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

assume that a play can be anything it likes, static or tit-for-tatic, round
or fancy-shaped, nimble or stately, provided it is a good play.
We must draw a definite line between the author's gift and the
theatre's contribution. I am speaking only of the former and refer to the
latter insofar as the author has imagined it. It is quite clear that as bad
direction or a bad cast may ruin the best play, the theatre may turn
everything into a couple of hours of fugitive glamour. A nonsense rhyme may
be staged by a director or actor of genius and a mere pun may be turned into
a splendid show owing to the sets of a gifted painter. But all this has
nothing to do with the dramatist's task; it may clarify and bring to life
his suggestions, it can even make a bad play look--and only look--like a
good one; but the merits of the play as disclosed by the printed word are
what they are, not more, not less. In fact, I cannot think of a single fine
drama that is not a pleasure both to see and read, though, to be sure, a
certain part of footlight-pleasure is not the same as the corresponding part
of reading-lamp pleasure, the one being in that part sensual (good show,
fine acting), the other being in the corresponding part purely imaginative
(which is compensated by the fact that any definite incarnation is always a
limitation of possibilities). But the main and most important part of the
pleasure is exactly the same in both cases. It is the delight in harmony,
artistic truth, fascinating surprises, and the deep satisfaction at being
surprised--and, mind you, the surprise is always there even if you have seen
the play and read the book many times. For perfect pleasure the stage must
not be too bookish and the book not too stagy. You will note that
complicated setting is generally described (with very minute details and at
great length) in the pages of the worst plays (Shaw's excepted) and, vice
versa, that very good plays are rather indifferent to the setting. Such
ponderous descriptions of paraphernalia, generally allied with a prefaced
description of the characters and with a whole string of qualifying adverbs
in italics directing every speech in the play, are, more often than not, the
result of an author's feeling that his play does not contain all it is meant
to contain--and so off he goes in a pathetic and long-winded attempt to
strengthen matters by decorative addition. More rarely, such superfluous
ornamentation is dictated by the strong-willed author's desire to have the
play staged and acted exactly as he intended--but even in this case the
method is highly irritating.
We are now ready, as we see the curtain rise, or as we open the book,
to examine the structure of a play itself. But we must be quite clear on one
point. Henceforth, once the initial convention is accepted--spiritual
awareness and physical non-intervention on our side, physical non-awareness
and significant intervention on the part of the play--all others will be
ruled out.
In conclusion, let me repeat in slightly different words--now that I
have defined the general idea--repeat the primary axiom of drama. If, as I
believe it to be, the only acceptable dualism is the unbridgeable division
between ego and non-ego, then we can say that the theatre is a good
illustration of this philosophical fatality. My initial formula referring to
the spectators and the drama onstage may be expressed thus: the first is
aware of the second but has no power over it; the second is unaware of the
first, but has the power of moving it. Broadly speaking, this is very near