Russian Dramatic Theory from Pushkin to the Symbolists ed. by Laurence Senelick (review)

Book Reviews 573 by figures like the Mummy or the Milkmaid in the same play" (p. 217). For some readers, this definition may be rather superficial, and perhaps even somewhat na¥ve. But it is used to good advantage throughout the study, in part because Carlson is willing to stretch it when necessary and go beyond it in some situations. The individual plays selected for study are, with the possible exception of Master Olof, dramas of interest to an international audience: The Father, Miss Julie, Creditors, To Damascus I, Easter, A Dream Play, and The Ghost Sonata. Even though not as well known as these, Master Olof affords an appropriate point of departure in that it was Strindberg's first dramatic success and as such allows the reader to see how Strindberg's sense of myth grew and developed from the beginning of his career to the end. The course of this development was just what one might well expect. Strindberg began, the author argues, "by borrowing imagery from the great mythologies and ended by creating his own mythic world, a world with a unique landscape and inhabitants" (p. 216). When these plays are seen in conjunction with the world's great mythologies - rather than just in the context of Strindberg's relationships with his wives, or of his madness, or of his subsequent recovery - they lose none of their dramatic intensity or power, but become far more universal in meaning and appeal. The arresting stage images that Strindberg forges so masterfully work with particular clarity within this mythic framework as powerful reflections of fundamental aspects of the human condition; and they can readily be understood as far more than just the projections of the personal quirks of an enormously creative but highly eccentric mind. Among the most significant merits of this book is the fact that it asks more questions, albeit indirectly, than it answers. Some of Strindberg's most important works will be seen in a new and revealing light as a result ofthis investigation, but new and potentially rich avenues of inquiry have also been opened. Questions about mythic structure and mythic time and space, among many others, now invite attention more clearly than ever. Strindberg and the Poetry of Myth may well come to be recognized as an important turning point in Strindberg studies: it is a volume that cannot be overlooked. STEVEN P. SONDRUP, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY LAURENCE SENELlCK, tr. and ed. Russian Dramatic Theory from Pushkin to the Symbolists. Austin: University of Texas Press 1981. Pp. lv, 336. $35. In comparison to other European literatures for the theatre, native Russian drama has been a late starter, and it was not until the second half of the eighteenth century that its history really began. Given its short two hundred years ofexistence, the heritage is a rich one. By now the principal plays and playwrights ofthe Russian tradition, from Pushkin and Gogol up to Chekhov, Gorky, and Mayakovsky, have entered the mainstream of Western artistic culture and become a part ofthe world theatrical repertory. Butthe same familiarity cannot be claimed for Russian theory and criticism about the drama, where in many cases the basic texts have never been available in English, and are often rare and inaccessible even in Russian (because of Soviet nonrecognition and refusal to reprint - a point to which I shall return later). Laurence Senelick's anthology of Russian essays on drama, which for the most part have never appeared before in English translation, is a 574 Book Reviews particularly valuable and needed addition to our knowledge of a major dramatic literature. Making no secret of his aversion for the socially oriented Russian criticism that eventually grew petrified in the theory ofsocialist realism, Senelickincludes only a short essay by the first and best critic of that school, Vissarlon Belinsky; totally omits the heavy-handed and didactic Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov (who were interested in drama only for its message); and concentrates instead on the realists' arch foes, the symbolists. As the word Russian, not Soviet, in the title indicates, the collection stops short before the revolution. In fact, two-thirds of the selections - and ten of the fifteen authors represented - come from the decade...