I
Take any newspaper of our time, and in every one you will find a section on theater and music; in almost every issue you will find a description of one or another exhibition or a particular painting, and in every one you will find reports on newly published books of artistic content, be they poems, novellas, or novels.
Detailed and immediately after it has happened, there is a description of how a certain actress or actor performed this or that role in a drama, comedy, or opera, and what merits they displayed, as well as the subject matter, faults, and merits of the new drama, comedy, or opera. With the same detail and care, it is described how a certain artist sang or played a certain piece on the piano or violin, and what the merits and faults of that piece and their performance are. In every large city, there is always at least one, if not several, exhibitions of new paintings, the merits and faults of which are discussed with the greatest profundity by critics and connoisseurs. Almost every day, new novels and poems are published, both separately and in magazines, and newspapers consider it their duty to provide their readers with detailed reports on these works of art.
To support art in Russia, where only one-hundredth of what is needed to provide the entire population with educational resources is spent on public education, the government grants millions in subsidies to academies, conservatories, and theaters. In France, 8 million is allocated for the arts, likewise in Germany and England. Huge buildings are being constructed in every large city for museums, academies, conservatories, drama schools, performances, and concerts. Hundreds of thousands of workers—carpenters, masons, painters, joiners, upholsterers, tailors, hairdressers, jewelers, bronze workers, typesetters—spend their entire lives in heavy labor to satisfy the demands of art, so that there is scarcely any other human activity, apart from the military, that absorbs as much energy as this one.
But it is not enough that such enormous labor is expended on this activity—human lives are directly spent on it, just as they are on war: hundreds of thousands of people dedicate their entire lives from a young age to learning how to quickly twist their legs (dancers); others (musicians) to learning how to quickly run their fingers over keys or strings; still others (painters) to learning how to draw with paints and depict everything they see; and a fourth group to learning how to turn every phrase in every way and find a rhyme for every word. And such people, often very kind, intelligent, and capable of all useful labor, become warped by these exclusive, stupefying occupations and grow dull to all serious phenomena of life, becoming one-sided and completely self-satisfied specialists who can only twist their legs, tongues, or fingers.
But this, too, is not enough. I recall once attending a rehearsal for one of the most common modern operas staged in all the theaters of Europe and America.
I arrived when the first act had already begun. To enter the auditorium, I had to pass through the wings. I was led along dark subterranean passages and corridors of the enormous building, past huge machines for changing scenery and lighting, where I saw people working in the gloom and dust. One of these workers, with a gray, thin face, in a dirty blouse, with dirty, work-worn hands and splayed fingers, clearly tired and displeased, walked past me, angrily reproaching another worker for something. Climbing up a dark staircase, I emerged onto the stage platform behind the scenes. Among the piled-up scenery, curtains, and various poles and circles, dozens, if not hundreds, of made-up and dressed-up men in costumes with tightly stretched thighs and calves, and women, as always, with bodies exposed as much as possible, were standing and moving about. All of them were singers, choristers, and ballet dancers waiting for their turn. My guide led me across the stage and over a wooden bridge spanning the orchestra pit, where about a hundred musicians of all kinds were seated, into the dark stalls. On a raised platform between two lamps with reflectors, the musical director, who managed the orchestra and singers and the entire production of the opera, sat in a chair with a baton before a music stand.
When I arrived, the performance had already started, and the stage depicted the procession of Indians bringing a bride. Besides the costumed men and women, two more people in jackets were running and bustling about on the stage: one was the dramatic director, and the other, who moved with extraordinary lightness in soft slippers and darted from place to place, was the dance teacher, who received a higher monthly salary than ten workers earned in a year.
These three managers were coordinating the singing, the orchestra, and the procession. The procession, as always, proceeded in couples with foil halberds on their shoulders. Everyone came out from one place, walked around and around again, and then stopped. The procession long failed to work: sometimes the Indians with halberds came out too late, sometimes too early, sometimes they came out on time but clustered too much as they exited, and sometimes they didn’t cluster but were improperly positioned on the sides of the stage, and each time everything stopped and started over. The procession began with a recitative by a man dressed as a Turk, who sang with his mouth strangely agape: “I am accompany-i-i-ing the bri-ide.” He would sing it and wave his arm—bare, of course—from beneath his mantle. And the procession would begin, but then the horn would play the wrong note in the recitative chord, and the conductor, flinching as if from a disaster that had occurred, would strike his stand with the baton. Everything would stop, and the conductor, turning to the orchestra, would lash out at the horn player, scolding him with the coarsest words, such as coachmen use, for playing the wrong note. And everything would start over again. The Indians with halberds would come out again, stepping softly in their strange footwear, and the singer would again sing: “I am accompany-i-i-ing the bri-ide.” But then the couples stood too close. Again a rap of the baton, a scolding, and back to the beginning. Again: “I am accompany-i-i-ing the bri-ide,” again the same gesture of the bare arm from beneath the mantle, and the couples, again stepping softly, with halberds on their shoulders, some with serious and sad faces, others talking and smiling, would arrange themselves in a circle and begin to sing. Everything seemed fine, but again the baton rapped, and the conductor, with a suffering and embittered voice, began to scold the choristers: it turned out that the choristers were not occasionally raising their arms in a sign of inspiration while singing. “Are you dead or something? Cows! Are you corpses, why aren’t you moving?” — Again from the beginning, again “accompany-i-i-ing the bride,” and again the female choristers sang with sad faces and raised their arms, now one, now another. But two female choristers were talking—again a louder rap of the baton. “Did you come here to talk? You can gossip at home. You, in the red trousers, stand closer. Look at me. From the start.” Again: “I am accompany-i-i-ing the bri-ide.” And so it continued for one, two, three hours. The entire rehearsal lasted six hours straight. Raps of the baton, repetitions, rearrangements, corrections of singers, orchestra, processions, dances, all spiced with malicious scolding. I heard the words: “donkeys, fools, idiots, swine,” addressed to the musicians and singers, about forty times in one hour. And the unfortunate, physically and morally mutilated person, be it the flautist, the horn player, or the singer, to whom the insults were directed, remained silent and carried out the order: repeating “I am accompany-i-i-ing the bri-ide” twenty times and singing the same phrase twenty times, and again stepping in his yellow slippers with a halberd over his shoulder. The conductor knows that these people are so mutilated that they are fit for nothing more than blowing a horn and walking with a halberd in yellow slippers, yet they are accustomed to a sweet, luxurious life and will endure anything rather than lose that sweet life, and therefore he calmly gives in to his rudeness, all the more so because he has seen this in Paris and Vienna and knows that the best conductors do this, that it is the musical tradition of great artists who are so carried away by the great work of their art that they have no time to consider the feelings of the artists.
It is difficult to see a more repulsive spectacle. I have seen one worker scold another during the unloading of goods for failing to support a weight that was pressing down on him, or a foreman scold a worker during haymaking for not properly topping the stack, and the worker meekly keeps silent. And however unpleasant it is to see this, the unpleasantness is mitigated by the consciousness that a necessary and important job is being done here, that the mistake for which the foreman is scolding the worker could spoil the necessary work.
What is being done here, and for what purpose and for whom? It is quite possible that he, the conductor, is also tormented, like that worker; it is even evident that he is indeed tormented, but who forces him to suffer? And for the sake of what work is he suffering? The opera they were rehearsing was one of the most ordinary operas for those accustomed to them, but one of the greatest absurdities one can imagine: an Indian king wants to marry, a bride is brought to him, he disguises himself as a singer, the bride falls in love with the supposed singer and is in despair, and then she finds out that the singer is the king himself, and everyone is very happy.
That such Indians never existed and could not have existed, and that what they were depicting is not only unlike Indians but unlike anything in the world except other operas, there can be no doubt; that people do not speak in recitative like that, or express feelings by standing in a fixed formation in a quartet and waving their arms; that people do not walk around in couples with foil halberds and slippers anywhere except in a theater; that no one ever gets angry, melts with tenderness, laughs, or cries like that; and that all these performances can move absolutely no one in the world—there can be no doubt about this.
The question involuntarily comes to mind: for whom is this being done? Who can enjoy this? If there are occasionally some pretty tunes in this opera that would be pleasant to listen to, they could be sung simply without those foolish costumes, processions, recitatives, and arm-waving. As for the ballet, in which semi-naked women make lustful movements, intertwining in various sensual garlands, it is directly a depraved spectacle. So, it is impossible to understand who this is intended for. For an educated person, it is unbearable, tedious; for a genuine working man, it is completely incomprehensible. It can only appeal, and even then barely, to corrupted artisans who have picked up the aristocratic spirit but are not yet satiated with aristocratic pleasures and wish to testify to their civilization, and to young footmen.
And all this disgusting nonsense is manufactured not only without good cheer, not with simplicity, but with malice and savage cruelty.
It is said that this is done for art, and that art is a very important matter. But is it true that this is art, and that art is such an important matter that such sacrifices can be made for it? This question is particularly important because art, for the sake of which the labors of millions of people and human lives themselves, and, most importantly, love between people, are sacrificed—this very art is becoming more and more something vague and undefined in people’s consciousness.
Criticism, in which art lovers previously found support for their judgments about art, has recently become so contradictory that if one were to exclude from the realm of art everything that the critics of various schools themselves do not recognize as belonging to art, almost nothing would remain of art.
Like theologians of various sects, artists of various schools exclude and destroy each other. Listen to the artists of the current schools, and you will see artists in all branches denying others: in poetry—old romantics denying Parnassians and Decadents; Parnassians denying romantics and Decadents; Decadents denying all predecessors and Symbolists; Symbolists denying all predecessors and Mages, and Mages denying all their predecessors; in the novel—Naturalists, Psychologists, and Naturists denying each other. The same is true in drama, painting, and music. Thus, art, which absorbs the enormous labor of the people and human lives and violates love among them, is not only not something clearly and firmly defined, but is understood so divergently by its lovers that it is difficult to say what is generally meant by art, and especially by good, useful art, the kind in whose name the sacrifices that are made to it can be justified.
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