The Theatre of Master Sylvester

The Theatre of Master Sylvester (English Translation)

The dim light of a single kerosene lamp snatched bizarre silhouettes from the half-light of the warehouse. Here, in the backstage of Master Sylvester's traveling marionette theatre, time had frozen, like dried glue on the neck of a sorceress queen. The smell of dust, turpentine, and old cloth was thicker than the night fog outside the window. Anton, the Master's former assistant and now his self-proclaimed chronicler and critic, sat on a prop box, holding Knight Valerius in his hands.

The knight was a hero. His brow was high, and his azure eyes, painted with a quick, confident brushstroke, gazed into some distant future. His armor, made of painted foil, shone with a dull luster, like a faded glory. In the official version of the performance, the one the Master showed at fairs and in city parks, Valerius was the embodiment of valor. He was captured by Queen Lilith, a seductress and a villainess, and he withstood all her temptations, saving his honor and his loyalty to the king. A classic. Purity. The abyss.

Anton turned the puppet in his hands, and its joints, held together by coarse string, let out a quiet, creaking groan. He knew this puppet like the back of his own hand. He knew that beneath the noble blue cloak, on the rough wooden back, there was a scratch from the Master's cat. He knew that the left hand, which gripped a wooden sword, had been remade after some drunken spectator in Oryol tried to "help" the knight in his battle with a dragon. This puppet was not a symbol, but a thing. A history of damages and repairs.

And it was in this thing-ness, not in the ideal image, that another story was hidden. The one Master Sylvester had buried so deep that it seemed even he himself had forgotten it. But Anton remembered. He remembered the old woman in a remote village on the Lithuanian border, from whom the Master had once, long ago, coaxed the plot. In her hut, which smelled of sour cabbage and old age, this tale was not about a knight, but about a fool. A village shepherd whom the local pani, out of boredom and cruelty, had brought to her court to "carry on."

"To carry on?" Anton had asked then, not understanding.

The old woman laughed with a toothless mouth.
“Galdit’, galdit’, my dear… to carry on… Surely you know, son, what it’s like in the barn, when there’s a loving scuffle and the noise it makes. And afterwards, she declared: he pounced on me, she said, as if I weren't a lady, but some common wench from the meadows! Well, he was flogged for that. But it was she who wanted to play, you see, and the rules—she interpreted them every which way, according to her own passion.”

The word "galdit’"—to make a boisterous, chaotic ruckus—was the key. In the Master's official performance, there was no ruckus. There were languid sighs, sinister whispers, and noble refusals. But Anton now saw that this whole noble scene was just a thin layer of gilt on rough wood. The Master had taken a coarse, marketplace farce and turned it into a high tragedy. Or was it the other way around? Had he taken a high tragedy of the human spirit and clothed it in the rags of a farce? The paradox was driving Anton mad.

In his hands, Knight Valerius suddenly ceased to be a hero. He became that very shepherd. A naive, simple-minded boy brought to the palace for sport. He did not understand the rules of the game. For the pani Lilith, it was just an amusement, a carnival where, for a time, everything is turned upside down. She is the lady, he is the slave. But in the game, she could be the slave, and he the master. She offered him this game: "Be mine for an hour, and I will be yours forever." And he, this fool, took it all seriously. He refused. He violated the main law of the carnival—the law of convention. He tried to bring reality into the game. And then she, in a rage, turned everything upside down again. "He wanted to take me by force!" she cried, and the world, which had just been playing by her rules, once again became serious and cruel. And he was flogged. Or, in the Master's version, he fled, his honor intact.

Which version was the true one? The one where the shepherd is a fool, or the one where the knight is a saint? Anton looked at the painted blue of the puppet's eyes and thought that perhaps there was no truth. There was only the text. Or, in this case, the puppet. And there was the will of the one pulling its strings. Master Sylvester, when creating his performance, had committed the same act as the pani Lilith. He had taken the living, chaotic material of a folk tale and forcibly dressed it in a knight's costume. He said: "You will signify honor." And the puppet obeyed. It plays its role, just as that shepherd played, until he realized the game had spun out of control.

This was the heart of it all. Any great myth, any national history, any sacred book—is nothing more than the same kind of performance. Someone, once upon a time, took the chaos of real events—with their clamor, their filth, their accidents and cruelty—and dressed them in noble armor. We all live in this theatre of Master Sylvester. We read his scripts and admire Knight Valerius, never suspecting that beneath his foil armor hides nothing but a frightened shepherd who didn't get the joke.

Anton placed the knight on the shelf. Next to him stood Queen Lilith. Her face was a mask of frozen, serpentine beauty. But now Anton saw in her not a villainess. He saw a player. A creature who understood that the world is merely a convention, and that the only real power is the power to change the rules. She didn't want to possess the shepherd. She wanted him to play for real. To enter her game, her world, where everyone is "carrying on" and laughing at seriousness. His refusal was, for her, not an insult, but a betrayal. A betrayal of art, a betrayal of the game itself.

The warehouse door creaked, and Master Sylvester entered. Old, stooped, with a face that resembled... it was hard to say what. He looked at Anton, then at the puppets on the shelf. His gaze was weary but shrewd.
"Still trying to read between the lines, Antosha?" he rasped, walking to the lamp and lighting his pipe. "There is nothing between the lines in my puppets. Only wood and paint."
"And what was there before the wood and paint, Sylvester Petrovich?" Anton asked quietly. "What about the shepherd?"
The Master released a ring of smoke. It drifted slowly toward the ceiling, losing its shape.
"People don't come to a show to watch shepherds," he said. "They come to see themselves as better than they are. They want to see a knight. I give them a knight. Is that not a miracle? To make, from a piece of wood and a silly village fable, something that makes someone in the audience weep? I am not lying. I am translating. I translate from the language of life into the language of hope."
"And what if hope is a lie?"
"And what if life is just a poorly staged performance?" the Master retorted. "Then my deception is nobler than its truth. The shepherd would have been eaten by pigs and forgotten. But Knight Valerius will live forever. In every little girl who sees the show. In every little boy who wants to be just like him. I gave immortality to a foolish tale. Is that not the highest form of love?"

He turned and left, leaving Anton alone in the half-light, with the smell of tobacco smoke and eternal questions. Anton looked at the two puppets standing side by side. The knight and the queen. The hero and the villainess. But now he saw them differently. Two players in the same game. One, the creator of a beautiful and salvific lie. The other, trying to demolish all the seriousness of the world, to return it to its primal, clamorous ruckus.

And Anton suddenly understood which of them was stronger. Not the one who saved his honor. And not the one who created myths. The strongest was Queen Lilith. Because only she knew that in the end, all performances are over, the puppets are put away in their boxes, and the audience goes home. And all that remains is the laughter. That ancient, clamorous ruckus from which the world was born. And this laughter, perhaps, was the only undeniable truth. The truth from which the knight, and Master Sylvester, and Anton himself—sitting now in the darkness among silent gods of wood and cloth—were all so desperately fleeing.


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Commentary on the Text and Translation

Commentary on the Text Itself

"The Theatre of Master Sylvester" is a profound and beautifully crafted parable about the nature of myth, art, and reality. Its genius lies in its central metaphor—the puppet theatre—which it explores with remarkable depth and subtlety.

The Materiality of Myth: The story's masterstroke is grounding its philosophical ideas in physical objects. The puppet is not an abstract symbol but a "thing," a "history of damages and repairs." This brilliant move shows that myths aren't ethereal; they are constructed, patched up, and bear the scars of their history, just like the knight's puppet.

The Carnivalesque Core: The discovery of the word "galdit’" (the chaotic, folksy ruckus) is the key that unlocks the entire story. It introduces the Bakhtinian idea of the carnival—a world of temporary liberation from rules, where high and low are inverted. The story argues that this chaotic, playful, "low" reality is the raw material from which all "high," noble myths are forcibly created.

A Complex Antagonist: Master Sylvester is not a simple liar. He is a tragic and compelling figure, a "translator from the language of life into the language of hope." His defense of art as a "noble deception" is powerful and deeply persuasive. He represents the Apollonian impulse to create order and meaning out of chaos.

The Reclaimed Feminine/Chaos: The final elevation of Queen Lilith is a brilliant turn. She is reinterpreted not as a villain but as a Trickster, a Dionysian force. She represents the game itself, the primordial chaos that laughs at all attempts to impose permanent, serious order upon it. Anton's final realization that she is the "strongest" is a powerful conclusion, privileging the raw, chaotic energy of life over the beautiful but artificial structures of myth.

Notes on the Translation Process

This text was a joy to translate because of its richness. The main challenges were capturing the specific atmosphere and dealing with the crucial, untranslatable word.

Capturing the Atmosphere: I focused on sensory details: "snatched bizarre silhouettes from the half-light," "the smell... was thicker than the night fog," "creaking groan." The goal was to make the backstage setting feel timeless, dusty, and laden with secrets.

The Problem of "Galdit’": The Russian word "галдить" is the story's heart. It has no single perfect English equivalent. It implies noise, chaos, fooling around, often with a vulgar or boisterous energy. A direct translation like "to make a clamor" would be too weak. My strategy was twofold:

I used a more general English phrase, "to carry on," in the initial dialogue.

I then relied on the old woman's own vivid description—"the loving scuffle and the noise it makes"—to define the word's specific meaning within the context of the story. This allows the reader to understand its essence without needing a direct translation. I also chose to italicize the original Russian word, "galdit’", in one instance, to signal its importance as a specific, loaded term. For the conclusion, I used a descriptive phrase, "that ancient, clamorous ruckus," to evoke its primal energy.

The Philosophical Dialogue: The exchange between Anton and Sylvester is the story's climax. The translation needed to be sharp and aphoristic. I paid close attention to the rhythm and weight of Sylvester's lines, like "My deception is nobler than its truth," to ensure they landed with the force of profound, albeit debatable, wisdom.

Maintaining Anton's Voice: Anton is an intellectual and a romantic. His narration needed to sound thoughtful and slightly melancholic. The language is a bit more formal and literary than in some of the other stories, reflecting his role as a "chronicler."

The final translation aims to be more than just a literal rendering; it seeks to be a performance in its own right, inviting the English-speaking reader into the dusty, magical, and deeply philosophical world of Master Sylvester's theatre.