Ревизор, откомментированный всем Гоголем. Александр Слонимский и Юлия Сазонова-Слонимская в полемике о мейерхольдовском спектакле

Abstract

The discussion of Meyerhold’s “Revisor” (GosTIM, premiere – December 9, 1926) is an unprecedented case in European theatre of the first half of the twentieth century: no other theatrical event had such a breadth of public reaction. In the general controversy around the Meyerhold “Revisor”, the theatre-critical dialogue between the philologist and theatre critic of the Leningrad “Gvozdev school” Alexander Slonimsky and the director and theatre critic Iulia Sazonova-Slonimskaia (who were brother and sister) represents not only the views of Soviet Russia and Russia Abroad, but also those of the drama/theatre theorist and theatre practitioner. The dialogue considered in this article – at first glance, local and peripheral – turns out to be inscribed in the discussions of the 1920s about one of Meyerhold’s most controversial performances, and at the same time becomes the prehistory of the discussions of the 1930s about Meyerhold theatre’s formalism and “untimeness”, which brought a tragic denouement: the dissolution of the theatre and the death of its director.