Masks, Demons, and Card Players: Reading Lermontov’s Masquerade
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2317-4765.rus.2024.227181Keywords:
card games, Mikhail Lermontov, romanticism, masks, theaterAbstract
Masquerade is a play written by Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841), one of the main writers of Russian romanticism. Based on the structure of Shakespeare's Othello, Lermontov presents the protagonist Arbiênin as a contemporary, Russian version of the Moorish hero, who acts in a cold, calculated, and cowardly way in the face of his wife's supposed betrayal, as opposed to the bloodthirsty passion of the other. In this article, we will use the metaphor of masks as a guiding thread to discuss the philosophical, social and aesthetic aspects of the play, which questions the possibility of a rational and moral human existence and shows the hypocrisy of a society supposedly governed by Enlightenment values. Masks and card games as battle simulations appear in the play as metaphors for working out the difference between appearances and reality, which Lermontov relates, in a metalinguistic way, to art itself, especially theater.
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