“Letters from D.S. Merezhkovsky to V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, 1909–1918,” comp., preface and comm. by E.A. Andrushchenko
The publication presents D.S. Merezhkovsky’s letters of 1909–1918 to V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko stored in the museum of the Moscow Art Theatre. Although Merezhkovsky was not in close contact with the theatre directors, he was of interest to them as a famous writer. The letters deal primarily with the...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Russian Academy of Sciences, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature
2025-06-01
|
| Series: | Studia Litterarum |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://studlit.ru/images/2025-10-2/20_Andrushchenko.pdf |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | The publication presents D.S. Merezhkovsky’s letters of 1909–1918 to V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko stored in the museum of the Moscow Art Theatre. Although Merezhkovsky was not in close contact with the theatre directors, he was of interest to them as a famous writer. The letters deal primarily with the negotiations about the staging of Merezhkovsky’s plays Joy Will Come (1916) and Romantics (1917), which makes them particularly valuable. When offering Joy Will Come to Nemirovich- Danchenko, the author expected him to implement the idea of terror rooted in religion as expressed by the radical revolutionary intelligentsia. It is no coincidence that one of the prototypes behind the protagonist of the play was Maria Prokofieva, the bride of Yegor Sozonov who had assassinated V.K. Plehve. Yet the director treated the play as a domestic or family drama about a former Narodnik associated with religious youth to regain hope for the future. Merezhkovsky expressed his disagreement with this interpretation in his article What Joy Will Come, which offended Nemirovich- Danchenko. When Merezhkovsky sent Romantics to the theatre, the director observed “speculation by elevated ideas” in the play. He refused to stage it, convinced that the theatre was no place for sermons and lecturing. The disagreements between Merezhkovsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko represented a clash between different concepts of the new theatre, as Symbolism strove to break its boundaries and become something greater than art, while the creators of the Art Theatre developed their “system” and a purely theatric language. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2500-4247 2541-8564 |