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Swan Song

by Anton Checkov

May, 1999  [Etext #1753]


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This file contains the chronology, the introduction, Swan Song.





Swan Song

by Anton Checkov




PLAYS BY ANTON TCHEKOFF


TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MARIAN FELL




CONTENTS

Introduction
Chronological List of Works
The Swan Song




INTRODUCTION

ANTON TCHEKOFF

THE last years of the nineteenth century were for Russia tinged
with doubt and gloom. The high-tide of vitality that had risen
during the Turkish war ebbed in the early eighties, leaving
behind it a dead level of apathy which lasted until life was
again quickened by the high interests of the Revolution. During
these grey years the lonely country and stagnant provincial towns
of Russia buried a peasantry which was enslaved by want and toil,
and an educated upper class which was enslaved by idleness and
tedium. Most of the "Intellectuals," with no outlet for their
energies, were content to forget their ennui in vodka and
card-playing; only the more idealistic gasped for air in the
stifling atmosphere, crying out in despair against life as they
saw it, and looking forward with a pathetic hope to happiness for
humanity in "two or three hundred years." It is the inevitable
tragedy of their existence, and the pitiful humour of their
surroundings, that are portrayed with such insight and sympathy
by Anton Tchekoff who is, perhaps, of modern writers, the dearest
to the Russian people.

Anton Tchekoff was born in the old Black Sea port of Taganrog on
January 17, 1860. His grandfather had been a serf; his father
married a merchant's daughter and settled in Taganrog, where,
during Anton's boyhood, he carried on a small and unsuccessful
trade in provisions. The young Tchekoff was soon impressed into
the services of the large, poverty-stricken family, and he spoke
regretfully in after years of his hard-worked childhood. But he
was obedient and good-natured, and worked cheerfully in his
father's shop, closely observing the idlers that assembled there,
and gathering the drollest stories, which he would afterward
whisper in class to his laughing schoolfellows. Many were the
punishments which he incurred by this habit, which was
incorrigible.

His grandfather had now become manager of an estate near
Taganrog, in the wild steppe country of the Don Cossacks, and
here the boy spent his summers, fishing in the river, and roving
about the countryside as brown as a gipsy, sowing the seeds of
that love for nature which he retained all his life. His evenings
he liked best to spend in the kitchen of the master's house among
the work people and peasants who gathered there, taking part in
their games, and setting them all laughing by his witty and
telling observations.

When Tchekoff was about fourteen, his father moved the family to
Moscow, leaving Anton in Taganrog, and now, relieved of work in
the shop, his progress at school became remarkable. At seventeen
he wrote a long tragedy, which was afterward destroyed, and he
already showed flashes of the wit that was soon to blaze into
genius.

He graduated from the high school at Taganrog with every honour,
entered the University of Moscow as a student of medicine, and
threw himself headlong into a double life of student and author,
in the attempt to help his struggling family.

His first story appeared in a Moscow paper in 1880, and after
some difficulty he secured a position connected with several of
the smaller periodicals, for which, during his student years, he
poured forth a succession of short stories and sketches of
Russian life with incredible rapidity. He wrote, he tells us,
during every spare minute, in crowded rooms where there was "no
light and less air," and never spent more than a day on any one
story. He also wrote at this time a very stirring
blood-and-thunder play which was suppressed by the censor, and
the fate of which is not known.

His audience demanded laughter above all things, and, with his
deep sense of the ridiculous, Tchekoff asked nothing better. His
stories, though often based on themes profoundly tragic, are
penetrated by the light and subtle satire that has won him his
reputation as a great humourist. But though there was always a
smile on his lips, it was a tender one, and his sympathy with
suffering often brought his laughter near to tears.

This delicate and original genius was at first subjected to harsh
criticism, which Tchekoff felt keenly, and Trigorin's description
in "The Sea-Gull" of the trials of a young author is a cry from
Tchekoff's own soul. A passionate enemy of all lies and
oppression, he already foreshadows in these early writings the
protest against conventions and rules, which he afterward put
into Treplieff's reply to Sorin in "The Sea-Gull": "Let us have
new forms, or else nothing at all."

In 1884 he took his degree as doctor of medicine, and decided to
practise, although his writing had by now taken on a professional
character. He always gave his calling a high place, and the
doctors in his works are drawn with affection and understanding.
If any one spoke slightingly of doctors in his presence, he would
exclaim: "Stop! You don't know what country doctors do for the
people!"

Tchekoff fully realised later the influence which his profession
had exercised on his literary work, and sometimes regretted the
too vivid insight it gave him, but, on the other hand, he was
able to write: "Only a doctor can know what value my knowledge of
science has been to me," and "It seems to me that as a doctor I
have described the sicknesses of the soul correctly." For
instance, Trigorin's analysis in "The Sea-Gull" of the state of
mind of an author has well been called "artistic diagnosis."

The young doctor-writer is described at this time as modest and
grave, with flashes of brilliant gaiety. A son of the people,
there was in his face an expression that recalled the
simple-hearted village lad; his eyes were blue, his glance full
of intelligence and kindness, and his manners unaffected and
simple. He was an untiring worker, and between his patients and
his desk he led a life of ceaseless activity. His restless mind
was dominated by a passion of energy and he thought continually
and vividly. Often, while jesting and talking, he would seem
suddenly to plunge into himself, and his look would grow fixed
and deep, as if he were contemplating something important and
strange. Then he would ask some unexpected question, which showed
how far his mind had roamed.

Success was now rapidly overtaking the young author; his first
collection of stories appeared in 1887, another one in the same
year had immediate success, and both went through many editions;
but, at the same time, the shadows that darkened his later works
began to creep over his light-hearted humour.

His impressionable mind began to take on the grey tinge of his
time, but much of his sadness may also be attributed to his
ever-increasing ill health.

Weary and with an obstinate cough, he went south in 1888, took a
little cottage on the banks of a little river "abounding in fish
and crabs," and surrendered himself to his touching love for
nature, happy in his passion for fishing, in the quiet of the
country, and in the music and gaiety of the peasants. "One would
gladly sell one's soul," he writes, "for the pleasure of seeing
the warm evening sky, and the streams and pools reflecting the
darkly mournful sunset." He described visits to his country
neighbours and long drives in gay company, during which, he says,
"we ate every half hour, and laughed to the verge of colic."

His health, however, did not improve. In 1889 he began to have
attacks of heart trouble, and the sensitive artist's nature
appears in a remark which he made after one of them. "I walked
quickly across the terrace on which the guests were assembled,"
he said, "with one idea in my mind, how awkward it would be to
fall down and die in the presence of strangers."

It was during this transition period of his life, when his
youthful spirits were failing him, that the stage, for which he
had always felt a fascination, tempted him to write "Ivanoff,"
and also a dramatic sketch in one act entitled "The Swan Song,"
though he often declared that he had no ambition to become a
dramatist. "The Novel," he wrote, "is a lawful wife, but the
Stage is a noisy, flashy, and insol ent mistress." He has put his
opinion of the stage of his day in the mouth of Treplieff, in
"The Sea-Gull," and he often refers to it in his letters as "an
evil disease of the towns" and "the gallows on which dramatists
are hanged."

He wrote "Ivanoff " at white-heat in two and a half weeks, as a
protest against a play he had seen at one of the Moscow theatres.
Ivanoff (from Ivan, the commonest of Russian names) was by no
means meant to be a hero, but a most ordinary, weak man oppressed
by the "immortal commonplaces of life," with his heart and soul
aching in the grip of circumstance, one of the many "useless
people" of Russia for whose sorrow Tchekoff felt such
overwhelming pity. He saw nothing in their lives that could not
be explained and pardoned, and he returns to his ill-fated,
"useless people" again and again, not to preach any doctrine of
pessimism, but simply because he thought that the world was the
better for a certain fragile beauty of their natures and their
touching faith in the ultimate salvation of humanity.

Both the writing and staging of "Ivanoff" gave Tchekoff great
difficulty. The characters all being of almost equal importance,
he found it hard to get enough good actors to take the parts, but
it finally appeared in Moscow in 1889, a decided failure! The
author had touched sharply several sensitive spots of Russian
life--for instance, in his warning not to marry a Jewess or a
blue-stocking--and the play was also marred by faults of
inexperience, which, however, he later corrected. The critics
were divided in condemning a certain novelty in it and in
praising its freshness and originality. The character of Ivanoff
was not understood, and the weakness of the man blinded many to
the lifelike portrait. Tchekoff himself was far from pleased with
what he called his "literary abortion," and rewrote it before it
was produced again in St. Petersburg. Here it was received with
the wildest applause, and the morning after its performance the
papers burst into unanimous praise. The author was
enthusiastically feted, but the burden of his growing fame was
beginning to be very irksome to him, and he wrote wearily at this
time that he longed to be in the country, fishing in the lake, or
lying in the hay.

His next play to appear was a farce entitled "The Boor," which he
wrote in a single evening and which had a great success. This was
followed by "The Demon," a failure, rewritten ten years later as
"Uncle Vanya."

All Russia now combined in urging Tchekoff to write some
important work, and this, too, was the writer's dream; but his
only long story is "The Steppe," which is, after all, but a
series of sketches, exquisitely drawn, and strung together on the
slenderest connecting thread. Tchekoff's delicate and elusive
descriptive power did not lend itself to painting on a large
canvas, and his strange little tragicomedies of Russian life, his
"Tedious Tales," as he called them, were always to remain his
masterpieces.

In 1890 Tchekoff made a journey to the Island of Saghalien, after
which his health definitely failed, and the consumption, with
which he had long been threatened, finally declared itself. His
illness exiled him to the Crimea, and he spent his last ten years
there, making frequent trips to Moscow to superintend the
production of his four important plays, written during this
period of his life.

"The Sea-Gull" appeared in 1896, and, after a failure in St.
Petersburg, won instant success as soon as it was given on the
stage of the Artists' Theatre in Moscow. Of all Tchekoff's plays,
this one conforms most nearly to our Western conventions, and is
therefore most easily appreciated here. In Trigorin the author
gives us one of the rare glimpses of his own mind, for Tchekoff
seldom put his own personality into the pictures of the life in
which he took such immense interest.

In "The Sea-Gull" we see clearly the increase of Tchekoff's power
of analysis, which is remarkable in his next play, "The Three
Sisters," gloomiest of all his dramas.

"The Three Sisters," produced in 1901, depends, even more than
most of Tchekoff's plays, on its interpretation, and it is almost
essential to its appreciation that it should be seen rather than
read. The atmosphere of gloom with which it is pervaded is a
thousand times more intense when it comes to us across the
foot-lights. In it Tchekoff probes the depths of human life with
so sure a touch, and lights them with an insight so piercing,
that the play made a deep impression when it appeared. This was
also partly owing to the masterly way in which it was acted at
the Artists' Theatre in Moscow. The theme is, as usual, the
greyness of provincial life, and the night is lit for his little
group of characters by a flash of passion so intense that the
darkness which succeeds it seems well-nigh intolerable.

"Uncle Vanya" followed "The Three Sisters," and the poignant
truth of the picture, together with the tender beauty of the last
scene, touched his audience profoundly, both on the stage and
when the play was afterward published.

"The Cherry Orchard" appeared in 1904 and was Tchekoff's last
play. At its production, just before his death, the author was
feted as one of Russia's greatest dramatists. Here it is not only
country life that Tchekoff shows us, but Russian life and
character in general, in which the old order is giving place to
the new, and we see the practical, modern spirit invading the
vague, aimless existence so dear to the owners of the cherry
orchard. A new epoch was beginning, and at its dawn the singer of
old, dim Russia was silenced.

In the year that saw the production of "The Cherry Orchard,"
Tchekoff, the favourite of the Russian people, whom Tolstoi
declared to be comparable as a writer of stories only to
Maupassant, died suddenly in a little village of the Black
Forest, whither he had gone a few weeks before in the hope of
recovering his lost health.

Tchekoff, with an art peculiar to himself, in scattered scenes,
in haphazard glimpses into the lives of his characters, in
seemingly trivial conversations, has succeeded in so
concentrating the atmosphere of the Russia of his day that we
feel it in every line we read, oppressive as the mists that hang
over a lake at dawn, and, like those mists, made visible to us by
the light of an approaching day.


CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF ANTON TCHEKOFF

PLAYS

"The Swan Song" 1889
"The Proposal" 1889
"Ivanoff " 1889
"The Boor" 1890
"The SeaGull" 1896
"The Tragedian in Spite of Himself" 1899
"The Three Sisters" 1901
"Uncle Vanya" 1902
"The Cherry Orchard" 1904

NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES

"Humorous Folk" 1887
"Twilight, and Other Stories" 1887
"Morose Folk" 1890
"Variegated Tales" 1894
"Old Wives of Russia" 1894
"The Duel" 1895
"The Chestnut Tree" 1895
"Ward Number Six" 1897

MISCELLANEOUS SKETCHES

"The Island of Saghalien" 1895
"Peasants" 1898
"Life in the Provinces" 1898
"Children" 1899




The Swan Song


CHARACTERS

VASILI SVIETLOVIDOFF, a comedian, 68 years old

NIKITA IVANITCH, a prompter, an old man

THE SWAN SONG

The scene is laid on the stage of a country theatre, at night,
after the play. To the right a row of rough, unpainted doors
leading into the dressing-rooms. To the left and in the
background the stage is encumbered with all sorts of rubbish. In
the middle of the stage is an overturned stool.

SVIETLOVIDOFF. [With a candle in his hand, comes out of a
dressing-room and laughs] Well, well, this is funny! Here's a
good joke! I fell asleep in my dressing-room when the play was
over, and there I was calmly snoring after everybody else had
left the theatre. Ah! I'm a foolish old man, a poor old dodderer!
I have been drinking again, and so I fell asleep in there,
sitting up. That was clever! Good for you, old boy! [Calls]
Yegorka! Petrushka! Where the devil are you? Petrushka! The
scoundrels must be asleep, and an earthquake wouldn't wake them
now! Yegorka! [Picks up the stool, sits down, and puts the candle
on the floor] Not a sound! Only echos answer me. I gave Yegorka
and Petrushka each a tip to-day, and now they have disappeared
without leaving a trace behind them. The rascals have gone off
and have probably locked up the theatre. [Turns his head about]
I'm drunk! Ugh! The play to-night was for my benefit, and it is
disgusting to think how much beer and wine I have poured down my
throat in honour of the occasion. Gracious! My body is burning
all over, and I feel as if I had twenty tongues in my mouth. It
is horrid! Idiotic! This poor old sinner is drunk again, and
doesn't even know what he has been celebrating! Ugh! My head is
splitting, I am shivering all over, and I feel as dark and cold
inside as a cellar! Even if I don't mind ruining my health, I
ought at least to remember my age, old idiot that I am! Yes, my
old age! It's no use! I can play the fool, and brag, and pretend
to be young, but my life is really over now, I kiss my hand to
the sixty-eight years that have gone by; I'll never see them
again! I have drained the bottle, only a few little drops are
left at the bottom, nothing but the dregs. Yes, yes, that's the
case, Vasili, old boy. The time has come for you to rehearse the
part of a mummy, whether you like it or not. Death is on its way
to you. [Stares ahead of him] It is strange, though, that I have
been on the stage now for forty-five years, and this is the first
time I have seen a theatre at night, after the lights have been
put out. The first time. [Walks up to the foot-lights] How dark
it is! I can't see a thing. Oh, yes, I can just make out the
prompter's box, and his desk; the rest is in pitch darkness, a
black, bottomless pit, like a grave, in which death itself might
be hiding.... Brr.... How cold it is! The wind blows out of the
empty theatre as though out of a stone flue. What a place for
ghosts! The shivers are running up and down my back. [Calls]
Yegorka! Petrushka! Where are you both? What on earth makes me
think of such gruesome things here? I must give up drinking; I'm
an old man, I shan't live much longer. At sixty-eight people go
to church and prepare for death, but here I am--heavens! A
profane old drunkard in this fool's dress--I'm simply not fit to
look at. I must go and change it at once.... This is a dreadful
place, I should die of fright sitting here all night. [Goes
toward his dressing-room; at the same time NIKITA IVANITCH in a
long white coat comes out of the dressing-room at the farthest
end of the stage. SVIETLOVIDOFF sees IVANITCH--shrieks with
terror and steps back] Who are you? What? What do you want?
[Stamps his foot] Who are you?

IVANITCH. It is I, sir.

SVIETLOVIDOFF. Who are you?

IVANITCH. [Comes slowly toward him] It is I, sir, the prompter,
Nikita Ivanitch. It is I, master, it is I!

SVIETLOVIDOFF. [Sinks helplessly onto the stool, breathes heavily
and trembles violently] Heavens! Who are you? It is you . . . you
Nikitushka? What . . . what are you doing here?

IVANITCH. I spend my nights here in the dressing-rooms. Only
please be good enough not to tell Alexi Fomitch, sir. I have
nowhere else to spend the night; indeed, I haven't.

SVIETLOVIDOFF. Ah! It is you, Nikitushka, is it? Just think, the
audience called me out sixteen times; they brought me three
wreathes and lots of other things, too; they were all wild with
enthusiasm, and yet not a soul came when it was all over to wake
the poor, drunken old man and take him home. And I am an old man,
Nikitushka! I am sixty-eight years old, and I am ill. I haven't
the heart left to go on. [Falls on IVANITCH'S neck and weeps]
Don't go away, Nikitushka; I am old and helpless, and I feel it
is time for me to die. Oh, it is dreadful, dreadful!

IVANITCH. [Tenderly and respectfully] Dear master! it is time for
you to go home, sir!

SVIETLOVIDOFF. I won't go home; I have no home--none!
none!--none!

IVANITCH. Oh, dear! Have you forgotten where you live?

SVIETLOVIDOFF. I won't go there. I won't! I am all alone there. I
have nobody, Nikitushka! No wife--no children. I am like the wind
blowing across the lonely fields. I shall die, and no one will
remember me. It is awful to be alone--no one to cheer me, no one
to caress me, no one to help me to bed when I am drunk. Whom do I
belong to? Who needs me? Who loves me? Not a soul, Nikitushka.

IVANITCH. [Weeping] Your audience loves you, master.

SVIETLOVIDOFF. My audience has gone home. They are all asleep,
and have forgotten their old clown. No, nobody needs me, nobody
loves me; I have no wife, no children.

IVANITCH. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Don't be so unhappy about it.

SVIETLOVIDOFF. But I am a man, I am still alive. Warm, red blood
is tingling in my veins, the blood of noble ancestors. I am an
aristocrat, Nikitushka; I served in the army, in the artillery,
before I fell as low as this, and what a fine young chap I was!
Handsome, daring, eager! Where has it all gone? What has become
of those old days? There's the pit that has swallowed them all! I
remember it all now. Forty-five years of my life lie buried
there, and what a life, Nikitushka! I can see it as clearly as I
see your face: the ecstasy of youth, faith, passion, the love of
women--women, Nikitushka!

IVANITCH. It is time you went to sleep, sir.

SVIETLOVIDOFF. When I first went on the stage, in the first glow
of passionate youth, I remember a woman loved me for my acting.
She was beautiful, graceful as a poplar, young, innocent, pure,
and radiant as a summer dawn. Her smile could charm away the
darkest night. I remember, I stood before her once, as I am now
standing before you. She had never seemed so lovely to me as she
did then, and she spoke to me so with her eyes--such a look! I
shall never forget it, no, not even in the grave; so tender, so
soft, so deep, so bright and young! Enraptured, intoxicated, I
fell on my knees before her, I begged for my happiness, and she
said: "Give up the stage!" Give up the stage! Do you understand?
She could love an actor, but marry him--never! I was acting that
day, I remember--I had a foolish, clown's part, and as I acted, I
felt my eyes being opened; I saw that the worship of the art I
had held so sacred was a delusion and an empty dream; that I was
a slave, a fool, the plaything of the idleness of strangers. I
understood my audience at last, and since that day I have not
believed in their applause, or in their wreathes, or in their
enthusiasm. Yes, Nikitushka! The people applaud me, they buy my
photograph, but I am a stranger to them. They don't know me, I am
as the dirt beneath their feet. They are willing enough to meet
me . . . but allow a daughter or a sister to marry me, an
outcast, never! I have no faith in them, [sinks onto the stool]
no faith in them.

IVANITCH. Oh, sir! you look dreadfully pale, you frighten me to
death! Come, go home, have mercy on me!

SVIETLOVIDOFF. I saw through it all that day, and the knowledge
was dearly bought. Nikitushka! After that . . . when that girl .
. . well, I began to wander aimlessly about, living from day to
day without looking ahead. I took the parts of buffoons and low
comedians, letting my mind go to wreck. Ah! but I was a great
artist once, till little by little I threw away my talents,
played the motley fool, lost my looks, lost the power of
expressing myself, and became in the end a Merry Andrew instead
of a man. I have been swallowed up in that great black pit. I
never felt it before, but to-night, when I woke up, I looked
back, and there behind me lay sixty-eight years. I have just
found out what it is to be old! It is all over . . . [sobs] . . .
all over.

IVANITCH. There, there, dear master! Be quiet . . . gracious!
[Calls] Petrushka! Yegorka!

SVIETLOVIDOFF. But what a genius I was! You cannot imagine what
power I had, what eloquence; how graceful I was, how tender; how
many strings [beats his breast] quivered in this breast! It
chokes me to think of it! Listen now, wait, let me catch my
breath, there; now listen to this:

  "The shade of bloody Ivan now returning
   Fans through my lips rebellion to a flame,
   I am the dead Dimitri! In the burning
   Boris shall perish on the throne I claim.
   Enough! The heir of Czars shall not be seen
   Kneeling to yonder haughty Polish Queen!"*

*From "Boris Godunoff," by Pushkin. [translator's note]

Is that bad, eh? [Quickly] Wait, now, here's something from King
Lear. The sky is black, see? Rain is pouring down, thunder roars,
lightning--zzz zzz zzz--splits the whole sky, and then, listen:

  "Blow winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
   You cataracts and hurricanoes spout
   Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
   You sulphurous thought-executing fires
   Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts
   Singe my white head! And thou, all shaking thunder,
   Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
   Crack nature's moulds, all germons spill at once
   That make ungrateful man!"

[Impatiently] Now, the part of the fool. [Stamps his foot] Come
take the fool's part! Be quick, I can't wait!

IVANITCH. [Takes the part of the fool]

"O, Nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this
rain-water out o' door. Good Nuncle, in; ask thy daughter's
blessing: here's a night pities neither wise men nor fools."

SVIETLOVIDOFF.

  "Rumble thy bellyful! spit, fire! spout, rain!
   Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters;
   I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
   I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children."

Ah! there is strength, there is talent for you! I'm a great
artist! Now, then, here's something else of the same kind, to
bring back my youth to me. For instance, take this, from Hamlet,
I'll begin . . . Let me see, how does it go? Oh, yes, this is it.
[Takes the part of Hamlet]

"O! the recorders, let me see one.-- To withdraw with you. Why do
you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me
into a toil?"

IVANITCH. "O, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too
unmannerly."

SVIETLOVIDOFF. "I do not well understand that. Will you play upon
this pipe?"

IVANITCH. "My lord, I cannot."

SVIETLOVIDOFF. "I pray you."

IVANITCH. "Believe me, I cannot."

SVIETLOVIDOFF. "I do beseech you."

IVANITCH. "I know no touch of it, my lord."

SVIETLOVIDOFF. " 'Tis as easy as lying: govern these vantages
with your finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and
it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the
stops."

IVANITCH. "But these I cannot command to any utterance of
harmony: I have not the skill."

SVIETLOVIDOFF. "Why, look you, how unworthy a thing you make of
me. You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you
would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from
my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music,
exce llent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it
speak. S'blood! Do you think I am easier to be played on than a
pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me,
you cannot play upon me!" [laughs and clasps] Bravo! Encore!
Bravo! Where the devil is there any old age in that? I'm not old,
that is all nonsense, a torrent of strength rushes over me; this
is life, freshness, youth! Old age and genius can't exist
together. You seem to be struck dumb, Nikitushka. Wait a second,
let me come to my senses again. Oh! Good Lord! Now then, listen!
Did you ever hear such tenderness, such music? Sh! Softly;

  "The moon had set. There was not any light,
   Save of the lonely legion'd watch-stars pale
   In outer air, and what by fits made bright
   Hot oleanders in a rosy vale
   Searched by the lamping fly, whose little spark
   Went in and out, like passion's bashful hope."

[The noise of opening doors is heard] What's that?

IVANITCH. There are Petrushka and Yegorka coming back. Yes, you
have genius, genius, my master.

SVIETLOVIDOFF. [Calls, turning toward the noise] Come here to me,
boys! [To IVANITCH] Let us go and get dressed. I'm not old! All
that is foolishness, nonsense! [laughs gaily] What are you crying
for? You poor old granny, you, what's the matter now? This won't
do! There, there, this won't do at all! Come, come, old man,
don't stare so! What makes you stare like that? There, there!
[Embraces him in tears] Don't cry! Where there is art and genius
there can never be such things as old age or loneliness or
sickness . . . and death itself is half . . . [Weeps] No, no,
Nikitushka! It is all over for us now! What sort of a genius am
I? I'm like a squeezed lemon, a cracked bottle, and you--you are
the old rat of the theatre . . . a prompter! Come on! [They go]
I'm no genius, I'm only fit to be in the suite of Fortinbras, and
even for that I am too old.... Yes.... Do you remember those
lines from Othello, Nikitushka?

  "Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content!
   Farewell the plumed troops 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!"

IVANITCH. Oh! You're a genius, a genius!

SVIETLOVIDOFF. And again this:

  "Away! the moor is dark beneath the moon,
   Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even:
   Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon,
   And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven."

They go out together, the curtain falls slowly.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Swan Song, by Anton Checkov