Without a Dowry and Other Plays Read online

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ostrovsky, Aleksandr Nikolaevich, 1823-1886 [Selections. English. 1995]

  Without a dowry & other plays / Alexander Ostrovsky; translated with an introduction by Norman Henley.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  Contents: A profitable position - Ardent heart -Without a dowry - Talents and admirers.

  ISBN 0-88233-933-8

  1. Ostrovsky, Aleksandr Nikolaevich, 1823-1886-Translations into English. I. Henley, Norman. II. Title.

  PG3337.08A24 1995 95-23736 891.72’3-dc20 CIP

  Printed in the United States of America

  eISBN: 978-1-4683-0928-7

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Go to www.ardisbooks.com to read or download the latest Ardis catalog.

  For Chris and Frannie

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  INTRODUCTION

  A PROFITABLE POSITION

  Afterword

  AN ARDENT HEART

  Afterword

  WITHOUT A DOWRY

  Afterword

  TALENTS AND ADMIRERS

  Afterword

  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS

  Ostrovsky’s Plays in Russian

  Ostrovsky’s Plays in English Translation

  Ostrovsky Criticism in English

  PREFACE

  Despite Ostrovsky’s high stature in Russian letters he has fared relatively poorly in English translation. Much of the translation was done before World War Two, and for that we are largely indebted to George Rapall Noyes (1873-1952), an eminent American Slavicist and strong champion of Ostrovsky. Since World War Two there have been scattered translations of Ostrovsky, but some of his worthy plays have not yet been translated into English.

  Some appreciations are in order. To my ex-wife Nancy and Robert M. Slusser, former colleague at Johns Hopkins, for their encouragement when it was most needed. To Dorothy Magner and my son Christopher, whose suggestions and corrections improved the translation. And to the Johns Hopkins University for a special grant, which helped me to finish the basic project.

  N.H.

  INTRODUCTION

  Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823-86), son of a judicial official, was raised in Moscow. He studied law at Moscow University, but did not finish his degree, and took a job as a legal clerk, in which capacity he learned much of value for some of his plays. During his university and law-court years he became passionately devoted to the theater and dreamed of working for it.

  In 1847 Ostrovsky’s first complete play, a one-acter entitled Picture of Family Happiness, was published but immediately forbidden theatrical presentation by the censor. Ostrovsky’s first full-length play, It’s All in the Family, was published in 1850, and it also was banned from the stage. While this play earned Ostrovsky instant fame, it also brought attention from the authorities, who were disturbed both because the play portrayed merchant immorality as a typical phenomenon and because the main culprit escaped unpunished. Ostrovsky was placed under police surveillance and soon felt compelled to leave his government position. In effect this sentenced Ostrovsky to a life of constant struggle and near poverty, particularly noticeable in his letters, where he frequently begs his friends for a loan to carry him through a pressing financial crisis. It should be noted here that in that period Russian playwrights had almost no rights, and though Ostrovsky’s plays were being performed continuously, he received very little income from the performances, deriving his basic income from their publication.

  Henceforth Ostrovsky generally wrote a play or two every year until his death, compiling a total of forty-seven original plays. In addition, he collaborated on seven plays and translated several others. Always concerned with the lot of the Russian theater and its actors, Ostrovsky served as president of the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers and Operatic Composers from its founding in 1870 to his death some sixteen years later.

  On the personal side Ostrovsky had many friends, especially in the theatrical and literary worlds. Unlike many of his contemporaries he shunned feuds and controversy. Though some of his plays stirred up heated debate, notably that engaged in by the Westerners and Slavophiles over some of his early plays, Ostrovsky himself shied away from such controversy.

  Brief as this sketch is, it is probably not unfair in suggesting that Ostrovsky’s personal life was unglamorous. He was an unpretentious literary hero, who wrote as steadily and honestly as he could under difficult censorship conditions and without compromising his integrity. His writing is that of the self-effacing artist, and in contrast to a playwright like Strindberg, it is almost impossible to see anything of Ostrovsky the outer man in his plays. Ostrovsky was a keen and sensitive observer of Russian reality, and this became the raw material for his plays. Although the well-known literary historian D. S. Mirsky made some bad and misleading observations about Ostrovsky, he was perceptive in describing Ostrovsky as “the least subjective of Russian writers.”

  During his “early” period, from 1847 to 1860, Ostrovsky wrote fifteen plays, notable among them being It’s All in the Family, Poverty’s No Vice, A Profitable Position, and The Thunderstorm. Although The Thunderstorm is performed less often than a number of Ostrovsky’s other plays, it has often been considered his masterpiece. Paradoxically, the success of this play in western drama anthologies may have hurt
Ostrovsky in the West by giving him the reputation of writing plays too “Russian” to be understood readily by non-Russian audiences. However, it should be stated that The Thunderstorm is hardly a leading candidate for Ostrovsky’s most typical play and that, in any case, many of his plays do have universal interest.

  The early plays impressed everybody with their brilliant characterization and language. But they also provoked controversy on sociological and political grounds. On the basis of these plays Nikolai A. Dobrolyubov (1836-61) wrote two famous essays, “The Kingdom of Darkness” (1859) and “A Ray of Light in the Kingdom of Darkness” (1860). The former essay considered the plays primarily as social documentation, dwelling on the morally unworthy characters (often enough the uncouth self-willed characters known as “samodurs”), whose power, derived from money or the authority of elders, was used arbitrarily to exploit the weaker members of society. In the latter essay, inspired by The Thunderstorm, Dobrolyubov saw a glimmer of hope, interpreting the heroine Katerina as a basically Russian type whose way of thinking in itself constituted a kind of protest against the inhuman world around her.

  At this point I feel that I should take the time to object strongly to the opinion sometimes expressed or implied in western criticism that Ostrovsky’s powers declined after The Thunderstorm. Ostrovsky’s artistic powers developed steadily throughout his career, and it is only with his very last play Not of This World that one can say that Ostrovsky “lost his touch.” In any case, it is a matter of record that for some time Soviet theaters performed Ostrovsky’s later plays much more than his early plays.

  The next period, from about 1860 to 1868, may somewhat awkwardly be labelled “historical.” While Ostrovsky wrote some plays based on contemporary life during this period, his main concern was the writing of versified historical chronicles intended for reading rather than the stage. Actually Ostrovsky was trying to make an escape from the theater, for his bitter experiences with the censor, the lack of proper recognition, and his impecunious state had left him disillusioned and discouraged. In a letter written in 1866 to his close friend, the actor Burdin, Ostrovsky declared, “I’m letting you know that I’m giving up the theatrical realm completely… I receive almost no profits from the theater although all the theaters in Russia live by my repertory… Believe me that I shall have much more respect, which I have earned and deserve, if I separate from the theater. Having given the theater twenty-five original plays I haven’t had any success in being distinguished from some bad translator.” Fortunately for us Burdin and others insisted that Ostrovsky not leave the theater, though one can easily imagine that Ostrovsky’s love of the theater made it easy for him to change his position. Although his historical plays are of justified interest to some, as a whole they are the least valuable of Ostrovsky’s plays and are seldom performed.

  The third period, from 1868 to 1878, may be considered Ostrovsky’s satirical period. While there had been satire in some of his previous plays, it is now more dominant, being especially brilliant in To Every Sage His Share of Folly and Wolves and Sheep. Other important plays of this period are An Ardent Heart; Easy Come, Easy Go; The Forest; Feasting Can’t Last Forever; Not Even a Copper, Then Lo a Goldpiece; The Snowmaiden; Late Love; Truth Is Fine, but Good Luck’s Better. The Snowmaiden (1873) deserves special mention as a highly esteemed though seldom performed fairy-tale play in verse. Rimsky-Korsakoff wrote an opera based on it, and Tchaikovsky wrote incidental music for it around 1900.

  B. V. Alpers calls the plays of Ostrovsky’s fourth and final period (1878-1885) “sad comedies.” Largely devoted to the slavish plight of women (Ostrovsky was definitely a philogynist), these plays are characterized by fine psychological delineation as well as a sad poetic atmosphere of unfulfilled love and deceived hopes. Notable plays of this period are A Last Sacrifice; Without a Dowry; Talents and Admirers; Without Guilt Guilty.

  It is sometimes difficult to do justice to Ostrovsky in translation or, for that matter, even by reading him in the original. Ostrovsky was highly stage conscious, and, with the exception of the historical plays, he always wrote his plays with performance in mind, sometimes with specific actors in mind for certain roles. He was especially language conscious, listening carefully to any speech within hearing, and while working on a play he read all the lines aloud to himself, striving above all for natural speech.

  If critics agree that Ostrovsky is unsurpassed in his use of colloquial language, they also agree that he is a master of characterization. His characters are convincingly real, interesting and varied. However, though there is an astonishing diversity in his vast gallery (E. Kholodov calculates a total of 728 speaking characters in Ostrovsky’s 47 original plays), some types recur rather frequently, such as the parasitic idler (especially the unscrupulous male seeking wealth through marriage), the powerful self-righteous bully, the helpless woman, the capitalistic entrepreneur as exploiter of individuals, and the rebellious crusader. The frequent classification of Ostrovsky’s characters into the exploiters and the exploited (“wolves and sheep”) needs special mention, for personal conflict of a quite direct nature, one-sided as the contest often is, is at the heart of Ostrovsky’s plays. It is probably this rather traditional feature which most obviously distinguishes the plays of Ostrovsky from those of Chekhov, whose dramatic characters are portrayed not so much as victims of other individuals as of themselves or their frustrating and unfriendly environment. It is indeed unfortunate that some Westerners have typed Ostrovsky as a playwright of the merchant class. In actuality only a small number of Ostrovsky’s plays deals to any great extent with merchants, and in those the merchant’s significance is as a human being, not as a businessman. Offhand I can remember only one instance (in The Forest) when one of Ostrovsky’s merchants makes a business transaction on stage.

  Ostrovsky is a brilliant psychologist. However, since the deservedly influential D. S. Mirsky didn’t understand this properly, it should be pointed out that Ostrovsky is primarily a social psychologist rather than what might loosely be called an “individual” psychologist. He introduces ready-made characters with significant traits or ambitions which are manifested as the characters interact with other characters. Ostrovsky does not ordinarily delve into the consciousness of individual characters to reveal their psychoses, to try to show how they “got that way,” an approach better suited to a novel, where time is not so limited. As psychologist, Ostrovsky is more subtle in his later plays.

  Ostrovsky’s plots tend to subordinate themselves to the portrayal of character and the social situation. However. this generalization is much more applicable to the earlier plays, as one will see if he compares the plot of A Profitable Position with that of Talents and Admirers. Ostrovsky was sometimes guilty of resorting to abrupt endings of a deus ex machina nature. Yet we should refrain from judging him too hastily since some of his seemingly abrupt and “happy” endings may be ironic, suggesting to the sensitive viewer or reader that in the kind of social milieu portrayed in the play it is only the very lucky who escape unscathed. Such is the case in Truth Is Fine, but Good Luck’s Better, where the virtuous hero-knight is reminded at the end that his deliverance from an unjust imprisonment was due not to his virtue but sheer good luck. Such endings can be frightening, and one can see how easily some of Ostrovsky’s so-called comedies could have turned into what we may loosely call tragedies. Incidentally, it is certainly worth considering the view of one critic who felt that Ostrovsky sugarcoated his endings as a compensatory consolation to the viewer/reader for the dark realities just portrayed which might unrelieved be morally discouraging.

  Relatively objective, Ostrovsky nevertheless does have his tendentious side and is frequently a propagandist for social justice. This is most obvious when some of his rebellious and morally good characters engage in excited moralistic preaching, usually near the end of the play. However, what probably influences us more is Ostrovsky’s satirical portrayal of the oppressive and insensitive characters. And yet Ostrovsky rarely insist
s too much. His satire is sharp but seldom bitter. He was not a misanthrope or pessimist. Painfully aware of the grim realities in his society he also had an optimistic faith in the power of education, considering the stage to be an educational forum.

  Why was Ostrovsky so popular during the Soviet period? Was it because with some reason he could be considered anticapitalistic? Because he believed in education? Because he exalted work? Certainly such factors would have him congenial to the officialdom, but they were hardly the reasons why normal Soviet citizens would have wanted to take in an Ostrovsky play on a cold winter’s night. They must have gone simply because of Ostrovsky’s dramatic art, because they found his plays entertaining and worthwhile.

  I. A. Goncharov best summed up Ostrovsky’s significance for Russian drama when he wrote to Ostrovsky in 1882, “You have made a gift of an entire library of artistic works; you have created for the stage your own special world. You alone have finished the building for which Fonvizin, Griboedov, and Gogol set the cornerstone. But only after you can we Russians say with pride, ‘We have our own Russian, national theater. By rights it should be called The Theater of Ostrovsky.’”

  A PROFITABLE POSITION

  A Comedy in Five Acts

  (1857)

  CAST OF CHARACTERS*

  ARISTÁRKH VLADÍMIRYCH VYSHNÉVSKY, a decrepit old man with symptoms of the gout.

  ANNA PÁVLOVNA VYSHNÉVSKY (MME. VYSHNEVSKY), his wife, a young woman.

  VASÍLY NIKOLÁICH ZHÁDOV, a young man. Vyshnevsky’s nephew.

  AKÍM AKÍMYCH YÚSOV, an old official serving under Vyshnevsky.

  ONÍSIM PANFÍLYCH BELOGÚBOV, a young official under Yusov.

  FELISÁTA GERÁSIMOVNA KUKÚSHKIN (MME. KUKUSHKIN), widow of a collegiate assessor (a rank in the civil service giving the right to hereditary nobility).