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diff --git a/26660.txt b/26660.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3ab693b --- /dev/null +++ b/26660.txt @@ -0,0 +1,592 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Plays, by Leo Tolstoy + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Plays + Complete Edition, Including the Posthumous Plays + +Author: Leo Tolstoy + +Translator: Louise Maude + Aylmer Maude + +Release Date: September 20, 2008 [EBook #26660] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLAYS *** + + + + +Produced by Bryan Ness, Jana Srna and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + [ Transcriber's Note: + This e-book only contains the front matter of Tolstoy's Plays + (Complete Edition). The individual plays have been posted as + separate Project Gutenberg e-books; they are linked to from this + book's HTML version. For reference, here is a list of their + e-book numbers: + + 26661: The Power of Darkness + 26662: The First Distiller + 26663: Fruits of Culture + 26664: The Live Corpse + 26665: The Cause of it All + 26666: The Light Shines in Darkness + ] + + + + + From LEO TOLSTOY concerning the translation of + his works by LOUISE and AYLMER MAUDE:-- + + "Better translators, both for knowledge of the + two languages and for penetration into the very + meaning of the matter translated, could not be + invented." + + + + + [Illustration: Leo Tolstoy.] + + + + + LEO TOLSTOY + + PLAYS + + Translated by + + LOUISE AND AYLMER MAUDE + + COMPLETE EDITION + INCLUDING THE POSTHUMOUS + PLAYS + + FOURTH IMPRESSION + + NEW YORK + FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY + 1919 + + + + + LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + LEO TOLSTOY (Photogravure Portrait) Frontispiece + + MATRYONA GIVES ANISYA THE POWDERS Facing page 12 + + I'M NOT ASHAMED OF MY PARENT " " 51 + + HER BOX IS FULL AS IT IS " " 53 + + YOU TELL ME NOT TO FEAR MEN? " " 91 + + WELL, DEAR, AND WHAT PROGRESSION IS OUR BUSINESS MAKING? " " 174 + + THERE, YOU SEE! YOU ARE BEING MADE A FOOL OF " " 223 + + + + + CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + PREFACE ix + + + Plays published during Tolstoy's life + + THE POWER OF DARKNESS (1886) 3 + + THE FIRST DISTILLER (1886) 97 + + FRUITS OF CULTURE (1889) 125 + + + Posthumous Plays + + THE LIVE CORPSE 229 + + THE CAUSE OF IT ALL 303 + + THE LIGHT SHINES IN DARKNESS 321 + + + + +PREFACE + + +_The Power of Darkness_, Tolstoy's first and greatest play, was not +written until he was fifty-eight years of age, and it was not allowed to +be performed in Russia till some years later. Both there and elsewhere +abroad it was highly successful on the stage, as was also the comedy, +_Fruits of Culture_, which he wrote three years later, to be performed +by his own family and their friends. + +The only other play published during his lifetime, _The First Distiller_, +is a very slight piece of no particular dramatic importance. It was +written in the cause of temperance. + +Besides these, he left three other plays finished, or nearly finished, +when he died. + +_The Live Corpse_ (which in English has also been called _The Man who +was Dead_) is the one best adapted for the stage. _The Cause of it All_ +is, like _The First Distiller_, a short and unimportant piece dealing +with the effects of drink. The most interesting, not dramatically but +psychologically, of the three is _The Light Shines in Darkness_, which +was left in an unfinished state. In it Tolstoy presents his own case, +and deals with the contradiction that existed and has so often been +commented on, between practice and theory in his own life and teaching. + +For the purpose of the play he greatly simplified his own highly complex +personality, and, though many of the details and characters are drawn +from life with extraordinary exactitude, the picture presented is not +one which all the people concerned are disposed to regard as quite fair +to themselves. + +The play presents the terrible clash which resulted from the calls +Tolstoy made on himself and on others to abandon all customary ways of +life and to start afresh in a new direction. In his own case he was +never allowed to test the effects of a life of extreme poverty and +manual labour, such as he advocated; nor did those of his followers who +adopted such a life achieve much success therein. Tolstoy's artistic +sincerity is indeed shown by the fact that, despite his spiritual +fervour and his profound conviction that he had really found the road to +salvation for mankind, he has not, in this play, minimised the failure +of his efforts to carry convictions to those about him, or to achieve +any other success than that of obtaining an inward assurance that he was +fulfilling the will of God. This assurance would, no doubt, have been +more fully indicated in the last act, had he lived to complete it. + +Tolstoy was well aware of the advantages a play possesses over a novel +as a means of propaganda, and but for the existence of the Censorship he +would have written more for the stage. When asked, in 1892, whether he +would write any more plays, he replied: "I would do so with great +pleasure, and I even feel a special need to express myself in that way; +but I feel certain the Censor would not pass my plays. You would not +believe how, from the very commencement of my activity, that horrible +Censor question has tormented me! I wanted to write what I felt; but at +the same time I felt that what I wrote would not be permitted; and +involuntarily I abandoned the work. I abandoned, and went on abandoning, +and meanwhile the years passed away." + + * * * * * + +There is one other matter of some importance on which I must here say a +word. + +No accepted standard of transliteration for Russian names into English +has hitherto existed. Each writer has been a law unto himself. Now, at +last, the Liverpool School of Russian Studies has prepared and privately +circulated a scheme, which deserves to be, and is likely to be, generally +adopted. It differs in some particulars from the plan I have followed +heretofore; but the advantage to Anglo-Russian literature of the general +adoption of a uniform and authoritative rule will be so great that I +hasten to put myself in accord with the Liverpool scheme, without even +waiting for it to be publicly promulgated. + +The result of so doing however is that in the three earlier plays now +reprinted from stereotype plates the transliteration does not quite +coincide with the plan adopted in the three freshly translated plays. +For this discrepancy I must ask the readers' kind indulgence. + + AYLMER MAUDE. + + + + + Printed in Great Britain by + T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty + at the University Press, Edinburgh + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Plays, by Leo Tolstoy + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLAYS *** + +***** This file should be named 26660.txt or 26660.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/6/6/26660/ + +Produced by Bryan Ness, Jana Srna and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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