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Terrible screeching: Adaptation of Pushkin's "Queen of Spades" in theater, opera and film

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Terrible screeching: Adaptation of Pushkin's "Queen of Spades" in theater, opera and film

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Content TERRIBLE SCREECHING: ■ ADAPTATION OF W S W ^ ’S-QUEEN'OFSPADES IN THE ATER, OPERA AND FILM Copyright 2001 by Galina Pastur A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILISOPHY (Slavic Languages and Literatures) May 2001 Galina Pastur Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UM I Number: 3027764 ___ ® UMI UMI Microform 3027764 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA The G raduate School U niversity Park LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90089H695 This dissertation, w ritten b y (P C L B o /v e t^ P tL . f £ u U nder th e direction o f h.&C. D issertation C om m ittee, a n d approved b y a ll its m em bers, has been p resen ted to and accepted b y The Graduate School, in p a rtia l fulfillm ent o f requirem ents fo r th e degree o f DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY v a te May 11. 2001 DISSER TA T IO N CO M M ITTEE Dean o f Graduate Studies < l lerson Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Galina Pastur Marcus C. Levitt TERRIBLE SCREECHING: ADAPTATIONS OF PUSHKIN’S QUEEN OF SPADES IN THEATER, OPERA, AND FILM This dissertation traces two-century history of adapting Pushkin’s tale The Queen of Spades for different media. Adaptation changes the literary source in ways that are revealing of Pushkin’s text itself, of different media, and of extra-artistic issues. Some changes are provoked by the difference between the highbrow art of Pushkin’s original and the middlebrow art of the tale’s adaptations. For example, adaptations eliminate many of the literary text’s nuances, such as its open end and deliberate polysemic narration, for to be appreciated they require some reflection, an aesthetic distancing on the part of the highbrow reader. Instead, adaptations clarify, or “finish” the story with an unambiguous ending, additional characters and situations. To provide their middlebrow public with an immediate gratification they also furnish the story with references to hot issues of the time. Besides this common pattern of changes due to general “debasing” of the literary source, there are changes meant to adjust Pushkin’s story to the specific conventions of medium and genre. Romantic opera such as Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades transforms Pushkin’s story into high drama with a tragic ending, all of which contributes to the music, the dominant component of the genre. In addition to a version’s cultural status and its medium, other cultural and political contexts may help account for changes in Pushkin’s plot and characters. These are often introduced in order to make Pushkin’s Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. story politically correct (as in Soviet theatrical versions), or to adjust it to different national audiences (as in French and British films). Finally, the Pushkin myth, the changing ideology defining Pushkin’s role in Russian culture and society, is also a factor that greatly influences changes. The history of Pushkin’s canonization in nineteenth- century Russia and his re-canonization in the Soviet Union are shown to play a significant role in adaptation process. Offering their own interpretation of Pushkin, stage and screen adaptations demonstrate what audiences of different epochs and countries expected to find in him and constitute a valuable source for reception history, enriching our knowledge of both Pushkin and his audiences. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ■ \ '• i i Aclmowledgements I would Ike to express my sincere gratitude to all the people who have helped and encouraged me from the conception to the final stages of this dissertation. My first debt is to my advisor, Prof. Marcus C. Levitt, whose thoughtful suggestions always guided my research in the right direction and who had endless patience listening to my “terrible screeching” and helped to transform my Wordy and convoluted writing into laconic and clear prose. I also wish to thank Profs, John Bo wit and Albert Sonnenfeld, whose comments have greatly enriched the dissertation. I also gratefully acknowledge the entire faculty and staff of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at USC for providing the stimulating working environment. I am particularly appreciative of the generous help given by Susan Kechekian. I wish to thank Prof Iurii Tsivian, whose seminar on literature and film sparkled my interest in the theme of this dissertation. Thanks also to Neil Cornwell and Ilin-Tomich, whose own valuable research on the subject had a great impact on mine. I have been fortunate in my friends and colleagues, who have read my work, offering comments, criticism and support—Susan Ryan, Prof. David Ford, Myriam Beck- Lefloch, Nadya Bodansky, Mikhail Gronas, Mary Drewchin, Igor Prikhod’ko. Special thanks to my dear friends Inna Bulkina, Irina Vladyshevskaia, and Mala Kucherskaia for their help with library work in Russia. Finally, my biggest debt of gratitude I owe to my parents, and to my husband, who read more versions of this work than anyone should have to and without whose support and understanding this undertaking would not have been possible. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. in Table of Contents Acknowledgments ii Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Queen o f Spades on the Nineteenth-Century Stage 21 Chapter Two: The Queen o f Spades on Soviet and Post-Soviet Stage 72 Chapter Three: The Queen o f Spades into Silent Film 107 Chapter Four: The Queen o f Spades into Sound Film 149 Conclusion 184 Bibliography 196 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION Pushkin’s “little tragedy” Mozart and Salieri opens with Salieri alone in his room, delivering a profession de foi. He compares his tortured and self-sacrificial path of “love, self-denial, labors and prayers” with that of the “idler” Mozart who, he believes, is undeserving of the “sacred gift” bestowed on him by God. Mozart then enters with a prank he has prepared for his friend Salieri. Mozart’s joke is self-referential— or rather it is about one of his masterpieces, an aria from Don Giovanni, which is distorted horribly by a blind fiddler whom Mozart has brought along in hopes of entertaining his friend. Salieri, however, is not amused in the least: he believes that by this act Mozart disgraces both himself and his art. Mozart’s blithe laughter at this joke dies, silenced by Salieri’s indignant tirade. Salieri is consumed by pride which makes him envious and judgmental and leads him to blasphemous murmuring against God and finally to murder. The reader can extract a number of profound messages from this well-known episode, but perhaps the simplest is that the fear of “profaning” “sacred art”— art to which only the initiated should have access— is snobbish and wrong. For Salieri, both Mozart and the blind fiddler are impostors and deserve punishment. Mozart, however, enjoys the music and pays the poor fellow for his terrible screeching. “Genius loves street amusements \Tenuu jito6um moufadnbie 3a6aeu]n Pushkin remarked once in a letter. In 1830, the year Pushkin was finishing Mozart and Salieri, he was already 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. aware of several distorted versions of Ms own creations, Ms poems that had been recast as ballets, dramas, and songs. Whether he had a Mozartian benevolent attitude towards the irreverent handling of his own creations is difficult to say. Pushkin never mentioned any of the theatrical adaptations of Ms works wMch appeared during his lifetime. Many were to follow during the two centuries that have passed since his death. Most of them have treated the originals so freely that Pushkin would barely recognize them. And yet, it is easy to imagine him enjoying the nineteenth-century melodramatic version of his Queen o f Spades in wMch Germann, the hero of the tale, acquires a Jewish identity (in Korsakov’s play, 1895) or chuckling over Rudolf Valentino’s interpretation of the aristocrat Dubrovsky in the Hollywood movie The Eagle (1923). Although adaptations of Pushkin’s works made into plays, operas or movies offer a vast subject of study, Pushkin criticism has generally adopted a rather Salierian attitude towards versions of Pushkin’s texts in other media. Preferring to address more important issues of Pushkin’s heritage, critics have either ignored the “apocrypha” of his “sacred creations” or scorned them.1 There are reasons for this lack of interest. Traditionally in the Russian intellectual continuum, literature occupies a sacred place (Lotman, Sotvorenie Karamzina, 53), and Pushkin stands at the top of the literary Merarchy. Thus 1 Stage adaptations of Pushkin’s Romantic poems quickly became the subject of severe criticism in the Moscow Telegraph 28 (1828), 230. Its critic offers an ironic recipe consisting of seven “rules” that should help one concoct a Romantic tragedy out of Eugene Onegin. These rules, offered as a joke, soon became a working pattern for numerous adaptations of Pushkin for the stage. The article is also remarkable for the Salierian tone of the critic who considers “the mutilation” ofPushkin’s creations to be “more than just a literary sin.” 2 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Pushkin’s prose is expected to function as literature, i.e., to be read, and not to be transformed into stage or screen performances that are deemed lower in quality. Even adaptations of Pushkin that do not bear; the stigma of popular culture (Tchaikovsky’s opera or some of the films) are still looked upon with slight condescension as a debasement of iogocentric high values. Critics especially dislike the changes that most adaptations bring to Pushkin’s plot and ideas. In contrast to this attitude, this dissertation treats the adaptations, as well as the changes to Pushkin’s originals, as a valuable area of investigation. First, adaptations constitute a precious source for studying the history of public reception. Offering their own interpretation of Pushkin’s characters and ideas, stage and screen adaptations demonstrate what audiences of different epochs and countries expected to find in Pushkin’s works. In this sense, understood as a sort of popular reading of Pushkin’s texts, adaptations for theater, opera, and film complement other, more traditional types of reception discourses, particularly literary criticism, and together create a sort of palimpsest laid upon Pushkin’s pages. Thus, adaptations may enrich our understanding of Pushkin’s works themselves. Second, since the study of reception history involves both the object of reception— in our case Pushkin’s works— and the subject of reception, i.e. the general public of the cinema, theater, and opera adaptations offer rich material for studying the audience in historical context. What the adaptations accept, what they discard, and what they add to Pushkin reveals a good deal about how the 3 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. aesthetic and ideological tastes of the public change with time. Third, PusHdn adaptations for theater, opera, and cinema demonstrate how: various media develop their own means to translate Pushkin’s images and ideas into their respective languages. Thus, they add to our understanding: of these individual arts in a historical context . ' ' The present study attempts to forge a path in this largely neglected field. For this purpose, I have chosen one of Pushkin’s major prose pieces, his tale The Queen o f Spades (1834), and I subject its versions in these media to intensive analysis. In the course of my study, I have considered various focuses on adapting literature for other media. There are the morphological changes on the level of plot and characters that alter Pushkin’s written narrative in the process of its translation into other media. My examination of theatrical, operatic, and cinematic versions of Pushkin’s tale shows that there are patterns to the changes that are common to most of the adaptations, no matter to which artistic medium the version belongs or whether it appears in Russia or in the West, by foreigners or by emigre Russians, in the nineteenth or in the twentieth century. For instance, almost all stage and screen adaptations change the ending of Pushkin’s tale. I consider this change of ending to be one of the basic differences between narrative techniques of highbrow culture, to which Pushkin’s tale belongs, and popular culture, to which most of the adaptations may be attributed. Pushkin’s tale is “open ended” (Emerson, "The Queen,” 26). Its characters neither die nor marry 4 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. each other but are left in media res. In the process of translating Pushkin’s literary text into a theatrical, operatic, or cinematic narrative some definitive “closed” ending, whether happy or tragic, is preferred. I analyze these “closed” endings as well as other morphological differences between Pushkin’s tale and its adaptations from the perspective of Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology. As we shall see, the changes introduced into Pushkin’s narrative in the process of its popularization are necessary in order to slake the thirst for immediate gratification characteristic of theater- and cinema-goers who dislike uncertainty and identify “better with simply drawn situations and characters than with ambiguous figures or enigmatic problems” (Bourdieu, Distinction, 32). In some epochs and with certain media and genres, such as the theatrical melodrama of the nineteenth century, the difference between the “taste of sense” of popular theatrical audiences and the “taste of reflection” of the high-brow reader (Bourdieu, Distinction, 488) explains why theatrical adapters romanticize Pushkin’s characters, heroicize his situations, and make the ending happy or bloody. The difference between highbrow and popular tastes is the focus of the first chapter of this study, where I show that the “lowering” of the cultural status of an adaptation is responsible for the mentioned set of changes. Yet, this general explanation often does not answer all questions. As my investigation shows, in most instances, there is no single factor but rather a multitude of factors that influences the process of adapting Pushkin’s text. Apart from the alterations due to the transformation of highbrow literature into 5 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. popular art, extra-artistic factors such as historical or political circumstances often account for much of the new look that The Queen o f Spades acquired in its adaptations. In the second chapter, which deals with the twentieth-century theater, the focus of the discussion shifts to extra-artistic circumstances surrounding adaptations of Pushkin’s tale. In the Soviet era it was no longer the demands of popular taste but state policy that shaped art. As the second chapter shows, the changes introduced into Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades were designed to adapt it to the tenets of Marxist-Leninist ideology, to make it “politically correct.” Those adaptations that failed to comply with state demands, such as Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Queen o f Spades (1935), provoked reactions quite unrelated to aesthetic issues. In the third and fourth chapters of this work, devoted to Pushkin’s Queen of Spades in silent and sound film, I revisit most of the issues found in previous chapters, for cinema is a medium that absorbs everything: contemporary artistic fashions, historical and political events, and the personal taste of filmmakers and film audiences. As I show, every film in this study, whether silent or sound, Russian or Western, tells something about broader ideological or artistic issues, among which are the tastes of different national audiences (as in French or British versions), and the evolution of the cinematic language from silent cinema to sound. Thus, in this study, I forsake a single approach in favor of a variety of angles to consider theatrical, operatic and cinematic adaptations of Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades. As I have discovered in the course of my research, each version has its 6 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. own peculiar transformational dominanta, which requires us to find the unique point of view from which we can folly appreciate the nature of its adaptation. The study is meant as neither definitive nor exhaustive. It could scarcely be, for comparative study of literature, theater, and cinema is an enormous topic containing many possible lines of research and analysis. Archival research gained great importance in work on the description of theatrical and filmic Queens o f Spades. Retrieval and reconstruction of versions from Russian and American archives was crucial to this project, for most Pushkin- derived plays and films have not yet been the subject of scholarly attention and have languished on archive shelves. Before proceeding with a discussion of the literary source, Pushkin’s Queen of Spades, I will begin with a few words on Pushkin scholarship that touches upon the subject of adaptations. As I noted, Pushkin criticism has generally snubbed adaptations of his prose works. When dealing with “Pushkin on stage,” scholars have generally addressed only his own plays. Several twentieth-century studies of Pushkin, however, take up the subject of Pushkin’s prose adapted for the stage and also the numerous Queens o f Spades, Duhrovskys, and Stationmasters that brought Pushkin to wide audiences of theater-, opera-, and movie-goers. Among those studies that deal with adaptations of Pushkin for the stage, the most exhaustive is Pushkin on the Stage (1951) by S.Durylin, a Soviet scholar, who carried out serious archival research into nineteenth- century theatrical performances based on Pushkin’s poetic and prose texts. The present study owes 7 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. much to Durylin’s account. However, Durylin’s study does not go beyond nineteenth-century theater and thus excludes twentieth-century theatrical adaptations, as well as cinematic versions, which played a prominent role in twentieth-century art. Another aspect of Durylin’s book that fails to satisfy the modem reader, is that his study does not make a serious attempt to analyze the theatrical adaptations of Pushkin’s prose or to provide theoretical explanation for the changes they imposed on Pushkin’s originals. Durylin judges them inferior to “serious” theater, Le. the staging of Pushkin’s dramas, Boris Godunov, Little Tragedies, etc., to which Durylin devotes the bulk ofhis attention. In contrast to Durylin, the American scholar Caryl Emerson in her book Boris Godunov: Transpositions o f a Russian Theme (1986) treats the problem of intermedia comparison with much theoretical vigor. To analyze the transference (in the author’s definition, “transposition”) of one plot across different media and genres, Emerson employs Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope, Le. “time-space unit, a sort of shorthand for the conviction that the very structure of narrative carries within itself laws of causality and plausibility” (Emerson, Boris Godunov, 5). For Emerson, “space and time are the basic coordinates” that predetermine the way events are narrated in a given genre, and they also govern other narrative categories such as those of action and character (Emerson, Boris Godunov, 7). So, according to her, to understand fully the differences between the competing versions of Boris Godunov’s story in history, drama, and opera, one has to compare the spatiotemporal relationship as presented in Karamzin’s historical 8 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. narrative, Pushkin’s play, and Musorgsky’s opera, respectively. Emerson’s approach and her concept of chronotope as the main “tool” for comparing different genres is valuable for this study, yet I do not use her method for the following reason. The starting point for Emerson’s study is historical reality, an event from the seventeenth-century Russian life, and her final goal is to demonstrate how this historical event is represented in different narratives— in other words, to compare fiction and reality. For this type of study, whose major concerns are history and its representation, the notion of chronotope understood as laws of causality and plausibility is especially relevant. The starting point for my dissertation, however, is a fictional story, and my final goal is to show how the literary story and its plot and characters can be translated into other arts. For this type of study, the notion of chronotope loses its pivotal role as a criterion for comparison, and other narrative elements such as plot and characterizations come into play more strongly. Another work that touches upon the question of Pushkin in different art media is Paul Debreczeny’s Social Functions o f Literature: Alexander Pushkin and Russian Culture (1997). Debreczeny devotes four pages to Pushkin in theater and opera; this section, entitled “Pushkin on the Stage,” provides a brief recapitulation of Durylin’s research combined with a survey of Caryl Emerson’s comments on Boris Godunov and its operatic version by Musorgsky (Debreczeny, Social Functions, 173-177). More important for us in this book, however, is Debreczeny’s study of Pushkin’s epigones or imitators. He investigates the 9 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. numerous Romantic poems which appeared during Pushkin’s lifetime, inspired by Pushkin’s early poem Ruslan and Liudmila and his Southern tales. For Debreczeny, imitations of Pushkin are interesting first and foremost as material for reconstructing Pushkin’s public reception. According to him, imitators voice the collective opinion, the pattern of literary norms, for “they select for imitation those aspects of the poet’s works that appeal most to a standardized taste” (Debreczeny, Social Functions, 80). By standardized or “middlebrow” taste, Debreczeny means the taste of an average undifferentiated audience situated between the highbrow literary elite, able to read Pushkin unadapted, and the lowbrow social group who still enjoyed lubok literature such as Milord George and Vanka Kain (Debreczeny, Social Functions, 105; on the lowbrow taste of the uneducated reader see Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read). From a sociological point of view, the public possessing middlebrow taste in the nineteenth century came largely from the urban middle class (Meufaucmeo), bureaucrats, merchants, provincial gentry, etc. To reconstruct the “middlebrow taste,” Debreczeny examines various changes or “corrections” made to Pushkin’s originals in the imitative poems. Debreczeny’s approach to imitations as material for reception history, as well as his method of studying changes as manifestations of middlebrow taste, comes closest to that of the present study. Similar to Pushkin imitations, most adaptations of Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades for stage or screen were products of middlebrow culture, and they changed Pushkin’s tale in order to present it to the general public, whose members come mainly from the urban middle class. The 10 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. social, groups that compose the middle class vary from epoch to epoch, and I will elaborate on this issue in the course of this dissertation. In describing Pushkin adaptations, I will make extensive use of Debreczeny’s concept of “middlebrow culture” and “middlebrow: taste.”2 Occasionally the terms “popular culture/taste/audience” are also used to denote the same phenomenon of middlebrow art (popular in the sense that was intended for mass audiences, not necessarily “liked by people” or “successful”). The Literary Source: Pushkin’s The Queen o f Spades Pushkin’s tale The Queen o f Spades (1834) is arguably the best choice for a study of adaptation of his work in theater, opera, and cinema. Although it is not his longest piece (about twenty-five pages), it has generated the greatest number of responses among his prose works. Numerous playwrights, composers, and film directors have adapted the tale for a wide variety of audiences. The fact that The Queen o f Spades equally appeals to different types of audience and that its numerous versions frequent theatrical and operatic stages and film screens suggests that this work possesses some rare quality that makes it of all Pushkin’s works “the most powerful in translation” (Bloom, 6). Before proceeding any further, let us recall the story in detail, since in its adaptations, even a seemingly 2 I prefer Debreczeny’s term “middlebrow culture” for its succintness over Bourdieau’s similar notion of “the field of large-scale production” (as opposed to the “field of restricted production”) which describes a similar phenomenon of middle-class art, associated by Bourdieau with petit bourgeois in French society (Bourdieau, Distinction). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. minute and insignificant episode of Pushkin’s tale could take; on new meanings, often quite unexpected ones. ■ The tale opens in the present (about 1830), in the Saint Petersburg rooms of Narumov, an officer in the Horse Guards (Chapter One). In the early hours of the morning, after a long night of gambling at cards, the conversation turns to German®, a military engineer of German descent, who is one of the guests present. He watches the cards with an eagle eye but never gambles himself. His abstinence reminds Tomsky, another guest, of an anecdote about his old grandmother, Countess Anna Fedotovna. She had once been an avid gambler but had not played for years. Then Tomsky narrates the story: In her youth (sixty years earlier, Le., about 1770) she and her husband lived in Paris, where she was known as la Venus moscovite. Once the young beauty had accumulated crippling gambling debts to the Duke of Orleans, which her husband refused to pay. In fear of financial and social ruin, she appealed to a rather disreputable fellow, Count Saint-Germain, an occultist and “an old eccentric,” and gleaned from him the secret of a winning sequence of three cards, which she used to gain back her losses from the duke. There is a three-fold reaction to Tomsky’s tale. The first guest puts it down to mere chance, the second (Germann) exclaims that it is a fairy tale, and the third proposes that it was a hoax (powdered cards). Then Tomsky proceeds to tell of another young man, Chaplitsky, who won at cards after Anna Fedotovna had revealed the secret to him. 1 2 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chapter Two.begins at the home of the cantankerous old Countess Anna Fedotovna, where the reader is introduced to her and her long-suffering ward, Lizaveta Ivanovna. Tomsky arrives to discuss the possibility of presenting his friend Naramov to the Countess. When Lizaveta 'Ivanovna discovers that Narumov is not in the Engineers, she is very disappointed since she has noticed an officer in an Engineers uniform watching her from the; street. This latter turns out to be Germann, who has now become obsessed by the Countess’s three-card secret. At first he considers becoming the lover of the eighty-seven-year old Countess, but on observing the attractive yet naive Lizaveta Ivanovna at her needlework, he seizes upon this opportunity: he will reach the old woman by courting her young ward. At the beginning of Chapter Three, Germann makes his move and slips Lizaveta Ivanovna a note declaring his love for her, copied verbatim from a German novel. At once flattered and perplexed, she resolves to answer his note curtly and returns his note to him. Undaunted, Germann persists with similar notes every day, until her defenses weaken and she begins to reply to his letters. At last she sets up a nocturnal rendezvous that will enable him to steal into the house while she and the Countess are at a ball. Delighted, Germann takes advantage of this, but instead of waiting for Lizaveta in her room he goes to the Countess’s room. He watches the old lady, tired after the ball, come into her room and prepare for bed and then steps out of the shadows to confront her. After assuring her that he means her no harm, he asks her to tell him the secret of the three cards. 13 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. She replies that it had been a joke. Germann, unable to accept this, begs her to tell him the formula. No matter how much he cajoles her, she remains silent. Finally, he becomes enraged, calls her “an old witch,” and draws his pistol from his pocket. At this the Countess dies of shock. Germann then goes to Lizaveta’s room and finds her still in her ball gown (Chapter Four). As he tells her what happened, Lizaveta realizes that not only were all his love letters nothing but a means by which Germann had hoped to satisfy his obsession but also that she had been an accomplice in the murder of her benefactress. Germann is also faced with a terrible reality— not that he scared the Countess to death or deceived Lizaveta but that he has lost the three-card secret forever. At the end of Chapter Four, Lizaveta notices in Germann an uncanny resemblance to a portrait ofNapoleon. Germann decides to go to the Countess’s funeral in Chapter Five, not out of reverence for the old woman but out of superstition. He believes that she might exercise some sort of evil influence on him if he does not ask her forgiveness. While paying his respects to the body of the deceased, he bends over the body and it seems that the dead woman darts a mocking glance at him and winks. Taken aback, he steps away and trips, so that someone has to lift him up. At this, Lizaveta Ivanovna is carried out in a dead faint. This incident provokes commentary from some of the guests that Germann is an illegitimate son of the old woman. Later, having drunk more than he is accustomed to, he goes home. That night he awakens from sleep and again sees the old Countess. She tells him that 14 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. she has been sent to grant Mm his request. She says that the cards three, seven, and ace will win if he plays them in succession, on the condition that he only plays one card each day, and that he never plays cards again. She also says she will forgive him her death if he marries Lizaveta Ivanovna. After this visitation Germann diligently writes down everything the ghost told him. After this encounter (Chapter Six) Germarm’s mind becomes consumed by the thought of the winning cards and the possibility of putting them to use. His friend Narumov takes him to the renowned gambling salon of one Checkalinsky. Having been introduced, he duly watches the game for a while and then expresses a desire to play. He stuns the company by staking forty-seven thousand rubles on his first bet. The three comes up in Germann5 s favor, and he leaves pocketing his winnings. The next night he doubles his stake. Again his card--the seven— wins. On the third night, the excitement in the salon is tangible as Germann comes to play. Even the dignified Checkalinsky’s hands are trembling as he deals the cards. Germann breaks the silence as he shows his card: “My ace wins!” But Checkalinsky answers, “Your queen has lost.” Horrified, Germann looks at his card to find not an ace but the queen of spades, who seems to sneer at him. “The old woman!” he exclaims in horror. The story finishes with a short conclusion in which we are informed that Germann went out of his mind and is living in an asylum muttering repeatedly, “three, seven, ace! Three, seven, queen!” Lizaveta Ivanovna is married to the prosperous son of the old Countess’s steward and is bringing up a poor relative. 15 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Tomsky marries Princess Polina. The Queen o f Spades was published in March of 1834. Unlike the rest of Pushkin’s prose, which did not become popular with the general public, The Queen o f Spades was a great success. Pushkin himself noted in Ms diary in a month after the tale was published, “My Queen o f Spades is in great vogue. Gamblers are betting on the trey, seven, ace. At court they have found some resemblance between the old Countess and Princess Natalia Petrovna, but it seems that they are not angry” (Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie> 43; on the contemporary popularity of the tale, see Sidiakov, “Pikovaia dama”). In this brief observation, Pushkin actually names the two main aspects of his tale that made it popular with audiences of his time. The first is the theme of gambling and the gambler, which appealed to members of polite society, and the second is its contemporary references to actual people and events of Pushkin’s time (see Annenkov, 353). By describing this reader-response to his tale Pushkin, once more proved himself a shrewd observer, prophetically foretelling the fixture of his work. Subsequent epochs may have brought vast social changes, but the demands of middlebrow taste remained very similar. What would make fixture generations of theater- and cinema-goers turn to The Queen o f Spades were the very features named by Pushkin: the entertaining plot and its topicality. Yet the notions of what is entertaining and what is topical are not stable: they change along with changes in taste and culture. Over time Pushkin’s tale underwent considerable modification in the hands of skillful playwrights and filmmakers, who added new plot elements and 16 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. famished it with hot issues of the time in order to satisfy the public’s sense of what was interesting and what was topical. There is much more to look for in Pushkin’s tale; for instance, its style, which marked the peak of Pushkin’s evolution as a prose writer, and its complex themes, among which the Petersburg myth plays an important role. These deeper and less ' visible facets of The Queen o f Spades would earn it an enormous popularity among another type of audience, i.e., critics and literary scholars, whose interpretations over two centuries became so numerous that they finally made this tale rather “overinterpreted” (Terras, 241; for a survey of interpretations, see Neil Cornwell [1991] and Il’in-Tomich [1989]). Among the vast number of critical speculations about The Queen o f Spades, there are many ideas which are valuable for this study, and I shall discuss them as appropriate. The tale’s plot is highly condensed— its twenty-five pages contain a sufficient enough number of events that it could be expanded into a novel (as A.V. Chicherin noted [qtd. in Debreczeny, The Other Pushkin, 232]). Despite the fact that the tale’s plot appears simple, quick, and straightforward, it is “the most complicated of Pushkin’s stories, difficult to understand” (Lezhnev, 126). According to Neil Cornwell, the complexity of the tale comes from the fact that its “verbal texture is full of subsidiary meanings and potentially portentous connotations” (Cornwell, 3). Every word in the tale is loaded with associative meanings as in poetry, and its events and characters are polyvalent and defy a single reading. Furthermore, even the ultimate meaning of events in the tale is not fully clear: does everything 17 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. supernatural in the tale emanate from Germann’s sick imagination or does the Old Countess’s ghost reaiy visit him, reveal the three-card secret, and then deceive him? The climactic end to Chapter Four fiirther supports the tale’s ambiguity. Germann’s fatal loss in cards— when instead of the winning ace he sees the queen of spades in his hand— allows a double interpretation: supernatural (the Old Countess’s postmortem revenge) and realistic-psychological (Germann in agitation drew the wrong card). Dostoevsky was the first to suggest that this ambiguity between the fantastic and realistic is the main feature of the tale: “When you read it through, you cannot make up your mind: did this vision emanate from Germann’s nature or was he really one of those who are in contact with another world, one of evil spirits hostile to man” (Dostoevsky, 192, translated by Cornwell). Ambiguity as a specific feature of The Queen o f Spades owes a great deal to the narrative method employed in the tale. Constant switches of points of view lead to the interweaving of internal and external perspectives on characters and events (on this, see Vinogradov, “Stil’ ‘Pikovoi damy’”). Some descriptions come from the narrator and thus function as objective insights, and some belong to the tale’s characters and thus might well be regarded as delusions. Since the points of view shift very quickly in the narrative, the reader is often misled as to where the information comes from, thus increasing the hesitation on the reader’s part. Is Germann a Mephistophelean, Napoleonic type with “strong passions and fiery imagination,” or just a poor Russian German, another “little man” who is defeated by the dark powers? Both interpretations of the tale’s main character find 18 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. justification in the narrative. The characters of Liza, Tomsky, and Count Saint- Germain, as well as the motivations for their behavior, also allows for a multiplicity of interpretations. The complexity of the tale’s overall design increases when, in the beginning, after Tomsky narrates his story about the young Countess’s win, his listeners try to explain this miraculous event. Their reactions to this story: “chance” (cjiyuau), “fairy tale” (cmsm), and “powdered cards” (nopovuxoeue Kapmu) (Pushkin, 213)3 ~offer the whole range of interpretations of the tale. As Cornwell puts it, “chance” provides a rational explanation, “fairy tale” stands for magic of sorts, and “powdered cards” (cheating) suggests a fraud or hoax (Cornwell, 42). Here the reader has in embryo a number of possible interpretations for The Queen of Spades as a whole. This possibility of many interpretations discussed within the tale itself leads some critics to classify Pushkin’s tale as a “self-conscious” text (Doherty, 62), an “allegory of interpretation itself’ (Emerson, The Queen o f Spades, 26), in which Pushkin intentionally teases the reader with partial keys. This reading of The Queen o f Spades presents it as a “total” parody whose objects are writing, reading and, finally, critical interpretation itself (Doherty, 62). Indeed, there is undoubtedly parody in Pushkin’s tale, directed against the Romantic tradition as well as against the tale’s contemporary readers who expected the events to develop according to the literary cliches of the time (for a full listing of literary 19 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. allusions as well as epigraphs and quotations, see Debreczeny, The Other Pushkin, 204-209). Yet, to view the tale as a “text about nothing” (Doherty) seems to be quite a (post) modernization of Pushkin in the “deconstructivist” vein that ignores the historical context as well as the seriousness that is present in the tale. Rather than viewing the tale as nothing but a “joke” (Emerson), for the present study I find it more useful to approach The Queen o f Spades as a text with “a multiple perspective that can accommodate fantasy within reality, past within the present and lyricism within an ironic framework” (Debreczeny, The Other Pushkin, 210- 211). I will elaborate more on the meanings and significance of discrete episodes of Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades in the course of this dissertation, as I compare the changes made to Pushkin’s tale in the process of its adaptation. The adaptations ignore the multiple perspective of the tale’s structure and the polyvalence of its meanings that are distinguished by the highbrow critical reader. Instead, each takes one or another layer of Pushkin’s tale and builds on it according to the changing historical context and aesthetic or political needs or conventions of its medium. While each adaptation comments on only one aspect of Pushkin’s narrative, their very number and the variety of perspective reconfirm polyvalence as an inherent feature of Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades. 3 Except where noted, all English quotations from Pushkin are made from Alexander Pushkin, Complete Prose Fiction, trans. Paul Debreczeny (Stanford: Stanford U Press, 1983). 20 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER ONE THE QUEEN OF SPADES ON THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY STAGE In this chapter, I discuss the lowering from highbrow to middlebrow cultural values as the main process accounting for changes that occur in nineteenth-century theatrical adaptations of Pushkin’s tale. Among the adaptaions discussed in this dissertation, nineteenth-century theatrical versions most clearly belong to middlebrow culture. First of all, the middlebrow status of the nineteenth-century adaptations is predetermined by the theatrical genres to which they belong: comedy, melodrama, and psychological melodrama. Within the generic system of the nineteenth-century theater, these genres appealed mainly to audiences composed of the Russian middle classes (primarily the kupechestvo and the meshchane). The cultural status of the version is dependent on its genre, or, in other words, the very choice of genre presupposes its cultural status, which, in its turn, dictates the direction in which the popularization process proceeds. Second, the nineteenth-century playwright adapting Pushkin’s tale was driven by commercial considerations and not by the political pressures or artistic ambition that often motivated his twentieth-century counterparts. As such, entertainment was his only and final goal. To achieve this goal, adapters changed the literary source in particular ways. They chose to base their versions on those aspects of the tale that also appealed to the audience contemporary to Pushkin: its engaging 21 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. subject matter (gambling .and gamblers) and its topical references. Then they added a few more adventures to the story and updated Pushkin’s allusions with some hot issues from their own time. The three nineteenth-century plays discussed in this chapter, namely, Shakhovskof s Chrysomania, Lobanov’s The Card Player, and Korsakov’s The Queen o f Spades, amply demonstrate how middlebrow culture creates its own versions of Pushkin’s tale. Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen o f Spades (1890) is also treated here, and there are various parallels that may be found between the operatic and theatrical treatments of Pushkin’s text. The opera, like popular theater, changes the verbal narrative in the direction of greater simplicity, romanticization, and drama. Yet, I will argue that in the case of Tchaikovsky’s opera, the changes introduced into Pushkin’s narrative are due not to a lowering of the cultural status as occurs when Pushkin’s tale is adapted for middlebrow theatrical genres but to the generic demands of Romantic opera. The conventions of Romantic opera, in which music dominates words, determine how the story is narrated. This role of music helps explain why Tchaikovsky and his brother Modest Tchaikovsky, the librettist, needed to change Pushkin’s text to the extent they did. Shakhovskoi’s Chrysomania (1836): The Queen o f Spades as Romantic Comedy Chrysomania, the first theatrical adaptation of The Queen o f Spades, appeared during Pushkin’s lifetime, in 1836. It was made by the then-well-known dramatist 22 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Prince Alexander Shakhovskoi, a prolific creator of verse and prose comedies, tragedies, vaudevilles, and operas, who combined Ms work as a playwright with that of a theatrical administrator, director, and historian and theoretician of the Russian theater (Karlinsky, 228). Among Shakhovskoi’s vast dramatic heritage, the most famous are his satiric comedies The New Stern (1805) and The Lipetsk Spa (1815), wMch not only enjoyed great popularity (and whose success often mingled with scandal) but also marked an epoch in Russian theater by bringing conversational dialogue and more individualized characters to the Russian stage. Pushkin himself recognized the real dramatic spark in Shakhovskoi’s plays, as well as their satiric wit, in his famous characterization of “the caustic (kojikuu) Shakhovskoi” in Eugene Onegin. As one recent critic has written, Shakhovskoi was above all concerned with “obtaining success by giving the public whatever it wanted” (Karlinsky, 248). Shakhovskoi had already adapted two of Pushkin’s Romantic poems for the stage (the “magic comedy” Finn (1824), based on Pushkin’s poem Ruslan and Liudmila, and the “Romantic trilogy” Kerim-Girei (1825), based on Pushkin’s poem The Fountain o f Bakhchisarai [see Gozenpud, Karlinsky, Shavrygin]). The Queen o f Spades was the first of Pushkin’s prose pieces adapted for the theater and the only one t w was dramatized and staged during his lifetime. Shakhovskoi’s adaptation of The Queen o f Spades, however, can hardly be considered one of his best efforts: it proved to be long and slow and lacking in wit and spark. Yet Shakhovskoi’s reworking deserves our attention, as it establishes 23 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the pattern which recurs in most of the theatrical adaptations that followed. Not all of them were as unsuccessful as Shakhovskoi’s adaptation was, but they all “correct” Pushkin according to a similar scheme. Among other things, new characters and events are added to tie up the many loose ends that Pushkin left in his tale, and clearer motivation is provided for the characters’ actions. And where Pushkin only hints, the adapter develops an entire subplot. Chrysomania’ s performance took place on September 3, 1836, in the Aleksandriiskii Theater, the leading Petersburg theater of the time. The Aleksandriiskii Theater, built in 1832 and named after the wife ofNicholas I, could seat 1700 people. Its spectators came from almost every social rank in the city, from the Tsar’s family to the lowest servants, and the theater was also patronized by provincial landowners visiting the capital. The bulk of the audience for domestic Russian plays, however, was members of the middle class, composed at that time of such social groups as middle and lower bureaucrats (cpeduue u Mejixue H U H 06H U K U ), merchants, officers, students, housemaids, etc. (See Petrovskaia, Teatral’ nyi Peterhurg, 125-127, the best sociological and historical work on Russian theater of the time). It was to cater to the tastes of this audience that Shakhovskoi adapted Pushkin’s tale. As the play’s advertisement indicates, Chrysomania promised songs and dances to its spectators and a far from reverent handling of the original: Chrysomania-A Dramatic Spectacle in Three Parts and Three Days with a Prologue, Epilogue, Song and Dance. First Part: Supper with Friends or You Will not Get Your Fill by Just Looking. Prologue-A Proverb with Songs. 24 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Second Part: The Queen of Spades or the Mystery o f Saint-Germain, Romantic comedy with Divertissment in Three Days. First Day: Morning in th e Capital City. Second Day: Night of the Murder. Third Day: An Evening of Gambling. Variety Entertainment: A Children’s Ball. Third Part: Goddaughter or the Mutual Settlement, Epilogue— Vaudeville in One Act, Serving as a Continuation of “The Queen of Spades’ .’ X pH 3 0 MaHHH~npaMaTHraecKoe spejname b xpex nacxsx h xpes cy n c a x , c n p oJioroM , o m u io r o M , necusMH h xanuaMH. ITepsaa uacxt: Hprm:ejn»cKHH yxnH hjih rjianeHHeM cb ix H e Syaemt. Etpojior— nocjioBHua c necaaMH. Bxopaa aacn.: ntocoBaa naMa hjih xaiHia CeH-DKepM ena, poMaHTHaecKaa KOMeaaa c jpiBepxHCCMeHTOM b xpex cyrKax. CyxKH nepBBie. Y x p o c t o j ih h h CyTKH BTOpbie. ytjHHCTBeHHaS HOHB. CyncH xp exw a. firpeitK H H B eaep . flHBepTHCCeMCHT. /^excKHH 6aji TpeTta aacTt: Kpeeraima h nojnodoBHaa cnejixa, amnior - BoneBHjit b oflHOM neiicTBHH; cjiyacamHH npoaonaceHHeM “Hhkoboh humm.” (qtd. in Stolpiansky, 13) Theatergoers at the time, intrigued by this announcement, rushed to the theater, but disappointment awaited them. Shakhovskoi tried hard to attract the public’s interest. He supplied his work with a fashionable but hardly comprehensible title in Greek (see Stolpiansky, 12). He combined vaudeville with romantic comedy plus divertissement in a single play (including divertissement during which the Mazurka, the quadrille, and the Savoiar dance were performed was a common theatrical practice meant to hold the audience’s attention during the long hours of the performance, as well as to accommodate the tastes of theater goers [Durylin, 34]). Shakhovskoi also made additions to Pushkin quite characteristic of all 25 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. popularizations. He introduced a new character, the old Countess’s goddaughter, to provide a negative double to the virtuous character, Lizaveta Ivanovna. He also included felly developed intrigues based on brief episodes from Pushkin’s tale. For instance, Pushkin’s Lizaveta Ivanovna and Tomsky do not have any serious relationship— there is only one ballroom chat between them. Shakhovskoi transformed this momentary encounter into a romance and eventual marriage. The marriage occurs in the third part of the play, named “Goddaughter or the Mutual Settlement,” which brings the entire intrigue to a happy ending also absent in Pushkin. Pushkin’s brief epilogue is transformed into a one-act vaudeville. Vaudeville, which had been introduced into Russian theater by Shakhovskoi himself, was the most favored genre in the Aleksandriiskii Theater. Its main feature was “infectious gaiety,” produced primarily by the eccentric and grotesque acting style unique to this genre. Although the main purpose of vaudeville was to entertain, it also implied some “moral influence” on its audience (Petrovskaia, TeatraVnyi Peterburg, 138-141). The moralistic couplets sung in the epilogue of Chrysomania are based on the lines from Pushkin’s text (such as the song about “true faith and superstitions,” which takes its idea from the beginning paragraph of Chapter Five). If Pushkin used such moralistic maxims with some ambivalence, in the play they are taken out of context and lose their ironic flavor. Thus, in accordance with the rules of the genre, Pushkin’s prosaic epilogue, neither funny nor didactic, acquires both moralistic and entertaining qualities. Despite all these efforts to change Pushkin according to theatrical fashions 26 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and trends of the time, the generally well-received playwright met with failure. After three shows (Septembers, September 9, and September IB) the play was removed from the program. The Chrysomania fiasco was acknowledged in a review that appeared in The Northern Bee (1836, N 216). Though this newspaper was owned by Faddei Bulgarin, the principal literary enemy of Pushkin and his circle, the review compared Pushkin’s tale to Shakhovskoi’s play in favor of the former. In the reviewer’s opinion, three major problems caused the play’s debacle. The first was the very decision to transform Pushkin’s prose tale into a play, which robbed Pushkin’s characters of their inner life making them more marionettes than real people. The second cause was changes in the plot, which watered down the compressed action of Pushkin’s tale. Finally, the reviewer charged that Shakhovskoi complete misunderstood the main idea of the tale, i.e., the psychology of gambling and the gambler: The gambler can never be a chrysomaniac as a miser can never be a gambler. It is not passion for money that makes a man a gambler but the thirst for infernal sensations that springs from ups and downs of the game. HrpoK HHKorfla n e m o h c ct 6 h ti> xprooMaHOM, tu k t o h h o KaK cKynen, H H K o raa He c ^ e jia e r c a nrpoK O M . H e c x p a c x b k sojiory a en a er uenoBeK a nrpoKOM, h o ■m b x .m a a c io a x om ym eH H ti, K o x o p tie poacaaiOTCH o t SecnpepH B H oro KOJiefiaHHs H rpti. (qtd. in Stolpiansky, 1 3 -1 4 ) As is evident from the review, those features of Pushkin’s Queen of Spades that made it successful— its topicality and engaging pace— were lost in the play. It was too long to be really engaging, the idea behind gambling was simply reduced 27 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. to greed, and finally, in the opinion of the reviewer, the constraints of the stage did not contribute to the quality of the reworking. Furthermore, Shakhovskoi has neglected to include any topical events or characters in his version of Pushkin. The comic genre that Shakhovskoi chose for his adaptation is significant, for it indicates that his contemporaries found nothing in Pushkin’s tale but a light story, a joke. Chrysomania was the only version of The Queen o f Spades that entirely ignored the tale’s tragic motifs, which were so important in future adaptations. To finish with Chrysomania, it is curious to note that in the beginning of September 1836, when Shakhovskoi’s play had its three-performance run in Saint Petersburg, Pushkin was in the city (PutevoditeT po Pushkinu, 25). Thus, there is even a chance that Pushkin attended the theatrical performance of his tale. There is no record of this, however, either in his letters and notes or in memoirs, and there is not even any record of his reaction to what his former literary enemy, Shakhovskoi, did with his tale. He left it to posterity to pronounce Shakhovskoi’s comedy “an absurd and tasteless reworking” (Alekseev, 113). Lobanov’s The Card-Player (1877): The Queen o f Spades as Melodrama Chrysomania made a come back success in 1846 (Durylin, 35), but the next attempt to rewrite The Queen o f Spades for the stage followed only in 1877, forty years after Shakhovskoi. In the late fifties and sixties The Queen o f Spades was 28 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. largely -ignored: neither dramatists nor Russian critics found the tale worthy of attention. The thirty years that passed after Pushkin’s death in 1837 brought many social changes to Russian society, and new trends and tastes came into vogue. Thus, the very feature that helped win' the tale success during Pushkin’s tim e-its topicality (“live portraits taken from nature”)— contributed to its oblivion 'with the public of later times. New generations could no longer recognize in the old Countess Anna Fedotovna those famous aristocratic old ladies like Princesses Natalia Kirillovna Zagriazhskaia and Natalia Petrovna Golitsyna, who in their youth graced the faro games at the royal court at Versailles. Some time was needed to create that distance that would help the reader find in The Queen o f Spades other meanings besides the depiction of people long forgotten. The other factor I have mentioned as contributing to the popularity of Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades with its first readers— the theme of gambling— also lost its attraction for the public. For at least two decades, from the forties to the early sixties, the subject shifted to the periphery of Russian literature (Il’in-Tomich, 120). Moreover, in the forties and fifties, the treatment of the card theme in literature also changed significantly. Iurii Lotman, in his book Conversations on Russian Culture: Everyday Life and Traditions o f Russian Gentry describes card games and their significance in both real life and the letters of Pushkin’s epoch. According to Lotman, games of chance (mapmmie uzpu), among them the game of faro described in Pushkin, became a “true epidemic” in the Russian society of the twenties and thirties, in spite of official banning (Lotman “Kartochnaia igra,” 29 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 154). With their philosopy of pure chance and unpredictability, they presented a sort of antidote to the strict regulation of official life under Nicholas I. In its turn, Russian literature of the 1830s offers a great number of texts with gambling for a theme, such as Pushkin’s The Shot (1830) and The Queen o f Spades (1834); Lermontov’s The Masquerade (1935), The Fatalist (1840), and the unfinished Shtoss (1841); and Gogol’s comedy The Gamblers (1842-1843). In Gogol’s writings, however, the theme of gambling had already lost the grave significance as a duel with Fate that it had had in Pushkin’s and Lermontov’s works, and it had become a subject of mockery. As Il’in-Tomich has noticed, the theme of the card game shifted from the mainstream of literature to its periphery in the forties, appearing either in the works of epigones of Romanticism such as Baron Fedor Korf, or in the prose of minor writers of the “natural school” such as Yakov Butkov (IFin-Tomich, 115-120). As its place in literature changed, so too did the conceptual underpinnings of the theme of the card game. If in Pushkin and Lermontov, the card game functioned as a philosophical symbol of life itself, in the literature of the natural school, the card game was depicted as just one of many social vices of contemporary life. The mystical aura surrounding card games in Pushkin no longer appealed to the imagination of the public. Finally, the generic changes that affected Russian literature also contributed to the oblivion of Pushkin’s tale. Already by the early forties, with the advent of the “Gogolian period” of Russian literature, the genre of the society tale, to which The Queen of Spades may be said to belong, had lost popularity and quickly died in the hands of 30 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. epigones of Romanticism, blooming for the last time in Lermontov’s Kniazhna Mary (on The Queen o f Spades as a society tale, see Sidiakov “Pushkin i razvitie”; for an opposite opinion, see Emerson, The Queen). All these factors led Vissarion Belinskii to announce in 1846 that Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades was no longer topical for Russian literature. This spokesman of his generation found Pushkin’s tale to be nothing but an “anecdote.” Although he echoed the critical responses of Pushkin’s time and praised the tale for its style (Macmepcmeo paccxasa) and for the truthfulness of its characters, Belinskii found the content of the tale too exceptional (ucxjimnumejibHO) and fortuitous (cjiynauHo) (Belinskii, 490). Both these characteristics had rather negative connotations in Belinskii’s critical vocabulary, for what he sought in literature were just the opposite qualities of “typicality” (munuHuocmb) and national spirit (Hapodnocmb). The readers of the fifties and early sixties, represented in criticism by Chemyshevsky, repeated Belinskii’s opinion of the tale almost verbatim. It is “excellently written but nobody would ascribe great importance to it,” wrote Chemyshevskii in the very first of his Essays in the Gogol Period of Russian Literature (Chemyshevskii, 18). The critic found this “great importance” in exposures of social injustice and in descriptions of the life of “poor folk,” as explored by the writers of the Gogolian trend. Hence, those texts by Pushkin that better reflect the issues of everyday life, such as The Stationmaster, which was adapted for the stage in 1854, attracted public interest. 31 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The democratic changes affecting Russian society of the fifties and sixties also had a considerable impact on the Russian theater. Moreover, it was to theater that the radical critics— who molded minds at that time— assigned the central role of bringing to light the “plague” of contemporary life and delivering social messages to the Russian public (Petrovskaia, Teatr i zritel’ , 40-41). According to I. Dmitriev (a litterateur-democrat, whose demands for a new repertoire in Russian theater reflected this trend), a mediocre play based on Russian reality is more entertaining and “is watched with a greater attention than all the amusements jnoTexn] with Dukes, Marquises...Italian doggers, English spleens and French wits” (qtd. in Petrovskaia, Teatr I zritel’, 41). The Queen o f Spades, with its Duke of Orlean, its Countess and its French wit, fitted perfectly into what Dmitriev stigmatized as a repertoire improper for the Russian theater. By the late seventies, when The Queen o f Spades once again appeared onstage, the situation in the Russian theater had changed again. Psychological and romantic melodramas came to dominate the stage. The melodrama featured the struggle of strong passions and tender agitation of the soul and the dominanace of emotions over the prose of life, and it offered to a public no longer interested in the social issues of the epoch an escape from the petty sorrows and insignificant problems of everyday life. Playwrights began exploring strong passions in exotic situations, and here Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades offered good material for elaboration. Yet another factor helped to revive interest in The Queen o f Spades— the appearance in 1867 of Dostoevsky’s The Gambler (Igrok), which helped bring the 32 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. theme of gambling and . the gambler back into public attention. Although Dostoevsky’s character is obsessed with roulette rather than with cards, this exploration of the psychology of gambling and its self-destructive manifestations came close to what Pushkin described in his tale. After DostoeVsky, gambling ceased to be merely a subject for anecdote or comedy and acquired those tragic connotations that attracted Tchaikovsky to Pushkin’s piece. A new adaptation of The Queen o f Spades by the dramatist Dmitrii Lobanov appeared in 1877. In order to meet the market’s demands, Lobanov supplied his play with the title The Card-Player {KapmeotcuuK) thus referring not to Pushkin’s long-forgotten tale but to Dostoevsky’s recent novel. Lobanov’s adaptation was a drama in five acts. Unlike its predecessor, Shakhovskoi’s unfortunate comedy, Lobanov’s play met with great success and was performed both in Saint Petersburg and on the provincial stage. Audiences in more than thirty-six cities (among which were such remote places as Arkhangelsk, Kutais, and Omsk) enjoyed The Card-Player for over twenty years (Durylin, 35). The changes the playwright made to the original help explain the tastes of the time. If Shakhovskoi’s Chrysomania transformed Pushkin’s prose work into a fashionable theatrical genre of romantic comedy, Lobanov’s Card-Player belongs to the genre of melodrama. Melodrama flourished in both the capital and the provincial theater in the nineteenth century, beginning with the year 1828, when Thirty Years, or the Life o f a Gambler, translated from the French, opened at the 33 with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Aleksandriiskii Theater (Danilov, 159).4 Melodrama’s attraction for the general public may be explained by the powerful catharsis it aims to give to the spectator, who is supposed to weep while watching heroes absorbed in consuming passions and struggling with extraordinary circumstances. As Gogol, who was crititical of melodrama, put it in his essay, “The Petersburg Stage in 1835-1836,” “The main point of melodrama is its effect, to stun the spectator with something for one instant at least. What catches one’s eye most— penal servitude [mmopaa], murder- -that which can frighten and produce convulsions. . . . The whole of melodrama consists of murders and crimes” (qtd. in Danilov, 160). Melodrama demands strong effects, something “strange and unseen” and mysterious. Pushkin’s tale seems to provide this sort of material, but, as we shall see, not in the correct proportions. Lobanov added new plot elements to Pushkin’s Queen of Spades to adapt it to the conventions of melodrama. First of all, Pushkin’s characters and the motivations for their actions have undergone considerable alteration. In Pushkin, Germann’s motives are depicted as a complicated mixture of a suppressed passion for gambling, the desire to get rich quick, and a temporary attraction to Liza (and, for a moment, even to the old Countess). Pushkin’s narrative thus defies any single reading. For example, Germann is described writing love letters to Liza: Inspired by passion Germann wrote them [letters] in a style that was characteristic of him, expressing both the uncompromising nature of his desires and the confusions of his unbridled imagination. (Pushkin, 221) 4This melodrama “won a huge success” and appeared oh the Petersburg stage until 1835. It is considered as one of the possible influences on Pushkin’s tale (lakubovich, 217-218). 34 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Pushkin never finally specifies what the nature of Germann’s “passion” and “desires”: is this passion for the girl, or for her old benefactress’s money? In Shakhovskoi’s comedy, Germann’s drives were reduced to a single and, as the reviewer noted, quite “unsophisticated” passion for money— chrysomania— which was meant to inspire laughter. Lobanov’s melodrama was composed with the opposite intent— to provoke tears. To achieve this, Lobanov made Germann’s motivation more complex. In The Card-Player, Germann is tom between two passions— his love for Liza, kindled even before he hears the tale of the old Countess’s game in Paris, and his desire to win money in the card game, sparked by Tomsky’s anecdote. This inner conflict between love and money recalls Alexey from Dostoevsky’s The Gambler and anticipates Tchaikovsky’s opera. In Pushkin, Liza’s motives are less complex than Germann’s, but there nevertheless remains some ambiguity, which makes Liza’s character more than one-dimensionaL The reader can only guess whether Liza has really fallen in love with Germann, or whether she just wants to use him to escape the humiliations she, a poor ward, has endured in the old Countess’s home. Indeed, from Pushkin’s scant narrative, the reader cannot even say for sure what kind of person Liza is: a positive character, a poor suffering victim, or a negative character with Napoleonic intentions much like Germann’s. Lobanov’s Liza, in contrast, is the one who is supposed to attract the main sympathy. In his play, Liza gives her whole heart to Germann (after, of course, the 35 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. hesitations appropriate to a young maiden). Moreover, the melodramatic Liza acquires qualities that Pushkin’s heroine lacked: informed by the question of women’s emancipation fashionable at that time (Petrovskaia, Teatral ’ nyi Peterburg, 147), Lobanov makes his Liza a strong, active character. The insanity afflicting Germann after his gambling loss serves only to fan the flames of her love for him. Indeed, at moments she sounds like the heroine of a Turgenev or Dostoevsky novel, as in this speech she delivers to the mad Germann: I love you as I have never loved you before, my poor sufferer! Can you hear me, can you understand me, Germann? Your misery draws me even closer to you. And I will never leave you, because I love you, I love you eternally! 5 1 xaK j u o 6 jik> xe6«, m o h 6 e.zmB.iH cxpananen, k u k H e Jno6HJia npexne! CjiM inHHiB ji h , noHMemt ji h Mena, TepMan? Tsoe H e cn a cx n e ernp 6ojiee npHBssMBaex M eiia k x e 6 e . I s H H s a n x o ne o c x a s m o x efis; noxoMy n x o jn offln o, SecKoneuHO ju o 6 ju o ! (Lobanov, 42-43) While the melodrama’s Germann is weak and tom between evil and virtue, Liza is a positive heroine meant to save him. Melodramatic conventions demand a villain, and this role is assigned to Tomsky, who makes rude advances towards Liza and wants to marry her as the heiress to the old Countess’s money. In this way, Lobanov’s melodrama met the expectations of the audience, who did not want complicated characters to be mulled over again and again. Making Pushkin conform to melodramatic standards meant eliminating the ambiguities and filling up the lacunae that Pushkin left in his tale. Lobanov also made remarkable plot changes to Pushkin’s story. These parallel 36 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. those made to the characters and also reveal much about the tastes o f the middlebrow audience. Just as the outlines of melodrama characters must be sharply defined without nuances and muted feelings, so too every action in a melodrama must be neatly explained. Bowing to this demand for neatness, the dramatist tied up those “loose ends” that'made Pushkin’s plot'so open to multiple readings. For example, Pushkin never clarifies what really happened to Germann during his last and fetal card game: whether he simply drew the wrong card {oGdepnyncn) or whether a mystical power took revenge by substituting the queen of spades for the winning ace. The melodrama version clears up this climactic event. Here the cause for Germann’s downfall is made explicit: the old Countess has revenge on Germann for disobeying the conditions of the three-card game laid down by the ghost. Both in Pushkin’s original and in its melodrama version, the ghost of the old Countess tells Germann that he will win by playing three, seven, ace, at the rate of one card a day, and that he should never try this again. In Pushkin Germann obeys this command: he comes to gamble for three successive evenings. But in the melodrama, Germann chooses to play all three cards at once. Just after the ghost’s visitation he pronounces the following monologue: But it is strange that she has ordered me not to stake more than one card in twenty-four hours. What nonsense! Why not stake them continuously, one after another? Or perhaps it is in this condition that their cabbalistic power lies? Impossible! H o crpaHHO, OTuero ona ne nenejia b cy n cn craBHTb 6 o jiee o,h h oh icapTM ? K axoH B3flop! O r o e r o h x ne c t u b h t b oflna sa a p y ro io , h TTocTQflwHo . H jih b o to m y c j i o b h h to jib k o h sajcjnouaerca h x 37 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. K a§6ajfflC T B raecK aa cH Jia? He Mo*ex6BiTi.! (Lobanov, 34) In the course of Ms game with Chekalinsky,. Gennann of the melodrama challenges the ghost’s conditions one more time: Here it is, the three has won! Bravo, Countess, thank you very much! But . why have you not allowed me to stake all three cards in one evening? It seems to me that this was a bit of jealousy on your p a rt... You just did not want me to become the possessor of more than 300,000 at once, as did your former protege Chekalinsky? Maybe you thought that I would lose my head from such unexpected wealth? Oh, I am not as weak as you,think, Countess, and I will now prove it. Box osa xpoHKa-xo B3HJia! Bpaao, rpa^HHS, cnacaSo bum! Oraero tojibko bbi He nosBOJiHjiH M H e nocTaBHTB see icapra b oflH H Beuep? Mae Kaacexca oto Strata M ajieHBKaa peBHocxt c Baniefi cxop oH B i. . . Bh H e xoTejiH, h to S b i a, noaoOHO sanieMy npeacneMy npoxexce, HejtajBiHCKOM y, cpasy cneaajica oOjia^axejieM 6ojiee xpexcox x&ican? B b i M oxcex 6 h t b nyMana, u xo a noxepjno rpjioBy ox xax o ro HeoacBwaHHoro §oraxcxBa? O , a ne xaie cjiaO, rpa<t>H H a, Rax bbi ayM aexe, h celnac floxaacy npoxHBHoe. (L ob an ov, 37) Finally, before Ms last and fatal bet, Germann not only breaks the condition not to play all the cards at once but also plans to break the proMbition that he not use the cards more than once in his life. He dreams about more games in the future: However, the Countess’s ghost whispered to me that I may only stake them once in my life. What does that mean? Do I really have to part with them, do I really have to abandon them, those dear, mysterious, delightful cards? What prevents me from staking them again somewhere else? OttHaxo, npHspax rpa(J»fflH meirraji MHe, n x o a M ory im p a rt na h h x x o jib r o op t pas b k h s h h . Hxo 3T0 osHanaex? Heyaceim a aoroxeH c h h m h npocTH Xtca, Heyxceini a nornxeH h x 6pocHXB h o x o m , s x h MHJiBie, TaHHCTBeHHBie, odojiBCTHTejiBHBie xapxBi? H xo ace m h c M em aex h x nocxaBHTB cHOBa, rtne-HnSyflB eme? (L o b a n o v , 39) In this way, the climax of the plot, Germann’s final loss, for wMch Pushkin 38 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. provides no definite interpretation, is exhaustively explained, leaving the audience no room for doubt as to why the hero is punished. Another example of this sort is an ingenious intrigue inserted into melodrama. Lobanov makes Germann the illegitimate son of the old Countess. In Chapter Five of Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades, there is a short episode that has no significance for the further development of the plot— one of those “loose ends” that Pushkin leaves in his tale. At the funeral service for the Countess, Germann “crashed to the ground” when he thought that the dead woman “screwed up one eye” at him (Pushkin, 247). In the minor confusion that follows, “a lean chamberlain” whispers to an Englishman standing near him that “the young officer is her illegitimate son” (Pushkin, 247). As was pointed out by a modem critic, this episode in Pushkin’s story has a kind of “negative inappropriateness”— that is, it is something the reader should not get caught up with in the tale (Cornwell, 51). In The Card-Player, this “red herring” from Pushkin’s narrative becomes one of the central moments, because in melodrama the action needs to be clear and even overdetermined. This amendment to the plot helped the dramatist to kill several birds with one stone: a number of events in the play become much stronger and more sensational, motivated as they are by this new relationship. One of them is the death of the old Countess: she dies not of fright as in Pushkin but because she recognizes Germann as her son, and the shock of this discovery, together with the sad recognition that her own son was threatening her with a pistol, overcomes the elderly woman. 39 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Another event that is greatly affected by Germann’s kinship with the old Countess is Germann’s own- death: the melodrama’s Germann dies because of the strong emotional shock he experiences after he learns that the diseased old Countess was his mother, in whose death he was implicated. Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades ends with a “Conclusion” consisting o f three short paragraphs. It functions as an epilogue which, according to tradition, is meant to tell the reader the subsequent fate of the main characters. The first paragraph describes that of Germann: madness and raving delirium. He is obsessed with the formula of the three cards, which he mutters to himself perpetually. The second paragraph recounts the fete of Lizaveta Ivanovna: she marries happily and raises a poor female relative. And the final paragraph tells about Tomsky, who has gotten a promotion and married Princess Polina. This conclusion is emblematic of Pushkin’s overall strategy in The Queen o f Spades. The heroes are not brought together into some final accord, but instead their fortunes are developed separately. As noted earlier, this kind of epilogue does not bring finality to the tale but rather leaves it open as life itself is open and unfinished from the point of view of its participants (Emerson, 1993: 33). As Lotman has suggested, The Queen o f Spades really has no end, for its epilogue tells the reader that its events happen again and again in an eternal cycle: Liza repeats the life of the old Countess, bringing up a poor ward; Germann repeats the three-card formula; and Tomsky repeats the typical path of a young man of his milieu (Lotman “Pikovaia dama,” 412). 40 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Pushkin’s epilogue also defies traditional definitions of either a “happy” or a “tragic” end. As T. Shaw has observed, while “Germann is shown to have failed completely, Lizaveta Ivanovna and Tomsky are presented as having succeeded in their hopes,” in a progression suggesting “failure, tainted success and success” (Shaw, 116-117). Thus, even if denied of all its philosophical significance, which is most likely to be discerned only by a sophisticated reader, such an epilogue still provokes uncertainty, inspiring not strong emotion but thoughtful reflection. Such a conclusion obviously left something to be desired for the dramatist. Melodrama demanded a final and impressive scene for the public to weep over. To fulfill the demands of the genre, Lobanov developed a whole new intrigue in Act Five of his play to bring all the events to the “bloody” climax proper for melodrama. In the final act of The Card-Player, Germann, possessed by insanity, sits in his study with cards in his hands and plays a solitary game, repeating the three-card formula. Liza visits him and addresses him in an affectionate way, trying to shift his attention from the cards to the prospect of their marriage. She vividly describes their future life together on the southern estate that she has inherited after the old Countess’s death, but her efforts are in vain. A doctor enters and gives a monologue describing Germann’s condition with up-to-date psychiatric jargon. He defines Germann’s medical case as an “acute mental derangement” that might be cured if the patient had a “paroxysm,” a “strong emotional shock.” The Doctor’s prophecy unfolds immediately: Germann suddenly begins weeping. Then he recognizes Liza and recovers. The doctor assures Liza that this healing is a 41 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. unique case in M s practice and that the miracle has occured through her love for Germann. He rejoices together with the lovers, who ask him to come to their wedding. The doctor tells Liza, however, to protect her fiance from shocks in the future because this could prove fatal for Germann. This triumph of love and virtue is interrupted by the arrival of Tomsky bringing news about the will of the old Countess. He announces that the deceased has left half of her estate to her son, known “by the last name of Germann.” The villain fulfills Ms role— Germann remembers what he did to cause the Old Countess’s death, now realizes he has killed his own mother, and becomes gripped by madness again. His hallucination of the old Countess’s ghost reappears, and Germann tears a dagger from the wall and stabs himself in the heart, intending to kill the ghost. With terrible screeching, Liza falls down on Germann’s dead body and the play ends. Here the playwright again demonstrated his skill and knowledge of the rules of melodrama. By supplying Ms play with a false happy end (Germann’s temporary recovery), Lobanov lets Ms audience relax for a moment before delivering a final shock. Moreover, the struggle between evil (passion for money) and good (love for Liza) that tortures Germann is resolved: love wins, and the hero emerges as a positive character. After this stirring of positive emotions, the tragic end of the play affects the audience much more strongly, as the death of Germann the happy lover is more likely to provoke tears than the death of Germann the gambler. Lobanov also “updated” Pushkin’s topicality by inserting the realia of contemporary life into Ms play. For example, the doctor with Ms scientific 42 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. interpretation of Germann’s condition reflects the public enthusiasm for neurology and psychopathology, new branches of medicine which had become fashionable at the time (on Pushkin’s references to the science of his time, see Alekseev; Debreczeny [The Other Pushkin, 323 n31] sees these references as ironic). In the seventies, sensational discoveries about the structure and function of the human nervous system were appearing on the pages on Russian magazines for specialists, promptly to be digested for the general public. The term “neurasthenia” was introduced in 1869 by the American neurologist G. M. Beard to describe a fundamental disorder in mental functioning characterized by general lassitude, worry, hypochondria, and even hallucinations. The syndrome soon came into fashion in Russia, and the expression “our nervous age” iuam Hepenuu eek) peppered the pages of newspapers and literary reviews (Petrovskaia, Teatr I zritel ’ , 186). It was believed that neurasthenia was often caused by the complex conditions of urban life and that it mostly affected people engaged in cerebral activity. The theater leapt upon the neurasthenia issue, and the theme of neurasthenia-induced insanity became popular. Lobanov made good use of this in his Card-Player, as Germann betrays all the symptoms of neurasthenia. His worries, his unhealthy urban life, his unbridled imagination, and his inner conflict between love and money produce hallucinations (i.e., his visions of the old Countess’s ghost). After the brutal emotional shock that Germann experienced with his loss in the card game, these medical pre-conditions propel his unstable nervous system into what is diagnosed by the doctor as an “acute, fulminant mental 43 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. derangement” (ocmpoe cKopomemoe yMonoMetuamejibcmeo) (Lobanov, 44). Liza’s suggestion that they flee urban life and settle on their country estate in order to remedy Germann’s illness also fits into the neurasthenia paradigm. Still more realia from contemporary life was incorporated in the play. The old Countess has a Ukranian last name, Pashenko; and the estate Liza and Germann inherit is in the south; furthermore, Liza’s plan to flee the city includes considerations about how to increase their capital by skillful estate management. The themes of Ukraine (the “south”) and estate management were common fashionable topics in the theater of the seventies and eighties, here combined (Petrovskaia, Teatr i zriteV, 148). The above comparison of Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades with its incarnation in melodrama indicates the pattern characteristic for middlebrow reworkings of Pushkin’s text. The melodrama that Lobanov produced aimed to supply immediate satisfaction characteristic to a general public. The plot changes as well as the metamorphosis of the characters purged Pushkin’s story of those polysemic, ambiguious elements which hindered the public from directly surrendering to sensations. For example, while the dramatist allowed some mysteries to appear in his melodrama (e.g., the spectator hears a lot about the existence of an illegitimate son of the old Countess), unlike Pushkin’s enigmas, they are resolved in the end. Pushkin’s “open end,” which provides freedom for further reflection on the part of the reader, is obviously not tolerated in melodrama. In Lobanov’s play, the events culminate in the double ending where the hero recovers only to perish immediately, 44 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. providing the audience with a wrenching emotional experience. As for the characters, they are simplified, which is exactly what the middlebrow audience expects. Finally, by inserting contemporary realia into his melodrama, the playwright bridged the gap separating his audience both socially and historically from Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades. The greater familiarity achieved in this way also aimed at allowing the spectator to identify better with the melodramatic characters and events. To sum up, the singular goal of all these changes in character, plot, and fashionable subject matter is to remove all kinds of distance that either the author’s design or history bestowed upon The Queen o f Spades. The aesthetic distancing inherent in Pushkin’s polysemic narrative makes it open to an infinite number of interpretations and simultaneously denies the reader the immediate satisfaction of the senses that he experiences when he is close to characters and identifies with events. In order to make the common spectator enjoy his play, Lobanov “finishes” Pushkin’s characters and events. In this way he closes off those virtual possibilities which are implicit in Pushkin’s “open work.” Paradoxically enough, Pushkin’s tale needed to be closed in the melodrama in order to open itself up to the average audience, which, according to Bourdieu, rejects the difficult “taste of reflection” in favor of the facile “taste of senses” (Bourdieu, Distinction, 488). with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Tchaikovsky’s Queen, of.Spades (1890): Pushkin into Romantic Opera In 1890, twelve years after Lobanov’s The Card-Player Petr IHich Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen o f Spades debuted with great success in the Saint Petersburg Mariinsky Theater and achieved prompt and lasting popularity both in Russia and the West. There had been one earlier attempt to adapt Pushkin’s take for the French operatic stage in 1850, Jacques Haldvy’s opera comique La Dame de pique, with a libretto by Eugene Scribe, but it transforms the Russian text almost beyond recognition (Il’in-Tomich, Fridkin, Roberts). The old Countess becomes the beautiful and young Princess Polotska (in reality Princess Daria Dolgoruki in disguise), who is a rich owner of salt mines and a hunchback (Roberts suggests the Victor Hugo’s influence here). Germann’s image is split between several personages. The first two acts take place at the end of Peter Ill’s reign, in the city of Polotsk, where Princess Polotska has her family castle and her salt mines. Prince Tsitsianov, a passionate gambler, wants to learn the three-card secret that, as a legend says, was given to Polotska’s family by the devil. Tsitsianov pretends that he loves the Princess, who is shrewd enough to recognize his lie and who, anyway, is in love with poor officer Constantin Nelidov, who once saved her life. To get rid of his rival, Tsitsianov blackmails Nelidov and then exiles him to salt mines near Polotsk. To save her lover, the Princess reveals the three cards— three, 46 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ten and the queen of spades (sic!)— miner Roskov, who helps Nelidov escape. Tsitsianov learns the three-card secret but does not have the magic ring which makes the secret work. In Act Third, Nelidov and Tsitsianov meet in Carlsbad, where they play cards and Tsitsianov loses on his third bet, the queen of spades, while Nelidov wins Tsitsianov’s money. In Act Four, the Queen of Spades herself appears on stage and turns out to be Princess Polotska who, in reality, is Princess Daria Dolgoruki and not a hunchback. This final accord, together with all other incredible operatic events and transformations, adjusts Pushkin’s story to the demands of opera comique as well as changes Pushkin’s situations and characters according to Western stereotypes about Russian life (Roberts, 11-14). The French opera La Dame de pique did not have a long existence and is known only to music historians now. It would seem, then, that due to its worldwide success and its enduring popularity, Tchaikovsky’s operatic version of Pushkin’s tale bears little resemblance to the short-lived middlebrow versions that have come under scrutiny so far. Yet, there are parallels between them: indeed, Tchaikovsky’s opera also changes the verbal narrative in the direction of greater simplicity, romanticization, and drama. In the case of Tchaikovsky’s opera, however, the changes are due not to a lowering of the cultural status but to the generic demands of Romantic opera. The genre of Romantic opera, largely created and developed in Russia by Tchaikovsky himself, gave priority to the music over the words. For Tchaikovsky, music has the power to convey meanings and emotions above and beyond words 47 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. tod a truth better and deeper than words. All his operas favor thus music over verbal form (Gould, 54-63). The plot and ideas of Pushjan’s story,.as well'as its overall intonation, needed to be subordinated to the music to become a Romantic opera. As a result o f thissutx>rdination, Tchaikovsky’s Queen :of Spades appears^ very different both in content and overall spirit from Pushkin’s tale: unlike its prose original, the operatic version privileges sublimity over intellectual wit, tragedy over irony. Music serves to intensify, and, accordingly, it needs characters and situations suitable for amplification. For this purpose, in the operatic Queen o f Spades the characters and action become removed from reality; this distinguishes the operatic version not only from Pushkin’s original but also from the other adaptations we dealt with earlier in this chapter. As was pointed out, in the successful theatrical versions, topicality helped to bring the story closer to real life and to the audience’s experience. The opera does the opposite: it removes tale’s events and its characters from contemporary reality. Notably, Tchaikovsky himself had criticized Dargomyzhsky’s version of The Stone Guest for its fidelity to Pushkin’s original, remarking: But if anything is more hateful and fa lse than this unsuccessful attempt to introduce truth into a branch of art where everything is based on artifice [n a jdkh] and where truth in the everyday s e n s e of the word is altogether inappropriate—I do not know it. (Dnevniki P. I. Chaikovskogo, 215) It was precisely to its non-topicality, its removal from contemporary reality, that earned opera exceptional popularity with the Russian public of the eighties and 48 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. nineties. According to Petrovskaia, in the optimistic, socially-conscious era of the sixties and seventies, the theater took center stage, so to speak, with the Russian public; its topicality gathered the largest audience. In the subsequent decades, opera prevailed as the art that offered an escape from reality (Petrovskaia, Teatr i zritel 135-136). Several basic changes that Tchaikovsky and his brother Modest, the main librettist, introduced into Pushkin’s tale account for opera’s non-topicality. First of all is its relocation of action from the era of Nicholas I to the end of Catherine II’s reign, a collective decision made at a meeting in the office of the Imperial Theater director Vsevolozhskii (Brown, 228). There are various reasons for this change. One of them is of purely practical nature: according to the tradition of Imperial opera, officers in uniform (as well as priests, church services, etc.) were taboo on stage (Smolich, 70). The only way to escape this ban and resent such characters was to transfer the action into the historical past. That is why it was necessary to place the action of the opera The Queen o f Spades in the eighteenth century— a good century before the opera was composed and performed. Besides this practical reason, there are also artistic reasons for this switch. As Gary Schmid g a .1 1 points out in his study Literature as Opera, the process of transforming literature into opera entails changes that facilitate the heightened level of expression that music demands. From this point of view, the luxurious grandeur of the era of Catherine the Great had much more expressive, spectacular power than the sober and prosaic epoch of Nicholas I in which Pushkin’s tale takes 49 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. place.5 ' For the same reason— expressive potential— Germann’s rank is elevated from military engineer to hussar. According to Schmidgall, the key operatic ingredient is eloquently passionate characters (Schmidgall, 20). The two main characters, Germann and Liza, are accordingly changed when transplanted into opera As for Germann, both M s social status and Ms psychological profile are considerably magnified in the opera in comparison with the story. In the opera, Germann is no longer Pushkin’s self- disciplined rational man but a fatalistic and passionate being. The “strong passions and a fiery imagination” that Pushkin mentions just once in his characterization of Germann (Pushkin, 218) becomes a major part of Germann’s character in Tchaikovsky’s opera. The departure from Pushkin is already evident in the first scene of the opera. In Pushkin, Germann makes Ms first appearance at a card party, where he observes a card game without gambling himself. In Tchaikovsky, he is introduced as a lover consumed by M s passion for Liza (upon his appearance he sings the famous arioso “I do not know her name” [M u M e n u ee ne 3Ham\, wMch becomes Germann’s love theme in the opera). It is only much later in the opera that another fierce passion— the lure of wealth— corrupts Germann’s initial ardent feeling for the heroine. And then, in the opera’s finale, before Ms death, Germann again returns to Ms first pure feeling, Ms love for Liza. 5 Officers’ uniforms, dresses, etc. underwent a considerable simplification from the epoch of Catherine to the time of Nicholas I wh o was notorious for his moderate taste and pretense to be“a simple soldier.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Thus, the psychological development of the opera’s hero differs considerably from that of the original tale. Pushkin’s Germann sets out to make his fortune by gambling, then feigns a romance with Liza, and ends up coming back to cards. Tchaikovsky’s Germann’s psychological progress is inverted: he experiences passionate, larger-than-life love for Liza, followed by obsession with the three cards (although sparked by his desire to get rich in order to marry Liza), and finally return to his love for Liza. Liza becomes a correspondingly passionate operatic heroine. Like Germann, she undergoes a change in social status as Pushkin’s poor ward becomes the Countess’s granddaughter, thus elevated and removed from most of the opera’s audience. She is betrothed to the noble Prince Eletsky, but she bums with a clandestine love for Germann, a “mysterious and gloomy stranger,” who constantly pursues her and her grandmother while on their promenades. According to Schmidgall, to fulfill the operatic requirement of intensification the action should consist mainly of “epiphanic moments,” i.e., explosive scenes of concentrated and striking expressivity. “The composer and librettist must search for the moments in literature— call them lyric, explosive or hyperbolic— which permit them to rise to an operatic occasion” (Schmidgall, 11). To provide such explosive moments, Tchaikovsky’s the main characters are brought into much closer contact than they are in Pushkin, where they mostly see each other in passing. In order to do so the opera introduces several love scenes. The most significant is the one in Scene III, when Liza is confronted with Germann in the 51 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. privacy of her room and she yields to his passion. Another such moment is the final encounter between the two protagonists (the Winter Canal scene). In the opera, Liza, having realized that his obsession for gambling and his insanity have overwhelmed Germann’s love for her, drowns herself in the canal, acting in accordance with her passionate nature. The operatic fatality and heightened emotion of the last encounter between the two lovers are radically different from Pushkin’s detached description of their last meeting. In Pushkin’s tale, nothing sensational happens, and no dramatic words are uttered. Liza gave Germann a key and detailed instructions on how to slip unnoticed out of the house, and he merely “pressed her cold unresponsive hand.. ., and went out” (Pushkin, 227). Neither hero dies in Pushkin. In Tchaikovsky both commit suicide— a prime example of those epiphanic moments without which Romantic operatic discourse cannot exist. In opera the possibility of “modest but real life” that Pushkin chooses for Liza, as well as any trace of parodic deflation, is rejected out of hand, for parodic or realistic heroes cannot suffer a fate tinged with profound loss or tragedy.6 It is noteworthy that the only piece from Pushkin’s text transferred into the opera verbatim is Germann’s plea when he addresses the Countess in the bedroom scene. Pushkin wrote this speech as a parody on Romantic discourse, with Romantic sentiments and rhythmic prose imitating Romantic poetry. This 6 It is also remarkable that Tchaikovsky never refers to his heroine as Lizaveta Ivanovna which is how Pushkin refers to her. In the opera she is called Liza, a name which for any Russian reader suggests a direct association with Karamzin’s “poor Liza,” who also drowns herself upon being abandoned by her lover. 52 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. suited the opera perfectly, and Tchaikovsky himself warmly praised Ms brother for tMs piece of adaptation (on tMs, see Raragicheva). Germann’s fate in the opera undergoes a transformation similar to Liza’s: after his ultimate loss, he does not end up in an asylum as in Pushkin but stabs himself with a dagger (an ending we have already encountered in the popular plays). As for the rest of the operatic Germann’s characteristics, they all expose him as a “demonic” hero. He is described as “gloomy and pale as a demon out of hell” (Tchaikovsky, Pikovaia dama, 21), and his arias and recitatives are replete with similar Romantic vocabulary. Here again the opera departs from the irony present in the original story by taking at face value Pushkin’s description of his main character as a “truly romantic character” with “the soul of Mephistopheles” (Pushkin, 226). Pushkin’s entire narrative becomes subject to the dramatic requirements of the opera, creating a dynamic spectacle of action, emotion, and engagement that music illustrates so well. In Pushkin’s tale, none of the characters experiences real love. In the opera, love and passion play a pivotal role; in addition to the main heroes being lovers, even lesser characters are consumed by the fatal passion. Prince Eletsky— to whom Liza is betrothed— represents a positive male character, absent in Pushkin. Eletsky’s presence in the opera creates a classical triangle as his unwavering love of the heroine is juxtaposed to Germann’s vacillating passions. In the last scene of the opera, Prince Eletsky challenges Germann at the card table and wins the final game, avenging Liza’s death. There is an additional love affair 53 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. between Count Saint-Germaine and the young Countess described in the opera. In Pushkin’s tale, Saint-Germaine is described .as an “old eccentric” (Pushkin, 213), who saves the young Countess by revealing the secret of three cards to her without, however, asking anything in return. In the opera Saint-Germaine is presented as “still a handsome-mari” and one of the Countess’s admirers, but the ' Countess remains indifferent toward him, preferring “Faro to love” (Tchaikovsky, Pikovaia dama, 35). The Countess’s loss at cards gives Saint-Germaine the chance to fulfil his amorous desires: as Tomsky’s ballad says, “in return for a single rendez-vous,” he reveals the three winning cards to her (Tchaikovsky, Pikovaia dama, 36). The basic difference between the overall conception of events in the opera and in the tale can also be traced on the level of narrative strategy. In Pushkin the whole story is told from an aesthetic distance. To achieve this, Pushkin uses an o m n iscie n t narrator whose point of view is detached and whose overall tone is cold. In Tchaikovsky, Germann’s point of view is dominant and predetermines the emotional and utterly serious tone of the operatic rendering of events. Analysizing Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Gary Schmidgall argues that, by taking Lenskii’s point of view instead of that of Pushkin’s ironic narrator, Tchaikovsky achieves a successful transformation of the literary text with its irony, polysemism, and detachment into a Romantic opera with its lyricism and emotional participation (Schmidgall, 229-233). A similar switch occurs in The Queen o f Spades, in which Germann takes place of Pushkin’s omniscient narrator. The effect of this change is 54 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. difficult tb: u n d e r e s t im a t e . For invPushkin Germann appears as the only character who -comes-'to believe in a supernatural ,cause o f events. The change of the narrator when Germann’s voice prevails, as well as the loftiness of Germann’s character, from which the German thriftiness and pedantism are completely removed, results in the opera’s fundamental departure from the meaning and spirit of the original. A mystical interpretation of events wins out over Pushkin’s realistically ambivalent attitude, as fierce passions overwhelm German calculation. As noted, these changes follow the conventions of Romantic opera. Tchaikovsky’s brother Modest, the author of the libretto, fruitlessly discerned in Pushkin’s narrative those moments with the most expressive “operatic” quality and expanded upon them. The composer himself was keenly aware of the dramatic requirements of opera as well as of the audience’s expectations. Although he pretended to have no talent for dramatic effects and allegedly ignored the necessity for them, it is he who introduced some major changes to Pushkin’s plot in order to heighten the drama of the libretto. For instance, Liza’s suicide in the Winter Canal scene was inserted into the libretto at Tchaikovsky’s insistence. According to the composer, without this scene the operatic narration would have lost its effect. In a letter to Modest, Tchaikovsky stated it clearly: Despite my wish to have as few scenes as possible and to keep it concise, the whole o f the third act will have no women and that’s boring. Apart from that, the audience needs to know what happened to Liza [emphasis is mine], (qtd. in Orlova, 359) Tchaikovsky’s intervention also belies the common belief that Modest alone was 55 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. responsible for all “distortions” o f Pushkin’s plot (see Brown, 243-244). ■ Tchaikovsky was also extremely concerned with the closing of each scene of the opera. Very much as in the theatrical versions, in opera, according to the composer, not only the whole work but every scene had to have an effective ending. Tchaikovsky completely reworked the, finale of Scene III, the meeting of Germann and Liza in her room, on the grounds that Modest’s version“ was no real ending” (qtd. in Orlova, 361). In Modest’s original libretto, the scene was supposed to end with a polonaise that left it “open.” The composer changed this ending, which he found uncertain or unimpressive, giving it dramatic closure: after Germann threatens to kill himself, Liza finally yields to his passion, confessing her love to him with the words “I am yours”( # mean). Like the “effective” scene closures, the opera’s Finale also bears testimony to the composer’s mastery of dramatic effects. The supreme emotional tension of Germann’s suicide is followed by the stylization of an Orthodox funeral chant: “O Lord! Pardon him and give rest to his turbulent troubled spirit” (‘Tocno/p>, npocxH eM y h ynoKoft ero Marexcnyio, HSM yneiiHyio ayiny”) (Tchaikovsky had to compose his own music for this chant because the censors would not allow authentic liturgical music on stage). This religious chant, the final chords of the opera, brings peace and reconciliation not only to Germann’s “troubled soul” but also to the audience’s exalted emotions. In general, the whole composition of the opera— seven scenes and three acts, perhaps corresponding to two of the three winning cards, three and seven- 56 with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. demonstrates the composer’s concern with dramatic integrity. Tchaikovsky alternates scenes of the utmost dramatic intensity (scenes 1, 4, 6, and 7) with more descriptive scenes that are meant to give the audience a break (scenes 2, 3, 5). This thoughtful compositional planning makes The Queen o f Spades one of the most fully integrated of all Tchaikovsky’s operas (Brown, 263). The Queen o f Spades had great success with all kinds of audiences (on the opera’s popularity, see II’m-Tomich). It quickly became a musical “bestseller,” both in its own country and abroad. This was exactly what the composer himself had in mind, for he composed his opera for wide audiences. On numerous occasions he acknowledged his partiality for the operatic genre precisely because he valued its “democratism” compared to other, more elitist musical genres: “opera has the privilege of influencing the musical feeling of the masses whereas the symphonic composer deals with a few selected auditors” (qtd. in Volkoff 328). Tchaikovsky expected The Queen o f Spades, his favorite creation, to have an effect on the public equal to what he himself experienced while writing his opera: I have written it with unbelievable passion and enthusiasm, I have vividly experienced all the sufferings and emotions of the story (to such extent that at one stage I feared that the ghost of the Queen of Spades might make an appearance), and I hope that all my raptures, excitements, and enthusiasm will find resonance in the hearts of responsive listeners. (Orlova, 369-370)7 7 The opera’s unanimous success with the general public did not prevent it from rebukes from the camp of highbrow critics who find faults in opera’s very popularity together with the its neglect of the important aspects of Pushkin’s tale. Let me just name several of these critical rebukes: “surface brilliance over inner content,” ’’scenic operatic effects to blind the spectator” (qtd. in Stark, 82-84), ‘Tchaikovsky’s own hysteria case” (Brown, 270), “outdated musical technique,” “not in style,” and “too emotional” (qtd. in Asafev, 211, 241, 256). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. So, very much as in popular theater, the operatic version was intended'to ■provide its jistemers with quick gratification. Yet there is a substantial difference between the theater and the opera: while in the theater the audience was supposed to find an immediate pleasure in identification with the external action on the stage* in the opera this audience’s satisfaction was achieved through participating in emotions and sufferings of the operatic characters. Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen o f Spades became, without doubt, the most significant adaptation of Pushkin’s tale for the general public. It very quickly became a cultural text independent of Pushkin’s tale, with its own history of performance, interpretation and influence. As we shall see in the next chapter, some interpreters, such as Meyerhold in his 1935 production of The Queen of Spades, found the operatic drama overwrought, its situations histrionic, and its story too accessible. Meyerhold tried to restore the dependence of Tchaikovsky’s music upon Pushkin’s text, reversing Tchaikovsky’s strategy, and turned the opera into a “performance of thought,” favoring verbal form and intellectual wit over the music. Other reworkings of Tchaikovsky’s opera, such as Schnittke’s Modem opera The Queen o f Spades, would consider its drama and its music too realistic and would experiment with the operatic composition. Yet these revisions of the opera, although praised by elitist critics, have not won popularity with the general public, whose demands for a “simple, clear, and colorful” performance Tchaikovsky fulfilled so well. 58 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Korsakov’s Queen o f Spades (1895): The Genre of Psychological Drama The next stage version of The Queen o f Spades appeared in 1895, written by the dramatist Nikolai Aleksandrovich Korsakov. Korsakov kept Pushkin’s title: there was no longer any need to change it in order to attract public attention. During the eighties and nineties, Pushkin’s status in Russian culture had radically changed: he became a recognized classic, whose name and works were well known to the common reader. A chain of events contributed to transforming Pushkin from a poet fu r Wenige, praised mostly by literati and the intelligentsia, to a revognized “national poet,” practically known to every Russian, both literate and illiterate. The first events that lead to canonization of Pushkin were the “Pushkin Days” in June 1880, when, during the celebration of the anniversary of the poet’s birthday, a monument to Pushkin was opened in Moscow. Although it was mostly the elite of Russian intelligentsia— the leading novelists, poets, editors, publishers, actors, artists, musicians— who attended the celebration, as well as initiated and organized the monument and its opening, there was still a wide resonance to this event among other strata of Russian society (on the 1880 celebration and Pushkin’s image, see Levitt, Aizenstok, Murav’eva). As a result of this quite “intelligentsia” holiday, Pushkin’s popularity grew quickly which meant that his works could become a saleable commodity. Already during the 1880 celebration, the “capitalizing” on Pushkin took place when alongside low-quality merchandise such as Pushkin vodka and cigarettes, his name reached the general public through 59 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the “Pushkin presentations” that popular theaters and amusements parks ran during; the Celebration (Levitt, 79-80). In January 29,1887, another Pushkin jubilee celebration took place (this time it was the fiftieth anniversary of Pushkin’s death). This celebration passed quite quietly, but the next day, when the fifty-year copyright on Pushkin’s works expired, cheap editions flooded the market. The availability of inexpensive copies of Pushkin’s works made him accessible for the common people and played a tremendous role in spreading his popularity. This changing status of Pushkin, who in the eighties and nineties became a central cultural figure for an expanding Russian public, greatly influenced the choice of his works for popularization and adaptation. His name and the titles of his works spoke for themselves, and popularizers no longer needed to substitute fashionable-sounding names like Chrysomania or Kartezhnik to attract public interest. Nevertheless, his plots and characters still needed some enhancement when brought to a popular audience. Korsakov’s drama The Queen o f Spades is a case in point. Besides Pushkin’s growing fame, another factor greatly influenced Korsakov’s adaptation. As suggested, Tchaikovsky’s opera breathed the new life into the public appreciation of Pushkin’s piece.8 Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades would from then on be read by Russian people with Tchaikovsky’s music ringing in their ears. What Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece did for Pushkin’s tale has not always been benign; the influence of Tchaikovsky’s music has been so powerful that it has 60 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. sometimes overshadowed Pushkin’s tale in the public mernpry. Events from the prose Queen o f Spades began to be contused in the public consciousness with those from its operatic counterpart. It was not only art consumers who tended to contuse Pushkin and Tchaikovsky; producers of art, likewise treated Pushkin and Tchaikovsky on equal footing in subsequent adaptations of The Queen o f Spades. Many of these are truly amalgams of Tchaikovsky’s and Pushkin’s works, blending elements from the two works in such a way that it became hard to remember from which masterpiece this or that element derives. In particular, the opening scenes, as well as the endings of both pieces, which differ radically from each other, are still often confused. Such is the case with Korsakov’s play, in which Tchaikovsky’s influence is clearly present. The first act, entitled “The Legend,” replaced the opening scene ofPushkin’s Queen o f Spades— the card game in Narumov’s house— with that of the opera. In the Summer Garden in Saint Petersburg, Tomsky tells a group of young officers the story of his grandmother’s adventures in Paris, where she played her three magic cards. As in Tchaikovsky, in Korsakov’s play the first meeting of Germann and the Countess takes place during this same scene. Traces of Tchaikovsky’ s influence can be also distinguished in the Old Countess’s reaction upon seeing Germann for the first time. As in Tchaikovsky’s opera— full of premonitions and omens— in Korsakov’s melodrama the Old Countess is frightened by Germann’s appearance, as she 8 The success of Tchaikovsky’s opera also brought the forgotten Chrysomcmia back into the public view. It was cleared by the censorship in 1891 and performed several times in Russian theaters (Durylin, 36). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. foresees her doom in him. She describes 'him as a person who seems to have- come “from Hell” (manm m ttpeucnodmu). In other parts of M s mblodrama, Korsakov either follows Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades or introduces changes according to his own notion of how to please public taste. In his modifications, Korsakov follows-'■ the pattern established by hist predecessors, modifying Pushkin according to what was considered entertaining and topical by the public of his time. The most significant transformation was that of Germann. In Korsakov’s Queen o f Spades, Germann is a learned man who desires to penetrate the “mysteries of nature;” he is also interested in “cabbalistics” and in “natural mysticism.” This modification of Pushkin’s engineer-protagonist not only brings Korsakov’s Germann closer to Pushkin’s character of Saint- Germain but also reflects the fascination with supernatural phenomena and mysticism that swept through Russian society at the fin de si eele. Korsakov adds yet another element to Germann’s character. Pushkin’s Germann was a Russian German (pyeemu nemeii), but Korsakov’s Germann is Jewish. The dialogue between the Old Countess and Tomsky, in which the public finds out this remarkable fact, is worth quoting in full: TOMSKY: I also need to ask you a favor. (The countess looks at him perplexed and with fear). Do not worry, this is not about money. COUNTESS: What is it about, then? TOMSKY: Let me introduce you, though not for the ball, to a true philosopher and wonderful mathematician... COUNTESS: Who? TOMSKY: My good friend Germann Abramovitch. COUNTESS: To whom is he known, mon cher? TOMSKY: To all my friends! COUNTESS: That is not enough. Where did he come from? 62 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TOMSKY: He was bom somewhere in Russia and received Ms ' ■ education-at a .University abroad. COUNTESS: But who Is Ms father? What familyjdoes h e comdfiom? TOMSKY:This I'd o 'n o t know for sure. Friends say he is German. COUNTESS: What do those who:are not M s friends say? - TOMSKY: They believe fie conies from among the German... how, would Tsay it...? . COUNTESS: Israelites? TOMSKY: Yes, something like that. But in any case fie is a remarkable man. COUNTESS: And for how long have you known him? TOMSKY: Not too long... But I have already had time to borrow something from him. COUNTESS: Is he a money-lender? TOMSKY: ,God forbid! I h ave borrowed from him a particle of his knowledge... TOMCKHH: Y Mena erne ecxt k bum npoctSa. (TPAd>HHM cm o x p h x ua nero BonpocHxejii»HQ-6o»3JiHBo). He o jjeHbrax. TPAdJHIM: O neM »ce? TOMCKH0: H o3B O .iH .xe mhc npegcxaBHXt., tojibko He mis Sana, H C T H H H oro 4)mioco<j)a h aaMeHaxejiMioro M axeM aTH Ka... TPA#HHM: Koro? TOMCKHft:Moero x o p o m e r o npHsxejis, T ep M an a ASpaMOBHHa. TPAOHHH: KoMy ace oh, mon cfier, rosecxeH? T OMCKHH:BceM m o h m £ p y 3 i> H M ! TPAOHHJI: Oxoro He aocxaxomto. Oxxyjta o h s b h jic s ? T O M C K H H :O h . .. poflHJica uyxt jih H e b P o c c h h ; odpaaoBaHHe nojiyunji b YHHBepcHxexe sa rpanimeH. rPAd>HHM: Ho k x o ero oxen? KaKoro o h npoHcxoxfleHna? TOMCKHH: Box oxoro a He snaro HaBepao... HpraxejiM roBopsx, h x o oh neMen,. TPA <I>H H W : A He npHaxejra? TOMCKHK: flyMaiox, hxo oh npOH Cxojprr ox HeM eipcHX... rax 6h mo noMsrue Bbipasnxb?.. TPAOHHS: HapaHJibxsiHHH? TOMCKHH: JS,a... b pone axoro. Ho b o bcm kom cjrynae, o h nejioseK 3aM eH axejn .H B .ra. TPAOHHJI: H xbi aaBH O c h h m sh u k o m ? TOMCKHH: He oco6eHHO... Ho ycnen yace y Hero no3aHMCXBOBaxbca... FPAOHH9: Passe o h pocxobihhk? TOMCKHH: noMHJiyfixe, h x o bbi! JI saHMcxBosaji y Hero nacxHHKy Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ero SH aH H H ... (Korsakov Pikovaia dama) In tMs remarkable dialogue, the public was confronted with a hot issue of the time: anti-Jewish feeling in the Russia nineties. Anti-Semitism had already reared its head in pogroms in Russia in the eighties, reaching its zenith in the appearance of The Protocols o f the Elders o f Zion, a document written in Russia purporting to outline a Jewish plan for world domination, and in the “Beilis affair,” a notorious blood libel. In introducing the Jewish question into his Queen o f Spades, Korsakov did not fail to exploit two common biases against Jews. The words of the Old Countess, who jumps to the conclusion that Germann is a moneylender (pocmoeiyuK), reflect a widespread antipathy towards Jews grounded in economics. In turn, Tomsky’s description of Germann as a learned man interested in “cabbalistics” might stem from the widespread belief in a connection between Jewish and Masonic “hidden knowledge,” as expressed in The Protocols o f The Elders o f Zion, which appeared shortly after Korsakov’s play. Hence, by supplying his Germann with a Jewish origin and an interest in “natural mysticism,” Korsakov incorporated some topical social issues into his play and updated the outmoded realia of Pushkin’s tale. Yet, other aspects of Germann’s personality found in Pushkin, such as his cynical practicality and his desire to get rich at any cost, did not need to be changed for Korsakov’s play. They were already in tune with what became a main theme of the theater of the 1890s, i.e., the immoral and predatory life of the “practical man” or capitalist, who 64 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. represented the impending kingdom of Vaal (Petrovskaia, Teatr I zritel ’ , 147-151). Thus, Korsakov’s adaptation of The Queen o f Spades bridged the gap which that have existed between the story of the thirties and the public of the nineties, and allowed spectators easy identification with the heroes and events of the tale. As to plot changes, these are minor in Korsakov’s drama, especially in comparison with the numerous alterations made by Lobanov in The Card Payer, yet there are some definite parallels in the pattern of these changes. Aside from substituting Tchaikovsky’s opening scene for Pushkin’s, Korsakov also alters the denouement of his Queen o f Spades. As I have already noted, in almost every middlebrow version of The Queen o f Spades, Germann dies in the end. Germann likewise meets his maker in Korsakov’s melodrama. Yet the dramatist does not pierce his hero’s breast with a dagger, as in Lobanov or Tchaikovsky. His Germann merely expires in a state of delirium caused by his final loss. Yet, his death in Korsakov’s drama is remarkable in that, instead of being “bloody” as in the other reworkings of Pushkin’s tale, it becomes “wordy.” After Chekalinsky, the banker, utters the fatal words, “Your Queen is beaten” (Bama doMa yduma), an ambiguous phrase in Russian, Germann takes these words literally (“your lady has been killed”) and pronounces a monologue meant to convey to the spectator such emotional turmoil that it results in delirium: Did I kill her? Lies, slander. I did not kill her, I swear to you... yes... where did you get this idea? Look, it is not loaded... ah...(looking in the window)... she disappeared. Can you hear her steps? Quiet, quiet, it’s her... talking.. .and here is her secret... Three, seven, ace!.. The old lady of spades!.. Do you see this sea?.. And here are my ships... do you see them fly?.. 65 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and here is gold...tons o f .goId!.,v,.doyou hear the chinMng o f coins?., oh, what deKghtfliL sounds... (laughing) more!., ahk. The; wind is -howling..;. What a terrihle noise.., ;It is -gold. boiling, bobbing, flowing... more, more... uh, a whole sea o f gold,., shining, glowing, ' sparkling.,. ■ ; diamonds, emeralds'.... more . y diamonds, factories, gardens. ..houses... mine, mSie^everything-Is mine!'': ' Are you surprised? Be surprised... yes, I \own everything..-.'nnly me... ■ everything 'is* mine, everything is here with me (strikes'the table and notices aeard). ■ That’s Her, her!'.?.? OlvWheiieAJpT'hide-from her?... What? What are you saying? Liza and death... Death!... Her... That’s her in theycoffin... I am afraid! I can feel how cold .the grave is... close the coffin! Let me go!..,. Have pity on a poor man, on a destitute man... No, do not pity him, trample him! He deserves it! Trample him, strangle him... Abuse him.., Like that, like that, trample him into the earth...ah!! a fire in my chest!!! I am suffocating (tears his clothes off and falls dead). FepM an: Y 6 h p ? JIojkb, KrreBexa. M m y 6 m m , m s m y c b b o m ... pa... p a c u e r o B ti B3ajm? CM Oxpaxe, He aapaacen. ..a... ( x j h p h t b o k h o ) . .. Hcne3jia. Cjibmmxe, cuM niHxe, Kaic cxyn aex? T h x o , x h x o ... 3xq o n a ... roB op n x a b o x ee xaifH a.... T p o iica , ceMepKa, x y 3 ...!! HnKOBasr cx a p y x a !... B b i BH/pixe 3xo M ope? A b o x m o h KopaSjiH ... BHpnxe jih , khk o h h nexK x... a b o x s o j i o x o .... ck ojim co so p o x a ..! cjibiunaxe jih sb om uepBOHpeB... ax, h x o 3a cpapocxH bie 3ByKH... (cM eexca) e ip e!.. A! B ex ep B o e x ... k u k o h yxacH B ifl in yM ... 3 x0 30Jioxo khudhx, KjioKouex, xeu ex, x e u e x .... 6ojn »m e... S o jib in e ... bi, n e n o e M ope s o jio x a ... 6jiecxn x, cB epxaex, n e p e jiH B a e x c s ... SpHPjmaHXbi, r a y M p y p b i... ajiMasbi, (fradpHKH, ca p b i... p oM a... m o h ... m o h ... Bee M oe!.. B h ypHBjraexecb? Y p m jiM x e c b .., pa, a BceM B jiap eio... o p h h ... Bee M oe, s e e y M era 3pecb (yp ap aex n o cx o jiy h b h p h x xapxy). Ona, oH a!.. o , x y p a m h c pexb ca o x n e e ... H xo? H xo xw roB opm nB ? J lro a h CM epxb... CMepxb!.. ona... ona b rp o 6 y !.. Cxpanmo! Beer MorajibHMM xoJiopoM ... saK poiixe rp o 6 ! H y cx a x e!.. Cxcajibxecb Hap; 6epHSK0M, n a p hhbd[hm ... n e t , He x a jie ifx e , x o n m ix e e r o ! H o pejioM eMy! T oothxc, p y n m x e e r o ... H apesaH xecb n ap h h m ... xax, xax - xom iH xe b seM P io... a-ax!! B rp yp n oroH b!!! flyn rn x, p ym n x (p se x Bee Ha ced e h nap aex MepxBbift). (Korsakov, Pikovaia dama) The last cry of Pushkin’s Germann— “The old woman!” (in Russian it is a one- word utterance, “Starukha! ”)— finds extensive elaboration in this pathetic Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. monologue full of exclamations, emotional pauses, and profuse verbiage, which communicate Germann’s delirious mind to the spectator. This monologue also proves to be quite an accomplishment for the melodramatist, for it manipulates the audience’s emotions in order to cause a profound emotional shock. When he begins his monologue, the spectator feels no compassion for Germann as he attempts to justify his murder of the Old Countess. Neither does the audience feel any sympathy for the hero when he is relieving his greedy dreams, which rather incline the viewer to condemn him. But in the last few sentences, the monologue suddenly acquires a completely new tone, moving and pathetic, which exonerates the hero and cannot but provoke tears in the audience. In addition, this monologue changes the tone of the play: Germann, who throughout the play had functioned as an antihero with whom the public was not supposed to sympathize at all, here becomes, if not a positive, at least a weak, pathetic hero whose death becomes tragic. We have already witnessed this kind of skillfull manipulation of the audience’s senses in the final act of Lobanov’s melodrama. What was achieved there, however, by means of the heroes’ dramatic actions, a chain of intense events, is conveyed in Korsakov’s play through the hero’s speech. This attention paid by the dramatist to the monologues of his heroes rather than to their actions results in the greater psychologism of Korsakov’s Queen o f Spades in comparison with both Pushkin’s tale and Lobanov’s melodrama. In Pushkin’s Queen of Spades, Germann waxes eloquent only once: in his tirade, delivered before the Old 67 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Countess, when in her room he tries to convince her to reveal the secret of the three magic cards. The rest of his utterances in Pushkin’s tale are deliberately laconic and even aphoristic in nature. In Korsakov’s Queen o f Spades, Germann regularly delivers lengthy monologues meant to invite the spectator into his inner world. Also, in comparison to its predecessors by Shakhovskoi and Lobanov, Korsakov’s version emphasizes its main character’s inner inadequacy rather than the external motivations for his behavior. This shift in the direction of greater psychologism reflected changes in the Russian theater, which by that time had witnessed the advent of Chekhov’s dramaturgy. In Chekhov’s plays, the characters’ monologues also overshadow the action. It is Chekhov who makes the central character of his plays a Hamletized Russian intelligent, for whom words replace deeds and whose inability to accomplish any positive action springs from his inner discord. After a performance of Chekhov’s play Ivanov (1889), whose success was characterized as “huge and extraordinary,” one reviewer suggested that the main character of the play had much in common with the people seated in the theater, most of whom were “Ivanovs, who likewise have gotten confused and drown in their psychological complexities” (Petrovskaia, Teatral’ nyi Peterburg, 190-191). Owing to Chekhov, in the late eighties and nineties this type of dissappointed, passive, unheroic intelligent supplanted the positive idealistic type of the fifties and sixties on the Russian stage; he was often juxtaposed to a practical, selfish, and amoral businessman character (Petrovskaia, Teatr i zriterl’ , 156-157). Moreover, the 68 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. influence of Chekhov’s psychological thrust, was so pervasive that even the negative “practical” characters (of whom Korsakov’s Germaim is one) often became the victim of spiritual dissension and inner .turmoil. As Petrovskaia puts it, at that time “Russian dramaturgy was learning the complexity of the human psyche” (Petro vskaia, 62). As with any cultural innovation, upon its first appearance Chekhov’s dramaturgy initially shocked the public, but soon it wrought change not only on Russian but on the world’s theater. Korsakov’s melodrama was written to please the tastes of a popular audience, which, as a rule, are quite conservative. Yet, the feet that Korsakov’s play reflected tendencies characteristic of Chekhov is not at all surprising, for “middle-brow art cannot renew its techniques and themes without borrowing from high art” (Bourdieu, Field, 129). So, in treating Korsakov’s Queen o f Spades, I have exposed yet one more dimension of popular culture. To appeal to the common taste, popular culture not only must be topical in content, that is, embracing contemporary political or social issues that are external to culture per se, but it also must emulate those artistic trends which belong to high culture, or, to use Bourdieu term, “legitimate” culture. According to Bourdieu, this constant reference to high culture is needed by middlebrow (or “illegitimate”) culture, for it is in this way that this culture earns its right to exist. In his Queen o f Spades, Korsakov flawlessly demonstrated his mastery of the middlebrow genre. His references to high culture were doubled: the public was presented with a popular version of one of the Russian classics, spiced 69 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. with, the latest achievements of the Russim theater. - Here the ^history of nmeteeath-century adaptatidm of The Queen of'Spades for- the stage ends,; Rafafl Zotov, one of the leading theatrical critics of the Nikolaevan epoch, insisted thai:.PusMdxi’s texts were written, to ■ be read and hot staged. ' ■ In Zotov’s, opinion,-.all adaptations of Pushkiii’s works' for 'theater would o f necessity result in IMlure (qtd. in Teatr i iskusstvo 5, 1912, 106). Contrary to this opinion, which became a commonplace in Pushkin criticism,, as we have seen The Queen o f Spades lent Itself quite readily to translation into theatrical and operatic genres. Dramatists and composers who knew the demands of their public molded Pushkin’s tale in the direction of greater simplicity and finality. In this changed but still recognizable form The Queen o f Spades was brought to large audiences who, through the stage, gained access to the values of high culture in a simplified form. The nineteenth-century theater and opera to a large extent were the art forms most accessible to general public, and, as a leading nineteenth-century playwright Aleksander Ostrovsky put it, “while all other works of literature are written for the educated people, dramas and comedies are written for the whole nation [dm ecezo napoda]” (qtd. in Durylin, 54). In the twentieth century, cinema was able to attract audiences larger than any theatrical performance would be ever able to gather, and it was mainly through cinema that the masses became exposed to the Russian classics. Thus, to study middlebrow tastes and preferences in the twentieth century we turn to cinematography, which is the subject of subsequent chapters in this study. 70 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. An examination of twentieth-century adaptations of The Queen o f Spades still, yields important insights— not so much about the demands of middlebrow taste, as did the nineteenth-century versions of Pushkin’s text, but rather about those special circumstances that shaped art in the Soviet state. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER TWO ; THE QUEEN OF SPADES ON SOVIET AND. POST-SOVIET STAGE PastM n in the Twenties and Thirties In 1918, a year after the October Revolution, the newly created Theater Department o f the People’s Commissariat of Education (TEO NARKOMPROS) put Pushkin on Its list o f recommended authors for theaters all over the country (Lapkina, 27). The first action of the Soviet power was to nationalize the theater: according to the decree of November 22, 1917, the State Commission on Education took charge of all theaters in Russia. The next action of the Soviet power was to centralize the control over theatrical enterprises throughout the country: in 1918 the special Theater Department of the People’s Commissariat of Education (TEO NARKOMPROS) was created, to be followed in 1919 by Centrotheater (I^eumpomeamp), headed by A.V. Lunacharskii (Khaichenko, 3-4). These actions of the new government affected greatly the status of the theater in Russia. Before the Revolution, only several theaters were under governmental control (the Imperial theaters). The rest of the theaters in Russia were private or public property after 1882, when, due to the rapid growth of theatrical enterprise in Russia, the state monopoly on the theater was abolished (Petrovskaia, Teatral ’ nyi 72 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Peterburg, 167). The restoration o f the state monopoly on the theater just after the; Revolution resulted in total Socialist governmental control not only over the material property of the theater but also over its ideological content. Nevertheless, in spite of the Commissariat o f Education’s official affirmation of Pushkin’s validity for the new state, in December, 1921, The Queen o f Spades was condemned as “the remnants of unwholesome Romanticism” {mpeoneumm cmepuoeo poManmmMa) in debates that took place in Moscow’s RSFSR Theater No 1 over the kind of theater that was appropriate for the new audience of workers and peasants. Some of the leading theater directors such as A. Mgebrov, who participated in these discussions, saw as their task “to give the public plays that raise their consciousness more than all these “Queens of Spades” and “Uncles Vanyas’” (Lapkina, 36). Yet others, among whom was Vsevolod Meyerhold, did not reject the theater of the past and proposed that the staging Russian classics should be allowed during the transitional period until a new revolutionary repertoire could be created (Lapkina, 36). As a response to the controversy surrounding Pushkin, in 1925 the Moscow New Drama Theater put on a production of The Queen o f Spades whose aim was to “correct” Pushkin and to make him relevant to the revolutionary experience. Its directors K. Eggert and K. Svarozhich strove to “discard those elements which are outmoded” and to “reveal those aspects that are in harmony with our epoch” (Lapkina, 44). What these are easy to guess: Mysticism has been discarded. Everything is realistic. No appearance of the dead Countess’s ghost. Germann’s double is introduced into the 73 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. -■ p lay .. It is to Mm that Germam talks- in a fit o.f'ii^ai^,;ipi$taldng;.him’ - for the old woman’s;shadow. . .I n the scene o f the Countess’ sflineral, the theater sees its 'task in revealing the anti-refigious aspect, (qtd. in Lapkina, 44) : Pushkin’s tale was to be “corrected” in order to satisfy the social demands of the new audience, at least as they were perceived fey theater directors of the new era. Unlike their nineteentMcentury predecessors, these directors no longer put entertainment as their primary goal. Their task was to educate their public and to conduct propaganda ( < azumupoeamb) (Khaichenko, 41). Pushkin was a Russian classic whose works were to be brought to illiterate masses through veMcles accessible to them, such as theater or cinema. The vulgar sociological approach to Pushkin, interpreted in the vein of Marxist-Leninist ideology, was typical of the post-revolutionary appropriation of the Russian classics, wMch in its extreme form resulted in such theatrical productions as Comrade Khlestakov (Toeapmy Xnecmame, 1922, adapted from Gogol’s Peemop) and the opera Hammer and Sickle (Cepn u m o jio m , 1920, adapted from Glinka’s fflm m sa napx) (Lapkina, 35, 45). In the same year of 1925, another Queen o f Spades was staged in the Moscow Reader Theater (directed by S. Vladimirsky, read by V.Iakhontov) and presented a very similar interpretation of Pushkin’s tale as the “conflict of the third estate with the aristocracy” (koh^ mukm mpembeeo cocjioem c dmpmcmeou). These interpretations, however, wMch purged Pushkin’s tale of its fantastic elements and imposed realism in order to impart a social significance to the tale, 74 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. did not represent the only existing approach to Pushkin in the twenties. As one modem researcher points out, “In the twenties the Pushkin myth was not finally formulated and there were still some controversies about it” (Murav’eva, 123). An example of such controversy was Tolmachevsky’s “free opera” based on Pushkin’s tale which was staged in 1827. This Queen of Spades was criticized for its mystical and unrealistic elements on the pages of the magazine The New Spectator (Hoeuu spumejib). The reviewer Georgii Polianovsky considered the production to be harmful and highly inappropriate for the new audience: The Queen o f Spades interpreted by director Tolmachevsky is, first and foremost, a kind of clinic [mme m mm ecm e saeedeuue] in which the majority of characters are, to put it mildly, not normal. Germann is depicted as a maniac from the very beginning. Already in Hofman's Fairy Tales [another play by this director] one could notice these threatening manifestations of the director’s completely wrong understanding of the performance as something full of mysticism and miracles. This approach has achieved monstrous dimensions in the staging of The Queen o f Spades, a play characterized by decadence, an enfeebled will, and clinical degeneration [ynadumecmeo, paccjiadnemau eom u KJiuumecKoe eupooscdeuue]. And this is a district opera [panoimaa onepa]'--opera for the new mass spectator [dm noeozo Maccoeozo 3pumem]. What kind of understanding of art do such plays bring to our unsophisticated spectator? (Novyi zritel 13-14) This criticism of the production already puts forth those ideological demands for “realism” that would shape Soviet art during subsequent decades. If in the twenties, due to very limited government interference in the arts, the mystical Queen of Spades could still be staged, coexisting with realistic and politically correct dramas reflecting their authors’ preferences and styles, by the thirties the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. situation in the arts had changed radically.9 In 1932 a single artistic method named “Socialist realism” was officially imposed on Soviet culture, to replace all other artistic methods and to propagate Party policy and ideology. The official Soviet viewpoint was also that there were some writers in the past who had a right to be considered predecessors of the new Soviet culture. Pushkin, whose official image as the greatest national poet who had ever lived had been established in Tsarist Russia starting with the 1899 Jubilee celebration, offered a ready-made national icon for the new regime. During the preparation and celebration of the 1937 anniversary of Pushkin’s death, the greatest literary holiday ever organized, the Soviet state took the pre-revolutionary myth of Pushkin as the greatest national poet and changed its focus. Pushkin’s “loyalty to Tsar” was transformed into his “hatred towards Tsarism” and “Pushkin as a faithful Orthodox Christian” became “Pushkin as an uncompromising atheist” (Murav’eva, 124). Now a Communist government dictated how to handle Pushkin’s works, and the government’s mandate for those authors who turned to Pushkin was not an easy one. On the one hand, Pushkin’s texts should remain untouched as something 9 The situation with Pushkin in the theater corresponds to the situation in Pushkin criticism. In the twenties, diverse interpretations of The Queen o f Spades still appeared on the pages of literary magazines. For example, in 1922, Vladislav Khodasevich, a Russian poet and critic, published quite a mystical interpretation of The Queen o f Spades as a Petersburg story, in which dark powers engaged with representatives of mankind (characteristically, this essay was first published before the Revolution, in 1915). In 1923, A. Slonimsky, a Formalist critic, gave a formalist interpretation of the tale and also acknowledged the triumph of the fantastic element in the end of the tale (Cornwell, 8-9). In the thirties, this diversity of critical approaches was no longer allowed. Then scholars dared only to mention briefly “reduced realistic mysticism” in the tale, and their analysises necessarily had to arrive at a sociological interpretation, such as Victor Shklovskii’s essay on Pushkin’s prose, or to give an ideologically neutral historical or stylistic reading of Pushkin’s tale, such as Vinogradov’s essays on Pushkin’s style or Tomashevskii’s commentaries in the academic edition of Pushkin’s works. 76 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. sacred, since he was canonized as a classic, the “founder of new Russian literature and the Russian language” and “the forefather of Russian realism”(Prav«da, Dec. 17, 1935). On the other hand, only those aspects of Pushkin’s life and works that did not contradict the official image of the poet as a “lover of people” and an “enemy and critic ofTsarist reality” were allowed to see the light of day. Still there were authors, such as Slezkin or Alibegova, whose plays are discussed below, who in their approach to Pushkin managed to solve the task given them by the state. Moreoever, due to the advent of the 1937 celebration, the years 1934-1937 yielded the greatest number of theatrical performances based on Pushkin. The Queen o f Spades, although not as favored as Pushkin’s more politically charged pieces such as Dubrovsky or The Captain’ s Daughter, was still on the list ofPushkin’s approved works. In 1934 The Queen o f Spades was staged in the Moscow Traveling Theater (MocKoecmu nepedeuowHou meamp). Following the demand for realism, Iurii Slezkin, who wrote this theatrical version of Pushkin’s tale, replaced the Old Countess’s ghost with a “lady of the demi-monde” (daMa nojiyceema), who came to mystify Germann after a merry party with Hussars. In 1936, another theatrical version ofPushkin’s story, the play Germann, appeared on the stage of Moscow’s Lensovet Theater. Its authors, M. Gus and K. Zubov, saw as their task to reproduce Pushkin’s “authentic style” in the theater. To achieve this, they introduced into their play motifs from various Pushkin prose works including Egyptian Nights and The Undertaker, as well as from various of Pushkin’s 77 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Unfinished prose pieces. Due to the well-developed historical and textological branches of Pushldnistics (the study of Pushkin) in the' thirties, many of the theatrical productions of The Queen o f Spades appearing at that time, like Germann or The Queen o f Spades by Alebegova, offered well-informed handlings of Pushkin’s: texts and sophisticated renderings of authentic historical realia of his epoch. A good example of this theatrical discourse on Pushkin in the thirties is the adaptation of The Queen o f Spades made by N. Alibegova (1936). Three main features characterize the play. First, the play is saturated with historical names and facts: P. Annenkova, the mother of the Decembrist; Nataliia Zagriazhskaia, the prototype of the Old Countess; F. Bulgarin, editor of the official newspaper The Northern Bee and Pushkin’s enemy; names of French actresses of that time-all these historical figures either appear or are mentioned in the play. These are introduced in order to fulfill the governmental demand for “authentic” Pushkin. The second feature of this play is its incorporation of quotations and whole passages from Pushkin’s fictional works, as well as from his letters, critical essays, etc. (e.g., Tomsky in the play announces his marriage with the opening words from Pushkin’s unfinished prose piece “My fate is settled. I am getting married” [yuacmb mompeiuena. M jfceuwch]). The third and most significant feature of Alibegova’s play is, however, its ideological focus: the choice of quotations from Pushkin, the historical realia, everything in the play is subordinated to a single goal: to teach the theatrical 78 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. audience a lesson on history given from the correct Leninist-Stalinist point of view. The fact that Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades depicts high society, not a peasant rebellion as in The Captain’ s Daughter or Dubrovsky, did not prevent the author from making her Queen o f Spades reflect the ideology of the time. High society is depicted in the play but from a highly critical perspective. The author introduces several members of Russian nobility, officers, and noble ladies, whose conversations betray either their shallowness or their reactionary views. Moreover, alongside such oblique critcisms of the nobility scattered throughout the play, there are also direct attacks on high society. These come from Germann, who delivers indignant political tirades, or from the character Incognito ( .Hemeecmmiu), who is introduced into the play just for this purpose— to condemn Russian high society (the figure of Neizvestnyi might be borrowing from Meyerhof d’s opera The Queen o f Spades staged a little earlier in Leningrad; in its turn, Meyerhold’s character might have come from his version of Lermontov’s Masquerade which Meyerhold staged in 1917). These assaults on high society are cobbled-together quotations from Pushkin’s own writing, in which he expresses his opinions on what he called “high society rabble” (ceemcKan uepub). The following fragment from one of Germann’s monologues exemplifies the play’s style: But what can I do if here, in order to buy the right to live, one has to sell one’s honor, conscience, and one’s own soul? Must one commit a crime in order to get the right to live? Not everyone, like Bulgarin, is willing to lick his masters’ boots and say only the things they want to hear. And only those who have their pockets full of money can afford to say what they think in our time and in our society. Or those who— knowing that they will have to pay for their words with their own lives—who still pronounce them. 79 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Hy wo ace M ne .aejiaxb, ecJiH y Hac, w o6m ic y n H T B npaso Ha k h s h b , Haxo npo#axB uecx&, cobcctb, xywy? HxoSm nojiyunxB npaso Ha acH3Hb, HyacHO npoirm nepes npecTynjieHHe?.. He see ace, K aK ByjirapHH, Moryx nHsaxb im tkh rocno^aM h roBopaxb xojibko x o , hxo xeM yrojoio cji&nnaxB. A roBopnxB x o jib k o x o , w o xonemb, b naraeM BCKe, b 3xom nameM Kpyry Moacex x o jib k o xox, y Koro KapMaH HaSax, hjih k x o snaa, w o ero cjiosa 6yayx cxohxb eMy a c H 3 H H , Bee ac npoHSHOcax ax. (Alibegova, 143) This monologue is interesting not only for its political content because but also because it provides the motivation for Germann’s actions. As we have seen, middlebrow interpreters of Pushkin’s tale reveal a tendency to provide clear external motivation for their characters’ actions. Alibegova’s Queen of Spades likewise follows this pattern, yet the motivation for Germann’s behavior here is not simple villainy, as had been the case in nineteenth-centuiy dramatizations. Rather the main hero (as in many adaptations of the thirties) is moved by a demand for social justice and against those forces that divide society into rich and poor. Such positive heroes fight against the “abnormality” of Russian society, to the point of sacrificing their lives (e.g., the allusion to the Decembrists at the end of Germann’s monologue quoted above), while others, the “superfluous” members, of whom Germann is one, seek for their fortunes in the boudoirs of Old Countesses. It is hard to tell whether theater audiences of the thirties really enjoyed these theatrical versions ofPushkin’s tale, saturated as they were with political messages and fortified by the latest discoveries of Pushkin scholarship. At that time the tastes, opinions, and demands of the audience were largely dictated from above. 80 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. And the governmental policy regarding the tastes of its populace was formulated in unambiguous terms: the Soviet spectator was expected to appreciate the “authentic Pushkin”: The Soviet theater should not strive to “adjust” Pushkin to its theatrical style. There is no need to adapt Pushkin’s works to the tastes of our spectator— our spectator knows, loves and appreciates the genuine Pushkin. The task for the theater is to preserve Pushkin’s images, Pushkin’s style of narration, and Pushkin’s language, while dramatizing his works [emphasis is mine]. (Pushkin i teatr, 79) Thus, while it was permissible and even desirable that Pushkin be adapted for the theater, it was prohibited to alter his (presumed) content as well as to carry out formal stylistic experiments. The only experimentation possible was the incorporation of fragments from other works by Pushkin. For decades the public grew accustomed to Pushkin plays in which heroes on the stage delivered speeches taken verbatim from other works by Pushkin. In the thirties, due to the interference of a totalitarian state that feared cultural innovation and experimentation, the “classical” and the “popular” merged into one unified “art for the people” (ucKyccmeo dm uapodd) (on this, see Maurice Friendberg, Russian Classics in Soviet Jackets). Thanks to that, the average Soviet spectator became one of the most classics-educated spectators in the world, knowing by heart those few Russian writers whose works comprised the meager repertoire of Soviet theaters. It was not until 1980s, when, with the weakening of totalitarian controls, the edifice of Pushkin as the first, greatest, and 81 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. unapproachable genius' began to crumble, aliowing new, “free” versions of The Queen o f Spades to appear on the stage. > In the thirties, aside from numerous literary hacks whose plays received praise from officials but not the imprimatur of history (Alibegova’s play described above is one such instance), there were some famous "figures, such as Vsevolod Meyerhold, for whom staging The Queen o f Spades seemed to offer a unique opportunity to show their loyalty to governmental directives without giving up their artistic freedom and aesthetic license. Meyerhold’s version of The Queen o f Spades (which, as we shall see, was an amalgam of Tchaikovsky’s opera and Pushkin’s tale) is an interesting example of the peculiar forms that Soviet “art for the masses” took in the works of brilliant individuals who sincerely hoped to make their idiosyncratic and experimental artistic visions comprehensible to the common people. The fate of Meyerhold’s production became quite typical for those times, when even loyalty to Soviet politics in art did not guarantee artists “safe conduct,” either for themselves or for their creations. with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Meyerhold’s Queen o f Spades (1935) Meyerhold’s Queen o f Spades premiered in the Malyi Opemyi Teatr (Malegot) on, January 25, 1935, and ran for two and a half years, only to be closed in 1937 when its director fell victim to Stalin’s purges. Meyerhold; staged The Queen o f Spades in the years when, fulfilling government order, Soviet art prepared for the celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of Pushkin’s death. Meyerhold did not depart from the state demand for “authentic Pushkin.” The the task the director set himself was to bring Tchaikovsky’s opera back to Pushkin. To achieve this, he thought it necessary to abandon the “mysticism” of Tchaikovsky’s opera and to return to Pushkin’s “realistic” style. The ideas that directed the production were summarized by Adrian Piotrovsky, who, as director of the Literature and Repertoire Department of Malegot, regularly reported to the press on the progress of Meyerhold’s production: In the collective work of the theater, and in particular that of its chief conductor S.A.Samosud and its director Meyerhold, one can observe a decisive revision of the scenic tradition and even the composition of Tchaikovsky’s work of genius. The object of this revision is to get rid of its stylization, pomposity, and the mystically symbolic interpretations of this “Petersburg” opera and to reveal its concrete and realistic elements. B coBMecxHOH pafioxe Teaxpa, h b u a cra o cT H e r o rnasHoro anprnK epa C.A. C a M o e y a a h peM ccepa Meftepxojinna, H aM eu aercs onem. peniHTejn.Ht.ift nepecMotp cueH H uectcoft xpajpiptu n m m s KOM no3Hinm reHnajifcHoro cosaaHHS ^aftKOBCKoro, HanpaBJieHHtaft Ha t o , h to S b i y n am ta cn u iH saT opcK H nunraoe h M u c m m e c K o - c u M e o jim e c K o e neperojiKOBaHHe orofi “ n erep fiy p rcK o ft” o n e p w Bctcp&m. ee K O H K p e m H O -p e a jiu c m m e c K u e ojieM eHTH. (V.E. M e y e r h o l d “P i k o v a i a d a m a , ” 1 7 ) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Together with M s co-author Valentin.-Stenich, a talented translator and critic (known as the first Russian translator of Joyce’ s Ulysses), Meyerhold wrote a new libretto for his opera, in which Tchaikovsky’s piece was “purged” o f operatic “banality and stereotypes.” More than four hundred bars of Tchaikovsky’s score were eliminated, and the overall structure of the opera was also changed, as Meyerhold added one more act to Tchaikovsky’s original seven. In his essay “Pushkin and Tchaikovsky” (1935), Meyerhold wrote that all of the changes to Pushkin’s plot had been imposed upon Tchaikovsky by his talentless brother Modest, who “kow-towed [jiaKeucmeoem] to Mister Vsevolozhsky, the director of the Imperial Theaters of Saint Petersburg” {Meyerhold “ Pikovaia dama, ” 122). Meyerhold hoped to “pushkinize” Tchaikovsky’s opera, restoring the union of Pushkin’s tale and Tchaikovsky’s music. According to Meyerhold, this also meant fulfilling Tchaikovsky’s initial desire, which, due to the “hostile ideological interference” of Vsevolozhsky and Modest, the composer had failed to realize in his lifetime {Meyerhold “ Pikovaia dama, ” 122-125). What are the elements of Tchaikovsky’s opera that did not satisfy Meyerhold? First and foremost, the social antagonism that Meyerhold believed underlay Pushkin’s plot was absent. As noted above, the action of Pushkin’s tale, which takes place in the Nicholaevan era of the 1830s, was shifted in Tchaikovsky’s Queen o f Spades to the Catherinean era of the 1770s. According to Meyerhold, this change of epoch resulted in a complete neglect of the social conflict between 84 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the nascent third estate (mpembe cocnoeue), represented by the engineer Germann in Pushkin’s tale, and the aristocracy, represented by Tomsky and the Old Countess (Meyerhold “ Pikovaia dama, ” 277). In Tchaikovsky the image of ; Russian society is homogenized as Gemoaim is elevated to the rank of Hussar and Lizaveta Ivanovna is raised from a poor ward into the granddaughter of the Old Countess. Besides, the metamorphosis- of the “prosaic nineteenth century into the pompous eighteenth century” in the opera also led to a generic transformation: Pushkin’s tale, which, according to Meyerhold, is a sort of Bildungsdrama (dpcma Kapbepu), becomes an erotic melodrama in Tchaikovsky’s opera. Meyerhold in his libretto cut out all those elements of Tchaikovsky’s opera that, in his opinion, obscured the social message and realistic underpinnings of Pushkin’s tale. The confrontation of the hero with his social environment becomes the central theme (Korobkov, “Pikovaia dama,” 105). As one critic put it, Meyerhold’s Germann was no longer “one more traditional operatic hero-lover but a character of a great social significance” (Meyerhold “ Pikovaia dama, ” 262). He was a son of his epoch, an ambitious, Napoleonic character driven by passion for power and money and who, constantly tormented by awareness of the barrier separating him from high society, is ready to sacrifice everything (even the lives of others) to reach his ambitious goals. As many reviewers of the opera indicated, Meyerhold makes his character akin to the realistic, passionate career-makers of Stendhal, Balzac, and Dostoevsky (Meyerhold “ Pikovaia dama, ” 271, 278). Critics also pointed out that Meyerhold’s interpretation of Germann’s theme was 85 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. characterized by a mastery of psychological realism, an innovation for the opera (Meyerhold “ Pikovaia dama, ” 213). Thus, the first step that Meyerhold took to create a play for the Soviet audience was to purge Tchaikovsky of those “unnecessary” elements that bore no ideological weight (whether social, psychological, or philosophical), elements that served the mere purpose of better “spectacle and entertainment” (spemujnocmh u sauuMamejimocmb). For Meyerhold to reveal Germann’s psychological and emotional state, many plot elements needed to be removed from the opera and replaced by Pushkin’s ones. For instance, Meyerhold opened his Queen o f Spades with the card gamd in Narumov’s house, as in Pushkin, instead of in the Summer Garden, as in Tchaikovsky’s opera. Tchaikovsky’s opening musical theme, a tone painting of the thunderstorm in the Summer Garden, became in Meyerhold an evocation of Germann’s inner turmoil. This and other instances of Meyerhold’s production demonstrate how he achieved the task of bringing Tchaikovsky back to Pushkin. He completely reconceived and rewrote most of Tchaikovsky’s libretto, changing it into what he believed was Pushkin’s design. And then he used Tchaikovsky’s music to accompany this new libretto that he considered to be based now on Pushkin’s true plot and ideas. “Filtering” the opera through Pushkin Meyerhold removed not only politically incorrect elements of the libretto, such as a hymn glorifying Catherine the Great, but also melodramatic elements, such as Liza and Germann’s tragic deaths. Meyerhold’s version also returns to Pushkin in his treatment of the characters’ 86 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. fates. Liza, who'is again a poor ward,.stays alive but bitterly disappointed by Gem m a nn’s false love; Germann ends Ms career in a fit o f insanity that overtakes him after M s final loss at cards. Their lyrical love affair, wMch took on such a pivotal role in Tchaikovsky, had n o . interest for Meyerhold. Germann in Meyerhold’s interpretation is a “gambler, not a lover, and Liza’s love is not his goal but the means to his ends” (Meyerhold “ Pikovaia dama,” 271). This disregard of the love theme helps to emphasize Germann’s loneliness and Ms isolated position within the officers’ society (Korobkov “Pikovaia dama,” 107- 108). More interested in social conflicts than in romances, Meyerhold also removes from his play Prince Eletsky, the unfortunate Liza’s fiance, to whom one of the most beautiful arias had been given in Tchaikovsky’s piece. Eletsky’s part now is performed by three different characters: the Fortunate Gambler, the Poet (resembling Venevitinov, a Romantic poet of Pushkin’s time), and the Incognito, who personifies the Mgh society rabble hostile to the hero. To sum up, Meyerhold attempted to purify the opera of all its melodramatic elements and Wstorical inconsistencies caused by Tchaikovsky’s change of epoch.1 0 He turned his Queen o f Spades into a “spectacle of thought” (cnevmamb m u c j i u ), discarding everything from Tchaikovsky that lends to the opera merely engaging and ornamental qualities (jammameJibHocmb u Kpacmocmb). Yet, trimmed of what seemed to Meyerhold tasteless and banal elements and enhanced by 1 0 For example, in Tchaikovsky’s opera Tomsky’s ballad retelling the story of the young Countess’ adventure with Saint-Germain has the phrase “Cnoea cnaufe seyxoe Motfapma.'" Mozart was not recognized until the nineteenth certtury, however, while the opera’s action takes place in the eighteen century. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. politically significant messages, Meyerhold’s version of Pushkin-Tehaikovsky’s Queen o f Spades: did-not meet -with success. There are several reasons for the production’s failure.: The most apparent is political, for in the thirties Soviet art was supposed to follow the method of Socialist realism, and there was hostility to individualistic artistic experimentation such as Meyerhold’s. Not all of Meyerhold’s corrections of the libretto bear the stamp of realism in art. Though genuine in his desire to reach the masses with his new production, Meyerhold nevertheless incorporated elements into his Queen o f Spades that recalled his past work in the avant-garde theater. For one example, he replaced Tchaikovsky’s pastorale “Shepherdess’s Sincerity,” performed in the ball scene, with a “fantasy in Callot’s manner” ( < panmasm e manepe Kcumo) in which masks from the Italian commedia dell’ arte, so beloved by Meyerhold in his career as a Symbolist director, replaced Tchaikovsky’s shepherds and shepherdesses. “Callot’s manner” refers to the sketches used as backdrop for the pantomime created by the artist Vladimir Solovev (whose collaboration with Meyerhold had already lasted for twenty five years), which imitated the manner of Jacques Caflot, a French etcher and engraver of the seventeenth century. Besides these allusions to Meyerhold’s early theater, there were other non realist elements in his interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s opera. These included a reading of fragments from Pushkin’s tale before each act (the initial conception was even bolder~to project Pushkin’s words on the curtain like titles in the cinema), opening the opera with Germann’s shadow (Ms silhouette appearing 88 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. behind the curtain), and mirrors that triple the image of the Old Countess. These also signaled Meyerhold’s personal touch. Moreover, Meyerhold’s desire to maintain fidelity to Pushkin’s text might well find its motivation not only in the official demand for the authentic Pushkin but also in artistic trends characteristic of modernist opera. Unlike nineteenth-century opera, in which music dominates words, twentieth-century opera, according to the observation of George Martin, put more emphasis on the word. Accordingly, the literary qualities of the libretto became a concern for composers, who invited professional writers and poets to produce the texts for operas. Meyehold may have wanted to achieve a compromise between his artistic and political ambitions. He tried to justify his artistic experimentation by claiming that his version of The Queen o f Spades represented a “critical assimilation of the classics” (a then-fashionable party imperative). At a meeting held in the State Academy of Art Study and devoted to a discussion of Meyerhold’s opera, he delineated his position as follows: A contemporary artist has no right not to bring in his own attitude towards what he creates. For he is a contemporary man, the man of this new wonderful era, when the world totally distinct from the world which had existed before the October revolution is being built. . . Therefore the slogan about the assimilation of classics and a critical approach to classics is not the invention of our genius, Lenin... A man of the contemporary new socialist culture wants to see the world transformed by the art. . . We need to create an atmosphere (and it seems that we have already created it) that would provoke these new associations in the audience and would lead to a critical attitude towards the world that no longer exists. CoBpeMeHHMi xyaoacHHK ne HM eex n p a s a He npHBHecTH CBoero oTH om eH H a k xoMy, h to o h p ean H syeT ,—h m c h h o coBpeM eHHHH 89 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. HejioseK, neJioBeK o x q h h o b o h saMenaTeJifcHoS o iio x h , Korna C T pO H T C fl M Hp, pe3K O O X JIH U H blft O T T O T O MHpa, K O X O pM H 6bUI A O O KraSpibCK O H peBomopHH. . . IIoOTOM y jioaynr 06 ocbo6hhh K JiaC C H K H H O K pH T H H eC K O M IIO A X Q A e K KJiaCCHKC—H S ecxb B tm yM lca reHHajibHoro nainero Jlemma. . . HejioseK coBpeMemmoH h o b o h copnajiHCTHHecKOH Kyjibxypbi xonex Btmext m hp npoSpaaceHHbiM h b HCKyccTBe. . . HaM n yra o coaAaxb xaKyio aTM Oc4)epy (h mbi ee Kaacerca cosAaJin), Koxopaa BbBBajia 6u b apHxenbHOM sane o t h HOBbie accopnaipiH, Koxoptie Beflyr s a ji k KpHxmecKOMy oxHomeHHio k TO M y MHpy, Koxoporo yace cefiraac Hex. (Meyerhold “ Pikovaia dama,” 252-253) The compromise that Meyerhold strove to reach between artistic experimentation and political correctness was no longer possible in the totalitarian state of the thirties. In 1937 his Queen o f Spades was removed from the repertoire, as an annual theater report announced due to the “formalistic, ideological-artistic mistakes of its director” (Meyerhold “Pikovaia dama, ” 5-6). A campaign against “formalism in art” had recently begun, targeting such important cultural figures as Boris Pasternak, Dmitrii Shostakovich, Alexandr Dovzhenko, and Mikhail Bulgakov. A virulent attack on Meyerhold’s Queen of Spades, written by A. Alshvang, a musicologist and a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, appeared in the newspaper Soviet Art in December 1937. It accompanied a series of other denunciations with such titles as “Ideological Failure,” “An Artist Alien to Our People,” “Under the Rule of Formalism,” and the like. Like other critical rebukes of the period, Alshvang’s criticism reads more like a sinister political denunciation: He [Meyerhold] is in hopeless and irreconcilable conflict with our great epoch. . . An extreme and bold subjectivism reigns in his theater. The director damages the work by distorting it with every possible conjecture and often even with open fabrications. Under the guise of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. restoring th e P ushkinian d esign , ; : T ch a ik o v sk y ’s w h o le co n cep tio n has b een sim ply cro ssed o u t But o n e sh ou ld not presum e that the Pushkinian tale is rep resen ted at least to so m e extent in th is strange perform ance. . . One can o n ly h o p e that The Queen of Spades in Meyerhold’s p ro d u ctio n w i l tea ch ou r op era theaters a good lesson . Its com p lete break w ith o u r so cia list r e a lty and eg o tism w ith o u t lim its brought M eyerh old to failure. Oh [M eftep x o m fl] HaxoAHxcg b flesHaaexHOM h nenpHMnpHMOM KOH^jiHKxe c H a n ie l bcjihkoh m ioxqh. . . B e r o xeaxpe rocno,qcxB yex KpaHHHg decnapflOHHfeih cyfeeKTHBHSM. P ea m ccep n op xn x npoH3Be«eHHe, Hcjcaacasr e r o B cesosM oratiM H noM ucnaM H, a Hepetpco H HpHMblM BbMblCJlOM. . . H o fl BHflOM BOCCTEHOBJieHHa nyniKHHCKoro saMHCJia s e a KOHueimHs MafiKOBCKoro n o n p o c r y aauepKHyra. . . H o He H a«o ayM axb, hto nyiHKHHCKaa n o se c x b b Kaxofi-T o M epe npeacxaB Jieaa b oxom cxpaHHOM cneK xarae. . . Hyjeoro H auesxbca, hxo y p o x “H hkoboh #aMbi” b nocxaHOBKe M e le p x o jitn a He n p o i# e x napoM mra hehihx onepH bix x e a x p o s. . . nO JIH blH OXpblB OX COpHaJIHCXHHeCKOH fleHCXBHXeJIbHOCXH H 5e3ipaHHHHbm otohsm npHBenH M eftepxonbfla k xp axy. (A . A lsh van g “M eyerh old v o p e m o m teatre,” in Meyerhold “ Pikovaia dama", 3 0 3 ) Thus, Meyerhold was found guilty of two major crimes of the time— subjectivism and conflict with “our great epoch.” Alshvang accused Meyerhold of distorting both Tchaikovsky and Pushkin. These were grave transgressions at a time when the classical heritage, both musical and literary, was not supposed to receive novel interpretation. Among other critical responses to the play appeared the following “critical sketch in dialogues,” written by the musical critic Samuil Gres (pseudonym of Kukurichkin), which appeared in one of the leading thick journals, The Star (Ssesda). The reviewer holds Tchaikovsky’s opera superior to Meyerhold’s production: MEYERHOLD (alone): Yes, to retreat is not in my nature! What would cause any brave man to break his neck would be to Meyerhold’s advantage. 91 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. . Ito o w |he “three cards” of theatrical success! I have won: the ace %:mine. ■ TCHAIKQ'V'SKY’S SHADOW (suddenly appears in black frock coat, /.carrying-acandle)iNo, your: Queen"-is Joled!.. MEYERHOLD (in sham fear): WhatQueen?!? ' TCHAIKOVSKY’S SHADOW: The one that once used to be mine: “The Queen of Spades!” (faDs through the trap) MEHEPXOJBb.H (oahh): J\a, ae b Moeft naxype oxcxynaxib! Ha ueM jnbfioii CM ejm uajc cjiOMan Ah raejo--xo Mefiepxoju»ay snpoK! Mae B e^O M H “xpn KapxH” xeaxpannbHoro ycnexa! Si Btmrpaji: Mofixya! TEHb HAHKOBCKOTO (sHesanno noMBjiaacB, b uepHOM ciopTyKe co cBeuKoft): Hex, BaI^a,^aMa--6Hxa!.. MEHEPXOJI]b,Z( (b fiyxacfjopcK O M yxace): Kaicaa aaMa?!? TEHb HAHKOBCKOrO: Ta, hxo 6u jia moch K oraa-xo: “flaMa nmc”! (IIpoBajiHBaexcfl b m o k ) (G ress, 210) When the critic cast the Meyerhold ofhis sketch in Germann’s part, he may not have guessed how close he was to reality. Meyerhold’s interpretation of The Queen o f Spades was replete with autobiographical subtexts (P. Gromov, a literary critic and a historian of theater, suggested that Germann resembles Meyerhold himself— they both are passionate people who live in some “unreal reality,” an imaginary world they have created). Germann’s loneliness and insecurity and his desperate attempt to fight fate reflected Meyerhold’s own shaky position in the thirties, and here Meyerhold’s interpretation was closer to that of Tchaikovsky than to Pushkin’s often ironic, even parodic attitude. And at the time Meyerhold certainly felt the “secret ill-will” toward him (signified in Pushkin by the Queen of Spades) growing rapidly. As a stenogram of the official discussion of Meyerhold’s opera indicates, the director was under seige. This was no longer the former Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. avant-garde director Meyerhold, who had enjoyed scandal and critical attack. Meyerhold was far from indifferent towards criticism, for he knew well their possible consequences. The Queen o f Spades was the director’s last finished work. Meyerhold was arrested and died while in prison in 1939. As if fulfilling the sinister epigraph to Pushkin’s tale, almost every member of the crew participating in the staging of the opera in Malegot also soon perished. Valentin Stenich, the author of the libretto, was arrested and executed even before his co-author Meyerhold, in 1938. Ruvim Shapiro, the director of the theater in which Meyerhold was invited to stage the opera, was executed earlier, in 1936. Adrian Piotrovsky, the director of the Literature and Repertoire Department of the theater and an ardent supporter of Meyerhold’s intepretation of Tchaikovsky in all critical debates, was likewise executed as an enemy of people. Even those who did not perish in the purges had serious problems in their careers after taking part in the play. N. Koval’skii, the singer who performed Germann’s part, fell out of favor after the opera was banned. Leonid Chupiatov, an artist who designed sets for the opera (a favorite pupil of Petrov-Vodkin), also fell under the “Macbeth’s curse” of the Queen of Spades and died in Leningrad during the first blockade winter. The tragic fate of Meyerhold’s creation and of the people involved in it gave birth to a belief widely with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. held among artists that The Queen o f Spades has some mystical power to bring misfortune to those who attempt to stage or film it.1 1 Aside from the mystical or political reasons that account for the failure of Meyerhold’s version of Pushkin-Tchaikovsky, I suggest one more explanation for its ill success. Bourdieu’s explication of taste values, discussed in the first chapter, suggests that the preferences of the average spectator are conservative and very different from the tastes of the artistic elite. In his attempt to raise the level of Tchaikovsky opera’s libretto and in his removal of “banal” and “tasteless” moments in it, Meyerhold demonstrated a virtual disregard for the actual tastes of his audiences. Making his opera an intellectual enterprise, a “spectacle of thought,” he failed to factor in the general conservatism of the average Soviet spectator who did not like avant-garde experimentation, finding it difficult to understand. Indeed, for the Soviet spectator, Romantic nineteenth-century opera was believed to be the model of operatic art. Twentieth-century modernist opera, in which performers talk more than sing, appeared as a violation of this ideal model. Stalin himself was known for his admiration of Tchaikovsky’s music; according to some accounts, he saw Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake twelve or 1 1 Mikhail Romm, a film director whose unfinished film based on Pushkin’s tale was banned in the thirties, warned another film director Mikhail Kozakov from choosing Pushkin’s tale as a source for his movie (Kazakov, M.: 451). Mikhail Kazakov also ascribes to Pushkin’s tale a mysterious and fatal influence on his own life. He writes: “Koraa a floxoxcy no spaa, Koraa iKwaa yxoflHT H3-nofl Hor..., Koraa k BonpocaM " h t o flejiaTt?” h ”k t o bhhobht?" aofiaBJiaeTca "K or,na ace Bee s t o Hanajiocfc?", a ofiosnanaio axor cjto m .nym 6yK B aM H "n.R." "IlHKOBaa jtaMa," 87-fi roa. ITpn sxopmraoM nominee 3KpaHH3HpOBaTB axy saraflOHHyro nosecnE. a sarpeMejx b ncnxynncy...» (Kozakov, 437) Alfred Schnittke, a composer whose attempt to reform Tchaikovsky’s opera will be dicussed later, expressed a similar belief: “KpoMe Toro y Mena ecn. cyesepHoe omymeHue no noso/ty 3xoro cioacera, h a c H h k o b o h naMoft ne xony SoJiMne HHKoraa h m c ti. aejia" (Besedy s Alfredom Schnittke, 201) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. thirteen times (Conquest, 129). Meyerhold’s internalizing of the operatic action, which in conventional opera is explicit and spectacular; his neglect of the melodramatic hallmarks of opera, such as the prominent role of a “love story” and, finally, his incorporation of elements from avant-garde theater such as his “fantasy in Callot’s maimer” made his rewriting of Tchaikovsky’s Queen o f Spades an artistic experiment. These innovations proved to be annoying not only for Soviet officials but also for the wide opera-going public and, in the context of the Stalinist terror, a fatal miscalculation. In producing The Queen o f Spades, Meyerhold drew the wrong card and lost his bet to meet a tragic end at the hands of Tchaikovsky’s admirers and the political censors. Liubimov-Schnittke’s Queen o f Spades'. History Returns (1977) For many decades after this time, Pushkin’s prose continued to be adapted and widely presented in Soviet theaters, but the tendency was to transfer Pushkin’s works onto stage as faithfully as possible. For instance, in an adaptation of The Queen o f Spades, made by Vladimir Obukhov for TYS (the Theater of the Young Spectator) in 1986, the only alterations the author dared to insert into his adaptation were the figures of three cards that reappear throughout the play as characters and voice remarks that in Pushkin’s original belong to the narrator. He introduced the “new” characters not to add something new to Pushkin as did his predecessor-adapters in the nineteenth century but to the contrary— to achieve 95 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. greater fidelity;to the original, dramatizing those passages from the tale that belong to its non-dramatic narration. Even in the stagnant atmosphere of the late Soviet epoch the history of the Queen o f Spades productions' had several remarkable moments. In the 1970s there was another attempt, very similar to Meyerhold’s, to make changes to Tchaikovsky’s Queen o f Spades in order to bring the opera closer in line with Pushkin’s tale. And similar to Meyerhold’s opera, this production was also banned because it was received as challenge to the officially allowed uses of Pushkin.. This remake of Tchaikovsky’s opera was undertaken by a crew of artists no less famous than their predecessors of the thirties: Iurii Liubimov, the director of the well-known Taganka Theater (which was generally held to be successor to the traditions of Meyerhold); Alfred Schnittke, one of the leading Russian Modernist composers; the renowed conductor Gennadii Rozhdestvenskii; and the stage designer David Borovskii. On various occasions during the scandalous campaign provoked by this production these artists referred to Meyerhold as their predecessor. The main affinity with Meyerhold’s production was Liubimov and Schnittke’s project to “restore Aleksandr Sergeevich” (Besedy s Alfredom Schnitke, 200) and to raise the operatic Pushkin up from the realm of Tchaikovsky’s allegedly antiquated musical banalities to the level of the latest achievements in opera. If Meyerhold was not satisfied with the mysticism of Tchaikovsky’s opera, Schnittke, on the contrary, found the opera too realistic. Schnittke’s intention was 96 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “ to reform the operatic canon and the absurd conventions of ‘realistic’ opera” (Besedy, 205). What irritated Schnittke in Tchaikovsky were the elements of “external realism” ( < memnwu peanusM) that, according to the composer, had nothing to do with truthfulness and that obscured the psychological drama present both in Pushkin and Tchaikovsky. Schnittke- especially disliked the realistic choruses presenting the “people” (mojina, the “crowd” in Schnittke’s terminology), considering them Tchaikovsky’s tribute to operatic conventions of his time. According to Schnittke, such elements may have been appropriate in Tchaikovsky’s time, but now they looked awkward and unrealistic. “Today,” wrote the composer, “The Magic Flute and Orpheus look more real (and, consequently, more realistic in a genuine sense), than Carmen and Aida. Tchaikovsky’s Queen o f Spades is a work of genius in regard to its characters’ psychological verisimilitude; everything is true there, except the elements of external realism” {Besedy, 202). The idea behind Schnittke’s remake of Tchaikovsky can be summarized as follows: in the modem age, true realism should look fantastic rather than realistic. In this sense, the opera of the end of the twentieth century does not follow its immediate predecessor, nineteenth-century opera, but earlier traditions such as the eighteenth-century or even ancient tragedy (on which Stravinsky relied in his Oedipus Rex). In his interpretation of Tchaikovsky, Schnittke omitted all generic “realistic” scenes, such as the children’s choms in the opening scene, the thunderstorm, the hymn to Catherine the Great at the ball, etc. 97 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. There are several experimental ’ elements i n . Schmttke-Liubimov’s interpretation of the opera that recall Meyerhold’s production. Among them are intermezzos (or “cT0n-Kanp&i”: — stop-frames) -during which Pushkin’s text, accompanied by the harpsichord, was read in French translation. The pastorale “The Shepherdess’s Sincerity,” which Meyerhold had replaced with a “fantasy in Callot’s manner,” was also rewritten by Schnittke-Liubimov. They turned this operatic fragment, which in Tchaikovsky’s opera functioned as a traditional ballet divertissement, into Germann’s hallucination, a foreboding of what was to come. Schnittke-Liubimov interpolated sinister musical themes from other parts of the opera into the idyllic music of the pastorale, and instead of Tchaikovsky’s conventional figures (Prilepa, Milovzor, and Zlatogor), the main characters— Liza, the Old Countess, and Eletsky— participate in the scene. In this way, the composer and the director achieved an effect similar to that of the “mousetrap” scene in Hamlet, when a play within a play represents the whole drama in a nutshell (Besedy, 202-203). These and other instances reveal Liubimov-Schnittke’s Queen o f Spades as a typical instance of highbrow elitist culture, not supposed to be understood by the average specator. Their experiments with Tchaikovsky’s opera, as well as their referral to Meyerhold’s name as a kind of proud anti-establishment banner, were an explicit challenge to the Soviet official art— in contrast to Meyerhold’s own production, inspired by the opposite desire, to create the new people’ s art, comprehensible to the masses. Liubimo v-Schnittke ’ s version of the operatic Queen o f Spades would 98 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. undoubtedly have been appreciated: by the cultivated patrons of Paris’s Grand Opera,: -where' The ■ Queen o f Spades was : supposed to be presented in 1978. Schnittke-Liubimov’s experiments with Tchaikovsky were not approved, however, by Soviet administrators, and the opera was banned. The ban came as the culmination of a press campaign against the production' that recalled the one of forty years before. The campaign began with an article in Pravda (March 11, 1978) entitled “In a defense of The Queen o f Spades, ” referring to Tchaikovsky’s opera). It was written by Algis Zhuraitis, conductor of the Bolshoi Theater and People’s Artist, and charged that: A monstrous event is being prepared. Its victim is the masterpiece of the genius of Russian music, P.I.Tchaikovsky. This is not the first time that someone has raised a hand against his incomparable creation, “The Queen of Spades.” Their pretext is that the libretto differs from Pushkin. What impostors, these self-appointed executors of Pushkin. FoTOBHTca nynoBHiuHaa aianra. Ee *epxBa— ntenesp remia pyccKon M y sB iK H n .H . ffanKOBCKoro. He b nepBBift pas noflHHMaeTca p y x a na HecpaBHeHHoe TBOpeHne—e r o Uum&ym dauy. Ilpeanor— fiyflxo jmfipexxo He cooxBexcxByex IlyniK H H y. Gnaiaae caMQSBaim&i, jaymenpHKaanHKH HynncHHa. (qtd. in Ogonek 9 (1989), 20) Later in the article, Schnittke and Liubimov’s actions were characterized as a “crusade against what is sacred to us [read “the Soviet people”],” a “medieval auto-da-fe”, a “quartering of Tchaikovsky’s soul,” and a “planned destruction of Russian culture,” and their opera as an “americanized musical.” The opera’s crew is condemned as “lovers of foreign sensations” and false “innovators” driven by “the petty interest of cheap foreign successn (Ogonek 9 (1989), 20). In conclusion, the author attacks those who permitted this “mockery of the Russian classics” and 99 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. urges the Soviet people to protest and condemn the perpetrators and participants of this sacrilege. Two weeks after this article, an official telegram from the Ministry of Culture was sent to Paris informing the Paris Opera administration that the Ministry could not give its permission to stage the opera since its “considerable changes in the text of The Queen o f Spades affect our cultural legacy” and explaining that the “problem has stirred up public opinion, and distinguished specialists from the Composers’ Union have rejected the whole conception” (Ogonek, 21). Indeed, in the USSR, tampering with the classics was considered a violation of the Criminal Code and punishable by law. However, in the 1970s the consequences of the affair were not as dreadful as forty years before, and at this point historical parallels with the Meyerhold campaign, which also started with journal attacks and which was also carried out in the name of defending Pushkin and Tchaikvosky, end. Liubimov and Schnittke did not lose their lives but only their jobs for half a year; David Borovskii, the art designer, lost one of his best compositions, which was left with the Grand Opera as a compensation for their expenses; the administration of the Parisian Grand Opera lost four million francs, and the world once again had a chance to witness the violation of artists’ rights in the Soviet Union (see the protest letter in Le Monde (March 24, 1978), signed by such notable cultural figures as Nathalie Sarraute, Eugene Ionesco, and Serge Lifar). Finally, the conductor Zhuraitis was rewarded for his denunciatory article with a plum assignment, the appointment to 100 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. conduct Tchaikovsky’s Queen o f Spades in Munich. In 1990 Schnittke and Liubimov’s version o f Tchaikovsky’s opera finally saw the light of day on the stage in Karlsruhe, Germany. Most Modernist elements of the 1977 interpretation were transferred to the 1990 production with some modifications: everyday realistic scenes were removed from the opera; Pushkin’s text was read throughout the action (in German translation); the orchestra, raised to stage level, became a participant in the action; symbolic sets replaced the traditional realistic backgrounds of Tchaikovsky’s opera (the main symbols were green and black card tables that flew through the air throughout the opera); and Germann was presented as a character “with a high forehead and in eyeglasses”— that is, he does not have the appearance of a demonic Romantic hero, as he is presented in most productions of both Pushkin and Tchaikovsky (Parin, “Pobeda v igre s sud’boi”). Schnittke and Liubomov’s interpretation of the opera was a great success and was staged again six years later in Bonn, where it again received favorable reviews from the German press, which characterized this version of The Queen o f Spades as “absorbing, independent, stylish, and innovative” (Reviews of Pikovaia dama, 41). The Queen o f Spades on the Post-Soviet Stage. In the 1990s, when the collapse of a single regulated Soviet art gave way to the existence of diverse and multiple art forms and ideas, The Queen o f Spades again 101 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. became popular with various theater directors. In 1990 the Independent Troupe of Alla Sigatova staged -(-The Queen o f Spades as a “musico-plastieo-dramatic fantasy,” in which the lectures of Sigmund Freud were accompanied by music by Schnittke and Rossini. It was conceived by Iurii Borisov, who directed It together with his father Oleg Borisov, the well-known TV and theater actor. This’ spectacle’s explicitly eclectic nature is very characteristic of Russian art of the post-Soviet period. It bears the mark o f Postmodernist aesthetics, in which the traditional coexists with the new, and commercial elements with artistic and innovative ones, and in which the boundaries between the arts become blurred. The mixed genre of the performance integrates ballet, drama, music, and reading. The play was performed by ballet dancers (among whom was the famous dancer Sergei Zhikharev from the Kirov theater who played Germann) and actors (Doctor, the Old Countess, and Chaplitsky parts were all played by Oleg Borisov). The music was a collage from such different composers. The play’s set was also experimental, designed as a combination of a cage,an aquarium and boxer’s ring (Kotykhov, 27). To cap off the eclectic mix, the private theatrical company that produced it styled itself after a pre-revolutionary theatrical enterprise, calling itself “Teatral’naia antrepriza Oleg Borisov i syn.” Another attempt at the “Post-modernization” of Tchaikovsky’s opera was undertaken by Anatoli Vasil’ev, a theater director well-known in elite circles. His 1995 production of The Queen o f Spades was first shown on Russian TV and then staged in Weimar, Germany. Unlike Liubimov or Meyerhold, Vasil’ev did not 102 with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. strive to-"mtettectualize” Tchaikovsky’s opera or to bring Tchaikovsky closer to Pushkin. He left Tchafltovsky’s Ibretto practic^y iBichanged. However, like a true Post modernist, instead of .fighting with Ms predecessor, Vasil’ev “simply” aestheticized Tchaikovsky by making the opera “strange and charming music for the eyes” (Gaeyskii, 35). In Vasil’ev’s performance, visual elements play a dominant function. An equisite corps de ballet, whose female component was dressed as pale-pink sylphs and whose male division was garbed in black “Expressionist” hats, reappeared throughout the spectacle. Its effect was characterized by one critic as “a choreographic phantasmagoria, choreographic dreams and visions” (Gaevskii, 35). In its turn, the set was meant to recall Russian avant-garde painting, in particular Mikhail Larionov’s “Rayonism,” one of the most radical artistic systems in Russian art of the 1910s. The central point in the composition was a cross rising from a hole wMch symbolized Heidus, and the cross was positioned as a ray, that is, not horizontally but at an angle (Vasil’ev, 34). A highbrow spectator used to the whims of Post-modernist art was probably not surprised to also see an inclined disk representing “a temporal love-bed” for Liza and Germann that was transformed into their death-bed in the end (Iz nemetskoi pressy, 36). “What is it— eclectic?”— exclaimed one reviewer, bewitched by the multitude of bizarre elements in this performance, among them the Countess’ flight to the moon a la a witch out of Gogol. “Is it Post-modernism which does not recognize the unity of style? Is it the whim of a director-Juggler-dreamer who tosses out of his memory the signs of 103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. different epochs and tosses them out as gamblers toss their cards-from the pack?... if it is indeed Post-modernism, it is of some beautiful kind” (Gaevskii, 35). Vasil’ev presents the opera as a collage of broken pieces from; different arts and epochs. Its goal is to “defknifiatize” passages from Tchaikovsky’s opera and Pushkin’s tale for a highbrow audience for whom both Pushkin and Tchaikovsky had grown stale. In comparison with the Borisovs’ and Vasil’ev’s interpretations of The Queen o f Spades, which in their flights of fantasy deviate from the original, the version staged by Petr Fomenko at the Vakhtangov Theater in 1995 (the play also ran in 1996) looks like a literal rendering of Pushkin’s text. Yet, even this seemingly conservative theatrical adaptation of Pushkin’s tale, staged by such a non-avant- garde, non-radical director as Fomenko, reflects the trends characteristic of Russian culture of the 1990s. Even the most conservative director, sick of having to produce a “Soviet Pushkin,” rushed to create his own diversified Pushkin. Fomenko discarded from The Queen o f Spades all of the Dostoveskian, Tchaikovskian, and Hofmannian elements, all the mysticism and fantasies that traditionally accompanied the tale’s interpretation on stage (Semenovskii, 8). Germann, played by Evgenii Kniazev, lost the demonic and Napoleonic qualities he had in most earlier versions. When visiting the Old Countess, he no longer even brings a revolver as in Pushkin’s tale. In general, the main tone of Fomenko’s Queen is ironic: according to a reviewer, Fomenko’s Pushkin is the Pushkin of Abram Tertz’s Strollings with Pushkin. As in Tertz, Fomenko’s interpretation of 104 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Pushkin foregrounds that Pushkinian “blithe spirit” that Russian culture had lost after his era (Fomenko, 42). Some reviewers also saw affinities between Fomenko’s interpretation and that of lurii Lotman (the Soviet Pushkinist and semiotician), characterizing this play as a “theatrical ship, floating between Lotman’s academism and Siniavsky’s [Terts’s] democratism” (N.Kazmina, 15). Indeed, Fomenko’s version of Pushkin vacillates between playing Pushkin’s prose and commenting upon it. If Vasil’ev or Borisov read Pushkin-Tchaikovsky through the prism of other arts (such as ballet or stage design), Fomenko in his play refers extensively to “the art” of critical commentaries, and his characters perform a “close reading” of Pushkin. At the beginning of the play, they enter the stage, each carrying a volume of the blue academic edition of Pushkin known to every Russian in his or her hands. They read from Pushkin’s text throughout the play, alternating fiction and authorial remarks. For them, to read means to exist: when the Countess drops her volume, it marks her death. The characters are kept alive until they are able to read Pushkin’s text, and Pushkin’s text thus itself becomes one of the characters in the play. The meta-theme of reading, as well as the ironic instead of the serious interpretation of Pushkin, was deplored by some critics, who complained that Fomenko overlooked the “sober magic of blizzard” present in Pushkin’s tale (Zlobina, 236). But these factors make Fomenko’s interpretation of The Queen o f Spades no less Modernist (or Post modernist) than other interpretations appearing in the nl990s. Moreover, with Fomenko’s play, the history of Pushkin in the 105 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. theater may be said to come fall circle, for the written word of Pushkin’s tale, with all its irony, its play with the Romantic tradition, etc., returns to dominate dramatic theatrical devices. At this point when literature and theater merge, and the book and the written word become a character on the stage we reach a convenient stopping point to the two-hundred-year history of theatrical Queens o f Spades. As we have seen, theatrical intepretations proceeded from melodramatic versions meant to please middlebrow audiences of the nineteenth century to Post-modem renderings destined to satisfy the cultivated theater-goer at the end of the twentieth century. At the same time, there are several theatrical Queens o f Spades in production now, which clearly indicates that the history of staging The Queen o f Spades continues, remaining open-ended and promising more material both for theater audiences and for researchers. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER THREE THE QXJEEN OF SPADES INTO SItENT HLM ; In. dealing with Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades in the arts, a significant space should be devoted to the history o f film adaptations- of the tale. In the twentieth century, cinema catne to replace both theater and opera as the predominant visual and popular art. As for theater, the main audience for cinema was drawn from the urban middle classes, and “the general form of cinema was determined by the middle class from the beginning” (Salt, 61). In her study of early Russian cinema, Denise Youngblood also concluded that the Russia cinema audience, though characterized by social diversity (its members included skilled workers and professionals, as well as people from the artistic elite), had a markedly “bourgeois,” i.e., middlebrow, orientation (Youngblood, The Magic Mirror, xiii). The middlebrow orientation of the new medium, which gave the Russian spectator both entertainment and simplified high culture, is one basic element that links cinema’s cultural role to that of the theater in nineteenth-century society. From its early days, the connections between literature and cinema were close: film m akers turned to literary classics to increase the prestige of film This love of filmmakers for literature was especially manifest in Russia, where a reverence for the classics characterized the middle class, the main film consumer. As noted earlier, thanks to the two Pushkin Jubilees of 1887 and 1899, by the beginning of 107 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the .new century, Pushkin had become perhaps the most celebrated figure of Russian culture, M own to every educated and 'uneducated.' Russian. ' The- wide popularity of Pushkin’s name, as well as the fact of his official recognition both by the state and the-church authorities (in contrast, for example, to the semi-dissident status of. Leo Tolstoy), ■ together with the good story-lines characteristic of Pushkin’s works, made him the most adapted author in early Russian cinema (Youngblood, Magic Mirror, 124). It is symbolic that the first Russian feature fiim was Alexander Drankov’s version of Boris Godunov in 1907 (about this film, see Tsivian “Early Russian Cinema”). In Russian pre-revolutionary cinema, especially between 1910 and 1917, the period when a series of important Pushkin films were shot, film techniques developed incredibly quickly. In two films based on The Queen o f Spades, one in 1910 and the other in 1916, changing technical possibilities of the medium greatly affected the way in which the films could convey action and the subtleties of Pushkin’s literary narrative. As we shall see, film technology, as well as theoretical debates over how to adapt literature to film, played a major role in shaping how Pushkin was transferred to the screen. Closely connected both to film practice and and to film theory is the question of intermediaries, a source or sources through which the literary material is filtered before coming to the screen. It was quite a common practice for cinema, especially in its early stages, to use other arts as a mediator in order to translate a literary plot to the screen. Filmmakers often chose to transfer to the screen not 108 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades as such but some other:.(often visual) version, of it, whether' opera, book illustration, or an earlier film. As: one researcher has put, it theater, painting, and photography also served as “an ‘intermediate code,’ which helped cinematography familiarize more complex fiterary material” (Khaniutin, 5). Similar to what we have already witnessed in the previous chapters, extra- artistic factors such as political, social, and cultural events could also influence the ways in which films interpreted Pushkin’s tale. Finally, in addition to all of these factors that affect the creation of a film, individual differences and preferences of filmmakers and actors also play a large part in producing a film version of Pushkin’s tale. This chapter discusses two Russian silent films based on The Queen o f Spades. The first film adaptation of Pushkin’s tale, Petr Chardynin’s Queen o f Spades (1910), presented a filmed version not of Pushkin’s story but of Tchaikovsky’s opera. Due to the technical limitations of cinema language in that period, this film was at best a simplification and a substitute both for Pushkin’s literary narrative and for Tchaikovsky’s operatic one. The next silent film, Protazanov’s Queen o f Spades of 1916, demonstrates that early filmmakers quickly learned the various possibilities of film narrative, whose sophistication began to emulate that of literary discourse. By 1916 filmmakers had become seriously concerned with the theoretical problems of literary adaptation. Appearing in the thick of these debates, Protazanov’s 1916 version became a prime example of what one critic called a “cine-story,” i.e., a film that needed to be “read,” in the sense that the 109 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. psychological motivation for the events dominated over external action. Chardynin’s Queen o f Spades (1910): Opera as a Source for Early Sileuts The two cinematic versions of The Queens o f Spades that appeared in 1910 were the first attempts to put Pushkin’s story onto film. These two Queens o f Spades were released by different companies— one by Khanzhonkov’s company (directed by Petr Chardynin) and the other by the German firm “Bioscop” (directed by Robert Persky) (Vishnevsky “Pushkin v kino,” 62). These films share one common feature: both were based on Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen o f Spades, first staged twenty years earlier. No copies of Persky’s movie, characterized by its producers as an “opera in three acts and seven scenes screened for cinematograph [cinema],” have survived. In contrast, Chardynin’s Queen of Spades has recently been restored and made accessible— an infrequent and fortunate case for the researcher dealing with the early cinema.1 2 For technological as well as historical reasons, most of the movies made before the Revolution have been lost (for an account of the fate of Russian silent cinema, see Paolo Cherchi Usai, introduction to Silent Witnesses, 10-20). Chardynin’s Queen o f Spades presents a characteristic case of the early cinema’s approach to the problem of literary adaptation. As noted, the first filmic Queen o f Spades took the opera as its mediator and model— Pushkin’s tale already 110 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. staged; and .turned into a spectacle. : Hence the frst^literary adaptations often came “second-liaiid,” only vaguely -resembling their literary predecessors. . The folio wing seene-by-scene retelling of Qhardynin’s Queen o f Spades helps reconstruct' what kind o f Pushkin film appeared on the screen before the eyes o f the -spectator of the early T9I;0s (the titles given here are according to Naum Kleiman’s restored version o f them [1959]; the original titles were'apparently lost). The"'first scene, introduced by the title “Germann has never gambled” (TepMaH H H K oraa ne npHHHMaji yqacma b arpe), opens with a group of officers sitting at the gambling table in a mansion, while one of the officers (presumably Germann) watches the game. Then the Countess with Liza appear in the background, and one of the officers (presumably Tomsky) tells the story of the three cards to his lfiends with gestures indicating great agitation. The second title appears “The Countess— keeper of the secret of the three cards” (rpa(j)um~o6jiadamenbHuiia mauHU mpex Kaprri). The Countess and Liza, now in the foreground, pass by the officers. The gamblers’ attention is utterly arrested by them. The most excited is Germann, who takes several steps in their direction and then picks up some cards from the table and stares at them. He seems plunged into a deep reverie while his friends laugh at him, each holding up three fingers. The second scene, preceded by the title “In the house of the Countess and her grand-daughter Liza” (B doj»e zpaffiimu u ee enymcu Jlrnu), opens with a mise-en- 1 2 This film has been restored by a crew of Russian film historians headed by Iurii Tsivian; in the United States it has been released in the video collection Early Russian Cinema, 5 (New York: Milestone Film & Video, 1992) 111 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. scene of a room, where Liza is listening to her girlfriend playing the piano. A young officer, Eletsky, is telling Liza about his love for her. As Liza’s gestures indicate, the officer’s speech is not taken favorably. Showing great despair, the officer leaves. Everyone else leaves the room also, except Liza. Germann enters through the window and starts conversing with her. Liza wants him to leave her alone, showing him to the door. He takes out a pistol and tries to shoot himself. Liza rushes towards him and prevents him from suicide. He takes her hand. A kiss. The third scene, with the title “At the ball Liza gives Germann the key to her room” (Ha 6my JIma d a e m FepMany kjuoh o m ceoeii KO M H am u), shows a ball room. In the background, a dance of shepherds and shepherdesses is being performed. In the foreground, two guests in masks are sitting and discussing something with agitated gestures. Germann moves from the background to the center of the scene, where he remains until almost the end of the episode. All the action is now centered around him. The guests in masks approach him, teasing him by showing him three cards. Then the Countess crosses the stage and, while passing Germann, stares at him and shrinks back in horror. Then Liza passes, her arm in Eletsky’s; she smiles at Germann and gestures to him. Then she appears again and gives Germann a letter. Her former partner watches in despair. In contrast, Germann looks at the letter and the key in ecstasy. The two masked guests appear again, laughing and showing three cards to Germann, but he is triumphant now as he raises the key given him by Liza. Then he holds up three 112 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. fingers, referring to the three cards. Everyone disappears. Only the shepherds and : shepherdess continue their monotonous dance, moving in the background like mechanical marionettes in ,a puppet theater, Ifrthe fourth scene, with the title “To find out thesecret of the three cards Germann comes to the Countess’s room” (Menem ysuamb mauuy mpex mpm repMcm npoHuicaem e mMuamy rpcupuftu), the Countess enters her room, followed by two maids. The maids leave, and now the Countess is alone, sitting in her armchair in a deep reverie. From the door located in the center of the background, Germann enters and approaches the Countess from behind. When the Countess sees him, she rises in fear. Germann talks to her, showing Ms three fingers. Then he pulls out a pistol and directs it at the Countess. She raises her arm as if trying to protect herself and then falls down dead into the armchair. Germann leans towards her. At this moment Liza enters the room and approaches Germann. He points to the Countess. Liza rushes towards her and then turns to Germann in horror. Germann shows her a letter. She points him to the door, asking him to leave. Germann leaves with his head bent down. According to the title “Germann’s room in the barracks. Germann reads Liza’s letter in which she asks him for a meeting” {Kounama repMema e msapMax. repMOH Humaem nucbMO Jlmu, e KomopoM oua eusueaem ezo dm odbxcueuM), the fifth scene shows Germann reading a letter. Suddenly a window opens and a white silhouette passes by. The Countess’s ghost appears in the room. Its hand points to the wall, where three huge cards appear. Then the ghost vanishes, and 113 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Germann, raising three .fingers,-rushes, to the desk, out of which he takes three cards and holds them up. In the sixth scene entitled “Elza awaits Germann” (Mma oncdem Fepjmua), Liza walks back and forth on the bridge, waiting-for Germann. He appears, she rushes towards Win, and he shows her'three cards with wild gestures, laughing. She raises her hands in despair and tries to embrace Germann. He pushes her off and leaves the scene. Liza throws herself from the bridge. The seventh and last scene, with the title “The Gambling Place” (Mzopnuu 3 o m ), opens with a number of people around two gambling tables. Germann enters, takes his seat located in the foreground, and places his bet. Twice he wins, and the punter express amazement. Eletsky, the unfortunate lover, is watching the game, and then takes the place of the punter. The next game begins. Germann takes his card, an ace. The punter starts the game; finally Germann points to a card, meaning that it is his bet. The gamblers are waiting for Germann to reveal his card. He shows it to the gamblers, although not seeing it himself. It is a Queen of Spades, and now Germann can see his card and starts up in horror. Among the laughing crowd, the white silhouette of the Countess appears. Germann rushes towards the ghost, and catches it, but the ghost turns into one of the gamblers. Germann draws out a dagger, stabs himself, and falls dead. The gamblers surround his body. The end. As one can see, the film basically follows the story line ofTcbaikovsky’s opera. The film’s seven scenes, the shift of action from the nineteenth to the eighteenth 114 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. century, the changed social status o f the principal characters (Liza as a grand daughter of the Old Countess), the added characters such as Prince Eletsky, who is Liza’s fiance— all these elements were transferred to the screen from the operatic stage. The film’s reliance on the operatic code rather than the literary one has its explanation in film history. In search of its own language, early cinema experimented with various types of discourse: theater, opera, painting, literature, and even song (Tsivian, Retseptsiia). Among the media exploited by the cinema, the first place belonged to the stage arts of opera and theater. There are several reasons that made opera the most attractive source for early filmmakers. One of them is the technical imperfection of the early cinema, because it was much easier to structure film as a series of scenes, as in opera, rather than to try and transfer into film the continuity of the action characteristic of written narration. In opera, literature had already been made into a spectacle with verbal images translated into visual ones. As a result of this operatic code, the first silent version of The Queen o f Spades appears as a series of discrete scenes and lacks the narrative continuity that the viewer of later cinema may expect. In his memoirs, Alexander Khanzhonkov, the film’s producer, provides an additional explanation for the fragmentary nature of the first adaptations of Russian classics: That summer in Krylatskoe the following pictures were filmed— Korobeinikx, based on the folk song by Nekrasov. . . The Queen o f Spades based on Pushkin, and The Idiot based on Dostoevsky. We did not film the whole works. Rather the most convenient scenes were chosen from them, without any special concern for a meaningful connection among them, for we assumed that it was impossible for the 115 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ■ spectator not to be’ acquainted with such popular pieces of Russian literature. (KhattZhoiiov, Pervye gody, 37) Another reason why early filmmakers preferred opera to other arts.might be found in the specific relationship of opera to literature in Russia. Russian opera drew mainly on Russian classical literature as the source for subject matter. The examples are numerous, and Russian operas based on Pushkin alone included M. I. Glinka’s Ruslan and Liudmila (1842); A. S. Dargomyzhsky’s The Mermaid (1855) and The Stone Guest (1872); M. P. Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov (1868- 1872); N.A.Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri (1897) and Skazka o Tsare Saltane (1900); P. I. Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (1879), Mazepa (1883), and The Queen o f Spades (1890), etc. Furthermore, as was noted earlier, literary narratives, when translated into the opulent language of opera, commonly acquire new features such as exotic settings, heightened emotions, simplified characters, strong passions, and tragic endings. This kind of melodramatization of literature was exactly what the early cinema and its spectator needed, and operatic librettos were easily turned into scripts for early films (indeed, early filmmakers even used the term “libretto” instead of “script” or “screenplay”). In this light, it is not accidental that Chardynin drew not on Pushkin’s original but on Tchaikovsky’s opera. So far, I have discussed the features that early filmmakers transferred from the operatic stage into cinema. Yet there are operatic elements that had no equivalent in early film language, elements that were lost while transferring the opera to the silent screen. First of all, this included the 116 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. central component'of the operatic performance, singing. Tchaikovsky’s;'score was almost entirely neglected in the first silent Queen o f Spades, and only a few randomly chosen musical excerpts from the opera were performed as accompaniment to the film, (la the 1910s* the musical accompaniment to films was performed either by an accompanist (itaper) or by a gramophone). The music thus took on a very subsidiary function as an accompaniment to the visual plane of rapidly changing pictures. Another basic component of operatic discourse, the opera’s spectacular quality, its rich colors and decorativeness was also largely lost in this black-and- white film. The filmmakers managed to obtain some period furniture, which, according to reviews, was one of the film’s attractions. It was very difficult for the early cinema with its meager means to approximate the luxurious, opulent operatic decorations of grand opera.1 3 As with the music, excerpts of which the viewer of the first Queen o f Spades was probably still able to recognize, some elements of the opera’s visual plane also survived on the screen. Yet the film’s visual offerings were greatly impoverished in comparison to the opera. For example, Tchaikovsky’s opera opens with a scene in the famous Summer Garden of Saint Petersburg. In Chardynin’s Queen o f Spades, the Summer Garden was simply due replaced by some generic “natural location” available to the filmmakers, whether to 1 3 In his memoirs, Alexander Khanzhonkov tells an anecdote about filming The Queen o f Spades: “I remember well the scene in which Liza drowns herself after her meeting with German. The insufficient height of the stage prevented the poor girl from concealing herself ‘underwater’, so a pit had to be dug urgently and the scene was shot again. That was an event in itself in those days” {Silent Witnesses, 108). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. their disinterest in fidelity to the source or, more probably, to the lack of economic resources. Hence the filmic rendering of both the musical and the spectacular aspects of the opera remained far from perfect. The duration of the action was also considerably shorter in the mo vie, in comparison with the opera: indeed, the rapid speed of the first movies and the necessary omission of most of the musical parts made the movie at best a greatly abridged version of the opera. In watching the first filmic Queen o f Spades, the modem spectator is probably most struck by the actors’ jerky and unnatural gestures, due to the high speed of early films; the black-and-white decorations, and the natural locations in the village of Krylatskoe near Moscow, which pretended to depict Saint Petersburg but was in fact Khanzhonkov’s dacha. The first cinematic Queen o f Spades, which might remind the condescending spectator of our days of Tolstoy’s notorious ridicule of opera, however, was singled out by contemporary viewers for its artistic qualities, good acting, and new techniques of filmmaking. Indeed, it stood out among numerous and, as a rule, hasty and iow-quality versions of Pushkin made during the first years of domestic film-production, i.e., between 1908 and 1911 (based on works such as The Mermaid, Mazepa, Brigand Brothers) Chardynin’s Queen o f Spades “won the first critical approval on what could be called artistic grounds” (Leyda, 40). Critical acclaim appeared on the pages of one of the leading film magazines of the time, Sine-phono. Its reviewer praised the film for its technical innovations, as well as 118 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. for its setting, and predicted great success for the filxp: One senses something new in the photography of this film, something which distinguishes it from that of films previously released. This novelty is evident in the production itself in which, for the first time, if T am not mistaken, the firm employs the trick of making the character appear or disappear. The picture is acted excellently; the ballet is very good. One’s attention is also drawn to the setting, consisting of period furniture. To the accompaniment of Tchaikovsky’s music this production will produce a tremendous impression. In short, success awaits this film.” (Sine-phono 2 (1910), 10; qtd. in Silent Witnesses, 110) Among the technical novelties introduced by the film was the use of close-ups, whose narrative importance is hard to underestimate. The movie was mostly filmed by a distant camera, as was the common practice of early cinema; as a rule, the camera was positioned at the center of the shooting site and remained there throughout the entire filming (Ginzburg, 121). At the end of The Queen o f Spades, during the last and fatal game, we see the faces of the gamblers, shown in medium close-up. The next close-up is used to show the card on which Germann makes his final bet. The camera reveals the card in close-up to the gamblers and to the audience, thus making the spectator a participant of the action, but not to Germann. In this way the camera takes on the function of cinematic narrator, choosing which information should be revealed and to whom it should be revealed. Here the cinema language thus emulates that of literature. This device, rare for the time and so popular later, helped cinema tell coherent stories using its own specific means. As one scholar explained, “the point of close-up shots was to make a film narrative intelligible without previous knowledge [emphasis is mine] of the story 119 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. when, the necess^^uifoi^tiohr'-'W as contained within the ;frame on-the screen” (Sklar, 51-52). Regrettably;, this cinematic device is used' otiiy .twice tow ard.-','the- end o f the film, leaving many ,'key details; in tte ;:re^.;of'the-:the;film so under emphasized that the spectator is left in the dark. For instance, the first- scene of the movie is supposed to introduce Liza and' the Old' Countess both to the spectator- and to the company of young officers. As filmed by a distant camera,- ho wever, the heroines, who are coining down a staircase, are barely distinguishable and lost in a crowd of other people. It would be anachronistic to dismiss this first film adaptation of Pushkin for a lack of narrative continuity that the spectator of later cinema might expect to meet on the screen. As recent critics of early cinema have argued, the alleged “primitiveness or otherness of early cinema needs to be recast” (Elsaesser, 6). Within this new historicist framework, the researcher dealing with the history of early cinema should pay attention not only to the dominant film styles, those that paved the path for the later cinema, but also to “deviant” cine-practices, which were not elaborated in later films (Elsaesser, 86). From this point of view, the first cinematic Queen o f Spades, with its fragmentary, non-continuous scenes, that imitated the performative and spectacular modes of opera, presents a fascinating example of that “road not taken” by later cinema. Moreover, for our study of Pushkin into film, this first Queen o f Spades marked a beginning of translating literary images into film language. S. Ginzburg, a Soviet film historian, calls these first film adaptations of literature “kinolpbki,” suggesting their primitive and often 120 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. akward treatmept of Hterary nmterial. (Ginzburg,'■ ■ 120-122). Yet, just as the lubok may he seen as a-'precursor of art of the art o f book illustration, so > this, .cinematic- hybrid of film, opera, and literature was a close predecessor of what would soon become the art of literary adaptation in film -.. Protazanov’s Queen o f Spades (1.916): Cine-Illustration or Cine-Story? Six years after Chardynin’s Queen o f Spades, Russian cinema turned again to Pushkin’s tale. A new Queen o f Spades, directed by the talented and versatile film director Yakov Protazanov, was released in 1916 by Ermofev’s film production company.1 4 Chardynin’s film had been characteristic of the cinema language in its nascent stage, presenting filmed opera. Unlike this first, still awkward attempt, Protazanov’s Queen o f Spades marks the apex of Russian pre- Revolutionaiy film. The unusually long shooting of the film (three months) and the film’s high cost served one goal: to create both an artistically sophisticated and commercially successful film that would help cinema become not only an inexpensive popular entertainment but also a new art form The filmmakers’ ambitions of filmmakers were gratified, and in its time and later the film has generated a larger number of critical responses than any other pre-revolutionary 1 4 Like Chardynin’s film, Protazanov’s Queen o f Spades has been released in the video collection Early Russian Cinema, 8 (New York: Milestone Film & Video, 1992). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. film (Ginzburg, 299). And, among the .entire body of film..-.versions of Pushkin, The Queen o f Spades of 1916 hasgained the reputation ofoneofthe most important. In sharp contrast to Chardypin’s film, in which the operatic code did not mesh well with the literary, Queen o f Spades presents arguably the most faithful rendering of Pushkin’s tale ever made. According to one-scholar,"ip the 1916 Queen o f Spades, “for the first- time [filmmakers] made a clever and scrupulous attempt to translate Pushkin’s text into the cinematic language” (Vishnevsky, “Pushkin v kino,” 62). The 1916 cinematic Queen o f Spades not only faithfully translates verbal images into visual ones by purely cinematic means but also achieves narrative continuity comparable to that of the literary text. Moreover, an attempt was made to render some of the philosophical and symbolic significance of the original. This ess achieved by employing and developing the latest achievements of the cinematic language of the time. Among the devices that contribute to the sophisticated rendering of Pushkin’s text are such things as the special lighting to convey the psychological state of the characters, parallel editing to render the peculiar temporality of Pushkin’s tale (two epochs in which action takes place), and special composition within a frame. The film appeared right in the middle of a dispute that had begun in 1915 surrounding the problem of adapting literature. How, the cinematic press asked, should or could film substitute for verbal imagery, imagery conceived visually? Is it possible for one artistic medium to borrow images and devices from another? What degree of fidelity is attainable when transferring a novel’s time, space, 122 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. characterization, setting, descriptions, and plot into film? And is this fidelity necessary or desirable at all? All these questions, which defy single answers and continue to be a matter of contention to the present day, were addressed by the author of an article that appeared in the first issue of the cinema magazine Proektor in 1915. The conclusions to which the writer comes are rather negative. First, he argues that art involves an inseparable relationship between form and content. This means, according to him, that the adaptation (uHcifeHupoem) of a literary work into theater or cinema becomes an act that violates “the most elementary rules of regular aesthetics” (Luk’ianov, 119). Arguing the impossibility of translating a work from one art form into another, the author states: A musical image as such cannot be at the same time a literary image, just as a literary image cannot concur with a dramatic one. . . Each image determines its own material, that is, the set of means and devices that help to incarnate this image into some external form. The entire significance and specificity of the image consists precisely in the fact that this image is indivisible, unequal to something else, and has its own special inner life. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony cannot be expressed by words, colors, or gestures. The same holds true with Maliavin’s painting Whirlwind. It is impossible to express it by anything except colors. The same is true with literary, dramatic, and other images... This is, in a simplified form, the view of modem aesthetics on the genre of illustration in painting and on adaptation in theater and cinema, (qtd. in Luk’ianov, 119) This concept of the untranslatability of the arts is not new, but now it is applied to film and literature. This pessimistic view on the matter of translation from literature into film has been echoed by many film theoreticians. From Valery Briusov and Bela Balazs in the twenties to modem scholars such as George 123 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Hliiestozie,' J3 3 £ m L y ---c ritic s,' like theffremote'predecessor in Prpektorr\\ave asserted' that the act of adaptation is an aesthetic violation. Literatore’s subject matter is adaptable to film, but not its aesthetic ,content (see the survey of opinions in/Griffith).; According to such critics, there are phenomenological differences among the arts,-"whose borders;are insurmountable;writing'is''-more interna!'and-, mental, for instance, while films'are more external and physical,.or, in other words, films arei-about what people, do and novels are about what people think, so their essential nature is not mutually accessible. Other, more positive opinions on the problem of film adaptation of literature also appeared in Protazanov’s time. I. Petrovskii, the author of the essay “Cine- Drama and Cine-Stoiy” (JCmodpcma u Kuuonoeecmb) (1916), which appeared in three successive installations of Proektor in 1916 and which Ginzburg has called “a manifesto of the psychological school of Russian cinema,” (Ginzburg, 290) took Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades as the perfect example of material for film adaptation. One of the arguments advanced by Petrovskii is the abundance of psychologically motivated action in Pushkin’s tale, which is perfectly suited for cinema. Another argument put forward is the fact that The Queen o f Spades had successfully made the jump to the stage in both opera and drama, and that that was a proof that it could also succeed on the screen. As one can see from this small sample of opinions, the problem of adapting literature for cinema became an important cultural issue for which Protazanov’s Queen o f Spades gave a practical answer. In the last portion of his essay, 124 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. published after The Queen of Spades had already appeared on the screen, I. Petrovskii took Protazanov’s film to be a perfect example of what he called “cine- story” (KUHonoeecmb). For Petrovskii there are two types of literary adaptations in film: cine-drama, in which external “fabula [storyline] replete with intrigues and acrobatic tricks” play a pivotal role, and cine-story, in which the “psychology and depiction of the characters’ emotional state” becomes paramount (Ginzburg, 289). For Petrovskii the emerging genre of cine-story, which came to replace the theatrically oriented genre of cine-drama, had its roots in literature, because “like in literature, cine-story considers the fabula [plot] only an external frame that needs to be filled with a psychological and ideological content” (Ginzburg, 289). “The time has come,” writes Petrovskii, “not to look at the screen but to read it” (qtd. in Ginzburg, 290). This essay clearly demonstrates that in 1916 film was turning from the stage arts of theater and opera to literature, as a model of imitation. The following interesting fact illustrates the literary orientation of the creators of the 1916 Queen o f Spades. Right after the film was released, Ermol’ev’s company published a brochure that reproduced verbatim the entire text of Pushkin’s Queen of Spades with stills from the movie playing the role of illustrations to the tale. Ironically enough, this brochure may be defined literally as “cine-illustration, ” a definition that, as we shall see, the filmmakers assigned to the film itself. This unique brochure includes a foreword, in which the filmmakers describe the main tasks they set before themselves while making The Queen o f Spades: 125 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Accepting all the responsibility that our cinematographic firm takes upon itself, in undertaking the adaptation of Russian classics— we could not deny ourselves the chance of giving a cine-illustration of one of the most remarkable Russian tales. There is more than just gold-digging behind modem cinematography. Serious creative work by those who are searching for new ways in art has also begun. People are attempting to find the inner essence of cinematography, to define its inner line, which connects it with real art. So far this question has found only a theoretical solution; and several definitions have appeared: ‘Cinematography is a tale in visual images.’ ‘ Cinematography is a special kind of pantomime.’ ‘Cinematography is a dynamic painting,’ etc. Our cine-illustration of The Queen o f Spades is one practical solutions to these questions. Our choice fell on The Queen o f Spades because its suitability for stage [ci{eHmHocmb\ has long been recognized... In 1890 P. Tchaikovsky’s opera Queen o f Spades, with its libretto by M. Tchaikovsky, appeared. As is well-known, M. Tchaikovsky’s libretto differs radically from the content of Pushkin’s tale. It should be noted also, that due to the exceptional popularity of the opera, the content of Pushkin’s tale was overshadowed by Tchaikovsky’s libretto in the memory of the wider public. In our adaptation of Pushkin’s tale for the screen, we followed Pushkin’s tale faithfully, frying to use those vast possibilities that cinematography possesses and that allow it to develop the writer’s hints in capturing living images. If our experience will be of any help to anyone who is searching to solve the problem of cinematography’s development, we would be gratified. (Pikovaia dama: Mnoiiliustratsiia) Paragraph by paragraph, the filmmakers here define their attitude towards every major issue of filmmaking of their time. They start with distancing themselves from the commercial cinema, what they call “gold-digging,” opposing their concept of cinema to it as “real art.” Their highbrow aspiration is further confirmed by an appeal to the authority of literature, which they choose as a model Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. for imitation. It is remarkable that they oppose their film as a faithful adaptation of Pushkin’s tale to Tchaikovsky’s opera as a free version of it. The filmmaker’s intention to bring Pushkin, overshadowed by Tchaikovsky, back to the memory of the wider public recalls later attempts— Meyerhold’s and others— to capture the “authentic” Pushkin in other arts. In spite of the fact that everywhere in the brochure the filmmakers maintained their utter fidelity to literature as the only source and model for their cinematic Queen o f Spades, this was not entirely so. In reality, in order to create a film version of Pushkin’s tale, the filmmakers made use of various visual arts, particularly that of theater and book illustrations. The art director for the movie, V. Balliuzek, had come from the theater. He had started his work on The Queen o f Spades after mounting Pushkin’s Little Tragedies in the Moscow Art Theater together with a group of theatrical artists headed by Alexander Benois (Kolodiazhnaia, 137). Benois’ss “wonderful majestic decoration and excellent, true-to-the-epoch costumes for Pushkin’s little tragedies” were highly praised by K. Stanislavsky, and this theatrical production considerably influenced Balliuzek’s design for Protazanov’s film Benois’s theatrical design was conceived so that each detail, each prop on the stage served to support the play’s action. Similarly, Balliuzek and the cameraman Slavinsky, both of whom were responsible for designing the overall look of the film, considered the design within a frame as a participant of the action. Until their film- the composition within a frame had not been much considered. As a rule, 127 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. scenes were stuffed with, many unnecessary props that distracted the spectator’s attention and hampered him from'separating what was important in the action from the accidental. In general, a film’s action did not correlate with frame design. In The Queen o f Spades, however, the scene composition within the frame, together with strategic use-; of props and lighting, gained as much importance as the action itself and often even became a dominant part of the plot (Kolodiazhnaia, 138; on the similar simultaneous discovery by D. W. Griffith, see Meritt, 147-152). It was not only Benois’s work in theater that can be felt in the film. Much more interesting is the fact that Benois as a book-designer also greatly influenced the overall look of the film. Several shots in Protazanov’s Queen o f Spades copy Benois’s illustrations to Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades in the edition published at the end of 1911 by the famous printing house of Golike and Vilborg in Saint Petersburg. To understand the significance of the filmmakers’ turn to Benois’s illustrations, a few words need to be said about the art ofbook illustration. Benois’s illustrations to The Queen o f Spades (1911), together with his earlier illustrations for Pushkin’s poem The Bronze Horseman (1905), had galvanized the whole field ofbook illustration, raising it from the level of mere craftsmanship to a recognized form of art. His illustrations raised the status ofbook designers to that of co-authors and turned well-designed books into artworks. His illustrations to Pushkin no longer functioned in a subordinate way to the written text but joined the text in a dialogic relationship. The contemporary writer Osip Dymov recorded his impression of Benois’ss illustrations in the journal Theater and Art of 1911: 128 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Benois’s illustrations are beautiful.. They do; not add (dogovarivaiut) \ anything to PushMn, for what can be added: to'..Pushkin? They, also, . . do/not lead astray but sound as. a harmonic- accompaniment to him.. . Maybe, instead of ‘illustrations/ it would be more correct to say “InMrinnentation”? One remembers— in spite of all the ■ years, that have passed— the-iflustrations ofthe same artist:for W e- Bronze. Horseman, which immediately arrested- public attention when they appeared on Petersburg exhibition for the-first time.. It Is noteworthy that in those illustrations as well as m:tKe;fflustratidtts forTfe Queen o f Spades, the insanity, the hero’s'madness, the young man’s delirium is placed at the center, as if Benois was enchanted by the side of Saint Petersburg about which Dostoevsky wrote: its fantasticism, its unreality... Behold to what degree the fantastic, the insane, is intertwined with the real in 'Benois’s illustrations!.. Benois has managed to penetrate into some of the mystery of Petersburg, (qtd. in Timenchik, Ospovat, 217) Dymov, acknowledging at the beginning Benois’s fidelity to Pushkin very soon arrives at the opposite point of view. According to the critic, Benois does not just follow Pushkin but rather invests him with the spirit of Dostoevsky and with the spirit of Benois’s own time, i.e., the epoch of the fin de siecle, when the Petersburg myth came to play such a special role (about this see Timenchik, Ospovat). Benois’s illustrations to Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades also represented an artistic interpretation, his own reading of Pushkin’s tale. Benois borrowed from illustrated books and albums of the past (e.g., silhouettes) and revealed his nostalgia for the era of Pushkin’s tale; indeed, The Queen o f Spades with the two epochs depicted there— Petersburg of the 1830s and Versailles of the 1770s— perfectly corresponded to Benois’s own aesthetic preferences. An exquisite stylization of the past is not the final goal of Benois’s conception of Pushkin: the atmosphere of bygone epochs was intertwined in his illustration with later Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. interpretations of the tale (such as its Dostoevskian connotations) and with Benois’s own reading of it. According to Tsivian, in Benois’s interpretation the motif of eternel retour, when Germann’s story with magic three cards mirrors the young Countess’s adventure, became paramount. Benois underscored the situational symmetry of Pushkin’s tale-two card games in two different epochs— by translating it into compositional symmetry. He created two illustrations, one depicting the young Countess’s card game in Versailles and the other Germann’s game in Saint Petersburg in such a way that they mirror each other in terms of the compositional symmetry of postures, costumes, props, and placed them at the beginning and near the end of the book. In this way Benois’ss illustrations created the situation of deja-vu as the reader approached the end of Pushkin’s story (Tsivian, “Books in Motion,” 361). Tsivian also writes that Protazanov used in his film Benois’s idea on symmetrical relationships between Pushkin’s two epochs and developed it by creating even more visual parallels between the epochs (I will talk extensively about this later). Tsivian argues that Benois viewed Pushkin with the slightly ironic eye of the twentieth-century reader and that these ironic overtones might have attracted Protazanov to Benois’ss work (Tsivian, Immaterial Bodies: Cultural Anatomy o f Early Russian Films). According to Tsivian, Benois also emulated Pushkin’s own irony by varying visual styles and techniques in his illustrations, “a device allowing the illustrator to maintain a playful distance between the illustrations and Pushkin’s 130 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. text—which. . . was quite in keeping with the detached irony of Pushkin’s own narrative” (Tsivian, “Books in Motion,” 362). Agreeing with Tsivian on irony in Benois, I would rather disagree with his view of irony in Protazanov. In contrast to both Pushkin and Benois, irony is completely absent in Protazanov’s film, which gives an utterly serious interpretation of both Pushkin’s tale and Benois’ss illustrations. I would suggest that Protazanov and his collegues turned to Benois for reasons other from irony. First, some of the illustrations (there are seven large illustrations to Pushkin’s six chapters and conclusion and a number of small ones to Pushkin’s epigraphs) remind one of stills from a movie, thus providing a ready model for film language. The movie borrows a compositional design within a frame from Benois’s illustrations. The composition of obejcts in these shots is arranged according to the same pattern as Benois’ss illustrations: limited and very precisely structured space segments in which elements rhythmically reflect one another. Eight shots in Protazanov’s Queen o f Spades reproduce Benois’s illustrations almost “verbatim,” and quite a number follow Benois loosely (Tsivian, “Books in Motion,” 361). Another reason that might have drawn the filmmakers to Benois was the similarity of their final goals. The creators of The Queen o f Spades were searching for a special cinema language, one that would make the film image not just a photographic, naturalistic reproduction of reality but an artistic image, an interpretation of reality peculiar to cinema alone. As I have already mentioned, what Benois achieved in his illustrations to Pushkin’s tale was precisely the 131 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. discovery of a language specific to book design. He thus raised the derivative, secondary status of book illustration to co-partnertnership, presenting its own version of the written story. In this sense, Benois’s example greatly appealed to the filmmakers, who also wanted to turn the derivative genre of film into an art form of its own. This is probably why, after Benois, they defined the genre of their film as “cine-illustration” (Molok, 214). There is also another substantial similarity in the overall conception of Protazanov’s film and Benois’s illustrations. In his illustrations, Benois gives the utmost attention to revealing the psychology of Pushkin’s characters (Pavlova, 14). In the film, which was an epitome of the Russian “psychological school” in cinema, this was also paramount. The psychological drama of Germann, the film’s central character, slowly unfolds on the screen, and the rest of characters are presented in their relationship to him (Ginzburg, 299). The conception of Germann’s psychological image was mostly determined by Ivan Mozzhukhin, whose performance in The Queen o f Spades became one of his greatest critical and popular successes {Silent Witnesses, 582). Mozzhukhin, a star of the first rank in Russian pre-Revolutionary cinema, embodied the main features of Russian pre-Revolutionary acting. Unlike the American cinema, where the main attention was paid to the dynamics of external action, the Russian school of filmmaking put particular emphasis on showing human inner experiences and intimate emotions and become famous for its psychologism. Characterizing Russian pre-Revolutionary cinema “posthumously” in 1925, the critic Andre 132 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Levinson explained that the Russian cinema school “created a style that was completely divorced from European and American experiments but enthusiastically supported by our own audiences. The scripts were full of static poetic moods, of melancholy, and of the exultation or eroticism of a gypsy romance. There was no external action whatsoever. There was just enough movement to link the long- drawn pauses, which were weighed down with languorous day-dreaming...” {Silent Witnesses, 32). The dearth of action and the immobility of the characters in Russian cinema was compensated for by a special manner of acting in which long pauses and scarce gestures were supported by rich facial expressions meant to convey a profound emotional life. And Mozzhukhin’s acting style, developed in his roles as neurasthenics, demonic characters, and people with secret passions or facing spiritual discord, became the epitome of Russian pre-Revolutionary cinema (there even existed the term the “the Mozzhukhin style of screenacting”). In choosing Mozzhukhin to play the main character, the filmmakers, whether realizing it or not, deviated from Pushkin’s original and presented a modernized version of Pushkin’s Germann (see Ginzburg; for a contrary opinion, see Zorkaia, “Russkaia shkola ekranizatsii”). Pushkin’s protagonist became heavily romanticized and dramatized in the film, perpetuating the phenomenon we have witnessed already in nineteenth-century theater and opera adaptations. As in the opera, in the film Germann becomes the main subject of the action, and his point of view dominates. Let us recall that in Pushkin’s story, Germann is always seen through the eyes of someone else (Liza, Tomsky, the Countess). Also, as in the 133 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. opera, Mozzhukhin’s Germann is utterly serious. If in Pushkin the reader always faces some ambiguity, wherein each of the characteristics of the hero, as a rule, is undermined as a Romantic cliche, in the film this Pushkinian balance between the tragic and the ironic is lost. Mozzhukhin’s solemn and lofty style of acting added a lot of grandeur to Pushkin’s “Russian German,” transforming Pushkin’s pragmatic character into a demonic maniac possessed by his passion. To cite another contrast with Pushkin’s text, the only information the story supplies to the reader about Germann’s appearance is that in profile he resembled Napoleon (Pushkin, 226) and that he had “dark, sparkling eyes” (Pushkin, 218). The first characteristics is voiced by Tomsky, who most likely wanted to impress Liza in their conversation at the ball. Tomsky also adds in their chatter that Germann has the soul of Mephistopheles and that he is “a truly Romantic character”--thus Pushkin openly refers to Romantic stereotypes. Germann’s eyes are seen as “dark and sparkling” by Liza, who was frightened as well as excited by this sight of the unknown young officer (Pushkin, 218). And so in The Queen of Spades, Pushkin does not give the reader any objective portrait of Germann; what we get are only subjective points of view. In the film, however, both of these characteristics are presented as objective qualities. Moreover, they become major visual attributes of the film’s hero. The Napoleonic profile is rendered in the film by Germann’s giant creeping shadow, a recurrent visual motif in the film (this is considered one of the cameraman’s major artistic achievements, but not all contemporary critics approved of the 134 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “objectiyation” , of Germann’s Romantic characteristics in Protazanov [see Luk’ianov, 127-128]). In its turn, Germann’s “sparkling eyes,” which were “fixed” on Liza’s window in the tale, found their visual counterpart in Mozzhukhin’s “magnetic eyes,” which became a legend of Russian pre- Revolutionary cinema (about Mozzhukhin, see Abel, “Magnetic Eyes,” Khrenov, Nabokov). The cinematic rendering of Germann ignores the parodic overtones of Pushkin’s character and conveys only his serious dramatic aspect: his fixation on an idea that finally results in his insanity (this theme does exist in Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades, but it is constantly undermined by irony). So does this translation of Pushkin’s verbal discourse into cinema language impoverish it and reduce the richness of Pushkin’s meanings to only one level? This is not completely or necessarily the case. While cinematic language does deprive Pushkin’s tale of some of its meanings, at the same time it introduces other dimensions into the story: Mozzhukhin’s Germann, for example, gathers all those Romantic neurasthenics from the works of Dostoevsky to those of the Russian Symbolists into whom Pushkin’s type developed in the course of the intervening decades. The function of actor as “palimpsest” was embodied in the star system when the actor created a type that followed him from film to film (Sklar, 70-74). Cinema gives the actor the unique opportunity of bringing with himself the memory of all his preceding roles, while the spectator recognizes beyond each new role the familiar type, which, in its turn, influences the public perception of the new character. By 135 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the time; of the appearance of Protazanoy’s Queen o f Spades (1916), Mozzhukhin had already starred in such decadent melodramas as Eugene Bauer’s Life in Death (1914; its “deadly” script, written by a famous decadent writer, Valery Briusov), and he played the role of Nikolay Stavrogin in a film based on Dostoevsky’s Possessed (1915). These and other similar roles'had earned him the reputation with the public as a neurasthenic in the spirit of Dostoevsky and as a mystical decadent characterized by “sudden tremendous outbursts, complicated dramas, and held back passions” (Mozzhukhin Ivan, How I Played Nikolai Stavrogin, qtd. in Silent Witnesses, 580). Hence Mozzhukhin’s cinematic interpretation of Germann was able to incorporate all of the allusions that later Russian culture bestowed both on him as a star and on Pushkin’s main character. There are other means specific to cinematic language that make the 1916 Queen o f Spades an especially successful translation of verbal images and ideas into visual ones. For example, in the film, Germann’s leading role in events is conveyed through his central positioning within the frame. Often he appears in medium-close shots, especially in the “psychological scenes” meant to show the character’s emotional turmoil (in these scenes he stares into the camera with his hypnotic eyes). Even while showing Germann surrounded by people against the background of some interior or enveloped by the architecture of Saint Petersburg, the filmmakers still find some position within the frame to emphasize Germann’s figure and to give it dominance. One scholar has also noted a special method of composition used for Germann 136 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. in the film. Although as a rule, he appears in the film against the background of some real life location, his environment is always symmetrically structured (Kolodiazhnaia, 140). According to this scholar, this symmetricaUy precise composition conveys Germann’s estrangement from real life and, I would add, this also finds its parallel in Germann’s propensity to calculation in Pushkin’s text. The cinematic rendering of Liza shows her as an antipode to Germann. Liza, who was played in the film by the former Moscow Art Theater actress Vera Orlova, is placed in the film in the context of every day life. She appears within intentionally disarranged compositions filled with simple domestic realia, meant to contrast her joy-filled, down-to-earth nature with the gloomy, despondent soul of Germann. Balliuzek, the art designer for the film, who was mainly responsible for creating the sets, recalls that “Yakov Aleksandrovich [Protazanov] did not only want the artist to produce effectively painted sets but directed his attention towards revealing the characters ’ psychological essence by visual means [emphasis is mine]” {Silent Witnesses, 356). Orlova’s immediate, natural style of acting also contrasts her performance to the lofty, solemn style of Mozzhukhin’s acting. To illustrate the cinematic devices used to translate Pushkin’s written narrative into a filmic one, I will analyze three sequences in the movie. One corresponds to the first chapter of Pushkin’s tale, i.e„ the card game in Narumov’s house and Tomsky’s anecdote about the adventures of his grandmother in Versailles. The second portrays Germann’s growing insanity, and the third is the closing sequence, 137 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. whicfrshowsGermann in a lunatic asylum.1 : The film opens- with a shot of Narumov’s room. A gambling table is in the. foreground; at the table a number of officers are sitting gambling. Their position at the table composes a semi-circle, which is symmetrically repeated by an arch in the background, a passage to another room. This s^hnmetfica!' composition -Within'a frame is disturbed by-the figure of an officer, Germann, whose standing position is in contrast to the rest of the people who are sitting. Not only his position but also his behavior distinguishes the standing officer from the others: the immobility and tension of his pose oppose him to the lively, excited gestures of the sitting officers engaged in play. His attention is utterly arrested by the gambling table, highlighted within the frame by a spotlight, although he himself is not gambling but only watching the game, unlike the others in the room. In this sequence, the composition within each frame is always organized in such a way as to make it easy for the spectator to spot Germann amid the rest of the characters (which was not the case in the film’s predecessor, Chardynin’s Queen o f Spades). For example, when all the gamblers, in order to go to another room for dinner, are gathered in the background against an arch, Germann, who is dressed in dark clothing is left alone against the background of the white wall. This play of light and dark contrasts in a frame, a technique called chiaroscuro (a term derived from painting), was one of film’s widely used distinguishing techniques. The officer and the rest of the gamblers always form some visual opposition, which bears a semantic significance. It directs the spectator’s attention to 138 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Germann’s characters and translates information of narrative importance into visual terms: Germann’s strange attitude towards the game, his loneliness, Ms burning passions, his emotionally disturbed state, etc. TMs information, conveyed by visual means, makes the title “Germann has never in Ms life had a card in his hand,” wMch follows the scene, almost redundant, for the film has already provided the spectator with more than sufficient visual clues to draw conclusions. The interior of the room also has semantic importance. In general, in Protazanov’s Queen o f Spades, the interior plays the role of a spatial-temporal continuum in which the characters exist and wMch influences their behavior, actions, and relationships to one another (on the special function of interiors in silent cinema, see Tsivian, Immaterial Bodies). There is thus a strong connection between the characters and their environment in the film. For instance, the setting of Narumov’s rooms is designed in the Empire style meant to convey the period of the action, the 1830s (Protazanov is careful to preserve the historical authenticity of Pushkin’s original). The most compelling element of the interior are the silhouettes that hang on the wall and against whose background Germann is shown several times. The silhouettes are profiles of an officer in a peaked cap (later Germann appears in the same type of cap), a lady with a hairdo in eighteenth- century fasMon (resembling the young Countess, who soon appears in the film), and an old gentleman (whose profile resembles Count Saint-Germain). These silhouettes, the appearance of wMch in the film may be traced to Benois’s influence, fulfill several functions in the film. First, along with the rest of the 139 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. elements in the interior, silhouettes convey the atmosphere of the epoch. Silhouettes had come into fashion in Russia a little earlier, near in the end of the eighteenth century, but they were still extremely popular in Pushkin’s time. Secondly, the silhouettes introduce the main characters of the narrative to the spectator from the very beginning: Germann, the Countess, and Saint-Germain. Finally, I would suggest that the silhouettes appear in the film as metaphors of cinema itself. Among visual arts, the art of silhouettes comes closest to the art of photography (silhouettes especially resemble negatives) and thus also to white- and-black cinema which was often referred to as the “art of shadows.” The variety of functions played by the silhouettes in The Queen o f Spades demonstrates how visual details in Protazanov’s film may acquire not only narrative importance, i.e., helping to tell the story but also discursive significance, i.e., referring the spectator to units larger than the text— here to the medium of cinema itself (see Iampolsky for a discussion of such cinematic narrative techniques). The next part of the opening sequence corresponds to Tomsky’s story about his grandmother. To translate the Versailles episode into cinema, the filmmakers employed a whole range of devices that make this sequence one of the most innovative and compelling in the movie. In Pushkin’s tale this episode has quite an intricate design of a story-within-a-story. The action shifts between two locations, the time and place of Tomsky’s narration (Paris of the 1770s) and the time and place of Tomsky the narrator’s actual location (Saint Petersburg of the 1830s). To convey this alternation in the movie, the filmmakers ably use a technique 140 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. innovative for Russian cinema of the time: a crosscutting, i.e., an editing, a nascent montage technique that alternates fragments' from two locations, thus, connecting them into amarrative whole. This special editing not only helps translate Pushkin’s alternation between two epochs into film but also to achieve in the cinematic version effects unattainable in its literary source. For instance, in Pushkin’s tale the epoch of the Countess’s youth and the time of Germann and Tomsky are closely linked, but to become felly aware of this similarity between the two epochs requires some effort on the part of the reader (for example, to notice the connection between the names of Saint-Germain and Germann). In the film, the affinity between the Petersburgian present and the Parisian past is made much more explicit: the actions are presented alternately, with many visual parallels between them. At each moment when the Parisian scene is interrupted by a scene showing its Petersburgian reception, the visual compositions of the two are mirrored. Tomsky’s story, one of the key sequences in the film, provides a good example of how Protazanov’s Queen o f Spades finds its own means to recreate the effect of its verbal source text. During the opening episode, the positions of Tomsky and Germann are marked. Germann occupies a position closest to Tomsky and becomes his most attentive listener. In his turn, Tomsky addresses his story mainly to Germann, whose behavior indicates what a deep impression the story is making on him. Here the film deviates from Pushkin’s tale. There Germann’s immediate reaction to Tomsky’s anecdote is that of mistrust: his immediate judgment is that it 141 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. is a “fairy tale.” Only at the very end of chapter two does Pushkin let the reader know what a deep impression the anecdote has left on Germann. To the contrary, in the movie the spectator is aware of Germann’s reaction from the very start. The film provides explicit visual information that does not leave space for doubt. As Tomsky opens his story, there is a close shot of the young Countess, dressed in a white ball dress with a farthingale and with a high, powdered hairdo in the eighteenth-century style. Her immobile pose, as well as the neutral dark background framing her figure, introduces her to the spectator as a kind of portrait. Then the portrait comes to life: the young beauty slowly raises her head, slightly bowed in the beginning, and stares, casting a fixed glance towards the camera. Finally, she smiles and raises her fan to hide her face. This short scene seems to be extremely loaded with meanings. First, it foreshadows the portrait of the young Countess that Germann contemplates while waiting for the old Countess in the third chapter of Pushkin’s tale. Pushkin writes that the portrait “showed a beautiful young woman with an aquiline nose, with her hair combed back over her temples, and with a rose in her powdered locks” (Pushkin, 223). The similarity of Pushkin’s description to the appearance of the young Countess in this scene of the movie is evident. This sequence of the film in which a portrait comes to life finds its parallel in two later episodes in Pushkin’s tale. One of them is the sinister episode of the Countess’s funeral, when the dead Countess smiles to Germann from the coffin (Pushkin, 229). The other episode from the tale corresponds even more literally to the one in the film: at the end of the tale, the queen of spades on 142 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the card grins to Geraiaim after Ms final loss (Pushkin, 233). Besides tMs richness of associations with Pushkin’s tale, there are other meanings that this filmic portrait of the young Countess acquires in the film. As one scholar has pointed out, the filmmakers use the portrait-device as an introduction, a sort of a title page, to the “story-within-a-story” sequence that follows this portrait shot (Kolodiazhnaia, 145). Introducing a story from the past by using a close shot presenting a static portrait (the other close-ups in the film are always dynamic), the filmmakers convey in cinematic language Pushkin’s idea of the irreversability of time. The Parisian era, when the Countess was in “great vogue,” when she was surrounded by a flock of admirers, and when Saint-Germain revealed to her the secret of the three winning cards, is irrevocably gone. It is dead, static, and frozen and one should not try to penetrate into its mysteries. The next pcene in the sequence shows the Countess amid the court of Versailles. This scene is presented as a series of Mgh-angle shots (shots in which the camera is pointed markedly downwards), and tMs contributes to the effect of a story-vrithin-a-story. Here the camera plays the role of narrator, and its position from above introduces the Parisian episode as if it were contemplated from some distance (here, distance in time). The scene then shifts back to the officers listening to Tomsky’s story. Tomsky’s and Germann’s figures are in the foreground, with Tomsky speaking mainly to Germann. The shots in the film that bring us back to the main action (the “present” of the film) correspond to such narratorial remarks in Pushkin’s tale as Tomsky’s “as far as I remember” (Pushkin, 143 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 211), :or:: “The .young' gaMblers listened with....doubled attention. Tomsky lit his .pipe...\.aad:-continued’’(Pushkffli^212). Yet' besides this, purely narrative purpose, the cinematic shifting between past and present has another meaning: it shows the close links between past and present. As noted, in his illustrations to Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades, Benois foregrounded the motif of eternel retour using compositional symmetry in his depiction of the two card games, in Paris and in Saint Petersburg. The filmmakers borrowed this device from Benois and developed it extensively: the successive shots in the sequence presenting the alternation between Paris and Petersburg have an identical disposition of figures. For example, one Parisian shot in this sequence shows the young Countess losing at the gambling table in Versailles as everyone watching the game rises up from the table in agitation. The next shot shows the officers also rising up from the table, agitated by this episode of Tomsky’s story. Another Parisian shot in the sequence shows Saint-Germain leaning down towards the sitting Countess to reveal the secret of the three cards to her. In the next shot Tomsky is leaning forward to the sitting Germann, intimately describing the same episode to him. The similar composition in two successive shots juxtaposes two situations, which at first sight do not have much in common. The movie explicates a meaning potentially present in Pushkin’s verbal narrative. Indeed, the episode with the young Countess and Saint-Germain and the episode with Tomsky and Germann are connected in Pushkin’s tale by a common motif that can be defined as a “temptation by the three-card mystery.” Thus Protazanov’s version of The 144 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Queen o f Spades tm&ts'its soilrce, Pushkin’s tale, In a/way remarkably, different 'from what we have witnessed so far. The film’s interpretation does not introduce; any change into the. original, as other versions do. Instead, vdlfaout any change to the story’s plot, the film places its.own accents and gives its own understanding of the events and characters of the tale, nevertheless remaining within the limits of potential meanings generated by Pushkin’s tale. In the sequence that portrays Germann’s growing insanity, the shot- countershot editing technique (i.e., different camera setups within a sequence) presents how reality is seen from alternately different viewpoints. The first fragment shows reality from an objective point of view; the next fragment in the sequence presents reality from Germann’s subjective point of view; and the third one returns the spectator back to the objective, normal picture of reality. For instance, the first fragment shows Germann in his room sitting on the couch. A picture with a dark silhouette depicting him in profile hangs on the wall on his right. Then he stands up and raises his hands in a gesture of despair. The next fragment presents the spectator with a picture of reality distorted by Germann’s insane imagination, as the silhouette on the wall transforms into an ace of spades. The ace grows and turns into a huge spider.1 5 Germann struggles in vain with a web entangling him. The next fragment brings the spectator back to the normal 1 5 This film episode with the ace and the spider loosely corresponds to that episode of Pushkin’s tale that describes Germann’s fixation on the three winning cards, affecting him after the visitation of the Countess’s ghost (beginning of chapter 6): “The trey, the seven, and the ace haunted him even in his dreams, taking every imaginable form: the trey blossomed before him like a great luxuriant flower; the seven appeared as a Gothic gate; and the ace assumed the shape of an enormous spider.. .”(Pushkin, 230). 1 /1 C Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. reality of the first fragment, but Germann, who now shown in the normal room of the first fragment, nevertheless keeps struggling with the invisible spider web that exists only in his sick imagination. Likewise, the concluding sequence consists of three fragments, The first presents Germann sitting on an iron cot in a lunatic asylum. His gestures suggest that he is playing imaginary cards. The next shot shows the room from Germann’s subjective viewpoint: it is filled with cards flying in the air; the ghost of the Old Countess also appears. The final shot shows Germann back on his bed dressed in a straitjacket. Thus, Germann’s psychological drama, which becomes the central theme of Protazknov’s version of Pushkin’s tale, is conveyed not merely by the acting but also through the creative use of cinematic devices. The filmmakers used these cinematic means to introduce into the film narrative an interplay of various points of view that had previously been considered to be solely the domain of verbal discourse. This was some of the territory the young art of cinema was striving to conquer. Protazanov’s Queen o f Spades became a major artistic event of the time. Its artistic design; its innovative use of cinematic technique; the intensity of the performance of the film’s lead, Ivan Mozzhukhin; and finally, its careful rendering of the literary original (rare at that time) affected the way people talked about cinema in general. The cultural elite, who had previously given scant attention to the medium, could now appreciate its artistic potential and could accept cinema not only as a sociological phenomenon but as the newest art form (Luk’anov, 146 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 126). The film’s poetics united spectacle and narrative in a manner that made a permanent mark on film style and practices. Many of its visual motifs reappeared in later films, sometimes Used as quotations, but even more often losing their direct connection and becoming the common property of cinematic language. The high artistic level of the film also had considerable impact on contemporary filmmaking, which had to keep pace with the artistic achievements of Protazanov’s film. Alexander Khanzhonkov, the head of the second largest film company in pre- Revolutionaiy Russia, recalls the effect Protazanov’s film had on him: My desire was to stun cinematography with some work of high artistic quality, which would immediately raise the reputation of our company to the high level it deserved. My desire was warmed up by Ermol’ev’s success, who at that time was finishing the highly artistic film The Queen o f Spades based on Pushkin... This film was a beautiful artistic ensemble. The original decorations of the artist Balliuzek became a new step in the development of Russian filmmaking. Our company, as the oldest and largest in Russia saw its duty in releasing in this season some film of the same “quality.” (Khanzhonkov, Pervye gody, 92) The fidelity of the film to its literary source also received critical praise. The author of an article that appeared in Russia’ s Screen (.Ekran Rossii) imagined Alexander Pushkin, who, after attending the screening of the movie, gave an interview. The journalists draw the writer’s attention to minor faults of the movie- -the instances where the film deviates from its literary original— and they ask his opinion about the film. Pushkin’s last word about the film is that of high praise: he admits “cinema’s precious individuality” in filming his tale, and he characterizes the 147 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ■film-as •'‘ftruly inspirational,” He thanks the-, filmmakersand fidelity to ..his-tale: I recognize my 'Germann. . . , my quiet bourgeois girl [MeifymomaJ Lizayeta Ivanovna,, and that intolerable old woman /.who -takes: her revenge' on everyone, because God took her beauty and the' energy of her once healthy and attractive body,- and my magickn--the'Count - Saint-Germain. I have/ recognized everyone'.-- Thanks, (qtd. in Luk’ianov, 134) Pro.tazanov’s Queen, o f Spades was an epitome of the Russian pre- Revohitionary film school. It accumulated this school’s main features, such as its “literariness” (mmepamypmcmh) and its psychologism. It was most likely this Russianness of The Queen o f Spades, influenced Protazanov’s decision to choose The Queen o f Spades out of all his voluminous cinematic legacy when the director needed to introduce himself to the international film community upon emigrating to France after the Revolution. The film was successful with the French public, and Mozzhukhin was adored there intensely for a few years (Leyda, 115). Unlike its cinematic predecessor, Chardynin’s Queen o f Spades, which nowadays in large part interests only film historians, Protazanov’s Queen o f Spades of 1916 entered the canon of classic works of cinema. Moreover, having become a canonical text itself (such as Pushkin’s works have become classics for literature), Protazanov’s film has been referred to again and again in later film versions of The Queen o f Spades. Even today its narrative content and artistic design keep the film remarkably fresh for the modem audience interested both in Pushkin and in film. 148 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER FOUR THE QUEEN OF SPADES INTO SOUND FILM This chapter discusses non-Russian filmic adaptations; one is the French film, and the other is a British version of Pushkin’s story. Before proceeding with discussing these films, both of which were talkies, I should mention that there were silent versions of The Queens o f Spades appearing in the West. According to Vishnevsky, in the twenties Pushkin’s tale was adapted for the screen three times, all of them in Germany. One of the German Queens was released in 1924 by “National Film.” Vishnevsky also states that the Russian emigre Grigorii Khmara played Germann’s part in this film, and the actress Asta Nielsen, a star of silent cinema, played the part of the Old Countess.1 6 Another Queen o f Spades was released in 1927 in Berlin by the German Phoebus-Film Atelier. The film was made by Alexander Razumny, a Soviet director, who in the twenties spent a few years in Germany, where he shot several films based on Russian classics (another film he shot in Germany was the movie Superfluous People, an adaptation of Chekhov’s works [Razumny, 11-117]). Similar to the Soviet theatrical productions of Pushkin in the twenties discussed earlier, Razumny entirely ignored the Romantic and mystical elements of Pushkin’s tale and preserved only its 1 6 Natalia Nusinova (1999) refers to this German Queen o f Spades as one that was never filmed and remained only in a project (237). Regrettably, Nusinova’s article discussing The Queen o f Spades in emigre cinema appeared after my chapters on Pushkin in cinema had been already completed. Her research was helpful in clarifying some points on the history of Pushkin’s tale in emigre film. 149 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. intriguing plot involving the three cards. He also changed the time-frame, as well as the characteristics and behavior of the tale’s characters, transferring all action into the Soviet era. The principal characters in the film are Aleksandr Germann, a young Soviet engineer working in a big factory, and Tomsky, an inveterate card- player; and the central message of the film is the final victory of those who labor! (Kino, 1927, 15). This free interpretation of Pushkin’s tale was characterized in the press as a tasteless simplification of Pushkin’s original, and the film itself was found boring by reviewers both foreign and Soviet, as well as by the viewing public (Kino, 15). It is remarkable that such an awkward “proletarization” of Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades appeared not in Russia but abroad- In my earlier discussion of The Queen o f Spades in theater, I have already mentioned a reason for this neglect of Pushkin’s tale in the early Soviet period. Pushkin’s tale, borrowing its subject from nineteenth century upper-society life (but lacking the “typicality” that could allow any didactic or satiric use of it) and oscillating between the fantastic and the real, was neglected by Soviet directors, who, ordered to promote an officially accepted Pushkin image, staged and filmed Pushkin’s works with more topical content, such as Captain’ s Daughter, Dubrovsky, and The Stationmaster. The arrival of sound in the thirties did not help to bring Pushkin’s tale to the screen in Soviet Russia. That is why, probably, as this chapter will show, the two sound adaptations of The Queen o f Spades in the thirties and forties appeared in the West. 150 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This chapter focuses on two Western adaptations, the French La Dame de pique (1937) and the British Queen o f Spades (1949). The first was filmed by Fedor Ozep, a Russian emigre director, and was addressed in part to Russian emigrants who were expected to become a large, if not the main segment, of the film’s audience. The inter-cultural position of the film, which functioned simultaneously in the French and Russian-emigre contexts, largely conditioned the poetics and the concept of the film The last film in this study, the British Queen o f Spades, presents in many ways the richest material for the study of film adaptation of literature, for much like Protazanov’s version of thirty years before, it explored all the achievements of contemporary cinema technique (including sound), in order to translate literary properties to the screen. As noted, The Queen o f Spades was not in favor with early Soviet filmmakers. Because the Bolshevik power valued cinema very much as a tool to promulgate revolutionary messages, the choice of what to be filmed became very important. And the apolitical and mystical Queen o f Spades did not fit into the politicized Soviet Pushkin myth that took rigid shape in the thirties and in which Pushkin appeared as an irreconcilable atheist, a “people’s poet,” and an enemy of the upper-class society. This may have been the reason for two failed attempts to produce film versions of The Queen o f Spades in the Russia of the thirties. In 1938 Mikhail Romm, a talented film director, was banned from continuing work on his film version of The Queen o f Spades, which was labeled by official criticism as a work “foreign to the contemporary life” (nyo/cdm coepeMemocmu 151 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Kapmmd). Even Romm’s two-part film Lenin in October and Lenin in 1918, directed in the same years of 1937 to 1939, did not procure him the right to finish his Pushkin film. The music for this unfinished project was composed by Sergei Prokofiev. There was also a project for a filmed opera of The Queen o f Spades in 1933 by the Vasiliev brothers, the directors of the Soviet blockbuster Chapaev. This movie was not produced either (a Soviet filmed opera version of The Queen o f Spades, whose director Roman Tikhomirov made use of the Yasilievs’ project, finally saw the light of day in 1960). Meanwhile, Pushkin’s tale became quite a popular source for screen adaptations outside of Russia. We have already mentioned several German silent film versions. Yet the most interesting products of this interest in Pushkin’s tale in the West appeared with the arrival of sound. One of them is The Queen of Spades produced in 1937 in France and directed by a Russian emigre, Fedor Ozep. Fedor Ozep’s Queen o f Spades (1937): A Case of Stylization and Nostalgia Fedor Ozep’s choice to make a film based on Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades was by no means accidental. Ozep entered Russian cinema as a screenwriter for Protazanov’s 1916 Queen o f Spades (at that time he was a twenty-tree-year-old student at Moscow University, working after school as an assistant editor of Yermoliev’s movie magazine Proektor [Leyda, 88]). He subsequently adapted 152 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. works of other 'Russian writers for the screen, among which was the script for a famous film adaptation of Tolstoy’s story Polikushka {1919). Although Ozep adored all Russian classics, Pushkin remained his favorite author and in 1922, together With Olga Gevesk, he adapted for the cinema another Pushkin story, The Snowstorm (Memenb) (Godin, 66). Ozep also wrote a screen adaptation of Alexei Tolstoy’s futuristic novel Aelita, which appeared in 1924 directed by Yakov Protazanov; this was one of the very first science fiction films (Godin, 67). After the death of Lenin in the late twenties, when Stalin began to tighten his control over cultural life, Ozep “seemed to feel that its was sound policy to stick with Russian classics,” and, together with Valentin Turkin, wrote a screenplay for another Pushkin film, Kolezhskii registrator (1925) (based on The Stationmastef). Then he wrote a script for the Soviet action film Miss Mend, and directed his own film The Earth in Chains ( S c m j i u e ruieny) which became a big hit with Soviet audiences and also with German audiences, to whom it was shown under the title The Yellow Pass (Godin, 68; on Ozep’s career in Soviet cinema, see also Youngblood Movies for the Masses, 58-59). In 1928 Ozep went to Germany to direct a German-Soviet co-production of Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse, made to commemorate the centenary of Tolstoy’s birth and to mark the founding of the Prometheus Films Company. Having married a Russian-Jewish woman who lived in Germany, Ozep nevertheless returned to Russia with the rest of the crew. A little later the German Terra Films Company asked him to direct an entirely German version of The Brothers 153 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Karamazov, which he completed in 1931. After Karamazovs had opened, a French company asked Ozep come to Paris to make a French-speaking version of the German film, and Ozep went to France with his wife (since by that time pressure was building against the Jews in Germany). In France he directed a number of films (among which was a scandalous adaptation of Zweig’s novel Amok banned in Britain and the US) before he turned to his first interest in cinema, The Queen o f Spades. It was not only his long-lasting commitment to the Russian classics but also a special event in the history of the Russian emigration that made Ozep turn to Pushkin’s tale as the source for his new movie in 1937. For in that year Russian emigres scattered throughout the world celebrated the centenary of Pushkin’s death. This celebration not only triggered Ozep’s intention to make a Pushkin movie but also determined the director’s strategy in interpreting Pushkin’s tale. This cultural holiday took on unprecedented scope: according to the statistics of the World-Wide Pushkin Committee established in Paris in 1935, Pushkin’s Jubilee was to be celebrated on all five continents (Lifar, 34), such that it considerably surpassed all other Russian emigre holidays in scale and had important cultural and political implications for the life of the Russian diaspora. Brintlinger writes that for Russians abroad after the Bolshevik Revolution, Pushkin’s image had a two-fold function: it served to preserve a particular sense of Russian cultural identity and to share Russian culture with the wider world, in particular enabling Russians to become equal partners in the European cultural community (Brintlinger, 172). The 154 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Pushkin Holiday of 1937 was supposed to play a crucial role in bolstering their positive self-identification, reviving their sense of “Russianness,” which had been severely injured by that time, and raising their prestige in an often indifferent if not hostile foreign environment (Nikita Struve, 232). By inviting European cultural figures to take part in their celebration of Russia’s first national poet, the Russian emigre community tried to convert the miserable conditions of their exile into a positive mission of great importance— to introduce Pushkin’s heritage to their host countries. Many Russian emigres dedicated everything they had— career, money, time— to the “altar of Pushkin.” In his memoirs My Foreing Pushkiniana, Serge Lifar, who was a leading dancer of the Paris National Opera, wrote that in 1937 he used his legs only for earning money for the Pushkin celebration. Another Russian emigre, A. Kartashev, a professor at the Paris Saint-Sergius Theological Institute, delivered a speech at a 1937 meeting, in which he bestowed on Pushkin the title of a Russian secular saint and a new Messiah (Lik Pushkina, 37). As one modem scholar writes, the veneration of Pushkin in the Russian diaspora often took forms of idolatory: for many, Pushkin was considered not only a prophet but also a god, whose name should be written with a capital letter (Filin “Pushkin kak russkaia ideologiia v izgnanii,” 25). It is hard to determine whether Ozep himself shared these lofty sentiments. Most likely, he did not adhere to this Pushkin-worship. Ozep did not belong to that generation of Russian emigration that fled the country due to the Revolution (among them many filmmakers and actors such as Ozep’s former associates 155 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ermol’ev, Protazanov’, Mozzhukhin, and others). On the contrary, Ozep’s international enterprise, the wider Western world could form a potential audience for Pushkin film, especially through the widespread advertising of Pushkin’s name during the anniversary year. Moreover, as Brintlinger writes, language-bound Russian literature was not the best medium for sharing Russian culture with Europe. She names the ballet as one Russian art that has a real international nature (172). Cinema was also an art that could easily cross the language barrier and be eminently translatable into other cultures. This orientation toward two audiences made Ozep’s Queen o f Spades an interesting mixture of the traditions of Russian and French cinema. Some aspects of Ozep’s film directly refer to Protazanov’s pre-Revolutionary Queen o f Spades, which serves as an intermediary through which Pushkin’s work had already been once filtered. Which elements of Ozep’s version indicate this connection between two films? In Protazanov’s Queen o f Spades, the use of a lighting technique with a chiaroscuro effect conveying moods was one of film’s major innovative elements. In its turn, reviewers praised Ozep’s film for its “direction and camera’s technique, stylized in a manner reminiscent of the very early Russian school o f somberness” (NY Times) and for “the lighting with attempts at the mood through use of career in Soviet Russia was quite successful. Yet, Russian audiences demanded Pushkin, and Ozep apparently was sensitive to the nostalgic sentiments of his compatriots. Because the celebration of Pushkin’s Jubilee outside of Russia became a real 156 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. shadows” (Variety). There is not only an overall stylistic indebtedness to Protazanov but specific quotations from Protazanov’s film in Ozep’s movie. For instance, the image of Germann’s enlarged shadow on the wall quotes the famous scene with Germann’s shadow on the wall of Protazanov’s film. This return to pre-Revolutionary cinematic traditions cannot be explained through the mere conservatism that characterized the style of the emigre filmmakers who left Russia right after the Revolution and who strove to preserve the tradition of the Russian pre-Revolutionary cinema untouched and untainted. After all, Ozep had been an active participant in Soviet avant-garde film production. Rather, these references to Russian pre-Revolutionary film serve deliberate aesthetic goals. For French film, connoisseurs they also proved the director’s mastery as a filmmaker and his ability to manipulate cinematic techniques of various epochs in an intentional attempt at stylization in his film. This stylization was clearly also meant to appeal to the Russian emigre audience, whose nostalgic feelings were rewarded both by the choice of this Pushkinian subject matter and by references to Russian pre-Revolutionary cinema. It is hard to say whether those Russian emigres who watched Ozep’s La Dame de pique recognized Protazanov’s pre-Revolutionary blockbuster as the cinematic predecessor for Ozep’s version. In any case, they surely must have appreciated the film’s depiction of “nineteenth-century Russian manners” and the life of “the Russian aristocracy with its absorption in gambling, duels, and fancy social affairs” (Variety). As Brintlinger writes, the emigres’ Pushkin challenged the Soviet image 157 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. o f the poet and highlighted exactly those features of Pushkin’s life that the Soviet myth ignored (Brintlinger, 64). Prominent among these elements were the elements of aristocratic culture in both Pushkin’s life and his works. Thus the theme of high society and the “ unworthy” subject of card games that kept The Queen o f Spades off Soviet Russian stage and screen of the time appealed greatly to emigre audiences. Besides this Russianness for Russians, many elements in Ozep’s film were meant to address the French audience. The Queen o f Spades seemed to be the best choice of a Pushkin work for a French film. It had been translated into French in 1849 by Prosper Merimee, and it recalled Merimee’s own manner to the point that French critics wondered whether it was a translation or Merimee’s original work. Later French editions of translation presented often The Queen o f Spades as Merimee’s own work on a subject borrowed from Russian literature or as a “free reworking” of Pushkin (Kogan, 338). So, for almost a century The Queen o f Spades had been regarded as a perfectly French story.1 7 Although Ozep’s film was plainly stated to be based on the work of the Russian writer and did not support this misconception, it still could be said that the story had already to some extent become part of the French literary tradition. 1 7 This literary apocrypha persisted not only because there is an affinity in Pushkin’s and Merimeee’s writing manners but also because Merimee’s translation contained quite a few semantic changes to Pushkin’s story. There is a typological similarity between the strategies used by Merimee in his translation and by those who adapt Pushkin for opera, theater, and film: they all “clarify,” “finish,” and “romanticize” Pushkin’s narrative. For example, in Merimee’s translation Saint-Germain is described as a “miracle-worker,” instead of “eccentric” (chudotvorets instead of chudak). Or, instead of Pushkin’s phrase “Liza came to the window,” Merimde writes, “Liza came to the window with her heart beating” (Kogan, 343-346). 158 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. There were many elements in the film designed to appeal to French audiences. The cast as well as the production crew of the movie consisted almost entirely of Frenchmen. Germann was played by Pierre Blanchar, a famous French actor whose acting career was at its peak. As French sources say, Blanchar’s roles in cinema were intellectual and at the same time profoundly romantic; and his acting manner, characterized by emphatic diction and an imperious look, had special success in conveying the inner world of personality (Dictionnaire, 68). It is possible that some similarity in Blanchar’s screen persona to that of Mozzhukhin influenced Ozep’s choice of the film lead. Similar to Mozzhukhin, Blanchar played famous literary characters; among such portrayals was his Raskolnikov in the French Crime et Chatiment (dir. P. Chenal, 1935). So, thanks to the institution of movie stars, Pushkin’s Germann, played by Blanchar, received some “additional credits” from Dostoevsky. It is noteworthy that Blanchar’s next role after his Germann in La Dame de Pique was another Dostoevsky character, Aleksei in the French film adaptation of The Gambler {Le Joueur, G. Lamprecht and L. Daquin, 1938)~a character who had direct connections to both Germann and Raskolnikov.1 8 According to a reviewer, Liza’s part was played by a “charming blonde cameo Madeleine Ozeray,” who died later in the same year, recalling The Queen of 1 8 In the late 1940s, Blanchar was still popular with the public, partly due to his special service to France during the German occupation. As written in an American review in the 1940s, the movie La Dame de pique was enjoyed by the French part of American audience, “particularly because its lead, Pierre Blanchar, has distinguished himself as a radio voice of the French underground during the Nazi occupation” (Variety). 159 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Spades Macbeth-like reputation. The music for the film was composed by the Polish-born composer Karol Rathaus, who had already collaborated with Ozep making his very successful score for The Brothers Karamazov. The French film introduces new characters into Pushkin’s tale. There is a captain Iretsky, presumably derived from Eletsky, Liza’s fiance from Tchaikovsky’s opera. Iretsky is in love with Liza, and there is duel between him and Germann. The Count Saint-Germain is replaced in the film by a figure more familiar to the French spectators— Cagliostro. Finally, Ozep’s verison adds several other minor figures: the General and the Librarian, and the female figures of Glasha and Nadya. There are also some considerable changes to Pushkin’s plot in Ozep’s film. Instead of Pushkin’s gambling party at Narumov’s house, the film opens with Germann’s arrival at a post station, where he loses his money at cards. This scene from Ozep’s movie refers not only to the general “gambling theme” in Russian literature, as Nusinova has suggested (Nusinova “Pikovaia dama,” 237), but also to a more concrete source, i.e., Pushkin’s The Captain’ s Daughter, whose main character also lost money playing billiards at a post station in the opening scenes of the tale. According to Nusinova, another scene from Ozep’s film— the duel between Germann and the Captain Iretsky— absent in Pushkin’s Queen of Spades came from Pushkin’s Shot. In both Pushkin’s The Shot and in Ozep’s Queen of Spades one of the duelists makes his shot into the air (Nusinova, “Pikovaia darna,” 237-238). 160 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The film’s allusions to other prose works by Pushkin, as well as the 1916 film Queen o f Spades, suggests that Ozep’s broader goal in his film was to create a composite image of Russian culture as represented by Pushkin. By quoting from Protazanov’s Queen o f Spades, Ozep invoked the tradition of Russian pre- Revolutionary cinema. Likewise, by bringing together episodes from different prose works by Pushkin, the film alludes to Pushkin’s oeuvre as a whole, to “Pushkin’s Text,” which for Russians had come to represent great Russian culture. In this Way the filmmaker fulfilled the major task set for the emigre holiday. Among the changes introduced to Pushkin’s tale that accorded with emigre ideology was the film’s new ending. Instead of Pushkin’s “open” end, the film has an unambiguously happy one: Germann is seriously ill but Liza, led by Captain Iretsky and driven by noble feelings, comes to visit the sick man and, as French critic describes the moment, “[After the death of the Old Countess] somber Germann is near madness but Liza, his frail lover, brings him back to life and happiness” (Histoire du cinema, 267). The happy ending in Ozep’s film differs not only from Pushkin’s original but also from Protazanov’s film, which ends with Germann insane in an asylum. This difference in the endings of the two films is significant and suggests the different context, in which the two films appeared. Protazanov’s Queen o f Spades brought Pushkin to a Russian pre-Revolutionary audience, notorious for its taste for the tragic Russian finale in cinema (for a discussion of tragic endings as an idiosyncratic mark of Russian pre-Revolutionary cinema, see Tsivian, “Some Preparatory Remarks on Russian Cinema”and his 161 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “Early Russian Cinema: Some Observations”). Ozep’s La dame de pique appeared in the West, where “AH’ s well that ends well” was the guiding ^principle of cinema. Moreover, the Russian portion of the film’s audience, to whom Ozep in part addressed his film, at that time definitely preferred happy endings to tragic ones. As Nusinova suggests, for Russians in exile, films with happy endings brought some hope for a happy ending of their own tragic fates (Nusinova, “Kino emigrantov”, 249). Hence Russian emigre filmmakers submitted to this demand for “happily ever after” (Nusinova, “The Soviet Union and the Russian Emigres”, 165). It is thus not surprising that, complying with the expectations of both Russian emigres and Western film-goers, Ozep gave his version of Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades a happy denouement. As a review commented, the visual style of Ozep’s La Dame de pique qualified the film as a piece of artistic cinema marked by spectacular visual effects and refined stylistic touches (NY Times). This film’s exquisite poetics partly finds its explanation in Ozep’s personal tastes (as a French source says, he was “more a stylist than an author” [plus un calligraphe qu’ un auteur— Dictionnaire, 501]) and his demand for perfectionism in everything regarding film style. According to Godin, Ozep’s La Dame de pique was at the editing stage for a long time, and the director was reluctant to finish it and to let it go. Also according to the same source, La Dame de pique was one of only a handful of the director’s works that met with his own unqualified approval (Godin, 71). Besides this personal factor, the rich traditions of French art cinema (and especially the school of French film 162 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. impressionism, with its search for purely cinematic language) also might have contributed to the Ozep’s work (on French cinema, see, Abel French Cinema)}9 Aside from all these considerations, there may be some additional reasons that account for the film’s overall stylistic conception. In his interpretation of Pushkin, Ozep by no means desired to show real life, with its psychological complexities and indefinite endings. What Ozep strove to achieve in his film was to create a period atmosphere, rather than conveying Pushkin’s philosophical uncertainties and psychological subtleties, which he intentionally avoided. Unlike the many film versions of Pushkin’s works that aspired to bring Pushkin closer to contemporary reality, Ozep’s film pursued the opposite goal. Appearing in the turbulent period of pre-war Europe in a time of tragedy for many Russian emigres, the French La dame de pique, later characterized in an American review as the “choicest” of pre war French films (NY Times), was conceived and performed as a piece of “antiquated” cinema with definite escapist intent. This film was supposed to lead its spectators, both Russian and French, into the colorful world of a by gone epoch, a world in which even the somber hero managed to successfully escape the sinister shadows of his past and the dangers of his insanity to reach happiness with a charming blonde. 1 9 There is also a connection between Russian pre-Revolutionary cinema and French avant-garde film: after the Revolution a group of Russian filmmakers and actors (Ermol’ev, Mozzhukhin, Protazanov, Kirsanov, Volkov) emigrated to France and continued working there as more or less marginal figures of the French narrative avant-garde (Abel, French Cinema). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. > . Thorold .Dickinson’s Queen o f Spades (1949): Poetics of the M acabre As Marcus Levitt remarked, “Pushkin’s conveniently short life span (thirty seven years) guaranteed a relatively close succession of large jubilee dates” (Levitt, 168). Indeed, the next great Pushkin Jubilee* a celebration of the one hundred- fiftieth anniversary of his birth, followed in 1949, soon after the his1937 Jubilee. The twelve years that passed were marked by such historical cataclysms as the World War II and the onset of the Cold War. It may seem that these great historical events had no relationship to the 1949 film The Queen o f Spades, appeared in Great Britain, all the more so that in the vast literature on this film there is not the slightest reference either to European politics or even to the 1949 Pushkin Jubilee. In the Soviet Union, the 1949 Jubilee became “a massive repay of the 1937 campaign,” whose main ideological difference with the year 1937 was its hyperbolic post-war nationalist rhetoric with its claims about the superiority of Russian culture and the rejection of all things “alien” (i.e., foreign) (Levitt, 166). The officially promulgated image of Pushkin as a genuine Russian and a people’s poet did not help bring The Queen o f Spades, with its subject matter neither visibly very “Russian” nor very “national” into public, notice in post-war Soviet Russia. In its turn, in Europe there was no longer a big Russian-speaking audience of the kind that enjoyed Otsep’s nostalgic depiction of by gone Russia in 1937. 164 with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. So the 1949 British version of Pushkin’s tale had to position itself as the first adaptation of Pushkin that was addressed to a purely Western audience, and here the political context mentioned above played a role. In the West, the Cold War not only generated hostility towards Russia as a major military and ideological enemy but also sparked interest among intellectuals in Russian history and culture. I suggest that, although there is no explicit evidence of it, the British film Queen o f Spades directed by Thorold Dickinson (1903-1984), an Oxford-educated intellectual, reflected this interest towards Russia. Although elsewhere the director described his primary goal as a purely artistic quest for the best ways of filming literature, it still might well happen that in turning to Pushkin, who, thanks to the worldwide campaign in 1937, had become a banner of Russian identity for the Western world, the British filmmaker was trying to penetrate the Russian enigma. A reviewer wrote: Folks who delight in ghost stories, old tales of the weird and grotesque- -of every sorcery and cabalistic matters and man driven mad by lust for power— should find a great deal to intrigue them in Anatole de Grunwald’s “The Queen of Spades,” a British film based upon Pushkin’s story... For Mr. de Grunwald has loaded this classic Russian tale of a man’s greedy traffic with evil with a most beautifully accomplished cast, exquisite baroque production and staging of a tense and startling sort. If it’s romantic shivers you’re wanting, this is undoubtedly your film... Under the able direction of Thorold Dickinson, a wild and macabre characteristic has been imparted to this film. (New York Times, 1 July, 1949) In this way, the British version of The Queen o f Spades, directed by Thorold Dickinson and produced by the Russian-born Anatole de Grunwald, was 1 6 5 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. introduced to the cinema-going public of New York, The reviewer saw the main attraction o f the film in the elements of horror that, abound' in this film and was optimistic enough to believe that the general public, greedy for the weird and macabre, especially if spiced with a Russian flavor, would flock to see this film. Yet other reviewers in American cinema periodicals expressed doubts about the wide appeal of this British film, finding it too sophisticated and not “pleasant” enough for the average spectator. The Hollywood Reporter wrote that “the film has a strong appeal for sophisticated spectators, but juveniles and filmgoers in search of a pleasant evening’s entertainment may find it unsatisfactory” (.Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep, 1950). A similar concern was voiced by the American trade paper Variety, where it was said that the film “should have a notable success in art houses, but the general tenor of the plot and treatment limits its appeal to most audiences.” (Variety, 30 Mar, 1949). In its homeland, by contrast, the film provoked a mostly very positive critical reaction. Critics unanimously recognized The Queen o f Spades as a high achievement of the British cinema. Some of the critics praised Dickinson’s Queen o f Spades for its “distinguished film craft” (A. Jympson Harman). Others admired in the film the “setting and atmosphere of a foreign story successfully brought to the screen,” although recognizing that “Pushkin’s extremely laconic and dry short story has been altered and expanded, made more romantic and fantastic in atmosphere” (Peter Ericsson). And, unlike their American colleagues, these critics were sure that “though the entire picture bears the stamp of intellect, it is superb 166 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. box-office” (PauLDehn)' (Shots in the Dark, 76-81). The British film version turned Pushkin’s tale into an exquisite thriller. Similar to the other film versions discussed in this dissertation, the British director used an intermediary that helped to adapt Pushkin’s images to the stylistics of the thriller. This intermediary was the school of German Expressionism in film that 'had been popular in Weimar Germany in the twenties. German film critic Sigfried Kracauer in his book From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History o f the German Film (1947), which he wrote in American exile, had recently brought cinematic Expressionism back to the attention of post-war European filmmakers. These films, the most famous among which was Robert Weine’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1919), featured the themes of madness, of hypnotic influences on human life, of s o m n am b u lism and dark occult powers. This thematic affinity with Pushkin’s tale might have well influenced Dickinson’s choice of a similar Expressionist poetics to make his Queen o f Spades. Most reviewers admit that the film’s preoccupation with “the grotesque, the shadowy, and the skew-whifF’ should be ascribed to the influence of “the macabre, malevolent, eerie tradition” of pre-Hitler German cinema (Shots, 76). Moreover, such major elements of the film as its settings, its “ultra-artistic photography with the odd shadow lighting ^(Hollywood Reporter), its “ shadows and superimpositions [the images in two film frames combined into one]” (A Critical History, 231), its “ dramatic lighting” (Shots in the Dark, 76) that are mentioned everywhere as contributing greatly to the film’s fantastic, odd atmosphere, explicitly referred to the stylistics of 167 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. German Expressionism (the italics here are mine). Besides the film’s overall style, the acting of its central character, which will be discussed later, and even the use of black-and-white film, to which Dickinson returned in The Queen o f Spades after several films in Technicolor, also betray the Expressionist influence. One reviewer even asserted that Dickinson’s Queen o f Spades was a “copy of Lang” (Shots, 76), most likely having in mind Fritz Lang’s famous Expressionist thriller Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1922), whose plot evolves around a gambler who uses hypnosis to control his victims and opponents and finally is discovered to be mad. Besides thematic parallels that could be sought in Pushkin’s tale, there might be an ideological, extra-artistic factor that made Dickinson turn to German pre-war film as the intermediary for translating Pushkin’s images to screen. In the above- mentioned book From Caligari to Hitler, Kracauer suggested that there was a direct link between German Expressionism in film and Hitler’s regime. Kracauer argued that Weimar Expressionist cinema, with its theme of the victory of dark occult powers exercised over human beings by a charismatic hypnotist, was a mirror of and aid to Nazism, and it laid bare the psyche of the German nation. Might the British director have had also Kracauer’s idea about the ideological underpinnings of German Expressionism in appropriating German Expressionist aesthetics? If so, Dickinson’s interpretation of Pushkin’s tale as an Expressionist thriller, in which the supernatural was not rationalized and in which the action was structured around “dramatic confrontations of good and evil” (Critical History, 230), might well suggest that the director saw some parallels between Germany 168 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and Russia as nations that had submitted to irrational powers so easily. TMs is just a hypothesis, for Dickinson himself never mentioned politics in his discussions of the problem of film adaptation of literature, which he said was Ms main concern in making The Queen o f Spades. In the history of British cinema, the first decade alter the war was “an age of adaptation,” when British filmmakers continually turned to literature as a source for their films {Critical History, 198).2 0 Thorold Dickinson was “one of the most remarkable filmmakers of his generation,” although his filmmaking career extended only from 1937 to 1952 and includes just eight features (A Critical History o f British Cinema, 233). The Queen o f Spades was Dickinson’s second post-war film. In the case of this British adaptation of The Queen o f Spades, we are lucky to have a rarely available cross-section of views on the film from both its audience and creators. This film was a focus of a highly detailed discussion in a British magazine, Cinema, in wMch Thorold Dickinson, its director; Roger Manvell, a distinguished film scholar and a Director of the British Film Academy, and Michael Bell participated. In this discussion the director gives his opinion on what makes filmmakers undertake the work of adaptating a literary work to the screen. He said that the film’s backers— its public and its sponsors— preferred to deal with familiar “subjects which have been already sold and tested for popularity in another form, theatrical 2 0 There were British versions of Shakespeare by Laurence Olivier and of Dickens by David Lean, Alberto Cavalcanti, and Noel Langley. Plays by Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde were brought to the screen by Anthony Asquith. The novels of the contemporary writer Graham Greene also became an extremely popular source for films. with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. or literary” (The Cinema, 195G,: 60). From this -pointof view, Pushkin’s tale “would give the fifi® prestige and a certain amount of publicity” (The Cinema 66). DicMnson’S 'reference to the popularity of Pushkin’ s'tale is remarkable, because; it proves that .by 1949 Pushkin’s tale was already not only known to . the , British public but also te ste d for popularity” and able to offer a film version public recognition. Indeed, as Leighton’s Bibliography o f Pushkin ’ $ Works in English indicates, by the year 1949'more than forty translations of Pushkin’s tale had been published in English (296-299), so it is not surprising that the British public knew the literary original. In this place, Dickinson mentions literary and theatrical versions of Pushkin’s tale. At another point of the discussion, Dickinson also mentions that Pushkin’s tale “was filmed several times silent and sound” (“Symposium,” 60). The director’s referral to his film’s predecessors is remarkable: I suggest that, as with the French La dame de Pique, the British version of Pushkin’s tale did not escape the influence of the Russian 1916 Queen o f Spades. As in the French film, there are quotations from Protazanov’s film in the British Queen. For instance, in the British film there is a moment of pictorial symbolism when Liza’s face is superimposed with an image of a spider and its web (as noted, it was in Protazanov’s movie that a spider and its web appeared for the first time to convey the moment in Pushkin’s tale when Germann visualizes an ace as a spider). There are other visual intertexts to Protazanov’s movie in the British Queen of Spades. One instance is how Saint-Germain is introduced in both of 170 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. them: :m .ProtazanovVfilm. he is , shown in a room sitting at a huge table, with, ' retorts, , chemicals, and other ..attributes;.-of bkck dnagic. : A similar “table” scene introduces the. occultist in the British fpin,\oifly^ here the Count himself is not shown (as in Protazanov’s film): he is introduced through a visual synecdoche: his hands, modeling on the table the wax figure of the : Countess, his future victim, appear in close-up. ' This suggestion of a connection between Protazanov’s film and the British Queen o f Spades becomes even more plausible if one takes into account Dickinson’s considerable knowledge of the history of Russian cinema. He was the author of a section on Russian silent film in the British Film Academy’s history of Soviet cinema, published in 1948, a year before his Queen o f Spades was made (T. Dickinson and C. De La Roche, Soviet Cinema [London: Falcon Press, 1948]). Because of the general Soviet bias of this book (about this, see The Film Factory, 10, 412, ft 90), Dickinson paid most attention to the silents of the Soviet era and only briefly touched upon pre-Revolutionary filmmaking without mentioning any concrete films (pages 9-11). Yet it is very likely that as a film historian he came across Protazanov’s film as one of the most remarkable films of that epoch, the more so that, unlike most of the pre-Revolutionary film production, Protazanov’s movie was not locked in Soviet cinema archives but was brought from Russia to France after the Revolution and thus made available to the Western audience. Besides those visual elements that make the British film to some extent an excellent stylization of silent cinema both Russian and German, there is much more 171 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. in this film, its creators made good use of the new techniques the cinematic language had developed during the twenty years .since the appearance of sound. Many reviewers commented on the use'of sound in the movie. Symbolic use of sound was found to contribute much to “a sinister thrilling whole” (BFl, 61). As Roger Manveli points out, “The most powerful use' o f symbolism in the film is the gradual association in the audience’s mind of the Countess with her slowly tapping stick alternating with the dragging swish of her heavy silk skirts drawn over the floor.” He went on, commenting on the cinematic meaning of this recurring “frou frou” of the Countess’s dress: “Once this association is frilly established when the Countess is alive it can be used with terrifying effect when she is dead... The gradually approaching sound of the Countess’s stick and skirt where no presence is visible [in the scene of her visitation of Germann after her death] is terrifying in its effect” (“Symposium,” 57).21. The other sounds on the film’s remarkable soundtrack— “the heavy creaking of the door as Germann goes into the Countess’s room, the howling of the dog [a sound that soon became a cliche in the poetics of the horror movie], the treatment of the voices in the fantastic card game at the climax of the film” (“Symposium,” 73)— were also masterfully combined to achieve a calculated effect, namely to heighten the audience’s tension and to give the film rendering of Pushkin’s story “an uncanny conviction only possible in the cinema” (Shots, 80). This use of 2 1 It is remarkable that to show something horrible in an indirect way as Dickinson did it in his Queen later became one of the major devices of horror film. For example, in the films of the master of the genre Alfred Hitchcock, the approaching danger is often shown indirectly, through its effect on a character. 172 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. soufid in the British 'version of IhisHrin’s tale led one.critic remark -that..in this literary .adaptation, “the creative possibilities of the new mediuffi'of the film have been allowed' fix! : play in the development of both characters and story” (“Symposium,” 59). ' ■ There are other devices in this film that helped not only td convey but also- to develop Pushkin’s action on the screen. The episode of Germann’s escape from the Countess’s house is one such instance. In Pushkin’s tale .Germann simply leaves the house quietly, and nothing terrifying happens right after the Countess’s ' death. In the British film version, Pushkin’s brief episode is developed into a full sequence in which filmmakers made the full use of the main devices o f poetics of the macabre, such as symbolic sound, music, close-ups, and superimposition. The critic gives a description of this sequence: After his confession to Lizaveta he [Germann] has returned to the Countess’s room in order to escape from the house through the secret passage hidden behind her bookcase. The most terrifying moment in the film follows. As Germann pushes open the door we see the figure of the Countess in her chair. He is next seen in the room terrified, and then we change to a sudden shot of the Countess. She is staring at him with one eye wide open. A dog howls; Germann for a moment is unable to move. We see the Countess again in the close-up, both eyes wide with the unwavering speculation of death. There is a crescendo of music, emphasizing the visual shock to the audience. Germann rushed to the bookcase and feverishly feels for the lock of the secret door. Again in ever-larger, staring close-up the dead eyes watch. As he rushes out from the underground passage into the white and empty streets, a fourth shot of the eyes is superimposed on the scene of his desperate escape. (“Symposium,” 58-59) Not only innovative film technique such as its sound or camerawork made this 1 7 3 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. film a new page in the history of the cinematic adaptations of Pushkin’s tale. According to reviewers, the cast chosen for the' film “was beautifully accomplished.” The dctress- chosen to play the part of the Old Countess garnered the most praise. Dame Edith Evans, a sixty-one-year-old theatrical actress, made her screen debut as the octogenarian Countess of Pushkin’s tale. According to an American review, her interpretation of the old grotesque Countess was almost terrifying in its realism and dominated the screen from her first entry until her death. A British critic went into more detail in his eloquent description of the Countess’s image as created by Dame Edith Evans: she is “a figure of unforgettable senility, whose skull one glimpses beneath the skin... and the words croaked softly from an almost lipless mouth, carry a quality of frog’s breath” (Shots in the Dark, 77). The question of the dominant place of the Old Countess in the film was also raised in the discussion between Thorold Dickinson, the film’s director, and film scholar Roger Manvell. Manvell explained the dominance of the Countess in the movie as a manifestation of the different methods of narration used by Dickinson on the screen and by Pushkin on the printed page. According to Manvell, in the film the constant physical presence of the Countess gives her greater prominence than she has in the book, since in the book she is seen much more through her effect on Germann. In the film her effect on the spectator is direct, not mediated through some point of view, and thus much stronger and more macabre than in Pushkin’s tale (“Symposium,” 54). The part of Germann was played by Anton Walbrook, a British actor who was 174 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. born in ¥ienna: and:; had' a background in German cinema. Unlike the part of the Old Countess, unanimously admired by the public, the acting of Anton Walbrook was criticized.. In some reviews his acting was described as “lacking color” (Variety) o r as “disappointing,” since “in many places he is inaudible and mouths his words in sibilant whispering.” (The Monthly Film Bulletin). Contradictorily enough, other critics reproached him for being “too melodramatic,” saying that his acting style reminded them of “the gesticulatory, tank-frail school of Central European acting” (Shots in the Dark, 77). They also complained that “Anton Walbrook, in the crucial role of the sober, recessive, and embittered Captain of Engineers, has the great advantage of moving and looking the part, but his playing is often too hysterical and self-dramatizing, robbing the story of some of its contrast” (Shots in the Dark, 80). In spite of these critical rebukes, the choice of Walbrook to play Germann’s part was by no means accidental. Walbrook’s background in German cinema contributed to, rather than undermined, the film’s stylistic unity, for, as suggested, the film heavily relied on the traditions of Expressionist German cinema. The very exaggeration in Walbrook’s acting style also recalled German Expressionism and corresponded to the overall anti-realistic style of the film, which, in the words of its director, “in this epoch of neorealism must have come as something of visual shock” (“Symposium,” 64). Walbrook was also a prime candidate for Germann’s role in that his earlier roles had created associations perfectly suited to the role of the maniacal and egocentric Russian officer. The actor had already appeared as a 175 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Russian character in the French-German film Michael Strogoff and had also played a number of “characters divided within themselves, frequently with disastrous results” in films in which “madness and death play a large part” {Critical History, 232). As Roger Manvell, who, unlike many critics, liked Walbrook’s Germann, summed it up: “The virtue of his [Walbrook’s] performance seems to be its very artificiality, for The Queen o f Spades is a macabre and haunted story, not unlike those favoured by German film directors and screen-writers twenty five years ago, and Walbrook gives us a profoundly haunted figure. His acting is a piece of bravura, a successful theatrical tour de force” (“Symposium,” 57). The setting of the British film has been transferred from the 1830 of the “lush and lavish period of the Napoleonic wars” {New York Times), and critics, far from objecting— or even noticing—the modification, gave high marks to “the setting and atmosphere of a foreign story [that] has been successfully brought to the screen” (something, they note, which si an “achievement so rare in the British cinema at any timeP’ -S'/joA in Dark, 78). This British opinion about the authenticity of the British adaptation was echoed by an American reviewer who, in commenting on The Queen o f Spades, noted that “rarely has a British picture so effectively captured the period atmosphere,” ascribing this authenticity of the film’s action to “the attractive costumes and settings of Oliver Messel” {Variety). One of the most interesting comments on the film comes from the British critic Peter Ericsson, who praised the film in the following way: “In The Queen o f Spades one can find innumerable shots which an edition of Pushkin need not be 1 7 6 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ashamed to use as illustrations [sic!]. The designs are, as is indeed the whole treatment of the subject, more positive and force&l than those of Benois or Dobuzhinski” (Shots in the Dark, 79). One can only speculate whether, in writing these words, the British critic had in mind Protazanov’s film Queen o f Spades, which, as we saw, did use Benois’ss illustrations for the movie. But what makes this critical remark even more fascinating (as an unintended intersection of ideas) is that, most likely, the Russian edition of Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades, published in 1916 with the shots from Protazanov’s movie used as illustrations, remained unknown to the British reviewer, who expressed an idea once suggested by the Russians: to use the film’s stills as book illustrations. The setting is an element of major importance in the poetics of the British film. As noted, the setting was designed by Oliver Messel, in an “exquisite baroque style” that meant to show “the picturesque surroundings of old Saint Petersburg” (New York Times). Through its pictorial qualities, the film contributes much to Pushkin’s written text, in which description of localities does not have such crucial importance. As Roger Manvell points out, the film, being a visual art, “develops a story within the framework of selected localities... which form the central place for the presentation of action” (“Symposium,” 54). The localities of the film are: (i) A gypsy tavern where the officers gamble and make love; (ii) A book shop where Germann discovers the Countess’s secret in the old book on sorcery; (iii)The macabre medieval castle of the Count Saint Germain on the outskirts of St. Petersburg; (iv) The snowy streets outside the Countess’s palace; (v) Germann’s private quarters; (vi) The Opera where during a performance of Gluck’s Orpheus Liza meets 177 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Germann to arrange their secret meeting; (vii) The Countess’s bedroom; (viii) The Cathedral where the: dead Countess lies; (ixj and the bird market where Liza meets Prince Andrei Narumov, her future deliverer. This list suggests some of the other changes to Pushkin’s settings in the British film. There is no Parisian episode in the film, and the young Countess’s adventure takes place in the Saint Petersburg of 1736, to which Count Saint-Germain came for a. visit (in the film he has taken a castle). The various changes are given theoretical justification in the symposium on The Queen o f Spades from which I have been extensively quoting. Manvell asserts that Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades is a perfect source-book for a film but adds that much should be changed in Pushkin’s tale when adapting it for cinema. One of these new elements is the elaboration of the film’s setting, since the film’s pictorial background “adds to the density of the story, filling it out and enriching its effect” (“Symposium,” 55). For according to Manvell, while the written discourse is able to focus the reader’s interest on the essentials of character and situation, a film must show character through its environment. Some of the locations, such as the gypsy tavern with its gypsy songs and dances (performed by “the superb gypsy singer” Maroussia Dimitrevitch), introduce some “Russian” flavor and exotic ethnics into the film. Others, such as the gothic castle of Saint-Germain, with its arched corridors and self-opening doors through which the frightened young Countess hastens to obtain the secret and to sell her soul, create a background for the theme of sorcery and 178 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the occult and contribute to the general macabre atmosphere of the film. Finally, some scenes, such as those in the market or in the back-street bookshop, bring new elements into the story, making Pushkin’s plot more elaborate, more packed with events (although Manvell finds the market and bookshop scenes unnecessary, since they “clog the pace of the film” [Cinema, 55]). In his reponse to this and similar issues raised by Manvell and others, Dickinson insists that his elaboration of the visual background was not simply a decorative addition to the film but an absolute necessity. This necessity arises not only because the written text is being translated into a visual artform but also because a cultural translation takes place in the film: Pushkin’s tale, describing Russian society at the beginning of the nineteenth century, must be presented to a British cinema audience of the late 1940s: To understand Germann nowadays it is necessary to explain all those habits and customs, those social attitudes and conventions, which drove Pushkin’s characters to behave as they did. . . Pushkin was writing for the contemporary reader to whom current social conditions were part of life. (“Symposium,” 63) According to the film’s director, most locations were introduced into the film only after careful research and were meant to plunge the spectator into the atmosphere of Petersburg society at the beginning of the past century. The reviews on the film indicate that Dickinson’s concern with the historical accuracy of his film (as a rule, not very popular in filmmaking) was praised by critics, who admitted its considerable impact on the film’s quality. 179 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Dickinson also gives an explanation for his changes to Pushkin’s plot. From the filmmaker’s point of view, Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades lacks the strict unity the cinema demands because the story concerns two separate major characters, Germann Suvorin and Countess Ranevskaya (sic), whose lives come together in only one scene (“Symposium,” 61). In his view, in a film one subject, character, idea, or event must be chosen, to which the film must stick from start to finish; otherwise it will lose the audience’s attention. Because of this need for unity, the director chose to sacrifice fidelity to the written story in order to balance the narrative in Germann’s favor. For instance, in Pushkin’s tale the anecdote about the young Countess acquiring the three-card secret Is told in the very beginning. According to the director, in the film this would confuse the spectator, since it is impossible in a film narrative to begin a new idea before fully establishing the old. So, in the film this episode so crucial for the plot is postponed until Germann is better known and understood by the audience (“Symposium,” 61). Also, to keep the audience’s attention on the main character, it is Germann who comes across the three-card secret in an old book (and not Tomsky who tells about three cards in Pushkin). In the film Germann reads and comments on the book against the background of a visualized flashback presenting the Countess’s adventure. This cinematic interpretation of a key moment of the story ties Germann and the three- card anecdote much more closely than in the book. Because of the emphasis on Germann, Liza also gets greater prominence in the movie than she has in Pushkin. She is played by the young actress Yvonne Mitchell, who, like Dame Evans, made 180 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. her film debut in this movie. All the reviewers complimented her portrayal of the Countess’s ward, describing her acting as “sensitive, sympathetic and gentle.” Diskinson also introduces the entirely new character of Prince Andrei Narumov, a noble, righteous character and Germann’s antipode. Unlike Germann, ^ndrei loves Liza sincerely and unselfishly, and Germann cunningly manipulates Andrei’s affection for Liza for his own purposes. Inspired by his feeling for Liza, Andrei agrees to help Germann to write a love letter, without knowing that the letter’s addressee is his own beloved. Soon Andrei discovers Germann’s impure motivation and tries to warn Liza at the ball (it is during a mazurka, comparable to Pushkin’s ironic description of the chit-chat between Liza and Tomsky at the ball). Finally, bitterly disappointed with Germann, Liza seeks refuge in Prince Andrei’s faithful hands. It is also Andrei whom Germann challenges to a duel and plays his final fatal game and loses. Dickinson strongly justifies this, at first sight, purely melodramatic, hackneyed addition to Pushkin’s story (let us recall that this character— Germann’s antipode and Liza’s faithful admirer— appears in many versions of Pushkin’s tale, including Tchaikovsky’s opera in which the character also plays the fatal game with Germann). The director characterizes Andrei as “one of the best of many imaginative developments on the part of the adapters [screenwriters for the film], Rodney Ackland and Arthur Boys” (“Symposium,” 62). In the director’s opinion, Andrei’s function in the film is, once again, to maintain the unity necessary for the film’s story: 181 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Andrei becomes part o f Germann’s story,; and when he tunas ■ up in the Gountess’s scenes andLHsewhei-e : apafi;from Gemjann, he. keeps the Getmann themeyalive.. "The tale Would be too disjointed and thin, for : the coiiceiiteated visual story-telling o f the .screen' if one were to drop TizaVeta M 'mid-stoiy: as Pushkin- dbes, and; constantly to pick up and drop Germanii a s well, :The adapters’ ingenious triangular ‘love’ story' adds a necessary strength to the screenplay. (“Symposium,7 ’ 62) Thus, all these changes to Pushkin’s plot in the film were the result of the filmmakers’ - careful considerations, and through them the film achieves that continuity that according, to Michael Bell, is “the most brilliant achievement of the film” (“Symposium,” 73). As noted, the British Queen o f Spades has a happy ending. This deviation from Pushkin’s tale in the film is all the more interesting in that it is preceded by a climactic scene of the fatal gambling, which remains faithful to Pushkin’s tale (the only change is that Germann’s rival is Andrei Narumov, not Checkalinsky). The gambling scene masterly conveys the balance between the fantastic and the real that is at the core of Pushkin’s story. In Pushkin’s tale, there are two possible explanations for Germann’s fatal mistake: a perfectly natural explanation, i.e., Germann unconsciously, in a rush, selects the wrong card, and the other one, that the card magically changes in Germann’s hand from ace to queen, which is part of the ghost story. In the film the same ambiguity is achieved by a cinematic device: in a close-up we see the queen of spades next to the ace in Germann’s hand, just before he selects the final card. So the spectator is left unsure whether Germann just pulled out the wrong card or was defeated by a demonic power. 182 with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. After this climactic scene comes thev bappy ending: instead of seemg.-Germann in the insane asylum,, as'-in Pushkin, the; scene opens in the bird market where the bells ring out as LizaveteTvaaovm,accompanied by Prince Andrei, releases all the caged birds, symbolizing her own liberation. Although the critic Michael Bell does not find this ending to be very successful, he still maintained that this change was absolutely necessary. According to Bell, it is just not possible for a film to achieve the equivalent to Pushkin’s laconic conclusion. Pushkin’s “anticlimax” at the end of the story, in which “all the characters are swiftly and effectively disposed of, should be ignored by the filmmakers” (“Symposium,” 72). This deviation is justified by the same need for continuity alleged to be essential for the film’s entire narration. Unlike a written story, which can leave the end open, a film needs to relieve the tension experienced by the spectator during the previous climactic scene by means of a happy ending. The following words of the film’s director Thorold Dickinson sum up his view of adapting literature into film: In this film there was more to be done than the mere factual translation of Pushkin’s prose poem into moving pictures. . . Our task was to capture the essence of a literary work of the past and to make it visually appreciable in the present. The finished film is of value only if we have distilled into It the flavour of the small enclosed world of old Saint Petersburg society which is at the heart of Pushkin’s fantasy. The film can have point only among the restless cinema audience...who have been able with it to capture a world whose human values held an emphasis different from ours, but whose humanity nevertheless can continue to be engrossing. (“Symposium,” 65) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CONCLUSION This study has shown how Pushkin’s tale The Queen o f Spades has been transformed into several different artistic media: theater, opera, and film. Adaptation distorts the literary source text in ways that are revealing of the nature of the different media and of extra-artistic issues. Some of the changes bring to light the fundamental differences between the middlebrow art of many of the tale’s adaptations and the highbrow art of Pushkin’s original. Popularization of Pushkin’s tale for a broad audience eliminates many of the literary text’s nuances, such as its deliberate polysemic narration, ambiguities in the portrayal of characters, open-endedness, its play with Romantic tradition, and special stylistic effects. These qualities inherent to Pushkin’s text cannot be translated into popular discourse, for they require some aesthetic detachment on the part of a cultivated reader able appreciate the work’s subtleties and its stance in relation to other works and to the literary tradition. Popular versions strive for the opposite effect: they seek to engage spectators and to cause them to identify with characters and events. Popular versions mean to deliver immediate satisfaction and so they strike ambiguities from Pushkin’s narrative, provide it with an unambiguous and satisfying ending, and “spice it up” with contemporary issues. The Queen of Spades in nineteenth-century adaptations amply demonstrates how popular culture creates its own version of Pushkin’s story. The above-described changes may be explaned as a general “debasing” of the 184 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. cultural status of the version, compared to the highbrow literary source, and therefore characterize not only adaptations for the theater but also into any medium. In some cases the changes, however, are provoked by the specific conventions of the medium into which Pushkin’s story is translated. My analysis of Tchaikovsky’s opera demonstrates how the composer and librettist needed to change Pushkin’s text both in spirit and in content in order to set it to music, the dominant component of the operatic medium. Music brings emotional power and the sublime to opera, simultaneously excluding the irony and detachment of Pushkin’s verbal discourse. In compliance with these operatic demands, Pushkin’s tale in opera became the high drama that music augments so well. Studying competing versions of one adapted text sheds light not only on the differences between literature and other media, particularly in those cases where the new medium finds its own means of approximating some of the literary narrative elements. For example, in Protazanov’s film a special alternating montage sequence is used to reproduce Tomsky’s narration from Pushkin’s tale. These and other techniques, such as close-ups or changes in camera angle in film, are their own media’s way of reproducing the narrative strategies of verbal discourse. In addition to the two factors of adaptation just discussed, namely, the version’s cultural status and its medium, one must also consider the cultural context as a third factor that greatly influences changes. By cultural context, I mean the prevalent cultural fashions and artistic trends of the period and of the 185 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. country of the version’s appearance. Let us revisit an example from one of the nineteenth-century theatrical versions of Pushkin’s tale, Korsakov’s play The Queen o f Spades. As we saw, the psychological portrait of Germann as an intelligent who suffers from a disconnect between his words and deeds owes a great deal to the advent of Chekhov’s dramaturgy. Another example of this third factor, cultural context, can be seen in Ozep’s movie La dame de Pique (1937). The film owes its domination of artistic form over content to the rich national tradition of French artistic cinema. Similarly, the influence of the art of illustration on Protazanov’s film can likewise be classified as belonging to its cultural context. The fourth factor of adaptation, social and political circumstances, is closely related to the third factor. In the Soviet era, political pressure mostly took the place of cultural influence. When the Bolsheviks came to power, the state authorities relegated to themselves the task of regulating the arts and the masses’ tastes. Decrees from above dictated the interpretation of Pushkin’s characters and events. To be accepted as politically correct, Soviet versions of Pushkin’s tale (and of Russian classics in general) had to comply with two major demands. While remaining mostly sacrosanct, the work’s subject matter had nevertheless to incorporate Marxist-Leninist political imperatives, and its form needed to be conventional and avoid innovation. Alibegova’s play (1936), in which Germann is presented as a politically-minded representative of the third estate, is typical of Soviet interpretations of Pushkin’s tale. The darker side of the successful adaptations that fulfilled governmental mandates is suggested by the fate of 186 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Meyerhold’s The Queen o f Spades, which was condemned along with its author for its artistic experimentation. The Pushkin myth, an ideology defining Pushkin’s role in Russian culture and society, should be regarded as a further, separate factor, since Pushkin’s changing status greatly affected the adaptation process at each given moment. The celebrations of Pushkin jubilees both in Russia and abroad, as well as the history of Pushkin’s canonization in nineteenth-century Russia and his re-canonization in the Soviet Union were shown to play a significant role in the adaptation process. These five factors of adaptation do not exist independently but are intertwined with one another, and it is often not a single factor but a group of them that influence the adaptation process. For example, in Meyerhold’s opera, artistic trends and political demands merged to influence the director’s desire to bring Tchaikovsky closer to Pushkin. As a result, Meyerhold’s production of the opera attemps to satisfy the Soviet demand for an “authentic Pushkin,” but at the same time it reflects the modernist trend towards more verbally centered operatic discourse. Likewise, in Ozep’s film La dame de Pique, the film’s poetics was influenced not only by the tradition of French art cinema but also by a socio political event: the celebration of the centenary of Pushkin’s death by the Russian community in exile. These five factors provide a model that is applicable to the adaptation process in general. A preliminary examination of versions of other works by Pushkin that have been adapted to the stage and screen demonstrates that, with a 187 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. few variations,: these five factors, (and I do not exclude the possibility of further ones)— the cultural status of the version, its medium, the cultural context, the ; socio-political circumstances, and the current condition of Pushkin myth—also remain relevant. The. following is an illustration of this thesis— a demonstration that the proffered model of analysis works on another Pushkin prose piece, the historical tale The Captain ’ $ Daughter, as adapted for the screen. The Captain’ s Daughter in Film Pushkin’s historical tale The Captain's Daughter has been adapted for the screen several times, in pre-Revolutionary Russia, in the Soviet Union, and abroad. The Captain's Daughter appeared on the screen for the first time in 1914 in a film by G. Libken, the owner of a minor film-production company in Yaroslavl. This version was a commercially successful boevik, an action film that took great liberties with the literary source (Vishnevsky “Pushkin v kino,” 62). This first adaptation of Pushkin’s tale has not survived, but accounts of the film strongly support the notion that it represents a clear instance of popular art and that the modifications to Pushkin were meant to make it simple and entertaining for the average pre-Revolutionary spectator. Although Pushkin’s Captain’ s Daughter, a historical novel a la Walter Scott, contains some elements of adventure as well as battle scenes and one violent scene describing a beheading, the general tone of the work is one of gentle irony wherein “all fanciful notions are dashed against the 188 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. prosaic facts of ordinary life” (Debreej&eny, The Other Pushkin, 265). The tradition of making a bmvik from Pushkin’s historical tale by exaggerating its violence and spicing it up with more adventure, however, was to be characteristic of most later film adaptations of the work,. ; ■ ■ The next remake o f The Captain’ s Daughter (1927, dir. Iurii Tarich, scenarist Viktor Shklovskii) presents an outstanding mixture of boevik and melodrama, with a radical revolutionary interpretation o f the events and .characters. The film’s creators, Tarich and Shklovskii, in their article “Pushkin Questioned” {Hymmm nod coMwimeM), plainly stated that in their film, “Pushkin’s material has been substantially reevaluated and corrected” (Kino 44 [1927]). The changes the film brought to its literary source cannot be understood outside the context of early post-Revolutionary Soviet culture, which combined elements of popular culture with the Bolsheviks’ politically oriented art (see Youngblood, Movies for the Masses). In the 1927 film, several elements of Pushkin’s tale dealing with the Pugachev Rebellion of 1773 to 1774 were completely reversed. For example, in Pushkin the officer Shvabrin is a villain, who cowardly betrays his Empress and his social class by joining Pugachev’s side; in the film he is presented as the positive character of a revolutionary aristocrat. Correspondingly, Pushkin’s protagonist Grinev is transformed into a weak villain: a coward, fool, and drunkard who “knows how to wear his uniform dashingly, how to read sentimentally stolen poems, and who takes away lands from poor peasants” (Film Kapitanskaia dochka (1927), 5). The 189 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. new interpretation also affected the depiction of Catherine the Great In compliance with both the middlebrow demand for spicy scenes and the political demand for an attack on tsarism, the Empress, who in Pushkin is depicted as a benevolent, merciful person, in the film is transformed into a lascivious old woman whose erotic escapades become the background for the entire action of the film. This “crowned Messalina,” having heard from Masha (who has come to save her fiance from jail) that Grinev is a handsome young man, ordered that he be brought to her bedroom. After a night spent with him, Catherine, although disappointed, grants him freedom. The “corrections” made by filmmakers to the source text, which they found unsatisfactory and into which they introduced class struggle as the dominant theme, reveal the “vulgar sociological” approach popular at the time. In this, The Captain’ s Daughter of 1927 is typical of the art of the early post-Revolutionary era which was ending. In the very next year, 1928, Shklovskii-Tarich’s film was attacked as a “leftist infantile sickness,” and was denounced as a terrible “distortion” of “our realist writer” (qtd. in Youngblood, Soviet Cinema, 169). The film was banned, and the next Soviet version of The Captain’ s Daughter, made in 1958, remained remarkably true to its literary source. The 1958 film provides an example of the reverent and traditional approach to Pushkin’s heritage that became entrenched in the late twenties to early thirties and continued for many decades to follow. Between the 1927 and 1958 Soviet versions of Pushkin’s historical tale an 190 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Italian version of The Captain’ s Daughter (La figlia del capitand) appeared in 1947, by director and screenwriter Mario Camerini. This film is of interest from two different vantage points: first as another example of cultural border-crossing (Pushkin read by another culture) and second as the product of Italian postwar cinema. Film adaptations of nineteenth-century classical writers that had appeared in Fascist Italy as an escapist genre persisted in postwar Italy. Mario Camerini was one of the leading directors of the adaptation school, and his Captain’ s Daughter, with its “artistic ambitions, dignity in approaching the subject, excellent costumes, and beautiful music” (L’Operatore, Intermezzo, 21/22, [1947]), was a clear instance of this escapist trend in Italian cinema.2 2 A further Italian-Yugoslavian-French version of The Captain’ s Daughter appeared in 1958; in comparison with the Soviet one just mentioned, it illuminates differences and similarities between Western popular culture and Soviet culture “for the people.” The European movie, entitled The Tempest, directed by an Italian, Alberto Lattuada, is a two-hour-long period costume drama shot mainly in the Yugoslavian plains and with an international cast. This commercial film hoped to cash in on the popularity of the recently released Western box-office smash, King Vidor’s War and Peace (1956), whose art director and technicians were invited to design costumes and sets for The Tempest. 2 2 During World War II, another film, Un Colpo di Pistola (1942), based on Pushkin’s short tale “The Shot,” was filmed in Italy by Renato Castellani. The film is reported have been shot in an elegant, decorative style (Storia del Cinema italiano, 502-503). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Although' the film was not a resounding success (its plot was condemned as banal or incredible and most of its acting as stiff and uncertain [ ,Filmfacts, 71]),. critics stip credited the film for, its battle scenes, the parade staged before the Tsaritsa’s palace, a Spring Festival, and Catherine’sv isit:to Pugachev in the dungeon-'scenes for the most part absent in Pushkin. There were departures 'fro-m Pushkin’s plot reminiscent of Shklovskii: Catherine the Great (played by Vivien Lindfords) is depicted as a voluptuary with a “harem,” and Grinev is exiled to Belogorsk for drunkenness during the Empress’s parade. In other words, to attract a wide European audience unfamiliar with the subtleties of Russian history, Pushkin’s novel was turned into a spurious but spectacular epic with bloody battles, royal love affairs, long-suffering heroes, and, above all, “ceaseless sensuous visual beauty” that owed much to the latest technological achievements (i.e., Technicolor film and “Technirama” photography). As a commercial enterprise, the film was designed to suit all kinds of audiences. According to a reviewer, its ideological message was conceived to please both the Right and the Left: “The Right will be pleased that the sophistication of Catherine and the efficiency of Suvorov are made more attractive than Pugachev’s boorishness and barbarity. The Left will be pleased by the fervor of the dialogue describing the people’s suffering under Catherine” {Films in Review). In contrast to this visually rich version of Pushkin’s tale, the 1958 Soviet adaptation (Mosfilm) is remarkable for its modest visual and technical qualities (the film was made in black-and-white) and for its remarkable fidelity to 192 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the literary source. Compared to the Western version, this Soviet film, lasting 78 minutes, is characterized by its conspicuous historical authenticity in rendering eighteenth-century Russia. Although lacking spectacle and gloss, the actors and the settings of the Soviet film follow Pushkin’s description of the characters and events faithfully. The Mosfilm version reproduces Pushkin’s principal female characters as described by the writer: Masha Mironova, the captain’s daughter (played by lia Arepina) is presented as a “doelike” provincial girl and her mother as a corpulent old woman with a double chin and a “quilted jacket,” who keeps her husband under her thumb. In contrast, in the European film the spectator leams nothing of how Russian women of past epochs looked: Masha appears as a tanned Italian diva, and her mother is a still-attractive, wasp-waisted, elderly dame who stylishly smokes her pipe and gives orders in a raspy voice. The 1958 Captain’ s Daughter is also remarkable for its fidelity to Pushkin’s interpretation of history, preserving the writer’s ambivalent depiction of characters and events. As in Pushkin, the film’s Pugachev is a merciful villain (sjiodeu- danvoiuKa) and the Mironovs are presented with the utmost sympathy in spite of their loyalty to the Empress. The film’s fidelity to the literary source even extends to including whole passages from Pushkin’s text that are read in the film as the inner speech of Grinev, here the narrator. This type of literary adaptation, which functions almost as book illustration, is characteristic of the Soviet school of literary adaptation in general (indeed, the film was criticized for its slight deviation from Pushkin [Grossman, “Pugachev na ekrane,” 4). 193 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Another screen version of The Captain ’ $ Daughter (1999) has recently been released in post-Soviet Russia. The film, named Russian Rebellion (Pyccmiu 6ynm), is meant by its director, Alexander Proshkin, to be a sober political parable, a warning issued to modem politicians who need to know that there is a limit to the people’s endurance. Proshkin saturated his movie with allusions to the contemporary political situation (Yeltsin’s era), and a TV interview repeated Pushkin’s own words to express the underlying idea of his film: “God forbids us from witnessing a Russian rebellion, meaningless and merciless” (TV Interview, 3 Feb., 1999). To make the screen version of Pushkin as convincing as possible, the filmmakers invested much effort and money in their work. The movie was filmed on site in Orenburg, where the historical events took place, and an eighteenth- century village was constmcted in order to show the Cossacks’ way of life. As a result, Russian Rebellion became not only one of the most “topical” Russian films of the year but also one of the most expensive (Mikhail Ryzhov, “Tsena russkogo bunta”). The film’s director compared his film to the Hollywood blockbuster Titanic on the grounds that in both films there is a “love affair against the background of a catastrophe.” On top of its attempt at historical authenticity combined with the desire to teach politicians a lesson, Russian Rebellion clearly attempts to Russianize Hollywood moviemaking. This latest Pushkin film was made in the year of another big Pushkin Jubilee, the bicentennial of the poet’s birth, and the film’s odd mixture of historic, prophetic, and commercial elements is typical for this Jubilee, as well as for Russian post-Soviet culture. Russian 194 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. J?^^wBS:orice'-';^^-;.isiiggests. the ever-adaptability of Pushkin’s works and testifies -that the protean transformatiook of Ms works in adaptations keep him remarkably fresh. Let us return to the image of the blind fiddler with which we began.: Salieri could not bear to hear tMs fiddler’s interpretation of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, but if we turn away the “bind fiddler,” we'deprive ourselves of the possibility of reliving the genius. Let the fiddler play on and let us give heed to his “terrible screeching.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abel, Richard. French Cinema: The First Wave, 1915-1929. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Abel, Richard. “‘The Magnetic Eyes’ oflvan MozzhuMiin.” Cinefocusl. 1 (1991): 27-34. Aizenshtok, I. “Tri iubileia.” Literatumyi Sovremennik I (1937): 293-307. Alekseev, M.P. Pushkin: sravnitel’ no-istoricheskie issledovaniia. Leningrad: Nauka, 1984. Alibegova, N.N. Pikovaia dama. Moscow .-Tsedram, 1936. Annenkov, P. V. Materialy k biographii Pushkina. Moscow: Sovremennik, 1984. Arms. Roy. A Critical History o f the British Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Asafev, Boris. “Pikovaia dama.” Simfonicheskie etiudy. Petrograd: Gosudarstvennaia filarmoniia, 1922: 201-247. Belinskii, V.G. Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 8. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1981. Besedy s Alfredom Shnitke. Comp. Ivashkin, A.V. Moscow: RIK Kultura, 1994. “Blanchar.” Dictionnaire du Cinema. Paris: Larousse, 1992. 68. Bloom Harold, ed. and intr. Alexander Pushkin: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Bomfel’d, M. “Problema dvuiazychlia v opere P.I. Chajkovskogo “Pikovaia dama.”’ P.I. Chaikovsky i rmskaia literatura. Izhevsk: Udmurtiia, 1980: 178-188. Borovsky, David. “Zelenyi kvadrat igry.” Review of Pikovaia dama, by lurii Liubimov. Moskovskii nabliudatel ’ 5-6 (1996): 39. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique o f the Judgement o f Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. 196 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Bourdiep, Pierre.. TTje'^ie0-df:^0tffplProdi^tion: Essays on Art and Literature.: • Ed. ‘ RandalJohnson. New York: -^Coliim ijia University, 1993. Brewster,' Ben," and Lea Jacobs.: Theater Lb Cinema: Stage Pictomlism and the : Emly Feature Film. Oxford:: Oxford lJniversity Press, 1997. Brintliiiger, Angela. Writing a Usable Past: Russian Literary Culture 1917-1937, Evanston, IU .1 Northwestern® Press, 200ft- Brooks, Jeffrey. When Russia Learned to Read:-Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Brown, Davidi Tchaikovsky: The Final Years (1885-1893). New York: W.W. Norton, 1991. Branetta, Broan. Storia del Cinema italiano 1895-1945. Roma: Editor! Riuniti, 1975. “The Captain’s Daughter.” Review o f Kapitanskaia doehka, by Vladimir Kaplunovskii. Filmfacts (1959): 316-317. Chemyshevskii, N.G. Ocherki gogolevskogo perioda russkoi literatury. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo Khudozhestvemaia literatura, 1953. Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker o f Nations. Penguin Books, 1991. Cornwell, Neil. Pushkin’ s The Queen o f Spades. Bristol Classical Press, 1991. “La Dame de pique.” Review of La Dame de piquei by Fedor Ozep. New York Times. 19 Oct. 1944,19:2 “La Dame de pique.” Histoire du cinema Franqais: enciclopedie des films. Ed. Bessy, Maurice, and Raymond Chirat. Vol. 2. Paris: Pygmalion, 1986. 267. Danilov, S. S. Russkii dramaticheskii teatr XIX veka. Vol.l. Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatefstvo Iskusstvo, 1957. Debreczeny, Paul. The Other Pushkin: A Study o f Alexander Pushkin’ s Prose Fiction. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983. The Social Functions o f Literature: Alexander Pushkin and Russian Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. 197 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Dnevniki P.I. Chaikovskogo. Ed. Chaikovskii, Ip.I. Moscow, Petrograd: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo MuzykaFnyi sektor, 1922. Doherty, Justin. “Fictional Paradigms in Pushkin’s ‘Pikovaia dama.”’ Essays in Poetics 17:1 (1992), 49-66. Dranishnikov, V. “Musykai’naia dramaturgiia ‘Pikovoi damy.”’ Pikovaia dama. Opera. Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskogo Gosudarstvennogo Akedemicheskogo teatra, 1935. 24-56. Durylin, S.N. Pushkin na stsene. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk, 1951. Eisner, Lotte H. The Haunted Screen. Expressionism in German Cinema and The Infuence o f Max Reinhardt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. Early Cinema: Space, Narrative, Frame. Ed. Elsaesser, Thomas. London: British Film Institute, 1990. Emerson, Caryl. Boris Godunov: Transpositions o f a Russian Theme. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. —, ‘“The Queen of Spades’ and the Open End.” Pushkin Today. Ed. David Bethea. Bloomingtomlndiana University Press, 1992. 20-26 Filin, M. “Pushkin kak russkaia ideologiia v izgnanii.” “V kraiu chuzhom... ” ZarubezhnaiaJRossiia i Pushkin. Ed. and comp. Mikhail Filin. Moscow: Russkii Mir, 1998. 5-38. The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents. Ed. Taylor, R., Jan Christie. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. Fridkin, V. “Voiazh “Pikovoi damy.” Nauka i zhizn ’1 (1984): 70-74. Gaevskii, Vadim. “Muzyka dlia glaz.” Review of Pikovaia dama, by Anatolii Vasil’ev. Moskovskii nabliudatel ’ 5-6 (1996): 35-36. Ginzburg, S. S. Kinematographiia dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1963. Glushchenko, Irina. “Podvizhnaia ideiia. ‘Pikovaia dama’: Versiia Petra Fomenko.” Moskovskii nabliudatel ’ 5-6 (1996): 11-12. Godin, David “Fedor Ozep: A Bried Biography.” Grijfithiana 35-36 (1989): 66- 74. 198 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Gozenpud, A. Introduction. Komedii, stikhotvoreniia. By Aleksandr Shakhovskoi. Leningrad, 1961. Gould, Stephany L. Romantic Literary Narrative into Opera: Towards Poetics o f Transposition. Diss. University o f Wisconsin-Madison, 1997. Gress, S. “’Pikovaia dama’: Kriticheskii ocherk v dialogakh.” Review of Pikovaia, dama, by Meyerhold (1935, Leningrad). Zvezda 5 (1935), 210. Griffith, James. Adaptations as Imitations: Films from Novels. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997. Grossman, Leonid. “Pugachev na ekrane.” Reviewof Kapitanskaia dochka, by Vladimir Kaplunovskii. Literatura i zhizn ’ 15 (1958):4. Iakubovich, D. “Literatumyi fon Pikovoi damy.” The Pushkin Journal 1 (1993): 215-225. Iampolskii, Mikhail. Pamiat’ Tiresiia. Intertekstual ’ nost ’ i kinematograph. Moscow: Kul’tura, 1993. Il’in-Tomich, A.A. “Pikovaia dama oznachaet...” “ Stolet’ ia ne sotrut... ” Russkie Massiki i ikh chitateli. Moscow: Kniga, 1989. 85-160. “Fil’m Kapitanskaia dochka.” Review of Kapitanskaia dochka, by Vladimir Kaplunovskii. Izvestiia, 25 Sept. (1928). Fomenko, Petr. “Neobkhodimo legkoe dykhanie!” Interview by A. Svobodin. Teatral’ naia zhizn’ 7■(1996): 39-42. “Iz nemetskoi pressy.” Reviews of Pikovaia dama, by Anatolii Vasil’ev. Moskovskii nabliudatel ’ 5-6 (1996): 36-38. “Iz nemetskoi pressy.” Reviews of Pikovai dama, by Iurii Liubimov. Moskovskii nabliudatel ’ 5-6 (1996): 40-41. Kapitanskaia dochka. V pomoshch kinozriteliu. Moscow: Tea-Kino-Pechat, ’ 1928. Katz, E. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979. Karagicheva, L. “Dva etiuda o “Pikovoi dame.”’ Sovetskaia muzyka 6 (1990): 46- 53. 199 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Karlinsky, Simon. Russian Drama from Its Beginning to the Age o f Pushkin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Kazakov, M. Akterskaia kniga. Moscow: Vagrius, 1999. Kazmina, Natal’ia. “Sluchai, skazka, andekdot.” Review of Pikovaia dama, by Petr Fomenko. Teatral ’ naia zhizn ’ 1 (1997): 14-16. Khaichenko, G.A. Sovetskii teatr: Puti razvitiia. Moscow: Znanie, 1982. Khaniutin, A. “Predkinematographicheskie zrelishcha v ikh istoricheskikh sviaziakh s literaturoi.” Ekrannye iskusstva i literatura: Nemoe kino. Moscow: Nauka, 1991. 5-28. Khanzhonkov, A. “Dorevoliutsionnye kinoinstenirovki proizvedenii Pushkina.” Iskusstvo kino 2 (1937): 39-41. Khanzhonkov, A Pervye gody russkoi kinematographii. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1937. Khrenov, N. “Sud’ba Ivana Mozzhukhina.” Is istorii kino: Dokumenty i materialy 10. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1977. 183-200. Kogan, L. “Pushkin v perevodakh Merime.” Vremennik Pushkinskoi komissii 4-5 (1939): 331-356 Kolodiazhnaia, V.S. “Izobrazitel’noe postroenie “Pikovoi damy.’” Iakov Protazanov. Sbornik statei i materialov. Ed. Aleinikov, M.S. 2nd ed. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1957. 136-156. Korobkov, S. ‘“Pikovaia dama oznachaet tainuiu nedobrozhelatel’nost’...”: “Pikovaia dama” Vs. MeyerhoFda.” Muzykal ’ naia akademiia 4-5 (1995): 104-110. Kotykhov, V. “Igra s sud’boi... (Spektakf “Pikovaia dama” na muzyku A.Shnitke i Dzh. Rossini v Nezavisimoi truppe Ally Sigalovoi)” Review of Pikovaia dama, by Oleg Borisov. Balet 1 (1992): 27-28. Korsakov, N.A. Pikovaia dama. N.p.: n.p. 1898. Kracauer, Sigfried. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History o f the German Film. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947. 200 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Eapkiha* G .ito ^ sfte --i5«#|iw.;MoseQw-Leningrad^ Leig|tto^]L;aureaG ., coi^y A/Bibliography, of Alexander Pushkin [ m English. ■Studies’ ; in,'.Slavic Languages : and Literature . 12.: Lewiston: The. Edwin . / • Meflen.Press, 1999.: Lezhnev, A. PushMn’ s prose. Trans. Reeder, Roberta. Ardis: Ann; Arbor, 1983. Leyda, Jay. '"K ino: A History o f the . Russian and Soviet Film. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983, Levitt, MarCus C. Russian Literary Politics and the Pushkin.: Celebration o f1880. Ithaca:Come!l U Press, 1989. Li-far’, Sergei. Moia zarubezhnaia Pushkiniana. Paris: Editions Rerisniak, 1966. Lik Pushkina: rechi, chitannye na torzhestvennom zasedanii Bogoslovskogo instituta v Parizhe. Paris: Ymca-Press, 1938. Lobanov, Dmitrii. Kartezhnik. Drama izpovesti Pushkina v piati deistviiakh. N.P. 1877. Lotman, Iu. M. “Kartochnaia igra.” Besedy o russkoi kul’ ture.: Byt i traditsii msskogo dvorianstva (XVlII-nachalo XIX veka). Sankt-Peterburg: Iskusstvo-SPB, 1994. 136-163. —, ‘“Pikovaia dama’ i tema kart i kartochnoi igry v russkoi literature nachala XIX veka.” Lotman, Iu.M. Izbrannye stat’ i. Vol. 2. Tallinn: Aleksandra, 1992. 389-415. —, Roman A. S. Pushkina “ Evgenii Onegin Kommentarii. Leningrad: Prosveshchenie, 1983. —, “Sotvorenie Karamzina.” Karamzin. St.Peterburg: Iskusstvo-SPB. 9-310. Luk’ianov, S.L. ‘“Pikovaia dama’ la. Protazanova.” Iakov Protazanov. Sbornik statei i materialov. Ed. Aleinikov, M.S. 2nd ed. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1957. 109-135. Martin, George. The Companion to Twentieth Century Opera. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1979. Martynov I. “Iskazhennyi Pushkin.” Liieraturnaia Gazeta. 21 Jan. (1937): 6. 201 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Merritt, Russell L. “Mr. Griffith, The Painted Lady and the Distractive Frame." “ Image ” on the Art and Evolution o f the Film: photographs and articles from the magazine o f the International Muzeum o f Photography. Ed. Deutelbaum Marshall. New York: Dover Publications, 1979. 147-152. Minkin, Aleksandr. “Pikovaia dama oznachaet tainuiu nedobrozhelateFnost’...” Ogonek, 9 Febr. (1989): 20-23. Morandini, Mario. “Italy from Fascism to Neo-Realism.” The Oxford History of World Cinema. Ed. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 353-361. Molok, Iurii. “ Pikovaia dama v russkoi grafike.” Pushkin v 1937 godu. Materialy i issledovaniia po ikonografii. Moscow: Novoe literatumoe obozrenie, 200. Murav’eva, O.S. “Obraz Pushkina: Istoricheskie metaroorphozy.” Legendy i mify oPushkine. Sankt-Peterburg: “Akademichekii proekt,” 1994. 109-128. Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Nusinova, N. “Kino emigrantov: Stir i Mifologiia.” KinovedchesMe zapiski 18 (1993): 241-260. —, “Pikovaia dama v izgnanii.” KinovedchesMe zapisM 42 (1999): 232-245. —, “The Soviet Union and the Russian Emigres.” The Oxford History of World Cinema. Ed., Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 162-174. Orlova, Alexandra. Tchaikovsky: A Self-Portrait. Trans. Davidson R.M. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Ospovat, A., and Timenchik, R. “ ’ Pechal’ nu povest’ sokhranit... ’ Ob avtore i chitateliakh ‘ Mednogo vsadnika. ’ ” Moscow: Kniga, 1985. “Ozep.” Dictionnaire du Cinema. Paris: Larousse, 1992. 501. Parin, A. “’Pobeda v igre s sud’boi’: o prem’ere ‘Pikovoi damy’ na stsene Badenskogo teatra.” Review of Pikovaia dama, by Iurii Liubimov. Sovetskaia kul ’ tura. 1 Dec. (1990). 202 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Pavlova, E. “A,S.Pushkin v illiustratsiiakh.” Pushkin v russkoi i sovetskoi illiustratsii. Album. Vol. 2. Moscow: Kniga, 1987. 5-18. Petrovskaia, Ira. Teatr i zritel’ provintsial ’ noi Rossii: vtoraia polovina XIX veka. Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1979. —, Teatr i zritel ’ rossiiskikh stolits. 1895-1917. Moscow :Iskusstvo, 1990. Petrovskaia, I., Somina, V. Teatral ’ riyi Peterburg: nachalo XVIII veka -dktiabr ’ 1917 goda: obozrenie-putevoditel Sankt-Peterburg: Kul’turanaia initsiativa, 1994. Pikovaia dama. Kino-illiustratsiia povesti A.S.Pushkina. Moscow: I.N.Ermol’ev, 1916. Pikovaia dama. Opera P.I. Chaikovskogo. Libretto. Leningrad: Muzykal’naia literatura, 1977. “Pique Dame.” Review of La Dame de pique, by Fedor Ozep. Variety. 25 Oct. 1944. Polianovsky, Georgil Review of Pikovaia dama (Svobodnaia opera), by Tolmachevskii. Novyi zritel’ 8 (1927): 13-14. Pushkin, Alexander. Complete Prose Fiction. Trans. Debreczeny, Paul. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983. Pushkin, Aleksandr. Pikovaia dama. llliustratsii Aleksandra Benua. St. Petersburg: R. Golike i V.ViPborg, 1911. Pushkin, A.S. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh. Vol. 8. Moscow: Nauka, 1965. Pushkin i teatr. Ed. Iudkevich, Z. Leningrad: Academia, 1937. PutevoditeV po Pushkinu. Prilozhenie k zhumalu Krasnaia Niva na 1931 god. Ed. Tsiavlosvksii, M.A. Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1931. “The Queen of Spades” Shots in the Dark. Ed. Anstey, Edgar et al. London: Allan Wingate: 77-81. “The Queen of Spades.” Review of The Queen o f Spades, by Thorold Dickinson. Variety. 13 March (1949): 13. 203 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “Queen of Spades.” Review of The Queen o f Spades, by Thorold Dickinson. The Monthly Film Bulletin 16 (1949): 61. “Queen of Spades.” Review of The Queen o f Spades, by Thorold Dickinson New YorkTimes. 1 July (1949): 14: 4. “‘Queen of Spades’ Compels Attention.” Review of The Queen o f Spades, by Thorold Dickinson. Hollywood Reporter. 26 Sep. (1950): 3. Razumnyi Aleksandr. U istokov... Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1975. Roberts, Carolyn. “Pushkin’s ‘Pikovaia dama’ and the Opera Libretto.” Canadian Review o f Comparative Literature 6-1 (1979): 9-26. Ryzhkov, M. “Tsena russkogo bunta.” Review of Russkii bunt, by Aleksandr Proshkin. Ekspert 45 (1998). Salt, Barry. Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis. 2nd ed. London: Starword, 1992. Schmidgall, Gary. Literature as Opera. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. —, Shakespeare and Opera. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Sedykh, Mariia. “La Venus Moscovite.” Review of Pikovaia dama, by Petr Fomenko. Literaturnaia gazeta. 17 Apr. (1996). Semenovskii, Valerii. “Grafinia i plebei.” Review of Pikovaia dama, by Petr Fomenko. Moskovskii nabliudatel ’ 5-6 (1996): 8-10. Serdobol’skii, Oleg. “Petr Fomenko v inter’erakh peterburgskoi zimy.” Review of Pikovaia dama, by Petr Fomenko. Teatral’ naia zhizn ’ 3 (1995): 8-9. Sergeeva, Tamara. “’Pikovaia dama”: chto snitsia cheloveku... (Iz opyta obrashcheniia russkikh rezhisserov k pushkinskoi povesti).” KinovedchesMe zapiski 42 (1999): 219-232. Shavrygin, S.M. Tvorchestvo A.A. Shakhovskogo v istoriko-literaturnom osveshchenii. St. Petersburg: D.Bulanin, 1996. Shaw, Joseph T. “The “Conclusion” of Pushkin’s Queen o f Spades P Studies in Russian and Polish Literature: In honor o f Waclaw LednicM. Ed. Folejewski, Zbigniew et al. The Hague: Mouton (1962): 114-126. 204 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Shepeiev, L. Tituly, mmdiry, ordena. Leningrad: Nauka, 199:1. Sfikfevskii, V. “Stsenarii “Kapitanskaia dochka.” Iskusstvo kino 2 (1937): 47. Sidiakov, L.S. “Pushkin i razvitie russkoi povesti v nachale 30-kh godo.v XIX veka” Pushkin: issledovaniia i materiafy'3 (1960): 193-217. Sidiakov, L.S. ‘ “Pikovaia dama” i “Chernaia zhenshchiba” N.I.Grecha: Iz istorii rannegO' vospriiatiia povesti Pushkina.” BoldinsMe chteniia 10 (1985): 164-173. Silent Witnesses: Russian Films 1908-1919. Ed. Usai, Paolo Cherchi et al. British Film Institute, 1989. Sklar, Robert. Film: An International History o f the Medium. New York: Prentice Hall, 1993. Smith, Patrick J. The Tenth Muse: A Historical Study o f the Opera Libretto. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1970. Smolich. N.V. “O postanovke “Pikovoi damy.” Pikovaia dama. Opera. Leningrad: IzdatePstvo Leningradskogo Gosudarstvennogo Akedemicheskogo teatra, 1935. 69-75 Stark, Z. “Otzyvy v pechati o pervoi postanovke “Pikovoi damy” na stsene B.Mariinskogo teatra.” Pikovaia dama. Opera. Leningrad: IzdatePstvo Leningradskogo Gosudarstvennogo Akedemicheskogo teatra, 1935. 76-88. Stolpiansky, P. “Odna iz peredelok proizvedenii Pushkina dlia stseny.” Ezhegodnik imperatorskikh teatrov 3 (1911): 11-15. Struve, Nikita “Russkaia emigratsiia i Pushkin.” Vestnik russkogo khristianskogo dvizheniia 149 (1987): 232-236. “Symposium on ‘The Queen of Spades. The Cinema 1950. Ed. Manvell, Roger. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1950. 46-77. Tarich, Iurii. “Pushkin pod somneniem.” Kino 44 (1927). “Tchaikovsky ‘Pikovaia dama.’ Versiia luriia Liubimova: Iz nemetskoi pressy.” Reviews of Pikovaia dama, by Iurii Liubimov. Moskovskii nabliudatel ’ 5-6 (1996): 40-41. 20 5 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “Tempest.” Review of The Tempest, by Alberto Lattuada. Filmfacts 14, 6 May (1959): 69-71. “Tempest.” Review of The Tempest, by Alberto Lattuada. Motion Picture Guide 8: 3299. “Tempest.” Review of The Tempest, by Alberto Lattuada. New York Times. 27 March (1959). “The Tempest.” Review of The Tempest, by Alberto Lattuada. Variety. 10 Dec (1958). “La Tempesta.” Review of The Tempest, by Alberto Lattuada. Monthly Film Bulletin 26 (1959): 85-86. Terras, Victor. A History o f Russian Literature. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Tsivian, Yu. “Books in Motion: On One Neglected Tradition in the History of Early Film Genres.” The Birth o f Film Genres. Udine: University degli Studi di Udine, 1999. —, “Early Russian Cinema: Some Observations.” Inside the Film Factory. Ed. Taylor, Richard and Ian Cristie. London: Routledge, 1991. 7-30. —, Istoricheskaia retseptsiia kino. Riga: Zinatne, 1991. Vasil’ev, A. “K maketu. 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Creator Pastur, Galina (author)

Core Title Terrible screeching: Adaptation of Pushkin's "Queen of Spades" in theater, opera and film

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Slavic Languages and Literatures

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