The Power of Darkness

A Drama in Five Acts

Leo Tolstoy, Louise Maude, Aylmer Maude

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780486836966
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Drama

Best known today as the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Count Leo Tolstoy also is acknowledged as a skilled playwright. His five-act drama The Power of Darkness offers a cold and unsparing look at Russian peasant life that illustrates the costs of pursuing personal desires rather than the dictates of morality. The grimly realistic tragedy is based on a real incident, centering on a peasant's confession to a party of wedding guests of his participation in a series of horrific crimes that range from adultery and murder to infanticide.
Tolstoy's moving portrait of a class enslaved by poverty and ignorance was written in 1886, but its performance was suppressed by Russian authorities until 1902. A 1904 version, performed in New York in Yiddish, marked the first successful production of a play by Tolstoy in the United States.

ACT III

The same hut. Winter. Nine months have passed since Act II. Anisya, plainly dressed, sits before a loom weaving. Nan is on the oven.

MITRITCH [an old laborer, enters, and slowly takes off his outdoor things] Oh Lord, have mercy! Well, hasn’t the master come home yet?

ANISYA. What?

MITRITCH. Nikita isn’t back from town, is he?

ANISYA. No.

MITRITCH. Must have been on the spree. Oh Lord!

ANISYA. Have you finished in the stackyard?

MITRITCH. What d’you think? Got it all as it should be, and covered everything with straw! I don’t like doing things by halves! Oh Lord! holy Nicholas! [Picks at the corns on his hands] Else it’s time he were back.

ANISYA. What need has he to hurry? He’s got money. Merry-making with that girl, I daresay . . .

MITRITCH. Why shouldn’t one make merry if one has the money? And why did Akoulina go to town?

ANISYA. You’d better ask her. How do I know what the devil took her there!

MITRITCH. What! to town? There’s all sorts of things to be got in town if one’s got the means. Oh Lord!

NAN. Mother, I heard myself. “I’ll get you a little shawl,” he says, may I die; “you shall choose it yourself,” he says. And she got herself up so fine; she put on her velveteen coat and the French shawl.

ANISYA. Really, a girl’s modesty reaches only to the door. Step over the threshold and it’s forgotten. She is a shameless creature.

MITRITCH. Oh my! What’s the use of being ashamed? While there’s plenty of money make merry. Oh Lord! It is too soon to have supper, eh? [Anisya does not answer] I’ll go and get warm meanwhile. [Climbs on the stove] Oh Lord! Blessed Virgin Mother! holy Nicholas!

NEIGHBOR [enters] Seems your goodman’s not back yet?

ANISYA. No.

NEIGHBOR. It’s time he was. Hasn’t he perhaps stopped at our inn? My sister, Thekla, says there’s heaps of sledges standing there as have come from the town.

ANISYA. Nan! Nan, I say!

NAN. Yes?

ANISYA. You run to the inn and see! Mayhap, being drunk, he’s gone there.

NAN [ jumps down from the oven and dresses] All right.

NEIGHBOR. And he’s taken Akoulina with him?

ANISYA. Else he’d not have had any need of going. It’s because of her he’s unearthed all the business there. “Must go to the bank,’’ he says; “it’s time to receive the payments,” he says. But it’s all her fooling.

NEIGHBOR [shakes her head ] It’s a bad look-out. [Silence].

NAN [at the door] And if he’s there, what am I to say?

ANISYA. You only see if he’s there.

NAN. All right. I’ll be back in a winking. [Long silence].

MITRITCH [roars] Oh Lord! merciful Nicholas!

NEIGHBOR [starting] Oh, how he scared me? Who is it?

ANISYA. Why, Mitritch, our laborer.

NEIGHBOR. Oh dear, oh dear, what a fright he did give me! I had quite forgotten. But tell me, dear, I’ve heard someone’s been wooing Akoulina?

ANISYA [ gets up from the loom and sits down by the table] There was someone from Dedlovo; but it seems the affair’s got wind there too. They made a start, and then stopped; so the thing fell through. Of course, who’d care to?

NEIGHBOR. And the Lizounofs from Zouevo?

ANISYA. They made some steps too, but it didn’t come off either. They won’t even receive us.

NEIGHBOR. Yet it’s time she was married.

ANISYA. Time and more than time! Ah, my dear, I’m that impatient to get her out of the house; but the matter does not come off. He does not wish it, nor she either. He’s not yet had enough of his beauty, you see.

NEIGHBOR. Eh, eh, eh, what doings! Only think of it. Why, he’s her step-father!

ANISYA. Ah, friend, they’ve taken me in completely. They’ve done me so fine it’s beyond saying. I, fool that I was, noticed nothing, suspected nothing, and so I married him. I guessed nothing, but they already understood one another.

NEIGHBOR. Oh dear, what goings on!

ANISYA. So it went on from bad to worse, and I see they begin hiding from me. Ah, friend, I was that sick—that sick of my life! It’s not as if I didn’t love him.

NEIGHBOR. That goes without saying.

ANISYA. Ah, how hard it is to bear such treatment from him! Oh, how it hurts!

NEIGHBOR. Yes, and I’ve heard say he’s becoming too free with his fists?

ANISYA. And that too! There was a time when he was gentle when he’d had a drop. He used to hit out before, but of me he was always fond! But now when he’s in a temper he goes for me and is ready to trample me under his feet. The other day he got both hands entangled in my hair so that I could hardly get away. And the girl’s worse than a serpent; it’s a wonder the earth bears such furies.

NEIGHBOR. Ah, ah, my dear, now I look at you, you are a sufferer! To suffer like that is no joke. To have given shelter to a beggar, and he to lead you such a dance! Why don’t you pull in the reins?

ANISYA. Ah, but my dear, if it weren’t for my heart! Him as is gone was stern enough, still I could twist him about any way I liked; but with this one I can do nothing. As soon as I see him all my anger goes. I haven’t a grain of courage before him; I go about like a drowned hen.

NEIGHBOR. Ah, neighbor, you must be under a spell. I’ve heard that Matryona goes in for that sort of thing. It must be her.

ANISYA. Yes, dear; I think so myself sometimes. Gracious me, how hurt I feel at times! I’d like to tear him to pieces. But when I set eyes on him, my heart won’t go against him.

NEIGHBOR. It’s plain you’re bewitched. It don’t take long to blight a body. There now, when I look at you, what you have dwindled to!

ANISYA. Growing a regular spindle-shanks. And just look at that fool Akoulina. Wasn’t the girl a regular untidy slattern, and just look at her now! Where has it all come from? Yes, he has fitted her out. She’s grown so smart, so puffed up, just like a bubble that’s ready to burst. And, though she’s a fool, she’s got it into her head, “I’m the mistress,” she says; “the house is mine; it’s me father wanted him to marry.” And she’s that vicious! Lord help us, when she gets into a rage she’s ready to tear the thatch off the house.

NEIGHBOR. Oh dear, what a life yours is, now I come to look at you. And yet there’s people envying you: “They’re ri...