Our pair of theatrical meetings began in style, with one of the most interdisciplinary gatherings of readers yet. After a brief introduction to the main themes of the term, we considered the origins of Maxim Gorky's Children of the Sun, written whilst he was imprisoned in 1905: its connections to contemporary revolutionary movements, and as part of Gorky's oeuvre of politically-engaged literature. Many aspects of the play's plot and characterisation, we felt, could be read as commentary on Tsarist Russian society, from the unsustainable complacency and dilletantism of the bourgeoisie, to the restless mob just off stage. (Famously, on the play's premiere the audience panicked, associating the feigned unrest with an actual assault on the theatre.) Though Gorky has been held up as a champion of socialist realism, and his later related interests in biology, aesthetics, and transfigured reality have been highlighted, we felt that his play was not so easily categorised: its playful, almost farcial elements seemed more like pantomime than sober reality.
We also explored the play's nineteenth-century setting, and its connections to earlier literature: Ibsen's An Enemy of the People was an evident point of comparison, another piece dealing with relationships between a scientific figure and wider society, purity and contamination. Turgenev's Fathers and Sons seemed to one participant at least to be an obvious model that Gorky was referencing, confident in his audience's familiarity with the classic work. Indeed, the very year of Fathers and Sons's publication, 1862, was the setting for Children of the Sun. Chekhov and Bulgakov were also fruitfully drawn upon.
Further themes of discussion included the similarities and differences between the speeches, poems, and described paintings in the play, and their associated dramatis personae of man of science, poet, and artist: were some sources of inspiration and dedication to pursuits more insightful or worthy than others? How the sun figured throughout the drama was also discussed, as was the provision and playful destruction of the eggs, and some of the ambiguities of Gorky's characterisation: Protasov could be portrayed in very different ways, according to how one wanted to read or stage the play.
We also considered the role of the man of science, as presented by the play: was it admirable and visionary to focus on the future of humanity, or selfish to neglect the humans in your near vicinity? Should figures self-abnegate before the scientific genius, or see scholarly isolation as a naive retreat from the problems of the commonplace and common people? Broadening out our discussion, we explored more general representations of scientific figures in literature and film, wondering about the (im)possibility of showing creativity on page or screen; whether ; and even whether such stories were more productively conceived of as superhero narratives.
Some further readings, mentioned by group participants:
- David Foster Wallace, 'Rhetoric and the Math Melodrama' (£)
- Helene Mialet, Hawking Incorporated
- Sydney Padua, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (web and book)
- Marianne Moore on the poet and scientist being willing to 'waste effort'
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