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Original Paper
DOI: 10.29025/2079-6021-2019-3-180-186
The Visual Codes of "The Ivanovs' Christmas Party" Play by Alexander Vvedensky
Eksterina S. Shevchenko
Samara National Research University, Samara, Russian Federation ORCID ID: 0000-0003-2400-6856,
Researcher ID: I-8759-2018; Scopus Author ID: 57203166127; e-mail: e.shevchenko.samara@gmail.com
Received: 19.08.2019 /Accepted: 30.08.2019 /Publishedonline: 25.09.2019
Abstract: The present paper investigates the visual codes of A. Vvedensky's play "The Ivanovs' Christmas Party" (1938) and their influence on the nature of artistic communication. It is noted that the change in the media landscape of the era in the direction of predominance of visual media and as well as media combining the image and word has led to the creation of new artistic worlds in literature with the participation of naive painting, the hagiographical icon, popular print, buffoonery, circus, cinema, formerly located on the periphery or outside the zone of aesthetic perception. In the course of the study the author comes to a conclusion that the problem of creating new artistic worlds in avant-garde drama is also associated with participation of other arts. The paper notes that due to Vvedensky's refusal of realistic drama and psychological theater traditions, the image plan substitutes the expression plan. The play composition is compared with the composition of a hagiographical icon; the central part of it is the death of Sonya Ostrova event with the hagiographic stamps in the form of remark pictures framing it. In the absurd world of Vvedensky's characters, the sacral is mingled with the profane, which is confirmed by the mixture of the hagiographical icon code with the codes of circus and buffoonery that leads to coarsening of traditional culture, degenerating into the Puzyrevs, the Ostrovs, the Pestrovs and nanny-the killer Schmetterling. The conclusion is that the inclusion of visual codes of other artistic and non-artistic systems into Vvedensky's literary discourse has lead to an increase in the meanings of the play and the richness of interpreting it.
Keywords: avant-garde drama, Vvedensky, symbolization, intermediality, visual codes.
For citation: Shevchenko E.S. The Visual Codes of "The Ivanovs' Christmas Party" Play by Alexander Vvedensky. Current Issues in Philology and Pedagogical Linguistics. 2019; 3: 180-186. DOI: 10.29025/20796021-2019-3-180-186 (In Eng.).
Оригинальная статья
удк 882
DOI: 10.29025/2079-6021-2019-3-180-186
Визуальные коды пьесы А. Введенского «Елка у Ивановых»
Е.С. Шевченко
Самарский национальный исследовательский университет имени академика С.П. Королева, г. Самара, Российская Федерация ORCID ID: 0000-0003-2400-6856,
Researcher ID: I-8759-2018, Scopus Author ID: 57203166127; e-mail: e.shevchenko.samara@gmail.com
Получена: 19.08.2019 /Принята: 30.08.2019 /Опубликована онлайн: 25.09.2019
Резюме: В данной статье исследуются визуальные коды пьесы Введенского «Елка у Ивановых» (1938) и их влияние на характер художественной коммуникации. Отмечается, что изменение медиа-ландшафта эпохи в сторону преобладания визуальных или сочетающих изображение и слово медиа привело к созданию в литературе новых художественных миров при участии наивной живописи, житийной иконы, лубка, балагана, цирка, кинематографа, прежде находившихся на периферии или вне зоны эстетического восприятия. В ходе исследования устанавливается, что проблема создания новых художественных миров в авангардной драме также связана с привлечением других искусств. В статье отмечается, что в связи с отказом Введенского от традиций реалистической драмы и психологического театра происходит замещение плана выражения планом изображения. Композиция пьесы сравнивается с устройством житийной иконы с центральной частью в виде события смерти Сони Островой и обрамляющими его житийными клеймами в виде ремарочных картин. В абсурдном мире персонажей Введенского сакральное смешивается с профанным, что подтверждается смешением кода житийной иконы с кодом цирка и балагана, ведущим к эффекту огрубления традиционной культуры, выродившейся в пу-зыревых, островых, пестровых и няньку-убийцу Шметтерлинг. Делается вывод о том, что включение в литературный дискурс Введенского визуальных кодов иных художественных и нехудожественных систем приводит к возрастанию смысла пьесы и богатству ее интерпретаций.
Ключевые слова: авангардная драма, Введенский, символизация, интермедиальность, визуальные коды.
Для цитирования: Шевченко Е.С. Визуальные коды пьесы А. Введенского «Елка у Ивановых» // Актуальные проблемы филологии и педагогической лингвистики. 2019; 3: 180-186. DOI: 10.29025/20796021-2019-3-180-186.
Introduction. The problem of creating new artistic worlds in avant-garde literature is associated with participation of other creativity forms. The influence of medieval painting, icon painting and popular print on the artistic language of the avant-garde has often been the subject of research, but it primarily concerned the influence of a particular fine art on another fine art. Such researchers as I.M. Sakhno, T.V Goryacheva, J.-C. Marcade were primarily interested in the influence of one art on another (e.g., J.-C. Marcade's work "Malevich and the Orthodox iconography" was devoted to investigating the influence of icon paintings on the artistic language of K. Malevich). We are interested in the influence of visual codes of others types of art on literature - drama text and its possible realization on the stage, i.e. on its theatricality.
We are also interested in significance of visual and multi-verbal arts acting as intermediary codes for avant-garde literature. The aim of the research is to investigate the visual codes of "The Ivanovs' Christmas Party" play by A. Vvedensky and their influence on the nature of artistic communication. The present paper makes an effort to investigate the significance of visual and multi-verbal arts acting as intermedial codes for avant-garde literature.
Literature review. Theoretical and methodological issues. According to the philosophical and aesthetic ideas of G. Berkeley, I. Kant, E. Cassirer, E. Gombrich, N. Goodman, symbolization becomes the main tool for creating new worlds. N. Goodman argues that the new possible worlds are created from existing ones. In the process of world-modeling, the symbolic scheme is transferred from one sphere of application to another [2]. Expanding the boundaries of symbolization and the emergence of new symbolic systems for describing the world in the 20th century has led to an expansion of world-modeling.
These processes, which offered a new interpretation of art of the 20th century, were investigated in works by M.S. Kagan [4], Y.M. Lotman [6], and later in the works by A.A. Hansen-Love [3], E. Mechoulan [8], I. Rajewsky [9], A.A. Khaminova and N.N. Zilberman [5] these processes were studied within the context of intermediality. Thinking over the structure and various forms of art, M.S. Kagan in monograph "Morphology of Art" views art as an open system, accumulating different meanings inside itself on various levels [4]. In the articles on semiotics of culture Y.M. Lotman introduces the notion of "polyglotism" of culture that appears due to multi-layer and semiotic inhomogenuity of fiction, their openness and ability to interact with various cultural contexts and to generate new meanings in the process of this interaction [6]. We suppose that openness and polyglotism of culture allow various languages and various symbolic systems to interact freely that results in formation of new meanings within the borderline areas or in destruction of borderlines and formation of new meanings in new areas. Such interactions are determined by the natural art's need for renewal and production of a new artistic language; the new language cannot exist in art without a new vision. Various types of art supply each other with this new vision. The beginning of the 20th century saw appearance of a new vision in modernist
and avant-garde art that became a source of new ideas. The sphere of art experiences the entrance of the systems, which were previously deprived of the aesthetic features (cheap popular print and other forms of primitive art); new systems, which have not acquired this status yet (cinema) are also employed. Consequently, one of the efficient models of art renewal is the writer's interest on other types of art, interaction of arts (interart) described in the works by A.A. Hansen-Love, E. Mechoulan, I. Rajewsky, A.A. Khaminova, N.N. Zilberman.
Avant-garde artists conceptualize the changed reality via such visual worlds (media) that have previously been outside the zone of aesthetic perception: icon painting, naive painting, popular print, sign, poster, advertisement, camera obscura, cinema and others. Intermediality implies interaction on the territory of the "Other". In the process of intermediality interaction, the transmitting sign system becomes a source of information for the receiving text and expands the boundaries of its informative space [5, p. 38-45]. Intermediality struggles with perception of aesthetic objects as isolated, as the objects are the "nodes of relationships" realizing the "promotion of relations" [8, p. 9-27].
Results and discussion. Visual codes and their meaning in Vvedensky's play
The hagiographical icon code
Vvedensky was always interested in three things: time, God and death [12]. In the "The Ivanovs' Christmas Party" these abstract categories receive a theatrical/spectacular embodiment. Vvedensky uses expressive means, excluding the psychological interpretation of images. He turns the fourth wall into a plane on the surface of which a real tragedy is played out. At the same time, time is actively ousted by space and is overcome by stopping the action in death as the only significant event of the play. The play by Vvedensky is particularly non-psychological - the author's intention is to avoid dramatizing the situations, depth of images and and internal motivations of the characters' words and actions. At the same time artistic communication is changing: the author does not make the reader reflect on the drama text intensively, but encourages him to use his imagination and visual capacities (e.g., watch the images painted in pictures: "the first painting pictures a bath", "the eighth painting pictures a court sitting" etc.). The text of "The Ivanovs' Christmas Party" requires an intensive visual perception. Visuality of the play is based not only on theatricality, but also on the other forms, which are not typical of drama and theatre.
Vvedensky's interest in God and death makes the reader pay attention to one of the genres of iconography -hagiographical icon (see Pictures 1, 2).
Picture 1. Picture 2.
The center of the icon is occupied by the image of a saint (eternity, God, overcoming death), the periphery contains the hallmarks demonstrating his path and trials (life in time, death, ascension). The hagiographical icon should be viewed as a visual narrative, representing the story of life, death and ascension of a saint in the form of images. Being under conceptual and compositional influence of hagiographical icon, Vvedensky's play
tends to become a kind of a story in pictures. The central image ("srednik") - the head and body of a former girl Sonya Ostrova aged 32. It is framed by multiple peripheral pictures ("stamps") - the remarks opening each of the nine pictures of the play: from the first one (the scene of children taking a bath on Christmas Eve) to the last one (Christmas scenes in which the characters die one by one) (see Table 1).
Scene 1 The first picture shows a bath. During Christmas Eve children are bathing. There is also a chest of drawers. To the right of the cook's door, the cooks are cutting chickens and cut piglets. Nannies, nannies, nannies are washing children. All the children are sitting in one big bath, and Petya Perov, a one-year-old boy, is bathing in a bowl standing directly against the door. On the wall to the left of the door there is a clock. It's 9 p.m. Scene 2 The same evening and the forest. There's so much snow that it can be carried by carts. And it really is being carried. In the forest, loggers are cutting down trees. Tomorrow there will be Christmas trees in many Russian and Jewish families. Among other loggers, one, whose name is Fyodor, stands out. He is a bridegroom of the nanny who committed the murder. What does he know about it? He doesn't know anything yet. He is cutting down the Christmas tree smoothly for the Puzyryov family. All the animals have hidden in their dens. The loggers are singing the anthem together. The same clock to the left of the door shows the same 9 p.m. Scene 3 Night. Coffin. Candles floating down the river. Puzyryov-father. Spectacles. Beard. Saliva. Tears. Puzyreva-mother. She is wearing women's armor. She is beautiful. She has a bust. In the coffin Sonya Ostrova is lying. She is bloodless. Her severed head is lying on a pillow attached to her former body. On the wall to the left of the door there is a clock. It's 2 a.m.
Scene 9 Scene 9, like all previous ones, depicts the events that took place six years before my birth or forty years before our birth. This is the shortest period. So why should we grieve and be sorry about the fact that someone was killed. We did not know anyone, and still they all died. Several hours passed between the third and fourth scenes. In front of the tightly shut doors there is a group of children cleanly washed and covered in flowers. It's 6 p.m. on the clock to the left of the door. Sonya Ostrova (a former girl, 32 years old) lies like a fallen railway post. (...) She is completely dead. She is killed. (...) Sonya Ostrova is a former girl, 32 years old, remains alone. Her head and body remain (scene 3) Scene 4 Police station. Night. Sealing wax. Police. It's midnight on the clock to the left of the door. A policeman and a clerk are sitting.
Scene 5 Asylum. A doctor is standing at the breastwork and aiming at the mirror. There are flowers, paintings and rugs around him. It's 4 a.m. on the clock to the left of the door.
Scene 8 Scene 8 depicts a court sitting. Judges are old - judging in wigs. Insects are jumping. Naphthalene is gathering strength. Gendarmes are swelling. It's 8 a.m. on the clock to the left of the door. Scene 7 A table. There is a coffin on the table. Sonya Ostrova is lying in the coffin. There's a heart in Sonya Ostrova. There is coagulated blood in the heart. There are red and white balls in blood. And, of course, corpse venom. Everyone understands that it is dawning. The dog, Vera, with her tail tucked, is walking around the coffin. It's 8 a.m. on the clock to the left of the door. Scene 6 A corridor. There are doors here. There are doors there. And there are doors here. It's dark. Fyodor the logger groom of the nurse who killed Sonya Ostrova, is walking down the corridor, wearing a dress coat, holding a box of sweets in his hands. For no reason his eyes are blindfolded. It's 5 a.m. on the clock to the left of the door.
Table 1
The hieratism of poses and gestures of characters, characteristic of ancient and medieval art, increases significance. Due to hieratism, the action seems to be repeated from century to century, lasting forever. The faces and bodies of the characters are endowed with meanings of sculpture, statuarity, which gives them significance and an abstract character. For Vvedensky, the appeal to the techniques of ancient and medieval painting and icon painting was determined by the search for new expressive means outside realism art. Attention is switched from the spiritual to the bodily. The body and death become sacred for the human being. Something that causes physiological disgust and a feeling of squeamishness is presented solemnly in the play.
The cinema code
Something frozen, magnificent is accompanied by the unpleasant, repulsive; statuarity is combined with large cinematographic plans, when the severed head of Sonya appears on a pillow, attached to her former body. A close-up and a detailed image substitute emotional experience, which, at the dawn of cinema, was perceived as a scene of natural dismemberment by the viewers, as a human figure was cut off by a movie frame. At the beginning of the 20th century the image of a human being in full growth, as on a theatrical stage, was more familiar to the viewers. Vvedensky's remarks with a close-up effect are meant to produce a shocking effect on the reader/viewer, just like the first moviegoers were shocked by the close-ups they saw in the films.
Buffoonery and circus performance code
Frozen, almost iconic poses of characters in the opening remarks (in the scene of bathing children, cutting the fir-tree for Christmas, lamenting Sonya, celebrating Christmas) are opposed by the eccentrics and clown-
ery inside the action. The nature of Vvedensky's characters movement reminds of the buffoonery character plastique. Muscular and verbal balancing of Sonya, her grimaces and protrusion of various parts of the body, a fight with a nanny lead to the nanny cutting off her head. Vvedensky depicts the world and a human being in a state of fragmentation. The mechanisms of crushing in "The Ivanovs' Christmas Party" are analogous to the mechanisms of body disintegration into parts in a circus. Cut off with an axe in the first picture of the first act, Sonya Ostrova is present until the end of the play. In the second picture Sonya, dead and lying "like a fallen railway post" [12, p. 60], talks to herself. The conversation is led by her head and body, when they remain "alone" without witnesses. Dialogue of Head and Body clearly refers to the circus ventriloquism acts. The dissociatively exposed body of Sonya Ostrova is further classified as "coagulated blood", "red and white balls", "corpse venom" [12, p. 60]. The human being in Vvedensky's play is split into a multitude of his own and strange reflections. In the fifth picture of the third act, a doctor from a mental ward takes aim and shoots at the mirror, seeing his mad patients in it. Answering the question of a male nurse about the shooter, he calls the mirror, not himself; then aims at the rug, but shoots at the male nurse who took himself for a rug. Such scenes refer to folklore theater based on the character's collision with the world and other characters who use physical strength and verbal gymnastics, reminding of blows exchange.
Popular print code
In the absurd world of Vvedensky's characters, the sacred is uncontrollably confused with the profane. The dramatic action of "The Ivanovs' Christmas Party" can be interpreted as a kind of a popular print icon, which is an upside-down hagiographical icon, and in this case the remarks opening the pictures - the hagiog-raphic stamps, also turned upside-down, imprinting false images and giving wrong interpretations of the Light. The remark opening a scene of the trial of the nurse-killer resembles the plots of popular prints and pictures regarding legal proceedings: "Shemyakin's court", "The Tale of Ersh Ershovich", "The bull did not want to be a bull and became a butcher" (see Pictures 3, 4).
In Vvedensky's play, buffonnery and popular print are aimed at "coarsening" the picture of the world and intended "spoiling" the traditional culture. This will become quite evident if we compare the Puzyrevs, Sonya Ostrova and the nurse-killer Shmetterling with Chekhov's Ivanov and Astrov, Dostoevsky's Sonya Marmela-dova and Raskolnikov and other classical images used by Vvedensky in the dialogue of cultures.
Conclusion. The forms of expressiveness, characteristic of ancient and medieval painting, icon painting, popular print, buffoonery and circus, as well as modern cinema, have a conceptual and stylistic significance in Vvedensky's play. They act as intermediality codes defining its specific visuality and theatricality / spec-tacularity. The events described in the play remind of a reversed hagiographical icon: in the centre of the icon there is a holy man, his figure is framed with the events of his life that led to his holiness and resurrection; in the centre of the play by Vvedensky there is a murder of Sonya Ostrova and along with her - the murder of traditional culture, death without resurrection. At the same time, artistic communication changes: the author does not require the reader to reflect tensely, but encourages him to use imagination and vision. Vvedensky describes the dark word of the present in the comments using the stylistics of cheap popular print. He discloses the monstrous distortions of the world and human being through the microscope lens; in his comments he uses the optical illusions characteristic of cinema. Due to the interaction of literature with visual and optical media, the sequence of perception is replaced by simultaneity, revealing the configuration of the literary text and making this configuration semantically significant. The visual codes of other artistic and non-artistic systems, included into the literary discourse of Vvedensky, help to build up the meanings and possibilities of their interpretation.
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Шевченко Екатерина Сергеевна, доктор филологических наук, профессор кафедры русской и зарубежной литературы и связей с общественностью, Самарский национальный исследовательский университет имени академика С.П. Королева; 443086, Московское шоссе, д. 34, г. Самара, Российская Федерация; e-mail: e.shevchenko.samara@gmail.com
Ekaterina S. Shevchenko, Doctor of Philology, Professor, Department of Russian and foreign literature and PR; Samara National Research University; 443086, 34 Moskovskoye shosse, Samara, Russia; e-mail: e. shevchenko.samara@gmail.com
