Books Received

206 MODERN DRAMA December revolution. Evreinov (who later died as an emigre) set forth the idea that the whole audience should be transported within the drama itself and become an "inner factor" of it. He called it "making a theater of life." One of the greatest Russian experimentalists was Tairov, founder of the Kamerny Theater in j\'loscow, who emphasized the importance of a definite rhythm on the stage. His actors would read prose as verse in a singing voice. Their motions and gestures were subordinated to the musical principle. Tairov's musical and pictur~ esque performances had the charm of fairy tales alien to the gloomy realities of Soviet life. There were many other gifted experimentalists who belonged to the younger generation of the Moscow Art Theater and who played in its three studios. ,The, young Vakhtangov (who died very early-1922), the director of the Third Studio, considered the theater to be a "gay festival of life." His production of Carlo Gozzi's Turandot was the gayest performance of the Soviet Theater. The great representative of the First and Second Studios was Mikhail Chekhov (a nephew of Anton). He was less experimental than other producers, and closer to the old Stanislavsky. Still in contrast to the latter, he too, like Tairov or Meierhold , proclaimed the "unreality" of the stage but did not cultivate the picturesque and grotesque, emphasizing instead inspiration, even ecstasy. Mikhail Chekhov left Russia and died in Hollywood where his experience was exploited by motion picture producers. All these bold and inspiring experiments were stopped in the thirties. Communists , who pretended to be revolutionaries, became more and more conservative, almost Victorian, in their taste and disapproved of the revolutionary tendencies in the realm of art. They were suspicious of any kind of novelty, and with them the creative inspiration vanished. Gorchakov's evaluation of the decay of the Soviet Theater is very objective, and his pessimism is well attest,ed in this book. (I would like to add that the Soviet performance of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard, which I saw in Paris last June, was poor, even vulgar: good only were some mises en scene which reminded one of Stanislavsky's technique, introduced for the first time some sixty years ago.) Only the Russian ballet is still inspiring the West. There are some gaps in Gorchakov's bibliography: he did not, for example, mention the valuable books of D. Mirsky (A History of Ru.ssian Literature), and G. Struve's Soviet Russian Literature, where problems of the Russian theater have been discussed and presented well. GEORCE IvASlC Books Received (The appearance of a book in Books Received does not preclude its subsequent review.) The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, Modern Library, Random House, New York, 1958,277 pp. Price $1.65. Selected Stories by P. G. Wodehou.se, with an introduction by John W. Aldridge, Modern Library, Random House, New York, 1958,382 pp. Price $1.65. The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant, Modern Library, Random House, New York, 1958, 335 pp. Price $1.65. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, with an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt , Modern Library, Random House, New York, 1958,285 pp. Price $1.65. Cou.sin Bette, by Honore Balzac, Modern Library, Random House, New York. 1958, 432 pp. Price $1.65. 1958 BOOKS RECEIVED 201 Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories, by Truman Capote, Random House, New York, 1958, 179 pp. Price $3.50. Eugene O'Neill and the Tragic Tension, by Doris V. Falk, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1958, 211 pp. Price $4.50. Three Great Plays of Euripides, translated by Rex Warner, Mentor Classic, New American Library, New York, 1958, 192 pp. Price $.75. The Classic Theatre, Volume I, edited by Eric Bentley, Doubleday Anchor Books, Doubleday and Co., Inc., Garden City, New York, 1958, 385 pp. Price $1.25. The Modem Theatre, Volume I, edited by Eric Bentley, Doubleday Anchor Books, Doubleday and Co., Inc., Garden City, New York, 1955,302 pp. Price $.95. The Modern Theatre, Volume II, edited by Eric Bentley, Doubleday Anchor Books, Doubleday and Co., Inc., Garden City, New...