"Владимир Набоков. Эссе о драматургии (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

Владимир Набоков.


Эссе о драматургии
(на англ. яз.)


Introduction

The lectures "The Tragedy of Tragedy" and "Playwriting" were composed
for a course on drama that Nabokov gave at Stanford during the summer of
1941. We had arrived in America in May of 1940; except for some brief guest
appearances, this was Father's first lecturing engagement at an American
university. The Stanford course also included a discussion of some American
plays, a survey of Soviet theatre, and an analysis of commentary on drama by
several American critics.
The two lectures presented here have been selected to accompany
Nabokov's plays because they embody, in concentrated form, many of his
principal guidelines for writing, reading, and performing plays. The reader
is urged to bear in mind, however, that, later in life, Father might have
expressed certain thoughts differently.
The lectures were partly in typescript and partly in manuscript,
replete with Nabokov's corrections, additions, deletions, occasional slips
of the pen, and references to previous and subsequent installments of the
course. I have limited myself to what editing seemed necessary for the
presentation of the lectures in essay form. If Nabokov had been alive, he
might perhaps have performed more radical surgery. He might also have added
that the gruesome throes of realistic suicide he finds unacceptable onstage
(in "The Tragedy of Tragedy") are now everyday fare on kiddies' TV, while
"adult" entertainment has long since outdone all the goriness of the Grand
Guignol. He might have observed that the aberrations of theatrical method
wherein the illusion of a barrier between stage and audience is shattered --
a phenomenon he considered "freakish" -- are now commonplace: actors wander
and mix; the audience is invited to participate; it is then applauded by the
players in a curious reversal of roles made chic by Soviet performers
ordered to emulate the mise-en-scene of party congresses; and the
term "happening" has already managed to grow obsolescent. He might have
commented that the quest for originality for its own sake has led to
ludicrous excesses and things have taken their helter-skelter course in
random theatre as they have in random music and in random painting.
Yet Nabokov's own plays demonstrate that it is possible to respect the
rules of drama and still be original, just as one can write original poetry
without neglecting the basic requirements of prosody, or play brilliant
tennis, to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, without taking down the net.
There were those who considered Father's professorial persona odd and
vaguely improper. Not only was he unsympathetic to the intrusion of
administrative matters on the academic and to the use of valuable time for
jovial participation in campus life, but he lectured from carefully composed
texts instead of chattily extemporizing. "All of a sudden," say Nabokov, "I
realized that I was totally incapable of public speaking. I decided to write