JUNE 15, 1913
Sweet Marusya! More than half my term of duty is over! In two weeks, I was supposed to go to a four-month training camp, but suddenly I got lucky—they decided to let me stay in the office, because they couldn’t find another clerk like me anywhere. And they didn’t look very hard, because they foresaw that I would surpass everyone else in skill and dedication. True, I had to learn to write in a special “clerkish” script, so that the page looks decent and slightly legible. I can address an envelope with flourishes and curlicues that even Akaky Akakievich would be proud of! I even thought, Hmm, I’m a kindred spirit of Gogol’s character with the pen and the overcoat … my penurious friend!
I’m spurring myself on. My studies have me chomping at the bit, and the books are good. In four months, you can accomplish a lot. It’s too bad I postponed taking my exams. After I read something, it gets fixed in my memory, but I’ve never tested its longevity. MOSCOW–YURYUZAN MARUSYA TO JACOB
JULY 6, 1913
I’m in a foul mood again. I was just about to go to a restaurant, but I decided not to. I have promised myself that, from this month on, I have to live at a calmer pace. I don’t sleep well; I’m nervous. I don’t think I can be away from you much longer. I can’t, I don’t even want to, get close to other people when you aren’t here. And I’m lonely.
I received an unexpected letter from Paris. Someone from the past wrote me. We haven’t seen each other or corresponded for many years. And now there’s a long letter. It was so strange to see a forgotten but familiar script all of a sudden. Sweet, strange life … There is so much sadness in memories of the past, and, true, profound happiness. My Jacob! My Jacob—you are the most important thing, the largest thing in my life. My young husband, dearest to me, closest to my heart. My own happiness; my own life. Good night! I kiss you. YURYUZAN–MOSCOW JACOB TO MARUSYA
AUGUST 12, 1913
Write me, Marusya, and tell me whether you have begun your studies at the Rumyantsev Museum. You had intended to read something there, if I recall correctly. And about the planes of dynamic composition, if that’s what it’s called.
I did read the books you sent me. The Voice of the Blood is quite good, but the others—oh, how weak and uninspired. Really, to cool your ardor, find the article by Chukovksy in the June issue of The Russian Word. Don’t be afraid. You’ll admire him afterward—but his halo will fade just a bit.
Now, Little Wars by H. G. Wells is something I understand. How could there be a parallel, though? I simply read one book after another. It intrigued me for a long time.
Ask someone who knows the English language and literature to read Barrie’s play Peter Pan to you. It’s a wonderful children’s play in which the characters talk to the audience, and the very memorable finale depends on the last answer given by the audience.
AUGUST 23, 1913
I’m reading Myths in Art—Old and New by René Ménard. I’m not so much reading it as looking at it, and I can’t get enough of it. Sculpture from antiquity—if it truly captures the structure of the modern human bodies—emphasizes a fact that I have never noticed before. A woman’s body does not differ so much from that of a man. There are many, many sculptures and statues in which the breasts are the only distinguishing feature between man and woman. But there are figures in which this sign communicates nothing. The majority of the male gods have a soft, rounded build, with somewhat full hips, shoulders, hands, and breasts that are too small for a woman but slightly too large for a man. The face does not always convey features typical of one sex or the other, especially if the face is very young. The width of the hips is misleading in the extreme. In modern man, the hips are considerably narrower.
Dress is the most unreliable sign of all. Apollo Musagetes is wearing a pleated robe with a train and a high waist. Apollo Sauroctonos has a typical woman’s body, with delicate, slender legs. Venus Genetrix has a typical male body.
One could cite many examples on this subject, but there’s no reason to do so. It is enough just to visit a museum or examine a cultural atlas to be convinced of it. Is it possible that the sexes back then didn’t differ so much from each other, that their ways of life, habits, ways of thinking, were more similar? They lived together, danced, studied, swam, practiced gymnastics, and loved together. Life was much simpler, more naïve. And that marvelous “unashamedness.”
It’s difficult to love Egyptian stone sculpture, with dead figures and one-dimensional profiles. But the graceful figure of Isis is lovely. She wears a tight sheath that ends at her breasts. And on another bas-relief she is depicted with the head of a cow, feeding Horus, a youth who already stands shoulder-high.
And about something that is of special interest to you, a good subject for your dynamic compositions: dance with theatrical masks. They are easy to create from papier-mâché. A tragic mask, laughing and crying. The possibilities are myriad.
Isadora Duncan’s dancing, in which the only material is her own body, demands a special degree of talent, for the added richness of visual means of expression is lacking.
There will come a time when you and I will read these books together—the history of art, music, a bit of medicine and pedagogical theory. The sooner the better.
Goodbye, little one. I await orders for maneuvers. And then—freedom. It’s unlikely that I’ll be given early discharge, though.
Write me sometime. I shower you with kisses—many of them, and often.
—Your Jacob Addendum
Look in the library for a handbook for reading the authors of antiquity, and for interpreting poetic allegories and symbols in works of art. Publisher-editor of The New Journal of Foreign Literature, richly illustrated. You might also need Stoll’s valuable work, Myths of Classical Antiquity. I highly recommend it.
SEPTEMBER 15, 1913
I received Footlights and for several minutes was transported there, to your world. It’s a pity it contains none of your notes! I enjoyed the article about Bogolyubov and the pictures of Reinhardt. I’m extremely interested in Western theater arts. Back home, I read a good book by Georg Fuchs—about the Munich Art Theater. And there’s still Dresden and Nuremberg to visit.
If I were an opera director in the present moment, I would adopt Reinhardt’s views on it. Reinhardt is made for opera, with its palpable conventions, its heightened theatricality. Of course, all art has its conventions, but drama is still somewhat closer to life. Opera, with its enormous scale, needs large-scale directorial decisions. The architectural-sculptural manifestations can change from opera to opera, but the main thing is that the “spectacular” dimension, the “staginess” or “showiness,” is particularly evident in opera, in extravaganzas, in ballet, as well as in tragedy.
The Munich Art Theater (drama) attempts to minimize the dimensions of the stage. On a large stage, the actors, characters, words dissolve and disappear. A large stage always requires many people, which artistic necessity does not always call for. But Reinhardt works with thousands of people, whole circuses, hundreds of torches, thousands of colors.
I read the papers and the magazines. I scour them for news about the Rabenek studio. And I read about the Free Theater, and about the Moscow Art Theatre. MOSCOW–YURYUZAN MARUSYA TO JACOB
SEPTEMBER 20, 1913
A few days ago, I was bathing in the kitchen. Nyusha was there, puttering around at her chores, and talking all the while. She recalled how, as a girl, she had liked to play outside, splashing around in puddles. And then about her family, how the matchmaker called and brought her together with her husband (she’s married). Then she started remembering her wedding night. I listened, quiet as a mouse. With a kind of agitation, and some other feeling I couldn’t quite describe. This is what Nyusha told me: It was very painful for her. She couldn’t bear it, and screamed at the top of her lungs. But no one responded to her call—everyone knew that that was how it happened. “Rivers of sweat were streaming down me. I started pounding him with my fists, then grabbed him by the throat, by his hair. I even pulled out clumps of his hair. I swear, madame, my heart starts pounding every time I remember it. For a whole week afterward, I felt as if I was ill. I thought I didn’t want to see a man again.” There were many other graphic details, but I’ll leave them out. And while I listened, I leaned low over the water basin, washing my feet carefully.