Some time ago, I was blessed to attend the "marathon" production of Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia
, three plays about the intellectual underpinnings of the Russian Revolution. It was another life changing event for me.
My favorite character in the plays is Vissarion Belinsky, a Russian literary critic who was a friend of Alexander Herzen and Mikhail Bakunin. In the first of the three plays, Voyage, Belinsky is vacationing at Bakunin's family estate. He's amazed by the contrast of the culture and the wealthy and the 500 serfs in service to his friend's father. Early in his stay at the estate, he's drawn out and reveals his purpose and perspective. It was a gift to receive this in the first act of the first of three plays that would stretch out all afternoon and evening. I you like what follows, I'll be posting the second monologue as soon as I get it typed up.
Mikhail Bakunin: You said we had no
literature.
Vissarion Belinsky: That's what I
write. We haven't. We have a small number of masterpieces, how
could we not, there are so many of us, a great artist will turn up
from time to time in much smaller countries than Russia. But as a
nation we have no literature because what we have isn't ours, it's
like a party where everyone has has to come dressed up as somebody
else – Byron, Voltaire, Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare and the rest
… I am not an artist. My play was no good. I am not a poet. A
poem can't be written by an act of will. When the rest of us are
trying our hardest to be present, a real poet goes absent. We can
watch him in the moment of creation, there he sits with the pen in
his hand, not moving. When it moves, we've missed it. Where did he
go in that moment? The meaning of art lies in the answer to that
question. To discover it, to understand it, to now the difference
between it happening and not happening, this is my whole purpose in
life, and it is not a contemptible calling in our country where our
liberties cannot be discussed because we have none, and science or
politics can't be discussed for the same reason. A Critic does
double duty here. If something true can be understood about art,
something will be understood about liberty, too, and science and
politics and history – because everything in the universe is
unfolding together with a purpose of which mine is a part. You are
right to laugh at me because I don't know German or French. But the
truth of idealism would be plain to me if I had heard one sentence of
Schelling shouted through my window by a man on a galloping horse.
When philosophers start talking like architects, get out while you
can, chaos is coming. When they start laying down rules for beauty,
blood in the streets if from that moment inevitable. When reason and
measurement are made authorities for the perfect society, seek
sanctuary among the cannibals... Because the answer is not out there
like America waiting for Columbus, the same answer fro everybody
forever. The universal idea speaks through humanity itself, and
differently through each nation in each stage of its history. When
the inner life of a nation speaks through the unconscious creative
spirit of its artists, for generation after generation – then you
have a national literature. That's why we have none. Look at us! –
a gigantic child with a tiny head stuffed full of idolatry for
everything foreign … and a huge inert body abandoned to its own
muck, a continent of vassalage and superstition, an Africa of
know-nothing have-nothings without a notion of a better life, or the
wit to be discontented drunk or sober, that's your Russia, held
together by police informers, and fourteen ranks of uniformed
flunkeys – how can we have a literature? Folk tales and foreign
models, that's our lot, swooning over our imitation Racines and
Walter Scotts – our literature is nothing but an elegant pastime
for the upper classes, like dancing or cards. How did it happen?
How did this disaster befall us? Because we were never trusted to
grow up, we're treated like children and we deserve to be treated
like children – flogged for impertinence, shut into cupboards for
naughtiness, sent to bed without supper and not daring even to dream
the of the guillotine...
Yes – I've got off my track, hell and
damnation … excuse me … it's always happening to me! … I
forget what I'm trying to say – I'm sorry, I'm sorry … Every work
of art is the breath of a sing eternal idea. That's it. Forget the
rest. Every work of art is the breath of a single eternal idea
breathed by God into the inner life of the artist. That's where he
went. We will have our literature. What kind of literature and what
kind of life is the same question. Our external life is an insult.
But we have produced Pushkin and now Gogol. Excuse me, I don't feel
well.
Honest to goodness, I'm going to have to pay much more attention to LA Theatre Works. First, they release a very nice cd of 
The Real Thing is one of my many favorite Tom Stoppard plays. It won a special spot in my heart because I was able to see the original production in London and the original production on Broadway. Jeremy Irons and Glen Close lead the cast on Broadway and Roger Rees and Felicity Kendall starred in the West End. Both productions were life-changing experiences for me but the West End production seemed to me to be the a bit better because it just seemed to be the right place to see the play. 
