Taboo Pushkin: Topics, Texts, Interpretations

Krzhizhanovsky’s Pushkin in the 1930s: The Cleopatra Myth from Femme Fatale to Roman Farce

402­ Krzhizhanovsky’s Push­ kin in the 1930s The Cle­ o­ pa­ tra Myth from Femme Fa­ tale to Roman Farce Caryl Emer­ son On 2 Jan­ u­ ary 1936, as part of the up­ com­ ing Push­ kin ju­ bi­ lee, the State Mos­ cow Cham­ ber The­ a­ ter com­ mis­ sioned a stage ad­ ap­ ta­ tion of­ Pushkin’s Eu­ gene On­ e­ gin (Ev­ ge­ nii On­ e­ gin) from one of its long­ time lec­ tur­ ers in the Ex­ peri­ men­ tal Act­ ing Stu­ dio, Si­ giz­ mund Krzhizh­ a­ nov­ sky.1 In­ ci­ den­ tal music was to be pro­ vided by Ser­ gei Pro­ kof­iev, then in the pro­ cess of re­ pa­ tri­ at­ ing with his fam­ ily from Paris to Mos­ cow. The mu­ si­ cal score was com­ posed, cos­ tumes were even ­ sketched, but the play ­ script, sev­ eral times re­ vised, never ­ passed theat­ ri­ cal cen­ sor­ ship. In the opin­ ion of party watch­ dogs and of­ fi­ cial Push­ kin­ ists, Krzhizh­ a­ nov­ sky had inter­ vened too rad­ i­ cally in the ca­ non­ i­ cal text. While re­ tain­ ing the torso of the On­ e­ gin ­ stanza, he had re­ moved ­ Pushkin’s nar­ ra­ tor, re­ as­ signed lines, ­ shifted major ­ events to deep win­ ter, ­ changed the order of some cru­ cial epi­ sodes, and en­ riched the speak­ ing parts with fairy tales and other ­ poetry by Push­ kin. The cen­ ten­ nial event it­ self—the death of a poet in a duel—was ­ staged only as a stub: in a howl­ ing bliz­ zard, Emerson / Krzhizhanovsky’s Pushkin in the 1930s 403 On­ e­ gin mut­ ters re­ morse­ fully over the dead body of his ­ friend. This post­ mor­ tem scene grows di­ rectly out of ­ Tatiana’s ter­ rify­ ing, grat­ ify­ ing dream.2 The ­ stalled On­ e­ gin pro­ ject was can­ celed ­ abruptly in De­ cem­ ber 1936, in the pan­ icked after­ math of an un­ re­ lated cri­ sis at the Cham­ ber The­ a­ ter: the ­ Politburo’s sud­ den at­ tack on a pro­ duc­ tion of ­ Borodin’s op­ er­ atic farce Epic He­ roes (Bog­ a­ tyri), with li­ bretto by ­ Dem’ian Bed­ nyi (see Carol Any in the ­ present vol­ ume).3 The ­ theater’s di­ rec­ tor, Al­ ex­ an­ der Tai­ rov, has­ tened to ­ cleanse his ­ jubilee-year rep­ er­ tory of all con­ tro­ ver­ sial pro­ jects. The dra­ ma­ tized On­ e­ gin dis­ ap­ peared. For Krzhizh­ a­ nov­ sky, this col­ lapse was the lat­ est (but not the last) in a ­ decade of fail­ ures to re­ al­ ize his crea ­ tive work in press, film, or on stage. A ­ gifted adap­ tor for the the­ a­ ter, he was also a ­ writer of phan­ tas­ ma­ gor­ i­ cal prose and a pro­ voc­ a­ tive, al­ though “un­ of­ fi­ cial,” stu­ dent of Push­ kin, Shake­ speare, and ­ George Ber­ nard Shaw. The focus of the ­ present chap­ ter is a sec­ ond ­ Pushkin-centered pro­ ject under­ taken by Krzhizh­ a­ nov­ sky in the 1930s, in its own way as non­ ca­ non­ i­ cal as his dra­ matic vari­ a­ tions on the inner life of Ta­ tiana La­ rina: the stag­ ing and then satir­ iz­ ing of the ­ symbolist-era Cle­ o­ pa­ tra myth. But first, a word about this ­ little-known Rus­ sian ­ writer. Krzhizh­ a­ nov­ sky, ­ Quasi-Person Si­ giz­ mund Krzhizh­ a­ nov­ sky (1887–1950), rus­ so­ phone mod­ ern­ ist of­ Polish de­ scent, was born near Kiev and died in his be­ loved ­ adopted city Mos­ cow, al­ most ­ wholly un­ pub­ lished and un­ per­ formed. His tall thin per­ son with ­ pince-nez was a fa­ mil­ iar fig­ ure in the lit­ er­ ary sa­ lons of Kiev and, after 1922, among ­ avant-garde cir­ cles of the cap­ i­ tal. Over a pe­ riod of ­ thirty years Krzhizh­ a­ nov­ sky au­ thored 150 short prose works, rang­ ing in ­ length from no­ vel­ las to ­ one-paragraph mini­ atures. As a lit­ er­ ary ­ critic, how­ ever, he spe­ cial­ ized in drama, de­ vis­ ing the term “realist-experimenter” for Shake­ speare (and for him­ self...