not exclusively the brutality of everyday life, nor the tremendous
catastrophes befalling human beings; nor to devise intricate problems
and far-fetched cases of conscience in which human beings might
possibly be entangled. It simply aims at presenting glimpses of human
beings as they really are, and by means of such glimpses it opens out
avenues and vistas on to their lives. The Russian stage, therefore
is like the Russian novel, realistic because it is a reflection of
life, and it is unlike the French naturalist novel or naturalist play
because these two things never reproduced life as it is, but portions
only of life exaggerated and magnified by the fantastic vision of
men of talent who were sometimes men of genius. The reflection of
anybody who has some experience of the stage, on reading this will, I
imagine, be the following: The everyday life of ordinary human beings
can be reflected in a novel, but not on the stage, which demands the
observation of certain conventions and the presence of certain cardinal
factors such as dramatic interest, the conflict of wills, etc., which
are indispensable to the acted drama. Moreover, the public goes to
the theatre to be amused, and the faithful photography of everyday
life cannot be amusing; the public wishes to forget everyday life, and
to find on the stage that which in everyday life is not predominant.
Well, the Russian stage has proved that these two contentions are not
necessarily true. Excellent plays can be written on the basis of strong
situations, but the Russian playwrights have proved that excellent
plays can be written in which the situations are neither more nor
less dramatic than those which occur every day before our eyes among
our immediate circle of acquaintance. They have also proved another
thing--that the public finds this kind of play interesting in the
extreme and flocks to see it; and this leads one to conclude that the
secret of the matter lies possibly in the fact that these plays are
_true_ pictures of life, and not would-be pictures of life which are
in reality false, and that the former cannot help being interesting,
and the latter cannot help being tedious. I believe that plays written
about real life, in which the characters live and behave as they do in
reality, would be not only interesting but successful in any country.
However that may be, the fact remains that the modern Russian play
consists of a series of pictures of everyday life faithfully depicted,
without any research of special theses or situations more theatrical
than those which everyday life abundantly affords, and that these plays
are successful. They make money. A cosmopolitan traveller once said to
me that he could no longer sit through a modern French play of the type
of _Le Dédale_ or plays such as M. Bernstein writes, because he found
them so intolerably artificial, and this was because he had seen many
Russian plays, of which the pre-eminent characteristics were reality
and naturalness. This being so it is easy to understand that Russian
plays form an exceedingly interesting commentary, an illuminating
“abstract and brief chronicle” of the Russian life of to-day.
I will give a few instances taken from plays which were being performed
during the winter season.[3] It must be remembered that there is a
censorship in Russia which is almost as severe where politics are
concerned as our censor in England is severe when the public morality
is liable to be shocked. In spite of this, politics, if not always
mentioned outright, permeate the Russian stage just as much as they
permeate Russian life, and in some cases they are allowed to be
mentioned outright, for the Russian censorship acts in a way peculiarly
its own, or rather it acts just as our censorship does when morals are
concerned, in an utterly illogical and incomprehensible fashion. There
is a play called _Walls_ being performed at the State-subventioned
theatre in St. Petersburg. This play would be forbidden in England,
not because it inculcates immorality, but because certain facts are
mentioned in it over which we draw a veil in this century, but which
Shakespeare did not shrink from mentioning in the days of Queen
Elizabeth. That is by the way. In this play we get among other things
a glimpse of the life of an old schoolmaster, who has retired, and
his wife; they have a daughter aged fifteen. These nice old parents
feel that there is a gulf between them and their child. The daughter
conceals her movements. She hides a portion of her life from her
parents, and this distresses them. We see the interior of their home,
and we see them waiting for the daughter in anxiety when she is
returning late from one of the expeditions about which she refuses to
speak. The father is distressed by the young generation. “In my time,”
he says, “we were Liberals, and we worked for the cause, but quietly;
now every one howls in the street and there is no talent anywhere.” He
looks at Hertzen’s portrait, which is hanging on the wall, and he says:
“Where have they got a man like him?” At last the daughter arrives, a
charming, simple, natural girl, pretty and attractive. They beg her to
say where she has been, and to be admitted into her confidence. We,
the public, know to a man that she has been to something political,
socialistic or revolutionary; we know that the parents know, and that
she knows that the parents know, and that the parents know that she
knows that they know. In spite of this she refuses to give any details.
The father tells her she is on a wrong tack. “It’s all words,” he
says. “You don’t understand, you can’t understand,” she answers. Then
after a while she gives the following astounding explanation of her
ideals: “There are two loves--a small love and a great love. The small
love is what one feels for one’s favourite chair, one’s table, one’s
father, one’s mother; the great love is the love which Christ felt for
the whole world, for humanity, for man, for the people.” The father
revolts at the idea of being compared to a table, and she kisses and
quiets him, but one feels that, as far as she is concerned, she spoke
the truth. Therefore we are not surprised in the last act when she
tells a man who loves her, and loves her in vain, that she is going for
good; she has received orders and starts for the South by the twelve
o’clock train. Here again the whole audience knows that she is going
to obey the orders of the Revolutionary Committee, probably to kill
some one. We see her leave the house. The parents are within drinking
tea; we see them by the light of the lamp through the window; she has
promised to be back soon; she is only going on a commission to the next
street, she says; “she casts one longing, lingering look behind;” the
man who is in love with her tries to keep her back by force, but she
tears herself away from him and disappears into the night, and we see
the parents waiting and waiting, and opening the window and listening
for her return, and the curtain falls.
[3] 1907.
This character of the daughter is a perfectly faithful picture of a
type that exists by the score in Russia to-day, and this play, acted
(it sounds like a paradox) at the State-paid Imperial Theatre throws
a searchlight on to the inner life of the throwers of bombs and the
killers of governors. It explains to us what sort of people these are
and why they do these things, and the spectacle is most instructive.
There was another play being performed this season[4] called _Chaos_,
in which the hero is the son of an aristocratic family who is a Social
Revolutionary. This play is far more stagy and less original than
Russian plays are generally, but it also contains many interesting
sidelights on the situation. We see the young wife of a high official
gradually opening her eyes to the political situation and gradually
becoming bitten with Liberal ideas, and finally plunging into the
whole thing. We see the young Socialist’s agony when the family receive
the news that their home in the country has been burnt and they tell
him that he must go at once, and he cannot go because he is “wanted” by
his party in St. Petersburg. We are shown the comic aspects also--the
family in which every member takes in a newspaper of a different shade
of political opinion and is quarrelling over the fact; and a meeting
of students in the aristocratic home quarrelling over Karl Marx and
throwing their cigarettes on the floor. We are shown, impartially, the
good points and the ridiculous points of both parties. Altogether it is
a most amusing play “palpitating with actuality.”
[4] January 1907.
I have seen Tchekoff’s last play, _The Cherry Garden_, either seven
or eight times. It tells in four pictures the whole story of the
aristocratic landed proprietor class in Russia. We see a charming old
and rather foolish aristocratic landlord coming back to his country
house with his sister, a young and beautiful married woman, after
five years’ absence. Their affairs are in a shocking state, and a
neighbour of theirs, whose father was a serf, and who himself was
a peasant, but who has become a merchant and a millionaire, warns
them that unless they let their property and allow it to be cut up
into villas it will be sold by auction. They tell him he does not
understand what he is talking about. The idea is simply inconceivable
to them. They say that something will turn up and save them; but it
does not, and the place and the beautiful cherry garden are sold by
auction, and bought by the merchant whose father was their serf, and
who ran about barefoot in their village as a child; and they go away,
and the shutters are shut, and we hear the cherry garden being hewed
down. That is the whole subject of the play; but I know no play more
poignant and more intensely real. It has, I should add, the advantage
of being played by the company of the “Artistic Theatre” of Moscow.
The acting of this company seems to me as superior to any other acting
I have ever seen as Shakespeare’s plays are superior to any other
plays in verse. It is simply in another class. They are now performing
Ibsen’s great poetical play _Brand_ so magnificently that it would be
worth while for any stage lover to go to Moscow from London merely
to see this performance. To see one of the greatest of poetical plays
played with inspiration by the chief actors, not only magnificently
but artistically staged and mounted, and perfectly interpreted down
to the smallest part and the most trivial detail is very rare. It is
worth a pilgrimage just in the same way as it is worth while going to
Bayreuth to hear _Parsifal_. And for the perfection of ensemble in the
interpretation and the inspiration of the principal units, it surpasses
anything which I have seen at Bayreuth, or anywhere else.
A RUSSIAN MYSTERY PLAY[5]
I was once in a company of Russian people, when a lady suddenly asked
to be explained what algebra meant. There were several mathematicians
present, but they, perhaps because they were mathematicians, were
unable to give a satisfactory explanation. I then said to the lady
that algebra is to arithmetic what Andreev’s play _The Life of Man_
is to other plays. She immediately understood the nature of algebra.
Andreev’s play, _The Life of Man_, which was produced for the first
time last year in St. Petersburg, and which is now being given at
the Artistic Theatre of Moscow, is written in the algebra of art.
Shakespeare wrote plays in which Fate manifested its inexorable
designs through the passions of individual men; for instance, he
showed us the fate of a man who was warm-hearted, brave, simple and
jealous--Othello; of a man who was dreamy, ambitious, superstitious
and hysterical--Macbeth. Molière, on the other hand, synthesised into
a series of vital types the various aspects of humanity, and showed
us the misanthropy of the whole human race in _Le Misanthrope_, and
the hypocrisy of all hypocrites in _Tartuffe_. Andreev in his play
represents neither types nor individuals, but simply the algebraic
symbol of man. Not man the miser, or man the infinitely complex Hamlet,
but man the quantity, man _X_, in face of fate the quantity _Y_.
[5] _The Life of Man_, by Andreev.
His play is not a play but a morality, such as those which were played
in the Middle Ages, without the buffoonery. It is a solemn mystery and
it is treated as such. The audience do not applaud and the actors do
not come before the curtain. The persons of the plays are puppets, the
pictures shown are like a series of rough woodcuts such as those in a
child’s newspaper; a penny plain and twopence coloured.
I have seen the play mounted and played with all the skill and subtlety
which are at the command of M. Stanislavski’s company at the Artistic
Theatre of Moscow. The acting was superlative, and the mounting
curious and original; nevertheless I will describe the play as I saw
it when it was given for the first time at the small theatre of Madame
Komisarjevskaia at St. Petersburg; because there (although the acting
was less excellent), owing to the simplicity of the staging, the
poignancy and the _macabre_ effect of the play were to my mind even
more forcibly brought home, and the effect, if not more impressive, was
in closer harmony with the author’s written words.
The curtain goes up on a space of complete darkness (in Moscow they
gave you the impression that you were looking into illimitable space),
from which a figure in grey emerges (in Moscow there was a vast shadow
behind him, shaped like that of Memnon’s statue)--a grey figure with
shrouded head and only his mouth visible. This figure is called in
Russian “He.” “He” is Fate, Life, Destiny, what you will--the _Y_
quantity which is inseparable from the _X_ quantity Man. The same thing
as Alfred de Musset pictures in his _Nuit de Décembre_, the presence
which was always with him “qui me resemblait comme un frère.”
The grey figure speaks a prologue, the beginning of which is as
follows: “Behold and listen, you who have come hither for mirth
and laughter. Here you shall see pass before you the whole life of
Man, with its dark beginning and its dark end. Unborn hitherto and
mysteriously hid in the womb of time, without thought, without feeling,
without knowledge of aught, he mysteriously breaks through the barriers
of nothingness and with a cry heralds the beginning of his brief life.
In the night of oblivion a candle breaks into flame lit by an unseen
hand.--It is the life of Man. Look upon its flame--it is the life of
Man. As soon as he is born he receives the shape and the name of Man,
and becomes like unto all men who dwell upon the earth. And their
merciless fate becomes his fate, and his merciless fate is the fate
of all men. Irresistibly compelled by Time, he passes through the
unchanging stages of human life, from the depths to the heights, from
the heights to the depths. With darkened sight, he shall never perceive
the next step over which his uncertain foot is already raised; with
obscured knowledge he shall never know what the coming day, what the
coming hour, what the coming minute are to bring. And in his blind
ignorance, outworn by foreboding and convulsed by hope and fear,
submissive he fulfils the iron circle of his destiny.”
The prologue, of which I have only quoted a small part, is written in
majestic prose, and it recalls the chorus in Swinburne’s “Atalanta in
Calydon”--
“He weaves and is clothed with derision,
Sows and he shall not reap.
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.”
The grey figure relates the varying stages, the changing vicissitudes
of which the life of Man is composed. He tells of the death of Man, his
return to nothingness, and he relates how he himself, the mysterious
figure, shall ever be with Man, unseen and near, in his hours of joy
and of sorrow; when he watches and when he sleeps, when he prays and
curses, in his hours of gladness, when his free and brave spirit leaps
high, in his hours of down-heartedness and anguish, when the spirit is
darkened with a mortal weariness and the blood freezes in the heart; in
his hours of triumph and defeat, in his hours of mighty wrestling with
the inevitable, he will be with him. The prologue ends thus: “And you
who have come hither for mirth, you who are allotted to death, look on
and listen; here with its far-off and illusive echo shall pass before
you, with its sorrows and with its joys, the short-spanned life of Man.”
The first scene is called the birth of the Man. The curtain rises on a
dark room. A group of old crones--you cannot see them distinctly--like
grey mice, are chattering in the obscurity. They are talking of
the child that is to be born. Here are the first words of their
conversation--
“I should like to know what will come to our friend: a son or a
daughter?”
“Is it not all the same to us?”
“I like little boys.”
“And I like little girls. They always sit at home and wait, when you go
to them.”
“And you like visiting?”
[_The old women laugh low._
“He knows.”
“He knows.” (_A pause._)
“Our friend would like to have a little girl. She says that boys are
too boisterous and enterprising, they run after danger when they are
little, and climb up high trees and bathe in deep water. They often
fall into the water and get drowned. And when they grow up they go to
war and kill one another.”
“She thinks little girls don’t get drowned. But I have seen many
drowned maidens, and they were like all drowned people--wet and green.”
“She thinks that little girls don’t kill with stones!”
“Poor thing, it is going so hardly with her, it is the sixteenth hour
that we have been here, and she has screamed the whole time. At first
she screamed loudly, so that her cry made our ears sore, and then more
gently, and now she only moans.”
“The doctor says she will die.”
“No, the doctor says that the child will be born dead, and that she
will live.”
“Why are they born? it is so painful.”
“And why do they die? that is still more painful!”
[_The old women laugh low._
“Yes, they are born and they die.”
“And again they are born.”
[_They laugh. The low cry of the
suffering woman is heard._
“It has begun once more.”
“She has found her voice again, that is good.”
“That is good.”
“Poor husband: he was in such a state that he was funny to look upon.
At first he was glad and said that he wished for a boy, he thought that
his son would be a minister or general, now he wishes for nothing,
neither for a boy or a girl, he only cries.”
“When the pangs began he himself writhed.”
“They sent him to the chemist’s to fetch medicine. He drove for two
hours by the chemist’s and could not remember what he wanted. Then he
returned.”
The old crones continue to chatter and to laugh their low, ghastly
laugh, until, suddenly, all becomes still, and the grey figure enters
and says, “Be still. The Man is born.” And as he says this a candle
which he bears in his hand breaks into flame. The old women disappear,
and the father of the Man comes in with the doctor. He says that he
hates the child for the pain it has caused his wife, but when he
hears that it is like him his heart overflows with gladness, and he
thanks Heaven that his desire has been fulfilled, and he prays God
that his son may grow up strong and healthy, intelligent and honest.
Then come the relations; they are got up like puppets, like penny,
wooden, painted dolls. They congratulate the father on the birth of
his child, each with a set phrase, they say all the usual things. They
leave no stereotype commonplace unsaid. Here is an example of their
conversation--
_The Fat Lady speaks_: “Allow me, dear brother, to congratulate you on
the birth of your son.”
_Fat Gentleman_: “Allow me, dear relation, to most heartily
congratulate you on the birth of your son, an event which you have been
expecting for such a long time.”
_The others_: “Allow us, dear relation, to congratulate you on the
birth of your son.”
_The Father_: “I thank you, I thank you; you are all very good and kind
people,” etc.
_A young Girl_: “What will you call the child, dear uncle? I should
like him to have a pretty, poetical name; so much depends on the name
of a man.”
_The Fat Lady_: “I should like him to have a simple and sensible name.
People with pretty names are always unsatisfactory and rarely succeed
in life.”
_The Fat Gentleman_: “It seems to me, my dear brother-in-law, that the
child should be called after some of its older relations; that prolongs
and maintains the race.”
_The Father_: “Yes, my wife and I often thought about it but could not
come to a decision. The birth of a child gives rise to so many new
cares and anxieties.”
_Fat Lady_: “It fills up life.”
_Fat Gentleman_: “It gives a splendid purpose to life. To educate a
child, to cause him by our guidance to avoid those faults into which
we ourselves fell, to strengthen his mind with the riches of our own
experience;--by so doing we create a better man, and slowly but surely
move towards the goal of our existence--perfection.”
_The Father_: “I entirely agree with you, my dear son-in-law!”
Here the doctor enters and says, “Sir, your wife is feeling very ill;
she wishes to see you.” The Man goes out.
The relations, after discussing whether the mother will live or not,
end by talking--always in set phrases--of ordinary topics, the men of
whether smoking is harmful, the women of how to remove grease stains
from silk; and then the infant is heard crying and the curtain falls.
The second scene is called “Love and Poverty.” The Man is grown up. It
is his room. He is married. His room is quite bare, the walls are damp
but lit up with bright, warm light. The grey figure is there; a third
of the candle that he holds in his hands has burnt down. The neighbours
come into the room. They are bright, cheerful puppets, and they bring
flowers and leaves and ribbons. They talk of the Man and his wife. They
are so poor, the neighbours say, and so happy, they sing and dance for
joy. They are so good and kind. They leave flowers for the Man and his
wife, and a bottle of milk, a piece of bread and a very cheap, strong
cigar.
They go, and they are followed by the wife of the Man. She is young
and pretty. She tells of her poverty; of how her husband is a talented
architect and cannot find work. She prays Heaven to send her bread
so that her dear, good husband may not hunger; she prays that if her
husband be cross to her, that it may be forgotten. She goes out and
the figure in grey speaks and says, “She little knows that her desire
is already fulfilled; that two rich men are already seeking the Man to
give him work which shall bring him riches and fame. Thus does fortune
come to Man, and thus does it go.” Then the Man and his wife return.
The Man complains of his hunger and fatigue. He is cross and irritable.
The wife’s eyes fill with tears, and then immediately he curses himself
for his selfishness and his thoughtlessness and kisses away her tears.
Hope rises triumphant in him, and turning to the grey figure, whom,
of course, he does not see, he challenges Life and Fate: “Come out
to battle,” he cries, “I _shall_ conquer,” and the wife of the Man
applauds him. Then the Man and his wife play at make believe. They
build castles in the air. They weave the future out of rainbows. They
imagine palaces where they will live in Italy or in the North. They
find the milk and bread and flowers brought by the neighbours. They eat
it greedily together, and the Man lights the cigar, which tastes like
heaven. They dance for joy. They imagine they are in a great palace
giving a ball--that the wife of the Man is the queen of the ball.
She puts the ribbons and flowers in her hair, and they dance wildly
together, while the figure in grey looks on indifferent, and the candle
in his hands burns brightly.
The next scene is called “The Ball in the Man’s House.” It is a huge
room with great columns placed in a circle. Beyond the columns all
is shadow, and the room is brilliant with cold, artificial light.
Everything in the house is rich and gilded. An orchestra is playing;
three little black puppets, one scraping the violin, one the ’cello,
and the third blowing the flute. They only play one tune, a lively,
monotonous and foolish polka.
[Music]
Under each column a guest is seated, stiff and lifeless as a waxwork:
They are old, wrinkled, painted, bedaubed and ridiculous. The women
guests are dressed in silk, satins, tinsel, and gaudy jewels; the
men are like expensive, pompous dolls, some in uniform, some covered
with orders, others in black and white clothes; they are all quite
expressionless.
In the centre of the room young men and girls are dancing the polka,
and they dance and disappear in and out of the columns. The figure
in grey stands in one corner of the room and two-thirds of his candle
have been consumed. The guests talk. Here is the beginning of their
conversation--
“I must observe that it is a great honour to be invited to the Man’s
ball.”
“You may add that this honour is given to extremely few. The whole town
tried to get asked; very few were chosen. My husband, my children and
myself are all proud of the honour the most highly-to-be-honoured Man
has paid us.”
“I am sorry for those who were not asked, they will not be able to
sleep all night for envy; and to-morrow they will invent calumnies
about the tediousness of the Man’s ball.”
“They never saw such magnificence.”
“You might add such extraordinary magnificence and luxury.”
“And I say such enchanting and unceasing amusement. If this is not
amusing I should like to know what is amusing!”