Harlequinade and Symbolist Art

by Olga Soboleva, London School of Economics

Harlequinade did not have any pre-history in Russian nineteenth century ‘high’ art. Commedia dell’arte¹ figures did not inspire Romantic poets, and it was not until the advent of symbolism that the character of a buffoon, paillasse (паяц), Pierrot or Harlequin started to attract the close attention of different writers and painters, becoming one of the constantly recurring themes of modernist art.² The interest in commedia dell’arte came to Russia from the West, but very quickly its images were appropriated, internalised and became a perfect outlet for the fundamental concerns of the Silver Age.³ The generations of 1890's and 1900's were deeply aware that they belonged to a dying world. The progress of science and industrialisation made its way so quickly that the majority could not follow it. The radical changes in the life style of the developing society were difficult to conceive; old values were fading, new ones were still unclear. In this situation the world of clownery, an enchanting fair festival, appeared as a restful island in the sea of anxiety, an attractive fairy tale that could be opposed to life emptiness, to the falseness and artificiality of the fading social norms.

Suddenly harlequinade appeared everywhere and took on a variety of forms in all areas of literature and art. For example, the opera I Pagliacci by Leoncavallo, first staged at the Bolshoi theatre in 1893, remained a firm favourite for the two following decades.⁴ In ballet: Harlequinade to the music of Drigo and Carnival set to the music of Schumann were based directly on commedia dell'arte masks.⁵  The plot was simple, nevertheless it appealed to the audience: caustic Harlequin courts joyful Columbine, lascivious Pantaloon is deceived in all the intrigues, and among the overall joy only Puerto is sad and excluded. Petrushka⁶ (1910) was the Russian variation on the same subject, depicting a fair festival in St Petersburg in 1830s. The dolls - Petrushka, the Moor and the Ballerina - brought to life by the magic of the Wizard, perform their drama of love and jealousy; the crowd is indifferent to the sufferings of Petrushka (the most human of the characters) even when he is killed by the Moor's sabre. The production immediately became extremely popular and attracted many people who had never been to ballet performances before.

In the realm of drama there were numerous attempts to revive the classical commedia dell'arte plays by Calderon, Gozzi and Goldoni and to coalesce the grotesqueness of Tieck's and Hoffmann's texts with colourful touches of carnival and fairground motifs. In this context it is worth mentioning the production of Calderon's Adoration of the Cross which took place in 1910 in the apartment of Viacheslav Ivanov, and the revival of Turandot by Gozzi at the Nezlobin Theatre in Moscow in 1912. There appeared many contemporary plays that also borrowed and incorporated different elements of commedia dell'arte. Often subversive, sometimes bizarre, these plays were full of innovative ideas and expressive symbolism. They were staged in small cabaret-theatres with curious names such as ‘Кривое зеркало’ (‘The Crooked Mirror’), ‘Бродячая собака’ (‘The Stray Dog’), or ‘Приют комедиантов’ (‘Players' Rest’) and were not only extremely popular among the admirers of modern art, but also highly significant for the future evolution of Russian drama.

In St. Petersburg the life of the cabaret-theatres at that time was dominated by the name of Vsevolod Meyerhold.⁷ Meyerhold was trained as an actor by Stanislavskii and Nemirovich-Danchenko, but in 1906 he ruptured his connections with the Moscow Art Theatre to start his directoral experiments. He set up a small troupe and staged The Acrobats written by an Austrian playwright Franz von Schonthan. It was a melodrama of circus life where Meyerhold paid particular attention to the depiction of backstage scenes and arrangement of a metatheatrical (i.e. theatre within the theatre) situation. However the most remarkable aspect of this production was his own performance of the ageing and failing clown Landowsky. ‘Tall, supple, melancholy and ridiculous, white face, long thin nose, uneasy eyes, a forced grimace of a smile’⁸ - Meyerhold’s character was entirely unrealistic, but vividly expressive in the ineffable combination of comedy and melancholy so that his intimacy with the image of Pierrot emerged with striking clarity.

Later on Meyerhold retained this identification when performing in various drama works. When speaking about Meyerhold’s most notable ‘harlequinades’, one should first of all name his versions of Blok's Балаганчикand Schnitzler's Der Schleier der Pierrette (Pierrette's Veil), in Russian Шарф Коломбины (Columbine's Scarf). Балаганчик was premiered on the 30-th of December 1906 in a joint performance with Maeterlinck's The Miracle of St. Anthony. The juxtaposition of two plays was not incidental: it was as if the director were saying farewell to the romantic drama and moving on to his new, experimental type of theatre, where he exploited the resources of commedia dell'arte presented through the prism of Hoffmann’s grotesque and Tieck's theatre-within-the-theatre. At least as important a role as those of Blok and Meyerhold in the integration of commedia dell’arte into Russian drama was played by Nikolai Evreinov.⁹ Nikolai Evreinov was a playwright as well as a director. In his plays, such as Веселая смерть (A Merry Death), Коломбина сегодня (Today's Columbine), he widely developed the possibilities of harlequinade and promulgated the idea of ‘theatricalisation of life’. Evreinov aspired to clothe life in holiday clothes, to colour it with the colour of the theatre, to return it to its former theatricality. Out of this, life would become not only more beautiful, but also easier: theatre will heal the wounds that life sustains.

Now a few words should be said about the remarkable costumes and decorations that contributed to the success of Russian ballet and drama productions: scenic designs by Nikolai Sapunov, Sergei Sudeikin, and members of the Мир искусства¹⁰ (World of Art) group could be considered as outstanding works of art in their own right. Their ‘finite’ approach to form, their stylisation and emphasis on the extravagant quality of the decor was an ideal visual parallel for the daring choreography and flamboyant staging. They turned theatrical sketches into a sphere of original artistic creation, and their achievements met world-wide recognition. For example, a great deal of the effect of Meyerhold’s productions was derived from Sapunov’s designs. Despite their illusory quality, his sketches outlined the nature of each character in the most perfect way: ‘asymmetry was the basic device in the portrayal of these mummers that were half-doll, half person; the sinister, fantastic, sometimes bird-like masks that seemed to be borrowed from Goya's capriccios and in which the essence of the characters could be glimpsed’¹¹. Many of the beginning of the century artists had as much taste for the grotesque harlequinade spirit as the playwrights and directors themselves. For many of them commedia dell’arte became a passion. They were deeply interested in the drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, in particular in his illustrations for Dowson’s The Pierrot of the Minute. Thus, numerous harlequinades invaded the paintings of Somov and Benois, Sudeikin and Sapunov. These artists believed in deep symbolism of commedia dell’arte and felt themselves to be conquistadors, adventurers in the realm of art.

In literature harlequinade enriched the poetry of Aleksandr Blok and Andrei Belyi, the writings of E. Guro and M. Kuz'min. Mikhail Kuz'min¹² was a great promulgator of commedia dell’arte, and in his life it intertwined with reality in the most peculiar way: he widely exploited harlequinade images in his creations and other people used them to describe him. He and all poets of his group (future ‘Acmeists’¹³) had indeed something of flamboyant, Dionysian spirit in their temperaments and their idea of literature. Kuz’min was a defiant homosexual. In 1906 he published a book of poems Александрийские песни (Alexandrian Songs) where he wrote about the intoxicating lips of Pierrot whom he associated with the young man he loved. Therefore Kuz’min’s poetry provoked much critical controversy. However it also attracted readers with its charming erotic sensibility and ambiguous blend of sadness and bittersweet immoralism. It was a mild and pleasurable scandal. The real scandal was his play of 1912 Венецианские безумцы (The Venetian Madcaps) where commedia dell'arte characters were presented in a homosexual love-triangle, and the work itself sounded as a triumph of forbidden desire and a strong affirmation of Dionysian spirit. In fact, the play intrigue had a real life reference in Kuz’min’s biography: Vsevolod Kniazev, a young officer, who had been Kuz’min’s lover, left him for Olga Sudeikina, wife of an outstanding artist Sergei Sudeikin. Olga Sudeikina was a dancer, a singer and also a fashion model. She was a close friend of Kuz’min and performed in his play The Venetian Madcaps. The amorous relations within this group were extremely complicated. Sometimes they transgressed against every moral and emotional law so much as to be naturally transposed into the unreal world of commedia dell’arte imbroglio. At that time such veiled autobiographies were not exceptional in the artistic circles. Several observers affirm that in his Балаганчик Blok was also inspired by the love triangle in which his wife, Liubov’ Mendeleeva, and his friend and fellow poet, Andrei Belyi were involved.¹⁴ One can certainly argue about the extent to which all these artistic rumours are true, however they show how deeply harlequinade was ingrained in the culture of the age. As soon as contemporaries were recognised in the characters of a play, they started to be seen through the prism of commedia dell’arte and perceived by others in comedic terms. As a result Olga Sudeikina was painted by her husband in Columbine’s costume. Blok signed a letter to his bride: ‘Your jester, Your Pierrot, Your scarecrow, Your fool’. The fact that Meyerhold, an outstanding director, danced in Fokin’s ballet Carnival and Zinaida Gippius, one of the main figures of Russian symbolism, let herself be portrayed by Lev Bakst as a page figure, speaks for itself.

In the light of the above we can say that symbolist interest in harlequinade was a vast phenomena. Commedia dell’arte inspired composers, artists, writers and poets and even became noticeable in their social life style. And in their daring feat to see life through the prism of grotesque images we should not see a faint-hearted desire to escape the perturbing and uneasy reality, but an attempt to look differently at it. What we must see here is a great belief in the power of farce that comes forward to meet the frightful and perverted reality, to trick it, to render it weak and defeated, so that, as Blok put it, ‘in the embraces of a fool and a farce the old world will wax beautiful and grow young, and its eyes will become clear, fathomless’¹⁵.