Performing Suicide: Transformation of the Superfluous Man in Soviet Drama (original) (raw)
Related papers
2019
This article anayses the trajectory of Iurii Olesha’s reinvention of the self through his autobiographical hero in the novel Zavist' [Envy, 1927] and two plays, Zagovor chuvstv [The Conspiracy of Feelings, 1929] and Nishchii ili smert' Zanda [The Beggar, or the Death of Zand, 1930–32]. This essay examines the playwright-protagonist relationship in the context of Olesha’s stylistic evolution of the beggar character in drama who serves as authorial alter ego, tracing the process of how “one’s cultural self is both fashioned and disfigured in the process of self-conscious writing” (Boym 1991: 2). By making his autobiographical character Nikolai Kavalerov a parody of an artist, deeply flawed in moral sense, Olesha adds a layer of identity to his artistic persona and begins his selfmyth of degradation. Through his character, the author enters a Nietzschean cycle of regeneration, finding creation in destruction and rebirth in death.
Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 2023
The article discusses the 1967 film The Private Life of Kuziaev Valentin, directed by Il’ia Averbakh and Igor’ Maslennikov. The film belongs to the Thaw period of Soviet filmmaking, defined by cineastes’ pledge to sincerity. This idea aligned with the cultural transformations launched by the Khrushchev administration at the end of the 1950s, which encompassed radical changes in the attitudes and behaviour of the Soviet youth. Sensitive to the current political climate, Soviet filmmakers populated their narratives with the new, honest and self-reflective young heroes. Our detailed analysis of The Private Life of Kuziaev Valentin demonstrates how it critically interrogates and destabilises the popular sincerity discourse of the time. Engaging in a complex dialogue with Marlen Khutsiev’s iconic 1962 production Ilyich’s Gate, the film also foreshadows the imminent appearance, on the Soviet screen, of a radically different character. In the 1970s, the introspective flaneurs of the Thaw are slowly replaced by their cynical and shallow, two-dimensional copies. Remarkably, this evolution of the contemporary protagonist coincided with similar tendencies in French and British cinema.
The Reflective Hero in Russian Literature and Soviet Cinema (from Oneghin and Oblomov to Zilov)
BRAJUC, Vladimir. The Reflective Hero in Russian Literature and Soviet Cinema (from Onegin and Oblomov to Zilov). // Limbaj și context / Speech and Context. International Journal of Linguistics, Semiotics and Literary Science: 2(IX)/2017, pp. 65–86., 2017
This paper analyzes the reflective character in the play “Duck Hunt” by A. Vampilov. The author proceeds from the literary type of “superfluous man,” that was discovered in the early 19th century by A.S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” and that continued its existence in such heroes of Russian literature as Pechorin, Beltov, Rudin, Oblomov. The author highlights the distinctive features of the studied literary type in the play “Duck Hunt” and in the movie “Holiday in September”, and stops at the plot-forming function of “replacement” in the play. Keywords: hero, image, type, character, “superfluous person,” Eugene Onegin, Ilya Oblomov, Viktor Zilov, Alexander Pushkin, Ivan Goncharov, Alexander Vampilov, Nikita Mikhalkov, Oleg Dal, Vitaly Melnikov.
AGATHOS, 2019
The concept of a superfluous man is mainly the result of some social and political issues in Russia in the 19 th century. That is why Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time can be seen as a projection of these issues in literature. The novel dwells upon such features of a superfluous man like intelligence, self-awareness, isolation, doubts, and loss of meaning. However, these personal characteristics can also be seen in English literature in the remote 16 th century and the modern 20 th century. Shakespeare's young prince in Hamlet and Conrad's young captain in The Shadow-Line can easily be analysed under the same personal traits. This fact shows that some human characteristics can be analysed as categories that fall upon people under various circumstances. This study concludes that although there is a difference between the social, cultural, and political environment in the 16 th , 19 th , and 20 th centuries in Russia and England, human beings breed similar reactions against changes in their societies.
The Beggar’s Opera as Social and Political Satire: Origin, Development and Popularity
International Journal of Research in Social Sciences and Humanities
This research paper revolves around the origin, development and popularity of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera when taken as a significant social and political satire. Historical representations are required to set up the shaping factors and origin of this play. Besides, the paper sheds light on the influences that have prompted him to attempt this kind of dramatic art. Furthermore, it can be assumed that that play is the production of Gay’s satirical attitudes towards the social and political systems prevailing in his time that are facilitative to this artistic production. The researcher will make certain touches upon Gay’s innovative mind to create a genre unprecedented in his time—the ballad opera tradition—that has gained immense popularity in the literary media and influenced many major dramatists such as Thomas Beckett and others to follow his example.
Journal of Literature and Art Studies Vol.3 Issue 3 March 2013
Journal of Literature and Art Studies, a monthly professional academic journal, covers all sorts of researches on literature studies, art theory, appreciation of arts, culture and history of arts and other latest findings and achievements from experts and scholars all over the world.
Tactile Communism: Keti Chukhrov’s Post-Soviet Dramatic Works and the Legacy of Soviet Defectology
Internationale Zeitschrift für Kulturkomparatistik, 2023
In this article, I analyze the character of hyper-naturalism and exaggerated tactility in dramatic poems by contemporary Russian-Georgian philosopher and writer Keti Chukhrov. I argue that, while descriptions of violence, physiological func-tions, and abject poverty are common for post-Soviet art, in Chukhrov’s work these elements perform radically different task than in the pessimistic and de-ideologized chernukha, or the style of grim realism. Her approach to matter is also distinct from the historic Russian avant-garde tradition, which relished intensified sensations but did not offer constructive ways of inscribing their immediacy into coherent cultural continuity. Instead, her dramatic poems bear pedagogical, even rehabilitative stakes for recuperating the individual sensations of alienated people into meaningful and shared cultural experiences. In this article, I discuss her ap-proach to drama as mobilizing the tradition of Soviet Marxist defectology, a spe-cial educational method of socializing disabled, cognitively impaired, or other-wise disadvantaged people. Pioneered in the Soviet Union in the 1920s by Lev Vygotsky and suppressed in the 1930s, defectology found further application in the 1960s and 1970s in the work of the Zagorsk boarding school for the deafblind, led by Vygotsky’s student Alexander Mescheriakov and Evald Ilyenkov, a Marx-ist -Hegelian philosopher who is a central figure for Chukhrov’s philosophical re-search. One of the key tasks of Meshcheriakov and Ilyenkov was to help their deafblind students to overcome isolation through learning to translate their purely tactile sensations into deliberate communicative acts. While Zagorsk offered Ilyenkov an opportunity to test and apply his theory of the collectivist formation of personality, for Chukhrov it is theater that has become the sphere for experi-mental, practical extension of her scholarly research into Soviet Marxist thought and socialist culture of the 1960s and 1970s. Her dramatic texts offer models of alternative subjectivization for post-Soviet people to allow themselves once again to recognize the presence of universal values and greater cultural commons be-hind individual, alienated sensations and experiences.
Research on Humanities and Social Sciences, 2013
This work examines Once Upon Four Robbers and Morountodun by Femi Osofisan to debunk the much touted assumptions by his readers and critics that his plays are pure Marxist dramaturgy. The work argues that though Osofisan is a Marxist writer who demands social change in favor of the oppressed and the downtrodden masses in the society as the themes of his plays express, the texts lack Marxist spirit to significant degree. The reason being that, difference, departure, and even superiority are often hastily read into his works. In addition, dialogues in the texts are intra-class rather than inter-class. This negates the concept of labour struggle and Marxist doctrines where dialogue is between two opposing forces. Moreover, as a dramatist, Osofisan's theory of aesthetics is sometimes compromised by practice. All these are what this work tends to examine and interrogate. 1.Introduction This work examines Femi Osofisan's Once Upon Four Robbers and Morountodun to interrogate the limits and or otherwise of the author as a Marxist as claimed by many of his critics. The man, Femi Osofisan, no doubt, is a pillar in the sphere of dramaturgy not only in Nigeria but also outside the shores of Nigeria. He is many things in one. Osofisan is a consummate man of the theatre, a skilled playwright, a poet, an actor, a director, and an artist of great repute, while the province of his plays is neck-deep in the Yoruba culture. On the other hand, the major themes in his plays are corruption, injustice, oppression, treachery, self-reliance and perseverance. Others are determination, feminism, compassion, collaboration, blackism, and revolution, among others. Like other theatre scholars, past and present, who have the singular task of making their societies conducive for human habitation, Osofisan focuses his energies on themes such as injustice and oppression, selfreliance, corruption, treachery, determination, collaboration, revolution, compassion, among others in their works. Time was when writers or poets were seen as mere entertainers or people not fit to leave in an ideal republic but be banished for simple reason that their works were seen as corrupting the minds of the people (The Republic, Book 3, 10). Others also feel that literature is nothing but a mere witnessing of a kind. Skeptics, according to Maxwell A. E. Okoli, "have never accorded it the force and vision capable of stirring up a revolution" (71). They thought of the writer as not more important in society as an ordinary dart player. However, history has changed all these, for the writer has metamorphosed into a visionary, a soldier, an agent of social change, using his writing as a weapon. Great writers work for progress by transforming their societies and its conditions, arousing men from their apathy and servile sentence, delivering them from the shackles of enslaving traditions, religions, dogmatism and political dictatorship. They often times launches into militant literature, raising their ideals like a banner, like a light for the people, and pulls off a revolutionary change that leaves society, wiser and more progressive (Literature and Social Change, 72). Literature on the other hand, which is the product of the writer's thought processes is an excellent tool of propagating ideas and sensitizing men to dream and aspire in their society. It serves both social and political causes that could be used to hatch and realize revolutions. It has the power to destroy in order to reconstruct. Literature thus could be said to be a catalyst for social reform as well as a missile against all forms of abuse. These tendencies of the writer and that of literature are what Marxist ideology strongly seeks to espouse. For as Ken Smith submits, "any person seeking to change the world in a socialist direction, the ideas of Marxism are a vital, even indispensable tool and weapon to assist the working class in its struggle to change society" (1). Perhaps there is no doubt that, Femi Osofisan could be classified as a Marxist writer who demands social change in favour of the oppressed and down trodden masses in the society as the theme of his plays expresses. But this Marxist ideology is limited to some degree, contrary to the views of his numerous readers and critics who see him as a consummate Marxist. It is on this note, and indeed, this popular believe that this work tends to differ and to interrogate these claims as contentious. The reason being that, difference, departure and even superiority are often hastily read into his works. This work is based on the theory of Dialectic Materialism as propounded by Karl Marx. Since this work's main focus is to determine the degree of Marxist spirit in the works of Femi Osofisan, Marxism and Research on Humanities and Social Sciences www.iiste.org