POWER OF DARKNESS, The (VtAST" T'MY). Leo Tolstoy had made in his youth several abortive attempts at writing dramas, but he scored a remarkable success when, in the eighties, under the influence of his moral re generation, he published his first drama, The Power of Darkness.' His intention was to strike terror into the hearers, not through the action of inexorable fate, but through the pos sibility of being engulfed by the Power of Darkness; hence the subtitle, The bird is lost if its claw is caught?' This is illustrated in the case of the hero, Nikita, who pays no attention to the advice of his simple-minded father, the cesspool-cleaner Akim, but allows his wily mother, Matrena, who has been compared to Lady Macbeth, to kill Anisya's husband, in order that he may marry her and live at ease. The terrible scene in which Nikita, at the in sistence of his mother and wife, kills his il legitimate child, by Akulina, had such a crush ing effect upon audiences that Tolstoy was obliged to write a less terrible variant for its performance. The Divine voice in the tragedy
is represented by Akim, who encourages his son to stand at the street corner and make his confession to the people and his peace with God.
Although passed by the press-censor, the dramatic censor prohibited the performance of the play. It was later performed first in pri vate houses, and in 1895 in Suvorin's Theatre, where it produced a deep impression. How ever, on account of the surcharge of peasant details it was not a success at the Little Theatre or at the Moscow Art Theatre, where it was given later. In France it was performed as early as 1888 in Antoine's Theatre Libre and elsewhere, and in Berlin in the Deutsches Theater in 1900. It has been translated into English as The Dominion of Darkness> in Sergel's Columbia Library, Chicago 1890, and several times since by the translators of Tolstoy's complete works.
Lou WIENER.