The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

Like Nikolai Gogol, Evgeny Shvarts (1896–1958), son of a provincial doctor, was active in amateur theatricals asa child and displayed a great gift of mimicry. In the early 1920s, Shvarts arrived in post-Civil War Petrograd, where he associated with Surrealist, Absurdist, and Futurist poets; by the end of the decade he was working for children’s literary magazines and the Leningrad Children’s Theatre.In 1933 he was invited by the Experimental Workshop of the Leningrad Music Hall to create a “Soviet fairy tale.”15 His first attempt, a satire against obstructionist bureaucrats, already exhibited his trademark deadpan tone. His basic recipe mixed everyday routine with the fantastic; concretely realizing metaphors (the bureaucrat really is a bloodsucking vampire; the cleaning lady is a good fairy, with a certain quota of miracles to perform each quarter) and committing itself, by hook or crook, to the happy end.

Shvarts had a talent for performing the brief, incongruous, manic-dramatic anecdote. He was famous for his jingles and madcap improvisations (a nervous

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tremor in his hands made it impossible for him to speak from notes). He managed to ply his trade throughout the worst Stalinist years. The fairy-tale format provided optimism without the ambitious bombast of the production novel; moreover, since villains were essential to the folk tale, evil could be portrayed close up even after class antagonism had been formally dissolved by the 1936 Constitution. Shvarts was not repressed, but his best work – a dozen plays in all – either never made it to opening night, or else played once and then were abruptly withdrawn. Only posthumously did his plays enter permanent repertory.

The depthless and detached narration of the folkteller’s art would seem to work against its successful dramatization. But Shvarts, at home in the avant-garde from his early Petrogradyears, overcomes this handicap by estranging the fairy tale from itself – making it, in its dramatic form, “self-aware.” Characters comment to one another on theirown fixed function in the plot, which provides them with the security of distance and a certain solace. The most comic and most politicized of Shvarts’s plays to speak out in this way is his 1943 classic, The Dragon [Drakon]: A Fairytale in Three Acts.

The Dragon was first published as an anti-fascist pamphlet in 500 copies. In it, Shvarts wove together the legend of Sir Lancelot and the Dragon, by the French founder of the literary fairy tale, Charles Perrault (1628–1703), with motifs from European folk-tale repertory transposed to a vaguely Teutonic environment. A kingdom is ruled by a changeling dragon-wizard, his corrupt Bu¨rgermeister [Mayor]andhis cronyson Heinrich. TheDragon demandsa new girl every year. This year’s girl, Elsa, is a pragmatist, as is her long-collaborating father. Both have reconciled themselves to the upcoming sacrifice. There are many good reasons to do so, which Elsa’s friends and family enumerate in Act I: the Dragon, after all, hasn’t been defeated for 400 years; “he’s a brilliant strategist and great tactician”; “he got rid of the gypsies for us”; “as long as he’s here, no other dragon dares touch us”; “The only way to be free of dragons is to have one of your own.”16 But then an errant knight and professional rescuer of maidens, one Lancelot (a mix of St. George and a Russian bogatyr), arrives in town to take him on. The Dragon, although a braggart, is tired of his toadies. He takes Lancelot into his confidence. “I’ve made these people cripples,” he tells the young man. “The human spirit is very hardy. Cut a man’s body in half and he croaks. But break his spirit and he’ll eat out of your hand . . .” (p. 173).

Lancelot is unimpressed by the Dragon’s argument. After all, most of the people he liberates, in story after story and kingdom after kingdom, advise him against such heroics. His task is not only to save the maiden but to wake up the bewitched, collaborating town, to bring it to new consciousness, however

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