. شخصیت اول در ابتدا «میخاییل باکونین» آنارشیست است به مرور جای خود را به «هرتسن» نویسنده می‌دهد. در خلال عبور از رویداد‌ها و حوادث بخشی از تاریخ شکل‌گیری انقلاب روسیه نیز تحلیل می‌شود. همانطور که در انتهای کتاب سوم و دریادداشتی که مترجمان آورده‌اند، این سه‌گانه نمایش‌نامه با تیاتر امروز تفاوت دارد. به نوعی به سبک و سیاق کلاسیک (و حتی رمان کلاسیک روسی) نوشته شده اما کلاسیک نیست و در عین حال جدید و تازه است.
ترجمه مجموعه هم قابل قبول و بدون ایراد است.

[Rob Gifford]

the whole trilogy presumes a modest level of familiarity with mid-19th century history that might (*might*) make it tough to approach for people who don’t walk in with preexisting knowledge of and opinions about Louis Napoleon and the International Workingmen’s Association and the like…although another part of me feels like none of that really matters. Stoppard is so good at keeping an eye on the human drama that it might not matter if you’re unfamiliar with redemption payments and Land and Liberty and Fathers and Sons and so on. the plays are funny, and romantic, and tragic enough that you find yourself washed away in the sweep of it. would love to see it produced, although I’m sad I’ll likely never get to see Ethan Hawke play Bakunin.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This whole play was just fantastic. I wish I'd have been able to see it.

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Salvage, the concluding play in Tom Stoppard’s trilogy The Coast of Utopia, addresses the concept of liberty. In this part, Alexander Herzen and his inner circle are Russian exiles living in London. England, according to Nicholas Ogarev, Herzen’s best friend, is a country where even beggars receive a degree of liberty. British policemen, unlike Russian policemen, are unable to arrest beggars for vagrancy. Ogarev also sees England as a country where thousands of people die daily from poverty. Ogarev states, “With all this liberty, there’s no beggar in France or Russia as destitute as the London poor, and with all this poverty, no Frenchman or Russian has his liberty guarded like a London beggar.” Therefore, the question naturally arises: In England, are poverty and liberty inseparable?
This question continues when Tsar Alexander II---much to Herzen’s delight---frees the Russian serfs. However, the serfs believe that the land they worked for now belongs to them, and when they come to realize this isn’t accurate---they will, in fact, have to pay rent for their plots---“freedom bears an uncanny resemblance to serfdom.”
Salvage reads as a lament, and it explores the tensions between communal and communistic socialism. Herzen advocates commercial socialism, a system where each household has its own plot. In Part II of The Coast of Utopia, Herzen witnessed the violence of the European Revolution firsthand, and this experience strongly influenced his feelings against aggressive forms of social change. At the end of Salvage, Herzen tells Ogarev, “We have to open men’s eyes and not tear them out.” This nonviolent sentiment, however, is not favored by a growing number of Russians---those who eventually become the Bolsheviks. Salvage shows the emergence of nihilism, and this new generation sees the ideas of Herzen and his contemporaries as tedious, sentimental, and addicted to nostalgia.
The Coast of Utopia concludes with Herzen feeling responsible for the impending violence. He foresees himself as “the future custodian of…a desecrated grave.” The tomb, of course, refers to Russia. The intelligentsia has been replaced with the nihilists, and Herzen’s writings will soon be overpowered by violence.

[Selena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to admit that I fell into the subconcious trap of reading these plays as though they were "The Russian Revolution as told from the eyes of the philosophers" in the same way one could write a series of plays about the French revolution as sold from the point of view of Locke or Robespierre. Of course, this series is much more a biographical sketch of Herzen and Bakunin, two historical figures whose philosophies are intricately tied with the movement that would become the Russuam Revolution, but who didn't actually live to see it happen. The truth of this because plainly obvious before the end of the second play, and yet still, like an idiot, I felt this jarring sense of incompleteness at the end of the third play because the action ended when Herzen dies as opposed to going up to the assasination of the Romanov family (the real climax I was waiting for).

So far, this review is much more about my own lameness than it is about the finale of this trilogy, lets see if I can bring it home.

I think the conclusion and the choice of timeline creates a very interesting juxtaposition. The audience travels through the lifetimes of these historical figured and follows the story through to a conclusion so there is a sense of finality and completion, and yet not, because in the historical context, the revolution has yet to even begin. So, though we've traveled through all the dramatic devices to the conclusion of the story, its nothing more than a prequel to the mail event. I love Stoppards use of this "finality as a gateway" to drive home one of the main points of the play; revolution is not the relm of old philosophers, it will always be brought about by the passion of the young. So, at once he's able to give full recognition to those paved the way while showing that by the time the starts were aligned, they were powerless to bring about the change themselves. The end is tragic and hopeful at the same time because the audience has the outside knowledge that these ideas will live on and their revolution will come to pass, but so will all their fears of chaos and anarchy. It is true that the dream of a "peaceful revolution from above" is just that, a dream.

[James Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Completing the trilogy that comprise The Coast of Utopia, Salvage opens with Alexander Herzen resting at his home in Hampstead, England. He dreams of a pantheon of emigre friends, political refugees from Germany, Poland, France, Italy and Hungary. It is "A dream about exiles", he explains -- an almost unreal world much like the one he himself inhabits, in the center of the vortex of those trying still to organise and cause change in Russia from far abroad. It is five years after the revolutionary turmoil of 1848, but the turmoil and lack of direction seem pervasive among the radicals.
The First Act continues juxtaposing domestic turmoils of the Herzen family, a new German tutor for the children, Natalie and Nicholas Ogarev and others. With their tribulations in the forefront the background of change for Russia becomes a descant that is briefly heard from with discussions of the new publication, The Bell, that provides a tocsin for the opponents of the Tsar. The freeing of the Serfs as an event seems not to satisfy either the radicals or the Tsar.
In Act Two Nicholas Chernyshevsky appears on the scene providing another opportunity for dialogue with Herzen over the best approach to effect change in Russia. There is not a definitive answer to that question beyond the continuing disagreement. There is also the voice of Turgenev who gently opposes those who deride him and what he does, believing that his art does also serve some purpose -- and responds when asked what his purpose was in writing a fiction: "My purpose ? My purpose was to write a novel."
The nostalgia of Herzen for his homeland leads him to rue his decision to leave it even though he would likely face prison and Siberia if he were to return. The lives of the Russian exiles are romantic only in an ironic sense as the fog and mist of England mask their disappointments.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saw the transcendent serial production of the trilogy during consecutive weeks at Lincoln Center (thx G'ma!), while reading the scripts in between shows. Amazing on every level. Not only vintage Stoppard, but an epic career centerpiece.

[Michael P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the truly great plays of our time, but read this trilogy in order. This is part three.

[Stewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part three of Stoppard's epic trilogy about 19th century Russian philosophy, politics and literature. Rapturously received when it was produced, I don't think it ranks with his best work.

[Stephen Selbst · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last play of The Coast of Utopia is elegiac in tone. Herzen’s dream of a liberalized and humane Russia has been shouldered aside by a generation of radical activists who see him as a doddering anachronism, in the words of one, a “millionaire socialist.” But Herzen could intuit — if not exactly foresee — that the radicals’ absolutism would simply replace one form of Russian despotism with another, which was the first tragedy of Russia’s 20th century. The Coast of Utopia is a masterpiece, melding Russian history, the evolution of Russian political thought in the 19th century, and the real characters’ lives. I reread the trilogy this summer and I remain in awe of its intellectual scope.

[Anna Kravchuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before the start of the play the word "transcending" played zero role in my life, by the end of it I felt like I can't stand hearing/reading it any more, like never ever again.

The last part of the trilogy is not bad, but it's weaker than the second one. It's basically all about disillusionment and disappointment, which hardly needed to be dragged for that long. The best part were characters thoughts but they weren't really invented for the play so.

[tatterpunk · Rating 2 out of 5]

A difficult trilogy overall, but sadly the last installment is the weakest: frenzied, unfocused, and without the personal or political insights of the first two. A lot of commotion in search of a climax.

[Richard Seltzer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing.
I loved Rosenkrantz and Guilderstern, also the movie Shakespeare in Love.
And this deals with an interesting set of historical figures -- Herzen, Belinski, Bakunin, etc.
But the characters don't come to life. It's simply boring.