The Consolations of Philosophy
Friday, August 2nd, 2002 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranth'Shipwreck', the second part of Stoppard's Coast of Utopia trilogy, seems emotionally warmer than 'Voyage'. The protagonists have grown up: they're not idealistic angry young men any more. The focus moves to love and friendship, and in particular the family life of the Herzens, who at the beginning of the play receive permission to leave Russia in search of medical help for their deaf son.
Most of the action takes place outside Russia, but the servants are still revolting. Herzen's mother is revolted by the over-familiarity of the unctuous French butler: later, she looks very likely to complain about their Italian servant. (Personally, I think that a butler who sings entire Rossini arias while laying the table might be a little ... wearing.)
Turgenev (so famous that I've actually read some of his work) visits a German spa with the dying Belinsky and argues about whether the author has to take a moral stance about his characters. He thinks not: it's valid simply to present the story and let the reader judge. (Belinksky tells him he'll be one of Russia's truly great writers. "I'm never wrong." "But you said Fenimore Cooper was as great as Shakespeare!" "That wasn't wrong," says Belinsky, coughing up another portion of lung; "that was only ridiculous.")
The Herzens are in Paris for the revolution of 1848 - visually very reminiscent of Les Miserables, but still shockingly loud. And yet, as someone remarks, everything is back to normal frighteningly quickly afterwards. Marx makes an appearance, and is credibly pompous. Bakunin, older and tougher but not really much wiser, meets him between revolutions: "Living in revolutionary barracks is the first time I've ever met the working class." "Really?" says Marx. "What are they like?" Herzen is much less taken by Marx: "He's a bourgeois from the anus up." "Alexander!" exclaims his wife Natalie. "I won't have that word!" "I'm sorry... Middle-class."
Herzen, in fact, is the focus of this play, and by far its most likeable character. He is the epitome of philosophical life: it's like a show-and-tell exposition of 19th-century Romanticism, ethics and literary theory. He discusses what is happening to him in philosophical terms, but his reactions are those of a mature and self-aware spirit, struggling towards some sort of understanding, some blend of stoicism and emotional expression. (The men in this play are not afraid to show their feelings). His wife Natalie also applies philosophical ideals to her life, though perhaps with less success: her affair with George Herwegh almost destroys her marriage, and what hurts - she says - is that she's lost "the ideal of a love which is greater the more it includes". (I was terribly impressed by her philosophical cat-fight with a friend's estranged wife, too. At last, a use for art criticism.)
By the end of 'Shipwreck' Herzen is alone. On the steamer to England - curiously motionless in a shifting moonlit sea - he encounters Bakunin, and asks "are you dead?" Herzen's wife died in childbirth after the death of their deaf son (and Herzen's mother) in an accident at sea. Far from descending into melodrama, he argues passionately that this is not a tragedy: that there is nothing more tragic about a child's death than about anyone else's: that every death counts for as much, or as little, or nothing at all. I can't do it justice, but I found it very powerful.
Came out of this wanting to re-read the very wonderful Freedom & Necessity, by Steven Brust & Emma Bull (er, see my review elsewhere): and Dumas' monumental The Count of Monte Cristo, which is a darned good read in its own right as well as the foundation for a number of swashbuckling TV and film epics. Oh, and all manner of 19th-century Russian novels. Or possibly short stories: let's not (heh) go overboard.
Final part, 'Salvage', tonight ...
Most of the action takes place outside Russia, but the servants are still revolting. Herzen's mother is revolted by the over-familiarity of the unctuous French butler: later, she looks very likely to complain about their Italian servant. (Personally, I think that a butler who sings entire Rossini arias while laying the table might be a little ... wearing.)
Turgenev (so famous that I've actually read some of his work) visits a German spa with the dying Belinsky and argues about whether the author has to take a moral stance about his characters. He thinks not: it's valid simply to present the story and let the reader judge. (Belinksky tells him he'll be one of Russia's truly great writers. "I'm never wrong." "But you said Fenimore Cooper was as great as Shakespeare!" "That wasn't wrong," says Belinsky, coughing up another portion of lung; "that was only ridiculous.")
The Herzens are in Paris for the revolution of 1848 - visually very reminiscent of Les Miserables, but still shockingly loud. And yet, as someone remarks, everything is back to normal frighteningly quickly afterwards. Marx makes an appearance, and is credibly pompous. Bakunin, older and tougher but not really much wiser, meets him between revolutions: "Living in revolutionary barracks is the first time I've ever met the working class." "Really?" says Marx. "What are they like?" Herzen is much less taken by Marx: "He's a bourgeois from the anus up." "Alexander!" exclaims his wife Natalie. "I won't have that word!" "I'm sorry... Middle-class."
Herzen, in fact, is the focus of this play, and by far its most likeable character. He is the epitome of philosophical life: it's like a show-and-tell exposition of 19th-century Romanticism, ethics and literary theory. He discusses what is happening to him in philosophical terms, but his reactions are those of a mature and self-aware spirit, struggling towards some sort of understanding, some blend of stoicism and emotional expression. (The men in this play are not afraid to show their feelings). His wife Natalie also applies philosophical ideals to her life, though perhaps with less success: her affair with George Herwegh almost destroys her marriage, and what hurts - she says - is that she's lost "the ideal of a love which is greater the more it includes". (I was terribly impressed by her philosophical cat-fight with a friend's estranged wife, too. At last, a use for art criticism.)
By the end of 'Shipwreck' Herzen is alone. On the steamer to England - curiously motionless in a shifting moonlit sea - he encounters Bakunin, and asks "are you dead?" Herzen's wife died in childbirth after the death of their deaf son (and Herzen's mother) in an accident at sea. Far from descending into melodrama, he argues passionately that this is not a tragedy: that there is nothing more tragic about a child's death than about anyone else's: that every death counts for as much, or as little, or nothing at all. I can't do it justice, but I found it very powerful.
Came out of this wanting to re-read the very wonderful Freedom & Necessity, by Steven Brust & Emma Bull (er, see my review elsewhere): and Dumas' monumental The Count of Monte Cristo, which is a darned good read in its own right as well as the foundation for a number of swashbuckling TV and film epics. Oh, and all manner of 19th-century Russian novels. Or possibly short stories: let's not (heh) go overboard.
Final part, 'Salvage', tonight ...
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Now there's a thing
Date: Sunday, August 4th, 2002 10:02 am (UTC)And I still don't know whether I actually want to see this myself, witty, thought-provoking, moving and well-paced though you make it seem. Am hopeless case, but still appreciative of reviews...