Vladimir Mirzoev — about how to live in the time of anti-heroes.
In the theater. Evg. Vakhtangov released the play «Crazy Day, or The Marriage of Figaro» based on the comedy by Beaumarchais. Director Vladimir Mirzoev saw many parallels with today’s problems in the XNUMXth century play.
Psychologies: At the end of the play, Count Almaviva asks for forgiveness from each character in the play. Timely repentance can save a lot. But why is it so difficult in life to say the word «I’m sorry» at the right time?
VM: Probably, uncontrolled power blinds like lightning — and any person, regardless of his mind, talents, principles. Superman says «I’m sorry» only at the last moment, at the moment of personal disaster, when the sky becomes a sheepskin and the last clarity comes. I remember the pitiful eyes of Saddam Hussein in the pit — just an unfortunate old man scared to death, no longer a dictator, no longer a superman.
With all the phenomenal charm of Sukhanov, the count is still an anti-hero. Now is the time not for heroes, but for anti-heroes?
VM: Perhaps yes. Our reality, which is similar to a bad dream, a bad anecdote, Dostoevsky’s «novel of scandals», is determined and vigorously shaped by anti-heroes.
- Intoxication with power
Although Figaro and Susanna are my favorite characters, they are inferior in every way to Count Almaviva. These guys have no money, no status, no connections, no parents, no home of their own. They are ordinary young people from the provinces. True, they have a head on their shoulders and there is love. They have each other, and this makes them incredibly strong, almost invulnerable to the machinations of the local feudal king. If the count had been a banal fool-lady’s man, we would not have become so worried — the fight would have been conditional, not dangerous. However, in the end, she did. But not because Almaviva is a weak opponent — just Susanna and Figaro are invincible. How invincible is the movement of life and the desire of modern man for freedom, away from tribal archaism.
Your play is called Crazy Day. What do you think is the craziness of today?
VM: We are living in an amazing period of our history. For a social psychologist, for a writer and director, this is an exceptionally valuable and unique material. I have an almost physical feeling that the country is again (for the umpteenth time) trying to get out of axial time into cyclical time. Where evolution does not exist, where there is neither Darwin, nor Einstein, nor Vernadsky, where one can only dream of a capable parliament.
I say “country”, and I mean, of course, the elite, the ruling class, which has seized a monopoly on all conceivable resources: political, budgetary, media. That is, a specific group of individuals is aborting modernization, wanting to return, so to speak, to their traditional bosom: with feudal dependence of all levels, all strata of society — from the monarch and his court to the last guard in the zone. An ideally organized world for this type of consciousness is a barracks. The question why they are doing this does not make sense — this strategy is one hundred percent selfish.
- Power reveals … and virtues too
For me, the main question is different: does the population also want this? Or is the Soviet man so plastic? Sculpt anything, he will only say thank you? Probably, an anthropologist would give the following answer: the traumas of the twentieth century are monstrous, the wounds are not healed, the cold war between the descendants of the victims and the executioners continues. Moreover, it is deliberately provoked by domestic fans of Machiavelli — divide and conquer, have fun and lord. Driving wedges, splitting the population along all possible lines — religious, property, national — is not a tactic of statesmen. The state was invented for this purpose in order to smooth out conflicts, to seek a balance of interests that are inevitably contradictory — modern society is not homogeneous, but, on the contrary, is multi-layered and fragmented.
In my opinion, the desire to climb into a lair and there to forget a sweet dream for another hundred and fifty years is deeply anti-historical and dangerous for the future of the country. Is another geopolitical catastrophe needed? That’s right — not needed. This means that it is necessary to adequately respond to the challenges of modern civilization, and not glue the make-up of Vladimir Sorokin’s characters.
- What is bulling?
And yet: is it possible to return to the cyclic (fixated on the past) time, or is it a crazy dystopia? Apparently it’s possible. For this, a mere trifle is needed — to destroy or nullify European Russia in the legal sense. According to various estimates, this is 15-20 million citizens. Ivan the Terrible found a simple solution to the «European question» — he killed entire families, ruined not only boyars, but also merchants, peasants, and seized property with the hands of his guardsmen. Stalin learned his lesson, the Chekists continued to destroy the elite, to remove the fertile cultural humus, layer by layer, alphabetically, until they got to the rock. They thought that this was the foundation of a Soviet temple, but it turned out to be dinosaur bones.
The dream of the «new nobles» (Patrushev’s definition) is to squeeze out the educated class abroad so that they don’t get in the way and interfere with the education of the masses. In the near future we are waiting for the introduction of exit visas.
What helps you resist insanity?
VM: I have a hard time experiencing an artificial split within society, I can hardly cope with emotions. I remember the French: they, being in a company, never talk about politics or religion — they consider it indecent. Perhaps we should all embrace this principle, at least temporarily. I don’t want to lose the people I’ve been friends with for forty, thirty years. What helps you deal with insanity? The profession helps.