Ostrovsky, Alexander

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Alexander Ostrovsky

Alexander Ostrovsky (1823–1886) was one of nineteenth-century Russia's most highly regarded playwrights, though his works are rarely performed in the West in the modern era.

Literary historians deem Ostrovsky the founder of Russian national drama, for he was the first to depict on the stage the ordinary merchants, government bureaucrats and other middle-class denizens of Moscow and the Volga River region. There were few acclaimed Russian playwrights before him, but when Ostrovsky began his career in the 1840s, "Russian theatre was more entertainment than art," asserted London Sunday Times writer John Peter. "The idea that it should present brutal comedies by an unknown young civil servant pillorying the dreadful behaviour and abysmal moral standards of those pillars of the Russian community, the merchant class, seemed inconceivable."

Born on March 31, in 1823, Ostrovsky was the son of a lawyer who held a post inside the Moscow municipal court system. His mother's family had run a bakery that made the communion bread for church services. The Ostrovskys lived in the part of Moscow known as Zamoskvorech'e (meaning "beyond the Moscow River"), an area that was a commercial district as well as home to many lower middle-class families. It was a neighborhood of strivers, of less educated folk who seemed to a young Ostrovsky to be wholly preoccupied with financial gain. His first plays would scathingly depict this world and its more unscrupulous characters.

Entered Exclusive Academy

Ostrovsky was the first of four children in the family, and his mother died when he was eight. At the age of 12, he entered the First Moscow Gymnasium, a prestigious academy that schooled boys from the city's more elite families. He spent five years there, and in 1840 enrolled at Moscow University to study law. Though he did well during his first year in college, he seemed to lose interest in his studies after that. He began failing his courses, and spent a disproportionate amount of time attending performances at the Moscow Imperial Theater. This was a popular form of entertainment for university students in the era, but the future playwright went further and began socializing with the actors, stagehands, and other personnel in his spare hours.

After dropping out of Moscow University in 1843, Ostrovsky entered the civil service with the help of his father's connections. At first he worked as a copyist in court offices near Red Square and the famous debtors' prison, Iama, that was located there during this period. From his office window he could see Iama's gates, and was riveted by the daily procession of merchants, gamblers and scofflaws who went in and out of the place. Around 1845, Ostrovsky transferred to the commercial court of Moscow, which formally handled the debt and bankruptcy cases of Iama's incarcerated. Again, he was fascinated by the stories of how fortunes were made, squandered or stolen. He also still found time to frequent the theaters of Moscow, and formed an artistic kruzhok, or circle, with two friends. They were deeply interested in the work of English language authors in translation, including Charles Dickens and James Fenimore Cooper, but were also devoted to Slavic folk culture and customs.

Ostrovsky began writing his first plays around 1846. These early works drew upon the Zamoskvorech'e neighborhood, though his father had risen professionally and the family now owned several residential properties in a more well-to-do quarter of the city known as Nikola-Vorob'in. His early dramas featured characters drawn from the innumerable clerks and civil servant classes of Moscow. The court clerks were notoriously underpaid, and bribes were commonplace, which Ostrovsky depicted for the stage. His first finished play was originally titled Iskovoe proshenie (The Claim Request), and was read aloud at one of the literary salon evenings held at the home of Stepan Petrovich Shevyrev, a literature professor at Moscow University. It was well-received by those in attendance that night, and Ostrovsky published it soon afterward as Kartina semeinogo schast'ia. Kartiny moskovskoi zhizni (Picture of Family Happiness. Pictures of Moscow Life). When he tried to have it produced later that year, however, it was officially banned by Tsarist government censors, and would not be performed until 1855.

Condemned by Government Officials

Ostrovsky went to work on a second play, Bankrut (The Bankrupt), which was published in the March 1850 edition of Moskvitianin (The Muscovite) to great acclaim. Its plot centers around a greedy merchant, Bashov, who makes a fraudulent bankruptcy application with the help of his clerk and a crooked lawyer. The accomplices actually do abscond with Bashov's assets, and the clerk wins the hand of Bashov's daughter as well, sending the man to professional and psychological ruin. This play is also sometimes referred to as Svoi liudi—sochtemsia! (It's a Family Affair-We'll Settle It Ourselves!), the title under which Ostrovsky submitted it to the censorship committee. It was rejected on the grounds that the characters were "first rate villains," according to Paul Taylor in London's Independent. "The dialogue is filthy," it was further judged. "The entire play is an insult to the Russian merchant class."

Bankrut caused Ostrovsky an undue amount of trouble. Not only was it banned from production, but he earned an official reprimand and was put under police surveillance. Within a year he had lost his job at the court. His literary career, however, was well underway by then, and the official reaction only secured his reputation as a maverick new playwright. Even Nikolai Gogol, Russia's most famous dramatist at the time, was present at one of the secret livingroom readings of Bankrut, and gave his approval. Ostrovsky's next work, Bednaia nevesta (The Poor Bride), also troubled government censors, and so Ostrovsky finally decided to write something that they would have to accept for performance. The result was Ne v svoi sani ne sadis! (Keep to Your Own Sledge! or, alternately, Don't Bite Off More Than You Can Chew). Its plot centers on a young, dishonest city man who heads to the countryside to find a rich bride. He nearly dupes one into marriage, but is foiled and receives his comeuppance. The play was staged at the Bol'shoi Petrovskii Theater in January of 1853, and went on to the St. Petersburg stage, where Tsar Nicholas came to see it and even made laudatory comments about it a few days later.

Ostrovsky's next work, Bednost' ne porok (Poverty Is No Vice), stirred intense literary debate for its themes after a premiere at the Maly Theatre in January of 1854. Its story revolves around two brothers: Gordei is a callous, profit-minded factory owner who wants to become less Russian and more European. This puts him at odds with "his drunken, feckless brother Liubim, a positive figure who represents Russian sincerity and genuineness," noted Robert Whittaker in Dictionary of Literary Biography. "The play brought Russian folk customs of Christmas celebrations to the stage with singing and dancing, which reinforced the national, homey nature of its pro-Russian, patriotic message," Whittaker continued. The cultural elite in Moscow and St. Petersburg were divided over the play's merits and whether Liubim was a heroic or tragic figure, and the controversy further boosted Ostrovsky's fame.

Incorporated Folklore Elements into Dramas

Tsar Nicholas died in 1855, and theaters in Russia were closed for a six-month period of mourning. A year later, Ostrovsky became part of an expedition that explored the northern sources of the Volga River. This was an official project of the Marine Ministry, and Ostrovsky was expected to write about his experiences. The trip north would provide him with a rich literary trove of folk customs, which he put to use in his subsequent plays. Many of these works would be set along the estates of the great river, where Moscow's elite owned estates. Later in life he acquired his own property, an estate called Shchelykovo, located in the Kostroma district to the north. His father had originally owned it, and Ostrovsky and his brother eventually bought it from their stepmother. Ostrovsky was the black sheep of the family, despite his fame. His common-law wife was probably of a peasant background—in an era when Russian peasants were technically the property of their landlords. It is only known that her name was Agaf'ia Ivanovna, and that they lived together after 1849.

Critics consider The Storm to be one of Ostrovsky's best plays. It was first produced under its original title, Groza, at Moscow's Maly Theatre in November of 1859. The work is set on a Volga estate, and features a dreadful, scheming widow and landowner, Kabanikha, who terrorizes her meek daughter-in-law, Katerina. Groza was a commercial triumph, and a personal one for Ostrovsky as well: he fell in love with the performer who played Katerina, Liubov' Pavlovna Kositskaia-Nikulina, and the affair lasted for a year before she moved on.

For many years Ostrovsky traveled frequently between the theater districts of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and to Shchelykovo as well. In 1862 he went abroad for the first time, visiting several countries in Europe. During this period of his career he had far fewer problems with the censors, for the new hereditary ruler, Alexander II, was a much more liberal tsar who enacted many important reforms. For a time in the mid-1860s, Ostrovsky turned to writing historical dramas, but these were difficult to stage and not considered among his best works.

Heralded for Satire

Na vsiakogo mudretsa dovol'no prostoty (Even a Wise Man Stumbles) returned him to familiar ground: the deceitful social striver. First produced at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, in St. Petersburg in 1868, it went on to a staging at the Maly Theatre where an enthusiastic opening night audience actually halted the performance midway through to call Ostrovsky out for an ovation. The play is sometimes titled Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man, The Scoundrel, or Diary of a Scoundrel. Its lead character is Yegor Gloumov, who writes disdainfully about the wealthy and well-connected on the pages of his private journal, but flatters them in person; his comeuppance comes when the scathing diary is published.

Ostrovsky's common-law wife, Agaf'ia, died in early 1867. Two years later he wed Mar'ia Vasil'evna Bakhmet'eva, an actress by whom he already had three children, two of whom were born when he still lived with Agaf'ia. He was writing at least one new play a year, and scored another triumph in Les (The Forest) in 1871. The play was first produced at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, and remains one of Ostrovsky's most critically acclaimed works. Again, a greedy widow behaves badly: Gurmyzhskaia sells off pieces of her nephew's land inheritance, and keeps her niece in the household as a servant, refusing to let her marry her suitor. The arrival of the nephew, an actor, along with his fellow traveling colleague help to resolve the crises.

During the 1870s, Ostrovsky's plays fell somewhat out of favor in St. Petersburg, though they remained popular in Moscow. A fairy-tale play, Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden) drew heavily upon Russian folklore, and the composer Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky wrote the music for its staging at Moscow's Bol'shoi Theater in 1873. Volki i ovtsy (Wolves and Sheep), first produced in 1875, is another well-known work from his pen. By this time he had been writing for nearly 30 years. "Tastes had changed under the influence of light opera and sentimental melodrama, however, and Ostrovsky's reviewers became increasingly disparaging," wrote Whittaker. "They accused him of repeating himself and having exhausted his talent."

Another six-month mourning period after the 1881 assassination of Alexander II shuttered Imperial Russia's theaters, and this time Ostrovsky suffered heavy financial losses as a result. His brother Mikhail, however, was a high-ranking government minister by then, and helped secure a state pension for Ostrovsky in 1884. After 1886 he served as director of repertoire for the Moscow Imperial Theaters and administrator of the Theater School. He was by then in his sixties, however, and the taxing work and travel schedule irreparably damaged his health. He died at his desk in the Shchelykovo residence on June 2, 1886. Though generally unknown outside of Russia, Ostrovsky is a respected figure in the literary heritage of his country, especially in its nationalist drama. So many of his works premiered at the Maly Theatre in Moscow that it was still referred to as "The House of Ostrovsky" a century after his death. A statue of him stands outside the landmark.