Isaac Babel's Maria at Stanford

Home , Isaac Babel, Maria (play), Mikhail Koltsov, Red Cavalry, Vsevolod Ivanov

Department of Drama The Stanford Department of Drama 2003–2004 Presents: production staff Director of Production Michael Ramsaur Technical Director Ross Williams Production Stage Manager Alison Duxbury Shops Supervisor Paul Strayer MARIA Costume Designer Connie Strayer Scenic Designer Mark Guirguis by Isaac Babel Costume Shop Supervisor Birgit Pfeffer Technical Supervisor Kenny McMullen translation by peter constantine Publicity Coordinator Mandy Khoshnevisan adapted for the stanford stage by Prop Master Christina Chao Gregory Freidin Set Shop Crew Michele Cash, Mollie Chapman, directed by Joseph Frega, Melisa Hill, Carl Weber Chienlan Hsu, Chris Junge, Margaret Lee, Becca Thal, Alexei Syssoyev, John White Costume Technicians Mindy Lieu, Katie Furuyama Costume Crew Jennifer Beichman, DeMara Cabrera, Megan Cohen, Kristen Del Rio, Anna Kerrigan, Emily Livadary, Alida Payson, Linda Serrato special thanks Davey Hubay, Larissa Rhyzhik, Toby Holtzman, Galina Leytes, Stanford University, Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures, Center for Russian, East-European, & Eurasian Studies, Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Division of Literatures, Cultures, & Languages, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Institute for International Studies, Stanford Humanities Center, Irwin T. & Shirley Holtzman, The Leytes Foundation. upcoming from the department of drama... The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka, directed by Matthew Daube Mar. 3Ð6 at 8pm, Mar. 5 at 10:30pm & Mar. 7 at 2pm. Nitery Theater, Old Union To receive emails about future productions, send an email to [email protected] and write “subscribe performance-announce.” There will be There will be Maria Photography smoking gunshots February 19–21 and 26–28 at 8pm will run and onstage onstage Videotaping February 29 at 5pm without an during the during the intermission. are Prohibited. Pigott Theater performance. performance. photo credits: Davey Hubay • Alexey Smirnov Stanford University powers against Hitler. By the spring of 1939, Stalin had decided to switch sides and seek a deal with Nazi Germany. Whether by coincidence or intent (we shall never know), Babel was arrested on May 15, 1939, soon after the pro-German Molotov Maria replaced pro-Western Commissar of Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov. Seven months later, Babel was convicted of the preposterous crime of spying for France and Austria by Isaac Babel and for belonging to a “Trotskyist terrorist organization.” He denied the charges throughout the investigation and during the trial, but he was shot in the Lubyanka translation by peter constantine basement the next day. His personal archive, confiscated during the arrest, has adapted for the Stanford Stage never been recovered despite his official exoneration in 1954. by Gregory Freidin Director A s of this writing, the play has had successful runs in Italy, Carl Weber Czechoslovakia, and both East and West Germany in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In 1979, it was adapted for and shown on BBC television. In 1990, it appeared on the Set Design Costume Design theater stage in London Old Vic’s. In 1994, it was finally staged in Russia by Mikhail Mark Guirguis Connie Strayer Levitin in his Moscow theater “Ermitazh.” WhyMaria has not generated any stage history in the US is whole other story. —Gregory Freidin

advised Babel, if he wished to see his of the play was a patronizing and discouraging review by the arts editor of Isai Lezhnev. The reader anyone to venture. When Staging a new play by an author as controversial as Babel became too risky for the rules of game and signaled beginning a new wave repression. Kirov, the Leningrad Party Secretary and a rising member of the Politburo, abolished State Theater, where it was to play in Yiddish) and one Leningrad. simultaneously by two Moscow companies (the Vakhtangov Theater and the Jewish clarify his ideological stand in the upcoming journal to abandoned, sharing the fate of Babel though apparently without much success, or enthusiasm. The project was simply in the West, especially France disappearing, all he had to protect him was his visibility among the anti-fascist circles in 1936 made Babel more vulnerable than ever. As his friends and colleagues were atmosphere of brutal ideological diktat and mounting mass terror. Gorky editions of his writings, with a few new or unpublished stories focused his efforts in the literary arena on preserving his legacy printed on the upper part of page, to Lezhnev some of the play reviewer left a glimmer of hope. Citing the author it on the class approach (Lezhnev though he had done both). But the stringent quickly whether Babel had overdonethe reader could learn it on sex and underdone

Red Cavalry.

Babel , just after his arrest in May 1939 , it appeared carrying its own ball and chain. Running parallel with the text But on December 1, 1934, the world changed. The assassination of Sergey Busy with his lucrative assignments for the Soviet film industry, Babel now ’ s details suggesting that ’

s eye could conveniently skip from the play Maria — for as long Stalin hoped an alliance with Western was published in April, 1935, the premier theater

’

Maria

s earlier plans to produce a peacetime sequel Maria II

on stage, to tone down the sex and Maria . For awhile, Babel tried to oblige, ’ was part of a sequel, Lezhnev ’ s droning critique below where s private communication and — — all in the choking negotiating new ’ s dialogue, ’

s passing

Pravda,

Katerina Vyacheslavovna Velzen (Katya)

(a former Czarist officer, now in the Red army)

Nyushka

Lyudmila Nikolaevna Mukovnina

(a former general in the Czar’s army) (a former general in the Czar’s Nefedovna

Sergey Hiliaronovich Golitsyn

(a live-in relative of the Mukovnins)

Nikolai Vasilievich Mukovnin (a young woman from the country)

Aristarkh Petrovich Sushkin

(daughter of General Mukovnin) Isaac Markovich Dymshits

(a former captain of the guard)

Drunk in Police Station

Yevstigneich

Kuzma

Andrei

Bishonkov

(the Mukovnin’s nanny)

Red Army Soldier Red Army (In order of Appearance) Safonov

(an antiques dealer)

Agasha

(a former prince)

Madame Dora

Elena (a floor polisher) (a floor polisher)

Filip

Kravchenko

Kalmykova

Policeman

Cast Viskovsky

Inspector

(a worker)

(a cripple) (a cripple) (a cripple)

(a janitor) (his wife) . Lisa Rowland . Emily Fletcher . Andrew Hendel . Barry Kendall . Justin Liszanckie . Edward Drapkin . Mandana Khoshnevisan . Daniel Sack . Holly Thorsen . Brad Rothbart . Eli Peterson . Dan Gindikin . Ana Carbatti . Tim Youker . Michael Hunter . Kathryn Syssoyeva . Thomas Freeland . Rachel Joseph . Audrey Dundee Hannah . James Lyons . Kyle Gillette . Matthew Griffin . James Poskin . Zack combines the psychological depth, and therefore the ambiguity, of a Chekhov play with the grotesquery of the avant-garde satire a la MayakovskyBath’s House or Brecht’sThree-Penny Opera. Babel was aiming at a new kind of theater, A Note from the Director anticipating Samuel GodotBeckett ’sWaiting for by some two decades. Reiterarmee A series of para- doxes posed by the play It was in 1961, the year the Berlin Wall was erected, that I first destined it, sooner or later, to run afoul of the Soviet encountered a text by Isaac Babel, a slim paperback titledBudyonny ’s censor. Babel was aware (Red Cavalry in English translation). Reading these short stories, that I was immediately caught by the power and scope of Babel’s vision, the Maria, as he wrote to way he captured the events described in their complex reality, in their his mother, did not toe the ambiguities and abrupt turns from horrifying cruelty to the grotesque and, “general line.” Indeed, often, farcical behavior, as he had witnessed it all while serving with the the play ends before the Soviet cavalry during the Polish campaign of 1920. woman worker gives birth with enough said to make When a few years later, in 1964, an at the time completely unknown Babel with daughter Nathalie, in Paris, 1933. the outcome of her play, Maria, received its first ever production in Italy and, soon after, in pregnancy—a common allegory for the revolution— to appear uncertain. Germany, I got hold of the German translation and rediscovered what Nevertheless, and in 1933-34 not unreasonably so, he had great hopes for Maria as had fascinated me in Babel’s cavalry stories. There was, in addition, the a stage success and, more important, as a work opening a new period in his development as a writer. He also hoped that it would put an end to the rumors—no amazing dramatic structure he had created to unfold his narrative of an doubt, known to Stalin—that Babel’s diminished output signified his unwillingness to odd assembly of people who, caught in the turmoil of 1920 civil-war take part in the construction of the Soviet Stalinist legend. Petersburg, are swept way down, or up, from their previous station in Russian Thematically, society. It was the combination of vibrant, colorful, often controversial Mariawas a play following the fashions of the late 1920s and characters and Babel’s particular epic, one might say: film-like, dramaturgy early 1930s and echoed what was by then a Soviet classic, Alexei Tolstoy’s novel, that made me keen on staging the play. By then, I was living and working Sisters, part of the trilogy entitledRoad to Calvary(Khozhdenie po mukam, hence in America, and I tried to interest producers and regional theaters in Babel’s Babel’s Mukovnin). Several civil war plays daring text — a rather naïve attempt, I must admit. Since there was no were1469 successfully produced and enjoyed English translation yet available and I could only describe the play and considerable critical acclaim. Armored Train explain what made it so fascinating to me. by his old friend and now the husband When Gregory Freidin approached the Drama Department and asked of his former lover, was a runaway success. if we would stage one of Babel’s two plays for the conference “The Enigma In short, Babel had every reason to believe of Isaac Babel” that he planned for 2004, there came at last the occasion that Maria might do the same service for to explore in production the many aspects of him. 5 His earlier play,The Sunset(1928) , had Maria that had captivated a mixed reception and premiered in as much as puzzled my imagination since I first read the text forty years Moscow in 1928 while he was in France. This ago. I hope that our audience will understand and share my fascination time, he took great care in orchestrating his with Babel’s play and the way he makes us watch women and men who come-back in order to maximize the play’s are trapped in a world of rapid and cruel change, while they try to negotiate visibility, not to mention the income from events beyond their control that might either destroy or lift up their lives. advances. He had parts of the play published early in 1934 in Moscow and Leningrad and gave public readings at —Carl Weber various venues, feeding the excitement and paving the way for the play’s future triumph on stage. For awhile, everything proceeded according to plan. Maria was being Babel at work, 1933. considered, perhaps even rehearsed, Maria Denisova, in 1920, during her army service and after three bouts of typhus. sharply with its other motifs—the sterility of economic rationality, of greed, despair of people left behind, and darkness. It is this Isaac Babel’s Maria contrast and its deep am- bivalence that accounts for the play’s overall message and its integrity. The otherworldly Maria does not redeem her loved ones despite their innocence and B their pleas. The strange gift she abel’s second play,Maria , is set sends them in place of in Petrograd in the winter-spring of 1920. This redemption—a pair of boots— was the third year of the Russian Civil War. The may be seen as a hint to them old regime began to collapse under the to pack and be off. One can pressure of WWI early in 1917; the tsar discern here echoes of Babel’s abdicated in March; in November, the own thoughts on his own and his Bolsheviks seized power, provoking the Civil family’s emigration. War when they dissolved the elected Constituent Assembly in January of 1918. For the Bolsheviks, Russia was “the weakest link in the capitalist chain,” and they forced the Civil War in order to ignite the revolution in the more advanced Western countries, thereby Babel did not return to Russia until September, 1933, but the manuscript speeding up the triumph of socialism all over of the play preceded him there, as it traveled in the pocket of none other than the world. This goal remained elusive, and Maxim Gorky—after Stalin, the most important patron of Soviet literature and the although the Soviet Union became an arts. Gorky himself had a mixed reaction to the play. He praised it at first, when industrial superpower somewhere along the Babel read it to him in Sorrento, but having looked at the manuscript found the play way, the means employed in pursuing it led too ambiguous, too grotesque and parts of the dialogue, convenient fodder for to death, privation, and destruction on a anti-Semitism. No manuscript of historically unprecedented scale. What Maria has survived, and we do not know if Babel Babel, in 1922 happens to the Mukovnin family in the play is an early part of this story. had taken Gorky’s criticism to heart. But perhaps, Gorky missed the point. The play Babel did not have the benefit of historical hindsight. When he was writing the play in 1933, the socialist experiment in Russia still had some luster, especially if Chronology of Russian/Soviet History: seen against the background of the economic crisis in the West, fascist dictatorship 1904-1940 in Italy, and Hitler’s ascension to power by constitutional means in the depression- ravaged Germany. Seen in this light, Soviet Russia could still be seen as a promising, 1904 Russo-Japanese War if grossly imperfect, work in progress, and the world-famous Soviet author Isaac 1905-07 The First Russian Revolution Babel—however intelligent, informed, and skeptical (and he was all of these)—had 1914 Russia enters World War I powerful reasons to hedge his bets, including the flow of royalties he received as a 1917 February Revolution (overthrow of Nicholas II); October Revolution (Bolsheviks seize Soviet author. power from the Provisional Government) 1918-21 Civil War and War Communism 1921 New Economic Policy (NEP) Maria,then, was very much a product of its uncertain time, and it is 1924 Lenin dies; Stalin begin his ascent to power filled with the ambiguities and ambivalences, refracted through the prism of Russia’s 1929 First Five-Year Plan (industrialization and collectivization of agriculture) recent history. 1932Ð33 Famine in the countryside 1934 USSR joins the League of Nations; assassination of Sergei Kirov Yet, Babel went to some lengths to makeMaria chronologically precise: its 1936 First Show Trial; adoption of the Stalin Constitution action is dated by the references to the beginning of the Polish campaign in the 1937-38 The Great Terror spring of 1920, the subject of Babel’s famous Red Cavalry (1926). In the former 1939 German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact; German and Soviet armies occupy Poland; in response, Great Britain and France declare war on Germany; World War II begins imperial capital, this third year of the civil war was remembered for its being the 1940 Conviction and execution of Soviet cultural and political leaders, including Isaac harshest, coldest, and most brutal. As the Civil War unfolded, the Bolsheviks abolished Babel, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Mikhail Koltsov, Nikolay Ezhov, Betal Kalmykov (357 all forms of private commerce and much of money economy, substituting for them people in all) War Communism, a universal rationing system that gave them full control. Before 1941Ð45 Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union and is eventually defeated 1953 Stalin dies. Beginning of de-Stalinization and rehabilitations of the victims of terror. Steel Was Tempered. Story “Trial” is published. Finishes a play or script about the civil war hero Kotovsky. Wife Evgeniia Ezhova protagonist of the play, Maria commits suicide. Sends a Well-placed veterans of the message to Malraux asking to be Mukovnin, had a transparent prototype Polish campaign of 1920 would have recalled to France; Malraux in the person of Maria Denisova. She easily understood that the eponymous declines. Signs contract for an was a famous Odessa beauty and the edition of collected works. Writes in originalPants inspiration—Giaconda—for the script for the film based on Mayakovsky’s great love epic, Gorky’s “My Universities.” Cloud 1939 Writes a script for a film “The Old . A modern, independent Square” about a falsely accused woman with strong leftist convictions, industrial manager. Arrest and non- she spent years studying sculpture and stop 72-hour interrogations. Babel art in Switzerland from which she was “confesses” and then repeatedly renounces his confessions, enters expelled in 1919 as a political pleas to have the case undesirable. Back in Russia, she joined reconsidered—all in vain. what was to become Budenny’s First 1940 January 26: Babel is tried in Cavalry Army where, not unlike Babel, camera, pronounced guilty of she worked for the Political Department spying for France and Austria and making posters and conducting belonging to a terrorist Trotskyist political education classes among the organization, and sentenced to Schoolteachers selling their belongings in the street, 1919. death. January 27: Babel is shot. ranks during the Polish campaign. Most 1954 Babel is officially exonerated. important for Babel’s rehabilitation long, life became reduced to its barest minimum, and even that could hardly be 1955 Babel’s Collected Stories, with an scheme, during this time Denisova met supported by the meager, starvation rations. Black market burgeoned, crime introduction by L. Trilling are and soon afterwards married Efrem proliferated. Petrograd—an abandoned capital since 1918, when the new published in NY. Afanasievich Shchadenko (“Akim government moved to Moscow—was sinking into a state of nature. In the winter, 1957 Selected stories, with an Ivanych” in the play). Shchadenko was introduction by Ilya Ehrenburg, are the Red Cavalry’s number three man, giant snow drifts covered the city, in the spring, young grass was breaking out through published in Moscow. the cobblestones on Nevsky Avenue, and side streets were being transformed into after Clement Voroshilov and Semyon fields of weeds. Class and status distinctions had vanished, and aristocrats, Budenny, and like them, he would revolutionaries, poets, and black-market dealers were thrown together in this freezing climb to the highest ranks of the Soviet pit of a Russian Apocalypse. armed forces, accelerating his career Although some saw redemption in man’s return to a primeval state, many during Stalin’s Red Army purge. were crushed under the rubble of the old regime. Life was laid bare and lost all pretenses to civilization (in the winter, indoor plumbing froze, and the city was covered 4 The by excrement). All that mattered were the instincts, the will, and the wits of the men unalloyed pathos of the Polish and women inhabiting the sub-arctic Hobbesean world. campaign that all of a sudden enters As a writer, Babel was in his element, a witness to raw nature breaking the play through the character of Maria through the cracks of one of civilization’s most beautiful shells. was intended, among other things, as Night has no mercy. The wind slashes and cuts you an olive branch, offered without down. The dead man’s fingers are feeling through St. fawning to the Red Cavalry trio. Petersburg’s the icy innards. A crimson sign of the There is little doubt that Babel’s pharmacy shines frozen at the street corner. The conciliatory message reached its pharmacist’s head with parted hair is dropped to one intended addressee, and perhaps side. The frost has seized the ink-stained heart of the helped to lift some of the clouds that pharmacy. And its heart has given out. Nevsky is had been gathering around him in the empty. Ink bubbles are popping in the sky. The time is mid-1930s. But it would be a mistake to two o’clock. It’s the end. The night has no mercy. see in this “auxiliary message” of Maria 1 an artistic compromise. The revo- So ran one of his stories datelined “Petersburg, 1918.” Written fifteen years later, lutionary, romantic pathos of the Polish Maria echoes these words with uncompromising starkness. It is in this world—the campaign serves a key constructive Babel, late 1920s. function in the play as it contrasts

1938 1936 1933 1934 1937 1935

Meadow Pravda Maria Cavalry Meadow writes his play Visits Gorky in Sorrento and there based on Nikolay Ostrovsky’s Works in Kiev on the film script, Gorky, and “The Kiss.” Grasso,” recollections of Maxim the purge. Publication of “Di friends in the military disappear Eisenstein on the film Begins collaboration with Pirozhkova establish a household. returning to Russia. Babel and France and Belgium before Speaks at the Congress, travels in at the anti-fascist congress in Paris. presence of Babel and Pasternak and André Gide demand the shooting of Odessa to participate in the Mourns Gorky’s death. Travels to Babel a dacha in Peredelkino. visit Gorky. Writers’ Union awards Koltsov travels to the Crimea Publication of to France. approves Babel’s request to travel for Paris after Stalin grudgingly Antonina Pirozhkova. Babel leaves study industrialization. Travels to the Donbass region its collectivized agriculture. republic of Kabardino-Balkaria and Caucasus to write a book about the Italian fascism, travels to the penniless. Speaks publicly about Returns hurriedly to Moscow, Paris via Rome and Florence. reprinted in Congress. Babel’s speech is art of literary silence” at the Writers’ Declares himself “practitioner of the Writers. Meets André Malraux. of the First Congress Soviet Moscow, involved in preparations Stays at Gorky’s estate outside publishing several new stories. work in dramatic form while production is delayed. Continues to rehearsed in Moscow but and Pirozhkova. The Daughter Lydia is born to Babel of Works on the special Gorky issue script of film project about Azef and writes a USSR In Construction. is published. André Malraux and the film is destroyed.

(8 . With Malraux and Mikhail Red Cavalry project is denounced in th

edition). Works on a Bezhin Meadow. Pravda.

Stories

Maria. Bezhin

for Pathé. Returns to and Bezhin Maria

Babel’s Red

is How for presenting them in his of the red empire, could forgive Babel aspired to command the armed forces Neither Budenny nor Voroshilov, who omnipotent patron, Joseph Stalin. of Defense, and, ultimately, their Babel among the Red Army ranked pretty low in sophistication military aides since the civil war, they “ replaced Trotsky as People behind him: Klement Voroshilov, who Semyon Budenny and those who stood the blustering Red Cavalry Commander critics, his old and increasingly powerful as a conciliatory gesture intended for Although they were Stalin uneducated, thick-skulled, and crude. in the end, like their charges, leaders of a rag-tag Cossack army, but for who they were draft of encouragement, he wrote the first full fashion as he did in before but never in such an elaborate contests, had tried to mend fences no interest in participating political public relations disaster. Babel, who had and popularity abroad, was for them a weeks for his overextended absence. something new and substantive to show and felt it in his interest to have in Sorrento, he had decided to go back plans seriously, by the time Babel arrived Whether or not he had entertained such planning to settle abroad for good. then rife in Moscow that he was months, lending credence to the rumors by five overstayed his allotted term back to the USSR. He had now his wife and daughter bring them two months, ostensibly in order to collect by Stalin himself he was grudgingly given permission may have been, reported to his mother. Whatever else it return ticket. return In part, then, ’

—“

Red Cavalry, Maria a Herculean task, ” Back in September, 1932,

— in the space of two

Maria Maria to travel France for

— Maria brave and gifted ’ was also Babel s top brass, and with its success was conceived .

’ Red Cavalry s Commissar ’ s trusted ” as he — ’ s

a hotel at Nevsky 86, where much of the play planted during his residence at Nevsky 86 bore their fruit in juggle these opposites and draw from them what he needed for his art. The seeds same regime (until Lenin closed it down in July, 1918). Babel the writer who could and literary godfather, Maxim Gorky, criticized the inhumanity and brutality of that Isaac Dymshits and Captain Viskovsky, while the journal, edited by his loyal patron down the enemies of new regime and black market operators, like the play paper for the Petrograd Cheka with that of a staff writer for the anti-Bolshevik but socialist In those days, Babel combined successfully, if incongruously, a career of a translator world of a dying metropolisnocturnal Victor Shklovsky recalled his this period in 1924: the play

Number 86, Nevsky Prospekt New Life ’

s Jewish entrepreneur and Babel of the big city. His own room was clean. He lived his life, observing unhurriedly the hungry lechery night buckets and its instrument left their imprint on the man. cleaned after him, tidied the rooms, took away the alone. Others came and went. The house maids Babel lived at Nevsky 86. He in a hotel and every lived day before going to bed, would put a full stop and sign went on around him. But it did seem to me that Babel, afterwards. No, he was not merely a cool observer of o that nowadays women often gave in before six . The Cheka, as the Bolshevik called their political police ’ clock, because trams stopped running soon with food leavings floating in them. Babel — as if it were a short story. The craft — that the action of ’ s namesake, ’ s action takes place, as the haunt of

in 1918 in St. Petersburg-Petrograd is rooted in Babel some of his friends, the play apparent, but clear to Cavalry Babel Cossacks Army service with Budenny read in Scene Five echoes Maria Mukovnin Some are on the surface. biographical overtones. auto- play has powerful what Babel has written, the

Isaac Maria ’

d tell me Maria. 2 ’ s masterpiece – Dymshits. His friend 19. He lived then in is set to unfold. L , based on his ike much of ’ 3

s sojourn ’ , hunted . s letter Less

, Red ’ ’ s s Virgin Soil,

Isaac Babel: 1924 Babel’s stories appear in the A Moscow journals LEF and Red A Chronology utobiographical elements do not end there, and Maria should be seen in beginning Babel’s 1894 Isaac Babel (Bobel) is born in fame. Moves permanently to light of Babel’s works and days in the Odessa, Russia’s third largest city, Moscow. Attacked by Semyon to Feyga and Manus Bobel, a decade that preceded its composition. In Babel’s old Petrograd address; the other is Budenny for “defaming” the First modest entrepreneur. the 1920s and early 1930s, he was becoming the pure romance of the revolution Cavalry Army. 1899 Babel’s sister, Mera, is born. increasingly controversial even as his fame embodied in the play’s Maria Mukovnin1925 Works in film, collaborates with 1905Ð11 Attends Odessa’s Nicholas I in Russia and abroad was growing who, like the young Babel, served in Red Sergey Eisenstein on the script for Commercial School, studies violin unabated. Much has been Cavalry in the Polish campaign. The two are a film Benya Krik, based on his with P.S. Stolyarsky, learns French, written about the pressures linked through the person of Maria’s sister, Tales of Odessa. Romance with English & German, becomes an Tamara Kashirina. Babel’s sister Lyudmila (literally, “pleasing to people”), a avid reader, tries his hand at Babel had to contend with emigrates to Belgium; his wife, writing, and frequents theater and to conform to the party clumsily calculating victim of her Evgeniia, leaves for France. opera. line in the arts or the own schemes. These two polar Publication of “Story of My 1911Ð16 Studies economics and business brutal threats of opposites and the figure that Dovecote” and another story of the at the Kiev Commercial Institute, Semyon Budenny. But mediates them may be seen childhood cycle. meets future wife Evgeniia he was subject to as a melancholy auto-1926 Publication of Red Cavalry (soon Gronfein. stresses of another biographical meditation translated in German and French) 1913 Publication of Babel’s first known Kashirina and Babel have a son, of a man—a writer and story, “Old Shloyme.” sort as well. His Mikhail. Babel writes Sunset, his 1914 Receives a temporary exemption complicated per- a public figure—in crisis. firstStars, known play. Babel’s mother from military service for reasons of sonal life—the Almost forty and still emigrates to Belgium. health; drafts his story “At unable to make 1927a Films Benya Krik and Wandering Grandma’s.” choice in his personal Mill released. Breaks with 1916 Completes studies at Kiev logistics of supporting of both,or public Babel life, was torn by Kashirina, leaving her his Moscow Commercial Institute, enrolls as a his mother in hauntedconflicting by demandsthe flat, rejoins his wife in Paris in July, law student at the Petrograd Brussels, his lover thought of never again finishes scripting the film Chinese Psycho-Neurological Institute. and mother of his (1928). Meets Gorky, publishes two stories being able to repeat 1928 While Babel is in France, Sunset first child, Tamara in Gorky’s journal Letopis, writes his spectacularfeat of is produced successfully in Baku for the Petrograd press. Kashirina, in Moscow, the mid-1920s, when and Odessa and unsuccessfully, in his wife and mother of 1917 Charged with pornography by the the publication of Red Moscow. Babel returns to Russia old regime that soon collapses; his daughter Nathalie in October and travels in the South Cavalry and Odessa volunteers for the Romanian front, in Paris—required a lot of of Russia. travels to Odessa and Kiev. energy and imagination. Stories (1923-1926) 1929 American edition of Red Cavalry. 1918 Works as a translator for the brought What’s more, they involved him to the apex of Gorky compares Babel to Nikolay Petrograd Cheka, writes for fortune and fame. Gogol and comes to Babel’s Gorky’s anti-Bolshevik New Life, unrealistic and unrealized defense when Budenny goes on organizes food procurement commitments to publishers and the offensive. Babel’s daughter detachments in the Volga region, film studios, and the impossible Nathalie is born in Paris to works for the People’s financial schemes he had to resort to Maria Denisova, c. 1914 Evgeniia Babel. Commissariat of Enlightenment. in order even to begin to discharge what he There are 1930 Babel settles in a village outside 1919 Returns to Odessa; works for the thought were his obligations. By 1932, there indications that Moscow. Critics begin to speak of State Publishing House; marries was also a budding romance with Antonina Babel’s “silence” as a writer. Babel Evgeniia Gronfein. Babel may have conceived the play late in isCavalry. accused—falsely—of making 1920 With identity papers issued in the Pirozhkova... 1929 or early in 1930, around the tenth anti-Soviet statements while nameCavalryman of Kiril Vasilievich Lyutov, Isaac Babel was torn between anniversary of the First Cavalry Army, when abroad and succeeds in proving joins Semyon Budenny’s First th the life of duty, which required calculation political pressure on him to redeem himself his innocence. 4 edition of Red Cavalry Army as a correspondent forOdessa) the army newspaper Red and maximizing his earning power (he saw in the eyes of Budenny increased 1931 Publication of two more for the duration of the this as his Jewish self, the play’sIsaac considerably.Around that time he obtained “childhood” stories, one new tale Polish campaign. Dymshits), and the life of art and romance commissions, and advances, for this play of Odessa, and one story about 1921 Publication of “The King” (Tales of (which he treated as his from two theaters, but for one reason or collectivization of agriculture. in an Odessa newspaper. Russian soul, one another Resumes his friendship with 1922 Travels in Georgia and the embodied in the play’s character of Maria). Maria remained on the drawing Gorky. Caucasus, writes for a Georgian The entire play is electrified by the boards. Everything changed when he 1932 Babel’s new apartment in Moscow. newspaper. currents flowing from these two thematic arrived at Gorky’s villa in Sorrento in April Publication of four new stories 1923 Publication of Red Cavalry stories extremes. One pole is the pure capitalist 1933. There, away from his family and including “The Journey” and “Guy in an Odessa newspaper. rationality of de Maupassant.” Romance with Isaac Dymshits, the resident at enjoying Gorky’s famous hospitality and

1938 1936 1933 1934 1937 1935

(8 . With Malraux and Mikhail Red Cavalry project is denounced in th

edition). Works on a Bezhin Meadow. Pravda.

Stories

Maria. Bezhin

for Pathé. Returns to and Bezhin Maria

Babel’s Red

—“

Red Cavalry, Maria a Herculean task, ” Back in September, 1932,

— in the space of two

Maria Maria to travel France for

— Maria brave and gifted ’ was also Babel s top brass, and with its success was conceived .

’ Red Cavalry s Commissar ’ s trusted ” as he — ’ s

Number 86, Nevsky Prospekt New Life ’

Isaac Maria ’

d tell me Maria. 2 ’ s masterpiece – Dymshits. His friend 19. He lived then in is set to unfold. L , based on his ike much of ’ 3

s sojourn ’ , hunted . s letter Less

, Red ’ ’ s s Steel Was Tempered. Story “Trial” is published. Finishes a play or script about the civil war hero Kotovsky. Wife Evgeniia Ezhova protagonist of the play, Maria commits suicide. Sends a Well-placed veterans of the message to Malraux asking to be Mukovnin, had a transparent prototype Polish campaign of 1920 would have recalled to France; Malraux in the person of Maria Denisova. She easily understood that the eponymous declines. Signs contract for an was a famous Odessa beauty and the edition of collected works. Writes in originalPants inspiration—Giaconda—for the script for the film based on Mayakovsky’s great love epic, Gorky’s “My Universities.” Cloud 1939 Writes a script for a film “The Old . A modern, independent Square” about a falsely accused woman with strong leftist convictions, industrial manager. Arrest and non- she spent years studying sculpture and stop 72-hour interrogations. Babel art in Switzerland from which she was “confesses” and then repeatedly renounces his confessions, enters expelled in 1919 as a political pleas to have the case undesirable. Back in Russia, she joined reconsidered—all in vain. what was to become Budenny’s First 1940 January 26: Babel is tried in Cavalry Army where, not unlike Babel, camera, pronounced guilty of she worked for the Political Department spying for France and Austria and making posters and conducting belonging to a terrorist Trotskyist political education classes among the organization, and sentenced to Schoolteachers selling their belongings in the street, 1919. death. January 27: Babel is shot. ranks during the Polish campaign. Most 1954 Babel is officially exonerated. important for Babel’s rehabilitation long, life became reduced to its barest minimum, and even that could hardly be 1955 Babel’s Collected Stories, with an scheme, during this time Denisova met supported by the meager, starvation rations. Black market burgeoned, crime introduction by L. Trilling are and soon afterwards married Efrem proliferated. Petrograd—an abandoned capital since 1918, when the new published in NY. Afanasievich Shchadenko (“Akim government moved to Moscow—was sinking into a state of nature. In the winter, 1957 Selected stories, with an Ivanych” in the play). Shchadenko was introduction by Ilya Ehrenburg, are the Red Cavalry’s number three man, giant snow drifts covered the city, in the spring, young grass was breaking out through published in Moscow. the cobblestones on Nevsky Avenue, and side streets were being transformed into after Clement Voroshilov and Semyon fields of weeds. Class and status distinctions had vanished, and aristocrats, Budenny, and like them, he would revolutionaries, poets, and black-market dealers were thrown together in this freezing climb to the highest ranks of the Soviet pit of a Russian Apocalypse. armed forces, accelerating his career Although some saw redemption in man’s return to a primeval state, many during Stalin’s Red Army purge. were crushed under the rubble of the old regime. Life was laid bare and lost all pretenses to civilization (in the winter, indoor plumbing froze, and the city was covered 4 The by excrement). All that mattered were the instincts, the will, and the wits of the men unalloyed pathos of the Polish and women inhabiting the sub-arctic Hobbesean world. campaign that all of a sudden enters As a writer, Babel was in his element, a witness to raw nature breaking the play through the character of Maria through the cracks of one of civilization’s most beautiful shells. was intended, among other things, as Night has no mercy. The wind slashes and cuts you an olive branch, offered without down. The dead man’s fingers are feeling through St. fawning to the Red Cavalry trio. Petersburg’s the icy innards. A crimson sign of the There is little doubt that Babel’s pharmacy shines frozen at the street corner. The conciliatory message reached its pharmacist’s head with parted hair is dropped to one intended addressee, and perhaps side. The frost has seized the ink-stained heart of the helped to lift some of the clouds that pharmacy. And its heart has given out. Nevsky is had been gathering around him in the empty. Ink bubbles are popping in the sky. The time is mid-1930s. But it would be a mistake to two o’clock. It’s the end. The night has no mercy. see in this “auxiliary message” of Maria 1 an artistic compromise. The revo- So ran one of his stories datelined “Petersburg, 1918.” Written fifteen years later, lutionary, romantic pathos of the Polish Maria echoes these words with uncompromising starkness. It is in this world—the campaign serves a key constructive Babel, late 1920s. function in the play as it contrasts Maria Denisova, in 1920, during her army service and after three bouts of typhus.

sharply with its other motifs—the sterility of economic rationality, of greed, despair of people left behind, and darkness. It is this Isaac Babel’s Maria contrast and its deep am- bivalence that accounts for the play’s overall message and its integrity. The otherworldly Maria does not redeem her loved ones despite their innocence and B their pleas. The strange gift she abel’s second play,Maria , is set sends them in place of in Petrograd in the winter-spring of 1920. This redemption—a pair of boots— was the third year of the Russian Civil War. The may be seen as a hint to them old regime began to collapse under the to pack and be off. One can pressure of WWI early in 1917; the tsar discern here echoes of Babel’s abdicated in March; in November, the own thoughts on his own and his Bolsheviks seized power, provoking the Civil family’s emigration. War when they dissolved the elected Constituent Assembly in January of 1918. For the Bolsheviks, Russia was “the weakest link in the capitalist chain,” and they forced the Civil War in order to ignite the revolution in the more advanced Western countries, thereby Babel did not return to Russia until September, 1933, but the manuscript speeding up the triumph of socialism all over of the play preceded him there, as it traveled in the pocket of none other than the world. This goal remained elusive, and Maxim Gorky—after Stalin, the most important patron of Soviet literature and the although the Soviet Union became an arts. Gorky himself had a mixed reaction to the play. He praised it at first, when industrial superpower somewhere along the Babel read it to him in Sorrento, but having looked at the manuscript found the play way, the means employed in pursuing it led too ambiguous, too grotesque and parts of the dialogue, convenient fodder for to death, privation, and destruction on a anti-Semitism. No manuscript of historically unprecedented scale. What Maria has survived, and we do not know if Babel Babel, in 1922 happens to the Mukovnin family in the play is an early part of this story. had taken Gorky’s criticism to heart. But perhaps, Gorky missed the point. The play Babel did not have the benefit of historical hindsight. When he was writing the play in 1933, the socialist experiment in Russia still had some luster, especially if Chronology of Russian/Soviet History: seen against the background of the economic crisis in the West, fascist dictatorship 1904-1940 in Italy, and Hitler’s ascension to power by constitutional means in the depression- ravaged Germany. Seen in this light, Soviet Russia could still be seen as a promising, 1904 Russo-Japanese War if grossly imperfect, work in progress, and the world-famous Soviet author Isaac 1905-07 The First Russian Revolution Babel—however intelligent, informed, and skeptical (and he was all of these)—had 1914 Russia enters World War I powerful reasons to hedge his bets, including the flow of royalties he received as a 1917 February Revolution (overthrow of Nicholas II); October Revolution (Bolsheviks seize Soviet author. power from the Provisional Government) 1918-21 Civil War and War Communism 1921 New Economic Policy (NEP) Maria,then, was very much a product of its uncertain time, and it is 1924 Lenin dies; Stalin begin his ascent to power filled with the ambiguities and ambivalences, refracted through the prism of Russia’s 1929 First Five-Year Plan (industrialization and collectivization of agriculture) recent history. 1932Ð33 Famine in the countryside 1934 USSR joins the League of Nations; assassination of Sergei Kirov Yet, Babel went to some lengths to makeMaria chronologically precise: its 1936 First Show Trial; adoption of the Stalin Constitution action is dated by the references to the beginning of the Polish campaign in the 1937-38 The Great Terror spring of 1920, the subject of Babel’s famous Red Cavalry (1926). In the former 1939 German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact; German and Soviet armies occupy Poland; in response, Great Britain and France declare war on Germany; World War II begins imperial capital, this third year of the civil war was remembered for its being the 1940 Conviction and execution of Soviet cultural and political leaders, including Isaac harshest, coldest, and most brutal. As the Civil War unfolded, the Bolsheviks abolished Babel, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Mikhail Koltsov, Nikolay Ezhov, Betal Kalmykov (357 all forms of private commerce and much of money economy, substituting for them people in all) War Communism, a universal rationing system that gave them full control. Before 1941Ð45 Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union and is eventually defeated 1953 Stalin dies. Beginning of de-Stalinization and rehabilitations of the victims of terror. combines the psychological depth, and therefore the ambiguity, of a Chekhov play with the grotesquery of the avant-garde satire a la MayakovskyBath’s House or Brecht’sThree-Penny Opera. Babel was aiming at a new kind of theater, A Note from the Director anticipating Samuel GodotBeckett ’sWaiting for by some two decades. Reiterarmee A series of para- doxes posed by the play It was in 1961, the year the Berlin Wall was erected, that I first destined it, sooner or later, to run afoul of the Soviet encountered a text by Isaac Babel, a slim paperback titledBudyonny ’s censor. Babel was aware (Red Cavalry in English translation). Reading these short stories, that I was immediately caught by the power and scope of Babel’s vision, the Maria, as he wrote to way he captured the events described in their complex reality, in their his mother, did not toe the ambiguities and abrupt turns from horrifying cruelty to the grotesque and, “general line.” Indeed, often, farcical behavior, as he had witnessed it all while serving with the the play ends before the Soviet cavalry during the Polish campaign of 1920. woman worker gives birth with enough said to make When a few years later, in 1964, an at the time completely unknown Babel with daughter Nathalie, in Paris, 1933. the outcome of her play, Maria, received its first ever production in Italy and, soon after, in pregnancy—a common allegory for the revolution— to appear uncertain. Germany, I got hold of the German translation and rediscovered what Nevertheless, and in 1933-34 not unreasonably so, he had great hopes for Maria as had fascinated me in Babel’s cavalry stories. There was, in addition, the a stage success and, more important, as a work opening a new period in his development as a writer. He also hoped that it would put an end to the rumors—no amazing dramatic structure he had created to unfold his narrative of an doubt, known to Stalin—that Babel’s diminished output signified his unwillingness to odd assembly of people who, caught in the turmoil of 1920 civil-war take part in the construction of the Soviet Stalinist legend. Petersburg, are swept way down, or up, from their previous station in Russian Thematically, society. It was the combination of vibrant, colorful, often controversial Mariawas a play following the fashions of the late 1920s and characters and Babel’s particular epic, one might say: film-like, dramaturgy early 1930s and echoed what was by then a Soviet classic, Alexei Tolstoy’s novel, that made me keen on staging the play. By then, I was living and working Sisters, part of the trilogy entitledRoad to Calvary(Khozhdenie po mukam, hence in America, and I tried to interest producers and regional theaters in Babel’s Babel’s Mukovnin). Several civil war plays daring text — a rather naïve attempt, I must admit. Since there was no were1469 successfully produced and enjoyed English translation yet available and I could only describe the play and considerable critical acclaim. Armored Train explain what made it so fascinating to me. by his old friend and now the husband When Gregory Freidin approached the Drama Department and asked of his former lover, was a runaway success. if we would stage one of Babel’s two plays for the conference “The Enigma In short, Babel had every reason to believe of Isaac Babel” that he planned for 2004, there came at last the occasion that Maria might do the same service for to explore in production the many aspects of him. 5 His earlier play,The Sunset(1928) , had Maria that had captivated a mixed reception and premiered in as much as puzzled my imagination since I first read the text forty years Moscow in 1928 while he was in France. This ago. I hope that our audience will understand and share my fascination time, he took great care in orchestrating his with Babel’s play and the way he makes us watch women and men who come-back in order to maximize the play’s are trapped in a world of rapid and cruel change, while they try to negotiate visibility, not to mention the income from events beyond their control that might either destroy or lift up their lives. advances. He had parts of the play published early in 1934 in Moscow and Leningrad and gave public readings at —Carl Weber various venues, feeding the excitement and paving the way for the play’s future triumph on stage. For awhile, everything proceeded according to plan. Maria was being Babel at work, 1933. considered, perhaps even rehearsed,

Red Cavalry.

s eye could conveniently skip from the play Maria — for as long Stalin hoped an alliance with Western was published in April, 1935, the premier theater

’

Maria

s earlier plans to produce a peacetime sequel Maria II

s passing

Pravda,

Katerina Vyacheslavovna Velzen (Katya)

(a former Czarist officer, now in the Red army)

Nyushka

Lyudmila Nikolaevna Mukovnina

(a former general in the Czar’s army) (a former general in the Czar’s Nefedovna

Sergey Hiliaronovich Golitsyn

(a live-in relative of the Mukovnins)

Nikolai Vasilievich Mukovnin (a young woman from the country)

Aristarkh Petrovich Sushkin

(daughter of General Mukovnin) Isaac Markovich Dymshits

(a former captain of the guard)

Drunk in Police Station

Yevstigneich

Kuzma

Andrei

Bishonkov

(the Mukovnin’s nanny)

Red Army Soldier Red Army (In order of Appearance) Safonov

(an antiques dealer)

Agasha

(a former prince)

Madame Dora

Elena (a floor polisher) (a floor polisher)

Filip

Kravchenko

Kalmykova

Policeman

Cast Viskovsky

Inspector

(a worker)

(a cripple) (a cripple) (a cripple)

Sound Design Lighting Design 1 “Khodya” (Chinaman), 1923. Adrian Coburn Andrew M. Reid 2Victor Shklovsky, “I. Babel: A Critical Romance,Lef” 2 (1924):153. 3 The Cheka, or the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Suppression of Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, was founded by decree in December, 1917, Dramaturgy Stage Manager and continued under various names all throughout the Soviet period (GPU, NKVD, MVD, KGB). The security services of the post-communist Russia, the FSB, still consider Gregory Freidin Lisa Vargas themselves part of this unbroken tradition. Kathryn Syssoyeva 4 In 1937, Shchadenko (1885-1951), was appointed by Stalin Deputy People’s Commissar of Defense to head the all-important Personnel Department of the Red Army. 5 Vsevolod Ivanov’Armoreds Train 14-69(1927) , K. Trenev’sLiubov ’ Yarovaya Staff (1926), and Vs. Vishnevsky’Pervaias konnaia(1930) , and of course, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Days of the Turbins(1927) , which after Stalin’s personal intervention became the mainstay of the Maly Theater repertoire. Assistant Director Kathryn Syssoyeva at the MayakovskyPhotos of Maria Museum Denisova in Moscow. are from The the Committee catalogue ofon the Culture Denisova of the Exhibition City of Assistant Stage Managers Eli Peterson Moscow and V.V. Mayakovsky State Museum. Pictures of Civil War Petrograd are Lisa Rowland from the Sokolov Album at the Hoover Institution Archives. Other photographs are courtesy of the Hoover Institution Archives. Cover photo by Davey Hubay. Malika Williams Light Board Operator Stephanie Friedman Sound Board Operator Ean DeVaughn Food for the production was generously donated by: Dresser Jennifer Rose Carr SAMOVAR Makeup Pallen Chiu Yana Kesala 650.941.9330 European Deli & Bakery Run Crew Meghan Dunn 225 San Antonio Road, Ste. 3 Authentic Russian Food Mountain View, CA 94040 Corporate/Private Party Catering Turntable Controls By: Systems West (Safeway Plaza at California St.) www.BestRussianFood.com Department of Drama The Stanford Department of Drama 2003–2004 Presents: production staff Director of Production Michael Ramsaur Technical Director Ross Williams Production Stage Manager Alison Duxbury Shops Supervisor Paul Strayer MARIA Costume Designer Connie Strayer Scenic Designer Mark Guirguis by Isaac Babel Costume Shop Supervisor Birgit Pfeffer Technical Supervisor Kenny McMullen translation by peter constantine Publicity Coordinator Mandy Khoshnevisan adapted for the stanford stage by Prop Master Christina Chao Gregory Freidin Set Shop Crew Michele Cash, Mollie Chapman, directed by Joseph Frega, Melisa Hill, Carl Weber Chienlan Hsu, Chris Junge, Margaret Lee, Becca Thal, Alexei Syssoyev, John White Costume Technicians Mindy Lieu, Katie Furuyama Costume Crew Jennifer Beichman, DeMara Cabrera, Megan Cohen, Kristen Del Rio, Anna Kerrigan, Emily Livadary, Alida Payson, Linda Serrato special thanks Davey Hubay, Larissa Rhyzhik, Toby Holtzman, Galina Leytes, Stanford University, Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures, Center for Russian, East-European, & Eurasian Studies, Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Division of Literatures, Cultures, & Languages, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Institute for International Studies, Stanford Humanities Center, Irwin T. & Shirley Holtzman, The Leytes Foundation. upcoming from the department of drama... The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka, directed by Matthew Daube Mar. 3Ð6 at 8pm, Mar. 5 at 10:30pm & Mar. 7 at 2pm. Nitery Theater, Old Union To receive emails about future productions, send an email to [email protected] and write “subscribe performance-announce.” There will be There will be Maria Photography smoking gunshots February 19–21 and 26–28 at 8pm will run and onstage onstage Videotaping February 29 at 5pm without an during the during the intermission. are Prohibited. Pigott Theater performance. performance. photo credits: Davey Hubay • Alexey Smirnov Stanford University