Maksimilian Voloshin

Theatre -- A Dream Vision

This year all theatrical groups in Russia are seized by feverish anxiety and expectations. All are looking, undertaking, and preparing for something new, something that is coming.

It's as if all the political anxiety of last year has been carried over this year into this world of conventional and abstract prototypes of life.

The Moscow Art Theatre, which sought and continues to seek for a detailed -- a most minutely detailed -- transmission of life, has begun to speak of simplification, of stylization.

Stanislavsky does not want to reconcile himself with the honourable and fine role, which has fallen to his lot, of carrying the realist stage through to its highest point.

Having created the theatre of Chekhov, he now dreams of creating the theatre of Maeterlinck.

Through the corridors and the dressing rooms of the Moscow Art Theatre runs a shiver of delight about Maeterlinck's new play, The Bluebird, a play not yet published in French that was sent by the author to the Moscow Art Theatre ¹.

Stanislavsky wants no actor, on whose lips the words of Chekhov's plays sounded, to take part in this new production.

The same feverish activity is taking place in Petersburg at Komissarzhevskaja's theatre.

These novelties, which are so sought after and which are promised to us, demand an answer to the question: what exactly is theatrical illusion?

The recently deceased French writer, Marcel Schwob, told of the following incident, while speaking of the conventions of the stage ².

An old tragedy of one of Shakespeare's contemporaries was being played, in which the hero exited in one scene carrying on the point of his sword the bloody heart of his lover, whom he had just slain.

"Wanting to make this scene more frighteningly realistic," Marcel Schwob said, "we got the real heart of a just slaughtered ram at a local butcher shop. But this black, formless lump of meat, when seen from the auditorium, aroused only laughter and bewilderment. But when, at the next rehearsal, a large, fake heart cut out of red flannel was fastened to the end of the sword, then all present trembled in fear."

The object on stage and the object in real life are not one and the same. A real object from everyday life becomes unreal when carried onto the stage.

A real, bloody heart carried onto the stage conveys no idea of reality whatsoever. But a symbolic heart, cut out of red flannel, conveys the whole terror of real life.

In life, some things are real; on stage, other things are real.

On stage, what are real are not objects, but the ideas of objects.

And if we follow attentively all the sensations of our dreams and our relationship to objects and setting when we sleep, then we will notice that there we are also dealing just with the ideas of objects, and not with their reality. Therefore, the unexpected changes and disappearances of forms, which would have shaken us to the bottom of our soul if we were awake, seem completely natural when we sleep.

There is a special logic to the dream, completely different from the logic of our daytime consciousness, but nevertheless fully rigorous and consonant with some basic but little-known properties of our brain.

And the logic of the dream is identical to the logic of the stage.

On the other side of the transparent, fiery shroud rising above the footlights, a new consciousness of reality begins for the spectator - a dream-state consciousness of reality: a world of things in themselves, the external forms of which can change arbitrarily without arousing any bewilderment whatsoever.

The stage is this dream-state consciousness of life, and the origin of this phenomenon lies in the very history of tragedy's birth.

There was a time when man was an animal. For this animal to give birth to a clear, mathematical consciousness, that is, a human consciousness, a profound intellectual shock -- the beast's lunacy -- was required.

The ape went mad and became a man, according to the striking expression of Vjacheslav Ivanov ³.

When man was an animal, he lived in the midst of the same impressions of reality he has now, and they came to him through the same organs of perception that he has now, but they passed through the brain differently, transfigured, magnified, sharpened as in a dream vision.

Analyzing our dreams, we can restore approximately the nature of the perceptions of the human being of those times.

I sleep. I dream of a long and coherent story. Someone insults me. I challenge him to a duel. Lengthy preparations follow. And I experience feelings of agitation, fear, and expectation. The seconds give the signal. I hear the shot of my opponent and, because of the sound of his gun, I awake.

Then I see that a chair has fallen.

The sound of the falling chair reaching my consciousness through the fog of a dream, which exaggerates the shapes and sizes of objects, stimulated in my brain this long, dramatic story.

In a fantastic dream I hear the ponderous steps of approaching giants and, having opened my eyes, catch the clatter of a horse moving off into the distance.

The basic features of a dream are exaggeration and a dramatic quality.

Legends, myths, folk epics -- these are the remnants of humanity's ancient, dream-state consciousness, tales of the real events of those times that have passed through the prism of the dream ⁴. The ancient dream-state consciousness, though at first it can seem distant, is far from alien to us today. During each intense emotional action we find ourselves wholly within the dream state, and in these moments our relationship to things is exactly that of ancient man. Only when the element of contemplation intrudes into the realm of action does our mathematical consciousness -- the ability to estimate and reckon-awaken.

The history of the orgiastic cults of ancient Greece, expounded in such detail in the articles of V. Ivanov titled "The Hellenistic Religion of the Suffering God," gives us a picture of the tragic insanity of ancient humanity while concluding its passage from a dream state to a daytime state of consciousness.

The intense craziness of the ape led to holy frenzy, to orgiastic dances, to human sacrifices.

According to ancient religions, wine was sent into the world to lock man within the gates of the dream-state consciousness.

History describes this period of the man-beast's insanity at the very end, when insanity took on the religious-ritualistic forms of Dionysian worship. From this, tragic theatre arises as the carrier of the ancient dream-state consciousness of humanity, which has already been pierced by the first lightning strike of mathematical lunacy.

From its beginnings theatre was the cradle of our dream-state consciousness, and it remains so even in our time, while passing through all the inflexions of literary and theatrical forms. Therefore, the stage takes from dramatic literary works and gives back only action and heartfelt emotions.

The rest that remains in a literary work is superfluous for the theatre.

Antique theatre was a dream-like action, but theatre in our day is a dream-like vision.

Antique theatre was a collective dream, but our theatre is a dream for each individual spectator.

The forms of the stage and the forms of a production play an important role in the mystery of the dream that springs up between the spectator and the actors. In this realm the dramatic intention of the author has the same significance as the sound of the falling chair or the clatter of the running horse.

It is only fundamental reality that has reached the consciousness of the spectator through the stage's dream vision unfolding before him.

The dream-like action is created by actors and spectators together, since in this sphere only creation in symbols is possible.

And symbols need to be, above all, universally recognized, since they are perceived not by reason but by our ancient dream-state consciousness, which became what we call the unconscious or, to be more precise, the subconscious.

A symbol adapted by reason will not be a symbol but an allegory. All true symbols are subordinate to the logic of our dream-state consciousness and senseless before the logic of our mathematical consciousness.

From this it becomes clear why a heart cut out of red flannel in the shape of the card suit of hearts compels us to tremble in horror when it appears on stage, whereas a genuine, anatomical heart arouses laughter.

The stage is a place where we contemplate things in themselves, and their features become visible only when they are essential. Therefore, that which we call a realistic production with its minute details impedes the free flow of the dream - and Meyerhold's idea to remove from the stage setting all that is unnecessary and to retain only those objects that have an immediate and vital relationship with the action is profoundly right.

In our theatrical dreams there were too many realistic shackles, and it is difficult to predict what new illusion will arise when the shackles are removed from us.

But behind the feverish search for new forms of scenic action something different is sensed, which has great significance for the current historical moment.

The searchers are preparing a cradle for an infant.

But where is the infant?

For what kind of new dream are they preparing a cradle?

In the meantime into these new forms old people and foreigners are fit and placed: Maeterlinck, Ibsen, Przybyszewski. Why here, in a land shaken by the fever of revolution, are new stages prepared with such enthusiasm and haste for the tragic conditions of the European soul, which caused such a fuss with its springtime gusts some fifteen to twenty years ago?

Theatrical fundamentals and traditions were not redesigned for them in their homelands. That means that they are not compelling the Russian stage to a total reconstruction.

The Russian spirit, itself, has become pregnant with a new type of tragedy, the new lunacy of a dream-state consciousness.

The consciousness of the dream state has never dimmed in anyone. The ancient consciousness has become the unconscious, but it is alive in each person. And the stage is its standard, its criterion.

At present, the change occurring in the dream-state consciousness of the people has not yet found its embodiment in the literary forms of tragedy, but the theatre, which is connected to this consciousness through fine, unbreakable nerve-fibres, is already preparing to accept new forms.

The forms of tragedy are closely dependent on the forms of social life.

They are like the arrow on decimal scales; onto the scales are thrown tens of weights, but the arrow advances only one indicator line.

A hurricane can rage on the surface of the sea, raising gigantic waves, but several fathoms lower, in the depths, there is total silence. Such a storm does not affect the forms of tragedy.

Thus it was during the French Revolution.

The political storm was reflected only in the smoky cloak of the words, in which the ancient body of tragedy was garbed, but the forms of tragedy did not change.

This was an indication that the core of the French spirit remained unchanged, which was true, since the Revolution was a categorical affirmation of a revolutionary change that had already been accomplished.

The arrow quavered only in the age of Romanticism and moved upwards one fine line; this indicated that something changed in the dream-state consciousness of the European spirit. A border between the past and the present was established.

Currently in Russia, the arrow, which indicates the alteration in dramatic forms, moves with unprecedented impetuosity, leaping across many indicator lines.

This is a sign that despite the gust of a political storm, which raised the foaming crests of the waves last year and then flew past, the seething is now beginning within.

The depths of the sea seethe, but its surface is calm.

Organic changes in the very depths of the nation's dream-state consciousness are taking place. Bombs, political murders, and executions are signs of the tense inner work of the dream-state consciousness, which in similar eras always placed the spirit in terrifying proximity to the mystery of death and the mystery of bloodletting.

The feverish quest in the realm of theatrical forms serves us as a joyful and prophetic token of the great rebirth happening in the depths of the Russian spirit.

Notes

This article was first printed in Rus', N. 71 (9 December 1906).

1. Maeterlinck's play was presented by the Moscow Art Theatre in the fall of 1908.
2. Further on, Voloshin recounts Schwob's acticle "Annabella and Giovanni," which deals with John Ford's Annabella, a tragedy produced in Paris in 1894.
3. In a letter to A. M. Petrova Voloshin wrote, "Vjach. Ivanov and I converse daily for several hours. He told me: "Yes, I acknowledge the ape. First the ape and then an unexpected ascent: the sunrise, paradise, the divinity of the human being. Something unique in history is being accomplished: an animal seized by lunacy. The ape went insane and became a human being. And the highest thing in life, tragedy, was born." (IRLI, f. 562, op.3, ed. xr. 93).
4. These notions are in keeping with the work of Sigmund Freud and his followers. In similar fashion K. Abragam advances an analogy linking the child's imagination with myth and with dreams (See K. Abragam, Son i mif, Moscow, 1912).

© Ralph Lindheim

© Zahar Davydov

back

top