ABSTRACT
Vera Fedorovna Kommissarzhevskaia, the actress whose seemingly unpronounceable last name still twists the tongues of Western critics and historians, is little known outside Russia except as the creator of Nina Zarechnaia in the The Seagull, and as the actress who dared to fire Vsevolod Meierhold. In contrast to Brenko, Goreva, Iavorskaia, and other less prominent actress-entrepreneurs, most of whom are unknown in the West and largely forgotten in Russia, Kommissarzhevskaia’s name is still spoken with great reverence in her native land. Wildly popular during the last decade of the nineteenth century and first decade of the twentieth, she inspired her admirers with the passionate enthusiasm of religious zealots. Engimatic, ambitious, frequently tormented by personal, political, and aesthetic contradictions, Kommissarzhevskaia stands as a complex symbol of the Silver Age itself. Although Iavorskaia and Kommissarzhevskaia promoted many of the same playwrights, supported many of the same causes, and followed Western trends in art and literature, critics and progressive spectators responded very differently to them. Despite her efforts to project the image of an enlightened, progressive artist, Iavorskaia was associated in the collective public consciousness with debased Western commercialism. In contrast, Kommissarzhevskaia embodied elevated modernity tempered by just the right touch of national identity.
