Asja Lacis' Education (translation from 'Revolutionary by Profession')
I spent my earliest childhood in Latvia in a house in the countryside, which we rented from the German manufacturer Baron Wolf. My father was an upholsterer and tailor. We had one very small room, the greater part of which was taken up by a loom. My mother wove sheets and blankets for our personal use. My world was a small surface beneath the loom. I didnât have any toys, not even a shabby soft toy. I had neither winter clothing nor leather shoes, so I spent the entire winter in my corner. Nevertheless, when the panes of the small windows were covered in delicate frost, that was my joy. I knelt on the stool and was hypnotised by the vision of ice, from which I also saw the characters of my fairytales emerge. More often than not I saw the ugly little duckling, little red riding hood and the princess from âKing Thrushbeard.â
My father wanted to work in a factory. We moved to the great city of Riga. My first impressions were of the acoustic kind: when the train came into Riga station, it greeted us with shrill pipes and the gasps of the locomotive, and the fumes enveloped us. The horns and chimes of the stables rung through our small flat directly opposite the wagon factory where my father worked. In the courtyard where I played there was everything: all sorts of stuff, boxes, rusty barrels. My playmates were Jewish children. The boxes, barrels and even shed roofs we used as play surfaces.
On midsummerâs day my mother took me to the Danube, where the women exchanged St Johnâs wort and floral wreaths. There were silvered twigs, multi-coloured bushels and brightly coloured paper flowers. There were lots of cottage around the pier. âEverywhere one sees commodities depicted on signs or painted on the side of houses.â So wrote Walter Benjamin later in One Way Street.1 My father was a progressive worker, and took part in the 1905 revolution, and gave me flyers for the leafleters. He wanted me to get an education, in order to have a free and independent life. He enrolled me in a private school, the director of which was an author. In this school all the best Latvian poets, musicians and painters were brought together. They fought for a the national culture and art of Latvia. At school I began to get a sense for social injustice and inequality. The school sought out the daughters of industrialists, elevated officials and âgrey Baronsâ (as the great barons were called). I was the only workerâs child. Their school clothes were made of expensive cloth, my clothes were of the cheapest. They laughed at me and pitied me, but the teachers supported me, as they saw my love for literature and art. I lived in a cloud of literature. I devoured Byron, Lermontow, Dostoyevsky. Each teacher belonged to the decadent and symbolic schools. They influenced me. And I inspired myself through Przybyszewsku, Andrejew, Materlinck, Sologub, Balmont. I hated the petit bourgeois authors, who fenced off life, with their narrow-minded rules and conventions. My heroines were Hedda Gabler, the indispensable Hilde Wangel, Anfisa (Andreyev), and Monna Vanna.
The atmosphere of ennui and the over-refinement of the individual threatened to alienate me from my class. By whatever means, I wanted to get a high school education. The first high school for women was the Bestuschew Course in St Petersburg. Krupskaja studied there. I learnt that there was a two year degree in general education at the psychoneurological institute, which required every discipline (medicine, law, chemistry, etc.) This institute would also take women. I traveled to St Petersbury with a bundle of things and one rubel in my pocket. The institute was supervised by Professor Bechterew. He gathered together progressive teachers around himself, some of whom were Marxists who had been sacked from the state universities. In the humanities I was taught by leading figures: the Bolshevik professor M. Reisner taught criminal psychology.
In his seminars he prepared debates. One debate consisted of a conversation between Iva and the Devil from the Dostoyevskiâs 'Brothers Kararmasovâ. The Devil discovered the conception of the future â one must eliminate the idea of God from humanity and master nature, through the assistance of science and his own will, he must become a man-God. And by this he understand that life is only a blink of the eye, and to love his neighbour selflessly. But for one particular development he had endless time. Around these theses flared up wild discussion â which created many political groupings among the students: the milieu in our Latvian student union studied the social democrats Marx and Plechanov, argued about Anarchists and Nationalists of all shades. Professor Reisner led the discussions intelligently, so that he led the studentsâ consciousness along the right way. I befriended Professor Reisnerâs daughter, Larisa, who is known in Germany as the author of the book 'Hamburg at the Barricadesâ. She was extravagant â she wore a garish Indian shawl, and on her shoulder sat a chameleon, which change colour when one touched it. Professor Antischkovâs seminars were also interesting, which covered these themes: Schopenhauer, Wagner, Nietzsche. âThus Spake Zarathustraâ I had already read in school. Now we studied âThe Gay Scienceâ, and 'The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Musicâ. A lot of the students were inspired by Nietzsche. The beautifully crafted form helped us to absorb the meaning. It was impressive that Nietzsche made sincere claims to struggle for our goals and ideals without reference to some christian pseudo-passion. This harsh sincerity stood in sharp contrast to the situation of bourgeois society, where words and deeds diverged from each other.
We learnt that Nietzsche allows the tragedy to emerge from the cult, and his distinction between the Socratic, Apollonian and Dionysian artistic methods. I was for the Dionysian in art. At school I had already enjoyed Hedda Gablerâs 'vine leaves in the hairâ. Doubts often came to me, but when I doubted, I more strongly defended the Dionysian.
The Petersburg Theatre was stuck in an atmosphere of bureaucracy and academia. Nevertheless, it had not totally slain genius â the imperial theatre had great actors, for example the demonic singer and actor Fjodor Schaljapin. When I was studying, the Moscow Art Theatre cam to St Petersburg. It was truly, as Brecht said, an ensemble of stars. In 'The Brothers Karamscovâ were Leonidow as Mitja, Katschalov as Ivan, Germanova as Gruschenka, and the smaller roles were also performed by great actors. The play was so forceful, that I could not allow myself any other interpretation. At that time I was hypnotised by Dostoyevsky â the sorrow of the poet for the humble and suffering made a deep impression on me.
In the imperial theatre Meyerhold was an active director. His performances blasted away the academicism and expelled the spirit of officialdom. He put on a production of F. Sologubâs 'The Hostage of Lifeâ (the eternal conflict between desire and reality). The proscenium was covered in blue fabric On the stage were an endless amount of doors, through which arguing people came, went, appeared, disappeared â a brightly coloured conveyor belt â a symbol for the meaningless confusion of life.
To rustle the public and anger the critics â this was Meyerholdâs purpose. So much so that when he put on a production of a salon piece by the English dramatist A. Pinero, the harmless liberal genre play 'At Half Wayâ, he built â along with the artist Golowin â a set from different kinds of cubes. It was a scandal: the actors refused to take part, and one of the most well known theatre critics of the time, Kugel, wrote: Meyerhold has transformed the academic theatre into a futuristic farce.
In the imperial Marientheater Meyerhold rehearsed Richard Straussâs opera 'Elektraâ, which was nonetheless considered to be extremely modernist. People criticised him further â why did he take a completely opaque, historical work, which was an insult to the memory of Sophocles? For the reviewers it showed them than this work represented a progressive piece of modern music drama. We students had solidarity with him. Meyerhold was truly a jack of all trades. There he produced of Glucksâ 'Orpheus and Eurydikeâ in the Suworin Theatre, the unknown Beaumarchaisâ 'Barber of Sevilleâ, advised on 'The Lady of the Camelliasâ, helped organise the 'Association of Acrots, Artists and Musiciansâ, and travellened form time to time to Terijoki (Finland), a location by the sea of secluded cottages, to build a theatre.2 The emblem of this theatre was a white laughing Pierrot on a lilac background, after a sketch by the famous painter Sapunov â which agreed to perform 'harlequinadesâ and Cervantesâ entremĂ©s.3 Furthemore, he conducted the class on dramatic movement in his studio. That was no accident â he tried to impress the best spatial thinking. That was the first practical preparation for his well own mature theory of arrangement. 'The Unknownâ and Carlo Gozziâs 'The Love for Three Orangesâ were directed in this studio. Meyerhold translated and worked on 'The Three Orangesâ. In this studio interesting experiments were undertaken,renewing the principles of Comedia dell'arte and the Spanish theatre. We students passed the little script of The Love for Three Oranges from hand to hand. The editor Doctor Dappertutto â was Meyerhold. I remember the sensation article in which the critic Eickenbaum superficially dealt with the Dappertuotto, which predicted the inevitable exit of theatre, in which theatre would no longer be art. Meyerhold developed the following counter-argument: the naturalistic theatre is no art, one must overcome it, and for the next generation theatre will become art. In this period arrived his anthology 'On Theatreâ. The main themes were epic, theatre, repetoire. The great reformer of the theatre was already struggling against the slavish following of reality and founding a new interpretation of the classics. He maintained that today one has to represent Ostrovskyâs pieces differently, as he wrote for his own time.4
In retrospect I see that my time in St Petersburg gave me much excitement, and greatly influenced my life. I also remember the impact which the city made on me. Whether under the Pushkind monument with its expressive dynamic, with rearing horses wandering underneath by the Neva or Fontanka, through the milk pale blue nights, where even the dead lie uncalmly, there I pulled towards me the heroes of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol and Dostoyevski â haunted by sorrow in the fading white mists, searching for a way out. Everyday I clearly saw the stone bunker of fortress Schlusselburg. Walls made of roughly hewn rock which the water drops flowed over. A stone table and held by hard iron chains set within a ring of stone walls, an iron bed chained to the stone â and above, a small grated slit window. In these shafts of martyrs have so many great figures proven the power of their ideas and the spirit of their courage.
Later in Moscow I got to know Vera Figner â she spent around twenty years in those cells. She was active in the Workers International Relief. I marvelled at and revered her â the soceuty of escapees from Hell, exuding all that was good and bright. I first saw Vladmir Mayakovski in the street. He wore a garish yellow shirt â the famouse âsholtaja koftaâ5 - with an uneven collar â on one side round, the other angled. The street urchins ran after him. He also came to us in the Psychoneurological Institute and read his futurist poetry. He divided the public. The secure ladies and gentleman were wary of his protesting repostes, the young sung his praises â the arguments over meaning sometimes broke out into scuffles; when it remained a discussion, Majakowski ruled the auditorium. His responses undercut his opponents, and they quickly took to their heels.
An uncommon event was the announcement of the first 'Futuristic Theatre in the Worldâ. The hit was the two act tragedy 'Vladmir Mayakovskiâ â director and central performer â in yellow shirt â Mayakovski himself in person. The curtains framed the sage, between which were huge placards. On them a city was painted â carriages, trams and people running. Criss-crossed, one over the other, like a Tower of Babel â the Futuristsâ goal was to invoke agitation and confusion. (Piscator, Wolf, Wangenheim and Brecht often used placards as scenic elements.) I remember the following scene: on a rock in the North Polar Sea sits Mayakovski, a laurel wreath on his head. He is wearing the yellow jacket. The scene appears between two women in make up. They carry cannonballs in each hand, their tears implying that the poets have fallen. He takes the cannonballs, carefully wraps them up in newspaper and packs them into a trunk. Then he stands up, takes off his hat and says to the audience:
âGood then!
The path is free!
I fancy -
that all of my vain joys are here;
with a sparkle in my eye
I would ascend the throne
as a Greek, with pampered bodiesâŠâ
The audience whistled and hollered so much: âMayakovski is an idiot and a nutjob, stop this scam-fest! Give us our money back!â From the stage came the answer in perfect diction: âYouâre your own fools!â For me this mocked the stuffy self-satisfcation and self-dissatisfaction as much as a fresh shot of Narzan.6
Later I grasped that whoever recorded the general sentiment, displayed the highest courage.
Goncourt was right, when he wrote: âIs it sometimes necessary to bring all the old sacred opinions crashing down, the eternal delights, the aesthetic programs of the professors of the academy, artistic beliefs, which have as little critical spirit as religious belief.â In those days we were excited by the political activities of Meyehold and Mayakovski against the petit bourgeois cult of mediocrity, external decency and prosperity, by the revolt against the sentimental hypocrisy of charity and fraternal love which concealed beneath it a merciless egoism. We were pleased by the rage with which Meyerhold and Mayakovski were taking shot at the amorality of the bourgeoisie and the petit bourgeoisie.
In 1914 war broke out. I went to Riga, Oryol, Moscow. I remained in Moscow, as I wanted to study drama. I joined the studio of Feodor Kommissarschewski, the brother of the Russian Duse, Vera Kommissarschewskaja, herself a director with singular beliefs.7 He searched for something truly creative, an empathetic theatre in its thought world and the external form of the work. He considered the director to be completely necessary, as he indeed said in his 'Prelude to a Theatreâ (1916): âThe director isnât a dictator with a whip in his hand, but rather he is one of the various routes, primus inter pares.â He was for a philosophical theatre, indeed he stressed that the philosophical content of dramatic art must be grasped in the emotional content. Kommissarschewski strove for stark generalisations of drama. He wrote: The actor who would play Harpagon8 âmust not forget that he should portray the mythical materialisation of the sorrow of miserlinessâ, and for the representation of Ostrovskiâs merchants he demanded that the oafish brutality of these characters be augmented into a nightmarish monster.
Moscow was a centre for Latvian refugees before it was for Germans. In Moscow I worked for the Latvian refugee office, which represented the material and spiritual interests of Latvians. The school gave lectures, concerts and in evenings was used for the organisation of intellectuals, etc. My boss was the headmaster Kenin, who had an important effect on writers, publicists and artists of all sorts of artistic and political persuasions. Beneath him was a group of aesthetes: the then democratic author Linard Laizens9 and the Bolsheviks Leon Paegle and Robert Pelsche.10 In one of the refugee schools I worked as a teacher. I soon came into a conflict of conscience â I was meant to teach Bible studies. But my schooling in St Petersburg had made me a militant atheist. I found a way out â an ersatz Bible study class though poetry. I used the small history of Christ by Selma Lagerlos. I got some plasticine, and the children made some small ducks. I gave them different roles: one boy was the little Christ, the other a little Judas, the other children watched both of them play it out. The Christ-duck was more beautiful than the Judas-duck â the jealous Judas wanted to smash it to pieces, and the audience had to rescue the ducks. Then they had to pack everything up really quickly and scurry off â in came the school inspector! Now I ran for it! But inspector liked the game and this time I got myself out of the situation.
By day I was a teacher, by evening I was a drama student. In the pedagogical plans of the Kommissarschewski Studio, the theoretical disciplines I undertook were taught in a huge room. Theory of literature was taught by Sachnowski, a famous Moscow director. I recall his sensitive comparative analysis of the styles of Dostoyevski and Turgenev. The history of medieval theatre was given by Panschin, a specialist. The theory of stage art was given by Kommissarschewski himself. Practical theatre training was led by the actor Pevzov and Kommissarschewski. The main goal was to develop the imagination, and so we improvised a lot with the texts. The stuido was attached to the Kommissarschewski Theatre, and so we often played small roles in the group scenes. In Aristophanesâ 'Lysistrataâ, for instance, and in Sologubâs âThe Doorkeeper Wanjka and the Pageboy Jeanâ. I remember the entirely secretful atmosphere which surrounded the rehearsal of âThe Bridal Choiceâ by Hoffmann, and in the grotesque scene of âA Nasty Anecdoteâ by Dostoyevski. Kommissarschewski wanted a truly thoughtful theatre.
The Moscow Theatre scene was different from that in St Petersburg. Moscow set the tone for private theatres and studios. Stanislavski and Nemirovitch-Dantschenko were world famous for their productions of Checkov and Dostoyevski. In Moscow one often spoke of the 'chamber theatreâ by Tairow, whose fascinating experiments demonstrated the truly artistic possibility of a 'syntheticâ theatre. Everything was different from the naturalistic theatre, and also from Meyerhold. The text, the composition, the movements were all done through rhythm. This was expecially the method of the actress Alice Koonen. An actress of the tragic forms. She spoken in an pronounced rhythm, letting the vowels ring out, and acted with her hands. Wachtangov wrote his first pieces as foundations for these studios. One could say that the Moscow theatre had the right direction and embraced experimentation. The lust for experiment show itself in the 'little formâ, which popped up everywhere in Moscow. The cabaret of âDie Fledermausâ brought about an interesting artistic stimulus.
Architecturally, Moscow was the opposite of St Petersburg. Opposed to the clear geometric lines of streets and squares â a confusion and circuit of back streets and side alleys, of the Arbat-Rayon â a labyrinth. Only with a special gift for spatial understanding could one find oneâs way out with Ariadneâs thread. It seems there could be no neighbouring cities so strongly contrasted. In Moscow a shabby hovel and a Renaissance palace were stuck together. One can write whole books on the Kremlin. My memory clings to Andrei Rublevâs icon of The Trinity, and to the architectural wonders of the cathedralâs composition. The Basilius Cathedral, near to the Lenin Mausoleum, so humbly situated, is always surrounded by a crowd of people.
In the villa of the rich businessman Tschukin the famous private collection of West European painters was established. Therein was Degasâs Ballerinas, Gaugin, Manet, Monet, CĂ©zanne â I will not enumeration them all, but I must mention Picasso. As I first went there in the company of a friend of Tschukinâs, we were showed round by the man himself. He showed us into a particularly special room â where Picassoâs paintings from his yellow period were all gathered together. They were all geometrical figures. Tschukin said to us: âWhen I came by these Picassos, I didnât leave this room for two weeks. I slept here.â I saw that there really was a bed. Theoretically I could nearly grasp Picasso, but I felt in him an incomparable creative power, a forceful personality. Visions of the future. I often went to the Tschukin villa to search for and behold this ever new power. Some years later, in Paris, I said to Fernand LĂ©ger, when I visited him in his studio: âWhat a shame for France, that an entire period of Picasso is in Moscow!â11
1Itâs in the Toys section. The usual translation is âEverywhere the eye sees commodities painted on signs or daubed on shopfronts.â Mine is more direct.
3Both seventeenth century kinds of farce, the first English, the latter Spanish.
4Alexander Ostrovsky (1823-1886) was the most famous realist playwright.
5This is Lacisâ transliteration of 'yellow shirtâ in Russian â the reference is to Mayakovskiâs poem 'The Fopâs Blouseâ, 1914.
6Narzan was a famous brand of mineral water from springs in Kislovodsk.
7'Duseâ refers to Eleanora Duse (1858-1924), a celebrated Italian actress.
8The protagonist of Moliereâs The Miser.
9Linards Laicens (1883-1938), Latvian novelist and politican.
10Leon Martynovich Paegle (1890-1926), Latvian communist poet; Robert Pelshe/Pelse (1880-1955), Latvian Marxist critic.
11Ferdinand LĂ©ger (1881-1955), French cubist painter.
IMAGES: Asja Lacis; Meyerholdâs production of Gogol, 1928; troops entering Schlusselberg, WW2; Mayakovsky, 1910; Rublevâs Trinity (13tj c.); Picasso, Young Girl with a Goat.
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