Quiet is the Ukrainian night.
A limpid sky, the stars shine bright.
The air’s unwilling to cast off
Its drowsiness. The silvered leaves
Quiver lightly on the poplar trees . . .7
The sound of doors opening.
What’s that?
NIKITA IVANYCH. I guess it’s Petrushka and Yegorka on their way back . . . That’s talent, Vasil Vasilich! That’s talent!
SVETLOVIDOV (shouts, turning to the direction of the noise). Over here, my fine feathered friends! (to Nikita Ivanych.) Let’s go change our clothes . . . Old age ceases to exist, it’s all nonsense, rubbish . . . (Laughsmerrily.) What are you weeping for? My dear imbecile, what are you snivelling about? Ey, that’s no good! That’s no good at all! There, there, old man, that’s enough of that! Why look at me like that? There, there . . . (Embraces him through tears.) You musn’t cry . . . Where there’s art, where there’s talent, old age or loneliness or illness cease to exist, and even death half . . . (Weeps.) No, Nikitushka, our party’s over . . . What kind of a talent am I? A squeezed lemon, a dripping icicle, a rusty nail, and you are an old theater rat, a prompter . . . Let’s go!
They start to go.
What kind of talent am I? In serious plays I’m useful only in Fortinbras’s retinue8. . . and I’m even too old for that now . . . Yes . . . You remember that bit from Othello, Nikitushka?
Farewell the tranquil mind; farewell content!
Farewell the plumèd troop and the big wars
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!
Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!9
NIKITA IVANYCH. Talent! Talent!
SVETLOVIDOV. And this one:
I’ll out of Moscow straight! My visits here are ended!
I’ll fly and not look back! Where no ill tongues disparage,
I’ll seek a refuge for my feelings much offended!
My carriage here! My carriage!10
Exits with NIKITA IVANYCH.
Slow Curtain
VARIANTS TO
Swan Song (Calchas)
Variants from the anthology The Season (S), the censor’s copy (C), the lithographed script (L), the journal Performer (P), and the anthology Plays (Pl).
page 307 / Replace: old man
with: old man with a long, gray beard (S, C, L, P)
page 307 / Replace: cluttered with junk
with: cluttered with all sorts of theatrical junk (S)
page 308 / Replace: Disgusting . . . Oof, good God!
with: Eh, why do you have to drink, you old nincompoop! Why do you have to! (S)
page 308 / Replace: your life’s been lived . . . left at the very bottom
with: you’re already fifty-eight—bye-bye! This life — my respects, is over! The cup’s been drained and almost nothing’s left (S)
page 308 / Replace: sixty-eight years
with: fifty-eight years (S, C, L, P)
page 308 / Replace: forty-five years
with: thirty-five years (S, C, L, P)
page 308 / Replace: A black, bottomless pit, like a grave
with: A black, bottomless pit, a gaping maw, from which darkness and cold stare out . . .
Pause.
Infinitely deep and empty, like a grave. (S)
page 308 / After: calling up ghosts! — stage direction: The bell for matins is heard. (S)
page 310 / Replace: Those blue eyes of hers . . . could dispel the darkest night.
with: I did not see her as a human being, as a woman . . . In my eyes she was the sun, whose beauty one could not withstand (S)
page 310 / After: snowdrifts could break! —
NIKITA IVANYCH. Vasil Vasilich, honest to God, it’s time to go to bed! Vasil Vasilich! (Waves his hand in dismissal.) What a nuisance you are! (S)
page 311 / Replace: Then I understood . . . a clown!
with: I didn’t give up the stage, but my eyes were opened and I understood a good deal . . . I understood that I am a slave, a plaything of someone else’s leisure time, comic relief, a clown! I began to understand that this is not sacred art, it’s all a baneful deception. (S)
page 311 / After: Yegorka! — Is there anyone there? God, the candle’s going out! (S)
page 314 / Replace: Farewell the tranquil mind . . . the circumstance of glorious war!
with: Had it pleas’d Heaven,
To try me with Affliction, had they rain’d
All kinds of sores, and shames on my bare head:
Steep’d me in poverty to the very lips,
Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes.
page 314 / After: glorious war! —
And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats
Th’immortal Jove’s dread clamors counterfeit,
Farewelclass="underline" Othello’s occupation’s gone. (C, L, P)
NOTES
1 Svetlovidov is evidently a stage name, “Radiant of countenance,” a sharp contrast to the actor’s woebegone mien.
2 The wily old oracle monger in Offenbach’s comic opera La Belle Hélène. The costume included a long-haired wig, a comical chiton, and a garland.
3 Dedicated to a specific performer, who was usually allowed to pick the plays and receive the takings on that occasion.
4 Pushkin’s blank-verse historical chronicle Boris Godunov (1824/5). This is a quotation from the soliloquy of the Pretender Dmitry, referring to the Polish noblewoman from whom he is trying to win support.
5 Lear on the heath in Act III, scene 2 of Shakespeare’s tragedy.
6 Hamlet, Act IV, scene 2.
7 From Pushkin’s dramatic poem Poltava.
8 When Fortinbras, Prince of Norway, makes his entrance in the last scene of Hamlet, he is accompanied by a retinue of soldiers. Compare T. S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock: “To swell a scene . . .”
9 The end of Othello’s monologue in Act III, scene 3.
10 Svetlovidov’s final quotation is from a comedy, Griboedov’s classic verse satire Woe from Wit. These are the last lines of the protagonist Chatsky, who has become completely disillusioned with Moscow society.
THE EVILS OF TOBACCO, FIRST VERSION
Originally, Chekhov intended this as a monologue for the talented though alcoholic comedian Gradov-Sokolov, but he believed that, by dashing it off in two and a half hours in February 1886, he had spoiled it. “I consigned it to the devil, and to the Petersburg gazette,” where it appeared, signed “A. Chekhonte.” He made some revisions when the piece was republished in his collection Motley Tales later that year, raising the emotional tone, with a reader, rather than a spectator, in mind. One of his literary friends, A. S. Laza-rev (Gruzinsky) considered it inferior to the other stories in the collection and twitted Chekhov for including it. Chekhov defended it, but the criticism may have stuck, for he returned to the monologue throughout the rest of his career, emending it until it reached the shape in which it is ordinarily reprinted today.