Tolstoy on Stage

There is no shortage of great Tolstoys in Russian literature. Just in the short period from the 19th to the beginning of the 20th centuries, three of them, including Lev, of War and Peace fame, and Soviet writer Alexei Nikolaevich, graced the literary scene. But the first Tolstoy, chronologically speaking at least, was Count Alexei Konstantinovich, whose 180th anniversary Russia celebrates on September 5.

Alexei Tolstoy (1817-1875) only lived to the age of 58, but he led an extremely full and productive life, leaving Russia with a great literary and moral inheritance. For, more than just about any other Russian writer before or since, Tolstoy’s personality – his generosity and purity of spirit – was reflected in his work. The writer Turgenev was quite correct in saying that “Alexei Tolstoy’s humanity shows through and breathes in everything he wrote.”

And he wrote prolifically. Tolstoy entered the Russian literary scene at the end of the 1840s and beginning of the 1850s primarily as a lyric poet, whose work was moving and subtle. He achieved popularity almost immediately through the amazing musicality of his verses. Many of them became songs, and later, in the 1860s and 1870s, the most famous composers – Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Musorgsky, Rubinshtein and Taneev – composed romances based on them. More than 70 of Tolstoy’s verses were set to music, among them the world-famous romances Among the Noisy Dance and It Was Early Spring.

Tolstoy’s work is surprisingly varied. Having started as a lyricist, he moved on to the genre of humorous parody. In 1854, he began to collaborate with the famous literary journal Sovremennik, where, together with the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers, he published poems and literary parodies under the pseudonym of Kozma Prutkov. His combination of aphorisms, wisdom and apt, humorous observations, ensured a long life for the unforgettable Kozma Prutkov.

Meanwhile, the man behind Prutkov, Alexei Tolstoy, separated himself from the imperial court at the beginning of the 1860s and dedicated himself entirely to literature. Though, due to his position in society, he remained close to the court for several more years. After serving in the Moscow archives of the Foreign Ministry, and then in the military and diplomatic corps, he held various court positions.

Tolstoy was irresistibly attracted by Russian antiquity. First, he adapted epic  tales (Vasily Shibanov and Prince Repnin) and then the historical novel The Silver Prince, a work that has been well-loved and widely read in Russia for more than 150 years. And it is unlikely that this novel will be forgotten anytime soon, as there have been few figures in Russian literature who have succeeded in depicting a complicated historical event with such shining artistry as did Alexei Tolstoy.

Evidently, Tolstoy’s immersion in the era of Ivan the Terrible also brought about his new literary “hypostasis.” Tolstoy turned to drama and wrote a historical trilogy – the tragedies The Death of Ivan the Terrible (1866), Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich (1868) and Tsar Boris (1870). He explained his turn to historical drama as follows: “Much of the good and evil that has existed up until now as a mysterious phenomenon in Russian life has roots hidden in the deep dark bowels of the past.”

The productions of these tragedies on the Russian stage have had an unusual history. The author himself participated directly and actively in the staging of the first – The Death of Ivan the Terrible – at St. Petersburg’s Marinsky Theater in 1867. But Tolstoy never saw his other two tragedies performed. Tsar Boris was staged at Moscow’s Pushkin Theater in 1881 – six years after Tolstoy’s death. And in 1898, the Artistically Accessible Theater (as the present-day MKhAT, or Moscow Arts Theater, was then called) opened its first season with Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich.

In different years, these plays have been alternately elevated to the dramatic canon and removed from it completely. With the rise of Stalin, Tolstoy’s historical dramas fell from grace. The historical associations between the times of Ivan the Terrible and Stalin were too eloquent and made the author’s humanistic position unacceptable, resonant of a judgment from history itself.

The older generation of Muscovites remembers the time of the “thaw,” when Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich appeared on the stage of the Maly Theater, with the famous actor Smoktunovsky in the main role. The play struck a deep chord with the public because their own thoughts, which had been restrained for so long, were suddenly expressed from the depths of the past.

Count Tolstoy made another visit to our times when Moscow’s Maly Theater staged Tsar Boris with the famous actor Korshunov playing the main role. And, even more recently, a production of The Death of Ivan the Terrible received a glowing review in the English language daily, the Moscow Times. Judging from the evidence, Alexei Tolstoy’s works are just as relevant today as they were 120 years ago.

In Brief

September contains two important holidays for Orthodox Russians. On September 21, believers celebrate the Birth of the Holy Virgin, and on the 27th, the Exaltation of the Cross. In addition, September 11 is the holiday of Ivan Postnyi, in honor of John the Baptist.

Along with the much–anticipated 850th anniversary of Moscow’s founding, September’s secular calendar contains another important date. September 7 marks 185 years since the Battle of Borodino, a bloody and crucial battle in the War of 1812 between France and Russia. One of Borodino’s outstanding military leaders, Prince Peter Bagration (1765-1812), outlived this battle by only a few days, dying from his wounds on September 24, 1812. As the poet and war hero Denis Davydov wrote of him: “Prince Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration, so famous for his amazing bravery, lofty unselfishness, decisiveness and activities, proved at the beginning of the war that he combined fearlessness with the experience of a skillful military leader. These shining qualities, the prince’s open character and his tender relations with everyone attracted the hearts of his subordinates to him.”  The Battle of Borodino, where Bagration commanded the left flank, was the pinnacle of his military career. He also participated in Suvorov’s Italian and Swiss campaigns and in the wars with France, Switzerland and Turkey in 1809-1810, while commanding the Moldavian army.

Speaking of aristocracy, September 17 marks 340 years since the birth of Sophia Miloslavskaya (1657-1704), daughter of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich by his first wife. Sophia ruled Russia from 1682 to 1689, before her half-brothers Ivan V and Peter I came of age. She came to power in 1682 as a result of a mutiny of the Streltsy (palace guard), and with the support of the intelligent and reform–minded Prince Golitsyn, who later became her favorite. Golitsyn was a man ahead of his time, and consequently, his reforms were doomed to failure. During Sophia’s reign, Russia fought unsuccessfully for access to the Black Sea (Russian troops under Golitsyn’s leadership twice suffered defeat at the hands of the Crimean Huns) and crop failures and a range of other disasters occurred. As a ruler, Sophia’s hands were tied. She could neither make use of her power nor let go of it. In the end, it was Voltaire who best characterized Sophia and explained her failures: “The ruler had a lot of savvy. She composed poems, wrote and expressed herself well, combined a multitude of talents with a marvelous outward appearance. But all this was overshadowed by the enormity of her ambition.”

September 20 is a momentous date in the history of Russian culture, for on this date 135 years ago, the Petersburg State Conservatory named after Rimsky Korsakov was founded. This conservatory, like the Moscow one, was founded on the initiative of A. Rubenshtein on the basis of the Russian Musical Society in Petersburg. As Russian Life has already written about the Moscow conservatory, we will add only that Pyotr Tchaikovsky graduated with the Petersburg conservatory’s first graduating class in 1865, receiving a large silver medal and the title of first laureate of the conservatory. Among later graduates were such outstanding musicians and composers as Ippolitov-Ivanov, Lyadov, Arensky, Gnesin, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Melik-Pashaev and Sofronitsky.

September also contains two dates connected with important Russian writers who were “forgotten” during the Soviet era. On September 25, Russia celebrates the 205th anniversary of the birth of Ivan Lazhechnikov (1792-1869), the author of the historical novels The Ice House (1835) and The Infidel (1838) and even earlier – in 1815 – Marching Notes of a Russian Officer, which catapulted him to instant fame.

September 29 marks 180 years since the birth of another well-known literary figure – playwright Aleksandr Kobylin (1817-1903). A revered Academic of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Kobylin experienced the harshness of Russia’s bureaucratic system first–hand when he was falsely accused of murdering his beloved in 1850. After a year, the accusation was withdrawn, but, as a result of his experiences, Russian literature gained the sharply satirical and deeply truthful dramatic trilogy Krechinsky’s Wedding, (staged in 1855) which he wrote in prison, The Affair (1867) and The Death of Tarelkin (1861).

September 24 marks the 195th anniversary of another outspoken Russian who suffered at the hands of the state – the writer, philosopher and patriot Aleksandr Radischev (1749-1802). His famous Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow (1790) openly denounced and challenged the tsarist autocracy. For this work, and also for the Ode to  Liberty, Radischev was exiled to Siberia for seven years. Upon his return, he once again became an active part of Russian public life, and in his proposals for legal reform, he worked actively for the annihilation of serfdom. In the end, threatened by further punishment, Radischev took his own life.

On a less somber note, on September 21, the Scientific Society of Russia will celebrate the 160th anniversary of the birth of Pyotr Lesgaft (1837-1909). A scholar, teacher, psychologist, doctor and anatomist, Lesgaft dedicated his life to the idea of educating the Russian people. He had an inexhaustible interest in a variety of fields and made a great contribution to science. But most of all, Lesgaft is remembered as an outstanding teacher who was living proof of his own theory that  education is inextricably linked with physical, moral, aesthetic and intellectual development.

And finally, September 28 will mark 140 years since the death of A. F. Smirdin (1795-1857), the well-known Russian publisher and bookseller, who published the likes of Pushkin, Gogol, Vyazensky and Zhukovsky. Smirdin went down in the history of Russian publishing not only as a founder of mass publishing, but also as the first person in the history of Russian publishing to introduce payment for writers by the page.