Edmund orders Lear and his daughter to be led away to prison, and

having ordered a captain to do them some hurt, asks him whether he

will fulfil it. The captain replies “I cannot draw a cart, nor eat

dried oats; but if it be man’s work I will do it.” The Duke of

Albany, Goneril, and Regan enter. The Duke wishes to take Lear’s

part, but Edmund opposes this. The sisters intervene and begin to

abuse each other, being jealous of Edmund. Here everything becomes

so confused that it is difficult to follow the action. The Duke of

Albany wants to arrest Edmund, and tells Regan that Edmund had long

ago entered into guilty relations with his wife and that therefore

Regan must give up her claim on Edmund, and if she wishes to marry

should marry him, the Duke of Albany.

Having said this, the Duke challenges Edmund and orders the trumpet

to be sounded, and if no one appears intends himself to fight him.

At this point Regan, whom Goneril has evidently poisoned, writhes

with pain. Trumpets are sounded and Edgar enters with a visor which

conceals his face, and without giving his name challenges Edmund.

Edgar abuses Edmund; Edmund casts back all the abuse on Edgar’s head.

They fight and Edmund falls. Goneril is in despair.

The Duke of Albany shows Goneril her letter. Goneril goes off.

Edmund while dying recognises that his opponent is his brother. Edgar

raises his visor and moralises to the effect that for having an

illegitimate son, Edmund, his father has paid with the loss of his

sight. After this Edgar tells the Duke of Albany of his adventures

and that he has only now, just before coming to this combat,

disclosed himself to his father, and his father could not bear it

and died of excitement. Edmund, who is not yet dead, asks what else

happened.

Then Edgar relates that while he was sitting by his father’s body

a man came, embraced him closely, cried out as if he would burst

heaven, threw himself on his father’s corpse, and told a most piteous

tale about Lear and himself, and having told it “the strings of

life began to crack,” but just then the trumpet sounded twice and

he, Edgar, left him “tranced.” And this was Kent. Before Edgar

had finished telling this story a gentleman runs in with a bloody

knife, shouting, “Help!” To the question “Who has been killed?” the

gentleman says that Goneril is dead, who had poisoned her sister.

She had confessed this. Kent enters, and at this moment the bodies

of Regan and Goneril are brought in. Edmund thereupon says that

evidently the sisters loved him greatly, as the one had poisoned

the other and then killed herself for his sake. At the same time he

confesses that he had given orders to kill Lear and hang Cordelia in

prison, under the pretence that she had committed suicide; but that

he now wishes to prevent this, and having said so, he dies and is

carried out.

After this Lear enters with Cordelia’s dead body in his arms (though

he is over eighty years of age and ill). And again there begin his

terrible ravings which make one feel as ashamed as one does when

listening to unsuccessful jokes. Lear demands that they should all

howl, and alternately believes that Cordelia is dead and that she is

alive. He says:

Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so

That heaven’s vault should crack.

Then he recounts how he has killed the slave who hanged Cordelia.

Next he says that his eyes see badly, and thereupon recognises Kent

whom all along he had not recognised.

The Duke of Albany says that he resigns his power as long as Lear

lives, and that he will reward Edgar and Kent and all who have been

true to him. At that moment news is brought that Edmund has died;

and Lear, continuing his ravings, begs that they will undo one of

his buttons, the same request he made when he was roaming about the

heath. He expresses his thanks for this, tells them all to look

somewhere, and with these words he dies.

In conclusion the Duke of Albany, who remains alive, says:

The weight of this sad time we must obey;

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

The oldest hath borne most: we that are young

Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

All go off to the sound of a dead march. This ends Act V of the play.

III

Such is this celebrated play. Absurd as it may appear in this

rendering (which I have tried to make as impartial as possible),

I can confidently say that it is yet more absurd in the original.

To any man of our time, were he not under the hypnotic influence

of the suggestion that this play is the height of perfection, it

would be enough to read it to the end, had he patience to do so, to

convince himself that far from being the height of perfection it is

a very poor, carelessly constructed work which, if it may have been

of interest to a certain public of its own day, can among us evoke

nothing but aversion and weariness. And any man of our day free

from such suggestion would receive just the same impression from

the other much praised dramas of Shakespeare, not to speak of the

absurd dramatised tales, _Pericles_, _Twelfth Night_, _The Tempest_,

_Cymbeline_, and _Troilus and Cressida_.

But such free-minded people, not pre-disposed to Shakespeare worship,

are no longer to be found in our time and in our Christian society.

Into every man of our society and time, from an early period of his

conscious life, has been instilled the idea that Shakespeare is a

poetic and dramatic genius and that all his works are the height of

perfection. And therefore, superfluous as it would seem, I will

try to indicate in the play of _King Lear_ which I have chosen, the

defects characteristic of all Shakespeare’s tragedies and comedies,

as a result of which they not only fail to furnish models of dramatic

art but fail to satisfy the most elementary and generally recognised

requirements of art.

According to the laws laid down by those very critics who extol

Shakespeare, the conditions of every tragedy are that the persons

who appear should, as a result of their own characters, actions, and

the natural movement of events, be brought into conditions in which,

finding themselves in opposition to the world around them, they

should struggle with it and in that struggle display their inherent

qualities.

In the tragedy of _King Lear_ the persons represented are indeed

externally placed in opposition to the surrounding world and struggle

against it. But the struggle does not result from a natural course

of events and from their own characters, but is quite arbitrarily

arranged by the author, and therefore cannot produce on the reader

that illusion which constitutes the chief condition of art. Lear

is under no necessity, and has no reason, to resign his power. And

having lived all their lives with his daughters he also has no

reason to believe the words of the two elder, and not to believe the

truthful statement of the youngest; yet on this the whole tragedy of

his position is built.

Equally unnatural is the secondary and very similar plot: the

relation of Gloucester to his sons. The position of Gloucester

and Edgar arises from the fact that Gloucester, just like Lear,

immediately believes the very grossest deception, and does not even

try to ask the son who had been deceived, whether the accusation

against him is true, but curses him and drives him away.

The fact that the relation of Lear to his daughters is just the same

as that of Gloucester to his sons, makes one feel even more strongly

that they are both arbitrarily invented and do not flow from the

characters or the natural course of events. Equally unnatural and

obviously invented is the fact that all through the play Lear fails

to recognise his old courtier, Kent; and so the relations of Lear and

Kent fail to evoke the sympathy of reader or hearer. This applies

in an even greater degree to the position of Edgar, whom nobody

recognises, who acts as guide to his blind father and persuades him

that he has leapt from a cliff when Gloucester has really jumped on

level ground.

These positions in which the characters are quite arbitrarily placed

are so unnatural that the reader or spectator is unable either to

sympathise with their sufferings or even to be interested in what he

reads or hears. That in the first place.

Secondly, there is the fact that both in this and in Shakespeare’s

other dramas all the people live, think, speak, and act, quite out

of accord with the given period and place. The action of _King Lear_

takes place 800 years B. C., and yet the characters in it are placed

in conditions possible only in the Middle Ages: Kings, dukes, armies,

illegitimate children, gentlemen, courtiers, doctors, farmers,

officers, soldiers, knights in armour, and so on, appear in it.

Perhaps such anachronisms (of which all Shakespeare’s plays are full)

did not infringe the possibility of illusion in the 16th century and

the beginning of the 17th, but in our time it is no longer possible

to interest oneself in the development of events one knows could not

have occurred in the conditions the author describes in detail.

The artificiality of the positions, which do not arise from a natural

course of events and from the characters of the people engaged, and

their incompatibility with the period and the place, is further

increased by the coarse embellishments Shakespeare continually makes

use of in passages meant to be specially touching. The extraordinary

storm during which Lear roams about the heath, or the weeds which

for some reason he puts on his head, as Ophelia does in _Hamlet_,

or Edgar’s attire--all these effects, far from strengthening the

impression, produce a contrary effect. “_Man sieht die Absicht und

man wird verstimmt_”[139] as Goethe says. It often happens--as for

instance with such obviously intentional effects as the dragging out

of half-a-dozen corpses by the legs, with which Shakespeare often

ends his tragedies--that instead of feeling fear and pity one feels

the absurdity of the thing.

IV

But not only are the characters in Shakespeare’s plays placed in

tragic positions which are quite impossible, do not result from

the course of events, and are inappropriate to the period and the

place, but they also behave in a way not in accord with their own

definite characters and that is quite arbitrary. It is customary

to assert that in Shakespeare’s dramas character is particularly

well expressed, and that with all his vividness his people are as

many-sided as real people, and that while exhibiting the nature of a

certain given individual they also show the nature of man in general.

It is customary to say that Shakespeare’s delineation of character is

the height of perfection. This is asserted with great confidence and

repeated by everyone as an indisputable verity, but much as I have

tried to find confirmation of this in Shakespeare’s dramas, I have

always found the reverse.

From the very beginning of reading any of Shakespeare’s plays I was

at once convinced that it was perfectly evident that he is lacking

in the chief, if not the sole, means of portraying character, which

is individuality of language--that each person should speak in a way

suitable to his own character. That is lacking in Shakespeare. All

his characters speak, not a language of their own but always one and

the same Shakespearean, affected, unnatural language, which not only

could they not speak, but which no real people could ever have spoken

anywhere.

No real people could speak, or could have spoken, as Lear

does--saying that, “I would divorce me from thy mother’s tomb” if

Regan did not receive him, or telling the winds to “crack your

cheeks,” or bidding “the wind blow the earth into the sea,” or “swell

the curl’d waters ’bove the main,” as the gentleman describes what

Lear said to the storm, or that it is easier to bear one’s griefs

and “the mind much sufferance doth o’erskip, when grief hath mates,

and bearing fellowship” (“bearing” meaning suffering), that Lear is

“childed, as I father’d,” as Edgar says, and so forth--unnatural

expressions such as overload the speeches of the people in all

Shakespeare’s dramas.

But it is not only that the characters all talk as no real people

ever talked or could talk; they are also all afflicted by a common

intemperance of language.

In love, preparing for death, fighting or dying, they all talk at

great length and unexpectedly about quite irrelevant matters, guided

more by the sound of the words and by puns than by the thoughts.

And they all talk alike. Lear raves just as Edgar does when feigning

madness. Kent and the fool both speak alike. The words of one person

can be put into the mouth of another, and by the character of the

speech it is impossible to know who is speaking. If there is a

difference in the speech of Shakespeare’s characters, it is only that

Shakespeare makes different speeches for his characters, and not that

they speak differently.

Thus Shakespeare always speaks for his kings in one and the same

inflated, empty language. Similarly all his women who are intended

to be poetic, speak the same pseudo-sentimental Shakespearean

language: Juliet, Desdemona, Cordelia, and Mariana. In just the

same way also it is Shakespeare who always speaks for his villains:

Richard, Edmund, Iago, and Macbeth--expressing for them those

malignant feelings which villains never express. And yet more

identical is the talk of his madmen, with their terrible words, and

the speeches of his fools with their mirthless witticisms.

So that the individual speech of living people--that individual

speech which in drama is the chief means of presenting character--is

lacking in Shakespeare. (If gesture is also a means of expressing

character, as in the ballet, it is only a subsidiary means.) If the

characters utter whatever comes to hand and as it comes to hand and

all in one and the same way, as in Shakespeare, even the effect

of gesture is lost; and therefore whatever blind worshippers of

Shakespeare may say, Shakespeare does not show us characters.

Those persons who in his dramas stand out as characters, are

characters borrowed by him from earlier works which served as the

bases of his plays, and they are chiefly depicted, not in the

dramatic manner which consists of making each person speak in his

own diction, but in the epic manner, by one person describing the

qualities of another.

The excellence of Shakespeare’s depiction of character is asserted

chiefly on the ground of the characters of Lear, Cordelia, Othello,

Desdemona, Falstaff, and Hamlet. But these characters, like all the

others, instead of belonging to Shakespeare, are taken by him from

previous dramas, chronicles, and romances. And these characters were

not merely not strengthened by him, but for the most part weakened

and spoilt. This is very evident in the drama of King Lear which we

are considering, and which was taken by Shakespeare from the play of

_King Leir_ by an unknown author. The characters of this drama, such

as Lear himself and in particular Cordelia, were not only not created

by Shakespeare, but have been strikingly weakened by him and deprived

of personality, as compared with the older play.

In the older play Leir resigns his power because, having become a

widower, he thinks only of saving his soul. He asks his daughters

about their love for him in order, by means of a cunning device, to

keep his youngest and favourite daughter with him on his island.

The two eldest are betrothed, while the youngest does not wish to

contract a loveless marriage with any of the neighbouring suitors

Leir offers her, and he is afraid she may marry some distant

potentate.

The device he has planned, as he explains to his courtier Perillus

(Shakespeare’s Kent), is this: that when Cordelia tells him that she

loves him more than anyone, or as much as her elder sisters do, he

will say that in proof of her love she must marry a prince he will

indicate on his island.

All these motives of Lear’s conduct are lacking in Shakespeare’s

play. Then, when (according to the older play) Leir asks his

daughters about their love for him, Cordelia does not reply (as

Shakespeare has it) that she will not give her father all her love

but will also love her husband if she marries--to say which is quite

unnatural--but simply says that she cannot express her love in words

but hopes her actions will prove it. Goneril and Regan make remarks

to the effect that Cordelia’s answer is not an answer, and that their

father cannot quietly accept such indifference. So that in the older

play there is an explanation, lacking in Shakespeare, of Leir’s anger

at the youngest daughter’s reply. Leir is vexed at the non-success

of his cunning device, and the venomous words of his elder daughters

add to his irritation. After the division of his kingdom between

the two eldest daughters in the older play comes a scene between

Cordelia and the King of Gaul which, instead of the impersonal

Shakespearean Cordelia, presents us with a very definite and

attractive character in the truthful, tender, self-denying youngest

daughter. While Cordelia, not repining at being deprived of a share

in the inheritance, sits grieving that she has lost her father’s love

and looking forward to earning her bread by her own toil, the King

of Gaul enters, who in the disguise of a pilgrim wishes to choose a

bride from among Leir’s daughters. He asks Cordelia the cause of her

grief. She tells him her woe. He, having fallen in love with her, in

his pilgrim guise woos her for the King of Gaul, but Cordelia says

she will only marry a man she loves. Then the pilgrim offers her

his hand and heart, and Cordelia confesses that she loves him and,

notwithstanding the poverty and privation that she thinks awaits her,

agrees to marry him. Then the pilgrim discloses to her that he is

himself the King of Gaul, and Cordelia marries him.

Instead of this scene Lear, according to Shakespeare, proposes to

Cordelia’s two suitors to take her without dowry, and one cynically

refuses, while the other takes her without our knowing why.

After this in the older play, as in Shakespeare, Leir undergoes

insults from Goneril to whose house he has gone, but he bears these

insults in a very different way from that represented by Shakespeare:

he feels that by his conduct to Cordelia he has deserved them, and

he meekly submits. As in Shakespeare so also in the older play, the

courtier, Perillus (Kent) who has taken Cordelia’s part and has

therefore been punished, comes to Leir, only not disguised, but

simply as a faithful servant who does not abandon his King in a

moment of need, and assures him of his love. Leir says to him what

in Shakespeare Lear says to Cordelia in the last scene--that if his

daughters whom he has benefited hate him, surely one to whom he has

done evil cannot love him. But Perillus (Kent) assures the King of

his love, and Leir, pacified goes on to Regan. In the older play

there are no tempests or tearing out of grey hairs, but there is a

weakened old Leir, overpowered by grief and humbled, and driven out

by his second daughter also, who even wishes to kill him. Turned out

by his eldest daughters, Leir in the older play, as a last resource,

goes with Perillus to Cordelia. Instead of the unnatural expulsion

of Leir during a tempest and his roaming about the heath, in the

old play Leir with Perillus during their journey to France very

naturally come to the last degree of want. They sell their clothes

to pay for the sea-crossing, and exhausted by cold and hunger they

approach Cordelia’s house in fishermen’s garb. Here again, instead

of the unnatural conjoint ravings of the fool, Lear, and Edgar,

as presented by Shakespeare, we have in the older play a natural

scene of the meeting between the daughter and father. Cordelia--who

notwithstanding her happiness has all the time been grieving about

her father and praying God to forgive her sisters who have done him

so much wrong--meets him, now in the last stage of want, and wishes

immediately to disclose herself to him, but her husband advises her

not to do so for fear of agitating the weak old man. She agrees and

takes Leir into her house, and without revealing herself to him takes

care of him. Leir revives little by little, and then the daughter

asks him who he is, and how he lived formerly. If, says Leir,

... from the first I should relate the cause,

I would make a heart of adamant to weep.

And thou, poor soul,

Kind-hearted as thou art,

Dost weep already ere I do begin.

Cordelia replies:

For God’s love tell it, and when you have done,

I’ll tell the reason why I weep so soon.

And Leir relates all he has suffered from his elder daughters, and

says that he now wishes to find shelter with the one who would be

right should she condemn him to death. “If, however,” he says, “she

will receive me with love, it will be God’s and her work, and not

my merit!” To this Cordelia replies, “Oh, I know for certain that

thy daughter will lovingly receive thee!” “How canst thou know this

without knowing her?” says Leir. “I know,” says Cordelia, “because

not far from here, I had a father who acted towards me as badly as

thou hast acted towards her, yet if I were only to see his white

head, I would creep to meet him on my knees.” “No, this cannot be,”

says Leir, “for there are no children in the world so cruel as mine.”

“Do not condemn all for the sins of some,” says Cordelia, falling

on her knees. “Look here, dear father,” she says, “look at me: I am

thy loving daughter.” The father recognises her and says: “It is not

for thee, but for me to beg thy pardon on my knees for all my sins

towards thee.”

Is there anything approaching this charming scene in Shakespeare’s

drama?

Strange as the opinion may appear to Shakespeare’s devotees, the

whole of this older play is in all respects beyond compare better

than Shakespeare’s adaptation. It is so, first because in it those

superfluous characters--the villain Edmund and the unnatural

Gloucester and Edgar, who only distract one’s attention--do not

appear. Secondly, it is free from the perfectly false “effects” of

Lear’s roaming about on the heath, his talks with the fool, and

all those impossible disguises, non-recognitions, and wholesale

deaths--above all because in this play there is the simple, natural,

and deeply touching character of Leir, and the yet more touching

and clearly defined character of Cordelia, which are lacking in

Shakespeare. And also because there is in the older drama, instead of

Shakespeare’s daubed scene of Lear’s meeting with Cordelia and her

unnecessary murder, the exquisite scene of Leir’s meeting with

Cordelia, which is unequalled by anything in Shakespeare’s drama.

The older play also terminates more naturally and more in accord with

the spectators’ moral demands than does Shakespeare’s, namely, by the

King of the Gauls conquering the husbands of the elder sisters, and

Cordelia not perishing, but replacing Leir in his former position.

This is the position as regards the drama we are examining, borrowed

from the old play _King Leir_.

It is the same with _Othello_, which is taken from an Italian story,

and it is the same again with the famous _Hamlet_. The same may

be said of Antony, Brutus, Cleopatra, Shylock, Richard, and all

Shakespeare’s characters; they are all taken from antecedent works.

Shakespeare, taking the characters already given in previous plays,

stories, chronicles, or in Plutarch’s _Lives_, not only fails to make

them more true to life and more vivid, as his adulators assert, but

on the contrary always weakens them and often quite destroys them,

as in _King Leir_: making his characters commit actions unnatural

to them, and making them, above all, talk in a way natural neither

to them nor to any human being. So in _Othello_, though this is--we

will not say the best, but the least bad--the least overloaded with

pompous verbosity, of all Shakespeare’s dramas, the characters of

Othello, Iago, Cassio, Emilia are far less natural and alive in

Shakespeare than in the Italian romance. In Shakespeare Othello

suffers from epilepsy, of which he has an attack on the stage.

Afterwards in Shakespeare the murder of Desdemona is preceded by

a strange vow uttered by Othello on his knees, and besides this,

Othello in Shakespeare’s play is a negro and not a Moor. All this

is unusual, inflated, unnatural, and infringes the unity of the

character. And there is none of all this in the romance. In the

romance also the causes of Othello’s jealousy are more naturally

presented than in Shakespeare. In the romance Cassio, knowing whose

the handkerchief is, goes to Desdemona to return it, but when

approaching the back door of Desdemona’s house he sees Othello coming

and runs away from him. Othello perceives Cassio running away, and

this it is that chiefly confirms his suspicion. This is omitted in

Shakespeare, and yet this casual incident explains Othello’s jealousy

more than anything else. In Shakespeare this jealousy is based

entirely on Iago’s machinations, which are always successful, and

on his crafty speeches, which Othello blindly believes. Othello’s

monologue over the sleeping Desdemona, to the effect that he wishes

that she when killed should look as she is when alive, and that he

will love her when she is dead and now wishes to inhale her “balmy

breath” and so forth, is quite impossible. A man who is preparing to

murder someone he loves cannot utter such phrases, and still less

after the murder can he say that the sun and the moon ought now to be

eclipsed and the globe to yawn, nor can he, whatever kind of a nigger

he may be, address devils, inviting them to roast him in sulphur, and

so forth. And finally, however effective may be his suicide (which

does not occur in the romance) it quite destroys the conception of

his firm character. If he really suffers from grief and remorse then,

when intending to kill himself, he would not utter phrases about his

own services, about a pearl, about his eyes dropping tears “_as fast

as the Arabian trees their medicinable gum_,” and still less could

he talk about the way a Turk scolded a Venetian, and how “_thus_” he

punished him for it! So that despite the powerful movement of feeling

in Othello, when under the influence of Iago’s hints jealousy rises

in him, and afterwards in his scene with Desdemona, one’s conception

of Othello’s character is constantly infringed by false pathos and by

the unnatural speeches he utters.

So it is with the chief character--Othello. But notwithstanding the

disadvantageous alterations it has undergone in comparison with

the character from which he is taken in the romance, Othello still

remains a character. But all the other personages have been quite

spoilt by Shakespeare.

Iago in Shakespeare’s play is a complete villain, a deceiver, a

thief, and avaricious; he robs Roderigo, succeeds in all sorts of

impossible designs, and therefore is a quite unreal person. In

Shakespeare the motive of his villainy is, first, that he is offended

at Othello not having given him a place he desired; secondly, that

he suspects Othello of an intrigue with his wife; and thirdly that,

as he says, he feels a strange sort of love for Desdemona. There

are many motives, but they are all vague. In the romance there is

one motive, and it is simple and clear: Iago’s passionate love for

Desdemona, changing into hatred of her and of Othello after she had

preferred the Moor to him and had definitely repulsed him. Yet more

unnatural is the quite unnecessary figure of Roderigo, whom Iago

deceives and robs, promising him Desdemona’s love and obliging him to

do as he is ordered: to make Cassio drunk, to provoke him, and then

to kill him. Emilia, who utters anything it occurs to the author to

put into her mouth, bears not even the slightest resemblance to a

real person.

“But Falstaff, the wonderful Falstaff!” Shakespeare’s eulogists

will say. “It is impossible to assert that he is not a live person,

and that, having been taken out of an anonymous comedy, he has been

weakened.”

Falstaff, like all Shakespeare’s characters, was taken from a play by

an unknown author, written about a real person, a Sir John Oldcastle,

who was the friend of some Duke. This Oldcastle had once been accused

of heresy, but had been saved by his friend the Duke. But afterwards

he was condemned and burnt at the stake for his religious beliefs,

which clashed with Catholicism. To please the Roman Catholic public

an unknown author wrote a play about Oldcastle, ridiculing this

martyr for his faith and exhibiting him as a worthless man, a boon

companion of the Duke; and from this play Shakespeare took not only

the character of Falstaff but also his own humorous attitude towards

him. In the first plays of Shakespeare’s in which this character

appears he was called Oldcastle; but afterwards, when under Elizabeth

Protestantism had again triumphed, it was awkward to mock at this

martyr of the struggle with Catholicism, and besides, Oldcastle’s

relatives had protested, and Shakespeare changed the name from

Oldcastle to Falstaff--also an historical character, notorious for

having run away at the battle of Agincourt.

Falstaff is really a thoroughly natural and characteristic

personage, almost the only natural and characteristic one depicted

by Shakespeare. And he is natural and characteristic because, of

all Shakespeare’s characters, he alone speaks in a way proper to

himself. He speaks in a manner proper to himself because he talks

just that Shakespearean language, filled with jests that lack humour

and unamusing puns, which, while unnatural to all Shakespeare’s

other characters, is quite in harmony with the boastful, distorted,

perverted character of the drunken Falstaff. That is the only reason

why this figure really presents a definite character. Unfortunately

the artistic effect of the character is spoilt by the fact that it

is so repulsive in its gluttony, drunkenness, debauchery, rascality,

mendacity, and cowardice, that it is difficult to share the feeling

of merry humour Shakespeare adopts towards it. Such is the case with

Falstaff.

But in none of Shakespeare’s figures is, I will not say his inability

but his complete indifference, to giving his people characters so

strikingly noticeable as in the case of _Hamlet_, and with no other

of Shakespeare’s works is the blind worship of Shakespeare so

strikingly noticeable--that unreasoning hypnotism which does not even

admit the thought that any production of his can be other than a work

of genius, or that any leading character in a drama of his can fail

to be the expression of a new and profoundly conceived character.

Shakespeare takes the ancient story--not at all bad of its

kind--relating: _avec quelle ruse Amlet qui depuis fût Roy de

Dannemarch, vengea la mort de son père Horwendille, occis par Fengon,

son frère, et autre occurrence de son histoire_, or a drama that was

written on the same theme fifteen years before him; and he writes his

play on this subject introducing inappropriately (as he constantly

does) into the mouth of the chief character all such thoughts of his

own as seem to him worthy of attention. Putting these thoughts into

his hero’s mouth: about life (the grave-diggers); about death (“To

be or not to be”); those he had expressed in his sixty-sixth sonnet

about the theatre and about women--he did not at all concern himself

as to the circumstances under which these speeches are delivered, and

it naturally results that the person uttering these various thoughts

becomes a mere phonograph of Shakespeare, deprived of any character

of his own; and his actions and words do not agree.

In the legend Hamlet’s personality is quite intelligible: he is

revolted by the conduct of his uncle and his mother, wishes to be

revenged on them, but fears that his uncle may kill him as he had

killed his father, and therefore pretends to be mad, wishing to wait

and observe all that was going on at court. But his uncle and his

mother, being afraid of him, wish to find out whether he is feigning,

or is really mad, and send a girl he loves to him. He keeps up his

rôle, and afterwards sees his mother alone, kills a courtier who was

eavesdropping, and convicts his mother of her sin. Then he is sent to

England. He intercepts letters, returns from England, and revenges

himself on his enemies, burning them all.

This is all intelligible and flows from Hamlet’s character and

position. But Shakespeare, by putting into Hamlet’s mouth speeches he

wished to publish and making him perform actions he needed to secure

effective scenes, destroys all that forms Hamlet’s character in the

legend. Throughout the whole tragedy Hamlet does not do what he

might wish to do, but what is needed for the author’s plans: now he

is frightened by his father’s ghost, and now he begins to chaff it,

calling it “old mole”; now he loves Ophelia, now he teases her, and

so on. There is no possibility of finding any explanation of Hamlet’s

actions and speeches, and therefore no possibility of attributing any

character to him.

But as it is accepted that Shakespeare, the genius, could write

nothing bad, learned men devote all the power of their minds to

discovering extraordinary beauties in what is an obvious and glaring

defect--particularly obvious in Hamlet--namely, that the chief person

in the play has no character at all. And, lo and behold, profound

critics announce that in this drama, in the person of Hamlet, is

most powerfully presented a perfectly new and profound character,

consisting in this, that the person has no character; and that in

this absence of character lies an achievement of genius--the creation

of a profound character! And having decided this, the learned critics

write volumes upon volumes, until the laudations and explanations

of the grandeur and importance of depicting the character of a man

without a character fill whole libraries. It is true that some

critics timidly express the thought that there is something strange

about this person, and that Hamlet is an unsolved riddle; but no one

ventures to say, as in Hans Andersen’s story, that the king is naked;

that it is clear as day that Shakespeare was unable, and did not

even wish, to give Hamlet any character and did not even understand

that this was necessary! And learned critics continue to study and

praise this enigmatical production, which reminds one of the famous

inscribed stone found by Pickwick at a cottage doorstep,--which

divided the scientific world into two hostile camps.

So that neither the character of Lear, nor of Othello, nor of

Falstaff, and still less of Hamlet, at all confirms the existing

opinion that Shakespeare’s strength lies in the delineation of

character.

If in Shakespeare’s plays some figures are met with that have

characteristic traits (mostly secondary figures as Polonius in

_Hamlet_, and Portia in _The Merchant of Venice_) these few life-like

figures--among the five hundred or more secondary figures, and with

the complete absence of character in the principal figures--are far

from proving that the excellence of Shakespeare’s dramas lies in the

presentation of character.

That a great mastery in the presentation of character is attributed

to Shakespeare arises from his really possessing a peculiarity

which, when helped out by the play of good actors, may appear to

superficial observers to be a capacity to manage scenes in which a

movement of feeling is expressed. However arbitrary the positions in

which he puts his characters, however unnatural to them the language

he makes them speak, however lacking in individuality they may be,

the movement of feeling itself, its increase and change and the

combination of many contrary feelings, are often expressed correctly

and powerfully in some of Shakespeare’s scenes. And this, when

performed by good actors, evokes, if but for a while, sympathy for

the persons represented.

Shakespeare, himself an actor and a clever man, knew not only by

speeches but by exclamations, gestures, and the repetition of words,

how to express the state of mind and changes of feeling occurring

in the persons represented. So that in many places Shakespeare’s

characters instead of speaking, merely exclaim, or weep, or in

the midst of a monologue indicate the pain of their position by

gesture (as when Lear asks to have a button undone), or at a moment

of strong excitement they repeat a question several times and cause

a word to be repeated which strikes them, as is done by Othello,

Macduff, Cleopatra, and others. Similar clever methods of expressing

a movement of feeling--giving good actors a chance to show their

powers--have often been taken by many critics for the expression of

character. But however strongly the play of feeling may be expressed

in one scene, a single scene cannot give the character of a person,

when, after the appropriate exclamations or gesture, that person

begins to talk lengthily not in a natural manner proper to him, but

according to the author’s whim--uttering things unnecessary and not

in harmony with his character.

V

“Well, but the profound utterances and sayings delivered by

Shakespeare’s characters?” Shakespeare’s eulogists will exclaim.

“Lear’s monologue on punishment, Kent’s on vengeance, Edgar’s on his

former life, Gloucester’s reflections on the perversity of fate, and

in other dramas the famous monologues of Hamlet, Antony and others?”

Thoughts and sayings may be appreciated, I reply, in prose works,

in essays, in collections of aphorisms, but not in artistic

dramatic works the aim of which is to elicit sympathy with what is

represented. And therefore the monologues and sayings of Shakespeare,

even if they contained many very profound and fresh thoughts, which

is not the case, cannot constitute the excellence of an artistic and

poetic work. On the contrary, these speeches, uttered in unnatural

conditions, can only spoil artistic works.

An artistic poetic work, especially a drama, should first of all

evoke in reader or spectator the illusion that what the persons

represented are living through and experiencing, is being lived

through and experienced by himself. And for this purpose it is not

more important for the dramatist to know precisely what he should

make his acting characters do and say, than it is to know what he

should not make them say and do so as not to infringe the reader’s

or spectator’s illusion. However eloquent and profound they may

be, speeches put into the mouths of acting characters if they are

superfluous and do not accord with the situation and the characters,

infringe the main condition of dramatic work--the illusion causing

the reader or spectator to experience the feelings of the persons

represented. One may without infringing the illusion leave much

unsaid: the reader or spectator will himself supply what is needed

and sometimes as a result of this his illusion is even increased; but

to say what is superfluous is like jerking and scattering a statue

made up of small pieces, or taking the lamp out of a magic lantern.

The reader’s or spectator’s attention is distracted, the reader sees

the author, the spectator sees the actor, the illusion is lost, and

to recreate it is sometimes impossible. And therefore without a sense

of proportion there cannot be an artist, especially a dramatist. And

Shakespeare is entirely devoid of this feeling.

Shakespeare’s characters continually do and say what is not merely

unnatural to them but quite unnecessary. I will not cite examples

of this, for I think that a man who does not himself perceive this

striking defect in all Shakespeare’s dramas will not be convinced

by any possible examples or proofs. It is sufficient to read _King

Lear_ alone, with the madness, the murders, the plucking out of eyes,

Gloucester’s jump, the poisonings, and the torrents of abuse--not to

mention _Pericles_, _A Winter’s Tale_--or _The Tempest_, to convince

oneself of this. Only a man quite devoid of the sense of proportion

and taste could produce the types of _Titus Andronicus_ and _Troilus

and Cressida_, and so mercilessly distort the old drama of _King

Leir_.

Gervinus tries to prove that Shakespeare possessed a feeling of

beauty, _Schönheit’s Sinn_, but all Gervinus’s proofs only show

that he himself, Gervinus, completely lacked it. In Shakespeare

everything is exaggerated: the actions are exaggerated, so are their

consequences, the speeches of the characters are exaggerated, and

therefore at every step the possibility of artistic impression is

infringed.

Whatever people may say, however they may be enraptured by

Shakespeare’s works, whatever merits they may attribute to them, it

is certain that he was not an artist, and that his works are not

artistic productions. Without a sense of proportion there never was

or could be an artist, just as without a sense of rhythm there cannot

be a musician. And Shakespeare may be anything you like--only not an

artist.

“But one must not forget the times in which Shakespeare wrote,” says

his belauders. “It was a time of cruel and coarse manners, a time

of the then fashionable euphuism, that is, an artificial manner of

speech--a time of forms of life strange to us, and therefore to judge

Shakespeare one must keep in view the times when he wrote. In Homer,

as in Shakespeare, there is much that is strange to us, but this does

not prevent our valuing the beauties of Homer,” say the belauders.

But when one compares Shakespeare with Homer, as Gervinus does, the

infinite distance separating true poetry from its imitation emerges

with special vividness. However distant Homer is from us, we can

without the slightest effort transport ourselves into the life he

describes. And we are thus transported chiefly because, however alien

to us may be the events Homer describes, he believes in what he says

and speaks seriously of what he is describing, and therefore he never

exaggerates and the sense of measure never deserts him. And therefore

it happens that, not to speak of the wonderfully distinct, life-like,

and excellent characters of Achilles, Hector, Priam, Odysseus, and

the eternally touching scenes of Hector’s farewell, of Priam’s

embassy, of the return of Odysseus, and so forth, the whole of the

_Iliad_ and particularly the _Odyssey_, is as naturally close to us

all as if we had lived and were now living among the gods and heroes.

But it is not so with Shakespeare. From his first words exaggeration

is seen: exaggeration of events, exaggeration of feeling, and

exaggeration of expressions. It is at once evident that he does

not believe in what he is saying, that he doesn’t need it, that he

is inventing the occurrences he describes, is indifferent to his

characters, and has devised them merely for the stage, and therefore

makes them do and say what may strike his public; and so we do not

believe either in the events, or in the actions, or in the sufferings

of his characters. Nothing so clearly shows the complete absence of

esthetic feeling in Shakespeare, as a comparison between him and

Homer. The works which we call the works of Homer, are artistic,

poetic, original works, lived through by their author or authors.

But Shakespeare’s works are compositions devised for a particular

purpose and having absolutely nothing in common with art or poetry.

VI

But perhaps the loftiness of Shakespeare’s conception of life

is such as, even though he does not satisfy the demands of

esthetics, discloses to us so new and important a view of life

that in consideration of its value all his artistic defects become

unnoticeable. This is indeed what some belauders of Shakespeare say.

Gervinus plainly says that besides Shakespeare’s significance in the

sphere of dramatic poetry, in which in his opinion he is the equal

of “Homer in the sphere of the epic; Shakespeare being the greatest

judge of the human soul, is a teacher of most indisputable ethical

authority, and the most select leader in the world and in life.”

In what then does this indubitable authority of the most select

teacher in the world and in life consist? Gervinus devotes the

concluding chapter of his second volume (some fifty pages) to an

explanation of this.

The ethical authority of this supreme teacher of life, in the opinion

of Gervinus, consists in the following: “Shakespeare’s moral view

starts from the simple point,” says Gervinus, “that man is born with

powers of activity,” and therefore, first of all, says Gervinus,

Shakespeare regarded it as “an obligation to use our inherent power

of action.” (As if it were possible for man not to act!)[140]

“_Die thatkräftigen Männer, Fortinbras, Bolingbroke, Alcibiades,

Octavius spielen hier die gegensätzlichen Rollen gegen die

verschiedenen Thatlosen; nicht ihre Charaktere verdienen ihnen

Allen ihr Glück und Gedeihen etwa durch eine grosse Ueberlegenheit

ihre Natur, sondern trotz ihrer geringern Anlage stellt sich

ihre Thatkraft an sich über die Unthätigkeit der Anderen hinaus,

gleichviel aus wie schöner Quelle diese Passivität, aus wie

schlechter jene Thatigkeit fliesse._”[141]

That is to say, that active people like Fortinbras, Bolingbroke,

Alcibiades and Octavius, Gervinus informs us, are contrasted by

Shakespeare with various characters who do not display energetic

activity. And, according to Shakespeare, happiness and success are

attained by people who possess this active character, not at all as

a result of their superiority of nature. On the contrary, in spite

of their inferior talents, their energy in itself always gives them

the advantage over the inactive people, no matter whether their

inactivity results from excellent impulses, or the activity of the

others from base ones. Activity is good, inactivity is evil. Activity

transforms evil into good, says Shakespeare, according to Gervinus.

“Shakespeare prefers the principle of Alexander to that of Diogenes,”

says Gervinus. In other words, according to him, Shakespeare prefers

death and murder from ambition, to self-restraint and wisdom.[142]

According to Gervinus, Shakespeare considers that humanity should

not set itself ideals, but that all that is necessary is healthy

activity, and a golden mean in everything. Indeed Shakespeare is so

imbued with this wise moderation that, in the words of Gervinus,

he even allows himself to deny Christian morality, which makes

exaggerated demands on human nature. “How thoroughly penetrated

Shakespeare was with this principle of wise moderation,” says

Gervinus, “is shewn perhaps most strongly in this, that he ventured

even to oppose Christian laws which demand an overstraining of

human nature; for he approved not that the limits of duty should be

extended beyond the intention of nature. He taught therefore the

wise and human medium between the Christian and heathen precepts”

(p. 917)--a reasonable mean, natural to man, between Christian and

pagan injunctions--on the one hand, love of one’s enemies, and on the

other, hatred of them!

“That it is possible to do too much in good things, is an express

doctrine of Shakespeare, both in word and example.... Thus excessive

liberality ruins Timon, whilst moderate generosity keeps Antonio in

honour; the genuine ambition which makes Henry V great overthrows

Percy, in whom it rises too high. Exaggerated virtue brings Angelo

to ruin; and when in those near him the excess of punishment proves

harmful and cannot hinder sin, then mercy, the most Godlike gift

that man possesses, is also exhibited in its excess, as the producer

of sin.”

Shakespeare, says Gervinus, taught that one _may do too much good_.

He teaches, says Gervinus, “that morality, like politics, is a matter

so complicated with relations, conditions of life, and motives, that

it is impossible to bring it to final principles” (p. 918).

“In Shakespeare’s opinion (and here also he is one with Bacon and

Aristotle) there is no positive law of religion or morals which could

form a rule of moral action in precepts ever binding and suitable for

all cases.”

Gervinus most clearly expresses Shakespeare’s whole moral theory by

saying that Shakespeare does not write for those classes for whom

definite religious principles and laws are suitable (that is to say,

for 999 out of 1000 of mankind), but for the cultivated, who have

made their own a healthy tact in life and such an instinctive feeling

as, united with conscience reason and will, can direct them to worthy

aims of life. But even for these fortunate ones, in the opinion of

Gervinus, this teaching may be dangerous if it is taken incompletely.

It must be taken whole. “There are classes,” says Gervinus, “whose

morality is best provided for by the positive letter of religion and

law; but for such as these Shakespeare’s writings are in themselves

inaccessible; they are only readable and comprehensible to the

cultivated, of whom it can be required that they should appropriate

to themselves the healthy measure of life, and that self-reliance

in which the guiding and inherent powers of conscience and reason,

united with the will, are, when consciously apprehended, worthy aims

of life” (p. 919). “But even for the cultivated also, Shakespeare’s

doctrine may not always be without danger.... The condition on which

his doctrine is entirely harmless is this, that it should be fully

and completely received and without any expurging and separating.

Then it is not only without danger, but it is also more unmistakable

and more infallible, and therefore more worthy of our confidence,

than any system of morality can be,” (p. 919).

And in order to accept it all, one should understand that according

to his teaching it is insane and harmful for an individual to rise

against, or “disregard the bonds of religion and the state” (p. 921).

For Shakespeare would abhor a free and independent personality who

strong in spirit should oppose any law in politics or morals and

should disregard the union of the state and religion “which has kept

society together for centuries” (p. 921). “For in his opinion the

practical wisdom of man would have no higher aim than to carry into

society the utmost possible nature and freedom, but for that very

reason, and that he might maintain sacred and inviolable the natural

laws of society, he would respect existing forms, yet at the same

time penetrate into their rational substance with sound criticism,

not forgetting nature in civilization, nor, equally, civilization

in nature.” Property, the family, the state, are sacred. But the

aspiration to recognize the equality of man, is insane. “It’s

realization would bring the greatest harm to humanity” (p. 925).

“No man has fought more strongly against rank and class prejudices,

than Shakespeare, but how could his liberal principles have been

pleased with the doctrines of those who would have done away with

the prejudices of the rich and cultivated, only to replace them

with the interests and prejudices of the poor and uncultivated? How

would this man, who allures so eloquently to the course of honour,

have approved, if in annulling rank, degrees of merit, distinction,

we extinguish every impulse to greatness, and by the removal of

all degrees, ‘shake the ladder to all high designs’? If indeed

no surreptitious honour and false power were longer to oppress

mankind, how would the poet have acknowledged the most fearful force

of all, the power of barbarity? In consequence of these modern

doctrines of equality, he would have apprehended that everything

would resolve itself into power; or if this were not the final lot

which awaited mankind from these aspirations after equality, if love

between nationalities and endless peace were not that ‘nothing’ of

impossibility, as Alonso expresses it in the _Tempest_, but could be

an actual fruit of these efforts after equality, then the poet would

have believed with this time the old age and decrepitude of the world

to have arrived, in which it were worthless to the active to live”

(p. 925).

Such is Shakespeare’s view of life as explained by his greatest

exponent and admirer. Another of the recent belauders of Shakespeare,

Brandes, adds the following:

“No one, of course, can preserve his life quite pure from injustice,

from deception, and from doing harm to others, but injustice and

deception are not always vices, and even the harm done to other

people is not always a vice: it is often only a necessity, a

legitimate weapon, a right. At bottom, Shakespeare had always held

that there were no such things as unconditional duties and absolute

prohibitions. He had never, for example, questioned Hamlet’s right

to kill the King, scarcely even his right to run his sword through

Polonius. Nevertheless he had hitherto been unable to conquer a

feeling of indignation and disgust when he saw around him nothing

but breaches of the simplest moral laws. Now, on the other hand, the

dim divinations of his earlier years crystallised in his mind into

a coherent body of thought: no commandment is unconditional; it is

not in the observance or non-observance of an external fiat that

the merits of an action, to say nothing of a character, consists:

everything depends upon the volitional substance into which the

individual, as a responsible agent, transmits the formal imperative

at the moment of decision.”[143]

In other words Shakespeare now sees clearly that the morality of

the aim is the only true, the only possible one; so that, according

to Brandes, Shakespeare’s fundamental principle, for which he is

extolled, is that _the end justifies the means_. Action at all costs,

the absence of all ideals, moderation in everything, the maintenance

of established forms of life, and the maxim that “the end justifies

the means.”

If one adds to this a Chauvinistic English patriotism, expressed

in all his historical plays: a patriotism according to which the

English throne is something sacred, the English always defeat the

French, slaughtering thousands and losing only scores, Jeanne d’Arc

is a witch, Hector and all the Trojans--from whom the English are

descended--are heroes while the Greeks are cowards and traitors, and

so forth: this is the view of life of the wisest teacher of life

according to his greatest admirer. And anyone who reads attentively

the works of Shakespeare cannot but acknowledge that the attribution

of this view of life to Shakespeare by those who praise him is

perfectly correct.

The value of every poetical work depends on three qualities:

1) The content of the work: the more important the content, that is

to say, the more important it is for the life of man, the greater is

the work.

2) The external beauty achieved by the technical methods proper to

the particular kind of art. Thus in dramatic art the technical method

will be: that the characters should have a true individuality of

their own, a natural and at the same time a touching plot, a correct

presentation on the stage of the manifestation and development of

feelings, and a sense of proportion in all that is presented.

3) Sincerity, that is to say that the author should himself vividly

feel what he expresses. Without this condition there can be no work

of art, as the essence of art consists in the infection of the

contemplator of a work by the author’s feeling. If the author has

not felt what he is expressing, the recipient cannot become infected

by the author’s feeling, he does not experience any feeling, and the

production cannot be classed as a work of art.

The content of Shakespeare’s plays, as is seen by the explanations

of his greatest admirers, is the lowest, most vulgar view of life,

which regards the external elevation of the great ones of the earth

as a genuine superiority; despises the crowd, that is to say, the

working classes; and repudiates not only religious, but even any

humanitarian, efforts directed towards the alteration of the existing

order of society.

The second condition is also absent in Shakespeare except in his

handling of scenes in which a movement of feelings is expressed.

There is in his works a lack of naturalness in the situations, the

characters lack individuality of speech, and a sense of proportion is

also wanting, without which such works cannot be artistic.

The third and chief condition--sincerity--is totally absent in

all Shakespeare’s works. One sees in all of them an intentional

artificiality; it is obvious that he is not in earnest but is playing

with words.

VII

The works of Shakespeare do not meet the demands of every art, and

besides that their tendency is very low and immoral. What then is the

meaning of the immense fame these works have enjoyed for more than a

hundred years?

To reply to this question seems the more difficult because if the

works of Shakespeare had any kind of excellence, the achievement

which has produced the exaggerated praise lavished upon them, would

at least be to some extent intelligible. But here two extremes

meet: works which are beneath criticism, insignificant, empty, and

immoral--and insensate, universal laudation, proclaiming these works

to be above everything that has ever been produced by man.

How is this to be explained?

Many times during my life I have had occasion to discuss Shakespeare

with his admirers, not only with people little sensitive to poetry,

but also with those who felt poetic beauty keenly, such as Turgénev,

Fet,[144] and others, and each time I have encountered one and

the same attitude towards my disagreement with the belaudment of

Shakespeare.

I was not answered when I pointed out Shakespeare’s defects; they

only pitied me for my want of comprehension and urged on me the

necessity of acknowledging the extraordinary supernatural grandeur

of Shakespeare. They did not explain to me in what the beauties of

Shakespeare consist, but were merely indefinitely and exaggeratedly

enthusiastic about the whole of Shakespeare, extolling some favourite

passages: the undoing of Lear’s button, Falstaff’s lying, Lady

Macbeth’s spot which would not wash out, Hamlet’s address to the

ghost of his father, the “forty thousand brothers,” “none does

offend, none, I say none,” and so forth.

“Open Shakespeare,” I used to say to these admirers of his, “where

you will or as may chance, and you will see that you will never

find ten consecutive lines that are comprehensible, natural,

characteristic of the person who utters them, and productive of an

artistic impression.” (Anyone may make this experiment.) And the

belauders of Shakespeare opened pages in Shakespeare’s dramas by

chance, or at their own choice, and without paying any attention

to the reasons I adduced as to why the ten lines selected did not

meet the most elementary demands of esthetics or good sense, praised

the very things that appeared to me absurd, unintelligible, and

inartistic.

So that in general in response to my endeavours to obtain from

the worshippers of Shakespeare an explanation of his greatness, I

encountered precisely the attitude I have usually met with, and

still meet, from the defenders of any dogmas accepted not on the

basis of reason but in mere credulity. And just this attitude of the

belauders of Shakespeare towards him--an attitude which may be met

with in all the indefinite, misty articles about Shakespeare, and in

conversations about him, gave me the key to an understanding of the

cause of Shakespeare’s fame. There is only one explanation of this

astonishing fame: it is one of those epidemic suggestions to which

people always have been and are liable. Such irrational suggestion

has always existed, and does exist in all spheres of life. Glaring

examples of such suggestion, considerable in scope and deceptiveness,

were the mediæval Crusades, which influenced not only adults but

also children, and many other epidemic suggestions astonishing in

their senselessness, such as the belief in witches, in the utility

of torture for the discovery of truth, the search for the elixir of

life, for the philosopher’s stone, and the passion for tulips valued

at several thousand guilders a bulb, which overran Holland. There

always have been and always are such irrational suggestions in all

spheres of human life--religious, philosophic, economic, scientific,

artistic, and in literature generally, and people only see clearly

the insanity of such suggestions after they are freed from them. But

as long as they are under their influence these suggestions appear

to them such undoubted truths that they do not consider it necessary

or possible to reason about them. Since the development of the

printing-press these epidemics have become particularly striking.

Since the development of the press it has come about that as soon

as, from accidental circumstances, something obtains a special

significance, the organs of the press immediately announce this

significance. And as soon as the press has put forward the importance

of the matter, the public directs yet more attention to it. The

hypnotization of the public incites the press to regard the thing

more attentively and in greater detail. The interest of the public is

still further increased, and the organs of the press, competing one

with another, respond to the public demand.

The public becomes yet more interested, and the press attributes

yet more importance to the matter; so that this importance, growing

ever greater and greater like a snowball, obtains a quite unnatural

appreciation, and this appreciation, exaggerated even to absurdity,

maintains itself as long as the outlook on life of the leaders of

the press and of the public remains the same. There are in our day

innumerable examples of such a misunderstanding of the importance

of the most insignificant occurrences, occasioned by the mutual

reaction of press and public. A striking example of this was the

excitement which seized the whole world over the Dreyfus affair.

A suspicion arose that some captain on the French staff had been

guilty of treason. Whether because this captain was a Jew, or from

some special internal party disagreements in French society, this

event, which resembled others that continually occur without arousing

anyone’s attention and without interesting the whole world or even

the French military, was given a somewhat prominent position by the

press. The public paid attention to it. The organs of the press,

vying with one another, began to describe, to analyse, to discuss the

event, the public became yet more interested, the press responded

to the demands of the public, and the snowball began to grow and

grow, and grew before our eyes to such an extent that there was not

a family which had not its disputes about _l’affaire_. So that Caran

d’Ache’s caricature, which depicted first a peaceful family that had

decided not to discuss the Dreyfus affair any more, and then the

same family represented as angry furies fighting one another, quite

correctly depicted the relation of the whole reading world to the

Dreyfus question. Men of other nationalities who could not have any

real interest in the question whether a French officer had or had not

been a traitor--men moreover who could not know how the affair was

going--all divided for or against Dreyfus, some asserting his guilt

with assurance, others denying it with equal certainty.

It was only after some years that people began to awaken from the

“suggestion” and to understand that they could not possibly know

whether he was guilty or innocent, and that each one of them had

a thousand matters nearer and more interesting to him than the

Dreyfus affair. Such infatuations occur in all spheres, but they

are specially noticeable in the sphere of literature, for the press

naturally occupies itself most of all with the affairs of the press,

and these are particularly powerful in our day when the press has

obtained such an unnatural development. It continually happens that

people suddenly begin to devote exaggerated praise to some very

insignificant works, and then if these works do not correspond to the

prevailing view of life suddenly become perfectly indifferent to them

and forget both the works themselves and their own previous attitude

towards them.

So within my recollection, in the eighteen-forties, there occurred in

the artistic sphere the exaltation and laudation of Eugène Sue and

George Sand; in the social sphere, of Fourier; in the philosophic

sphere, of Comte and Hegel; and in the scientific sphere, of Darwin.

Sue is quite forgotten, George Sand is being forgotten and replaced

by the writings of Zola and the Decadents, Baudelaire, Verlaine,

Maeterlinck and others. Fourier, with his phalansteries, is quite

forgotten, and has been replaced by Karl Marx. Hegel, who justified

the existing order, and Comte, who denied the necessity of religious

activity in humanity, and Darwin, with his law of struggle for

existence, still maintain their places, but are beginning to be

neglected and replaced by the teachings of Nietzsche, which though

perfectly absurd, unthought-out, obscure, and bad in their content,

correspond better to the present-day outlook on life. Thus it

sometimes happens that artistic, philosophic, and literary crazes in

general, arise, fall rapidly, and are forgotten.

But it also happens that such crazes, having arisen in consequence of

special causes accidentally favouring their establishment, correspond

so well to the view of life diffused in society and especially in

literary circles, that they maintain their place for a very long

time. Even in Roman times it was remarked that books have their fate,

and often a very strange one: failure in spite of high qualities,

and enormous undeserved success in spite of insignificance. And a

proverb was made: _Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli_, that

is, that the fate of books depends on the understanding of those who

read them. Such was the correspondence of Shakespeare’s work to the

view of life of the people among whom his fame arose. And this fame

has been maintained, and is still maintained, because the works of

Shakespeare continue to correspond to the view of life of those who

maintain this fame.

Until the end of the 18th century Shakespeare not only had no

particular fame in England, but was estimated less than his

contemporaries: Ben Jonson, Fletcher, Beaumont, and others. His fame

began in Germany, and from there passed to England. This happened

for the following reason:

Art, especially dramatic art which demands for its realisation

extensive preparations, expenditure, and labour, was always

religious, that is to say, its object was to evoke in man a clearer

conception of that relation of man to God attained at the time by the

advanced members of the society in which the art was produced.

So it should be by the nature of the matter, and so it always had

been among all nations: among the Egyptians, Hindoos, Chinese,

and Greeks--from the earliest time that we have knowledge of the

life of man. And it has always happened that, with the coarsening

of religious forms, art had more and more diverged from this

original aim (which had caused it to be recognised as an important

matter--almost an act of worship) and instead of the service of

religion, it adopted instead of religious aims worldly aims for the

satisfaction of the demands of the crowd, or of the great ones of the

earth, that is to say, aims of recreation and amusement.

This deflection of art from its true and high vocation occurred

everywhere, and it occurred in Christendom.

The first manifestation of Christian art was in the worship of God in

the temples: the performance of Mass and, in general, of the liturgy.

When in course of time the forms of this art of divine worship

became insufficient, the Mysteries were produced, depicting those

events regarded as most important in the Christian religious view

of life. Afterwards, when in the 13th and 14th centuries the centre

of gravity of Christian teaching was more and more transferred from

the worship of Jesus as God, to the explanation of his teaching and

its fulfilment, the form of the Mysteries, which depicted external

Christian events, became insufficient and new forms were demanded;

and as an expression of this tendency appeared the Moralities,

dramatic representations in which the characters personified the

Christian virtues and the opposite vices.

But allegories by their very nature, as art of a lower order, could

not replace the former religious drama, and no new form of dramatic

art corresponding to the conception of Christianity as a teaching

of life had yet been found. And dramatic art, lacking a religious

basis, began in all Christian countries more and more to deviate from

its purpose, and instead of a service of God became a service of

the crowd (I mean by “crowd” not merely the common people, but the

majority of immoral or non-moral people indifferent to the higher

problems of human life). This deviation was helped on by the fact

that just at that time the Greek thinkers, poets, and dramatists,

with whom the Christian world had not hitherto been acquainted, were

re-discovered and favourably accepted. And therefore, not having

yet had time to work out for themselves a clear and satisfactory

form of dramatic art suitable to the new conception entertained of

Christianity as a teaching of life, and at the same time recognising

the previous Mysteries and Moralities as insufficient, the writers of

the 15th and 16th centuries, in their search for a new form, began

to imitate the newly discovered Greek models, which were attractive

by their elegance and novelty. And as it was chiefly the great ones

of the earth who could avail themselves of the drama--the kings,

princes, and courtiers--the least religious people, not merely quite

indifferent to questions of religion but for the most part thoroughly

depraved--it followed that to satisfy the demands of its public the

drama of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries was chiefly a spectacle

intended for depraved kings and for the upper classes. Such was the

drama of Spain, England, Italy, and France.

The plays of that time, chiefly composed in all these countries

according to ancient Greek models, from poems, legends, and

biographies, naturally reflected the national characters. In Italy

what was chiefly elaborated were comedies with amusing scenes and

characters. In Spain the worldly drama flourished, with complicated

plots and ancient historical heroes. The peculiarity of English drama

was the coarse effects produced by murders, executions, and battles

on the stage, and popular comic interludes. Neither the Italian, nor

the Spanish, nor the English, drama had European fame, and each of

them enjoyed success only in its own country. General fame, thanks

to the elegance of its language and the talent of its writers, was

enjoyed only by the French drama, which was distinguished by strict

adherence to the Greek models, and especially to the law of the three

Unities.

So matters continued till the end of the 18th century, but at

the end of that century this is what happened: in Germany which

lacked even mediocre dramatists, (though there had been a weak and

little known writer, Hans Sachs), all educated people, including

Frederick the Great, bowed down before the French pseudo-classical

drama. And yet at that very time there appeared in Germany a

circle of educated and talented writers and poets who, feeling

the falsity and coldness of the French drama, sought a newer and

freer dramatic form. The members of this group, like all the upper

classes of the Christian world at that time, were under the charm

and influence of the Greek classics and, being utterly indifferent

to religious questions, thought that if the Greek drama depicting

the calamities, sufferings, and struggles of its heroes supplied

the best model for the drama, then for drama in the Christian world

such representation of the sufferings and struggles of heroes would

also be a sufficient subject, if only one rejected the narrow

demands of pseudo-classicism. These men, not understanding that the

sufferings and strife of their heroes had a religious significance

for the Greeks, imagined that it was only necessary to reject the

inconvenient law of the three Unities, and without containing any

religious element corresponding to the beliefs of their own time,

the representation of various incidents in the lives of historic

personages, and of strong human passions in general would afford a

sufficient basis for the drama. Just such a drama existed at that

time among the kindred English people and, becoming acquainted with

it, the Germans decided that just such should be the drama of the new

period.

The masterly development of the scenes, which constitutes

Shakespeare’s speciality, caused them to select Shakespeare’s dramas

from among all other English plays which were not in the least

inferior, but often superior, to Shakespeare’s.

At the head of the circle stood Goethe, who was then the dictator of

public opinion on esthetic questions. And he it was--partly from a

wish to destroy the fascination of the false French art, partly from

a wish to give freer scope to his own dramatic activity, but chiefly

because his view of life agreed with Shakespeare’s--he it was who

acclaimed Shakespeare a great poet. When that falsehood had been

proclaimed on Goethe’s authority, all those esthetic critics who did

not understand art threw themselves upon it like crows upon carrion,

and began to search Shakespeare for non-existent beauties, and to

extol them. These men, German esthetic critics--for the most part

utterly devoid of esthetic feeling, ignorant of that simple direct

artistic impression which for men with a feeling for art clearly

distinguishes artistic impression from all other, but believing the

authority that had proclaimed Shakespeare as a great poet--began to

belaud the whole of Shakespeare indiscriminately, selecting passages

especially which struck them by their effects or expressed thoughts

corresponding to their own view of life, imagining that such effects

and such thoughts constitute the essence of what is called art.

These men acted as blind men would if they tried by touch to select

diamonds out of a heap of stones they fingered. As the blind man,

long sorting out the many little stones, could finally come to no

other conclusion than that all the stones were precious and the

smoothest were especially precious, so the esthetic critics, deprived

of artistic feeling, could come to no other result about Shakespeare.

To make their praise of the whole of Shakespeare more convincing

they composed an esthetic theory, according to which a definite

religious view of life is not at all necessary for the creation of

works of art in general, or for the drama in particular; that for

the inner content of a play it is quite enough to depict passions

and human characters, that not only is no religious illumination of

the matter presented required, but that art ought to be objective,

that is to say, it should depict occurrences quite independently of

any valuation of what is good or bad. And as this theory was educed

from Shakespeare, it naturally happened that the works of Shakespeare

corresponded to this theory, and were therefore the height of

perfection.

And these were the people chiefly responsible for Shakespeare’s fame.

Chiefly in consequence of their writings, the inter-action of

writers and the public came about which found expression, and is

still expressed, by the insensate belaudment of Shakespeare without

any rational basis. These esthetic critics wrote profound treatises

about Shakespeare (eleven thousand volumes have been written about

him, and a whole science of Shakespeareology has been formulated);

the public became more and more interested, and the learned critics

explained more and more, that is to say, they added to the confusion

and belaudment.

So that the first cause of Shakespeare’s fame was that the Germans

wanted to oppose something freer and more alive to the French drama

of which they were tired, and which was really dull and cold. The

second cause was that the young German writers required a model for

their own dramas. The third and chief cause was the activity of the

learned and zealous esthetic German critics who lacked esthetic

feeling and formulated the theory of objective art, that is to say,

deliberately repudiated the religious essence of the drama.

“But,” I shall be asked, “what do you mean by the words ‘religious

essence of the drama’? Is not what you demand for the drama

religious instruction, didactics: what is called a tendency--which

is incompatible with true art?” By “the religious essence of art,”

I reply, I mean not an external inculcation of any religious truth

in artistic guise, and not an allegorical representation of those

truths, but the expression of a definite view of life corresponding

to the highest religious understanding of a given period: an outlook

which, serving as the impelling motive for the composition of the

drama, permeates the whole work though the author is unconscious of

it. So it has always been with true art, and so it is with every true

artist in general and with dramatists especially. Hence, as happened

when the drama was a serious thing, and as should be according

to the essence of the matter, he alone can write a drama who has

something to say to men--something highly important for them--about

man’s relation to God, to the universe, to all that is infinite and

unending.

But when, thanks to the German theories about objective art, an idea

had been established that, for drama, this is not wanted at all,

then a writer like Shakespeare who in his own soul had not formed

religious convictions corresponding to his period, and who had even

no convictions at all, but piled up in his plays all possible events,

horrors, fooleries, discussions, and effects, could evidently be

accepted as the greatest of dramatic geniuses.

But all these are external reasons: the fundamental inner cause of

Shakespeare’s fame was, and is, that his plays fitted _pro captu

lectoris_, that is to say responded to the irreligious and immoral

attitude of the upper classes of our world.

VIII

A series of accidents brought it about that Goethe at the beginning

of the last century, being the dictator of philosophic thought and

esthetic laws, praised Shakespeare; the esthetic critics caught up

that praise and began to write their long foggy erudite articles, and

the great European public began to be enchanted by Shakespeare. The

critics, responding to this public interest, laboriously vied with

one another in writing fresh and fresh articles about Shakespeare,

and readers and spectators were still further confirmed in their

enthusiasm, and Shakespeare’s fame kept growing and growing like

a snowball, until in our time it has attained a degree of insane

laudation that obviously rests on no other basis than suggestion.

“There is no one even approximately equal to Shakespeare either among

ancient or modern writers.” “Poetic truth is the most brilliant gem

in the crown of Shakespeare’s service.” “Shakespeare is the greatest

moralist of all times.” “Shakespeare displays such diversity and such

objectivity as place him beyond the limits of time and nationality.”

“Shakespeare is the greatest genius that has hitherto existed.”

“For the creation of tragedies, comedies, historical plays, idylls,

idyllic comedies, esthetic idylls, for representation itself as

also for incidental verses, he is the only man. He not only wields

unlimited power over our laughter and our tears, over all phases

of passion, humour, thought and observation, but he commands an

unlimited realm of imagination, full of fancy of a terrifying and

amazing character, and he possesses penetration in the world of

invention and of reality, and over all this there reigns one and the

same truthfulness to character and to nature, and the same spirit of

humanity.”

“To Shakespeare the epithet of great applies naturally; and if

one adds that independently of his greatness he has also become

the reformer of all literature, and moreover has expressed in

his works not only the phenomena of the life of his time, but

also from thoughts and views that in his day existed only in germ

has prophetically foreseen the direction which the social spirit

would take in the future (of which we see an amazing example in

Hamlet)--one may say without hesitation that Shakespeare was not only

a great, but the greatest of all poets that ever existed, and that in

the sphere of poetic creation the only rival that equals him is life

itself, which in his productions he depicted with such perfection.”

The obvious exaggeration of this appraisement is a most convincing

proof that it is not the outcome of sane thought, but of suggestion.

The more insignificant, the lower, the emptier, a phenomenon is,

once it becomes the object of suggestion, the more supernatural and

exaggerated is the importance attributed to it. The Pope is not only

holy, but most holy, and so forth. So Shakespeare is not only a good

writer, but the greatest genius, the eternal teacher of mankind.

Suggestion is always a deceit, and every deceit is an evil. And

really the suggestion that Shakespeare’s works are great works

of genius, presenting the climax both of esthetic and ethical

perfection, has caused and is causing great injury to men.

This injury is two-fold: first, the fall of the drama and the

substitution of an empty immoral amusement for that important organ

of progress, and secondly, by the direct degradation of men by

presenting them with false models for imitation.

The life of humanity only approaches perfection by the elucidation

of religious consciousness (the only principle securely uniting men

one with another). The elucidation of the religious consciousness of

man is accomplished through all sides of man’s spiritual activity.

One side of that activity is art. One part of art, and almost the

most important, is the drama.

And therefore the drama, to deserve the importance attributed to

it, should serve the elucidation of religious consciousness. Such

the drama always was, and such it was in the Christian world. But

with the appearance of Protestantism in its broadest sense--that is

to say, the appearance of a new understanding of Christianity as a

teaching of life--dramatic art did not find a form corresponding to

this new understanding of religion, and the men of the Renaissance

period were carried away by the imitation of classical art. This was

most natural, but the attraction should have passed, and art should

have found, as it is now beginning to find, a new form corresponding

to the altered understanding of Christianity.

But the finding of this new form was hindered by the teaching, which

arose among German writers at the end of the 18th and beginning of

the 19th centuries, of the so-called objectivity of art--that is

to say, the indifference of art to good or evil--together with an

exaggerated praise of Shakespeare’s dramas, which partly corresponded

to the esthetic theory of the Germans and partly served as material

for it. Had there not been this exaggerated praise of Shakespeare’s

dramas, accepted as the most perfect models of drama, people of the

18th and 19th centuries and of our own, would have had to understand

that the drama, to have a right to exist and be regarded as a serious

matter, ought to serve, as always was, and cannot but be, the case,

the elucidation of religious consciousness. And having understood

this they would have sought a new form of drama corresponding to

their religious perception.

But when it was decided that Shakespeare’s drama is the summit of

perfection, and that people ought to write as he did without any

religious or even any moral content--all the dramatists, imitating

him, began to compose plays lacking content, like the plays of

Goethe, Schiller, Hugo, and, among us Russians, Púshkin, and the

historical plays of Ostróvski, Alexéy Tolstóy, and the innumerable

other more or less well-known dramatic works which fill all the

theatres and are continually produced by anyone to whom the thought

and desire to write plays occur.

Only thanks to such a mean petty understanding of the importance of

the drama do there appear among us that endless series of dramatic

works presenting the actions, situations, characters, and moods of

people, not only devoid of any spiritual content but even lacking any

human sense. And let not the reader suppose that I exclude from this

estimate of contemporary drama the pieces I myself have incidentally

written for the theatre. I recognise them, just like all the rest, to

be lacking in that religious content which should form the basis of

the future drama.

So that the drama, the most important sphere of art, has become in

our time merely an empty and immoral amusement for the empty and

immoral crowd. What is worst of all is that to the art of the drama,

which has fallen as low as it was possible to fall, people continue

to attribute an elevated significance, unnatural to it.

Dramatists, actors, theatrical managers, the press--the latter most

seriously publishing reports of theatres, operas, and so forth--all

feel assured that they are doing something very useful and important.

The drama in our time is like a great man fallen to the lowest stage

of degradation, who yet continues to pride himself on his past,

of which nothing now remains. And the public of our time is like

those who pitilessly get amusement out of this once great man, now

descended to the lowest depths.

Such is one harmful effect of the epidemic suggestion of the

greatness of Shakespeare. Another harmful effect of that bepraisement

is the setting up of a false model for men’s imitation.

If people now wrote of Shakespeare that, for his time, he was a

great writer, he managed verse well enough, was a clever actor and

a good stage-manager, even if their valuation were inexact and

somewhat exaggerated, provided it was moderate, people of the younger

generations might remain free from the Shakespearean influence. But

when to every young man entering on life in our time are presented

as models of moral perfection, not the religious and moral teachers

of mankind, but first of all Shakespeare, about whom it is decided

and transmitted by learned men from generation to generation as an

irrefragable truth that he is the greatest of poets and the greatest

of teachers of life, a young man cannot remain free from this harmful

influence.

On reading or hearing Shakespeare the question for a young man is

no longer whether Shakespeare is good or bad, but only to discover

wherein lies that extraordinary esthetic and ethical beauty of which

he has received the suggestion from learned men whom he respects, but

which he neither sees nor feels. And forcing himself, and perverting

his esthetic and ethical feeling, he tries to make himself agree

with the prevailing opinion. He no longer trusts himself, but trusts

to what learned people, respected by him, have said (I myself have

experienced all this). Reading the critical analyses of the plays,

and the extracts from books with explanatory commentaries, it begins

to seem to him that he feels something like an artistic impression,

and the longer this continues the more is his esthetic and ethical

feeling perverted. He already ceases to discriminate independently

and clearly between what is truly artistic, and the artificial

imitation of art.

But above all, having assimilated that immoral view of life

which permeates all Shakespeare’s works he loses the capacity to

distinguish between good and evil. And the error of extolling an

insignificant, inartistic, and not only non-moral but plainly immoral

writer, accomplishes its pernicious work.

That is why I think that the sooner people emancipate themselves

from this false worship of Shakespeare the better it will be--first

because people when they are freed from this falsehood will come to

understand that a drama which has no religious basis is not only not

an important or good thing, as is now supposed, but is a most trivial

and contemptible affair. And having understood this they will have

to search for and work out a new form of modern drama--a drama which

will serve for the elucidation and confirmation in man of the highest

degree of religious consciousness. And secondly, because people,

when themselves set free from this hypnotic state, will understand

that the insignificant and immoral works of Shakespeare and his

imitators, aiming only at distracting and amusing the spectators,

cannot possibly serve to teach the meaning of life, but that, as long

as there is no real religious drama, guidance for life must be looked

for from other sources.

PART XVIII

A TALK ON THE DRAMA.

Reported by I. Teneromo, _ca._ 1907

I recently had the opportunity of talking with Leo Tolstoy about the

theatre.

“What dramas, what heartrending dramas, are being enacted before our

eyes: national dramas, class dramas, caste dramas! And the individual

drama! Has there ever been a time so full of terrible suffering,

of mutual destruction? Only think what has passed before us during

these last four years of horror! What a din of battle, what a storm

of insurrection, what shrieks of massacres with their heaps of

mutilated bodies in the streets, in the fields, and at the bottom of

the sea! And now that the noise is past, how many secret executions,

secret suicides, and how much secret madness! And in spite of such

a plenitude of subjects the stage is impoverished. We have no

tragedies, no moving drama, not even a healthy amusing repertoire, no

humor....

“It is as though life and the drama were made of one piece of dough,

and if more is allotted to the one, there remains less for the other.

The well-spring of plays for the stage has dried up, and there is

only the dull sticky liquid of adaptations left at the bottom.

“Oh, those adaptations! Of course, what will not hunger drive one

to invent? But the idea of adaptation is a perfectly childish one.

To take a novel, or a story, and rearrange it as a play is like

what children do when they cut a figure out of a picture along the

outline, stick it to a bit of cardboard, fix it on a stand, and are

quite delighted. It stands up, therefore it is a statue! A novel or

a story is pictorial work: in it the master works with his brush,

putting on dabs of paint, producing backgrounds, shadows, half-tones.

A play is sculptor’s work. One has to work with a chisel: not to put

on dabs of paint but to cut out in relief.

“I first understood the wide difference between a novel and a play

when I sat down to write my _Power of Darkness_. At first I set to

work using a novelist’s usual methods, to which I was accustomed. But

after the first few pages I found that they were not the right thing

here. For instance, on the stage it is impossible to prepare for

the important moments lived through by the hero, impossible to make

him think and call up memories, or to throw light on his character

by referring back to the past: it all comes out dull, forced, and

unreal. A ready-formed state of mind, ready-formed resolutions, must

be presented to the public. Only soul-images like these--sculptured

in relief and in mutual collision--agitate and touch the onlooker.

“It is true I myself could not resist it, and put into _The Power of

Darkness_ a few monologues; but while doing so I felt it was not the

right thing.”

The above is taken from _The Life of Tolstoy_, Vol. II, by

Aylmer Maude.

_c. 1917._

PART XIX

TWO KINDS OF MENTAL ACTIVITY

(The following article was written by Tolstoy to serve as

an introduction to a collection of thoughts, aphorisms, and

maxims by La Bruyère, La Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues, and

Montesquieu, which a friend of Tolstoy’s had translated into

Russian.)

The activity of human reason directed to the elucidation of the laws

that govern human life has always manifested itself in two different

ways. Some thinkers have tried to systematize all the phenomena and

laws of human life into definite connection with one another. Such

were the originators of all the systems of philosophy, from Aristotle

to Spinoza and Hegel.

Others have helped the elucidation of the laws of human life not by

elaborating shapely systems but by detached observations and apt

expressions indicating the eternal laws that rule our life. Such were

the sages of the ancient world who formed collections of aphorisms,

the Christian mystic writers, and especially the French writers of

the XVIth, XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, who brought this style of

writing to the highest degree of perfection.

Such are the thoughts and maxims of La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère,

Pascal, Montesquieu and Vauvenargues, not to mention the wonderful

Montaigne, whose writings partly belong to this class.

If we compare all knowledge of the laws of human life to a ball

continually enlarged by fresh acquisitions, then thinkers of the

first, systematic class should be likened to men who try to enfold

the ball with more or less solid and thick stuff in order to enlarge

it equally all over. Thinkers of the second category are like men

who, disregarding inequalities in the increase of the surface of

different parts of the ball, enlarge it, not all over but at various

points of the radii along which their thoughts naturally travel,

generally outreaching the thinkers of the first kind and furnishing

future systematizers with material to work upon.

The advantages on the side of thinkers of the first category

are: coherence, completeness, and symmetry in their doctrines.

The disadvantages are: artificiality in their structure, forced

connection of the parts, often evident deviations from truth to

secure coherence of the whole teaching, and (resulting from this)

frequent obscurity and mistiness in the manner of exposition.

The advantages on the side of the second category of thinkers

are: directness, sincerity, novelty, boldness, and, as it were,

an impulsiveness in their thoughts, a freedom from shackles, and

a corresponding vigour of expression. Their disadvantages are:

fragmentariness and sometimes external inconsistency--though this

latter is usually more apparent than real.

Their greatest advantage however is that whereas works of the first

class--philosophic systems--often repel by their pedantry or, if

they do not repel, weaken the mind of the reader by subduing him

and depriving him of independence, books of the second class always

attract by their sincerity, elegance, and brevity of expression.

Above all, they do not crush the independent activity of the mind

but, on the contrary, evoke it by obliging the reader either to

deduce further conclusions from what he has read or sometimes, when

he quite disagrees with the author, to contest his positions and thus

arrive at new and unexpected conclusions.

Of this kind are the detached thoughts both of ancient and modern

writers generally, and such are the thoughts of the French writers

whose maxims are collected in the work before us.

_1908._

PART XX

PREFACE TO N. ORLOV’S ALBUM OF “RUSSIAN PEASANTS”

Tolstoy willingly called attention to pictures, as well as to

stories, of which he approved; and he was particularly ready

to do so if the artists’ subject was one that might interest

the peasants, for whom he considered that artists have done

too little.

Work such as Orlóv’s (himself of peasant origin) which, by

the disapproval it showed of the Government’s treatment of

the peasants, involved risk to the artist, was specially

calculated to attract his sympathy.

“Be not afraid of them which kill the body, but are not able

to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy

both soul and body.” (Matt. X. 28.)

The publication of Orlóv’s pictures in album form is an excellent

thing. Orlóv is my favourite artist because the subject of his

pictures is my favourite subject--the Russian people: the real

Russian peasant-people, not that people which vanquished Napoleon

and conquered and subdued other nations, not that people which

unfortunately has so quickly learnt to make machines, railways, and

revolutions as well as Parliaments with all conceivable sub-divisions

of parties and tendencies, but that meek, hard-working, Christian,

gentle, much-enduring people which has reared and bears on its

shoulders all those who now torture and diligently corrupt it.

And what Orlóv and I love in these people is one and the same

thing: namely, the meek, patient peasant-soul, enlightened by true

Christianity, which promises so much to those who can understand it.

In all Orlóv’s pictures I see that soul, which like the soul of a

child retains all possibilities and above all the possibility

(while avoiding the depravity of western civilization) of following

the Christian path which alone can lead Christendom out of that

enchanted circle of sufferings in which, with torment to themselves,

men now incessantly revolve.

Here in a smoky hut on a bed of straw lies a dying woman. A burning

taper has, according to custom, been placed in her hands which are

already growing cold. Near her, in solemn submissive calm, stands

her husband; and by his side, in a coarse smock (her only garment),

stands their eldest daughter, a thin little girl, crying. Beside a

rude cradle, hanging from the ceiling, the grandmother soothes a

crying infant. Neighbours stand talking near the door.

This picture evokes in me a wonderful and elevating feeling of tender

pity and also, strange as it may seem to say so, a feeling of envy of

that holy poverty and of the attitude towards it here revealed.

The same elevating feeling of consciousness of the vast spiritual

strength of the people to whom not by my life but by my race I

have the good fortune to belong, is produced in me by two other

pictures of similar character, which always move me profoundly--_The

Emigrants_ and _The Soldier’s Return_.

Apart from the fact that the departure of the emigrants, who are

saying good-bye to those they are leaving behind, is important in

its subject-matter (showing us as it does in vivid images what, in

spite of the difficulties placed in their way by the Government and

the landowners, the Russian people are accomplishing: populating and

cultivating enormous tracts of country), this picture is rendered

particularly touching not merely by the wonderful old man in the

foreground, but by all the figures, full of movement and life,

excited by the thoughts of departure or doubtful at being left behind.

_The Soldier’s Return_ is a picture I am particularly fond of.

Having pined for years far from home in hard army service uncongenial

to his soul, Pahóm or Sídor, a dutiful son, a loving husband and a

good worker, has at last struggled back to liberty and home. And what

does he find there? He has already heard the news before he reached

his hut. During his absence his Matrëna has had a baby.

This is their first meeting: the wife kneels before her husband,

and the child--the evidence of her fault--is also there. The

mother-in-law is egging on her son (woman’s way) and telling how she

had said, “Mind, Matrëna, your husband will return....” But the old

father, still filled with that Christian spirit of forgiveness and

love by which the best representatives of the Russian people have

lived and still live, interrupts the old woman’s shrill speech and

reminds them of that which settles all accounts and wipes out all

offences and all anger: he reminds them of God--and all reckonings

are at an end, all tangles straightened out.

However painful it may be to the son, however hurt he may feel,

however he may have wished to avenge his shame on his wife, he is his

father’s son and the same divine spirit lives in him: the spirit of

mercy, forgiveness and love; and this spirit--so alien to the uniform

he wears--awakes within him, and he waves his hand and experiences

the touching joy of forgiveness. “God will forgive you! Rise,

Matrëna, that will do!”

The other six pictures are equally important and beautiful. I have

separated these six from the three first only because, besides the

traits common to them all, in these six are vividly depicted the

temptations and depraving influences against which the Christian soul

of the Russian people has to contend and does contend, and by which

it has not been subdued.

These pictures are peculiarly attractive in that they depict the

struggle without deciding whose the victory will be. Will the whole

people follow the path of spiritual and mental depravity along

which the so-called educated classes, wishing to make it like

themselves, invite it, or will it hold to the Christian principles by

which it has lived, and, in a vast majority of cases, still lives?

[Illustration: “THE RETURN FROM WORK”

_The Tax Collector in a Peasant’s Hut_

_By N. Orlóv_]

(_See illustration facing this page._) A picture of this kind is the

one in which a village Elder--who has come to collect taxes from a

poor man just returned from wage-work carried on far from home--is

standing over the man awaiting an answer. Only the old father gives

that answer, regardless of all consideration of the needs of the

Government, speaking of God, and the sin of exploiting a worker

barely able to support his family. Very pathetic in this picture,

besides the master of the house, are the mistress who stands by

the table on which she has just spread a meal, from which everyone

has been torn away, and the child who gazes perplexed and full of

sympathy at his excited grandfather.

Of similar kind are the remaining pictures of the series, which

depict a struggle between good and evil in which men of the people,

partly or completely depraved, side with evil.

Such is the picture _Arrears of Taxes_, depicting the sale of a poor

widow’s cow--the support of her children. A rich peasant money-lender

is buying, and the District Elder is selling, the cow, while the

Village Elder notes down the transaction.

Similar pictures are the one, full of matter, in which a poor widow

who lives by the illicit sale of vodka (thereby diminishing the State

revenue) is caught in the act; and _No. 7_ (_see next page_), which

depicts the consecration of one of the vodka-shops which are now

(1908) a Government monopoly. This picture is specially remarkable

for its technique, for the delicacy and exactitude with which the

ideas are expressed, and for the accuracy of its types.

Yet another such picture is the one with the revolting theme,

_Corporal Punishment_.

Besides a true portrayal of the still unperverted Russians, which

is the chief subject of the whole series, in all these last six

pictures, types are shown of that already depraved part of the nation

which wishes, for its own profit, to pervert its still unperverted

brothers.

The Village Elder who is collecting taxes from the man whose payments

are in arrear has not yet broken all links uniting him to his

fellows, and evidently suffers for his fellow-man as well as from his

own participation in the cause of that suffering.

But the over-fed District Elder in the picture in which the cow is

being taken, no longer feels any remorse at fulfilling his cruel

duty, and the usurer buying the cow has no consideration for anything

but his own profit. In the picture of the illicit vodka-seller,

the policeman and the District Elder and the clerk are performing

their task unabashed, and they even admire the cleverness of the

man in disguise who has trapped the vodka-seller. Only the old man,

a representative of the soul of the Russian people, disturbs the

general complacency by his bold words.

In the picture of _The Monopoly_, besides the fat publican grieved

at the loss of his business, the peasant crossing himself before

the icon with evident hypocrisy is very striking, and so is the

tattered fellow who has pushed inopportunely in at the door of the

institution which has brought him to his present condition, and has

so successfully corrupted--and continues for the State’s profit to

corrupt--a large part of the population.

Again in the picture of _Corporal Punishment_, all those present,

except the old man who is praying for the sins of men, and the little

boy aghast at man’s cruelty, have reached the point at which they can

regard their shameful deeds as necessary duties.

[Illustration: “THE MONOPOLY”

_The Consecration of a State Vodka Shop_

_By N. Orlóv_]

The last picture, expressing all that is said in the final six of

the series, is particularly powerful and dreadful in that it shows in

the simplest and most comprehensible way what lies at the bottom of

the demoralization to which the people are subjected, and the chief

danger that faces them.

“Go, go! God will help you!” says the girl, refusing to give to the

beggar. “You see, his Reverence is here!”

Yes, it is a terrible picture!

The strength of a nation lies in the degree of truth in that

religious understanding of the laws of life which guides its actions.

I say the degree of truth, for a complete understanding of God is

never possible to man. Man can but draw ever nearer and nearer to

the one and the other. And the greatest amount of true religious

understanding of life in our days has been and still is to be found

among the illiterate, wise and holy Russian peasant-population.

And in all kinds of ways: by Law Courts, taxation, conscription,

and alcoholic poisoning for revenue’s sake, they are surrounded by

terrible temptations, and the most awful of these is the religious

fraud which claims greater importance for the Church and its

ministers than for mercy and brotherly love.

All this is presented in Orlóv’s pictures, and so I think that I am

not wrong in loving them.

These pictures show us the danger now menacing the spiritual life

of the Russian people. And to realize a danger that was not noticed

before is a step towards averting it.

_1908._

APPENDIX

DARLING

_By Antón Chékhov_

Olenka, the daughter of a retired civil servant, Plemyánnikov, sat

musing in her back porch. It was hot, the flies were pertinaciously

teasing, and it was pleasant to reflect that it would soon be

evening. Dark rain-clouds were coming up from the east and bringing

with them an occasional whiff of moisture.

In the middle of the courtyard Kúkin, who lived in a small house

in the same courtyard and was manager and proprietor of the Tivoli

Gardens, stood looking at the sky.

“Again!” he exclaimed despairingly. “It’s going to rain again! Rain

every day, every day, as though to spite me. One might as well hang

oneself! It’s ruination! Fearful losses every day!”

He raised and clasped his hands in despair, and turning to Olenka

continued:

“There, Olenka Semënovna, that’s the life we lead. It’s enough to

make one cry. One works, tries hard, wears oneself out, gets no sleep

at night, and racks one’s brains what to do for the best--and what’s

the result? On the one hand there’s the ignorant boorish public! I

give them the very best operetta, a fairy-like masque, splendid comic

singers, but is that what they want? Do you suppose they understand

anything of all that? What they want is what is given in a booth at

a fair! Trash, is what they demand! On the other hand, look at the

weather! Rain almost every evening. As it started on the 10th May, so

it went on the whole of May and June. It’s simply awful! The public

don’t come, but I have to pay the rent and the artistes!”

Next evening the clouds again began to gather, and Kúkin said with an

hysterical laugh:

“Well, what of it? Rain away! Let it flood the whole garden with

me in it! Let me have no luck in this world or the next! Let the

artistes take proceedings against me! What is a trial? Even if I go

as a convict to Siberia! Or to the scaffold! Ha, ha, ha!”

The next day it was the same again.

Olenka listened to Kúkin silently and seriously, and sometimes

tears came into her eyes. In the end Kúkin’s misfortunes touched

her and she came to love him. He was short and lean, with a sallow

complexion, twists of hair were curled on his temples, he spoke in

a thin tenor voice, and when he spoke his mouth twisted, and his

face always expressed despair, but still he aroused in her a real

and profound affection. She always loved someone and could not

exist without it. Formerly she had loved her papa, who now sat in

an armchair in a dark room, ill, and breathing with difficulty; she

loved her aunt, who sometimes--once in two years--came from Byansk;

and before that, when she was at the secondary school, she had loved

her French master. She was a quiet, soft-hearted, compassionate young

woman, with a mild tender look in her eyes and very good health.

At the sight of her plump rosy cheeks, her soft white neck with a

dark little mole on it, and the kind naïve smile which appeared on

her face when she listened to anything pleasant, men thought, “Yes,

she’s all right,” and smiled too, and lady-visitors could not refrain

from suddenly seizing her hand in the middle of a conversation and

exclaiming with a gush of delight: “You darling!”

The house in which she had lived since her birth and which had been

left her in her father’s will, was on the outskirts of the town in

the Gipsy Suburb, not far from the Tivoli Gardens. In the evenings

and at night she could hear the band playing and rockets going off

with a bang in the Gardens, and it seemed to her that Kúkin was

fighting his fate and taking his chief foe, the indifferent public,

by assault: her heart melted tenderly, she had no wish to sleep,

and when he returned home towards morning she tapped softly at her

bedroom window and, letting him see only her face and one shoulder

through the curtains, gave him a friendly smile.

He proposed, and they were married. And when he had a good view of

her neck and her plump healthy shoulders, he threw up and clasped his

hands and said: “Darling!”

He was happy but, as it rained on their wedding day and the whole of

the following night, the despairing expression never left his face.

After the wedding they lived happily together. She sat in his

booking-office, saw that the Tivoli Gardens were in order, entered up

the accounts and paid the salaries; and her rosy cheeks, her sweet

naïve smile, shining like a halo, appeared now at the window of the

booking-office, now behind the scenes, now at the refreshment-bar.

And she began to tell her acquaintances that the theatre was the

most remarkable, most important, and most necessary thing in the

world--that only at the theatre could one obtain true pleasure and

become cultivated and humane.

“But do you think the public understands that?” she said. “They want

a common booth! Yesterday we put on ‘Faust Inside Out,’ and almost

all the boxes were empty, but if Vánichka and I were to give some

common trash, believe me the theatre would be packed. To-morrow

Vánichka and I are giving ‘Orpheus in Hell’; mind you come!” And

what Kúkin said about the theatre and the actors she repeated; she

despised the public as he did, for their indifference to art and

their ignorance; she took part in the rehearsals, corrected the

actors, kept an eye on the behaviour of the musicians, and when the

local paper criticised their theatre unfavourably she cried, and

afterwards went to the newspaper office for explanations.

The actors were fond of her and called her “Vánichka and I,” and “the

Darling.” She was sorry for them and used to lend them small sums,

and if it happened that they did not pay her, she cried in secret,

but made no complaint to her husband.

And in the winter they got on quite well. They took a theatre in the

town for the whole winter and sub-let it for short periods, now to an

Ukrainian troupe, now to a conjuror, now to a local dramatic company.

Olenka grew plumper and was all beaming with pleasure, but Kúkin

grew thinner and sallower and complained of terrible losses, though

business had not been bad all winter. He used to cough at night,

and she gave him raspberry or lime-blossom tea, rubbed him with

eau-de-Cologne, and wrapped him up in her soft shawls.

“What a splendid dear you are!” she said, quite sincerely, smoothing

his hair. “What a good-looking pet you are!”

In Lent he went to Moscow to gather a troupe, and without him she

could not sleep, but sat by the window looking at the stars. She

compared herself, at the time, to the hens who keep awake all night

and are restless when the cock is not in the hen-house. Kúkin was

detained in Moscow and wrote that he would return for Easter, and his

letters already contained arrangements about the Tivoli Gardens. But

on the Monday in Passion Week, late in the evening, an ominous knock

was suddenly heard at the gate; someone was hammering at the gate as

if on a barrel: boom, boom, boom! The sleepy cook, splashing with her

bare feet through the puddles, ran to open the gate.

“Open for goodness’ sake!” said someone in a thick bass voice.

“There’s a telegram for you!”

Olenka had received telegrams from her husband before, but this time

for some reason she grew quite faint. She opened the telegram with

trembling hands, and read as follows:

“Iván Kúkin passed away to-day suddenly pasway awaiting instructions

fuferal Tuesday.”

It was typed “fuferal” in the telegram, and there was also the

incomprehensible word ‘pasway.’ The signature was that of the manager

of an operatic troupe.

“My precious!” sobbed Olenka. “Vánichka, my dearest, my precious. Why

did I ever meet you? Why did I ever know and love you? Whom have I

left? Why have you deserted your poor, unfortunate Olenka?”

Kúkin was buried on Tuesday in the Vagánkov cemetery in Moscow.

Olenka returned home on Wednesday and as soon as she entered her

house she fell on her bed and sobbed so loud that she could be heard

in the street and in the neighbouring houses.

“The darling!” said the neighbours, as they crossed themselves.

“Darling Olga Semënovna, how she does take on!”

Three months later Olenka was returning from Mass, melancholy and

in deep mourning. It happened that a neighbour, Vasíli Andréich

Pusloválov, who was also returning from church, walked beside her. He

was manager of the merchant Babakáev’s timber-yard. He wore a straw

hat, a white waistcoat and a gold watch-chain, and looked more like a

squire than a tradesman.

“Everything has its own order, Olga Semënovna,” he said gravely, in a

tone of sympathy, “and if any one of those near us dies, it must be

that God willed it so, and so we must not forget ourselves but must

bear it submissively.”

Having accompanied Olenka to the gate he took his leave of her and

went on. All day after that she seemed to hear his dignified voice,

and whenever she closed her eyes she saw his dark beard. He pleased

her very much. And apparently she had also made an impression on

him, for shortly afterwards an elderly lady with whom she was but

slightly acquainted came to drink coffee with her, and as soon as she

was seated at the table began to talk about Pustoválov and say what

a good and reliable man he was, whom anyone would be glad to marry.

Three days after that, Pustoválov himself came to call on her; he did

not stay long, not more than ten minutes, and did not say much, but

Olenka fell in love with him, so much in love that as if she were

in a fever she did not sleep all night, and in the morning she sent

for the elderly lady. The match was soon arranged, and then came the

wedding.

Pustoválov and Olenka lived happily after their marriage. He was

usually in the timber-yard till dinner and then went out on business,

and Olenka took his place and sat in the office till the evening,

writing out accounts and despatching goods.

“Now timber rises twenty per cent in price every year,” she said

to customers and acquaintances. “Just think, we used to sell local

timber, but now Vánichka has to go to Mogilév province every year to

buy timber. And the freights!” she went on, covering both her cheeks

with her hands in horror, “what freights!”

She felt as if she had dealt in timber quite a long time; that the

most important and most necessary thing in life was timber; and there

was something intimate and touching to her in the words: “balk,

joist, pole, plank, scantling, batten, beam....”

At night when she slept, she dreamed of whole mountains of planks

and boards, and long unending rows of carts conveying timber to

distant places beyond the town. She dreamed of how a whole regiment

of twenty-eight foot, nine-inch beams was marching on end to attack

the timber-yard; joists, beams and boards knocked against one another

with a resounding crash of dry wood, all falling down and rising

again, piling themselves on one another. Olenka cried out in her

sleep and Pustoválov said tenderly: “Olenka, what’s the matter,

darling? Cross yourself!”

Her husband’s thoughts were hers too. If he thought the room too hot,

or business slack, she thought so too. Her husband did not care for

any entertainments and stayed at home on holidays, and so did she.

“You are always at home or in the office,” her acquaintances said to

her. “You should go to the theatre, darling, or the circus.”

“Vánichka and I have no time to go to theatres,” she answered

sedately. “We are hard-working people and have no time for trifling.

What good are those theatres?”

On Saturdays Pustoválov and she went to evening service, on holidays

to early service, and they returned from church side by side with

a softened expression on their faces, both diffusing an agreeable

perfume, and her silk dress rustling pleasantly. At home they had tea

with fancy bread and different kinds of jam, and then cake. Every

day at noon an appetising smell of beet-root soup and roast mutton

or duck, or on fast days of fish, was noticeable in their yard and

in the street outside, and one could not pass their gate without

beginning to feel an appetite. In the office a samovar was always

boiling, and customers were treated to tea and biscuits. Once a week

the couple went to the baths and returned from there together, both

red in the face.

“Yes, we get on all right,” Olenka used to say. “Thank heaven! God

grant everyone a life such as Vánichka’s and mine.”

When Pustoválov went to the Mogilév province to buy timber she was

much depressed and lay awake at night, crying. Sometimes in the

evening the regimental veterinary surgeon, Smírnin, who rented their

lodge, used to come to see her. He would tell her some news, or play

cards with her, and that distracted her a little. She was specially

interested in what he told her of his own family life: he was married

and had a boy, but was separated from his wife because she had been

unfaithful to him, and now he hated her but sent her forty roubles

a month for his son’s maintenance. As she listened to this Olenka

sighed, shook her head, and felt sorry for him.

“Well, God be with you,” she would say when he took his leave, and

as she lighted him with a candle to the staircase. “Thank you for

sharing my dullness. May the Queen of Heaven grant you good health!”

She always expressed herself thus sedately and sagaciously, imitating

her husband, and when the veterinary surgeon was already disappearing

beyond the door below, she would call after him:

“Do you know, Vladímir Platónych, you should make it up with your

wife. Forgive her, if only for your son’s sake! The little boy no

doubt understands.”

And when Pustoválov returned she told him in a low voice about the

veterinary surgeon and his unhappy family life, and they both sighed,

shook their heads, and spoke of the boy who no doubt pined for his

father, and then, by some strange sequence of ideas, they went up to

the icons, bowed to the ground, and prayed that God would send them

children.

So the Pustoválovs lived quietly and peaceably in love and full

accord for six years. But then one winter Pustoválov at the

timber-yard went out without his cap, after drinking hot tea, to send

off some timber, and caught cold and fell ill. He was treated by the

best doctors, but got worse, and died after four months’ illness. And

Olenka was again a widow.

“Whom have I now that you have forsaken me, my precious?” she

sobbed, after she had buried her husband. “How am I to live without

you, grief-stricken and wretched! Pity me, good people, utterly

forlorn....”

She wore a black dress with weepers, gave up hats and gloves for

good, and hardly ever went out except to go to church and to her

husband’s grave, and at home she lived like a nun. It was only after

six months had passed that she left off the weepers and opened the

shutters of the windows. She was sometimes seen going to market with

her cook to buy provisions, but how she now lived, and what went on

in her house, could only be conjectured. People made conjectures, for

instance, from seeing her drinking tea in her little garden with the

veterinary surgeon, who read the newspaper aloud to her, and also

from the fact that, meeting a lady she knew at the post-office, she

had said to her:

“There is no regular veterinary inspection in our town, and therefore

there is much illness. One is always hearing of people falling ill

from the milk, and being infected by cows and horses. The health of

domestic animals should really be looked after as carefully as the

health of human beings.”

She repeated the veterinary’s thoughts and was now of his opinion

about everything. It was clear that she could not live a year without

some attachment and had found her new happiness in the lodge of her

own house.

Another would have been censured for this, but no one could think ill

of Olenka; everything she did was so natural. The veterinary surgeon

and she never spoke to anybody about the change in their relations

to one another, and they tried to conceal it, but did not succeed in

this, for Olenka could have no secrets. When visitors, his comrades

in the service, came to see him, she while pouring out the tea or

serving supper would begin to speak about cattle-plague, or bovine

tuberculosis and municipal slaughter-houses, while he would become

dreadfully confused, and after the visitors had gone would seize her

hand and hiss angrily:

“Didn’t I ask you not to speak of what you don’t understand? When we

veterinaries talk among ourselves, please don’t join in. It’s really

annoying!”

And she would look at him with amazement and agitation and would ask:

“Volódichka dear, what am I to speak about?”

And she would embrace him and with tears in her eyes entreat him not

to be angry, and they would both be happy.

That happiness however did not last long. The veterinary left with

his regiment and left for good, as the regiment was ordered to some

very distant place, perhaps to Siberia. And Olenka was left alone.

She was entirely alone now. Her father had died long ago, and his

armchair lay covered with dust and with a leg broken off, in the

garret. She grew thinner and paler and people she met in the street

no longer looked at her as they used to do; it was evident that her

best years were over and left behind, and that a new unknown life was

beginning about which it was better not to think. In the evenings she

sat in her porch and could hear the music playing and the rockets

bursting in the Tivoli Gardens, but they did not now awaken any

thought in her. She looked indifferently at her empty yard, thought

of nothing, wished for nothing, and afterwards when night came on

she went to sleep, and saw in her dreams the empty yard. She ate and

drank as if unwillingly.

But the principal thing and the worst of all was that she no longer

had any opinions whatever. She saw the objects around her, and

understood all that took place, but could form no opinions and did

not know what to speak about. And how awful it is not to have any

opinions! One sees, for instance, how a bottle is standing, or rain

falling, or a peasant is driving his cart, but what the bottle, or

rain, or peasant, is for, what sense there is in them, you can’t

say--not even if someone gave you a thousand roubles to do so.

While she had Kúkin, Pustoválov, and afterwards the veterinary

surgeon Olenka was able to explain everything and express her

opinions about anything you liked; but now there was the same void

in her mind and heart as in her yard. And it was harsh and bitter as

wormwood in the mouth.

The town was gradually expanding on all sides; the Gipsy Suburb was

now called a street, and where the Tivoli Gardens and the timber-yard

had been, houses had sprung up, and several side streets had formed.

How fast time flies! Olenka’s house had grown dingy, the roof had

rusted, the outhouse had a slant to one side, and the whole yard was

overgrown with docks and stinging nettles. Olenka herself had grown

elderly and plain; in summer she sat in the porch, and her soul as

before was empty, oppressed, and savoured of wormwood; in winter

she sat at a window looking at the snow. When there was a scent of

spring, or the wind brought the sound of the church bells, a flood

of memories from the past would well up, her heart would contract

with tender emotion and tears would flow freely from her eyes, but

this was only for a moment, then again emptiness returned and she did

not know why she lived. Brýska, her black cat, would rub against her

softly and purr, but these feline caresses did not touch Olenka. Were

they what she needed? She wanted a love that would absorb her whole

being, her whole soul and reason, would give her ideas and a purpose

in life, and would warm her ageing blood. And she brushed away black

Brýska, and told her crossly:

“Get away ... you’ve no business here!”

And so she went on day after day, year after year, without a single

joy, and without any opinions. Whatever Martha the cook said, that

was right.

Towards the evening of a very hot July day, just as the town herd

of cows was being driven through the streets and the whole yard was

filled with clouds of dust, someone suddenly knocked at the gate.

Olenka went herself to open it and was dumbfounded by what she

saw: at the gate stood the veterinary Smírnin, now grey-haired and

in civilian dress. She suddenly remembered everything, could not

restrain herself, began crying, and let her head fall on his breast

without saying a word, and in her great excitement did not notice how

they both entered the house and sat down to tea.

“My dearest!” she muttered, trembling with joy. “Vladímir Platónych!

From where has heaven sent you?”

“I want to settle here for good,” he told her. “I have left the army,

and want to try my luck as a free man, and to live a settled life.

Besides it is time to send my son to the high school. He’s a big boy.

Do you know, I have made it up with my wife.”

“And where is she?” asked Olenka.

“She is at the hotel with our son, and I am hunting round looking for

a lodging.”

“Oh goodness, my dear soul, take my house! What’s wrong with it? Oh,

Lord, why, I won’t charge you anything,” said Olenka, excitedly, and

again began to cry. “You live here, and the lodge will do well for

me. What joy, oh, my goodness!”

Next day the roof of the house was already being painted and the wall

whitewashed, and Olenka, her arms akimbo, went about the yard giving

directions. The old smile beamed on her face and she was fresh and

full of life again, as though she had waked up from a long sleep. The

veterinary’s wife arrived--a thin, plain lady with short hair and a

peevish face, and with her came the boy, Sásha, small for his age

(he was going on for ten), plump, with clear blue eyes and dimples in

his cheeks. Scarcely had the boy entered the yard before he rushed

after the cat, and his merry joyous laughter immediately filled the

air.

“Auntie, is this your cat?” he asked Olenka. “When she pups let me

have a kitten. Mama is awfully afraid of mice.”

Olenka talked to him, gave him tea, and her heart suddenly grew warm

and contracted tenderly, just as if he were her own son. And in

the evening, when he sat down in her dining-room and prepared his

lessons, she looked at him with emotion and pity and whispered:

“My pretty one, my precious ..., my little child! Fancy your being

born so clever and so fair!”

“An island is a portion of dry land surrounded on all sides by

water,” he read.

“An island is a portion of dry land ...” she repeated, and that was

the first opinion she expressed with conviction after so many years

of silence and absence of thought.

And she already had opinions of her own, and at supper she spoke to

Sásha’s parents of how difficult it was for children nowadays to

learn in the high-schools, but that a classical high-school education

was, all the same, better than a commercial one, as after finishing

at the high-school all careers were open to you, whether you wished

to be a doctor or an engineer.

Sásha began going to the high-school. His mother went to stay with

her sister in Khárkov, and did not return; his father went away

somewhere every day to inspect herds of cattle, and would sometimes

be away from home for three days at a time; it seemed to Olenka that

they had quite abandoned Sásha, that he was not wanted at home, that

he was being starved, and she took him to her lodge and arranged a

little room there for him.

Half-a-year has already passed now since Sásha came to live in her

lodge. Every morning Olenka comes into his room; he is fast asleep

with his hand under his cheek, scarcely breathing. She is sorry to

wake him.

“Sáshenka,” she would say sadly, “get up, dear! Time to go to school.”

He gets up, dresses, says his prayers, and then sits down to

breakfast. He drinks three tumblers of tea and eats two big plain

cakes and half a French roll with butter. He is not quite awake yet,

and therefore not in a good temper.

“But, Sáshenka, you did not quite learn your fable,” Olenka says,

gazing at him as if she was seeing him off on a long journey. “I am

troubled about you. You must take pains to learn, dearest ... and

obey your masters.”

“Oh, do leave me alone!” says Sásha.

When he goes along the street to school, himself small but wearing

a big cap and with a satchel on his back, Olenka follows him

noiselessly.

“Sáshenka!” she calls.

He turns round and she slips a date or a caramel into his hand. When

they turn into the side street where the school stands he feels

ashamed of being followed by a tall, stout woman; he looks round and

says:

“You go home, auntie; I can go on alone now.”

She stops, and follows him with her eyes fixedly until he disappears

into the school doorway. Oh, how she loves him! Not one of her former

attachments had been so deep, never before had her soul surrendered

itself so freely, so disinterestedly, and so joyously, as it did now

when the maternal feelings grew more and more ardent within her. For

this boy, who was not hers, for the dimples in his cheeks, for his

peaked cap, she would have laid down her life, given it gladly and

with tears of emotion. Why? Who can tell why?

Having seen Sásha to school she returns home quietly, so content,

serene, and full of love. Her face, which has grown younger-looking

during the last half-year, is smiling and radiant, those she meets

look at her with pleasure, and say:

“Good morning, Olga Semënovna, darling! How are you, darling?”