The Tragedy of Mister Morn
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creaking now with the urgent longing of toads
on ponds, now with the convulsion of oily leaves…
Had I not been King, I would have been a poet
with a lyre hot in this night, saturated
in blueness, in this vivid night, which quivers
along its length under a swarm of stars,
like the sensitive back of black Pegasus…
But we shall not—shall we?—talk of death,
—but with a bright conversation about
the kingdom, about power, and about
my happiness, you shall refresh my soul,
chase from the light the long, soft butterflies—
and gulp of wine will follow gulp, so that
the words of the soul may sound more sweetly
and sincerely… I’m happy.
LADY:
Sovereign, will there
be dancing?…
MORN:
Dancing? There is no room to, Ella.
LADY:
My name is not Ella…
MORN:
I am mistaken…
so… I’ve remembered… I was saying there is
no room to dance here. But in the palace,
perhaps I will host a ball—an enormous one,
by candlelight, yes, by candlelight,
to the magnificent hum of an organ…
LADY:
The King… the King is laughing at me.
MORN:
I am happy!… And if I’m pale, it is from happiness!…
The bandage… it is too tight… Edmin, tell…
no, do it yourself… fix it… like that…
good…
GREY-HAIRED GUEST:
Perhaps the King is tired? Perhaps
the guests should…
MORN:
Oh, how alike he is!…
Look, Edmin—how alike!… No, I am not tired.
Have you been away from the city long?
GREY-HAIRED GUEST:
My sovereign, I was driven out by a storm:
the mob, having shied away from you,
accidentally pushed into me, almost crushing
my soul. I fled. Since then I have thought
and wandered. Now I will return, blessing
my sorrowful exile for the sweetness of return…
But in wine there are bees’ wings; and in joy,
for me, there is a grief translucent: my old
house, where since childhood I have lived,
my house is burned…
EDMIN:
But the nation has been saved!
GREY-HAIRED GUEST:
How can I explain? A nation is a bodiless divinity,
whilst our favourite corner of our homeland—
that is the visible image of the bodiless.
We only know God by his parted beard;
we recognize our nation by the traits
of our dear home. No one can take God
or our homeland from us. But it’s still sad
to lose the warm little image. My house
has perished. I weep.
MORN:
I swear, I will build
that very same house in the very same spot
for you. And not an architect, but your love
will check the blueprints; your memories, not carpenters,
will aid me; not painters, but the alert eyes
of your childhood: in childhood we see the souls
of colours…
GREY-HAIRED GUEST:
Sovereign, I thank you: I know
that you are a magician, I’m happy that
you’ve understood me, but I do not need
a home…
MORN:
I made a vow… What’s in a vow?
The babble of pride. And when you look, death
is always there. What’s in a vow? Even
the star deceives the stargazer, by sometimes
not returning at the expected time.
Wait… Tell me… did you know that old man—
Dandilio?
GREY-HAIRED GUEST:
Dandilio? No, sovereign, I don’t recall…
SECOND VISITOR [quietly]:
Look at the King, he’s displeased with something…
THIRD VISITOR [quietly]:
As though a shadow—the shadow of a bird—
flew across his bright, pale face… Who’s that?
[There is movement to the left, by the door.]
VOICE:
Excuse me… What is your name? You cannot
come in here!
FOREIGNER:
I am a Foreigner…
VOICE:
Wait!
FOREIGNER:
No… I shall come in… I’m just… I’m nothing.
I’m simply asleep…
VOICE:
He’s drunk, don’t let him in!…
MORN:
Ah, a new guest! Come in, come in, quickly!
I am so happy that I’d welcome with a smile
even an angel mournfully dragging himself
beneath the funereal hump of his folded wings;
or a beggar with some brilliant trick;
or an executioner with his tidy frock-coat
tightly fastened… Well then, my dear guest,
approach!
FOREIGNER:
They say you are the King?
EDMIN:
How dare you!…
MORN:
Leave him. He’s foreign. Yes, I am the King…
FOREIGNER:
So, then… I’m pleased: I dreamt you up well…
MORN:
Keep silent, Edmin—it’s amusing. Have you
come from afar, my nebulous guest?
FOREIGNER:
From
commonplace reality, from the dull real world…
I am asleep… All this is a dream… the dream
of a drunken poet… A recurring dream…
I dreamt of you once: some ball… some city…
frosty and merry… Only you had a different
name…
MORN:
Morn?
FOREIGNER:
Morn. That’s it…
An elaborate dream… But you know,
I was glad to wake up… I remember something
wasn’t right there. But what I don’t recall…
MORN:
Does everyone in your country speak so…
dreamily?
FOREIGNER:
Oh, no! In our country all is not well,
not well… When I wake up, I will tell them
what a magnificent king I dreamt of…
MORN:
Curious fellow!
FOREIGNER:
But what makes me uneasy?
I don’t know… Just like last time… I’m frightened…
My bedroom must be stuffy. Something fills me
with fear… an illusion… I’ll try to wake up…
MORN:
Wait!… Where did my ghost slip off to?… Wait,
come back…
VOICE [from the left]:
Hold him!
SECOND VOICE:
I can’t see him…
THIRD VOICE:
Night…
EDMIN:
My sovereign, how can you bear to listen to that?
MORN:
Past kings had fools: they spoke the truth darkly,
cunningly—and the kings loved their fools…
While I have this spurious somnambulist…
Why have you grown quiet, dear guests?
Drink to my happiness! And you, Edmin.
Eh, brighten up! All drink! The heart of Bacchus
is like cut glass: in it is blood and sunshine…
GUESTS:
Long live the King!
MORN:
The King… the King…
Heavenly thunder rumbles in that earth
ly word.
So! We’ve drunk! Now I will hearten my subjects:
I intend to return tomorrow!
EDMIN:
Sovereign…
GUESTS:
Long live the King!
EDMIN:
… I beg you… the doctors…
MORN:
Enough! I said—tomorrow! Go back, back—
in a flying coffin! Yes, in a steel coffin,
on fabricated wings! And what is more:
you said “fairy tale”… It makes me laugh…
and God laughs with me! The stupefied mob
does not know that the knight’s body is dark
and sweaty, locked in its fairy-tale armour…
VOICE [quietly]:
What is it that the King is saying? …
MORN:
… they do not know that the poor Eastern bride
is barely alive beneath her tasselled weight,
but across the sea the wandering troubadours
will sing of a fairy-tale love, will tell lies
to the ages, their fingers barely touching
the sheep sinews—and dirt becomes a dream!
[Drinks.]
VOICE:
What is the King saying?
SECOND VOICE:
He’s inebriated!…
THIRD VOICE:
His eyes shine with madness!…
MORN:
Edmin, pour me
some more…
LADY [to the gentleman]:
Let’s go. I am frightened…
[…]*
[KING]:
A dream once interrupted cannot be resumed,
and the kingdom which sailed before me in a dream
is suddenly revealed as merely standing
on the earth. Reality has suddenly intruded.
That, which is flesh and blood, once seemed to glide
like translucent ether; now, suddenly,
stomping like a rough giant, it has entered
into my solid but fragile dream. I see
around me the ruins of towers which soared up
to the clouds. Yes, a dream is always
an illusion, all is a lie, a lie.
EDMIN:
She lied
to me too, my sovereign.
KING:
Who lied, Edmin?
[suddenly remembers]
Oh, you talk of her?… No, my kingdom
was an illusion… The dream was a lie.
[…]*
[MORN]:[3]
Edmin, give it to me!… What else should I do?
Fall to my knees? Would you like that? Ah, Edmin,
I must die! I am guilty, not before Ganus,
but before God, before you, before myself,
before my people! I was a bad king:
unseen, without courtiers, I ruled by deception…
All my power lay in my mysteriousness…
The wisdom of my laws? The creativity
and joy of power? The love of the people?
Yes. But empty and deceiving, like the pale jester
in his moon-like smock, was the soul of the ruler!
I appeared now in a mask upon the throne,
now in the drawing room of a vain lover…
Deception! And my flight was the lie, the trick—
do you hear?—of a coward! And this glory
is but the kiss of a blind man… Am I
really a king? A king who killed a girl?
No, no, enough, I will fall—to death—
to fiery death! I am but a torch,
thrown into a well, flaming, whirling, flying,
flying downwards to meet its reflection,
that grows in the darkness like the dawn…
I beg you! I beg you! Give me my black pistol!
You do not speak?
[Pause.]
Well then, don’t… There are
other deaths in this world: precipices
and maelstroms, poisons and blades, and the knot.
No! You can no more stop a sinner killing
himself, than a genius from being born!
[Pause.]
But then, I am demeaning myself in vain
by these requests… A complicated game
with such a simple denouement is boring.
[Pause.]
Edmin, I am your king. Give it to me.
You understand?
[EDMIN, without looking, extends the pistol to him.]
MORN:
Thank you. I will go out
onto the terrace. Only the stars will see me.
I am happy and lucid; I could not speak
more truthfully… Edmin, I’ll lightly kiss
your light brow… Silence, silence… Your
silence is sweeter than any known songs.
So. Thank you.
[walks towards the glass door]
The blue night takes me away!
[He goes out onto the terrace. His figure, illuminated by the night rays, can be seen through the glass door.]
EDMIN:
…No one must see how
my King presents to the heavens,
the death of Mister Morn.
CURTAIN
Further Reading
The Tragedy of Mister Morn was first published in 1997 in Zvezda, a Russian literary journal, as “Tragediia Gospodina Morna” (“The Tragedy of Mister Morn”), edited by Serena Vitale and Ellendea Proffer and with an introduction by Vadim Stark (Zvezda, no. 4 [1997], pp. 6–98). This translation is based on the play as it subsequently appeared in book form: Tragediia Gospodina Morna (St. Petersburg: Azbuka Press, 2008), edited by Andrei Babikov and containing the Russian text of Nabokov’s other plays.
Many if not all of Nabokov’s other writings cast light on Morn. Of especial interest, however, are the early Russian writings, included in the volumes of his collected works in Russian: Sobranie sochinenii russkogo perioda v piati tomakh (Collected Works of the Russian Period in Five Volumes), with various editors and an introduction to each volume by Alexander Dolinin (St. Petersburg: Symposium, 1999–2000). For readers without Russian, many of Nabokov’s other early plays are translated by Dmitri Nabokov in The Man from the USSR & Other Plays (San Diego: Bruccoli Clark/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), which also contains his important essay on drama, “The Tragedy of Tragedy.” Early poems which offer comparisons with Morn are translated in Nabokov, Selected Poems, edited by Thomas Karshan (New York: Knopf, 2012). Early short stories, many of which bear on Morn, are translated in The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Knopf, 1995). This last volume contains two short stories, “Ultima Thule” and “Solus Rex,” which Nabokov wrote in 1939–40 and which are the only surviving remnants of a novel that would clearly have re-developed the themes of Morn. Traces of that project are also to be found in Nabokov’s novel Bend Sinister, and still more so in the Pale Fire, the work in which Nabokov most directly re-addressed the images, themes, and ideas of Morn.
The definitive biography of Nabokov is the two-volume work by Brian Boyd, whose first volume deals with the period in which Nabokov was writing Morn and contains a critical analysis of the play: Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (London: Chatto & Windus, 1990). Critical analysis is also offered, for those who read Russian, in Andrei Babikov and Vadim Stark’s introductions to their respective editions of Morn. Apart from these, there has been little critical analysis of Morn to date. Exceptions are: Gennady Barabtarlo, “Nabokov’s Trinity: On the Movement of Nabokov’s Themes,” in Nabokov and His Fiction: New Perspectives, edited by Julian Connolly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 109–38; Siggy Frank, “Exile in Theatre/Theatre in Exile: Nabokov’s Early Plays, Tragediia Gospodina Morna and Chelovek iz SSSR,” in the Slavonic and East European Review, vol., no. (October 2007), pp. 629–57; A. Iu. Meshchanskii, “‘Tragediia Gospodina Morna’ kak predtecha russkoiazychnoi prozy V. V. Nabokova,” in Voprosy filologii, no. 11 (2002), pp. 100–108; an
d R. V. Novikov, “‘Tragediia Gospodina Morna’ V. Nabokova: k poetike ‘p’esy-snovideniia,’” in Maloizvestnye stranitsy i novye kontseptsii istorii russkoi literatury XX v.: Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, Moskva, edited by L. F. Alekseeva and V. A. Skripkina (Moscow: Moscow State Open University, 2003), pp. 181–87.
Much has been written about Nabokov more generally. Excellent starting points are The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov, edited by Julian Connolly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) and the encyclopaedic Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, edited by Vladimir Alexandrov (New York: Routledge, 1995). Other recent critical studies include: Vladimir Alexandrov, Nabokov’s Otherworld (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991); Julian Connolly, Nabokov’s Early Fiction: Patterns of Self and Other (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Leland de la Durantaye, Style Is Matter: The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007); Alexander Dolinin, Istinnaia zhizn’ pisatelia Sirina (St. Petersburg: Academic Project, 2004); Thomas Karshan, Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Play (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Leona Toker, Nabokov: The Mystery of Literary Structures (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989); and Michael Wood, The Magician’s Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).
A Note About the Author and the Translators
VLADIMIR NABOKOV studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940, he left France for America, where he wrote some of his greatest works—Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962)—and translated his earlier Russian novels into English. He taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.
THOMAS KARSHAN is the author of Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Play and editor of Nabokov’s Selected Poems. Previously a research fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, and Queen Mary, University of London, he is now a lecturer in literature at the University of East Anglia.
ANASTASIA TOLSTOY is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oxford, where she is writing a thesis on Nabokov. She is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy.
Other titles by Vladimir Nabokov available in eBook format
Ada, or Ardor • 978-0-307-78801-6
The Annotated Lolita • 978-0-307-78808-5
Bend Sinister • 978-0-307-78788-0
Despair • 978-0-307-78766-8
The Enchanter • 978-0-307-78730-9
The Eye • 978-0-307-78756-9
The Gift • 978-0-307-78777-4
Glory • 978-0-307-78757-6