Samuel OConnor Perks

Analysis of Elizaveta Bam

Introduction

On first reading of the play Elizaveta Bam one certainly feels a certain disorientation
and loss of purpose. The play has no explicit plot and the characters seem so farcical and
ridiculous, it seems near to impossible to really engage with the play as such. However, this
happens if one jettisons the structure and merely focuses on the content of the play. We have
to read the play in a new way, but how do we do this? We have to learn to read the play
without Aristotelian prejudice, that is to say, we have to abandon the primacy of muchos
(narrative plot) and assert the importance of opsis (spectacle or scenic plot). This is what is
asserted more explicitly in The Oberiu Manifesto and realised in the play Elizaveta Bam. For
instance, one line in the Oberiu manifesto reads: Oberiu does not concern itself with only the
subject matter and the high points of artistic work; it seeks an organically new concept of life
and approach to things. (pp. 194, The Oberiu Manifesto) This organically new concept of
life is to see the theatre as having a life of its own, whereby the possibilities are potentially
endless as any subject matter can be used in the theatre as the Oberiu envisages it. After re-
reading the play, one begins to see how Elizaveta Bam is in fact a realisation of this avant-
garde manifesto outlined by Oberiu. The goal of this essay will be to draw on the play and
show how it in fact manifests the ideas which are discussed in the manifesto through its
employment of characterization, the relation between the captions of the play and the context
of the dialogue, the communicative interactions (collisions) and through a reflection of the
overall meaning of the play and the plot.

Characterization

Firstly, one could say that the characterization is minimal in the conventional sense.
There is no omniscient narrator to set the scene nor is there a prologue to set the pace of the
play. Nor or we given any detailed descriptions of what the actors are wearing or the set
design. The opening line reads: (A small, deep room.)(pp. 119, Elizaveta Bam) This in itself
says next to nothing. But yet, when one continues to read there is a certain characterization
that emerges which allows the characters to come into view via collisions. Rather than
having the identity of the characters defined a priori by a disembodied narrator, their identity
emerges in the eregnis (the event as the meeting of two characters which produces a
dynamics between the characters). In this way, the attention is concentrated, not on a static
figure, but on the collision of a number of objects, on their interrelationships. (The Oberiu

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Manifesto, pp. 198) This gives the characters an organic concrete meaning within the context
of the play. So for example, Elizavata Bam is initially characterized as a criminal by the
unknown voices who do not yet have identities within the play (First Voice and Second
Voice) under the caption of Realistic Melodrama; then, when we arrive at scene two which
bears the caption of Realistically Comic Genre there is a moment of reversal which is
triggered by the statement of Elizaveta when she says: In that case it is bad. Because you
have no conscience.(pp. 120) This then unfolds into:

Second Voice: What do you mean, no conscience? Peter Nikolaevich, she says we have no
conscience.

E.B.: Ivan Ivanovich, you have no conscience. You are simply a crook.

Second Voice: Who is a crook? Me? Me? I am a crook? (Elizaveta Bam, pp. 120)

So here we have an example of a moment of reversal, whereby the characterization is based

on the meeting of the characters who are spontaneously trying to figure out who they are. The
scenic plot dismantles the narrative plot. It is only when the characters emerge in the mis-en-
scne that the process of characterization can occur.

The process of dynamics and the changing nature of characterization is also

exemplified by the changing of the names throughout the play. For example, the two
intruders undergo a metamorphosis with regards to their names: Voice becomes Voice
behind the Door becomes First Voice who becomes Peter Nikolaevich who then returns
to First Voice and then Peter again. These shifts and displacements run concomitantly with
the dynamics of the dramaturgy itself- the nature of which is determined by captions which
give the context and thus the conditions for bringing life to the characters. Indeed, in The
Oberiu Manifesto they state that lyricismdoes not exist for its own sake, it is no more than
a means of displacing the object into the field of new artistic perception. (The Oberiu
Manifesto, pp. 197) This technical use of prosopopoeia will used later by Beckett in a similar
manner (such as in Not I and Linnommable):- the displacement of the I in literature
delivering the spectator to an anonymous force (the neutral voice) deprived of fixed identity.
One could indeed see this Voice as expressed in Elizaveta Bam as a force of reasonless
anonymity who demands that the victim deliver herself over to the irrational law (like in
Kafkas The Trial or Becketts What Where).

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A Comparison of the Captions

The captions employed in Elizaveta Bam range from what one could describe as
classical categories of drama to new undefined notions of dramaturgy. The first caption to
appear is Realistic Melodrama which is easy to relate to, sediment in history, classically
defined thus allowing for a theatre going audience to understand the drama (or at least the
expectation that they are going to be able to envisage the development of the narrative plot).
However, there then occurs a dissemination of classical motifs and the Obriu terminology
starts to emerge. By the time we reach scene five the term radix emerges. This term radix
as I envisage it is the essential nothing which is at the heart of the drama. But this is only a
nothing in the metaphysical sense. The being of the play does not have a fixed, static meaning
but works through perpetual ebb and flow and meaning is given in the context which appears,
i.e. in collisions. The radix is semantically meaningless as there is no fixed ontological
reference point, yet the signifier is wholly ambiguous which means that [i]t finds a way to
represent any subject. (The Oberiu Manifesto, pp. 194-195)

So if we compare an utterance from the caption of Realistic Melodrama (Scene 1) to

Solemn Melodrama Underlined by Radix (root) (Scene 7). In the first scene Elizaveta Bam
is engaged in a monologue which reads:

Elizabeth Bam: Any minute now the door will open and theyll come in. Theyll certainly
come in so that they can catch me and wipe me out. What have I done? What have I done? If I
had only knownRun? Where can I run? (Elizaveta Bam, pp. 119)

This is entirely appropriate at this stage as it is building the suspense- the caption reads
Realistic melodrama so Elizabeths fear is appropriate to the context here. Both we the
audience and the character do not know who is coming to catch Elizabeth or why she is
guilty. So if we compare this with scene seven, where Peter utters:

Peter: (Raises his hand.) Please listen to me. I want to prove to you that all misfortune begins
unexpectedly. When I was still a very young man, I lived in a small house with a creaking
door. I lived alone in that house. Except for me, there were only mice and cockroaches.
Cockroaches everywhere. When night fell, I locked the door and put out the lamp. I slept
fearing nothing.

If we look at the start Peter utters a statement which could be classically applied to genre
specific drama such as tragedy when he says I want to prove to you that all misfortune
begins unexpectedly- this could be applied to many classical dramas such as Oedipus Rex.

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But then what follows, neither proves nor disproves this sense of despair which we are to
expect. The radix starts to intervene in the dramatic action and this interrupts what we expect
to see in the theatre. After this soliloquy, his response comprises of unknown voices (Voice
from behind the Stage), the Mother, Ivan uttering the ominous Nothing and a piano and a
pipe which is behind the stage making dissonant unrecognizable sounds. The nothing is the
radix which interrupts the solemnity of this scene. Indeed this notion of interruption in the
dramaturgy is expressed more explicitly in The Oberiu Manifesto: We take a dramatic plot.
We develop it slowly at first; then suddenly it is interrupted by seemingly extraneous and
clearly ridiculous elements. (pp. 201) The radix in the context of Solemn Melodrama could
be seen just as analogously to the distinction between the Apollonian and the Dionysian
which is outlined in Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy. The soliloquy spoken by Peter is
interrupted my jarring sounds produced by pipes and a piano (note: In The Birth of Tragedy,
Nietzsche claims that music is a pre-linguistic art form which he thinks expresses the
Dionysian aspect of the world in its closest form. Of course the brother god Apollo is needed
in order for anything to be represented at all, but the important point is that the way that
music is used in Elizaveta Bam can be seen as a Dionysian interruption of the Apollonian
formal narrative.) So in scene one, we have a Realistic Melodrama in which the emotions of
Elizaveta are appropiratley felt, but if we compare this with scene 7 where there is the
introduction of the radix the logic of the genre is obscured.

Communication (failures)

What can we make of the dialogue in Elizaveta Bam? It is meaningless. Surely there
is moreIf one focuses on the content then the dialogue appears to be completely inert. The
characters are stuck in their narcissistic shells without replying to the questions that they are
asked in an appropriate manner. For example, in scene 17 under the caption of Physiological
Pathos Elizaveta Bam asks her mother: Right now theyre going to come. What have I
done? to which her mother replies: Three times 27 makes 81. (pp. 138) The answer is
correct but it is completely irrelevant as an answer. (We could possibly see this as a
testimony to the tyranny of human reason like in the way that Zamyatin characterises the
coldness of rationality in WE- the mother wants to hand over her daughter Elizaveta for
ruining her sons life, thus she answers with the use of indifferent of mathematical formula to
deliver her daughter over to the law). But there is surely more going on than the expression of
the absurd in a meaningless world. Take for instance this series of exchanges:

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E.B.: Ivan Ivanovich, run down to the grocery store and get us a bottle of beer and some peas.

Ivan: Oh, get some peas and run to the beer and bring the store.

E.B.: Not bring the store, but bring a bottle of beer, and go to some peas.

Ivan: Right away; Ill hide my hat in the store and will wear the beer on my head.

In this piece of dialogue there is an unfolding of language within language itself. The logic
of the dialectic is complicated by mixing the ordering of the words yet all of the main
signified objects remain within the dialogue (bottle of beer, store, some peas). In this
repetitive exhaustion of the banal in language, Daniil Kharms rehearses a certain sequence of
possibilities which allows for the microscopic aspects of the structure of language to unfold
different ways allowing for an eruption of different possible meanings. In this little interplay,
it is the way that Kharms plays with the logic of the in-between which obscures the original
meaning intended. The play itself is a kind of self-dissemination in the manner of this
exhaustive repetition of the banal. Yet, the banal is made transparent to us as being ridiculous
which makes us think of our everyday use of language, so we could see the play as a form of
meditation of the limits of language.

This device of using communicative failure as the basis for dialogue also works as a
kind of shock treatment- it startles the viewer from his position as a passive observer into a
state of feeling the play in its immanence. This sense of loss brings the spectacle closer to the
viewer though as the shock affects the viewer which allows the audience to hear and
readwith ones eyes and fingers [rather] than with ones ears. (The Oberiu Manifesto, pp.
198) Indeed, the audience play a very important role for the Oberiu as they state that [w]e
are not so presumptuous as to regard our work as completed (The Oberiu Manifesto, pp.
195). In the play, questions are left unanswered, and are either answered by another question
or by an irrelevant answer. This then opens a space for the audience to participate in the play
many of the statements are questions or aporetic in form.

Plot and the Overall Meaning

The Plot structure of Elizaveta Bam is circular in structure. It comes full circle in the
sense that it ends where it begins. The basis of the plot is that we have a woman named
Elizaveta Bam and she is guilty of a crime that she may or may not have committed. This is
plot, but this does not say anything of the play as such. We must read the play structurally if
we are to make sense of it. If we look at the way that the captions develop throughout the
play with the help of the statement of the Oberiu that I quoted above the structural shifts start

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to make sense. The quote that I am talking about is as follows: We take a dramatic plot. We
develop it slowly at first; then suddenly it is interrupted by seemingly extraneous and clearly
ridiculous elements. (The Oberiu Manifesto, pp. 201) And we see precisely this in the play
of Elizaveta Bam. The realistic melodrama of the first scene turns on its head into realistic
comical genre, which then becomes a series of interchanges, all the while the radix is
humming beneath the surface in the margins. This series of interchanges allow for the play to
hover between comedy and tragedy without being committed to either genre. The height of
the play is the moment when the radix appears in its purest form and the musicality of the
signifier without the signified is unleashed in its wild form. This scene of the play marks the
limit which is unsurpassable. From here it returns to dialogue but it never this point of
absurdity. The structure of the play then reverts back to where it started via a mock battle
ending in the scene with the caption Dry Realistic which brings the play full circle.

One could read this play in many ways; it is multi-faceted swaying from the dread of
being punished to the farcical exclamations such as the father shouting: Help! My right hand
and nose are the same as my left hand and ear. (Elizaveta Bam, pp. 130) It is tragic-comic in
the sense that the subject matter that ignites the play was to become a very real thing in the
Soviet Union whereby people were being denounced for crimes that they did not commit. We
could indeed see the opening and closing scenes of the play as a parody not only of Stalinist
show trials, but of the law in general as being a principle of alteriety without an arkh. Yet
because of the artistic aims of the Oberiu, they did want to merely represent- they wanted to
create, which meant for the Oberiu creating new forms of theatre which were not tied to the
shackles of narrative driven plot.