I saw a Boston Ballet production of the Prodigal Son a few years ago, and posted this as part of my review her:


Today I was reading Barbara Milberg Fisher's In Balanchine's Company, and encountered this passage:

I just thought it was funny she had the same question, and actually got an answer!

Well, that's pretty much getting the answer, albeit second-hand, from the source. And doesn't that make the final embrace, with the father carrying the son into the home, all the more poignant?

Thanks, fendrock!

But wait.......I remember that in the memoir of one wife/paramour or another (perhaps Shura, since she was living with him when he choreographed it) she recounts Balanchine "agonizing" over whether or not he could extend that crawl for such a long stretch of music. It was presented as an artistic decision based on the music. If anyone has access to the book (which I don't just now) we could all learn something about that decision.

The ending of Prodigal Son bothers me more every time I see the ballet , and every time I find myself wondering why a religious man like Balanchine would so badly distort the message of the parable. Was it just that the music didn't fit the biblical ending? And if so, how could he bring himself to do the ballet at all? I'd really welcome any more light anyone could shed on this.

Jane, I was thinking about this, and I do believe that it reflects Balanchine's own views on faith.

The Prodigal Son is based on a parable, a parable about the relationship between God and someone who comes to believe in God.

It seems that Balanchine felt that a Christian builds his/her own faith in God; God does not reach out, or compel, belief.

fendrock, that's a fascinating reading, but it's not one I've ever heard before. Certainly it's not the classical Christian reading, which sees the parable as illustrating God's eagerness to forgive someone who has willfully done wrong, and His joy in so doing. Still, as carbro, says, the father's initial impassiveness in the ballet does make his final solicitiousness more poignant. And it puts the spotlight on the effort it cost the son to return, emphasizing the sincerity of his repentance. I'm not speculating that this is what Balanchine intended, but we can watch it that way.

This ballet has always seemed to me like an emigré's statement of longing for home. The Father is like God, but is not the God of the Gospel according to Luke. This is impassive God the Father of the Old Believer Orthodox Church. The Father is less God, and more Russia. The Father will not move; the reconciling penitent must come to him. It's a lot like consubstantiation. Very little change on earth, but a change in Heaven.

When I first saw Prodigal Son, my first thought was "did I miss that week of Hebrew School?" I was so sure from its telling that it was an Old Testament story that I didn't know. I didn't realize it was from the New Testament, given Balanchine's take on it.

Why would Old Believers interpret the parable in this way? Presumably their translation of Luke's Gospel would have the father running out to meet his son as in every other translation. Nevertheless, is there any evidence that Balanchine was sympathetic to the Old Believers? I think the real question is why Prokofiev gave the piece such a somber ending. Given the music, I don't see how Balanchine could have choreographed it any other way.

The father would have, but Balanchine's change was to equate the father with G-d, and the G-d of the Orthodox Church, in his vision, would behave differently.

But that's just it. The father in the parable has always been understood to be God and the son represents repentant sinners. In the notes to the Orthodox New Testament (Holy Apostles Convent, 2000) Blessed Theophylact is quoted as writing, "The man who is introduced here is God, verily the one who loves mankind. The two sons portray the two ranks of men, the righteous and sinners" (vol. 1, p. 357). The parable of the prodigal son comes right after the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, and in both cases they're followed by explanations about there being more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than many righteous men in no need of repentance.

And yet both Prokofiev and Balanchine seem to focus on how difficult it is for the sinner to humble himself and repent, rather than how eager God is to welcome back the wayward. Now I see how the other son's subsequent irritation and the father's explanation about the dead coming back to life and the lost being found would be difficult to translate into movement, but that still leaves the punchline of the parable missing.

In art, as opposed to love, Balanchine didn't beg, and he didn't let his dancers ask for much. He was known to be unforgiving. He bestowed. I think his father figure in Prodigal Son is very much in that vein, as well as resembling the formal, ritualistic religious figures of the Orthodox Church and the monarch whose court he left most reluctantly.

That's why I always consider it more of an emigrant's tale of homesickness than much of a relation of a Christian parable. But Helene is right, it's a very formal, distant God-figure that is the Father. One of the reasons for the Great Schism (1054) was that the western church argued that Christ was homoousias (of one being with the Father), while the eastern church maintained that the former was homoiousias (of a being LIKE the Father). The trinity of the orthodox had rather rigid and hierarchic job descriptions for the various aspects of God. Souls in heaven might not even see God the Father. Too high up.

The music, as volcanohunter says, does in deed provide the emotional foundation for Balanchine's interpretation. This is not meant to discount the possibility of various theological interpretations as well.

The son at the end of the ballet, crawling across the stage to his Father's open but unyielding arms, seems totally drained and humbled, and completely dependent. This is human salavation as abject surrender. It is a vision of parental Love that is quite foreign to our usual idea of -- and frequent sentimentalizing of -- human parenting. God's "Fatherhood" is not your comforting fix-everthing-here-on-earth Diety. I guess you can interpret it in a variety of ways. As for me, I am reminded of John Knox, Jonathan Edwards, and other variants of the Puritan Protestant view of things. (Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God, even when being forgiven.)

This discussion me back to Bernard Taper's biography of Balanchine, where I found the following:A brief Googling reveals that Pushkin's prodigal offspring is a daughter, and that the stationmaster, deeply distressed by her abduction to the capital, becomes unhinged and dies. From an article by Lina Steiner, in Comparative Literature:Is anyone familiar with the imagery in these engravings, or with the Pushkin story which is apparently an ironic comment on them?

The issue at the root of the schism of 1054 was the filioque, not the nature of Christ. It was a dispute over whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone or from both Father and Son. What you're referring to is related to the Arian heresy, which was condemned in 325. I can assure you that both Orthodox and Catholics refer to Christ as homoousios or consubstantial with the Father. (The Church Slavic term is edinosushchna.) On this point there is no dispute.

Without wishing to draw out a discussion further , oh, but there CAN be, there can. It's why the heresiology classes at the seminaries are so crowded. Individual heresies don't exist in little bottles, even after they are apparently squelched. Some scholars (not me) like to trace the Great Schism all the way back to the Corinthian Heresy ("Let's try to sin more, so we can have more forgiveness, and therefore be more blessed" {sounds like fun, doesn't it?}) These differences of interpretation and belief persist for centuries. St. Cyril of Jerusalem thought he had completely destroyed Nestorianism, but there's a Nestorian church in Jerusalem even today. The filioque clause ("We believe in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the son....) was the proximate cause of the separation of the eastern from the western churches. The eastern didn't support the idea of the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Son as well as the Father, which may actually have something to do with the hermeneutic which led Balanchine to an image of the solid, stolid Father, and the depraved, albeit penitent Son in his ballet. And besides, there was all that damn music to fill!

It would be of great interest to know how Prokofiev chose to end his ballet score with the somberness he did. Anybody have any insight on that? Was there more that Balanchine cut?

And Consubstantion remains a heresy within the Roman Catholic Church, who maintain Transubstantiation as the true way in which the bread and wine of the mass become the actual body and blood of Christ.

Just for the sake of clarity, let's not confuse the Nicene Creed with the Lord's Supper.

The Nicene Creed in both versions (325 & 381) states that Christ is ομοούσιον τω Πατρί (homoousion to Patri). In Latin this is translated as consubstantialem Patri. In Church Slavic it's единосущна Отцу (edinosuščna Otcu). (I apologize for not having proper Church Slavic fonts installed on my computer.) In the Book of Common Prayer it's translated as "being of one substance with the Father," as it is in the Lutheran Service Book. The Orthodox Church of America translates it as "of one essence with the Father." At present the Roman Catholic Church translates this into English as "one in Being with the Father," although the committee responsible for the English liturgy has decided that it ought to be translated as "consubstantial with the Father," to bring it closer to the Latin. The key thing here is that Orthodox, Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and many other Protestants accept the Creed as authoritative and none of them holds that Christ is "of like substance" (homoiousios) with the Father.

Consubstantiation is something entirely different. That term, generally but not entirely accurately associated with Martin Luther, is used for the doctrine that states that Christ's body and blood substantially coexist with the consecrated bread and wine. This doctrine was indeed condemned by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent. The Catholic Church holds to a doctrine of transubstantation, which states that consecrated bread and wine actually change into the substance of the body and blood of Christ, so that only accidents of bread and wine remain. The Orthodox position is essentially the same.

But back to the parable itself. I don't think there's much basis for attributing Balanchine's interpretation to the Russian Orthodox Church. It probably has more to do with the personal religious views of Prokofiev, Kochno or Balanchine. I've never seen the translation of the Bible used by Old Believers, but in the standard Church Slavic Bible the father is described as running out to meet his son while the latter is still far away. The word used is текъ (tekŭ) derived from the verb meaning to flow or run, and related to the modern Russian течь (teč').

As for suggestions that the libretto was inspired by Pushkin, Kochno himself seems to have disavowed the idea.


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...&pagewanted=all

Thanks for that link to the 1986 NYCB review, volcanohunter.It does indeed seem to undercut to suggestions of a Pushkin plot influence, although I still wonder what the engravings in the story looked like and how they handled the return to the Father.I love the phrase "granitelike stillness," as if the Father is a magnet drawing the son to him, but not himself moveable. Kochno's reference to the influence on Balanchine of Expressionism and Constructivism -- two movements not associated with sentimentality -- may also have a bearing on Balanchine's treatment of the interaction of son and Father in this scene.

Also, I hope that someone can answer Mel's interesting question about the role of Prokofiev in all this:

1) No it doesn't. We say "of one being with the Father."

2) So when did Balanchine's personal religious views become informed by, say, the Presbyterians?

Sorry, I must have an out-of-date edition. I was quoting the Canadian Book of Common Prayer (1962). It may be translated differently in other countries.

That sounds like it was from one of the "trial books" they published in the mid-70s, when they were trying to modernize the language of the Liturgy of the Word. I'll have to look in my collection.

::mod beanie on::

While the religious contexts of The Prodigal Son are indeed a fascinating topic of discussion, it is outside the scope of this forum to be discussing theological issues in and of themselves. Remember also that not everybody who participates in Ballet Talk practices Christianity.

Please keep the discussion related to Balanchine's ballet in order for this thread to stay open.

Thank you.

::mod beanie off::

I think it has to do with both. Organized religions of all stripes have created ritual and general teaching that is expected to be absorbed through repetition, ritual, and impression. Do I think that Balanchine's interpretation was based in Orthodox doctrine? No. Do I think that Balanchine's interpretation was rooted in his concept of what it meant to be a Russian Orthodox man of deep religious faith, based on the ritual he observed in childhood, noted by Taper and many subsequent biographers, and reinforced by similar ritual at court and on the ballet stage? Yes.

Just as he experimented with Impressionistic ballet during his school days into his professional career, and just as he expanded ballet into a neoclassicism and use of modern music that would be alien to his childhood stage idols and often ignored the concept of institutional hierarchy as a ballet master, he kept the essence ingrained from when he was student: "Ballet is woman" and structural hierarchy on stage.

The distinction reminds me of a an interview with Karen Armstrong, a former nun who has written extensively about religion and religious history, that was published on salon.com. Since it is accessible by subscription, I won't add a link, but will quote a small portion:

While I'm not saying that Balanchine's view of G-d was infantile, I do think that in his interpretation of the Prodigal story, he retained the essence of what he distilled from his religious experience and turned it into theater. That's why I think that a discussion of doctrine is not the central point.