Page images
PDF
EPUB

Art. 2.-THE RUSSIAN STAGE.

1. Dina Glank. A drama in four acts. By Semyon Yushkievitch. Stuttgart: Dietz, 1906.

2. Vassa Zheleznova; scenes. By Maxim Gorky. Berlin: Ladyschnikow, 1910.

3. The Works of Anton Tchekhof. Vols 7 and 11. St Petersburg: Marks, 1908.

4. The Axle of the Earth; tales and dramatic scenes. By Valery Brusof. Moscow: 'Scorpion,' 1907.

5. Alma; a tragedy of contemporary life, in three acts. By N. M. Minsky. St Petersburg: Northern Press, 1900.

[ocr errors]

6. Collected Writings of Theodore Sologub. Vol. 8 (dramatic works). St Petersburg: Shipovnik,' 1911. 7. Rings; a drama in three acts. By L. D. ZinovyevaAnnibal. St Petersburg: 'Scorpion,' 1904.

8. Lyrical Dramas. By Alexander Blok. burg: 'Shipovnik,' 1908.

And other works.

St Peters

If we want to learn the inner secrets of Russian thought during the national crisis of the last few years, the heartsearchings, the aspirations, there is hardly a better, more intimate way of doing it than by the discriminating study of their drama. Little, of course, can be gathered from the works of the popular playwrights, the entertainers, who bulk biggest in the daily programme. In every art there are these necessary and delightful by-products; but they reflect nothing, they reveal nothing; they have no place in the history of intellectual forces. We must take care also not to be taken in by that intermediate sort of purveyor, who flourishes everywhere nowadaysthe playwright who strives to be artist and entertainer at the same time; to represent new phases of thought, and yet to please the many; to be true if he can, but always to be effective; the writer who is interested' in 'intellectual' questions, and has an air of probing their secrets, without giving offence by penetrating further than his public has gone before him. He reflects only the surface of things, the after-ripples.

The perfect type in Russia of this intermediate sort is Leonid Andreyef, a gifted and versatile craftsman, famous already in England, while the work of better

playwrights is still unknown. He can turn his hand to anything; he is ready to do you the realistic, the mystic, the modern, the antique, the biblical, the medievalwhatever you please. Tragedy or comedy, it is all one to him; he will give you hope if you want it, or despair if you prefer it. If he has a talent more peculiarly his own, it is the big symbolical bow-wow.' In The Ocean' (1911), in 'Anathema' (1909)-lately translated into Americanin 'The Life of Man' (1907)-excellently described by Mr Maurice Baring in his Russian Essays and Stories' (1908) everything is on the large symbolical scale, with symbolical seas and mountains and walls and gates, and tall figures of mysterious Hims' and 'Its' that stand silent, with their hats pulled over their eyes. His writing is like Bilibin's painting, rich, astonishing, ingenious, hollow, and insincere.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

But the quality which won Russian literature the position it holds in European esteem was pre-eminently its restless, probing sincerity, impelled by that 'sick conscience,' that sense of the disharmony of life and the desire to overcome it,' which Bulgakof says has always been the inspiration of typical Russian writers. We turn naturally to the realists; for it is in the guise of realism that we are accustomed to Russian sincerity. The younger generation has not escaped the danger that lies in wait for realists-the painting of things in too sombre colours. The type is too well fixed to be avoided; it is a sort of tragédie de mœurs; a poor but intellectual middle-class family, living in a small provincial town (how realists everywhere delight in small provincial towns!), inspired by hearty dislike for their nearest relatives, and practising the marriage customs of the early Stone Age. As for form and construction, 'pas de sous-intrigue, pas de thèse, pas de contrastes, pas de leçons; mais une réalité implacable, et une unité féroce' -the ideal of Antoine's Théâtre Libre.*

This sort of drama is pursued with great success by certain Jewish writers-a new element this, by the by, in Russian literature-pre-eminently by Yushkievitch, a clear-headed and vivid dramatist, not quite original, but endowed with a fine sense of humour. His chief play in

* As formulated by Filon, De Dumas à Rostand' (1898), p. 81.

this line is 'Dina Glank' (1906), the story of the struggles of a Jewish family. Dina is a majestic figure, a strong-willed old Jewess, one of the 'heavy mothers,' of the Gorkian sort, that have arisen of late in Russian drama as a significant type. One after another she compels her daughters to support the family at the expense of their virtue. They resist at first, but in the end she convinces them, and almost the audience, that it is the only thing to do; that all else but bread and butter is flimsy romance, and will not stand the test of real life. Any idea, if clearly and consistently expressed, may rise to the height of a philosophy; and it is clearness and consistency that make this play a great one.

Do mothers really sell their daughters in Russia? One is not wholly convinced. Andreyef offers corroboration in 'The Days of our Life' (1908), a play that has had considerable success; but he gives the daughter a natural preference for sweetmeats over chastity, which turns it into a personal case and robs it of its philosophical value. One suspects that things are pictured worse than they are, out of respect for the tradition. Naidyonof's 'Children of Vanushin,' a perfect carnival of deadly sins, well received in realistic circles, gives the case away by exaggeration. More characteristically Russian is the subjective or psychological realism of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. As a playwright, Tolstoy never succeeded very well; he never seemed to find room on the stage to express much of what he thought; one always feels that his play is such a little tap for such a head of water. 'The Living Corpse' ('The Corpse' was his own name for it) is an unfinished fragment that he got bored with and put aside years ago, after seeing the man on whose story it was founded. It never even reached the point of becoming a play. When it was put on the stage in Moscow and St Petersburg last year, it enjoyed that kind of failure which is known as a succès d'estime. It is saved from tediousness chiefly by the quite irrelevant singing of the Gipsies in Act I and the hope that they may sing again. As for The Light that shone in Darkness,' lately published by his executors, and 'The Cause of it all,' produced in April last by the Adelphi Play Society, it is hard to believe that he really wrote them as they stand.

Among the younger generation, Osip Dymof has

6

succeeded in bringing this peculiarly Russian probing sincerity on to the stage in Cain' (1910), the study of a family in which there has been a suicide. Russian writers have an almost unfair advantage over others in this sort of drama; for Russians, in everyday life, have a habit, not only of thinking sincerely, but of saying what they think. The psychological realist has only to make them speak on the stage as they do in private life. French writers have a similar advantage, for a different reason; for Frenchmen are always theatrical, even in the bosom of their families. In both cases life and the stage agree; and it is the difference of the two ways of agreement that puts the French and Russian dramas at opposite poles. Russian literature, however, has never been content merely to register phenomena; it has been inspired not only by the sense of the disharmony of life,' but also by 'the desire to overcome it.' Mankind is conscious of its progress towards some end. What is that end, and how is it to be reached? According to the general belief, it is a new social order, which, with a little effort and goodwill, may easily be attained. Turn somebody out of somewhere, turn somebody else in; let somebody be prevented from doing something that he does, and somebody else be allowed to do something else that he is prevented from doing; and Life, which has hitherto been pretty bad, will all at once become extremely good. Tolstoy, though no politician, was quite of this opinion. The problem was of the simplest kind, according to his showing, and it was only by reason of some sort of misunderstanding that mankind had not yet solved it. But the solution he propounded never aroused any general enthusiasm; it was too Christian in its essence. Neither in Russia nor elsewhere in Europe do the mass of people believe any longer that the right road to happiness is by the way of humility and forbearance. Even women have lost their faith in those traditional virtues.

In the nineties of the last century, people in Russia were distracted between many ideals, dissatisfied with all. They were puzzled and afraid; puzzled with the present, and afraid of the future. Everyone felt that a new era was at hand; and there was a desperate need to get its ideals formulated, or it would begin in mere chaos and destruction. Everyone felt that there was an old era

waiting to be sent about its business, but no one knew how to dispatch it. They ran hither and thither as sheep having no shepherd. At that moment Gorky emerged from the Lower Depths, with his square chin and clear eyes-a strong man who had the air of knowing what he wanted. His success was immediate and immense. The crowds that had followed Father John of Cronstadt or what not, a year or two before, now flocked to touch the hem of Gorky's dusty garment.

Did he, in fact, come with any clear idea? Did he bring any definite plans for the new world in his trampswag? Not much, it appears. Vaguely, it would be covered with engine-sheds, and peopled by strong men with black oil on their hands; there would be no gentry in it, no funny men, no unapplied science, no art for art's sake, no puritans, no philosophers, no almsgiving, no private theatricals. Never was there a reformer less definite about positive ideals and the institutions of the new age that he was bringing in. On one point only was he clear, that in order to bring it in we must have a new breed of men; tough customers, something like himself, something like the earth and sky between which he had wandered so many years, strong-willed, patient, jolly, confident; men 'straight and tempered like swords' -nothing less could carve a way through the cumbering rubbish piled up by the Hogs who have captured the command of life.' He was plain-spoken-another charm; the real working-man had arrived in literature; democracy had become articulate. But still the question put to Brusof's regenerator in 'The Earth' remained unanswered: 'You, the saviour of mankind, in the name of what do you save? What will people do in your new Eden, if they take you for their pattern?'

[ocr errors]

Gorky's first play, 'Petits Bourgeois' (1900)-the French renders the title best-set forth the new man, the new hope, in the clearest possible terms. The characters of this comedy belong to two clearly defined groups; on the one hand stands the Bezsemenof family, the grim father, the pious mother, the clever, neurotic son and daughter, Peter and Tatyana; these represent the old bad order of things. On the other side stand the Birdcatcher and his simple-minded daughter, the students the jolly widow upstairs, and, chief among them, Nil the

« PreviousContinue »