3oet tore 3ptap.9
THE CLOUDS
KVAPIL,) JAROSLAY
Richard G. Badger, Publisher, Boston
















VOLUME XXI         NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, I910        NUMBER VI
THE CLOUDS*
(A play in three acts).
BY JAROSLAV KVAPIL
Translated from the Bohemian by Charles Recht*
THE CAST
PATER IAN MATOUSH, a village priest.
MAYA ZEMANOVA, an actress.
PETR KOCIAN, a theological student.
MARIA KOCIANOVA, his mother, the priest's sister.
DR. VOTAVA, a physician.
Scene: A small Bohemian parsonage near the mountains.
ACT I
Courtyard of a country parsonage. Summer afternoon.
Matoush (entering from the outside with his sister).- Well, God
willing, by to-morrow night this year's harvest will be all gathered.
To-morrow we'll get that piece we have on Zablati finished up, and
then we'll thresh it all together. But don't you work so hard,
Marianka. To-day it was awfully hot, and you, poor thing, had to
work twice as hard. Petr home?
*Copyright, I9pi, by Charles Recht. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright, 19I1, by The Poet Lore Company.  All Rights Reserved.
417


293643




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Kocianova.- No.   Soon after dinner he took a book and went
somewhere around Zalachi.
Matoush.- My old feet don't serve me as well as they used to.
I went around to Zablati and it took me a good hour to get home.
And I am tired. In other days I would go with the last sacrament a
good many miles and would come home as fresh as when I started,
but now even such a short walk wearies me. We are getting old,
Marianka; we are getting old. And we stand here all alone.
Kocianova.- May the Almighty at least reward us with Petr.
May He give him His mercy and blessing so he can serve his first
mass next year.
MatouSh (smiling).- And afterwards that he should go a-farming
on sorme godforsaken country parsonage. Is that it? (Sits down
on the bench.)
Kocianova.- God's will be done. Our old father farmed, my
old man farmed,- and both were content.
Matoush.- Listen Marianka - come, stop a moment - come
sit down here beside me. Listen, are you not at least once in a while
a bit sorry that Petr is not going to be something greater, something
more important than his uncle?  And you know well that he could
have been.
Kocianova.- But I have promised him to the Lord. And He
knows the covenant I made with Him when the boy was on his
deathbed, and that's why He saved him.
Matoush.- And do you think that is the only reason why He
saved him?
Kocianova.- For that and everything. But it was His will
that Petr should be what you are.
Matoush.-What I am! Ah! my golden soul, at our age one
can regret many things and yearn for things which are not. I go
through fields, I meet the peasants and laborers, and I often ask of
myself, "For this did I study many long years, for this did my
brothers and sisters sacrifice themselves, for this did I remain single,
that at the end of ends I should be the same as you are, but without
your happiness and your hope?" What I am! A peasant, a strange
acre, which to-day is mine and to-morrow is-God knows whose.
A decaying recluse who never knew the world and who doesn't leave
anything to the world.
Kocianova.- Don't lament, Jenichek! You brought up Petr.
Matoush.- No, I didn't. He would have finished his studies




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without me, and without me he would have been what you would have
"covenanted" him to be. Marianka, God is also in other places
besides the church. And when I see Petr and his habitual silence,
his compressed lips, it is to me as if I saw our poor dead father again,
at that time when I told him I would go to the seminary if we didn't
have enough money for the university (waving his hand). Well, I
went gladly. I offered myself as a sacrifice, and went of myown will,
Marianka, of my own accord.
Kocianova.- And Petr also
Matoush.- Petr, my dear, has been sacrificed by you, or rather
let us say, we have sacrificed him. He could have studied, I could
have afforded it. (Silence.)
Kocianova.- It was God's will.
Matoush.- It was your wish, Marianka, it was the wish of your
religion (smoothing her hair lightly). You have a good son, sister.
May God preserve him, and the Lord's will be done. (Rising.)
Won't you give me my lunch?
Kocianova (rising).- See, we were talking till I forgot. (Seeing
Petr coming.) And there is Petr coming; you can eat together.
Petr (entering from the outside).- His name be praised!
Matoush.- Unto all eternity!
Kocianova.- From ages to ages!
Matoush.- You are hurrying home, too, aren't you? Such heat
tires me.
Petr.- In the Zalchi woods it is nice and shady, and pleasant to
read there.
Matoush.- Yes, on Zalchi, of course,- but what a distance?
Kocianova.- Do you still remember, Petrichek, how you got
lost on Zalchi when you went to pick strawberries? Good God, but
that's so many years ago!
Petr (smiling). —At least twenty.
Kocianova.- If not more, my dear boy. Why you were only
such a bit of a schoolboy; but even at that time your dear father
was already with God.
Matoush.- It will be twenty-four years on Saint Vaclav's day
since he died.
Kocianova.-Twenty-four already. How the years go! And
how old are you, Petrichek?
Petr.- Almost twenty-eight.
Matoush.- To be sure, to be sure. You were almost fourteen




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when we sent you to the gymnasium.
Kovianova.- And then you lost two years on account of that
sickness.
Matoush.-What happened that time on Zalchi? I don't
recollect
Petr (with a smile).- Well, at that time!- with that little girl
from Prague,- don't you remember?
Matoush.- Ach, with the one whose father restored our church?
Kocianova.- Yes, yes, with her. And wasn't she great friends
with our little Petr? The girl was only a little tot, but such a good
child. I can see her even now. On her little neck she had a string
of little red corals, and Frank Dolegsh teased her whenever he saw
her, "Give me those pretty corals, Marenka." Marenka she was
called, wasn't she?
Petr.- Yes, Marenka, I think.
Kocianova.- Well, and one fine day just as the boy was teasing
her again, the girl says something sharp to him, and then dear Frank,
-bang! goes and tears down the whole string from her neck. The
corals were scattered all over the ground, and the girl was like wild.
Our Petrik was sitting here on the doorstep - just as if I would see
him to-day - and just as the girl started to cry, he flew at Frank,
and soon he was on top of him (laughing). You used to be such a
wild fellow, Petrichek.
Petr (quietly).- I used to be, maminka, I used to be.
Matoush (laughing).-Oh yes, I also remember it now. And
afterward they had to pick up all those corals, and finally I punished them both.
Petr.- What became of that girl, I wonder?
Matoush.- She lost her father so suddenly. It is a great pity.
He was such a good and skilful man; at that time he fixed up our
church so well that it has no equal, far or near.
Kocianova.- Oh, well, I suppose she has been married a long
time now. Why, she was only a few days younger than our Petr.
Petr. —Yes, they used to tease me by calling me her bridegroom.
Frank, even after many years, used to shout, "Where is your wife
Marenka?"
Kocianova.- Ah, what do the children not chatter together!
Petr.- And what life makes of it! (Silence.)
Matoush.- Oh, it was at that time on Zalchi that you and she
lost your way. Now I am recollecting. What trouble there was here




JAROSLAV KVAPIL                     421
in the house when you weren't home after the Angelus.
Petr.- Talk about the Angelus! Why, it was perfectly dark when
the Herstein forester found us in the woods and brought us home.
Kocianova.- And here am I listening to you and forgetting all
about the lunch (Going out). Shall I bring it into the hall?
Matoush.-Yes, do, Marianka, do, it's nice and cool there.
Kocianova.- I will get it ready at once (exit).
Matoush (after a while).- See, Petr, how the time flies. It isn't
such a long time ago since you came back on a vacation, and soon
it will be after harvesting, and then you'll have to get ready to go
back to the seminary again.
Petr.- God willing, a year from to-day I will serve my first mass.
Matoush.- Yes, and next year after the harvest you will settle
down some place as a pastor. Your mother would like to see it even
now.
Petr.- Poor maminka.
Matoush.- My poor mother cried for me when I served my first
mass, but not from joy. She wanted me to be a doctor. But there
wasn't enough money for that. And see, Petr, I have been consecrated for thirty-two years, and this is the twenty-sixth year that I
have been in this lonely farm. Why, why, I am almost sixty (pause).
Do you still remember, Petr, how we sat here, just as to-day,
under this tree, at the time when you were about to enter the Seminary? How many times, my dear boy, have I thought of it since.
Didn't I myself, years ago, dislike to go where I was sending you?
And I went voluntarily at that. When we sat down in the buggy
at that time, and I took you to the railway station, I felt just as if I
were leaving my home again to go to some place where I really did
not want to go. But I had to go and see you; you, too, probably had
to go. (After a while.) But, see here, Petr, I should not talk to
you in this way. I am a priest and you too will become one soon;
and perhaps I ought to pray for the constant and undisturbed peace
of your soul. But we are men now; grown-up men, and they say
that men are the masters of their fates. Tell me, my boy-are
you content? And do you hope to be always content?
Petr (quietly).-Always, uncle.
Matoush.- God forbid that I should try to misguide you now
when you stand at the threshold of a new career, which has been the
lifelong wish and dream of your mother and which has become your
own ambition also. But I am an old man, Petr, and to us old people




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and especially to those who during their lives have always had
enough time to meditate about themselves - is given as a recompense for their inactive past, an insight as clear as of summer nights
when the most distant things are in view. I was never a religious
fanatic, although even if I had taken up a different calling I would
have never ceased to be a believer. To your mother I do not dare
to talk about these things at all. She considers priests as the incarnation of religious belief -because she never heard iof anything
else. To her we are the living embodiment of faith, the assurance
of the nearness of her God. But, believe me, He exists even without
us and our preaching. (Pause.) You are surprised, Petr, isn't it so,
that a priest should talk in this way? I, your former instructor, your
guardian, the very priest whose hand led you into the service of the
Church.
Petr.- Frankly, uncle, while I listen to you I feel the strangeness
of your talk. But it seems to me that I understand you well -
at least, it seems so to me. I comprehend your situation more
through feeling than reason. Indeed, my reason has not been given
the opportunity to pursue an independent path of its own liking
- but had to follow the clerical path. I see now that in the Church
it is very much as it is in the Army. Those who enter must leave
reason and independence behind them. You are not to think - but
to believe. Believe me, I would have perhaps rebelled against my
mother's commands had it not been for you and for the example you
have set. Your loyalty in everything, in work, in the love of
your kindred amidst this graveyard solitude of a country parsonage,
gave me confidence that I also would be able to fulfil my mother's
wish - and that I will be strong enough to kill all bolder hopes and
dreams of young ambition.
Matoush.- You are a good boy, Petr, and I would even say that
you are a worthy man, were it not that I myself wish often that men
would and should be stronger than we both are. May God strengthen
and protect you. (Patting him lightly.) And don't blame your
old uncle, my dear fellow, if he talked to you as a priest ought not
talk. (Gets up.) But let's come, come - maminka has most likely
just as much as we forgot about the meal. (Goes a few steps and
calls out.) Well, Marianka, aren't you going to invite us in?
Kocianova (on the threshold).-Please have patience. In a minute. The girl ran away on me somewhere and I had to chop a bit of
wood myself. But come inside, it will soon be ready. (Goes into the




JAROSLAV KVAPIL


423


yard.) Where could that Barushka be
Matoush.- Let's come, Petr. (Smiling.) Nunc est bibendum.
(They both go into the house.)
Kocianova (in the yard).- But what a girl she is - (Crosses the
yard.)  Barushka! (Goes out through the gate.)  Barushka,-can
you hear me?
(The stage remains empty for a while. MAYA appears in the gateway. She is lightly dressed and carries a parasol which she shuts when
she enters. She looks around meditatively.)
Kocianova (whose voice can 'be heard from a nearby house).- But
Barushka, Barushka - where have you been?
Petr (comes out on the threshold and calls).- Maminka, maminka,
where did you put -? (Having seen MAYA he does not finish the
sentence, but stops and greets her quietly.) Good afternoon.
Maya.- Ach! Pardon me, reverend sir, that I have come into
your yard without permission.
Petr.- You are welcome. Are you looking for somebody?
Maya.- Oh no - mere inquisitiveness. I just wanted to see
your parsonage from the outside, at least. Old memories, don't you
know. Would you permit me to look into the hall. There used to
be some old blackened pictures there and I used to be so afraid of
them.
Petr (steps off the threshold - he motions to her to enter).- If you
please!
Maya (approaches the threshold, but stops).-Ach!  Pardon.
I must explain why I am interested. My name is Maya Zemanova
and I come from Prague.
Petr (somewhat embarrassed).- Yes
Maya.- I used to live here -many, many years ago. And
this year some vagabond spirit brought me again into your neighborhood. I am in Breskowitz for my vacation. (She looks around.)
Wonderful! To my imagination your parsonage seemed a tremendous building, your yard according to my recollection was at least
as big as a town square, even that tree there seems to me very much
smaller than it was in my memory - and the tree must have grown
since that time.
Petr.-You must have been away from here for a long time,
madam.
Maya (laughing).- Years, many years. But, reverend sir, you
were not here then.




424


THE CLOUDS


Petr.- Impossible, madam, I was born here.
Maya.-You don't tell me-but then you did not say
Mass.
Petr.- I don't say it, even now, madam. I have not yet been
ordained.
Maya.- Is that so? I thought that you were the local pastor.
Petr.- Oh, no - I am only a theological student.
Maya.- Ach.   So.  You   are only a bachelor, only, ha?
(Laughing.)
Petr (smiles).- Yes, only a bachelor, dear madam.
Maya (laughing).- Well, then, I am not a madam, as yet either.
Petr (embarrassed).- Pardon me, Miss.
Maya (still jolly).- Who can help it that I look like a married
lady. (After awhile.)  And if you please, Mr. - Mr. - see, now
I don't know what title to give you. May I not call you "reverend
sir"?
Petr.- My name is Kocian, Miss.
Maya (lightly).- Delighted. Is not that priest here any more,
who used to be here years ago? I have such a bad memory for
names.
Petr.- My uncle has served in this place for almost twenty-six
years.
Maya (with warmth).- Your uncle?
Petr.- Yes, Pater Ian Matoush.
Maya.- Yes! Yes! Father Matoush. But, God in heaven, is
your name Petr?
Petr (surprised).- Really, Miss, Petr is my name.
Maya.-Petr! Petr! (Shakes his hand cordially.) And did
you not recognize me?
Petr (embarrassed).- You - Miss?
Maya.- Not even by my name? Ah, of course, the name I
gave you is of later date. That is my stage name. You know I am
an actress.
Petr (involuntarily releases her hand).- Is that so?
Maya (laughing).- But did not you get frightened! (More
seriously.) My real name is Marie Preisova - but I am entirely
used to the other name.
Petr (suddenly remembering).-Marie Preisova.    (Quickly.)
Your father worked on our church, here, did he not?
Maya (cordially).- And during that time I was the ward of the




JAROSLAV KVAPIL


425


parsonage, surely, surely. My mother was already dead and papa
took me with him every vacation.
Petr.-Ach! Miss Preisova - this is, indeed, strange. We were
just talking about you.
Maya.- You -about me? Why, do you still remember me?
And with whom were you talking about me, please?
Petr.- Why, with uncle and maminka.
Maya.- Is maminka still alive? She is the priest's sister, is
she not?
Petr.- Yes, she has been keeping house for my uncle since my
father's death.
Maya.- What a surprise, Mr. Petr, I daresay. You are not
angry at me for calling you by your first name?
Petr.- Ah. If you please - Miss --
Maya (suddenly, surprised).- And you are also a priest-or
you are going to be one! Who would have thought that of you? I
always remembered you with that big paper cap on your head and
your long wooden sabre - who could have known that from such a
courageous hero the after years would hatch out a colorless country
parson?
Petr (somewhat astonished; then he says slowly and quietly).- It
had to be!
Maya (seriously).- It had to be! Ach, yes, Mr. Petr, everything had to be! (Merrily.) And how about me-did you ever
think that I would become an actress?
Petr (quiet smile).- Rather a fairy princess, Miss, as you yourself used to tell me in those days.
Maya.- Yes, a fairy princess. Down below on a hedge near
the brook we had our castle in a watchman's booth.
Petr.- Yes, and I used to go out, sabre in hand every time
Frank Dolejsh would come to besiege our cherry trees.
Maya.- And once you walloped him on account of me, ha?
Petr.- Many times. Even after you went away from here
Frank got many whippings on account of you.
Maya.- Is it possible! And why?
Petr (embarrassed).- Why - well why? But that is no longer
true. (Pause.)
Maya (pensively).- "Gib meine Jugend mir zuriick"...
(Quickly changing the subject.) And maminka, is she well? And
uncle, how is he?




426


THE CLOUDS


Petr (hurriedly, getting out of his embarrassment).-The Lord
be praised - they are both well. And won't they be glad! How
stupid of me! Here I am talking with you without inviting you
inside.
Maya (smiles and remains standing on the threshold - she looks
around.)
Petr.- But I'll have to call maminka. (Hurries through the
yard.) Maminka, maminka! (Goes around the corner.)
Maya (steps inside the yard and looks about. She gazes at the
stern, white walls of the rectory and looks at the tree, then goes back to
the house and sits down on the bench. She begins to write on the sand
with her parasol, reciting to herself half aloud.)
Kocianova (still behind the scenes).- And what a visit. What a
visit!  (Enters, followed by PETR) - My dear, golden soul.  What a
guest, what a guest! (Goes over to MAYA, who rises and goes toward
her.)
Maya.-Mrs. Kocianova, do you still remember me? (She
embraces and kisses her.)
Kocianova.- Ach. My dear, golden Miss. You are no longer
that little Marenka who used to romp around with our Petr. Such a
lady from the city! I really don't know, Miss
Maya.- And I used to think of all of you so often.  Believe me,
I often wanted to come here. Last year I was in Pilsen and I was
all ready to make a trip over here, but just then I got a telegram to
return to Prague and I had to go back.
Kocianova.-And during all this time you never wrote to us.
My brother read at that time in the newspaper that your father was
with God.
Maya.-Those were very sad times for me, Mrs. Kocianova.
My father fell off a scaffolding when they were rebuilding a church in
Skalitz, and when I got there he was already dead.
Kocianova.- My poor soul!
Maya.- And then I was not even fifteen. And soon after that
my aunt who adopted me died, too, and since my seventeenth year I
have been all alone in the world. I was in Germany for a couple of
years, but this is now my sixth year in Prague.
Kocianova.- Well, as long as you are healthy and happy.
Maya.- Well, health I have, thank God - and as for happiness,
I don't get enough time for that.
Petr.- Miss    is with the theater in Prague, maminka.




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427


Kocianova.- Is that possible - that big one? And she plays
parts there, does she not?
Maya.- It's funny, isn't it? And almost ten years now.
Kocianova.- That must be an odd calling. And don't you find
it hard?
Maya.- That is how I make my living.
Petr.- That's why I could not recognize Miss. She introduced herself by her stage name.
Kocianova (confused).- And has she a different name now
than she had then?
Maya.- You see, Mrs. Kocianova, at first I did not want toplay under my own name, because so many people knew my father,
and now I am better used to the other name.
Kocianova (surprised). —Why, is that possible?
Maya (lightly).- Why not? To-day no one knows me by theold name.
Petr.- About such things we have no idea, maminka.
Kocianova (quietly).- We have not, to be sure. (After a while.)
But you must come inside, Miss. Brother will be surprised, I tell
you!
Maya.- Really, I hardly feel like leaving this yard. Why, we
used to stay here from morning till night. Here on the threshold,
there on the bench and there under the trees. Out into the hall I
was almost afraid to go on account of those big black pictures.
Kocianova.- Could I offer you a glass of our cream?
Maya.- Your cream? If you please, Mrs. Kocianova. Poor
father, for many years he used to say, "There is nothing like that
cream from Luschitz."
Kocianova.- So come right inside, Miss, right inside. Go,
Petrichek, and take the Miss inside, I'll go and get something.
Maya (jolly).- But wait, Mrs. Kocianova, I will go in alone.
I'll appear before the pater in the same way that I appeared before
Mr. Petr. I wonder if he will know me. (Laughs.) Do you know,
Mrs. Kocianova, that Petr kept on calling me "madam," before he
recognized me. Well, well -who is to blame that I am not married?
Kocianova.-The young lady is nothing but jolliness. Well,
then, as you like. Brother is in the hall to the right. Do you
remember the way?
Maya (lightly).- I wonder what I could say to him, so he would
not know me. Well, I'll try to think of something. I will be out




428


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in a minute, so please wait. (Going inside.) To the right, then --
(Goes in.)
Petr (confused; stands in the midst of the courtyard).
Kocianova (after a pause).-Really, really-I cannot get it
into my head. And that this should be that little Marenka Preisova
from Prague. Petrichek
Petr (rousing).- Yes, yes, but I have changed, too, maminka.
Kocianova.- You I have not lost from my sight, my dear boy,
and so it does not seem so strange.
Petr.- And then I grew up differently.
Kocianova.- And how sincere and cordial she is! Would you
believe that when I saw her the first time I really did not know what
to say to her? But she came to me at once, with a "My dear Mrs.
Kocianova," and kissed me just like my own child.
Petr.- She must have met with but little love in this world.
Kocianova.- Yes, the poor thing, since her fifteenth year without a mother or a father! And in her best years!
Petr.- And still she went independently through life. A little
girl fighting life's battle unaided, single handed. Think of that,
maminka! And in those years I was only a petty gymnasium
student. And even to-day I am - nothing.
Kocianova.- But you soon will be, God willing
Petr.- A forgotten country parson.
Kocianova.- Believe me, my boy, that is something even
greater than her calling. Well, I don't know. Only if she is as
good a girl as she seems. Surely, it is a gift from God that she
attained to all these things - but I don't know what and how it is -
I don't know yet.
Petr.- Without doubt it is something beautiful and great.
See how free and unrestrained she is in her talk to 'us and her
actions. Wonderful! When I was in the gymnasium I went to the
theater now and then, and it seemed to me that these women were
really not women at all, just as if some master created an ideal being
and it was artistically placed upon the stage.  One of the actresses lived near our house at the time when I lived with old Mrs.
Morfeit. And she was a wonderful woman. I always thought that
I would die of embarrassment if she should ever speak to me on the
street. And that's the way I have always imagined all actresses were.
Kocianova.- I don't understand those things at all. One hears
about it once in a while, but never knows about it. But when I look




JAROSLAV KVAPIL


429 -

at that girl there I begin to believe it. Only she must be better,
more open hearted than the others - Well! I don't know how I
should say it. When one hears a goodly creature like that one feels
better and the world grows brighter.
Petr.- And what must the men of their world be if a woman can
be so free and independent -how those men must live! Does it not
seem to you, maminka, that they are entirely different people of a
different world than ours? And that world is so far away.
Kocianova (softly).- Well, let it be far away. As long as we can
love some one. If God wills it, neither are you living in vain. Did
I not pray to Him for you?
Petr (somewhat moved).- And I also thank Him daily that I
still have you. (Cordially.) Let His will be done, maminka, as
long as you find joy in me.
Kocianova (pats him lightly).- My good, my only Petrichek.
Petr (after a while).- Well, I daresay that uncle was surprised
when he saw her. I wonder if she has told him yet who she is.
Maya (running out of the house).- Well, you should have seen it!
You should have seen it!
Kocianova.-Did brother know you, Miss?
Maya.- No, not at all. (To the priest who is coming after her.)
He made so many guesses, did you not,- but never guessed right!
Matoush.- What do you think of that, Marianka? And you,
Petr?
Petr.- I did not know Miss Preisova, either, uncle.
Matoush.- And do you know who I thought she was when she
entered. The Countess of Herstein. I was reading without my
glasses, when she knocked and came in. That figure and that light
dress.
Maya.- And I of course played my little part and the reverend
sir started off, "Your Grace." Only that as soon as he put on his
glasses he saw
Matoush.- But still I did not know where to place her
Maya.- See, see, reverend sir. To-day you would hardly call
me "you over-patted cry baby." Really, that's what he called me
once when I began to whimper for no reason and he was in a hurry.
Matoush.- But I am afraid that it was a little worse than you
tell us.
Maya.- Yes, it was. At the end I got a good slap from you
because I would not stop...
~..




430


THE CLOUDS


Kocianova (laughing loudly).-Is that possible, Miss!
Maya.-And believe me, Mrs. Kocianova, for such a slap I
would gladly go back into the days of my childhood, even to-day.
My childhood was not very long, but beautiful.
Petr.- The present must be even more beautiful.
Maya.- That only seems so to you, as to many others. But
you, Mr. Petr, you must have enjoyed your young years even more
than I.
Petr (slightly bitter).- Do you think so, Miss?
Kocianova.- Ach, my dear, golden soul! Petr had a very sad
childhood. Even at the time when he was home. Brother did not
know for a long while whether he would send him to the city to
study. He was already fourteen when brother decided, and then,
the poor thing, he fell sick, and we had to have him home for a long,
long while. And how many times did Dr. Votava come here?
Matoush.- Yes, he was almost a goner.
Kocianova.- And then I used to kneel and pray many, many
nights and call upon God to save him. It was at that time that I
promised him to the Lord -and He accepted my promise and He
saved him.
Maya (attentive, with interest).- And at that time you decided
what Mr. Petr should be?
Kocianova.- The Lord Himself decided.
Maya (after a pause).- None of us knows where Fate will take
us, I never thought of going on the stage. I wanted to be a teacher.
And besides, did you know that I was also in a convent?
Kocianova (interested).- Were you, Miss?
Maya.- It was really a girlish whim. After my father's death
in all that loneliness and worry I longed for a quiet haven. In my
seventeenth year I thought that my life was all spent and I had such
a craving for solitude and peace. So I went to the Mother Abbess of
Sacre Coeur.
Kocianova.- Well, and
Maya.- And a half a year after that I was on the stage. I have
no idea how it all happened! The convent did not quite come up to
my expectations, and in the mean time one of my aunt's acquaintances
met me and she was an amateur actress. For a year I played in
German places - I knew German well, you know. My father
used to send me to a German high school. So I played in Germany
for some time, and as soon as I could I came back.




JAROSLAV KVAPIL


431


Petr.- And are you happy, Miss?
Maya (lightly).- Yes - happy. We are all happy as long as
we have enough to do and enough to think about. But here am I talking about myself all the time. And how are you getting along, Father?
Matoush.- I? At my age thinking becomes an unnecessary
function.  I was farming already at the time when you were with us
- and well the years passed by without much change. Only that
we have grown much older, and Petr grew up. And after we have
gone, he, too, will get old and so we will all pass away without leaving
anybody or anything to this world, except three neglected poorlooking crosses in the churchyard.
Kocianova.- God's will be done!
Matoush.- But you are a nice hostess, Marianka. Aren't you
going to offer something to Miss Preisova?
Maya (laughing).-We have forgotten all about that cream.
But don't trouble yourself, Mrs. Kocianova. I will come again, if
you will permit me.
Kocianova.- No trouble at all, Miss. When you come again,
you can have some again, and every day if you like.
Dr. Fotava (coming from the outside).- Hello there, everybody!
And what do you think of this! Here is Miss Zemanova in the
rectory. Extremes have met! (Greeting every one.)
Maya.- We are old friends, aren't we, reverend sir? And how
about you, Doctor, have you a patient here?
Votava.- Not here in the parsonage. Mrs. Kocianova is about
again as chipper as a bird. But old Rynesh down there in the village
is getting along very badly. I am just coming from him. The old
woman, poor thing, is wailing awfully. Would not you go over
there, Father? I promised her that I would stop in here and ask you
to come over with the Sacrament.
Kocianova.- So - so - it is true, after all. Well, he has been
very miserable lately.
Matoush.- I will get ready at once, doctor. Petr, go and get
the sexton. And you, Marianka, don't forget the young lady.
Petr (going).- I am going. I'll take a short cut through the
garden. (Goes out around the house.)
Matoush.- Yes, and I'll follow you at once. Well, let's go.
Shall I see you again, doctor?
Votava.- I don't know. I thought of giving Miss Zemanova a
ride. My buggy is below at the inn.




432


THE CLOUDS


Maya.- I really wanted to go by the fields.
Votava.- I would not advise you. You might get wet. The
clouds are pretty darkly gathered above Zalchi.
Kocianova.-God forbid. Our people are still in the fields.
But now I must - (Goes into the house.)
Matoush.- And you, doctor, will stay a while, will you not?
Votava.- I'll take a look around the village and come back
here for Miss Zemanova.
Matoush.- Well, good by! (Goes into the house.)
Fotava.- And how do you come to be here, Miss Zemanova?
Maya.- I used to be a guest here many years ago.
Fotava.- Ach surely! My wife was telling me about it the
other day. I forgot.
Maya.- No wonder. A busy, worried man like you!
Fotava.- And don't you think that we have no worries! We
in the villages are, as it were, isolated from the rest of the world, but we
still have our worries.
Maya.- Listen, doctor, do you often come here to the rectory?
Fotava.- Now and then. Whenever it is necessary. Every
time I come to the village I always stop here to see the old man. He
is one of those old-fashioned ones. One still can talk to such.
Maya.- Young Kocian is of the younger generation, I suppose?
Votava.- Well, at the present time he is not. That is - I
don't know. On the whole, he is a poor talker. Perhaps his seminary life did not contribute much to his happiness.
Maya (with interest).- How is that?
Votava.- The boy used to be as wild as an Indian and then he
got very seriously ill. He recovered and was a good student. I
thought that he would become something else. But his mother was
set upon the seminary  and the uncle, what could he do? He did
not resist her wishes.
Maya.- And Petr?
Votava.- He humbly goes the usual path of our poor country
students. That's the way it always ends with our farmer lads;
either they haven't enough money for the university or it's the wish
of their pious parents. Our peasants want all their sons to be gentlemen. Well, they manage to get them through the gymnasium somehow, but then - it's hard. The rank and file of our young clergy,
even those who become religious fanatics later in life, is formed thus
from involuntary candidates.




JAROSLAV KVAPIL


433


Maya.- Poor Petr!
Votava. —Why poor Petr? Maybe he is and maybe he isn't.
That's an individual instance. After all, our attainments in life
are only the sum total of our ambitions, so far as these could develop
in our environment. It all depends on whether the individual is
strong enough to change his surroundings, if he finds that they conflict with his ambitions.
Maya.- And what if such individual recognizes that fact later
on in life? For instance, suppose that Petr should to-day awake and
recognize that his mother's wishes are of no importance when compared to his duty to himself, his mission in life, his happiness? Suppose he should rise up? What then?
Fotava.- What then? Perhaps only a misunderstanding, or
maybe a calamity. My dear Miss Zemanova, it is not advisable to
shake the foundations on which rest the newer layers of our life.
Petr is to-day blindly going along on the well-beaten path - like a
new chicken in a strange yard, whose wings are tied. If he should
want to fly he will only fly into a neighboring yard and would injure
himself in getting over the fence. And they would catch the chicken
there, after all; and if tying the wings did not answer the purpose
they'd cut them off entirely.
Maya.- Salutary theories!
Votava.- For us they are salutary - what do you know? You
never had chicken wings.
(Petr is returning from the outside.)
Fotava.- It is agreed then, Miss? I'll take you with me. I am
just going to see another patient and I'll return in a few minutes.
So, until then, by by! (Goes out.)
Maya (crosses the yard and sits down on the bench near the house.)And how about you, Mr. Petr, aren't you ever going to Prague?
Petr.- When?
Maya.- Any time. Perhaps this vacation. Only wait until I
return there. Take your mother along with you. Let your uncle
keep house alone for a day or two.
Petr.- Ach. What do you think? Maminka - and to Prague!
Maya.- It is not at the world's end. Suppose you had studied
there. She would have had to come there a couple of times.
Petr (with a light smile).- If I had studied there! Ah, no,
Miss - Prague means nothing to me any more. First of all, I must
finish my last year, and then comes the holy Mass, and in the mean




434


THE CLOUDS


time I must not think of anything else.
Maya.- You certainly are in a hurry to get there.
Petr.- Why shouldn't I be! Others at my age already have a
career behind them.
Maya.- Will you be glad when you are ordained and are your
own master?
Petr.- Well, I wish it were to-day.
Maya (inquisitively).- You took up theology gladly, did you
not?
Petr.- Gladly? (Just as if he did not know what to answer.)
Oh! yes, gladly, even if only for my mother's sake.
Maya.- Listen to me, don't you ever think of a greater career?
Petr.- How do you mean?
Maya.- Well, I don't know how you priests make a career.
It is most likely the same as in other lines. A small country parish
is not the end of your ambitions. What comes after a parson?
a dean, ha? Or a vicar? (Laughs.)
Petr (with a smile).- Well, perhaps - a dean.
Maya.- Yes, and after a dean an archdean and then a bishop.
And archbishop, cardinal (laughs). Well, would not that be a career?
Petr.- But, Miss, what are you thinking of? I never in mylife
have thought of being anything greater than a simple country parson.
I have really never given it any thought at all.
Maya.- Aren't you ambitious?
Petr (calmly).- No.
Maya.-Peculiar! (After a while.) You know what I was
thinking of. It seems to me that this calling of yours does not afford
you happiness. I don't believe that it is not impossible to be ambitious
in a labor of love. Look! not even I thought of being an actress. First
I trifled with that idea, which later on became my existence. But as
soon as I gave myself up to the theater I devoted myself to it with all
my soul. Passionately. And still, look! I am not one of those egoists who consider an actor the crownpiece of society. On the contrary, the profession - do you understand me - not the art but the
profession - is at times even repulsive to me. I look upon most of
the people from the stage point of view. But nevertheless, I live
with my entire soul in my art, I am lost therein, it is that which gives
passion and pleasure to my life --- without it I don't know whether I
could exist.
Petr.- You are happy?




JAROSLAV KVAPIL


435


Maya.- Happy! Since my childhood I have not been entirely
happy. Because happiness to me seems like a peaceful rest, calmness,
conciliation with life. But my life is nothing but activity, effort, and
struggle. I must always aspire further and higher, without a minute's rest, without stop. Instead of my passion for happiness, I
have only my ambition; I find joy in work, joy in beauty, and I
know how to become infatuated even with the joy of life. But
happy, that which you call "happiness," happy I am not. And see,
I often yearn for that happiness -like that happiness of my childhood; but not until to-day did I know that such happiness would be
sufficient for me. I don't want it - although I know that it exists
only it does not exist for me.
Petr (does not understand her clearly).- You have lived so differently from me. I believe you, but I do not understand.
Maya.- That's because you never knew the charm of your calling. In the selfsame way you could have been a lawyer or a physician. You decided to become a priest because your mother
wanted it. And in the same way that you believe me, but do not
understand, so do I believe that you will gladly become a priest.
You are, namely, happy because until now you have not aspired
for anything different.
Petr.- Do you think so?
Maya.- Yes. Perhaps you never aspired for anything different because they separated you in time from everything. You look
neither to the left nor to the right, and obediently go the commanded
way. You go gladly, you say. But, Mr. Petr, did you ever feel
joy on the way?
Petr.- My calling is not supposed to be a joyful one.
Maya.- Don't think that! Everywhere it is possible to feel joy,
even in the most cruel and terrible things. Don't you think that
there was joy in dungeons, pillories; in martyrdom and sufferings
that there was no joy? Don't you tkink that they who died for their
faith at the stake or in torture chambers, that they felt no joy in such
dying? And don't you know that our more common heroes who willingly castigate their bodies, lie down alone in coffins, condemn themselves voluntarily to exile and solitude - don't you think that they
find passionate pleasure in it? No matter what we do, it can be
beautiful and joyful, but it must originate from our will, from our
innermost conviction, from the needs of our passions, from our entire
self, from our soul.




436


THE CLOUDS


Petr (overcome by her eloquence, puts his hand to his brow).- All
this I have never known.
Maya (leans back against the wall and looks upward to the sky).See how those clouds travel along! Great, airy, free, joyful. Something carries them along, something unknown, invisible, perhaps
the vehement currents of those high spheres, perhaps their own passion for the setting sun, or perhaps only the mood and poetic spirit
of this day. How freely and undauntedly they journey on! Without
a will of their own and yet so free, unencumbered, unfettered by
either earth or heaven. I often feel that I am floating on like those
clouds. High up above the earth, illumined, sunkissed. And the
earth deep down, deep under me. In that distance the earth looks
so friendly, peaceful, dumb. Here on earth there might be happiness,
but up above there is joy, there is light -light even long after sunset
- and probably death there would be sweet, beautiful. Can you
see?
Petr (from his depths). — I see. (Silence.)
Maya (first to rouse herself).- But I am babbling again.  It
looks like foolishness, doesn't it?
Petr.- Ach, no, Miss. I could listen to you forever and forever.
I am so dull, I really ought to answer you somehow - I feel itbut look! It was not given to me.
Maya.- Don't be surprised at me, Mr. Petr. After so many
years we meet each other and I feel now just as if I were returning
from some very distant place - home. See, I very seldom have
confessed myself so truly and voluntarily to any one as I have to-day.
Petr (still looking at the clouds).- It was beautiful.
(Silence.)
Kocianova (comes out of the house).- So, Miss, if you please, have
something to eat with us. It is just a bite. By the time you could
reach Breskovitz you would be pretty hungry. The doctor will wait.
He can join us at the table when he comes.
Maya.- Mr. Petr and I have been talking the time away.
Kocianova.- You must come to see us oftener, since you are in
the neighborhood.
Maya.-Ah, surely I'll come. But you did not have to go to
all this trouble, Mrs. Kocianova.
Kocianova.- How you talk, child. Come, come.
Maya (on the threshold).- Well, since I must. (Goes in.)
Kocianova (goes after her, but returns).- And how about you,




JAROSLAV KVAPIL


437


Petrichek, aren't you coming with the young lady?
Petr (is gazing at the sky, he does not answer).
Kocianova. —Well, come, come. What are you looking at so?
Petr.- I am looking at those clouds.
ACT II
Same Scene. Towards evening.
Petr (coming out of the parsonage with DR. VOTAVA).- So really,
doctor, it is nothing serious?
otava.- You get frightened too easily, my friend. By the
postal you wrote, I thought, God knows what's happened. Your
mother got a bit strained during the harvesting, or probably she ate
something that did not quite agree with her. Let her rest nicely
for a day or two and she will be all right. Don't bother - at her age
every little indisposition looks serious.
Petr.- Thank the Lord! But in the afternoon she had a pretty
high fever. I was afraid that it might be typhus or something
similar. Forgive us, doctor, that we troubled you so.
Fotava.-Ah, what of that! I am quite used to these sudden
messages. But poor Miss Zemanova, she got so frightened. She
just came down to take a little walk with my wife, and as soon as she
heard about yout mother's illness she persisted in coming along with
me.
Petr.- Good soul.
Fotava.- Really she is an excellent person. Only last night
when we were coming from here did I learn what a fine woman she
is. (Nodding.) Yes, she is a splendid woman. My wife is very
fond of her.
Petr.-And maminka-she was so glad that Miss Zemanova
came with you.
Fotava.- Yes, yes, and gladness is often better than all drugs,
my friend. (Looking at his watch.) Well, as long as it is nothing
worse, let maminka chat with the young lady for a while; I will
take a ride to Pravovitz yet, and in an hour or so I'll be here again.
But don't let your mother do much talking, rather let your guest
entertain her. Better if she fell asleep.
Matoush (comes out of the house).
Fotava. —Well, reverend sir, I'll be on my way again. And
don't worry. It is nothing serious. Quiet and rest is all that is




438


THE CLOUDS


needed and she will be all right again. What would you have?
She is not a girl any longer, and she is still all hustle and bustle.
Matoush.- Well, she feels much better than she did before
Miss Preisova came. Has she a fever?
Votava.- Hardly any. Thirty-seven six-in the morning it will
be normal again.
Maya (in the doorway).- If you please, Mr. Petr, have you
some fresh water? Maminka would like a drink.
Petr.- Immediately, immediately.  (Hurries into the house;
both exeunt.)
Matoush.- That will not harm her.
Votava.- Ah, let her drink. She ought not to get up to-morrow,
though. I will be here to-morrow morning or in the afternoon; I
have two patients in Pravovitz and so I shall have to pass here
anyhow.
Matoush.- Did Petr complain to you, doctor?
Votava.- Why, is he also sick?
Matoush.- For about two days he has been complaining of
headache. Maybe it comes from the heat. But somehow or other
he seems changed a little. He is so excitable lately, and he was not
so before.
Votava.- Ach. That will pass.
Matoush.- If it is only not some inner discontent! In a few
weeks he will be going about again, and I would dread any difficulties
for him in his last year. God be my witness, doctor! Urge him to
enter the seminary?  On the contrary, I told him to think it over
seriously. Even the other day. But the boy, it seemed, was quite
reconciled to his fate.
Votava.- Well, if it did not explode until now, I don't think
it will explode. If he was twenty years old it would perhaps be
serious, but as it is  Besides, he was brought up on that. Since
his early years he has heard what he was going to be, and your life
course undoubtedly was a fit precedent for him, so that he was not
likely to strive for anything else. I do not believe in these sudden
changes. (Again looking at his watch.) But, reverend sir, hora ruit.
It is already half past seven and I wanted to see some one in Pravovitz.
Maya (coming out of the parsonage).
Votava.- We have stayed here too long, Miss, and I have to
go to Pravovitz yet. It will be dark before we'll get home.
Maya (jolly).-Ah, for my part —as long as you will give me a ride I




JAROSLAV KVAPIL


439


Votava.- Of course I will.  But you will have to wait for me.
Or would you rather come with me now?
Maya.- You will be passing here anyway, will you not?
Votava.- Certainly. I never go a different way.
Maya. —Then I would rather wait here for you. May I,
reverend sir? I like it here so much.
Matoush.- Where else would you be going, Miss Maya? You
can have supper with us and the doctor will be back by that time.
Votava (to MAYA).- And how is your patient getting along?
Maya.- She fell asleep. That's why I came out. That
window? Ought I not shut it?
Votava.- No. Fresh air will not harm her. At night you may
shut it. So please have patience, Miss Maya. I'll be back soon.
Au revoir. (Going away.)
Matoush (escorts him). —Well, I am so much obliged to you,
doctor. (Returning.) You are a good girl, Miss Maya, to come to
see us. You have given my sister much pleasure, and me, too.
Maya.- I would have come sooner, but I did not want to be
forward. It is so beautiful here, so quiet; believe me, I like it
here even better than I did years ago. I will be longing for this
place in Prague. I am going Saturday, you know.
Matoush.- Already?
Maya.- Ach, yes, yes,- the holidays are over. Next Monday
I will be playing again. It will all start again -and God only
knows what will happen in a year. (After a while.) Do you know,
reverend sir, that I am beginning to envy you?
Matoush.- Me?
Maya.- Yes, all of you. That is, at least, you and Mrs. Kocianova. I probably feel sorry for Petr.
Matoush (attentive).- Did he complain to you?
Maya.- Mr. Petr? What an idea! I don't believe he would
ever complain to any one even if something should oppress him.
He is so self contained. And, anyway, how could he? This is
only the second time that I have been here. The other day we did
not do much talking and to-day there was no time for it.
Matoush.- I was just telling the doctor that he has changed
suddenly. (Pointing to the parsonage.) He is by his mother?
Maya.- Yes. We did not want to talk there because she was
falling asleep. And he stayed inside. (After a while.) He loves his
mother very much, does he not?




44A0


THE CLOUDS


Matoush.- He does. He is too good a son. If he only were not
so taciturn. If he were just a little more energetic.
Maya.- He is going to be a priest - what good would energy
be to him?
Matoush.- And do you think that energy does not befit a priest?
That is probably because our calling seems to you nothing else but
self denial. But, ach, let me tell you, Miss, that it is just this self
denial which requires at times lots of energy. It is just in self denial
that we must have a strong will, so that it may safely and surely last
throughout our life. Under the external, apparent resignation and
self denial, there must be a strong, iron will, there must be an inherent
internal strength, enough to control the entire being, to dictate to it.
Maya.- To control the whole being. You are right, sir. Even
I knew how to act with the entire vehemence of my will power, when
necessity called for it. When, many years ago, I wanted to be a
teacher, I buried myself in books with great passion, and when my
father's death put an end to all my plans, and I was frightened and
tired of life, I sought nothing but an asylum, a refuge where I could
devote my entire youthful energy to resignation. I told you how
at that time I knocked at the portals of the convent. But as soon as
I breathed the atmosphere of the theater I gave myself up to it,
without hesitation, happy or unhappy, but entirely, just as if nothing
else existed in this world. (Silence.)
Matoush.-You ought to be happy that life took you where you are.
Maya.- I think that my life would have blossomed forth even in
other surroundings. Because life to me is a magnificent, wholesome
joy. But do not think, father, that because of these things I am
frivolous. On the contrary,-my conscience usually is even painfully
sensitive. But my profession has taught me to understand the manifold features of our daily life. Something beautifully adventurous
I inherited from my father. Even in him there was the blood of an
adventurer, even though the traditions and conventionality of
bourgeois life got the best of him. But I am a bit more of my own
making. Ten years of life on the stage gave me much more training
than all my former home and school education. I know the art of
being happy, the art of intoxicating myself with everything and anything -- to-day with a great work of art, to-morrow with a mere
memory; to-day with a dead faded flower, which I had put in a
book years ago when there was spring and sunshine, to-morrow,
probably with some sudden and most sorrowful calamity.




JAROSLAV KVAPIL


441


Matoush.- How many people would envy you!
Maya.- Do you think so? (Lost in thought.) At that time
when my father lost his life, I was heartbroken, crazily grief stricken.
One cannot wonder. My father was everything to me. I arrived
in Skalitz as if I were in a trance. I don't know how I ever got to
the railway station or into the train, and how I passed those few
hours before I reached my father's deathbed. When I got there
he was dead.  But all of a sudden -I blushed when I caught
myself - I was studying my great sorrow, analyzing it. I was, I
would say, tracing the psychology of my pain. I wanted to gain
from every moment of its duration each one of its pangs. I would
almost say that I was glad of my grief, as of something rare and unusual, perhaps in the same way as a doctor has a keen, scientific
pleasure from even the most painful case. See, already then, at that
time, I felt the actress within me. Not a comedian, who plays for
the gaud of costumes or the empty applause of a helter-skelter mob,
but an artist able to conceive and produce every and all pathos,
passion, and pain of human nature. And so it was when I came to
you the other day, reverend sir. Hardly had I been a moment in
your vicinity when all the poetry of my childhood echoed in my soul.
I wanted to go back, at least in my memories and sentiments, although I did not know whether I would meet with yours. I came
to you the other day just like a bird of prey, and when I went away
that evening I felt as if I was carrying off a new booty. (Lighter
tone.) Good God, what a cruel person I am!
Matoush.- What a difference in young souls. You and Petr,
both of the same age. Are you the real personification of our youth,
or is it our Petr, who is so resigned, so willingly humble, so peculiarly
indifferent.
Maya.- Was it inevitable that he should become a priest?
Matoush (shrugs his shoulders).- It was and it was not - hard
to say! Perhaps it was not inevitable, even though his mother's
wishes were so positive and sworn. Lord! Lord! I often think
that all depended upon him. If at that time he had rebelled against
our wishes, especially against his mother's. Perhaps it would have
been otherwise. Well, His Will be done. (After a pause.) Besides, do understand me, Miss Zemanova, I am not pitying
Petr just because he will become a priest. I feel sorry for him
because he devoted himself to this calling so indifferently, just as if
he would have devoted himself to any other calling in a similar way.




442


THE CLOUDS


(Plaintively.) Without enthusiasm, just as if he had never been
young. (He remains silent for a while, and then speaks again with
increasing warmth.) Youth to me appears like a bright, glowing
flame which heats up to the utmost all human feelings. A young soul
should be such a white glowing matter which is hardly restrained
by its surroundings. It ought not to cool off until life itself creates
a hard mold for it, into which it pours with vehemence and heat. And
it does not matter, later on in life, what the form of this once glowing
metal is; whether it is a pagan idol or a consecrated bell, as long as
it is inherently pure, intact, and without a blemish. (Sighs.) But
where is that warm youth of Petr's?
Maya.   Perhaps he never was different.  Perhaps he was
born so.
Matoush.- Ach no, no. Don't you remember what a wild
fellow and fighter Petr was in his early days and what a timid, bashful
little girl you were. What if Petr's life just like his studies were
delayed in their course? And what if the hot noon of his life has not
yet arrived? (After a while.) And it is too late already.
Maya.- Really is it too late?
Matoush.- How should it not be? What could he begin now,
even now, when he is not yet consecrated? He is almost twentyeight. Should he start a new course of studies? Or should he become
a starving substitute teacher in a country school or a petty civil
official? And would not that be the same thing? Especially for a
poor fighter as he is - without ambition.
Maya.- Surely, then, you are worrying yourself for nothing.
Matoush.- Well, we are only talking about it. Every one of
your words urges me on to new thoughts. Much that I felt indistinctly became clear to me at that moment when again I knew you.
It seems to me now that it is a fatal deception, when it is said that we
old ones are entitled to obedience and concessions from the younger
generations. Not we - but youth is right. Its demands may be
but its own and to us entirely new and strange ones. But even if
youth is not logical, it has a far greater claim to life than we who are
growing older and more superfluous every day. Youth should desire
and demand, because it wants for itself and for the future - and we
ought to concede. We ought to concede, no matter how holy or
important our aims may be, and youth ought to demand; it ought
to have a will, even though it is a spiteful one, youth can even be reckless, at least more so than we. (Plaintively.) Why was not Petr such?




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Maya (decisively).-Ach well, reverend sir, you yourself said
that it is too late. Petr's life is already cooling and forming into a
consecrated bell. Let us drop these thoughts. It is not given to
Petr to be different, so let us at least wish him perfect peace in his
even though joyless life. Perhaps a time will come when even I will
envy him.
Matoush.- You?
Maya.- Perhaps it is a mere reaction - but I do not resist.
Perhaps it is frivolous. But grant me that pleasure. In a few days
everything will be ended, anyway. And then I will long for this
moment,- in my spare time,- and I will say to myself that to-day
was a holy moment of my life.
Matoush.- Really?
Maya.- Yes - and for all that I wish to thank you, reverend
sir, most cordially. (Gives him her hand.)
Petr (coming out of the house).
Matoush.- How is maminka?
Petr.- She is sleeping quietly and her breath is regular. Thank
God! I watched her for a long time. The poor thing. I only
hope that she will be well to-morrow.
Maya.- Of course she will. You will see how happy she will
be when she wakes up to-morrow morning.
Petr.- Are we not going to supper, uncle? Barushka is getting
it ready alone.
Matoush.- Let her get it ready before the doctor comes back for
Miss Zemanova. (Looks at his watch.) Well, there is no hurry.
He hardly has reached Pravovitz yet. (Sincerely.) See, Miss Maya,
one does not know what to choose. There! Take a doctor. Every
one thinks a doctor is what not? But what does such a country
doctor amount to. Dr. Votava complains quite often, does he not,
Petr?
Petr.- Of course, a country doctor. But a doctor in a city, in
Prague, for instance, there is no comparison. My friend Breicha,
do you know him, uncle, from Chernikow, he is already a privatdocent. He graduated from the gymnasium some years before I did,
to be sure, but he is no older than I am.
Matoush (somewhat surprised).- Surely, surely, my dear fellow,
but not all the doctors can be privatdocents. Among my schoolmates one is already a bishop, and from my class many have become
deans, archdeans, and canons. Well! and I am a parson in Luschitz




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and never will become anything greater or more.
Petr.- It all depends on luck.
Matoush.- And on a number of other things, old chap. (With a
smile.) Well, Petr, let us hope that more will be allotted to you than a
small country parsonage.
Petr (with a sigh).- Easily said.
Maya.- Oh no, Mr. Petr, one must have a will.
Petr (carelessly).- Perhaps.
Matoush (with certainty).- Well, let bygones be bygones. Do
not lose any sleep over it. Why, Petr, you have never complained
before. (Searchingly.) And how about your health? Have you still
that headache?
Maya (interested). —Why, have you headache?
Petr. —Yes, it aches and aches. In those worries about maminka it stopped a bit, but now it is beginning again.
Matoush. —Well, so it is. (To MAYA.) In his young days he
often complained of headaches, but he has had no trouble now for
years. Is it not so?
Petr (somewhat impatiently).- Well, I am not complaining. Man
was born to suffer.
Matoush.-And at the end of ends all suffering will cease. (Changing
the subject.) Well, Petrichek, take Miss Zemanova into the hall and
have your supper before I am back. (To MAYA.) I always take a
walk before supper. Just through this alley here into the woods.
(Laughing.) My constitutional. (Giving her his hand.) I will not
say good by, because I think that I will be back in time. Maybe I
will be back in time. Maybe I will meet Dr. Votava and we will
come back together. So au revoir, Miss, and you, Petr, send Barushka
for some beer for the young lady when your supper is ready. (Goes
out.)
Maya.- Au revoir, reverend sir. (Silence.)
Maya.- I wonder, Mr. Petr, if you have ever experienced how
many a trifling recollection of our childhood returns to our memory,
if after years we visit the places where we used to live?
Petr.- My life had no extensive changes, Miss. I was born
here, here I grew up, and here I return many times every year.
Everything here occurs with the same monotonous regularity, year
in and year out. Until now I have never been in any other place.
Maya.- It is truly remarkable how short the time seems to be
when we come to remember some particular trifle after years. For




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instance, in the reverend father's room behind the crucifix are those
palm leaves from last Palm Sunday, just as they were years ago. I
never thought of those palm leaves or that crucifix at all, but as soon
as I saw it, I immediately remembered a funny incident, and it seemed
to me that it must have happened but recently.
Petr.- And what was that, please?
Maya.- You will laugh when I tell you. You once told me
that these consecrated palm leaves were awfully healthy and that we
ought to eat them to keep well. And you started to climb for them
right then and there. I was helping you and in our hurry we broke
a little box which your uncle had as a keepsake and then we got it,both of us - I can tell you.
Petr (with a smile).- Really?
Maya (nodding).- And after we were punished, you said all of a
sudden: "Well, only wait, Marenka, wait until I grow up and marry
you, then I would not let any one harm you."
Petr (extremely embarrassed).- I said that?
Maya.- I hope that you are not angry with me for having spoken
of it? Tell me, is it possible that it was so long ago?
Petr (suddenly).- And Miss Maya, why do you remind me of all
these things now?
Maya (surprised).- Ach. Forgive me. I never for a moment
thought that it would have a different effect upon you than as a merefoolish memory of childhood. Pardon me for that - you are a priest,
and to you such recollections, even though ever so innocent, seem
sinful and undignified.
Petr (quickly).- But, no, no! That would be foolish on my
part, if such trifling thought impressed me in that way.
Maya.- Still it seems that I should not have spoken about it..
Petr (quietly).- You should not have.
Maya.- And why?
Petr.-Because it hurts me. (Quickly changing the subject.)
But quite differently than you would think. The life that I have led
hitherto hurts me as it never has before.
Maya (sincerely).- Life hurts every one, my friend.
Petr.- Ach. No, no, Miss Maya, it does not hurt you. To you
it has fulfilled itself so richly and beautifully, it gave you even more
than you yourself wanted, and to me it did not even give that modest
little I longed for.
Maya.- You told me yourself the other day that you would




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gladly become a priest. Even if only for your mother's sake.
Petr.- Ach. I am not speaking of that. And please don't let
us talk about it at all. What good is it? Those few strange wishes
and ambitions which I had to renounce when I entered the seminary
have long since been regretted. Anyway, they were so modest that
they were hardly worth while. Listen to me: My present life, from
my earliest years until to-day, that petty, monotonous, downtrodden life has begun to hurt me -- that life for which I was brought
up and which could not have ended differently than it's ending now.
Maya.- And have you never thought of that before?
Petr.- Never. Not until now.
Maya.-Why? Your uncle did not urge you to enter the
seminary!
Petr.- Who told you that?
Maya.- He himself.
Petr.- And why did you talk about it?
Maya.- Well, just so -why are you looking at me in that way?
I was asking Father Matoush if you were happy.
Petr.- Happy! Does any one care about that?
Maya.- Perhaps no one. But some people still might. Your
mother -
Petr.- Yes, yes, my mother, she verily believes that I am happy.
Maya.- And you said the other day that her belief was sufficient.
Petr.- It was until lately.
Maya.- And your uncle cares about it, also.
Petr.- Yes, yes, it is for their sake that I have become what I am.
Anyway, I do not live for any one else in this world.
Maya.- Of course. Besides those two you have no one.
Petr.- So why insist upon thinking about it at all?
Maya.- I understand you. You mean, why should I care to
insist upon thinking about it.
Petr (quickly).- Pardon me, Miss, but I did not mean it in that
way.
Maya.- I know that you did not mean to offend me. But
really, I ought not to disturb you with my sympathy.
Petr.- But no, Miss Maya. I thank you very much for the
interest you take in me.
Maya.- Do you believe that it is sincere?
Petr.- I do.
(Quiet. It is growing dark.)




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447


Maya (after a while).-Tell me, Mr. Petr, but sincerely, what do
you think of me?
Petr.- You? How do you mean?
Maya.- Do you really still regard me as a friend of childhood
days?
Petr.- Can I, to-day? We are already so distant from each
other.
Maya.- Perhaps I am to you. And I can well understand that.
It cannot be otherwise. Why, I have changed much more than you
did. At least, in appearance. And just because you did not have
to absent yourself from your childhood, you are even to-day much
nearer to me than you know.
Petr.- Really?
Maya.- Yes, really. And therefore do not think ill of me
because a little while ago I interested myself in your happiness and
cared just as much about it as your mother or your uncle.
Petr.- Miss
Maya.- Yes, and I am as fond of you to-day as I was in our
childhood days. We are mature people - our ways parted long ago
and will never meet again. Why should we not talk freely?
Petr (disturbed).- And will never meet again.
Maya.- But friends we will remain, would we not? Friends
we were always and continuously, although we did not see each other
for years. And I am grateful to you for the most pleasant memories
of my childhood, and now when I leave here, I will be grateful to you
for this.
Petr.- Grateful to me? And for what?
Maya.- Perhaps only for just this moment. Because it is so rich
for me, it reflects so beautifully in my soul, in a way which you cannot
understand. For many long years I have not known such calmness and
rest. And that gives me to-day as much pleasure as the most difficult task. I give myself up to it, I give myself up to it entirely, my
friend, and I am glad that I have some one to whom I can tell all
these things.
Petr (suddenly).- Miss Maya, you don't know how happy you
make me by these words. Even though I am suffering so much, you
make me happy by these words.
Maya.- But, Mr. Petr! Do understand me. I did not mean
to disturb you with my sincerity. I did not want my happiness at
such a high price. I thought that you would be able to understand




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THE CLOUDS


me with the same pleasure as I feel in your house. But now I see
that you are beginning to suffer while I am enjoying myself.
Petr (feverishly).- Yes, I am suffering, suffering terribly. But
it is impossible that it should be different. My suffering was not
caused by your present words; I have been suffering ever since that
moment when we stood here all alone in the courtyard and you spoke
so beautifully and wonderfully about your life. Why deny it? You
have brought me resurrection and freedom.
Maya (with consternation).- God Almighty! What do you
mean, Mr. Petr? For nothing in the world would I want to leave
here with the knowledge that I have destroyed the peace of your soul.
Petr.- Why, I am but thankful to you for it, but thankful.
Let it pain, let it burn; it is, anyway, only for a moment. Like those
clouds that are traveling high up there above our heads. You yourself
spoke about them.
Maya (lost in dreams).- Like the clouds. My clouds.
Petr.- And you have followed them all your life, while I only
dared modestly to stare at the ground. Always down bent, always
humble. While they kept on traveling by day and night. Full of
meaning for every one in the world - except for me.
Maya.- It is too late, my friend. You would not know how to
follow them now. We are different, Petr, both of us. We are
something else than we used to be.
Petr.- And so you think that I have lost all, that I have been
robbed of everything?
Maya.- Yes.
Petr.- Can you not believe me?
Maya.- And what?
Petr.- That I am not such as you all think me. That everything has not yet been trodden down within me - that I still live.
My life is not yet gone. That it is still possible for me to change,
that for me everything in this world can change yet.
Maya (firmly).- I don't believe it.
Petr.- Shall I prove it?
Maya (quickly takes his hands).- No, no, no - You must not,
Petr, for God's sake, promise me that you will do nothing so rash.
Petr (bitterly).- I thought you did not believe me.
Maya.- That is just why, I want you to promise me that. If
I could believe in your vital strength; if I believed in impossibilities, I
would say to you: "Yes, you are right. Revolt." I would say that




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449


although I would know what havoc I should cause within your inner
life. I would say it although I know well that you could not resist my
words. But I will not say it, Petr. Because I know that you are
deceiving your own self, and that it is too late - too late for everything.
Petr (feverishly).- And what if it is not too late?
Maya.- It must be.
Petr (crushed).- Must. (Broken, he sinks down on the bench.)
(It is dark now, and the sky is full of stars. From the distant
village the tune of a fiddle falls hither softly, quietly, and prolonged.)
Maya (moved, goes toward PETR).- It must be Petr, it must
(she puts her hand on his brow). Poor boy, it must be so.
Petr (takes both her hands).- Marenka.
Maya (longingly).- Marenka. Do you know for how many
years no one called me by that name? Ach, Petr, Petr, this is no
longer myself
Petr (lowly).- And who is it, then?
Maya.- Some one who died years ago. Ach, Petr, if you but
knew. But not even you would believe.
Petr (softly).- What?
Maya.- That I am just as strong as I told you, just as vicious.
But, look, both of us fell victims to this moment.
Petr (feverishly).- Really?
Maya.- Don't speak about it, I beg you, do not say even one
word. It would be in vain. But just keep on looking with me at
those clouds. At my clouds. Our clouds.
(Sitting beside him, she lets her head fall on his shoulder. Both
stare at the starry skies. From the village the faint, soft music of a
fiddle can be heard, slow, prolonged, and sad.)
Maya (after a while).- I would so like to ask you about one
thing, Petr. (Stops and continues after a short pause.) I would so
gladly speak to you about something dear to me and - forlorn.
(Lost in thought for a long time.)
Petr.- About our childhood.
Maya.- And about something else. About something later.
If you have ever loved.
Petr (just like in a dream).- I, never
Maya.-And I but once. Once in all -so loyally and purely,
so truly I shall never love again.
Petr.-Never?




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Maya.- Never. And so much love had died within me - and
so much love still lives.
Petr.- And does it live for any one at all?
Maya.- For no one in this wide, wide world. Still it lives
for everything. It burns and burns and will burn out in vain.
Petr.- Marenka, must it be so?
(Their heads have touched each other, he kisses her.)
Maya.- It must, Petr, it must (rises half way). Petr, it must
be so (has risen erect). Petr, promise me.
Petr.- What?
Maya.- That we will both forget.
Petr.- It is not possible.
Maya.- And that you will finish your studies.
Petr.- And what if not even that is possible?
Maya.- You must.
Petr (still confused).- And if I cannot?
Maya (confidently).- I will compel you.
Petr (erect, he presses his palms on his brow).- GOD. GOD.
Maya.- Petr, to-day we see each other for the last time.
Petr (frightened).- That is not possible. That will not happen!
Do you want to kill me?
Maya.- No, my friend, to save you.
Petr.- And you -was all this not true?
Maya (for a moment confused).- Don't ask, but obey. (Firmly.)
Petr, you must obey! Even I am obeying and perhaps with a greater
pain than you. (They look at each other.) (Silence.)
(Suddenly from the open window is weakly heard the voice of PETR'S
sick mother).- "Petrichek, are you there?"
Petr (is aroused).
Maya.- Did you hear?
(His mother's voice can be heard again, softly and beggingly)."Petrichek, can you hear me?"
Petr (frightened).- Maminka
Maya (with a forced calmness).- Yes, she is calling you. Let
us go to her! (She makes a few steps toward the house.)
Petr (just as if he had waked up, detains her).- No, for God's
sake, not now. I would not dare to go in, now.
Maya (meaningly).- You do not dare even that!
Petr.- I would feel so sorry for her.
Maya.- See, Petr, see! You are a weakling-only a short




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451


while ago you wanted to rebel against the fates. (Firmly.) Let us
go over to your mother, Petr.
(The rumbling of an approaching carriage can be heard in the
distance.)
Petr.- No, no, at least do not let us go there together.
Maya.- You are right. I have no business there. Go there
yourself, she only called you.
Petr (hesitates).
Maya.-The carriage is coming already. (Softly and benevolently.) Go, Petr.
Petr (goes into the house).
Maya (stands alone in the midst of the yard).
(The rumbling of the carriage has ceased. The doctor's voice can
now be heard.)
Fotava (entering from the outside with MATOUSH).-And do you
think that my horse would not find its way in the dark? And
before we get ready the moon will come out again.  But poor Miss
Zemanova, she had to wait so long!
Maya (merrily).- Really, doctor, I thought that you ran away
from me.
Matoush (surprised).- And gracious me, Miss, are you here in
the dark and all alone? Where is Petr?
Maya.- His mother called him.
Matoush.- And that you are not inside!
Maya.- It is such a beautiful evening. Grant me that pleasure.
Matoush.-And I'll gamble that you have not had supper yet.
Is it not so? That is the way it is when the housekeeper is sick.
Petr (comes out of the house).
Matoush.- You are a nice, hospitable gentleman, Petr.
Votava.- And how is maminka?
Petr.- She just woke up.
Fotava.- Well, and how is she? She does not complain, does
she?
Petr.- Not just now.
Maya (calmly). —And she will be all right again to-morrow.
You will see.
Votava (goes into the house).- I will take a look at her before I
go.
Matoush. —All right, doctor. I am with you. Look out foo
the-stoop; it is so dark.




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THE CLOUDS


(They go in.)
Maya (standing near the threshold).- And I must go in to say
good by.
Petr (detains her).- Must you?
Maya.- Yes, to every one and everything.  (Goes nearer to him.)
And forgive me, Mr. Petr.
Petr (feverishly).- You must come again.
Maya.- I cannot.
Petr (decided).- Then I will come!
Maya (commandingly).- I forbid it! You must not! (Goes
into the house.)
Petr (sinks on the bench and breaks out into a loud sobbing).
(From the distant village the faint music of the fiddle sounds sadly,
softly, prolonged. After a while it ceases and a plaintive song from a
solitary female voice is heard.)
ACT III
Scene as before. Time, early, before sunrise.
Kocianova (sitting on the bench under the tree - she looks heartbroken and despairing).
Matoush (stands near her. He holds his hat in one hand and with
the other he is mopping his brow).
Petr (stands before them. He looks downcast).
Kocianova (sobbing).- Petr, Petr, what have you done?
Matoush.- Boy, boy, don't you feel sorry for your old mother?
Petr.- Maminka, for God's sake, do not cry. Forgive me, but
I cannot do otherwise. I have been holding it back, I have tried
to keep it from you, and not to reveal it, I have tried to overcome it,
but all in vain. For many nights I have not slept, and often I
prayed the whole night. But in the morning I decided that I would
be only lying to myself and to you if I kept it back and did not tell
you the truth. I feel that I could never be happy. And that you
would be unhappy also- uncle, for God's sake, please!
Matoush.- Poor fellow! I thought it would happen. I thought
so. But why did not you speak sooner? Did I not often remind
you that you should study your heart and soul, that you should
question it before you decided upon your course of life. That time
when you graduated from the gymnasium I spoke to you about it,




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and even the other day. Then, of course, it was just as late as it
is now. But what has happened so all of a sudden?
Kocianova.- These last few days, that I was so sick, I prayed
to God to give me back my health once more for your sake. So I
would at least live long enough to see you a pastor of the Lord and
to know that I have not brought you up in vain. Ach! Better
had He called me into His fold, rather than to live to witness this.
Petr (painfully).- Maminka.
Matoush (seriously).- Don't blaspheme, Marianka. What has
happened, has happened. It was His will. But you, Petr. Let
us talk sensibly. We are grown-up people; you too, Petr, are no
longer a child. Tell me, what do you intend to do? If you do not
wish to finish your theological studies, well and good. You say
that you would only sin against your own conscience if you would
sacrifice your outward life to the service of the Lord without your
inward will. You could have been a good enough servant even
without that inward conviction. But these changes do not happen
all of a sudden - still, let us take it for granted. But you are no
longer at that age when one can drop one career and start another
without many consequences. It is rather late. And you have to
be something.
Petr.- I am capable of doing everything, only if my conscience
is clear.
Matoush.- You are capable. Well, maybe you are. But you
have considered all these things before you idecided - and I hope
that you have not forgotten all the circumstances. Do you want to
go to the university? Do you want to study medicine? Law?
Petr.- Decide upon anything, uncle. I will gladly take up
anything, anything, anything.
Matoush.- Foolish man. We should again decide for you,
to-day when you have matured, when as a man you should be able
to take an independent step, even heedlessly.
Petr.- And have I not taken such a step?
Matoush.- Yes, but how. You want to drop theology. But
what would you like to be? Let us say that you'll go to the university. In the first place you ought to consider that a man of your
age is not an able student. Then I am an old man and liable to
die to-day or to-morrow, and country parsons, you know, do not
leave any temporal wealth. How are you going to study?
Petr.- I will work, uncle, I will work days. and nights. Others




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have finished their studies amid poverty and hunger.
Matoush.- But do you know how old you would be when you
would graduate? Thirty-two or thirty-three. And what would
you amount to then? Nothing. How many years would fail to
forty before you would be an independent man? Did you consider
that?
Petr.- It would not be necessary that I should go to the university. I will learn a profession, any profession, even a low and
an humble one.
Matoush.- And to find a low and an humble profession you had
to study until you are twenty-eight. So that afterwards you could
clerk, or play the lackey, like an excommunicated priest.
Kocianova (still crying).- Petrichek, PetrichekMatoush.- Let us talk sensibly, Petr. Let us talk like two
grown-up men who will not dodge the most painful questions. You'll
leave the seminary and go out into the world, the world with all
its customs and conventionalities. You will perhaps be desirous
of - let us talk uprightly, boy - you will perhaps be desirous ofmarried life - -
Kocianova (quietly).- Merciful Jesus!
Matoush.- No, sister, such things have to be talked over. (To
Petr.) Tell me, in how many years would you hope to reach that
stage of life, when as an honest man you could build you a homely
hearth? Did you think of that?
Petr (confused and silent).
Matoush (again).- Have you thought of that?  (After a while,
with emphasis.) Petr, I know why you don't answer me.
Petr (entirely confused).- But, uncle
Matoush (slowly and quietly).- You see, my boy, this question
of mine confused you entirely. And I know why. (Goes over to
him and takes him by the hand.) Look into my eyes. Look, Petr,
without fear. It is not necessary, my dear fellow, that you should
cast down your eyes before your old uncle.
Petr.- Uncle - (kisses his hand feverishly).
Matoush (to KOCIANOVA).- Don't cry, sister, don't cry. You
will not mend things with tears. (Goes over to her and embraces her
lightly.) Go, poor woman. Go away from here for a while and
leave us here alone. God will grant that we shall come to an understanding. (Helps her to rise.) Well, go, go, Marianka.
Kocianova (gets up, her hands on her breast).- Petrichek, have




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some sense and pity.
Matoush.- Crying and sobbing will not better it. Come,
leave us here alone. In a while I will have to go to say morning
Mass, and I should like to speak to him alone. (He escorts her away.
Returning.)  I did not want to speak about it before your mother.
She would not understand.  (Sincerely.)  But I understand you,
my boy (warmly). Tell me, do I not understand you?
Petr (with painful gratitude).- Uncle
Matoush (takes him by the hand and draws him toward himself
on the bench).- So, it is true?
Petr (looks into his eyes and understands).-It is, uncle, it is.
But it would have happened anyway
Matoush.-Anyway, you say? Yes, yes, but so much worse
that it has happened now. Because now that question of mine
must be answered. (Seriously). How old will you be when you will
be able to marry her?
Petr (is silent).
Matoush.- And how old will she be? You are almost of the
same age. Have you thought of that also?
Petr.- About that I have not thought at all.
Matoush.- See, see, you have not thought of it, and you are
ready to throw away your entire life.
Petr.- But I feel so strong, so strong
Matoush.- Those are words, my dear boy. You should have
felt so before. You should have felt so at the time when I asked
you if you felt strong enough to comply with your mother's wishes.
Petr.- At that time I did not know anybody - I knew no one
except maminka and you.
Matoush.-And what if you will never know any one else?
And soon neither mother nor myself, and remain here all alone,
like a barren rock amidst seas. Petr, I do not force you. I will
not sorrow, like your mother. I will gladly assist you, but I am old.
I beg you, my dear fellow, think it over carefully, lest all these new
sacrifices are in vain. There are moments in our lives when we have
no right to decide or choose what course we would take.  When
we must not think of our happiness or our future, but when the
errors of our bygone years commandingly point the inevitable way
they have formed for us. (The churchbell begins to toll.) They
are already ringing for early Mass - I'll have to go. And this is
the law of life.  I would this morning rather minister to the wants




456


THE CLOUDS


of your heart than to the Lord, and He would strengthen me in this,
the greater service. I would rather stay here with you and help
you, but see (slight, bitter smile) even I have to go now the way my
errors point (goes toward the house). Come, Petr, come to your mother.
Do not go to church with me as you do on other days. It would be
sheer hypocrisy. Come to your mother. And if you can, try to
cheer her up. (They both go out.)
(The courtyard remains empty for a while, then the rumbling of an
approaching carriage can be heard. Shortly after MAYA, in a traveling
costume, comes in with DR. VOTAVA.)
Maya.- So then, doctor, I think I will take your advice, though
my intention was to go to the station directly, and not to stop here
at all. But if you think I can help
Fotava.-You can help, Miss Maya. I am an experienced
doctor, and I know my patients well. I have diagnosed this case,
and my conclusion is, that an operation is necessary.
Maya.- But why did you tell not me about this sooner? Why
did you wait until the very moment when I am leaving this place?
Votava.- You must admit, Miss Zemanova, that the situation
here is very peculiar. At first, I asked my wife to speak to you
about it, but you know how my wife is - Therefore, I decided that
I would take you to the railway very early in the morning so that
I would have an opportunity to talk it over with you. If you really
care anything about Petr, you must speak to him before you leave
here for good.
Maya.- Doctor, tell me the whole truth. What did Petr tell
you?
Votava.- Ah. Nothing more than what I told you on the way.
The other night he suddenly appeared at my house and said that he
wanted to speak to me. (Inquisitively.) Did he not visit you?
Maya. — No. We have not seen each other since that Monday
night that I was here with you.
Votava.- And did he not mention to you that he wants to drop
theology?
Maya (firmly).- Yes, he mentioned it. And I told him that he
should not do it. I told him that very distinctly.
Fotava.- Really?
Maya.- Do you doubt my words?
Fotava.- No. I believe you. Only you will have to tell him
again, and more distinctly.




JAROSLAV KVAPIL


457


Maya.- And do you think that he will obey me?
Votava (quietly).- Yes, because it is for your sake that he wants
to leave the seminary.
Maya (surprised).- And did he tell you that?
Votava.- No, he did not, but I dared to infer it. He only said
that he had been struggling a long time, that he does not know in
whom to confide at first, that he feels sorry for his mother and uncle.
That, therefore, he first came to me for advice.
Maya.- And you?
Votava.- Ach. Nonsense, mere nonsense. I soon guessed
what was what.
Maya.- And what if you are hurting me?
Votava. —No. I am not. Why? I am not accusing you of
anything. You have not done anything, at least, not intentionally.
But perhaps unintentionally? (Looks at her searchingly.) Don't
you think so?
Maya (firmly).- Yes, unintentionally. And therefore you are
right, doctor. I must not go away now, because I like Petr and I
must first destroy the mischief that I have caused. I will take your
advice.
Votava.- You will do excellently, Miss Zemanova.
Maya (decided).- Or I ought rather to say I will obey my own
resolution.
Kocianova (coming out of the house).
Fotava (has noticed her).- Well, and here is Mrs. Kocianova.
Miss Zemanova has come to say good by to you, Mrs. Kocianova.
Kocianova (without animation, sadly).- So you are really going,
Miss.
Maya.- Yes I am, really.
Votava.-You look very worried, Mrs. Kocianova,-is anything
the matter?
Kocianova (bursts into crying).- Ach. God! Doctor
(In the church the bell begins to toll again.)
Fotava (understands).-Ach, so - I know now. Well; don't
grieve before time. The father is in church, ha? And Mr. Petr
also?
Kocianova.- No. He is in the hall.
Votava.-We will go to see him. In the mean time you can say
farewell to Miss Maya. But, hurry. In a little while we will have
to be going. (Goes into the house.)




458


THE CLOUDS


Maya (she is short of words).- I really thought, Mrs. Kocianova,
that I would not be over to see you any more. I am on my way to
Prague. But the doctor told me about something on the way.
Kocianova (without interest).- About what, Miss?
Maya.- About that which Mr. Petr intends to do.
Kocianova (surprised).- And so the doctor knows about it?
Maya.- Mr. Petr went to him for advice.
Kocianova (mournfully).- Before he told his own mother! God,
God! What's happening!
Maya.- He did not want to make you sad. He first wanted
to talk to some one else about it.
Kocianova.- God - God!
Maya (firmly).- And I am coming to dissuade him. I feel it my
sacred duty.
Kocianova (softly).-My dear golden Miss.
Maya.- Of course I do not know if he will obey me. I dread
the thought that he will not. But promise me, Mrs. Kocianova, that
even if I am not able to persuade Petr, still that you will forgive me.
Kocianova.- And what shall I forgive you?
Maya.- I don't know how I ought to tell you, so that you would
not misunderstand my words. Listen, when I came to you the other
day and heard that Mr. Petr was to become a priest, I felt sorry for
him. I did not expect to. And when I learned that it was your
doing, I felt angry with you. You will forgive me, won't you?
Kocianova (confused).- But, Miss -
Maya.- See! I did not consider possible what I feel now.
Kocianova.- You know that it would be a great sin?
Maya (she overcomes her own conviction).- Yes. It would.
And that sin I do not want to have on my conscience. But tell me,
tell me the truth. Did it not occur to you that I caused it all?
Kocianova (surprised).- Merciful Jesus! Miss! How could I
ever think so meanly of you?
Maya (timidly).- Really, do you not blame me?
Kocianova.- But, God in heavens, Miss! That would be against
God, if Ifshould ever for a minute think that you could be so bad.
Maya.- So you do not believe that Mr. Petr wanted to do it on
account of me?
Kocianova.- Great heavens! Could that be possible?
Maya (firmly).- It could.
Kocianova.- Did he say anything like


------- - -- - - - ~ i ~ ~II r I -- ' %I




JAROSLAV KVAPIL


459


Maya.- I know it. He did not say anything, but I know it.
Kocianova (crushed down).- Just God!
Maya.-And that is why I am going to talk him out of it.
Because it is my fault. Look! I have not your faith, but at this
moment I feel that in our souls there must not be even a shade of
insincerity if we would do something really pure and great. Before
I speak with Petr I must tell you everything. I must confess to you
just as you confess your little sins to your priests. In all my life I
have fought against hypocrisies and dissimulations, and even
now I also feel that I could never be victorious over Petr if I
should not tell you the truth.  And that is why I am confessing
to you with ardent sincerity. It is for my sake that Petr wants
to do this.  I have caused it, Mrs. Kocianova.  Can you forgive me?
Kocianova.- But that is not possible. That is not possible.
Maya (wholly decided).- It is more than possible. It is the
truth. When after so many years I came back to you, I could not
understand what a chasm divides us. It was all like a dream to me,
like the return of my childhood. I did not want to understand. I only
wanted to enjoy the returning memories of my early childhood. It
was an exquisite, ardent delight to me that all the feelings of my
beautiful days were returning to me here, and I spoke with Petr as
sincerely as we did in our childhood days. I did not see that abyss
which in the mean time had divided us, but I offered him both my
hands across it. Even I felt dizzy for a while. But he is reeling.
And if he falls into that abyss it will be my doing.
Kocianova (crying, sinks on the bench).
Maya (after a pause).- Before I leave here for good I will try
to save him. Ach. God. Only a moment ago I thought that I
would be able to do it. And what if I shall not be able to? If I am
not, you will all be unhappy. And ought it to be, that I should go
away from here leaving you to remember me with love, with sincerity, and without bitterness? No, I will not have that, my golden,
my dear Mrs. Kocianova. You shall have known it, you shall have
known it from me, no matter what will happen. (Pause.) If you
could know what pain it causes my heart when I see you so down —
cast! (Sits down beside her.) My dear, dear maminka. (Kissesher.)
Kocianova.-May God forgive you! And may the Lord
strengthen you with His blessings! Let us hope that you will suc



-460


THE CLOUDS


ceed, since you feel so strong.
Maya (awakening and rising).- My heart will be bleeding while
I talk to Petr. It will be to me as though I were burying my youth
for the second time. But I do not fear it. I will be strong. I will
be feelingless.
Kocianova (looks up to her).
Maya.- Feelingless to him and to myself. And to myself
mostly. (Decided.) Let us go to him.
Kocianova.- And do you want to tell him all that before the
doctor?
Maya.- You are right. I would, perhaps, not be strong enough.
Send him to me.
Kocianova (rising).- May the Lord strengthen you! (She goes
away slowly into the parsonage.)
(Pause.)
Maya (erect, decided, goes after her. She stops near the doorway
and looks forward, expecting PETR).
Petr (after a while appears on the threshold).
Maya (all decided, as soon as she sees him).- Mr. Petr, I have
come to say good by to you.
Petr (Extremely surprised and confused).- Miss - you here?
Maya.- Did not Dr. Votava tell you?
Petr.- He did not. I thought he came alone.
Maya.- Mr. Petr, I did not mean to come to you any
more. For your sake - and - for my sake. But I am coming
again and for the last time, because it had to be. Give me!your
hand.
Petr (gives her his hand).- Did I do any harm to you?
Maya (she smiles slightly and sadly).- You - to me? (Shakes
her head.) I -to you. And therefore, first of all, forgive me
(stops, not finishing). Yes, forgive me. It is the last cordial and
kind word I shall say to you. (Stops.) Will you forgive me?
Petr (confused).- Yes.
Maya (pretending calmness).-Thank you. And now, know why
I have come again. I come to tell you, Mr. Petr, that you have
sinned awfully against your mother. I will not mention your uncle,
although you have also wounded him. But you have inexorably
wronged your mother.
Petr (surprised).- I?
Maya.- You and I, both of us. But I want to be strong again.




JAROSLAV KVAPIL


461'


I want to rise again and go away from here straight, unburdened,
and in silence.
Petr (embarrassed).-And I also.
Maya.- Never. You will humble yourself and remain.
Petr.- I cannot.
Maya (with emphasis). —You will humble yourself and remain,
You are to-day capable of nothing else but humbleness. If you do
not know it to-day you will know it to-morrow, or soon enoughBecause you were born for lowliness and resignation - and my path
leads another way and 'to other places. It is giddy - bold - but sonarrow that no one can walk alongside of me. I throw down every
one who would dare to walk at my side.
Petr.- And even me?
Maya.- You, first of all.
Petr.- Then I will go without you.
Maya.-Where to?
Petr.- After you.
Maya. —You shall not dare it! Before me there are skytouching peaks, but behind me are chasms and chasms. Behind me
there are dead bodies, multitudes of dead bodies of those who,like
you, wanted to mate with me. And these who wanted to come with
me were stronger than you are. They were free, their feet were not
fettered.
Petr.- Nor shall my feet be fettered hereafter.
Maya.- They are and shall, though you may not know it. Do
you suppose that I need to remind you of your mother? I need not.
And even if she were not, you cannot follow in my paths. Turn
back, you fool.
Petr (resolutely).- I don't believe you. You scorn me for the
sake of my old mother, out of sympathy for her naive love, for the
sake of her religious promise.
Maya (with a short, contemptuous smile).-Ach. You childish
simpleton. What would your mother mean to me in such a moment,
if I wanted you to come with me? What would all her creed, that is
to me a strange creed, be to me? What would I care for her happiness, the happiness of a stranger, if I wanted you at my side? Do you
think that you were the first or only one? Know it, then, since you
must! I lied to you the other day when I said that I only loved once
and purely. It was the impulse of the moment. I said it because
the moment, that charming moment, amused me. I was thirsty for




462


THE CLOUDS


your warm, unpolluted blood, and I grasped your hands and laid my
head on your chest like a vampire. But it was only for the moment.
I am, poor boy, used to greater whirlwinds of passion, to warmer
sensations, and your petty, feverish fantasy hardly was enough for
one quiet evening. Mr. Petr, you would be ridiculous if for one
such petty moment you would be wrecking your entire future, your
entire life.
Petr (he had been listening to her, with a growing consternation).-Now he breaks out).-You lie!  You lie!  Only to get rid
of me.
Maya (coldly and harshly).- Yes, I lie, but not for the purpose
of getting rid of you. You would not even be able to reach beyond
your own petty environment. You would soon sink under the
surface without a stir on my part.
Petr.- Why did you come back? You would not have come
back if the things you say were true!
Maya.- Why I came back?   Because I pitied you. I pity all
weak people and that pity is the only beautiful feature of my tranceful life. I do not feel sorry for strong people - they are my equals -
the people of my blood - to such I grant with passion a moment at
my side. Perhaps only for this reason that I should add sweetness
to their toilsome life, before an early death. And that is why I have
come to undeceive you from your delusions. See, even such a Christian mission amuses me at times.
Petr.- I don't believe you.
Maya.- You cannot believe me. I understand you. In your
pious naiveness you have learned to classify people into good and
bad only. Into apostles and devils, into saints and sinners. You
do not know that human nature is an undivided composite element
which contains parts of both - evil and good. That it often does
good in order to effect evil and sometimes acts evilly to bring about
good. The strength, that yearning strength of my life, has given
me a plentitude of different passions and sentiments, but when I was
tired of everything, my glory, my art, and my passions, I went out
to seek something different, something unusual - the enchantment
of primitive memories and recollections, these small dainty flowers
that grew alongside of the paths of my childhood, the fairy tales of
my once unspotted soul. That is why I was so good when I came
here again after so many years, that is why I gloried in that evening.
But how long could it have lasted? In its footprints I felt the coming




JAROSLAV KVAPIL


463


storm - storm - storm - the element of my life. And to-day it is
all over, it is victoriously and freezingly clear.
Petr (crushed).- So you refuse me.
Maya (hardly able to overcome herself). —Yes. Entirely! Those
are the remains of that undivided composite element of human nature
- that I am discarding wholly. For that to me is also a victory,
and I am always victorious. Bow your head, Petr, and look down,
as you ever did, on the ground. As for me - I am igoing high up
after the shining glory - into the airy clouds.
Petr (sinks down on the bench near the house. His head in his
palms).
Maya (stands alongside of him, erect, feelingless, majestic, victorious).
Petr (after a pause).- And do you know what you have done?
Maya.- I do. You will return to your faith and to your calling.
Petr (half straightened).- And what if I do not? What if I
perish?
Maya.- How?
Petr.- Perhaps with my own hand.
Maya (smiles scornfully).- You will not kill yourself. You are
too weak to do that, just as I would be too strong. Life, my friend,
is not a romance or a melodrama where people shoot themselves so
easily. Life has a healing power even for those who know but little
of its tremendous scope. And you, Petr, you are a tender, flexible
little tree - life will bend you, but not break you. There is no need
for it. (Stops a while and then says commandingly) Rise, Petr!
Petr (unintentionally rises).
Maya.- And give me your hand. (She takes his hand).- From
this last pressure of your hand I want to extract some pleasure. I
want to leave here victorious. I want to know that I have convinced you.
Petr. - Convinced me of what?
Maya.-That I do not deserve that you should love me. That
I am not worthy of your sacrifice.
Petr.- It would be all in vain.
Maya. ---Yes, it would be all in vain. But your mother is




464


THE CLOUDS


awaiting you in the hall there,- is that also in vain?
Petr.-You are terrible!
Maya.- I am. Because, look, I do not want to be otherwise.
(After a while.) Well.
Petr (quietly).- You know best what I will have to do.
Maya (with a flash of joy, which she suppresses quickly).- And
what will happen?
Petr (overcome).- I will return.
Maya.- Surely?
Petr.- Surely.
Votava (during the last phrases he has been unnoticed standing on
the threshold. Now, when both PETR and MAYA are silent for a while, he
says, looking at his watch).- Well, Miss Zemanova, we must be
going or we shall miss our train.
Maya.- All right, all right, doctor - we will go.
Votava (to PETR).- And how about you, my friend?
Maya.- We are agreed, are we not, Mr. Petr?
Petr (from his depths).- Yes.
Votava (with satisfaction).- Really?
Maya (with the last strength of her bravado).- And you doubted
it, doctor? Go, Mr. Petr, go and tell your mother. She surely is
waiting.
Petr (suddenly giving her his hand).- Thank you.
Maya (hardly able to overcome herself).-And I thank you
also.
Petr (goes into the house).
Maya (sinks on the bench where before PETR was sitting.)
(Pause.)
Fotava.- So, really, he will stay?
Maya (with a sigh).- He will.
Votava.-One really should not wonder. He could not have
done otherwise.
Maya (looks at him).-And do you know, doctor, that this
result was bought with blood?
Votava (calmly).- Ach, well, that'll pass.
Maya (smiling sorrowfully).- And do you know that I paid




JAROSLAV KVAPIL


465


for it with my own blood?    That I have thrown myself into
mud and stepped on myself, that I have been smiting my own face,
that I have slandered myself, in order to save him —for his
mother?
Votava (surprised).- But, Miss
Maya. —And look, I must not even cry. Although I would
so much, so much like to cry. But he must not see that it has hurt
me. Do you think that his was the greatest sacrifice?
Yatova (taking her hand). —I understand you, and I admire
you.
Maya (rises).- Even that is not necessary, doctor. Am I not
a comedian?
Votava.-But, say
Maya. —Yes, and this was a desperate comedy -the worst
comedy of my life. Now, the curtain has fallen. And we will go.
Kocianova (coming out of the parsonage).
Votava (to KOCIANOVA).- Well, did I not tell you, Mrs. Kocianova? What unnecessary worries you have again caused yourself.
Kocianova (hurrying to MAYA). —Is it possible, Miss? May
God Almighty reward you.
Maya.- Everything is possible, Mrs. Kocianova, if we have a
will.
Kocianova (looks at her but does not understand).
Maya (quickly).-And those that have no will should not
attempt anything. (Kissing her.) May God preserve you. Good
by. And may you all be as happy as you were heretofore. Give
my regards to the reverend father. I will not be able to see him
any more.
Kocianova (crying).- My dear soul, my golden soul.
Maya (to VOTAVA).- Let's be off. (Wants to go.)
Votava.- And are you not going to say good by to Mr. Petr?
(He calls into the hall.) Mr. Petr, come here to say good by.
Petr (comes on the threshold).
Maya (gives him her hand).- Good by, Mr. Petr, and may you
be well and happy.
Votava.- And say I will come to see you again next year.
Maya.- No, no, Mr. Petr - good by for good - forever.
(She goes quickly toward the gate.)
Kocianova (escorts her)..




466


THE CLOUDS


Votava (giving his hand to PETR).- Well, so good by, comrade,
and as I say, you have done excellently. (Goes after them.)
(Quiet. DR. VOTAVA, MAYA, and KOCIANOVA are gone. After
a while the rumbling of a departing carriage is heard.)
Kocianova (returns after a while).- Petrichek, my golden Petrichek. (She hurries to him.) Well, Petrichek, what are you looking
at so sadly?
Petr (quietly).- I - am - looking - at those - clouds.
"THE PRINCESS HAS HER LOVERS"
By SARA TEASDALE
The princess has her lovers,
A score of knights has she,
And each can sing a madrigal,
And praise her gracefully.
But Love, who is so bitter,
Hath put within her heart
A longing for the scornful knight
Who, silent, stands apart.
And though the others praise and plead,
She maketh no reply,
Yet for a single word from him
I ween that she would die.




HAFIZ
Two Translations
BY EDNA WORTHLEY UNDERWOOD
I
MUGHANNINAME
THE BOOK OF THE SINGER
Why tarriest, Singer? Take thy lute and come!
With royal song call back again the royal one.
Be great thoughts, too, our guests amid the wine,
And mention of old friends exiled by time.
Bring to our jaded circle joy of June.
Let Kul1 and ghasel' blossom to thy tune.
Grief bowed unto the earth, beggared, was I,
Once more on wings of song oh, let me fly!
Through richest measured magic, Singer, go,
Grief's curtain lift! The face of beauty show!
So well let inspiration wing thy flight
That Anahid2 dances adown the night,
The maiden harpist, to whose witching song
Old friends unto the Banquet backward throng,
'Ghasel and kul are Persian verse forms. Ghasel is a verse of merry meter;
kul is a somewhat graver form.
'Anahid, the star Venus, is the protecting star of singers and musicians.
It is fancie to be a beautiful woman playing upon a harp within the sky. SohreVenus, the evening star, sometimes called Anahid.
467




468                  MUGHANNINAME
Who lifts enrapt to God the Sufi3 up
As surely as from hand to mouth the cup.
Give tones so vibrant, rich, so roundly sweet
The tangling dust of Time falls from the feet.
Deliverance bring from cares of sordid earth,
Safe sheltered in my heart bring Peace to birth.
Come, Singer, come! Befriend me as of yore!
In case the lute fails let the loud drums roar.
'Tis best when in the blood wine works its harm,
To drown it with the deafening drum's alarm.
Why tarriest, Singer?  Red rose time is here,
When nightingales sing sweetest of the year,
Embowered within the green. Shall I not know
The joy-song of my blood when lutes breathe low?
Come, Singer, through the ear inspire the soul.
With fresh songs ever let fresh music roll.
Shatter my heart, my Singer, with thy song!
Create it greater, cleared of grief and wrong!
O! joy, if thou shouldst show such grace to me,
Again within my heart youth's fire set free,Youth's fire! swift to consume gray Grief and Care,
And wrinkled Sorrow's household drive from there.
Why tarriest, Singer? On thy strings strike loud.
Come, banish from my breast this beggar crowd!
3Sufi. A meditative mystic. This order have numbered among its members
many poets of the East.




EDNA WORTHLEY UNDERWOOD                     469
A beggar sooner hence myself would go
When Death calls, than a purple robe to show.
Sweet Singer, swifter strike adown the stringsSwifter, I say! A truce to sorrowing!
Or leifer wouldst thou sing an Iraks song
While blinding tears the swollen eyelids throng?
Come, Singer, since my soul confides in thee,
Upon my truth-pledged word this do for me:
Be shabby Grief's sad camps thy glorious goal;
With song pray scatter them, with twirled drum's roll!
Spacious with love my heart now shelters thine;
Inspire the flute with friendship's breath divine;
Drown deep thy woe in wine! Suffice that not,
Breathe in the flute, by breath e'en life is bought.
Why tarriest, Singer? Come, fresh songs, I say!
Thy cup is empty? Fill it then straightway,
That we together new born unto joy
May happy be a space sans care's alloy.
And with the others let my own songs meet,
Tripping beside thy lute they'll seem more sweet.
Let Music make my soul her home to-night!
Lead on the dance! The cowl I'll fling from sight!
Upward, inspired, from thought to thought I'll soar
What time wine's guarding the Tongue's Tavern Door!
4The Persian color of mourning is blue.
'The Irak meter corresponds somewhat to our word elegy, in that it is
dedicated to grief.




470


MUGHANNINAME


Grief grasps my heart! The two-stringed lute let ring,
Nay! Nay! - the three stringed - to the One Great King!
Fresh songs, my singer! And brave let them be!
I'd have friends hear, exchange their joys with me.
To pleasure them who walk the ways of bliss
Once more pray, sing of Barbud6 and Perwis!
I've caught Fate at her knavish tricks again!
I'll toy with love, forget both life and men!
Upon this gloomy resurrection shore
Alone the blood of grapes is ours to pour.
I watch amazed the dizzy Heaven spin:
Who's freed from life to-day? Who'll death begin?
Mere fraud and vanity are things of earth;
The Night is pregnant: What brings she to birth?
Sure happiness and peace no man's may be.
Who stands safe on a bridge built unsafely?
The vulture's instinct hath the greedy dust,
Which Selm7 and Tur7 into the darkness thrust.
Beside this road of ruin, desolate and dead,
Efrasiab8 a palace proud builded.
6Barbud was a singer at the court of the Sassanian King, Choszrew Perwis,
who reigned from 590 to 626.
Selm and Tur were the sons of King Feridun, a mythical king of Iran.
They slew their elder brother after he had become king. Later, they too were
slain by a relative. Firdusi speaks of them in his satire to Sultan Mahmud: "I
have sung of adventures with wolves and lions and dragons, of kings with their
crowns and helmets of Shah Efrasiab and Tur and Selm  "  Feridun has been
sung of by Firdusi in the Shah-nameh. Saadi has written of the vizier of Feridun.
8Efrasiab was a mighty Prince from Turkestan, and a dangerous enemy of
Persia. He was noted for his love of splendor.




EDNA WORTHLEY UNDERWOOD


471


Where's his great general gone, pray, Prince Piran?
And Schideh where, with sword from Turkestan?
And where their fellow soldiers?    No one knows
Nor over them where reddest blooms the rose.
For struggle, strife, and sorrow Fate made men;
One fights best with the sword, one with the pen.
'Schideh was one of the sons of Efrasiab.
II
SAKINAME
THE BOOK OF THE TAVERN KEEPER1
Bring on the wine!2 Light inspiration's fires!
To genius, to ambition, bring fresh desires!
Once my well-hoarded wealth these virtues rare,
Until love basely did my soul ensnare.
'Julius Hart, in that part of his essay on Persian Poetry which deals with
"The Tavern Keeper," says: "This characterizes the poetic spirit of the Sufi,
the mystic, that he never expresses his teachings in abstract words, but wraps them
in an embroidered picture gown and expresses everything allegorically, perhaps
for the purpose that the orthodox may be deceived as to the size of the chasm
that yawns between deistic Mohammedanism and the pantheistic religion of the
Sufi. Since allmysticism istheoutgrowth of a superabundant imaginative life, it
is natural that the oriental mystic should use beautiful symbols of the senses
and under the figure of the handsome Tavern Keeper, God is almost always
meant.   Whether one has always to do with a mystic poem      or a realistic song of love and wine cannot be decided with absolute certainty. And it
cannot, therefore, be considered strange that Omar and Hafiz should likewise be
condemned as freethinkers and scorners of things sacred."
2"Drink with thy lips from the cup of consecrated love of the wine of




472


SAKINAME


Bring on the fluid gold which Noah's life boon -
Such fabled treasure gives as rich Karun!3
To him who thus lifts up a prayerful eye
The Gateways of Desire will open fly.
Bring on the golden fire which in Earth's breast
Old Zoroaster4 sought with pious zest.
eternity, for from its intoxication is beloved desire born and heights are found
in its depths."- Rumi.
"Drunken often is God's man without wine."- Rumi.
"Trunken mussen wir alle sein!
Jugend ist Trunkheit ohne Wein,
Trinkt sich das Alter wieder zur Jugend,
So ist es wundervolle Tugend."
-Goethe.
Hafiz wrote in "the divine, high piping Pahlevi" of Omar. His admirers
called him "the tongue of the Unseen." Hafiz and Anacreon are the two poets
whose reading is said to bring madness.
3Karun was famous for his wealth. The term corresponds to our word
Croesus.
4Zoroaster was a prophet and teacher of religion about 900 B.C. Wise
Man's Fount: It is related of the prophet Chiser that he journeyed into the land
of Darkness, where he found the fountain of life.
"Great Dschem once wrote this upon a stone beside a fountain: Many have
rested and refreshed themselves here and then gone on when the light of the fountain failed; I conquered the world by strength and courage, and yet into the grave
I can take nothing with me.
Saadi. The Bostan.
"Dschem's Magic Cup." The Eastern fable has it that once a basket of
grapes was brought to King Dschem just as he was starting for the hunt. He
ordered the grapes to be placed in a costly jar and kept until his return. The hunt
lasted longer than he intended, and when he returned he found in the jar, not grapes,
but a rich and fragrant liquid. He wrote the word 'poison' upon the jar and
set it away. One day one of the beauties of the palace, who desired to end her
life because of jilted love, found and drank it. Instead of dying she fell into a
deep and pleasureful sleep. When she awoke she remembered her pleasant dream
and desired to live. Then wine was made for the first time by the Persians,
and named "The Sweet Poison." King Dschem hastened to try it and so did
all his courtiers and his wise men and his scholars, and it became widely celebrated. The king possessed a golden cup upon the bottom of which all the mysteries of earth were revealed. This cup plays an important part in Persian poetry.
Goethe's "Konig in Thule" seems almost to be a reminiscence of Deschm and his
cup of gold. The fables of the cup are many. It is told of Hafiz that once an
old man held outtto him a magic cup. He drank of it and became an inspired poet.




EDNA WORTHLEY UNDERWOOD


473


When crowned with love and wine why should we care
Whether we pray to earth or fire or air!
Bring on the wine, the dream, the dear delight!
Dawn rosy paints the Cup of Dschems the night.
Bring on Dschem's magic Cup, that by its might
I may explore the secrets of the light.
Dschem's magic Cup bring me! Make haste, I say!
Whene'er you find it empty, fill it, pray.
This royal word spake great Dschemschid of old:
"One grain of wheat will all earth's treasure hold."
Bring on the cup, sparkling like Selsebil!6
My pole star be it, topping Heaven's hill.
When flute and cither shed their sweetness down
The Cup I'd not exchange for King Kei's crown.
Bring on, I say again, the virgin wine,
Unsmirched of tavern smoke and pure and fine.
Bring joy back to my heart once more though I
Gather the gossiping world's grudges thereby.
Bring joy's fire back, which once should wild beasts know,
The mighty forests would be leveled low.
Alone it frees from coil of change and time,
And for me opens the Tent Door divine.
ZDschem or Dschemschid is the somewhat mythical first king of Persia, to
whom fable has attributed exploits and heroic deeds. He is a national hero after
the manner of King Arthur. He taught the Persians agriculture and the useful
arts. Firdusi has sung at length of his wars.
6Selsebil, a river of Paradise. It is a frequent term of comparison in Persian poetry:
"Thou whose face is Eden, and whose lips are selsibil.
Schehab-ed-din-Edib-Sabir.
Rumi speaks of the Fountain Selsebil, which Sweet Youth guides you to the
Gates of Paradise."




474


SAKINAME


Bring on the wine! In it the Houris7 smiled!
There Heaven keeps their sweet breath undefiled.
Oh, with it I will quench this passion's glow,
A little while at feet of Peace sit low.
Bring wine, whose rosy light strikes up the sky
To greet there for me Dschemschid and King Kei!
'Tis then I'll ask when flutes shed sweetness down,
"When wore Kawusz8 and when Dschemschid the crown?"
Oh, Life is but a substance made for song!
With song call back again the kingly throng.
Let each one rule awhile beneath the light,
Let wine all dim thoughts strengthen, make more bright!
I lorded it full well the Heart's Throne o'er
'Til Scorn and Sin shut fast on me the door.
Bring wine! Bring wine! Thus dissipate my night!
Bring softness to my sorrow, to darkness light!
Its glory now upon me's richly shed,
And now the face of Wisdom's unveiled.
A spirit glorious was I and free.
As dust amid the dust, who exiled me?
Yet when the crystal cup my hand does hold,
I see the mirrored joys of earth unfold.
At Gates of Sacrifice I bend the knee,
And though a beggar a king seem to be.
7Houris are the maidens of the Mohammedan Paradise, whose beauty delights the faithful after death.
8Kawuszwas Shah of Iran in the days of Rustem. Firdusi makes this mention
of him in the Shah-nameh where he tells the story of "Sorab and Rustem": "To
Kawusz they brought this grievous word: The throne has lost Rustem its defense.'




EDNA WORTHLEY UNDERWOOD


475


Whenever drunken inspired Hafiz sang,
From Heaven Sohre's lute in answer rang.
Life is a fickle, frail, inconstant thing;
Seek then within the cup joy's doubling.
Wine lengthens out alone man's little day,
And makes real for a space the phantom way.
Enjoy the banquet board, the candle light!
To none Life keeps the troth that she does plight.
As floating bubbles on a cup of wine,
Vanished in dust Keikobad's might divine.
To sleep send wisely now the griefs of life,
And live not as a slave held by heart strife.
Without the soul the body cannot be,
How heart then without wine-soul, pray tell me?
Again fill full the glass! Fill full, I say!
I drink to all the kings who lived their day.
Has any, pray, escaped the thirst of Fate,
Insatiate of blood, livid with hate?
Let anger not for me thy breast inflame,
Because thou of the dust, of flame I came.
Fill full the glass! From out its finer fire
Let comfort come forth, courage, and fresh desire.
Incorporate its substance with my soul,
Since treasures vanish as sea-rivers roll.
Bring wine! To match it rubies do notrdare!
Let pride and grief unto the devil fare.




476


SAKINAME


The rosary and cowl go with them too,
To both, well pledged for wine, a long adieu.
The treasures of the Vine Child flow most free
Wherever cloister walls frown heavily.
Should any say to thee, "Beware the sight!"
I pray thee answer only, "Friend, good night!"
Bring on the wine! I love its rosy flower.
Let me live grandly for one little hour!
Naught else can free my heart a space from grief,
And seat me at the rich Life Giver's feast.
Wine! Wine! that nourisheth the souls of men,
Unto the dying holds Life's mirror up again.
Wine! Wine! My tent I'll pitch upon the air,
And mingle with the bright star-dwellers there.
Fill full the cup again with rarest wine,
Thus fill my spirit with one more divine,
That, Tavern Keeper, double-natured, I
May praise thy wine the worthier thereby.
Come, Saki, let thy glory grace the feast,
Although divinely natured, 'tis not least.
Lift up the cup! Make haste! Why shouldst thou fear?
In Heaven 'tis not accounted wrong, as here.
Life's substance, Saki, is thy wine to me.
Pour on! Pour on! though all should emptied be.
To death the circling days had drawn me near
Until I found the Wise Man's Fountain here.




EDNA WORTHLEY UNDERWOOD                       47T
Quickly that Fount of Wisdom bring to me!
On Rustem's war steed Rachsch9 I'll ride grandly.
And like Tuhemten's1' hero wield will I
The sword of Truth 'til Falsehood faint and die.
Bring on the onyx carven crystal cup!
I love its joyous fire when lifted up.
A plague be on the bowed slaves of the pen!
But Inspiration, let her call again.
Exterminate with wine's fount flowing fire
The grief that gnaws the heart out of desire.
Make thine the day! Let that be Duty's thought:
Who knows whether another'll come or not?
All they who once were Lords of Life and Time,
And feasted as fond lovers in their prime,
Were forced the tinsel joy-world to forego,
And now forgotten in their graves lie low.
Who toward the Tent dares lift a haughty eye?
Who counts on joy when all things else pass by?
Alas! Alas! that youth speeds like the wind!
Happy alone who keepeth pure his mind.
Saki, bring wine! Beneath its magic power
I'll own the two worlds for my little hour.
The King with Arab steeds of wealth untold,
And elephants of war tusked deep with gold.
9Raksch or Reksch,- Rustem's famous war steed.
'Tuhemten means the strong one, the glorious. It is one of the appellations
of the national hero Rustem, who is the Persian Siegfried or Hercules. Perhaps,
however, Samson is the best equivalent, since Rustem's strength was the gift of God..




478


SAKINAME


Who stormed the earth in pride and swore to take,
A banquet is where worms their hunger slake.
From forth the tingling spheres, from Morning's wing,
From out the mouths of Houris these words ring;
"Break through thine earthly cage, Sweet Singer, Thou,
Where naught but phantoms are hast lived enow!"
Unto the Heaven wing thy fearless flight,
To rest and reap reward on clearer height.
Availed it, pray, Great Dschem to rule the world,
When from his helpless hand the cup was hurled?
To make the wine of life the red grape dies,
Therefore it needs must make my dead heart rise.
Each brick that yonder roof unto was brought,
Was some once mighty head, now dust and naught.
With royal blood the clefts of earth are filled,
And Beauty's dust upon the wind is spilled.
One haughty at the Banquet boasted loud,
Up-swinging high the cup before the crowd:
"The jest and scorn of Heaven here is seen:
The great it humbles and exalts the mean."
Darius mortals excelling so far
The assembled kings of earth less kingly are,
As softly stole away when Death cried - "Come!"
As if he ne'er had stood beneath the sun.
Away now to thy king! For me say this:
Who representest Dschemschid well I wis,




EDNA WORTHLEY UNDERWOOD


479


Seek well the beggar out, his hunger still,
Ere yet the Cup of Dschem thou darest fill.
All needlessly the griefs of earth confine
Since freedom waits for us within the wine!
And now that such a king the power doth own
As never found an equal on a throne,
Defender of the faith, of peace and right,
Of kingly Kaianian, star most bright,
Give length of days, give good health to our king!
Conquest unto his scepter, honor, bring.
So long as wrong and right draw not anigh,
And Bull and Ram still pasture in the sky,
So long - God grant - may Shah11 Mansur remain,
And blessed be the years o'er which he reign,
In wine which ripens in the glowing south
I drink to him with heart and hand and mouth.
"Shah Mansur - Hafiz lived at his court.




ISADORA DUNCAN, PRIESTESS
BY SHAEMAS O'SHEEL
HE beauty of the human body is a myth; but like every myth
it is a truth to those who understand. I mean that while
it is a cant phrase among us that there is nothing more
beautiful than this our body, we have actually proceeded
so far, so long, so relentlessly, urged by those twin vices,
at whose feigned opposition the demons laugh, Fashion and
Prudery, in the abuse and suppression of the body, the elimination of it,
artistically speaking, from our daily lives and thoughts, that its beauty is to
us merely a tradition, a rumor of hearsay, not confirmed by our actual experience. We have cast out beauty from the body by a process of distortion
and torture, as of old they cast out devils on the rack; and we have driven
the body from the realm of our more beautiful and exalted life. We do not
now consider with solicitude how it may be made more beautiful, nor how
it may be displayed as a factor in the artistic life of the day; fashion supplants the one consideration and prudery has made the other impossible.
And if a score of women from some modern city, chosen at random among
all classes, were translated first into revelling Arcadians, and then into
nymphs of Diana, it is a question whether the scorn of the goddess for their
shame and confusion, or the horror of the Greeks at the malformation of
many and the awkwardness of all, would be greater.
The beauty of the human body is a myth, and it needs a priestess to
point us the truth of it. A great priestess has arisen: Isadora Duncan,
who has shown us many and wondrous meanings. May it prove that she is
also prophetess, surely foretelling the renaissance of reverence for the body,
when, as the medium of a universal and varied art, it shall at once bear
witness to a new imaginative era and be the symbol of a pervading joy.
It is this hint that a joy once ours may yet again stir the limbs and fill
the hearts of the race, which holds the audiences at Miss Duncan's recitals
in a strange and compelling fascination. Peculiar audiences they are,
seven eighths women, the beautiful and gentle daughters of the wealthy,
and the women moulded to a certain intellectually critical attitude by the
college; and a very few men, some artists, who must feel a vicarious shame
for the comparative callousness of their sex, and some of the callous sort,
who have evidently been brought unwilling, or but half willing, by women.


480




ISADORA DUNCAN, PRIESTESS


481


But however little attuned to the appeal of the dancer many may come to a
recital, none, I think, ever goes forth from her spell without a deep regret for
the passing of an experience both softening and exalting; nor without suffering a shock of revulsion from the complexity and ugliness of the life rushing
through the streets of to-day. It is perhaps matter for astonishment, certainly for rejoicing and the taking of new hope, that time after time the largest
auditoriums in New York city'have been filled to their capacities when Miss
Duncan has danced, and that this has happened in other American cities
also. Of course Europe long since proclaimed her; but one always fears
that perhaps the acclaim of Paris and Berlin is the shout of delight in a new
sensation, not the sincere tone of reverence; while the voice of London is,
of course, a mere unintelligent echo. The eagerness of the most cultured
and the most alert classes in this, her native country, to pay tribute is a much
more significant thing; and though the reason for this eagerness is one
which bears a sad implication, yet it also hides pregnant seeds. I am sure
that every convention-bound and polite one of us has felt a tumult of recognition in the presence of a woman who is doing what every polite and convention-bound one of us longs to do; though we have forgotten it, we realize
suddenly anew that we do want to dance; to run and skip and toss our arms
in moments of joy, and to express our melancholy in slow and swaying
rhythms. This solitary figure on the lonely stage suddenly confronts each
of us with the secret of a primal desire invincibly inhering in the fibre of each,
a secret we had securely hidden beneath our conventional behaviors, and we
yearn for a new and liberated order in which we may indeed dance.
But if this interpretation of a universal secret desire, and this intimation
of a new Arcadian era, are deeper causes of the vogue of Duncan, the more
obvious, the more generally realized attraction, is that of the sensuous
beauty of her performances. The stately draperies, the impressive emptiness of the stage, the dim radiance, exquisite, mystical, weird, the splendid
feminine body, moving with a perfection of rhythmic motion which visualizes the accompanying music; these blend to an impression of utter beauty
intoxicating to souls long thirsty and unfed. That solitary figure, gloriously
a woman, voluptuous yet slender and agile and full of youth, barefooted,
with draperies fluttering away from strenuous legs and perfect shoulders,
and arms 'curving like a precious chaplet from finger to throat,' as Henri
Lavedan has phrased it; swaying and running and drifting musically in a
little space of gray radiance,- who can forget the vision? Coming from
my first experience of it, I met, in the lobby of the Opera House, a young
poet of supersensitive genius, who, when I attempted some praise of what
we had both witnessed, stopped me with a pained entreaty and a reproof,




482


SHAEMAS O'SHEEL


which I forgave for the justness of it. For truly silence seems the perfect
tribute to such an achievement, and no words can suggest or recall its
wonders. An essay to set forth certain subtle meanings is not, however,
a violation of this proper reticence, and if I have in the preceding paragraphs
discovered little of novel import, let me attempt an indication of what I feel
to be the very greatest of all the suggestions of Isadora Duncan's art.
Greater even than the creation of beauty, greater even than the promise
of joy and freedom, is the interpretation of life by the instinctive wisdom of
genius, which is feeling confirmed by thought, and which understands that
the ultimate of our apprehension is a mysticism impossible of interpretation
save in symbolic art. Isadora Duncan's dancing is no less than an interpretation of life in symbols. Watching her I have felt that I was watching the
Soul of Man moving in the Dance of Destiny. The term ' dance' has a
very different and very much more serious significance when used to indicate Miss Duncan's work than it has when standing for even the most
talented and delightful of ordinary stage dancing. It connotes not merely
something pretty and happy, something to beguile and amuse; it is an expression of the impulse which is a dream of all beauty; it is a questioning,
an aspiration, a thrill with hopes and fears, desires and joys and melancholies, and ever with wonder. It is mythology, the embodiment of wonder
- and wonder is the attitude of the soul confronted with mystery, beauty,
the conflict of the passions of love and hate, and the strange, strange moods
of joy and sorrow. This, I feel, is the deepest significance and the highest
beauty of the art of Isadora Duncan.




SHAKESPEARE'S POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY
BY L. W. ELDER
INCE there is in the half century preceding Hobbes a paucity of
technical philosophical expression, one who is interested in this
period must be content to construct a hypothetical edifice of
thought from the scattered and untechnical expressions in
general literature.  For political philosophy Shakespeare's
King Richard II offers a field for investigation. As we pass from
Shakespeare's early period to such a work as this we notice a radical change
in his attitude. He is no longer filled with the phenomenology of the age
as the exponent of the exaggerated personal, but is rather the historian of
the inner spirit, seeking meaning in that life of which he had been so preeminently characteristic. No longer merely carried along by fashionable
thought, he becomes prophetic of the skeptical and reflective attitude which
history recognizes as an inevitable accompaniment of the renaissance.
The questions of what is real and true; what is universal; what
reality and what universality have individuals, we here have translated into
the corresponding terms of politics. They may be stated as follows:
What is real and universal in the state? The old dogma of kingship
is brought into question. The drama occurs in the warring of the traditions of the king as a universal individual, and the growing consciousness of
a real life coextensive with society. Why is it that the king by divine right
comes to an unhappy end? There is no answer in the mere record of history, and to the inquiring mind there is a certain sense of defeat. The king
proves to be no king: a universal which is but one thing among other things.
For this antithesis of a king over against the people as the Many, there appears to be no solution; unless by a complete change of attitude toward the
state, we can show why the universal should be identified with the end of
society. Though we admit, if it is a fact, that the ideals of society triumph
over those of any individual, even a king's, yet we cannot say why it should
be so.
What reality have individuals in personal relations with others? If
the king is the universal, the only real individual in the state, then all relations among men are abstractions, unless centered in the king. Such
483




484


SHAKESPEARE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY


relations as men have to one another are mediated through the king's
court - correspondingly an abstraction for the universal which comprehends diversity. The solution of this problem lies in the growing sense of
nationality, which will be a real universal giving reality and worth to personal
relations in society.
The conservative position, upholding the divine right of kings, is
represented by the church in the person of the bishop, and by the old barony
in York. The position rests upon the theory of a supernatural power
external to the world. The physical world is (equally) arbitrary and
lawless; and for that reason this supermundane power must impose itself
upon the natural, for it is thus that the eternal order of the universe will
be made manifest in the affairs of men. The dogma of the divine right of
kings may be regarded as an hypothesis to allay doubts concerning this
eternal order. It is an explanation of an institution so old that its origin
and history have been forgotten. If, then, the history of this institution is
unknown in natural terms, its traditional authority must be explained by
reference to another sphere. Hence kingship receives an extra natural
explanation. (K. R. II, III, 98, 71, 127, 272, 336, 86, 118.)
The beginnings of doubt and the first conflict of a new consciousness,
with the old tradition of kingship, is represented in Gaunt's attitude (I, 508).
His skepticism implies that even a king cannot act contrary to natural laws.
A king's power lies in being at one with nature, not opposed. So far as
kingship is a divine right, just so far is it arbitrary and non-natural. Arbitrary, extra-natural kingship, Gaunt implies, has no real power. Even
York in his assiduity to profess his reverence for the old authority lets slip
a question on the king's justice, implying that though he be king by ' fair
sequence and succession,' yet he cannot set aside the institutions which
are the outgrowth of social life. (II, 204, 241.) Though the dualism of the
natural and the supernatural is maintained, it is implied that political
institutions are natural in their origin, and in their development subject
to natural laws, without supernatural interference.
A positive expression of the new ideal of kingship is embodied in
Bolingbroke, though intimations of the same spirit are found in Richard
himself. While the speeches of the latter may be affected there is implied
a concession to that new consciousness in the people. It indicates on
Richard's part a notion of kingly responsibility, even though that responsibility be but an abstraction in the service of his arbitrary power.
It is here that the new sense of kingship connects with the new idea of
personal relations based on individual worth. Politics is now regarded as
an institution of social wellbeing. Its purpose is not to exalt just one




L. W. ELDER


48VQ5


individual; but every individual, even the king, must react in ordinary
relations with others. The king, like other individuals, owes his service
to the state. (III, 421-5.) In fact the king, just because the leader of the
people, because he embodies and secures their ends, resigns his individuality
to see it re-expressed in the life of the whole. The grim-minded gardener
gives expression to a vulgar point of view. (III, 513.) He forgets that
the leaders in a society embody the ideals which are only incipient in the
group as a whole, and the ' top-lofty ' ones are needed to shape institutions to new ends. The gardener is even reactionary, since, by confusing
the state with the king as the only real individual in the state, he implies
a return to the conservative position. (III, 542.)
The status and value of the many, or the question of personal relations,
arises out of an inquiry concerning the meaning of feudalism and chivalry.
That men have no true and universal relations between themselves, we
infer from the fact that a personal grudge has no standing at court. (I, 9.)
Any relation to have value must involve the king directly, as e.g., in treason;
and any situation which does not involve the king, because by that very
fact illegal, is at once construed as casting suspicion on all the parties concerned. Because the relations of men are arbitrary, the situations in which
they are placed may be as arbitrarily solved by the sovereign. (I, 400.) This
power of the sovereign is reflected in the at least formal moral isolation of
men from each other. Bolingbroke's conduct being interpreted as a subversion of recognized good (the established order) entails as a penalty an
equally violent procedure for the sake of justice. But this justice, far from
being an instrument for the maintenance of recognized good, is only the
personal interest of a universal individual.  The king talks about ' the
unstooping firmness of my upright soul,' but this may be regarded as the
abstraction for that justice and pretentious righteousness which must be
expected as an element in an absolute monarch. Richard's uprightness is
a formal affair, deriving its authority from the same attitude of mind that
permits such a king to reign.
The significance of the sentence passed on Bolingbroke, lies, of course,
in the fact that he was not morally isolated from his fellows. In being
banished, king and people alike suffered. (I, sc. iii.) The conduct of
every one is informed by the ideals of the people as a whole. The actor
derives his motive from the group which furnishes the opportunity of action.
If, then, we pass judgment on one who leads the people we strike at their
ideal.
That a man would be willing to stake his life for the righteousness of
his conduct is evidence that there was more vitality in the mediaeval con



486       SHAKESPEARE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
sciousness of conduct than is usually allowed. (I, 80.) Chivalry brought
with it a more intense conviction of man's ability to solve moral situations
than we have to-day. But it must be remembered that, in dealing with the
waning end of chivalry, as we are in the drama before us, the content of
conduct was not real action but honor. (I, 169.) Honor, which may be
called the supernatural in conduct, is the pursuit of an abstraction formed
by taking the principle for the content of conduct. Chivalry of course
reflects the morality of an age which has lost its sense of reality and leaves
the world behind in search of signs and wonders. Conduct in such an ages is
made up of abstractions which would have reality only in such another
world as chivalry vainly tries to habilitate.
The drama shows the inability of these old institutions to maintain
their meaning, and the failure of all old methods of solution is due to the
advent of new ideals in conduct. Norfolk's speech implies the doctrine that
life for man is an existence in a social medium. (I, 547.) True honor is a
principle of social relation, not an abstract ideal, but one which depends
on a sense of unified life and the inherent value of a man. (II, 40-65.)




HORACE TO HIS WINE JUG
BY THOMAS EWING, JR
ODES III, 21
Oh twin-fellow born under a Manlius
Mine own familiar toby whether chatter
Or brawls or unreasoned attachments
Or heaviness, pretty trusty, bearing;
Be what the freightage may of the excellent
Massic the vintage worthy a festival,
Come down to Corvinus demanding
Just the variety you can offer.
For truly although steeped in the dialogues
Plato reported he's not averse to you;
The story is Cato the ancient
Found the bottle to revive the conscience.
You weaken if you gently apply the rack
Even the toughened, out of the wariest
Drawing the most secret devisings
When rollicking Bacchus is beside you.
You give renewed hope unto the desperate,
Upon the poor man horns of might bestowing,
That neither angered helmet of kings
Can terrify nor an army frighten.
May Venus if she smile a bit and Bacchus,
And all the Graces loth to be torn apart,
With our living lanterns attend you,
Till the planets are aflight of Phoebus.
487




BOOK NOTES


FICTION: "The Prodigal Pro Ter,"
by Frederick Orin Bartlett (Small,
Maynard, $1.50). "The Castle Builders," by Charles Clark Munn (Lothrop,
Lee & Shepard, $1.50). "The Steering
Wheel," by Robert Alexander Mason
(Bobbs, Merrill, $1.50). "The Sheriff
of Dyke Hole," by Ridgwell Cullum
(George W. Jacobs, $1.50). "Harmen
Pols," by Maarten Maartens (John
Lane Company, $1.35 net). "Bellcroft
Priory," by W. Bourne Cooke (John
Lane Company, $1.50). "Everybody's
Lonesome," by Clara E. Laughlin
(Fleming H. Revell,.75 net). "Sonny's Father," by Ruth McEnery Stuart
(The Century Co., $1.00 net). "Once,"
by John Mattes (Henry Holt, $1.20 net).
"Ashton-Kirk, Investigator," by John
T. McIntyre (Penn Pub. Co., $1.20 net).
"The Social Buccaneer," by Frederic S.
Isham (Bobbs, Merrill Co., $1.50).
"The Frontiersman, A Tale of the
Yukon," by H. A. Cody (George H.
Doran, $1.20 net).
BIOGRAPHY:   "Life   of  Robert
Browning, with Notices of His Writings,
His Family, and His Friends," by W.
Hall Griffin and Harry Christopher
Minchin (The Macmillan Co., $3.50
net).
POETRY AND DRAMA: "The Town
Down the River," by Edwin Arlington
Robinson (Scribner's, $1.25 net). "Pietro of Siena," by Stephen Phillips (The
Macmillan Co., $1.00 net). "Judith,"
by Martin Schultze (Henry Holt, $1.25
net). "The Gold-Gated West," Songs
and Poems, by Samuel L. Simpson,
edited with introductory preface, by
W. T. Burney (J. B. Lippincott).
"Pansies and Rosemary," by Eben E.
Rexford (J. B. Lippincott, $1.50 net).
"The Little Singer and Other Verses,"


by Emily Sargent Lewis (J. B. Lippincott, $1.00 net). "Poems," by Mrs.
Schuyler van Rensselaer (The Macmillan Co., $1.25 net).
JUVENILE: "Kiddie Land," by Margaret G. Hays (George W. Jacobs)
"Under the Window," pictures and
Rhymes for Children, by Kate Greenaway (Frederick Warne & Co., $1.50 net).
"The Emerald City of Oz," by L.
Frank Baum (The Reilly & Britton Co.).
"The Magical Man of Mirth," by Elbridge H. Sabin (George W. Jacobs).
" Anne Nelson, a Little Maid of
Provincetown," by Alice Turner Curtis
(R. F. Fenno & Co., $1.25). "Sammie
and Susie Littletail," by Howard R.
Garis (R. F. Fenno & Co.). "Those
Smith Boys, or The Mystery of the
Thumbless Man," by Howard R. Garis
(R. F. Fenno & Co., $1.25 net). "Sherman Hale, the Harvard Half Back," by
George Hart Rand (R. F. Fenno & Co.,
$1.50).
ILLUSTRATED HOLIDAY AND TRAVEL:
"A Hoosier Romance," by James Whitcomb Riley, illustrated by John Wolcott Adams (The Century Co., $1.50
net). "Lovely Woman," pictured by
famous American artists (Bobbs-Merrill
Co.). "The Whistler Book," monograph on the life and position in the
art of Whistler, by Sadakichi Hartmann
(L. C. Page & Co.). "The Art of the
Munich Galleries," by Florence Jean
Ansell and Frank Roy Fraprie ( L. C.
Page & Co., $2.00 net). "The Story
of Spanish Painting," by Charles H.
Coffin (The Century Co., $1.20 net).
"Royal Palaces and Parks of France,"
by Francis Miltoun (L. C. Page & Co.,
$3.00). "The Lands of the Tamed
Turk," by Blair Jaekel (L. C. Page &
Co., $2.50). "Bohemia and the Zechs,"


488




BOOK NOTES


489


by Will S. Monroe (L. C. Page & Co.,
$3.00). "Brazil and Her People of
To-day," by Nevin 0. Winter (L. C.
Page & Co., $3.00). "Panama and the
Canal To-day," by Forbes Lindsay (L.
C. Page & Co., $3.00). "Romantic
Days in Old Boston," by Mary Caroline
Crawford (Little, Brown & Co., $2.50).
MISCELLANEOUS:   "The   Love  of
Books and Reading," by Oscar Kuhns
(Henry Holt & Co.). "The Chauncey
Giles Year Book " (J. B. Lippincott).
"Faith, Hope, Love," compiled by
Grace Browne Strand (A. C. McClurg
& Co.,.50 net). "Love, Friendship,
and Good Cheer," compiled by Grace
Browne Strand (A. C. McClurg & Co.,.50 net).  "A  Search after Ultimate
Truth," by Aaron Martin Crane (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, $1.50 net).
"Under the Open Sky being a Year with
Nature," by Samuel Christian Schonnecker (J. B. Lippincott). "The Original Garden of Eden Discovered, etc.,"
by J. M. Woolsey (copyright by J. M.
Woolsey). "The Cause and Cure of
Colds," by William S. Sadler, M.D.
(A. C. McClurg & Co., $1.00 net).
"Foster's Auction Bridge up to Date,"
by R. F. Foster (Frederick A. Stokes
Co., $1.00 net). "World Corporaation," by King Camp Gillette (The
New England News Co.). "Mothers
and Daughters, a Book of Ideals for
Girls," by Mrs. Burton Chance (The
Century Co., $1.00). "A Psychic Autobiography," by Amanda T. Jones (Graves
Publishing Co.). " The Passover, an
Interpretation," by Clifford Howard
(R. F. Fenno, $1.00 net). "Down to
the Sea," by Wilfred T. Grenfell
(Fleming H. Revell, $1.00 net). "With
Stevenson in Samoa," by H. J. Moors
(Small, Maynard & Co., $3.00).
Mr. Bartlett's " Seventh Noon " we
thought an excellent piece of work, but
in the "Prodigal Pro Tem" he has surpassed himself with a delicious plot,


whose charming development in comedy
elements reveal to us characters that
are delightfully human and fascinating.
The scene is laid in the Catskill country,
and the background of nature and out
doors is woven throughout the romance
with descriptions of exceptionally fine
handling.
"The Steering Wheel" will not enhance the reputation of the author of
"Happy Hawkins," a story compounded
of love and business, and a "happy
ending," neither the shrewd sayings of
its characters can redeem a plot full
of absurd complications. The story of
"Uncle Asa " Webster is told in the
"Castle Builders," by Mr. Munn, and
since "Uncle Asa" is the very core of
New England character, New England
virtues illuminate love, family devotion,
and business honor in the essentials
that furnish the author's plot. Of the
same genre in substance, but in vivid
contrast in setting is "The Sheriff of
Dyke Hole," by Ridgwell Cullum.
The "sheriff" full of blunt honesty, a
deep fund of humor, and with his many
inimitable observations gives color and
realism to a double love story, set amid
the untamed forces of a Western mining
camp. From novels which hold their
interest and develop their plots about
the portrayal of a unique character to an
ingeniously woven tale of mystery as
that in "Ashton-Kirk, Investigator," by
John T. McIntyre, is a mere transition
of one's mental focus upon life.  Character is more puzzling than the mystery
of much of the recent, of the "AshtonKirk" class; the thrill is lost with a
satiety of counterplots and effects.
Quite worth recommending for all their
publishers claim for them are Ruth
McEnery Stuart's "Sonny's Father,"
Clara E. Laughlin's " Everybody's Lonesome," and John Mattes's "Once."
To mention Mrs. Stuart's "Sonny" is
to recall former happy associations,




490


BOOK NOTES


and is enough to send one immediately
to this new book to hear the delightful
and tender chronicle of Sonny's family
and of the world in which they live, by
"Sonny's father."  Miss Laughlin calls
her idyl a "true fairy story"; we do
not dispute her, for it holds a secret
and has enchantment which may transform for us as it did for Mary Alice,
this too often gray world in which we
live.
Every one who enjoyed and held dear
Kenneth  Grahame's   "Golden  Age"
will take this work of Mr. Mattes to
heart. To say this is a better recommendation than the reviewer's attempt
to indicate its delightful quality by
epitome or quotation. That there are
other and sterner qualities in life and consequently in fiction, a reading of Marrten
Marrtens's "Harmen Pols" convinces
us. The Dutch "Scarlet Letter," it has
been described, in which the battle of
the spirit is substituted for Hawthorne's
battle with carnal sin. It depicts a
young Dutch peasant who lost and
finally regained his faith in God and
man in his efforts to retain, against the
long-hidden iniquity involved, his inheritance. The picture of mother and
son is full of powerful characterization,
and in the story of their struggles the very
spirit of Holland is expressed. From
the spiritual tragedy of peasant life in
Holland to a genuine old-fashioned
middle class English love story, shadowed by the atmosphere of ancient
influences and mellowed by tradition, in
"Bellcroft Priory" one's emotions experience the transition from unrest to
tranquility. There is a spell about
this English novel, even with its note
of melodrama now and then accenting
its ineffectual jealousies and fervent
sentiments of love. John Clodd and his
mistress of Thorncliffe Hall are both
drawn with interest and conviction. It
is a thoroughly good story. From a


quiet English priory to the Hukon is a
far cry, not simply in the distance that
separate the two places, but in the
temperament and character in human
nature each place calls out in man. In
the quieter English setting human
nature somehow gets diversified, the
types are varied; in the Yukon Mr.
Cody's "Frontiersman" is like other
frontiersmen.  The  "stirring  adventures" are the stirring adventures of
all the novelists who set their stories
"packed with action" there. A great
many readers have cultivated a liking
for fiction of this sort, and Mr. Cody's
story will please them. The motives in
human nature that inspire the "Social
Buccaneer," perhaps are not fundamentally more different than those of
Mr. Cody's frontiersman. The author's
motto, so his publishers inform us, has
always been to "get there," and the
power and triumph which the "getting
there" insures does not very profoundly
separate the instincts of men so widely
varying in internal aspects as Mr.
Cody's and Mr. Isham's heroes.
A new life of Robert Browning is
always hailed with respect and expectation. New material illuminating the
personality and development of genius
is always a welcome guidance to the
insight of his admirers upon the subject;
but in Browning's case this fact added
to a clearer interpretation of rendering
more lucid poetry so misunderstandable
invests this new biography with importance. This volume prepared with
such care and assiduous labor over a
period of years by Prof. Hall Griffin, and
left unfinished at his death, is completed
with sympathy and insight by Mr.
Minchin. The authors have woven
into a gossipy, interesting narrative
the personal details of the poet's life,
his family, his friends, his association,
with the various places he lived and
visited. Into this is worked notices




BOOK NOTES


491.


and studies, expositions and outlines
of the poet's work, showing its development and gradual recognition by the
public. This is a very readable biography and can be perused as a supplement to all the books written about
Browning and his work.
Among these seven books of verse
three at least stand out with distinction among the poetry of the year. Mr.
Robinson is one of the three or four
foremost American poets, while in
England Mr. Stephen Phillips holds a
like position. "The Town Down the
River" is full of that ironic philosophy,
that psychologic protraiture in human
nature, of which he is master, and of
an art full of reticence and haunting
harmony. Mr. Phillips's "Pietro of
Siena," while not as notable in art and
substance as his earlier poetic dramas,
bears, however, the stamp of genius
which won him the reputation of weaving such cunning dramatic verse for the
action of his characters. Mr. Schutze's
"Judith" is worthy of a place among
Mr. Phillips's best poetic dramas. It is
based on the apocryphal story, the principal tragic motive is the irreconcilable
conflict between a noble and passionate
woman's fanatic and desperate patriotism and her moral nature and personal
integrity. The conflict of Judith is
further intensified by the presentation
of Holofernes as a great man, whose
power and wisdom yield to the passion
inspired by her force and beauty. The
beauty of Mr. Schutze's blank verse
admirably clothes this passionate and
absorbing substance. Mr. Van Rensselaer's " Poems " is a distinctive volume.
A sober but penetrative quality imbues her lines that are shaped with a
subtle command of rhythm. In the
collected  poems, comprising  "The
Golden-Gated West Songs and Poems,"
edited by W. T. Burney, Simpson is
classed with Burns and Poe. While it


is too much to claim for the deceased
poet, it does not, however, prevent us
from enjoying verse that has many
sterling and compelling qualities. There
is much of the same quality of feeling
and melody in Mr. Rexford's "Pansies
and Rosemary" that we discovered in
Mr. Simpson's verse. Sentiments that
touch the common heart and appeal to
minds unconfused by the symbolism
of life and the mysteries. Emily Sargent Lewis continues the same note
on alowlier key, in the Little "Singer
and other Verses." The emotion is not
so full, though the impulse is not less
genuine.
Those interesting series, published
by L. C. Page & Co., of books historical
and descriptive of the peoples and countries of other lands, have had three
new titles added in Blair Jaekel's
"The Lands of the Tamed Turk," Will
S. Monroe's "Bohemia and the Zechs,"
and Nevin 0. Winter's "Brazil and Her
People of To-day." Each of these
authors writes with authority upon his
subject and adds a fund of reliable
information to our limited knowledge
of phases of their history and development. Mr. Miltoun has given us many
interesting and fascinating books of
descriptive travel, but none is so laden
with the richness of his observations and
knowledge as the "Royal Palaces and
Parks of France," so teeming with the
long and brilliant associations of French
history and great personages. Another
addition to the "Art Galleries of
Europe" series is a welcome addition in
Florence Jean Ansell and Frank Roy
Fraprie's "The Art of the Munich
Galleries." The authors, in their interpretation of schools and artists, in
rendering the beauty and significance
of single masterpieces comprehensive
to the readers, have achieved a service
that is educational as well as pleasurable.
Mr. Sadakichi Hartmann writes with




492


BOOK NOTES


full knowledge and full appreciation
about the great painter's life and work,
in "The Whistler Book," which contains fifty-seven reproductions of Whistler's most important pictures. The
paradox of the man is brought into
relation with his art and in the impressionism of the pictures this relationship
unravels a personality that is clear
in its artistic intentions.  Mr. Hartmann's contribution to the interpretation
of Whistler as man and artist is a notable
one. On the subject of art there is no
clearer and more suggested writer than
Mr. Coffin. In an admirable volume he
showed us "How to Study Pictures,"
and applying the same concise revealing
qualities to the "Story of Spanish
Painting," he draws definitely for his
readers the historical, biographical, critical, and appreciative aspects of his subject. It contains all that one should
know who has not and is likely not to
see the original canvases in Spanish
cathedrals and galleries. A subject
so full of public interest and speculations as the Panama Canal justifies any
book that gives an account of the country, its physical features and natural
resources, with a thorough history of
the canal project from the earliest times.
Mr. Forbes Lindsay's comprehensive
book fully illustrated from recent photographs, and including five maps, seems
the most valuable account yet published
on that narrow country, whose constructed canal will have so tremendous
influence upon the future commerce of
the world.
It is superfluous to recommend a
Kate Greenaway book, her name is assured in the affections of childhood; to
her "Under the Window," Mr. Baum's
"The Emerald City of Oz" may be
added as the work of one who too has
won a dear hold upon the imagination
of the young. "Kiddie Land," by
Margaret G. Hays, and "The Magical


Man of Mirth," by Elbridge H. Sabin,
though by authors of less repute, are of
delightful interest to the child whose
interests are compelled by the pictures
rather than the text.
Suggestions concerning the ideals and
aims of books are always worth heeding
when they are made by so efficient and
informed a mind as Mr. Kuhns.   His
"The Love of Books and Reading" is a
companion volume one should place on
one's shelf beside 'old Richard Bury.
The "Chauncey Giles Year Book" is a
sort of latter day "Christian Year,"
which will bring spiritual guidance and
fortitude to many readers. "A Search
after Ultimate Truth," by Aaron Martin
Crane, elaborates the essential characteristics of man, and the mutual relations of men to each other and to God.
It incontestably and triumphantly proves
that man is immortal. Two little
compilations that will be welcomed by
many are "Love, Friendship, and Good
Cheer," and "Faith, Hope, and Love,"
compiled by Grace Browne Strand. Mrs.
Burton Chance's "Mother and Daughters, A Book of Ideals for Girls," is one
that ought to link closer parent and
child during those years when the consciousness of maturity in the girl begins
to draw her existence apart from the
parent. It is an important text on a
vital relationship. The "Psychic Autobiography" of Amanda T. Jones will be,
as the late William James suggested,
of deep interest to investigators of
psychic phenomena. Its human interest will appeal to many readers.
"Under the Open Sky" is a year with
nature, its seasons, birds, flowers, hills,
and streams. The author's aim, he
declares, "is to help people who are
feeling in themselves the quietening
modern longing for contact with and
understanding of Nature in her simpler
manifestations."


MAY 2       1'"91