in reference to its performance by a group of first-rate émigré actors in New York in Nineteen-Forties*2
Regarding M. Zheleznov’s Review
Dear Sir, Mr. Editor,
In accordance with the good custom of the Russian press, I kindly request that you print the following:
“Sirin,” notes Mr. Zheleznov with reference to my play The Event (Novoe russkoe slovo, April 6), “is settling old scores with a writer clearly belonging to our emigration and known to us all. The caricature succeeded brilliantly….Dalmatov understood who Sirin had in mind.”1
These words are not only unseemly but meaningless, too. There would have been a shadow of meaning in them had they referred to the staging of The Event in Paris, where the director, without any intention or knowledge of mine, added such a twist to Pyotr Nikolaevich that the Parisian audience discerned in him the manner of an actual person. But here, in New York, nothing in Dalmatov’s excellent acting suggested or could have suggested a mimed connection with any prototype at all. So what’s going on? What exactly did Dalmatov “understand,” or, rather, what did the reviewer “understand” on his and my behalf? With whom am I settling what “old scores,” in Mr. Zheleznov’s facile expression?
By making my perplexity public, I am only trying to cut off a flight of presuppositions as mysterious as they are absurd. At the same time, I am battling the tempting thought that Mr. Zheleznov is simply one of my carefree characters and resides in the very townlet where my farce takes place.
Please be assured of my utmost respect.
V. Sirin