"Christ is risen from the dead. He has conquered death with death and given life to those lain in their graves. Christ is risen--" CURTAIN THE LIFE OF MAN (ZHIZN CHELOVIEKA) A PLAY IN FIVE SCENES WITH A PROLOGUE 1906 TO THE BRIGHT MEMORY OF MY FRIEND, MY WIFE I DEDICATE THIS COMPOSITION THE LAST ON WHICH WE WORKED TOGETHER PERSONS Someone in Gray called He Man His Wife Man's Father Relatives Neighbors Friends Enemies Guests Servants Musicians Physicians A Bartender Drunkards Old Women PROLOGUE--_Someone in Gray called He, speaking of the Life of Man_ SCENE I--_The Birth of Man and the Mother's Travail_ SCENE II--_Love and Poverty_ SCENE III--_Wealth. Man's Ball_ SCENE IV--_Man's Misfortune_ SCENE V--_The Death of Man_ THE LIFE OF MAN PROLOGUE SOMEONE IN GRAY CALLED HE, SPEAKING OF THE LIFE OF MAN _A large, rectangular space resembling a room without doors or windows and quite empty. Everything is gray, monocolored, drab--the watts gray, and the ceiling, and the floor. A feeble, even light enters from some invisible source. It too is gray, monotonous, spectral, producing neither lights nor shadows. Someone in Gray moves noiselessly away from the wall, close against which He has been standing. He wears a broad, gray, formless smock, vaguely outlining the contours of His body; and a hat of the same gray throws the upper part of His face into heavy shadow. His eyes are invisible. All that is seen are His cheekbones, His nose, and His chin, which is massive, heavy, and blunt, as if hewn out of rock. His lips are pressed tight together. Raising His head slightly, He begins to speak in a firm, cold, unemotional, unimpassioned voice, like a reader hired by the hour reading the Book of Fate with brutal indifference._ SOMEONE IN GRAY Look and listen, you who have come here to laugh and be amused. There will pass before you the whole life of Man, from his dark beginning to his dark ending. Previously non-existant, mysteriously hidden in the infiniteness of time, neither feeling nor thinking and known to no one, he will mysteriously break through the prison of non-being and with a cry announce the beginning of his brief life. In the night of non-existence a light will go up, kindled by an unseen hand. It is the life of Man. Behold the flame--it is the life of Man.