Major Strategies in Twentieth Century Drama: Apocalyptic Vision, Allegory and Open Form by Estelle Manette Raben (review)

Book Reviews 57! ESTELLE MANETTE RABEN. Major Strategies in Twentieth Century Drama: Apocalyptic Vision, Allegory and Open Form. American University Studies (Series IV, English Language and Literature, Vol. 67). New York, Bern, Frankfurt am Main, Paris: Peter Lang 1989. pp. 154. As the title clearly indicates this study proposes to prove a thesis: playwrights of OUf tragic century, seeking fonns and conceptions to sustain their new art, have articulated three strategies, "apocalyptic thought, open fann, and allegory" (p. 5). The prototheological apocalyptic thought, issuing from The Book of Revelation, has become secularized. "The millenarianism implied in the apocalyptic endings of modem plays" (p. 10) is a pessimistic warning of doom. Severed from its theological roots, it "may be considered politicized and psychologized by metaphor" (p. I I). In the same manner, traditional allegorical modes do not apply to "a society without a common public philosophy" (p. IS). Thus, modern allegorists build their system "on ... the current social, political, and moral stance" (p. IS). Using Edwin Honig's Dark Conceit: The Making of Allegory, Estelle Manette Raben proceeds to prove that symbolists and allegorists of our time "work against the cultural grain in trying to carry forward a tradition of insight based on the concept of the dignity of man ... " (Honig quotation, p. 20). Yet, by renewing the apocalyptic vision and the allegorical form by means of the ambiguous openend, contemporary playwrights are tapping the archetypal models, albeit ironically, and linking their explorations to those of the classical writers of Greece, Rome and Renaissance Europe. To prove her point, Dr. Raben "sets the background" (p. 25) of her discussion by examining five plays that fail to "integrate" her "three paradigms into a cohesive pattern" (p. 25). Clearly the author is in Jove with theory, and the plays get squeezed into this tight corset. Starting with Chapter 3, Dr. Raben pairs 6 plays: The Cherry Orchard and Heartbreak House (3); La Turista and The Birthday Party (4); The Water Hen and Endgame (5). The frrst pair, ushering in our century, might be subtitled "Intimations of the Apocalypse." The second presents the destruction of the central character. The final pairing suggests the dissolution of the social order, and, in Beckett's case, projects the image of a post-catastrophic planet. Perhaps one of the chief difficulties we face as scholars is dealing with works translated from a language we do not know, and a culture we are unfamiliar with. Although I would like to praise Estelle Raben for her political reading of the text and subtext of Chekhov's last play, I also wish to correct some serious misinterpretations. Written on the eve of the revolution of 1905, and only 13 years before the Revolution, The Cherry Orchard does indeed celebrate "the passing of the agrarian age of Russian history ... and the arrival of a commercial and industrial age" (B. H. Bruford as quoted on p. 41). But a flawed reading ofTrofimov's line: "All ofRussia is our orchard" (p. 38) as "a controlling metaphor (for) the violence ... felt by the orchard" (p. 3S) turns the latter into "a synecdoche for all Russia" (p. 42). The reader must keep in mind that Trofimov is one ofChekhov's utterly helpless fools, "the eternal student" who never left 572 Book Reviews the confines of his masters' estate, even after the accidental death of his young charge, and the departure of the mistress of the house for Paris. His idealistic exclamation must be translated as follows: "We mustn't remain attached to the past, and to private property. All ofRussia is our land." The people who spoke in this manner in the previous century were the nihilists, depicted with gentle irony by Turgenev in the character of Bazarov (Fathers and Sons). Such pronouncements led after the Revolution to enforced collectivization which spelled the ruin of Soviet agriculture, and caused the death by starvationoftwenty millionproductivepeasants. ChekhovdepictsTrofimov as aeomical utopian idealist, and a dangerous idiot. As to the orchard, far from being all of Russia, it is referred to as a special place of beauty, one " mentioned in the Encyclopedia." In a letter Chekhov writes: "I dearly love Russian country estates." In fact, as soon as he made...