From a Diary

FEBRUARY 27, 1919

Alya and I are at Antokolskys.* It's Sunday. It's thawing. We've just come from the Church of Christ the Savior, where we heard the counterrevolutionary whisperings of pilgrims and of those —in little hats — in fur coats with "puffs" — thin and kind — not just women — not quite ladies, with whom one feels so right at cemeteries.

"They've ruined Russia" . . . "It's all in the Scriptures" . . . "Antichrist" . . .

The church is huge and dark. Up above there's a headspinning God. Little islands of candles.

*

Antokolsky reads me his poetry—"Prologue to My Life," which I would call "The Justification of Everything." But since I can't do that, since at the moment I am Russian, I hold my tongue with a silence that is sharper and weightier than words. We say good-bye. Alya puts on her hood. The student V. appears in the door with a stony face.

"I've brought terrible news: Aleksei Aleksandrovich Stakhovich hanged himself yesterday."1

*

There was a double mist of incense and breath in the church (near Strastnoi Boulevard, I don't remember the name). I took off my mitten each time I crossed myself. The wax dripped, but my tears didn't.

I see hands —made of something else, not flesh —which have pre-

*A poet and student of the Vakhtangov studio.

served only the form of the living — an entrancing form! The same hands with which he grafted roses in the Crimea, and —when the roses were gone — made a noose of curtain ties. The head in the heavy magnificence of death. The eyelids like curtains/: they're lowered, the end. If there is any suffering — then it's at the temples. The rest is at rest.

When I stand over the coffin, whether of someone close or distant, I invariably ask the question: "Who is next?" Will I stand over another's face this way? Whose? This thought resides in me like temptation. I know that the dead person knows. Not a question, but an interrogation. And the never-endingness of this answer . . .

One more thing: whoever the dead person is to me, rather: however little I may have been to him when he was alive, I know that at this particular hour (the hour of he who is done with hours), I am closer to him than anyone. Perhaps it's because, more than others, I am on the edge, I will (would) follow him more easily than all the others. That wall doesn't exist: living —dead, was —is. There is a double-edged trust: he knows that despite my body —I am; I know that he is —despite the coffin! A friendly compact, contract, conspiracy. He is simply a little older. And with every departing, a part of me, of my longing, of my soul, departs for over there, for the beyond,. Overtaking me —it heads home. It's almost like: "Please give my regards to."

But, resurrecting with him, I also die with him. I can't cry over a coffin, because I am being buried, too! I pay for my hold on other worlds with a certain loss of my earthly presence. (Payment for transportation? After all, the shades paid Charon, didn't they? I send my shade ahead of me — and pay here!)

And one other thing: why are friends and relatives so unjealous of the coffin? They yield so easily—even those last inches. His seconds on this earth are running out and every inch is precious! I never exceed my rights, I leave the emptiness around the coffin unfilled — if not the family, then no one! — but with such bitterness, with such hurt for he who lies there. (The coffin: intersection of all human lonelinesses, the last and most extreme loneliness. Of all the hours — this is the hour when one should love close up. Actually stand right over the soul.)

Lord, if he were mine (that is, if I had the right!) how I would stand, and gaze, and kiss, how —when everyone is gone —I would talk with him — talk to him about such simple things — maybe about the weather — after all, he existed just recently! He still hasn't had time to not exist! How I would tell him the earth for the last time.

I know that his soul is nearby! No one ever heard anything with the ears.

*

The church is crowded, I don't know anyone. I remember Stanislavsky's gray head and my thought: "He must be cold without his hat" — and a rush of tenderness for that gray head.

From the church they carried him to Kamergersky Lane. The crowd was enormous. All strangers. I walked, feeling half dead, dying with every step — from all the strangers around me, from him — alone — up ahead. The crowd was enormous. Automobiles had to turn off the road. I was a little proud of this (for him).

At Zubovskaya Square the crowd began to thin out. In the gradualness of this thinning it emerged that only young people were following him — the students of the II Studio — his Green Ring. Their singing was lovely.

By the time the streets became completely alien and I could no longer feel my body or my soul, V. L. M[chede]lov* came up to me.2 I was overjoyed to see him and immediately transferred a portion of my tenderness for Stakhovich to him. I felt — I ordered myself to feel — that he felt the same way I did, I instilled this in him, instilled with all my powers of autosuggestion — and if I have ever in my life experienced a feeling of fellowship, it was precisely at that hour, in the snows of De-vichye Pole, following Stakhovich's coffin.

"I didn't tell you at the time. Do you remember? Last year you wrote me a letter with a few lines about him: something to do with white bones, white flour. I read it to him. It made an extraordinary impression. He followed me around for three days asking me to copy those lines down for him . . ."

I listen silently.

"Everyone really loved him, everyone came to see him during his ill-

*A director of the II Studio, now also deceased.

ness. Just a day before his death one of the students brought him a horse-meat cutlet. He stuck in his fork and said with a laugh: 'Maybe I'm eating my own horse'. . . He used to own horse farms you know. He loved horses with a passion."

"But how is it that all of these students, all these young men, all these young women? How is it they didn't manage . . ."

"To guess?"

"Didn't defend him from death?! After all, they have youth — love — power— in their hands!"

"Ah, Marina Ivanovna! Pity isn't love. Especially for an old man. Stakhovich hated pity. Tm a useless old man,' he'd say."

We move over to the sidewalk to smoke. My fingers can barely hold the cigarette. There was a thaw, now there's a blizzard.

"He didn't leave any note?"

"No, but on the day of his death when he was still in the theater, he came up to me and asked: 'Well, have you got a job?' 'No.' 'That's too bad. That's too bad.' And he squeezed my hands."

"Who's the small man who was crying so hard in church?"

"His valet. He used to work as a busboy in the cafeteria. The day before his death Stakhovich paid the man his salary a month in advance and gave him a bonus. He paid all his debts before his death."

We arrive at the cemetery. The divine whiteness of Devichy Monastery, the calming vault of the arch. (About this cemetery, one of my companions, a Jew, said in 1921: "It's worth dying to be buried here," and, after a pause: "maybe even worth being christened.") We walk to the grave. The students want to lower the coffin themselves, but the coffin, made in the Moscow Art Theater, is too wide (I think to myself with a chuckle: it's lordly!) and it won't fit. The grave diggers widen the hole. A nun, hurrying and stumbling, approaches the priest: "Father, can't we go faster? There's another body at the gates."

The snow drifts haven't been cleared, so I'm standing on Sapunov's grave, a little tormented by the fact that this, well, this is very un-Stakhovichian. I remember a lady in mourning dress. Large blue eyes, glassy with tears. As die coffin is lowered, she follows its trajectory with small, frequent crosses.

Later I find out—she's an actress whose mother and sister were killed in Kiev not long ago.

*

The civil memorial service for Stakhovich (the Art Theater).

First comes Beethoven's funeral march.

Stakhovich and Beethoven. This is something to think about.

The first thing I feel — is the incongruity, the second — discomfort, as if from an indiscretion. What's wrong? Too grandiose . . . Too obvious. So?

Stakhovich — is the XVIII century, Beethoven — is outside (any century). What links these two names? Death. The accident of death. Because, for this one, Stakhovich, death is always an accident. Even if willful. Not a completion, but a break. Not an author's dash, but the censor's scissors cutting the poem. Stakhovich's death, brought on by the year 1919 and old age, doesn't correspond to Stakhovich's essence — the XVIII century and youth. Knowing how to die does not yet mean loving immortality. To know how to die means to be able to overcome dying — that is, once again: it's to know how to live. Moreover — and this time I'll say it in French (the language of formulas):

Pas de savoir-vivre sans savoir-mourir.

Savoir-mourir—what a Russian noun — is the opposite of savoir-vivre. I'm pleased to be the one to introduce it for the first time with the following formula:

Il n'y a fas que le savoir-vivre, ily a le savoir-mourir.

*

But what about Beethoven and Stakhovich?

Ah! I think I understand. Stakhovich —is more XVIII century than Beethoven, who was born in it, just as Beethoven's funeral march is more death than Stakhovich, who lies in the coffin. The meaning of Stakhovich (of the XVIII century!) — is Life. And on the day of death, as on that of love: "Point de lendemain!" All of Stakhovich departs. Beethoven is that paradise which Stakhovich is meant to enter. There's a sort of double rudeness in Beethoven's funeral march, in relation to Stakhovich: acte de deces (they don't perform it for the living) and acte d'abdication (he's through performing!)

Is it clear what I want to say?

Oh, Stakhovich himself would have understood me better than anyone!

*

Stanislavsky's speech:

"My friend had three loves in his life: his family, the theater, and horses. Family life —is a secret, I'm not a connoisseur of horses . . . I'm going to talk about the theater."

He tells a story about how the handsome adjutant Stakhovich first appeared backstage at the Hunting Club,* in the grand princes' entourage. "The grand princes, as befit them, didn't stay long. The adjutant stayed on." —And the gradual — unpublicized — participation of the dashing guardsman in the productions — as an arbiter elegantarum. ("We'll have to ask Stakhovich," "that's not Stakhovich's way," "how would Stakhovich do it?") The trip to study the gentry and peasant life at Stakhovich's estate near Moscow. — "We were treated like tsars." -Stakhovich's gentleness. "If someone in the group got sick, who stayed with the patient in the stifling Moscow heat? The dashing, worldly guardsman was instantly transformed into the most attentive nanny." The story of how Stakhovich, breaking away from a court ball, flew over to the Art Theater for five minutes in order to bark like a dog into a gramophone horn for a production of The Cherry Orchard.

*

The wrong people are saying things the wrong way. Stanislavsky — too simply (I would even say—simple-mindedly), reducing all of Stakhovich to the quotidian: first the court-military quotidian, then the theatrical, and what's worst of all — die Art Theater quotidian: that is, to die embodiment of die everyday—missing the element of rebellion that pushed the courtier to the stage, naively confusing the hold that the bold word "Khudozhestvenniki" had over Stakhovich with attraction

The first location of the Art Theater. (M.Ts.)

to the Art Theater as such, forgetting both the background and tone of that stifling epoch, forgetting whence and remembering only—where.3

Rossi (in an article that someone else reads) boils the complex lyrico-cynical-stoical-epicurean essence of Stakhovich down to nests of Russian gentry and presents a feuilleton rather than a poem. Yuzhin—as a public figure accustomed to burying the same kind of people —for some incomprehensible reason recalls the sins of the nobility and places his emphasis on "the social usefulness of the Stakhoviches" (a lie! they are completely useless, like racehorses. Except for those people, like myself, who place their bets on them).

Everyone applies Stakhovich to something: to the theater, or to society, or to the nobility . . . No one stands apart: Stakhovich as a phenomenon.

Best of them all — upset, bold, not a single superfluous word — is the actor's studio student Sudakov. One sentence is completely mine:

"And the best lesson in bon ton, maintien., tenue, that Stakhovich gave us was on the 11th of March 1919." (February 27-March 11, the day of his death.)

*

I listen, listen, listen. My head sinks lower and lower, I understand the fatal mistake of this winter, every word is a knife, the knife goes deeper and deeper, I don't allow myself to feel it fully—oh, it doesn't matter — after all, I too will die!

And I'll talk about one more thing that no one else mentions, but everyone knows (?): Stakhovich and Love, about the lovefulness of this causeur, about his meaninglessness outside of love.

And I'll talk about one more thing that no one knows: if I had gone to see Stakhovich at Christmas 1918, as I wanted to, he wouldn't have died.

And I would have come alive.

*

They wouldn't let me read any poems to him at the memorial. Kameneva and someone else were there.4 Nemirovich-Danchenko simmered and hesitated: on the one hand—"a performance," on the other — the cameras.

You didn't greet the rabble with bread and salt,

And in the black kingdom of'labor's blisters'

Your hands crossed, exquisite to a fault,

In noble boredom.

"Now, if we could just drop this bit. . ."

"You can't, it's the most important part." But I didn't insist: Stakho-vich wasn't in the room.

I copied this poem out for his lovely sister —the only person who needed it. Performing for me is always an overcoming; given my distaste for spectacle and society, this is natural. Not timidity: a certain uncertain alienation: stranger hear.*

... In the black kingdom of "labor's blisters."

I'm not talking about blisters caused by work, but about the imposed blisters of equality that have blistered our eyes and ring incessantly in our ears. That's why I put it in quotation marks.

M Y E N C O U N T E R W I T H S T A K H O V I C H

The only one. A year ago. We were introduced by V L. Mchedelov, whom I've known for a long time, but became friendly with only last winter. I always liked in him, a man of the theater, that penchant for other worlds: in the man of the spectacle — the passion for the unseen. I forgave him the theater.** I saw his production of A Studio Diary (an excerpt from Leskov, The Story of Lieutenant Ergunov and White Nights) three or four times I liked it so much! I remember a tear in the eye of the sleeping lieutenant in Lieutenant Ergunov. A large, sleepy one. It ran and froze. It burned and cooled off. He resembled a man wounded in battle. Resembled the whole White Army. Perhaps that's why I went to see it.

And the room — a slum! — a den where a Persian girl flatters the lieutenant! Eyes in the corners, knots in the corners. Those worn-out shoes,

*In English in the text. Tsvetaeva apparently meant "I'm a stranger here" [translator].

**The following on the theater, I pass over, since it's already been published.

(M.Ts.)

rubble, rubbish. It was a room whose center was — a shoe. That shoe in the middle of the floor; the royal — in its dispassionateness — gesture of a foot flying up to the ceiling! The absence of common sense in that room! The absence of a room in that room! My Boris and Gleb St. life, live as the day! My furnishings. My housecleaning. All my seven rooms in one. The skeleton of my everyday life. My home.

I remember the Persian girl (a little devil): whisperings. Whispering — babbling — muttering. Around and about words. Mumbling chanting, clinking, clanking. Amulets —bracelets. Under the bracelets —the lieutenant's epaulets. Babbling —and beads, nightingale rumblings — and hands. Hands, streams.

*

Then he took me to see Stakhovich's Green Ring. I won't judge the play. The voice —was that of a great enchanter. The only instance when I don't believe my ears. (The theater.) You don't always have time to translate the sentence from the voice into meaning — to make sense of it, to understand what has been pronounced: you swim with the voice. The voice — and feeling in response, exist outside the intervals of words. Theater doesn't need words, they aren't important —the actor slides over the words. (Further proof that Heine was right.) A meaningless a-a-a-a, o-o-o-o can turn a whole crowd to ashes, can bring on fits. Just as —if the voice is unsound —there's no helping either Shakespeare or Racine. (The voice here is meant not only as the throat, but as reason.) How this vocal reason can exist in the range of idiocy which the singer often represents — is another question, which could take us far away. Maybe — a good teacher, perhaps — simply the meddling of the gods. (No less than poets and women, the gods are tempted by unworthy vessels.) In short, to finish with the voice:

I — am a miracle: neither good nor evil.

And so, to finish with the play—I really don't know, I was listening to Stakhovich.

*

Stakhovich: velvet and grandeur. No corners. The vocal and plastic line is unbroken. I'm talking about what the five senses perceive. Spiritually — a bit haughty. It isn't at all important that this fits the play. It's as clear as a mirror that he's playing himself. "My dear children" he says not to his partners — but to all of us, to the whole audience, the whole generation. "My dear children" should be read as: "I'm tired, I know everything that you'll say, all the dreams that you have yet to dream I already saw a millennium ago. And nonetheless, despite my exhaustion, I'll hear you out: both the confessions and rebukes. Tolerance — isn't it the lesser of Petronius's virtues? Moreover, like all aging people, I am an insomniac. Won't your prattling serve me as that very petal-strewn stream in which, finally, the eyelids of my happier confrere closed shut?"

*

Was this what the author wanted? It's unlikely. In this way, with the magic of essence and voice, a very local image (of the Russian gentleman), extremely class-based (very much of the gentry) and very temporal (fin du siecle of the last century) was transformed into something atemporal and universal —eternal.

The image of the past gazing into the future.

*

After the play V L. M-lov took me to meet him — somewhere down below. I remember green and steam: furniture and tea. Stakhovich rose to greet us. Very tall (I belong to one of those tribes that sees its gods as giants!) —a lithe uprightness; the color of the suit, eyes, hair —something between steel and ashes. I remember the eyelids, the heavy breed that rarely open wide. Eyelids that are naturally haughty. An aquiline nose. An impeccable oval.

M-lov"s accompanying flattering words; I, forcing myself to look directly:

"I'm enchanted, but you already know that. It's enough for you to listen to yourself. I hate the theater, but I adore enchantments. Today I'm very happy. That's all."

They both laugh. I laugh too. And, to disperse, no —to cloud —the directness of what was said and heard—as if sweeping it away with a tail! — I light a cigarette. Then — Stakhovich will forgive me for recalling one of the more charming slips of the tongue I've heard in my life! — came his frightened exclamation:

"But why burn your hair?! You have so little anyway!"

I, righteously indignant:

"Little? Hair?"

"I meant to say — it's so short."

We laugh again. Laughter, in the first moments, is the best connection. Laughter and a slight (someone else's) blunder. I sit down at the table. While he pours the tea I admire his hand.

"I love your poetry. When we were in Kislovodsk, Kachalov received a poem from you, unsigned . . ."5

I, seething:

?!!

Stakhovich, putting out the flame a bit with his hand, says with a smile: "A vain precaution, I assure you, for everyone recognized you immediately. Cupolas, bells. . . Magnificent poem. Both architectural, and musical, and philological —marvelous. I immediately learned it by heart and recited it at many soirees. Always with a success ... (a slight bow), which I attribute entirely to you."

I listen, astounded. I — sent poems to Kachalov?! Kachalov, who has been spoiled rotten by shop ladies? I sent Kachalov —and unsigned?! Unsigned?! Me?!!!

"I love poets' readings. Won't you read that poem for me?"

"But. . ."

And suddenly —hopelessness: Stakhovich loves this poem. Stakhovich is 60 years old, and he has overcome disgust for "contemporaneity." Stakhovich insists on praising this poem. And it turns out that the poem — isn't mine! The whole building collapses. And under the ruins — there's Stakhovich!

So, revealing nothing, swallowing both the anonymity and someone else's poems, as well as Kachalov —heroically:

"But I read so badly . . . Like all poets... I couldn't bring myself. . ." (NB: I read well—like all poets — and I can always bring myself.)

"Such a Charlotte Corday? I would never have suspected you of timidity!"

And I, relieved (Wordplay! Something at which I can't be beat):

"I thank you for the honor, but am I indeed in the presence of Marat?"

He laughs. We laugh. He asks again. I decline. I divert. What can I tell him? I don't know that poem. A tragic absurdity: here, where everything is "yes" — to begin with a refusal! Then, a sudden brainstorm:

"Perhaps you'd recite it for me yourself?"

He, embarrassed:

"I... I have forgotten it a bit, I'm afraid."

(I didn't write it, and he doesn't remember it! "Go to the right — you lose the horse, to the left . . .")

And —making a precipitous and irreversible turn:

"If I were Vera Redlikh * I would turn the whole play upside down!"

"What do you mean?"

"You are on stage — the text is forgotten, the fiance is forgotten . . ."

"Are you so forgetful?"

"No, it's you — who are unforgettable!"

Stakhovich to M-lov:

"O-o-o! I had no idea that poets were such a tribe of flatterers. That part usually fell on the poor heads of courtiers."

"Every poet—is a court poet: of his own king. Poets always have a weakness for greatness."

"As do kings — for flattery."

" Which I adore, since I do it not from hypocrisy, but for the pleasure of charming—the person I flatter. To flatter —is to be captivated. I know no other flattery. And you?"

*

Then we parted — apparently captivated by one another. (About myself I can say for certain.) Then I wrote a letter to V L. M-lov, which had nothing to do with the addressee except for the address. (From the date to the signature — it was about Stakhovich and for Stakhovich.) Then it was all forgotten.

*

*An actress who in the play was in love with a high school student. (M.Ts.)

Two months ago I heard about his illness from Volodya Alekseev.* He was sick, he was depressed. But we had only met once, just for an hour! And — since he's ill — family, friends . . . You can't get close, and I don't know how to push my way through. (They won't just up and part for me.) The vision of someone else's home, someone else's everyday life. The relatives, who will inspect me, since they've never seen me before . . . The well-dressed aspiring actresses — and me in these boots.

Also: for me, to visit (always, and especially now, in the Revolution), for me to visit —means to bring something. What could I bring him? My empty hands (never aristocratic, and now —not even human!), my empty hands and overflowing heart? But the latter—because of the former (my embarrassment!) — he won't see. I'll torture myself for nothing and waste his time.

But every time Volodya comes, I say plaintively: "Take me to see Stakhovich!" For me, the attainability of the desired (whether things or souls) is in reverse relation to its desirability: the more desired —the more unattainable. In advance. As a matter of course. And I don't even try to want. Stakhovich is living on Strastnoi Blvd., therefore —Strast-noi is not Strastnoi and even Stakhovich — is not Stakhovich. ("He'd be surprised . . . He'd be angry . . ." He, Petronius!!) In short, I didn't go.

*

One more remark, at the funeral, from M-lov: "Why didn't you ever visit him? He would have been so glad. He loved poetry, conversation, loved to tell stories himself, only no one wanted to listen . . . And there was a lot to listen to! He had an unusual life. So many encounters, travels ... In his youth —the war . . . And such different circles: the court, the military, the theater . . . And he liked you so much that time . . ."

*

March 16,1919.

I'm walking along the street. It's thawing a bit. Suddenly I have the thought: "Moscow's first spring without Stakhovich . . ." (Not:

*An actor of Studio II, later a volunteer in the White Army, who went missing in action in 1920. (M.Ts.)

"Stakhovich's first spring without Moscow" — that was exactly how the thought came to me.)

*

March 19.

Every time I see a gray head on the street my heart clenches.

*

I also forgot to say: Stakhovich had a marvelous voice once. He sang with some famous Italian.

The voice! The crudest fascination for me!

*

Yes, the waltz was lovely, languid.

Yes, it was a wonderful waltz.

He often sang that song, wonderfully. He'd finish — and invariably:

If I were young,

How I would love you!

"Aleksei Aleksandrovich! Aleksei Aleksandrovich! That's not in the ballad! You're making up your own song!"

"Yes it is, yes it is! And if it isn't—se non e vero e ben trovato!

And no one understood!

(Recounted by a student actress.)
Moscow, February-March 1919

"Iz dnevnika. Smert' Stakhovicha (27 fevralia 1919 g)" was first published in the Paris newspaperPoslednie novosti, January 26,1926.

1: Aleksei Aleksandrovich Stakhovich. Stakhovich (1856-1919) was an actor in the Moscow Art Theater (MKhAT) and taught at MKhATs III Studio.

2: M[chede]lov came up to me. Vakhtang Levanovich Mchedelov, (real name Mchedlishvili (1884-1924), a director and acting teacher.

3: The hold that the bold word "Khudozhestvenniki." I.e., actors of MKhAT (Moskovskii Khudozhestvennyi Akademicheskii Teatr).

4: Kameneva and someone else were there. Nemirovich-Danchenko simmered. Olga Davydovna Kameneva (1883-1941) was head of the theater section of the People Commissariat of Englightenment from 1918 to 1919. V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858-1943) was a director and playwright.

5: Kackalov received a poem from you, unsigned. Kachalov, the pseudonym of Vasily Ivanovich Shverubovich (1875-1948), an actor in the Moscow Art Theater.