THE POSSESSED
I. ON
DOSTOEVSKY AS POETIC THEATER
a manifesto
by the translator/playwright
"They [i.e. Bakhtin's concepts of
intersection, consonance or interruption of open dialogue with remarks from the
heroes' inner dialogue] emphasize the importance of producing a totality of
ideas, thoughts, and words through several separate voices, each of which has a
different sound. The dramatizer must not forget that the author's object is the
building of a theme on many levels in accordance with Dostoevsky's consistent
polyphony and dissonance. The dialogue nature of Dostoevsky's novels, the
dialogic vision of the world which permeates all his work, and the dialogic
nature of his language make his novels particularly rich material for stage
versions. But these qualities also oblige the theatres and the whole theatrical
world to bear responsibility for adequate representation of the significance
and profundity of the great artist's word." (Dostoevsky In Russian And
World Theatre, p. 52)
I would
like to propose a translation/adaptation into English poetic drama of
Dostoevsky's Possessed. Utilizing blank verse, a variety of other poetic
forms, some modern, some traditional, rhymed and unrhymed, these plays in verse
will be modern in spirit and will issue from a close, organic reading of the
Russian text.
It is my
belief that Dostoevsky's prose novel translates fundamentally better into a
poetic, mostly blank verse, drama than into a prose one. A paradox? Perhaps, but
an unavoidable one nevertheless.
As every
reader of the Elizabethan dramatists knows, the wonderfully flexible instrument
we call the blank verse line or rather cluster of lines is capable of
expressing everything ‑‑ or nearly everything ‑‑
on its essentially bare stage: Every emotion, every thought or concept, every
kind of action, description, state of mind or state of irony,‑‑
there is nothing that cannot be rendered by it with subtlety or boldness.
It is my
contention that an unbridgeable chasm separates a prose novel from the prose play
based on that novel. The actual experience or act of reading at one's
leisure (and alone) a complicated 750 page novel ‑ whether in the
original or in translation ‑‑ is fundamentally different from the
experience or act of watching (and hearing, of course) a 75 ‑ 100 page
prose dramatization of this same novel in the theater. The prose we read
is one thing. The "prose" we watch and hear as spectators is
something else altogether‑‑ even when the novel is inherently
"dramatic," as is the case with The Possessed.
The
"drama" of the novel is, I think, a rather distant cousin to the
"drama" on stage. In fact, I'd venture to say that any and all such
75 ‑100 page "prose" reductions of a work as artistically complex
and technically demanding as The Possessed are doomed to failure,
indeed, to ignominious failure because all such reductions cause irreparable
damage to the organic multi‑faceted texture of the full‑length
novel.
This
inherent failure of a prose dramatization is brilliantly developed by Vladimir
Seduro in his Dostoevsky In Russian And World Theatre (North Quincy,
Massachusetts: Christopher Publishing House, 1977) an exhaustive documentation
of Dostoevsky translations, adaptations, scenarios, readings, stage versions,
specific performances and film interpretations in every language, on every
continent, from the novelist's earliest days to the 1970's. Although
occasionally marred by an unidiomatic style, this massive work on Dostoevsky
performances is invaluable in demonstrating the complexity of Dostoevsky's
dramaturgy in both theory and practice. We come away from it with a deeper
appreciation for the excruciating problems attending any attempt at staging his
multi‑leveled works.
I have
decided to quote from Mr. Seduro's insightful discussion at length. The
dramatizations in question are, of course, all prose ones. The time‑frame
is 1910, when Anatolii Kremlev, representing many critics opposed to
adaptations in principle, proposed that all stage dramatizations of Dostoevsky,
Tolstoy and other famous writers (other than by the writers themselves) be
officially prohibited by law.
"The
opponents of dramatization of prose usually allude to the laws of drama and
stress the formal distinctions between epic narration and a scenic work. In
their opinion, nothing can come from a dramatization but a series of
illustrations for the novel, despite the most highly sophisticated and talented
adapter and theatrical enactment. The novel loses its wealth of nuances, is
impoverished and weakened in the theatrical interpretation, and even is
distorted. Great art is belittled. Thus arises the problem of the relationship
between the novel and drama genre. Undoubtedly, there is no need to deny the
special property of dramatic work, that at its center lies a conflict which
gives rise to a dramatic collision. In the drama nothing should interfere with
the continuous, unfolding action, no retarding digressions outside the plot,
whether descriptions, epic elements of information, lyric or historico‑biographical
digressions, and so on, should impede the developing movement of the basic
actions. Therefore the broader the range of events and more multi‑faceted
and diverse a picture of life there is in the epic work, the more difficult it
is, naturally, for it to undergo dramatic adaptation. Tolstoy's War and
Peace in this respect presents an infinity of difficulties, and many
dramatizations of this grandiose work were doomed to failure thanks to the very
form, composition, and contents which lend themselves only to the narrative
manner of exposition. In the novel there is not one but dozens of dramas,
hundreds of scenes and episodes." (pp. 18‑19)
And if
the latter observation is true for the epic, objective, stable narrative
technique of Tolstoy, how much more is it true for the dramatically tortuous,
unstable, subjective, indeed, multi‑subject structure of Dostoevsky's
art.
II. DOSTOEVSKY AS POLYPHONIC THEATRE
This latter
peculiarity, that is, multi‑subjectivity, has been made famous by Bakhtin
under the intriguing term "polyphony." Going to the very heart of
Dostoevsky's structure and world‑view, it discloses the novelist's genius
as a kind of dialectic in space or set of simultaneous dialectics without
resolution. This technique involves the juxtaposition and collision of
"independent, unsubordinated voices," whether expressed as the
conflict between characters or as a conflict within the soul of a single
individual (the phenomenon of "the double") or, more likely, as both.
This is why
Bakhtin considers Dostoevsky's novels "great dialogues," or
dialogical novels, instead of the traditional monological novels, where all the
characters of the novel are subordinated to a single consciousness, that of the
narrator.
One may go
further, as some scholars have, and argue that a Dostoevsky novel is less a
"transparent" polyphony of dialogic voices , a great
dialogue in which these voices participate in the creation of a totality, than
an "opaque" polyphony of monologic voices that refuse to form a
compositional whole. That is, Stepan's humanism, Shatov's Christ‑centered
Christianity, Shigalov's program for an egalitarian slave society run by an
elite, Kirillov's call for mass suicide as a way to God, the Mephistophelean
revolutionary nihilism of Pyotr Verkhovensky[1],
Nicolai Stavrogin's aristocratic nihilism[2],
Varvara Stavrogin's social snobbery, von Lembke's bureaucratic zeal, Marya
Lebyadkin as a traditional "holy fool" [yurodivaia ], Captain
Lebyadkin's world‑view as the depraved "cockroach" deserving
God's grace, etc.‑‑ each of these is a monologue or rather a
monomania seeking full realization, total submission, absolute domination. The
result is not a "parliamentary" relativism, in which each opinion is
ultimately reconciled to all other opinions, but an authoritarian arena in
which each character, espousing an absolute truth, seeks to subdue and
obliterate all other absolute truths. It is a kind of dialogue of the deaf,
where the characters are at war with each other and with each other's truths.
However, that's not all. Each is also at war with himself. I have in mind, for
example, Kirillov as a gentle, loving young man who advocates a
"theology" of mass suicide, Captain Lebyadkin as a scoundrel deserving
of God's grace (and our pity) precisely for being a scoundrel, Liputin as a
miser advocating utopian socialist ideals, Marya Lebyadkin as an apoplectic
half-wit who utters the high wisdom of a holy fool.
If all the
characters in their self‑contradictoriness are at war with each other,
then what, one may ask, is Dostoevsky's ultimate point of view in The Possessed?
The
answer is that Dostoevsky's narrator is a dual figure: He is Anton, the genial, innocent storyteller, a
minor character in the novel, a friend and confidant of Stepan, a link to all
the other characters and a conduit for rumors, hearsay and information of all
sorts, both spurious and authentic. But more importantly, he is Dostoesvky, the
relentless, unsparing Christian tragic satirist, the fervent enemy of Western,
rationalistic secularism and of nihilism as its Russian surrogate and of all
souls who deny God and man's instinctual longing and need for God. This second,
un‑genial, thoroughly un‑innocent, razor‑edged
narrator confronts us at every corner through the instrumentality of that same
innocent Anton, his rumors, hearsay, suspicions, doubts, speculations and
reports. The latter are among a whole array of devices utilized by Dostoevsky.
In this respect, Dostoevsky, at once an artist affirming his Christian faith
and a naive storyteller relating a
variety of mutually exclusive absolutes, is reminiscent of the Chaucer of The
Canterbury Tales, of Voltaire's Candide and of Swift's Gulliver's
Travels.
In his study
of Dostoevsky, Vyacheslav Ivanov called these polyphonic compositions
"Novel‑Tragedies" and their author "the first Russian
Shakespeare."
Mr. Seduro
elaborates on the Shakespearean dimension in Dostoevsky:
"The
instinctive creative factor dominated the rational element and, like
Shakespeare's talent, contributed to his gift for "penetrating" into
an alien "I" and experiencing the other "I" as a fully
independent being. This is the source of the independence of each hero and the
individuality of each separate world which is not dependent on the author's
will, with all its special logic and force of conviction. Dostoevsky seems to
say to the true essence of the outer world,
"You are!" and thereby overcomes extreme individualism by a
great act of love. His understanding of the tragic responsibility of every
person for everyone and everything deepened the catastrophic nature of the
whole spiritual side of Dostoevsky's world." (pp. 44‑45)
Such a
complex art, I posit, cannot possibly be captured by a dramatization utilizing
prose, even if Dostoevsky had come back from the dead to do it himself.
The only
way to recreate the organic whole of Dostoevsky's masterpiece is to approach it
organically, that is, to translate the organic prose fabric into an
organic poetic fabric, to dismantle all of the major motif clusters of the
novel, to select those motifs that the translator/playwright considers most
crucial to his conception of the play and then to rebuild and reintegrate them
into the new structure of his poetic drama. Nothing else will do.
My play
is an adaptation that is built solidly on the original text. That is, where
possible, I "merely" translated. This foundation accounts for
anywhere from 25% to 50% or even more of
the text. However, the translated part serves ultimately as a spring‑board
for the invented (i.e. adapted) part as it concerns both the action and
the dialogue. The transition from the translated to the invented part should be
seamless, organic. This, of course, is
crucial. A reader who is familiar with the novel in every detail would no doubt
spot such "creative departures," but even then, I hope, only when
comparing the two texts analytically. In performance, when on a real stage or
on the stage of his imagination, he should feel a natural, organic
transition. Only afterwards should he say: "Hey, I don't remember
reading this in the novel."
These
invented creative departures are an attempt on my part to bring out on stage what
is dramatically and theatrically implicit in Dostoevsky's novel. Admittedly,
that's a lot of chutzpah, but that's the whole point. The play either fails or
succeeds on the basis of this technique. As an illustration of this principle,
let's look at Kirillov's introduction on page 18:
"...
somewhat absent‑minded, who is holding a toy soldier with a broken
neck."
Obviously,
this is an invented detail. There is no mention in the novel of a Mischa or of
a toy soldier with a broken neck. The text speaks only of a child tossing a
ball to Kirillov. I've changed the child's gender (a minor detail of little
importance in the novel) and "orchestrated" this detail in order to
bring out the dramatic possibilities of this scene (page 21, middle).
The same
holds true for Nicolai, his chorus and his oracles in rhyme, for Marya's song,
for the utopian verse of Stepan's "revolutionary" circle, etc. This
is what I mean by an organic adaptation. It should feel right to the
spectator/reader, regardless whether he has ever read the novel or not. On the
other hand, a prose script would be no more than a mechanical compilation of
motifs. Stripped of all
harmonic/orchestral resonance, it could never hope to overcome its
inherent fragmentariness, with the result that a performance based on such a
text could only fail ‑‑ by definition. Of course, a poetic drama
might also fail, but then only if the poet fails, that is, if his art fails to
measure up to the task.
For
example, in presenting Nicolai Stavrogin to the reader, the narrator of the
novel gives us a long list of his scandalous sins (Chapter II, section 1). The
list runs the whole gamut including insubordination, duels to all sorts,
outrageous acts of perversion, sado‑masochism and depravity. The narrator
recounts three of Nicolai's more puzzling escapades, namely, dragging a certain
general by the nose, sexually explicit public dancing with Liputin's wife, and
biting the Governor's ear.
Quite
obviously, no playwright could or should try to incorporate all of these ingredients
in his play, whether in the plot or in the dialogue. Not only would such a
foolish attempt at "novelistic totality" sink the play. More
importantly, the dramatic possibilities of the theatre as a unique art form
would never be realized. The whole play would choke on its own excesses, on its
own insufferable "completeness."
Therefore,
a playwright should select the strand or strands from the complex offered by
the narrator (Dostoevsky‑Anton) and, developing this strand dramatically,
incorporate it organically into the symphony of the play. The "dramatic
totality" of the play consists of all the selected strands of each
character as they resonate with each other within the selective body of
the plot. I have thus focussed most of my characterization of Nicolai on his
perverse love relationships with Marya Lebyadkin, Liza and Dasha. The challenge
is to make Nicolai's "love" theme resonate with many of those other
aforementioned motifs (i.e. sins) omitted during the initial process of selection.
The same, of course, holds true for all the other principal or secondary
characters.
We can
better understand this if we look at Othello. Shakespeare's Iago, as
complex as he is, is seen almost exclusively in his Mephistophelian role as the
tempter who seeks to destroy Othello by all means. Everything he does, says,
thinks is focussed on this obsession. We know little else about Iago,
dramatically speaking, because the playwright has selected Iago's relationship
with Othello as the pivot of his drama. All development moves relentlessly
forward to the consummation of the plot. The point is that while Iago is
perceived by the spectator in terms of the "destroyer of Othello"
motif which Shakespeare has selected for his theme and characterization, the latter
constitutes only one, albeit key, motif from amongst a whole cluster of motifs implicitly
associated with Iago. Shakespeare then proceeds to develop this key
"destroyer of Othello" motif dramatically through Iago's manipulation
of Roderigo, Cassio, Desdemona and just about everyone else in
The
result is that Iago's destruction of Othello resonates with a whole complex of
nefarious thoughts and deeds that go beyond this one act of destruction to
encompass a whole universe of evil, which we, the spectators, along with the
inhabitants of
Finally,
the selectivity of motifs makes possible a transcendence from high tragedy to
myth. The visible gives way to the invisible: Othello, Iago and Desdemona
incarnate the archetypes of the hero, the eternal feminine and the Devil.
Similarly,
the love theme in Othello is the foundation on which Shakespeare builds
the aesthetic, moral, social and metaphysical structure of his play. He does
this partly through such linguistic and rhetorical devices as metaphor,
parallelism, repetition, rhyme, rhythm, symbolic leitmotifs, classical and
Biblical allusions, etc. as well as by structurally incorporating the
destruction of Othello and Desdemona by Iago within the cultural framework of
Venice (Act I and, by implication, Act V). Thus, the love and love betrayal
theme resonate with a whole complex of related themes such as tragic cathersis
(aesthetics), moral responsibility (ethics), Christian salvation and the
afterlife (religion), appearance vs. reality (philosophy) and, finally, to an
archetypal dimension in which the Medieval‑Renaissance hierarchical order
is reduced to primeval chaos (myth).
In The
Possessed, we encounter a similar structural complexity as it evolves
directly or indirectly from the primal root‑theme of revolt against God,
which leads inescapably to perverted love, nihilistic values and political
revolution.
Coleridge
claimed that all great poetry issues from the organic "imagination,"
while the "fancy" is reserved for the lesser category of the merely
mechanical and contrived. I contend that a prose stage version is doomed to the
lower category of fancy, while a poetic rendition might well succeed on the
higher plane of the imagination.
I. STEPAN VERKHOVENSKY AND HIS CIRCLE
(Enter
alone Stepan Verkhovensky, a fine representative of the Russian liberal
intelligencia. In his long, black frock coat buttoned‑up nearly to the top,
Stepan walks on stage like a dandy. He is sporting a soft, wide‑brimmed
hat, a white tie and a cane with a silver knob. Tall and lean, clean shaven,
with hair down to his shoulders, he looks very handsome and imposing. Yet,
Stepan is easily given to childish fits of laughter or tears. He is living on
Varvara Stavrogin's huge estate not far from
Stepan Verkhovensky
(Spotlight.
Alone. Alternately arrogant and
obsequious, thunderous and sobbing)
I've
been forgotten (Mesdames et Messieurs),
Banished...
from the orbit of their thoughts.
I'm
of no use to them (vous comprenez?)
I've
shouted out my truths on every square‑‑
My
lips, like leeches, can command no more‑‑
Gulliver,
too, returning from abroad,
From the crumbling shores
of Lilliput,
Harangued
the streets of
Waiting in the wings
to crush their bones.
It's
no secret,
(in
a loud voice like a circus ringmaster)
Madames
et Messieurs,
(his
voice suddenly faltering)
It's
... no secret at all‑‑
(whispering)
I'm
a dissident,
(voice
rising triumphantly)
A
mighty bear driven to a sad exile,
(Tears
well up in his eyes)
Hunted
down from one end of
(Strikes
a pose as a sacrifical victim)
To
another (comme je souffre toujours!)
A
sacrifical victim on their altar...
(his
shoulders stooping, he points up with his finger)
Up
there they fear me, up there
Every other minister, every clerk
Quakes
in his boots at the very mention
Of
my persecuted name. I'm no mouse,
I'm
ready to step forward, to do battle
For
a glorious mankind...
(oui,
mesdames, ...
pour
la beauté, pour l'ideal)
(Another
spasm of cholera. Beaming radiantly)
To
bring to fruition the universal dream
Of
human regeneration, of eternal beauty,
Of
the Sistine Virgin shimmering down,
A
penumbra of spots erupting from the sun.
Oh,
what I wouldn't have done for the cause,
Were
it not for them ‑‑
(pointing
up with his finger)
for their petty decrees,
The
whirlwind of circumstances that fell
On
my bare head.
(sobbing
intermittently as if carrying a great burden))
Oh, beauté eternelle,
Had
you not come between me and my career,
Had
you stayed put in your exalted niche,
In
the Sistine chapel of the drooping sky, ...
(regaining
his composure and tilting his head back in a gesture of heroic defiance, he
speaks dramatically and with ever greater forcefullness)
I
would have set out against the tide
Like
a knight‑errant storming the citadel
Or
a noble athlete scaling
Oh,
Holy Reason, constant as the North Star,
Queen
of all who hunger for your lofty rules,
Show
me the way, the truth, the steady light,
Which
I, a mere insect, crawling...
(N'est‑ce pas, mes chers amis? Mais
oui!)
(pointing
to a book in his hand)
Do
you know this book? No?!... Up there
They
are still trembling from my brilliance‑‑
Yes,
you are looking at The Revolt of
A
work surely not for the faint of heart!
Were
it not for armies of spiteful clerks,
For
envious ministers and fanatic saboteurs,
My
valiant heroes would have surely long since
Put
the finishing touches to a tower of hope,
Of
cosmic harmony, love and understanding.
(Nous
nous comprendrons en ce jour‑là)
They've
forgotten me, banished me quite
(sobbing intermittently
again)
To
wander forever under the stagnant stars
Of
Varvara Stavrogin's luxuriant estate.
(in
a tone of Biblical prophecy)
Victory
shall be mine at the end of days:
They‑‑
(pointing
up)
shall stoop down to reap my light,
They
shall come to me on tattered knees
To
plead their case to the toiling masses,
(J'adore le peuple. Moi, je le comprends!)
They
will send for me, ‑‑ yes, from there,
(beaming
radiantly)
The
good news shall flash like a comet
Through
the obscure minds of our land.
Crushed
with grief, racked with noble pain,
I
shall make my move, at long last,
Overleaping,
with revolutionary zeal,
The
walls of prejudice and human rot.
(Quelle
cause! Quelle grande idée!)
(in
a spirit of self‑justification)