Marbles: A Play in Three Acts [Paperback]

Joseph Brodsky (Author), Alan Myers (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1990

A Platonic dialogue in the form of a double anachronism--the action takes place two centuries after our era--Joseph Brodsky’s only play, Marbles, is set in a prison cell that alone provides for the three unities of classic drama: those of time, place, and action. A nightmare rather than a utopia, this play proceeds according to the immanent logic of mental aggravation as its two characters, the inmates Publius and Tullius, examine the tautology of their psychological, historical, and purely physical confines. The fusion of its dour, somewhat terrifying vision with the macabre hilarity of its verbal texture allows Marbles to take its audience beyond the farthest reaches of the theatre of the absurd, into territory more suitable for modernist imagination than for human experience.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

"Prison is a shortage of space compensated by a surplus of time" is one of numerous references to time and space in this literary expression of Einstein's relativity theory by Nobel Prize-winner Brodsky. A play in classic form, it consists of a dialogue between Publius and Tullius, two Romans incarcerated in a one-mile high steel tower, and takes place at once in ancient Rome and a future supermechanized society. The discourse also concerns timelessness (marble, literature) versus transience (technology, ideology) and reality versus illusion, interspersed with arguments about mundane things. The only dramatic event, Tullius's escape and return, is downplayed. Thus, the play demands much of its audience, especially since allusions to classical literature, history, science, and philosophy abound in the very compact text.
- Ulla Sweedler, Univ. of California at San Diego Lib.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"'Prison is a shortage of space compensated by a surplus of time' is one of numerous references to time and space in this literary expression of Einstein's relativity theory by Nobel Prize-winner Brodsky. A play in classic form, it consists of a dialogue between Publius and Tullius, two Romans incarcerated in a one-mile high steel tower, and takes place at once in ancient Rome and a future supermechanized society. The discourse also concerns timelessness (marble, literature) versus transience (technology, ideology) and reality versus illusion, interspersed with arguments about mundane things. The only dramatic event, Tullius's escape and return, is downplayed. Thus, the play demands much of its audience, especially since allusions to classical literature, history, science, and philosophy abound in the very compact text."--Library Journal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (January 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374521166
• ISBN-13: 978-0374521165
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,151,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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