Summaries

In memory of Alexander Anikst (1910—1988)

A. Anikst. The Dramatic Speech Dynamics in Shakespeare

Shakespeare as it is well-known was not only a playwright but a poet as well. The dramatic speech of Shakespeare's plays is picturesque, full of poesy and music. Word is the highest esthetic element of Shakespeare's art.

The dynamics of Shakespeare's evolution is convincingly revealed through the analysis of the dramatic speech within his plays from early chronicles to tragedies. The influence of rhetoric, which laws Shakespeare followed more straightforwardly at the beginning, gave way to a greater freedom and adequacy oi speech to the situation, providing the text with philosophical depth, natural dynamics and vividness which has become the inherent characteristics of the later plays.

V. Komarova. The Final Scenes in Shakespeare's Chronicles and Tragedies

The report was delivered at the conference in Moscow in October 1986. The paper was to be delivered at Shakespeare International Conference in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1980, which the author could not attend.

The final scenes of Shakespeare's chronicles reveal some essential historical conceptions of their author. The conflicts seem to be settled yet the new situation brings forth new conflicts threatening to overset the temporal harmony. However, the warnings are inconspicuous, the prevailing atmosphere being that of energy and hope for the future. Shakespeare often gives a kind of epitaph to the heroes — in chronicles the final judgement in dual, historical and ethical, and the able rulers such as Henry IV or Henry V are not justified from the moral standpoint. Only Brutus in «Julius Caesar» is given the highest praise for his heroic attempt to save the country from the danger of tyranny. On the contrary the fate of Coriolanus is shown to be partly the result of his belief in the absolute value of his own virtues and in his right to revenge the ungratefull country.

In all Shakespeare's mature tragedies the catastrophy in its turn is psychologically motivated in the course of the dramatic action: the heroes' temperaments, passions and views lead to the tragic ends. The essential quality of the final scenes in the tragedies lies in the unity of historical, social, ethical and psychological aspects. The fate of the heroes and the true picture of the past help to understand the present and foresee the future.

А. N. Gorbunov. Time Category and the Concept of Love in English Poetry at the turn of the XVII Century (Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne).

During the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean epochs there were at least two main attitudes to Time — linear wich regarded time as a finite category and human life as a short moment in the face of eternity; and cyclic when Time was considered a process of constant renewal, perpetual rotation of all forms of being. Both of them affected the poetry of Spenser, Shakespeare and Donne. In «The Fairy Queene» Spenser combines linear and cyclic concepts and the latter determines his view of love. According to the poet love brings together antithetical masculine aDd feminine elements of nature, is subordinated to the ideal of marriage and so becomes part of universal harmony. The cyclical attitude is dominant with Spenser, though at the end of «The Fairy Queene» sceptical notes gradually appear. Skepticism goes much further in Shakespeare's sonnets. In the first seventeen sonnets the poet's position is rather close to that of Spenser. However later the fatalistic linear attitude comes to the fore, giving a tragic dimension to the poems. For the sonnets'hero as for Hamlet the time is out of joint and the harmonious neoplatonic ideal of love does not work any more. Beauty is no longer identified with good and so becomes flawed, tainted with evil. In Donne's «Songs and Sonnets» the process of revaluation is carried still further. The poet deliberately brings together conflicting views of lowe (neo-pagan or Ovidian, Petrarchan and neoplatonic) without giving marked preference to any of them. Unstable harmony is achieved only in Donne's late religious hymns.

A. Geniušas. Spiritual Metamorphosis in «The Tempest»

«The Tempest» is apparently patterned on the typological structure of initiation. The play develops through characters' ordeal and «death» to their enlightening «rebirth» and restoration to power. «The Tempest» is obviously composed of the typical elements of fairy tale, pastoral and masque pivoting on the archetypal symbolism of the way associated with solar mythology. The overthrow and restoration of Prospero take place at midnight and at noon. Within the regular twelve-year interval three groups oi characters set out by ship to the mystic island in the West, each departure or arrival being connected with the imprisonment of opponents and the change of power. The action centres round the symbolic cave of Prospero culminating in the ultimate «rebirth» of many characters, above all Ferdinand, Miranda and Prospero. The principal development is paralleled on the grotesque plane of the tragicomedy.

N. Olshanskaya. The Peculiarities of Rhythm Patterns in the Dark Comedy «Troilus and Cressida»

The unity of the rhythmical movement in «Troilus and Cressida» is analysed as one of the important elements of the dramatic text predetermined by the structure of the artistic whole.

Rhythm — forming elements reside on all planes of the text hierarchy and can be traced at the level of spatial — temporal continuum, in the rearrangement of personages and events or just be manifested by the size and structure of acts and scenes or by purely linguistic means. Only the integrative relations of these elements within the artistic whole determine their rhythm — forming function in drama.

The broad interpretation of the nature of rhythm, the recognition of the existence of irregular rhythms in dramaturgy side by side with regular ones and the interaction of both in the dramatic text contributes to the conceptual and expressive interpretation of «Troilus and Cressida».

I. Prikhod'ko. The Mystery-play Tradition in «Othello»

The author develops Al. Block's idea of a mystery behind the personages and the events of «Othello». There being explored the mysterial roots of the genre and the plot, the mysterial structure and poetics, the symbolic aura of the main heroes. The mysterial approach affords to see clearer the conflict of the tragedy, which is the soul of a man (Othello) placed between Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell, Angel and Satan (Desdemona and Jago). The author persists that the mysterial outline does not refuse the traditional historic, social and psychological analysis, but makes the phylosophy of the drama more obvious.

M. Sokolyansky. Semantic Range of the Notion «Freedom» in «The Tempest»

The problem of freedom is a central one in the last tragi-comedy of Shakespeare. The meaning of this category is not unitary in «The Tempest»; various interpretations of it are represented in speech and actions of a number of personages in the drama (Antonio, Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo, Gonzalo, Ferdinand, Ariel, Prospero).

The representation of «freedom» in «The Tempest» has a polyphonic character. Different viewpoints on it are being interpreted in their correlations.

I. Gililov. Shakespeare Contemporary Lady — Writers

The author portraies two ladies whose tribute to English literature at the turn of the XVII-th century, though not yet properly apprehended, was no less remarkable. They are Mary Sidney Herbert Countess of Pembroke, the sister of the XVI-th century Phoenix of English belles lettres Philip Sidney, and his daughter Elizabeth Countess of Rutland. The first of them, besides being a person due to whose efforts her brother's works were published after his death was a very talented poet and translator. She was a patron of a number of the distinguished poets and dramatists of the epoch as well as the hostess of a literary saloon visited by Shakespeare as well. Some of the facts analysed by the author proved that she was the one who initiated and organised the edition of the Great Shakespeare's Folio of 1623. The book was announced for publication in 1622 but was postponed for more than a year right after Mary Pembroke's unexpected death in September 1621.

In her turn Elizabeth Sidney is identified as an author of a strange poetic book published under the name of some Emilia Lanier. The concept is proved by thourough analysis of Lanier's biography and of the content of the book especially by the dedications to Queen Anne, other members of the royal family as well as to some most noble ladies, the closest friends of Elizabeth Sidney. The image of this lady, whom highly devoted Ben Jonson praised as «being nothing inferior to her Great Father in poesy» is also trased in a number of Jonson's poems where she most frequently mentioned under various allegorical names and masks.

S. Makurenkova. The Poetry of Shakespeare and Donne within Aesthetic Framework of Coleridge

The paper deals with the problem of Shakespeare's poetry being «homo iousian» and not «homoousian» to Donne's, as it was outlined in one of Coleridge's marginal remarks. The question is being traced back to the original split in the philosophical concept of Trinity in early Christianity and Coleridge's apprehention of it. His appeal to the dichotomy of homoousian/homoiousian within aesthetic framework reveals his understanding of the likeness of Shakespeare's and Donne's poetry in the form of «conceit» as a means of poetic expression while on the substantial level he differenciated them as dramatical and lyrical poesy. Regarding «likeness» as the «greatest absolute difference» Coleridge just only briefly outlined the specification of both of them, which seems to be the explanation while the XX-th century English criticism on John Donne is mainly treating his poetry as a dramatic one.

Ivan Chekalov. M. Losinsky and B. Pasternak as Translators of «Hamlet» and their Contemporary Reviewers in the Soviet Press of 30-s

Both M. Losinsky's and B. Pasternak's Russian versions of «Hamlet» are now generally accepted as being of the highest excellence. Yet in the 30-s, when first published, they were far from being taken for granted. They had been out only for a few months when conflicting reviews began to appear. The controversy covered a wide range of questions including those raised by the translators themselves concerned with the theoretical part of their work. Critics were divided over such issues as the adequacy of the interpretative approach adopted by the translators, the accuracy of their adherence to externally imposed rules and canons, the ultimate extent to which the text of a Russian translation could convey an unfaltering sense of reality found in the original. The difference in approach to these and some other problems is traced in numerous reviews and articles published in the press. The controversy is shown to be rooted in various schools of translation which reveal a shade of topicality when placed against the background of shifts and trends in the Soviet Shakesperian criticism of the period.

S. Melnikova. «Coriolanus» on the Soviet Stage

The author proclaims a definite change in the interpretations of «The Tragedy of Coriolanus» on the Soviet stage during the last decade and a half. Revising the versions of the Esthonian, Lythovian, North-Osethia, Armenian and Checheno-Inghush theatres within the period of 1964—1979 the author emphasizes that the so-called «political» conception of the play gave way to a much more universal one. Thourough analysis of the material in each particular case supports the idea.

A. Grigoryan. The Right of an Actor in Shakespeare's Theatre

Shakespeare's plays are regarded as a sensitive and open to interpretation artistic texture which possesses magical attractivenes being ready to reflect any reality whatsoever. Shakespeare seems finally to be the one who dictates all possible relations and attitudes towards the material which is artistic in the utmost sense of the word. Shakespeare's drama is appreciated as nothing but an invitation for a play sent to an artist, including ail possible varieties of interpretors. An artist, quite consciously giving himself into the nature of playing, creats mimesis while the very form of Shakespeare's plays helps him to overcome casualty and produce an epic song. Transforming his personality into a generalized image Shakespeare makes an artist the rapsode of his own life thus taking together two such contradictory theatre forms as mimesis and performance are.

P. Nerler. Some Notes on the Russian Translations of Shakespeare's CXXIX Sonnet

The paper is dealing with the problem of the translations of Shakespeare's CXXIX Sonnet into Russian. Besides the already published and well known translations there being revised some new versions of it. The analysis of the Russian translations reveals the variety of conceptual interpretations of one and the same original text.

New Translations of Shakespeare's Sonnets

There exists a variety of Russian translations of Shakespeare's Sonnets, among which those done by the prominent Soviet poets. But they still continue to attract attention being of a particular interest for the new-born generations of the translators. Here are exhibited the works of S. Zaslavsky, E. Lopatukhin, I. Fradkin, D. Sh'edrovitsky, L. Shlosberg. The translation of the poem «The Phoenix and the Turtle» is done by Sh'edrovitsky anew according to the latest interpretation of the Shakespeare's text.

S. Krzhizhanovsky. The comediography of Shakespeare

The paper written in 1934 as a preface to an edition of Shakespeare's plays is now published for the first time.

The analysis of the very nature of comic in Shakespeare's plays reveals the artistic means of its creation. Among them the comparative fastening in the development of situations in comparison to obvious logic, the dynamic of love stories with both happy and unhappy ends, parodies, hyperboles, «chains» of comic comparisons, playing on words, fascinating intrigues. A special attention is paid to the «dream» — imagery, including the final monologue of Prospero in «The Tempest». There traced the functional role of fools and clowns, «meaningful» names and titles of Shakespeare comedies, which in comparison to both chronicles and tragedies are dealing not as much with the main hero's names but with describing the situation.

The author outlines the dynamics from early burlesque comedies to those more contemplative and philosophical of the later time. The nature of prose and poetry combinations is analysed here.

In general the work preserves the atmosphere of the ideological discussions of the 30-ies, which influenced the Soviet studies in Shakespeare as well.