Національна Академія Мистецтв України Інститут культурології

Superficially seen the transformation of epic source into drama has an outlook of extracting and selecting necessary quotations for the dramatis personae’s direct speech. But such selective and eliminative transformations are not sufficient to create opportunities necessary for reproducing this presupposed narrative account on events and subsequently for understanding drama adequately. The creation of dramatic version of epics presumes first of all reflection over the source. The case of operatic libretto may serve here as the pattern of the interpretation of epics. Such reflection may well be demonstrated on the example of Mussorgsky interpreting Gogol who has for instance introduced the episode of Black Mass in the text of “The Market in Sorochintsi” disclosing thus the presupposition of the narrative source. In this respect dramatic text in regard to epics can be defined as the epic narration where all the links endowing coherence are eliminated together with author’s speech so that it lacks previous contextual referential ties. Therefore to regain coherence dramatic text needs the presence of the third person of arbiter or observer that is necessary for the narrative to restore the plot as textual integrative foundation as well. The necessity of an observer for a narration’s integrity reveals itself already in epics through a plot’s mediation whereas in drama it becomes immediate condition for the comprehensibility of a dialogue. Dramatic text consisting of dramatis personae’s enunciations must be supplemented with arbiter’s observations to become sufficient for comprehensibility. It is arbiter’s competence that imparts coherence here. Therefore one can say of the inferential nature of the coherence of dramatic textual integrity as far as it is based upon the inferences made by an arbiter. This integration is to be obtained from partial quotations given in dramatic text.

In narration the observer coincides with the addressee. In drama with its dialogues (as well as in conversational passages in epics) the observer becomes already discerned from the immediate addressee of dialogue. This opposition of addressee vs. observer gains decisive role in drama. It is only in drama that an observer becomes “purified” so that the observer’s personality comes into play in its authentic role. The observer as addressee in the case of narration becomes witness in the case of drama. The necessity of such witness is attested when the account on events is included in dramatic text in explicit form as is the case in ancient choruses, of testo in oratorio or of the role of moralizer in modern drama of everyday life. All it creates communicative conditions perfectly different from those in epics. This situation is comparable to the “observer’s problem” in physics, that’s of the impact of an observer’s existence upon the world as a whole and only through intermediary ways upon the observed object. Without an observer’s presence and with it – these are two different objects.

Arbiter as the invisibly present virtual constituent of dramatic work determines the initial dramatic textual paradox which consists in the necessity of arbiter’s competence to disclose the motivation of deeds and speeches. There lacks motivational background in the textual stuff as such, and it is only due to this competence that one can comprehend the reasons of behavior. It is why the famous effect of attendance becomes the necessary existential premise of drama: it is always supposed that and observer must know more than each of the dramatic personae. It entails in particular the constant opportunity of irony to be disclosed by such competent observer in characters’ cues⁷⁰⁹. Such effect of irony has become the subject of special study undertaken in regard to the plays of Calderon and Lope de Vega. The conclusions give ground for the estimation of it as the constantly implied element inherently peculiar for dramatic interpretative opportunities. In particular it goes about the contradictions between the opinions of dramatis personae and the development of action, between their competence and that of the observer (spectator), between the expectations and the actual behavior, besides, the parody appertains here too⁷¹⁰. At the same time the author can play with the supposed observer’s competence and interpret it as the pretended experience so that with the refutation of expected irony a special effect will be achieved⁷¹¹. Thus the task is constantly reproduced of discerning between sincerity and deceit in the speeches uttered from stage (that’s of the identification of utterances’ modality), and this task is out of being conceived without the competent audience’s participation. Under such circumstances irony becomes one of the most influential opportunities of dramatic text.

Thus it is competence that generates the virtual text of the mentioned narrative presupposition. That dramatic text needs such observer’s participation can be attested with the peculiar kind of replicas a parte aiming at being “eavesdropped” by the observer. Nobody wants to be “eavesdropped”. Meanwhile it is one of the usual ways of behavior on the stage. In this respect dramatic art has foreseen the so called observer’s effect of quantum mechanics where the presence of observer changes the state of world and in this way participates in the fate of the observed object. Dramatic text presupposes such observer’s participation as the necessary contribution to the generation of this text itself. Obviously such participation of arbiter in the generation of dramatic text is to be regarded as the interpretational activity. Drama contains a built-in program for interpretation as the necessary part of textual generation. It is these interpretative opportunities that are disclosed in the arbiter’s text. In opposite to lyrics and epics dramatic text is not only incomplete but also insufficient to be understood autonomously. Its segments need not only referential ties but also interpretative supplementing comments. The external arbiter (observer) becomes necessary to impart coherence to dramatic text with interpretative efforts aiming at replenishing lacunas and disclosing latencies. The necessity of arbiter’s aspect (of observer’s viewpoint) as the force of textual integration entails the prevalence of functional variability and of the derivative over the primary meaning. Thus a set of semantic consequences arises that essentially distinguish drama from epic sources.

From here the communicative paradox of dramatic play ensues: scenic dialogue carried out between the characters becomes actually addressed to the third person of the observer; in its turn such addressee of the presupposed observer is the necessary existential condition of dramatic play and not only of communicative function of dialogue. It means that it is not dialogue itself that is of significance but the very act of observing speech as an enunciation of an alien personified entity and turning this speech into the object of reflection. The outer observer is foreseen as the supposed participant of the dramatic action and its “decipherer”. A play can be said to give to a spectator only a prompt as an unfinished sentence (that’s a cited passage of the direct speech of characters’ cues) so that its continuation and termination would be guessed and supplemented. For example, in Gogol’s “The Inspector” Bobchinski’s replica gives only indication to the fact that a certain «молодой человек» (young person), two weeks being without the pay in the hotel, «в тарелки к нам заглянул» (into the plates to us glanced). Therefore the panic assumption about the identification of this person as the inspector incognito can exemplify the erroneous reconstruction of the latent presupposition as the commencement of general self-deception. In a way this case can be regarded as a kind of “scene upon scene” where the effect of misinterpretation becomes the foundation of the whole comedy. This widely known pattern attests the indispensability of interpretative activity in drama.

Thus the textual deficit of reflected and inverted “direct speech” correlates with specific communicative conditions of dramatic textual existence where an observer’s competence becomes the necessary premise for textual reproduction. Being “a prompt” drama can’t be comprehended if it lacks such competence. The destruction of dramatic text can be proved with its inadequate perception within the audience ignorant as to the rules of game attested with the audience’s destructive behavior. The case concerns in particular the border between stage and world so that the play as such remains incomprehensible and in a way “illegible” entailing the destruction of the performance.

This inherent dramatic textual deficit as the consequence of reflection & inversion is still aggravated in such particular form of textual heterogeneity as that of dialogue. It is well known that one usually describes generic dramatic peculiarity as that of abridged epics where only direct speech remains whereas narration is excluded. Such approach is obviously superficial, nevertheless it becomes still sometimes enlivened. Subsequently one supposes dialogue to be definitive attribute of dramatic genera. Even B.I. Yarkho suggested respective definition of drama⁷¹². Moreover it was in hic special researches that the peculiarities of dialogue were chosen as the chief stylistic feature⁷¹³. Meanwhile it was already J. Mukarovsky who had shown (referring in particular to the experience of his contemporary and compatriot E.Burian who restored in his staging practice the devices of Baroque declamations where prosaic text was arbitrarily distributed among the voices of those speaking) the unimportance of dialogue for drama [Mukařovsky, 1977]. Actually each dramatic text can be represented as a soliloquy or inner monologue so that dramatis personae turn into the incarnations of the passions of the same person.

Respectively the identification (or rather the confusion) of dialogical speech with dramatic genus would entail gross errors. First of all there are numerous dramatic works written as monologues. It is the permanent direct speech and not dialogue that becomes the generic dramatic distinctive feature. In its turn direct speech implies already negative element inherent for each discussion: the author of the work discerns itself from the character pronouncing monologue and doesn’t agree with the statements of the character’s speech. Utterances become quotations of the voice of an alien person. This status of quotations with the ensuing semantic transitions is still more complicated in dialogue. The illusion arises as if the author would vanish because his or her invisible participation is reduced to few remarks. Meanwhile such illusion would deceive the observer (reader or spectator) dealing with the interplay of quotations that are ascribed to dramatis personae. The author doesn’t disappear and is to be felt through the characters that are his or her alter ego⁷¹⁴. Dramatic text acquires an outlook of cento compiled of the characters’ enunciations (Plato’s symposiums being by far the ancient sample). At last each conversation can easily be converted to soliloquy so that a cento of characters cues can be converted in a soliloquy of some alien imaginary person.

To impart dramatic qualities to a text it is necessary that a dialogic structure would imply reciprocal negations of consequent utterances, the very act of asking being a hidden objection or a doubt – already as the ignorance of the information presented in a response. The very necessity of putting a question presumes the assertion of such ignorance and the lack of knowledge and subsequently the absence of affirmative judgement on subject discussed. The pair “affirmation - negation” (and not only “question - response”) creates the constructive core of a drama. This indispensable presence of objection ensues already from the above mentioned properties of each conversation as a discussion. This bare contradiction gets necessary attire of dramatic dialogue that is by no means something self-sufficient but only attests the growth of the degree of textual heterogeneity. It serves to delineate characters due to the impossibility of their revelation in proper words of monologues. For a character is more important what other partners say about her or him than his or her proper utterances. This insufficiency of a role’s text represents general insufficiency of word in drama that lies as a real foundation for its dialogical nature. The split of speech in the chain of dialogical remarks arises as the consequence of indefiniteness that needs to be removed gradually. Dialogue becomes just the adequate means for such gradation. A grade in this process becomes a unit of dramatic scene.

Therefore the dialogical form of exposing judgments is not itself the crucial distinctive feature of a dramatic play, dialogue itself serving to determine decisions (in particular in opposite to lyrics where such final decisions are absent). The motifs presented in dramatic and lyrical texts can be the same, but their meanings differ essentially being involved either in discussion aiming at the decision of an action or in lyrical meditation around a puzzle to be contemplated. For instance the lyrical foundations of opera are to be seen in particular in the transformation of dialogue into ensemble (not to say of recitative as an extraneous element inserted in musical tissue). In its turn be discussion or catechism of questions and answers the most primitive forms of dialogue, they don’t represent its essence. Explicit syntactic forms of question or demand aren’t necessary to express the interrogative or imperative mode. The utterance can be in the form of a usual assertion and at the same time bear the task of question or command. And still more important is the divergence between question and answer that makes them imply mutual negation in the cases of deeply disguised contents of utterances⁷¹⁵. Thus it goes about heterogeneity that plays decisive role in determining conversational peculiarities of dramatic speech. This heterogeneity in its turn is the consequence of the mentioned reflection & inversion as the most essential properties of direct speech built up of quotations as the enunciations of an alien person.

Of a much bigger importance for dramatic genus is the fact that each case of direct speech (whether it be a conversation or a monologue) presupposes the existence of the author of the whole text distinct from the author of the cited speech. In epics this distinction is obvious, and such case is to be regarded as normal. Thus for example it is in the Old Testament where the distinction between the author’s words (in particular those of the Prophet’s) and the words of other persons is very clear. The same concerns Homer’s text such as the lively conversation in “The Iliad”, 19. The distinction of drama consists in the reduction of an author’s speech to remarks so that the mentioned illusion of an author’s disappearance arises. This illusion of an author’s absence only conceals the constant existence of an author’s viewpoint. It is this constantly sensible and observable viewpoint that implies the reticent narration (or latent narrative presupposition as it has been called). In particular it is the producer’s task to provide the survival of such narration. The producer’s remarks reproduce such virtual narration as the reticent satellite of the direct speech of drama. As an example of such survival K.S. Stanislavski’s comments to dramatic texts can serve. For example a single Othello’s exclamation (in response to Iago’a calumny) “Hang her!” (about Desdemona, 4.1.line 187) is endowed with a whole narration⁷¹⁶. Extensive narrations of the kind that the producer has compiled build up actually the whole novels accompanying dramatic plays. Be author’s own remarks very scarce, so it will be those of producer that supplement them and let them grow up to the scope of a novel parallel to drama. There always exists the author’s image that will be revealed in the performance together with the producer’s image incarnated in the suggested interpretation. Drama is transformed into novel in performance; and this novel becoming a dramatic satellite can often be written down as a narrative version in producer’s draft.

Then the relationship of drama and epics can be conceived in terms of metasystem⁷¹⁷. In particular the conciseness of drama entails its coherence in opposite to disparateness of epics. Drama is a novel’s digest (limited with the direct speech with the exclusion of narration) and it returns to the full unabridged form of novel in a performance on a stage. Such dramatic digest gets an outlook of a cento compiled of quotations of direct speech. In its turn performance becomes then the secondary interpretation and redoubled reflection of the primary epic source reflected in drama. Thus the situation of multiplied reflection arises where performance returns to a novel’s minute description of events that have already been mediated in drama. A novel becomes drama while being abridged to the scope of direct speech and becomes again reflected novel in a performance. Drama & novel demonstrate reciprocity so that the first becomes the reflection of the second becoming again the redoubled reflection of performance. Then to play a drama means merely to represent a secondary interpretation of epic prosaic text that has already been interpreted as the reflection represented in dramatic text.

The necessity of producer’s creative interpretation (together with spectator’s creative perception) and of the obligatory participation of performers & observers in reproducing dramatic text (as the premise of its comprehensibility) implied the just discussed phenomenon of the double reflection inherent for dramatic genus. All dramatic text is conceived as a represented & reflected speech of alien persons that becomes the target of repeated reflections in performance. This multiplication of reflection entails cumulative effect that can’t be reduced to a sum of separate reflective actions. In particular the arbiter (observer) does not only reflect the textual data as a passive “mirror”; the arbiter’s mission consists in gathering these data and providing cumulative effect. The effect of mirror is the indispensable existential element of dramatic textual structure. Be a play performed before a mirror only, then a dialogue with a mirror arises (not to say of soliloquy). Dialogue is the immediate consequence of any act of reflection as the inherent quality of any text and code and it is as such consequence that it becomes the indispensable property of theatre⁷¹⁸. At the same time accumulation is one side of the bilateral process, the other side being the elimination (in the same way as anamnesis presupposes amnesia). One can say also of the process of inclusions & exclusions or of kataphatic & apophatic ways of cognition that build up the foundation of inferential knowledge. The counterbalance of real and imaginary existence comes into play together with the multiplied reflection.

This overall reflection’s multiplication comes also to the inversion of initial normal communicative conditions of drama in comparison to epics. The communicative process represented at the stage becomes the ultimate the object of observation that is submitted to the aims that are alien to the purely communicative tasks. Instead of being the source of textual generation these tasks become the object of reflection. Such inversion of aims entails the paradoxical position of communication that turns into the observed object. That is why drama models the superstructure of text and becomes the foundation of textual metasystem. Drama opposes both to epics and lyrics as the represented communication. If the communicative process is normally carried out within the borders of writer who writes and reader who reads, drama suggests the inverted order where real producers and receivers of communication don’t coincide with the represented ones. Messages of dramatis personae are seemingly addressed one to another but really they appeal the arbiter who participates in the generation of textual entity with his or her competence. Therefore they are the reflected messages that are both formally addressed to the dramatis personae and really appealed to the audience so that they match their mission together with the act of reflection. That is why dramatic communication has become the paragon for the formation of the concept of “performative” speech (after J. Austin’s work “How to do things with words”, 1963)⁷¹⁹, the act of performance being indispensable part and parcel of dramatic text. In particular perlocution is the special dramatic types of performative speech where the words addressed to a dialogical partner have in reality the same target as the cues a parte: they are purposed to the “eavesdrop” of an audience.

That the communication at the stage is not “genuine” but the reproduced, represented and reflected one entails important consequences. They concern the mentioned dramatic communicative paradox where the external observer becomes the existential condition of scenic play. First of all as far as the product of arbiter’s interpretative activity embedded and foreseen in drama the dramatic text needs the extension of this activity in performance. Respectively the dramatic text is a very peculiar text that belongs to the performed repertory. From here the involvement of the forces ensues that remain external in respect to the verbal tissue and in particular of music. Dramatic text (as well as music text) foresees a set of versions for performance as the interpretative continuum. One can say thus of the effects of “echo” (or mirror) as the inherent peculiarity of dramatic speech. The phenomenon of reflected speech (direct speech, quotation) can be compared to echo obtained in the mirror of an observer’s consciousness giving rise to the derivative process of semantic transitions. One can say in this respect of “echoed derivation” evolving in direct speech. For instance the mentioned device of the jokes of Wellerism is based upon on the designation of the source emanating such echo. In this effect it is the task of identification that initiates semantic drift. It becomes necessary not only to find out the grounds for the affiliation of the cues to the role but also for the disclosure of the characters’ intents that determine the specific meaning that the cue is endowed with. Such identification can be clearly traced in the historical development of personified abstract allegories as the isolated personal features (for instance, attributes of temperament as personified human beings) that are transformed into vivid characters as autonomous persons (representing respective typical and individual attributes). While being confronted in dialogues as cues such allegorical personifications reveal their insufficiency in regard to diversified details. The matter is that abstract personifications can’t retain their identity in variegated repetitions as in improvised utterances. Unexpected thoughts (not to say of scenic circumstances) could arise so that the evolvement of the role could encounter with the unforeseen circumstances that would contradict the essence of abstract allegory. Therefore abstract personifications were inapt of correlating with the mutable environment and had to be replaced with characters independent from such vicissitudes and capable for durability in different circumstances. Such transformation of the former allegories (stable roles, emploies) into the future characters (as the individual incarnations of social and psychological types) attests the role of identification as the central task for comprehending direct speech.

From the viewpoint of textual analysis the noticed communicative paradox as the consequence of multiplied reflection and interpretative acts can be correlated with the intensification of heterogeneity. In the same way as the contradictions in proverbs promote the juxtaposition of heterogeneous motifs, the dramatic dialogical discussion encourages the involvement of loosely adjacent enunciations. The utmost degree of heterogeneity attained in drama reveals itself also in the problem of how to ascribe the row of enunciations to the same person (as well as how to include scenes in the same act). It means that there is the problem of integration in drama that constantly accompanies the development of its text. In particular there constantly exists the danger of disjointing the action into a series of disparate episodes. Obviously such integrative problem looks like the problem of identification so that the speech of a person would become recognizable and could be easily attributed to the very person. Arbiter as the necessary condition for dramatic text’s comprehensibility plays the same integrative and identifying role too. Reciprocally in its turn heterogeneous dramatic text having an outlook of a cento of quotations, the task of identification acquires also the functions of textual integration. Disparate sentences represented in cues must be identified as included in the role of the same person or in the scene demonstrating the same action so that the problem of the motivation for the decision of such identification arises. Thus the peculiar dramatic textual heterogeneity becomes the reason for conceiving identification as motivation. Obviously it is the task for perception & performance to find out such motivation that is to be fulfilled with interpretative efforts of the producer and spectator. At last it is to bear in mind that here integration entails derivation. As far as integrative processes with their identification and motivation are based upon reflection (carried out in perception & performance) this reflective act can’t be stopped arbitrarily. Reflection generates derivation in every case and in drama in particular, therefore it provides conditions for the semantic drifts of the cues of scenic direct speech.

There exist special phrase-books where one encounters the ready episodic dialogues apt to be inserted in a drama. The practice of using such sources for dramatic works has been observed and studied by Yu. B. Norman who suggested the term “principle of phrase-book” for such devices⁷²⁰. Dialogue is then to be regarded as the representation of disharmony with the aim of its removal. Dialogues are to be regarded as the common textual formations of the participants of the common game, their distinction from operatic ensembles consisting in the marked location (personification) of utterances. In particular it is in the ensembles that the latent homogeneity becomes explicit while dialogues stress the heterogeneity of common text. Randomization as the involvement of chaos can be detected also in such fundamental dramatic element as the perturbation (peripety). It is the presence of chaos that enables the play of fate and fortune as the main forces of perturbation so that one can say of stochastic speech generation. Thus drama can be said to become an epic text where chaotic perturbations have already taken place. Such inclination to randomness is richly attested in the enunciations of the leading representatives of the decadent epoch in particular such as A. Strindberg⁷²¹.

The presence of chaos that is to be felt in chatter promotes the easiness of its transformation into the state of delirium. Such transition from chatter to delirium is brightly disclosed in Zarechnaya’s cues in A.P. Chekhov’s “The Gull” (3): <«Нина: (…) Я – чайка… Нет, не то. О чем я? Да … Тургенев …»>. Another type of deliria’ scenes can be found in the representation feminine hysteria very widespread in melodramatic works. That the randomization has become customary theatrical device can be demonstrated with its famous derision in Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” (Chapter 21) where the author makes his heroes – the swindlers “Dauphin” and “Duke” – concoct the parody to monologue “To be or not to be: that is the bare bodkin” (etc.). Parodies of the kind (not to mention, for instance, W.S. Gilbert’s “The Savoy Operas” written with preponderant absurdity) attest the “accustomed” randomization turned already in the annoying manner worth being ridiculous.

Subsequently dramatic text is not only built of the direct speech of dialogues but also randomized (especially remarkable with the means of colloquialisms) with likeness of a disparately built narration. One can say of chaos penetrating narration and resulting in its dramatization. There existed a special term to designate the peculiar dramatic chaotic disharmony as “a mixture” () attesting the fact that textual heterogeneity attains the limits of a hybrid. This quality is to be distinguished from those of epics and lyrics. It is to be traced in particular in the already mentioned cento of quotations (versus centonarius) that dramatic text betrays similarity to. Dialogue being essentially a set of quotations of strangers’ voices meets the definition of such mixed verse. Replicas being permuted, they can build another play, and it is attested with improvised comedy (commedia dell’arte). In this respect any passage from a phrase-book can be inserted in a drama. Actually stable repertories of phrases for constant roles (emploi) can be regarded as a kind of cento. At the same time they can be conceived with equal rights as the soliloquy i.e. personifications of the passions of the same person in the manner of Jesuit school drama. One can say even of a seeming easiness of playwright’s work where arbitrary talkative passages can be taken to supplement interstitial space for motivation. Obviously all such effects of randomization, disharmony and cento of cues ensue from the