FOOTNOTE:
[1] The theme of The Corpse became known to the newspapers through Tolstoi’s copyist, Alexander Petrovich, who, in a drunken bout in the Khitrovka, told a fellow drunkard, a reporter of the Novosti Dnya, that Tolstoi was writing a play, and also told him the subject of the play. The reporter made an article of it and published it in the paper. This was the cause of the dramatis personae coming to Tolstoi, and it was also one of the reasons why Tolstoi left the play unfinished. (Years afterwards the play, finished, was published and entitled The Living Corpse.)