chronographic order
Beaumarchais The Marriage of Figaro
Exceptional success fell on the second part of the Beaumarchais comedy trilogy – “Mad Day, or the Marriage of Figaro”. (For the first part – see “The Barber of Seville” – analysis.)
Before us is Figaro again. But now it is no longer the Barber of Seville, arranging the love affairs of a young aristocrat. Managing the castle of Count Almaviva, he now comes into conflict with his master. Continue reading
Bogdanovich “Darling”
The content of “Darling” is taken from La Fontaine’s prose work “The Love of Psyche and Cupid” (“Les amours de Psyché et de Cupidon”). The content of this work, in turn, was borrowed by the author from Apuleius’s novel The Golden Ass.
In the work of Apuleius, the main idea is that the soul, immersed in sensuality, matter afterwards, thanks to the initiation into the sacraments, is purified and transformed. The soul of a woman (Psyche), having lost its original purity, should as a slave of Love (Venus) undergo a series of severe tests in order to ascend to the divine bridegroom – Eros (Cupid, Cupid). Continue reading
Rose and Cross block
The ideological and philosophical basis of the drama is a characteristic of the Bloc of the 1910s the idea of the many-sided nature of life, the idea of merging its opposing principles. Its main motive is connected with this – the dual unity of Joy-Suffering, a motive that is also reflected in its title, where “rose” should mean pleasure, joy of life, and “cross” – suffering that fell to a person or voluntarily accepted by him. The same motif is organically intertwined with a number of images of the multicolored world that surrounds the hero (Bertrand) and the heroine (Isoru): inviting mysterious, gloomy sea distantly, invoking a new and deep meaning to their dull being. Continue reading
