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Concealment of Communication in Soviet Latvian Drama
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
Translating and publishing of Baltic drama in an organized fashion has been going on since the fall of 1973 at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (SIU-C) under the auspices of the Baltic Theatre project. A group of some twenty individuals of Baltic descent consisting of university professors, graduate students, and volunteers from other walks of life have translated more than sixty Baltic plays. Three of the translated plays have been produced by the Theatre Department of SIU-C and four others by either profesional American theatres, universities, or amateur groups. The first volume of a Baltic-drama anthology, Confrontations with Tyranny, has been published recently.
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- Copyright © 1978 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities (USSR and East Europe) Inc.
References
Notes
1. Straumanis, Alfreds, ed., Confrontations with Tyranny (Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 1977).Google Scholar
2. Arrowsmith, William, ed., The Craft and Context of Translation (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1964), p. 94.Google Scholar
3. According to Michael Glenny in “The Postwar Soviet Theatre,” Herbert Marshall, The Pictorial History of the Russian Theatre (New York: Crown Publishers, 1977), p. 200, this play, produced at the Sovremennik Theatre in 1974,” is a ‘moment of truth’ play, in which survivors of the Stalin era meet after many years and argue out the question of their moral responsibility for the tyrannous oppression of Stalin's rule. The explicit conclusion is that such tyranny was possible only because virtually everyone in the U.S.S.R. collaborated in the dictator's inhuman designs … the central episode debated by the characters in Mount Fuji bears a startling resemblance to the real-life circumstances under which Solzhenitsyn was arrested and imprisoned in 1945.”Google Scholar
4. Bibers, Gunars, “Katram cilvēkam savu Fudži kalnu,” Teātris un Dzīve, 20 (Riga: Liesma, 1976), p. 19.Google Scholar
5. Straumanis, , Confrontations with Tyranny, p. 223.Google Scholar
6. Autocratic president of independent Latvia before the soviet occupation.Google Scholar
7. Priede, Gunārs, Piecas lugas (Riga: Liesma, 1973), pp. 277–343.Google Scholar
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9. Ibid., p. 37.Google Scholar
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11. Putninš, Pauls, Paši pūta, paši dega: Four Plays (Riga: Liesma, 1975). The original title of the first play mentioned in the text, Paši pūta, paši dega, is the second line of a Latvian folk song—Tiny, small brushwood rods/Fanned themselves, burnt themselves—and it is felt that by using the first line for the English title the author's intent is better served. “The Fool and the Ironers” is a literary translation of the original title, Mulkis un pletētāji. Google Scholar
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Note: I have written a play, It's Different Now, Mr. Abeles, attempting to persuade the Latvian audiences in exile of the same fact. This play, produced by the Latvian Theatre of Washington, D.C. and performed at major centers in the U.S.A. and Canada, as well as produced by the Melbourne Latvian Theatre in Australia, received mixed reviews: it was condemned by some, praised by others. Such an inconsistency once more emphasizes the difficulty of interpreting the author's intent.Google Scholar