Strindberg’s A Dream Play and Gumilyov’s Allah’s Child. A mystery plot

Abstract

Тhe article explores the issue of implementation of a mystery plot in the dramaturgy of the turn of 19th–20th centuries. Within the aspect of the given topic, two plays are considered — A. Strindberg’s drama A Dream Play, and N. S. Gumilyov’s fairy tale Allah’s Child. It is an attempt to demonstrate that in these works one can find the same plotline, which can be traced back to the myth of Persephone. With various interpretations still around as to the content of the ancient Greek mystery, is can generally be acknowledged that the myth comprised the foundation of the sacred action at Eleusis; the debate only concerns its “stage” adaptation. At the turn of 19th–20th centuries, the story of Persephone is already creating its own, new myth about the trials of a wandering soul on the path of knowledge. In Strindberg’s and Gumilyov’s plays, the soul (Persephone) is played by a divine being: in A Dream Play it is the daughter of god Indra of ancient Indian mythology, and in Allah’s Child it is the daughter of a god from the mythology of peoples of Central and Minor Asia. Both heroines go through a hard path of earthly sorrows, and in the denouement return to the divine world. This plot structure, which mirrors the development of an ancient mystery, both playwrights — Swedish and Russian — introduce the Poet as a character. In both A Dream Play and Allah’s Child the Poet becomes an intermediary between the earthly and divine lives, bridging the gap between those worlds, and, in essence, acting as Dionysus. The general trend, whereby the dramaturgy of “the turn” looked back to ancient mythology, speaks to the ongoing process of myth structuring, as it acquires new meaningful layers.