“The Task of Our Time”: Theatre Performances as a Project of Reviving Antiquity (Preface to the Translation of N.M. Bachtin’s Essay), Bachtin, Nikolai M., “Oresteia” in Cambridge, Trans. by Cherviakov, Nikolai A.

Abstract

The article is devoted to some insufficiently explored aspects of the herit­age of Russian philosopher and philologist N.M. Bachtin, namely his article written in exile about a theatre performance of Aeschylus’ “Oresteia” staged at Cambridge University. Our article endeavors to reconstruct Bachtin’s view on the so-called “task of our time” with the help of cultural, culturological, and theatre-aesthetic contexts of that time. In the considered essay Bachtin proposes the thesis that every act of accepting an aesthetic or cultural phenomenon is based on two steps. The first step involves a deep investigation of the condi­tions that make a phenomenon born and exist, and the second one involves the relationship between a studied phenomenon and actual tasks. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that they can consider the realization of theatrical performances in the open air inspired by the idea of the Third Re­naissance of Antiquity as that task. The article reviews the theoretical heritage of theatre figures who were close to Bachtin and participated in realizing the idea of “mass theatrical performances” in the Soviet Union (A.I. Piotrovsky, S.E. Radlov). Besides, the author compares Bachtin’s ideas with the O. Spen­gler’s theory of culture, which was fashionable at the time. The article investi­gates Bachtin’s thoughts about the difference between realities in various civi­lizations and ages that find their expression in a concrete dramatic form and concrete beliefs about life, death, and sin. Based on Bakhtin’s emigrant texts, the author concludes about the philosophical sense of theatre performances of ancient Greek authors. The essay of N.M. Bachtin is published in Russian for the first time