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Skaya
The song itself is plaintive, elemental, with the insinuating nuances that are vital to Russian music.
There comes a bit of melancholy in the song, and she sings it as one possessed, giving it drama, pathos. Suddenly there is a change. The music leaps to wild abandon. She is with it. She tosses her head like a wild Hungarian gypsy, and gives fire to every note. But almost as it began, the abandon is over. With wistful sweetness she is singing plaintively again.
She is touching every human emotion in her song. At times she is tossing away care, then gently wooing, an elusive strain that is almost fairylike, that crescendos into tragedy, going into crashing climax that diminishes into an ending, searching, yearning, and wistfully sad.
Her personality is written into every mood of the song. She is at once fine, courageous, pathetic and wild.
3. A SHORT STORY WRITTEN AT THE TIME OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR*
RHYTHM
A STORY OF MEN IN MACABRE MOVEMENT
Only dawn stirred in the quietude of the little Spanish prison yard — dawn, the harbinger of death — while the young loyalist stood before the firing squad. The preliminaries were over. The little group of officials had drawn to one side to watch the execution and at this moment the scene was set in a painful silence.
From first to last the rebels had hoped that the staff-officer would send a reprieve. The condemned man was an opponent of their cause, but he had been popular in Spain. He was a brilliant humorist whose writings had in large measure rejoiced the hearts of his compatriots.
The officer in command of the firing squad knew him personally. They were friends, before the civil war. Together they had obtained their diplomas at the University of Madrid. They had fought together for the overthrow of the monarchy and of the power of the Church. Together, they had drunk a glass of wine, spent their night round tables in a cafe, laughed, joked, and given whole evenings to
* Rhythm is taken from Pierre Leprohon's book, Charles Chaplin. Melot. Paris. 1946. The story is virtually unknown in this country. Our efforts to trace the original publication, presumably in the U.S.A., have so far proved unavailing. The story is striking, and brings out so clearly a fundamental aspect of Chaplin's genius that we wished to call attention to it, and have zfelt justified in giving it in the form of a rendering from the French.