Mediating

Viktoria Volkova

“The sun of Russian poetry”, Alexander Pushkin, wrote his novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” from 1823 to 1831. Since then it has been regarded as a masterpiece of literature and Pushkin’s key work. From the school curriculum every student is familiar with Pushkin’s famous iambic tetrameter, an unusual rhyme, which is also famous as the “Onegin stanza” or the “Pushkin sonnet”. But what still has been disputed by Pushkin researchers, is the query, what is it which is so unique about “Onegin”: is it the poetic structure of the novel, and the tempo-rhythm which the poetic structure produces while reciting and acting on stage? Or is it the national cultural content, called by the Russian critic Vissarion G. Belinsky "the encyclopaedia of Russian life”? There were many attempts to interpret the novel. But to interpret Pushkin is not the same as to recite him. That is why the former director of Taganka Theatre in Moscow Yuri Lyubimov (1917-2014) staged “Onegin” in 2000 focusing on the tempo-rhythm of the Pushkin stanza. However, “Eugene Onegin” remains undoubtedly “the encyclopaedia” where national manners, customs, and cultural traditions from every field of life are described with brilliant virtuosity. In this connection, Alvis Hermanis’ (1965-) interpretation of “Eugene Onegin” at the Schaubühne Berlin in 2011 should be mentioned. Hermanis concentrated particularly upon Russian cultural embodiment. Five actors embodied the main characters of the novel and were both its narrators and historians who allowed the audience to the backstage of Russian and European everyday life. So it was the actors themselves who embodied the “encyclopaedia of Russian life” in Belinsky’s sense on stage. Both, Lyubimov and Hermanis, chose heterogeneous forms of mediation for their performances. In my paper I investigate mediation practices applied to preserve the tempo-rhythm on the one hand, and to reveal cultural traditions on the other.

Conclusion

This article focused on and showed the potential which Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse (created neither as a theatrical play, nor as a film script, but rather for the sake of mere amusement, fun for his contemporaries) achieved through theatrical means. Theatre as genre can offer us such mediating practices which no other genre like film or radio is able to apply. Mediating practices described in this article emphasized the possibilities of staging the tempo-rhythmic potential of the verse together with the cultural and national embodiment of Russian society in the 19^th century. Via performers' acting, singing and dancing techniques Yury Lyubimov's performance showcased the rhythm of Onegin's stanza in various displays like chastushka, rap, lullaby etc. as it is confirmed by the installed videos from the Taganka theatre. Alvis Hermanis' historical investigation for the stage version of "Eugene Onegin" at the Schaubühne Berlin scrutinized with the help of incredible props, costumes and stage design the living and common to-be-in-the-world conditions as well as the world perception of the Russian nobility of the 19th century, actualy that very multilayered content of the "encyclopaedia of Russian life" Belinsky referred to in his critics. In contrast to the genres of opera and ballet, taking in consideration the fact that the first is based on the libretto by Peter I. Tchaikovsky and the second concentrates on choreographic elements, the drama performance reveals opportunities both for the form of the text (the iambic tetrameter) and for fine features of national identity reflected in the way of speaking, eating, loving, shooting, bathing, riding etc.

The difference of every performance

is not something to be looked at from a position outside and after the fact […]; it must be experienced from within a durational process of continuous and multiple becoming in which the perceiver is also in a state of emergence. […][i]

In this sense, mediating practices of the two performances “Eugene Onegin” serve as a kind of decoding the “process of continuous becoming” of society for the perceiver, for the performer, and for the researcher.

[i]Fleischman, Mark, “The Difference of Performance as Research”, in: Theatre Research International, 37/1, Cambridge University Press 2012, p.34.

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