L.N. Tolstoy’s plays in the Context of Theatrical Search for the “New Drama”

The study examines the late plays of L.N. Tolstoy (“The Power of Darkness”, “And the Light Shines in the Darkness”, “The Living Corpse”) against the backdrop of the Western European “new drama”, represented by the works of G. Ibsen, M. Maeterlinck, G. Hauptmann, and analyzes the nature of the influence of the new dramatic discourse on the writer’s work. The writer’s negative assessment of the work of the new playwrights, whose plays were “accused” by him of incomprehensibility and lack of content, is combined in Tolstoy with an active assimilation of their creative techniques. In the dramas “And the Light Shines in the Darkness”, “The Living Corpse” one can find many artistic principles of the new playwrights: the retrospective-analytical principle of composition, the biographical method of depicting a character, the dialogical superposition of different points of view, and subtext. At the same time, Tolstoy's theatre was not only influenced by the drama of the “new wave”, but also had a direct influence on it, which is confirmed by the analysis of the play “Before Sunrise” by G.Hauptmann, inspired by Tolstoy's “The Power of Darkness”. Certain parallels are found when comparing this same drama by Hauptmann with Tolstoy's ‘The Living Corpse”. When analyzing Tolstoy's dramatic works of the 1880–1900s, their inclusion in the general context of theatrical searches at the turn of the century is revealed.

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