Речевое поведение персонажей в пьесе В. Войновича «Трибунал»

Valentin Halizev, analyzing speech acts of literary personages, came to conclusion: “Forms of demonstration of the homo loquens in the literature are different and diverse”¹. These forms are to be described with more details, taking contemporary literature as useful matter. We analyze the speech behavior as developed in the last edition of the trial comedy by Vladimir Voinovich The Tribunal. We understand speech acts of each person of the comedy as “main point of thoughts, feelings and decisions of this person”². The first edition of the comedy was in 1985, as memory about Sinyavsky and Daniel Trial, and the second edition, or maybe remake, was in 2013. As author explains, “It seems for me, that history repeats, but not in lightened mood as farcical play”³ (the last words are allusion to the Marx’s aphorism about Napoleon the Third).

The main problem in the second edition is trial and court in post-Soviet Russia⁴. The court is one of the oldest social forms, and ceremonial theatricality is the mood of its existence from the beginning. The plot of the comedy is grotesque admission, that common man Leonid Podoplekov could be arrested in the theatre and sentenced without any guilt, and all his attempts of defence only renew his virtual guilt. So the Tribunal is metaphor of the society as extremely important court process, where every human may be persecuted. This comedy alludes to Der Process by Kafka, to absurdist theatre and to the Bible book of Job, standing at the side of contemporary social reality. This reality is revival of the archetypical scapegoat, and our dramatic writer is concerned with speech mechanic of collective persecution.

The speech construction of the comedy is complex, including lyrical monologues in Brecht’s style and psychological monologues of the persons. The main device here is verbal manipulation depicted as such. The meaningful names are symbolic for this abuse: the innocent persecuted Podoplekov, while in his words all try to find inner sense or unobvious motivations (podopleka in Russian is literary indirect motivation), the Chief Meshalkin (literary “mixing” or “confusing”), while he confuses any truth. Podoplekov, trying to understand the reason of his fall, appeals to Chekhov: “Like Chekhov, isn’t it? The gun only hanging in the first act will shoot before the end”5 (p. 13). [We cite text in the edition: Voynovich VN. Tribunal. Brachnaya komediya, sudebnaya komediya i vodevil’ [Tribunal: Marital Comedy, Just Comedy and Vaudeville], Moscow: Eksmo, 2014, pp. 5-118 (page in branches)].

Taking this phrase as point of persecution, the Chief demonstratively distorts the proper sense of the words of the naive protagonist: “improper conduct, extremist slogans, public agitation for banditism, violence and murder, terrorism through appeal to unknown Chekhov’s authority, notion of a gun, that must shoot” (p. 23). The similar case of the verbal truck is the medical clearance of the sergeant Gorelkin, afflicted by self-defending Podoplekov: the light eye hit was registered as “dangerous hematoma” и “major injury”. When Larissa, Podoplekov’s wife, told sincerely on their relations before the marriage, her words were immediately qualified as prove of illegal relations, socially condemned.

The notion of humanity is also subject for manipulating. The words of the Chief “We are mostly full of humanity” are corrected by the Prosecutor: “Sir, humanity is the main feature of our society, but nobody allowed to take our humanity as weakness” (p. 18). The word humanity now is empty sign of self, if presumption of innocence is denied from the beginning.

The main decoration of the comedy is statue of Justice, but both surreal and naturalistic: “The left eye is under bandage, the right eye is open, with baton and libra in her hands” (p. 8). This monument is general symbol of the incredible court, where the Chief is sceptical to the main idea of justice, he is cynical and hypocritical, and the Secretary only writes all that he ordered to put in the protocol, saying “I’m the office minor” (p. 41). The comedy is sharply actual: the Chief and the Secretary are ruthless people, thinking only about their social status and material goods. In the trial, where the anomie is only rule (e.g., the position of defence isn’t taken into account), they are empty signifiers of their official functions.

This inhumanity of the court officials is similar to the plot of Der Prozess by Kafka, brilliantly interpreted by Maurice Blanchot:

“The Chief of Der Prozess is the deadman, whose only deal is to sentence to death, while death is his only power, and his reality is not in his life, but in his death”⁶.

In the world, where any human expected to identify himself or herself with his or her social role, the remarkable forms of behavior are the silent aimed to give impression of some important act, demanding general attention and admiration. As remarked in the text, the Secretary has “business solemn steps”, the Chief, the Prosecutor, the Solicitor and the Secretary applause themselves, “as giving all answers to the fascinated public” (p. 11). The false solemnity is tangling and delusional, directly as authoritarian and repressive mood of the Chief. The general strategy of persecution in this case could be named as “covering silence”. As Marina Mikhailova writes on this behavior: “In the realm of human secrets the silence guards any mystery from the explanation, so both supports its existence and saves the human from the destructive trends of any mystery. The secrets prefer to remain invisible”7. The high-grade officials in the comedy, with their emphatically solemn and respectable manners, are similar to the persons from the Petersburg Novels by Gogol. So, important person in ФЬе Overcoat before being general (according to the Russian Table of Ranges) already cultivates abruptive and rude intonation of the higher official, the voice for commands and instructions.

The important issue of the presented social reality are new communicative facts, as social media, talk-shows, spiritual dialogue or appeal to the State Duma member. These facts are new interactions of administrators and common people. Facebook comments, read by Podoplekov’s wife and daughter (act 1, scene 8) are initially full of sense, but drift soon to ineptitude (“The power is given by God, and there is no land with just courts”) and aggression (“You are crazy from your grandparents”).

Larissa unsuccessfully tries to appeal to a State Duma Member. This official, proud to be PhD, makes speech on U.S. Dept of State and Russian courts. Here we see inversion of the classical plot of the sympathy and mercy from the supreme power (as in The Heart of Midlothian by Scott or in The Captain s Daughter by Pushkin). The Duma official lacks tolerance, reasoning and even basic empathy. He is aware as all Podoplekov’s persecutors that nobody is sentenced without guilt, because to be in the theatre is outcome of the presumed order of the U.S. services, a kind of treason (p. 74).

The TV anchor, to whom also appeals Larissa, uses this case as reason for his own speech for what he usually discuss: “corruption, migration, LGBT-ac-tivism, crimes against children”. The talk-show is not a dialogue of real positions, but irregular invectives of Feminist Activist and Mere Woman, State Duma Member and Human Rights Watcher, Solicitor and Member of Public Council. We can hear in the noise only few phrases as cliches of our days: “I, monarchist”, “I, Christian traditionalist”, “Our nation is under degradation”, “Our army is dysfunctional” etc (pp. 81-82). In the stream of narrow and rigorous statements sinks the proper subject of discussion. All the rapid generalizations in the speeches are stereotypes, are aggressive, and are impersonal. We don’t know who makes these replicas, and it has no matter, while there are only cliches and stereotypes.

We expect that the Priest would be exception, if we agree, that “the Church, founded by Christ, is not mere institution, but new life with Christ and in Christ, actualised by the Holy Spirit”8. But the role of the Priest is bizarre, he only makes the rite of consecration of the Tribunal hall, claiming the benediction “on these domiciles”. The gap between signifier and signified here is obvious, emphasized with Church Slavonic quote. The priest refuses to help, but only moralizes. He tells Larissa with emphatic alienation: “Our sufferings are way to perfection and to God’s heights. If your husband is sentenced, if your house is destroyed by fire, if the illness is chronic, your deal is to pray and to bless God”. The Priest himself is part of the world not allowing the idea of innocent suffering, so he is comic person, but not representative of Christianity. He repeats in his mind all Christian key concepts, as sin, passion, Hell and Heaven etc., but for him these abstract notions have nothing to do with any particular social cases. He has no words of empathy, compassion or even social help, but only indifferent clichees.

In the end of the comedy persecutors and persecuted are changed: the revolt brings Podoplekov to be the new Chief. Former persecuted immediately adopts behavior of his predecessor: he “looks at the public as vigilant official”, “takes a solemn pause” (p. 118), and after announces the non-publicity of the trial, avoiding any public discussions. The sarcastic comedy ends as keptical statement. The system of collective persecution repeats itself, using different persons. But desperation isn’t the last word to Voinovich, who trust to his humor as tool of resistance to the collective delusions.

As a conclusion, in the Voinovich’s comedy such forms of the speech behav-

ior as trial speech, social media statements, TV commentaries, oral communication are the elements of the grotesque reality of the persecution of innocents. This injustice leads to gap between signifier and signified, to identification of each person with his or he’s social image and role, avoiding responsibility and moral collapse. The speech characteristics of the personages, borrowed from Russian and World literary traditions, allows to understand mental structures and presumptions leading to historical decay of the people.

NOTES

• ¹    Хализев B.E. Теория литературы. 6-е изд., испр. М., 2013. С. 208.

• ² Хализев В.Е. Теория литературы. 6-е изд., испр. М., 2013. С. 210.

• ³    Войнович В.Н. Автопортрет. Роман моей жизни. М., 2010. С. 443.

• ⁴    Векслер Ю. Лекарство от меланхолии. Разговоры с Владимиром Войновичем // Радио Свобода. URL: https://www.svoboda.Org/a/26611615.html (дата обращения: 28.10.2017).

• ⁵    Войнович В.Н. Трибунал. Брачная комедия, судебная комедия и водевиль. М., 2014. С. 5-118.

• ⁶    Бланшо М. От Кафки к Кафке / пер. с фр. М., 1998. С. 64.

• ⁷    Михайлова М.В. Эстетика молчания. Молчание как апофатическая форма духовного опыта. СПб., 2009. С. 68.

• ⁸    Булгаков С.Н. Православие: очерки учения православной церкви. М., 1991. С. 27.