Fernand Crommelynck’s dramaturgy and its interpretation by Vsevolod Meyerhold and Les Kurbas

Background. The modernist dramaturgy of Fernand Crommelynck allows some literary critics to attribute it to symbolism: continuing the symbolist traditions, the author builds his works “on the development of an abstract position, personified by dramatic characters that can be perceived both as living people and as figurative designations of concepts” [8]. Other researchers believe that the F. Crommelynck’s works are expressionistic, since the Crommelynck Theater is “poetic, but full of pathos, hyperbolized images, in the characteristics of his personages exaggeration is brought to the point of absurdity” [2]. Some scientists attribute Crommelynck to surrealism because the playwright is one of the burlesque theater renovators [3]. At the same time, there is an opinion that a number of later plays by the playwright anticipate the aesthetics of the theater of the absurd [11]. Ambiguously critics evaluate the genre features of Crommelynck’s plays. They are also interpreted as “psychological dramas that combine farce and tragedy”, therefore “the characters of Crommelynck’s plays are tragic jesters, the embodiment of the “eternal” principles of love, jealousy, and stinginess. His highlight is human passions, paradoxes, absurdity” [15]. His pieces are considered and as varieties of drama filled with elements of the grotesque, and “characters often act as personifications of certain moral qualities: jealousy (“Le Cocu magnifique” – “The Magnanimous Cuckold”), stinginess (“Tripes d’or” – “The Golden Womb”), played out virtues (“Carine, ou la jeune fille folle de son âme” –“Carine, or the Mad Girl of self soul”)”, etc. [11]. Neither Vsevolod Meyerhold (production of the play “The Magnanimous Cuckold” in 1922), nor Les Kurbas (production of the play “The Golden Womb” in 1926), who were innovators in theatrical field, revolutionists of the Soviet theater, could not pass by the creativity of the contemporary modernist playwright. The purpose of this study is to identify the peculiarities of the Crommelynck’ dramas produced by stage directors and the lines of the pioneering searches of two great representatives of the theater went when staging Crommelynck’s plays. Methods. The basis of the research methodology is historical analysis. Results. Meyerhold, as shown by his notes and the memoirs of his contemporaries, moved in the 1920s in his theatrical searches went towards formalist experiments, in particular, constructivism and biomechanics. According to the director, the Crommelynck’ grotesque-farcical play “The Magnanimous Cuckold” on the theater stage, saturated with complex diverse physical movements of the actors, was supposed to show one of the workers’ leisure activities. Les Kurbas, also seeking to radically renew the Ukrainian stage, relied on a completely different theatrical concept. Speaking for an active-revolutionary life installation, for the restructuring of social psychology and, consequently, for spiritual and moral values, Kurbas in his articles and conversations called for fighting the limited outlook of the Nepmen and provincial inhabitants who only think about endless prosperity [9; 10]. Realizing his concept in life, it is not by chance that the director chooses for the premiere of the first season of “Berezil” in Kharkov the play “Tripes d’or” (“The Golden Womb”) just written by Crommelynck (1925). Note that “Tripes d’or” in its content is much more complicated than the “Le Cocu magnifique”. In our opinion, the playwright, using allusions to the work of European prose writers of the XIX century, seeks to show that even an honest and decent person, becoming the owner of a large inheritance, will begin to degrade morally; gold, sooner or later, will become a fetish. Moreover, in “Tripes d’or” it is quite clearly shown that the uncle of Pierre-Auguste himself (the hero of the piece) – AnnaRomainHormidas deGutem– passed through the temptation of wealth. Hormidas’ niece Melina, who eventually got the “throne” with a pottery filled with gold dust, will also pass along this path. In addition, Crommelynck in his play reveals a number of stages of Pierre-Auguste’s painful struggle with the attractive power of gold: from understanding that gold will soon turn into a dragon that will kill a knight, through the realization that “gold in itself is fascinating”, to recognition: “I want to destroy everything ... what is near money .. so that there is no – neither the past, nor the present, nor the future ...” [7: 149, 160]. At the same time, the author in a number of scenes departs from the tragic pathos and appeals to the grotesque, which allows in the “Tripes d’or” to organically combine the real and the fantastic. Thoughtfully approaching the text of the play, Kurbas saw in its plot not the single tragedy of Pierre-Auguste, on which a huge inheritance had suddenly fallen, but a rather common phenomenon in the world of ordinary people thinking only of profit. Therefore, the director chooses not a psychological disclosure of characters, but a grotesque beginning, which allows exposing the thinking of the Nepmen and bourgeois living in petty, personal interests. The original design of the play “The Golden Womb”, semi-grotesque and half-realistic costumes of the actors, their playing and characters’ associations with animals to clarify the understanding of the stage images – all this, on the one hand, exposes the mercantile consciousness of the modern tradesman, on the other – discloses the original approach of the director to modernist text. Conclusions. By turning to modernist dramaturgy and relying on the modern possibilities of the avant-garde theater, both outstanding directors created original productions. If Meyerhold, during this period, was interested in formal experiments and revealing the possibilities of constructivism and biomechanics, so for Kurbas, who was also interested of constructivism, nevertheless, other tasks came to the fore. It was necessary for him to bring up a new theater audience in a short time: to change philistine psychology demonstrating new horizons for the development of public life and the wide possibilities of man in it. It is evidently, that the analysis of the new European dramaturgy and new experiments in the Soviet theater of the 1920–1930s is not limited to what has been said, and further careful study of these problems is required.