Модернизм как архаизм. Национализм и поиски модернистской эстетики в России

Chapter Four has a circular composition: its first and, partially, fourth (final) sections are devoted to the story of an unrealized ballet by Sergei Prokofiev, Ala and Lollii (1915), the libretto for which was written by Gorodetsky. Initially commissioned from Prokofiev by Diaghilev in 1914 and later rejected by him as “international music,” this ballet was soon reworked by Prokofiev into a suite that acquired the name Scythian Suite. One of the reviews of its first performance in 1916, written by Andrei Rimsky-Korsakov (the composer’s son), directly – and disapprovingly – linked this piece with the Parisian fascination with the “Russian primitive,” thus insisting on its dependence on Diaghilev’s concept of the “national.” In order to explain how the two mutually exclusive interpretations of Prokofiev’s music became possible, in the second and third sections of this chapter I trace the formation of the aesthetic ideology of Diaghilev’s “Russian Seasons” in Europe and the reception of the “national” aesthetic, as manifested in its select productions, in Russian art, music, and theatre criticism. On the one hand, I analyze declarative statements by such contributors to these productions as Leon Bakst, Nikolai Roerich, Alexander Benois, Igor Stravinsky, and Diaghilev himself, which allow me to speculate about the creative and ideological intentions each of the participants brought into the project. On the other, I discuss the critical response in Russia to some of these productions, specifically turning in section four to Stravinsky’s early ballets, as responsible for attributing a range of meanings to archaistic experimentations in music – from declaring “Russian archaism” as a new, authentically “national” artistic style (Yakov Tugendhold) to exposing Stravinsky’s evolution from “fairytale through lubok to the primitive” as a story of a “dramatic rupture with the traditions of Russian music” (Andrei Rimsky-Korsakov). Within this range, the discursive equation of the experimental with the “barbarian,” and of the latter with the “(pseudo)national,” allowed critics to qualify pieces like Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite as manifestations of the newest brand of “musical nationalism,” even in the absence of inherent folkloric substrate. At the close of the chapter, using music as example, I touch upon the issue of the interaction between expert knowledge of the indigenous Russian traditions, projects of their revival, and forms of their actualization in experimental art.