"She must
think we are in the orchestra."
"Hearts are good guessers."
"Guessers nothing."
" 'S-sh! Let's listen."
Madame Klesmer was playing the part of a girl in a modern
Russian town. She declaimed her lines, speaking like a prophetess
in ancient Israel, and I liked it extremely. I was fully aware that it
was unnatural for a girl in a modern Russian town to speak like a
prophetess in ancient Israel, but that was just why I liked it. I
thought it perfectly proper that people on the stage should not talk
as they would off the stage. I thought that this unnatural speech of
theirs was one of the principal things an audience paid for. The
only actor who spoke like a human being was the comedian, and
this, too, seemed to be perfectly proper, for a comedian was a
fellow who did not take his art seriously, and so I thought that this
natural talk of his was part of his fun-making. I thought it was
something like a clown burlesquing the Old Testament by reading
it, not in the ancient intonations of the synagogue, but in the plain,
conversational accents of every-day life
During the intermission, in the course of our talk about Madame
Klesmer, Jake said: "Do you know, Levinsky, I don't think you
really love her.
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