Reflection of the War in Soviet Drama
Reflection of the War in Soviet Drama Review by VERA ALEXANDROVA SEVEN SOVIET PLAYS, With Intro-Auction*) by //. W, L. Dun*. The Mac-milkm Company. Nsw York. 1946. 520 pp. Priei $4.00. ThESE mwi...
...This desire for faith which so many young men have brought back from a war of twilight significance, a war of negations against a positive evil, is the core of the problem...
...Yss, inasmuch ss the author propounds , and develops s number of historical theses which are really helpful for on understanding of the German problem...
...This interpretation of an old Bolshevik is due to the fact that the play was written in 19S8, shortly sfter the Moscow trials...
...This appears clearly in the play of Alexander Anno-genov On the Eve, included in the collection...
...In spite of these defects, Steinberg's history is so revealing with regard to some very important aspects of the development of the German trsgedy'that it should be read by all who want to get more information on these questions thsn they csn get from the bulk of the war-born' literature on Germany...
...This play, however, ia not included in the collection...
...The Ex-G.l...
...Front: The new reportedly party-line publication Salute came up for coiiiiiien tin the House rccenlty...
...h. w. L. Dana introduces this play ss follows: "In ths Orchards of Polovehansk snd in several of these other plays there lurk in the background sinister figures leagued with the enemies of Russia, giving even to these cheerful plsys tha sense of the ever-present menace of a coming foreign invaaion...
...Tha publisher is Whittlesey House...
...Is it not because it shows that the heroic exploits which were credited to the Communist Andrei in fact had been accomplished by the non-party aon of doctor Talanov, who shortly before the invssion had returned home from s concentration camp...
...Irwin Shaw in the foreword to hia play, Ths Assassin, writes: "I would no more think af sitting down to dinner with certain af the critics of the New York papers than-1 would think of breaking bread with the master of Buchenwald...
...Among other plsys included in collection, only The Russian People, by Constantine Simonov, well-known in this country, is of interest...
...New Directions Press, 11.50...
...But Steinberg fails to throw light on ether important factors which also contribute*' to the German trsgedy...
...attacked it as "an Insidious hoax...
...This is true only in part, for some plsys were written during the war...
...After all, democracy in Germany waa doomed not for the sole reason that a large part of the middle classes turned totalitarian, or reverted to the romantic adoration of the strong autocratic forger of German unity, but because of the defection, under Communist leadership, of a considerable part of the workers from their old sacred democratic ideals...
...Animal Farm, by George Orwell, a sstire of Russian Communism which has slresdy swept England, haa been scheduled for American publication...
...These world sx-patriatee have made a eult of Hopkins, and they will find thia new book of criticism much to their precious liking...
...He named contributors Walter , Bernstein, Jsmss Dugan, DsWitt Gilpin (was Gilpin's Party name in Kansas City some years ago Ralph Munroe...
...His Darkness at Noon, s brilliant novel of the Moscow trials, hss been published for the first time in Prsnce under the title From Zero to Infinity...
...He virtually Ignores the role of the Communists in the disintegration of the Weimar Republic...
...ThESE mwi different play* represent sevsn different wsys ia which Soviet drama prepared the Russian people for the coming of the German invasion of June, 1941, and helped sustain their courage and unity in the midst of thst invasion, ths most terrific of all history," writes h. W. L. Dana in his Introduction...
...At lsst the walls of wsrtims censorship are collapsing in the publishing field...
...for his critical intuition and awareness of ths poetie process...
...At that time many Soviet writers, and Leonov, alas, among them, were tempted to exploit thia officially favored topic, which, however, had nothing to do with the "ever-present menace of foreign invssion...
...Some Light on the German Tragedy Review by ALFRED BRAUNTHAL A SHORT HISTORY OF GERMANY...
...This, plus the hint of polite homo-sexuslity, has sndesred him to the neo-Tbomists, the (Mortimer) Adlerians, and to that host of parlor converts whose faith is poised on the tip of a compass needle...
...But it was precisely the economic, political, snd cultural stagnation in Germany snd the lack of political cohesion in the period from the 16th to the second half of the 18th century which made her a prey of military conquerors from the outside snd inside of the country snd stifled the development of democratic forces...
...Democracy collapsed already under Bruening when the majority of the electorate voted for anti-democratic parties, namely the Nazis, the German National Party, snd the Communists^J*A1I these crucial fscts srs entirely neglected in Steinberg's book...
...Some of the plays and novels deal with a possible clash between Soviet Union and Jspsn (N...
...Dondero (R., Mich...
...The monument for these qualities exists in his letters to Robert Bridges, published s decade ago...
...Until the world invests in some small peace of mind, the God which Hopkins—end which every religions poet —creates will draw to it ths despairing and the dispirited in times of crisis...
...for his perception of the problems of meaning and revelation in poetry...
...If not as sn event, certainly as a symptom, this book is significant...
...This success proves how great tha disappointment with the , Soviet military leadership waa during the first disastrous period of the war...
...New York: He Maemiuan Company, 1946 XI and 804 payee, ft.00...
...In New York it Is announced that Darkness at Neon haa been added to the Modern Library at ninety-five cents a copy...
...Some idea of hew acuta the whole ait-nation during the first period of the wsr wss given in the play by Alexander Korneitchuk, The Front (1942...
...Said Dondero: The first issue "follows the party line to the letter...
...The drama develops around this episode: after many years Pylyayev reappears at the Maccaveyev's home...
...The sinister figure" lurking in the background of Leonov's play la Matvsi Pylyayev, an eld Bolshevik and close friend of the aged director efaecaveyev from ths time •f the Civil War...
...Nor does Steinberg do justice to the tragic pert which totalitarian romanticism played not only in ths German middle clssses, but also hi ths German working class...
...As products of the thwarted materialism of ths 'SOs, they envy the young Oxford priest the faith which aat so easily on him, and seek to find its secret in the filigree of hia poems...
...It is s prospect which leaves the mind unsatisfied and still seeking, unless the two are Ss critically interwined as they wars in Hopkins, so the desire remains unsppeased...
...By the Kenyon Critics...
...Tha typical old military leader is portrayed in Ivan Gerlov, commander at tha front, that of the new rising leader in Ognev, who is a pas sonata antagonist of Gorlov...
...By Hopkins' own criterion, they never explode...
...The weak point of Korneitschuk's drama lies in the fact that "the bitter truth" about the military Ineptitude of Gorlov could be discussed only afar it had been recognised by Stalin...
...As s poet, Hopkins csn be dsmned by his own words, hia understanding of what the poet must do for the reader: "One of two kinds of clearness ona should hsvs—sither the meaning to ba felt without effort as fast as ons reads or else, if dark at first reading, when once made out to explode...
...The author neglects, for instance, completely the bearing which economic factors had on ths course of German history...
...4—German democracy ultimately failed because a large part of the middle classes were bribed by snd made their peace with the victorious sutociicfes, both of the Hohensollerns and of Hitter...
...And now, Thin Is My Story, by Louis Budenz, Communist editor turned Csthollc, will be on the book counters October 11...
...Leonid Leonov, a very prominent writer, ia represented in the collection only by his prewar play The Orchards of Polovehansk (1938...
...2—Militarism, bureaucracy, and Prussian discipline are not characteristic features of German history as a whole, but were artificially created by several Pruaaian rulers and later forced upon all Germany by the conqueror's sword.' x—Ths formation of the German Reich in 1871 did not constitute a genuine union of the German states, but was forced upon them by the victorious Prussian dynasty...
...Reports from France indicate that Koestler is ths most discussed author...
...On June 21, the eve of the war, not s single member of the large family of the aged worker Zavalov, apending a peaceful weekend in his father's country house, had the slightest idea of what would happen a few hours lster...
...What the book baa to any ia technical, involved, in an exact sense provincial, and hardly up to tha standard of some of the other studies in the New Directions series of Makers of Modern Literature...
...It seems that the desire to show how fine everything wss in Soviet Rusaia "influenced the choice of the plays...
...Faith, as a peg on which to hang a philosophy, as a container for a chaotic and overcast world—that is their need, and in the discipline of the spirit Hopkins achieved in ths Church, they see ths possibility of a way...
...Thus he fails to mention even with one word 'the devastating effects which the shifting of the center of the world trade from the Mediterranean, Alpine, and Baltic trade routes to the Atlantic routes from the late 15th century on hsd on the prosperity snd political cohesion of Germany...
...The play was a goat success during the year 1941...
...Since the wsr ended only The Invasion holds its place on the theatre programs...
...A BOOK appears now, a series of essays by the "Kenyon critics," on the Victorian Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins...
...German history, if intelligently in-terarreted, will reveal why the great civilised nation which Germany once was fell first into the abyss af Hiancutellern imperialism and than became a willing tool far tha depravities af Nanism...
...Pogodin's The Silver Ravine, P. Psvlenko's In the East, etc), but no literary work of importance in Russia before 1941 sven mentions the "coming of the German invasion...
...Leverett Gleason, publisher of Salute, is not mentioned in the first lasus...
...But their Interest does not disqualify the meaning of Hopkins to perplexed intellectuals todsy...
...The play ends with the dismissal of Gorlov and ths appointment to his plsce of the young general Ognev...
...Sound and Fury...
...see • A Note on Koestler...
...Ho saw it as an attempt by the CPA (not Certified Public Accountants) to make hay out of veteran dissatisfaction...
...Between the Lines • The Now It Can and Will Be Told Dept...
...Now he la eld poor, despised, because be waa an oppositionist and spent several years in a concentration camp...
...A history of Germany written for the general reader outside of Germany will be af Interest to him only if it paves the wsy for sn understanding of this tragic development Does Steinberg's book meet this supreme test...
...But though this inquiry into Hopkins is to a ho-hum stags abstrusely literary, cultish, and only slightly pertinent to an understanding of a difficult snd ingrown poet, it is important because It has been published today...
...Correct as all these theses sre, they do not illuminate the whole complex"of the German problem...
...One of the meet successful and doubtless best Russian wartime plays ia The Invasion by Leonid LeosMv...
...Harpers at long last has decided to relesse Trotsky's biography of Stalin...
...A young man surrounded by the bourgeois optimism of ths Brownings, the dewy vapors of the Pre-Raphaslites, ths studied paganism of the Swinburnes, Hopkins assumed the double discipline of Cat holism and Jesuitism...
...Leonov lets him appear now as a dangerous person connected with foreign espionage...
...more precisely s Catholic man of faith...
...Be) S. H. Sternberg...
...The . action of tha play is focused en the conflict between the old Bolshevik military chiefs and the young generals who arose during the war...
...The real union of the German states had failed when the revolution of 1848 was defeated by the Hohensollerns and the Hspsburgs...
...The direct thootog-leal love, the faith in God and In his works in nature (not tha phony pantheism af the 19th century) which hides under the fretwork of Hopkins' poetry opens s prospect to the seeking heart...
...The rupture of their friendship is due to the fact that years ago Pylyayev was a lover of Mas-caveyev's wife and the last son of Mac-eaveyev is in reality the aon of Pylyayev...
...The main historical theses which csn be derived from Steinberg's presentation of the history of Germany are as folWi: 1—The organic development of aifed...
...Kravehenko's volume, / Chose Frsedom, will hit the stands later this season...
...Faith and Manley Hopkins By RALPH Df TOLED4NO GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS...
...To the non-scholarly reader, then, Hopkins today is mainly interesting and sympsthetic not as a poet—though he is very much s poet's poet, a prosodist's Im n.s< id ist—but as a man of faith in a world upturned...
...The somewhat misleading remarks of h. W. L. Dana about the ways in which Soviet drsma "prepared" the Russian people for the coming German invaaion are hardly accidental...
...as former contributors to Communist publicstions, including ths Daily Worker, ths Young Communist Review, the New Massss, etc...
...However beautiful the harmonic and polyrhythmic movement of Hopkins' poetry, the compression snd complexity of his syntax (ths forward lunge which doubles back on itself), leave the painstaking reader clinging only to isolated lines and phrases which, though full of abiding loveliness, are pregnant with a meaning somehow never delivered...
...Thia is a hook bargain...
...era democratic state was hampered ia Germany /by the fact that thia coaaaVy fell unde/ the sway of r. barbarian state which grew on the edge of German civilisation (Prussia) and Which ultimately overpowered the other German states, where conditions for a democratic development were, mora propitious...
...Hopkins is important to us for his keen insight, sensitivity, and with in Judging his contemporaries...
Vol. 29 • March 1946 • No. 12
