Publisher's Synopsis
1905-1918. Petersburg before the Revolution; story of establishment of first private theaters in Moscow; rural life in the deep Russian north - Zaonezhye (Onego Lake)...
A landowner's daughter, a Russian aristocrat, is a young, unspotted and open-minded girl who follows a wandering actor onto the stage. Travelling, triumphs and failures, the arrest of her lover and the abyss. Returning home and the painful routine of life, a child, doomed marriage, the role of wife and mother. Loyalty, acquisition...
The story begins on World War I's eve. A difficult period. It is the birth of a new century, a crazy one, as full as nothing in Russian history.
The theater is conventionally depicted as the protagonist. "Theater is a mystery, a play of time and destiny." "The stage is a space beyond time. The actor is able to cheat time by transforming from play to play. The roads through cities and towns unlock the predetermination of the path."
"Truth is learned through people, their joys and sorrows, and people are within you... Compassion and empathy erase boundaries. Find the others within you. And then you will see God in the audience." That's how Anna, the main character, was taught to play on stage. And the theater becomes the herald of breaking historical epochs and new roles in society.
The role of Solveig (Ibsen's play "Peer Gynt", staged in Moscow in 1912) becomes a triumph and a major part for Anna. Makar is arrested, Anna is pregnant. She returns home to her parents by mail wagons, but they have to marry off her younger sister and get rid of Anna, who has disgraced the family's honor. She is given in marriage to the blacksmith Vasilii in Zaonezhye. Vasilii lost his family, too. Anna reminds him of his first love, and the couple begins to build a new family out of despair, but over time they grow attached to each other. Meanwhile, war breaks out. Makar is sent to the front line as a prisoner (Anna sees his death in a dream: "Birds in nests feed their chicks with the flesh of fallen fighters"). Anna's noble family is shot by the Bolsheviks in Petrograd. She is the only survivor of her family and continues to live in Zaonezhye as a mere woman, building a new life.
The novella is like a metaphor for time. It is all about the power of the image. The relentless tragedy of life. Dreams, longing for the sky and immense fate. Motherhood as a nucleus of being for both oppression and embodied aspiration. Perhaps this is the key to the mesmerizing effect of the work. White shout, red song, for red is also life, beauty, new dawn...
"Peer Gynt" in general, with Solveig being well-integrated here, is the expectation. Of what? May it be happiness? Whether Solveig is the essence of a mere duty to life...? The metaphor itself is a question and isn't it true that questions are sometimes more compelling than answers, because you're looking for the answer itself.
