September 20th. I told Tolstoi about the article in the Moscow Courier where Maeterlinck’s is quoted as saying that Power of Darkness is in his opinion almost the greatest play.
Tolstoi laughed and said:
“Why doesn’t he imitate it, then?”
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.)
1902
Moscow, January 13th. Tolstoi once told me:
“When I went to see Power of Darkness acted I sat in the gallery on purpose so as not to be recognized. Yet I was recognized; they began to tell me to go on the stage, and I hurried home at once. But there was a moment when I could hardly restrain myself from stepping on to the stage and beginning to speak, to say everything—whatever that may be.”