Article

Name: Reception of Nietzsche as a drama theorist in the works of Russian symbolists («Nietzsche and Dionysius» by Vyach. Ivanov – 1904, «Theatre and Modern Drama» by Andrei Belyi – 1908)

Authors: Shatin Yury Vasilyevich

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract:

Reception of Nietzsche as a drama theorist reflects the fundamental dualism of the attitude to his philosophy set by Vladimir Soloviev who, on the one hand, considered the idea of «superman» to be the most interesting: «of these three ideas associated with the three big names (Karl Marx, Leo Tolstoy, Friedrich Nietzsche) … the third one will be proclaimed the day after tomorrow and further. I regard it as the most interesting of the three». On the other hand, «in his polemic with Christianity Nietzsche is strikingly shallowbrained and his claim to the significance of «the Antichrist» would have been highly comical if it had not ended in such a tragedy» (V. Soloviev. «Justification of the Good»).

Following Soloviev, Vyach. Ivanov supports the dualism of Nietzsche’s nature: Nietzsche as a philologist who is wandering about the Elysium of pagan shadows and «Nietzsche as a herald of orgiastic sacraments of a spirit». Ivanov believes that Nietzsche’s tragedy consisted in that he failed to fully confide in the ecstatic substance, and thereby created a new aloof creature in the image of a Superman. «The tragic fault of Nietzsche is his distrust in the god that he himself discovered for mankind».

Reflecting on Nietzsche’s theory of drama heritage Andrei Belyi accentuated somewhat differently the German philosopher’s victories and defeats. According to Belyi’s concept Nietzsche is the greatest theorist of drama because he was one of the first to understand its nature and to define the drama «superiority of creation over cognition», «real struggle for the liberation of mankind». At the same time Nietzsche’s mistake was to canonize the form of drama, namely the stage, which led him to his personal tragedy. «In the beginning he amused himself with the shell – regenerating contemporary forms of drama acting, and then by accident he broke the shell making an attempt to extract the dynamite of life creativity from drama as an art form. The shell exploded in the wrong place – in the hands of the inventor but not against the walls of our prison». In its turn the dual interpretation of Nietzsche’s theory of drama peculiar to Russian symbolists’ attempts to combine the incompatible, namely, Nietzsche’s immoralism and Christian values, revealed another duality of drama: its inevitable breakup with the psychological realism in art and transition to new forms, i.e. to the theatre of cruelty of Antonin Artaud and the theatre of estrangement of Bertolt Brecht.

Keywords: drama, tragedy, symbolism

Bibliography: