petrushka (‘I must start my story by confessing that i have somehow failed to become a real patriot..')

horsemouth is reading alexandre benois’s memoirs (he's peter ustinov’s uncle) - they’re an interesting family venetian-french-german st. petersburgers,

‘I must start my story by confessing that i have somehow failed to become a real patriot... petersburg itself I loved...’ 

benois is a so-so musician but an excellent sketcher - he collects toys - eventually his collection goes to the russian museum in st. petersburg. like benjamin he is fascinated by small things - dwarf world he calls it, book illustrations, gulliver’s travels (the lilliputians), robinson crusoe and by praxinoscopes, zootropes, and magic lanterns.

the first theatre he went to was a dog theatre,

‘I was not more than four years old... I remember most clearly a remarkably intellignt, beautiful black labrador, who.. executed the well-known dog’s valse on the piano with his master in a duet for two hands and two paws. I learnt afterwards to play that simple little piece.’

later he graduated to toy theatres and puppet theatres at home (taking his first steps to becoming a theatrical designer), and then to punch and judy (petrushka) shows and harlequin shows.

in the petrushka show there is an unexpected interlude (petrushka, on the run after murdering the policeman lover of his intended joins the army and has just killed his sergeant, now read on)- two ‘black men’ appear,

 ‘they both carry sticks, which they throw skilfully up into the air and from one to another, and then use to hit each other over the head with resounding blows’.

then we are back to the main action in the piece - a musician who petrushka has been insulting offers him a strange creature, which he tells him is a lamb, petrushka rides the strange beast back and fore a few times. but then, quick as a trice, it throws petrushka off and is revealed as the devil - the devil then drags petrushka down to hell. his death rattle is heard - the musician plays a gay gallop, and the performance is over.

benois notes the superiority of the street shows over those given by members of high-society and in doing show tells us what the street show puppets looked like - ‘chipped and faded’ and not ‘freshly painted’. 

owing to the cold the roundabouts of the fair had to be erected in tents - outside of each would be a barker (a dyed - or grandpa - to get people in), two dancing girls to skip round him, and two animal figures - the goat and the crane,

‘they were dressed in long white shirts, and from their necks, about three yards long, dangled a bearded snout with horns and a bird’s head with a long beak.’

eventually the temperance society succeeded in driving the fair with its puppet shows, pantomimes and drunkenness out of town, post 1880 heavy moralising folk plays (he names lermontov and pushkin) came to replace the stories of tricksters like punch and harlequin.

benois becomes a ballet enthusiast, harlequin has become mephisto, his interest in puppet shows feeds in to coppelia. soon he will be moving in this world himself.

his elder brother (the charmer) is a great improviser of music (benois is no slouch himself).

after the revolution they all continue to live in their old st. petersburg palaces but now must share them with the hoi-polloi.

horsemouth is reminded of a tale he heard told by an anthropologist film-maker one time. the film-maker is in china, but he doesn’t speak much chinese, he’s filming workers in a communal house, every so often a little old man will come up to him and begin chattering on nervously, the film-maker hums and ha’s - it’s not what he came here to film. later he is watching the film back with his translator - ah that’s interesting, wind that back says the translator, he was the owner of the house... and then, with the revolution it was requisitioned...