coast of utopia

nationaltheatre.org.uk

‘Passages of breathtaking beauty... I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds’ Guardian

‘Moments that catch at the heart... both beautiful and profound’ Daily Telegraph

“Nobody in theatre today can match Stoppard for a combination of sinuous argument,

intellectual élan and sheer coruscating wit… Sunday Times

“A sumptuous Trevor Nunn production, gorgeously rigged out by its designer William

Dudley, crewed by luminous actors.” The Observer

Company for the Trilogy

Thomas Arnold

Eve Best

John Carlisle

Martin Chamberlain

Raymond Coulthard

Simon Day

Felicity Dean

Stephen Dillane

Janine Duvitski

Charlotte Emmerson

Rachel Ferjani

Guy Henry

Douglas Henshall

Richard Hollis

Jasmine Hyde

Jack James

Will Keen

Jennifer Scott Malden

Sarah Manton

Anna Maxwell Martin

Iain Mitchell

John Nolan

Paul Ritter

Nick Sampson

Jonathan Slinger

Janet Spencer-Turner

Kemal Sylvester

Sam Troughton

David Verrey

Lucy Whybrow

Children from the

Jackie Palmer Stage

School

Director

Trevor Nunn

Set, Costume &Video Designer

William Dudley

Lighting Designer

David Hersey

Associate Director

Stephen Rayne

Music

Steven Edis

Movement Director

David Bolger

Sound Designer

Paul Groothuis

Voyage w Shipwreck w Salvage

World premiere of three new plays by Tom Stoppard

the Stoppard Trilogy

Barclays is a premiere partnerof the National Theatre

Company for the Trilogy Thomas Arnold, Eve Best, John Carlisle, Martin Chamberlain, Raymond Coulthard, Simon Day, Felicity Dean, Stephen Dillane, Janine Duvitski, Charlotte Emmerson,

Rachel Ferjani, Guy Henry, Douglas Henshall, Richard Hollis, Jasmine Hyde, Jack James, Will Keen, Jennifer Scott Malden, Sarah Manton, Anna Maxwell Martin, Iain Mitchell, John Nolan,

Paul Ritter, Nick Sampson, Jonathan Slinger, Janet Spencer-Turner, Kemal Sylvester, Sam Troughton, David Verrey, Lucy Whybrow & Children from the Jackie Palmer Stage School

Director Trevor Nunn Set, Costume & Video Designer William Dudley Lighting Designer David Hersey Associate Director Stephen Rayne Music Steven Edis Movement Director David Bolger Sound Designer Paul Groothuis

‘Heroically ambitious...

I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds’

Guardian

‘I find this trilogy beautiful...

It restores one’s faith in theatre’

Financial Times

‘Stoppard’s epic success... Nothing of such ambition,

daring or scope has marked the National’s 38-year history’

Evening Standard

‘As funny, as moving, as anything Stoppard has written... a comic tour de force’

Daily Telegraph

Royal National TheatreSouth Bank, London SE1

020 7452 3000

the Coast of Utopia

Poster; designed by Michael Mayhew, photo by Ivan Kyncl, printed by Augustus Martin © Royal National Theatre (registered charity)

The Coast of Utopiaby Tom Stoppard

Further production details:www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

DirectorTrevor Nunn

DesignerWilliam Dudley

Lighting DesignerDavid Hersey

Associate DirectorStephen Rayne

MusicSteven Edis

Movement DirectorDavid Bolger

Sound DesignerPaul Groothuis

NT Education National TheatreSouth Bank London SE1 9PX

T 020 7452 3388F 020 7452 3380E education@

nationaltheatre.org.uk

Workpack written by Helen Rappaport Russian consultant for The Coastof Utopia.

Editor Dinah Wood

Design Alexis BaileyPatrick Eley

The Trilogy 2The personal and the political 2The ‘bit players’ in the human story 2What is wrong with this picture?: the ‘accursedquestions’ 2The ferment of ideas 3Making drama out of history: the playwright’sapproach 3Creating a visual kaleidoscope: the designer’schallenge 4

Voyage 5Growing up in paradise: Premukhino 5Four Sisters 5Written work and further study 6

Shipwreck 71848: the year of demagogues, revolutionaries and tin soldiers 7The two Natalies 7Written work and further study 8

Salvage 9A forgotten feminist: Malwida von Meysenbug 9Journey’s end: Herzen’s credo 9Written work and further study 10

Epilogue 11What happened next? 11The continuing quest for utopias 12

For discussion 13

Related material 14History/ideas 14Fiction 15Stage and film on video 15

NT Education WorkpackThe Coast of Utopia

national theatre education workpack 2

The personal and the political ‘If we can’t arrange our own happiness, it’s a conceitbeyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of thosewho come after us’ (Herzen: Shipwreck, Act 2, p.100)

In its exploration of the various ways in which 19th-century revolutionaries and thinkers tried andfailed to establish political utopias, and with themorganize the future of others, The Coast of Utopiacharts the rise of a new and influential class inRussia – the intelligentsia. The political, moral andliterary debates that preoccupied its membersbetween 1833 and 1868, both within and outsidetheir native country, provide the backdrop to ajourney that begins on a provincial Russian estate in1833. We follow the story of Stoppard’s real-lifeprotagonists – the socialist thinker and publisherAlexander Herzen, the anarchist Michael Bakunin,the literary critic Vissarion Belinsky, the writer IvanTurgenev and the poet Nicholas Ogarev – as well asthat of their sisters, wives, lovers and children,through travel, exile abroad, and, in some cases,untimely death. In 1848 some of them becomecaught up in the revolutions that ravage manyEuropean cities that year, prompting furtherdispersal of the group into various émigré enclaves,Herzen moving from Paris, to Nice, to London, andfinally Geneva. As the play closes, his old friendBakunin, returns from years of imprisonment andexile in Russia.

Underpinning the politics, the debates and the bigideas that are the driving force of The Coast of

Utopia is a moving human story: of personalsuffering, of love and bereavement, of hopesabandoned and renewed, of friendships broken andfinally reconciled. Above all, the trilogy is atestament to the true nature of love and friendship– between Herzen and Bakunin, Herzen and Ogarev,and Herzen and his wife Natalie – relationshipstested to the limits by political differences as wellas acts of personal betrayal. In weaving thedomestic lives of his real-life heroes into thehistorical fabric of nineteenth-century history,Stoppard counterpoints the individual experienceof personal tragedy with the sweep of historicevents, providing a discourse not only on the so-called ‘accursed questions’ which dominatednineteenth-century Russian radical thought, butalso an exploration of the human condition itself.

The ‘bit players’ in the human storyThe rich and complex subject matter of Coast ofUtopia is an extraordinary undertaking for anyplaywright working outside Russia. Whilst the nameof Bakunin might be vaguely familiar here (if onlyfor his association with other political misfits ofthe oft-demonized ‘loony left’), Herzen – a majorfigure in the pantheon of Russian political thinkers– is surprisingly little known in Britain, even inintellectual circles. The literary critic, VissarionBelinsky, who dominated Russian literary criticismduring his short, frantic life, is unheard of.

A supporting cast of friends, hangers-on andpolitical fellow travellers, all of them equally vividand idiosyncratic historical figures, make up thiscollection of the largely forgotten heretics anddreamers of nineteenth-century history, many ofwhom were briefly, and sometimes ignominiouslycaught up in the fast-moving events of 1848.Stoppard admits to a particular affection for thesemarginalized figures. Not least among them, too,are the women in the story: the Bakunin sisters, thethree Natalies: Herzen, Tuchkov and Beyer; theémigré German feminists Malwida von Meysenbug,Emma Herwegh and Johanna Kinkel, and thematriarchs Luisa Haag and Varvara Bakunin.

What is wrong with this picture? – ‘The accursedquestions’The ambitious text of The Coast of Utopia throwsup a wide range of thought-provoking arguments,broaching as it does a succession of fundamental

The trilogy

Will Keen and Douglas Henshall

photo Ivan Kyncl


debates of the time, which in Russia began with thediscussion of German Romantic philosophy in the1830s. Each play hangs on several key events orarguments, which provide both the student of thetext and the interested theatregoer with aconsiderable resource for further research, readingand informed argument. These relate to Russia’sposition in relation to European civilization andhistory – reflected in the debate between theSlavophiles and Westerners in Shipwreck – to man’splace in the universe, to the nature of personalliberty, and the justification – or not – for violentrevolution in the quest to liberate oppressednations from authoritarian rule. In Voyage, Herzenposes what will be one of the fundamental andrecurring questions of the play: ‘What is wrong withthis picture?’ What, he asks, is wrong with tsaristRussia, a country crippled by its outmoded, feudalsystems, by its censorship and political despotism;and, more to the point, how can Russians ofconscience put it right?

Whilst much of the story takes place in Europe, TheCoast of Utopia is also the story of Russia itselfduring this period, if seen only through therefracted glass of exile. Herzen once observed that‘there are only two interesting problems: the socialproblem and the Russian problem’ and that theywere inextricably linked. And so, his eyes and thoseof his circle of Russian friends forever turned ontheir native land. Events in Russia, even whenexperienced at a distance, shaped their lives, theirpassions, their frenzied debates and disagreements,and for many years fuelled Herzen’s passionatecampaign to liberate the Russian serfs.

The ferment of ideasWhilst some of Herzen’s friends – George Herweghand Bakunin included – became caught up in thepopular movements of 1848, Herzen continued topursue his own metaphorical visions through thewritten word. His friend, the cool and detachedbystander, Turgenev, often joined him in observingsome of these events – forever witty, ironic andperceptive, but never judgmental. In The Coast ofUtopia, it is the steady flow of words and ideas thatkeep frustrated Russian intellectuals going throughthe repressive reign of Nicholas I (1825–55) and thedisappointments that follow the 1861 emancipationof the serfs by his successor, Alexander II.Throughout the nineteenth century the tsarist

government might exert a stranglehold over civiland political liberties, but it could never controlthat most precious commodity – ideas, the freeflow of which, channelled by Herzen in the pagesof The Bell, would be the lifeblood of alldisaffected Russians, everywhere.

Making drama out of history: the playwright’sapproachTom Stoppard has readily admitted that writing TheCoast of Utopia was the most arduous thing he hasever done. As long ago as the mid-1960s he hadfirst entertained the idea of writing a play aboutRussia, initially having the ‘very abstract desire’ towrite something naturalistic in the manner ofChekhov. The idea gathered ground in the late1990s, under the guiding intellectual force of thewritings of Isaiah Berlin, in particular his seminalwork, Russian Thinkers. Reading it promptedStoppard to begin contemplating a single playabout Alexander Herzen – of whose ideas Berlinwas a lifelong and most passionate advocate. But asStoppard began reading around the subject, so theproject morphed into something far moreambitious: ‘I began to think I’d need two plays. ThenI thought, let’s go for broke’. Seeing Trevor Nunn’sproduction of Maxim Gorky’s Summerfolk in 1999was the final catalyst, with Stoppard now mootingthe idea of a trilogy of plays – each of themfocussing on one of three central subjects: Bakunin,Belinsky and Herzen.

With Nunn’s endorsement of the project, Stoppardembarked on a prodigious reading programme thatwould exhaust even the most enthusiastic ofresearchers. Punctilious about facts and obsessiveabout detail, he read and re-read a wide range ofsources, with ‘almost a psychosis for unearthingevery last scrap of information’. A naturallyomnivorous reader, he was determined to winkleout those obscure but, to his mind, vital facts thatmight provide valuable insights. Like allperfectionists, Stoppard remains dissatisfied; duringthree months in rehearsal and a month of previewshe continued to hone and refine the text, ironingout the structural and narrative problems. In sodoing, he remained firmly resistant to ‘taking bricksout of the wall’ of what he felt were the play’sintellectually demanding, but crucial, arguments.Director Trevor Nunn has championed the text’semotional and intellectual demands. Stoppard ‘sets

The trilogy


the bar very high’ in his opinion and doesn’t set outto help the audience by making concessions orexplanations. For the actors too, Nunn admits, thetext is ‘daunting stuff’ – ‘as complex a text as aShakespeare’.

Creating a visual kaleidoscope: the designer’schallenge A list of 70 characters, based on real people,provides a rare opportunity for the 30-strongensemble cast of The Coast of Utopia, many ofthem playing several different roles, todemonstrate their versatility, not to mention theirspeed at donning a veritable emporium of wigs,beards and 169 costumes. The combined talents ofdesigner, William Dudley, and the NT CostumeDepartment succeed in transforming many of thecast into uncanny lookalikes – from Belinsky in hiscap and baggy trousers, to Turgenev effortlesslylanguid in his immaculately tailored suits, to thedaft chocolate-soldier uniforms donned by Georgeand Emma Herwegh as they march off to theinsurrection in Baden.

From the outset, Stoppard endorsed Dudley’s filmicapproach to the set design for The Coast of Utopia,necessitated by the rapid and constantly changinglocations, where the use of conventional stage setswould have been unviable. Having, for the last tenyears or so, nursed an ambition to use theinnovative techniques of computer graphics instage design, Dudley did a crash course in them andconvinced Stoppard and Nunn of their

effectiveness. Although simplified versions of thesetechniques have already been tried out in a fewexperimental theatres they have never beenemployed on anything like the ambitious scale ofthe Stoppard trilogy.

As someone with an appetite for new challenges,Dudley saw the Olivier’s revolving stage as offeringthe perfect venue for a vivid fairground ridethrough his video landscapes. These are created bygiant projectors, transmitting Dudley’s designs ontoseven moving, curved panels containing concealeddoorways. They frequently evoke old Victorianmagic lantern slides – most notably the skatingscene in Voyage act 2; elsewhere, they are Dudley’spersonal salute to the innovative designs of post-revolutionary Russian theatre. Enlisting the help ofRichard Kenyon for the more complex animations,he produced an average of 15 set designs for eachplay, enhanced by lighting designer David Hersey’ssimulation of real weather conditions.

Whirling, spinning and swooping, these computer-generated images draw the audience into arelentless visual extravaganza, that is sometimesvertiginous (the storm at Blackgang Chine), oftensurreal (the flying cages of Moscow’s zoologicalgardens), and hauntingly naturalistic (the dappledsunlight on the birch trees at Premukhino). Dudleyis convinced that the future of stage design lies inthese new techniques. They will, he believes, playan important role in attracting a new and youngeraudience to the theatre, now so enamoured ofvirtual-reality computer games and reluctant, itseems, to sit through conventional stageproductions.

The trilogy

Will Keen and Stephen Dillane

photo Ivan Kyncl


Growing up in paradise: PremukhinoThe spacious, neoclassical Bakunin manor house,Premukhino, was set in an idyllic glade of woodlandat Premukhino, north-west of Moscow in theTorzhok district of the province of Tver. Aftersettling there in 1797 with his wife Varvara,Alexander Bakunin added two brick-built wings tothe main wooden structure, as well as a doric frontportico. He remodelled the park, planting anavenue of lime trees, one for each of his children,as well as ponds, cascades and a grotto. Thegardens surrounding the house led down a gentleslope to the nearby River Osuga, its banks a mass ofbird cherry, wood roses and lilies of the valley,where nightingales could be heard day and nightduring the spring and peasant girls sang amid theraspberry canes in high summer. In this rural idyllthe Bakunins reared their ten children: fourdaughters and six sons (the five younger ones donot feature in the play), abandoning their townhouse in Tver in 1812 to live at Premukhino all theyear round.

In Voyage the family seem to enjoy one endless,halcyon summer day of long convivial lunches, andevenings spent watching the sun go down. AsAlexander tells his daughters in the final scene:‘You grew up in Paradise, all of you children, inharmony that was the wonder of all who camehere’ (act 2, p. 113). Yet sadly, Premukhino did notcome through the ravages of Russia’s turbulenthistory unscathed. It shared the fate of many othercountry estates after the Revolution of 1917 and

the ensuing Civil War. Some were demolished,others converted into schools or sanitoria.Premukhino was vandalized: its roof was taken offand its ironwork stripped away to be smelted forre-use. Much of the remaining wooden structure,left exposed to the open air, either fell down orwas salvaged by local villagers; one of the brick-built wings also vanished. One by one the great oakand spruce trees planted in the park with such loveby Alexander Bakunin were felled. The nearbywhitewashed family church is still standing,although long since stripped of its interiordecorations and its icons; the Bakunin family graveshave been destroyed.

Four SistersIn Voyage, a noisy and opinionated Mikhail Bakuninmakes much of asserting his own personalautonomy, whilst simultaneously exerting analmost perverse controlling influence over the livesof his sisters: Liubov (1811–38), Varenka (1812–56),Tata (1815–71) and Alexandra (1816–82). They were,for their time, highly cultivated young women,receiving a liberal education that was exceptional,thanks to the civilized 18th-century ideals of theirfather Alexander. Taught by him, and bygovernesses, they spoke French and German, playedpiano and sang, and were well-versed in Westernliterature and philosophy.

Nevertheless, they lived the most sheltered ofprovincial lives, much like the Brontë sisters atHaworth. Their fertile imaginations were fuelled byromantic fantasies about love, gleaned fromPushkin’s Eugene Onegin and the novels of GeorgeSand. They may well, in their eagerness, haverushed to read Sand’s novels in French, before theywere even translated. And there were plenty tochoose from: a torrent of romantic stories pouredfrom her prolific pen in the 1830s – Indiana (1832),Valentine (1832), Lélia (1833), Jacques (1834) to namethe earliest. In Russia these novels were gobbled upby an adoring readership and directly inspired thefirst discussions of the ‘woman question’ there. It isnot hard to see why impressionable young womensuch as the Bakunin sisters so idolized her, for Sandwrote, often with considerable compassion, on thetrap of marriage, and on the sexual slavery anddomestic tyranny too often perpetuated byloveless unions. The idealistic alternative that shepromoted, of relationships between equals,based

Voyage

Lucy Whybrow, Eve Best,Charlotte Emmerson, Anna Maxwell Martin

photo Ivan Kyncl


on the transforming power of love, no doubtprompted the Bakunin sisters in their own sadlyabortive love affairs with Stankevich, Belinsky andTurgenev. In Russia, Sand’s Jacques became aprototype for the love triangle espoused by manyRussian progressives advocating free love; LittleFadette (1848) mirrors the Herzen-Natalie-Herweghtriangle in Shipwreck.

Written work and further studyHow accessible are the German philosophicalarguments promoted by Bakunin and Stankevich inAct 1 of Voyage? Do their ideas make sense and dothey have any relevance in our modern world? Ifnot, how does Stoppard parody them?

How exceptional does the Bakunin sisters’upbringing seem in comparison with the generalposition of women at the time? Did theirenthusiasm for their brother’s ideas and thewritings of George Sand have a constructive or adestructive effect on their lives?

How does Stoppard’s portrayal of the provinciallives of the Bakunin sisters compare with thefrustrated hopes and dreams of Chekhov’s ThreeSisters – or the lives of the Brontë sisters?

Compare Stoppard’s depiction of life on thecountry estate with that in Chekhov’s CherryOrchard and Turgenev’s A Month in the Country. Towhat extent has he succeeded in distilling theChekhovian/Turgenevian quality of rural Russia

and, for those who have seen the production, howwell served is the play in this respect by WilliamDudley’s design?

Discuss the following seminal quotations from theplay:

Stankevich: ‘The inner life is more real, morecomplete, than what we call reality.’ (Act 1, p.19)

Turgenev: ‘We’re all Hegleians now, what’s rational isreal, what’s real is rational.’ (Act 1, p.52)

Herzen: ‘People don’t storm the Bastille becausehistory proceeds by zigzags. History zigzags becausewhen people have had enough, they storm theBastille.’ (Act 2, p.104)

Belinsky: ‘If something true can be understoodabout art, something will be sunderstood aboutliberty, too, and science, and politics and history.’(Act 1, p.39)

Chaadaev: ‘How did we come to be the Caliban ofEurope?’ (Act 2, p. 82)

Voyage

Eve Best and RaymondCoulthard

photo Ivan Kyncl


The Two NataliesTom Stoppard’s interest in exploring not just thepolitics but the ‘messy personal lives’ of hisprotagonists can be seen in his portrayal of thecomplex interrelationships of the Herzens, Ogarevsand Herweghs. Herzen’s wife, his cousin NatalieZakharina (1817–52), was, like him, illegitimate. Aftertheir elopement in 1838 and despite the never-ending demands of motherhood, Natalie clungsteadfastly to her adolescent dreams of beingfulfilled in her relationship with her husband. Shefelt compelled to live in a constantly heightenedstate of exalted feeling, responsive always to the‘divine spirit of love … for all creation’ (Act 2, p. 85).But at the opening of Shipwreck, she is alreadyregretfully admitting to Ogarev: ‘Now grownupnesshas caught up with us … as if life were too seriousfor love’ (Act 1, p.6). After Natalie and Herzen leftRussia in January 1847, she increasingly missed thecircle of friends whose company she had soenjoyed during the summers at Sokolovo,particularly after Herzen became more and moreabsorbed in political life. She found emotionalfulfilment for a while in her romantic friendshipwith Natalie (Natasha) Tuchkov, whom she met inRome in 1848, and who travelled back to Paris withthe Herzens. The attachment of the two Natalieswas lived out like one of George Sand’s novels, withNatalie Herzen calling Natalie Tuchkov her‘Consuelo’ – after the eponymous heroine of anovel by Sand. Their relationship prompted astream of passionate love letters between them,

(see Carr 1998 in bibliography), many of which havebeen preserved.

1848: the year of demagogues, revolutionariesand tin soldiersThe turbulent year 1848 brought the metaphoricalshipwreck of many of the ideals and aspirationsnursed for so long by Herzen and hiscontemporaries. Demonstrations calling forelectoral reform and universal male suffrage beganin Sicily in January. Newly arrived in Paris, Herzenand his family watched in horror as events unfoldedthere in February, beginning with street fightingafter the abdicaiton of King Louis Philippe. Unrestspread to virtually every continental countryexcept, ironically, that most reactionary of all –Russia. Other seats of protest were Vienna (thencapital of Prussia), Berlin (then capital of Prussia),and Prague (then part of the Austro-Hungarianempire). In Italy Milan, Bologna, Naples and Romerose up against Austrian domination; the Bourbonking of Sicily quickly capitulated and granted aconstitution, as did the governments of Tuscany,Naples, Piedmont and the Papal States.

The Prussian and Austrian governments offered thepalliative of a role for liberal politicians in existinggovernment and by the autumn had regainedcontrol of Prague and Berlin. Meanwhile, Herweghhad gone marching off to war in Baden, at the headof a force of French and German workers, only tosuffer ignominious defeat. He fled to Zurich, andthen made his way back to Paris until allowed toreturn to Germany in an amnesty in 1866. In Paris,meanwhile, a small group of republicans, led byAlexandre Ledru-Rollin, seized power and elected aConstituent Assembly. But they soon foundthemselves opposed by a group of more extreme,working-class radicals led by Louis Blanc, leading tomore fighting on the streets of Paris for three daysin June.

In December the Constituent Assembly electedLouis Napoleon (nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte)president of a new republic; but democraticgovernment did not last long – three years later,after staging a coup d’état, he proclaimed himselfEmperor Napoleon III. The revolt in Hungary, led byKossuth was one of the last to be quelled, in 1849,after Nicholas I of Russia sent in troops. Bakunin,having taken part in the February fighting in Paris,went off to join the uprisings in Prussia and Poland,

Shipwreck

Eve Best and Stephen Dillane

photo Ivan Kyncl


but after the insurrection in Dresden in May 1849he was arrested, jailed in Saxony and from thereextradited to Russia in 1851.

Discussion and further study How does Stoppard depict the women in radicalcircles? Were they really emancipated – or merelythe camp followers of their husband’s politicaldreams? Does Stoppard see their influence as beingpositive or negative and how much doesdomesticity get in the way of the pursuit of ideas?

Belinsky lauded the decision of writers to remain intheir own countries, however repressed, so thatthey might stay close to the source of theirinspiration. This tradition persisted with writerssuch as Pasternak (who refused to leave Russia) andSolzhenitsyn (whose work suffered when he did).How does Turgenev’s position, as depicted byStoppard, compare?

Stoppard has argued that censorship had one great,positive effect on Russian literature: it ‘madepeople look to writers as their real leaders’. Towhat extent is this valid today – not just in Russia?Did exile diminish Herzen’s influence and hissubsequent importance in Russia?

Compare the depiction of the events in Paris in1848 with Victor Hugo’s classic novel about therevolution, Les Misérables, and with the stagemusical and other film versions (see relatedmaterials).

As a counterpoint to events in the political arenaduring Shipwreck, Stoppard charts the short, buthappy life of Herzen’s profoundly deaf son, Kolya.Compare his depiction of the world of the deafchild with that in other plays that tackle thesubject such as The Miracle Worker and Children ofa Lesser God.

Discuss the following seminal quotations from theplay:

Aksakov: ‘Go to France for your cravats if you must,but do you have to go to France for your ideas?’(Act 1, p.18)

Proudhon: ‘Why should anyone obey anyone else?’(Act 1, p.18)

Théophile Gautier (on art for art’s sake): ‘a novel isnot a pair of boots... A sonnet is not a syringe.’ (Act1, p.24)

Bakunin: ‘Freedom is a state of mind.Herzen: ‘No, it’s a state of not being locked up.’ (Act1, p.36)

Herzen: ‘Who is this Moloch who eats his children?’(Act 1, p.56)

Herzen: ‘A child’s purpose is to be a child.’ (Act 2,p.100)

Herzen: ‘If we can’t arrange our own happiness, it’aconceit beyond vulgarity to arrnge the happines ofthose who come after us.’ (Act 2, p.100)

Bakunin’s anarchist credo: ‘Destruction is a creativepassion’ (Act 2, p.103)

Shipwreck

Raymond Coulthard and Eve Best

photo Ivan Kyncl


A Forgotten feminist: Malwida von MeysenbugOn the surface, she might have seemed thatVictorian archetype, the self-effacing governess,but Malwida von Meysenbug was a woman ofconsiderable independent spirit, who supportedthe democratic ideals of 1848, seeing in them anopportunity to advance the emancipation ofwomen. She knew and corresponded with many ofthe male ‘Forty-Eighters’ and in Frankfurt hadjoined the Free Catholic Congregation, a religiousopposition group that advocated equality of thesexes. Rejecting the offer of marriage to a Germanexile, Julius Froebel, and a new life in the USA, shewent to Hamburg to study, and later teach, at apioneering women’s higher education institute runby Catholic liberals. But by 1852 she was undersurveillance by the Prussian police for associatingwith revolutionaries, and fled to London to avoidarrest.

As a single woman, and a refugee, few options forearning a living presented themselves to Malwidawhen she arrived in London in May, apart fromgiving German lessons. Mixing with German exiles,she was befriended by Gottfried and JohannaKinkel, who introduced her to Herzen. During herthree years as teacher (she flatly rejected the titleof governess) to Herzen’s children Malwida becamewell acquainted with the major revolutionaryfigures of the day, such as Louis Blanc, GiuseppeMazzini, and Lajos Kossuth. She also took aninterest in the embryonic women’s movement inEngland, supporting campaigns for women’s higher

education – particularly the opening of themedical schools to them – and the right of marriedwomen to control their own property. Eventually,conflict with Herzen’s mistress, Natalie Ogarev, overthe children forced Malwida to leave in 1856. Shespent time helping Mazzini establish a workers’circle for Italian émigrés in London, supportingherself by translating and writing articles for radicalpublications such as The Bell. After Herzen’s deathshe legally adopted his youngest daughter Olga andsettled in Rome where she held her own salon. Shebecame a friend and confidant of Nietzsche andRichard Wagner and was a mentor of the poetRomain Rolland. In 1876 she published herautobiography in German (partially translated asRebel in Crinoline). When she died of cancer in1903, Malwida was buried in the Testaccio cemeteryin Rome, not far from the graves of Keats andGoethe.

Malwida’s friend Johanna Kinkel (1810–58) was anequally outspoken and accomplished woman. Apianist and composer, she had moved in progressivecircles in Berlin and Bonn, and in London was acentral figure in the émigré community. In 1860 shepublished a fictionalized autobiography, Hans Ibelesin London: A Family Picture of Refugee Life, abouther years in exile, in which Malwida is thinlydisguised as the governess, Meta Braun. EmmaHerwegh (1817–1904) also fancied herself as awriter, recording her experiences of 1848, intypically self-dramatizing style, as On the Historyof the German Democratic Legion from Paris, By aWoman Accused of High Treason.

Journey’s end: Herzen’s credo Herzen’s final speech (Salvage act 2, p. 118) is acrystallization of many of the strands of argumentthat make up The Coast of Utopia’s intellectualfabric. It contains his final rebuttal of Marx’sarguments on the inevitability of history, withHerzen insisting that the happiness of society inthe future can never be justified by acts of violenceand bloodshed committed in the present. Withgreat passion, Herzen argued throughout his lifethat a just society could only be based on mutualtolerance and respect for the rights of theindividual over the collective. These seminal ideas,which come in the main from Herzen’s key essays inFrom the Other Shore, were discussed by IsaiahBerlin in Russian Thinkers (1978), and have now been

Salvage

Stephen Dillane and Lucy Whybrow

photo Ivan Kyncl


crystallized by Stoppard in his own unique style.With the English text of From the Other Shoresadly long out of print, a study of Berlin’s essays‘Herzen and Bakunin on Liberty’ and ‘AlexanderHerzen’ will provide many instances of howStoppard has deftly refined and recoined thesearguments in dramatic form.

Discussion and further studySalvage illustrates the powerful role played inrepressed societies by the underground press – atradition begun by Herzen and continuedthroughout the Soviet era, notably by Solzhenitsyn.Discuss its importance in effecting political andsocial change in authoritarian societies.

The governess has often featured in literature. Theproblems they encountered in being assimilatedinto a new environment – or even culture – hasbeen dramatized in novels such as CharlotteBronte’s Jane Eyre and even the musical The Kingand I (1956). The theme of the bond betweengoverness and her charges is also explored in HenryJames’s novella The Turn of the Screw. Compare andcontrast the experience of Malwida with otherfictional governesses in literature, theatre and film.Does she suffer from the same problems ofintegration, isolation and a sense of loss/rejectionwhen she has to leave?

Stoppard has described his use of children in theplays as a device to ‘up the emotional ante’. Thechildren undoubtedly play a crucial role in

Shipwreck and Salvage; discuss how Stoppardjuxtaposes the broad panorama of political lifewith the personal and often poignant world ofdomestic life and the family. How successful is it indramatic terms?

Stephen Dillane

photo Ivan Kyncl

Salvage


What happened next?The Bakunin SistersThe lives of the four sisters all ended more or lessunhappily: Lyubov died of tuberculosis in 1838 afterher doomed love affair with Stankevich; Varenka,incited by Bakunin into leaving her dull husband,Nikolay Dyakov, had a brief affair with Stankevichin Italy, before he too died of tuberculosis. Shereturned to Dyakov in 1843 and had a child by him,dying in 1866. After a brief romance with Turgenev,Tata had hopes of going to Berlin but soon resignedherself to the life of a provincial spinster, devotingher time to assembling the family archive. She hadambitions to write a family history but never gotbeyond a few pages; she died in 1871. Alexandra,after her romance with Botkin, married a cavalryofficer and had several children, but her husbanddied young; she lived until 1882. All of the sisterswere considerably outlived by two of their fiveyounger brothers, who survived into the 1900s.

The Herzen childrenNatalie Herzen gave birth to nine children duringher marriage to Alexander Herzen, five of whomdied at birth or soon after. She lost the will to liveafter the drowning of Kolya and died of pleurisy afew months later, shortly after giving birth to herlast child, who was buried with her. Of the otherchildren, Sasha, the eldest son married an Italian,Teresina Felici, by whom he had ten children. Hestudied medicine and became a professor ofphysiology, dying in Lausanne in 1906. Tata andOlga Herzen lived to old age: Tata died unmarried

in 1936; Olga, who married the French historianGabriel Monod, had four children, and lived until1953. Herzen’s other surviving daughter – Liza – byNatalie Ogarev, was a restless, sensitive soul. Hershort life ended in suicide in 1875 after an unhappylove affair with a married man.

The IntellectualsAfter the closure of The Bell in 1868, Herzen’s starfaded, while Bakunin garnered a following among anew generation of Russian radicals no longercontent to fight simply for democratic reform. Acell of dedicated revolutionaries – The People’sWill – plotted the eventual assassination of the‘tsar-liberator’ Alexander II in 1881. His deathaugured a new age of repression, censorship andreaction under Alexander III – and with it thehardening of Russian revolutionary objectives – thekind which would have been anathema to theliberal and humane Herzen. He died, prematurelyaged, in Paris on 9 January 1870 – the same yearthat Lenin was born in Siberia – and was buriedwith Natalie in Nice.

Bakunin settled in Geneva in 1868 and joined Marx’sFirst International. But he was expelled for hisextremism in 1872, by which date, with theideology of Marxism now on the ascendant, he toohad outlived his political time. He died,disappointed but not defeated, in Berne on 1 July1876. Ogarev, the generous and warm-heartedepileptic, died in penury, a hopeless alcoholic, in1877. He was buried at Shooter’s Hill Cemetery,Greenwich, mourned by the devoted MarySutherland but forgotten – both as a poet and as aradical – in his homeland. The steadfastly objectiveoutsider, Turgenev, remained an unrepentantsocialite to the end. He became one of Russia’smost popular and respected writers in Europe andthe USA. Despite choosing to spend the remainderof his life on the Continent, distanced from hissource of inspiration, his heart remained in hishomeland, his novels infused as they are with anelegiac nostalgia for Russia. When he died in Francein 1883 his body was taken back to St Petersburg’sVolkov cemetery, to be buried near the tomb of hisfriend Belinsky.

Lucy Whybrow and Eve Best

photo Ivan Kyncl

Epilogue


The continuing quest for utopiasNot in Utopia, – subterranean fields, –Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where! But in the very world, which is the world Of all of us, – the place where in the end We find our happiness, or not at all. Wordsworth, The Prelude bk 11, l. 140

The words of Wordsworth, written in 1850 are notonly contemporaneous with Herzen’s writing butuncannily echo his sentiments.

Like Herzen, Tom Stoppard believes that politicaland social utopias are an impossible ideal – notjust, he explains, because of the ‘fundamental,flawed nature’ of human kind, but because peopleare, in general, simply ‘too stubborn, selfish, foolishor blind’ to go in search of them. Utopias, are, heargues, ‘basically incoherent as a conception’. Ifthey exist at all, then they are to be found, asHerzen discovered, inside all of us, in theexperience of the moment – what he called the‘summer lightning of personal happiness’ (Salvage,Act 2, p. 118). Yet the doomed pursuit of them hasexerted an age-old fascination on men of ideas –from Plato, in his 4th century-BC work, theRepublic; through Thomas More’s Utopia of 1516, toGeorge Orwell’s satire of communist utopias inAnimal Farm (1945).

Several practical attempts to set up communesbased on utopian ideals were made in thenineteenth century by the followers of RobertOwen and Claude Henri de St Simon; messianicmovements such as the Shakers in the USA also

shared similar ideals. With the coming of twodevastating world wars in the twentieth century,the quest for utopias seemed finally buried, only torevive with ‘flower power’ and the New Left idealsthat sparked the civil rights and anti-Vietnammovements of the 1960s in the USA, as well asanother year of revolutions in Europe – this time in1968.

The voyage continues: having taken a new directionwith the latter-day environmentalist movement, itlives on in the ‘new age’ quest for alternativelifestyles, in a planet that is rapidly becomingovercrowded, polluted and increasingly fraught byracial and religious tensions. The message ofAlexander Herzen and his often embattledcontemporaries seems ever more pertinent; in hischallenging trilogy Tom Stoppard offers profoundand thought-provoking arguments that are asrelevant now, in the new millennium, as they weremore than a century and a half ago.

Guy Henry and Stephen Dillane

photo Ivan Kyncl

Epilogue


Tom Stoppard endorses Isaiah Berlin’s view that, ina truly democratic society, no individual should beexpected to obey anyone else without a goodreason. He defines the essence of liberty as being‘not that my interests should be tolerated but that Ishould tolerate yours’. How closely does thiscoincide with the views of Herzen in Coast ofUtopia?

How effective is The Coast of Utopia in conveyingthe complex lives and ideas of real people caughtup in major historical events? How does it comparewith Stoppard’s depiction of literary and politicalfigures in Travesties and The Invention of Love?

Does The Coast of Utopia have a valid part to play,as drama, in teaching us the cultural, literary andpolitical history of Russia? How far are thecharacterizations affected – both in the negativeand positive sense – by Stoppard’s own politicalbias?

The Coast of Utopia’s long gestation period isindicative of a work that has ‘perhaps been alifetime in the thinking’, in the view of one critic,and which finally reveals Stoppard’s ‘Slavic heart’, inthe view of others. How far can it be taken as adeclaration of his personal beliefs?

The all-day theatrical event dates back to theancient Greek tragedies that were originally stagedas mammoth trilogies. Discuss the tradition of suchevents in British theatre, from productions such as

the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Wars of theRoses in the 1960s, to Ken Campbell’s seven-houradaption of Illuminatus! at the NT in 1976, TrevorNunn’s RSC production of David Edgar’sdramatization of Nicholas Nickleby in 1980, toRobert Lepage’s 1996 visit to the NT with SevenStreams of the River Ota, and Peter Hall’s 2001 RSCproduction of Tantalus.

Stoppard believes that the three plays, althoughsequential, are self-contained and could be seen (orread), out of chronological order. Do you agreewith him, in the case of Coast of Utopia, that ‘tolearn things retroactively is sometimes moreinteresting’? What are the benefits of seeing allthree plays in sequence and on the same day?

Iain Mitchell and Will Keen

photo Ivan Kyncl

For discussion


History/Ideas:Isaiah Berlin 1994. Russian Thinkers. Penguin

Isaiah Berlin. 1996. The Sense of Reality. London:Chatto [see: ‘Artistic Commitment: A RussianLegacy’, on Belinsky]

Isaiah Berlin. 1997. The Proper Study of Mankind.Chatto & Windus. [see: ‘Herzen and His Memoirs’–first pub. as introduction to My Past and Thoughtsbelow]

Isaiah Berlin. 2000. The Power of Ideas [see: ‘TheMan Who Became a Myth’ on Belinsky; ‘ARevolutionary without Fanaticism’ on Herzen]

Michael Billington. 1960. The Icon and the Axe: AnInterpretative History of Russian Culture. VintageBooks [see part IV, ch. 3 ‘The “Cursed Questions”’ –on the debate between the Slavophiles andWesterners]

E. J. Brown. 1966. Stankevich and His Moscow Circle[a slim but valuable monograph on this little-knownradical]

E. H. Carr. 1975. Bakunin. Macmillan [1st pub. 1937]

E. H. Carr. 1998. The Romantic Exiles. Serif. [firstpub. 1933 and, in the continuing absence of full-length biographies of Herzen and Ogarev, still thestandard].

Richard Hare. 1977. Pioneers of Russian SocialThought. Vintage. [on the Slavophiles andWesterners, Herzen, Chernyshevsky and Belinsky]

Alexander Herzen. 1956. From the Other Shore andThe Russian People and Socialism. Weidenfield &Nicolson [the two seminal Herzen essays]

Alexander Herzen. 1999. My Past and Thoughts.University of California Press.[abridged fromConstance Garnett’s translation by DwightMacDonald; introduction by Isaiah Berlin]

Aileen Kelly. 1987. Mikhail Bakunin: A Study in thePsychology and Politics of Utopianism. YaleUniversity Press.

Aileen Kelly. 1998. Toward Another Shore: RussianThinkers Between Necessity and Chance. YaleUniversity Press.

Aileen Kelly, 1999. Views from the Other Shore:Essays on Herzen, Chekhov and Bakhtin. YaleUniversity Press.

Martin Malia. 1961. Alexander Herzen and the Birthof Russian Socialism. Harvard University Press

Malwida von Meysenbug. 1937. Rebel in a Crinoline– memoirs of Malwida von Meysenbug. GeorgeAllen & Unwin [publihed in USA 1936 as Rebel inBombazine]

Monica Partridge.1993. Alexander Herzen: CollectedStudies. Astra Press. [for articles on Herzen inLondon and the Free Russian Press]

Leonard Schapiro. 1979. Turgenev: His Life andTimes. Random House.

Judith E. Zimmerman 1989. MidPassage: AlexanderHerzen and European Revolution, 1847–1852.University of Pittsburgh Press.

Stephen Dillane and Douglas Henshall

photo Ivan Kyncl

Related material


Fiction:A range of George Sand’s novels are available inhard and paperback (see Amazon), particularlyJacques and Indiana (OUP World’s Classics).

The following works by Ivan Turgenev arerecommended in connection with the trilogy,available in OUP World’s Classics, Penguin,Everyman and Wordsworth editions: Fathers andSons [intro. to Penguin ed. by Isaiah Berlin), Rudin, AMonth in the Country, A Nest of Gentlefolk, FirstLove (Penguin ed. trans. by Isaiah Berlin).

Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin is also widelyavailable in paperback.

For the lives of the Brontë sisters, see:Juliet Barker. 1994. The Brontës. Weidengeld &Nicolson.

Stage and Film on VideoThe following film versions are available on VHS(see Amazon):Children of a Lesser God (1986) based on MarkMedoff’s stage play.

Jane Eyre: Zeffirelli’s 1996 version, Robert Young’s1997 ITV version; the 1983 BBC TV version andOrson Welles’s classic 1943 version

Les Misérables (re 1848): a 1995 French subtitledversion, and the most recent, Hollywood version(1999) starring Liam Neeson, although the

consensus is that Darryl F. Zanucks’s 1935 version(available on VHS) starring Frederic March is thebest. Trevor Nunn’s stage version of the musical isalso available on VHS.

The King and I : Margaret Landon’s 1944 book Annaand the King of Siam was first filmed in 1946. TheRodgers and Hammerstein musical (1956) isavailable on video, as is the recent Hollywoodremake Anna and the King (1999), starring JodieFoster.

The Miracle Worker dir. Arther Penn (1962) based onWilliam Gibson’s 1959 play about the deaf and blindHelen Keller.

Three Sisters dir. Laurence Olivier (1970) based onhis stage production for the NT at the Old Vic.

Famous Authors: The Brontë Sisters is available onvideo (see Amazon)

Douglas Henshall

photo Ivan Kyncl

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