Maria

The play Maria, a portrait of the sordid underbelly of Soviet society, was written by Isaac Babel during the mid 1930s.

Plot

Maria is set in St. Petersburg during the Russian Civil War. In the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, the once iron clad Russian class system has disintigrated. Meanwhile, each member of the aristocratic Murovnin family attempts to make their peace with the new Communist regime. The elderly General Mukovnin is writing books about Russia's military history, which he sells on the thriving black market. His daughter, the ditzy and superficial Ludmilla, is hoping for an advantageous marriage with Isaac Dimshits, the Jewish mob boss who controls the city's black market food supply. Her cousin, Katya Felsen, is scandalized by Ludmilla's behavior and remains torn between her memories of the Tsarist past and the Soviet present. The General's eldest daughter, Maria, is a political officer assigned to the Soviet Army. An idealistic servant of the new regime, Maria is quoted, but never seen and likely is meant to represent the dream of Marxist-Leninism.

Ultimately, Dimshits makes sexual advances to Ludmilla, who flees into the company of Captain Viskovsky, a White Army officer turned jewel thief. Viskovsky first gets Ludmilla drunk and then rapes her in a nearby room. Yasha Kravchenko, a corrupt officer in the Soviet Army, coldly tells him, "People with the clap shouldn't sleep with women, Mr. Viskovsky." An enraged Viskovsky slaps Kravchenko, who initiates a gun battle in which each kills the other. As a result, the CHEKA arrests Ludmilla, the lone survivor. At the Lubianka prison, she is written off as a prostitute who smuggles thread for Dimshits' gang. When she protests her innocence and begs for a doctor, the CHEKA interrogator indifferently declares that he hasn't slept in five days. He demands to know how many times she has been arrested.

A crippled war veteran, who also works for Dimshits, arrives at the Mukovnins' apartment with the news. The General, however, declares that this will be a valuable lesson for Ludmilla before having a massive heart attack. He expresses joys at the news that his other daughter, Maria, will soon be returning from the front.

The following day, one of Maria's fellow Commissars arrives, announcing that she has been detained. The dying General, assuming that his daughter has been killed, instantly dies of a massive stroke.

Later, a group of peasant workers prepares the Mukovnins' former apartment for its new tenants. As they work, they compare the vanished Russian nobility with the new Communist elite that has taken its place. Katya arrives with a high level Party functionary, announcing that she is selling the Mukovnins' antique furniture on Maria's orders. The forewoman of the workers refuses to allow this, saying that the new tenants were promised a fully furnished apartment. The Party official leaves enraged, threatening to return with CHEKA agents to arrest the forewoman. Meanwhile, the new tenants, a worker and his pregnant wife, settle into their new home.

Reception

Maria caused Babel to be chided by Maxim Gorky, who accused him of having a "Baudelairian predilection for rotting meat." Gorky further warned his friend that "political inferences" would be made "that will be personally harmful to you."

According to Babel's common law wife, Antonina Pirozhkova,

"Once Babel went to the Moscow Art Theater when his play Mariya was being given its first reading, and when he returned home he told me that all the actresses had been impatient to fing out what the leading female role was like and who would be cast in it. It turned out that there was no leading female character present on the stage in this play. Babel thought that the play had not come off well, but it should be noted that he was always critical of his own work."^[1]

Although intended to be performed by Moscow's Vakhtangov Theatre in 1935, the premiere of Maria was cancelled by the NKVD during rehearsals. Four years later, Isaac Babel was arrested and shot as part of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. His surviving manuscripts were confiscated by the NKVD and destroyed. As a result. Maria was never performed in Russia until after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Structure

The storyline of “Maria” is structured in an unconventional, nonlinear fashion. According to a cast member from the American premiere,

"The play runs like a film — there are so many different locations and characters that you have to be very attentive. They even had to build a revolving stage in order to accommodate all of the changing locations in the story.... The play flows in a very subtle manner."

Legacy

Although it was very popular at Western European colleges during the 1960s, it was not performed in Babel's homeland until 1994. The first English translation, conducted by Peter Constantine, appeared in 2002 and was edited by Nathalie Babel Brown. Maria's American premiere, directed by Carl Weber, took place at Stanford University two years later.

According to Weber,

"The play is very controversial. [It] shows the stories of both sides clashing with each other during the Russian Civil War — the Bolsheviks and the old society members — without making a judgment one way or another. Babel’s opinion on either side is very ambiguous, but he does make the statement that what happened after the Bolshevik Revolution may not have been the best thing for Russia."

Quotes

• Katya: "No one is living well nowadays. No one."^[2]

• Ludmila: "Oh, Katya, darling. Better a Jew than a cocaine addict, like most of the men of our set. This one is a cocaine addict, another has gotten himself shot, another has ended up as a coachman standing outside the Europa waiting for fares. The way things are now, Jews have become the safest bet."^[3]

• General Mukovnin: "One thing that isn't foreign to us is fatalism. Another, that Rasputin and the German Tsarina destroyed the Romanov dynasty. And yet nothing but good has come from that wonderful Jewish race, which has given us Heine, Spinoza, and Christ."^[4]

• Captain Viskovsky: "Who knows what can happen, Yasha? They might ask you to blow up the street you were born on, and you would blow it up. Or to blast an orphanage to bits, and you'd say, "A two-zero-eight fuse," and blast that orphange to bits. That's what you would do, Yasha, as long as they let you live your life, strum your guitar, and sleep with thin women. You're fat but you like them thin. You'll do anything, if they tell you to renounce your mother three times, you would renounce her three times. But that's not the point, Yasha! The point is they will want more: they won't let you drink vodka with the people you like, they'll make you read boring books, and the songs they teach you will be boring, too. Then you'll be mad, my dear Red Artillerist. You'll be furious, your eyes will start rolling! Then two citizens will come visiting: "Let's go, Comrade Kravchenko." "Should I take any personal effects with me or not," you'll ask them. "No, you needn't take any personal effects with you. It'll be a quick interrogation, over in a minute." And that will be the end of you, my dear Red Artillerist. It'll cost them four kopecks. It's been calculated that a Colt bullet costs four kopecks and not a centime more."^[5]

• Andrei: "If it was up to me, I wouldn't ask my worst enemy to clean floors after the Revolution! During the Revolution the dirt grew to three inches thick on these floors -- you couldn't shave it off with a plane! I should get a medal for cleaning floors after the Revolution, and all you do is bark."^[6]

References

1. ^ Antonina Pirozhkova, At His Side; The Last Years of Isaac Babel, Steerforth Press, 1996. Page 47.
2. ^ "The Complete Works of Isaac Babel," page 807.
3. ^ "Complete Works of Isaac Babel," page 808.
4. ^ Ibid, page 813.
5. ^ Ibid, pages 822-823.
6. ^ Ibid, 837.

External links

• Maria's American Debut

Resources

• "The Complete Works of Isaac Babel," Edited by Nathalie Babel Brown, 2002.