Tolstoi Throws a Bomb into Art and Music

In these days when public art galleries, opera houses and places of amusement are thronged with the so called "common people", the iconoclastic words of Tolstoi, in his "What is Art?", appear very strange. The very human appetite for food for the imagination, for entertainment, for anything to add color and brightness to a life that might otherwise be very somber, needs constant gratification. Opera, art, good books, the stage, and fine music have an educational and reconstructive value which the great Russian thinker, and (shall we say it?) "kicker", valued all too slightly.

Nevertheless, there is something very thought provoking in a good "kick". The jar stirs up our sleeping intellects, and, for this reason, Tolstoi's opinions are most interesting. He was particularly opposed to government subsidies for opera, and, in his day in Russia, he may have had good reason for his stand. Living as close to the common people as his noble birth would permit, he affected to share their privations and champion their rights. He imagined that opera was an enemy of the people through wasting money that should be spent in alleviating their real needs. To those of us who believe that opera is worth while Count Tolstoi's views seem not only short sighted, but often ridiculous.

"For the support of art in Russia (where, for the education of the people, only a hundredth part is spent of what would be required to give every one the opportunity of instruction) to government grants millions of roubles in subsidies to academies, conservatories, and theatres. In France, twenty million francs are assigned for art, and similar grants are made in Germany and England."

"In every large town enormous building are erected for museums, academies, conservatories, dramatic schools, and for performances and concerts. Hundreds of thousands of workmen - carpenters, masons, painters, joiners, paper hangers, tailors, hairdressers, jewelers, molders, type setters - spend their whole lives in hard labor to satisfy the demands of art, so that hardly any other department of human activity, except the military, consumes so much energy as this."

Does This Art Stultify?

"Not only is enormous labor spent on this activity, but in it, as in war, the very lives of men are sacrificed. Hundreds of thousands of people devote their lives from childhood to learning to twirl their legs rapidly (dancers), or to touch notes and strings very rapidly (musicians), or to draw with paint and represent what they see (artists), or to turn every phrase inside out and find a rhyme to ever word. And these people, often very kind and clever, can capable of all sorts of useful labor, grow savage over their specialized and stupefying occupations, and become one sided and self complacent specialists, dull to all the serious phenomena of life, and skillful only at rapidly twisting their legs, their tongues, or their fingers."

"But even this stunting of human life is not the worst. I remember being once at the rehearsal of one of the most ordinary of the new operas which are produced at all the opera houses of Europe and America."

"I arrived when the first act had already commenced. To reach the auditorium I had to pass through the stage entrance. By dark entrances and passages, I was led through the vaults of an enormous building, past immense machines for changing the scenery and for illuminating; and there in the gloom and dust I saw workmen busily engaged. One of these men, pale, haggard, in a dirty blouse, and dirty, work worn hands and cramped fingers, evidently tired and out of humor, went past me, angrily scolding another man. Ascending by a dark stair, I came out on the boards behind the scenes. Amid various poles and rings and scattered scenery, decorations and curtains, stood and moved dozens, if not hundreds, of painted and dressed up men, is costumes fitting tight to their thighs and calves, and also women, as usual, as nearly nude as might be. These were all singers, or members of the chorus, or ballet dancers, awaiting their turns. My guide led me across the stage and, by means of a bridge of boards across the orchestra (in which perhaps a hundred musicians of all kinds, from kettledrum to flute and harp, were seated), to the dark pit stalls."

The Tyrannical Director

"On an elevation, between two lamps with reflectors, and in an arm chair placed before a music stand, sat the director of the musical part, baton in hand, managing the orchestra and singers, and, in general, the production of the whole opera."

"The performance had already commenced, and on the stage a procession of Indians who had brought home a bride was being presented. Besides men and women in costume, two other men in ordinary clothes bustled and ran about on the stage; one was the director of the dramatic part, and the other, who stepped about in soft shoes and ran from place to place with unusual agility, was the dancing master, whose salary per month exceeded what ten laborers earn in a year."

"Home I Bring the Bride"

"These three directors arranged the singing, the orchestra, and the procession. The procession, as usual, was enacted by couples, with tinfoil halberds on their shoulders. They all came from one place, and walked round and round again, and then stopped. The procession took a long time to arrange; first the Indians with halberds came on too late; then too soon; then at the right time, but crowded together at the exit; then they did not crowd, but arranged themselves badly at the sides of the stage; and each time the whole performance was stopped and recommenced from the beginning. The procession was introduced by a recitative, delivered by a man dressed up like some variety of Turk, who, opening his mouth in a curious way, sang, 'Home I Bring the Bride'. He sings and waves his arm (which of course is bare) from under his mantle. The procession commences, but here the French horn, in the accompaniment of the recitative, does something wrong; and the director, with a shudder as if some catastrophe had occurred, raps with his stick on the stand. All is stopped, and the director, turning to the orchestra, attacks the French horn, scolding him in the rudest terms, as cabmen abuse each other, for taking the wrong note. And again the whole thing recommences. The Indians with their halberds again come on treading softly in their extraordinary boots; again the singer sings, 'Home I bring the bride'. But here the pairs get too close together. More raps with the stick, more scolding, and a recommencement. Again, 'Home I bring the bride', again the same gesticulation with the bare arm from under the mantle, and again the couples, treading softly with halberds on their shoulders, some with sad and serious faces, some talking and smiling, arrange themselves in a circle and begin to sing. All seems to be going well, but again the stick raps, and the director, in a distressed and angry voice, begins to scold the men and women of the chorus. It appears that when singing they had omitted to raise their hands from time to time in sign of animation. 'Are you all dead, or what? Cows that you are! Are you corpses, that you can't move?' Again they recommence, 'Home I bring the bride' and again, with sorrowful faces, the chorus women sing, first one and then another of them raising their hands. But two chorus girls speak to each other, again a more vehement rapping with the stick. 'Have you come here to talk? Can't you gossip at home? You there in red breeches, come nearer. Look toward me! Recommence!' Again, 'Home I bring the bride'. And so it goes on for one, two, three hours."

"The whole of such a rehearsal lasts six hours on end. Raps with the stick, repetitions, placings, corrections of the singers, or the orchestra, of the procession, of the dancers, all seasoned with angry scolding. I heard the words, 'asses', 'fools', 'idiots', 'swine', addressed to the musicians and singers at least forty times in the course of one hour. And the unhappy individual to whom the abuse is addressed - flautist, horn blower, or singer - physically and mentally demoralized, does not reply, and does what is demanded of him."

"That there never were, or could be, such Indians, and that they were not only unlike Indians, but that what they were doing was unlike anything on earth except other operas, was beyond all manner of doubt; that people do not converse in such a way as recitative, and do not place themselves at fixed distances, in a quartet, waving their arms to express their emotions; that nowhere, except in theaters, do people walk about in such a manner, in pairs, with tinfoil halberds and in slippers; that no one every gets angry is such a way, or laughs in such a way, or cries in such a way; and that no one on earth can be moved by such performances; all this is beyond the possibility of doubt."

Is This a Useless Tax?

"For the production of every ballet, circus, opera, operetta, exhibition, picture, concert, or printed book, the intense and unwilling labor of thousands and thousands of people is needed at what is often harmful and humiliating work. It were well if artists made all they require for themselves, but, as it is, they all need the help of workmen, not only to produce art, but also for their own usually luxurious maintenance. And, in one way or other, they get it; either through payments from rich people, or through subsidies given by government (in Russia, for instance, in grants of millions of roubles to theaters, conservatories, and academies). This money is collected from the people, some of whom have to sell their only cow to pay the tax, and who never get those aesthetic pleasures which art gives."