Il motivo faustiano nella letteratura russa del Novecento

Abstract

The present study examines the transformation of Goethe’s Faust (1808-1832) central theme in twentieth century Russian literature. The first chapter establishes the methodology and offers a brief overview of the translations and artistic expressions which brought the image of Faust into the Russian cultural field. The second chapter focuses on the reception of Goethean tragedy in the nineteenth century, while the main body of the dissertation concentrates on twentieth century Faustian works. The death of Stalin (1953) is a useful watershed which divides the century into two halves. The guiding path of this examination is the supposition of the existence of a “Russian Faustism”, based on the individuation of a series of characters or attitudes that are connected to Goethe’s Faust, even if they typologically remains Russian. The reworking of the Faustian motif in the twentieth century on the one hand registers a descendent course for the Russian Faust, on the other hand points to its gradually becoming a specific ideological revealer. The metamorphic dynamics of the Faustian motif indicates the glorification or demystification that any singular work achieves towards the social and cultural context to which they refer. This dissertation takes into account, in particular, the dramas A. Lunačarskij’s Faust i Gorod (1916), S. Alëšin’s Mefistofel’ (1942) and I. Sel’vinskij’s Čitaja “Fausta” (1947), the novels E. Zamjatin’s My (1924) and M. Bulgakov’s Master i Margarita (1926-1940), the farce E. Radzinskij’s Obol’stitel’ Kolobaškin (1968), the tale N. Elin’s and Vl. Kašaev’s Ošibka Mefistofelja (1984), the sketch M. Kreps’ Vizit satany (1986). The analysis shows how Lunačarskij, Alëšin and Sel’vinskij retell positively the Faustian story, from the point of view of a Faust converted to socialism and defender of ethical-ideological values of communist doctrine; Zamjatin and Bulgakov show the progressive deprivation of power of the hero who, divested from the oppressive authority, of the possibility to express his own identity, becomes an anti-Faust. This Faust, for his artistic and sentimental vocation, is insane and socially ‘superfluous’. On the contrary, Radzinskij, Elin and Kašaev, Kreps create the image of a mean, disenchanted Faust, without elevated expectations, a type who aims to achieve material pleasures, a pošlyj man, a social climber, boastful and obsessed with the thirst of success. This research has proved that the transformation of the Russian Faust is strictly conditioned by the historical, ideological, political, social and cultural context into which this figure of world literature is positioned.