Nikolay Erdman
Meyerhold, Mayakovsky, and Erdman
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Nikolay Robertovich Erdman (16 November
[O.S. 3 November] 1900 — 10 August 1970)
was a Soviet dramatist and screenwriter
primarily remembered for his work with
Vsevolod Meyerhold in the 1920s. His
plays, notably The Suicide (1928), form
a link in Russian literary history
between the satirical drama of Gogol and
the post-World War II Theatre of the
Absurd.
Early life
Born to parents of Baltic German
descent, Erdman was reared in Moscow.
His brother Boris Erdman (1899-1960) was
a stage designer who introduced him to
the literary and theatrical milieu of
Moscow. Young Erdman was particularly
impressed by the grotesquely satirical
poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky, which
seemed to defy all poetical conventions.
At the outbreak of the Russian Civil
War, he volunteered with the Red Army.
Erdman's first short poem was published
in 1919. His longest and most original
poetical work was Self-Portrait (1922).
As a poet, Erdman aligned himself with
the Imaginists, a bohemian movement led
by Sergei Yesenin. In 1924, Erdman acted
as a "witness for the defense" in the
mock Imaginist Process. He also authored
a number of witty parodies which were
staged in the theatres of Moscow.
Work with Meyerhold
In 1924, Erdman submitted to
Meyerhold his first major play, The
Mandate. The young playwright cleverly
exploited the subject of the subverted
wedding to produce a work brimming with
tragic absurdity. In his adaptation of
the play, Meyerhold chose to emphasise
the mannequin-like behaviour of Erdman's
characters by introducing the tragic
finale which revealed "the total and
disastrous loss of identity" on the part
of his characters.
.Erdman's next collaboration with
Meyerhold was The Suicide (1928), "a
spectacular mixture of the ridiculous
and the sublime", universally recognized
as one of the finest plays written
during the Soviet period. The play draws
on the theme of the faked suicide, which
had been introduced into Russian
literature by Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin
in The Death of Tarelkin (1869) and was
explored by Leo Tolstoy in The Living
Corpse (1900).
Erdman's masterpiece had a tortuous
production history. Meyerhold's attempts
to stage the play were thwarted by
Soviet authorities. The Vakhtangov
Theatre also failed to overcome
censorship difficulties. At last
Konstantin Stanislavsky sent a letter to
Stalin, in which he compared Erdman to
Gogol and cited Gorky's enthusiasm for
the play. The permission to stage the
play was granted, only to be revoked by
Kaganovich's party commission on the
very eve of the premiere.
Repression
His career in the theatre
effectively stalled, Erdman turned his
attention to the cinema. He wrote
scripts for several silent films, the
most famous being Boris Barnet's The
House on Trubnaya. After Stanislavsky's
actor Kachalov thoughtlessly recited
Erdman's satirical fables to Stalin
during a night party in the Kremlin,
their author's fate was sealed. He was
arrested when filming his first attempt
at a musical, Jolly Fellows, and faced
deportation to the town of Yeniseysk in
Siberia (1933). The following year he
was permitted to move to Tomsk, where
was able to secure a job in a local
theatre.
Although he was not allowed to appear in
Moscow, Erdman would visit the city
illegally in the 1930s. During one of
such visits, he read to Mikhail Bulgakov
the first act of his new play The
Hypnotist (never completed). Bulgakov
was so impressed by his talent that he
petitioned Stalin to sanction Erdman's
return to the capital. The petition was
ignored, but Erdman's script for the
comedy Volga-Volga was awarded the
Stalin Prize for 1941.
At the outbreak of World War II, Erdman
was called up for military service with
the Red Army but, through Beria's
patronage, he had returned to civilian
life in Moscow by 1942. With no other
means of livelihood but the cinema, he
turned to the most apolitical activity
available, contributing scripts for
children's films, such as Morozko and It
Was I Who Drew the Little Man, until
some years after Stalin's death.
The Thaw
Erdman was living in obscurity when
in 1964 Yuri Lyubimov invited him to
join the newly-founded Taganka Theatre.
Although Lyubimov and Erdman
collaborated on several novel
productions, aspiring to revive
Meyerhold's traditions, it was not until
1990 that Lyubimov succeeded in
producing his stage version of The
Suicide.
Erdman's principal work was banned in
the Soviet Union until the Perestroika.
Even the comparatively orthodox Moscow
Satire Theatre (inaugurated in 1924 with
the production of Erdman's review Moscow
from the Point of View...) failed to
have their version of The Suicide
approved by the Soviet censors.
