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A BIOGRAPHY
275
While our books were going through the press we
once more attempted a work in collaboration.
Sönya, during her last visit to Russia, had found
in her sister’s desk the MS. of a drama which Aniuta
had written many years previously. It had met with
warm approval from some of the best literary critics
in Russia, but it was not ready for the stage. It
contained scenes full of inspiration. The delineation of
character was admirable, and throughout there lay in
it a wonderfully deep, melancholy spirit. It had,
besides, a very strong Russian local coloring.
When Sönya read it to me in full translation I at
once felt that it was worth revising in order to offer
it to the Swedish stage. Sönya, moreover, ever since
her sister’s death, had felt a keen desire to make some
of her works known. It pained her to remember how
Aniuta’s rich gifts had been repressed in their
development, and she found a kind of consolation in the
thought of obtaining for her sister at least a
posthumous fame. We set to work. We discussed scene
after scene, act after act, and agreed as to what
alterations were necessary. Sönya sketched the drama in
Russian, and added nearly a whole act, thus making
her first attempt in dramatic dialogue. She then
dictated it to me in her broken Swedish, and I put it into
shape as I wrote it down.
But it seemed as though no form of collaboration
could succeed. We read the new drama to a select
circle of literary and artistic friends in Sonya’s red
drawing-room. It had, after much deliberation,
received the somewhat clumsy title of " Till and After
Death." The opinion of our friends was not very
encouraging. They found the drama too monotonously
gloomy. They did not think it would be successful
on the stage.
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