Wednesday, 7 April
At night time I invited the people in the Embassy to watch plays. The equipment in this big theatre here is fine, but the music seems to be not as good as Moscow. Many artists have returned to Moscow. The play tonight was Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. It was about the bad habits of young people in the imperial Russian era of the early 19th century. The main story line was as follows. The story was of a rich landowner family which was comprised of one mother and two daughters. The first scene was about the mother’s domestic life and how the peasants respected her. It also depicted how the peasant women when picking berries had to sing all the time because when one sang one could not eat berries. The elder daughter was quiet and studious, and the younger was cheerful. A young man, Lenski, came from afar and wanted to marry the younger one, but the mother wanted the elder to marry first. Therefore, Lenski came with his friend Onegin and introduced him to the elder daughter. The younger one also liked Onegin. In the second scene, the elder daughter was back in her room. She could not sleep and she wrote a love letter to Onegin. It reflected the love feelings of a young girl. The play was good at depicting the care of the maid towards her mistress, the love song was good too. After receiving the letter, Onegin met the girl and told her he couldn’t accept her love as he liked her younger sister. She was very disappointed and felt shame. Both singing and acting were very good. The third scene was on the elder daughter’s birthday. At the party Lenski felt that the younger daughter also seemed to like Onegin, therefore he challenged Onegin to a duel. Lenski died and Onegin had to leave. The fourth scene was at the marriage of the Baron at a young Baron’s residence. Onegin took part and the bride was the elder daughter. Onegin was moved at her beauty and asked her to see him and told the girl he loved her. She rejected him and said “but I became another’s wife; I shall be true to him through life.” When Pushkin wrote this play he was some 20 years old. Unfortunately his fate was about the same because his wife was very pretty and she couldn’t be faithful. This aroused many rumours and he no choice but to have a duel with a Frenchman called D’Anthès and die. He was perhaps doomed to die.
In the morning, Counsellor Liu sadly told me that his father died at the age of 70 at Harbin last November. None of his two sons, or three daughters were with him. Counsellor Liu was a very filial son and he was very sad about it. I tried to console him. In this hard times, there is no end of suffering for us.