Did someone tip Malkovich – or he himself decided to stage B. Shaw's play “Arms and Man“ in Sofia?
With “In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields“ (staged by Timofey Kulyabin and in partnership with Ingeborga Dankunaite) Malkovich conquered the Sofia audience a year ago. Even those who entered the National Theater for the first time paid for tickets that were the most expensive in the entire European tour of the play. There is no reason to be surprised - it is inevitable that Malkovich will be on the menu of the nouveau riche-upstarts. Some media even took the trouble to count by name how many of this breed were in the hall of the National Theater.
This is how the new class is created - money breeds, above all else, also curiosity, and then it unexpectedly takes you to some noisy performance - now Malkovich's, then some other celebrity, and so you gradually become hardened by the trials of something, which is completely foreign to you.
Money merges with “science”, it simply possesses it.
About 90 years ago, Stefan Popov wrote in emigration his remarkable essay - “The Third Generation”. Only the third generation of Bulgarian leaders after the Liberation from Turkish slavery will be full-fledged individuals – then, when wealth and education merge, so the author claims.
Soon after September 9, 1944, this “third generation” is destroyed. Does this repeat itself to some extent these days, when the Transition is still floundering somewhere? Did he play the role of that “Ninth of September” these days? What was rejected – what was encouraged?
After all, with the help of such migratory birds as Malkovich, today's “firsts“ they can break away from the dictates of the sleaze that they push and for which they pay generously.
And now, having passed their first test with Malkovich, they must take a second test – again with him and even more difficult.
I will not take your time for all the details about the play “Arms and the Man“ – if they are interesting to you, you can find them yourself on the Internet. Its premiere in 1894 in London was a resounding success, it was also performed in Berlin and Vienna, even in 2006 the Viennese “Burgtheater“ commemorates the 150th anniversary of Shaw's birth with the same play. The resistance against it, organized mainly in the 20s of the last century by Bulgarian students abroad, some of whom are supposed to form the “Third Generation”, is smoldering. Because of their dissatisfaction, productions of the play were stopped.
Later this no longer happens, such a thing is unthinkable especially in the years of Transition – it is absurd to expect in 2006, for example, the most repulsive candidate for the European Union with his obedience to allow such behavior.
We are now able to absorb any abuse directed at us and even demand more.
Recently, however, the deeply dormant passions were rekindled when it was heard that Malkovich was casting actors and was preparing to put Shaw's play on the stage of the National Theater – he already staged it, in the mid-1980s, in a New York theater.
“The weapons and the man“ takes us back to the time after the Serbian-Bulgarian war. Joseph Herbst writes that at the very beginning, the only man in Sofia was Ekaterina Karavelova, who flew around Sofia in a phaeton to meet the military. That quickly changed and the Serbs were defeated – and the heroes of the Slivniška epic are not bothered at all by the fact that Bulgarians are quarrelsome with personal hygiene, as Shaw claims.
In this respect, at least, Shaw seems to think he has enviable knowledge – otherwise he says himself that he does not particularly like History, he even asks friends to direct him to some war to describe. Finally, he stops at the Serbian-Bulgarian one and takes on the role of hygiene inspector for the poor Bulgarians.
After years, Churchill likes the same role, his words are “I have no respect for a people who congratulate themselves in the bathroom”.
A while ago I had an interesting story with the hygienist Churchill.
A local “committee”, which censors texts on Facebook, was concerned about his reputation – they had found no evidence that he uttered the vile phrase “Sofia must be razed to the ground and potatoes sown in its ruins” which
I quoted in one of my letters.
It is absolutely certain, however, that he uttered these words – and thus began the Anglo-American bombing of Sofia and other Bulgarian cities.
The consequences are dire: 4208 people were killed, 4744 people were seriously injured. In Sofia alone, over 12,000 buildings were destroyed, nearly 1/4 of the capital's building stock collapsed. For the period from April 6, 1941 to September 1, 1944, 187 settlements were bombed with 45,268 bombs. Of the victims, 88% were civilians. The material damage caused was over 24 billion US dollars at the time.
Churchill's vow has been fulfilled – it remained to sow the potatoes.
As they have driven her, the censors will begin to denounce those who only mention the Anglo-American bombings.
But it will be unfair - because we are the only ones who allowed a monument to our executioners to be erected – of enemy airmen. It is unthinkable that this could happen anywhere else – as if the Americans were to allow a monument to be erected to the Japanese pilots who caused the carnage at Pearl Harbor“.
Two more words about Churchill. Perhaps his best biographer
Paul Johnson mentions how everyone convinced him at the end of the war that the bombing of Dresden was now unnecessary – but he insists that the city and its population be utterly destroyed. A real hygienist.
In fact, the arguments surrounding Shaw's play are far more entertaining than the play itself. Here is an excerpt from “The Guns and the Man“.
Petkov: How are you, dear?
Katerina /his wife/: Oh, the usual sore throats, nothing else.
Petkov /convinced/: Because you wash your neck every day, how many times do I have to tell you.
Katerina: Nonsense, Paul!
Petkov /drinks coffee and smokes a cigarette/: These new customs are not good. All this washing is not good for health, it is not natural. There was an Englishman in Philippopolis who washed himself with cold water every morning when he got up. Disgusting! All this comes from the English: their climate makes them so dirty that they constantly wash. Look at my father! He hasn't bathed all his life and I live to be 98 – the healthiest person in Bulgaria. I don't mind washing once a week in front of people, but every day is downright ridiculous.
Katerina: You're still a barbarian at heart, Paul. I hope you behaved decently in front of the Russian officers.
Petkov: I tried my best. I did not forget to tell them that we have a library.
Katerina: Oh, but you didn't tell them that we also have an electric bell in it. I had it put on us.
Petkov: What is an electric bell?
Katerina: You press a button, something rattles and Nikola immediately comes.
Petkov: Why not shout at him?
Katerina: Civilized people never call the servant. I learned this while you were gone.
Petkov: OK, wait until I tell you what I learned. Civilized people don't hang out their laundry in plain sight, so you'd better move all that.“
Elsewhere it also speaks of the library of the family.
“Raina: Do you know what a library is?
Man: A library? A room full of books.
Raina: Yes, we have one, the only one in Bulgaria.”
And this is how Shaw describes the library in question: “…the facility consists of a single shelf on which are piled tattered books dressed in old coffee-stained paper“.
Three years ago, one of Orwell's early novels was published in Bulgarian – "Don't let the aspidistra wither" was written in 1936. His character Gordon Comstock, an aspiring poet, works in a bookstore. Once, in a conversation with a client, he offered him “a thin red volume from the poetry shelf” and says: “It is about to end… Something very original, translated from Bulgarian.
While Shaw pokes fun at “the booklessness” in Bulgarian, Orwell “recommends“ original Bulgarian poet.
Today, Orwell is certainly a more influential author than Shaw - and without focusing so much on the possible hygiene anomalies of the Bulgarian. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to discover who the Bulgarian poet in question could be.
A fragment of the quoted dialogue between Petkov and Raina can be printed in the program, even on the tickets for the upcoming production of Malkovich.
This will be the initial check, whether in Bulgarian the “sense of self-irony” – probably this will be the explanation of the authors of the idea of "Weapons and the man" to be staged at the National Theater.
Self-irony check – Shaw himself also mentions this. Vyatar - after such ridiculous performances by the authorities during the Transition years, some of them dangerously idiotic, there is hardly an atom of “self-irony” left in the Bulgarian language. And a bunch of new challenges are constantly falling on his head - the most recent of which was when they drooled over History with “The Return of Ferdinand”.
It is entirely possible that something else is possible: Malkovich's interest in the hygienic features of “onia“ Bulgarians to have arisen from something completely different. Two years ago there were protests in front of the presidency, the participants of which demanded to stop buying Russian gas. Their motto was – “I will not bathe with water heated by Russian gas”. A foreigner could easily believe that there are no particular changes in the hygienic status of a Bulgarian - even if he is a resident of the capital, a “yellow-faced” and bearer of the new European values.
We should not expect Malkovich's production to be accepted as a Pearl Harbor of Bulgarian Pride.
We are already used to living without any dignity – or only with as much as is due to the diligent novice.
We've gone so far as to be proud of the 30th anniversary of the USA's fourth-place finish at the World Cup – and that is enough for us.
And there is no one to organize a novice championship – then we will surely be first. Soon we will not wait for this, the servant is not given any comforts.
Ultimately, we have Malkovich to thank – as long as it succeeds in rousing us from the apathy in which we have sunk.
How does a pile of theater tickets look to you?
Besides, what would a monument to Humiliated Pride look like?