By "Soy"
Shanghai, May 20.
about the time that in Paris the famous actress Mme. Cecile Sorel, on learning of the death of Feodor Chaliapin,. came out in front of the curtain and, saying, "We have lost the greatest artist of our epoch," sank to her knees in front of an atidience that rose and observed a minute of silence, in England news of the death of the Russian genius was being received no less touchingly.. "Challe opin was nota star—he was the sun." "Chaliapin didn't serve music; he made music serve him, his in dividuality, his genius." "Chaliapin probably an only phenomenon in the whole history of music." These three separate gleanings from three dif ferent obituaries reveal the general tone of the English press. One sentence in "The Times" won the special attention of Russians; and it interesting to note that it appeared not in the main obituary but, the following day, in an article on an exhibition to the memory of the famous English actor Keene. "Both great actors," writes the author of "The Times article, "rose to the heights of fame. But with the difference. that the igh altitude made Keene dizzy, while Chaliapin remained steady and Knowing the highest quarter, the zenith which lifted his genius above the very clouds, was granted only to hhis Russian contemporaries. The same is probably true of Shakespeare: only. Englishmen know, feel and understand him to the full.
Old Russia And is it only in the realm of art that one is unable to understand an alien nation completely? Let us take las an example books on Russia—ast and present—written by non-Russians, however talented these observers of Russian life may be. These books may be replete with quotations from Leo Tolstoy and Dostoievsky, and may contain graphs and figures on the production of east-fron or steel. The figures may right, the quotations correct, but thousands of counter-figures and counter quotations would instantly destroy the picture's. convenient Jsymmetry and represent Old Russia, for instance, as she really was: a world—a whole universe—i itself, with the most capricious net of lines, energies, inclinations, currents and traditions—a living whole and not a tenilzed project.
And truly, throughout his long life Challapin travelled incessantly, spending a good half-century journeying from one place to another. He might have died in Sydney, in Japan, South America oF in Harbin where he was long in bed with a serious cold.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.