- "Why I am remembering again and again the All-Russian exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod? The Exhibition of 1896? The tsar's visit with a guilty smile?" - Gorky has sighed with nostalgia. - "The exhibition pavilions, whirling as in dance, - in a semi-fantastic, silent, but mighty dance, - the pavilions, which I was observing from the train car moving?
The obvious understanding of the hugeness of the state: from the White Sea to the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, from the Baltic coasts to Vladivostok?
How to forget performances at an exhibition of the people's storytelleress Irina Fedosova: about the power of melancholy - a melancholy terrible, tearing heart? About a courage - which is full of vigorous forces? About a powerful love to freedom? About a search of feats? How to forget - in her execution - the "soldier's song", the song impressing by the melody, similar to the Byzantine drawing, abounding with a drearily daring shouts, the "akhs" and "ekhs", a long pullings of notes and infinite variations on the main motive?"
Gorky and his guest - Aleksey Silych Novikov-Priboi, who has arrived to Capri, - were sitting admiring the sea.
- "You, Alexei Maximovich, passed on foot a half of Russia? How many strokes on the teeth have you received for the time of the wanderings? Have you interceded for a woman? And you were beaten in responce? And if "on the teeth" every day? "For the order's sake"? Whether everybody could look at Russia in such style, like the visitors of an exhibitions did?" - Novikov-Priboi has made a pause. - "Wouldn't we were ready to forgive? In case, if the victory was reached? If the victory was a reality?"
Novikov-Priboi has sighed:
- "After the surrender of Port Arthur not followed the firmness during the Battle of Tsushima?"
- "Whether will not break, old boy, the emergency brakes after February of the 1917th?" - the low, slightly bald, man with a big forehead, who has approached the conversating writers, has commented. - "Residents of Kronstadt will make in the spring of the 1917th an impression on counterrevolutionary public? And in the fall "Aurora" will make the cannon's shot toward the Winter Palace? In the 1918th in Novorossiysk will open the Kingston valves?"
- "In 1921, in Kronstadt, it will no chance to solve situation without Tukhachevsky?" - Gorky has with regret conjectured.
- "During the Siege of Leningrad in 1941-1943 the seamen will not show the big firmness?" - Novikov-Priboi has continued to express his thoughts.
Gorky has nodded in agreement; the low man with a big forehead has departed by this moment from interlocutors, continuing walk along the coast of the island.
- "The exhibition - enormous, immersed in the sounds of music, all filled in with electric light, fantastic, is, perhaps, the most Caprian image in our today's reminiscences?" - Gorky has thought aloud.
Novikov-Priboi took a deep breath. Was a warm, fresh sea air.
June 09, 2017
Translation from Russian into English: April 27, 2018 05:09, June 6, 2021 21:00.
Владимир Владимирович Залесский 'Вопросы о выставке 1896 года'.