"I warrant you it will be," interposed Kotlicki, "not the kind that
Topolski desires but that which will be the best within the bounds
of possibility. It will even be possible to introduce certain
improvements by way of variety and attraction, but we shall leave
the reformation of the theater to someone else; for that you would
need hundreds of thousands of rubles and you would have to start it
in Paris."

"The reformation of the theater will not originate with the
managers, and as for dramatic creativity, what is it really? . . .
The seeking of something in the dark, a dog-like scenting about, an
aimless straying, or the antics of a flea. A genius must arrive to
revolutionize the modern theater; I already have a feeling that one
is coming . . ." asserted Glogowski.

"How is that? . . . Aren't the existing masterpieces of the drama
sufficient for creating an ideal theater?" queried Janina.

"No . . . those masterpieces belong to the past; we need other
works. For us those masterpieces are a very important archeology,"
answered Glogowski.

"So in your estimation Shakespeare is antiquated?"

"Sh! let us not speak of him; he is the whole universe; we can
merely contemplate him, but never understand him . . ."

"And Schiller?"

"A Utopian and classic: an echo of the Encyclopedists and the French
Revolution. He represents nobility, order, German doctrinarianism
and pathetic and wearisome declamation."

"And Goethe?" ventured Janina, who had developed a great liking for
Glogowski's paradoxical definitions.

"That means only Faust, but Faust is so complicated a machine that
since the death of the inventor no one knows how to wind it or start
it going. The commentators push its wheels, take it apart, clean it,
and dust it, but the machine will not go and already is beginning to
rust a little. . . . Moreover, it is a furious aristocracy. That Mr.
Faust is first of all not the ideal type of man, but an
experimenter; he is nothing but the brain of one of those learned
rabbis who spend their whole lives on pondering whether it is proper
to enter the synagogue with the right or the left foot first; he is
a vivisector, who, after breaking the heart of Margaret in the
process of his experimentation, and fearing the threat of
imprisonment, and being unable by virtue of his shortsightedness to
see anything beyond his study and his retorts, makes a sport of
complaining and laments that life is base and knowledge is
worthless