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I. Our differences.
While glorifying the "good chaos", i.e., the extreme confusion and unscrupulousness that reign in Russian society, one well-known literary lady unpleasantly stumbled upon something solid, some kind of island in the misty sea of universal vagueness, which she and her kind like so much. . Such an island is proletarian ideology, i.e., Marxism. The literary lady was consoled by the consideration that this firmness was only apparent. In her opinion, it is worth taking any Marxist by surprise, and he will turn out to be the same confused layman, like herself and all her good friends. Of course, this is only ladies' self-consolation. The Marxist trend is rich in people who are consistent in principle, who have created for themselves a worldview, if not complete (a completely finished worldview is the lot of limited pedants), then in any case definite, placing them high above the changeable and shaky impressionism that has reigned everywhere.
However, Marxism is a single and integral trend in essence, being refracted in various environments and heads, it acquires a different character, is expressed in different ways, so that only the most general, so to speak, generic features remain unchanged, while in details, and even not only in details, individual species diverged far from each other.
It would, of course, be desirable to avoid such disagreements, or at least eliminate them where they arise as a result of an insufficient exchange of ideas between individual representatives or separate groups of the Marxist trend. Since, however, such disagreements have emerged, it is necessary to clarify them to the end, eliminate the misunderstanding and reject responsibility for those ideas of comrades in the direction that seem to this person and this group to be errors, so to speak, of a compromising nature.
One can be indignant at the claims of some Marxists to declare everyone who thinks differently from them as heretics standing outside the party, but one cannot deny their right to reject responsibility for ideas that profoundly contradict their own conception from themselves and their Marxism.
That trend in Marxism, to which the writer of these lines has the honor to belong, does not look back, but forward, we do not consider the truth ready, but only emerging; we do not excommunicate those who go to it in other ways: we consider our disagreements, our polemics a form of cooperation. In our criticism we can be harsh, allowing the same harshness in the criticism of our own views, because the hammer of criticism, crushing glass, forges damask steel. But any direction, in our opinion, has the right to prove its logic and strength, the final judge is the future.
However, we do not want and cannot hush up our differences with this or that representative of Marxism. I personally had to work quite a lot in the field of aesthetics and the theory of art, trying to apply here too the great principles of Marxism, as I understand it. If next to the ideas developed by me, others appear that claim to form the basis of Marxist aesthetics and most sharply contradict my convictions, it is absolutely impossible for me to remain silent. I cannot take responsibility for such a Marxist aesthetic, which, in my opinion, enables our opponents to celebrate easy victories over Marxism. I don't want to create a heavy confusion in the minds of fellow readers, an unnatural mixture of my aesthetic principles with completely opposite, but covered by the same names: Marxist aesthetics.
That is how I look at the controversy between Marxists. This is how I look at the objections that I consider absolutely necessary to make to comrades Shulyatikov, Fritsche and Steklov, who came up with some very controversial, in my opinion, provisions in the collection The Crisis of the Theatre.
II. Ideology and economics in the evolution of the theater.
Iabsolutely do not find it possible to agree that the method used by Shulyatikov in the study of ideology is the method of Marx and Engels, Kautsky and Mehring.
In essence, Shulyatikov uses three different methods, the common feature of which is, on the one hand, a certain resemblance to the method of the Marxists, and, on the other hand, a striking simplification leading to very bad results:
1) Shulyatikov's first method can be called the method of exposing deliberate lies . Ideology from this point of view is a deliberate lie, behind which the crudest economic interests of entrepreneurs are always hidden. An entrepreneur needs to reduce the cost of scenery - he beckons a serving person from the intelligentsia with his finger, explains to him in a nutshell what the matter is, and adds: I cut costs, and I renew sacred art. He is trying. So they would have cheated the public, if not for the "Marxist". But the "Marxist" knows that under any ideology there is an economic interest, and without much difficulty exposes the true background of all these theories.
Assessing this view of things, one has to note that here there seems to be a resemblance to serious Marxism, since the economic class interest is also considered by the latter to be the basis of ideology. But deliberately lying to cover up the most immediate interests of production is a highly private, rare and culturally insignificant case. Moreover, for Shulyatikov, the determinant of the ideology of a given time is exclusively the ruling class, he ignores all other classes. There are only deceitful capitalists and their henchmen, and a duped public that takes their ideology at face value. The difference between Shulyatikov and Marx turns out to be the same as between an analytical chemist and a sergeant-major who tries the soldiers' cabbage soup, whether they are "correct" or "they stink a lot."
2) The second method can be designated as the method of exposing the hidden apology of the ruling classes.There is no longer any talk about the direct connection of this ideology with the money profit. Capital points to a certain path of progress as desirable for it and inevitable for the rest of the classes. And so the ideologists adapt and adapt others to this formula of progress. It's hard for ideologues; in the difficult task of an apology for all the horrors of capitalist development, they often become so mentally ill that their creativity begins to take on an obviously pathological character. Shulyatikov has a great predilection for crude methods, and therefore Shulyatikov parted with the psycho-pathological method, which uses the hospital classification to understand the cultural life of mankind, not without regret. But he remains true to his "Marxism" and sees in the "absurdities" of modernism only a hidden apology for capital.
And here there are points of contact with serious Marxism. The ideology of all classes, including the ruling class, of course, has a really direct connection with the formula of progress, which is desirable for a given class. But, striving to see in any ideology of our time (with the possible exception of the proletarian one) an apology precisely for the large-scale capitalist formula of progress, Shulyatikov comes to monstrous exaggerations and completely distorts the whole spirit and meaning of modern culture, at the same time replacing the familiar faces of individual writers with some then inhuman caricatures.
One feature is characteristic of both of Shulyatikov's methods mentioned above. Understanding ideology, he does not calm down until he finds the most prosaic, possibly baser motive for it. The materialistic method turns in him into uniform misanthropy.
3) The third method, the method of the direct influence of technology on ideology . The idea of such an influence is inherent in Marxism. True, indirect and indirect influence (through the organization of labor) occupies an infinitely greater place in Marxism than stating the fact that art depends to a certain extent on the very technical means and methods of a given era, but such a stating can be useful if it is not exaggerated. ugly, which is the case with Shulyatikov.
Let us consider some examples of Shulyatikov's application of his methods, contrasting his own explanations of various ideologies that are more or less directly related to the theater.
What is modernism? The essence of modernism Shulyatikov considers the desire for simplicity of forms in all areas of art. Modernists claim that this noble simplicity is directed against the vulgar heaviness and barbaric complexity of modern art, the modern way of life. They also point out that mass factory production depersonalizes all the things one has to live among, raises a revolt against the machine for manual labor, against the principle of quantity for quality.
Shulyatikov considers the anti-philistinism and anti-capitalism of the modernists to be either knavery or self-deception. Modernism is the child of the modern iron industry. “The new industry brings with it a light, thin iron pillar,” Shulyatikov says. On this pillar he bases his whole strange theory.
First of all, simplicity is not a principle of modernism at all. It would be very good if it were so: then we would simply have a step forward before us. But modernism is almost entirely infected with decadence, the main features of which are blatant pretentiousness, deliberate illogicality, deliberate obscurity, all the ills of a nervous artistic personality striving to attract attention, grimacing more original than its competitors. The symbolism of some Rimbaud or Mallarme, drawings by Beardsley, music by Richard Strauss and ... simplicity!
The striving for simplicity shines through in modernism only here and there, and if modernism cannot be reduced to it in any way, then it cannot be put entirely on a “thin iron pillar”. To be convinced of this, it is enough to recall at least some of the phenomena of cultural history over the past centuries, all these turns and changes in styles, schools, trends.
How can we explain this phenomenon?
First , the change in the hegemony of individual social groups in art. The new class, brought to the fore by historical events, also brings a new, still fresh, still retaining the simplicity of a bud, artistic principle, sweeping aside all the overripe and complex wisdom of the old schools that dominated at the time of its rise. Secondly , the immanent law of the development of art. Shulyatikov hates all these immanent laws. He wants to convince "the reader of the absence of mysterious "internal" laws for the "higher" creations of the "human genius" - the fruits of dramatic art.
The words: inner, higher and human genius are put in ironic quotation marks by Shulyatikov. We think that economic materialism by no means denies any of these categories, but in this case, by the immanent law of art, we do not mean anything internal, higher or ingenious, much less anything mysterious and not amenable to social accounting.
All forms of ideology, like the very production of goods, aim to strengthen and organize society. At the same time, they influence each other, striving to eliminate from the entire system of life any contradictions that weaken it and to harmonize it. In that. sense there is an ideological struggle of different cultural formations among themselves. The decisive factor is the economy. It determines the position and, at the same time, the ideals of individual classes, it determines the growth or decline of their strength. But more than that, in the process of mutual adaptation of individual cultural principles, religion, philosophy, art, scientific theories, law and custom, ultimately yield and obey the inexorable requirements of the economy, i.e., the organization of production, because the latter is determined by the development of tools and techniques in the labor struggle against nature.
It by no means follows from all of the above that thinking, feeling, and free forms of creativity cannot have their own immanent, psycho-physiological laws; they have them and are determined by them entirely in their specific form , while they derive their content from the social environment, which is ultimately determined by the economy , which weaves the flows of cultures of individual classes and nations into a bizarre fabric called history.
The immanent psychological law of the development of art, which we spoke about in this case, is the law of complication. Impressions of equal strength and complexity, repeated many times, begin to produce an effect of less force and less complexity on the psyche, a feeling of monotony, boredom is obtained - “boring”. Hence the natural tendency of every artistic school to complicate and enhance the effect of its works. This leads first to the complete and exhaustive development of this artistic principle, which is the basis of this trend in art. Then comes a moment of luxurious over-ripeness; superfluous details, excessive expressions, the complexity of the idea bordering on confusion, external decorations that are not directly related to the main form of the work and serve to artificially lift the impression - all this can still, perhaps, evaluated positively by an impartial court of posterity, but already marks for him the beginning of the end of this school. Art then plunges into one or another kind of baroque, decadence. If a given class has not yet outlived its usefulness, it seeks artistic renewal, it draws for the most part new motives from the treasury of folk art, flushes away the old school with laughter and indignation and begins a new cycle of development. If outlived not onlythe art of this class, but also its social significance , is replaced by another class, bringing renewal and art with it. Finally, if the life of an entire society is exhausted, then the accompaniment to its social decay is a protracted artistic decadence, leading through pretentiousness to the final degeneration of art and barbarism.
This immanent law put forward by Avenarius sheds a lot of light on the cultural history of mankind. But this law is purely formal, it does not give us the slightest idea either about the content of art, or about the timing and nature of the changes taking place in it. We can get a vivid idea of the development of art only by examining its concrete history and using Marx's method in doing so.
Let's move on to a typical example of Shulyatikov's application of his method, which we call the method of exposing deliberate lies. It is about the considerations of a certain Savitz, director of the Munich Shakespeare Theater, who is trying to prove the need to replace complex scenery and stage effects with simpler ones. Shulyatikov exposes our aesthete in a lie. According to Shulyatikov, all “appeals to the ‘genius of poetry’, in whose name the entire modernist campaign is allegedly undertaken, turn out to be of no real value: behind them there remains only the significance of a mask covering a certain economic significance.”
In fact, reform attempts in the field of the theater are determined by a more complex set of conditions than our author thinks.
The gradual rise in price of the theatrical undertaking as such, caused by the desire of the theatrical capitalists to outdo the competitor with the brilliance of the production, has as its natural consequence an ever more complete subordination of the playwright and the artist to the bag of money. The center of gravity is transferred to permanent capital, and the theater can easily do without a talented artist or playwright, while the latter are deprived of any opportunity to manifest themselves outside the modern luxurious and complex theatrical apparatus. This has been the trend in the development of the theater until recently. It is quite understandable that the protest of theatrical artists has finally grown stronger and has resulted in the form of a categorical demand to shift the center of gravity from a dead inventory to a living acting. This is the first reason for theatrical reform: it is the emancipatory desire of the artist.
Meanwhile, the public is also differentiated. There is, of course, a large petty-bourgeois audience, greedy for the spectacle as such, and in its mass constituting an inescapable flock of various conjurers-entrepreneurs. But an important element among the theatrical audience is the intelligentsia. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the new demands of this intelligentsia in order to give an account of the question that interests us. We cannot now carry out such a study, and we will only note that impressionism, symbolism, the cult of the individual, and similar phenomena have modern theater in common with all literature.
Finally, the third reason was the peculiar disintegration of many big-bourgeois families and the appearance of a disgusting type of bourgeois epigone-decadent. The theater of tricks, striking effects, realistic or enchanting luxury is not on the nerves of these geeks: they are looking for nuances in the theater, a barely audible lullaby for their rotting premature decrepitude.
Of course, the financial considerations of entrepreneurs to reduce production costs went along with these trends, which Shulyatikov so frivolously rejected.
We see absolutely nothing harmful in the very tendency to simplify productions. The whole question is whether such a simplification is successfully carried out. Personally, we assume that it can be produced successfully. At the same time, the opportunity to reduce the cost of seats and make the theater accessible to everyone is extremely profitable and democratic. Savitz says about this: "With a larger number of seats, the price of admission, this important point in the organization of folk theaters, could be significantly reduced."
Shulyatikov sees a simple catch here too: "Art must be popular - this statement on the lips of the theater reorganizers is simply an indication of a well-known source of new income for the theater box office."
Ah, what a misanthrope this Shulyatikov is! Why not believe in the sincerity of Savitz? Why not believe that the artist wants to get in touch with the masses? But after all, this reason is of a "higher" nature, and Shulyatikov's Marxism allows only base motives.
In the last part of his article, Shulyatikov somewhat expands his methodological devices with great loss of clarity and without any gain in terms of the final result.
Regarding the modernists (Andreev, etc.), Shulyatikov comes to the following conclusion: “Their doxology in honor of death signifies nothing more and nothing less than a victory hymn written on behalf of those who, in the hands of capitalist society, own the economic future.”
Andreev, Sologub sing, it turns out, a victorious hymn to capital! A pretty victory hymn that makes dogs howl and milk turns sour. By what paradox could Shulyatikov come to such a blatant absurdity as to turn the most notorious pessimists and enemies of all energy into spokesmen for big-bourgeois imperialism, such as Kipling or Annunzio of the latest formation?
Andreev is becoming more and more definite opponent of socialism and philosophical realism. But to say about him that he defends the interests of capital on behalf of the latter is to put oneself in a ridiculous position and, with Suzdal rudeness of judgment, cast a shadow not on the enemy, but on this direction, which one so “resolutely” and so clumsily serves. Shulyatikov, trying to base his judgment about Andreev on facts, writes the following: “Andreev’s heroine, in whose face the playwright tried to portray the type of a convinced revolutionary and defender of the interests of the “fourth estate”, suddenly begins to speak in this language: “Yes. I found, I know now what I will do. I will build a city and settle in it all the old, like the lovely Ellen, all the poor, the crippled, the crazy, the blind. There will be deaf-mutes from birth and idiots, there will be eaten by ulcers, paralyzed. There will be murderers... There will be traitors and liars, and creatures like people, but more terrible than beasts. And the houses will be the same as the inhabitants, crooked, hunchbacked, blind, ulcerated, houses - murderers, traitors ... And we will have constant murders, hunger and crying; and I will make Judas king of the city and I will name the city "To the stars!"
"To the stars - through corpses, at the cost of degeneration!" - Shulyatikov remarks: “An amazing “formula of progress” ... but very understandable in the mouth of a modernist. It turns out that L. Andreev rented the costume of a fighter for the emancipation of the proletariat for his heroine. Now this costume is thrown off, and the heroine comes out with her real credo - which is at the same time the credo of the playwright himself - with a sermon pointing to her place in the ranks of a different class.
With regret, I must confess that even among bad bourgeois critics I have not met such a misunderstanding of what is being read, a misunderstanding deliberate or resulting from eristic blindness. As! Shulyatikov does not understand that this is a cry of pain and indignation, that this is a bloody satire on the formula of progress that he wants to impose on Andreev, that this is a hysterical admission of his weakness to correct life, that this is the voice of sorrow, compassion and despair. Yes, Marusya is not a representative of the fourth estate, not Treitch, she is an intellectual with a fragile heart, whose cheerfulness and courage could not resist a personal blow of fate that made a hole in her heart, through which the horror of life gushed in black waves.
Marxist criticism has nothing to spare Andreev, because in his role as a pessimist-destroyer he swung at revolutionary values; it is easy for us to reveal to our friend-reader all the ulcers of this sick soul, but it is all the more absurd to raise wild accusations against him, which can only be understood as a sign of weakness and a tendency to slander.
May my comrades forgive me for the severity of these words, but is it possible to allow our music to be spoiled to such an extent by obviously false notes?
I personally consider Shulyatikov's entire misanthropy to be harmful. Class ideals are determined by economics, but this does not necessarily make them false, but remain ideals. To deny idealism in history does not at all mean to be a "materialist", for the essence of the materialist method lies in explaining the origin of ideals, and not in their naked denial.
Shulyatikov exclaims: “The magnificent cult of the “human personality” turns out, on verification, to be the worship of the “golden calf”. Romantic moods suggest the flattest, mercantile "realism".
If it is still possible to approach the merchant bourgeoisie with such assessments, then to interpret the entire bourgeois intelligentsia in this way, to make Carlyle, Standahl and Nietzsche, Byron, Ibsen and Strindberg representatives of flat merchants, covering up their "summa ratio" with pompous lies - monstrous, monstrous all the more, that Marxism fights against individualism, not as a deliberate lie, but as a hostile ideal, and does not at all need naive misanthropy, the theory of bribery and self-interest in order to give a socio-economic explanation for individualism.
III. The death of the theatre.
The European theater lives an undeniably unhealthy life. We can say, perhaps, that he is going through a crisis. But this expression is completely misinterpreted by both Steklov and Fritsche. Steklov sees all searches as meaningless and harmful, all this is a fall into sin, the golden age of the theater is behind - this is the naturalistic period of its history. Steklov does not despair, like Fritsche, in the theater itself, he does not believe, as the author of The Theater in Modern and Future Society, that the working class will follow in the footsteps of the Puritans and completely reject the stage, but Steklov places his hopes on the convergence of the masses of the people and the old naturalistic theater.
Neither the theory of the fall into sin, nor the theory of the death of the theater will find supporters in us: the theater is developing, the disintegration of the bourgeoisie creates new motives and techniques in the field of dramatic art, the proletariat can borrow something both from the more wholesome and healthy bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie of the era of positivism, and from restless, rushing about in its autumn dying of the bourgeoisie of our days. But he creates his own philosophy, the foundations of which have already been brilliantly laid, and his own art, his own theater, at the bright birth of which we are present.
About the death of the theater in the present and its complete absence in the future, in which Fritsche believes, we will talk later. And now let us express a few considerations about bourgeois realism and the coming proletarian art, in addition to what we have already said in other articles devoted to the same issue.
But for this we need to find out, at least in the most general terms, what symbolism is and what its relation to the drama is. True, we have spoken about this more than once, but we will now have to approach this issue from a new point of view. Bazarov in his article "Mystery or Life" makes an excellent contrast between two radically different concepts, hidden under the same term - symbolism. Condemning the symbolism of the "symbolists" already out of fashion in quotation marks, Bazarov writes:
“I have used the word “symbolism” here, of course, not in the sense in which one speaks of “symbolic” art as opposed to realistic. Symbolism, as a special method of artistic generalization, strictly speaking, is not even opposed to realism; it represents only a further step in the development of the latter, a deeper understanding, a bolder and more consistent implementation of the very task that the realist artists pursued, striving for the typicality of their images. "Symbolism", which was discussed above, is not a way of artistic creation, but a concrete fact of a particular psyche. This is a characteristic everyday feature of the modern refined soul, the empirical impossibility for it to recognize how valuable, everything is clear, definite, distinctly outlined, and the resulting conscious desire to possibly increase the chaotic, whimsical,
All this is absolutely true. Genuine symbolism is not opposed to realism, this is its highest stage. The only difference between a type and a symbol is the amount of capture. A relatively small and special circle of experience, when subjected to artistic treatment, as a quintessence, creates a type: the type of a peasant, an official, a German, etc. A much larger circle of observations, compressed into one image, already gives a symbol. These are like cones, the height of which, with an equal slope, depends on the area of \u200b\u200btheir base. Logic teaches: the wider the scope of a given concept, the poorer its content, but art breaks the laws of logic: symbolic figures (Balder, Prometheus, Ivan the Fool, Hamlet, the Grand Inquisitor) are carried away, of course, into the heights, live outside the real environment, their environment fantastic and abnormal from the point of view of naturalism, but it is rational and highly normal from an artistic point of view. For the poet, not constrained by the framework of reality, drawing on fantasy, tries to create such an environment and such events in which certain deep principles are manifested with the greatest, unearthly brightness and power, the distorted, diminished and worn face of which the poet saw under a layer of dust of chance and set free for the teaching of brothers-people.
The only correct understanding of symbolism, which is stated above, completely destroys all considerations about the impracticability of a symbolic drama, just as the facts destroy it, since most great tragedies and many great comedies are strictly symbolic works. Of course, if, together with Ellis from Libra, one thinks that a symbol can only be contained in “confuses paroles”, and that it can only be based on “correspondances that never coincide with the world of phenomena”, then symbolic theater is unthinkable. But are the First Faust or Cain confuses paroles? Are elusive correspondances the foundation of Macbeth? Didn't the great symbolism of the ancient world and Christianity constantly strive for stage embodiment? But how could it be otherwise? After all, life, captured in symbols, is its enlightened reflection, its interpretation through artistic transformation? Isn't the stage another life in which human life and will systematically combine and separate what is unreasonably entangled in far inhuman reality? Similarly, if, together with Bely — of course, infinitely more witty and profound than Ellis — we consider symbolic creativity as a simple desire to clothe the process of abstract metaphysical or ethical thinking in concrete clothes, then the symbolic drama will also turn out to be impossible, because they will collide and interfere with each other. the logic of passion and action inherent in drama, with the logic of pure thought underlying the symbols. But this is not true either: a symbol is not a point of contact between abstract thinking descending from the sky and a concrete image taking off from the earth; then only a brief kiss of the spirit on high and the spirit of the earth would be really possible, such as we have in the bright image that suddenly flashed in Kant, or in the philosophical idea that unexpectedly struck us in Pushkin; then the lyric itself, with the exception of such a false kind of poetry as didactic, would be the scattering of such a happy point of intersection of two lines, two straight strings of the human soul. But living poetic symbolism draws from life itself, the images for it are not simple allegories, not clothes of philosophical, ethical concepts, but the true essence of the most concrete reality, and not a mysterious, invisible, “internal” essence, but artistically generalized colors, screams , movements, artistically clarified features of a single external and internal universe at the same time.
Symbolic theater is possible. It has been repeatedly implemented, of course, not by those Symbolists who are only capable of "confuses paroles". But this is not enough. The proletariat will demand, in our opinion, precisely the symbolic theatre.
Henrietta Roland-Golst quite rightly pointed out the main shortcoming of naturalism - the absence of an ideal in it. Not illuminated by the star of the ideal, unable to connect themselves and their present with world history, with the grandiose heritage of the past and the prospects for the future, naturalists completely delved into the present, which they painted in every detail. But the details of the present, the outer everyday shell of today, are of no interest to the proletarian, the bearer of the great world-historical ideal. Take a picture of the life of the worker himself. If you constantly begin mournfully portraying the worker, his deprivations, resentment, all his bitter lot, you will quickly set his teeth on edge, as proof of which I already cited in the article "Theater and Socialism" the debate of the Breslav Parteitag. But even the depiction of the struggle of the worker, copied from his present state, does not give much. We must unfold it, show its titanic scope, make its victory obvious. But for this it is necessary to go beyond the limits of this reality, as Verhaarn already did in his Dawns, an imperfect drama, but very important as a stage in the development of a new art.
Similarly, in a satirical or, in general, in one way or another hostile depiction of other classes, first of all the main enemy - the capitalists, and then all varieties of philistinism - the proletariat is unimportant and uninterested in the details of their life, but their very soul is important, it is important to understand the basic types in their development and inevitable decline. Bourgeois realism gave a huge series of beautiful portraits of representatives of capital and the philistine world in general, but even Balzac, the titan of realism, who at the same time felt so much almost romantic pathos in his soul, even Balzac, who possessed a gigantic power of fantasy and generalization, gave only types, gave only interesting variety, did not create an eternal and general figure that would characterize any large, world-historically significant group of philistinism. But he nevertheless provided the most processed material for subsequent symbolic creativity, and, perhaps, came closest to it. Others burrowed into the sand of trifles, and were even less able to step back and place the figures of a great drama against the backdrop of a world-historical landscape.
Great symbolism was always unfolding when this or that people, or class, awakened a vivid consciousness of its world-historical mission.
Oppressed by their aristocracy and finally crushed by a national disaster, the Jewish mob creates the great symbolism of the Bible, Haggadah and Kabbalah. Moaning in the depths of the great but shattered Empire of masters, the ancient proletariat unfolds the symbolism of redemption and the Last Judgment, unheard of in terms of tragedy, also firmly believing in the world mission of the poor in general, just as the Jews believed in the fate of their people. The Catholic clergy that came to replace it unfolded the dark and deep symbolism of their Augustines, Aquinas and, indirectly, Dante. In general, the highest moments in the development of deep-philosophical, symbolic poetry in the broadest sense of the word were, we repeat, the moments of the world-historical consciousness of certain parts of humanity. To end the series with an example, taken at random from the treasury of cultural history, let me also remind you of that incomparable flowering of Polish romanticism, Polish symbolic poetry, which is inextricably linked with the names: Mickiewicz, Slovak, Krasinsky and with the name of the unfortunate and touching Toviansky, in times of grief and humiliation, who showed the Polish nation the path of service to humanity.
And is it possible that the proletariat, whose ideology and practice, having done away with the myth of providence once and for all, has permeated the entire history of mankind with an even more joyful and heroic light of higher meaning, is it possible that this class-messiah, which the earth has never seen before, will not be able to embody its broadest concepts, its understanding, love and hate, struggle and hope into gigantic images that live an intense artistic life? No, he will have his Aeschylus, his Dante, who will take from him the powerful but obscure phantoms and chords that inhabit his collective soul and, turning them into monumental figures-symbols, will make them dance the great dance of life to as yet unheard-of music.
All of the above, by no means, does not reject naturalistic art - it can have its place of honor. After all, no one rejects for the sake of a heroic epic or a symphony - a simple song. The realm of art is vast, and in it there is a place for the most diverse types of beauty and creative methods. But still, a hierarchy reigns in it, and symbolic art is at the top.
Fritsche's arguments, which he cites as evidence of the dying of the theater in our days, did not convince me. Ascertaining the enormous success of the cinema, Fritsche sees this as a defeat for the theatre. We take for example, at least the latest reports of the Paris theaters. It turns out that their attendance and profitability have not decreased at all, rather, the opposite trend is noticed. In big cities, new theaters are constantly being built and opened, the smallest cities are striving to have their own at all costs. Everywhere there is a tendency to open special cheap theaters for the people and an increase in the interest of the lower strata of the population in the theater. In a word, in fact, in quantitative and economic terms, the theater is flourishing. The lamentations of the entrepreneurs of the theatrical business are exactly like other capitalist lamentations: capital loves to pretend to be offended.
Let's move on to the internal state of the theater. With Fritsche, it somehow turns out that the classical, naturalistic and simply average petty-bourgeois repertoire, all sorts of Landaus, Bernsteins, Capuses, were handed over to the archive as unusable, that staged plays did not pay off and were removed from the stage, that the decadent theater froze all action and came to self-denial ... In fact, nothing of the kind: Shakespeare, Schiller, Hugo, Molière and others, as well as Messrs. Sardou and Donne are successfully given with the same success as 10, 20, 30 years ago. Complaints about the high cost of productions did not prevent Stanislavsky from staging The Blue Bird, did not prevent Antoine's Odeon and the German Reinhart Theater from surpassing themselves in each new production. The decadent theater has not died either, on the contrary, only now, one can say, the mass staging of Maeterlinck's old dramas and their feverish reworking into operas begins; does not die, but on the contrary, Ibsen's success grows in breadth and depth, no matter what Bely says. Fritsche maintains that social, in other words, labor drama, had to be removed from the stage everywhere, but even if this were completely true, this does not prevent the fact that social drama is a product of the last decade and that, failing to conquer the bourgeois theater, it will find shelter in the theaters of the workers. Of the latter, Fritsche writes the following: “Perhaps the most direct and sympathetic public today are the workers. At the very least, the former director of the Burg-theater admits that nowhere did he see "more receptive listeners, who, moreover, possessed surprisingly true instincts" as the workers - Social Democrats. Indeed, the proletariat has repeatedly shown a great and sincere interest in the dramatic art. It suffices to point to the "Free People's Stage" that arose in Berlin in 1980—a truly proletarian theater maintained at the expense of the workers. However, under existing social conditions, with low wages and excessively long working hours, the proletarian is deprived of the opportunity to visit the theater and influence the repertoire. In addition, the ordinary worker is not at present sufficiently developed to serve as a reliable support for the entrepreneur and playwright. Vandervelde reports (Socialism and Art) that at the performances organized by the Arts Section at the Brussels People's House, where plays of the latest repertoire were staged, usually with a social tendency, it is true that there was always a group of workers, mostly qualified, but it was "far from being the majority" ; the working masses were more willing to listen to various old melodramas on Sunday evenings.
The fermentation, searching, painful impulses of modern theater are by no means symptoms of dying. There is no doubt that 50 years ago the repertoire and productions were more monotonous and worse, and the influence of the theater is less than it is now. And this is because the social drama is growing and intensifying. The big bourgeoisie clings to imperialism, fraught with drama, loving energy and action, seeking to reconcile the tragic contradictions of struggle in the "lofty ideas" of militant patriotism or personal thirst for power. The Nietzschean and imperialist Annunzio has already given in his last two dramas outstanding examples of such a theatre. oneTrue, the leaden dullness of the heads adorned with diplomatic cocked hats, and the too distinct snapping of wolf teeth, which no Zarathustra can drown out, will probably prevent imperialist dramaturgy and the "colonial theater" from gaining wide influence. But here it is not a particular crisis of the theatre, but a general crisis of the bourgeoisie that is at work. And we can only enjoy it.
The middle classes, perhaps, have never shown such painful ideological activity: it is a kind of deathbed rush from bloodless mysticism to outbursts of crazy passion, from Burne-Jones to Stuck, from Verlaine the Uranist to Verlaine the Catholic, from the neo-Kantian sobriety of secular pastors to hysterical fiction of the Weiningers and Schure, etc., etc.. An extreme degree of despair begins to break through in the theater, where, next to Ibsen and Hoffmannsthal, with Chekhov and Maeterlinck, the theater of hopeless horror, the theater of Andreev and Wyspyansky, begins to gain its place . The cemetery and infirmary character that underlies all almost any talented works of representatives of the middle classes, again, is not the fault of the theater as such - this is also an indicator of the cultural crisis of the bourgeoisie in general. If you can't say in order for all creative abilities to dry up in the bourgeoisie, then the ability for healthy creativity has apparently dried up completely. Poets with a strong temperament—the Gorkys, the Verkharns, Demeny—are going over to the proletariat. But this is the danger and sorrow of not only the theatrical, but the general cultural crisis, that the proletariat has not yet overcome the terrible difficulties that lie between its real position and its cultural possibilities. But the proletariat is growing. Even before the cultural scepter falls out of the dying hand of the bourgeoisie, it will wrest it from it, and this scepter, like Aaron's rod, will bloom with huge and fragrant flowers. Even now, approaching the proletarian masses, like plunging into the Siloam font, makes the paralyzed healthy. The poet and philosopher of cultural rickets, Maurice Maeterlinck, before our eyes, took his bed and went, and went well.
Culture is sick, theater is sick. But neither culture nor theater die.
T. Fritsche certainly wants to kill the theater ideologically. We have already cited his judgments about the workers' theatre. There, the relatively low success of this theater is explained by the insufficiently high education of the proletarian masses, but it is stated that the advanced workers love the theater. Later, Fritsche forgets about all this. It turns out that the workers organically cannot stand the theater: “Each time a new class entered into a struggle with recent masters for power, it directed its attacks not only against the world of afterlife spirits, but also against the world of theatrical shadows, denying the first and abolishing the second. . Thus, the English bourgeoisie of the 17th century was so consistent that they did not recognize either the independent existence of the spirit or theatrical art.
And so, the proletariat has to learn from the consistent philistines of the puritan wars, who rejected all art and made the most boring, hypocritical everyday life out of life.
Does Fritsche really set as an example to the proletariat these Zerubbabels, vile psalms, these people who, with all their military, political and moral courage, are culturally and aesthetically a symbol of stupid vulgarity and impenetrable philistinism?
Meanwhile, this is not a lapsus; Fritsche tries to base his hostility towards the theater on a number of theoretical considerations. There are three such considerations: 1) tragedy in the future society is impossible due to the complete absence of tragedy in life; 2) the theater will be destroyed, since it is inextricably linked with the dualism of the body and spirit, which will be eliminated in the future; 3) the theater is to be destroyed as an instrument of domination by the upper classes. To this we add Fritsche's prediction that theatrical performances will be replaced by processions and festivities.
Let us examine all these propositions which the author has put forward against me and Comrade Bogdanov, and against which I would strongly protest if they were not polemically directed against us. I will do this all the more willingly because our dispute will provide an opportunity to clarify some important aspects of the theater, which, in our opinion, is so vitally connected with all human culture.
Disputing the element of tragedy in the life of socialist mankind, Fritsche notes: “Everything allows us to think that as humanity moves to higher forms of economic activity, as machine technology develops, as, in the words of Rich . Wagner, nature turns from a mistress into a servant, the feeling of helplessness and instability is increasingly giving way to a sense of confidence and security.
He solemnly concludes: “Together with the consciousness of the “life tragedy”, the ground for tragic spectacles will inevitably disappear. Forgetting past strife, humanity will move out of the chaos of disunity onto the path of a solidary and systematic struggle of all against a common enemy - against "elemental nature" - and from the depths of its spirit, along with a feeling of boundless power, only jubilant hymns will be born, illuminated by the light of joy and happiness, in the honor of a new life created by the combined forces of all!
Our thesis about the eternal tragedy of human life Fritsche compares with the bourgeois theory of "hopeless tragedy", put forward by the way Berdyaev.
Fritsche completely overlooks the fundamental difference. Everyday tragedy, which Berdyaev tried to sanctify forever, is a defensive and passive tragedy, it states the humiliation and impotence of a person in the face of fate; it is directly opposed to the tragedy of struggle and energy. But the very tragedy of the struggle can be pessimistic, when only the majestic prospect of death with a sword in hand and protest on the lips is drawn, when all consolation lies in the greatness of the perishing; he can be optimistic when the efforts of the victim and death itself are presented as stages on the road to victories.
In the collection The Crisis of the Theatre, in an article by Comrade Bazarov, we find the following excellent lines: “Fate is only resistance experienced in the struggle for the realization or preservation of life values. If the experience of struggle shows that resistance is insurmountable, that the highest values are unrealizable or doomed to perish, then a pessimistic worldview arises, otherwise, the worldview will be optimistic. With both a pessimistic and an optimistic final conclusion, the tragedy is all the more significant, the brighter the basic guiding values burn, the deeper their light penetrates into all aspects of life, the more intense, wider and more concentrated the struggle for them. Every death produces a depressing impression, every love beckons, but only against the background of the deep pathos of life, only against the background of a mighty struggle in life, does the tragedy of death and the tragedy of “strong as death” love arise.
With Fritsche, it turns out that the people of the future will become completely like modern decadents, they will not know what fate is, because they will not wage a real struggle. Where there is a real struggle, there are enormous efforts, there are sacrifices, danger, pain and often death. Does Fritsche think that humanity will someday be the absolute winner? God, at whose mere thought everything will be accomplished, or at least, for whom every goal is achievable without effort? I do not think that Fritsche believed in miracles that would mean the degeneration of man, since a decrease in effort means a decline in energy and impoverishment of life itself, but which are unthinkable, because the field of labor expands with the growth of his strength.
Not a few catastrophes, immeasurably superior to the forces of today's humanity, are drawn on our distant horizon. The merit of the "Red Star" is a concrete description of some forms of that colossal struggle with nature, which lies ahead for our great-grandchildren. But the point is not only in the dangers that threaten us by nature, which by no means merges with us in “pre-established harmony”. The point is still in the growth of human exactingness, human desires. How do we know with what impatience our descendant of genius will feel that power of space over him, that power of time, which even now makes our hearts shrink sometimes when they tell us about the splendors of the world of Sirius or about the wonders of the culture of the year 3000?
Fritsche is not talking about the final victory of man over the world, this is a metaphysical chimera, but about some kind of epoch of complacency, when a person will settle down comfortably on earth and will sing only jubilant hymns. If I were a Frichean, I would be afraid of the contemptuous criticism of a Nietzschean who would throw at me the famous phrase of his teacher: "We invented happiness, says the last man, and blinks intensely." Fortunately, I am not a Frichean: for me, socialism is the transition from slavery to freedom, and not from striving for complacency. For me, and I think for every socialist who is not infected with petty-bourgeois statics, harmony is not an end in itself, but only the transition of what was the subject of the struggle into the realm of the conquered, reconciled, finally humanized, so that on an expanded foundation the struggle against everything will flourish again. tension, with all the torments of love and creativity, a struggle that always takes “beyond our strength”, and strives, having grown these forces, through generations to catch the star of the ideal dancing in the sky and make it a winged horse for a gallop to new distances.
A culture devoid of antagonism, a culture in which the desired does not exceed what is realized, a culture in which there is no tragedy of tension, struggle, sacrifice - there is a culture of decadence, an autumn culture.
Two more words about death. Learn to die stoically, says Fritsche. Marx liked to repeat the words of Epicurus: "Death is terrible not for the dead, but for the survivor." I have no doubt that the horror of death will be overcome, but how? Will man become like a lower animal, unaware of the very presence of death? Is this stoicism? Or in a deep consciousness not only with the head, but also with the heart of the universal connection of life, all- lifeand triumphant in death itself? Doesn't Fritsche realize that the "stoic calmness" with which a rational being meets its own end, or the end of a dear friend, is the most genuine tragedy? Fritsche apparently imagines that tragedy implies only horror and sorrow, he forgot that it is primarily reconciliation, the victory of man over all horror and all sorrow; but the victory is not in the dulling of sensitivity, but in the highest contemplation of life, the contemplation of the tragic.
No matter how far a person goes, but as long as he goes up, fixing his greedy and powerful gaze on eternally new horizons, until then he will lean on the shoulder of the strict and passionate, bitter and comforting, calm and forever calling Melpomene forward. And if ever this greatest of muses moves away from a person, it will mean that he has become decrepit, fallen into childhood, sat down on the ground, lowered his eyes to his hands and childishly plays with the golden apple of complacency, purring like a cat, and falling asleep forever .
Fritsche tries to prove the fundamental vice of the theater, namely, its connection with dualism. For this, he refers to Prof. Vipper, citing the following words from his work “Psychology of the Theatre”: “Man invented the theater, proceeding from the belief in the duality of the world and in the dual nature of his own being, he hurried to paint the second world in bright colors and, of course, repeated himself only in raised tones” .
Man did not so much "invent" theater as he gradually developed it from festivities. One can argue whether symbolic festivities, such as the meeting of the sun, the funeral of summer, the expulsion of winter, associated with special, one might say, stage ceremonies and dressing up, took place independently among all peoples, or whether Europe only adopted them from the east, through calends, brumalia and bacchanalia. . But the following remains undoubted: 1) these festivities are popular, democratic, 2) it was from them that both comedy and tragedy arose, and 3) from them Orphic, and later Christian, mysteries developed.
It can be said without exaggeration that the central moment, both in the development of the theater and in the development of the cult, were dramatic rites depicting the birth, life, death and resurrection of God. The daily and annual solar turnover, the death and revival of vegetation were extremely important for man and in themselves. The sun-god and the thunder-god, as well as the god-grapes, the god-bread, deeply interested the farmer, and the real vicissitudes of their existence with the help of the most myth-making language were humanized and thus brought closer to the mind and heart of the farmer. But this is not enough: by throwing the clothes of human-like flesh over the elements, by humanizing his gods, man deified himself, from the naturalistic myth, from the drama of the forces of nature, a mystical meaning shone, the drama of life, the drama of man. Demeter and Kore, Dionysus and Adonis, became symbolic representatives of man in his struggle, sorrows, losses, in his death and unshakable confidence in the victory of life over death.
But this does not say anything against the theater, for both the animistic and naturalistic character was very soon forgotten and discarded by the theater. On the other hand, a different kind of dualism, generated by the fundamental symbolism of the primitive theater, remained forever inherent in it.
Prof. Whipper spoke, as we saw: "he hurried to paint the second light in bright colors and, of course, repeated himself only in raised tones ."
Fritsche turned all his attention to a completely unimportant dualism for the theater in general: “belief in the duality of the world” and let something else pass by: the “second world” that a person creates on stage is our same world only in brighter colors and raised tones. . This is indeed the radical aesthetic dualism of the theatre: striving to clarify life, to emphasize certain aspects of it, to exalt or ridicule them, serving the knowledge of life, or calling for a fight against it, the theater immediately began and always continued to transform it for its own purposes. This is the essence of all art, including, of course, stage art. In a society that is frozen, where there is nothing more to understand in life, where there are no longer oppositions between the ideal and reality, there will, of course, be no dualism between everyday life and its artistic reflection.
But the theater serves the upper classes, it is an instrument of hypnosis and enslavement. Here is what Fritsch says about this: “In the early stages of culture, the theater pursued mainly police tasks: with the help of terrible masks and monstrous images, vengeful gods and punishing devils, the theatrical performance led the audience into trembling fear. In later times, the commanding group no longer resorted to such crude forms of intimidation, and yet they still saw in the scene an excellent means of hypnotizing the auditorium with the play of shadows and thus imperceptibly imposing on it their own ideas about the life of society and morality.
“In a socialist society, where there will be no opposition between owners and producers, between organizers and the masses, between masters and subordinates, there will obviously be no ground for the emergence and existence of dualistic concepts of life, and along with the idea of an underworld of spirits ruling over rough matter, there will disappear and the idea of a stage towering above the auditorium, from the height of which ghostly doubles subjugate the psyche of real people by hypnosis for certain purposes.
Wonderful. But at the same time, shouldn't philosophy also be abandoned? From any art in general and even from journalism? Firstly, in their original form they are all associated with dualism, and secondly, they all served the ruling classes as a means of hypnosis. Yes, Fritsche will say, but they served not only the ruling classes, the struggling rising classes created their own revolutionary art, revolutionary philosophy and journalism. But wasn't there a revolutionary theatre, isn't such a thing possible? Doesn't Fritsche know with what diligence the censorship of the ruling classes strangles the theater? After all, this censorship has remained even in those countries where general censorship has long since become a thing of the past. Thus, the theater seems to the masters of the situation a more dangerous weapon than even the daily press. Did Fritsche not state to you the emergence of social drama, removed, according to him, from the stage at the insistence of the bourgeoisie? Why shouldn't it again take the stage at the insistence of the proletariat? Or Fritsche especially does not like the fact that the stagerise above the auditorium? But, firstly, the raek rises above the "scaffolding", and secondly, where will speakers be placed in the future, in a pit, or what? to make it harder for them to hypnotize the crowd?
Fritsche continues: “In a socialist society, the stage must again merge with the public, and theatrical performances, with their division into spectators and actors, will give way to collective festivities, solemn processions, mass choirs, etc.”
But he is deeply mistaken in believing that festivities and processions do not contain dualism. It was from them that the theater arose, as we have seen. A celebrating person is a transformed person, he is dressed in a different, unusual, bright dress, he does not walk, but dances, does not speak, but sings, does not work, but plays. This is the dualism of the real and the ideal, the dualism of the everyday and the exceptional, and our merciless "monist" obviously needs to make the festivities as gray and ordinary as possible so that theatricality does not creep into them. Down with emblematic chariots, down with symbolic clothes, you can’t put living pictures, God forbid, if someone stands on the pedestal and starts singing some couplets ...
Fritsche is a kind of puritan. But puritanism is something directly opposite to the tendencies of the proletariat. Puritanism is hatred of the culture of the economically backward elements. Tolstoy is a typical puritan: he does not want to master culture, he does not elevate it, he does not expand it, he does not want to heal it, but he wants to kill it, returning us to the delights of natural economy. Puritanism is a tendency of anti-capitalist classes, of capital being destroyed, of petty-bourgeois - the proletariat, the class created by capital, developed in its depths, going to replace it, has completely different moods. He greedily treats culture, he wants to penetrate it, assimilate it for himself in all its luxury, because he knows that he will be able to re-educate this beauty, he will be able to throw off all the ugliness from her, adorn her with new jewelry, he will be able to heal her from an ulcer of vice, make her your sweet friend.
As a brilliant and inquisitive Scythian Anacharsis, a worker-intellectual enters the rich Athens of human culture, already touched by the autumn of decadence. And our role, the role of the intelligentsia, who went to meet him, in this case is to serve as his guide, to help his bright curiosity, his healthy and strong spirit to see everything and weigh everything, to open all the chests and chests where the most filigree jewels, to allow him to penetrate beyond the appearance of things into their inner world-historical significance; and at the same time help his untouched instinct to protect himself from infection by corruption. But it is regrettable if the guide turns out to be a kind of puritan whose aversion to culture is caused, perhaps, by intellectual repentance and a hangover from the aesthetic intemperance of previous years. Such an Athenian culture-hater will quickly lead the brilliant barbarian, muttering: "all this is not good for hell, I hope you destroy everything and put it to the flames." And when the mighty Anacharsis smiles brightly at the sight of some kind of beauty, the sad grave-digger of culture drags him on as soon as possible, everything, they say, is sin, everything is decay.
Isn’t this what happened to Fritsche when, while stating the workers’ interest in the theatre, he at the same time teaches them to imitate the Puritans and, leaving Capital and other related literature, “collect all the books and burn them,” for all truth is contained in in the Quran.
If we add to Fritsche's puritanism, this product of the excessive repentance of a cultured person, his desire to interpret the future as calm jubilation, soft like a feather bed and sweet like sugar fudge, then we get a peculiar bouquet and notice that Fritsche's "Marxism" itself smells of rotten leaves and dry flowers.
A few more minor remarks. Steklov bravely defends realism. Shulyatikov bravely acts with his method of exposing an unattractive entity under all sorts of "phrases". And now, to my horror, Steklov turns out to be the defender of the "old factory."
Read in fact the following exposure of Steklov by Shulyatikov: “The break with the old forms of art, carried out by modernism, in the eyes of the orthodox realists was a real madness. And at first, in art nouveau, decadence was seen as nothing but the fruits of sick creativity. So it was in an age when the factories of the old type were still the dictator of the industrial world, when the new factory had to be content with the role of an obscure and unconditional parvenu. The old factory utilized the labor of the broad, untrained and poorly studied working masses, and the art of its era stood under the sign of realism, and then naturalism. And his admirers naturally looked down on the modernist performances.”
It seems to me that both resolute comrades are a little punished by this strong clash of foreheads. You should not be absolutely self-confident, consider everything that you disagree with as crazy.
Steklov - who loves soldier jokes - quotes Dragomirov's advice to some general to feed the horses so that they gain weight, not with rice and carrots, but with "sheep". Steklov with pathos demands "sheep" for the proletariat. I believe that the working intelligentsia, which alone can be discussed in this case, has greatly outgrown the simple decisiveness characteristic of our true Israelites, in whom there is no slyness, and their immaculate hatred of the Philistines. I think that by serving the proletariat that “oatmeal” Marxism that, in my opinion, prevails in the analyzed articles of the three comrades, we run the risk that the reader will even reach for the soaked “rice” of bourgeois science and the wormy “carrot” of aesthetic modernism. But if this article fails to be of any use to the three respected comrades,
A. Lunacharsky.