Abstract
This essay offers a ground-breaking account of Hamlet’s acculturation in Russian culture. Tracing stagings, translations and readings of Hamlet since the eighteenth century, Thomas Grob examines Russian cultural identity and its relationship to European culture through the lens of literary importation, beginning with an examination of Hamlet as one of the first English plays to be translated and performed in eighteenth-century Russia. The multiple Russian Hamlets include the political Hamlet of the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia, the tragic lover, the Chekhovian melancholic Hamlet, and a modern existentialist Hamlet. The volatility and mythopoeic potential of the character for Russian culture is crucially based on the distance between the ‘original’ and his reception during the process of migration, enabling politically and aesthetically inflected performances of identity.
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Notes
- 1.
The reception of the Hamlet-figure has been well documented on the factual level, thanks not least to the Russian scholar of English Literature, Iurii Levin (see the summary in Levin 1988). The first non-Russian overview is provided in Hamlet: A Window on Russia (Rowe 1976); the latest by Tiffany Moore (2012, 25–73)—who has, however, an oversimplified view of the political situation in Russia. There are also a number of anthologies, for example of poetry (most recently Roznatovskaia 2012) or translation (most recently Poplavskii 2006). There is still no recent monograph comparable to the one on Don Quixote (Bagno 2009), whose reception has a number of points in common with that of Hamlet.
- 2.
Kukulin et al. provide a model of research on literary and film figures as cultural phenomena with respect to Soviet children’s ‘heroes’ including a section on Vinni Pukh (Kukulin et al. 2008, 276–353).
- 3.
Levitt argues convincingly that Sumarokov had recourse to all of these sources (Levitt 1994).
- 4.
Levitt sees the play in the context of a theodicy with a specifically Russian inflection (Levitt 1994, 333–4).
- 5.
Most recently as the title of a book in a collection of documents on Pavel I by A. Skorobogatov (Moscow, 2004).
- 6.
On the latter, see http://shine.unibas.ch/translatorsfrench.htm#alphabetisch (22.7.2013); Bardovskii also undertakes a comparison of Ducis’ Hamlet with Viskovatov’s rendering (Bardovskii 1923b, 117–19).
- 7.
On Pushkin and Shakespeare, see the detailed discussion in Levin (1988, 32–63) and O’Neil (2003).
- 8.
At least according to Levin (1988, 34–5).
- 9.
Within a few days of this correspondence he also wrote a letter to Vyazemskii in which he spoke enthusiastically about Byron’s Don Juan, which includes a quote from Shakespeare.
- 10.
- 11.
The inscription on his gravestone calls him ‘iunosha-poet’ (Pushkin 1977–1979, 5:123/ChVII.6).
- 12.
The latter passage makes the allusion clear by referring to death and the ‘indifferent oblivion’ that follows (Pushkin 1977–1979, 5:124).
- 13.
In 1836, Pushkin renamed the poem Poslanie Del’vigu (Epistle to Del’vig).
- 14.
Pushkin had been given the skull by his young friend Aleksei Vul’f; see Pushkin’s poem ‘Iz pis’ma k Vul’fu’ (From a letter to Vul’f, 1824; Pushkin 1977–1979, 2:171), where drinking, death and love are linked by association.
- 15.
A. Grigor’ev, who we shall return to below, ascribes this to the combination of Polevoi’s text with Mochalov’s performance (Grigor’ev 1980, 55).
- 16.
The passage concludes the monologue on the two portraits in Hamlet’s dialogue with his mother in III.4 (in Polevoi’s version III.3; see also Gorbunov 1985, 12).
- 17.
- 18.
It is thanks to the excellently researched anthology edited by Roznatovskaia that this poetry has become accessible (Roznatovskaia 2012).
- 19.
In 1840, Nekrasov had written an Ophelia poem inspired by a performance (Roznatovskaia 2012, 35–6.).
- 20.
The Ophelia motif had also appeared, though less prominently, as early as 1840, during the Romantic period (Rowe 1976, 29).
- 21.
See also Valerii Briusov’s poem Ophelia (1911), in which a young woman’s fatal fall from a window in the city is superimposed on Ophelia, and which cites four lines from Fet (Roznatovskaia 2012, 62–3.).
- 22.
With regard to Dostoevsky, see Roznatovskaia (2012, 45).
- 23.
- 24.
Hamlet had been parodied in as early as 1844 in D. Lenskii’s vaudeville Gamlet Sidorovich i Ofeliia Kuz’minishna (Levin 1988, 153). Other plays by Shakespeare were also subject to such treatment (Levin 1988, 154–8.); the most famous of these adaptations being Nikolai Leskov’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, which Shostakovich turned into an opera in 1930.
- 25.
For him, too, there was an affinity between Shakespeare and Byron; in 1836 he tried his hand at translating passages from King Lear, Othello and Manfred (Brang 1977, 44).
- 26.
On autobiographical elements in the ‘Shchigrovskii Hamlet’, see Brang (1977, 75).
- 27.
Konstantin Romanov (1858–1915), the nephew of Tsar Aleksandr II and cousin of Aleksandr III, published poems as ‘K. R.’ and moved in literary circles. Working on Hamlet for 10 years, he sought to be as accurate as possible and published his translation as a bilingual edition with the original English text (Gorbunov 1985, 17–18). He later added extensive documentation. The book had several print runs until 1930, including in the Soviet Union.
- 28.
- 29.
See Levin (1988, 180–1) for a detailed discussion.
- 30.
- 31.
Holland’s perspective, like that of others, is limited to the politically critical ‘usefulness’ of the Hamlet figure and who holds that the Russian Hamlet is ‘more social and political than aesthetic’ (Holland 1999, 316).
- 32.
See the story In Moscow (V Moskve, 1891), which begins with the sentence: ‘I am a Moscow Hamlet’ (Chekhov 1974–1982, 7:500–7).
- 33.
- 34.
For a detailed discussion, see Grob (1995/1996).
- 35.
The dialogue marked as a quotation from Hamlet [III.4.78–86; (eight lines beginning with ‘O Hamlet, speak no more…’)] takes place in the first act before the performance of Treplev’s play (Chekhov 1974–1982, 13:12); on the use of Polevoi’s oversimplified translation, which makes translation back into English difficult, see Holland (1999, 317–22).
- 36.
See, for example, Shakh-Azizova (1977, 245).
- 37.
On Tolstoy and Hamlet, see the detailed discussion in Rowe (1976, 95–8).
- 38.
- 39.
The context of the two fragments is unclear. It is not certain whether the poet edited them for the first publication in 1946; there they are dated ‘1909/1945’.
- 40.
Here dated 1909.
- 41.
See Hamlet’s repeated exhortation (III.1.137): ‘Get thee to a nunnery’.
- 42.
‘I loved Ophelia, Forty thousand brothers/ Could not with all their quantity of love/ Make up my sum’ (V.1.254–6).
- 43.
On the reappearance of the motif in Akhmatova’s work in her ‘Poem without a hero’, see Sukhanova (2004, 84–5); on the Ophelia motif in the work of Marina Tsvetaeva, see Sukhanova (2004, 86–95).
- 44.
- 45.
The cited passage—which Blok quotes in Kroneberg’s translation, giving just ‘Hamlet’ as the source—is spoken by Laertes on encountering the singing Ophelia: ‘Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself/ She turns to favour and to prettiness’ (IV.5.183–4).
- 46.
See Sukhanova (2004) for other references to Hamlet by Blok.
- 47.
Something similar occurs in Blok’s reworking, in 1910, of the first of the poems mentioned above. The narrator’s question ‘Wherefore, child, art thou?’ is answered first by the distorted echo of the nightingale and then, in a dark room, by the shadow of Ophelia (Blok 1960–1963, 1:649).
- 48.
After Hamlet, Pasternak translated, in quick succession, Romeo and Juliet (1942), Antony and Cleopatra (1943), Othello (1944), parts of King Henry IV (1945–1946), King Lear (1947), and Macbeth (1950).
- 49.
Gordon Craig and Stanislavsky staged a Symbolist dramatization of Hamlet in 1911, despite mutual differences (Rowe 1976, 119); a highly Symbolist performance of Kroneberg’s translation took place in 1924 in the Moscow Art Theatre II with Mikhail Chekhov in the title role (see for example Rowe 1976, 127; Morozov). Meyerhold’s first attempt dates back to 1915. He is said to have sought to persuade Tsvetaeva and Mayakovsky to take part in a production in the 1920s (Semenenko 2007, 142).
- 50.
For example, the translations by Mikhail Lozinskii (1933) and Anna Radlova (1937).
- 51.
- 52.
In 1942 he talks about translating Shakespeare requiring ‘absolute naturalness and complete freedom of thought’ (Pasternak 2004–2005, 5:45).
- 53.
On Pasternak’s not always ‘spontaneous’ editing of the text, see Semenenko (2007, 95). Semenenko highlights external pressures; however, the changes are very varied and are all written in Pasternak’s hand; in a letter to Kozintsev, he wrote that he did not know himself which version to choose (Kozintsev and Pasternak 1975, 215; see Semenenko 2007, 96; Pasternak 1989, 542–3).
- 54.
Akhmatova, who had known him since 1911 from the poet’s group ‘Tsekh poetov’, defended what she recalled as his intentional complication of the form [http://www.akhmatova.org/proza/lozinsk.htm (accessed 1 September 2013)].
- 55.
In his draft essay ‘Characteristics of Blok’ (1946), for instance, Pasternak calls Blok’s ‘Hamletism’ an ‘elemental intellectual force’ (dukhovnost’). This Hamletism had been refined over the course of Blok’s life, Pasternak writes, and in the context of the 1905 revolution it had led to a ‘dramatisation of all of Blok’s realist writing’ (Pasternak 2004–2005, 5:363). The proximity to Pasternak’s own search for a ‘realism’ at this time is clear.
- 56.
Commentators have often noted an intrinsic connection between the Hamlet translation and the novel Doktor Zhivago; Dmitrii Bykov holds that the novel’s ‘circle of ideas’ evolved ‘under the direct influence of Hamlet’ (Bykov 2007, 690). Indeed, in his short notes on translation On Shakespeare (1942), Pasternak sees Shakespeare’s work as the climax of realism as regards human beings and their sufferings. He connects this to his own experiences of war, which the figure of Zhivago will also negotiate. The connection he sees in Shakespeare between a ‘volcanic structure’ and artistic objectivity in fact recalls his later novel (Pasternak 2004–2005, 5:44–5).
- 57.
The first version of the poem, with just two verses, was written in 1946 (Pasternak 2004–2005, 4:639). The first verse was modified slightly in 1955; the last two lines are unaltered.
- 58.
On the intertextual field of this poem, see Sukhanova (2004, 73–6); on the biographical affinity with and discussion of Blok, see Barnes (1998, 227).
- 59.
Grigorii Kozintsev (1905–1973) had been a pioneer of Soviet film since the 1920s, mostly in cooperation with Leonid Trauberg; he came from the avant-garde, but continued to work under Stalin and turned increasingly to the theatre after 1939; before Hamlet he had already directed King Lear (1941) and Othello (1944).
- 60.
Shostakovich had already written the music for Kozintsev and Trauberg’s Odna (Alone, 1931), one of the first sound films in the Soviet Union; he later composed the music for King Lear (1970). The body of Russian musical responses to Hamlet is modest; on the compositions by Aleksandr Varlamov (1837) and Tchaikovsky as well as Shostakovich, see O. Zakharova’s article for the electronic Russian Shakespeare dictionary (http://www.world-shake.ru/ru/Encyclopaedia/3989.html).
- 61.
Kozintsev, first and foremost a Shakespeare specialist, also discusses Laurence Olivier’s famous Hamlet film of 1948, and Kozintsev’s Hamlet figure is also visually indebted to Olivier’s. Kozintsev states that he wanted to de-mystify Olivier’s Hamlet, to make it more realist and—through certain cuts and omissions—to make it more political (see Kozintsev 1983, 327, 339–40, 410–11). In this context he also opines that one cannot ‘direct’ Hamlet, but that one needs to ‘suffer’ him, which Olivier in his opinion does not always manage to do (Kozintsev 1983, 432–3).
- 62.
Kozintsev’s book, originally published in 1962, had to be published in English (in 1966 and 1967) under the title Shakespeare: Time and Conscience, because in the meantime, in 1964, Jan Kott’s book Shakespeare, Our Contemporary had appeared. While Kott refers to Kozintsev’s Hamlet film, he does not mention Kozintsev’s book, of which, however, he must have been aware. After Kozintsev’s death, Kott spoke of him as a friend, even though his reading of the Hamlet film reduces the film to a vehicle for an anti-Soviet message (Kott 1979). For a comparison of interpretations of the Hamlet film see Moore (2012, 13–14).
- 63.
The Lenin Prize (1965) suggests a wind of change, but the film was not considered anti-Soviet; the award for best film from the journal ‘Sovetskii ekran’ testifies to the high regard in which it was held during the thaw; the special prize in Venice (1965) to its universal appeal.
- 64.
‘He had never been able to play himself in a film. Now, in Hamlet, everything came together. He came up with something new for this role every day. To be Hamlet—or not to be at all. That was the play now showing’ (Novikov 2013, 153).
- 65.
Vysotsky in an interview with Grozny television, cited in http://www.kulichki.com/vv/ovys/teatr/gamlet_vv_o.html (accessed 1 September 2013).
- 66.
Vysotsky in an interview with Bulgarian television, cited in http://www.kulichki.com/vv/ovys/teatr/gamlet_vv_o.html (accessed 1 September 2013).
- 67.
Recordings of both can be found on Youtube and elsewhere in the public domain.
- 68.
Vysotsky in an interview with Bulgarian television, cited in http://www.kulichki.com/vv/ovys/teatr/gamlet_vv_o.html.
- 69.
- 70.
At least according to the Russian Wikipedia entry on Hamlet. Semenenko (2007, 102–21) sees a tendency in the latest translations to make the language more contemporary.
- 71.
The authors apply this concept in other contexts also.
- 72.
This happened with the theatre production by no less a director than Andrei Tarkovsky, who staged Hamlet in Leningrad in 1977 in Pasternak’s translation with the actors from Stalker. His protagonist, who is reported to have been a very different, cold Hamlet, unperturbed by self-doubt, left almost no traces.
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Grob, T. (2016). ‘One Cannot Act Hamlet, One Must Be Hamlet’: The Acculturation of Hamlet in Russia. In: Habermann, I., Witen, M. (eds) Shakespeare and Space. Palgrave Shakespeare Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51835-4_10
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