Since these quotations are drawn from statements
made over a long period of years--he lived to be 75--
the reader will be aware of certain minor shifts of
viewpoint. Because Stanislavski never stood still ("Art
and artists must move forward or they will move back-
ward"), he was revising his ideas to his last breath. But
the fundamental aim never varied: "to create the life
of a human spirit, but also to express it in a beautiful,
artistic form." No matter what the angle of approach,
his efforts remained constant to achieve "a truth trans-
formed into a poetical equivalent by means of creative
imagination."

Stanislavski was fortunate in many ways. He was the
son of a wealthy man who could give him the advan-
tages of a broad education, the opportunity to see the
greatest exponents of theatre art at home and abroad,
the possibility of making his own early experiments in
the theatre. He might have remained a brilliant dilet-
tante had he not set his sights on a high goal and never
faltered along the hard road leading to it. His per-
sonal integrity and inexhaustible capacity for work
contributed to make him a professional artist of the
first rank. For Stanislavski was also richly endowed by
nature with a handsome exterior, fine voice, genuine
talent, so that as an actor, director and teacher he was
destined to influence and inspire by his own example
the many who worked with him and under him, or
who had the privilege of seeing him on the stage with
the incomparable company of the Moscow Art Theatre
of his time.

"Do you realize . . . what is required of an actor,
why a real artist must lead a full, interesting, beauti-
ful, varied, exciting and inspiring life?" Those were
his words. That was his life.

-- E. R. H.

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