_[The crowd continues to pour in, filling the entire stage. Gaping mouths and round, wide-open eyes are seen everywhere. Shrill shrieks are uttered by the crazed epileptics. A momentary outcry is heard:_ "Somebody crushed!" _Tony's laughter dies away somewhere. The triumphant hymn rises, spreads, pa.s.ses into a t.i.tanic roar that drowns every other sound. The bells continue to ring._

CROWD _(shouting at their utmost power)_

"Christ is risen from the dead. He has conquered death with death and given life to those lain in their graves. Christ is risen--"

CURTAIN

THE LIFE OF MAN

(ZHIZN CHELOVIEKA)

A PLAY IN FIVE SCENES WITH A PROLOGUE

1906

TO THE BRIGHT MEMORY OF MY FRIEND, MY WIFE

I DEDICATE THIS COMPOSITION

THE LAST

ON WHICH WE WORKED TOGETHER

PERSONS

Someone in Gray called He

Man

His Wife

Man's Father Relatives Neighbors Friends Enemies Guests

Servants

Musicians

Physicians

A Bartender

Drunkards

Old Women

PROLOGUE--_Someone in Gray called He, speaking of the Life of Man_

SCENE I--_The Birth of Man and the Mother's Travail_

SCENE II--_Love and Poverty_

SCENE III--_Wealth. Man's Ball_

SCENE IV--_Man's Misfortune_

SCENE V--_The Death of Man_

THE LIFE OF MAN

PROLOGUE

SOMEONE IN GRAY CALLED HE, SPEAKING OF THE LIFE OF MAN

_A large, rectangular s.p.a.ce resembling a room without doors or windows and quite empty. Everything is gray, monocolored, drab--the watts gray, and the ceiling, and the floor. A feeble, even light enters from some invisible source. It too is gray, monotonous, spectral, producing neither lights nor shadows.

Someone in Gray moves noiselessly away from the wall, close against which He has been standing. He wears a broad, gray, formless smock, vaguely outlining the contours of His body; and a hat of the same gray throws the upper part of His face into heavy shadow. His eyes are invisible. All that is seen are His cheekbones, His nose, and His chin, which is ma.s.sive, heavy, and blunt, as if hewn out of rock. His lips are pressed tight together. Raising His head slightly, He begins to speak in a firm, cold, unemotional, unimpa.s.sioned voice, like a reader hired by the hour reading the Book of Fate with brutal indifference._

SOMEONE IN GRAY

Look and listen, you who have come here to laugh and be amused. There will pa.s.s before you the whole life of Man, from his dark beginning to his dark ending. Previously non-existant, mysteriously hidden in the infiniteness of time, neither feeling nor thinking and known to no one, he will mysteriously break through the prison of non-being and with a cry announce the beginning of his brief life. In the night of non-existence a light will go up, kindled by an unseen hand. It is the life of Man. Behold the flame--it is the life of Man.

Being born, he will take the form and the name of Man, and in all things will become like other men already living. And their hard lot will be his lot, and his hard lot will be the lot of all human beings.

Inexorably impelled by time, he will, with inavertible necessity, pa.s.s through all the stages of human life, from the bottom to the top, from the top to the bottom. Limited in vision, he will never see the next step which his unsteady foot, poised in the air, is in the very act of taking. Limited in knowledge, he will never know what the coming day will bring, or the coming hour, or the coming minute. In his unseeing blindness, troubled by premonitions, agitated by hope and fear, he will submissively complete the iron-traced circle foreordained.

Behold him a happy youth. See how brightly the candle burns. From boundless stretches of s.p.a.ce the icy wind blows, circling, careering, and tossing the flame. In vain. Bright and clear the candle burns. Yet the wax is dwindling, consumed by the fire. Yet the wax is dwindling.

Behold him a happy husband and father. But see how strangely dim and faint the candle burns, as if the yellowing flame were wrinkling, as if it were shivering with cold and were creeping into concealment. The wax is melting, consumed by the fire. The wax is melting.

Behold him, an old man, ill and feeble. The stages of life are already ended. In their stead nothing but a black void. Yet he drags on with palsied limbs. The flame, now turned blue, bends to the ground and crawls along, trembling and falling, trembling and falling. Then it goes out quietly.

Thus Man will die. Coming from the night, he will return to the night and go out, leaving no trace behind. He will pa.s.s into the infinity of time, neither thinking nor feeling, and known to no one. And I, whom all call He, shall remain the faithful companion of Man throughout his life, on all his pathways. Unseen by him, I shall be constantly at hand when he wakes and when he sleeps, when he prays and when he curses. In his hours of joy, when his spirit, free and bold, rises aloft; in his hours of grief and despair, when his soul clouds over with mortal pain and sorrow, and the blood congeals in his heart; in the hours of victory and defeat; in the hours of great strife with the immutable, I shall be with him--I shall be with him.

And you who have come here to be amused, you who are consecrated to death, look and listen. There will pa.s.s before you, like a distant phantom echo, the fleet-moving life of Man with its sorrows and its joys.