Kommersant, January 25, 2008

Failure of one success

"Martin Eden" at the RAMT

The premiere of the play "Martin Eden" was played at the Russian Youth Theater (RAMT). Director Andrei Vasiliev presented his stage version of Jack London's novel to the audience. By MARINA SHIMADINA.

A few decades ago, "Martin Eden" was one of the favorite books of the most reading country in the world. A strong and noble hero, striving through the thorns of his wretched position to the stars of high literature, invariably aroused the sympathy of readers who grew up under the slogan "whoever wants, he will achieve", excited young souls with a craving for beauty and became a role model. Unless the sad end of the hero, impeccable in all respects, caused bewilderment - our people do not do that. After perestroika, the minds of former Soviet citizens were occupied with completely different literature, and Jack London with his brutal sailors and gold prospectors was forgotten. But not all. The artistic director of the Youth Theater Alexei Borodin once admitted that he had long dreamed of seeing Martin Eden in the RAMT's repertoire - an ideal romance of formation, very instructive for the theater's young audience.

Andrey Vasiliev, whom Moscow theater-goers used to know as an actor, undertook to realize this dream. In Jack London's autobiographical novel, the director discerned a topic that previously naturally faded into the background in the perception of readers, but now has become especially relevant. "In our country, as it used to be in America, the main god is success. Not even money, but success. Everyone prays to him, but mostly young people," says the director, and one cannot but agree with him. The play even has a subtitle "Success Story". But this declared and rather promising topic remains annoyingly undisclosed.

For most of the stage time, the director tells about Martin Eden's difficult path to fame, about his relationship with Ruth, depicts life's adversities and troubles, plunges the audience into the hero's childhood memories, but when it comes to the success that happened, which, in fact, they were going to tell the audience , the author of the play has nothing to say. Brushed and dressed in a decent suit, Martin Eden just sits on the stage and delivers a long monologue about vile glory, in between times fighting off the caresses of Ruth who returned to him. And when he finally gets up and jumps from the last row down, behind the stage, viewers who do not know the plot may not even guess that this hefty fellow committed suicide.

This is not to say that the performance was not invented at all. There are some spectacular solutions in it: for example, the underworld laundry, in which Martin and his friend, like devils, all plow in the smoke under the hard rock that has come from nowhere, or a bell, in the role of which is a bag full of checks. For whom he calls, there is no doubt, but the appropriateness of this or that artistic technique remains in question. These findings seem random, as if invented for different performances and do not want to add up to a single image. With one exception. When Martin Eden first steps onto the parquet floor of the Morse house living room, he slips out of habit, frantically trying not to drop himself in front of a girl from another circle, both literally and figuratively. After a reliable support in this slippery situation, books will serve him: volumes scattered around the stage, on which the hero will carefully tread, as if on bumps in a swamp, in his opinion - the only way to the heart of his beloved (although she is actually much more concerned about his powerful muscles and rough hands). When Martin Eden achieves recognition, they seem to change places: his new patent leather shoes, coupled with a tight wallet, allow him to take a stable position, while the ground of the rejected Ruth leaves from under his feet.

As for the staging itself, also made by Andrei Vasiliev, one can also argue about the choice of certain scenes. The author minimized the number of characters, leaving, in addition to the Morse family, only the tramp Joe (Vitaly Timashkov), who plays here the role of carpet - it is necessary for someone to sometimes make the audience laugh, and the sworn children's enemy-friend Martin Butter Rozha (Sergei Pechenkin), who is in the play becomes something of the hero's alter ego. In order not to leave the performer of the main role alone with a very voluminous material, the director breaks up his internal monologues for two. Moreover, Martin's double represents just his rationalistic, pragmatic beginning, constantly returning the hero hovering in love dreams from heaven to earth.

The new performance at the Youth Theater is being played in a small enclosure set up right on the stage. A small square podium is surrounded on three sides by spectator chairs, on the first rows of which the actors now and then sit down. That is, the story of Martin Eden's rise and fall is played out at arm's length. And in such conditions, actors who are not fenced off from the audience by the line of the footlights usually require a much greater measure of naturalness. Young artists of RAMT have problems with this. This is especially true of Evgenia Beloborodova, who plays Ruth. For some reason, the actress is trying to present her heroine as a close-up dressed up doll and replays to such an extent that it is impossible to imagine how such an extraordinary person like Martin Eden could seriously love this dummy. Appointing the young Roman Stepensky for the main role, the director, in general, did not lose: a suitable texture, natural charm and acting temperament allow us to imagine a great future for his hero, but this Martin Eden has yet to prove his professional competence.

Vremya Novostei, January 25, 2008

Dina Goder

Revanchist dreams

"Martin Eden" was staged at the Youth Theater

The Martin Eden Youth Theater production is subtitled Success Story. This is how glossy magazines call columns that tell stories about millionaires and famous brands. The hero of Jack London's semi-autobiographical novel, a young sailor who became a famous writer, but overstrained, was neither one nor the other, but why the director and author of the stage production Andrei Vasiliev gave the play such a subtitle is clear.

The choice of the name itself is very remarkable, and it seems especially accurate for the Youth Theater, where the main director Alexei Borodin is very attentive to the poster, as if compiling a library of books necessary for a teenager. Performances here are better and worse, but the names are rarely missed. In addition, London is rare in the theater, and I must confess that I don’t remember any other production of Martin Eden, except perhaps the radio play by Anatoly Efros, which once completely mesmerized me, thirty years ago. The role of the author in it was read by Efros himself, and Martin was Vladimir Vysotsky, and his voice, rumbling at the bottom, with an incredible wealth of overtones, gave a simultaneous feeling of power, depth and complexity, without which this hero is not.

Andrei Vasiliev explains his choice in the following way: “In our country, as once in America, the main god is success. Not even money, but success. Everyone prays to him, but mostly young people ». The director claims that for him the main idea of \u200b\u200bthe performance is the price of success. But it turned out differently.

In "Martin Eden" mostly young actors play. All of them have already appeared on the stage of RAMT in several roles, some of them played vividly and charmingly in the light and sweet children's production of "Fairy Tales Just in Case" But you can't recognize them here. The performance from the very beginning turned out to be painful, at the same time gloomy and loud, as if this whole story of transformation - the unbearable tension of the strength of the personality and talent of the young savage who made himself a great writer - happened not under the influence of love, but out of envy.

Martin Eden, played by Roman Stepenskiy, at first diligently portrays the seaman's bearish clumsiness on the floor, hobbled up and down, spreading his arms to maintain balance and falling incessantly, as if he were a clown in a circus. And then inspiration plays, jabbing furiously at the typewriter with two fingers and ruffling his hair. If there is anything that connects the hero and the actor described by London, then perhaps the heroic build and clear look, perhaps even too simple-minded. The hero is followed by his "inner voice", at other moments of the performance it turns out to be an enemy-friend of childhood, nicknamed the Butter Mouth (Sergei Pechonkin). He tells everything that Martin thinks, addressing him and as if trying to convince him of this. But the main trouble happened with the other heroes of the novel. Especially with the gentle, delicate Ruth, who, performed by pretty Evgenia Beloborodova, looks not just a bitchy fool, but also a vulgar, vulgar creature, like her whole family, by the way. She, like a schoolgirl, endlessly squeals and pouts and, like a gossip girl, chatters about everything that, in London, only flashed through her head. (Having barely met Martin, Ruth animatedly discusses him with her mother: “Did you notice: he has the lips of a fighter and a lover?”)

Yes, the play speaks of the price of success, but not at all in the sense in which one would think, knowing the novel. In an unexpected way, he presents the look of a loser dreaming of revenge: “Look how they were all nasty, stupid, vulgar, how they did not understand me!”, “Look what I have achieved!”. And finally: "Look how I mock them now!" Martin meets the pathetic father Ruth (Valery Kislenko), who has come to invite the renowned writer to dinner, with an icy tone of insulted virtue, and his "inner voice", running up, rips off Mr. Morse's chest some shiny things that look like medals on his uniform, and almost pushes the elderly person out with your breath. He also drags Ruth, who came for reconciliation, triumphantly, except perhaps by the hair. All this looks like a triumph of inescapable heavy complexes in the spirit of: “Come running ?! Where have you been before ?! " And even the finale, where the hero, having dissuaded his due, resolutely walks through the rows of spectators (the audience is sitting on the stage) and jumps into the hall, nothing changes. Those who have not read the novel probably do not realize that Martin drowned himself in this way. And those who read, perceived this death as another reason to satisfy vain complexes: "When I die, then you will regret it!"

Results, January 28, 2008

Maria Sedykh

Good fellows a lesson

The RAMT hosted the premiere of "Martin Eden" by Jack London

Jack London is usually read in adolescence. Rather, it seemed to me, they read: why the hell to the new pragmatists, this romantic blown by the winds of all seas, fiercely hating the insipid bourgeois values \u200b\u200band despising the very notorious American dream that captured the minds and hearts of our not only young contemporaries. But no. It is worth looking into Internet blogs to make sure the smoking room is alive. And it was his Martin Eden. Poems are dedicated to him, they are quoted, and most importantly, they are included in their amateur lists of compulsory reading. Perhaps this late London novel is alive, where the hymn to the strength of the spirit ends tragically and defeat from victory is no longer easy to distinguish? In any case, it turned out that the Youth Theater's appeal to "Martin Eden" is not at all a purely educational action, but an opportunity to conduct a completely relevant dialogue.

Unlike me, the director of the play, Andrei Vasiliev, had no doubt about it. For him, the main theme of the production is success, "a new God for young people who are busy with one thing today - they are making a career." I will say right away that the performance was instructive, having lost the dramatic tension by the finale. The main character, violating the author's will, was not even allowed to perish, sending him somewhere in the light, or in the gloomy distance.

It all began charmingly. The clumsy bear Martin, represented by the artist Roman Stepensky, immediately falls in love with not only the decent antics Ruth (Yevgeny Beloborodov), but also the audience. It is impossible not to sympathize with him and not to root for him. And the audience, in a sense, is assigned the role of fans, because it is seated around the ring, in which the action unfolds. Artist Viktor Shilkrot is laconic and witty. His scenography is not illustrative, but dramatic (the school of Oleg Sheintsis). There is a romantic sadness in it: of all the marine paraphernalia on the stage there is only a shabby wooden gangway, only on it Eden feels firm. There is also humor: when an impoverished Eden selflessly decides to become a "laundress", the black curtain of the backdrop from the floor to the grate is suddenly opened, filled with white bags of linen, which cannot be washed in a lifetime. This is how the stage designer dramatizes long pages of prose in moments.

But back to the ring, on which the future famous writer glides, every now and then making ridiculous dizzying somersaults. What is ice dancing! The polished parquet floor of the respectable house of Ruth is fraught with more dangers for him than a storm on the high seas. It is not hard to guess that there will come a moment of triumph for Martin, when he will easily and contemptuously walk across this floor in lacquered boots. It will already be a luxurious hotel, where the betrayed bride humiliatedly rushes in ... and slides, losing both face and balance. The director succeeded in rhyme. If we remember the idea, then, perhaps, the motive of "the price of success" sounds thinner than others, a lyrical rebuke to those who, putting off the joys of life, having gained fame and prosperity, are no longer able to enjoy them. Everything else is played head-on.

It is interesting that the first performer of the role of Martin Eden was Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky. Like many of his contemporaries, fascinated by Jack London, in 1919 he wrote the script himself and made a film with the prosaic and edifying title "Born Not for Money". His hero's name was Ivan Nov, and the action was transferred to Russia. The film had an excellent rating - it remained at the box office for six years. True, Mayakovsky reproached the author for the "whiny" ending and gave in to optimism, not fully feeling the similarity of fate. The film is forgotten, but the lines from the poem "A Cloud in Pants" are separated by commas: "Remember? / You said: /" Jack London, / money, / love, / passion ... "As a matter of fact, what is not a synopsis for modern TV series with Roman Stepensky in the title role.

Culture, 14 February 2008

Irina Alpatova

The cult of cash

"Martin Eden". RAMT

A certain tendency in the theater is sometimes valuable in itself and is not directly related to the success or failure of a particular production. Take RAMT, for many years led by Alexei Borodin. How interesting, original and sometimes unique is the repertoire of this theater. But the most important thing is that it is almost an anthology of the very literature that the young generation of viewers must certainly master. Including high classics, and works that are almost forgotten, but win-win by young people.

The premiere of the play "Martin Eden" based on the work of the same name by Jack London fits perfectly into this trend. However, it fits in from the point of view of the repertoire choice and the most curious director's intentions, which, alas, have not been fully realized. But what silence stands in the hall, with what interest and sympathy the young viewers are watching the plot twists and turns of the "success story" of a young and impoverished sailor who turned the fate of a famous and wealthy writer, later ruthlessly crushed by this success. During his own romantic youth, Jack London's book had a chance to read and reread endlessly. And what a strong impression left from the radio performance of Anatoly Efros with Vladimir Vysotsky in the title role! Then, however, the prosaic everyday situations and already their own struggle for a place in the sun "Martin Eden" strongly pressed, right up to the complete eviction from the head. Today, given the inevitable touch of adult cynicism, this story is perceived with a little irony. But young people, in the absence of these age costs, experience everything sincerely and seriously. For which, and thanks to the theater in the first place.

This "thank you", however, does not remove many of the problems associated with the performance. Unfortunately, problems can be guessed in a wide variety of areas - in staging, directing, acting. One person undertook the staging and staging - Andrei Vasiliev, a former actor, practically unknown to the metropolitan public as a director. It is clear that for a chamber performance (and this is exactly what happened in the RAMT) from the voluminous and populous work of Jack London, it was necessary to isolate the necessary minimum, not obscuring the content, but concentrating it. For this, of course, a dominant, form-building idea was needed. Vasiliev seems to have found it, having designated it in the genre subtitle of the play: "a success story." But he proved the proposed theorem only half: Martin Eden's path to the heights of success is shown quite clearly and in detail. What happened then, why the price for this success was the hero's voluntarily surrendered life is completely incomprehensible from the performance. Everything is said in a straightforward, hastily, quick twister, as if time is running out and the performance must be finished immediately.

When it comes to a prose work at the theater, there are also many difficulties. You can make a banal dramatization, or you can try to translate prose into the language of the stage. And here, by the way, Andrei Vasiliev achieved a lot. Long monologues that tire the audience certainly do happen, but not often. More often the director tries to synthesize the text with a visually effective range, with any effects, which only benefits the performance.

Here, the concept of scenographic design, invented by director Andrei Vasiliev and artist Viktor Shilkrot, can also be attributed to good luck. There is no strained connection of the plot to the present day, as there is no reconstruction of the place and time prescribed by Jack London. On the other hand, there is a cleverly invented theatrical convention that not only creates such a desired image of the performance, but also as if presents a "protocol of intentions" for the director and artist: how, in what emotional register, should this story be played out today.

The performance takes place right on the Big Stage of the RAMT. In the center there is a square platform, which at the same time resembles a boxing ring and, despite its different shape, a circus arena. And it is immediately clear that it will be a story-fight and at the same time a performance. With a wave of the actor's hand, light flashes and music explodes. Martin Eden's (Roman Stepensky) boots glide across the brilliant "parquet" of the ring, forcing the hero to lose his balance and fall to the ground. This wonderful symbol would work much more strongly if it was repeated once or twice. But for the 25th time, you only think about the circus, which pulls the blanket over itself. From the category of "carpet" and a certain vagabond Joe (Vitaly Timashkov), now and then in different guises encountered on Eden's path and sometimes comic inappropriately, in relation to the general idea, is by no means amusing.

Much here is functional and symbolic at the same time. A huge cabinet is approaching Eden, spewing books. The laundry, where the hero happened to work, is represented by a hatch into the underworld, from where puffs of smoke come out. Somewhere in the background, massive doors slide open, revealing bales of dirty linen or hundreds of freshly printed books. Such an entourage in itself provokes not to narrative writing of everyday life, but to playful forms, when the story is not told, but it is played out. At a certain distance from the events that happened in reality, with the current attitude towards them. And this sometimes turns out great: in the already mentioned sliding on the parquet, and in the "laundry" scenes, and in some duets between Martin Eden and Ruth (Evgeny Beloborodov), and in episodes with Butter Horn (Sergei Pechenkin), appearing here in an ancient role "companion" of the protagonist. And the sack, full of money and invitations, is swinging like a bell, you know who is calling.

But the behavior of many actors sometimes lacks logic. They, in the absence of clearly built lines of their existence, sometimes fall into false pathos or try to explain something tediously. The title character performed by R. Stepensky, however, looks, lives and presents quite well, taking both a suitable texture and temperament. But what attracted him to poor Ruth - Beloborodova with the "tyuz" habits of a 13-year-old schoolgirl - is not clear. Here you will not see any aristocracy prescribed by London, or intelligence, or elementary good manners. And even the final "loss of the ground underfoot" proposed to her by the director, with slips and falls on the parquet, as it was at the beginning with Eden himself, looks illiterate.

Martin Eden himself in this performance is practically devoid of final reflections, insights and assessments of the dual outcome of his fate. Wealth here suddenly falls on him, literally like snow on his head: multi-colored pieces of paper are flying from the ceiling, scattering throughout the hall. And, too, overnight, he starts a strange monologue here on the topic "lost life." He was never allowed to experience success, compare his feelings and states, or draw any conclusions. Having voiced the prescribed text and roughly pushing Ruth away, Eden - Stepensky jumps from the stage into the darkness of the auditorium. Not everyone even understands what actually happened. But what topic for discussion in a long dressing line ...

However, this newborn performance has not yet had time to ossify in its forms, it is chaotic, sometimes inconsistent. But all this means only that he is still capable of moving somewhere, developing and looking for logic that is sometimes lost. And it will be very insulting if he does not find it.

"Lord! I'll die for you at least now! At least now" (c)

"Finished singing - I will not touch the strings.
Songs freeze quickly
So the sparks go out in the wind.
Finished singing - I will not touch the strings.
Sang once in the clean morning -
The blackbird repeated with a merry whistle.
I became dumb, tired starling.
There are no songs in my throat
The time for singing was over.
Finished singing - I will not touch the strings. "(C)

Jack London's Martin Eden is truly a mesmerizing piece. Excites with its originality and its hopelessness. Martin is an attractive young man, whom nature has endowed with a talent for writing, and throughout the entire work he is chasing the recognition, which he strives for because of his beloved bourgeoisie, Ruth. The strange thing is, as soon as Ruth leaves him, hungry, poor and unnecessary to anyone - glory comes to him. He receives huge royalties, countless proposals from editorial offices are poured on him, and everyone who once turned up his nose at him invites him to dine. And something breaks in Martin at the moment when Ruth betrays him, when he realizes that she no longer believes in him, does not believe in their love, and he notices that love is "so primitive and vulgar that it must feed on external success. and crowd recognition. " He achieves success and, it would seem, if she returned to him now, they could be together, but Martin is above all this, he cannot understand her betrayal, although he forgives, he cannot understand. Here I cite, in my opinion, the most important monologue in the work, which clearly makes it clear his feelings and explains his behavior:

“Why didn't you decide on this earlier?” He asked sharply. When I didn’t have a job? When did I starve? When I was the one that is now - as a person, as an artist, the same Martin Eden? whom I have been fighting for many days - this not only concerns you, but everyone and everyone. You see, I have not changed, although they suddenly began to appreciate me very highly and have to remind myself all the time that I am the same. The same flesh I have on the bones, the same fingers and toes. I am the same. I have not become stronger or more virtuous. And my head is still the same. I have not thought of a single new generalization either in literature or in philosophy. As a person, I am worth exactly the same amount as I was when no one needed me. And now why they suddenly needed me, that’s incomprehensible. By myself, they probably don’t need me, because I’m still the same as before, when they didn’t need me. So they need me because of something else, because of something that is outside of me, because it’s not me! Tell you what the salt is? chil recognition. But recognition is not me at all. It dwells in the minds of others. And everyone needs me because of the money that I have earned and earn. But the money is not me either. They are in banks and in the pockets of the first comer. So is that why you need me now - because of the recognition and money? "

And on her proposal to be together again, he says: “Only now I realized how sick I am. Something left me. I was never afraid of life, but I never thought that I could be fed up with it. I'm fed up and don't want anything else. If I could want something, I would now wish you. "
Having received a blow from one person, it may well console another, because the world cannot be so cruel. He has such a man, Lizzie, a simple girl, very attractive, in love with him, but he rejects her too, he says that he could make her happy, but instead of himself offers only money. Martin, having earned so much money, has no idea at all how to dispose of it; he no longer goes to the grocery store, preferring to eat in restaurants, and in general, he is a welcome guest at every event and may well not spend a cent on his food. For what I appreciated Martin, because he helps those people who believed in him to the end, who were with him when he was hungry and not recognized by anyone, to rise. He buys a laundry for his friend who is a tramp, buys a house for the Portuguese he lived with, and no true friend is left without Martin's generosity. But from this, alas, he does not feel either better or more needed.
Martin's trouble is that, having survived one shock, he was never able to get up and since then he has not written any more works, continuing to publish long-written ones, and profited from this. He remained the same Martin, but with a huge fortune, which he did not need, because at the moment when he found out that he would be published, Ruth was not there. If she had been there, if she had not left him, had not told him that he was a disgrace to her and her family, he would not have gone down so easily.
Martin Eden got me thinking, how many people in the world who are abandoned, left to enjoy their millions alone? Yes, they are recognized, but does everyone know how to forgive in our time? And why, in fact, do we worship money and everything connected with it so much? Money is just a means; it is not meant to buy either love or friends. And even if it buys you love or a friend, it will only ghostly remind them ...

Martin picked up a few of his typed stories, hesitated, then added Voices of the Sea to them. It was June, and by the end of the day, they rode their bicycles towards the hills. This is the second time he was alone with her outside the house, and as they rode amid the fragrant warmth, swept by the fresh cool breath of the sea breeze, Martin felt with his whole being how beautiful, how well the world is and how wonderful it is to live in the world and love. They left their bicycles by the side of the road and climbed the round, brown top of the hill, where the sun-scorched grasses breathed the ripe dry sweetness and contentment of the hay season.

- This herb has done its job, - Martin said when they sat down. Ruth is on his jacket and he's sprawled right on the ground. He breathed in the sweet spirit of the reddish grass not only with his lungs, but also with his thoughts, instantly transferring from the particular to the general. “I did what I existed for,” he continued, tenderly stroking the dry blades of grass. - Dull winter showers only spurred her striving for the goal, she withstood the fierce spring, blossomed, lured insects and bees, scattered seeds, courageously. I fulfilled my duty to myself and the world and ...

“Why do you always look at everything so intolerably, practically?” Interrupted Ruth.

- Probably because I study evolution. To tell you the truth, my eyes just opened.

- But it seems to me that this practicality prevents you from seeing beauty, you ruin it, like children who catch butterflies and at the same time erase bright pollen from wonderful wings.

Martin shook his head.

- Beauty is full of meaning, and this I did not know before. I just perceived beauty in itself, as if it exists just like that, without any meaning. I did not understand anything about beauty. And now I understand, or rather, I am just beginning to understand. I understand what it is, grass, I understand all the hidden alchemy of the sun, rain, earth, thanks to which it became grass, and from this it is now, in my opinion, even more beautiful. Indeed, in the fate of every blade of grass there is romance and even extraordinary adventures. The very thought excites the imagination. When I think about the play of energy and matter, about their amazing martial arts, I feel ready to write an epic poem about a blade of grass.

“How well you speak!” Ruth said absently, and he noticed that she was looking at him searchingly.

He was embarrassed under this gaze, confused, blushed deeply.

“I hope I… I’m learning to speak a little,” he stammered. - There are so many things in me that I want to say. But it's all so huge. I can't find words, I can't express what's inside. Sometimes it seems to me that the whole world, all life, everything in the world has settled in me and demands: be our voice. I feel, oh, I don't know how to explain ... I feel how huge it is and when I start talking, babble comes out. How difficult it is to convey a feeling, a feeling like that. in words, on paper. or aloud, so that the one who reads or listens will feel or feel the same as you. This is a great challenge. So I bury my face in the grass, inhale its smell, and it thrills me, awakens thousands of thoughts and images. I breathed in the breath of the universe itself, and I can understand songs and laughter, accomplishment and suffering, struggle and death; and pictures are born in the brain, they were born, I don't know how, from the breath of the grass, and I would be glad to tell you, the world about them. But where am I? I am tongue-tied. Now I tried to make you understand how the smell of grass affects me, and failed. Only a faint, awkward hint of my thoughts and feelings came out. In my opinion, I just get miserable gibberish. And the unspoken suffocates me. Unthinkable! He threw up his hands in despair. - You can't explain it! No words can convey it!

“But you do speak really well,” Ruth repeated urgently. “Just think how you have progressed in the short time that we know each other. Mr. Butler is an outstanding speaker. During the campaign, he is always asked to give speeches. And the other day at dinner you spoke just as well. He's just more reserved. You are too excited, but gradually learn to control yourself. You will still be an excellent speaker. You will go far ... if you like. You are good at it. I’m sure you can lead people, and whatever you do, you’ll succeed as you succeed in literacy. You would make an excellent lawyer. You could shine in the political arena. Nothing prevents you from achieving the same remarkable success that Mr. Butler has achieved. And you will do without indigestion, ”she added with a smile.

So they talked. Ruth, with her usual gentle persistence, again and again repeated that Martin needed a serious education, that Latin provides invaluable advantages, this is one of the foundations for entering any field. She painted her ideal of a successful person, and it was a fairly accurate portrait of her father, with some lines and shades borrowed from Mr. Butler. Martin listened eagerly, all turned into hearing, he lay on his back and, lifting his head, happily caught every movement of her lips when she spoke. But he remained deaf to her words. The pictures that she drew did not attract him at all, he felt the dull pain of disappointment and even a burning love longing. She never once mentioned his writing, and the forgotten manuscripts that she had taken with them lay on the ground.

Finally, when both were silent, Martin looked at the sun, estimated whether it was still high in the sky, and picking up the manuscripts, thereby reminded them of them. “I completely forgot,” Ruth said hastily. - And I so want to listen.

Martin began to read the story, he flattered himself with the hope that this was one of his best. The story was called "The Wine of Life", this wine intoxicated him when he wrote, - intoxicated even now, while reading. There was some kind of magic in the very idea of \u200b\u200bthe story, and Martin also blossomed it with the magic of words and intonations. The old fire, the old passion with which he wrote then flashed again, took possession of him, caught him, and he was blind and deaf to all flaws. I felt differently. Ruth. The well-trained ear could distinguish between weakness and exaggeration, the excessive arrogance of a beginner and instantly caught every failure, every violation of the rhythm of the phrase. Ruth noticed the intonation of the story, perhaps, only where the author expressed himself too pompously, and then she was unpleasantly struck by the obvious amateurism. Such was her final judgment: the story was amateurish, but she did not tell Martin this. When he finished reading, she only noted minor flaws and said that she liked the story.

“… Waddling, legs wide apart, as if the floor beneath him was falling and rising on the sea wave, he followed his companion. The huge rooms seemed to be too cramped for his sweeping gait - he was always afraid to kick his shoulder out the door or brush some trinket from the fireplace. He maneuvered between various objects, exaggerating the danger that existed more in his imagination. Six people could pass freely between the piano and the table heaped with books, but he dared to do this only with a sinking heart. His heavy arms dangled helplessly, he didn't know what to do with them. And when suddenly he clearly imagined that he was about to touch the books on the table, he, like a frightened horse, pulled aside and almost knocked over the stool at the piano. He looked at his confident paced companion and for the first time in his life thought about how awkward his own gait and how it differs from the gait of other people. For a moment he was seared with shame at the thought ... "

A week has passed since the day Martin met Ruth, and he still did not dare to go to her. Sometimes he was quite ready to make up his mind, but every time doubts prevailed. He did not know after what time it would be appropriate to repeat the visit, and there was no one who could tell him this, and he was afraid of making an irreparable mistake. He moved away from all his former comrades and broke with his old habits, but he had no new friends, and he had only reading. He read so much that ordinary human eyes would not have withstood such a load for a long time. But he had hardy eyes and a strong, hardy body. In addition, until now, he lived away from abstract bookish thoughts, and his brain was an untouched virgin land, fertile soil for sowing. He was not tired of the sciences and was now grasping with a stranglehold on book wisdom.

By the end of the week it seemed to Martin that he had lived for centuries - so far was his former life and his former attitude to the world. But he was always hampered by a lack of preparation. He took up books that required many years of special study. Today he read books on ancient, tomorrow on new philosophy, so that a constant confusion of ideas reigned in his head. It was the same with economic doctrines. On the same shelf in the library, he found Karl Marx, Ricardo, Adam Smith and Mill, and the formulas of one that he did not understand refuted the claims of the other. He was completely confused and still wanted to know everything, at the same time being carried away by the economy, and industry, and politics. One day, passing through City Hall Park, he saw a crowd of five or six people, who were apparently engaged in some heated debate. He came closer and for the first time he heard the language of the folk philosophers, still unfamiliar to him. One was a vagabond, the other was a trade union agitator, the third was a university student, and the rest were just discussion-loving workers. For the first time he heard about anarchism, socialism, about a single tax, he learned that there are various, hostile to each other, systems of social philosophy. He heard hundreds of completely new terms for him from such fields of science that have not yet entered his meager use of information. As a result, he could not follow the development of the dispute and only intuitively guessed the ideas hidden in these strange words. Among the debaters there was a black-eyed footman from a restaurant - a theosophist, a member of the baker's trade union - an agnostic, some old man who defeated everyone with his amazing philosophy based on the assertion that everything is just, and another old man who talked at length about space, about the atom-father and about the atom-mother.

Martin Eden's head was swollen from all this reasoning, and he hurried to the library to look at the meaning of a dozen words that were engraved in his memory. Leaving the library, he carried under his arm four thick volumes of Madame Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, Progress and Poverty, The Quintessence of Socialism, and The War of Religion and Science. Unfortunately, he started with The Secret Doctrine. Every line in this book was replete with polysyllabic words that he did not understand. He sat on the bed and looked more often at the dictionary than at the book. He read so many words that, memorizing some, he forgot others and had to look again in the dictionary. He decided to write down the words in a special notebook, and in a short time he filled in about twenty pages. And yet he could not understand anything. He read until three in the morning; his mind had gone beyond reason, but still he did not catch a single essential thought in the text. He raised his head, and it seemed to him that the whole room was shaking, like a ship while rocking. Then he swore, threw away the Secret Doctrine, put out the gas and decided to go to sleep. Things went no better with the other three books. And it's not that his brain was weak or unresponsive: he could assimilate all these thoughts, but he lacked training and lacked vocabulary. He finally realized this and at one time even rushed about with the thought of reading only one dictionary until he learned by heart all the unfamiliar words.

The only consolation for Martin was poetry: he enthusiastically read those simple poets, every line of which was clear to him. He loved beauty, and here he found it in abundance. Poetry affected him as strongly as music, and imperceptibly prepared his mind for future, more difficult work. The pages of his memory were empty, and he effortlessly memorized stanza after stanza, so that soon he could already recite whole poems aloud, enjoying the harmonious sound of the living printed lines. One day he stumbled upon Gailey's Classical Myths and Belfinch's Age of Fairy Tale. As if a ray of bright light suddenly cut through the darkness of his ignorance, and he was even more drawn to poetry.

The man at the table already knew Martin, was very friendly with him and nodded his head amiably when Martin came to the library. Therefore, Martin once decided on a bold act. He took some books and as the librarian stamped his cards, he muttered:

- Listen, can I ask you about what? The librarian smiled and nodded his head encouragingly.

- If you met a young lady and she asked you to come in ... so ... when can you do it?

Martin felt his shirt stick to his sweaty back with excitement.

- Yes, whenever you like, in my opinion, - answered the librarian.

- No, you don't understand, - Martin objected. “She… you see, what her thing might not be at home. She goes to university.

- Well, you will come next time.

- Actually, that's not even the point, - Martin confessed, finally deciding to surrender to the mercy of his interlocutor, - you see, I am a simple sailor, I am not very used to such a society. This girl is not at all what I am, and I am not at all what she is ... You don’t think that I am breaking a fool, ”he suddenly interrupted himself.

“No, no, what are you,” the librarian protested. - True, your request is not within the competence of the information department, but I will gladly try to help you.

Martin looked at him admiringly.

- Eh, if I knew how to fumble like that, that would be the case, - he said.

- I'm sorry ...

- I want to say that everything would be fine if I could speak so fluently and politely as you do.

- AND! The librarian responded sympathetically.

- When is the best time to come? In the afternoon? Just so as not to please for dinner? Or in the evening? Maybe Sunday?

“You know what I’ll advise you,” the librarian said, smiling, “you call her on the phone and ask.

- But it's true! - Martin exclaimed, collected the books and went to the exit.

On the threshold, he turned around and asked:

“When you’re talking to a young lady — well, say, Miss Lizzie Smith — how should you say — Miss Lizzie or Miss Smith?”

“Say Miss Smith,” the librarian said in an authoritative tone. “Say Miss Smith until you get to know her better.

So the problem was resolved.

- Come whenever you like. I'm always at home after dinner, - Ruth answered on the phone to his timid question when he could return the books he had taken from her.

She herself met him at the door, and her female eye immediately noticed the ironed fold of her trousers, and some general elusive change for the better. But the most surprising thing was the expression on his face. He seemed to be overflowing with healthy strength and surging through her in a wave, Ruth. Again she felt the urge to snuggle against him, to feel the warmth of his body and again marveled at how his presence affected her. And he, in turn, felt a blissful thrill again when she gave him her hand. The difference between them was that she outwardly showed nothing of her excitement, while he blushed to the roots of his hair.

He followed her, waddling awkwardly as he walked. But when they sat down in the living room, Martin, against the expectation, felt rather at ease. She did her best to create this feeling of ease in him and did it so delicately and carefully that she became a hundred times dearer to him. They first talked about books, about Swinburne, whom he admired, and about Browning, who was incomprehensible to him. Ruth directed the conversation, while she kept thinking about how to help him. She thought about it often after their first meeting. She absolutely wanted to help him. She felt tenderness and pity for him, but there was nothing offensive in this pity: it was never experienced by her before, almost a motherly feeling. And could it be simple, ordinary pity, if in the person who caused her, she felt the man so much that his closeness alone generated in her an unaccountable girlish fear, and made her heart beat with strange thoughts and feelings. Again she felt the urge to hug him by the neck or put her hands on his shoulders. And still this desire embarrassed her, but she was already used to it. It had never occurred to her that nascent love could take such forms. But it also did not occur to her that the feeling that gripped her could be called love. It seemed to her that Martin simply interested her as an unusual person, with great potential, and that she was guided by purely philanthropic motives.

She did not understand that she wanted him, but with him things were different. Martin knew he loved Ruth; and he knew that he wanted her in a way he had never wanted in his life. He loved poetry before, as he loved everything beautiful, but after meeting her, the gates to the vast world of love lyrics opened before him. She gave him so much more than Belfinch and Gailey. A week ago, he would not have thought about such a line, for example: "A sad young man, he is obsessed with love and ready to die in a kiss," but now these words did not leave his head. He admired them as the greatest revelation; he looked at Ruth and thought that he would gladly die in a kiss. He felt like that very sad young man who was "obsessed with love", and was more proud of this than he could be proud of being elevated to knighthood. He finally comprehended the meaning of life and the purpose of his existence on earth.

As he looked at her and listened to her, his thoughts grew bolder. He remembered the pleasure he felt in shaking her hand and longed to feel it again. Sometimes he looked at her lips with eager longing. But there was nothing coarse and earthly in this yearning. It gave him an unspeakable pleasure to catch every movement of her lips as she spoke, these were not the usual lips that all women and men have. They were not flesh and blood. These were the mouths of an ethereal spirit, and the desire to kiss them was completely unlike the desire aroused by other women. He, of course, would gladly press his lips to these heavenly lips, but it would be all the same, as if he kissed the image of the Lord God himself. He could not understand the peculiar reassessment of values \u200b\u200bthat was taking place in him, and did not understand that in the end, when he looks at her, his eyes burn with the same fire that burns the eyes of every man thirsting for love. He did not suspect how ardent and courageous his gaze was, how deeply he worried her all. Her virgin integrity ennobled his own feelings for him, and lifted them to the height of the cold chastity of the stars. He would be shocked to learn that his eyes radiate a mysterious warmth that penetrates into the bowels of her being, and there they ignite a return fire. Embarrassed, alarmed by his gaze, she several times lost the thread of the conversation and, with considerable difficulty, again collected scraps of thoughts. Usually she did not find it difficult to talk and now explained her condition by the exclusivity of her interlocutor. She was very receptive to all kinds of impressions, and in the end it was no surprise that this alien from another world embarrassed her.

She thought about how to help him, and wanted to start a conversation in this direction, but Martin himself came to her aid.

“I don’t know if I can ask you for advice,” he began, and almost choked with joy when she expressed her readiness to do everything in her power for him.

- Remember, I said that time that I can’t talk about books, about any such things, nothing comes of it. Well, I've changed my mind a lot since then. I started going to the library, collected all sorts of books there, but all of them are not for my mind. Maybe it's better to start over? I have never really studied. I had to work since childhood, but now I went to the library, looked at the books, read - and I see that before I read it was not at all what I needed. You see, somewhere on a farm or in a steamer's cabin you will not find such books as, say, in your house. There, the reading is different, and I just got used to such and such reading. And meanwhile, I will say without bragging, I am not like those with whom I drove the company. Not that I was better than other sailors and cowboys, I was a cowboy too - but, you see, I have always loved books and always read everything that came to hand, and it seems to me that my head works in a different manner, than my comrades. But that is not the point. The point is this. I have never been to a house like yours. When I came to you that week and saw you, and your mother, and your brothers, and how everything is with you, I really liked it. Before, I only read about this in books, but then it turned out that the books do not lie. And I liked it. I wanted all this, and now I do. I would like to breathe the same air as in your house, so that there are books, pictures and all sorts of beautiful things around, and that people speak calmly and quietly, and be cleanly dressed, and have clean thoughts. The air that I've breathed all my life smells like kitchen, wine, swearing and talk about rent. When you got up to kiss your mother, it seemed so beautiful to me - I have not seen anything more beautiful in the world. And I have seen a lot and I can say - I have always seen more than others. I really love to watch, and I always want to see something else and more.

But that's not it. The most important thing is this: I would like to come to the life that you live here in this house. Life is not only about drinking, fighting, hard work. Now the question is: how to achieve this? Where do I begin? I'm not afraid of work; if we talk about it, then I will surpass anyone in my work. I would just start, and there I will work day and night. Maybe it’s funny for you that I’m talking to you about this? I may have turned to you in vain, but I have no one else, to tell the truth - is it to Arthur? Maybe I should have gone to him? If I was ...

He suddenly fell silent. His whole plan staggered at the thought that he should have really asked Arthur and that he was playing the fool. Ruth did not answer immediately. She was absorbed in trying to tie together his awkward speech and primitive thoughts with what she read in his eyes. She had never seen eyes that reflected such unbreakable power. This man can do anything - that's what his look told her, and it didn't fit well with his verbal helplessness. In addition, her own mind was so sophisticated and complex that she did not know how to truly appreciate simplicity and spontaneity. And yet, even in this tongue-tied thought, strength was discerned. Martin seemed to her to be a giant, trying to rip off his shackles. Her face breathed with caress as she spoke.

“You yourself know what you lack,” she said. “You lack education. You should start over - finish school, and then take a course at the university.

“This takes money,” he interrupted her.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “I didn't think about it! But couldn’t any of your family members support you?

He shook his head.

“My father and mother are dead. I have two sisters: one is married, the other is likely to be married soon. There are a whole bunch of brothers, I am the youngest, but they never helped anyone. And everyone has long scattered around the world to seek happiness, each on his own. The elder died in India. Two are now in South Africa, one is sailing on a whaling boat, and the other is traveling with a traveling circus - he is an acrobat on a trapeze. Here I am the same. I have been supporting myself since I was eleven, since my mother died. So I will have to get down to everything myself. I just want to know where to start.

- First of all, you should study the language. You sometimes express yourself (she wanted to say "terrible", but she resisted) is not entirely correct.

Perspiration covered his forehead.

- I know that sometimes I let go of words that you do not understand. But at least I know how to pronounce these. I have some words from books in my head, but I don't know how to pronounce them, that's why I don't say them.

- It's not just the words, but the general structure of speech. Can I speak frankly with you? Will you be offended by me?

- No no! He exclaimed, blessing her kindness in his soul. - Fry! I'd rather know all this from you than from anyone else!

- So that's it. Everything you need can be found in the grammar. I have noted a lot in your conversation, from which you need to wean. I'll bring you the grammar now.

When Ruth got up, Martin remembered one rule from the book about etiquette, and he awkwardly got up from his seat, but was immediately frightened - she would not have thought that he was going to leave.

Ruth brought the grammar and pulled her chair over to his, and Martin thought that perhaps he should have helped move him. She opened the book, and their heads moved closer. It was difficult for him to follow her explanations - he was so worried about this closeness. But when she began to explain the secrets of conjugation, he forgot everything in the world. He had never heard of conjugation, and this first penetration into the mysterious laws of speech fascinated him. He bent down lower to the book, and suddenly her hair touched his cheek.

Martin Eden lost consciousness only once in his life, but then he thought that now it will happen again. His breath caught in his chest, and his heart was beating so hard that it seemed about to jump out. She had never seemed so accessible to him. For an instant, a bridge was thrown across the abyss that separated them. But his feelings did not become less sublime from this. She did not stoop to him. It was he who climbed behind the clouds and approached her. His love, as before, was full of religious awe. It seemed to him that he had invaded the holy of holies of a certain temple, and he carefully moved his head away to avoid this touch, which acted on him like an electric charge. But Ruth did not notice anything.

“And then a man appeared - Spencer, who brought all this into a system, combined, made conclusions and presented to Martin's astonished gaze a concrete and orderly world in all details and with complete clarity, like those small models of ships in glass jars that sailors make at their leisure ... There were no surprises or accidents here. There was a law in everything. Obeying this law, the bird flew; obeying the same law, the formless plasma began to move, wriggle, its wings and legs grew - and a bird was born ”(p. 353)

“Martin has been looking for love all his life. His nature craved love. This was an organic need of his being. But he lived without love, and his soul became more and more hardened in solitude ”(p. 269).

“Until now, not a single word, not a single indication, not a single hint of the divine touched his consciousness. Martin never believed in the divine. He was always a man without religion and laughed merrily at the priests talking about the immortality of the soul. There is no life "there," he said to himself, and there cannot be; all life is here, and then - eternal darkness. But what he saw in her eyes was precisely a soul - an immortal soul that cannot die. Not a single man, not a single woman had instilled in him the thoughts of immortality before. And she inspired! .. Even now her face shone before him, pale and serious, affectionate and expressive, smiling so tenderly and compassionately as only angels can smile, and illuminated with a light of such purity that he had never suspected. Her purity stunned him and shocked him. He knew that there was good and evil, but the thought of purity as one of the attributes of living life never crossed his mind. And now - in her - he saw this purity, the highest degree of kindness and integrity, the combination of which is eternal life ”(p. 280).

“But Martin Eden, a great writer, never existed. Martin Eden - the great writer was an invention of the crowd, and the crowd embodied him in the bodily form of Martha Eden, a reveler and a sailor. But he knew it was all a hoax. He was not at all the legendary hero before whom the crowd bowed, refined in serving his stomach ”(p. 606).

On the work of Jack London From the Foreword by P. Fedunov to the collected works in 7 volumes (Moscow, 1954)

Jack London's Northern Tales are imbued with faith in the noble qualities of the common man. The heroes of these stories are people of strong will, inexhaustible energy and courage. In the land of the White Silence, they are looking for gold, but it is not the passion for profit that attracts them to the gold-bearing shores of the Klondike ... they are guided by a thirst for adventure, love for freedom and hatred for corrupted bourgeois culture ”(p. 17)

“London has faithfully depicted the collapse of all the illusions of Martin, who was trying to defend his personal happiness alone in a hostile world of property. The last link connecting Martin with bourgeois society was his love for Ruth ... But his disappointment was all the more terrible when he realized that Ruth was not at all the ideal creature that created his imagination ”(p. 33).