The Coast of Utopia

‘Voyage’

 

Time: 1833-44

 

Place:

 

Act One: Premukhino, the Bakunin estate, a hundred a fifty miles north-west of Moscow…

 

 

1.       Summer 1833 (Premukhino: Courtship of Liubov)

2.       Spring 1835 (Premukhino: Natalie Beyer’s Letter)

3.       Autumn 1835 (Premukhino: Stankevich ‘analyses’ Liubov)

4.       Spring 1836 (Premukhino:  Liubov’s ‘nits’;  Stankevich’s illness)

5.       August 1836 (Premukhino: Belinsky arrives)
6.       Autumn 1836 (Premukhino: Belinsky’s carp and his speech)


Inter-scene: The Gunshot!


7.    January 1837 (Premukhino: Stankevich and Liubov ill)
8.    Spring 1838 (Premukhino:  Liubov’s bier)

9.    Spring 1841 (Premukhino: Turgenev’s visit)

 

 

 

1.       Summer 1833 (Premukhino: Courtship of Liubov) (7-14)

·           Describe the effect of Michael’s return home on the family.

·         Look at Michael’s philosophical outburst (14) What have he and the other members of Stankevich’s circle at Moscow University been discussing? Which philosopher is dominating their thinking?

·         Why does he reject Baron Renne as a potential suitor for Liubov?

·         The French socialist, novelist, celebrity and women’s rights activist George Sand was in vogue. She famously conducted an affair with the great pianist Chopin and openly advocated the emancipation of a woman’s free choice in love. She said, “There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.” Her first novel, Indiana, set during the 1830 Revolution in Paris, was a best seller. It’s heroine is married to an older ex-army officer, but she scandously sets out on her own in search of passionate love.

 

2.       Spring 1835 (Premukhino: nearly two years later)(14-20)

·         Varenka has married Dyakov, an army officer, after terrible rows between the parents and Liubov over her refusal, instigated by Michael, to marry Baron Renne.

·         Varenka is returning home with great news: she is pregnant.

·         The girls have recently received a letter from one of their friends in Moscow, Natalie Beyer. She is upset and complains that the girls stand in the way of Michael’s happiness with her. What is the real reason for Michael’s unwillingness to take the relationship ‘to the next level’? (see p. 19)

·         Michael has been getting in trouble with the military command in his regiment over his objections to the Russian action in Poland to suppress the November Uprising (1831). A quick history of Poland’s recent injuries at the hands of her neighbors, Prussia, Russia, and Austria:

o    Kociusko Uprising (1795) crushed and Poland is partitioned by the three powers.

o    Napoleon conquers Central Europe in 1807 and creates the Duchy of Warsaw.

o    After Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the Congress of Vienna portioned Poland again, this time between Prussia and Russia.

o    The November Uprising in  1831 was crushed by Nicholas I’s troops

 

3.       Autumn 1835 (20-29)

·          Varenka is nine months pregnant… What has her marriage been like?

·         What kind of relationship does Liubov dream of? What keepsake of Stankevich’s does she cherish?

·         The girls also mention that they have read Eugene Onegin (1825-32) by Pushkin, who wrote the novel in verse about a St. Petersburg nobleman who rejects love with the beautiful and intelligent Tatiana when she offers and lives to rue the day. Onegin came to represent the epitome of the Russian nobleman during the first half of the 19th century: he cannot connect to existence. He regards himself as superfluous and winds up starting love affairs, ending them abruptly and fighting duels, all with an air of indifference.

·         Note Stankevich’s illustration of Schilling’s conception of aesthetic idealism (the path to True Spirit) in his description of Liubov reading her book in the garden and loosening her hair. What is Stoppard’s point?

·          What is the consequence of Michael’s insistence that he be allowed to go with Stankevich to Berlin to study German Idealism?

·          How do Kantian ethics also stand in the way of Stankevich and Liubov’s budding romance?

 

4.       Spring 1836  (29-33)

·         The first strawberries

·         What is father looking for in Liubov’s hair?

·         Tatiana has broken off her romance with Count Sollugub. Why?

·         What is the upsetting news about Stankevich in Berlin?

·         How has Michael been getting work done so that it can be published in Telegraph?

·         At the end of the scene Michael mentions that he is now rejecting Schelling’s definition of the Spirit as a force of nature and is embracing Fichte’s conception of the most perfect expression of the self as part of the transcendent Volk.

 

5.       August 1836 (33-36)

·         Varenka has left her husband.

·         Quiet arrival of the family at the dinner table, and then everyone gets upset and stomps out.

·         Belinsky arrives at Premukhino (age 25), poor as a mouse. He makes a fool of himself because of his embarrassment, but Tatiana sees something in Belinsky right off.

 

6.       Autumn 1836 (36-46)

·         Belinsky enters with a five pound carp he has caught from the pond. Miracle of miracles, when he was cleaning the fish, he found the penknife he lost years before at the Moscow Zoo skating pond. What is Premukhino like to him?

·         He has been trying to impress Alexandra with stories about his publishing ventures in Moscow, but she will have none of it.

·         What is the main idea of the essay that Belinsky has been writing criticizing Russian literature?

·         How does Belinsky criticize the French Enlightened ideals of Alexander?

·         How does Alexander defend the ‘Russian liberty’ which exists on his estate?

·         How does Belinsky defend the sacred duty of literature in Russia (44-46)?

·         What does Liubov dream of?

[A gunshot is heard off stage!]

 

7.       January 1837 (47-50)

·         Pushkin is dead.

·         In the letters from Stankevich and Michael that the girls all read together, they discover that Stankevich has gone abroad to have his tuberculosis treated. Does he know that Liubov is ill as well?

·         Why does Stoppard arrange the discovery of this information so near Pushkin’s death?

 

8.       Spring 1838 (50-54 and then intercut with Scene 9 to 58)

·         Michael and Alexander are gathering lilies for a Spring bonfire. They are preparing a special picnic for Liubov who is fast succumbing to tuberculosis.

·         Michael has now rejected Fichte’s conception of the Spirit as an expression of the Volk and has embraced Hegel’s conception of History as the gradual manifestation of the Spirit.

·         Alexander berates Michael for the damage he has done to his sisters. Is Alexander’s criticism valid?

 

9.       Autumn 1841 (54-58)

·         Turgenev’s visit. (He is 23.)

·         He and Tatiana speak about Michael in Berlin, and Stankevich’s death. We learn that Stankevich died in Varenka’s arms because Liubov could not be there.

·         Tatiana tells of Liubov’s death. As she does so, the ‘memory ‘ of Liubov’s arrival at the bonfire in her cart as the goddess of the Spring plays out.