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 Biography |
With M.Kropivnitskiy's name not only works of Ukrainian Professional Theatre and the next period of realistic dramaturgy are connected.
Outstanding actor, producer, active organizer of theatric affair, talented composer and writer-democrat, together with M.Staritsky, I.Karpenko-Kariy, I.Franko was creating a literature basis of growing and development of Ukrainian Theatre. Marko Kropivnitskiy's works, as I.Franko said, "guarantee him not only the name of one of its fathers in the Ukrainian Theatre's history, but also the name of the outstanding dramatic author in our literature history".
Marko Lukich Kropivnitskiy was born on March 7, 1840 in Beizhbaraky village in Kherson region. "The epoch, to which I had to deep with my head, is a rough and faultless essence of all my existence and all my work", was noticing the writer in his "Autobiography" at the end of his life. His father was a "man of work, hard work", though he attained, as its known, prosperity and had a privilege position in the community, he couldn't used to live in pans' environment, and his post of a manager of pans' possessions didn't guarantee him nor moral, not financial protection to him and his family. M.Kropivnitskiy's childhood distinguished from rural children's childhood not very much.
Multifarious nature gift of future artist was revealed in his childhood yet, when he "composed songs and wrote poems by himself, and had a great memory". And he was getting his education without a definite system - at first, in a regional private school of Rudkovski, then in Elisabethgrad College. Qualitative education became possible in Bobrenetskiy School, which the young man graduated with a praise-worthy diploma. His mother taught him music, learned various vocal parts with him. This time M.Kropivnitskiy took part in an amateur community's work, in which they staged various plays of Ukrainian and Russian dramaturges.
After his unsuccessful attempt to continue his education in Kiev High School he comes back to Bobrynets and gets his job in a regional court.
From 1862 M.Kropivnitskiy attends lectures as a free student in juridical faculty of Kiev University. Under the influence of one of the translated melodramas, which he has seen in Kiev Theatre, he writes his play "Mykyta Starostenko". That was the work of an inexperienced author (in some time he by himself gave a negative valuation to this attempt), full of external stage effects and terrible passions. Even in its completed form under the title "Give freedom to a heart and it makes you involuntary" this play had a negative I.Franko's valuation. Now it's known in a form, which underwent the numerous basic author recasts and is noted for its vividness, conflict's originality, and social acuteness.
Truthful reflection of new events of Ukrainian village's social life at the first decade after the reform, when visible remains and real witnesses of pans' rule are retained yet, and when rural community's class differentiation is strengthened, characters of rural workers such as Semen, Odarka, Ivan, which are endowed with deep and serious feelings, make possible to classify this popular-realistic melodrama as one way of critical realism.
Because of not getting his full education for various reasons, M.Kropivnitskiy replenished his knowledge without any assistance, especially when he moved to Elisabethgrad, where in 1865 the region was removed and where were the libraries. There he with I.Tobolevich "made the acquaintance with works of Smiles, Robert Owen, John Stuart Mill, Spenser and others; read some stories of Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe, Gainer, Dumas, George Sand, Thackeray" His work didn't give him promotion, and he very often didn't get his earnings for his interesting in art and his taking part in amateurs' performances.
In 1871 M.Kropivnitskiy became a professional actor and agreed to work in the troupe of counts Morkovych (Odessa). During his ten years of work in Russian theatric troupes he was getting a great stage experience, studied carefully specifics and laws of theatric art, formed his own creative principles, understanding of theatre place in the community's life.
In 1872 in Odessa newspaper "New Russia Telegraph" M. Kropivnitskiy's vaudevilles "The made it up" and "Unexpected seeking in marriage" were published, their personages are rich people who strive only for their personal
matters. But even here we can see author's inclination for social problems.
The important stage in Kropivnitskiy's creative life and in Ukrainian Theatre's history were its performances in 1875 in Galichina, where he was working as an actor and producer of a theatre belonging to the association "Russian talk" and put his efforts to changing of repertoires and theatric art style, and approaching it to realism and to people. His experience based on Russian realistic drama helped him in this.
After cancellation (1881) of Ukrainian Theatre's prohibition (though some limitations and warnings were still remained) different Ukrainian troupes began to appear in such towns as Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa. But their work didn't satisfy Kropivnitski who strived for coordinal changes in stage creativity. In 1882 he organizes his own troupe, which in about one year merges in troupe of M.Starytskiy, where Kropivnitskiy becomes its leading producer. A new epoch in the history of Ukrainian professional theatre begins, on the stage of which Zankovetskaya, Sadovskiy, and some later Sadovskaya-Bariliotti, Zatyrkevych-Karpinskaya, Saksaganskiy, Karpenko-Kariy played. Performing works of Kotliarevskiy, Shevchenko, Kvitka-Osnovianenko and their own ones, our outstanding artists confirmed the principles of nationality and realism, and created real examples of stage art within the narrow limits permitted by low.
Collection of Kropivnitskiy's works, which was published in Kiev in 1882, included plays "Give freedom to a heart and it makes you involuntary", "Glytai or Spider" and "Involuntary man". Greeting the appearance of this work as the evidence and in the same time as one of the factors of Ukrainian Theatre's development, I.Franko also gave some pretensions to the author ("Dawn", 1883, ¹13) for his manner to complicate a story's composition by "unnecessary" moments and personages. Franko pointed out poetical and truthful style of the scenes of the play "Give freedom to a heart…"as well as a sad story of poor people's humiliation for one usurer and ingenuous kulak…"
Hardiness of serfdom and slavery psychology correspondingly, annihilation of "noblemen's aeries" and pushing out of nobility by intensification of rural bourgeoisies, enriching of bourgeois - "dirty" - and his fall at people's life, his predatory competition with similar to himself, Russian-Japan War and its influence on people's life, revolutionary riots in villages - such problems were revealed in Kropivnitskiy's dramaturgy. Their actuality is doubtless as well as importance of moral problems of creative intelligence's life, its relations with "throng", which were described in drama "Bespochveniki" and in comedy "Barbarians' invasion". The most of his plays were interdicted by censorship at once and many years were getting the right to be staged. From time to time the writer staged and remade his famous literature works ("Involuntary man" by Shevchenko, "Howling" and "Lost patent" by Gogol, "Vergily's Eneida", "Chaikovski or Alexey Popovich" by Grebenko, "People living under the mountains" by Gushalevich, "Moustaches" by Storozhenko and some others.
To the end of his life Kropivnitskiy created two plays for children, using some folk fairy tales' motives ("Ivasyk-Telesyk", "After spike's telling off"). Organic connection of his dramaturgy with folklore is revealed in the initial attitudes of the writer, who defended the understanding of kindness and evil by its people and who was always for poor and offended ones, as well as in reflection in personage's language of ready-witted people's word and humor. In 70-80th he very often pays his attention to songs, but through that time no place in his stories remained for them as well as for various ethnographic insets.
External conflict's development in Kropivnitskiy's plays takes place in the most cases in family-common sphere, but their main point is in making sense of critical social problems and their generalization, that is reached by masterly characters' description. Chrestomathy image was got by characters of exploiters, rural glytais - Iosyp Bychko ("Glytai or Spider"), Nastia and Samros' Zhludii ("Two families"), Baltyz ("Olesia"), Shklianka ("Over the ruins"), Suponia and Tarohti ("Difficult epoch") - the new prosperous and guileful claimers who wanted to be masters of the life.
 Describing pan's community Kropivnitskiy applies to enough difficult public-psychological traditions. And from liberalism of Gornov, as well as from dissoluteness, cruelty of Voronovs ("Until the sun rises…"), from good-for-nothing Nartsisa Pavlovna and
her haughty daughter Nadezhda (" Springs full of silt"), it is one step to hypocrisy of heartless advocate of serfdom Pidgainy ("Before freedom"). From the first look a delicate helper Derevitski at the end of 1905 hopes to stop rural people, excited by revolutionary moods, "by sincere talk and making them more conscience". But that delicateness is logically conditioned on complexity of the situation and doesn't contradict at all to hisown interests ("Difficult epoch").
So we can point out a lot of common in Leonid Zagrivniy ("Olesia") and Smorodyna ("Over the ruins") - the former owners of large properties, which were got to the hands of their yesterday's lackeys. The writer understood that this community's strength already comes out of historic arena, and he contented with the valuation of its single features, directing his disclosing pathos against those, who supersede those in impracticable nobility who leave their posts, - against bourgeoisies.
The artist also pays his attention to a specific type of a man-hybrid, which is striped of social and national self-consciousness, miserably ridiculous in his readiness for money to sell whoever and whatever you like, including his own dignity. Beginning from Gordi Pavlenko ("Until the sun rises…"), such personage from time to time is appeared in Ukrainian dramaturgy in opposition to tragic characters of dull heroines. So, correlation of tragic and comic in Kropivnitski's creativity is in a constant dialectical dependence on the object and the way of its reflection.
In Kropivnitskiy's first vaudeville "They made it up" are stories allegedly of entertaining genre; I. Franko not causally saw "black" pictures (scenes), which are possible to be only in the atmosphere of Russian life and darkness, which confirm the author's tendency to generalization of social character. Traditional Moeller's plot about dexterous servant and simple-minded pan in vaudeville "They became fools" confirmed "a real satiric talent" of the dramatist and his ability for "creating some persons from real life by his artistic hand" (27, 233). The experience got by Kropivnitski in these woks gives him an opportunity to create a brilliant sample of social satire - etude "According to the revision". Description of spiritual emptiness of rural "authority", of a foreman and a clerk, which power is over hundreds of people, expresses its relation with Gogol's satiric tradition. Deriding comedian customs, which became obsolete, minute human lacks, which result in comic misunderstandings, and sometimes it brings to dramas, which are over undoubtedly by happy end, Kropivnitski even in such not spiteful comedies as "Moustaches", "Dzhygun", "Silly woman", "Thin on top", "A mistake has been made" and some others, doesn't miss a chance to ridicule a foreman or a clerk, underline a moral superiority of a poor man over a rich one. His satiric exposure is strengthened on his showing a demoralization influence of wealth on people.
Tragedy-comic situation, which is the main one in the play "Chmyr" ("Dirty"), is used masterly by the dramatist to show social and spiritual incompatibleness of toilers and parasites. Until not a reach rural man Demko Pshinka lived with a help of his work - he was a normal man; his minute lacks were compensated by his healthy mind and criticism, skill of his hands, feeling of his work's necessity. In Demko's words, - "The more rich man is, the more silly he becomes" because "that kopeck will over him, that'll result in his mind's turbidity", - the first seed of his future fate is put. Unexpectedly he got a great wealth he considered it, which was an inheritance of his dead city brother; and then he got into events he had spoken about. Trying to take over some external forms of pan's life and applying to them an understandable for him notion "various formations", Demko is really found in a foolish situation like personages of Ostrovskiy's comedy "Do not seat on someone else's sledge". Ingenious trader dexterously robbed illiterate Demko.
"Chmyr" is one of Kropivnitskiy's the most completed plays. Impetuousness of act's developing, wittiness of situations, laconism and precision of dialogues, vividness of characters, as well as firmness of the author's moral position - all this makes this play the attractive one for the theatre even nowadays.
If adventure with Pshinka is a consequence of his mind's temporary turbidity, a spiritual evolution of a "trader from bonds", Kyrpa, in the play "Old dims and young sprouts" is completed. His greediness, as well as greediness of his wife, who economizes even in their children feeding, doesn't have any limits. His numerous skirmishes with all participants of the act are put together into one universal conflict of wealth and poorness, exploitation and work, dishonor and decency. A logic final of the story - a dull death of Kyrpa on the heap of his money (here satire is transferred into grotesque) - complicates a satiric picture, in which there are no half tints.
In Kropivnitskiy's play "Mummy" it's possible to see an example of that "new
type of comedy", about which B. Show thought like about comedy, "as much more tragic than a tragedy with catastrophic final as an unhappy or even happy marriage is more tragic than any unhappy railway accident." The dramatist describes an ill-boding picture of full moral degeneration of people under the influence of greed to wealth, for which a wife doesn't spare her husband, a son - his father. In narrow limits of family life different gradations of annihilation of people's principles are showed, which are directly depend on scopes of material interests.
Not comic Kropivnitskiy's comedies belong to a typological number of works, which in their time gave a reason to Skabichevskiy to designate a peculiarity of Russian comedy, and at first - Ostrovskiy's ones. The critic noticed that as against an European comedy of customs, individually Moeller, in Russian comedy personages, who are bearers of opposite moral norms, communicate not paying their attention to that they speak using different languages at all, about different things, not understanding each other. It touches a basic conflict of Kropivnitski's works as well as casual ones. An educational worker Nadezhda and a man-hybrid Mykola, and also those rural people who consider her a witch ("Opposite directions"), have lived and forth-coming pans - Smorodyna and Shklianka ("Over the ruins"), even members of one family ("Chmyr", "Mummy", "He became clever" and others) turn out to be people of "different worlds".
In description of family conflicts, through which, how their real first cause, they shine through expressively actual social problems, Kropivnitski approximates to a new drama, though in choosing a material, and in methods of conflict's developing, another words in external expressing of the story's internal idea, he remains faithful to the tradition. These peculiarities of the writer's creative work bring it into the context of European dramaturgy, where in 70-90th years social and moral problems are appeared on the foreground: unmasking realistic description of reality in works of G. Ibsen, R. Bracko with a special sharpening of the problem of woman's position in family and community.
So it's not causally that Kropivnitskiy's dramas "Glytai or Spider", "Two families", "Olesia" belong to the most critical, complete works in the time of their expressive tendentiousness. Franko considered his works the best such as "Two families", where "without any theatric intrigue his drama's action is developing very naturally and with a poetic truth based on the heterogeneousness of its characters" (41, 398), and "Zaidygolova" - "a talented written scene from people's life, where a real conflict of heterogeneous characters represses the theatric intrigue… and where an action without any artificial help is developing naturally from the very beginning to the end, creating simultaneously various theatric effective scenes" (41, 397). The dramatist attained a harmony of naturalness and staginess, noted by the critic, every time anew, persistently standing for the principle of truth, for all that calling for saving a sense of measure, for which from time to time he had to fight not only with direct actors but also with famous ones.
Kropivnitskiy's dramas "Glytai or Spider", "Two families", "Olesia", "Zaidygolova", "Until the sun rises…", "Springs full of silt", "Before freedom", "Muddle", "Opposite directions" give many-sided imagination about woman's fate, a woman of different public positions, - from times of serfdom to the beginning of the century. Her position without any rights, strengthened by a great number of conventions and severe traditions, was showed masterly by the dramatist in different public layers. Rural poor girls Oksana ("Until the sun rises…"), and Olena ("Glytai or Spider"), rich bourgeois girl Zin'ka ("Two families"), daughters of landowners - emotional Orysia ("Before freedom") and educated wise Zhenia ("Springs full of silt") became defenseless victims of these antihuman minds, irrepressible self-willfulness of those, from who a heroine's fate depends on in any ways. Olesia ("Olesia"), Domaha ("Zaidygolova"), Katria ("Muddle") fight very actively and win at last.
The dramatist thinks over a woman's tragedy in his works where she is also in the background independently of genre. A heroine of the vaudeville "He became clever" as well as Zin'ka in the tragedy "Two families" say such words to their husbands "The place is still alive here". In his merry "comedy with songs" - "Dzygun" one man speaks calmly and even with a grin as about something quite usual about how he beat his wife: "…I beat her so hard that she couldn't do anything more than a week; and I tired so much doing this!.." And there are some words about others: "It's impossible not to beat them, man - the law doesn't allow this!.. And any law must be implemented…"
An intensive artistic (no less than one hundred of performances per year) and organization activity of Kropivnitskiy, ramification of theatric routes - not only staring ones, but also, which were conditioned on the absence of
stationary theatre (many places in Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, Poland, Byelorussia), remained not much time for literature activity. But a persistent necessity in a full-fledged repertoire, faithfulness to the favorite art, many- sided talent were giving life to a great enthusiasm, which gave an opportunity to Kropivnitskiy to overcome all difficulties of "actor's life similar to Gypsy one" as well as temporary (sometimes even conflictive and long) divergences with like-minded people. He wrote more than forty plays of different genre, involving remixes and staging; he translated Shakespeare's works, some works of Russian dramaturgy.
Even in the last years of his life Kropivnitskiy, who had to settle in village Zatyshok because of his health's changing for the worse, enough often took part in different performances, continued to write plays, trying to touch up the most burning and keen problems of that time's life. He was very interested in events of 1905; in one of his letters he dreams about those times when the truth will overcome injustice and it would be possible "only one time to take the free air, to hear a free singing of "Marseilles". Kropivnitski strives for the opening of school for rural people and their children, creates two children plays and works over their staging in the village.
M.L.Kropivnitskiy died on April 21, 1910 on his way from Odessa, where he was in performances; he was lusted in Kharkov.
Establishing in creative manner traditions of Kotliarevskiy, Shevchenko, Gogol, Ostrovskiy, Nekrasov he made his contribution into the literature of critic realism describing violent class struggle in Ukrainian village in the second part of XIX century. Essential evolution was tried by his positive personages: from patience and passive protest up to capability for analyzing a situation, self-consciousness and social activity. Many of his dramas and comedies are peculiar analogs of "ideological" stories of I.Nechui-Levytski, B.Grinchenko, O.Konynskiy, which also I.Franko called "the first attempts" of describing of new public-political directions in our community.
The essential lines of the writer's art thought is his interest to keen moral and political problems of those days, which was expressing in publicist sharpness, satiric directness of his plays. Dramatist's works confirmed realism by creating folk characters in the most usual life situations. Providing a Ukrainian Theatre with current repertoire, in which traditional poetics overcame, Kropivnitskiy felt keenly new life phenomenon, acts (also strengthening of revolutionary struggle), that made him to find new dramaturgic forms.
/ История украинской литературы. В 2-х т. К. ; Наукова думка, 1987.- т.1, стр.418-425. |
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