понедельник, 2 января 2012 г.

A Polychromatic Analysis of a Play about the Love of a Russian Traveler and a California Girl

 



What is love? This is a question that everyone is trying to answer for him or herself. Love is something that cannot be understood by the mind, it has to be felt by the heart. Love is something, without which the very existence of the humankind would be impossible. Love can be a reason to live or to die. Love is capable of moving mountains and reaching stars in the sky.
Every person on Earth looks for his or her love. Unfortunately, not everyone finds it. To some, it comes when they are young; to some, when they are adults; and to others, when they are old. The key is to wait for and believe in love. Unfortunately, oftentimes love comes when a person can no longer wait for it. There are such facts in the human history.

California, too, can be proud of such a story of human love and fidelity. It is a love story of Conchita, daughter of California governor Argüello, and count N. P. Rezanov, a Russian traveler and diplomat.


 Conchita de Argüello


count N. P. Rezanov

Many in Russia know this story well because it is at the heart of a popular modern opera, “Unona and Avos”, which has been a cult play since it first came out in 1981, and to this day. For decades now, this play has been attracting a full house in Moscow’s Lencom theatre. A beautiful love story plays itself out in a wonderful romantic atmosphere. Andre Voznesenskys poem along with Alexei Ribnikov’s music, directed by Mark Zakharov, has turned into a composition with its unique poetic conventions, metaphors, and polyphony. The best Lencom actors have for many years been creating the colorful figures of Rezanov, Conchita, Fernando (Conchita’s fiancé) and other characters in this musical dramatic poem. To this day, it is still fresh, clever, unusually spectacular, and has many meanings. Word and thought, music and dance, scenic effects, stage settings, plastic arts of the gestures, grace of the dress articles – all of them are combined into an organic whole. Everything in this play is perfectly correlated: acting, stage graphics, light, rhythm, color… Let us try to analyze the color solution of the play. Rather, the polychromatic phenomena (PCF) used in the play, as artificially created color occurrences. PCF are color signs, symbols, and images, their compositions and systems. PCF is a specific expression in the relationship between one person and another. This is why we will try to penetrate the secret of the lovers’ relationship using the polychromatic solution of the play, its polychromatic language.


Popular Modern Opera “Unona and Avos” (Text by Andre Voznesensky, Music by Alexei Ribnikov, Directed by Mark Zakharov)
The play begins with a ray of red light on a black stage. The ray looks for and finally finds and merges onto a red fire ball. Red is the color of blood and fire, which, according to ancient beliefs, created the world and will one day destroy it. Red is an impulse and a will to win; it is the color of all forms of life strength. According to the plot of the play, exactly 200 years ago, in 1806, the count Nicholas Rezanov tried to establish a “bridge” between Russia and California. With his own money, he bought two schooners and named them “The Unona” (in Ancient Roman mythology, the queen of Gods, Jupiter’s wife, patroness of marriage and birth) and “The Avos” (which, in Russian, means “maybe” – i.e., hope and wish for something). In July 1803, on these two schooners, the Russian diplomat and traveler sailed out for his long voyage. During the voyage, the stage becomes blue-gray, similar to the color of the waves, which brought Rezanov to Conchita. While traveling to California, Rezanov was anxious, as if in anticipation of something. Blue carries a divine, celestial origin. It is the color of the depth of discovering the unknown. Gray is the color of indifference, boredom, melancholy, coolness. A blue-gray composition causes an un-composed, soft, and melancholy mood, which is how Rezanov felt while approaching California. Against this background, a prayer is read, at which time light appears. While red symbolizes the male origin, white is a symbol of the female origin. It is exactly in white that Conchita first appears on the red-black stage, dancing a Spanish dance with her fiancé. White, the color of Conchita’s dress is a symbol of pureness, virtue, and chastity; it is the color of joy and gaiety, the color of dream since it synthesizes all colors. California governor Argüello greets Rezanov, the Russian diplomat, with honors, and invites him to Conchita’s 16-year birthday ball. During the ball, there is much yellow on the stage. Conchita herself is wearing a gold colored dress. Yellow is the color of happiness, joy, openness of feelings. Yellow is motion forward, towards the new, the unknown. For Conchita, it is the happiest time. However, in Spain, which at the time owned California, yellow symbolized treason and a lack of trust. It is during the ball that Conchita, Fernando’s fiancé, falls in love with Rezanov. Fernando is wearing a blue uniform with gold and a red coat. Blue is the color of fidelity (Fernando never betrayed Conchita and loved her with all his heart). Blue is also a symbol of grief, pureness of feelings, and wisdom. After a duel with Rezanov, a dying Fernando will ask him to marry Conchita since she will not be able to live with her shame otherwise. Fernando’s red coat symbolizes his active state of excitement, bravery, and aggression towards Rezanov. At a moment of anger, using light, Rezanov’s red coat turns violet, which is a color between red and blue, between unforgiving force and blind love. It is the color of Fernando’s inner passion.
Also of interest is a dialogue between Rezanov and Conchita, where they both realize that they love each other. Both are wearing white clothes, which has several meanings. On the one hand, it symbolizes pureness of their feelings and intentions. On the other hand – joy and satisfaction of being with each other. Yet another meaning is future grief since in many cultures, white is a symbol of grief. It is as if they feel the brevity of their time together and the coming separation forever.
Gradually, the stage becomes light-blue, which is a symbol of faith and mutual loyalty, a symbol of their harmony. At the peak of passion between the two lovers, the stage turns red-black. This combination of colors means, simultaneously, two things. On the one hand, a victory of true love in this sinful world, a victory of life over death. On the other hand, it is a presage of their future separation forever and mourning clothes, which Conchita will be wearing for the next 35 years, not quite believing that Rezanov died.
Conchita’s priest, having broken the secret of confession, tells Conchita’s family about her relationship with Rezanov. Fernando challenges Rezanov to a duel. During the duel, Rezanov wears white, while Fernando wears black and red. These colors symbolize their stand against each other. It is a symbol of their polarity, their impulsive-destructive behavior. The color of their clothes is also an indication of what goes on in their souls. Rezanov feels joy and satisfaction on the one hand, and an anticipation of future grief, on the other. Fernando feels aggression and refuses to accept Conchita’s betrayal, her unfaithfulness. A wounded Fernando asks Rezanov to marry Conchita in order not to disgrace her. Rezanov begs Fernando to forgive him for what he has done.
During Conchita and Rezanov’s engagement, the stage is gray and light-blue as a symbol of uncertainty in the lovers’ future happiness on the one hand and humility of Conchita’s relatives and friends, their acceptance of Conchita’s choice, on the other. The gray and light-blue stage also shows the lovers’ grief before their forthcoming separation. This color combination symbolizes a contradiction of their feelings. On the one hand, it is calmness, satisfaction, harmony in their relationship, faithfulness toward each other. On the other hand – anxiety. Conchita’s head is covered with a white cover – a symbol of purity and virtue, fidelity and loyalty. She feels she is about to lose Rezanov, who, during the engagement, takes off the white cover and replaces it with a gray headscarf – a symbol of grief for the rest of her life, a symbol of humility before her fate.
Rezanov left for Russia to obtain marriage permission since they were of different faiths: Conchita was a Roman Catholic, while he was an Orthodox Christian. Half-way from California to St. Petersburg, on 13 May 1807, he died of a trivial cold. Conchita waited for Rezanov for 35 years. She refused to believe that he had died. Only in 1842, a traveler told her details of Rezanov’s death. Having finally believed in his death, Conchita gave a vow of silence to the end of her days and went to live in a monastery. It is no coincidence that the final lines in the play read,
"I will never see you. I will never forget you."
          
Hence, PCF has an important role in the play, as if PCF are telling their own story in a polychromatic language, which has been formed (and is still forming) during the entire course of human history. A person receives 80% of information through her vision. On the other hand, the world and the human eye are created such that we perceive the world as multi-colored. PCF is yet another key to understanding the psychology of times, events, and occurrences. Using PCF, the play reflects the entire spectrum of feelings and emotions, formed such that they could be understood and felt by the spectator by staying in her memory.
Hence, the play confirms opinions of the French sociologist and anthropologist Morris Halbwachs, that social groups construct “recollections”. Physically, individuals are the ones who remember, but it is group values that finally determine criteria of the “notable ness” of events and of their cause-and-effect relationships. According to Halbwachs, social groups mostly “remember” those events and facts, which are not directly related to the social experience of the group. In other words, it is possible that a certain “novelty”, which was never experienced (physically, via non-material culture, or via senses) by an individual directly, becomes a part of her recollections. Or, on the contrary, it becomes a part of the “notable information” about the life of an “influential” historical figure.
The creators of the play placed an accent on the collective memory of the viewers, since Halbwachs believed that collective memory is a social construct, forming and changing in accordance with a system of values.[1] Emile Durkheim’s sociological collective approach to memory is a traditional theory that people collectively agree to remember selectively in order to control human collective behavior; individual memory as such is not recognized at all[2]. It is a well-known fact that Durkheim’s main contribution to the social science is in the understanding of society as a value-normative system, a system of symbols, which provides for integration and interaction among people.[3]
This play is a bright example that memory serves as one of the regulators of social behavior, which is based on myths, perception stereotypes, and those images of the past, which, having gone through certain transformations, are still necessary even today. Because of human memory, this love story of a Russian count and a California girl is still alive, bringing together our peoples and giving rise to the belief within every one of us in true love on Earth.
Hence, it is not a coincidence that recently, almost 200 years later, this story, which became the foundation of the play “Unona and Avos” by Moscow’s Lencom theatre, was unexpectedly continued. Police officers from Monterey, CA visited the Russian city of Krasnoyarsk, where Nicholas Rezanov was buried in 1807. They brought with them soil and a rose from the grave of Conchita, who loved Rezanov, and who was separated from him by death. They left Russia with soil from Rezanov’s grave and scattered it over the place where Conchita’s remains are lying. One would like to believe that this will symbolically connect them for all eternity. In Monterey, many people know about the love between daughter of California governor Argüello and Russian count Rezanov: books have been written about it and there are always fresh flowers on Conchita’s grave.

  Rezanov's grave    


Conchita’s grave

Because of the play “Unona and Avos”, some people in Russia are still convinced that the touching love story of Rezanov and Conchita is just the result of imagination of the poet Andre Voznesenski and the composer Alexei Ribnikov. They say it is too romantic, it cannot happen in the real world. However, true love does exist because it is the most beautiful thing there is, it is the one key word of our lives. Love is the motivating force and the cause of all our actions. This love story of a Russian traveler and a California girl is but one confirmation of that.
The fact that we remember this story proves the presence of several “mediators”, which allow recollections to form under the influence of a social system. This story has passed through several such “mediators”. First, it existed as an oral (anthropological) tradition, and was being passed from one person to another by word of mouth. Then, it was formed entirely in various notes, or recordings. In fact, semantically, in most European languages, the word “recording” is related to the Italian “ricordare” – “to remember”, i.e., “to make notes for memory”. However, one has to observe that any “recording” is not a direct (“innocent” according to P. Burke) act of memory, but rather an attempt to model or correct the memory of “others” by suggesting various “scenarios” (scripts) of the past. These recordings do not only contain “appraisal judgments” in the Weberian sense; any recording transforms data by the fact of “being recorded” alone[4]. Due to the development of information technologies, today we are able to re-create this story as an audio- or video-recording. The presence of a video-recording of this play is a proof of that[5].

Виктор Савицкий "Юнона и Авось" - Viktor Savicky "Unona and Avos”









[1] Hallbwahs, M. The Collective Memory – English translation – Cambrige Univ. Press, 1950.
[2] Durkheim, E. Sociology. Its subject, methods, and use. - Moscow, 1995.
[3] Osipova, E. V. The sociology of Emile Durkheim. - Moscow: Aleteia, 2001.
[4] Vanshina Jan. Oral Tradition as History – Madison, 1985.
Андрей Вознесенский "Авось" (1970)


"Описание в сентиментальных документах, стихах и молитвах славных злоключений Действительного Камер-Герра Николая Резанова, доблестных Офицеров Флота Хвастова и Довыдова, их быстрых парусников "Юнона" и "Авось", сан-францисского Коменданта Дон Хосе Дарио Аргуэльо, любезной дочери его Кончи с приложением карты странствий необычайных..."

http://www.cal-soc.org/uploads/CSA_Newsletter_sept_2006.pdf




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