The Magician and the Fool

A Drama in Three Acts

Tony Rothman

Author’s Preface

Where the truth leaves off and the fiction begins is, as usual, difficult to say. On the side of history, this play does concern two historical figures and all the identified characters did exist, usually in the roles assigned to them. Most of the major events in the play occurred, though how they occurred is another matter. Finally, for the cause of history, a fair bit of dialogue is adapted from the actual writings of the protagonists or from eye-witness accounts. On the side of fiction, times and places have been severely distorted or ignored altogether, and occasionally characters have been combined. Most of the dialogue has been freely invented -- after all, court stenographers and the secret police, then as now, were not everywhere. And finally, for the cause of fiction, there are some significant gaps in the historical record. The hyper-realistic details presented here to fill in the narrative are fabrications.

Fiction, of course, wins out in the end, if for no other reason than the intent of the play is not historical. Even if every individual element in the drama were factual, the whole would still be a phantasm. Call it “historical surrealism” if a category is required.

This is not to say the play cannot be taken as biographical. It can, but because the focus is on more general questions, the reader or theatergoer maf find himself at the end almost as ignorant about the works of the heroes as he was at the beginning. Standard references may help remedy the situation. Or, if deemed necessary, the two prologues may be read on stage before curtain, printed, or ignored.

T.R.

CAST

ALEKSANDR SERGEYEVICH PUSHKIN: The historical Pushkin from ages 20 to 37. See portraits by Tropinin or Kipresnsky. Short, dark, long side whiskers. Quick movements bursting with energy.

EVARISTE GALOIS: The historical Galois from ages 17 to 20. Extant are only sketches done while he was a high-school student and by his brother Alfred sixteen years after his death. Short, thin, even wiry. Quick movements laced with paranoia.

AUGUSTE CHEVALIER: Galois’ closest friend and schoolmate. The same age. Extraordinarily faithful, not bright, but occasionally stumbles on to a good point.

TZAR NIKOLAI I: “He has the most aristocratic physiognomy imaginable; he is despotism made man, the most irreproachable personification of absolute power...You can see that he is posing all the time; that he sees himself going by. Being constantly in uniform has stiffened his movements and given special significance to all his gestures. You might say that he is always under arms, and that he never takes off his gorget.” –Lacroix as quoted by Troyat. Nonetheless, known to have been exceedingly sly with prisoners.

FORTUNE TELLER: Old and craggy, but no fool.

M. RICHARD: Galois’ mathematics teacher in secondary school. A competent mathematician.

NATALYA PUSHKINA (NATASHA): Only 18 when married, 12 years younger than Pushkin. Unfortunately, as dimwitted as she was beautiful. The 19th century equivalent of a sorority girl.

STEPHANIE DUMOTEL: Nothing is known about her except her name and that she was a doctor’s daughter.

SOLOGUB: A young count in his twenties. A fervent admirer of Pushkin.

IVAN IVANOVICH PUSCHIN (JEANEAU): Pushkin’s best friend from the lycée. Later sent to Siberia.

Plus: Friends, Republicans, Seconds, Prisoners, Dancers, Voices and Shadows.

NOTE: The play is constructed so that parts can be doubled and quadrupled. In particular, CHEVALIER and SOLOGUB should be played by the same actor. The same holds true for RICHARD and RASPAIL.

SOME NOTES

1. Music

There is a fair amount of music specified for use in the play, some of which is more crucial than others. To set the mood, I would suggest playing the second movement of the Brahms sextet in B-flat for strings before curtain. A suitable recording is the Menuhin et al.

2. Names

The pronunciation of some of the more unusual names is as follows:

Ábel: a as in “father.”

Cáuchy: “Koashee” with the “oa” as in “goat.”

Galóis: “Galwah.”

Raspáil: silent 1.

The accent on many Russian names is not on the same syllable as expected in English. Thus:

Vladimir is “Vladéemir.”

Boris is “Barées,” the a as in “father.”

Ivan is “EEván.”

In all but the most formal conversation, the patronymics tend to become contracted:

Ivanovich becomes Ivan’ich.

Ivanovna becomes Ivantna, etc..

3. The Russian.

The Russian poetry is given in transliteration and, in the course of the action, a translation. The transliteration is not, and cannot be, accurate. The music will shine through if the Russian is learned. The original is also given in footnotes.

4. Sets.

The sets described tend to be “maximal.” One could probably do with nothing.

PROLOGUE ONE

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin was Russia’s greatest poet. He wrote approximately one thousand works, including Ruslan and Ludmilla, upon which Glinka based his opera; The Stone Guest, which became an opera by Dargomyshky; The Bronze Horseman, which became a ballet by Gliere; Mozart and Salieri and Le Coq d’Or which became operas by Rimsky-Korsakov; The Queen of Spades and Evgeny Onegin, which became operas by Tchaikovsky; and Boris Godunov, which served as the basis for Musorgsky’s opera.

In Russia, innumerable parks, squares, museums, and theatres are named in his honor, not to mention several cities. There exists a four-volume dictionary which is nothing more than an index to Pushkin’s vocabulary. He is the acknowledged creator of the modern Russian literary language, and it is said that he is among the five persons in all history about whom more has been written than any others.

PROLOGUE TWO

Evariste Galois was one of the greatest mathematicians of the nineteenth century. His was the first full expression of the theory of groups, which in the twentieth century has become the fundamental description of nature at its most basic level. Although the work of Galois concerned symmetries found in mathematical equations, these symmetries are also found in snowflakes, crystals, and atoms. Modern theories of elementary particles and of the natural forces are theories of analogous symmetries and thus can be said to find their origins in the work of Galois and other pioneers. His collected works fill approximately sixty pages and until recently there was no biography of Galois in the English language.