Prague research trip
Hofmannsthal was inspired to write his Elektra after having seen Eysoldt in the role of Nastya in The Lower Depths by Gorky. However, the evidence of how she played this role is very scarce. The performance was praised for its ensemble, and the reviews didn’t describe the separate roles in detail. Those researchers who write about Eysoldt in this role, usually use the same quotations from 3-4 newspapers. This is because in other reviews, both from Berlin and Vienna (where the performance was played in May 1903 – it was when Hofmannsthal saw it there), Eysoldt was only mentioned, although usually with a brief praise. Last year I succeeded to enrich this collection of opinions with those expressed by Hungarian critics. The production of The Lower Depths was brought to Budapest twice: first right after the Vienna guest performances in 1903 and then a year later. In 1904 Hungarian critics already placed the role in the context of other achievements of Eysoldt, including that of Elektra (for example, Jenő Kovacs published an article dedicated exclusively to the actress). I used this material in my paper for FIRT/IFTR Conference in July 2018, which I am now preparing for publication. However, another important destination for Reinhardtian tours was surely Prague, although it never became so important as Budapest. Till 1914 Reinhardt´s theatre(s) would come back to Budapest every year; as for Prague, they visited it not so regularly and brought there less performances. However, as for Eysoldt, an often quoted opinion on her left by Kafka in one of his letters to Felice Bauer, derived precisely from his Prague experience, so the theme can be exciting.
This was the reason to plan a short stop in Prague on my way to Dresden.
Once in Prague, I am helped by my colleague Dr.Vlasta Smoláková, whom I know as an excellent specialist on Czech and Russian theatre. Without her help I could not use up the time effectively, so many thanks to Vlasta!
Theatre Collection of National Museum, National Library “Clementinum” and the library of Theatre Institute are identified as main destinations for the research.
What would be most interesting is to find how Czech theatrical milieu responded to this guest performance which was the first one to introduce the Gorky’s text to this city as it did so in Berlin, Vienna and Budapest. It was also the first presentation of serious intentions of Reinhardt’s company (previously, Reinhardt had brought to Prague only a cabaret program). However, when one reads the texts about Reinhardt’s guest performances in Central Europe, one is prompted to believe, that only German language press responded to them and probably only German language audience attended them. Of course, in Central Europe all this really had ground to happen. In Warsaw, for example, the public could boycott the performance of Reinhardt’s Oedipus Rex, thus protesting against germanisation of Polish territories that belonged to German Empire ( see http://encyklopediateatru.pl/kalendarium/1855/krol-edyp-maxa-reinhardta-zbojkotowany-wwarszawie).
For Czech people, theatre was extremely important for national self-identification and struggle for national independence. Today, visiting the exhibition of the newly-opened historical building of National Museum, I am extremely touched to find right at the entrance the artefacts concerning theatre – including the song „Kde domov můj?“ from the Fidlovačka by Josef Kajetan Tyl. My (and Vlasta’s) teacher professor Larisa Solntseva began her lectures citing the theatrical event which gave the Czechs their (then unofficial) anthem and reciting the Russian translation of the text. Now, in the earphones, I finally hear the song (not as an anthem, but as a song from a play) and read the text… I also read the commentary about the controversies around the song becoming an anthem… Nearby is the box where the people’s donations were gathered in order National Theatre could be built anew. The whole exposition is dedicated to the 200th anniversary of National Museum and presents the main tendencies in what was collected and exhibited.
Happy to see all this, I am, however, rather disturbed – like in Vilnius, Lwow, Wroclaw or other places – that there is hardly a space where the multinational cultural milieus of the past could be presented and reflected on. The documents on Max Reinhardt’s guest performances also would belong to one of these non-existent exhibitions.
In the archive, however, I am given an old catalogue, where the performances written about are registered according the names of the plays’ authors. So, there is no such entry as “Reinhardt” (let alone “Eysoldt”); but I check Gorky, Hofmannsthal and Shakespeare (because of A Midsummernight’s Dream, which was also played in Prague). It turns out that the small journal of National Theatre regularly reported about the news from Berlin, including The Lower Depths, which is described as a performance with a tremendous financial success (this information had to be acquired already in Theatre Institute, where they held the journal, while the National Museum had only the catalogue, the funds being based in Terezin).
Despite such advertisement, Prague audience somehow didn’t like the idea of The Lower Depths very much and simply didn’t attend the performance very well. Max Reinhardt decided to replace the last – third – performance of The Lower Depths with the cabaret program, which would repeat what Schall und Rauch had shown in Prague a year before.
Curiously, it is at this point, that newspapers began to express a special interest in Eysoldt. Was it her strategy to draw attention to herself by rejecting to take part in a cabaret evening? If it was so, it was a complete success. First the newspaper Bohemia reported that she would be replaced, then that the spectators of the last evening missed Eysoldt greatly (for they remembered her acting from the previous year!). The reviewer also expressed the regret that the Prague audience could not appreciate “the inner art” of The Lower Depths and demanded entertainment.
Although somewhat negative, the result of my search is that Eysoldt was distinguished by the Prague audience already during her visit in 1902. Although the impact of her acting was probably never documented satisfactorily, it is worth to search for such indirect evidence, as Kafka’s note or the newspaper’s reports around the canceled performance of The Lower Depths and Eysoldt’s (demonstrative?) absence in the renewed cabaret program. And one evidence more: in 1905, the reviewer of the important artistic magazine Volné směry didn’t find a better way to praise Miloš Marten who recited the poems of Otakar Březina, than to compare him with Gertrud Eysoldt, who “recite new poets on the new stages, with all love to the speech that was discovered, loved, transfigured and adjusted” (Volné směry, 1905, s.134-135). Isn’t it one of the best descriptions of what Eysoldt did to Hofmannsthal’s text? Even if it was written on the totally different occasion…
I begin to think that probably the best way to find something about Reinhardt’s The Lower Depths in Prague is… to search in the reviews on the guest performances of Moscow Art Theatre in 1906, which, in turn, showed the same play with the tremendous success!