heoretician, and pedagogue" (Hartnoll 638). This can be reduced to the title impresario, for the principal point is that Meyerhold appears to have desired the artistic control that allowed him to realize (= make real) his vision and theory of theatre.
The evidence of Meyerhold's career is that his unique theatrical vision compelled interest and respect in the emerging culture of twentieth-century European drama. This explains why, in 1905, Stanislavski invited him to head the Studio, an "experimental laboratory for the Moscow Art Theatre" (Hartnoll 638). In part, the Studio appears to have been conceptualized as a vehicle for the strand of symbolist dramatic aesthetics that ran parallel to the strand of aesthetics grounded in psychological realism. Psychological realism, for which the acting of the Moscow Art Theatre was notable, entailed an acting method meant to counteract the "artificial, declamatory style" that had dominated acting in the nineteenth century (Moore 8).
While Meyerhold's approach to acting may have entailed psychological realism in its response to declamatory acting praxis, Meyerhold is associated most strongly with symbolist dramatic aesthetics that, in its turn, was a response to Stanislavskian realism (Arnott 425). Indeed, Hartnoll describes self-conscious symbolism in the theatre as "a reaction against realism" (931). And it must be noted that Meyerhold's tenure at the Moscow Art Theatre's Studio was over within a year of its beginning, partly a consequence of artistic differences. In
In the background of Meyerhold's association with symbolist drama is the whole range of aesthetic activity identified as the Russian Symbolist Movement. The Symbolist movement per se has been associated with literary currents in Europe, especially France, at the turn of the century. It was distinguished chiefly by a rebellion against literalist realism, or "literally descriptive poetry, and influenced by the poetic theory o...