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"A Christmas Carol" by Dickens and "The Accursed Prince" by Remizov. Korsh Theatre. "Much Ado about Nothing" by Shakespeare and "Le Misanthrope" and "Georges Dandin" by Moli=8Are. Dramatic Theatre. "Alexander I" by Merezhkovsky. Theatre of Drama and Comedy. "Little Dorrit" by Dickens and "The King's Barber" by Lunacharsky.
He asked: "Is it not one of those caps with which we were preparing to throw back the foreign enemy? Is not all Russia seeking now its lost cap and cannot be consoled?" Petersburg. The lost cap belonged to Dmitry Merezhkovsky, who immediately wrote a much-discussed article in an important newspaper under the title of "What has become of our Cap?" The above is an actual quotation from it.
"The admirable Epicurus," says Merezhkovsky, "that joyous sage, who, in the very center of Athens, cultivated with his own hands a tiny garden, and taught men not to believe in any human or divine chimeras, but to be contented with the simple happiness that can be given by a single sunbeam, a flower, a sup of water from an earthen cup, or the summer time, would recognize in Tolstoy his faithful disciple, the only one, perhaps, who survives in this barbaric silence, where American comfort, a mixture of effeminacy and indigence, has made one forget the real purpose of life...."
Merezhkovsky has also written a long historical drama, called "The Death of Paul I." He traces there, with his accustomed animation, the figure of the weak and criminal Tsar, now heaping favors upon those who surround him, now persecuting them with the most terrible cruelty. The savage scene of the assassination of this tyrant is of remarkable beauty.
In a kind of "leitmotiv" Merezhkovsky has shown us the Tolstoyan characters individualized by very particular corporal signs. "Tolstoy," he says, "has, to the very highest degree, the gift of clairvoyance of the flesh; even when dead, the flesh has a tongue." He is the subtle painter of all sensations and he is a master in this domain.
This poem is like a last tribute paid by the author to the humanitarian and realistic tendencies of Russian literature. Afterward, yielding to the inclinations of his nature and his taste for classical antiquity, Merezhkovsky insensibly changed.
At all events, the interest and value of "Peter and Alexis" does not rest in its philosophic ideas and in the Nietzschean obsession, but rather in the art with which Merezhkovsky faithfully depicts the psychology of his heroes.
His "Ham Triumphant" is the Antichrist, whose reign, as predicted by the Apocalypse, will begin with the final victory of the bourgeoisie. According to Merezhkovsky, the present evil in the world consists entirely in the moral void which results from the disappearance of the Christian ideal from the soul.
The poet Merezhkovsky has been to see me twice; he is a very intelligent man. How sorry I am you did not see my mongoose. It is a wonderful creature. ST. PETERSBURG, January 14, 1891. Unforeseen circumstances have kept me a few days longer. I am alive and well. There is no news. I saw Tolstoy's "The Power of Darkness" the other day, though. I have been to Ryepin's studio. What else? Nothing else.
Merezhkovsky is absolutely right in all that he says about the fact that Russian writers live solitary, deprived of that precious excitation which is felt when one is in contact with original and different temperaments; but if you add to this, as he has done, the statement that Russia does not possess a literature worthy of the name, you go too far.
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