Book Reviews: Vagabonding Masks: The Italian Commedia Dell'arte in the Russian Artistic Imagination

Partan writes of “harlequinized characters” such as jesters (44); a “harlequinized element” of a play (using a prop weapon as a symbol of male sexuality) (106); “Sumarokov's harlequinized comedy” (113), which paradoxically lacks many of the traits of commedia; “harlequinized imagery” (116) such as the use of the Harlequin character in plays and the donning of Harlequin costumes at masquerade balls; “a harlequinized prism” through which to read Vladimir Nabokov's novel Look at the Harlequins! (218); “harlequinized attributes—the pair of harlequin sunglasses (akin to a mask) and golden pencil (a miniature lath and Harlequin's magical stick)” (235); and Alla Pugacheva's “four-decades-long harlequinized reign on the throne of Russian popular culture” (240). [...]the author might have categorized the commedia's core elements and given each category a short name (along the lines of “characters,” “improvisation,” “style,” and “scenarios”) and invoked a specific category in regard to each case study of harlequinization in order to help her readers better grasp which aspect(s) of the tradition she was identifying as relevant. Partan's case studies, in which she applies her concept of harlequinization to subject matter ranging from literary text to self-stylization, illuminate the remarkable extent to which the commedia dell'arte tradition reverberates in Russian culture.