American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Meyerhold and His Set Designers by Marjorie L. HooverReview by: John E. BowltThe Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 404-405Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/309095 .

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404 Slavic and East European Journal

In the earlier review I expressed the hope that the Handbook would correct the numerous errors and misprints detected in the Russian original. Unfortunately, while most of these errors have been corrected, many new ones have been introduced. A careful examination of the appendices and about a third of the entries revealed the following: Final d omitted in forced (574) and in underworld (235); the apostrophe omitted in Its made out of (485); roman pagina- tion omitted in the front matter (the author later refers the reader to pages ix-x) (580); follow- ing Yushkov the notation see lushkov (583), but there is no such entry; the header Appendix 10 instead of Appendix 11 (549); lieterally (110); xunew with two different stresses indicated (480); an entire illustration missing in the entry eop6ywKa (83), although space for it has been left. The Bibliography omits nearly a dozen titles included in the Russian original, five on a single page (583) and three on another (584). On the other hand some titles are included which are lacking in the original.

The large number of such mistakes is most regrettable in a work that is thus far the best reference work we have on Soviet prison camps and the speech of their inhabitants. But it remains the best work, these annoying errors notwithstanding. None of its predecessors approach it in number of entries, in the detail contained, and in the enormous amount of historical background the author provides to the words and the external events affecting prison camp life. The Handbook makes available to those who do not read Russian an incredible, graphic picture of prison and camp life. Such a reader could easily spend hours pouring over this work, following cross references from entry to entry, until horror and depression overcame the fascination, forcing him to set it aside. It is true that we have had descriptions of camp life in artistic form in the past, but the neutral scholarly depiction of these events, which Rossi himself experienced or witnessed, makes the effect even more striking. Slavic linguists and those with an interest in Soviet prison and camp life will find this work essential. Many general readers will find it difficult to ignore.

Harlan E. Marquess, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Marjorie L. Hoover. Meyerhold and His Set Designers. New York: Peter Lang, 1988. 258 pp. with 21 black and white illustrations, $37.95 (cloth).

Marjorie Hoover is a leading specialist in the history of 20th-century Russian/Soviet theater, particularly of the avant-garde period, and her previous book on Mejerxol'd, i.e. Meyerhold. The Art of Conscious Theater (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974), made an original contribution to our understanding of Modernism on the Russian stage. Her new study of Mejerxol'd and his scenographic experiments is also a solid piece of research, even though it is overshadowed by new and more glamorous Soviet studies of the period such as Konstantin Rudnitsky's Russian and Soviet Theater 1905-1932 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988). This impression arises in part because Hoover is concerned primarily with the visual impact of Mejerxol'd's primary productions such as Magnanimous Cuckold (1922), Death of Tarelkin (1922), and the Inspector General (1926), and yet her book carries only a few mediocre illustra- tions (in contrast to Rudnitsky's luxury edition). On the other hand, Hoover offers a well- documented, intelligent appraisal, written in a clear and accessible style. Her Glossary of Terms, incidentally, is especially useful to the non-Slavist reader.

Hoover begins her main discourse with Mejerxol'd's tenure at the Moscow Art Theater and his brief alliance with Konstantin Stanislavsky in 1906, before moving on to his more exciting- but less familiar-collaboration with Vera Komissarievskaja. During the 1906-07 season Komissar'evskaja commissioned a number of experimental pieces that were staged by Mejer- xol'd, including Hauptmann's Hedda Gabler, Maeterlinck's Soeur Beatrice, and Aleksandr Blok's Balagandik. As Hoover demonstrates, Mejerxol'd and Komissarievskaja undertook

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Reviews 405

theatrical researches in ideas very distant from the Moscow Art Theater: the production of Soeur Beatrice, for example, elicited harsh criticism both for its "conditional" acting and for its "abstract" sets and costumes. Hoover implies that, in many ways, these early Modernist works anticipated the innovations that Mejerxol'd introduced just after the October Revolution, including Vladimir Majakovskij's Mystery-Bouffe with designs by Kazimir Malevich (1918).

In 1920 Mejerxol'd was given the premises of the former Zon Theater in Moscow. This became the RSFSR Theater No. 1, inaugurated by the production of Verhaeren's Les Aubes with designs by Vladimir Dmitriev. Hoover is right to treat this production as a trial rather than as a solid success, for it was the series of productions beginning with the Magnanimous Cuckold in 1922 that really brought fame-or notoriety-to RSFSR Theater No. 1. It was his discovery of the Constructivist designers Liubov" Popova, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and Varvara Stepanova that helped implement his "art of conscious theater," and through her painstaking research, Hoover narrates the complex story of those radical production--Earth on End (1923), Woe from Wit (1928), The Bathhouse (1930), etc.-that deeply affected the course of 20th- century directing, acting, and scenography.

After following Hoover's exposition, the reader will have an appreciable and appreciative understanding of Mejerxol'd the producer and artist. Once again he emerges as a pioneer in the development of new theatrical forms, but, as Hoover reminds us, he was not the only innovator, and it would be wrong to exaggerate his significance to the detriment of other original innovations on the part of Nikolai Okhlopkov, Aleksandr Tairov-and especially Komissarievskaja, one of the most forward and most inventive women of the Modernist era. Perhaps Hoover could make her the subject of a next book.

John E. Bowlt, University of Southern California

Vaira Vikis-Freibergs, ed. Linguistics and Poetics of Latvian Folk Songs: Essays in Honour of the Sesquicentennial of the Birth of Kr. Barons. McGill-Queen's Studies in Ethnic History; 4. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989. xxi, 371 pp., $39.95 (cloth).

This book, appearing a century and a half after the birth of the Latvian folklorist Krisjanis Barons (1835-1923), is a work worthy of the memory of this person who devoted his life to compiling and editing the monumental tomes of Latvian folk songs, Latvju Dainas (Mitau, Riga, and St. Peterburg, 1894-1915). Barons' collection is still considered by Latvian scholars to be the most authoritative published collection of Latvian folk poetry. Linguistics and Poetics of Latvian Folk Songs includes essays by some of the best-known researchers in this area, representing the approaches of disciplines as diverse as Classical Studies, Comparative Religion, Computer Science, Literature, Linguistics, Musicology, and Semiotics. It should be noted that among the seventeen contributors are two from Latvia and one each from Poland and East Germany, an indicator of the less restrictive contacts with the West that have come with dramatically changing times in East Europe.

The book is organized into seven thematic parts with nineteen chapters. The first part, "Krisjanis Barons: The Man and his Work," provides two chapters: One by Vaira Viikis- Freibergs on the significance of Barons' published folk song collection as a cultural symbol in contemporary Latvian society, and the other, a brief biography of Barons by Janis Arveds Trapans.

Part two, "Research and the Daina Corpus," might better be titled "oral formulaic theory and computer-assisted analysis of the daina," since all three chapters deal with these two topics. The section begins with Albert B. Lord's examination of the nature of themes, formulas, and oral composition in Latvian folk lyric. In articles published elsewhere, Lord has assessed

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