On people and puppets: The play “Mary’s Tuesday” and M.A. Kuzmin’s literary strategies of late 1910s and early 1920s

Abstract

This article discusses context of creation and publication of “Mary’s Tuesday”, a play by Mikhail Kuzmin. As examination of the play and other related texts demonstrates, one of the key issues of Kuzmin’s work at that period of time (i.e. late 1910s — early 1920s) was similarity of people and puppets. Having considered the background of literary and social realms of 1917, a year when the play was finished, and 1921, when it was published, it is possible to conclude that Kuzmin’s literary strategy had been changing in the first post-revolutionary years.

Keywords

• mikhail kuzmin
• “mary’s tuesday”
• puppet theater
• puppet-like motif
• alexander blok