The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 4, 1925, Page 13

By MICHAEL GOLD. MONG many of the American intel- ligentsia it is a common belief that the Soviet revolution has killed all art and culture in Russia. This charge has been repeated so often that even friends of Russia credit it with some truth. But it is not true; it is merely an- other of those strange, malicious slanders that have been so freely ‘cir- culated to give Russia a bad name. Time will disprove this mean lie, as it has disproved so many other lies about Russia. Time wiil show that the revolution was not a destruction of culture, but the great renaissance of a nation and a world. In ten years artists and students from all over the world will be throng- ing to Russia just as in the middle ages young intellectual Englishmen and Germans, like John Milton and Erasmus, went to Italy, for new ideas: Russia will be the world’s fountainhead of all free and bold modern thot during the next few dec- ades, ' There are, Jews all over the world, for instance, and they have powerful communities in New. York, London Paris and Berlin. I have been in all these cities, and have seen the Jew- ish life in them, but in my judgment the heart of Jewish culture and art exists, today in Moscow. y ‘wo greatest Jewish theaters in the world are now playing in Moscow They are the Jewish Kamerny theater and the Gabima theater. Of them one cannot write calmly—they are a reve- lation to a student of stage-craft. They are marvellous laboratories of the theater, and they are also the finest blooming of the long-suppressed Jew- ish race-spirit. The Gabima theater gives produc- tions in classic Hebrew, the only theater of its kind in the world. I saw the two plays in its repertoire, namely: Gadybuk, and the Eternal Jew, by David Pinski. The Gadybuk is one of the standard pieces of the Jewish stage and has been given many times in America. But it has never been given with the genius with which it has been clothed at the Gabima in Moscow. There it becomes a rich, glamorous epic of the Jewish folk, a blend of Jewish poetry mysticism, music, melancholy and dancing as well as benighted Jewish superstition and bigotry. Vahtangov, a young Armenian reg- isseur of the Moscow Art theater who died a few days ago, was the director of both_pieces played at the Gabima. He was one of the great regisseurs of Russia and even tho he was not a Jew, his Semitic blood gave him ap instinctive understanding of Jewish life that makes his productions as au- thentic as if they had been born in the mind of a native of Palestine, - The Gabima is the spiritual center around which a great deal of mystic Jewish Zionism and nationalism re- volves in Moscow. I am not an ad- herent of Jewish nationalistic mysti- ¢ism, any more than’ T can yield my- _ self.to: the Irish national mystics like Yeats, or the catholic mystics of the stage like Claudel. These mystics write nobly of infinity, god, the soul. the cosmos, but when one goes under the purple and gold of their imagery one finds the skeleton of the same 100 per cent patriotism and national- ism that has plunged the world into so many ugly, bloody wars. To grow mystical over one’s nation or one’s race is to join hands with the ku klux klan of one’s nation and race. One cannot apply a political test to the Gabima, however. It is a great art theater, and a poet and artist finds himself ravished by the beauty of its perfect performances. About one- third of the audience at the Gabima is made up of Russians who do not understand Hebrew, but who come to this temple of pure, noble art, out of devotion to thé spirit of great art. _ The Jewish Kamerny .is no less a theater of genius than the Gabima, but it is more in the main stream of modern life. It is not slow and stately and majestic with the biblican grand. eur of the Gabima; it is swift, satiri- cal, full of energy, boldness, youth, langhter—the spirit, not of the bible, but of young Communism. The Jewish Kamerny, under the di- rection of another great regisseur, Granovsky, has fused many of the tendencies of the new Russian theater into a synthesis that is something so new that it is almost impossible to write about. It must be seen and heard to be understood. I despair of making it clear, it would be like try- ing to tell anyone that the greatest living singer could be heard it Rus- sia, if Chaliapin had not come to Am- erica to convince skeptics that he really was the world’s greatest singer. The Jewish Kamerny will soon visit America, too; and perhaps will con- vince skeptics here more than any words of mine. I saw three productions of the Jew- ish Kamerny; Goldfadden’s old play, The Witch, and a play called “200,000,” and a group of one-act parodies on the methods of other Jewish theaters. Of these plays I thot The Witch the finest. The Witch has been often given at Jewish theaters in America, but in Moscow it was not the sentimental tale of the poor little silly orphar girl over which so many Jewish ma- trons have shed their plentiful tears All the vulgar. sentimentality and cheap music-hall hokum has been eliminated from the piece; only the fantasy and humanity of the story have remained. The production cannot be compared to anything we have yet seen in Am- erica. The Moscow Art theater and Balieff’s Chauve Souris are not fair samples of modern Russian theatrical art. They are remnants of the old; in Russia the Moscow Art theater is re- garded by the younger men as a sort of museum; where ancient modes of acting and scenery are presented by old people who have learned nothing since the nineteenth century. The Jewish Art theater models itself on this old school of photo- graphic art, and therefore. its. per- formance of Goldfadden’s Witch that 1 saw in New York was as unoriginal and dull as a play mounted by Be- lasco. c—— No. 1 Trade Unions in America By Wm. Z. Foster, James P. Cannon and Earl R. Browder Is, with a brief statement of the American trade union movement, a history of the development of the left wing and an explanation of the structure and program of its guiding spirit—the Trade Un- ion Educational League. At the Jewish Kamerny in Moscow however, the play has been made into a theatrical symphony. Every- thing is in the key of young, vigor- ous fantasy, The costumes, the scenery, with its planes and levels the dancing, the singing, the speech, the gestures, all have been planned and harmonized. Nothing is left to chance; each move on the stage, every word uttered, is as skilfully planned in advance as a ballet is planned. Granovsky’s ideal has been the syn- ethic theater of which Gordon Craig and other aesthetes have . dreamed. He has achieved the synthetic thea- ter; a theatre where word, move- ment, music, gesture and dance are woven into a unity from which one cannot eliminate anything; not the gesture of a hand. Only in very technical terms could one convey the great work of Granov- sky. I prefer not to attempt a descrip- tion, but to let the Jewish Kamerny DANCE FOR BENEFIT OF WHITE RUSSIAN PRISORERS IN POLAND The Workers’ Home, together with the White Russian Peoples’ _Society will give a concert and dance this Sunday, April 5, at Scho- enhofen Hall, corner Milwaukee and Ashland avenues, for the benefit of the political prisoners in Poland. Many of the White Russians who are fighting for the liberation of the territory forcibly annexed by Po- land and which Its in fact part of the Soviet Republic of White Russia, are suffering in the jails of Poland. Only a few days ago, the capitalist Press reported how two of such prisoners who were on their way to “be exchanged for Polish prisoners in Soviet Russia, were shot down by the Polish chief of police. All who are in sympathy with the liberation movement in Poland are invited to attend this affair and thereby help the victims of the Polish bourgeoisie. The concert will start at 4 p. m. The Little Red Library The first two numbers of this little pocket-size library, destined to become the most popular of any working class publications ever issued in this country, are now being sold by all Daily Workers Agents. thruout the country. Tf you have not as yet seen a copy of this splendid little propaganda giant, and have not enjoyed the valuable reading in each, be sure to ask your local Daily Worker Agent for @ copy—or @ dozen copies. (They are twelve for $1.00.) 10 CENTS EACH They can also be had by mail from THE DAILY WORKER 1113 W. WASHINGTON BLVD. o— No.2 Two Great Jewish Theaters in Moscow speak for itself when it comes here. All I can do is prophesy that it will create a revolution in the minds of the younger American dramatists, ac- tors and musicians. Many of them have been feeling their clumsy way toward work like this; and. the per- formances of the Jewish Kamerny will give them a clear picture of what they have wanted in the theater. It will start a new epoch on the Ameri- can stage. _/? CLEVELAND, OHIO. Co-operate * with THE CO-OPERATORS COMPANY Dealers in Groceries, Fruits and Vegetables 1195 E. 71st Randolph 7059 Owned and controlled by your fellow workingmen | Dr. A. Moskalik DENTIST | | §, W. Corner 7th and Mifflin Sts. | PHILADELPHIA, PA, PITTSBURGH, PA. To those who work hard for their money, | will save 50 per cent on all their dental work, DR. RASNICK DENTIST 645 Smithfield Street. LEARN ESPERANTO The International Language The following booklets are received The Esperanto Manual The Esperanto Teacher......... Esperanto for Young Beginners. Textbooks of ane Gepinnees be languages, literature in Bsperanto, 100 titles. WORKERS’ ESPERANTO ASSN., 525 7th St., Rockford, tl. Class Struggle Class Collaboration By Earl R. Browder Is a splendid study of the methods of labor bureaucracy to divert the workers from militant struggle thru the B. & O. plan, insurance schemes and workers’ education. A most valuable number for the thinking worker. CHICAGO, ILLINOIS