The Political Aspects of Russian Hamletism

Abstract

The article deals with Hamletism and its political aspects in the context of Russian culture of the XX centuries. The author distinguishes the following aspects of Hamletism: 1) political views of Shakespeare, represented in Hamlet and other plays; 2) ideal of politician and statesman, represented in Hamlet and its receptions; 3) reception of the tragedy by Shakespeare in the different political and cultural contexts and reactions of politicians and statesmen to the ideology of Hamlet. All these aspects are represented in the Russian context in the XX century. The author notices four possible variants of the reception of
Hamlet by Shakespeare in the XX century in Russia: 1) translations of Hamlet into Russian; 2) creative interpretations of Hamlet in the Russian poetry (A. Blok, A. Akhmatova, M. Tsvetajeva, B. Pasternak, V. Vysotsky) and problem of Hamletism of literary characters; 3) staging of the tragedy by Russian theatres; 4) theoretical comprehension of the tragedy Hamlet by philosophers, psychologists, theologians (P.Florentsky, L.Vygotsky, M.Bakhtin), writers and literary critics (I.Annensky, L.Pinsky). Special attention in the article is paid to the translation of Hamlet by B.Pasternak.