Re: [xmca] Vygotsky and Gordon Craig's Hamlet

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Anton--

I was interested in your statement that  "Yaroshevskii is totally
irrelevant as long as Vygotsky and his legacy are concerned."

I aware that there are various groups and individuals who claim to have
relevant things to say about Vygotsky and his legacy. I was not aware that
there a way to figure out who the "ones that count" are.

How do you see this intellectual landscape of contemporary Russians who
take an interest in Vygotsky
and his legacy? What is at issue and what are the stakes?

mike



On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 6:49 AM, Anton Yasnitsky <the_yasya@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Some comments.
>
>
> 1. The fact that Vygotsky moved to Moscow and started his unfinished (i.e.
> dropout) studies in Moscow University
>
> does not prove anything other than he started his studies in that very
> year. Thus, there is at least a theoretical possibility
>
> that he, some 15-16 years old, traveled to Moscow in order to see the
> show. Well, not likely, but not improbable either.
>
>
> 2. Another--purely speculative--option is that someone Vygotsky (Vygodskii
> back then) knew had attended the performance and
> shared his or her first-hand experience. I could think about David
> Vygodskii, his cousin, a prominent translator and literary critic,
> from Gomel' too and several years older, who might be the person. In other
> words, who cares if he actually saw the show or not,
> given the diversity and richness of sources of information about this
> fashionable theatrical production then and there? ;)
>
>
> 3. Vygodskaia & Lifanova's story certainly gives wrong chronology (i.e.,
> definitely not 1916!),
> is messy and does not make much sense, indeed.
>
>
> 4.
>
> 5. As some of you might know, a nice discussion of the topic of the
> interrelations between Vygotsky, Gordon Craig's MKhT production,
>
> and phenomenological aesthetics can be found in a recent paper by Priscila
> Nascimento Marques in the leading Vygotskian journal
>
> PsyAnima [ http://www.psyanima.ru/ ] and is currently freely available on
> the journal's web-site in Portuguese, and, somewhat shorter
> versions, in English and Russian. See here:
> http://www.psyanima.ru/journal/2012/3/index.php
>
>
> AY
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>  From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 3:48:03 PM
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Vygotsky and Gordon Craig's Hamlet
>
> David,
>
> I have this, though it doesn't seem to make sense, from:
>
> Vygodskaia, G. I., & Lifanoya, T. M. (1999). Lev Semonovich Vygotsky.
> Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 37(3), Whole number.
>
> "Lev Semen6vich developed an interest in the theater early, back in his
> high-school years; he would try never to miss a play by a local group or a
> visiting theater group. In Moscow the student art group became his favorite
> theater, and he would visit it often with pleasure. In fact, such plays as
> Malen 'kie tragedii, Brat 'ia Karamazovy, Nikolai Stavrogin were events in
> Moscow's theater life. Hamlet was staged by Gordon Craig, the English
> director, in this theater in 1916, when Lev Semenovich was still a
> university student. The staging was original: there was no set: the play
> was performed on a bare stage. This made it possible to concentrate the
> spectators' attention on the actors and their performance. The role of
> Hamlet was played by v.I. Kachelov. This play was, of course, espe- cially
> interesting to Lev Semenovich." (p. 34)
>
> Martin
>
>
>
> On Jan 31, 2013, at 3:15 PM, Bella Kotik-Friedgut <bella.kotik@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Vygotsky came to Moscow in 1913
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 6:09 AM, kellogg <kellogg59@hanmail.net> wrote:
> >
> >>  Does anyone happen to know whether Vygotsky personally saw the Gordon
> >> Craig version of Hamlet in Moscow in 1912? He would have been sixteen, I
> >> guess, and it was about the time he was starting to write about Hamlet.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> I'm reading a book which attempts to reconstruct the Gordon Craig
> version
> >> of Hamlet (directed by Stanislavsky). It has the interesting that the
> >> production was greater than the sum of its antithetical parts. Craig saw
> >> the play in intensely psychological terms (Craig believed that only
> Hamlet
> >> was a real person, and everybody else in the play has the same status as
> >> the ghost). Stanislavsky, on the other hand, saw it in equally intense
> >> sociological terms (Stanislavsky believed that it should be historically
> >> accurate, and that is why he insisted on a medieval rather than a
> >> Renaissance setting).
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> And so of course it occurs to me that Chapter Eight of Psychology of Art
> >> is an attempt to square the circle. But on p. 172 he speaks
> disapprovingly
> >> of the 1924 revival of the Gordon Craig version by Michael Chekhov,
> because
> >> it transforms Hamlet into an action hero, puts Claudius in the role of
> >> nemesis, and confers extraordinary depth of character on Hamlet.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Kozulin seems to think that Vygotsky really sided with Craig against
> >> Stanislavsky, that is, he saw the work as a mystery play and not a bit
> of
> >> realism. I am not so sure: The way I read Vygotsky, he really turns
> Craig
> >> upside down: Hamlet is the ONLY person in the play who has no real
> >> character at all.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> I also think that reading Hamlet as a myth or a mystery play makes it
> >> quite impossible to achieve what Vygostky is really trying to get out of
> >> the play: a little model of the mind as a sociological backstage and
> >> a psychological proscenium, with the great midstage occupied by various
> >> forms of speech.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> David Kellogg
> >>
> >> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
> >>
> >>
> >> <kellogg59@hanmail.net>
> >> __________________________________________
> >> _____
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> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > Sincerely yours Bella Kotik-Friedgut
> > __________________________________________
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