The Modernist Masquerade: Stylizing Life, Literature, and Costumes in Russia

5. Character Costumes: Cultural Memory and the Philological Masquerade

143 5 Char­ ac­ ter Cos­ tumes Cul­ tural Mem­ ory and the Phil­ o­ log­ i­ cal Mas­ que­ rade A news­ paper ac­ count that ap­ peared in The Pe­ ters­ burg Ga­ zette on De­ cem­ ber 28, 1910, tes­ tified to an un­ named ­ individual’s wish to honor the re­ cently de­ ceased Rus­ sian lit­ er­ ary giant Lev Tol­ stoy by dress­ ing as him for a hol­ i­ day mas­ que­ rade. In­ stead of en­ joy­ ing com­ men­ da­ tion for his sar­ to­ rial trib­ ute, how­ ever, the guest was ­ forced to leave the event be­ cause his ­ choice of cos­ tume, in the es­ ti­ ma­ tion of his hosts, ­ showed too lit­ tle re­ spect for the ­ writer who had ­ passed away the pre­ vi­ ous month. Ti­ tled “The Prof­ a­ na­ tion of The Mem­ ory of L. Tol­ stoy,” the ar­ ti­ cle show­ cases the ill so­ cial con­ se­ quences of in­ fe­ lic­ i­ tously ap­ pro­ pri­ at­ ing the iden­ tity of a known cul­ tural fig­ ure as mas­ que­ rade cos­ tume.1 While the un­ for­ tu­ nate de­ noue­ ment of this in­ ci­ dent ­ points to the per­ ils of wear­ ing a char­ ac­ ter cos­ tume that res­ o­ nated too ­ deeply, such cos­ tumes that ap­ pro­ pri­ ate the iden­ tity of fic­ tional, my­ tho­ log­ i­ cal, and his­ tor­ i­ cal fig­ ures per­ formed an im­ por­ tant cul­ tural func­ tion, es­ pe­ cially in the early years of the twen­ ti­ eth cen­ tury, when Rus­ sia was on the thresh­ old of rev­ o­ lu­ tion­ ary ­ change. The spe­ cific sym­ bolic value of char­ ac­ ter cos­ tumes is ­ grounded in the re­ al­ ity of the ­ country’s cul­ tural her­ i­ tage; 144 Part II: Costume Design and Theatricality this fact sug­ gests how prof­it­ ably we can ex­ am­ ine these ali­ ases as ex­ am­ ples of what Vi­ a­ ches­ lav Iv­ a­ nov ­ called “Re­ alis­ tic Sym­ bols.” The char­ ac­ ter iden­ tities rep­ re­ sented at ­ Ivanov’s ­ real-life cos­ tumed salon gath­ er­ ings, known as “Even­ ings of Hafiz,” func­ tioned as such Re­ alis­ tic Sym­ bols, as did the fig­ ures in Anna ­ Akhmatova’s ­ poetic por­ trait of a New ­ Year’s mas­ que­ rade in Poem with­ out a Hero. Char­ ac­ ter cos­ tumes ­ played an im­ por­ tant role in pre­ serv­ ing cul­ tural mem­ ory: their as­ sem­ bly at balls and par­ ties ­ created a ­ uniquely in­ car­ nated inter­ tex­ tu­ al­ ity. Draw­ ing on the orig­ i­ nal mean­ ing of the term phi­ lol­ ogy, ­ namely the love of learn­ ing and lit­ er­ a­ ture, I call cos­ tumed gath­ er­ ings that draw on cul­ tural pa­ tri­ mony phil­ o­ log­ i­ cal mas­ que­ rades.2 The phil­ o­ log­ i­ cal mas­ que­ rade ­ uniquely uni­ fies life and art: its his­ to­ ric­ ity and er­ u­ di­ tion dif­ fer­ en­ tiate it from the in­ di­ vid­ u­ al­ is­ tic in­ stances of­ self-stylizing dis­ cussed in chap­ ters 3 and 6. The char­ ac­ ters pop­ u­ lat­ ing a phil­ o­ log­ i­ cal mas­ que­ rade may orig­ i­ nate in di­ verse na­ tional tra­ di­ tions and his­ tor­ i­ cal ­ epochs but they co­ a­ lesce in the ­ event’s dis­ tinc­ tively syn­ cretic chron­ o­ tope. The phil­ o­ log­ i­ cal mas­ que­ rade per­ forms a ­ museumlike func­ tion of eval­ u­ at­ ing cul­ tural ar­ ti­ facts ­ through care­ ful cu­ ra­ tion and, like the art mu­ seum that per­ pet­ u­ ates ex­ clu­ siv­ ity by hous­ ing works by and for the elite, it is a pub­ lic ex­ hi­ bi­ tion space for er­ u­ di­ tion and re­ fined taste. Such ­ events are the do­ main of the clas­ si­ cally ed­ u­ cated and cul­ tu­ rally lit­ er­ ate, among whom ­ shared knowl­ edge is the me­ dium of com­ mu­ ni­ ca­ tion. Phil­ o­ log­ i­ cal Mas­ que­ rades Cer­ tain ­ nineteenth-century writ­ ers em­ ployed the phil­ o­ log...