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Stanislavsky's Double Life in Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Laurence Senelick
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Extract

On the short shelf of theatrical autobiographies that continue to be read long after their author has ceased to be newsworthy, Konstantin Stanislavsky's My Life in Art stands foremost. It is a textbook for acting classes, a sourcebook of theatrical history and a guidebook for those workers in the theatre who have lost touch with the meaning of their efforts and seek in Stanislavsky's trials and errors, goals and achievements, an artistic True North to put them back on their course. In the Soviet Union, it is lauded, in the words of the director Aleksey Popov, as “a model of superb literature and comparable to such books as Herzen's My Past and Thoughts.” In the West, no less a colleague than Jacques Copeau praised it in terms that made My Life in Art sound like the vita of an anchorite.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , November 1981 , pp. 201 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1981

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References

1 Quoted in K. Stanislavsky 1863–1963 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1963), p. 136Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., p. 172.

3 For Gest's publicity campaign, see Sayler, Oliver M., Inside the Moscow Art Theatre (Nėw York: Brentano's, 1925), 21–23Google Scholar. Documents on Stanislavsky's meeting with Valentino, whom he found stiff and regimental, are in Vinogradskaja, I., Žizʼn.i tvorčestvo K. S. Stanislavskogo: letopis' (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1973), III, 410–412Google Scholar. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

4 Vinogradskaja, III, 372–73.

5 Stanislavskij, K. S., Sobranie sočinenij v vos'mi tomax (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1961), VIII, 86–87Google Scholar.

6 Stanislavskij, VIII, 73. Letter to the author from the late Robert MacGregor, 2 October 1974.

7 Stanislavskij, VIII, 87.

8 Ibid.

9 Boleslawski, Richard, “Books in Review,” Theatre Arts Monthly (Aug. 1924)Google Scholar. For Koiransky's association with the Art Theatre in New York, see Bertenson, Sergey, Vokrug iskusstva (Hollywood, 1957), pp. 379, 388Google Scholar.

10 Quoted in Magarshack, David, Stanislavsky A Life (London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1950), p. 367Google Scholar. Although Magarshack's is the standard biography in English, it is typical in skimming over Stanislavsky's career after the publication of My Life in Art. Of the 404 pages of text, only 35 are concerned with the busy last fifteen years of his life.

11 Robert MacGregor, supra.

12 Stanislavskij, VIII, 88.

13 Vinogradskaja, III, 430.

14 Quoted in Volkov, N., “Kniga K. S. Stanislavskogo ‘Moja žizn’ v iskusstve,” in Stanislavskij, Sobranie sočinenij, I, xxvGoogle Scholar.

15 Vinogradskaja, III, 442. Stanislavsky had evidently considered discussing Meyerhold in the American edition. According to J. J. Robbins, “One of the chapters dealt with the spirit of innovation in the theatre. It was written in the form of a letter to one of his students who had already become a stage director of international reputation. It was filled with the bitterness of a master who sees one of his apprentices give the lie to all he had learned in the workshop of the master. I had already translated the chapter, and it was on the way to the publisher when a telegram from Stanislavsky asked me to withdraw it. “He felt that the controversy between himself and his student had reached a stage where much that was said by both of them should remain unpublicized, and, although he could find no other form for saying the truths that he had injected into the particular chapter, truths that would have shed further light on his craftsmanship, the chapter was never published. I still preserve it as a testimonial of the great generosity of the man.” (“Stanislavsky's an now belongs to the world,” New York Herald, 14 August 1938.)

16 All quotations from the 1924 version of My Life in Art come from the first edition translated by Robbins, J. J. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1924)Google Scholar. All quotations from the 1926 Moja žizʼn v iskusstve are my translations from Stanislavskij, Sobranie sočinenij, I.

17 Bunin, Ivan, O Čexove (New York: Izd. imeni Čexova, 1955), 393–399Google Scholar.

18 Duerr, Edwin, The Length and Depth of Acting (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), p. 570Google Scholar.

19 Ervine, St. John, “At the Play,” Observer (14 Feb. 1926)Google Scholar.

20 Quoted in Tulane Drama Review 26 (Winter 1964), 46Google Scholar.

21 Nina Gourfinkel, “Repenser Stanislavski,” Revue d'histoire du théâtre (avr. - juin 1971–72), 103–128. In the last decade a number of important new works, shedding fresh light on Stanislavsky, have appeared in the U. S. S. R. The most noteworthy are Vinogradskaya's four-volume chronicle of his life, cited above; Polyakova's, ElenaStanislavskij-aktër (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1972)Google Scholar which analyzes his work as an actor, and the same author's Stanislavskij (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1977), an excellent biography, packed with detail and sound evaluation; and Stroeva's, MariannaRežissërskie iskanija Stanislavskogo (Moscow: Nauka, 1973, 1977)Google Scholar, a brilliant, two-volume analysis of his development as a director. All these books pay attention to his work on the Symbolist drama and his later “theatricalized” productions, phases which are generally skimped in works in English.