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

where lies the tragedy of tragedy.
Consider the following curious position: on one hand a written tragedy
belongs to creative literature although at the same time it clings to old
rules, to dead traditions which other forms of literature enjoy breaking,
finding in this process perfect liberty, a liberty without which no art can
thrive; and, on the other hand, a written tragedy belongs also to the stage
-- and here too the theatre positively revels in the freedom of fanciful
sets and in the genius of individual acting. The highest achievements in
poetry, prose, painting, showmanship are characterized by the irrational and
illogical, by that spirit of free will that snaps its rainbow fingers in the
face of smug causality. But where is the corresponding development in drama?
What masterpieces can we name except a few dream-tragedies resplendent with
genius, such as King Lear or Hamlet, Gogol's Inspector, and perhaps one or
two Ibsen plays (these last with reservations), what masterpieces can we
name that might be compared to the numberless glories of novels and short
stories and verse produced during these last three or four centuries? What
plays, to put it bluntly, are ever re-read?
The most popular plays of yesterday are on the level of the worst
novels of yesterday. The best plays of today are on the level of magazine
stories and fat best-sellers. And the highest form of the dramatic
art--tragedy--is at its best a clockwork toy made in Greece that little
children wind up on the carpet and then follow on all fours.
I referred to Shakespeare's two greatest plays as dream-tragedies, and
in the same sense I would have called Gogol's Revizor a dream-play, or
Flaubert's Bouvard et Pcuchet a dream-novel. My definition has certainly
nothing to do with that special brand of pretentious "dream-play" which was
at one time popular, and which was really regulated by the most wide-awake
causality, if not by worse things such as Freudianism. I call King Lear or
Hamlet dream-tragedies because dream-logic, or perhaps better say
nightmare-logic, replaces here the elements of dramatic determinism.
Incidentally, I want to stress the point that the way Shakespeare is
produced in all countries is not Shakespeare at all, but a garbled version
flavored with this or that fad which is sometimes amusing as in the Russian
theatre and sometimes nauseating as, for instance, in Piscator's trashy
concoctions. There is something I am very positive about and that is that
Shakespeare must be produced in toto, without a single syllable missing, or
not at all. But from the logical, causal, point of view, that is, from the
point of view of modern producers, both Lear and Hamlet are impossibly bad
plays, and I dare any contemporary popular theatre to stage them strictly
according to the text.
Better scholars than I have discussed the influence of Greek tragedy on
Shakespeare. In my time I have read the Greeks in English translation and
found them very much weaker than Shakespeare though disclosing his influence
here and there. The relays of fire in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus o'erleaping
the plain, flashing across the lake, rambling up the mountainside, or
Iphigenia shedding her crocus-tinctured tunic--these excite me because they
remind me of Shakespeare. But I refuse to be touched by the abstract
passions and vague emotions of those characters, as eyeless and as armless
as that statue which for some reason or other is considered ideally
beautiful; and moreover I do not quite see how a direct contact with our