Alexander Sumarokov plaque, St. Petersburg

I don’t know why, but I have always loved Alexander Sumarokov. For a non-Russian scholar of Russian literature, Sumarokov is one of those writers that you cram in before your oral exams. You didn’t study him in any classes or seminars – they were devoted to the Pasternaks, the Tolstoys, the Dostoevskys, the Pushkins, the Gogols. The Sumarokovs and other writers of the 18th century? Nobody taught them. But a grad student isn’t there to be taught. A grad student is there to learn. So you do that on your own. You spend a week reading Vasily Trediakovsky, a few days reading Mikhail Lomonosov.
The student who imagines himself being something of an expert in drama and theater someday reads all the tragedies of Vladislav Ozyorov (actually loving Fingal). You plan to read all of Catherine the Great’s plays, but you end up admitting that you probably don’t need to. You read Vasily Kapnist and absolutely love Chicanery, wondering why in the hell nobody has taken that on for 200 years. You more than familiarize yourself with Yakov Knyazhnin and Alexander Ablesimov (which repays you decades later in Moscow when you see productions at two different theaters based on works by these writers). You read Mikhail Kheraskov but don’t remember him. You love Denis Fonvizin, especially his The Brigadier, even though everyone tries to tell you his The Minor is his major play – bunk. You enjoy reading the comedies of Alexander Shakhovskoi, although you don’t come close to reading all 100 of his plays – you actually probably bail out having not reached the 10% mark. But you admire his ability to turn a comic phrase.
In other words, you read yourself silly, virtually without any tutoring from anyone. Oh, there are a handful of books out there that give lip service to early Russian drama. You read those and you don’t come away with much. So this marathon reading of very old plays that no one has cared about for centuries (with the rare exception, natch), really puts you on your toes. It’s sink or swim and you admit to no one at all that you are finding yourself sinking as often as swimming.
But then there’s Alexander Sumarokov. The man doesn’t get much respect. Other writers laugh at him. Critics and historians tell you he wasn’t much of a writer. D.S. Mirsky, one of those fundamental historians I mentioned, wrote that “the literary value” of Sumarokov’s plays “was small,” and that they “reeked of translation.” Ech. It would seem nobody had talked to Mirsky about the folk tradition. Well, except, Sumarokov was hardly of the folk…
Anyway, I always had a soft spot for Sumarokov. If he didn’t like somebody (and he didn’t like lots of people), he sat down and wrote a play attacking them, as he did in the quite funny Tresotinius, which parodied Trediakovsky. Sumarokov had no doubts about his own place in the history of Russian literature in the mid-18th century: He was its greatest and most influential star. In fact he truly was, at least until Gavrila Derzhavin and then Alexander Pushkin came along. After that, Sumarokov kind of fell of the table. But the man had character, he had chutzpah, and he had no little talent. Just you try to corral the influences and styles and hopes and aspirations of an entire nation that has no literary traditions, unless your name is Pushkin… But even Pushkin, of course, had all the writers I’ve already mentioned to cast off from. Sumarokov had next to nothing. So, when he brought Hamlet and Macbeth into the Russian canon – even if he did simplify and bowdlerize them – he was setting down signposts for the future of Russian culture. On top of this, Sumarokov was one of the first major Russian publishers, as editor of the influential journal The Busy Bee, or The Industrial Bee, depending on how you translate it. He wrote poetry, essays, engaged in social and political debate (to a degree), and was an all-around – let’s be honest, let’s give it to him – Renaissance Man.

Sumarokov was born November 25, 1717, and he died October 12, 1777 (using the contemporary dates of the Gregorian calendar). According to the chronological, but incomplete “Selected Works of A.P. Sumarokov,” he wrote his first poetry around 1739. He wrote in at least 25 different poetic genres, including the ballad, the ode, madrigals, translations, epistles, eclogues, idylls, elegies, sonnets and many others. This far-from-incomplete source lists 268 works. (The list includes some tragedies and translations, but includes none of his journalism, essays, 12 comedies, or his Shakespeare re-workings.) But there is a serious problem with counting and researching Sumarokov’s full literary output, for his entire archive was lost. We have nothing but published texts to go back to. Furthermore, by the time of his death, virtually no one cared about him anymore. He was destitute, unloved, unrespected, really not even thought about by anyone. He was buried in the cemetery at the Donskoi Monastery in Moscow, but even his grave was eventually lost. A grave marker was erected there in his honor in 1951, but the placing of that slab (which I remember seeing and coming to an abrupt stop as if I had seen a ghost) has nothing to do with the location of his remains. When Sumarokov died he did not have enough money left over to pay for the burial, so some Moscow actors took up a collection and covered the expenses. His was a classic case of riches to rags.
The last time I was in St. Petersburg a few years ago, I spent five days wandering the city with a huge list of addresses in hand. One of them was Bolshoi Prospect 31 on Vasilyevsky Island. Research had indicated that there was a plaque honoring Sumarokov there. Indeed there was, and this is what is written on it: “On this plot was located the house in which resided, from 1765 to 1769, the writer, poet, playwright, and great theater practitioner Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov.”
So, what are we looking at when we stand on this street corner and read the words on the plaque honoring the great man? Nothing. Virtually nothing. Unless we are looking into the catacombs of our own memories and thoughts. Standing here, I felt no chills, no mystical magnetism, no sense of deja vu. I tried. I looked for it. I felt for it. It wasn’t there. The building standing here now had nothing to do with Sumarokov or his times – it came much, much later. The streets here, the people standing around or walking by – none of them have anything to do with Sumarokov at all. No one stopped to look at the plaque, no one cared. Not even when I set up and began photographing it from one side and another. That is usually enough to make at least some passersby curious. Not here. Not this place. These locals already knew: Nothing here we need to know.
Fate is a turkey, as the Russians say. I have no idea where this phrase came from. But it is one you can have a good, hard feel for. Especially when you ponder the life and work of Alexander Sumarokov, and then ponder the way the world turned away from him by the time he died, and then just plain forgot him after that.
However, so as not to drown ourselves in our own tears, let us rejoice that the small Chelovek (Human) Theater in Moscow recently opened a show called (Sumarokov’s) Hamlet. It may be the first time the once-great writer has been staged in 200 years. Good for Vladimir Skvortsov, who directed. A man after my own heart. Long live the memory of Alexander Sumarokov.

Mikhail Lomonosov statue, Muzeon Park, Moscow

Click on photos to enlarge.

 

I got a kick yesterday reading this post on the Facebook page of director Philipp Grigorian: “I am incapable of grasping the concept of this damned ‘muzeon.’ I think it’s hellacious trash. What the frig is this Lomonosov standing here for, not on a granite pedestal in the center of a park named for him, but in the mud under some bush, next to some damn deer made out of tubing????” He accompanied his mini-rant with two photos – Lomonosov in the mud and the tube-made deer standing nearby.
You see, just a few weeks ago I myself walked through this place called Muzeon and snapped a few photos myself, including these of Lomonosov (I passed on the deer). I thought I’d probably lay them away for some rainy day when I’d have nothing else to write about, but Grigorian made me want to come back to them right now – not to take issue with him, or even to agree with him, but just because these carelessly snapped shots all of a sudden took on a certain real-time urgency.
Muzeon is the outdoor sculpture park behind the House of Artists located on Krymsky Val in Moscow. It is essentially a graveyard for sculptures and monuments. There’s a creepy, well-made one of Stalin here, and lots of hack-jobs of Lenin. In these pages I have written about several somewhat more interesting pieces that can be found here – Maxim Gorky, Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov and maybe another one or two. You can chase those down on this blog spot.
But Philipp is right, of course. There is a weirdness to this place. It makes no sense. Many of the abandoned old monuments – ones to Brezhnev and his ilk – stand in lines like bad tombstones. I wrote about a marble Pushkin here that is bizarrely stuck in a corner between two sidewalks coming together. When I photographed it, its feet were covered in dirt – just a royal mess. The better, more intriguing pieces, like this Lomonosov, are sometimes fortunate to be outside of a graveyard grid. But Grigorian’s question is the first that comes to mind for anyone passing through – what the hell is this doing here? Where was it before? Why isn’t it there now? Is this really the best place they could find for this?

This sculpture of Russia’s “first genius” – a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, poet, playwright and more – was made by Leonid Baranov (born 1943). Baranov is a successful sculptor who specializes in work honoring famous individuals. He created a likeness of Peter the Great that stands in Amsterdam (where Peter went to learn the craft of shipbuilding), and he is the author of a monument to Fyodor Dostoevsky that stands in Baden-Baden (where Dostoevsky loved to gamble.). The Lomonosov sculpture we see here is actually a duplicate of an original which was created in 1980 for the Lomonosov Theater in Arkhangelsk, near the great man’s birthplace.
To what I fear will be the chagrin of Philipp Grigorian, this duplicate was forged a second time from the original cast in 1991 specially in order to stand here in the Muzeon Park. That would explain why it stands outside the “gravestone rows” – it’s not a salvage job, but rather a purposeful choice on someone’s part.
I rather like the piece. It has a comics-like feel while also doing honor to historical reality. The nice rufflery (if that’s not a word it should be) on the shirt corresponds pleasantly to the layers of curls in Mikhail’s presumably powdered wig. The gaze, even through two blank orbs, is specific and focused. The facial expression is blank enough for us to read what we want into it, but clear enough to offer a sense of knowing and self-value. The chubby cheeks fit nicely with the low, but long, forehead, the broad, rolling shoulders and the comfortably protruding belly. Also of interest to me is the tiny book in Lomonosov’s left hand, and the large, strong, outstretched right hand that many passersby evidently cannot pass without giving a good shake. I did it myself and I swear Lomonosov returned back a nice, firm, gentlemanly shake.

 

 

Mikhail Lomonosov monument, Moscow

You have no idea what stories you’re walking into when you approach a monument on the street. The one I highlight today honors the great Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765), Russia’s first everything in the arts and sciences. He was essentially the first poet of any consequence, playwright, translator, scientific experimenter, chemist, physicist, astronomer, geologist, metallurgist… He studied in Kiev, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Marburg and Freiburg, to name a few places. In 1755 Moscow University was established according to Lomonosov’s plan. That’s all pretty well known. A few of us who studied Lomonosov’s plays and poems have had a laugh or two, let’s be honest. But then if we’re going to be honest,  let’s also be fair: How many of those who have laughed singlehandedly established the literary and scientific  groundwork for an entire nation? Yeah, right. Now go and laugh some more if you can.
What I, at least, had no inkling of is that the monument to Lomonosov which now stands before the old building of Moscow State University on Mokhovaya Street just across from Red Square and the Kremlin, is the third to grace this space. The first was a small bronze bust by Fedot Shubin which was unveiled in 1877 (1876 Old Style). This bust, however, was damaged badly in 1944 during World War II when it was struck by shrapnel from a bomb. It was decided in 1945 to commission the prominent sculptor Sergei Merkurov to replace the bust with a larger statue. He did so, but, for reasons as yet unclear to me, he employed a temporary plaster or gypsum painted to look like bronze. As a result, by 1957 his statue had to be replaced, thus bringing us to the work we now see when we walk onto the grounds of Moscow University in the city center. This image is of a young Lomonosov, perhaps still a student himself. It was sculpted by Iosif Kozlovsky. I have garnered most of this information from several pages on Russian Wikipedia.

A little more leisurely research turns up more interesting tidbits. It seems that our poet and scholar had a hot temper and was not averse to a round or two of fisticuffs. According to an article in the newspaper Arguments and Facts, Lomonosov was once even tried and jailed shortly for fighting. One example of his physical strength and willingness to use it has become something of a legend. One evening as Lomonosov walked through Vasilyevsky Island in Petersburg he was accosted by three sailors. Lomonosov turned on them so furiously that two would-be attackers high-tailed it immediately. The third had the misfortune to land in Lomonosov’s grasp and was splayed out on the street under the learned man’s heavy hand. “What are the names of those two bandits, and what did you intend to do to me?” Lomonosov demanded of his captive. The answer quickly followed that robbery was the intent. “You rapscallions, you!” Lomonosov thundered, “Then I will rob you!” And he proceeded to strip his attacker-turned-victim of his clothes and took them home as a trophy of his exploit.
Tell me this: How many countries can claim that their first poet, scientist and learned man was also a champion street fighter?