The Show Must Go On: Komissarzhevskaia’s 1909 Production of Stanisław Przybyszewski’s Gody życia MICHAEL D. JOHNSON UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS S peaking from a pragmatic standpoint, before any traditional per-formance occurs on the stage or in any playing space, certain events must have already taken place. First, the performer(s) will have chosen a piece of repertoire and its method and mode of expression, including, but not limited to, the involvement of other actors. Sec-ond, the performer(s) will have also engaged specific personnel to take responsibility for costumes and wigs, properties, sets, and lighting. Third, the performer(s) will have located a space in which to unfold the creative act, preferably before a willing audience that will pay a charge so that the company may recoup any major financial outlays and enjoy a small profit. Russian theatre history is filled with stories of productions that have met, and sometimes surmounted, obstacles such as these during the rehearsal period, and have thus become part of the Russian theatrical canon. Vera F. Komissarzhevskaia (1864-1910), one of Russia’s great-est actresses of the early twentieth century, overcame many such ob-stacles in her illustrious career. However, perhaps no obstacle pre-pared her for the rebellion that occurred within her own company as she prepared to stage the premiere of Stanisław Przybyszewski’s (1868-1927) Gody życia [Pir zhizni; Life’s Banquet, 1909] in the fall of 1909, seven years after her first acquaintance with his aesthetic views. Tragi-cally, the role of Hanka in this play would become the last new role she was to prepare before her untimely death in February 1910. The relationship between actress Komissarzhevskaia and Przy-byszewski is intriguing, but has received relatively little scholarly atten-tion.1 American scholars devote no more than passing notice to their possible creative relationship.2 For some theatre scholars, Przy-byszewski’s plays do not even exist as a part of this actress’ notable career.3 However, as we shall see, Przybyszewski’s aesthetics do reso-nate strongly in Komissarzhevskaia’s life and work, dating from early spring 1902 and continuing until her death. An investigation into thisresonance will not only provide a fuller understanding of the move-ment of modernist aesthetics from Western Europe into Russian thea-tre at the beginning of the twentieth century, but also the role played by major theatrical figures, such as Komissarzhevskaia, in the accep-tance and transference of those aesthetics. Komissarzhevskaia’s reception of Pryzbyszewski’s aesthetics began in 1902 and is associated with his pronouncements on the soul, artist, and art, as expressed in “Aforyzmy i Praeludia” [“Aphorisms and Preludes”], the first section of his collection of essays, Na drogach duszy [On the Paths of the Soul, 1900]. Her conception of “soul” was not founded on a strict religious interpretation, but rather a psychological one. She eagerly accepted Przybyszewski’s view that the true source of creative inspiration was a focus inward toward the soul, not out-ward toward external reality. This would lead to an interest in a char-acter’s psychological and emotional motivation. Moreover, Przy-byszewski’s belief in the sanctity of both art and the artist would move her to reject artistic mediocrity and set out upon new paths of artistic self-exploration, eventually breaking with naturalist theatrical conven-tions. The comments that Komissarzhevskaia made in defense of her own production of Przybyszewski’s new play, Gody życia, provide addi-tional evidence that this actress was conceptualizing and actively re-sponding to—if only on a personal level—the Polish dramatist’s pre-scriptions for improvements in the acting profession. These com-ments also provide evidence of how Komissarzhevskaia understood Przybyszewski’s dramatic theories and gives us a retrospective glimpse into her possible pragmatic use of Przybyszewski’s works in the devel-opment of the actor’s craft, including her own. The Polish essayist, dramatist, and novelist Stanisław Przy-byszewski first gained recognition in Germany, where he popularized both the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and that of the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. After he moved to Kraków to become the editor of the journal Życie in 1898, the circle of young Polish writers and artists living there, as well as Russian critics of the period, began to acknowledge him as the head of the artistic current known as Młoda Polska, or Young Poland. Contemporary Russian critics, such as Pavel Kogan, soon recognized Przybyszewski as one writer who, along with Oscar Wilde and Maurice Maeterlinck, influenced Russia’s young, growing modernist movement (Kogan 98-100).4 Despite his popular-ity and notoriety, this prolific Polish writer is almost forgotten today, although his distinctive synthesis of metaphysics, occultism, eroticism, 66 STUDIES IN SLAVIC CULTURESand aestheticism created great controversy in fin-de-siècle Russia. Przybyszewski’s dramas—a transitional blend of naturalism and symbolism—were marked by an absence of external action and a con-centration on character psychology. They frequently explored the themes of love and death, guilt and retribution, within the context of the changing sexual mores of the early twentieth century. In his essay O dramacie i scenie [On Drama and the Stage, 1905], Przybyszewski sketched the major differences between the “old drama” (before Ib-sen) and the “new drama” (after Ibsen). This work had originally been serialized in the Warsaw daily Kurjer Teatralny in 1902 and was eventually published in a Russian translation. Its first Russian transla-tion appeared as a short serialization in the influential Petersburg jour-nal Teatr i iskusstvo in 1904. This leading trade weekly for individuals in the theatre profession, which included articles about actors, drama-tists, reviews, and box office reports from throughout the Empire, would have been obligatory reading for all actors, including Komis-sarzhevskaia. Rejecting the detailed stage directions of naturalists such as Hauptmann, Przybyszewski preferred to think of the dramatic text as a “stenogram” or outline, within which the actor could explore the battle raging within the soul. It was this battle, and not external events or circumstances, which he believed to be the