" THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING REVO- LUTIONARY " [To the
Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I am puzzled by two extracts which your reviewer " C. G." has made from my book, The New Spirit it? the Russian Theatre. The first, a rather long one, is, fora reason unknown to me, printed almost entirely in italics. It is related to the reviewer's assumption that everyone in the Bolshevist theatre is, according to me, actuated by the idea of " revolution as an end," that is, Bolshevist revolution. Actually the extract is my interpretation of what the sup- porters of the extreme Left section of the theatre had in mind when they began to develop that section—namely, that the theatre must be a functional one ; that the pm-War art of the theatre was dead, and sociological expression had come to birth.
The second and shorter extract which ,immediately follows is taken from the long chapter on Stanislayski's theatre, and is made to end abruptly on the word art (in italics, not mine, and guarded by four stalwart notes of exclamation). Can this be meant to show that I have contradicted myself and that Stanislayski is not concerned with revolution, Bolshevist revolution, as an end ? Reading the whole chapter, anyone may learn that, before the War, Stanislayski was primarily concerned with giving to his productions art forms. Though he sought to present a better species of play than could be found in the commercial theatre, and went to the Free Theatre of the eighteen-nineties for it, he was attracted by its literary and aesthetic merits, not by its sociological and social reform content. When he presented Chekov's studies of changing and decaying society, it was not in order to teach a moral or social lesson. It was to reproduce as faithfully as possible, according to the current theory of new realism, and by means of his system of acting and representation, the remarkable Chekovian atmosphere. After the revolution he was compelled by the demands of a new audience to put sociological content first. Thus he came to discover much sociology in his pm-War repertory which was fit for consumption by the post-revolution common folk.
Ever since I first entered Bolshevist Russia I have expressed, in books, lectures, in two or three hundred articles, the view that we cannot copy the new institutions in Russia simply because they are the outcome of circumstances which are
never likely to be repeated in this country, But there is
no harm in studying them for the good that may be in them. What I claim is that the Bolshevist theatre is the first present- day theatre to recapture the true function that the theatre must fulfil for man—namely, that of participating in the vital work of each epoch ; in other words, living for the people and time. I maintain that every theatre of every country should be organized to fulfil this function. And the sooner the theatre of this country is organized to take a vital part in the work of rebuilding the nation and of establishing permanent peace, that is being carried on, the better for [This letter has been reduced owing to pressure on our space. Our reviewer writes : " Mr. Carter's letter is further evidence that, as I endeavoured to show, the zealots of Bolshevist Russia speak a language which is almost incom- prehensible by outsiders. The reason for the four stalwart notes of exclamation' is obvious. No one except the strange creatures who speak the jargon of Continental isms' could do otherwise than smile or be amazed at any antithesis between the theatre (expressing sociological reform) and art. I am grateful for the correction as to the first extract, and I agree that some indication should have been given as to which portion was meant to be italicized, and by whom, the author or reviewer."—En. Spectator.]
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