The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia

Modern Language Review, The, Oct, 1999 by Birgit Beumers

The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia. By SPENCER GOLUB. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. 1994. xiii 277 pp. 45 [pounds sterling].

Although Spencer Golub's book makes for interesting reading, it offers very little in terms of original perspectives on twentieth-century Russian theatre. In the introduction he provides an abstract of his study and the background of Russian thought until 1917. Then he moves back in time to the period of The Cherry Orchard, which he discusses as a dramatic text rather than in terms of performance. Having defined his intention as 'to illustrate how, by creating rather than simply retrieving memory, the Russian state and intelligentsia directed history to conform to recurring patterns and tragic conventions of fate' (p. 1), Golub interprets the play as one offering 'the intelligentsia's acceptance of [its] history as fate' (p. 16). He thus draws no distinction between state and intelligentsia in general, and fails to specify which characters he sees as representative of the intelligentsia in the play. He develops interesting points about the notion of time in Chekhov's play and its link to trains, ominously foreshadowing, as it were, Lenin's arrival on a train at the Finland Station.

Chapter 2 provides a synopsis of early twentieth-century thought as a backdrop for a discussion of gender transgression in the Ballets Russes and Meierkhol'd's production of The Little Showbooth, and images of the 'femme fatale' (Ida Rubinshtein) and the 'femme fragile' (Vera Komissarzhevskaia). Then he discusses the abstract concept of a genderless stereotype in the 1920s on the evidence of Lenin's attitude to women (Armand and Krupskaia) and the Meierkhol'd-Raikh relationship. Chapter 4 considers the role of Chaplin in Soviet culture of the 1920s and 1930s. Chapter 5 is concerned with Meierkhol'd's productions Woe from Wit and The Inspector General, and Tairov's Phaedra, extracting in a lucid manner the directors' attitudes to word and sign, and to stasis and motion. Golub again leaves the theatre in favour of a discussion of the theatricalization of life in an attempt to rewrite the past, referring to Lenin's tomb, Eizenshtein's October, and Shvarts's plays. He concludes with a discussion of the significance of Hamlet for the Russian theatre, ending with Liubimov's 1971 production. In the epilogue, he briefly discusses another production by Liubimov, The Exchange (1976). In the last chapter Golub jumps from the 1930s to the 1970s, without providing an explanation, nor filling the gap in time.

Some points, themes, and parallels are interesting, but there is no real explanation for choosing fact and fiction, film and ballet, play and performance from different decades to make comparisons. Despite Golub's statement of intent, it remains unclear what the aim of this book is, since the author fails to limit the period discussed or to justify the selection of texts and events.

Golub's footnotes are thorough and meticulous (62 pages for 200 pages of text!), but often they provide accounts a reader might expect in the main body of the text. The footnotes also reveal that Golub frequently quotes from secondary sources as though they were primary ones. Moreover, he is content to rely on secondary sources rather than consult the original (for example, for the murder of Meierkhol'd and Raikh information is drawn from an article by Edward Brown, in which he translates documents from Russian sources; Golub is satisfied with quoting Brown). Most paragraphs are followed by a footnote listing an array of sources; often, entire paragraphs paraphrase other critics. Quotations are attributed obscurely in the list of sources consulted. Furthermore, inaccuracies creep in: the quote attributed to the set designer Iakulov (p. 145) is in fact by the critic Vladislav Ivanov; the reference to Mandel'shtam's notion of 'the black sun of gilt and doom' in the context of Tairov's Phaedra comes from the same critic.

Within each chapter, and in the book overall, Golub uses both quotations and arguments from other critics, rather than forming his own argument.

BIRGIT BEUMERS UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL