Without a Dowry and Other Plays

Ostrovsky Alexander

Description

Contemporary of Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy and precursor to Chekhov, he was a keen sociological observer, often exposing abuses of power, landing him in trouble with the censors again and again. He wrote 47 original plays and began the tradition of acting today associated with Stanislavsky. Ostrovsky's plays were written with performance in mind and with a masterful use of colloquial language. To this day they are a much-performed part of the Russian repertory. A This volume collects four of Ostrovsky's key plays, each from a different decade-A Profitable Position, An Ardent Heart, Without a Dowry, and Talents and Admirers, and is rounded out by the translator's introduction, an afterword for each play, an extensive bibliography, and complete list of Ostrovsky's works.

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 04 février 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781468309287
• Langue: English

Extrait

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This edition first published in paperback in the United States and the United Kingdom in 2014 by Ardis Publishers, an imprint of Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ostrovsky, Aleksandr Nikolaevich, 1823-1886 [Selections. English. 1995] Without a dowry & other plays / Alexander Ostrovsky; translated with an introduction by Norman Henley. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references. Contents: A profitable position - Ardent heart -Without a dowry - Talents and admirers.
ISBN 0-88233-933-8 1. Ostrovsky, Aleksandr Nikolaevich, 1823-1886-Translations into English. I. Henley, Norman. II. Title. PG3337.08A24 1995 95-23736 891.72’3-dc20 CIP
Printed in the United States of America eISBN: 978-1-4683-0928-7
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For Chris and Frannie
CONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
A PROFITABLE POSITION
Afterword
AN ARDENT HEART
Afterword
WITHOUT A DOWRY
Afterword
TALENTS AND ADMIRERS
Afterword
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS
Ostrovsky’s Plays in Russian
Ostrovsky’s Plays in English Translation
Ostrovsky Criticism in English
PREFACE
Despite Ostrovsky’s high stature in Russian letters he has fared relatively poorly in English translation. Much of the translation was done before World War Two, and for that we are largely indebted to George Rapall Noyes (1873-1952), an eminent American Slavicist and strong champion of Ostrovsky. Since World War Two there have been scattered translations of Ostrovsky, but some of his worthy plays have not yet been translated into English.
Some appreciations are in order. To my ex-wife Nancy and Robert M. Slusser, former colleague at Johns Hopkins, for their encouragement when it was most needed. To Dorothy Magner and my son Christopher, whose suggestions and corrections improved the translation. And to the Johns Hopkins University for a special grant, which helped me to finish the basic project.
N.H.
INTRODUCTION
Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823-86), son of a judicial official, was raised in Moscow. He studied law at Moscow University, but did not finish his degree, and took a job as a legal clerk, in which capacity he learned much of value for some of his plays. During his university and law-court years he became passionately devoted to the theater and dreamed of working for it.
In 1847 Ostrovsky’s first complete play, a one-acter entitled Picture of Family Happiness , was published but immediately forbidden theatrical presentation by the censor. Ostrovsky’s first full-length play, It’s All in the Family , was published in 1850, and it also was banned from the stage. While this play earned Ostrovsky instant fame, it also brought attention from the authorities, who were disturbed both because the play portrayed merchant immorality as a typical phenomenon and because the main culprit escaped unpunished. Ostrovsky was placed under police surveillance and soon felt compelled to leave his government position. In effect this sentenced Ostrovsky to a life of constant struggle and near poverty, particularly noticeable in his letters, where he frequently begs his friends for a loan to carry him through a pressing financial crisis. It should be noted here that in that period Russian playwrights had almost no rights, and though Ostrovsky’s plays were being performed continuously, he received very little income from the performances, deriving his basic income from their publication.
Henceforth Ostrovsky generally wrote a play or two every year until his death, compiling a total of forty-seven original plays. In addition, he collaborated on seven plays and translated several others. Always concerned with the lot of the Russian theater and its actors, Ostrovsky served as president of the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers and Operatic Composers from its founding in 1870 to his death some sixteen years later.
On the personal side Ostrovsky had many friends, especially in the theatrical and literary worlds. Unlike many of his contemporaries he shunned feuds and controversy. Though some of his plays stirred up heated debate, notably that engaged in by the Westerners and Slavophiles over some of his early plays, Ostrovsky himself shied away from such controversy.
Brief as this sketch is, it is probably not unfair in suggesting that Ostrovsky’s personal life was unglamorous. He was an unpretentious literary hero, who wrote as steadily and honestly as he could under difficult censorship conditions and without compromising his integrity. His writing is that of the self-effacing artist, and in contrast to a playwright like Strindberg, it is almost impossible to see anything of Ostrovsky the outer man in his plays. Ostrovsky was a keen and sensitive observer of Russian reality, and this became the raw material for his plays. Although the well-known literary historian D. S. Mirsky made some bad and misleading observations about Ostrovsky, he was perceptive in describing Ostrovsky as “the least subjective of Russian writers.”
During his “early” period, from 1847 to 1860, Ostrovsky wrote fifteen plays, notable among them being It’s All in the Family, Poverty’s No Vice, A Profitable Position , and The Thunderstorm . Although The Thunderstorm is performed less often than a number of Ostrovsky’s other plays, it has often been considered his masterpiece. Paradoxically, the success of this play in western drama anthologies may have hurt Ostrovsky in the West by giving him the reputation of writing plays too “Russian” to be understood readily by non-Russian audiences. However, it should be stated that The Thunderstorm is hardly a leading candidate for Ostrovsky’s most typical play and that, in any case, many of his plays do have universal interest.
The early plays impressed everybody with their brilliant characterization and language. But they also provoked controversy on sociological and political grounds. On the basis of these plays Nikolai A. Dobrolyubov (1836-61) wrote two famous essays, “The Kingdom of Darkness” (1859) and “A Ray of Light in the Kingdom of Darkness” (1860). The former essay considered the plays primarily as social documentation, dwelling on the morally unworthy characters (often enough the uncouth self-willed characters known as “samodurs”), whose power, derived from money or the authority of elders, was used arbitrarily to exploit the weaker members of society. In the latter essay, inspired by The Thunderstorm , Dobrolyubov saw a glimmer of hope, interpreting the heroine Katerina as a basically Russian type whose way of thinking in itself constituted a kind of protest against the inhuman world around her.
At this point I feel that I should take the time to object strongly to the opinion sometimes expressed or implied in western criticism that Ostrovsky’s powers declined after The Thunderstorm . Ostrovsky’s artistic powers developed steadily throughout his career, and it is only with his very last play Not of This World that one can say that Ostrovsky “lost his touch.” In any case, it is a matter of record that for some time Soviet theaters performed Ostrovsky’s later plays much more than his early plays.
The next period, from about 1860 to 1868, may somewhat awkwardly be labelled “historical.” While Ostrovsky wrote some plays based on contemporary life during this period, his main concern was the writing of versified historical chronicles intended for reading rather than the stage. Actually Ostrovsky was trying to make an escape from the theater, for his bitter experiences with the censor, the lack of proper recognition, and his impecunious state had left him disillusioned and discouraged. In a letter written in 1866 to his close friend, the actor Burdin, Ostrovsky declared, “I’m letting you know that I’m giving up the theatrical realm completely… I receive almost no profits from the theater alt