Theater of the Avant-Garde, 1890-1950: A Critical Anthology 9780300133042

Table of contents :
Contents
Editors' Note
En Garde! The Theatrical Avant-Garde in Historical, Intellectual, and Cultural Context
I . Franco-Russian Symbolism
2. Pataphysical Theater
3. Intimate Theater/Chamber Drama
4. Correspondences
5. Italian Futurism
6. German Expressionism
7. Dada
8. The Theater of Pure Form
9. French Surrealism
10. The Theater of Cruelty
11. Russian Oberiu
12. American Dada and Surrealism
13. The Theater of the Absurd
General Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Theater of the Avant-Garde 1890-1950

Copyright © 2001 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by James J.Johnson and set in Electra Roman & Gill Sans type by Keystone Typesetting, Inc., Orwigsburg, PA. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Theater of the avant-garde, 1890-1950: a critical anthology / edited by Bert Cardullo and Robert Knopf. p.

cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-300-08525-7 (cloth) - ISBN 0-300-08526-5 (pbk.) I. Drama—20th century. and criticism.

2. Experimental drama—History

I. Cardullo, Bert.

II. Knopf, Robert, 1961 P N 6 I I 2 . T 4 2 200I

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 3

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Richard Gilman and Amo Selco who taught us to love theater in all forms

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c o Editors' Note

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En Garde! The Theatrical Avant-Garde in Historical, Intellectual, and Cultural Context

1

BERTCARDULLO

I . Franco-Russian Symbolism Maurice Maeterlinck, Interior (1891) Maurice Maeterlinck, "The Modern Drama" (1904) Valery Briusov, The Wayfarer (1910) Valery Briusov, "Against Naturalism in the Theater" (1902)

1 . Pataphysical Theater Alfred Jarry, King Ubu (1896) Alfred Jarry, "Theater Questions" (1897)

41 45 55 64 72

77 84 123

I * I n t i m a t e Theater/Chamber Drama

127

August Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata (1907) August Strindberg, from Zones of the Spirit (1907)

134 161

4 . Correspondences Wassily Kandinsky, The Yellow Sound (1909) Wassily Kandinsky, "On Stage Composition" (1912)

169 173 180

5 . I t a l i a n Futurism Umberto Boccioni, Genius and Culture (1915) Francesco Cangiullo, Detonation (1915) Filippo Marinetti, Feet (1915) Filippo Marinetti, Emilio Settimelli, and Bruno Corra, "The Futurist Synthetic Theater, 1915" (1915)

6 . German Expressionism Reinhard Sorge, The Beggar (1912) Yvan Goll, "Two Superdramas" (1918)

7 . Dada |2

Tristan Tzara, The Gas Heart (1920) Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto, 1918 (1918)

8 . The Yheater of Pure Form ♦ .^ *

Stanisiaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, The Cuttlefish (1922) Stanisiaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, "On a New Type of Play" (1920)

9. French Surrealism Roger Vitrac, The Mysteries of Love (1927) Andre Breton, First Surrealist Manifesto (1924)

1 0 . The Theater of Cruelty Antonin Artaud, The Spurt of Blood (1925) Antonin Artaud, "No More Masterpieces" (1938)

I I • Russian Oberiu Aleksandr Vvedensky, Christmas at the Ivanovs (1938) Daniil Kharms, Aleksandr Vvedensky, and others, "The Oberiu Manifesto" (1928)

187 195 198 199 201

207 212 262

265 272 283

291 297 321

327 335 365

373 378 382

389 394 415

I I . American Dada and Surrealism Gertrude Stein, Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights (1938) Gertrude Stein, "Plays" (1934)

1 1 . The Theater of the Absurd

421 425 450

467

Arthur Adamov, The Invasion (1949) Martin Esslin, "The Theater of the Absurd" (1961)

472 499

General Bibliography Index

503 515

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o o Readers will find in the table of contents the titles of the plays and major theoretical pieces included in the anthology. In addition, though, each part contains biographies of the authors of those pieces, shorter critical excerpts about their works, and select bibliographies of criticism. These briefer items are not listed in the table of contents. A few very minor changes have been made here to the pieces reprinted from other sources, primarily for the sake of internal consistency of spelling and for grammatical correctness. We would like to thank Sarah Bay-Cheng and Kristen Tripp-Kelley for their tireless devotion to, and invaluable work on, this project.

E n Garde! The Theatrical Avant-Garde in Historical, Intellectual, and Cultural Context Bert Cardullo

The plays, biocritical prefaces, and historical documents presented here, together with theoretical manifestos and bibliographies, are designed to provide a history of genuinely avant-garde drama, as isolated from twentiethcentury developments in conventional veristic forms. The materials assem­ bled in Theater of the Avant-Garde, 1890-1950 are thus meant to contribute to a revisionist history of modern drama, for many still persist in viewing modern drama as moving from the realistic (yet formally neoclassical) plays of Ibsen and the naturalistic plays of Strindberg to the socially, politically, and psychologically oriented "problem plays" of the twentieth century, even if occasionally influenced by "techniques" from aberrant avant-garde movements. Take, for example, Tennessee Williams' misguided homage to the as­ sorted unconventional techniques of Expressionism in his "Production Notes" to the otherwise romantically realistic Glass Menagerie (1944). Or consider the frequently misunderstood and overborrowed "alienation effect" of Bertolt Brecht (really a defamiliarizing or distancing device, which is not the same as an exclusively anti-illusionistic one). Brecht is excluded from Theater of the Avant-Garde not only because his dramatic work is already widely available in English translation but also because he was primarily a social realist whose real objection to the theater of Realism and Naturalism was its psychologization of human character, not its rendering of surface reality. Indeed, Brecht wrote his two greatest Schaustiicke, The Life of Galileo (1939) and Mother Courage and Her Children (1941), in an effort to bridge, not to widen, the gap between the often numbing prosaism of the modern social-problem play and the sometimes indulgent ethereality of

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avant-garde drama. Using Expressionistic techniques this politically revolu­ tionary playwright created, one could say, an anti-Expressionistic drama that evolved into mock-epic theater or faux-historical chronicle—with the cool, detached style, direct presentation of character, and episodic plotting that we have also come to recognize in related forms of narrative cinema. It is time, and in fact late, to bring genuine dramatic Expressionism, and the major innovative tradition of twentieth-century theater to which it belongs, into central focus. The problem in doing so has been that the plays and documents of the tradition are hard to find. The writings of some of its major figures are scattered in out-of-print translations or have not been translated at all, and no comprehensive collection in English—or any other language, for that matter—gives adequate recognition to the place as well as importance of the avant-garde in the development of a distinctive, freestand­ ing theatrical sensibility and vocabulary. This anthology illuminates not just a single national tradition or movement (as do Michael Benedikt and George Wellwarth's fine anthologies of French, German, and Spanish avantgarde plays or Walter Sokel's important collection of Expressionist drama), nor even one style or posture (such as "Absurd" or "Protest") that cuts across national boundaries, but instead the astonishing variety and daring of the writers in all Western countries and theatrical movements who since before the turn of the twentieth century have wrenched dramatic art out of every one of its habits, including the most fundamental of them. Represented in Theater of the Avant-Garde are particular movements, such as French and Russian Symbolism, Italian Futurism, German Expressionism, and DadaSurrealism, seminal figures like Alfred Jarry, August Strindberg, and Antonin Artaud, and Gesamtkiinstler like Wassily Kandinsky. In bringing together the works of such disparate yet fundamentally simi­ lar pioneers, we go beyond a purely historical accounting for this new drama to suggest intellectual and aesthetic contexts for theater and drama even broader than those which have already been proposed by critics and histo­ rians as an explanation for the avant-garde revolution. What becomes appar­ ent when these writers are assembled within a single volume is that the new movements were fed by the other arts as much as they were provoked by conventional drama itself. Poets, painters, filmmakers, musical composers, circus performers, architects, choreographers, photographers, cartoonists, sculptors—any but professional or commercial dramatists—were the models and sources for the radical shift in the aesthetics of theater and drama. To speak only of the movies, their presence was continually felt through­ out the vigorous theatrical experimentation of the 1920s. On the one hand,

the theater was seeking a new area of activity that the cinema—potentially the most literally representational or documentary "real" of the arts—could not usurp; on the other hand, the theater frequently tried to explore ways of imitating and incorporating the fantastic or visionary capability of film form. Throughout Europe, the dramatic avant-garde repeatedly expressed admira­ tion for the dreamlike fluidity of film, its power to convey interior states of mind, and its possibilities as a truly proletarian and antibourgeois art. Par­ ticularly in France, the Surrealist theatrical experiments of such writers as Andre Breton, Guillaume Apollinaire, Louis Aragon, and Antonin Artaud were perhaps better suited to the screen than to the stage, assaulting as they did the theater's traditional objectivity or exteriority and its bondage to con­ tinuous time and space. And a number of Surrealists did indeed move from the theater to the cinema, most notably Jean Cocteau. In Germany, film was one element among many of the influences that led to the development of dramatic Expressionism, with German cinema and theater freely borrowing from each other during the twenties. The debt to the stage of such pictures as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) has often been noted, and, to cite only one example, the characteristic roving spotlight of the Expressionist stage was an obvious attempt to control audience atten­ tion in the manner of a movie director. The attempts of the Bauhaus group to create a nonrepresentational, manifestly manufactured "total theater" in fact involved the incorporation of film into the ultimate theatrical experi­ ence, as did the production experiments of Marinettfs "Futurist Variety Theater" in Italy. The shift of drama to so simultaneously mechanical, democratic, and subjective a model as the cinema is intimately connected, of course, with the concepts of modernity and modernism. "Modernity" refers to the network of large-scale social, economic, technological, and philosophical changes wrought by the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. "Modernism" is usually used to denote that period of dramatic innovation in all the arts, from around the end of the nineteenth century (beginning with Symbolism and Aestheticism but going as far back as the Romantic movement) up to World War II and its immediate aftermath (associated with Absurdism), when the sense of a fundamental break with inherited modes of representa­ tion and expression became acute. Modernism relies on a distinctive kind of imagination, one whose general frame of reference resides only within itself. The modernist mind believes that we create the world in the act of perceiv­ ing it. Such a view is basically anti-intellectual, celebrating passion and will over deliberate and systematic morality.

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Most important, modernism implies historical discontinuity, social dis­ ruption, moral chaos, and a sense of fragmentation and alienation, of loss and despair—hence, of retreat within one's inner being or private conscious­ ness. This movement rejects not only history, however, but also the society of whose fabrication history is a record; modernism repudiates traditional values and assumptions, then, in addition to dismissing the rhetoric by which they were once communicated; and in the process it elevates the individual over the group, human beings' interior life over their communal existence. In many respects a reaction against Realism and Naturalism and the scientific postulates on which they rest, modernism has been marked by persistent, multidimensional experiments in subject matter, form, and lang u a g e - These literary excursions revel in a dense, often free-form actuality as opposed to a practical, regimented one, and they have been conducted by poets and novelists as vital yet diverse as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Stephane Mallarme, Arthur Rimbaud, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, W. B. Yeats, W. H. Auden, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Thomas Mann. Modernist or avant-garde, as opposed to modern, drama is similarly asso­ ciated, above all, with a pervasive, formal self-consciousness and inventive­ ness. The avant-garde thus becomes that element in the exercise of the imagination that we call art which finds itself unwilling (unable, really) to reiterate or refine what has already been created. Many would identify in the avant-garde not merely a tendency to retreat from the maddening disorder of the world for the purpose of creating, through art, an alternative, visionary, eternal order but also a tendency to absorb the world's chaos into the work of art itself. (The first tendency holds true for most writers of modernist fiction and verse, as it does for the Symbolist Yeats. Among avant-garde playwrights, however, most belong either in the second category —like Pirandello, the Humorist of the Grotesque—or in both categories simultaneously, like Jarry, the Pataphysician.) It is possible, additionally, to identify in the avant-garde a thematic preoc­ cupation with the modern city and its technologies—and concomitantly with the exhilaration of speed, energy, and rapid development, typical of the Italian Futurists—as well as with the urban potential for physical, social, and emotional dislocation. Renato Poggioli has described this avant-garde as a culture of negation (1968, 107-8), and indeed its commitment to ceaseless, radical critique—not only of the (bourgeois) art that went before it but also, in many instances, of the sociopolitical institutions and instruments of industrial-technological practice or power—may be seen as a prime instance of the modernist emphasis on the creation of the new.

In a rhetorical gesture utterly typical of the avant-garde, however, the Surrealist poet and playwright Robert Desnos lambasted the very notion of the "avant-garde," associated as it was for him with the Impressionists and the Aestheticism of Cocteau. The dynamic of "negation," then, is not restricted to a criticism of mass culture by everything outside it but operates within the field of avant-garde artistic practice as well. Nothing is more characteristic of the avant-garde than disputes within its ranks about which subgroup is most deserving of the epithet. On the surface, the avant-garde as a whole may seem united in terms of what it is against: accepted social institutions and established artistic conventions, or the tastes and values of the "general public" as that represents the existing order. Yet any positive program tends to be claimed as exclusive property by isolated and even mutually antagonis­ tic groupings. So modernist art appears fragmented and sectarian, defined as much by manifestos as by creative work and representing the amorphous complexity of postindustrial society in a multiplicity of dynamic but unstable movements focused on philosophical abstractions. Hence the use of "-isms" to describe them: Symbolism, Futurism, Expressionism, Dadaism, Surreal­ ism, and the like. All these modernist "-isms" nevertheless react against the same common enemy: the modern drama of Realism and Naturalism—that is, the socialproblem play as fathered by Ibsen (if it was not pioneered earlier by Friedrich Hebbel). Such realistic and naturalistic drama was based on the conven­ tional, long-lived triad of psychology (or motivation), causality (or connec­ tion), and morality (or providential design), but these problem plays ban­ ished theology as well as autocracy from their paradigm of human action, in this way deepening the dramatic role played by psychology, sociology, and linearity or linkage. That is, in modern drama, the patriarchal relationship between God and the individual soul has been replaced by the adversarial relationship between a person and his or her own psychology, the will to comprehend the self, even as the patriarchal relationship between ruler and subject has been replaced by the adversarial relationship between the indi­ vidual and society, in the form of society's drive to marginalize all those it cannot or will not homogenize. Thus the fundamental subject of almost all serious plays of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—in other words, of almost all of modern as well as modernist drama—becomes the attempt to resurrect fundamental ethical or philosophical certainties without resurrect­ ing the fundamental spiritual certainty of a judgmental God or the funda­ mental political certainty of a mindful monarch. Modernist, or avant-garde, drama, however, took modern drama a step further, by demonstrating that a play's movement could be governed by

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something completely outside the triad that links motive to act, act to logical sequence of events, and logical outcome to divine or regal judgment. In Maeterlinck's Symbolist play Pelleas and Melisande (1892), for instance, the characters are led to the slaughter like sheep, but for reasons that are never clear, either to them or to the audience. There is sequence but no causality— that is, one event follows another but is not caused by it. Even an otherwise representational work like Chekhov's hanov (1887) can intimate the avantgarde by breaking down the connection between the psychology of its central character and the causal pattern of his or her drama. There is a causal sequence leading to Ivanov's marital infidelity and suicide, but no sustained motive on his part—which is to say, one event is caused by another, but irrespective of this otherwise intelligent man's clear intent or wish. For the avant-garde, beginning in the late nineteenth century with Jarry, if not earlier with such German visionaries as Ludwig Tieck, Georg Biichner, and Christian Dietrich Grabbe, the nature of reality itself becomes the prime subject of plays because of a loss of confidence in the assumed model for dramatizing human behavior and thinking about human existence: in other words, the representation onstage of the illusion of reality becomes the demonstration of the reality of the illusion-making capacity, illusionprojecting essence, or illusion-embracing tendency of the human mind. Through the introduction of total subjectivity into drama—that mirror of a supposedly external reality—the Symbolists, in particular, imagined a new theatrical model, polyphonic in form and irreducible to rational analysis or univocal interpretation, thereby opening the door for the subsequent avantgarde movements that have dominated the stage in the twentieth century. The world, which the realists and (to a lesser extent) the naturalists had attempted to know fully and depict accurately, was revealed by the Symbol­ ists to be pure illusion—a veil of fleeting appearances behind which were hidden deeper truths. It was what lay buried within the psyche and con­ cealed behind the mirror that this radical new poetics of drama proposed to explore. Problems or issues of perception and epistemology thus subverted prior certainties as the arena of artistic representation moved from outside the human consciousness to within it. And the drama that emerged from such an aesthetic was paradoxically more sacred—or sacrilegious—than sec­ ular, thus returning theater to its ritualistic origins. For its themes and tech­ niques, Symbolist performance happened to be drawn, as was Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy (1872), to church ritual, pagan rites, folklore, fairy tales, popular superstition, and communal practices—in other words, to "primi­ tive" times before the advent of Realism. The locus of this visionary art was

not the here-and-now of daily life (as it was for the realists), not what can be seen and experienced in our normal waking hours; rather, that locus was the eternal bond of human beings to the unknown, to the mystery within them­ selves and within the universe as they journey toward ultimate extinction. In striving to put onstage what common sense declared to be nondramatic and undramatizable, the Symbolists liberated playwriting from mech­ anistic notions of chronological time and Euclidean space; they enlarged the frame of drama to include worlds and beings other than those inhabiting the bourgeois theater—which, to more than one of its foremost practitioners (among them Augustin Scribe, Emile Augier, and Alexandre Dumas /z/s), had no need to be more than the echo of society's whispers. Moreover, despite much adverse criticism, the Symbolists held firm in their conception of the acting appropriate to the production of their plays, for they felt it necessary to divert attention from external realism or representationalism to the mysterious inner as well as outer forces that control human destiny. A natural extension of this interest led the Symbolists to explore the possibili­ ties of puppet theater, which until then had been associated primarily with crude, popular entertainment. Gordon Craig's vision of the ideal actor as an Ubermarionette (itself influenced by Heinrich von Kleist's essay "On the Marionette Theater" [1810]) was paralleled by Maeterlinck's belief that puppets would be the most suitable performers for his early plays, and by Aurelien Lugne-Poe's original intention of founding his Theatre de l'Oeuvre as a puppet stage. Indeed, marionette theater presents a natural Symbolist aspect. Because marionettes are abstractions of the human form, individual experience does not obtrude on our perception of them, as it inevitably does with a human performer when the actor's personality comes into play; and their perception or apprehension reaches full expression only subjectively, in the spectator's mind, not objectively, on the stage. Symbolist designers took their own cue from the puppet theater, and as a result of their subtly atmospheric or evoca­ tive efforts, theater artists became aware of the illogicality of too much literal­ ism in the procedure of a medium that is essentially make-believe. The future, ideal stage of the Symbolists would thus be multiple, fluid, and polyvalent: a point of departure for imaginary voyages into uncharted re­ gions. For such drama there were no fixed forms, prescribed rules, or conven­ tional models to follow. Disdainfully rejecting the theater of commerce with all its practicalities, Symbolist poets wrote their plays for no existing audience or playhouse, their works sometimes remaining unperformed for many years. Nonetheless, Symbolism in the theater—as well as in poetry and paint-

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ing—was a truly international movement and spread not only throughout Europe but also to North and South America and parts of Asia. Only when the Theatre de TOeuvre closed its doors in 1899 did Symbolism begin to stir in Poland and particularly in Russia, where, in addition to Valery Briusov, the movement included Aleksandr Blok, Andrei Bely, and Leonid Andreyev among its dramatists. Likewise, in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Romania, the Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and India, Symbolist theater enjoyed a second life after having been declared dead in Paris. Furthermore, rather than deriving from a reactionary, escapist tendency (as has often been depicted), Symbolist drama in Eastern Europe, Ireland, and India was a progressive or liberating force, awakening a consciousness of national and cultural identity, opposing all forms of repression, and protesting against the drabness of regimented modern life. Symbolism, then, battled against all restrictions and limitations, includ­ ing those which isolated theater from the allied arts of painting, poetry, and music. Taking its cues from Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk, on the one hand, and Mallarme's "theater of the mind," on the other, Symbolism aspired to be a total spectacle encompassing all of life. From our remove of more than a hundred years, that assault on the objectivity of the dramatic form seems an essential first step—perhaps none has been as important—in the series of modernist (and postmodernist) revolutions that have transformed the art of theater from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day. Each of the revolutionary movements and coalitions had its distinctive character. They were shaped by forces as varied as F. T. Marinetti's artistic expansionism, which sought to colonize all modernist manifestations and individual creators for the Futurist empire (hardly by accident, Futurism labeled war the supreme, health-bestowing activity); the libertarian individ­ ualism of Tristan Tzara's Dada; or Andre Breton's zealous defense of Surreal­ ist purity. Both within and outside these movements, however, the specific genius of individual avant-garde writers and artists flourished, the distinctive trace left by such individuals serving to remind us that historical categories and groupings are often suspect, reductive, or artificial. As we shall see, between Marinetti's machine-age bombastics and Kandinsky's abstract spir­ ituality, for example, lies a world of difference. Wassily Kandinsky, for his part, attempted to disrupt the concept of tradi­ tional theater as a reproductive or representational mechanism by advocat­ ing a synthetic, spiritualized art that would redirect people inside themselves and reveal the depths and heights of the human soul. Kandinsky believed he could synthesize music, dance, poetry, and painting into one monumental,

self-contained, and self-defined art form, or rather temple of art. Futurist synthetic theater, by contrast, rejected such an inward-looking art. For the Futurists, literature, painting, sculpture, theater, music, dance, morals, and politics should all be inspired by the scientific and technological discoveries that had changed the physical environment, and that should correspond­ ingly change human perceptions. Human beings should, in fact, become like machines, abandoning the weaknesses and sentimentalities of the past. Influenced by the superman of Nietzsche and D'Annunzio, the Futurists wrote of their own godlike being, who was aggressive, tireless, courageous, inhuman, and mechanical. Early heroes, accordingly, were those who had direct contact with machines: car drivers, pilots, journalists, telegraph opera­ tors, and the like. Later heroes represented a fusion of man and machine, assured of immortality because the parts were interchangeable. The Futurists' theories centered on the industrial age, with its machines and electricity, its urbanization, and the revolution in the means of transport and communication. Futurists welcomed the products of industrial society with an all-embracing optimism, for they saw them as the means by which people would dominate the environment and be able to extend knowledge indefinitely. The speed and change of the industrial age were also funda­ mental to the Futurists' love of the modern and their rejection of the static, lethargic past. The effects of the speed of transport and communication on modern sensibility were such that people were now aware not just of their immediate surroundings but of the whole world. The limits of time and space had been transcended; it was possible to live through events both distant and near at hand—in fact, to be everywhere at the same time. Simultaneita (simultaneity) was the word used by the Futurists to describe these extensions of perception. In their works, different times, places, and sounds, both real and imagined, are juxtaposed in an attempt to convey this new concept to the public. The Futurist embrace of simultaneity was accompanied by a desire for synthesis. The Futurists held that the speed of modern life called for a corresponding speed of communication in contemporary art, which was therefore—unlike the conventional theater—to convey the essence of an emotion or a situation without resorting to lengthy explanation or descrip­ tion. The sintesi teatrali (theatrical syntheses), then, were works of extreme brevity and concentration, in which the conventional three-act play was replaced by attimi (moments) intended to capture the essence and atmo­ sphere of an event or emotion as it happened. Movement, gesture, sound, and light became as important as the written word, and in some cases came

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to replace words altogether. This reduction to what the Futurists regarded as the essential part of the action was intended to create an immediate and dynamic contact with the public, so that the audience would respond intu­ itively to a theater that was now synthetic, hypertechnological, dynamic, simultaneous, alogical, discontinuous, autonomous, antiliterary, and unreal. F. T Marinetti was determined from the outset to bring his movement to the attention of the greatest possible number of people. In common with many other innovators in the arts of the time, he believed that art and literature could have a determining influence on society, and he described Futurism as the new formula of artistic action. The artist therefore became the leader and promoter of the new ideas, and the forger of links between art and action, art and society. The desire for ceaseless activity, the advocacy of bravery and heroism, and the insistence on aggression, accordingly, led the Futurists to go beyond mere theorizing. They involved themselves in a great deal of direct action, including their serate, or evenings, which usually consisted of readings from Futurist works of literature, and which often ended in a brawl. The serate doubtless gave the Futurists some general experience of the theater, whose importance for his movement Marinetti recognized, as he did that of the spettacolo (performance) in particular. Futurist performances became an ideal means of direct communication with the public; the expectation was that audience members would react directly and physically to what they saw and heard. Deliberate provocation of the audience, partly for the sake of being aggressive, partly in order to break down the barriers between audience and actors, became one of the impor­ tant techniques of the Futurist theater and influenced the staging of its plays. The Futurists thus realized the polemical importance of theatrical tech­ niques very early on, and in this sense Italian Futurist theater represents nothing less than the birth of the twentieth-century avant-garde. In its violent rhetoric and actions, in its blatant self-promotion and willful disrespect for the sacred cows of the (written) intellectual tradition, as well as in its allembracing (if prototypically Fascist) ideology, Futurism was the model or stereotype for all the "-isms" to come. Itself influenced by the Futurist synthetic theater, Dada had been founded in 1916 by a group of expatriate artists in Zurich, but as practi­ tioners adopted the banner in Berlin, Cologne, and New York, the move­ ment became an international one. The Romanian poet Tristan Tzara, the leader of the movement, moved to Paris, the major center for Dada, as it would be later for the Surrealism that sprang from Dada's ashes. "Dada" itself is a nonsense word, and as such is a clue to the nature of the move-

ment, which was anarchic, violently antitraditional, and vociferously antibourgeois—at least in its rhetoric. Many of the Dada artists had been in­ volved in World War I, and the Dada movement has been understood as a reaction of disgust toward a society that could sustain such a barbaric con­ flict. If the war was the end-product of a society supposedly built on the principles of rationality espoused by Enlightenment philosophers, then the means of protest against this society would have to be irrational. As conscientious objectors in neutral Switzerland (the fount of the move­ ment), moreover, Dadaists were expected to desist from overt political pro­ test; Switzerland prohibited citizens or visitors from taking a strong vocal stance on political occurrences beyond its borders, for fear that the country's neutrality might be compromised. The Dadaists' impulses of frustration and counteraggression had to manifest themselves in some way, yet if life had so little meaning for a world that was organizing and sanctioning its own de­ struction, how could art matter? Hence the antisensical anarchy of Dada art, whose pacifist authors wanted, not to escape from current events through fantasy, but rather to reflect the chaos of their present to make the public cry with laughter. Dada, in fact, struck out against all "-isms"—previous artistic movements that had, in effect, exhaustively and systematically emphasized the timeless and universal aspects of art without ever truly living in their own particular moment. This is the context in which Marcel Duchamp began to exhibit his "ready-mades"—ordinary objects like bicycle wheels and the urinal he named "Fountain," signed "R. Mutt," and presented as a sculpture. In doing so, Duchamp offended against not only the assumption that art involves creative effort but also the assumption that only certain things are appropri­ ate subject matter for art, which by definition would not include utterly utilitarian objects. Indeed, the Dadaists maintained that the artistic act, rather than the product, was first and foremost Dada; the tangible yield developing from the imaginative act (the painting, poem, sculpture, or dra­ matic text) was merely a by-product of the real art. But best of all for the antimaterialist Dada artists, the Dadaist use of language was not easily mer­ chandised. In the performance of a poem or a play, the Dadaists kept custody of their work, letting only the experience of the language and its effects on the listener stand as proof of its existence. Dadaists thereby succeeded not only in creating a presence in society for the artist-as-performer (as opposed to the actor-as-character) but also in keeping art out of the commodifying hands of bourgeois marketeers, principally because the art itself was a matter of heresay to those not fortunate enough to be present for the poetry reading

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or theatrical event. Dada thus sought to radically short-circuit the means by which art objects acquire financial, social, and spiritual value; in this man­ ner, the movement fulfilled one definition of the avant-garde, which is an attack on the foundations of artistic institutions themselves. And attack the avant-garde did, for the term "avant-garde" is, after all, military in origin—however synonymous with "esoteric" or "incomprehensible" it may now be—referring to the "advance party" that scouts out the terrain up ahead of the principal army. The expression was first used militarily around 1794, to designate the elite shock troups of the French army, whose mission was to engage the enemy first in order to prepare the way for the main body of soldiers to follow. The expression was first used metaphorically beginning around 1830, by members of French revolutionary political movements who spoke of themselves as being in the "vanguard." Used as early as 1825, in fact, by the Utopian socialist writer Olinde Rodrigues and later by Charles Fourier's disciple Gabriel Laverdant, the term "avant-garde" was applied to the "men of vision" of the coming societystatesmen, philosophers, scientists, and businessmen—whose actions would give direction to the future development of humanity. It was only during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, however, that the metaphor was trans­ ferred wholesale from politics to literary and artistic activities. Mainly at­ tached to them ever since, the metaphor has been used to identify successive movements of writers and artists who, within the larger cultural framework of modernism, generated a vital tradition of formal innovation or experimen­ tation and sociopolitical radicalism. Mikhail Bakunin, for example, titled the short-lived anarchist journal he published in Switzerland in 1878 L'Avant-Garde, and his aim in revolu­ tionizing aesthetics was to pave the way for social revolution. More than fifty years earlier, however, Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon had proclaimed in Uartiste, le savant et Vindustriel that "it is we artists who will serve as your avant-garde; the power of the arts is indeed the most immediate and the most rapid. We have weapons of all kinds We address ourselves to the imagina­ tion and to the feelings of man; and we must always take the swiftest and the most decisive action.... There is no more beautiful destiny for artists than to exert a powerful influence on society—this is our true calling—and to thrust ourselves into the fray with all our intellectual faculties, at the peak of their development!" (210-11, 216; my translation). To Saint-Simon, the avantgarde artist was a soldier-priest in the service of progress, and Saint-Simon's multivolume Oeuvres, published between 1868 and 1878, promulgated this belief with a vengeance. Hence, toward the end of the nineteenth century,

certainly, the use of the term "avant-garde" had been extended to encompass the idea of social renewal through cultural challenge rather than by means of overtly political activity. The avant-garde mentality, in its most rabid form, thus belongs to the past hundred years or so. But if we look at the matter in the context of French literary history, it is possible to suggest that we are not dealing with an absolutely new and separate phenomenon; it is, rather, the effect of a long and extremely complicated process, which is, of course, the general change­ over from the static or cyclical view of human existence to the evolutionary view. And evolutionism is, fundamentally, a scientific concept. Therefore, if my suggestion is correct, the term "avant-garde" is not simply a military metaphor, used first in politics and then transferred to literature and art; it is basically connected with science and with what is sometimes called the scientific revolution: the replacement of the medieval belief in a finished universe by the modern, scientific view of a universe evolving in time. The scientific view affected political and social thinking long before it penetrated into literature proper and the fine arts, and that is the real reason the meta­ phor was political first and literary or artistic afterward. In France, the first real signs of the modern evolutionary view occur in the seventeenth century, at the time of the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns. (This quarrel was fought from either an essentially conservative position—the championing of the ancient Greeks and Romans, codification of aesthetic rules, insistence on decorum and the purity of traditional literary genres, subordination of art to moral or social concerns—or a liberal one— the championing of the moderns, pragmatic and flexible treatment of all classical precepts, perception of art as an end in itself.) But the beginnings of the development can naturally be traced back to the Renaissance—to Copernicus, Machiavelli, and Montaigne—and, beyond the Renaissance, to ancient Greece, where most ideas existed at least in embryo. In seventeenth-century France, the first pale dawn of the scientific view seems to have had little or no effect on the aesthetic attitudes of creative artists, or at least on attitudes that were part of these artists' conscious make­ up. The extraordinary flowering of French neoclassical literature that was contemporaneous with the quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns owed al­ most nothing to it. Even those famous French thinkers of the earlier part of the grand siecle, Descartes and Pascal (like their Italian contemporary Gali­ leo), were not looking toward the future in the modern manner. It is true that, as they made their mathematical and scientific discoveries and tried to put their conflicting ideas in order, they made explosive statements. But we

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have no reason to believe that they themselves knew just how radically new their thinking was. In the eighteenth century, however, a dramatic change took place that has often been commented upon. Although scientific evolutionism was not yet fully established, the major thinkers of the French Enlightenment foresaw, or at least sensed, its implications. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau, all of whom had some knowledge of science, were in a sense sociologists, trying to understand human life both as a dynamic process in time and as a secular process that cannot be accounted for in religious terms, more especially not in the light of Christian revelation. These philosophes were thus brought into conflict with orthodox Christian theology, which is based on the belief in a static relationship between human beings inside time and God outside time. The great controversy between science and religion, then—which was not to occur in England until the middle of the nineteenth century, with Darwin's formulation of evolutionary theory—had, for all intents and purposes, run its course in France by the end of the eighteenth century. This historical situation is the fundamental reason for which the conditions favoring the development of the avant-garde mentality were present earlier in France than anywhere else. In France, by the end of the eighteenth century, the modern evolutionary and secular view of the world had per­ vaded the consciousness of at least the intellectual elite. The situation that Nietzsche would express so dramatically in the nineteenth century with the phrase "God is dead" already existed before 1789. In fact, most of the great nineteenth-century themes are already present in the French Enlighten­ ment: we can find intimations of Hegel and Marx in Montesquieu, Diderot, and Rousseau; of Darwin and Freud in Diderot; of Freud and SacherMasoch in Rousseau; and of Freud, Sacher-Masoch, and Nietzsche in the Marquis de Sade. We might even say that the Marquis de Sade (himself an antisentimental, even irrationalist dramatist in such works as Oxtiem, ou Les Malheurs du libertinage [1791]) was the first great modern figure to go mad over the death of God, and that this is why he has been revived with such fervor over the past 175 years or so as the darling of successive avant-gardes. In other words, the intellectual watershed, as I see it, is the Enlighten­ ment. In the two to three centuries since, many sincere, ingenious, and elaborate attempts have been made to effect a compromise between the modern scientific view of the universe and the old Christian view, and the French themselves, from Auguste Comte and Hippolyte Taine to Henri Bergson and Simone Weil, have been particularly active in this effort. But it

seems obvious that no reconciliation has been brought about. The two different ways of looking at matters exist side by side, and the extremely tangled aesthetic history—not to speak of the social and political history—of the last 250 years or so can be seen in terms of the tensions between these attitudes and of the growing predominance of the scientific worldview. A crucial contribution of the Enlightenment was the concept of history as the continuously unfolding tale of human life on earth, seen, of course, against the backdrop of a much greater time scale—the evolutionary de­ velopment of the universe. This view presents human life as a process in time, which we can illuminate to some extent as we look back, or speculate about as we look forward, but which bears no definable relation to anything that might exist outside time—that is, to eternity or God. This is what is meant by "the death of God," and the implication is not only that no per­ sonal entity behind the universe provides us with a moral law, but also that human life can be given meaning, if it has any at all, only within the flux of history. And, if I may be allowed my largest generalization yet, the increasing prevalence of avant-garde attitudes reflects the growing effect of this percep­ tion that we live only in time and have to find our values in time. Avant-garde artists and thinkers sense the problem of finding values within flux, and they are trying—often perhaps neurotically—to adapt to what they see as the movement of history by anticipating the crest of the next wave (la nouvelle vague); alternately, they may be trying to escape from the dilemma of perpetual movement by finding some substitute for eternity— that is, some God-substitute. Quite often they are trying to achieve both ends at once, and that is why so many avant-gardes have both a progressive and a nonprogressive aspect. Insofar as they are nonprogressive, the expression "avant-garde" is a misnomer, because the movement is not forward but to the side, or even backward in time to pre-Enlightenment attitudes. It occa­ sionally happens, for instance, that an avant-garde artist (like the Expres­ sionist Reinhard Sorge or the Symbolist Paul Claudel) is consciously re­ converted to or reconfirmed in Christianity, and usually to old-fashioned Catholicism, because it offers the best escape from the cycle of change. Nonetheless, during the first phase of the Enlightenment (which con­ tinued well into the nineteenth century), considerable optimism prevailed about the possibility of arriving at the permanent truth concerning human nature; it was thought that, in the search, art might be used as an instrument. The French philosophes had looked back over history, had seen it as a record of success or failure (but mostly failure), and had assumed that over time, they and other thinkers would evolve a concept of humankind that would

allow them to correct the course of history. If history was such a record of crime and injustice, this was because it had not played out in accordance with human nature. Once that had been defined as a natural phenomenon like other phenomena, without all the mythical accretions of the past, so­ ciety would right itself, and the generations of the future would find themUJ

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selves in a social context that would allow the full, harmonious expression of their inherent possibilities. We now come to what I believe is the crux of the matter: in recent times the Enlightenment hope of ameliorating the definition of human nature has come to seem more and more illusory, at least to a great many important thinkers and artists. When the philosophes assumed that it would be possible to define human nature and create the perfect society, they imagined they were looking toward the future, but in fact they were falling back onto a static conception. The accumulation of knowledge has shown not only that human beings are part of the evolutionary process but that they are, as the only animals with culture, an exceptionally changeable part. It is possible to talk about the nature of the noncultural animals, such as the lion or the tiger, because that nature has not altered appreciably in the course of recorded history. But the more we learn about human beings, the more we realize that their so-called nature has included such a bewildering variety of customs, attitudes, beliefs, and artistic products that it is impossible for any one person to comprehend more than a very small part of the range. Moreover, we are more aware than ever before of the complex and mysterious forces at work within ourselves, forces that we do not wholly understand and therefore cannot wholly control. In other words, as some modern thinkers—in particular, French thinkers such as Andre Malraux—are fond of putting it, the death of God is now being followed by the death of Man (Temptation, 97). However much some people may wish to reject the past, precisely because they find it so difficult to contemplate, the knowledge of it weighs on them as an immense repository of largely unassimilable data, while the future stretches ahead, a vista of endless and ultimately meaningless change. The sheer fact of living in time thus becomes a form of existential anguish, because history is no more than a succession of moments, all in a way equally valid or invalid. Human nature, having ceased to be a unifying concept, henceforth describes only the suc­ cession of human manifestations. And of course this anguish of living in time is accompanied by the twin anguish of contingency, the sensation that scientific law holds sway over animate and inanimate nature, entirely without intelligible reference to

human consciousness and emotion. The result is a metaphysical dizziness or nihilistic despair over the very concept of human nature, which combines in all sorts of complicated ways with both the pastoral myth of original human nature and the millennial myth of ultimate human potential. Let me now try to indicate some of the consequences of all this for avant-garde art in general and avant-garde drama in particular. It is because people have been trying, since the Enlightenment, to un­ derstand matters rationally and scientifically that they face these dilemmas. Hence the widespread, often fascinated, disgust with the idea of science, which is taken as a further justification for the flight from reason. Hence also the search for methods of producing a sensation of mystic depth—in other words, an apparently meaningful, although ultimately incomprehensible, relationship with the transcendent—namely, something beyond ordinary or everyday existence. If nothing can be given a meaning in the general transitoriness of history, everything can be given a sort of mystic weight through existentialist awareness, which may range from hysterical euphoria to re­ signed nausea. In its extreme form, this awareness even eliminates the need to create a work of art. Anyone can be an artist, simply by picking up a stone or a found object, or drawing a line around some fragment of the given world and seeing it as an embodiment of mystery. This helps to explain collages, cut-outs, and the cult of the object among Surrealists and other avant-garde litterateurs. Such randomness is also connected with the dream, on the one hand, and, in its more frantic manifestations, with madness, on the other. Both are forms of unreason that have been much cultivated by different avant-gardes. It is interesting that while medicine and psychiatry, which are scientific in intention, try to interpret dreams and madness in rational terms, some avantgardes have reverted to the medieval attitude and accept the dream or the madman's perception as a truth higher than that perceptible by the sane or the waking mind. This inclination is particularly noticeable among the Surrealists and their descendants, who have taken Rimbaud's prescription about le dereglement de tous les sens (the disordering of all the senses) very seriously and who find in Freud's work their justification for an enlightened form of irrationalism. Moreover, since language is normally the vehicle of articulate meaning, it is in connection with language that the problem of meaning versus meaninglessness occurs most acutely among avant-garde writers. For some, all the ordinary uses of language are too comprehensible, so these avant-garde writers adopt various methods designed to break through language to a

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mystery that is supposed to lie beyond it; or, in the interests of escaping from mutability, they adopt imaginative ways of putting words together, yet, un­ like classical authors, avant-gardists ignore the purportedly changeless aspect of human nature in their writing. At one end of the scale are dramatists as different as Antonin Artaud and Gertrude Stein, who dispense with their existing languages almost altogether and replace them with collocations of more or less onomatopoeic sounds. (In rejecting cogency of plot and idea in favor of the sensuality or pure form of gesture and space as well as language, Stein was probably the first thoroughgoing American avant-garde dramatist.) These sounds could be intended as a return to the voice of our original pastoral or primitive nature, like the barking of dogs or the mooing of cows, or perhaps they are supposed to make us feel that all language is futile, since no language provides the key to the meaning of the evolving universe. Then come those playwrights, like the Dadaist Tzara, who treat words as objects, like the objects of the avantgarde painter or sculptor, and try to dissociate them from the articulate meanings they might have in a sentence. As a performance phenomenon and as dramatic art, Dada disposed of or­ ganic contexts by removing from language its readily recognizable character of communication. The Dadaist poet hacked up words and rearranged their syllables, exalting the outcome as new language whose meaning camped sometimes in inflection, sometimes in the resemblance to other, fixed words. Indeed, Dada poetry actively inconvenienced—or indeed eradicated—im­ mediate comprehension by aggrandizing language into art and then depriv­ ing that art of a clear and consistent aesthetic. Like Dada poetry, the Dada stage was an experiment in language, meddling with the word in order to reduce viewers' comprehension of theme, setting, and metaphoric meaning. For the Dadaists believed that language, like other representational art forms, required revivification if it was to escape from lifeless intellectualism. Lan­ guage, for them, had lost its artistic probity: as a tool, it was used to sustain ideological power structures, in the form not only of overt political propa­ ganda but also of truistic everyday speech. When Tzara demanded a poetry intentionally divorced from standard syntax and punctuation, he was not only exercising anarchism against the tyranny of Realism and Naturalism in the arts; he was, in addition, rebelling against both communication and the possibility of communicating Dada creativity (as well as desperation) to the rest of the world. Of course, writers have always been aware of words as objects with a shape, a rhythm, and a feel in the mouth, but traditional artists combined

this sense of words as tangible entities with the elaboration of more or less coherent statements. Coherence had become such a despised characteristic by the early twentieth century, however, that many dramatists tried to elimi­ nate it, just as the so-called literary or narrative element had been removed from much painting and sculpture. The play was meant to be sheerly a juxtaposition of words that did not allow the mind to pass through it in the usual way and so slip back into the cycle of time. The normal comprehen­ sion of any sentence is necessarily an act in time, so that if you could halt comprehension, the words would become or might appear to become ulti­ mate fragments of the universe, thereby producing a semblance of eternity. Andre Breton took a militant stand against all procedures that tended to destroy just such an approximation of eternity—and with it the enigma of existence—by submitting the unknown aspects of human words and actions to rational analysis. Breton's First Surrealist Manifesto (1924) therefore at­ tacked the psychological novel directly and, by implication, similar ap­ proaches to the drama. But Breton conceded that dialogue as verbal com­ munication was the most suitable channel for what he called automatic writing. "It is to the dialogue that the forms of Surrealist language are best adapted" (34), he declared. And in an effort "to restore dialogue to its abso­ lute truth" (35), Breton rejected the use of dialogue for polite or superficial conversation. Rather, it was to be a confrontation of two streams of spoken thought, neither particularly relevant to the other or having any inherent sequential order, but each provoking a spontaneous response from its op­ posite number. As a psychic release in which the speakers dispensed with decorum, Breton considered, such dialogue, when written down, was "auto­ matic" in the sense that it was as free as possible from the mental mechanism of criticism or self-censorship on the part of the author(s). One of the first pieces of writing acknowledged as "Surrealist," the play The Magnetic Fields (1919), on which Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault collaborated, was just such a form of dialogue: a juxtaposition of two soliloquies verbally bouncing off each other. Finally, language might be used to create a puzzle, a conundrum, or a game, as Jarry did in Caesar-Antichrist (1895). This is not quite the same thing as a sheer object, for it allows a kind of circular movement of com­ prehension within the terms of reference of the game itself. Here the writer produces a construct according to his own arbitrary rules, or to rules founded on the unexplained vagaries of his particular temperament, and we are intended to enjoy it as a sort of metaphysical trompe-Yoeil. The game pre­ sents the appearance of meaning, for the language of which it is composed

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conveys sense up to a point, but it is really a self-sufficient linguistic labyrinth from which the mind is not intended to escape. Such a work offers no exit to any reality other than its own and hence can be seen as a kind of antirealistic, quasi-Absurdist statement unto itself. Its overdeliberate arrangement is, in the last resort, equivalent to the randomness of some other avant-garde works. A common denominator among most avant-garde movements, in particular those which sprang up between 1910 and 1930, was skepticism about earlier modes of perception—skepticism, that is, about the possibility of articulating meaning through the logic of language or the language of logic. Realism, together with its more complex descendant, Naturalism, had been based on the assumption that material or positivistic reality can be discovered and articulated through the systematic application of the scientific method to objective or observable phenomena. The resultant tendency to ignore subjective elements and the inner life led, in the view of avant-garde artists, to an oversimplified view of the world. By contrast, as we have seen, the Symbolists, Aesthetes, and neo-Romantics had sought truth in such abstractions as mystery, destiny, beauty, and the ideal, which is to say that they placed ultimate reality outside our human ken. The dramatic move­ ments to come were as deeply concerned with truth and reality as their predecessors had been but, finding the old definitions and formulations in­ adequate, they sought new ones. In this pursuit they were not antiscientific; rather, they attempted to incorporate scientific discoveries into a more com­ prehensive vision of the world. And that revised vision was prompted as much by World War I, as I have already suggested, as by anything else. The assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sara­ jevo on June 28, 1914, started a four-year period of slaughter and mutila­ tion. Among the victims was the well-made realistic play. Although the nineteenth-century theater was not killed outright in the first of the great world wars, it did receive a series of blows from which it would never fully recover. The stable world of the prewar era, reflected in a theater that had catered to a bourgeois audience and had held the mirror up to their iives, manners, and morals, began to disintegrate. With a million killed at Verdun and another million during the Russian offensive of 1916, with countries appearing, disappearing, and reappearing on the map of Europe, what did it matter whether Mme Duclos committed adultery with her husband's best friend, or whether M. Dupont succeeded in marrying off his daughters? After the horrors of mechanized war, the theatrical depiction of the material and financial problems of the bourgeoisie seemed irrelevant, even obscene.

The realistic tradition and the well-made play were of course only maimed and shell-shocked; they continue to drag out a senile existence in the rest homes of our commercial theater. The Surrealist writer and painter Andre Masson described the artistic revolt of the twenties as having its origin in disgust with "the colossal slaugh­ ter" of World War I, with the "obscene 'brainwashing' that had been in­ flicted on civilians," with the "militant stupidity" and "sick society of the years 'between the wars'" (81, 96, and passim; my translation). Angrily re­ jecting the past, avant-garde dramatists also rejected traditional ways of re­ garding and portraying reality; or they lost confidence, to repeat the phrase used earlier, in the customary model for dramatizing human behavior and thinking about human existence—the representational one. These play­ wrights created daringly experimental drama that reflected their new ways of seeing people and the world. And if the Great War exploded old conventions and preconceptions for these artists, then the Russian Revolution of 1917 (preceded by the dress rehearsal of 1905) showed them that the most sacred structures were subject to violent change. Indeed, the October Revolution and World War I go hand in hand, for the former appeared to rescue the universal values of the French Revolution of 1789 from the European ashes of Verdun in 1916. October 1917 restored faith in the power of human agency (a power that would not be without its significance in the theater) at a moment when the carnage on the Western front seemed to prove that human beings were the helpless playthings of historical forces. For the entire European Left, the Russian Revolution sym­ bolized the resumption of history's forward march—and so it was seen, through thick and mostly thin, by many if not all leftists, until the counter­ revolution of 1989. Certainly neither international communism (with its rhetoric of the enemy class) nor nationalist fascism (with its rhetoric of the enemy race) would ever have become ruling creeds in the twentieth century had bourgeois society not thrown itself into the abyss of 1914. It was World War I that transformed both political "-isms" into agendas that spoke to the resentment, exhaustion, and horror of the men who returned from the trenches. Communism's own accomplishment, and the source of its appeal, was to formalize the terms of the bourgeoisie's guilty conscience, its remorse at its failure to practice what it preached: the idea of universality or action in the public interest, as well as the equality of all citizens, ideals the bourgeoisie claimed as its primary innovation and the foundation of democracy, but each of which it constantly negated through the unequal distribution of

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property and wealth perpetuated by the competition of its members. And communism gave expression also to the aesthetic self-loathing of the bour­ geois, their secret belief that money twisted the soul and that they knew the price of everything, yet the value of nothing. In this sense, the rise of commu­ nism was inseparable from the rise of Romanticism, the artistic rejection of all that was narrow, miserly, and vulgar about bourgeois capitalism. In Russia, such rejection, and the revolution that went with it, became the starting point for the new, theatrically and cinematically as well as politically and economically, and it made the Soviet stage pre-eminent for experimentation during the dozen years after Lenin's arrival at the Finland Station. Pilgrimages to Moscow to see the productions of Evgeny Vakhtangov, Aleksandr Tairov, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Nikolai Akimov, and Schlomo Mikhoels, and Sergei Eisenstein became mandatory for anyone interested in the future of the theater, or in the work of a Russian Futurist dramatist such as Vladimir Mayakovsky. As the pro-Marxist, pro-Soviet, yet artistically innovative Mayakovsky—whose Mystery-Bouffe (1918) enjoys the odd reputation of being both the greatest Bolshevik and the greatest Futurist drama—once wrote, the violence of World War I made a Futurist of everyone. As a result of the war, all stability, and all expectation of what is normal or can be taken for granted, were destroyed. The Russians Daniil Kharms and Aleksandr Vvedensky belonged to the Oberiuty, the last wave of postrevolutionary modernist writers able to express the new sense of uncertainty and repudiation as well as eagerness for novelty before being suffocated (like Mayakovsky before them) by Stalinist socialist realism—which would permit no confusion or commingling of revolution­ ary politics with revolutionary artistic methods. While stressing their rejec­ tion of representationalism, the Oberiuty also wanted it understood that, unlike some of the earlier twentieth-century avant-garde groups, such as the more extreme Futurists and the Dada-Surrealists, their goal was not to di­ vorce art from life but only to reflect the illogicality, fragmentation, and chaos of the life around them in a different, nonrepresentational way: by jarring the perceptions with unexpected, disjointed configurations of reality mixed with unreality; then by exploiting what such a collision of elements could yield in the way of shock, upset, and humor. If Westerners were unaware of the Russian Oberiuty at least until the early 1970s, they were equally unaware during the twenties and thirties of a lonely and misunderstood figure, the Polish painter-playwright-novelistphilosopher Stanistaw Ignacy Witkiewicz. "Witkacy," who had recently re­ turned from the tsarist army and direct observation of the Revolution, was

creating in the third decade of the twentieth century a proto-Absurdist the­ ater and a theory of abstract drama based on an analogy with modern paint­ ing. In this theater, meaning would be defined solely through internal scenic construction, the only logic would be that of pure form, and the only psy­ chology would be that of bizarre fantasy. In the West, German Expressionists such as Ernst Toller and Georg Kaiser were themselves radically transform­ ing dramatic structure and staging, but, unlike Witkiewicz, Kharms, and Vvedensky, with an impact that was soon felt across the Atlantic in the United States. As a result—and partly on account of the United States' increasing "globalization" after its successful participation in World War I— American theater joined the international mainstream of experimentation for the first time, as it produced the avant-garde drama of the early Eugene O'Neill, E. E. Cummings, and Gertrude Stein. After World War I, France, which had enjoyed commercial rather than artistic leadership in the field of drama as the nineteenth century marched in lockstep from Pixerecourt and Scribe to Sardou and Labiche, immediately regained its traditional importance in the avant-garde, and not only through the theatrical innovations of Jacques Copeau and his students (Louis Jouvet, Charles Dullin, Gaston Baty, and Georges Pitoeff). The French also reasserted their prominence in drama through the avant-garde experiments of such Surrealists as Philippe Soupault, Benjamin Peret, Louis Aragon, and Roger Vitrac, who—in the wake of a world war both imperialist and mecha­ nized—portrayed the ambiguity and irrationality of existence with incon­ gruous juxtapositions, with nonsense and non sequitur, and with humor and irony. (Guillaume Apollinaire was the first to use the term "Surrealism," in the preface to his play The Breasts ofTiresias [1917]: "When man wanted to imitate walking he created the wheel, which does not resemble a leg—and in the same way he has created Surrealism unconsciously" [56].) Artaud, whose radical insights bore fruit a generation later, himself be­ gan his work as playwright, actor, director, theorist—and prophet—during this renaissance in the French theater. And though in Italy Pirandello had shattered the traditional conceptions of representational theatrical illusion and unified dramatic character, it was the French productions by Dullin and Pitoeff that brought the Sicilian's dramatic vision to the rest of Europe and America—so much so in our own country that Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) has surely become the most frequently anthologized, and deservedly the most influential, of avant-garde plays. (For this reason, we felt no need to anthologize it yet again here.) Whether it was French or Italian, German or Russian, the theatrical

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avant-garde of the post-World War I era was not revolutionary only in an artistic sense, however; as I have noted, it was also revolutionary in a socio­ political sense, which was itself complemented by a psychological revo­ lutionism. The patron saints of the theatrical revolutionists of this period happened to be an unlikely pair, Sigmund Freud and V. I. Lenin. (Coincidentally, in the year before the Russian Revolution, Lenin lived directly across the street from the Cabaret Voltaire, the famous Zurich cafe that was the birthplace of Dada.) Implosions and explosions, dreams and revolutions, the conquest of the irrational and the triumph of the proletariat—these psychological and sociopolitical extremes lent form and substance to the avant-garde theater of the teens and twenties. Expressionism and Surrealism, the two major movements in painting and drama of the period, unite the subjective and the societal, dream and revolution, with the aim of transcending and transforming reality by releasing the subconscious and leveling all social barriers. In their rejection of the old society, the Surrealist heirs of Dada looked eastward, toward Moscow, for fraternity as well as inspiration and maintained a prolonged, if stormy and vacillating, attachment to the French Communist Party and the Third International—an attachment that thus privileged social or political revolu­ tion over the spiritual revolt of Artaud's theater of cruelty. Unlike the war­ mongering Italian Futurists, the German Expressionists, almost to a man, were pacifists. Social change, for them, grows out of the dream of spiritual rebirth, and the grimly realistic therefore moves with shocking rapidity in their work toward the fantastic and the visionary. The extremism and distortion of Expressionist drama derive precisely from its closeness to the dream. Indeed, in its crude aspects, Expressionism is nothing more than dramatized daydream or fantasy. In its subtler and more interesting examples, however, Expressionism approaches the concealing symbolism and subliminal suggestiveness of night dreams, if not nightmares. Innovatively, Strindberg called the experimental plays he wrote when he passed beyond Naturalism dream plays: namely, To Damascus (1888-1904), A Dream Play (1902), and The Ghost Sonata (1907). In them the projection and embodiment of psychic forces take the place of the replication of exter­ nal fact; and the association of ideas supplants the construction of plot based on the logical connection of cause and effect. The old structural principle of causal interrelations linking character, incident, and action thus gives way to a new structural pattern, closer to music than to drama—the presentation of a theme and variations. Instead of being mimetic, the acting in Strindberg's dream plays, like that

in German Expressionist drama, would be "musical" as well. Rather than seek to reproduce everyday behavior on the stage, the expressionistic actor, according to Paul Kornfeld (in an epilogue appended to his play The Seduction [1913]), should combine passionate rhetoric with trancelike ecstasy, and "not be ashamed of the fact that he is acting. . . . The melody of a great gesture says more than the highest consummation of what is called natural­ ness. Let him think of the opera, in which the dying singer still gives forth a high C and with the sweetness of his melody tells more about death than if he were to crawl and writhe" (7-8). Strindberg's dream plays in turn became the inspiration for German Expressionists such as Georg Kaiser, Ernst Toller, Reinhard Sorge, and Wal­ ter Hasenclever. Unlike the French Surrealists of the twenties and thirties, though, the Expressionists rarely reproduced actual dreams, with their shift­ ing planes of reality and gross distortion of the "laws" of time, space, and causality. Instead, the structure of many of their plays resembled the formal pattern or movement of the human mind in dream and reverie. Not by accident, the influence of Strindberg coincided with that of psychoanalysis (Freud's Interpretation of Dreams having appeared two years before A Dream Play), and, in its Freudian form (as well as later in its Jungian one), psycho­ analysis had decisive significance for Expressionism. But even before Freud, German philosophy from Schelling to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, to­ gether with the intellectual atmosphere in Germany in the wake of Roman­ ticism, had offered intimations of the subconscious. Even those Expression­ ists who were not conversant with the actual works of Freud, then, were undoubtedly familiar with the climate of thought that had given rise to psychoanalysis in the first place. In adopting an episodic dream structure, the German Expressionists not only rejected the tradition of the well-made play and openly defied the ideal of an objective recording of everyday life, on which "realistic" theater had been based. In league, paradoxically, with the realists and naturalists, they also turned against the disdainful aloofness from contemporary urban reality that characterized those writers who sought to revive the Romanticism or even the Neoclassicism of the past. Along with the dominant art of bourgeois society, the Expressionists rejected, unmasked, and caricatured the mores, precepts, and institutions that denatured its urban reality, whose prevail­ ing authoritarian temper—whether in Wilhelmine Germany or Hapsburg Austria—they opposed. Thus, like the other avant-gardes of its time, Expres­ sionism constituted not merely an aesthetic revolt but also an ethical and sometimes even a political one, closely allied with humanitarian principles

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and socialist reform. However, since this revolt was in many cases neither specific nor rational, but instead vague and emotional, the otherwise pacifistic movement numbered among its members some who were afterward, in an apparent about-face, to contribute their support to militant communism. The Bolshevik Revolution and Freudian psychoanalysis, then, tore down both the external conventions of society and the internal walls of the self. No wonder the walls and conventions of the realistic theater were also demolished—walls between stage and auditorium, actor and audience, author and play, together with the conventions of illusion, character, and plot. It had been demonstrated that reality, the basis for "realism," was neither objective nor unchanging, neither absolute nor unified, but instead relative and fragmented. And with the loss of belief in objective, immutable truth understandably came the eclipse of illusionistic, representational playwriting and staging. The human psyche, psychoanalysts showed, was a heap of fragments, not an integrated whole; an entire society, the Bolsheviks proved, could be blown up, and with it every value that it had cherished, every belief that it had promulgated. The avant-garde writers of the twenties and beyond investigated dramatic

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form precisely for the purpose of expressing this shattered reality; instead of holding a mirror up to nature, creating an illusion of reality, or reflecting the surface of the world, they smashed that mirror, imagined illusions within illusions, and generated apocalyptic visions. It was in order to depict human society and human nature in constant, often violent, upheaval and disin­ tegration, to uncover subterranean faultlines in politics as well as people, that the new playwrights adopted the fluidity of dreams and the chaos of revolutions as dramatic devices. Avant-garde drama between the world wars thus reflects not the private domestic life of that period, but rather its gross communal instability: its shifting planes of reality, changing perspectives on society, drastic transpositions of time and space, and manifold takes on personality. Many of the new movements placed considerable emphasis on multiple images of personality, for example, through their exploration of the sub­ conscious—probably because Freud's theories provided a semiscientific ex­ planation for forces that the Symbolists had relegated to the realm of fate, mysticism, or the supernatural. Through the subconscious, the subjective and the objective worlds could be brought into logical relation onstage that synthesized the views of both the realist-naturalists and the Symbolists. And through the psychological probing of the Surrealists, the vast realms of the mind offered material for new explorations in performance, apart from any

concern for objective representation. Freud's theories were given new di­ mensions, moreover, by the work of Carl Jung. Beginning with Psychology of the Unconscious (1912), he argued that Freud's description of the structure of the mind is incomplete; to its three divisions of id, ego, and superego should be added a fourth, the "collective unconscious"—a division beyond the reach of psychoanalysis, for "by no analytical technique can it be brought to conscious recollection, being neither repressed nor forgotten" (319). The collective unconscious, according to Jung, is "nothing more than a potentiality... which from primordial times has been handed down to us in the specific form of mnemonic images, or expressed in anatomical forma­ tions in the very structure of the brain" (319), incorporating "the psychic residua of innumerable experiences of the same type" (320). In this manner, Jung pushed the concept of the unconscious one step further and suggested an explanation for psychological responses not accounted for by Freud. He went on to declare that there are essentially two kinds of art: the kind based on the personal unconscious and that based on the collective unconscious. The first is limited by the author's personal vision, but the second is more significant because it captures (through archetype, myth, and symbol) expe­ riences embedded in the collective unconscious, which are the ones best suited to compensate for what is missing from our lives in the present. From the point of view of avant-garde dramatists, Jung, in so extending Freud's conception of the unconscious, was implicitly arguing for a reality that is far more complex than surface appearance would suggest. New developments in physics were to prove as far-reaching as those in psychology. Beginning in 1905, Albert Einstein began formulating his the­ ory of relativity, which constitutes the most revolutionary, precise statement of perceptions of time and space that have greatly influenced not only twentieth-century science but art and literature as well. The theory is revolu­ tionary precisely because, in formulating it, Einstein sought to incorporate both spatial and temporal dimensions. Newtonian physics had depicted space as static and absolute by treating both time and point of view as fixed; starting with Einstein, space came to be seen by contrast as relative to a moving point of reference. To the three spatial dimensions, he added the fourth dimension of time, in the form of movement; and the faster the movement, the greater are the changes in the perceived dimensions of both time and space. Even though Einstein saw mass, length, time, and simultaneity as rela­ tive, he never doubted the orderliness of the universe, and he sought to harmonize the variables through mathematical formulas. Less scientifically

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oriented minds, however, were more attracted to the idea of relativity itself and elevated it as a principle by which they could not only question the linear progression of time or the related principle of inexorable, determinis­ tic causality but also postulate the purely subjective nature of human percep­ tion. For many the possibility of firm or absolute truth had vanished forever, in the same way that it had disappeared around a century before for the German Romantics in consequence of Kant's notion that "pure reason" cannot penetrate the essence of things, that the intellect cannot determine what is truth and what merely appears to be truth, that all perception is finally subjective. (This idea was expressed in his Critique of Pure Reason [1781] but later qualified—like Einstein's theory of relativity—and reconciled with a belief in God's moral law in both his Critique of Practical Reason [1788] and his Critique of Judgment [1790].) Kant's notion—which for Kleist shattered his Enlightenment belief in the power of reason to comprehend the universe and to perfect life on earth—lay at the heart of German Romanticism. Henceforth, the outer world was abandoned in favor of the inner, reality was created by the imagi­ nation, higher consciousness was gained through the unconscious, and the generally valid was reached by way of the most individual. But whereas Romantics like Tieck and Grabbe escaped from objective reality into a world of fairy-tale fantasy, literary satire, or nationalistic folklore, Kleist in­ corporated the obduracy of that reality into such dramas as Penthesilea (1808) and Prince Friedrich of Homburg (1811) and in this sense showed some affinity for the classicism of Goethe and Schiller (themselves erstwhile Sturmer-und-Dranger)y which had attempted to reconcile spirit and matter by harmonizing the inner and outer worlds. As a result of Einstein's work, however, the changed conceptions of time and space were soon evident on the surface of artistic forms (in addition to being manifest at their spiritual core)—particularly in their organizational patterns. Space in painting, for example, had since the Renaissance been conceived as fixed, and objects had been shown from a single point of view at a specific instant in time. In fact, the entire logic of perspective painting was based on this convention, which was grounded in Newtonian physics. The first major break with tradition came in the late nineteenth century when Paul Cezanne began to include in one painting objects that could be seen only from different "eye-points." But it was Cubism (usually said to have begun in 1907 and to have reached its height just before World War I) that first systematically introduced into a single painting several points of view, no one of which had more authority than the others. The Cubist paint-

ers, among whom Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were the leading fig­ ures, sought not only to break down objects semigeometrically, into cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones, but also to provide several views of the same object simultaneously. Cubism thus represented an attempt to deal analyt­ ically with space and to incorporate the dimension of time into painting. Similar attempts were made in drama, where time has traditionally been treated as linear (and events occur in proper succession from beginning to middle to end) rather than as simultaneous or relative. Just as fixed space had governed most painting, the orderly or sequential passing of time had gov­ erned drama, with most plays being unified through a cause-and-effect ar­ rangement of incidents that mimicked Newton's own theory of causality (according to which every thing or occurrence in the universe has its cause or origin). Less often, an overriding thought, theme, or thesis had been used to unify otherwise seemingly random, disjointed incidents (as in Aristopha­ nes' comedies and the medieval mystery plays). Nearly all nonrealistic dra­ matists have adopted some variation on this method, for most have orga­ nized their works around some central idea or motif, although the specific form of organization—musical, say, as in the case of Strindberg's Ghost Sonata, mentioned earlier, Mayakovsky's "bouffe" (comic opera) of a mys­ tery play, or, even later, Sam Shepard's Suicide in B-Flat (1976)—depends in large part on the assumptions the playwright has made about reality. Before the modern period most dramatists had assumed, of course, that ours is a logical universe presided over by a just God; behind any apparent chaos, therefore, lay ultimate harmony and justice. But as I have tried to make clear, avant-garde drama was directly affected by the new god of science—by new scientific discoveries and the advanced technologies of the machine age, in their constructive as well as destructive capacities. For this reason, the plays of the Expressionists, Futurists, and Surrealists have an essentially new tempo or rhythm that mirrors the fast pace of industrial life, the thrilling speed of the airplane, the automobile, and the motorcycle, and the quick cuts of edited film. Such drama overwhelms the spectator with its abrupt images and movement more in keeping with the sports arena and the movie screen than with the predictable pace of bourgeois, boulevard, or Broadway theater or even the Symbolist temple of art (where earthly dis­ continuity, illogicality, and obscurity could still be absorbed, reconciled, or overruled in a transcendent, ideal realm). Furthermore, avant-garde drama playfully calls attention to itself as drama, to its own artifice and spectacle (as realist or naturalist plays never would), and exuberantly com­ bines esoteric art with popular culture—with the circus, the cabaret, even

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the jazz of the twentieth century—in a way not seen since the two apogees of Western theater: those of ancient Greece and Elizabethan England. All the playfulness and exuberance ended, however, with the rise of fascism and the arrival of World War II, as an entire generation of artists was geographically displaced, politically silenced, morally co-opted, or simply executed (the fate of the sometime Surrealist Federico Garcia Lorca). State repression of the avant-garde was most conspicuous, of course, under the totalitarian regimes of the Soviet Union and Germany, in which, respectively, avant-garde practice was denigrated as "formalist" and "degenerate." In both cases, avant-gardism was stamped out because it conflicted with, or merely failed to serve, official government policy. The dramatic decline of the European avant-garde in the 1930s is thus connected with a paradoxical feature of the avant-garde ethos: avant-garde artistic practice can flourish only under liberal political regimes, which are willing to tolerate vigorous expressions of dissent against the state and society. In this respect the avantgarde bites the hand that feeds it, or conversely, in Poggioli's words, it pays "involuntary homage" to the bourgeois liberal democracies it attacks (106). World War II was thus a turning point not only in the individual lives of a great many artists and intellectuals but also in the history of the avant-garde as a whole. Avant-garde drama written after World War II, like the drama produced between the two world wars, was to be affected by new scientific discoveries and the advanced technologies of the machine age, but in this case those which made possible the splitting of the atom and the demented, conveyor-belt efficiency of gas chambers—which is to say, technologies whose immediate effect was overwhelmingly negative—indeed, incompre­ hensibly catastrophic. The horrors of World War II, especially the systematic displacement and extermination of vast numbers of people, created a crisis of conscience among many of the world's artists and intellectuals. Traditional values and morals seemed incapable of coping with such dilemmas as the American dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, or the Holocaust perpe­ trated by the Nazis against European Jewry (not to speak of the Soviet GULAG stretching from the Urals to the Pacific). Conventional values and morals, as a result, no longer seemed to rest on any solid foundation. As the full implications of a godless universe at last became evident, the search for absolute values or essential truths gave way to fundamental ques­ tions about human beings' existence and place in the universe. As Martin Esslin put it, "The decline of religious faith was masked until the end of the Second World War by the substitute religions of faith in progress, national­ ism, and various totalitarian fallacies. All this was shattered by the war. By

1942, Albert Camus was calmly putting the question why, since life had lost all meaning, man should not seek escape in suicide" (5). Camus, of course, was a leading exponent of existentialism, perhaps the most compelling force in postwar thought. (Although it can be traced as far back as the ancient Greeks, existentialism remained a relatively minor strain in philosophy until the mid-nineteenth century, where we find it beginning with Kierkegaard.) Whereas an essentialist philosopher might inquire into what it means to be human—what the essential human traits are—the existentialist begins by asking, "What does it mean 'to be' or 'to exist?" Existentialists like Albert Camus argued that human beings are, individually, responsible for making themselves what they are, and that without making a free and conscious choice before taking action, one cannot truly be said "to exist" as a human being. This philosophical movement thus sought to free the individual from external authority as well as from the authority or weight of the past and to force him or her to discover within the self the grounds for choosing and doing. (Hence the difference between traditional, expository characters who are victims of the past, and unconventional, existentialist characters who live in—and act out of—the eternal present.) Understandably, existentialism struck a responsive chord during and after World War II, for the world had seemingly gone mad, as personal choice was abdicated in favor of blind adherence to national leaders and policies, even when such obedience en­ tailed condoning almost unbelievable cruelties or crimes against humanity. Existentialism also struck a responsive chord in the theater. Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre wrote such plays as Caligula (1945) and The Flies (1943) to dramatize the tenets of their philosophy. These plays, along with those by Giraudoux, Anouilh, and Salacrou, create what could be called a form of aesthetic dissonance, however, for they posit, in Esslin's words, the ul­ timate "senselessness of life [and] the inevitable devaluation of ideals, purity, and purpose" (6). Yet the plays themselves are logical constructs that depend for their effect on ratiocinative devices, discursive thought, and consistent or coherent character. In this sense, existentialist playwrights have something in common with dramatists that went before them—Goethe, Schiller, and especially Kleist, a harbinger of the avant-garde. These Germans had at­ tempted to harmonize Romanticism—and its focus on the turbulent, inter­ nal life—with Neoclassicism, which emphasized the controlled, external world. Camus, Sartre, and company tried to express irrational content—that is, the theme of the irrationality of the human condition—in rational form. (Sartre and Camus were to be followed, in the late 1990s, by Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn, whose Arcadia and Copenhagen, paradoxically, explore

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in conventional dramatic form, respectively, the way in which Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle exploded the traditional concept of cau­ sality, thus opening the door to "chaos theory.") The dramatists of the Theater of the Absurd, by contrast, strive to express their sense of metaphysical anguish at the senselessness of the human condition in a form which mirrors that meaninglessness or ultimate lack of purpose. Therefore, Absurdists like Samuel Beckett, Eugene lonesco, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov abandon the cause-and-effect relationship that traditionally governs the incidents in a play—the progression of exposition, complication, turning point, climax, and denouement—or reduce reliance on that pattern to an absolute minimum. Rather than chronicling the connective quality of events in a linear narrative, the action in plays like Waiting for Godot (1952), The Bald Soprano (1950), The Maids (1947), and The Invasion (1949) tends to be circular or ritualistic, as it concentrates on exploring the texture of a static situation or condition. In such drama, problems or dilemmas are seldom resolved, and characters tend toward the typical or archetypal rather than the specific or the individual. Often they even exchange roles or metamorphose into other characters, and some are given only generic or numerical designations. Moreover, time for these characters is flexible, as it is in dreams, just as place is generalized: the dramatis personae of Absurdist plays most often find themselves in a symbolic location, or in a void cut off from the concrete world as we (think we) know it. And in this dramatic limbo, language itself is downgraded. Although the characters frequently talk as volubly as do the figures of conventional theater, they usually recognize that they are indulg­ ing in a word-game that ridicules the very use of language by distorting it or making it as mechanical as possible. To compensate for this downgrading of language as a means of communication, Absurdist plays emphasize the met­ aphorical aspect through their scenery. Their poetry tends to emerge, ac­ cording to Esslin, "from the concrete and objectified images of the stage itself. . . . What happens on the stage transcends, and often contradicts, the words spoken by the characters" (7). What happens, moreover, never takes place in the context of traditional dramatic genres: instead, the somber often becomes the grotesque (as in the precursory esperpentos of Ramon Maria del Valle-Inclan from the twenties), and the comic frequently takes on tragic overtones (as in the anarchic farces of Joe Orton). The world is "neutralized," even turned on its head, by these writers' deriding of everything that in the past was taken seriously, or by their transforming of what most people have considered to be ludicrous into something ominous, powerful, and affecting. Despite such rejection of for-

mal purity, structural logic, integrated character, and linguistic cohesiveness, Absurdist drama is ultimately conceptual, for in the end it too seeks to project an intellectualized perception—however oblique or abstruse—about the human condition. The difference between such drama and earlier nonrealistic plays, from Symbolism onward, is precisely that perception or vision, rather than its techniques. Although the Absurdists were especially attuned to as well as inclined to imitate the work of Jarry, Artaud, Pirandello, the Futurists, the Dadaists, and perhaps above all the Surrealists, their subject becomes peo­ ple's entrapment in an irrational and hostile or impersonal and indifferent universe, an existence in which the search for truth is an exercise in futility. (This attitude, incidentally, does not seep into American drama, with Jack Gelber's The Connection [1959] and Edward Albee's The American Dream [ 1961 ], until postwar euphoria wears off, the Korean War erupts in the midst of the Cold War, and the Vietnam debacle looms on the horizon. The American avant-garde, however, is rooted more in performance than in text, in a radical performative technique that dismantles and then either discards or refashions the overwhelmingly "well-made" drama of the American stage, as the work of the Wooster Group, the Living Theater, the Open Theatre, the Bread and Puppet Theatre, Mabou Mines, and Ping Chong will attest.) The Theater of the Absurd, that is, gives up the search for a dramatic model through which to discover fundamental ethical or philosophical cer­ tainties about life and the world—something even the Surrealists attempted in their probing of the unconscious. To paraphrase Malraux, if the mission of the nineteenth century was to get rid of the gods, the mission of the twentieth century was to replace them with something—until we get to the Absurdists, who replace "something" with nothing or nothingness. The only certainty about human reality, in Ionesco's words, is that, "devoid of purpose . . . cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless" (quoted in Esslin, 5). And this "certainty," as I have already indicated, is reflected in the viciously cyclical nature of Absurdist dramatic form. Theater of the Avant-Garde does not go beyond 1950 and the inception of the Absurd, but not because avant-garde drama has ceased to be written. One need only witness from the 1970s, for example, the Austrian Peter Handke's Ride Across Lake Constance (1971), which demolishes even the remnants of mimesis through a relentless scrutiny of the semiotics of language and expe­ rience that allows for no progression of events, no resolution, no character­ ization, and hence no correspondence between behavior and language; the Frenchman Michel Vinaver's Overboard (1973), whose many discontinuous

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The dog is on the chain, don't be afraid. Well, didn't you get soaked! Right through! Take off Your coat and boots. There's a lap robe on the b e n c h Take it, use it. Slippers are under the b e n c h Yes, put them on. That's good. Now just sit down, And warm yourself, I'll throw some wood in the stove. WAYFARER: {He takes off his overcoat and boots, puts on the slippers, and wraps himself up in the lap robe. Julia tosses logs into the stove.) JULIA: Want a little vodka? Well, go ahead! {She brings out the bottle and pours him a small glassful.) WAYFARER: {He nods his head as a sign of appreciation and drinks.) JULIA: But there's nothing to eat, not even any bread. WAYFARER: {He shakes his head negatively, indicating that he is not hungry.) JULIA:

Well, listen to me. For the night I'll give You this room here. The sofa's comfortable, Lie down, and sleep until tomorrow morning. And I will go to bed behind that partition. I've got a gun there, and if you come near The doorway, I shall instantly and with Unerring aim put a bullet through your head. And Polka will not let me be abused! You understand? Well then, we're friends for now. WAYFARER: {He nods his head.) JULIA: But why don't you say anything? Answer me! WAYFARER: {He makes a sign with his hand.) JULIA: What does that mean? WAYFARER: {He makes the same sign again.) JULIA:

I do not understand. Or are you mute? WAYFARER: {He makes a sign that is neither affirmative nor negative.) JULIA:

I don't believe it. That's

Your way of trying to make fun of me! Hey, watch out! I won't let you abuse me! WAYFARER: {He grabs Julia's hand and kisses it respectfully.) JULIA:

Well, that's enough, I didn't do a thing. So then you're mute? Now it's all clear to me. That's why you kept so silent all the while. But you're not deaf? WAYFARER: {He shakes his head negatively.) JULIA: You u n d e r s t a n d m e , d o n ' t you? WAYFARER: {He nods his head affirmatively.) JULIA:

Oh, oh, poor boy, poor boy! Come now, forgive me. You see: my father left for town this morning; Tomorrow he'll come back. The miller's two Miles off, t h e village beyond t h e river, a n d n o o n e In t h e whole house. Just m e a n d Polka. It's obvious W h y I was afraid to let a m a n in. But you're completely different, dear. W h y , you're So pale a n d thin, a n d weak a n d sickly-looking. You must b e quite u n h a p p y . WAYFARER: {He nods affirmatively.) JULIA:

But then, tell me: Are you really from town? Do you live there? WAYFARER: {He shakes his head negatively.) JULIA: N o t in t h e town? T h e n where? Far, far away? WAYFARER: {He nods his head affirmatively.) JULIA:

And what's your n a m e ? Sergei? Ivan? or Peter? Nikita? Nikolai? or Alexander? WAYFARER: {He shakes his head negatively.) JULIA:

Well, what does it matter! I am Julia. I'll call you Robert. That's a name that I Have always liked a lot. So tell me, Robert, Where were you going? To the mill? Or further, To Otradnoye village? Or to the estate, To the Voznitsins'? Or even further still? WAYFARER: {He shakes his head negatively and covers his face with his hands.) JULIA: D o n ' t want to tell m e ? W h a t is it—a secret? WAYFARER: {He nods his head affirmatively.)

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JULIA:

A secret? Oh, that's what! Like in a novel? I've read quite a few. Two years ago There was a lady living in Otradnoye Who used to give me books. I still have two Of them now: The Scullery-Maid Who Became Countess And The Black Prince. Have you read them? WAYFARER: (He shakes his head negatively.) JULIA:

Too bad.

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Fve read them eight times each at least, and still Whenever I come to the touching scenes, Right off I start to cry—I can't help it! A Gypsy stole the countess's baby daughter, She didn't know she was herself a countess, Grew up like a poor beggar, had to work, And suddenly . . . But then, I won't describe it a l l . . . Sometimes The idea suddenly strikes me: what if Instead of being a forester's daughter, I too am a countess! Just don't laugh. That's all Pure nonsense. Well, if you want to, drink some vodka. (She offers him a glass.) WAYFARER: (He shakes his head negatively.) (Silence.) JULIA:

Robert, you know, I am very unhappy! I've spent all of my life here in the forest. My mother died long ago. My father's surly, Always tramping through the woods, for days On end, out hunting, or on business. Guests Come here but rarely—and then who? The sexton, The gardener from the Voznitsins', and the miller . . . It's only in summer that ladies and gentlemen visit Otradnoye—but how can I go up to them? I'm so ashamed; I don't know how to speak Their language; they laugh at me; I'm not at all Well educated . .. But I simply cannot Live this life any more! I'm bored, I'm bored! I feel the need of something else. I like Nice clothes and luxury. I want to go To theaters and to balls. I want to chat In drawing rooms. I'm sure I would know how

To seem no sillier than any countess. Really, I am quite beautiful! My eyes Are large, my ears are small, and I have legs That are elegant and a body smooth as marble! Fd hold my own with any other countess With all her airs and ingratiating ways! Fd quickly learn to play the pianoforte And dance all of the latest dances. Fve An innate sense of elegance. But here Who is there to see me? Pine trees, birds, My father, and the peasants! And what do I hear? Barking, swearing, shooting, and the howling of wolves As they come running toward us through the snow . . . Fd like to lean back in an easy chair And, with a tea cup casually in hand, Listen to amorous whisperings in French . . . But no—J have to sweep the floors, prepare The dinner, do the wash, and bring the water For our horse, and to think that for all eternity There is nothing else Fll ever know! (The charcoal in the stove goes out) Well, Fll get married soon. To whom? A forester Of course! Or even worse, it may well be A miller! And then I shall put on weight, Count bags of meal, and all night long hear The wheels creak as the water makes them turn .. . My unloved husband will kiss me on the cheeks And lips—with his gross, over-heavy lips; Sometimes he'll pet me roughly, with a sneer, Sometimes, when he's half-drunk, he'll pull my braids! Once children come, Fll wash their hands and cut their hair, Cook them porridge, whip them with willow switches... And slowly Fll forget my girlish dreams Like the ends of candles that have burned out! Oh, no! Fve not the strength to think of it! (Silence.) Robert! You think that, living in the forest, Like all the country wenches, I did not Preserve my virtue? Now by all that's holy, I swear to you: until this moment no one Has ever kissed me, and there is no one To whom Fve spoken words of love. I am Pure, as the summer sky, as water from the spring, I would not shame the royal bed of a king.

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The most malicious slanderer could not Speak ill of m e ! . . . What am I waiting for? I do not know. Perhaps I am waiting to Find out that I'm the daughter of a count, Waiting for some prince to come to my country And tell me: I have been looking for you throughout The world, and now I have found you, come with me To my sumptuous palace and be the tsarina! I am waiting, the years pass, I am alone, There is no joy, nor will there be, that's clear! And, if I tell the truth, yes, there are times I am ashamed that I have been so chaste! (Silence. It grows darker and darker in the room.) But perhaps I am complaining without cause, And the day that I was waiting for has come, And Robert, you're the one who has been sent To me to answer all my prayers! I did Expect the prince to come in a golden coach, With throngs of servants, followed by his retinue, But he came on foot, alone. I did expect He would be wearing velvet and brocade, And he appeared in a jacket and overcoat! I had imagined that on bended knee He would express his love for me eloquently In a long speech, full of passionate compliments, But he is mute! .. . Well, still! Isn't it clear That he's the one! How odd! Robert, answer! Did You know that you were sent to me by Fate? You are the one that I was waiting for! You are the one the Lord ordained for me! My betrothed! My beloved! My sweetheart! Yes! I recognize your eyes, your sad And wistful look, the slender, delicately Bent fingers of your beautiful hands! Robert! Robert! Tell me that I'm the one! WAYFARER: (He makes no response at all.) JULIA:

Well, no matter, listen! Whoever you are, The one or not the one, what matter to us? I won't find something better, and where will you Ever meet another girl like me? You think I'm beautiful? And young? Till now I've never kissed a man! All of the strength Of my virginal tenderness I'll give to you!

To you I'll give my innocence, as if You were my fiance, my husband, my master! Fm going to believe that you're some prince, Traveling in disguise, who has lost his throne, And must in the meantime conceal his name! I shall serve you like a faithful servant, And, like a tsarina, caress and care For you! Believe in me! Stay here with me! You'll spend this night as in a fairy tale! And even you'll believe we live in a castle, That above our bed there hangs a canopy Of gold brocade, and that hundreds of servants Wait zealously outside the door, that all We do is say the word—the hall will blaze With fire, and a chorus of musicians burst out! Oh, how I am going to adore you, And fondle and caress you! Your every wish I shall fulfill! I will be passionate, Submissive, tender, whatever you want me to be! Upon awaking in the morning, you Will see the daughter of a forester, Bustling about the house. She'll offer you Some milk. And you will think you dreamed a strange Dream. You'll say thanks, put on your overcoat, And go away, leaving these parts forever, And, if you want to, you'll forget about me . . . Robert! My prince! My lord and master! Take Me, as though I were some precious pearl Cast at your feet from the depths of the sea! Take me, as the gift of a nameless fairy, Who caught sight of you in the thick of the forest! Take me! Possess me! I am yours, all yours! {She throws herself at the Wayfarer.) Let me squeeze against you! Give me your lips, To press mine against yours! Give me your hands, To put them around my waist! . . . Why don't you want to? {She stares fixedly at him and suddenly recoils in horror.) Robert! Robert! It cannot be! He's dead! {Once again she bends over the Wayfarer sitting immobile in the armchair, then in fright rushes to the window.) He's dead! Who's there! You people! Help me! Help! END

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A g a i n s t Naturalism in the Theater Valery Briusov

It is three years now that the Art Theater has been with us in Moscow. Somehow it was an immediate success with everyone—the public, the press, the partisans of the new art and the defenders of the old. Not long ago, it was the custom to cite the Maly Theater as the model of the Russian stage; these days people only laugh at its routine. And this same Maly Theater and another Moscow theater—Korsh's—have begun to adopt the new methods. For Muscovites the Art Theater has become a kind of idol; they are proud of it, and it is the first thing they hasten to show off to the visitor. When the Art Theater visited Petersburg, it performed here to packed houses, arousing universal interest. The Art Theater ventured to stage plays that had failed in other theaters—Chekhov's Seagull, for example—and was successful. Most surprising of all, it was the Art Theater's experimental spirit, its innovations in decor and acting, its daring choice of plays, that won the sympathy of the crowd. What is the Art Theater, then? Is it really the theater of the future, as some have called it? Has it made a step toward the spiritualization of art, toward the overcoming of the fatal contradictions between the essence and the surface of art? Simple probability says no. If the Art Theater has set itself such tasks, it would hardly have won universal acclaim so quickly. Success attests that what the Art Theater offers its audience is not the genuinely new, but the old refurbished, that it offers no threat to the deep-rooted habits of the theatergoer. It has only achieved with greater perfection what other theaters, including its rival the Maly, have aimed at. Together with the entire European theater, with insignificant exceptions, it is on a false path. Reprinted from "Unnecessary Truth," in The Russian Symbolist Theatre: An Anthology of Plays and Critical Texts, ed. Michael Green (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1986), 25-30.

Modern theaters aim at the utmost verisimilitude in their depiction of life. They think that if everything on the stage is as it is in reality, then they have worthily fulfilled their function. Actors endeavor to speak as they would in a drawing room, scene painters copy views from nature, costume de­ signers work in accordance with archaeological data. In spite of all this, however, there remains much that the theater has not succeeded in counter­ feiting. The Art Theater has set itself the aim of reducing this "much." The actors there have begun to sit with their backs to the audience without constraint; they have begun to talk to each other instead of "out" to the audience. In place of the usual box set has appeared the room placed at an oblique angle: other rooms are visible through the open doors, so that an entire apartment is presented to the viewer's gaze. The furniture is arranged as it usually is in people's homes. If a forest or a garden is to be represented, several trees are placed on the forestage. If the play requires rain to fall, the audience is made to listen to the sound of water. If the play is set in winter, snow can be seen falling outside the windows. If it is windy, curtains flutter, and so on. First of all, one has to say that these innovations are very timid. They are concerned with secondary matters and leave the essential traditions of the theater undisturbed. And until these traditions, which comprise the essence of any stage production, are changed, no alteration of detail will bring the theater closer to reality. All theaters, including the Art Theater, try to make everything on stage visible and audible. Stages are lit by footlights and strip lights, but in real life light either falls from the sky or pours in through windows or is cast by a lamp or a candle. If there is a night scene, the Art Theater has ventured to leave the stage in greater darkness than is customary, although it has not dared to extinguish all the lights in the theater; however, if it were really night on stage, the audience would obviously be unable to see anything. Similarly, the Art Theater is at pains to ensure that all stage conversation is audible to the auditorium. Even if a large gathering is repre­ sented, only one actor speaks at a time. When a new group begins to speak, the previous one "moves upstage" and begins gesticulating energetically— and this a quarter of a century after Villiers de ITsle Adam in his drama Le nouveau monde bracketed two pages of dialogue with the direction "Every­ body speaks at once!" But even if the Art Theater were more daring, it would still fall short of its purpose. To reproduce life faithfully on the stage is impossible. The stage is conventional by its very nature. One set of conventions may be replaced by another, that is all. In Shakespeare's day a board would be set up with the inscription "forest." Not so long ago we used to be content with a backdrop of a forest with side wings depicting trees with branches incomprehensibly intertwined against the sky. In time to come, forests will be constructed from artificial three-dimensional trees with foliage and rounded trunks, or even from living trees with roots hidden in tubs under the stage... And all this, the last word in stage technique, will, like the Shakespearean inscription, be for

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the audience no more than a reminder, no more than a symbol of a forest. The modern theatergoer is not in the least taken in by a painted tree—he knows that a particular piece of lathe and canvas is intended to stand for a tree. In much the same way, a signboard meant "forest" to an Elizabethan audience and a stage sapling will mean a tree growing naturally to the audience of the future. The set is no more than a pointer to the imagination. In the Greek theater, an actor playing someone who had just returned from foreign parts would enter from the left. At the Art Theater, the actor is admitted to a small vestibule where he divests himself of sheepskin and galoshes as a sign that he has come from afar. But who among the audience is likely to forget that he arrived from the wings? In what way is the conven­ tion by which an actor removes his sheepskin more subtle than the one by which it is understood that if he enters from the left he is coming from foreign parts? Not only the art of the theater, but art of any kind cannot avoid formal convention, cannot be transformed into a re-creation of reality. Never, in looking at a picture by one of the great realist painters, will we be deceived like the birds of Zeuxis into thinking that before us are fruits or an open window through which we may glimpse a distant horizon. By infinitesimal gradations of light and shade, by the most elusive signals, the eye is able to distinguish reality from representation. Never will we bow to the marble bust of an acquaintance. It is unheard of that someone, on reading a story in which the author recounts in the first person how he came to commit suicide, should order a mass to be sung for the repose of his soul. And if there do exist reproductions of people and things that deceive the eye, such, for example, as bridges in a painted panorama or wax figures so convincing that they frighten children, we have difficulty in recognizing these creations as works of art. Not a single one of the spectators sitting in the orchestra and paying three or four rubles for his seat is going to believe that he is really looking at Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and that in the final scene the prince lies dead. Each new technical device in art, be it that of the theater or another, arouses only curiosity and suspicion in the spectator. A certain contempo­ rary artist has, it is said, painted a new series of pictures in which the effect of moonlight is strikingly conveyed. When we see them, our first thought will be: How did he manage to do that? And then we will captiously seek out every discrepancy with reality. Only when we have satisfied our curiosity will we start looking at the picture as a work of art. When an avalanche of wadding descends on the stage, the members of the audience ask each other: How was that done? If Rubek and Irene simply walked off into the wings [in Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken], the audience would believe more readily in their destruction than it does now, when before their eyes two straw-stuffed dummies and armfuls of wadding go rolling over the boards. "It faded on the crowing of the cock," someone says of the Ghost in Hamlet, and this is enough for the audience to imagine the crowing of the cock. But in Uncle

Vanya the Art Theater has a cricket chirping. No one in the audience will imagine that the cricket is real, and the more lifelike the sound, the less convincing the illusion. In time, audiences will become used to the devices they now find so novel and will cease to notice them. But this will not come about because the audience will take wadding for snow in real earnest, or the rope that tugs at the curtains for wind, but because these devices will simply be numbered among the usual theatrical conventions. Would it not then be better to abandon the fruitless battle against the invincible conventions of the theater, which only spring up with renewed strength, and rather than seeking to eradicate them, attempt to subjugate, to tame, to harness, to saddle them? There are two kinds of convention. One kind arises from the inability to create successfully. A bad poet says of a beautiful woman: "She is as fresh as a rose." It may be that the poet really understood the vernal freshness of the woman's soul, but he was unable to express his feelings, substituting cliche for genuine expression. In the same way, people want to speak on the stage as they do in life but are unable to, stressing words unnaturally, pronouncing endings too emphatically and so on. But there is another kind of convention—that which is deliberately applied. It is a convention that statues of marble and bronze are left unpainted. They could be painted—at one time they even were—but it is unnecessary, since sculpture is concerned with form, not color. An engraving in which leaves are black and the sky striped observes certain conventions, but it nevertheless affords pure aesthetic en­ joyment. Wherever there is art, there is convention. To oppose this is as absurd as to demand that science would dispense with logic and explain phenomena other than by their causal relationship. It is time that the theater stopped counterfeiting reality. A cloud depicted in a painting is flat, it does not move or change its form or luminiscence—but there is something about it that gives us the same feeling as a real cloud. The stage must provide everything that can most effectively help the spectator to re-create the setting demanded by the play in his imagination. If a battle is to be represented, it is absurd to send on stage a couple of dozen—or even a thousand—extras waving wooden swords: perhaps the audience will be bet­ ter served by a musical picture from the orchestra. If a wind is called for, there is no need to blow a whistle and tug at the curtain with a rope: the actors themselves must convey the storm by behaving as people do in a strong wind. There is no need to do away with the setting, but it must be deliberately conventionalized. The setting must be, as it were, stylized. Types of setting must be devised that will be comprehensible to everyone, as a received language is comprehensible, as white statues, flat paintings, and black engravings are comprehensible. Simplicity of setting will not be equiv­ alent to banality and monotony. The principle will be changed, and there will be ample scope in particulars for the imagination of Messrs. the set designers and technicians. Dramatists too must in some degree perfect their artistic method. They

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are sovereign artists only when their work is read; on the stage their plays are only forms into which the actors pour their own content. Dramatists must renounce all superfluous, unnecessary, and ultimately futile copying of life. Everything external in their work must be reduced to a minimum because it has little to do with the conduct of the drama. The drama can convey the external only through an intermediary—through the souls of the dramatis personae. The sculptor cannot take soul and emotion in his hands; he has to give the spirit bodily incarnation. The dramatist, on the contrary, should make it possible for the actor to express the physical in the spiritual. Some­ thing has already been achieved in the creation of a new drama. The most interesting attempts of this kind are the plays of Maeterlinck and the latest dramas of Ibsen. It is noteworthy that it is in the staging of these plays that the modern theater has shown itself to be particularly ineffectual. The ancient theater had a single permanent set—the palace. With slight alterations it was made to represent the interior of a house, a square, the seashore. Actors wore masks and buskins, which forced them to put aside any thought of imitating everyday life. The chorus sang sacred hymns around the altar and also intervened in the action. Everything was at once thoroughly conventionalized and utterly alive; the audience devoted its attention to the action and not to the setting, "for tragedy," says Aristotle, "is the imitation not of men, but of action." In our day, such simplicity of setting has been preserved in the folk theater. I chanced to see a performance of [Aleksei Remizov's] Tsar Maximilian given by factory workers. The scenery and props consisted of two chairs, the tsar's paper crown and the paper chains of his rebellious son Adolph. Watching this performance, I understood what powerful resources the theater has at its disposal and how misguided it is in seeking the aid of painters and technicians. The creative urge is the only reality that exists on earth. Everything external is, in the poet's words, "only a dream, a fleeting dream." Grant that in the theater we may be partakers of the highest truth, the profoundest reality. Grant the actor his rightful place, set him upon the pedestal of the stage that he may rule it as an artist. By his art he will give content to the dramatic performance. Let your setting aim not at truth, but at the sugges­ tion of truth. I summon you away from the unnecessary truth of the modern stage to the deliberate conventionalization of the ancient theater.

m Pataphysical Theater

a

Ifred Jarry, novelist and playwright, was born on September 8, 1873, in Laval, France. As a fifteen-year-old schoolboy, he be1 gan writing his most influential play, the five-act satirical farce " ^ King Ubu. Jarry originally performed King Ubu with marionettes, and I M F * over the next eight years he continued to revise the play. As the assisw-^^m tant to Aurelien Lugne-Poe, the director of the Theatre de POeuvre in " ^ Paris, he succeeded in securing a production there of King Ubu in 1896. n ^ * This premiere, with designs by Bonnard, Vuillard, and Toulouse-Lautrec, _ caused a riot in the theater (comparable to the one caused by the U w ^ staging of Victor Hugo's Hernani in 1830, during the heyday of Romanticism) because of Jarry's use of profanity and mangled diction, as well as on account of the enormity of the characters' greed and cruelty. Jarry championed the use of puppets in place of actors long before Gordon Craig proposed the Ubermarionette; the use of masks, which Jarry wanted for King Ubu but did not get, would have been the first step toward his desired depersonalization of the performer. He thus shared Maeterlinck's preference for an abstract theater rather than a realistic one, and the violent, absurd vision of the world captured in his plays and in his invention of "pataphysics"-—"the science of imaginary solutions," which bears much the same relation to the scientific or rational way of analyzing and describing the world as Jarry's anti-theater does to conventional drama—influenced the Surrealists and Dadaists of the 1920s, Antonin Artaud, and the Theater of the Absurd. The sequels to King Ubu—Ubu Cuckolded (1888) and Ubu Bound (1900)--were not published or produced until long after Jarry's death. In the last years of his life he gave in to his addictions to absinthe and ether, and began to live life as the character of Ubu. He died on November 1, 1907, in Paris. A vicious satire of Jarry's despised physics teacher, King Ubu parodied in the process not only Shakespearean tragedy, most evidently Macbeth, but also all the

turn-of-the-century thematic and stylistic expectations of serious drama. This was parody that went beyond the literary, however, for King Ubu is a disparaging attack against the fundamental concepts of Western civilization, specifically as they are embodied in bourgeois aims, attitudes, and practices. The grossly fat and loathsome Ubu is the ugly personification of the baser instincts and antiso­ cial qualities—rapacity, cruelty, stupidity, gluttony, cowardice, conceit, vulgarity, treachery, and ingratitude—all of which he inspires as well in the people who

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surround him, particularly those who are esteemed as honorable, heroic, al­ truistic, patriotic, idealistic, or simply socially conventional. Thus Ubu, who at his wife's urging murders the unsuspecting Wenceslas, king of an imaginary Poland, himself reduces kingship to gorging on sausages and wearing an immense hat; economic competition to a kicking, struggling race; social reform to slaughter motivated solely by envious cupidity; the waging of war to boastful brawling; and religious faith to fearful superstition, manipulated by the unscrupulous for their own benefit. In other words, a figure symbolizing all that bourgeois morality condemns is accepted as the representative and mainstay of bourgeois society, which then stands condemned by its own principies. The creation of such a character as the apocalyptic twentieth century was dawning—a character spawned, in essence, by the bourgeoisie—was gruesomely prophetic, particularly since the Ubus survive the Polish revolt (led by both the Russian tsar and the only surviving son of King Wenceslas) and sail off at the end to comfortable exile in France. Ubu's tyrannical savagery, which was seen by many as the creation of a deranged mind, seems tame indeed when compared with the massacres, genocides, and holocausts of subsequent generations.

Jarry and the Modern Theatre _ ^ ^ ish* f}^m

H H bu Ro' stands at a turning point in the evolution of the mod­ | ^ ern theatre. In an age in which the traditional distinction ^ ^ f c between poetry and prose was breaking down (with the in­ vention of the vers fibre) and painting was taking its first steps in the I M F * direction of abstraction, it was only natural that the theatre should attempt to follow a similar path of self-examination and redefinition. Jarry him­ self was in the forefront of such developments (all the more so as he was him­ self fully abreast of similar movements in the fields of poetry and painting and had close personal links with many of those most responsible for them): his work in the theatre sets out to revolutionize that genre in respect of its language, of its forms of expression, and of the underlying purpose and function of the theatre itself. The starting point of Jarry and of a host of subsequent playwrights is an effort to break once and for all with the principles and traditions of the Realist and Naturalist theatre, with its attempt to create on the stage an illusion of the "real" world (or what its practitioners took to be the "real" world) outside the theatre. The first significant parallel lies therefore in the efforts to create, in opposition to such conventions, a theatre based on the principles of deliberate stylization and simplification, and on the adoption of purely "schematic" modes of representation. Jarry's endeavours in this domain were echoed to some ex­ tent by those of the Symbolist theatre, and by the ideas of theatrical reformers and visionaries of his own time and of the early years of this century such as Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig. Today, of course, an element of simplification and stylization is an accepted part of production methods in the modern theatre even in relation to plays written in a traditional Realist or Naturalist mode. But the real revolution in our time has been widespread total abandonment of this mode by a string of major playwrights, who see the true force of the theatre as lying in the adoption of conventions diametrically op­ posed to those of Realism. The second feature of the theatre of his time rejected by Jarry in which he can again be seen as a precursor is its essentially narrative and psychological function. The theatre, he argues, is not the proper place for "telling a story" or for the portrayal and analysis of psychological conflicts, which belong more properly to the novel. Nor is it the place for dealing with social issues or problems. Whether or not there is a necessary relationship between a theatre which, thematically, is oriented towards the expression of social issues and problems and the Realist mode of expression, the fact remains that historically the two have been closely linked. The inevitable corollary is the desire to create a theatre which will be concerned with a portrayal of "situations" and "types," or more exactly archetypes, and with the expression of the universal and eternal rather than purely with historically limited social issues and themes. Jarry thus Excerpted from Keith Beaumont, "Jarry and the Modern Theatre," "Ubu Roi": A Critical Guide (London: Grant and Cutler, 1987), 86-95.

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implicitly looks forward to the call of Artaud for a "metaphysical" theatre which will be concerned with the portrayal of aspects of an unchanging "human condi­ tion," a conception fully realized in the work of playwrights such as Beckett, lonesco, or (in his early plays) Adamov. He also implicitly anticipates Artaud's call for a theatre of "myth," in the sense of a creation of universal and archetypal images. What after all is Ubu but a "myth" in this sense, an archetypal image of mankind as seen by Jarry? The creation of such a theatre has profound implications for the portrayal of character on the stage, and here a further parallel can be found. To reject the portrayal of psychological conflicts is also to reject psychological complexity, and implicitly to advocate a deliberately simplified and schematic presentation of human character—a presentation which, at its most extreme point of development, finds its outward expression in the use of masks or the portrayal of human beings in terms of mere puppets. And this too is not only a central feature of the work of Jarry but has been a significant (though certainly not universal) trend in the theatre of the twentieth century, most strikingly in evidence in the work of lonesco, particularly in his early one-act plays or in a highly stylized later work such as Macbett With this simplification of character goes also on occasion an abandonment of psychological coherence and motivation, which in turn can have a profound effect upon the plot and action of the play. The unpredictability of Ubu's behaviour—his sudden and unexpected changes from resolution to cowardice or his apparently gratuitous acts of cruelty—indicates in such instances an absence of coherence and logical motivation which looks forward in embryonic form to the topsy-turvy world of, for example, those same early plays of lonesco. A similar absence of logic in the relationship between events can be found in certain plays of Arrabal, whilst discontinuity is a fundamental feature of the theatre of Beckett. Such a portrayal of character points also to the sources of inspiration of the above playwrights and others, which indicate a further parallel between Jarry and his successors. In all intended revolutions, whether political or artistic, men tend to turn back, in order to create something radically different from the present or from that which immediately preceded it, to a more distant past for inspiration. Jarry's attempt to revitalize the theatre of his time by a return to the "simpler" and more "naive" art of the mime and the puppet theatre has been echoed by many since. Directors and theoreticians of an earlier generation such as Craig and Gaston Baty have exalted the expressive possibilities of marionettes, and playwrights such as Ghelderode, lonesco, and Arrabal have spoken of their child­ hood delight in the guignol, which has been a source of inspiration in their own work. In the work of Jarry as of these and other playwrights, moreover, the figure of the puppet provides more than simply a source of inspiration but takes on a functional significance also, providing an image of man himself and his situa­ tion in the world and forming an essential part of the playwright's own vision. "Simplification," in both characterization and themes, does not, however, as Jarry understood it, mean mere simplicity, but rather a condensation or synthe­ sis of complexity. Thus the figure of Ubu is simple only in the sense that he synthesizes and implicitly embodies a multiplicity of different potential meanings.

Hence Jarry's invitation to the audience at the premiere of Ubu Roi to place its own interpretation upon the play, a statement that looks forward to the concept of the "openness" of the work of art. Such a concept is central to Jarry's whole literary aesthetic and underlies his reflections on the possibility of an "abstract" theatre, in which the play would constitute no more than a kind of abstract framework into which the members of the audience would be invited to project their own meaning—thereby participating actively, he maintains, through the exercise of the imagination, in the process of creation itself. It is this urge towards abstraction which explains the nature of the setting of Ubu Roi—its Nowhere/Everywhere achieved by a canceling out of mutually contradictory elements—and to which there corresponds a similar imprecision in the work of such playwrights as lonesco (anonymous but archetypal provincial town), Vian (block of flats in an unnamed town), Arrabal (mythical desert island), or Beckett (deserted country road). A sixth parallel, of a quite different nature, can be found in the deliberate provocation of Jarry's flouting of the linguistic and theatrical conventions of his time, in his calculated attack upon both the moral and aesthetic susceptibilities of his audience. The original production of Ubu Roi provides in this respect an outstanding example of theatrical aggression which has been followed by many directors and playwrights since, from Artaud to Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz, and from the Dadist and Surrealist theatre to certain of the works of Weingarten (the first performance of whose Akara in 1948 was likened by critics to the opening night of Ubu Ro/), Genet, lonesco (whose first play was provoca­ tively subtitled "Anti-piece"), Vauthier, and Arrabal. Where, however, it was the linguistic and moral aspect of that aggressiveness which had most impact on Jarry's contemporaries, from our point of view today its most significant feature was its artistic subversiveness, Jarry's creation of forms of deliberate incoherence and logical contradiction which can be seen implicitly to call into question the very nature and existence of the work of art itself. There is in fact present in Jarry a dual impulse, a desire to create radically new artistic forms which exists alongside and simultaneously with a secret wish to subvert all forms of art from within. The tension resulting from these two conflicting impulses was in fact never resolved in his work, and can be seen in his theatre, in much of his poetry, and in such novels as Messaline and Le surmale, where the apparent reality of the narrative is secretly undermined from within. This subversive intention is not, however, restricted to Jarry (though he was among the first of modern writers to manifest it), but it is shared with a number of modern playwrights and novelists and is in fact characteristic of the intensely self-conscious and introspective age in which we live. It expresses itself at times, as in Jarry, in the inclusion within a work of deliberately contradictory details, and at times also, in the theatre, through the presence within the play itself of elements of dialogue or action whose function is to remind us that what we are watching is a "fiction," a "play" in the primary sense of the word. No modern playwright so fully exemplifies this conception of what has been called "the selfconscious stage" as Beckett, in whose plays the affirmation of the essentially "fic­ tional" and "theatrical" nature of what we are watching is a recurrent feature.

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Jarry can also be seen as a precursor in his creation and exploitation of a form of humor to which contemporary audiences totally failed to respond (or responded with bewilderment and hostility) but which has become widespread in our own time, a humour based on the deliberate exploitation of incongruity or of outright logical contradiction in both action and word—a form of humour which can legitimately be described as "absurd" humour. The clash of conflicting elements in the set for Ubu Roi in 1896, no less than the clock of lonesco's La cantatrice chauve which strikes successively seven, three, naught, five, and two times in the course of the first scene, or Ubu's statement that "I am going to light a fire while I'm waiting for him to bring some firewood," lonesco's demonstration in the same play that when a doorbell rings it means that "sometimes there is somebody, at other times there is nobody" and Clov's statement in Fin de partie that "If I don't kill that rat, it is going to die," all provide examples of a form of humour which deliberately flies in the face of the laws of logic or causality. Not only, moreover, is this form of humour widely accepted and exploited in our own age, but it seems to have a particular appeal to those of an intellectual bent, through the provision of a much-needed liberation from the constraints of logic and the processes of reasoning. It is also, finally, a decidedly subversive and destructive form of humour, sweeping all before it in a total derision of rational values, anticipating and responding to Artaud's call for a rediscovery of "the anarchic power of dissociation in laughter," which, along with a true sense of the tragic, Western civilization had lost. Lastly, Jarry in Ubu Roi brought to the theatre—or more exactly restored to it—the spirit of childhood which had been a part of the medieval theatre, but which had been proscribed by the dominant rationalism of the intervening cen­ turies. The vision which presided at the creation of Ubu Roi, with its crude exaggeration, its violence, its frequent absence of logical relationships and co­ herent motivation of action, is that of a child's conception of the world; and the character of Ubu himself is nothing more than that of an overgrown child, displaying a primeval innocence, but one which is no less terrifying and brutal for all that. It was a vision which Jarry alone among his school fellows had the insight and the artistic sense to preserve, but which looks forward to playwrights such as lonesco, Vian, and Arrabal, whose work at times either focuses on similarly childlike figures or portrays in other ways an equally terrifying or disturbing innocence. Even more important than this vision itself, however, is the spirit which informs Jarry's play, and which expresses itself in a spontaneous and innocent love of nonsense, of wordplay and linguistic distortion, and of sheer absurdity. To laugh at such "absurd" forms of humour requires a willingness to suspend the normal habits of rational thinking characteristic of the adult mind, and to enter once again, at least momentarily, into the spirit of childhood. And insofar as we are able to do this today, we are all heirs of Jarry. In all of these ways, then, Jarry can be seen as a precursor of the modern theatre, or at least of one major current in it. That current is a sufficiently important and widespread one to make of Jarry, as result of the extensive parallels outlined above, a major figure in the emergence of modern culture, and to make of Ubu Roi an archetype for our own time.

Select Bibliography on Jarry Beaumont, Keith. Alfred Jarry: A Critical and Biographical Study, 86-119. Leicester, England: Leicester University Press, 1984. New York: St. Martin's, 1984. Church, Dan M. "Pere Ubu: The Creation of a Literary Type." Drama Survey 43 (1965): 233-43. LaBelle, Maurice Marc. Alfred Jarry: Nihilism and the Theatre of the Absurd. New York: New York University Press, 1980. Lamont, Rosette C. "Ubu Roi: A Collage." Dada 4 (1974): 17-26. Lobert, Patrick. "Ubu Roi, Jarry's Satire of Naturalism." French Literature Series 14(1987): 124-32. See also Braun; Innes, Avant Garde Theatre; Schumacher, Alfred Jarry and Guillaume Apollinaire; and Shattuck, in the General Bibliography.

KingUbu Alfred Jarry THIS PLAY IS DEDICATED TO MARCEL SCHWOB

Then Father Ubu shakes his peare, who was afterwards yclept SHAKESPEARE by the Englishe, and you have from him in his own hand manie lovely tragedies under this name.

CHARACTERS AND COSTUMES

UBU: Casual gray suit, a cane always stuffed in his right-hand pocket, bowler hat. A crown over his hat at the beginning of Act II, Scene 2. Bareheaded at the beginning of Act II, Scene 6. Act HI, Scene 2, crown and white hood, flaring to a royal cape. Act III, Scene 4, cloak, cap pulled down over his ears; same outfit, but with bare head in Scene 7. Scene 8, hood, helmet, a sword stuck in his belt, a hook, chisels, a knife, a cane still in his right-hand pocket. A bottle bounces at his side. Act IV, Scene 5, cloak and cap but without above weapons or stick. In the sailing scene a small suitcase is in Father Ubu's hand. MOTHER UBU: Concierge's clothes or a toiletries saleswoman's ensemble. Pink bonnet or a hat with flowers and feathers and a veil. An apron in the feasting scene. Royal cloak at the opening of Act II, Scene 6. CAPTAIN BORDURE: Hungarian musician's costume, very close-fitting, red. Big mantle, large sword, crenelated boots, feathery hat.

FATHER

Reprinted from Modem French Theatre: The Avant-Garde, Daday and Surrealism; An Anthology of Plays, ed. Michael Benedikt and George E. Wellwarth; trans. Michael Benedikt and George E. Wellwarth (New York: Dutton, 1964), 1-54.

KING WENCESLAS:

Royal mantle and the crown Ubu wears after murdering

him. The mantle and crown Mother Ubu later wears. BOLESLAS, LADISLAS (sons of King Wenceslas and Queen Rosemonde): Gray Polish costumes, heavily frogged; short pants. BOUGRELAS (the youngest son): Dressed as a child in a little skirt and bonnet. GENERAL LASCY: Polish costume, with an admiral's hat with white plumes, and a sword. STANISLAS LECZINSKY: Polish costume. White beard. JOHN SOBIESKI, NICHOLAS RENSKY: Polish costume. THE TSAR, EMPEROR ALEXIS: Black clothing, enormous yellow sword, dagger, numerous military decorations, big boots. Huge frill at the throat. Hat in the form of a black cone. THE PALOTINS (GIRON, PILE, COTICE): Long beards, fur-trimmed greatcoats, shitr-colored; or red or green if necessary; tights beneath. CROWD: Polish costume. MICHAEL FEDEROVITCH: Same. Fur hat. NOBLES: Polish costume, with cloaks edged with fur or embroidery. ADVISERS, FINANCIERS: Swathed in black, with astrologers' hats, eyeglasses, pointed noses. QUEEN ROSEMONDE:

PHYNANCIAL FLUNKIES: The Palotins.

Polish costume. THE POLISH ARMY: In gray, with frogging and fur trimmings: three men with rifles. THE RUSSIAN ARMY: Two horsemen: uniform like that of the Poles, but green, with fur headgear. They carry cardboard horses' heads. A RUSSIAN FOOTSOLDIER: In green, with headgear. MOTHER UBTJ'S GUARDS: Polish costume, with halberds. A CAPTAIN: General Lascy. THE BEAR: Bordure in bearskin. THE PHYNANCIAL HORSE: Large wooden rocking horse on casters, or else cardboard horse's head, as required. THE CREW: Two men in sailor suits, in blue, collars turned down, and so on. THE CAPTAIN OF THE SHIP: In a French naval officer's uniform. PEASANTS:

JAILER * MESSENGER * * Jarry did not include suggestions for the costuming of these two characters in these notes, which were published from manuscript by the College de Tataphysique in 1951.

a *£, 2 * {g

COMPOSITION OF THE ORCHESTRA

Oboes Pipes

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Blutwurst Large Bass Flageolets Transverse Flutes Flute Little Bassoon Big Bassoon Triple Bassoon Little Black Cornets Shrill White Cornets Horns Sackbuts Trombones Green Hunting Horns Reeds Bagpipes Bombardons Timbals Drum Bass Drum Grand Organs

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You really think so? They look rotten to me. Look at this one. (To the soldier.) When did you last shave, varlet? KING WENCESLAS: But this soldier is absolutely impeccable. What's the mat­ ter with you, Father Ubu? FATHER UBU: Take that! (He stamps on his foot) FATHER UBU:

KING WENCESLAS: Wretch!

UBU: Shitr! Come on, men! Hooray! Charge! They all hit the king; a Palotin explodes. KING WENCESLAS: Oh! Help! Holy Mother, I'm dead. BOLESLAS (to Ladislas): What's going on? Let's draw. FATHER UBU: Ah, I've got the crown! To the others, now. CAPTAIN BORDURE: After the traitors! The princes flee, pursued by all.

FATHER

CAPTAIN BORDURE:

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MICHAEL FEDEROVITCH: Sire, I don't know how to thank your Majesty FATHER UBU: Think nothing of it, my dear friend. Take your money home with you, Michael; and you others, share the rest—each take a piece until they're all gone. ALL: Long live Michael Federovitch! Long live Father Ubu! FATHER UBU: And you, my friends, come and eat! I open the gates of the palace to you—may you do honor to my table! PEOPLE: Let's go in, let's go in! Long live Father Ubu! He's the noblest monarch of them all! They go into the palace. The noise of the orgy is audible throughout the night The curtain falls. ACT HI SCENE 1

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The palace. Father Ubu, Mother Ubu. FATHER UBU: By my green candle, here I am king of this country, I've already got a fine case of indigestion, and they're going to bring me my big helmet. MOTHER UBU: What's it made out of, Father Ubu? Even if we are sitting on the throne, we have to watch the pennies. FATHER UBU: Madame my wife, it's made out of sheepskin with a clasp and with laces made out of dogskin. MOTHER UBU: That's very extraordinary, but it's even more extraordinary that we're here on the throne. FATHER UBU: How right you are, Mother Ubu. MOTHER UBU: We owe quite a debt to the Duke of Lithuania. FATHER UBU: Who's that? MOTHER UBU: Why, Captain Bordure. FATHER UBU: If you please, Mother Ubu, don't speak to me about that buffroon. Now that I don't need him any more, he can go whistle for his dukedom. MOTHER UBU: You're making a big mistake, Father Ubu; he's going to turn against you. FATHER UBU: Well, now, the poor little fellow has my deepest sympathy, but I'm not going to worry about him any more than about Bougrelas. MOTHER UBU: Ha! You think you've seen the last of Bougrelas, do you? FATHER UBU: By my financial sword, of course I have! What do you think that fourteen-year-old midget is going to do to me? MOTHER UBU: Father Ubu, pay attention to what I'm going to say to you. Believe me, you ought to be nice to Bougrelas to get him on your side.

Do you think Fm made of money? Well, Fm not! You've already made me waste twenty-two million. MOTHER UBU: Have it your own way, Father Ubu; hell roast you alive. FATHER UBU: Fine! You'll be in the pot with me. MOTHER UBU: For the last time, listen to me: Fm sure that young Bougrelas will triumph, because he has right on his side. FATHER UBU: Oh, crap! Doesn't the wrong always get you more than the right? Ah, you do me an injustice, Mother Ubu, Fll chop you into little pieces. Mother Ubu runs away, pursued by Father Ubu.

FATHER UBU:

SCENE 2

The Great Hall of the palace. Father Ubu, Mother Ubu, Officers and Soldiers; Giron, Pile, Cotice, Nobles in chains, Financiers, Magistrates, Clerks. FATHER UBU: Bring forward the Nobles' money box and the Nobles' hook and the Nobles' knife and the Nobles' book! And then bring forward the Nobles. Nobles are brutally pushed forward. MOTHER UBU: For goodness' sakes, control yourself, Father Ubu. FATHER UBU: I have the honor to announce to you that in order to enrich the kingdom I shall annihilate all the Nobles and grab their property. NOBLES: How awful! To the rescue, people and soldiers! FATHER UBU: Bring forward the first Noble and hand me the Nobles' hook. Those who are condemned to death, I will drop down the trap door. They will fall into the Pig-Pinching Cellars and the Money Vault, where they will be disembrained. (To the Noble.) Who are you, buffroon? THE NOBLE: Count of Vitebsk. FATHER UBU: What's your income? THE NOBLE: Three million rixthalers. FATHER UBU: Condemned! (He seizes him with the hook and drops him down the trap door.) MOTHER UBU: What vile savagery! FATHER UBU: Second Noble, who are you? The Noble doesnt reply. Answer, buffroon! THE NOBLE: Grand Duke of Posen. FATHER UBU: Excellent! Excellent! Fll not trouble you any longer. Down the trap. Third Noble, who are you? You're an ugly one. THE NOBLE: Duke of Courland, and of the cities of Riga, Reval, and the Mitau. FATHER UBU: Very good! Very good! Anything else?

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THE NOBLE: That's all. FATHER UBU: Well, down the trapdoor, then. Fourth Noble, who are you? THE NOBLE: The Prince of Podolia. FATHER UBU: What's your income? THE NOBLE: Fm bankrupt.

UBU: For that nasty word, into the trapdoor with you. Fifth Noble, who are you? THE NOBLE: Margrave of Thorn, Palatin of Polack. FATHER UBU: That doesn't sound like very much. Nothing else? FATHER

THE NOBLE: It was enough for me.

Half a loaf is better than no loaf at all. Down the trapdoor. What's the matter with you, Mother Ubu? MOTHER UBU: You're too ferocious, Father Ubu. FATHER UBU: Please! Fm working! And now Fm going to have MY list of MY property read to me. Clerk, read MY list of MY property. THE CLERK: County of Sandomir. FATHER UBU: Start with the big ones. THE NOBLE: Princedom of Podolia, Grand Duchy of Posen, Duchy of Courland, County of Sandomir, County of Vitebsk, Palatinate of Polack, Margraviate of Thorn. FATHER UBU: Well, go on. FATHER UBU:

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THE NOBLE: That's all.

What do you mean, that's all! Oh, very well, then, bring the Nobles forward. Since Fm not finished enriching myself yet, I'm going to execute all the Nobles and seize all their estates at once. Let's go; stick the Nobles in the trapdoor. The Nobles are pushed into the trapdoor. Hurry it up, let's go, I want to make some laws now. SEVERAL: This ought to be a good one. FATHER UBU: First Fm going to reform the laws, and then we'll proceed to matters of finance. MAGISTRATES: We're opposed to any change. FATHER UBU: Shitr! To begin with, Magistrates will not be paid any more. MAGISTRATES: What are we supposed to live on? We're poor. FATHER UBU: You shall have the fines which you will impose and the prop­ erty of those you condemn to death.

FATHER UBU:

A MAGISTRATE: Horrors!

A SECOND: Infamy! A THIRD: Scandal!

A FOURTH: Indignity!

ALL: We refuse to act as judges under such conditions. FATHER UBU: Down the trapdoor with the Magistrates! They struggle in vain. MOTHER UBU: What are you doing, Father Ubu? Who will dispense justice now? FATHER UBU: Why, me! You'll see how smoothly it'll go. MOTHER UBU: I can just imagine. FATHER UBU: That's enough out of you, buffroonness. And now, gentlemen, we will proceed to matters of finance. FINANCIERS: No changes are needed. FATHER UBU: I intend to change everything. First of all, I'll keep half the taxes for myself. FINANCIERS: That's too much. FATHER UBU: Gentlemen, we will establish a tax of 10 percent on property, another on commerce and industry, a third on marriages and a fourth on deaths—fifteen francs each. FIRST FINANCIER: But that's idiotic, Father Ubu. SECOND FINANCIER: It's absurd. THIRD FINANCIER: It's impossible.

You're trying to confuse me! Down the trapdoor with the Fi­ nanciers! The Financiers are pushed in. MOTHER UBU: But, Father Ubu, what kind of king are you? You're murdering everybody! FATHER UBU: Oh, shitr! MOTHER UBU: No more justice, no more finances! FATHER UBU: Have no fear, my sweet child; I myself will go from village to village, collecting the taxes. FATHER UBU:

SCENE 3

A peasant house in the outskirts of Warsaw. Several peasants are assembled. A PEASANT (entering): Have you heard the news? The king and the dukes are all dead, and young Bougrelas has fled to the mountains with his mother. What's more, Father Ubu has seized the throne. ANOTHER: That's nothing. I've just come from Cracow where I saw the bodies of more than three hundred nobles and five hundred magistrates, and I hear that the taxes are going to be doubled and that Father Ubu is coming to collect them himself. ALL: Great heavens! What will become of us? Father Ubu is a horrible beast, and they say his family is abominable.

A PEASANT: Listen! Isn't somebody knocking at the door? A VOICE (outside): Hornsbuggers! Open up, by my shitr, by Saint John, Saint Peter, and Saint Nicholas! Open up, by my financial sword, by my finan­ cial horns, I'm coming to collect the taxes! The door is smashed in, and Father Ubu enters, followed by hordes of tax collectors. SCENE 4

Which one of you is the oldest? A peasant steps forward. What's your name? THE PEASANT: Stanislas Leczinski. FATHER UBU: Fine, hornsbuggers! Listen to me, since if you don't, these gentlemen here will cut your ears off. Well, are you listening? STANISLAS: But your Excellency hasn't said anything yet. FATHER UBU: What do you mean? I've been speaking for an hour. Do you think I've come here to preach in the desert? STANISLAS: Far be it from my thoughts. FATHER UBU: I've come to tell you, to order you, and to intimate to you that you are to produce forthwith and exhibit promptly your finances, unless you wish to be slaughtered. Let's go, gentlemen, my financial swine, vehiculize hither the phynancial vehicle. The vehicle is brought in. STANISLAS: Sire, we are down on the register for a hundred and fifty-two rixthalers which we paid six weeks ago come Saint Matthew's Day. FATHER UBU: That's very possible, but I've changed the government and run an advertisement in the paper that says you have to pay all present taxes twice and all those which I will levy later on three times. With this system, I'll make my fortune quickly; then I'll kill everyone and run away. PEASANTS: Mr. Ubu, please have pity on us; we are poor, simple citizens. FATHER UBU: Nuts! Pay up. PEASANTS: We can't, we've already paid. FATHER UBU: Pay up! Or I'll stick you in my pocket with torturing and beheading of the neck and head! Hornsbuggers, I'm the king, aren't I? ALL: Ah! So that's the way it is! To arms! Long live Bougrelas, by the grace of God King of Poland and Lithuania! FATHER UBU: Forward, gentlemen of Finance, do your duty. A struggle ensues; the house is destroyed, and old Stanislas flees across the plain, alone. Father Ubu stays to collect the money. FATHER UBU:

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SCENE 5

A dungeon in the Fortress of Thorn. Captain Bordure in chains, Father Ubu. FATHER UBU: So, Citizen, that's the way it is: you wanted me to pay you what I owed you; then you rebelled because I refused; you conspired and here you are retired. Horns of finance, Fve done so well you must admire it yourself. CAPTAIN BORDURE: Take care, Father Ubu. During the five days that you've been king, you've committed enough murders to damn all the saints in Paradise. The blood of the king and of the nobles cries for vengeance, and their cries will be heard. FATHER UBU: Ah, my fine friend, that's quite a tongue you've got there. I have no doubt that if you escaped, it would cause all sorts of complications, but I don't think that the dungeons of Thorn have ever let even one of the honest fellows go who have been entrusted to them. Therefore I bid you a very good night and I invite you to sleep soundly, although I must say the rats dance a very pretty saraband down here. He leaves. The jailers come and bolt all the doors.

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8 SCENE 6

The Palace at Moscow. The Emperor Alexis and his court, Captain Bordure. ALEXIS: Infamous adventurer, aren't you the one who helped kill our cousin Wenceslas? CAPTAIN BORDURE: Sire, forgive me, I was carried away despite myself by Father Ubu. ALEXIS: Oh, what a big liar! Well, what can I do for you? CAPTAIN BORDURE: Father Ubu imprisoned me on charges of conspiracy; I succeeded in escaping and I have ridden five days and five nights across the steppes to come and beg your gracious forgiveness. ALEXIS: What have you got for me as proof of your loyalty? CAPTAIN BORDURE: My honor as a knight, and a detailed map of the town of Thorn. (Kneels and presents his sword to Alexis.) ALEXIS: I accept your sword, but by Saint George, burn the map. I don't want to owe my victory to an act of treachery. CAPTAIN BORDURE: One of the sons of Wenceslas, young Bougrelas, is still alive. I would do anything to restore him. ALEXIS: What was your rank in the Polish Army? CAPTAIN BORDURE: I commanded the fifth regiment of the dragoons of Vilna and a company of mercenaries in the service of Father Ubu.

Fine, I appoint you second in command of the tenth regiment of Cossacks, and woe to you if you betray me. If you fight well, you'll be rewarded. CAPTAIN BORDURE: I don't lack courage, Sire. ALEXIS: Fine, remove yourself from my sight. He leaves.

ALEXIS:

SCENE 7

Ubus Council Chamber. Father Ubu, Mother Ubu, Phynancial Advisers. FATHER UBU: Gentlemen, the meeting has begun, and see that you keep your ears open and your mouths shut. First of all, we'll turn to the subject of finance; then well speak about a little scheme I've thought up to bring good weather and prevent rain. AN ADVISER: Very good, Mr. Ubu. MOTHER UBU: What a stupid fool! FATHER UBU: Take care, madam of my shitr, I'm not going to stand for your idiocies much longer. I'd like you to know, gentlemen, that the finances are proceeding satisfactorily. The streets are mobbed every morning by a crowd of the local low-life, and my men do wonders with them. In every direction you can see only burning houses, and people bent under the weight of our finances. THE ADVISER: And are the new taxes going well, Mr. Ubu? MOTHER UBU: Not at all. The tax on marriages has brought in only eleven cents so far, although Father Ubu chases people everywhere to convince them to marry. FATHER UBU: By my financial sword, hornsbuggers, Madame financieress, I've got ears to speak with and you've a mouth to listen to me with. Shouts of laughter. You're mixing me up and it's your fault that I'm making a fool of myself! But, horn of U b u ! . . . A messenger enters. Well, what do you have to say for yourself? Get out of here, you little monkey, before I pocket you with beheading and twisting of the legs. MOTHER UBU: There he goes, but he's left a letter. FATHER UBU: Read it. I don't feel like it, or come to think of it perhaps I can't read. Hurry up, buffrooness, it must be from Bordure. MOTHER UBU: Right. He says that the tsar has received him very well, that he's going to invade your lands to restore Bougrelas, and that you're going to be killed.

UBU: Oh! Oh! Fm scared. Fm scared. I bet Fm going to die. Oh, poor little man that I am! What will become of me, great God? This wicked man is going to kill me. Saint Anthony and all the saints, protect me, and Fll give you some phynance and burn some candles for you. Lord, what will become of me? (He cries and sobs.) MOTHER UBU: There's only one safe course to follow, Father Ubu. FATHER UBU: What's that, my love?

FATHER

MOTHER UBU: War!!!

ALL: Great heavens! What a noble idea! FATHER UBU: Yes, and I'll be the one to get hurt, as usual. FIRST ADVISER: Hurry, hurry, let's organize the army. SECOND: And requisition the provisions. THIRD: And set up the artillery and the fortresses. FOURTH: And get up the money for the troops. FATHER UBU: That's enough of that, now, you, or I'll kill you on the spot. I'm not going to spend any money. That's a good one, isn't it! I used to be paid to wage war, and now it's being waged at my expense. Wait—by my green candle, let's wage war, since you're so excited about it, but let's not spend a penny. ALL: Hooray for war! SCENE 8

The camp outside Warsaw. SOLDIERS and PALOTINS: Long live Poland! Long live Father Ubu! FATHER UBU: Ah, Mother Ubu, give me my breastplate and my little stick. Fll soon be so heavy that I won't be able to move even if I'm being chased. MOTHER UBU: Pooh, what a coward! FATHER UBU: Ah! Here's the sword of shitr running away first thing and there's the financial hook which won't stay put!!! (Drops both.) I'll never be ready, and the Russians are coming to kill me. A SOLDIER: Lord Ubu, here's your ear-pick, which you've dropped. FATHER UBU: I'll kill you with my shitr hook and my gizzard-saw. MOTHER UBU: How handsome he is with his helmet and his breastplate! He looks just like an armed pumpkin. FATHER UBU: Now Fll get my horse. Gentlemen, bring forth the phynancial horse. MOTHER UBU: Father Ubu, your horse can't carry you—it's had nothing to eat for five days and it's about to die. FATHER UBU: That's a good one! I have to pay twelve cents a day for this sway-

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backed nag and it can't even carry me. You're making fun of me, horn of Ubu, or else perhaps you're stealing from me? Mother Ubu blushes and lowers her eyes. Now bring me another beast, because I'm not going to go on foot, hornsbuggers! An enormous horse is brought out. I'm going to get on. Oops, better sit down before I fall off. The horse starts to leave. Stop this beast. Great God, I'm going to fall off and be killed!!! MOTHER UBU: He's an absolute idiot. There he is up again; no, he's down again. FATHER UBU: Horn of Physics, I'm half dead. But never mind, I'm going to the war and I'll kill everyone. Woe to him who doesn't keep up with me! I'll put him in my pocket with twisting of the nose and teeth and extraction of the tongue. MOTHER UBU: Good luck, Mr. Ubu! FATHER UBU: I forgot to tell you that I'm making you the regent. But I'm keeping the financial book, so you'd better not try and rob me. I'll leave you the Palotin Giron to help you. Farewell, Mother Ubu. MOTHER UBU: Farewell, Father Ubu. Kill the tsar thoroughly. FATHER UBU: Of course. Twisting of the nose and teeth, extraction of the tongue and insertion of the ear-pick. The army marches away to the sound of fanfares. MOTHER UBU (alone): Now that that big fat booby has gone, let's look to our own affairs, kill Bougrelas, and grab the treasure. ACT IV SCENE 1

The Royal Crypt in the Cathedral at Warsaw. MOTHER UBU: Where on earth is that treasure? None of these slabs sounds hollow. I've counted thirteen slabs beyond the tomb of Ladislas the Great along the length of the wall, and I've found nothing. Someone seems to have deceived me. What's this? The stone sounds hollow here. To work, Mother Ubu. Courage, we'll have it pried up in a minute. It's stuck fast. The end of this financial hook will do the trick. There! There's the gold in the middle of the royal bones. Into the sack with it. Oh! What's that noise? Can there still be someone alive in these ancient vaults? No, it's nothing; let's hurry up. Let's take everything. This money will look better in the light of day than in the middle of these graves. Back with the stone. What's that! There's that noise again! There's something not quite right

about this place. I'll get the rest of this gold some other time—I'll come back tomorrow. A VOICE (coming from the tomb of John Sigismund): Never, Mother Ubu! Mother Ubu runs away terrified, through the secret door, carrying the stolen gold. SCENE 2

The Main Square in Warsaw. Bougrelas and his men, People and Soldiers. BOUGRELAS: Forward, my friends! Long live Wenceslas and Poland! That old blackguard Father Ubu is gone; only that old witch Mother Ubu and her Palotin are left. I'm going to march at your head and restore my father's house to the throne. ALL: Long live Bougrelas! BOUGRELAS: And we'll abolish all taxes imposed by that horrible Father Ubu. ALL: Hooray! Forward! To the palace, and death to the Ubus! BOUGRELAS: Look! There's Mother Ubu coming out on the porch with her guards! MOTHER UBU: What can I do for you, gentlemen? Ah! It's Bougrelas. The crowd throws stones. FIRST GUARD: They've broken all the windows.

Saint George, I'm done for. THIRD GUARD: Hornsass, I'm dying. BOUGRELAS: Throw some more stones, my friends. PALOTIN GIRON: Ho! So that's the way it is! (He draws his sword and leaps into the crowd, performing horrible slaughter.) BOUGRELAS: Have at you! Defend yourself, you cowardly pisspot! They fight. SECOND GUARD:

GIRON: I die!

BOUGRELAS: Victory, my friends! Now for Mother Ubu! Trumpets are heard. Ah! The Nobles are arriving. Run and catch the old hag. ALL: She'll do until we can strangle the old bandit himself! Mother Ubu runs away pursued by all the Poles. Rifle shots and a hail of stones. SCENE 3

The Polish Army marching in the Ukraine. FATHER UBU: Hornsass, godslegs, cowsheads! We're about to perish, because

we're dying of thirst and we're tired. Sir Soldier, be so good as to carry our financial helmet, and you, Sir Lancer, take charge of the shitr-pick and the physic-stick to unencumber our person, because, let me repeat, we are tired. The soldiers obey. PILE: Ho, my Lord! It's surprising that there are no Russians to be seen. FATHER UBU: It's regrettable that the state of our finances does not permit us to have a vehicle commensurate with our grandeur; for, for fear of de­ molishing our steed, we have gone all the way on foot, leading our horse by the bridle. When we get back to Poland, we shall devise, by means of our physical science and with the aid of the wisdom of our advisers, a way of transporting our entire army by wind. COTICE: Here comes Nicholas Rensky, in a great hurry. FATHER UBU: What's the matter with him? RENSKY: All is lost. Sir, the Poles have revolted, Giron has been killed, and Mother Ubu has fled to the mountains. FATHER UBU: Bird of night, beast of misery, owl's underwear! Where did you hear this nonsense? What won't you be saying next! Who's responsible for this? Bougrelas, I'll bet. Where'd you just come from? RENSKY: From Warsaw, noble Lord. FATHER UBU: Child of my shitr, if I believed you I would retreat with the whole army. But, Sir Child, you've got feathers in your head instead of brains and you've been dreaming nonsense. Run off to the outposts, my child; the Russians can't be far, and we'll soon be flourishing our arms, shitr, phynancial and physical. GENERAL LASCY: Father Ubu, can't you see the Russians down there on the plain? FATHER UBU: It's true, the Russians! A fine mess this is. If only there were still a way to run out, but there isn't; we're up here on a hill and we'll be exposed to attack on all sides. THE ARMY: The Russians! The enemy! FATHER UBU: Let's go, gentlemen, into our battle positions. We will remain on top of the hill and under no circumstances commit the idiocy of descending. I'll keep myself in the middle like a living fortress, and all you others will gravitate around me. I advise you to load your guns with as many bullets as they will hold, because eight bullets can kill eight Russians and that will be eight Russians the less. We will station the infantry at the foot of the hill to receive the Russians and kill them a little, the cavalry in back of them so that they can throw themselves into the confusion, and the artillery around this windmill here so that they can fire into the whole mess. As for us, we will take up our position inside the windmill and fire through the window with the phynancial pistol, and

bar the door with the physical stick, and if anyone still tries to get in, let him beware of the shitr-hook!!! OFFICERS: Your orders, Lord Ubu, shall be executed. FATHER UBU: Fine, we'll win, then. What time is it? GENERAL LASCY: It's eleven o'clock in the morning. FATHER UBU: In that case, let's have lunch, because the Russians won't attack before midday. Tell the soldiers, my lord General, to take a crap and strike up the Financial Song. Lascy withdraws. SOLDIERS and PALOTINS: Long live Father Ubu, our great Financier! Ting, ting, ting; ting, ting, ting; ting, ting, ta-ting! FATHER UBU: Oh, how noble—I adore gallantry! A Russian cannonball breaks one of the arms of the windmill Aaaaah! I'm frightened. Lord God, I'm dead! No, no, I'm not.

3

I SCENE 4

2

The same, a Captain and the Russian Army. A CAPTAIN (entering): Lord Ubu, the Russians are attacking. FATHER UBU: All right, all right, what do you want me to do about it? I didn't tell them to attack. Nevertheless, gentlemen of Finance, let us prepare ourselves for battle. GENERAL LASCY: Another cannonball! FATHER UBU: Ah! That's enough of that! It's raining lead and steel around here, and it might put a dent in our precious person. Down we go. They all run away. The battle has just begun. They disappear into the clouds of smoke at the foot of the hill. A RUSSIAN (thrusting): For God and the tsar! RENSKY: Ah! I'm dead. FATHER UBU: Forward! As for you, sir, I'll get you because you've hurt me, do you hear? You drunken sot, with your popless little popgun. THE RUSSIAN: Ah! I'll show you! (He fires.) FATHER UBU: Ah! Oh! I'm wounded, I'm shot full of holes, I'm perforated, I'm done for, I'm buried. And now I've got you! (He tears him to pieces). Just try that again. GENERAL LASCY: Forward, charge, across the trench! Victory is ours! FATHER UBU: Do you really think so? So far my brow has felt more lumps than laurels. RUSSIAN KNIGHTS: Hooray! Make way for the tsar! Enter the tsar, accompanied by Captain Bordure, in disguise.

i o

A POLE: Great God! Every man for himself, there's the tsar! ANOTHER: Oh, my God, he's crossed the trench. ANOTHER: Bing! Bang! Four more chopped up by that big ox of a lieutenant. CAPTAIN BORDURE: So! The rest of you won't surrender, eh? All right, your time has come, John Sobiesky! (He chops him up.) Now for the others! (He massacres Poles.) FATHER UBU: Forward, my friends! Capture that rat! Make mincemeat of the Muscovites! Victory is ours! Long live the Red Eagle! ALL: Charge! Hooray! Godslegs! Capture the big ox. CAPTAIN BORDURE: By Saint George, they've got me. FATHER UBU: Ah! it's you, Bordure! How are you, my friend? I, and all the company, are very happy to welcome you again. I'm going to broil you over a slow fire. Gentlemen of the Finances, light the fire. Oh! Ah! Oh! I'm dead. I must have been hit with a cannonball at least. Oh! My God, forgive my sins. Yes, it's definitely a cannonball. CAPTAIN BORDURE: It was a pistol with a blank cartridge. FATHER UBU: Oh, you're making fun of me! All right, into the pocket you go! (He flings himself upon him and tears him to pieces.) GENERAL LASCY: Father Ubu, we're advancing on all fronts. FATHER UBU: I can see that. But I can't go on any more, because everyone's been stepping on my toes. I absolutely have to sit down. Oh, where's my bottle? GENERAL LASCY: Go get the tsar's bottle, Father Ubu! FATHER UBU: Ah! Just what I had in mind. Let's go. Sword of Shitr, do your duty, and you, financial hook, don't lag behind! As for you, physical stick, see that you work just as hard and share with the little bit of wood the honor of massacring, scooping out, and imposing upon the Muscovite emperor. Forward, my Phynancial Horse! (He throws himself on the tsar.) A RUSSIAN OFFICER: Look out, Your Majesty! FATHER UBU: Take that! Oh! Ow! Ah! Goodness me. Ah! Oh, sir, excuse me, leave me alone. I didn't do it on purpose! (He runs away, pursued by the tsar.) Holy Mother, that madman is coming after me! Great God, what shall I do? Ah, I've got that trench ahead of me again. I've got him behind me and the trench in front of me! Courage! I'm going to close my eyes! (He jumps the trench. The tsar falls in.) THE TSAR: God, I've fallen in!

Hooray! The tsar has fallen in! I'm afraid to turn around. Ah! He fell in. That's fine; they've jumped on him. Let's go, you Poles; swing away; he's a tough one, that swine! As for me, I can't look. But our prediction has been completely fulfilled: the physical stick has performed wonders, and without doubt I

THE POLES:

FATHER UBU:

would have been about to have killed him completely, had not an inex­ plicable fear come to combat and annul in us the fruits of our courage. But we suddenly had to turn tail, and we owe our salvation only to our skill in the saddle as well as to the sturdy hocks of our Phynancial Horse, whose rapidity is equaled only by its solidity and whose levitation makes its reputation, as well as the depth of the trench which located itself so appropriately under the enemy of us, the presently-before-you Master of Phynances. That was very nice, but nobody was listening. Oops, there they go again! The Russian dragoons charge and rescue the tsar. LASCY: It looks like it's turning into a rout. FATHER UBU: Now's the time to make tracks. Now then, gentlemen of Po­ land, forward! Or rather, backward! POLES: Every man for himself! FATHER UBU: Come on! Let's go! What a big crowd, what a stampede, what a mob! How am I ever going to get out of this mess? (He is jostled.) You there, watch your step, or you will sample the boiling rage of the Master of Phynances. Ha! There he goes. Now let's get out of here fast, while Lascy's looking the other way. He runs off; the tsar and the Russian Army go by, chasing Poles. GENERAL

SCENE 5

A cave in Lithuania. It is snowing. Father Ubu, Pile, Cotice. FATHER UBU: Oh, what a bitch of a day! It's cold enough to make the rocks crack open, and the person of the Master of Phynances finds itself se­ verely damaged. PILE: Ho! Mr. Ubu, have you recovered from your fright and from your flight? FATHER UBU: Well, I'm not frightened any more, but, believe me, I'm still running. COTICE (aside): What a turd! FATHER UBU: Well, Sire Cotice, how's your ear feeling? COTICE: As well as can be expected, sir, considering how bad it is. I can't get the bullet out, and consequently the lead is making me tilt. FATHER UBU: Well, serves you right! You're always looking for a fight. As for me, I've always demonstrated the greatest valor, and without in any way exposing myself I massacred four enemies with my own hand, not count­ ing, of course, those who were already dead and whom we dispatched. COTICE: Do you know what happened to little Rensky, Pile? PILE: A bullet in his head.

J ^ g ♦ ♦ 2

UBU: As the poppy and the dandelion are scythed in the flower of their age by the pitiless scythe of the pitiless scyther who scythes pitilessly their pitiful parts—just so, little Rensky has played the poppy's part: he fought well, but there were just too many Russians around.

FATHER

PILE and COTICE: Hey! Sir Ubu!

AN ECHO: Grrrrr!

PILE: What's that? On guard! FATHER UBU: Oh, no! Not the Russians again! Fve had enough of them. And, anyway, it's very simple: if they catch me Fll just put them all in my pocket. SCENE 6

The same. Enter a bear. COTICE: Ho! Master of Phynances! FATHER UBU: Oh! What a sweet little doggie! Isn't he cute? PILE: Watch out! What a huge bear! Hand me my gun! FATHER UBU: A bear! What a horrible beast! Oh, poor me, Fm going to be eaten alive. May God protect me! He's coming this way. No, he's got Cotice. I can breathe again! The bear jumps on Cotice. Pile attacks him with his sword. Ubu takes refuge on a high rock. COTICE: Save me, Pile! Save me! Help, Sir Ubu! FATHER UBU: Fat chance! Get out of it yourself, my friend; right now I'm going to recite my Pater Noster. Everyone will be eaten in his turn. PILE: Fve got him, I'm holding him.

Hold him tight, my friend, he's starting to let me go. FATHER UBU: Sanctificetur nomen tuum. COTICE: Cowardly lout! PILE: Oh! It's biting me! O Lord, save us, I'm dead. FATHER UBU: Fiat voluntas tua! COTICE:

COTICE: Fve wounded it!

PILE: Hooray! It's bleeding now. While the Palotins shout, the bear bellows with pain and Ubu continues to mumble. COTICE: Hang on, while I find my exploding brass knuckles. FATHER UBU: Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie. PILE: Haven't you got it yet? I can't hold on any longer. FATHER UBU: Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. COTICE: Ah! I've got it. A resounding explosion; the bear falls dead.

PILE and COTICE: Victory! FATHER UBU: Sed libera nos a malo. Amen. Is he really dead? Can I come down now? PILE (with disgust): Just as you like. FATHER UBU (coming down): You may be assured that if you are still alive and if you tread once more the Lithuanian snow, you owe it to the lofty virtue of the Master of Phynances, who has struggled, broken his back, and shouted himself hoarse reciting paternosters for your safety, and who has wielded the spiritual sword of prayer with just as much courage as you have wielded with dexterity the temporal one of the here-attendant Palotin Cotice's exploding brass knuckles. We have even pushed our devo­ tion further, for we did not hesitate to climb to the top of a very high rock, so that our prayers had less far to travel to reach heaven. PILE: Disgusting pig!

FATHER UBU: Oh, you beast! Thanks to me, you've got something to eat. What a belly he has, gentlemen! The Greeks would have been more comfortable in there than in their wooden horse, and we very barely escaped, my dear friends, being able to satisfy ourselves of his interior capacity with our own eyes.

.§ ^ 2 ♦ * CO

I'm dying of hunger. What can we eat? COTICE: The bear! FATHER UBU: My poor friends, are you going to eat it completely raw? We don't have anything to make a fire with. PILE: What about our flintstones? FATHER UBU: Ah, that's true. And it seems to me that not far from here there is a little wood where dry branches may be found. Sire Cotice, go and fetch some. Cotice runs off across the snow. PILE: And now, Sir Ubu, you can go and carve up the bear. FATHER UBU: Oh, no. It may not be completely dead yet. Since it has already half-eaten you, and chewed upon all your members, you're obviously the man to take care of that. I'll go and light the fire while we're waiting for him to bring the wood. Pile starts to carve up the bear. Oh! Watch out! It just moved. PILE: But Sir Ubu, it's stone cold already. FATHER UBU: That's a pity. It would have been much better to have had him hot. We're running the risk of giving the Master of Phynances an attack of indigestion. PILE (aside): Disgusting fellow! (Aloud.) Give me a hand, Mr. Ubu; I can't do everything myself. PILE:

^

No, I'm sorry I can't help you. I'm really excessively fatigued. COTICE (re-entering): What a lot of snow, my friends; anyone would think this was Castile or the North Pole. Night is beginning to fall. In an hour it'll be dark. Let's make haste while we can still see. FATHER UBU: Did you hear that, Pile? Get a move on. In fact, get a move on, both of you! Skewer the beast, cook the beast—I'm hungry! PILE: Well, that does it! You'll work or you'll get nothing, do you hear me, you big hog? FATHER UBU: Oh! It's all the same to me; I'd just as soon eat it raw; you're the ones whose stomachs it won't agree with. Anyway, I'm sleepy. COTICE: What can we expect from him, Pile? Let's cook dinner ourselves. We just won't give him any, that's all. Or at most we'll throw him a few bones. PILE: Good enough. Ah, the fire's catching. FATHER UBU: Oh, that's very nice. It's getting warm now. But I see Russians everywhere. My God, what a retreat! Ah! (He falls asleep.) COTICE: I wonder if Rensky was telling the truth about Mother Ubu being dethroned. It wouldn't surprise me at all. PILE: Let's finish cooking supper. COTICE: No, we've got more important problems. I think it would be a good idea to inquire into the truth of the news. PILE: You're right. Should we desert Father Ubu or stay with him? COTICE: Let's sleep on it; we'll decide tomorrow. PILE: No—let's sneak off under cover of darkness. COTICE: Let's go, then. They go. FATHER UBU:

SCENE 7

(talking in his sleep): Ah, Sir Russian Dragoon, watch out, don't shoot in this direction; there's someone here. Oh, there's Bordure; he looks mean, like a bear. And there's Bougrelas coming at me! The bear, the bear! He's right below me; he looks fierce. My God! No, I'm sorry I can't help you! Go away, Bougrelas! Don't you hear me, you clown? There's Rensky now, and the tsar. Oh, they're going to beat me up. And Mother Ubu. Where did you get all that gold? You've stolen my gold, you miserable witch; you've been ransacking my tomb in Warsaw Cathedral, under the moon. I've been dead a long time; Bougrelas has killed me and I've been buried in Warsaw next to Ladislas the Great, and also at Cracow next to John Sigismund, and also at Thorn in the dungeon with Bordure. There it is again. Get out of here, you nasty bear! You look like Bordure. Do you hear, you devilish beast? No, he can't hear me, the Salopins have

FATHER UBU

cut his ears off. Disembrain them, devitalize them, cut off their ears, confiscate their money and drink yourself to death, that's the life of a Salopin, that's happiness for the Master of Phynances. (He falls silent and sleeps.) ACTV SCENE 1

It is night. Father Ubu is asleep. Enter Mother Ubu, without seeing him. The stage is in total darkness. MOTHER UBU: Shelter at last. Fm alone here, which is fine, but what an awful journey: crossing all Poland in four days! And even before that, every­ thing happened to me at once! As soon as that fat fool left, I went to the crypt to grab what I could. And right after that, I was almost stoned to death by that Bougrelas and his madmen. I lost the Palotin Giron, my knight, who was so stricken by my beauty that he swooned whenever he saw me, and even, Fve been told, when he didn't see me, which is the height of passion. He would have let himself be cut in two for my sake, the poor boy. The proof is that he was cut in four, by Bougrelas. Snip, snap, snop! I thought Fd die. Right after that, I took to flight, pursued by the maddened mob. I flee the palace, reach the Vistula, and find all the bridges guarded. I swim across the river, hoping to escape my persecu­ tors. Nobles come from every direction and chase me. I die a thousand deaths, surrounded by a ring of Poles, screaming for my blood. Finally I wriggle out of their clutches, and after four days of running across the snow of my former kingdom, I reach my refuge here. I haven't had a thing to eat or drink for four days. Bougrelas was right behind me. . . . And here I am, safe at last. Oh, Fm nearly dead of cold and exhaustion. But Fd really like to know what's become of my big buffroon—I mean my honored spouse. Have I fleeced him! Have I taken his rixthalers! Have I pulled the wool over his eyes! And his starving phynancial horse: he's not going to see any oats very soon, either, the poor devil. Oh, what a joke! But alas! My treasure is lost! It's in Warsaw, and let anybody who wants it go and get it. FATHER UBU (starting to wake up): Capture Mother Ubu! Cut off her ears! MOTHER UBU: Oh, my God! Where am I? Fm losing my mind. Good Lord, no! God be praised I think I can see Mr. Ubu Sleeping near me. Let's show a little sweetness. Well, my fat fellow, did you have a good sleep?

FATHER UBU: A very bad

one! That was a tough bear! A fight of hunger against toughness, but hunger has completely eaten and devoured the tough­ ness, as you will see when it gets light in here. Do you hear, my noble Palotins? MOTHER UBU: What's he babbling about? He seems even stupider than when he left. What's the matter with him? FATHER UBU: Cotice, Pile, answer me, by my bag of shitr! Where are you? Oh, I'm afraid. Somebody did speak. Who spoke? Not the bear, I sup­ pose. Shitr! Where are my matches? Ah! I lost them in the battle. MOTHER UBU (aside): Let's take advantage of the situation and the darkness and pretend to be a ghost. We'll make him promise to forgive us our little pilfering. FATHER UBU: By Saint Anthony, somebody is speaking! Godslegs! I'll be damned! MOTHER UBU (deepening her voice): Yes, Mr. Ubu, somebody is indeed speak­ ing, and the trumpet of the archangel which will call the dead from dust and ashes on Judgment Day would not speak otherwise! Listen to my stern voice. It is that of Saint Gabriel who cannot help but give good advice. FATHER UBU: To be sure! MOTHER UBU: Don't interrupt me or I'll fall silent, and that will settle your hash! FATHER UBU: Oh, buggers! I'll be quiet, I won't say another word. Please go on, Madame Apparition! MOTHER UBU: We were saying, Mr. Ubu, that you are a big fat fellow. FATHER UBU: Very fat, that's true. MOTHER UBU: Shut up, Goddammit! FATHER UBU: Oh my! Angels aren't supposed to curse! MOTHER UBU (aside): Shitr! (Continuing.) You are married, Mr. Ubu? FATHER UBU: Absolutely. To the Queen of Witches. MOTHER UBU: What you mean to say is that she is a charming woman. FATHER UBU: A perfect horror. She has claws all over her; you don't know where to grab her. MOTHER UBU: You should grab her with sweetness, Sir Ubu, and if you grab her thus you will see that Venus herself couldn't be as nice. FATHER UBU: Who did you say has lice? MOTHER UBU: You're not listening, Mr. Ubu. Try and keep your ears open now. (Aside.) We'd better get a move on; it's getting light in here. Mr. Ubu, your wife is adorable and delicious; she doesn't have a single fault. FATHER UBU: Ah, you're wrong there: there isn't a single fault that she doesn't have. MOTHER UBU: That's enough now. Your wife is not unfaithful to you!

I'd like to see someone who could stand making her unfaithful. She's an absolute harpy! MOTHER UBU: She doesn't drink! FATHER UBU: Only since Fve taken the key to the cellar away from her. Before that, she was drunk by seven in the morning and perfumed herself with brandy. Now that she perfumes herself with heliotrope, she doesn't smell so bad any more. Not that I care about that. But now Fm the only one that can get drunk! MOTHER UBU: Stupid idiot! Your wife doesn't steal your gold. FATHER UBU: No, that's peculiar. MOTHER UBU: She doesn't pinch a cent! FATHER UBU: As witness our noble and unfortunate Phynancial Horse, who, not having been fed for three months, has had to undergo the entire campaign being dragged by the bridle across the Ukraine. He died on the job, poor beast! MOTHER UBU: That's all a bunch of lies—you've got a model wife, and you're a monster. FATHER UBU: That's all a bunch of truth. My wife's a slut, and you're a sausage. MOTHER UBU: Take care, Father Ubu! FATHER UBU: Oh, that's right, I forgot whom I was talking to. I take it all back. MOTHER UBU: You killed Wenceslas. FATHER UBU: That wasn't my fault, actually. Mother Ubu wanted it. MOTHER UBU: You had Boleslas and Ladislas killed. FATHER UBU: Too bad for them. They wanted to do me in. MOTHER UBU: You didn't keep your promise to Bordure, and moreover, you killed him. FATHER UBU: I'd rather I ruled Lithuania than he. For the moment, neither of us is doing it. Certainly you can see that I'm not. MOTHER UBU: There's only one way you can make up for all your sins. FATHER UBU: What's that? Fm all ready to become a holy man; I'd like to be a bishop and have my name on the calendar. MOTHER UBU: You must forgive Mother Ubu for having sidetracked some of the funds. FATHER UBU: What do you think of this: I'll pardon her when she's given everything back, when she's been soundly thrashed, and when she's revived my phynancial horse. MOTHER UBU: He's got that horse on the brain. Ah, Fm lost, day is breaking! FATHER UBU: Well, I'm happy to know at last for sure that my dear wife steals from me. Now I have it on the highest authority. Omnis a Deo scientia, which is to say: omnis, all; a Deo, knowledge; scientia, comes from God.

FATHER UBU:

That explains this marvel. But Madame Apparition is so silent now! What can I offer her to revive her? What she said was very entertaining. But, look, it's daybreak! Ah! Good Lord, by my Phynancial Horse, it's Mother Ubu! MOTHER UBU (brazenly): That's not true, and I'm going to excommunicate you. FATHER UBU: Ah, you old slut! MOTHER UBU: Such impiety! FATHER UBU: That's too much! I can see very well that it's you, you half-witted hag! What the devil are you doing here? MOTHER UBU: Giron is dead and the Poles chased me. FATHER UBU: And the Russians chased me. So two great souls meet again. MOTHER UBU: Say rather than a great soul has met an ass! FATHER UBU: Fine, and now it's going to meet this little monster. (He throws the bear at her.) MOTHER UBU (falling down crushed beneath the weight of the bear): Oh, great God! How horrible! I'm dying! I'm suffocating! It's chewing on me! It's swallowing me! I'm being digested! FATHER UBU: He's dead, you gargoyle! Oh, wait, perhaps he's not. Lord, he's not dead, save us. (Climbing back onto his rock.) Pater noster qui e s . . . MOTHER UBU (disentangling herself): Where did he go? FATHER UBU: Oh, Lord, there she is again. Stupid creature, there's no way of getting rid of her. Is that bear dead? MOTHER UBU: Of course, you stupid ass, he's stone cold. How did he get here? FATHER UBU (bewildered): I don't know. Oh, yes, I do know. He wanted to eat Pile and Cotice, and I killed him with one swipe of a Pater Noster. MOTHER UBU: Pile, Cotice, Pater Noster? What's that all about? He's out of his mind, my finance! FATHER UBU: It happened exactly the way I said. And you're an idiot, you stinkpot! MOTHER UBU: Describe your campaign to me, Father Ubu. FATHER UBU: Holy Mother, no! It would take too long. All I know is that despite my incontestable valor, everybody beat me up. MOTHER UBU: What, even the Poles? FATHER UBU: They were shouting: Long live Wenceslas and Bougrelas! I thought they were going to chop me up. Oh, those madmen! And then they killed Rensky! MOTHER UBU: I don't care about that! Did you know that Bougrelas killed Palotin Giron? FATHER UBU: I don't care about that! And then they killed poor Lascy!

I don't care about that! FATHER UBU: Oh, well, in that case, come over here, you old slut! Get down on your knees before your master. (He grabs her and throws her on her knees.) You re about to suffer the extreme penalty.

MOTHER UBU:

MOTHER UBU: Ho, ho, Mr.

Ubu!

UBU: Oh! Oh! Oh! Are you all through now? I'm just about to begin: twisting of the nose, tearing out of the hair, penetration of the little bit of wood into the ears; extraction of the brain by the heels, laceration of the posterior, partial or perhaps even total suppression of the spinal marrow (assuming that would make her character less spiny), not forgetting the puncturing of the swimming bladder and finally the grand re-enacted decollation of John the Baptist, the whole taken from the very Holy Scriptures, from the Old as well as the New Testament, as edited, cor­ rected, and perfected by the here-attendant Master of Phynances! How does that suit you, you sausage? (He begins to tear her to pieces.)

FATHER

MOTHER UBU: Mercy, Mr. Ubu!

a 2>

A loud noise at the entrance to the cave.

2 ♦ ♦

SCENE 2

The same, and Bougrelas, who rushes into the cave with his soldiers. BOUGRELAS: Forward, my friends. Long live Poland! FATHER UBU: Oh! Oh! Wait a moment, Mr. Pole. Wait until IVe finished with madam my other half! BOUGRELAS (hitting him): Take that, coward, tramp, braggart, laggard, Mus­ sulman! FATHER UBU (countering): Take that! Polack, drunkard, bastard, hussar, tar­ tar, pisspot, inkblot, sneak, freak, anarchist! MOTHER UBU (hitting out also): Take that, prig, pig, rake, fake, snake, mis­ take, mercenary! The soldiers throw themselves on the Ubus, who defend themselves as best they can. FATHER UBU: Gods! What a battle! MOTHER UBU: Watch out for our feet, Gentlemen of Poland. FATHER UBU: By my green candle, when will this endlessness be ended? Another one! Ah, if only I had my Phynancial Horse here! BOUGRELAS: Hit them, keep hitting them! VOICES FROM WITHOUT: Long live Father Ubu, our Great Financier! FATHER UBU: Ah! There they are. Hooray! There are the Father Ubuists. Forward, come on, you're desperately needed, Gentlemen of Finance. Enter the Palotins, who throw themselves into the fight.

05

* < +

All out, you Poles! PILE: Ho! We meet again, my Financial sir. Forward, push as hard as you can, get to the exit; once outside, well run away. FATHER UBU: Oh! He's my best man. Look the way he hits them! BOUGRELAS: Good God! I'm wounded! STANISLAS LECZINSKI: It's nothing, Sire. BOUGRELAS: No, I'm just a little stunned. JOHN SOBIESKI: Fight, keep fighting—they're getting to the door, the knaves. COTICE: We're getting there; follow me, everybody. By couseyquence of the whiche, the sky becomes visible. PILE: Courage, Sire Ubu! FATHER UBU: Oh! I just crapped in my pants. Forward, hornsbuggers! Killem, bleedem, skinnem, massacrem, by Ubu's horn! Ah! It's quieting down. COTICE: There are only two of them guarding the exit! FATHER UBU (knocking them down with the bear): And one, and two! Oof! Here I am outside! Let's run now! Follow, you others, and don't stop for anything!

♦ o ^

SCENE 3

COTICE:

The scene represents the Province of Livonia covered with snow. The Ubus and their followers are in flight FATHER UBU: Ah! I think they've stopped trying to catch us. MOTHER UBU: Yes, Bougrelas has gone to get himself crowned. FATHER UBU: I don't envy him that crown, either. MOTHER UBU: You're quite right, Father Ubu. They disappear into the distance. SCENE 4

The bridge of a close-hauled schooner on the Baltic. Father Ubu and his entire gang are on the bridge. THE CAPTAIN: What a lovely breeze! FATHER UBU: We are indeed-sailing with a rapidity which borders on the miraculous. We must be making at least a million knots an hour, and these knots have been tied so well that once tied they cannot be untied. It's true that we have the wind behind us. PILE: What a pathetic imbecile! A squall arises, the ship rolls, the sea foams. FATHER UBU: Oh! Ah! My God, we're going to capsize. The ship is leaning over too far, it'll fall!

Everyone to leeward, furl the foresail! FATHER UBU: Oh, no, don't put everybody on the same side! That's impru­ dent. What if the wind changed direction—everybody would sink to the bottom of the sea and the fish would eat us. THE CAPTAIN: Don't rush, line up and close ranks! FATHER UBU: Yes, yes, rush! I'm in a hurry! Rush, do you hear! It's your fault that we aren't getting there, brute of a captain. We should have been there already. I'm going to take charge of this myself. Get ready to tack about. Drop anchor, tack with the wind, tack against the wind. Run up the sails, sun down the sails, tiller up, tiller down, tiller to the side. You see, everything's going fine. Come broadside to the waves now and every­ thing will be perfect. All are convulsed with laugher; the wind rises. THE CAPTAIN: Haul over the jibsail, reef over the topsail! FATHER UBU: That's not bad, it's even good! Swab out the steward and jump in the crow's-nest. Several chose with laughter. A wave is shipped. Oh, what a deluge! All this is the result of the maneuvers which we just ordered. MOTHER UBU and PILE: What a wonderful thing navigation is! A second wave is shipped. PILE (drenched): But watch out for Satan, his pomps and pumps. FATHER UBU: Sir boy, get us something to drink. They all sit down to drink. MOTHER UBU: What a pleasure it will be to see our sweet France again, our old friends and our castle of Mondragon! FATHER UBU: We'll be there soon. At the moment we've passed below the castle of Elsinore. PILE: I feel cheerful at the thought of seeing my dear Spain again. COTICE: Yes, and we'll amaze our countrymen with the stories of our won­ derful adventures. FATHER UBU: Oh, certainly! And I'm going to get myself appointed Minister of Finances in Paris. MOTHER UBU: Oh, that's right! Oops, what a bump that was! COTICE: That's nothing, we're just doubling the point of Elsinore. PILE: And now our noble ship plows at full speed through the somber waves of the North Sea. FATHER UBU: A fierce and inhospitable sea, which bathes the shores of the land called Germany, so named because the inhabitants of this land are all cousins-german.

THE CAPTAIN:

That's what I call true learning. They say that this country is very beautiful. FATHER UBU: Ah! Gentlemen! Beautiful as it may be, it cannot compare with Poland. For if there were no Poland, there would be no Poles!

MOTHER UBU:

CURTAIN

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Theater Questions Alfred Jarry

What conditions are indispensable to the theater? I do not think we need give any more thought to the question of whether the three unities are necessary or whether the unity of action alone will suffice, and if everything revolves around a single character, then the unity of action has had its due. Nor do I think that we can argue either from Aristophanes or Shakespeare if it is the public's susceptibilities that we are supposed to respect, since many editions of Aristophanes have footnotes on every page stating: "The whole of this passage is full of obscene allusions," and, as for Shakespeare, one only has to reread certain of Ophelia's remarks, or the famous scene (nearly always cut) in which a Queen is taking French lessons. The alternative would appear to be to model ourselves on Messieurs Augier, Dumas fils, Labiche, etc., whom we have had the misfortune to read, and with profound tedium: it is more than likely that the members of the younger generation, though they may have read these gentlemen, have not the slightest recollection of having done so. I do not think there is the slightest reason to give a work dramatic form unless one has invented a character whom one finds it more convenient to let loose on a stage than to analyze in a book. And anyway, why should the public, which is illiterate by definition, attempt quotations and comparisons? It criticized Ubu Roi for being a vulgar imitation of Shakespeare and Rabelais, because "its sets are economically replaced by a placard" and a certain word is repeated. People ought not to be unaware of the fact that it is now more or less certain that never, at least never Reprinted from Ubu Roi, Selected Works ofAlfred Jarry, ed. Roger Shattuck and Simon Watson Taylor; trans. Barbara Wright (New York: Grove, 1965), 82-85, © 1961, by permission of New Directions.

since Shakespeare's day, have his plays been acted in any other way than with sets and on a relatively perfected stage. Furthermore, people saw Ubu as a work written in "old French" because we amused ourselves by printing it in old-style type, and they thought "phynance" was sixteenth-century spelling. I find so much more accurate the remark of one of the Poles in the crowd scenes, who said that in his opinion "it's just like Musset, because the set changes so frequently." It would have been easy to alter Ubu to suit the taste of the Paris public by making the following minor changes: the opening word would have been Blast (or Blasttr), the unspeakable brush would have turned into a pretty girl going to bed, the army uniforms would have been First-Empire style, Ubu would have knighted the Czar, and various spouses would have been cuckolded—but in that case it would have been filthier. I intended that when the curtain went up, the scene should confront the public like the exaggerating mirror in the stories of Mme Leprince de Beau­ mont, in which the depraved saw themselves with dragons' bodies, or bulls' horns, or whatever corresponded to their particular vice. It is not surprising that the public should have been aghast at the sight of its ignoble other self, which it had never before been shown completely. This other self, as M. Catulle Mendes has excellently said, is composed "of eternal human im­ becility, eternal lust, eternal gluttony, the vileness of instinct magnified into tyranny; of the sense of decency, the virtues, the patriotism and the ideals peculiar to those who have just eaten their fill." Really, these are hardly the constituents for an amusing play, and the masks demonstrate that the com­ edy must at the most be the macabre comedy of an English clown, or of a Dance of Death. Before Gemier agreed to play the part, Lugne-Poe had learned Ubu's lines and wanted to rehearse the play as a tragedy. And what no one seems to have understood—it was made clear enough, though, and constantly recalled by Ma Ubu's continually repeated: "What an idiotic man! . . . What a sorry imbecile!"—is that Ubu's speeches were not meant to be full of witticisms, as various little ubuists claimed, but of stupid remarks, uttered with all the authority of the Ape. And in any case the public, which protests with bogus scorn that it contains "not a scrap of wit from beginning to end," is still less capable of understanding anything profound. We know, from our four years' observation of the public at the Theatre de l'CEuvre, that if you are absolutely determined to give the public an inkling of something, you must explain i t . . . beforehand. The public does not understand Peer Gynt> which is one of the most lucid plays imaginable, any more than it understands Baudelaire's prose or Mallarme's precise syntax. [People] know nothing of Rimbaud, they only heard of Verlaine's existence after he was dead, and they are terrified when they hear Les Flaireurs or Pelleas et Melisande. They pretend to think writers and artists a lot of crackpots, and some of them would like to purge all works of art of everything spontaneous and quintessential, of every sign of superiority, and to bowdlerize them so that they could have been written by the

public in collaboration. That is their point of view, and that of certain plagia­ rists, conscious and unconscious. Have we no right to consider the public from our point of view?—the public that claims that we are madmen suffer­ ing from a surfeit of what it regards as hallucinatory sensations produced in us by our exacerbated senses. From our point of view it is they who are the madmen, but of the opposite sort—what scientists would call idiots. They are suffering from a dearth of sensations, for their senses have remained so rudimentary that they can perceive nothing but immediate impressions. Does progress for them consist in drawing nearer to the brute beast or in gradually developing their embryonic cerebral convolutions? Since Art and the public's Understanding are so incompatible, we may well have been mistaken in making a direct attack on the public in Ubu Roi; [audiences] resented it because they understood it only too well, whatever they may say. Ibsen's onslaught on crooked society was almost unnoticed. It is because the public is [such] a mass—inert, obtuse, and passive—that it needs to be shaken up from time to time so that we can tell from [its mem­ bers'] bearlike grunts where they are—and also where they stand. They are pretty harmless, in spite of their numbers, because they are fighting against intelligence. Ubu did not debrain all the nobles. They are like Cyrano de Bergerac's Icicle-Animal, which does battle with the Fire-Beast—in any case they would melt before they won, but even if they did win they would be only too honored to hang the corpse of the sun-beast up against their mantel­ pieces and to allow its rays to illuminate their adipose tissue. It is a being so different from them that its relation to them is like an exterior soul to their bodies. Light is active and shade is passive, and light is not detached from shade but, given sufficient time, penetrates it. Reviews which used to publish Lou's novels are now printing a dozen pages of Verhaeren and several of Ibsen's plays. Time is necessary because people who are older than we—and whom we respect for that reason—have lived among certain works which have the charm of habitual objects for them, and they were born with the souls that match these works, guaranteed to last until eighteen-ninety... odd. We shall not try to push them out of our way—we are no longer in the seventeenth century; we shall wait until their souls, which made sense in relation to themselves and to the false values which surrounded them throughout their lives, have come to a full stop (even though we have not waited). We too shall become solemn, fat, and Ubu-like and shall publish extremely classical books which will probably lead to our becoming mayors of small towns where, when we become academicians, the blockheads constituting the local intelligentsia will present us with Sevres vases, while they present their mustaches on velvet cushions to our children. And another lot of young people will appear and consider us completely out of date, and they will write ballads to express their loathing of us, and that is just the way things should always be.

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to the MOTHER and SISTER. Wouldn't you like to go to bed? Father and I might stay up a while yet. .. THE FATHER. Yes, indeed, you must go to bed—good night, Mommy. See how well-behaved I am, I'm not going with you. But just wait a while . . . a week from now . . . oh, that will be nice . .. THE MOTHER. Yes! Good night, little papa. THE FATHER goes rapidly to her and kisses her. Good night, good night, my wifey! Kisses her more ardently. Good night! THE SON touches his arm gently. You meant to be well-behaved, didn't you, Father? THE FATHER, letting the MOTHER go. Tonight, yes, but in a week . .. The SISTER extends her hand, wishing him good night. Good night, Hedi. Throws the MOTHER a kiss as she exits. Good night, good night! THE SON,

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The MOTHER and SISTER leave the room.

looking after them. She is really getting more and more beauti­ fill, our dear little Mommy! He starts pacing up and down. Just wait, just wait, my dear wifey! This week shall also pass. One, two, three, one, two, three .. . bibite. .. oh, yes. He sits down in a comer at the foot of the sofa. THE SON. So tell me more of your plans, Father! THE FATHER. Yes, I'll surely do that, my boy. What I've begun, I must also finish. That's the way it should be, shouldn't it? THE SON, in front of him. You'd been talking about the machines and how you gradually were beginning to understand their construction, and how in general... THE FATHER, transformed; under the impact of his vision. Yes, the machines! God, what advances compared to ours! Look here .. . He bends down and draws shapes on the floor with his finger. His mind is obviously throbbing with these visions and frequently interrupts the flow of his speech. The SON stands in front of him. . . . The great drilling machine, for instance, it hung suspended on springs like this and like this—the frame looked like this, here, like this, the two beams here diagonally, the center beams here, you see, cross­ wise, see—like this . . . There the upper beam divided, suspended wires connected it with the lower part, four of them disappeared here under­ neath the center structure. Later on I could see that center structure in cross-section; the ignition was installed there, a complicated construc­ tion, didn't become clear to me for a long time. Now there, below the THE FATHER,

ignition, were enormous hooks, and underneath these was the driller. They had some kind of induction—Fm telling you, it took me ages to find my way! But finally I found out everything, everything!—And then there was a dredge, my God, you could have cried for joy . . . we have absolutely nothing even remotely comparable!—This drill, now, had .. . well, it's hard to describe, I have to show you the blueprints; then you'll see it clearly. Teeth clenched; he jumps up. Yes, my boy, wasn't it an enormous good fortune to be privileged to see all that!? And how I let it sink in! All of Mars burned itself, as it were, into my brain. And my brain was like a gigantic spider, embracing Mars, and inserting his proboscis into it, a sharp pointed sting, and sucking out all its secrets... all. Sits down again. Pause. THE SON. And now you wish to . . . THE FATHER, ecstatic.... and now, and now—I wish to Shower happiness upon this earth! You hear! Fm holding Treasures—Miracles of Mars! Riches of the stars! World happiness! I hold omnipotence in my hand! I can stamp This whole great earth into dust! When I stamp the ground, It bursts asunder. The solid rocks rip apart In dead center! In dead center! Ah—they are bursting even now! Mountains turn and wander far afield. Whither I command. The chasms fill With rocks or flames or flowers. Because I wish it so! Or with fields! And green! I make the craters! I beat out depths, Most dreadful depths—here! with this fist! I call the oceans from the poles And all the seas! the seas to me, To make them full. .. Fertile! Fruitful! Fruitful! We sinks back. The SON puts the FATHER to bed on the sofa. He rests his hand on the FATHER'S forehead. The FATHER tries to raise himself again; twitches with the effort. Silence. THE FATHER. The p l a n ! . . . the p l a n ! . . . the plan! THE SON. Now be quiet, Father, and don't talk about it any more. THE FATHER. The plan . . . you have to see the plan! Wards off the SON'S hand. Let me go—it's all right. Half raised up.

It's all right.—You must see the plan. He reaches into the pocket of his robe and pulls out the folded and voluminous blueprint He quickly unfolds it, putting it on the floor. The blueprint measures approximately three-fourths of the length of the sofa in both dimensions. THE FATHER. Here it is! my work! my work! This is it!

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Yes, great! proud! glorious! blissful! marvelous! Mars filled all my brain when I created it! Mars rolled and glowed red-hot, and whirled thoughts round, And raised my arms electrically, And guided them! They carved these lines, The cosmos carved and all the stars came to my aid! Omnipotence created this through me! So proud . . . so THE SON, pacifying. Father. THE FATHER. Let me glorify! You shall not stop me! Glorify! Away and on! Look here and marvel: this line here Undercuts the Himalayas! What this signifies is but this: Away with Himalaya! I push it Out of my way! Here this yellow bedbug— Sahara is its name—will soon be in full flight from me, God only knows where to! And Himalaya, this tiny bug, Shall likewise run from me! I shall drown both in oceans deep, with these Two arms, sore with cosmic strength and radiance! They burn! you hear! they're sore! .. . Here these lines, All these black lines, will soon gleam silver-white With broad canals! They will bring lasting happiness to earth Through power that is mine alone! And will be fruitful! fruitful! Many white sails are sailing to and fro, They are the white doves of my love. Forward, forward, On and on! . . . And harbors! ports and havens! they will stretch Many miles, black and strong and sooty With bellies swollen of all these blessings! Blessings! Yes, blessings! Bread and marrow floating through air, And derricks will link them. Oh, blessings! Broadly flung Brother bridges will join shore to shore! Fraternal, yes! A clanking and clattering in the air, And seeds are blown dustlike through the sky In giant clouds. In swelling clouds. Fragrant Clouds! All miracles! All miracles! He leans back. Ah! I am weary from all that splendor! What splendor! Creating makes one weary! I want to build myself a house by the side of the road, and lie

peacefully and view my happiness. From my windows. Lying there, look­ ing, I want nothing else . . . And I want to die! I am cold. Please cover me . . . I am so cold! My cover . . . The SON takes a red cover from the foot of the sofa and spreads it over his FATHER. T H E FATHER. T h i s is good . . .

Hear m e . . . I want to die . . . Fve longed for this All my d a y s . . . My work is done! Creating has been beautiful! Create further, My son! You will do it! T h a n k you! You! Now give m e your hand! Love m e well and help m e die. R e m e m b e r . . . Give m e poison! Give poison to your poor father! r i l thank you for it! You see, F m shedding tears! Yes, you'll give m e poison and help m e leave this life, W h i c h tortures m e so m u c h . . . I want my bed . . . The SON helps the FATHER raise himself up. T H E FATHER.

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. . . W e l l . . . well

You have no inkling how I am tormented! Believe your father! It torments, torments, and no one knows the true extent! One is alone . . . and black with anguish is the world And one is mute. And turns insane! You too will suffer it, one day! Give me the poison! Poison me! Redeem your father! The others too will be relieved when I am gone; Then you will need no more attendants! . . . Well, to bed! The SON leads the FATHER away.

For a short while the stage is empty. Lights are out The SON re-enters through the door at upstage-left, having released the holt outside. He pulls the curtain aside, and in the window frame the sickle of the waxing moon appears. A star sparkles above it THE YOUTH, seating himself at the foot of the settee. His posture: leaning back, supporting himself on his stiffened arms. Night—profound—night so blue—how marvelous. Redemption. Silver moon. Now drops the stony oppression of the day; Cooled, I can lie down in nearness to you, Conversing in heavenly dialogue, silvery miracle—you! The left half of the back wall and the adjoining half of the left side wall recede and the view opens onto the deep-blue night sky; stars. Mars glows in striking redness. Silhouetted against the sky, on the threshold of the room, these three figures become visible: two WOMEN, deeply veiled, kneeling. Behind them,

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erect, likewise veiled, the FIGURE OF A MAN. All have long, flowing, loose dark garments. The YOUTH raises himself, gazing. THE FIGURE OF THE MAN speaks. In the day's Anguished toil and need, Under death's Brightly tinted lead, Borne on wan Poverty's r e e d Have you not your task forgotten? That ironclad command, Anchored with chains above you in the skies? This To ever-new signs Choosing you, In every pulse beat Using you, No martyr's woe Refusing you, In blackest pit not Losing you, With fires of stars Fusing you— Have you forgotten it? Brief silence. THE FIGURE OF THE FIRST WOMAN Speaks.

Onto your narrow path Your loving mother's star Threw many a burnt-out rock Freighted with pain and woe, Many a sterile stone, Many a dry dead bone. Has such disturbing confusion, Such humdrum intrusion Never embittered Your glance when you gazed on Maternal radiance In the deep blue of night?! Brief silence. THE FIGURE OF THE MAN speaks. With reddish glow Insane-creative, Your father's meteor With restless wandering, Encircling M a r s Did you understand

In flaming eruptions Of tormented craters Him who begot you? Brief silence. THE FIGURE OF THE SECOND WOMAN Speaks.

When despair was very near you The great omnipotent Will Brought the girl's love to your path. When sorrow bestrides you, Enmity chides you, All power fights you, Your song even spites you— Ever constant will her love receive you, Her hands caressing will relieve you. Your frozen features she will thaw And spread out, blooming, into smiles— Under the gentle nearness of her gaze, In the ever-constant warmth of her embrace. Oh, you, let the breath of her kiss, Let her chaste embrace Be a sacred symbol of mystic might: Let the force of her attachment Symbolize mystic motherhood. THE YOUTH.

I hear your every word. You are the stars and the voices Among which I always live. Your signs Have been carved into me deeply, those signs Will speak to me always. When you speak, All becomes eternity and healing consolation .. . CHORUS OF THE THREE.

Thundering constellations Set us above you As your physical stars; Behold us, you that are body and person! Other stars, Many, will still rise for you, Kindly stars, Many, will still set for you in blood-red glow; Hark to our voices, body and person! Hearken, hark To us, your physical eternityFeel us deeply, Us, Mothers of Your future immortalities!

As they disappear, the walls close again. The voice of the MAN can still be heard growing fainter in the distance: Your father implored you. Hearken. Do well. Lights go up gradually. THE YOUTH rises.

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My father asked his death from me. I sympathize With his request. Yet this one question still arises: Did he create a fruitful work? He must not die If he can still create. Has perhaps his brain, In its deluded state, given birth to Deeply thought-out wonders?— An expert must decide on this. The sound of a door is heard from downstairs. The YOUTH, startled, listens, then goes quickly to the door at upstage-left and opens it. Quick steps are heard mounting the staircase. The door stays open. The GIRL enters. She shuts the door behind her. Stepping close to him, she lays her hands on his shoulders. The YOUTH kisses her on the forehead and both eyes. THE GIRL, after a pause. I'm very late, beloved. We were so busy in the office. We didn't get through till nine. THE YOUTH. Is this job more exacting than the ones you had before? THE GIRL. Yes, it is, but that doesn't matter. I am so happy I got it and that I can now live in the same town with you. And one has to get adjusted, you know. Four days isn't a long time. THE YOUTH, leading her to the settee. Yes, we were lucky that my friend could get you the job so fast. THE GIRL. How fast it's all happened. She is about to sit down. Ah, you know, let us sit down the way we did last night. Shall we? It was so wonderful. THE YOUTH. This way— He moves the chair in front of the right-hand post of the door frame in the back, seats himself in the chair, while the GIRL settles on the floor, nestling her head on his knees. She does not withdraw her hand. Behind both are the night sky, moon, and stars. THE GIRL, after a brief silence. Tonight you begin to tell, beloved, because I'll have so much to tell you later. THE YOUTH. Is it something bad, my love? THE GIRL. Please, you start. THE YOUTH. I don't have much to tell. I did some writing this morning and took a walk at noon . . . My love, you have no idea how you've changed me! Remember, that evening in Berlin, when my last way out was blocked, and I no longer knew where I should turn, and yet was driven

on by aspiration, driven on? No, I did not know then how I could go on to live my life! Then you came forward and confined the surge of my longing, and my inner drive no longer pushed me onward, but upward, my love! I was driven into gyres still unknown to me, and Fm still being driven in them, higher and higher. I wonder how it will continue . . . Silence. THE YOUTH, bending down and kissing the GIRL. And now, you tell me of yourself! Have you finally had some news about your baby? THE GIRL. Yes, this morning I received a letter. The baby is fine. She smiles painfully. And is getting rounder every day, they write. THE YOUTH, kissing the tears away from the GIRL'S lashes. He's probably well taken care of in the Home. THE GIRL. Yes, very well. Brief silence. And now read this letter.

Hands him a letter. unfolding it. Who sent it? THE GIRL. From my uncle, the master builder. THE YOUTH, skimming through the lines: What does he suggest? . . . what? . . . You are to give your child away? THE GIRL nods painfully. He wants me to offer it up for adoption. Silence. THE YOUTH. I still don't understand it—you know—it's so dreadfully un­ natural, so alien to me .. . THE GIRL. I too couldn't understand it atfirst!And I never wanted to give my child away. Never! But then reason began to speak up, and I had to agree with my uncle: What am I, with my tiny salary, able to offer to the child, and how he would be benefited by being brought up in a decent family. THE YOUTH. But suppose he comes to people who can't offer the child anything but their decency, who are not rich but with their prejudiced views and miseducation will spoil the child's youth .. . THE GIRL. At least he will have a respectable name! That's necessary for his future! . . . And my uncle would inform himself very carefully before about the family. THE YOUTH. What are we talking about! We are talking as if a human destiny could be predetermined and constructed with a little common sense. And yet we know nothing of the possibilities which might perhaps lead the child to his happiness if he remains with you, and perhaps to his misery if you give him away. What do we know! THE YOUTH,

THE GIRL. Yes, everything is so difficult...

What will you decide, darling . . . ? I have already decided. One thing alone determined my decision.

THE YOUTH. THE GIRL.

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Softer. Lowering her voice. If I give the child away, nothing will tie m e any more . . . and I can love you exclusively . . . and I can serve you with my undivided self.. . Profound silence. THE YOUTH. My girl . . . mine . . . it is so strange . . . so m u c h . . . it is so good . . . incomprehensibly good. He stirs on his seat, rises, bends over backward, staring up toward the sky. O miracle! This miracle! It rushes toward m e . . . it b e n d s . . . M e into the Heavens . . . into the beyond . . . bends m e . . . rushes— 0 girl! O love! You are so good—so good And wholly . . . He bends down and passionately kisses the crown of her head, then sits down again on the chair, leaning forward on her, pondering. Yet there is something warning me— 1 a m afraid. I fear your matricide. o O ^ ♦ °j! 02

Raising his head and trunk high, erect. . . . And that the screams of strangled motherhood Will fill you and encircle your heart, Lay waste your being and shriek above the wasteland! Desist! Desist! Love your child and m e ! And do not kill! THE GIRL. I bear you too m u c h love! THE YOUTH.

Dearest, your sacrifice intoxicates my inmost depths! Your goodness dazzles m e and gives a taste of Heaven! For years I have been longing for such love! It is u n n a m e a b l e ! It is unthinkable! It remains desire only and good! D o n ' t do it! Don't! T h o u g h I do want you to so m u c h ! D o n ' t do it! C o n c e r n advises well! . . . THE GIRL. . . . Fear is past and gone . . . THE YOUTH. It is too m u c h . Too quick. We have to w a i t . . . Silence. Until your uncle informs you of something definite, m u c h time may pass, and we can meanwhile think it over many times. Try to understand m e the right way, my darling girl! The GIRL tenses her body and gazes steadily up at the YOUTH. The moon has almost set; only the tip of the sickle peeks up in silvery gleam; more stars have appeared. THE GIRL speaks.

I cannot understand you, I cannot well reflect, I only can implore you, And give to you— All my heart

Desires to be near you And wants merely to give you. To give to you itself. THE YOUTH, uttering the first verses bent down over the GIRL, the last ones erect, while gazing to the sky. The depths of Heaven Shall surround us, The beauty of stars Shall be within us— What do I care about understanding, What do I care about comprehending— Omnipotent power Will lead me to my goal. THE GIRL. All my heart Shall always be with you; I want your songs Kept in my heart— You can only give me, you can only bless me— What can I give you, how fructify you—? Faithful I shall be to you, Faithfully depart with you into the heavenly beyond. Curtain. ACT III Scene: Left, a garden. A partial view of a terrace jutting out from the middle of the wall for a quarter of the stage. The terrace consists of stone and has stone balustrades. On the far left, an ivy-grown segment of wall connects it with the ground, otherwise it is freestanding, elevated. In front of the terrace and past it leads a path into the garden; another path from right-front joins it A young birch tree opposite the terrace; in front of it a backless bench. Upstage: a lawn divided by the path curving to the left. A hedge shuts the garden off. Blue spring sky. Morning. The MOTHER, seated on the bench under the birch tree, her hands in her lap, her eyes closed. Silence. After a while the SON approaches from the left. THE SON. Good morning, Mother. THE MOTHER. IS Father back again? THE SON. No, not yet. THE MOTHER. I sat down in the sun here, it's so nice—spring has come. The sun feels so warm on me. And on my hands. THE SON. The sun will do you good. You look tired. I guess you haven't slept since then? THE MOTHER. Why do you remind me of that again . . . I want to rest quietly here and think of nothing, and you are bringing it up again.

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THE SON. You are very right. Let's not talk about it any more. THE MOTHER. No, not any more . .. You were about to tell me how he stood in front of the fire and threw the old blueprints in, singing and dancing all the while? It's true, isn't it? THE SON. Let's not talk about it any more. THE MOTHER. No, tell me; it did happen . . . And he ran around, horrible, with his head burning, and screaming so dreadfully? Did it really hap­ pen? Or is it all unreal? THE SON. Mommy, rather enjoy the birch tree and spring all around you! THE MOTHER. Yes, here is our lovely birch—I'm so afraid. THE SON. Tell me: Of what are you afraid? THE MOTHER, anxiously frowning. Tell me: All this has never happened, I have only dreamed it. I know for sure I dreamed about something. But many things did happen. THE SON. Whatever happened, dearest, is past now, and what you dreamed of is also past. Don't think of either any more. THE MOTHER. Do you see how I'm withering away . . . THE SON. Dear Mother! Spring will make you young. THE MOTHER. Yes, you're a darling! Well, soon it will be cool around me; soon I'll be allowed to lie in the earth. I ask God every day to take me away to Him. Then all will be well. THE SON, kissing her forehead. Soon all will be well; you'll see, Mother! THE MOTHER. Yes, you're a darling! But my fear won't leave me, and neither will my dream. And real life exists and stays. Oh, it's consuming me, but never mind! THE SON. YOU know that Susanne will come to dinner today? THE MOTHER. What a darling you are—you've still kept your kind heart! Yes, now I have to go in and see to the meal. Hedi isn't back yet, is she? THE SON, helping her rise. I don't think so. THE MOTHER. Ah. My knees are shaking again. Well! Thank you, thank you so much. Exits right. THE SON, leaning on the birch tree; after a silence. My friend has sent me now the poison. Ripe is The moment too. The time is overripe! My mother's infirm age accelerates its course downward toward the grave; And they have deemed my father's work—mad. He ponders, plucking a birch twig, absorbed in thought. Quickly the deed arose in me. It almost Blotted out the torment of its genesis. My beloved, too, laid her smile lovingly upon the wound,

Yet under golden bridges, it bleeds on and on: this wound . . . And if I delve far down, the root of this deed also Shoots forth from out this bloody stream. Do not deceive yourself! Your torment was its soil! Father, Mother, Sister offered themselves up To it as pillars. Am I then a soul towering Strangely up above a single will—? For me this is A symbol of spring which has become a need, And rising sun and first sight of blue. The GIRL and the SISTER enter from upstage-left. Hearing their steps, the SON turns around. THE SON. Good morning, you two! THE TWO. Good morning! THE SISTER. We met at the garden gate. THE GIRL. How wonderful this birch tree looks! THE SON. Spring is everywhere. The SISTER throws a meaningful glance at the BROTHER. Silence. THE SISTER to the BROTHER. Could you still sleep last night after that? THE BROTHER. No, nor you either? THE SISTER. No, no. All nights recently have been disturbed. THE BROTHER. You look so pale. You too, Susanne. THE SISTER. It comes without one's realizing it. Is Father back again? THE BROTHER. Not yet, I think. THE SISTER. Has Mother asked for me? THE BROTHER. Yes, she is in the kitchen now. THE SISTER. I'll go to her.

Just look at the birch tree in the breeze! Like blond hair. How beautiful it looks. While the SISTER exits to the right, she gazes up at the birch tree. THE YOUTH kisses the GIRL on her forehead and takes her hands in his. Good morning, my love, did you sleep badly? THE GIRL. N O , I had a good sleep, sound and deep . . . THE YOUTH. But you look pale and youVe grown thin. THE GIRL. I feel well, my love. THE YOUTH kisses her hair, sits down on the bench and draws the GIRL down next to him. I well know how you suffer. Silence.

THE GIRL.

THE GIRL. Let it be spring!

Let spring enter into you! What can I do for it? It just comes over one; you understand .. . ?

THE YOUTH. THE GIRL.

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THE YOUTH,

kissing her forehead. This is different.

THE GIRL. No!

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IV: [Pushing her away from Rockoffer] Lay off him. She's a cuttlefish, not a woman. Did you hear me? This is the last time I'm telling you this. ELLA: [Flaring up] Then kill me—I won't leave him myself. [From the right enter two matrons and two old men elegantly dressed in black.] MOTHER: Ellie, let me introduce you to two of your uncles you don't know. They're the ones who are financing your marriage with Paul. Mr. Ropner and Mr. Stolz—my daughter—my daughter's fiance, the well-known painter Mr. Paul Rockoffer. [The two old men greet Ella.] ROCKOFFER: First of all, I'm no longer her fiance, and secondly, in introduc­ tions a person's first name and occupation should never be mentioned, particularly since I've changed my occupation. You'll have to pardon me, Maria, but unknown perspectives are opening up before me. I'll be something along the line of a cabinet minister in Hyrcania. Hyrcanian desires gratified at last! It would take too much time to try to explain it all at once now. I hardly understand it myself. MOTHER: I can see that. You must be drunk, Paul. Ella, what does this mean? ELLA: Mama, it's all come to nothing. He's not drunk, and he hasn't gone mad. It's the most obvious, cold, cruel truth. The king of Hyrcania is taking him with him. He's stopped being an artist. [The Mother is dumbfounded.] HYRCAN IV: Yes, ma'am, and we'll settle things amicably. I don't like big scenes in the grand manner when I'm not on my own home ground. I'll pay you whatever damages you ask. MOTHER: I'm not concerned about money, but about my daughter's heart. HYRCAN IV: Don't be trite, please. And besides, I'm not just any lord or master, I'm a king. MOTHER: I've read about that Hyrcania of yours in the newspapers. It's the theater critics who write about it. Not one decent politician even wants to hear it mentioned. It's an ordinary theatrical hoax, that Hyrcania of yours. A depraved and degenerate band of madmen and drunkards took it into their heads to simulate a regime in the old style! You ought to be ashamed, Mister! Hyrcania! It's simply a disgrace, "bezobrazia" a la maniere russe.11 HYRCAN IV: [Throwing his sword on the pile of clothes] The old lady's gone crazy. Be quiet. Rockoffer's agreed and I'm not going to let any mum­ mified battle-axes get him in their clutches. Let's go. [Paul remains undecided.] ELLA: Mama, I won't live through this. I want to go too. HYRCAN

11. Bezobrazia, which is Russian for "disgrace," is a common expression of indignation and outrage.

What? So you're against me too? Aren't you ashamed in front of your uncles you've just met? If you keep behaving this way, we won't get a single cent. Ella, come to your senses. ELLA: [Clutching her head] I don't want to live! I can't! Only I don't have the courage to die. [To the king] Hyrcan, most poisonous of civilized reptiles, crowned slob, kill me. I want pain and death—I've already suffered too much today. MOTHER: Ella, what a way to talk! Who taught you such dreadful expressions? ELLA: I don't even know myself. I'm playing a role—I know that—but I'm suffering terribly. [To the king] I beg you—kill me. HYRCAN IV: You want me to? That won't cost me anything. In Hyrcania everything is possible. The absolute in life—can you understand that, you vile dishwashers of plates others licked long ago? ROCKOFFER: Wait—maybe it can all still be settled by a compromise. I can't stand scenes a n d rows. Ella will go quietly back to h e r mother, a n d I'll at least leave with a clear conscience. ELLA: N o , n o , no—I want to die. M O T H E R : D o you want to poison the last days of my old age? And what about o u r little apartment, a n d o u r nice evenings together, just the three of us, a n d later surrounded by children: yours a n d Paul's, m y darling grand­ children. ELLA: Mama, don't torture me. I'll poison your life worse if I stay with you than if I die right now at the hands of the king. MOTHER: [In despair] What difference does it make who kills you. You die only once, but my old age will be poisoned to the very end. ELLA: No—I must die right away. Every minute of life is unbearable anguish. HYRCAN iv: Do you mean that seriously, Miss Ella? [X] ELLA: Yes. I was never so serious. HYRCAN iv: All right, then. [He picks up his sword, which is lying on the pile of royal robes, and strikes Ella on the head with it Ella falls without a groan. ] MOTHER: Oh!!! [She falls on Ella's corpse and remains there until almost the end of the play. Hyrcan stands leaning on his sword. The old men whisper vehemently among themselves. Matron II remains calm. (+)] ROCKOFFER: I'm just beginning to understand what the Hyrcanianness of Hyrcanian desires actually is. Now at last I know what it means to put absolutism into practice in real life. [He clasps Hyrcan's hands in his.] JULIUS II: I've committed many atrocities, but this pragmatic crime has moved me deeply. I bless you, poor mother, and you, spirit of a maiden pure and lofty beyond all earthly conception. [He blesses the group on Hyrcan's left.] Well, sire, she lived her life as an absolutist, too—you've got to admit that. MOTHER:

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IV: Her death has moved me too. Fve come to recognize a new kind of beauty. I didn't know that there could be anything quite so unexpected outside of Hyrcania. ONE OF THE OLD MEN: [Drawing near] Well, all right, gentlemen, but what now? How are we going to settle all this? We understand, or rather we can guess what it's all about. Actually it's a trite story, but how can it all be explained and justified? JULIUS II: Well, gentlemen. I'm a tolerant person, but I can't stand your company any longer. You understand—I was the Pope. Kiss me quickly on the slipper and clear out, while you're still in one piece. I can't stand dull, commonplace thinking masquerading as phony good nature. [The old men kiss his slipper and, crumpling their hats in their hands, go out to the right with astonished faces. Meanwhile, the others continue talking.] HYRCAN IV: Paul—go with this flunkey right now and get ready for the trip. The Hyrcania Express leaves in an hour. I'm here incognito and don't have my special train with me. ROCKOFFER: All right—Grumpus, leave these ladies here and come along. [He and Grumpus pass to the right. Matron II comes up to Hyrcan. Rockoffer and Grumpus stop on the threshold.] MATRON II: Hyrcan—don't you recognize me? I'm your mother. HYRCAN IV: I recognized you instantly, Mama, but you're the one hidden shame in my life. I'd prefer not to apply the Hyrcanian worldview to my own mother. My mother, mother to a king—an ordinary whore! How ghastly! JULIUS II: And so even you have sacred treasures hidden in the depths of your pragmatic-criminal heart? I didn't expect that. HYRCAN IV: Holy Father—don't meddle in what's none of your business. [To Matron II] Mama, I advise you, get out of here and don't cross my path ever again. You know, I inherited a bloody and violent disposition from my father. MATRON II: But couldn't I be a priestess of love in your country? In olden times the daughters of Syrian princes deliberately offered up their vir­ ginity to an unknown stranger for a couple of copper pieces. HYRCAN IV: That was in olden times and that made it beautiful. You didn't get started that way. You were the mistress of our idiotic aristocrats and obese Semitic bankers. I don't even know whose son I am—me, a king. What a nasty mess. MATRON II: Why should you care? All the more credit to you that starting from nothing you've raised yourself up to the height of a throne. A ridiculous one, but still a throne. HYRCAN IV: Still, I'd prefer to know my genealogy and not get lost in guess­ work.

HYRCAN

ir. You're funny. What difference does it make whether you're Aryan or Semitic or Mongolian? Prince Tseng, ambassador of the Celestial Empire, was one of my lovers, too. Nowadays . . . HYRCAN IV: Shut up—don't get me in a rage! JULIUS II: Common pragmatic snobism. So even in Hyrcania there are irrele­ vant issues. Yes—Napoleon was right: recherche de paternite interdite. STATUE: Ha, ha, ha! Hyrcan and the mother problem, that's a good one! HYRCAN IV: I'm leaving. I don't want to have a new row. If I weren't here incognito, you'd see it would all end quite differently. [He goes to the door and leaves at the same time as Rockoffer and Grumpus.] MATRON ii: [Running toward the door] Hyrcan, Hyrcan! My son! [She runs out] JULIUS H: [To the Statue] That's a fine kettle offish! And what do you say to that, my daughter! STATUE: I knew we couldn't get off without a few discordant notes. [Behind the scenes, a shot is heard, and then a dreadful roar from Hyrcan IV.] JULIUS ii: What's that now? Some fiendish surprise. My stay in Heaven has made my one time nerves-of-steel too sensitive. I've grown unaccus­ tomed to shots. [Ella's mother doesrit even hat an eyelash.] STATUE: Quiet. With Paul, anything is possible. Let's wait: this is a really strange moment. I feel an extraordinary, non-Euclidean tension through­ out all space. The whole world has shrunk to the dimensions of an orange. JULIUS ii: Quiet—they're coming. [Rockoffer runs in with a revolver in his hand, followed by Matron II.] ROCKOFFER: I've killed him. I've avenged the death of poor Ella. JULIUS: Who? Hyrcan? ROCKOFFER: [Embracing Matron II] Yes. And you know what alienated me from him most? That scene with his mother. I don't remember my mother, but I feel sure I wouldn't have treated her that way. If you want absolutism in life, there's absolutism in life for you. He drove me to it himself, the dog. JULIUS II: Well, fine—that's very nice of you, my son. But what's going to come of it? ROCKOFFER: [To Matron II] Just a minute. First of all, I ask you, in memory of your son and my friend, to consider me as your second son. He was un­ worthy of you. A matron—a whore—where could I find a better mother? MATRON ii: [Kissing him on the head] Thank you, Paul—my son, my true, dear son! MATRON

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ROCKOFFER: That's enough. Let's go. JULIUS II: But where? What' 11 we do without that thug Hyrcan? Worse still— what'll we do without Hyrcania? Now that our Hyrcanian desires have reached their peak and, so to speak, run absolutely wild? ROCKOFFER: Oh—I see Your Holiness has really lost all his wits. Is there anyone who deserves to be king of Hyrcania more than I do? Is there any absolutist who's carrying out his ideas in real life more than I am? Give me the whole world and I'll smother it with kisses. Now we'll create something diabolical. I feel the strength of a hundred Hyrcans in me. I, Paul Hyrcan V. I won't be a joker the way he was. Out with this junk. [He kicks the royal robes and sword on the floor.] I'll create a really cozy little nook in the Infinity of the world. Art, philosophy, love, science, societyone huge mishmash. And not like groveling worms, but like whales spouting with sheer delight, we'll swim in it all up to our ears. The world is not a rotten cheese. Existence is always beautiful if you can only grasp the uniqueness of everything in the universe. Down with the relativity of truth! Chwistek's the first one I'll knock off! We'll forge on in the raging gale, in the very guts of absolute Nothingness. We'll go on burning like new stars in the bottomless void. Long live finiteness and limitations. God isn't tragic; He doesn't become—He is. Only we are tragic, we, limited Beings. [In a different tone] I'm saying this as a good Catholic, and I hope I won't offend Your Holiness's feelings by doing it. [In his former tone] Together, we'll create pure nonsense in life, not in Art. [Again in a different tone] Hmm—it's revolting! They're all different names for the same gigantic, disgusting weakness. Completely new— everything new. [Clutches his breast] I'm getting tired. Poor Ella! Why couldn't she have lived till now? [He falls into deep thought] STATUE: Didn't I say that with good old Paul you can expect anything? JULIUS II: But you won't leave me for him, my daughter? STATUE: Never. Paul is too intense for me—and too young. [She kisses Julius IPs hand.] JULIUS H: I'm only afraid that the actual results may not live up to such a promise. I'm afraid of humbug. STATUE: I am, too—a little. But it's always worth trying. ROCKOFFER: [Waking up from his meditation] And you, Holy Father, will you go with us? In Heaven, will they grant you an extension of your leave? JULIUS H: To tell the truth—in Heaven they think I really belong in Hell. But you see, as a Pope they can't decently do . . . that to me . . . you know? That's why I can get a leave to any planet I want without any difficulties whatever. ROCKOFFER: That's great. Without you, infernal old man, I wouldn't be able to take any more. You appealed to me because your inner transforma­ tions were sincere. But poor Ella—if it were only possible to bring her

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back from the dead! What wouldn't I give for that right now! He was the one who made me do it: that damned Hyrcan. [Ella springs up suddenly, pushing her Mother aside.] ELLA: Fm alive! I was only knocked out. Fm going with you! Fll be queen of Hyrcania! ROCKOFFER: [Embracing her] What happiness, what endless happiness! My most dearly beloved, forgive me. [He kisses her.] Without you, even Hyrcania would be only a ghastly dream. MOTHER: [Getting up in tears] You're a good man, Paul. I knew you wouldn't abandon poor Ella. [Paul goes over to her and kisses her hand.] ROCKOFFER: Adopted mother and mother-in-law, Fll take both of you with us to Hyrcania. I know how to value the advice of older women who've experienced a great deal. Even the uncles—those two old idiots, we'll take them with us too. Let's go—whatever he's done, Hyrcan opened a new way for us. May his memory be sacred to us. JULIUS II: What generosity, what generosity! This is one of the most beautiful days of my life beyond the grave. In any case, God is an inscrutable mystery. [X] Come, my daughter. ROCKOFFER: Matrons, let's get a move on—the Hyrcania Express leaves in ten minutes—we've got to hurry. [The Matrons leave, passing by Grumpus] GRUMPUS: His Royal Highness just breathed his last in my arms. ROCKOFFER: [Offering his arm to Ella] Well, may he rest in peace. Now I am king of Hyrcania. And even if I have to stand on my head and turn my own and other people's guts upside down, Fll carry out my mission on this planet. Understand? GRUMPUS: Yes, Your Royal Highness. [Rockoffer goes out with Ella. Julius II goes out after them with the Statue. (+)] JULIUS II: [As he leaves] Even the worst fraud that scoundrel perpetrates on society has the strange charm of a finished work of art. I wonder if I'll be able to create a new artistic center in this infernal Hyrcania. STATUE: In artistic matters, you're the almighty power, Holy Father . . . [They go out, followed by Grumpus. The packages and the clothing of the king remain in the middle of the stage.]

O n a New Type of Play Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz

"On a New Type of Play" is the last section ofAn Introduction to the Theory of Pure Form in the Theater, which first appeared in 1920 in numbers 1, 2, and 3 of Skamander, a leading Polish avant-garde literary magazine of the 1920s and 30s. Coming to the theater from painting, and strongly influenced by nonrepresentational modern art, Witkiewicz was able to develop a complete aesthetic theory of nonrealistic drama early in his own career as a playwright. His quest for "pure form77 in the theater makes Witkiewicz part of the avantgarde European reaction against the realistic, psychological drama and social problem play which had dominated the stage since the 1890s. Before the First World War, Jacques Copeau, the guiding force behind modern French drama, attacked the socially constructive theater based on observation of real life as philistine and bourgeois, an adjunct of journalism, not art. The aim of the theater, Copeau argued, is not to make the spectator think, but to " 'make him dream,7 by evoking and suggesting the multiplicity and mystery of life.771 By the middle twenties, Gabriel Marcel suggested that "the future belongs to the theater of pure fantasy,772 and Benjamin Cremieux talked of the idea of "pure theater,77 which like pure poetry would have a technique of its own that would free it of the social content of realistic drama Reprinted from "The Madman and the Nun' and Other Plays by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, ed. Daniel C. Gerould and C. S. Durer; trans. Daniel C. Gerould and C. S. Durer (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), 291-97. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wash­ ington Press. 1. Jacques Copeau, Critiques d'un autre temps (Paris: Editions de la Nouvelle Revue Franchise, 1923), p. 230. 2. Gabriel Marcel, "La crise de la production dramatique," L'Europe Nouvelle 39 (Septem­ ber 29, 1923), p. 1255.

and give it independent life as pure movement3. In the 1930s, Antonin Artaud, in the manifestoes collected in The Theater and Its Double, formulated his theory of the theater of cruelty which rejects psychology and logic for violence, dreams, and the internal world of uman considered metaphysically!^ Witkiewicz anticipated many of these ideas and quite independently came to conclusions similar to those of his Western European contemporaries. It is important to note that Witkiewicz's idea of pure theater is inclusive; he wishes not to rid the theater of reality, but to transpose it into a new dimension. Pure Form can absorb all kinds of material; the internal arrangement is simply freed from traditional discursive and didactic demands. [Translators' note]

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Theater, like poetry, is a composite art, but it is made up of even more elements not intrinsic to it; therefore, it is much more difficult to imagine Pure Form on the stage, essentially independent, in its final result, of the content of human action. Yet it is not perhaps entirely impossible. Just as there was an epoch in sculpture and painting when Pure Form was identical with metaphysical content derived from religious concepts, so there was an epoch when performance on stage was identical with myth. Nowadays form alone is the only content of our painting and sculpture, and subject matter, whether concerned with the real world or the fantastic, is only the necessary pretext for the creation of form and has no direct connec­ tion with it, except as the "stimulus" for the whole artistic machine, driving it on to creative intensity. Similarly, we maintain that it is possible to write a play in which the performance itself, existing independently in its own right and not as a heightened picture of life, would be able to put the spectator in a position to experience metaphysical feeling, regardless of whether the fond of the play is realistic or fantastic, or whether it is a synthesis of both, combin­ ing each of their individual parts, provided of course that the play as a whole results from a sincere need on the part of the author to create a theatrical idiom capable of expressing metaphysical feelings within purely formal di­ mensions. What is essential is only that the meaning of the play should not necessarily be limited by its realistic or fantastic content, as far as the totality of the work is concerned, but that the realistic element should simply exist for the sake of the purely formal goals—that is, for the sake of a synthesis of all the elements of the theater: sound, decor, movement on the stage, dialogue, in sum, performance through time, as an uninterrupted whole—so trans­ formed, when viewed realistically, that the performance seems utter non­ sense. The idea is to make it possible to deform either life or the world of fantasy with complete freedom so as to create a whole whose meaning would be 3. Benjamin Cremieux, "Chronique dramatique," Nouvelle Revue Frangaise 27 (August 1, 1926), 233-37. 4. Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, trans. M. C. Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958), p. 92.

defined only by its purely scenic internal construction, and not by the demands of consistent psychology and action according to assumptions from real life. Such assumptions can be applied as criteria only to plays which are heightened reproductions of life. Our contention is not that a play should neces­ sarily be nonsensical, but only that from now on the drama should no longer be tied down to pre-existing patterns based solely on life's meaning or on fantastic assumptions. The actor, in his own right, should not exist; he should be the same kind of part within a whole as the color red in a particular painting or the note C-sharp in a particular musical composition. The kind of play under discussion may well be characterized by absolute freedom in the handling of reality, but what is essential is that this freedom, like "nonsensicality" in painting, should be adequately justified and should become valid for the new dimension of thought and feeling into which such a play transports the spectator. At present we are not in a position to give an exam­ ple of such a play, we are only pointing out that it is possible if only foolish prejudices can be overcome. But let us assume that someone writes such a play: the public will have to get used to it, as well as to that deformed leg in the painting by Picasso. Although we can imagine a painting composed of entirely abstract forms, which will not evoke any associations with the objects of the external world unless such associations are self-induced, yet it is not even possible for us to imagine such a play, because pure performance in time is possible only in the world of sounds, and a theater without characters who act, no matter how outrageously and improbably, is inconceivable, simply because theater is a composite art, and does not have its own intrinsic, homogeneous elements, like the pure arts: Painting and Music. The theater of today impresses us as being something hopelessly bottled up which can only be released by introducing what we have called fantastic psychology and action. The psychology of the characters and their actions should only be the pretext for a pure progression of events: therefore, what is essential is that the need for a psychology of the characters and their actions to be consistent and lifelike should not become a bugbear imposing its particular construction on the play. We have had enough wretched logic about characters and enough psychological "truth"—already it seems to be coming out of our ears. Who cares what goes on at 38 Wspolna Street, Apartment 10, or in the castle in the fairy tale, or in past times? In the theater we want to be in an entirely new world in which the fantastic psychology of characters who are completely implausible in real life, not only in their positive actions but also in their errors, and who are perhaps completely unlike people in real life, produces events which by their bizarre interrela­ tionships create a performance in time not limited by any logic except the logic of the form itself of that performance. What is required is that we accept as inevitable a particular movement of a character, a particular phrase having a realistic or only a formal meaning, a particular change of lighting or decor, a particular musical accompaniment, just as we accept as

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LEAH: Yes. But to what?

That's true, to what? you wait for me a moment? (She goes off and returns immediately with a basket filled with small dogs.) My mother is dogging you this basket for the way. PATRICK: Thanks. (He throws both dogs and basket into the audience.) Be­ cause I, you know, and religion . . . (A pause. Gesticulating.) What beautiful sunshine! What beautiful sunlight! (Pause.) Really, Leah? May I die of it on the spot! Oh! My friends. Enter the three friends. (Stillgesticulating.) Will you leave, all you others? The three friends leave. Do you see, Leah, I'm happy. I don't need anything else. I'm stifling. It's

PATRICK:

LEAH: Will

the oysters. Do you hear? {Shouting.) It's the oysters. But what is the lemon doing? Ah, Leah, will you hide that leg, that knee! Will you hide that thigh! {Screaming.) Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! I will shout it out. I will shout it out from the rooftops, from the stars, from above the stars! {Taking the audience into his confidence.) Leah loves me, Leah loves me, Leah loves me. She confessed it. She loves me. {To Leah.) It's your turn now. Shout it out, Leah. Go on my little Leah, my Lele, my Leah-Leah. Shout it out, now, shout it, my Leahleahleah. LEAH {to the audience): I love Patrick. Oh! I love his guts. Oh! I love the clown. I love the clown. From every viewpoint, from every seam, from every form. Look at them, Patrick. Listen to them. Oh! Oh! Oh! . . . {She burst into laughter.) A VOICE {in the audience): But why? Merciful heavens! Why? Are you both ill? LEAH: Madly.

Are you both mad? PATRICK: Madly. A VOICE {in the audience): Do you hear them, Martine? A shot. ANOTHER VOICE: D O you hear them, Marie? A shot. ANOTHER VOICE: D O you hear them, Julie? A shot. ANOTHER VOICE: Do you hear them, Theresa? A shot. ANOTHER VOICE: Do you hear them, Michelle? A shot. ANOTHER VOICE: Do you hear them, Esther? A shot. SEVERAL VOICES: Kill me! Kill him! Kill her! Mercy! Pardon! The Child! Tumulty cries, shots. Suddenly the house lights go off. Instant silence. The box alone is half-lighted. PATRICK: Listen. A stroll in the mountains. The spruce trees are frozen. Ah, youth! Chandeliers under ice. And then the swamps! The swamps? So many beds with childless women. And suddenly there's the sparrowhawk. It's he. He is dead, I tell you. He falls like a flashing of lightning. There are no wings on either side of his naked body on the ground. There are two eyes. Isn't it so, Leah? LEAH: It isn't Leah. PATRICK: And yet it is she. The rest of the body, you'll say? Oh! See! She flies an ensign of blood. Do as she does, ladies. Hold onto your skin while removing your black mourning furs. Let it remain attached. You, Leah, THE VOICE:

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above all, don't do it. Don't do it here. Your muscles would get cold and your nerves would become consumed. Oh, it's just that I don't allow myself to be surprised, that's all. Not me. Don't worry, my bed will smell neither of fulminate nor of powder, the way it does here. LEAH: What! It already smells like brains. PATRICK: Some good advice. Throw some sound and sweep under the arm­ chairs. This mud is an infection. LEAH: Stop it, Patrick. PATRICK: Order, damn it all! Tidy things up a bit. The women, please, lay them out on the right. The men standing on the left. And the children in the middle, in the sauce. LEAH: My big hero is right. PATRICK: Shut up. And now, Commissioner, please chain all these fine people up for me. A VOICE (in the audience): Mr. Patrick, you are a criminal. PATRICK I, sir? No, sir. Are you deaf? I love Leah. You should have shouted out that you love Julie, Marie, Theresa, Michelle, or Esther, and Leah would naturally have been among them. And I would experience a voluptuous pleasure in my wrists. LEAH: And I wouldn't have to sleep with phosphorus tonight. PATRICK: You little bird-brain. LEAH: Stop, Patrick. PATRICK (very casually): My dear, there will be a lot of people here tonight. LEAH: So much the better, so much the better. PATRICK: They're all signaling to us. Leah and Patrick make friendly gestures to the audience. The house lights come on. LEAH: And the face? PATRICK: Come, now! You remind me of a slashing knife. A wound. LEAH: Ah! That animal that pissed, how dear it is to your heart. PATRICK: No, Leah. I swear it. It was right in the forehead. Besides, it's of no importance. LEAH: The face, Patrick? PATRICK: Oh! Sirens! You all have it, you're all fishheaded. LEAH: Be a little discreet. If you force me to it, I'll be stark naked. PATRICK: How useless it all is. Only clothing interests me. An empty dress or suit or shirt walking about. All these constructions of chalk, wax, wood, bone, and flesh should be incinerated. A hat gliding along six feet above the sidewalk, have you ever seen that? LEAH: What shitabed notions! And help!

Leah! Leah! LEAH: What's the matter? PATRICK: Nothing to worry about. My plaster hurts. LEAH: Your plaster? PATRICK: My hollow space.

PATRICK:

LEAH:So? PATRICK: Oh! So you can take your place at the pump. LEAH: Why, Patrick? PATRICK: Why, to pump up the red, my dear child. LEAH: Bladders and lanterns, my love? PATRICK: Isn't that always the way with bearded women! The intelligence of the extremities. Pause. Enter Dovic. Patrick looks at Leah dully. He is entirely indifferent to the scene that is to follow. DOVIC (to Leah): Absolutely, positively, no. LEAH: What's all this fuss? DOVIC: You jealous liar, that's it. LEAH: And all a-tremble, and all a-sweat, and all in tears. DOVIC: Now, which one did you want, the animal, machinery, or the child? LEAH: But he was opening up my belly, that one. DOVIC: You mean your noodle. LEAH: With his beard. DOVIC: Oh, no! No scandal here, right? I protest, Leah. (Slapping her.) I've always loved you. (Pinching her.) I still love you. (Biting her.) Give me credit for that? (Pulling her ears.) Did I have cold sweats? (Spitting in her face.) I caressed your breasts and your cheeks. (Kicking her.) Everything I had was yours. (Making as though to strangle her.) You left me. (Shaking her violently.) Did I hold it against you? (Striking her with his fist.) I am good-natured. (Throwing heron the ground.) I have already forgiven you. (He drags her around the box by the hair.) Patrick rises. LEAH (presenting Dovic to him): You know, Patrick, Dovic is a real gentleman. PATRICK: Who is this Dovic? DOVIC: That's me, sir. LEAH (whispering to Patrick): He has ants on the back of his head. PATRICK: Very good. And what interests you in life, Mr. Dovic? DOVIC: Love. Love really. PATRICK: Funny idea, coming to call. For without doubt you are dining with us?

LEAH: Did I invite him? DOVIC: I'm used to the stairs, and the key is always in the door. PATRICK: Perfect. (To Leah.) Close the windows a n d set the table. (To Dovic.) And love in what aspect?

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DOVIC (pointing to Leah): See for yourself. Without another word, Patrick and Dovic come to blows. They roll on the ground and strike each other violently. LEAH (following the combat): Look out for the statue. Lean over to the right or you'll knock the armchair over. Now to the left. You're rolling into the fireplace. Look out for the plants, Patrick! Dovic, your nose is bleeding, you're getting spots on the tablecloth. T h e dishes are in pieces. O h , my God! Bravo, both of you. A doorbell rings. Patrick, Dovic, stop it right now. Someone's ringing. G e t u p , Patrick! G e t u p , Dovic! Enter a few neighbors. Patrick and Dovic get up. Dovic is bloody. PATRICK (to Dovic): G o away. (To the neighbors.) And you too. DOVIC (showing a place in the box): T h a t palm is mine. Exit Dovic and the neighbors shrugging their shoulders.

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LEAH: I've got a migraine.

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PATRICK: Never mind. Look, what sunshine! LEAH: Tell m e : You won't ask m e anything about my past life, Patrick? PATRICK: N o .

Pause. Enter a woman dressed in a long nightgown. blue.

Her face, hands, and feet are

PATRICK: Good day, M a d a m e . LEAH: In our room? W h a t are you doing there, Patrick? PATRICK: W h y not? LEAH: Who's this tart? PATRICK: She's the virgin, Leah; she's the virgin. Are you happy? Exit the woman in the nightgown. The three knocks, traditional to French stagecraft, are heard. The house lights go off. The proscenium lights go on. The box is plunged into darkness. For a few seconds the curtain is strangely shaken. With each shake, the most diverse cries are uttered in the audience. Finally the curtain rises slowly. The stage is white. On the backdrop appears this inscription: ITS ALWAYS POSSIBLE TO DIE TWO HOURS ATA TIME C I G A R E T T E S : SILK From the left, enter a Young M a n in evening dress. From the right, an Old M a n with his beard trailing on the ground. The Young M a n divests himself

of his cane, his hat and his gloves, which he places on the floor of the stage. The Old Man raises his arms heavenward, and smiles. THE YOUNG MAN (pulling a bird out of his pocket): Dad, you have before you one who is about to die. THE OLD MAN: Then you will spread out my beard on the sheet. It needs to dry out. THE YOUNG MAN: Don't you ever wash it? Look how dirty it is! THE OLD MAN: Ah! When I was a child, Justin, it was as white as milk. The Young Man opens his hand. The bird flies off. Both go offstage to the left, weeping. The curtain falls abruptly. A shot is heard. A few protests arise in the audience. The Theater Manager appears immediately. THE THEATER MANAGER: Ladies and gentlemen, the play is over. The drama which it has been our privilege to present to you is by Mr. Theophile Mouchet. Mr. Theophile Mouchet has just killed himself. The Manager disappears. Stupor, then sudden and increasing laughter. A VOICE: Author! Author! ALL THE AUDIENCE (in chorus): Author! Author! Author! The curtain rises again. The Author appears. He is in his shirtsleeves. His face and clothing are covered with blood. He laughs. He laughs heartily. He laughs with all his might, holding his sides. Both curtains suddenly fall. SECOND TABLEAU

The stage represents, on the left, the Quai des Grands-Augustins in Paris. To the right, a bedroom. In the center stands a small cabin with a porthole overlooking the Seine. In the background, in the space which should be occupied by the Palais de Justice, stands an advertising sign bearing this inscription in large blue letters: Le Petit Parisien. On the parapet, booksellers7 stalls affecting the shape of coffins. Above, red tugboat stacks. The bedroom has closed windows, formed like narrow arches, the tops of which are lost in obscurity; they are adorned with very white muslin curtains. In front of the fireplace and a couple of yards from the entrance to the room stands a stove of the u salamandery variety. But it is from the fireplace that, from time to time, blue flames emerge. The bed is entirely covered by the sheets. A table. Chairs. A pedestal lamp with a green shade on the table. A glass-fronted sideboard is filled with dishes. In a corner, some old newspapers. A package of medicated cotton wool stands in front of the stove. I QUAI DES GRANDS-AUGUSTINS

Enter the Lieutenant of Dragoons and Leah, carrying in her arms a cloth doll, half red, half yellow.

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(as the Lieutenant of Dragoons): I don't like people's children. LEAH: Look at her, Patrick. She has my eyes, my nose, my mouth. They've cut her hair like this. It's sad. Is she a little Chinese girl? I happen to be a blonde. But you know that she's really yours. She blows into a child's toy trumpet The doll weeps. Enter Lloyd George. He looks like the former English prime minister.

PATRICK

LLOYD GEORGE: Psstt . . . Pstt . . . Pstt . . . Pstt . . .

Ah! What a terribly tragic conclusion. He seizes the doll, deposits it in the river, and disappears. Lloyd George goes into his room. Leah follows him.

PATRICK:

II LLOYD GEORGE'S ROOM

LEAH: I'm frightened, Dovic. Lloyd George crosses the room, raises the bedsheets, and reveals to a horrified Leah a little girls head resting on the pillow. LEAH: Mr. Lloyd George—I recognize her! With a sudden gesture, Lloyd George completely removes the sheets and uncovers the child. Naturally, it is only a bust of flesh which has been sawed off at the shoulders; the rest of the body has disappeared. Enter Patrick as the Lieutenant of Dragoons. His cheeks are hollow and his eyes deeply sunken. Leah rushes into the small cabin and begins to utter piercing shrieks, for the space of a few seconds. Lloyd George and Patrick remain facing each other, petrified. Leah rejoins them. (To Patrick.) Go on, go on, I can see you're not a party to these goings-on. Patrick slips into the bed beside the girls bust. (to Leah): Ah! Now let's see a sample of my savoir-faire. He goes off stage to the right and returns immediately carrying a young man under his arm. He deposits him on the table, and saws off his head. During this operation, terrifying crashing sounds, and the sound of bells, are heard. (Carrying off the pieces.) There's a tidy bit of work, if I do say so myself. Leah shrugs her shoulders. She bends over the bed and removes the little girls eyes. They are as big as ostrich eggs. LEAH: My eyes, Patrick! My eyes! PATRICK (turning toward the wall): I don't want to see it. I don't want to see it. Enter Lloyd George. He is carrying a black suitcase, which he holds out to Leah. LLOYD GEORGE: Here, Madame, are the miraculous remains of the wellbeloved. Leah crosses the Quai des Grands-Augustins. She weeps and disappears. Enter Mrs. Morin, in mourning; and the late Mr. Morin. He has a mili-

LLOYD GEORGE

tary haircut and wears checkered trousers. The lamp lights of itself All sit at the table. Patrick alone remains lying in the bed. Lloyd George sets four places. He brings numerous dishes: lobsters, chickens, dressed roasts, sherbets, pyramids of fruit. From time to time, he releases some birds. Leah returns. She takes her place. All eat and gesticulate in silence. Mr. Morin has removed his coat and is in his shirtsleeves. Mrs. Morin, her lips outrageously made up, a crepe hat on her head, remains motionless. LLOYD GEORGE (to Leah): Go over and arrange the Young Officer of Dra­ goons' knees below the little girl's shoulders. No one must notice that the child has been sawed off at the shoulders. The sheets, fallen in where the thighs and legs ought to produce natural protuberances, might give away the crime. LEAH: That's true. (She rises and arranges the knees of the Young Officer of Dragoons as Lloyd George has directed her. Then she returns to the table. Mr. Morin and Mrs. Morin have been pretending not to see anything.) LLOYD GEORGE (to Leah): Madame, kindly look at the sideboard. Leah raises her eyes and sees Patrick's head looking at her from on top of the sideboard. (Lloyd George rises, takes Leah by the arm, pulls her to the front of the stage, and says to her): How hard it's raining! I won't repeat it again. You are my unwilling accomplice, and if you talk, you will be handed over to the police. Besides, we must put an end to this. I propose the river. LEAH: Decidedly, this is becoming a mania with you. What I would prefer are those booksellers' chests along the Seine that close with a padlock and are covered over with a sheet of zinc. LLOYD GEORGE: My, my, can you see that? LEAH: Too late! Patrick as the Officer of Dragoons comes down from his observation point and goes over to the fire. The package of medicated cotton wool catches ablaze. Mrs. Morin utters a loud cry. Patrick calmly returns to his place on top of the sideboard. LLOYD GEORGE (laughing): Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! The assassination victims themselves fail in their attempt. All resume eating. Lloyd George rises only to fetch new dishes. MR. MORIN: However, that evening the sea was rough. Sardines were being taken by the netful. But the night, the thunder, the lightning, and espe­ cially the Negroes in the boiler room, not to mention the leopard . . . Eh, my wife? Surely you won't deny, Mrs. Morin, my wife, that one's ever eaten so well. LLOYD GEORGE: I know quite well, sir, how to handle all this. But tell me— which way is the harbor? Leah suddenly rises and, with the gestures of a sleepwalker, without being noticed, draws her chair near the dresser and covers Patrick's head over

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with a newspaper. She returns to the table and continues eating with the others. MR. MORIN: Still, you must take some interest in my stories. However, that evening, the sea was rough. Sardines were being taken by the netful. But the leopard and the captain's knife and all the glasses were shattered .. . At that moment the wind carries off the newspaper covering Patrick's head. Leah utters a loud cry. Mr. Morin rises and, taking Lloyd George by the arm, pulls him off toward the Quai des Grands-Augustins. She's mad, sir. What, ho! See the crazy woman! See the crazy woman! LLOYD GEORGE: Oh, my! The crazy woman! Oh! The crazy woman! They go offstage. MRS. MORIN: I've seen everything. Leah, come on over here. They go toward the bed where two arms are being raised which resemble two dead branches, but whereon are flowering two enormous, very white hands. Ah! My daughter! Don't come any closer. She has leprosy. Leah kneels. LEAH: She has my slanted eyes. My blond hair. My gleaming mouth. You must agree that you don't die of love. END OF THE SECOND TABLEAU AND OF THE FIRST ACT.

ACT II THIRD TABLEAU

The stage represents a hotel room. A bed. A table. Chairs. A wardrobe, and so on. Leah is stretched out on the bed. Patrick is at her bedside. PATRICK: It's turning. It's turning. LEAH: What's turning? PATRICK: Not the table, obviously. LEAH: The earth is turning. PATRICK: Be quiet. The daylight is in my left eye. LEAH: Oh!—he's starting that again! PATRICK: I said, the daylight is in my left eye. LEAH: Did I say it wasn't? (A pause.) And in your right eye, Patrick? PATRICK: There is a mountain. LEAH: Can I see? PATRICK: If you want. Leah bends over Patrick's eye, and looks. LEAH: What is it? PATRICK: It's a wheel. LEAH: And behind it?

PATRICK: Behind it, there's a white quarry. LEAH: Yes, the workers are taking it easy. PATRICK: Aren't they, though! LEAH: What's that shining among the stones? PATRICK: Their tools. They're pretty, aren't they? They're made of nickel. The smallest one looks like a pink fingernail, and the biggest one like an ax. One of the men is holding the ax. Do you see him, Leah? LEAH: Very well. He seems tired. PATRICK: Still, he's got food and drink there. LEAH: He's taking a bath. That's curious. PATRICK: What's so curious about that?

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LEAH: He's melting. He's white. Now the animals are eating him. PATRICK: Poor creatures. LEAH: Poor creatures? Those vipers? Those flaming, scaly things? PATRICK: They haven't done anything to you. LEAH: In that case, kiss my hands. Patrick kisses her hands but suddenly leaps back. PATRICK: Ouch! LEAH: What have I done? PATRICK: You've burned me. Smoke is rising from Leah's hands. Leah goes toward the washstand and plunges them into the water. LEAH: And you—you frightened me! PATRICK: So in the future take care of your eyes, and leave mine alone. Leah weeps. That's no reason to cry. LEAH: The world bores me. PATRICK: Where is this world? LEAH: Here I am, Patrick; here I am. PATRICK: Pardon, Leah. The world, if you please. Leah stretches out on the bed. LEAH: Come, Patrick. PATRICK: Oh! How long it is. (Pointing to an electric lamp.) The equator on a grid. And what lands have you protected, Madame? Tahiti, Tahiti, where change purses drop like ripe bananas? Where lace is a valued auxiliary on the ambassadors' legs, Tahiti the shoe of spring? LEAH: Tahiti? My hips. You boor! PATRICK: Pull yourself together a bit, Leah. It's turning. LEAH: Not the table, obviously, you idiot. PATRICK: The earth is turning. The daylight is in my left eye.

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Why don't you get a grip on yourself and listen to me? PATRICK: And yet it does turn. LEAH: You're imagining things. PATRICK: I'm not doing anything any more. I am the machine that is to turn in a vacuum. That's the brain, you say? It's poisoned by work. It's at the stage of tetanus. A nice animal, that one. Only yesterday I could still eat. Today, Leah, it's all over. The brain is in the belly. We let that outcast do anything. The heart? You can look for it in the bed. The stomach? It licks my feet beneath the table. The liver makes faces in the mirrors. The spleen is in the drawer next to the corkscrew, and my lungs are having fun making holes in your canaries. My poor brain, that divine dough, bends under any yoke. It's not Leah who's complaining, is it? LEAH: Well! There's one who turns quickly, yet not at all awkwardly. Nev­ ertheless, I didn't want this warfare. The doorbell rings. PATRICK: Come in. Enter the Butcher. THE BUTCHER: Is there anything for me, little lady? LEAH: Yes, Casper. You will find everything wrapped up on the kitchen table. THE BUTCHER: Very good, Miss Leah. Exit the Butcher. PATRICK: Who is that fellow?

LEAH:

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LEAH: He's a man of sorrows.

PATRICK: And what does he do? LEAH: He slaughters cattle.

PATRICK: Poor creatures! LEAH: No calling is to be despised.

Re-enter the Butcher. THE BUTCHER: Well now, Miss Leah, I'll not be coming to your place any more. Not worth the bother. Just some bones where even a whore wouldn't find a pittance! You can keep your garbage for the soldiers. You could give me the skin with the hair and nails on it now, and I still wouldn't give you another penny. You robber! Exit the Butcher. PATRICK: What does that man come to do here? LEAH: Nothing, dear. He's very talented, Casper is. He reupholsters the chairs and replaces the windowpanes. PATRICK: It seems to me I've seen his face before. LEAH: Come now, Patrick, don't say that. You always insist that I have to turn out the light before you go to bed. PATRICK: W h o , me?

Yes, you. And that brain that you're so proud of. There's certainly a good-time Charlie: before a meal, all he dreams about is knife wounds, animals dying in the forest—and such language! And after that there's the prairie, the country with its delicate herbs where Mr. Patrick lies down like the cloud called cirrus which in shape looks like a pike and in color like fire. PATRICK: Go on! Next time our drainpipes won't dry up quite so quickly. LEAH: So it would seem. PATRICK: Only last night, someone was shouting: "Are you through cutting each other's throats up there?" I get up in my nightshirt and I answer, "This is August, dear sir, the month of the shower of stars." And do you know what our neighbor answers? LEAH: What did our neighbor answer? PATRICK: "When you have enough blood to go into business you should become a painter, not go around scandalizing people!"

LEAH:

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LEAH: You see.

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PATRICK: You, naturally, are going to suppose that he's being reasonable. LEAH: What are you talking about? PATRICK: The reasons of lodgers. LEAH: Pardon me, I misunderstood. PATRICK: Would you dare suppose that I don't have my reason? LEAH: Far from it. Reason is balance, isn't it? You climb ladders well enough. PATRICK: Oh! That hair, what battles! LEAH: But how cosmetic! PATRICK: You said it. You could have seen through every pore in the skin. A diamond millstone, that chest. And it's fortunate. Women today select pink underthings! You, it's the mouth that lights your way. It's like a quarry of blood. LEAH: What nonsense! What about poetry? PATRICK (slaps her): Take that! LEAH: I'm not happy with you. PATRICK: (slaps her again): And now? LEAH: I'm unhappy. PATRICK (dragging her around by the hair): I'd be interested to know if I'll be a clock all my life. Or rather a clock's pendulum, or even pendent from a clock. LEAH: Have mercy, Patrick; have mercy! I won't start up again. I'll always be happy. PATRICK: Look at me, Leah. I'm not bad-looking—maybe I have something missing?

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What would that be? PATRICK: Fortune. Fortune for every care and garments for the skin. Fortune? Did I say fortune, Leah? Yes, I said fortune. What's most important of all is underwear. I go into a cafe. Faces are hidden behind pulled-up skirts. They are on the ceiling like pears. And suddenly everyone's kissing. They stick pins into the fleshy parts of their legs, and I hear on all sides: "How good-looking he is!" Chance, that pearl—I find it on the staircase. No, Leah, it's the fragrance that guides me. That house, I gild it every morn­ ing, for the evening before it is a ship in which we have both gone down. Open the door, for God's sake! And let the gesture accompany it. I said fortune. Fortune for every care and garments for the skin. LEAH: The skin! PATRICK: Ah! Don't touch on that one. My skin! My parchment? And also, skin yourself. LEAH: You're hard, Patrick. You're heartless.

LEAH:

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Well, I get along as I can—that's no one's lookout but my own. My behavior is my own. What was it someone once said? Love: the need to come out of oneself, someone once said. And that is why I ask you this: Are you through looking for what has been left me? Are you through looking at my skeleton? You're certainly quite an X-ray. LEAH: What I have to listen to! PATRICK: Ah, bah! What are you listening to? Are you really listening to this walking scaffold? A spinning top! Oh! The Skeleton and the Spinning top (a fable): A skeleton six feet tall Happened to run out of plaster The worms no longer cared for it it had become so brittle and lovely And the rest what did you do with it When sitting down at the table We made animals out of it And the reason is this speed supplied By the momentum of my darling's heart That top (The heart or the darling? -Both.) LEAH: Think of the future, rather. PATRICK: The child you bear in your bosom, Leah, infinitely disturbs me. You may remove it. LEAH: Rest assured, it's only temporary. Exit Leah. PATRICK (alone): What a business! But what sunlight! Enter Mrs. Morin. PATRICK:

MRS.

Good day, Mr. Patrick. PATRICK: Mrs. Morin! I'm happy to see you. MRS. MORIN: You may believe that your pleasure is shared, my dear son-in-law. PATRICK: Son-in-law, do you say? Please be seated, and remain calm. You're no doubt bent on death. MRS. MORIN: On life, do you mean? PATRICK: On life, on death, I know that tune. Your daughter, Mrs. Morin, is an eel on that theme. MRS. MORIN: She has someone to take after. PATRICK: I have hinted at it, Madame: she takes after death. MRS. MORIN: But what sort of man are you, Mr. Patrick? PATRICK: Ah there we are! Enter Dovic. MRS. MORIN: There's Dovic. (To Dovic.) Good day, son-in-law. DOVIC: Leave me alone, you. (To Patrick.) Patrick, I'm quite fond of you. PATRICK: Just one question, Mr. Dovic. You doubtless know the author of this play? MORIN:

DOVIC: He's my father. PATRICK: No. DOVIC: At any

rate, he's my best friend. PATRICK: Well, then, please have him step over here a moment. DOVIC: Hey, there! Author! Author! ALL (singing in chorus): Why, there's the author, how are you, old lady? Why, there's the author, how are you, my love? Enter the Author. THE AUTHOR: Good day, Mrs. Morin. Good day, Dovic; and good day to you, Patrick. PATRICK: You've come just at the right time: how do you want all this to end? THE AUTHOR: Well now, my lad, you seem quite involved in this. PATRICK: Don't I, though? One word more. THE AUTHOR: Go ahead. PATRICK: You betray yourself, sir. Am I to conclude that we are to go ahead? THE AUTHOR: Resolutely. PATRICK: Then it's useless to talk. No one here may have the floor. THE AUTHOR: Listen, my boy, your case doesn't interest me very much. It doesn't interest the public very much, either. PATRICK: You don't think so? THE AUTHOR: I understand myself as well as you understand me, and as well as you understand it.

DOVIC :

I beg your pardon? You leave us alone. Tend to the women. I am speaking with the gentleman. (To the Author.) Just one little word of advice, if you please? THE AUTHOR: My friend, do you really want me to tell you something? Well, I am about to reveal my greatest weakness: in this particular case, I would behave as you do. But, in this particular case, permit me to withdraw. Exit. PATRICK: By Hercules! Let's go ahead. He seizes a chair and breaks up everything. He knocks down Dovic and Mrs. Morin. The stage is spattered with blood. The light goes out. He continues to flail about furiously in the dark. LEAH: (offstage): Ah! Ah! Mo—Mo—Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, aaaaah . . . The light goes on again. Patrick is in tatters. Dovic and Mrs. Morin are stretched out on the floor. Enter Leah, a child in her arms. LEAH (joyfully): It's a boy. (Taken aback with shock.) Oh, our apartment! And while I was giving birth to your son! PATRICK: Yes, now you see. You leave me alone and you see what happens. Let's see the child. PATRICK:

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LEAH: It didn't take me too long? PATRICK: He seems well enough

put together. Don't you think he'll be too cold on the marble mantelpiece? LEAH: I'll clean the mirror and I'll make a fire every morning. But he'd be better off in the bed, between us. PATRICK: It's warm enough right there! You can sweep away the broken statues. (Taking his son and raising him up above him.) Guillotin, you will be called Guillotin, and all your life you will occupy the place of a masterpiece, there, between our two rooms, on the pedestal of the Venus de Milo. LEAH: What do you mean to do with your son? With your little sonny-boy, your Gui-gui, your Guiguillollo, your Guillo? PATRICK: Well, that's a nice role you've got ready for me. (Placing the child on the mantelpiece.) Hold steady. And now, Guillotin, come into my arms. The child risks a movement, loses its balance, falls and is killed. LEAH: Ah! Ah! Ah! . . . Murder! Murder! That one, my lover, my daddy, my daddy, my Patrick, who's gone and murdered my Guigui, my Guigui, my Guillotin. (Her tone changes.) By the way, you could have given him some other name. You infanticide! PATRICK: Enough, Leah. You will light the torches and prepare my traveling gear. I have things to do in the neighborhood. LEAH: Good night, Patrick. Exit Patrick.

(entering): Are you the one that's making all the noise? What's the matter with you, Madame? You're crying? Has someone beaten you? LEAH: Oh, it's nothing, Officer; it's the little one who fell and caught the scarlet fever. The curtain falls abruptly.

A POLICEMAN

END OF THE THIRD TABLEAU

FOURTH TABLEAU

The stage simultaneously represents a railway station, a dining car, the seashore, a hotel lobby, a yard goods shop, the main square of a provincial town. To be suitably arranged are signal discs, telegraph wires, several laid tables, large pieces of cotton wool to simulate the foaming waves, ships7 masts, green plants, garden chairs, a sign bearing the inscription "Yard Goods," and an explorer's statue. A projector will light up each part of the stage according to the location of the action. As the curtain rises, Leah is alone in the center of the stage. Enter Mrs. Morin in full mourning. She is holding a child in her arms. By her side, both tied to the same leash, trot two dogs: a white fox terrier and a gray bulldog. MRS. MORIN: Pardon me, Madame, would you hold my child a moment? LEAH: I should hardly think so, Madame; my train leaves in five minutes. MRS. MORIN: Have no fear! I'll be back soon. Just long enough to pick up tickets for my dogs, and then I'll be back. Besides, what are you afraid of? My husband is in this coach. Darkness, then light. Mussolini is seated at a table. Enter Leah, the child in her arms and the dogs following her. Several passengers are eating. Leah sits, and the two dogs stretch out at her feet. A Conductor passes. LEAH: Is it luncheon time already? THE CONDUCTOR: It's five after twelve. LEAH: At what time will we arrive? THE CONDUCTOR: At three.

Whistles. Steam noises. The train starts. LEAH (at the door): Stop! Stop! Stop! I've been given a child. . . . Yes, the child isn't mine . . . the woman . . . there! THE CONDUCTOR (laughing): Come now, Madame, that one's been tried on us before. You keep the child; you'd come to regret it later on. Leah sits down again. LEAH: What have they done? Me, a child-stealer? I should say not! But now how to get rid of it? A cherub is such a nuisance! MUSSOLINI (from his place): The sea air will do the child good. LEAH: That's true. MUSSOLINI: You understand, you can't.. .

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(interrupting him): Excuse me, sir, but you are mistaken. Your wife, I suppose it was, entrusted me with this child and these animals. Only you will readily understand that I cannot be burdened with a child, with dogs, and with a man, at my age. MUSSOLINI: Well! You could say a man, a child, and dogs. Darkness, then light. MUSSOLINI (alone): The sea! What foam! Not a drop of water. Just foam. Foam up to the roofs ofthe houses. It rises at regular intervals. I've never seen anything so impressive! And this town, built on a bridge! The sea, where is the sea? It's two feet below, the sea. I'm frightened. Darkness, then light. Enter Leah from the left with the child and the dogs. An old Chambermaid enters from the right. LEAH: Funny country. THE CHAMBERMAID (sitting on one ofthe steps to the stage): You're not obliged to stay here. LEAH: Could I have a few bones for my dogs? A Cook enters from the left. He is peeling some vegetables. A second Cook follows him; he too is peeling vegetables. Finally, the last to enter is a Man in Evening Dress, with white gloves, also peeling vegetables. THE MAN IN EVENING DRESS (to the Chambermaid): Answer the lady! Yes, Madame, you'll be given some bones. Leah manifests great joy. She places the child and the dogs underneath her dress (without being afraid to show her legs) and shakes them in all directions. LEAH: The bulldog is unhappy. Why, I hadn't noticed his paws. He has paws like a tiger's. Enter Mussolini; the Cooks and the Man in Evening Dress, who seemed interested in Leah's actions, are seized with panic, and flee. Leah places the dogs on the floor. She keeps the child in her lap. Mussolini kicks the fox terrier and sends it rolling into the wings. You brute! You've bashed his snout in, and his ear! MUSSOLINI: Doctors aren't for dogs: better have him taken care of. Leah places the child on the floor. LEAH: Oh, how horrible are these black shoes, these laced shoes, and these black stockings! I'm going to buy him some others.

LEAH

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MUSSOLINI: No, it's useless.

LEAH: You're right: I'd better go. Darkness followed by light. The yard goods shop. LEAH: I'd like some white leather booties for the child. THE SHOPKEEPER: Sky blue would be prettier. LEAH: No, white! I want white booties! THE SHOPKEEPER: What taste!

LEAH: Everyone to his taste. (She examines the booties.) Why! The soles are made of cork. They can't be very practical. They'd soak up the water. THE SHOPKEEPER: And what about wine-bottle corks when you push them under water? LEAH: All right, I'll take the sky blue ones. Darkness followed by light. LEAH (seated): I'm going to Saint Affrica, in Africa. I can't take you. MUSSOLINI: Complain! I advise you to complain. A husband without looking for one, a child you haven't borne, and dogs you haven't bought. LEAH: He has curls. He's blond. He has large black eyes. He looks like the one I have at home, like my Patrick. I'm keeping the child. He's too pretty. Darkness, then light LEAH (holding the child by the hand): The light is opaque; the atmosphere is heavy. It is the city of wills-o'-the-wisp. And those people, those black phantoms. It is all very disturbing. (She runs.) There! I've got one! It's Mussolini. MUSSOLINI: Well! It's obvious you've never had a child before. You're run­ ning like a madwoman, running as though you were alone, and you're dragging the brat on the floor. LEAH: Yes, you're right. I'd forgotten him. I was holding him by the hand. But, first, please call me "Madame." I can't stand disrespect. MUSSOLINI: There she goes again! Mussolini, the child, and the dogs begin to weep. LEAH: What's wrong with you? Why are you crying? MUSSOLINI: Ah, I don't hold it against you. (Taking the child's black shoes from his pocket.) Here, put his old shoes, his black shoes, back on him. Someday he may be able to race along with you. But just now he needed them. LEAH: Oh, my God! If I could only change my heart! (She throws away the blue shoes and places the black ones on the child's feet) And the hair falling straight down over his forehead—where are his lovely blond curls? MUSSOLINI: Yes, he had on a wig. Leah begins to walk rapidly around the stage holding the child by the hand and saying: LEAH: Oh—it's true! Now he runs as fast as I, he runs as fast as I, he runs as fast as I. (She stops and takes the child into her arms.) My little one, my little one, now we will never part again. You will have no more wigs. And so that you may pass unrecognized I will dye your hair black. Exit Leah followed by the dogs. Mussolini sits down and holds his head in his hands. The curtain slowly falls. END OF THE FOURTH TABLEAU AND OF THE SECOND ACT

ACT III FIFTH TABLEAU

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The stage represents a hotel lobby at midnight. As the curtain rises, a clock is heard to strike, bells ring, there are footsteps and shouts on the stairs. The elevator filled with lodgers goes up and down at full speed. People in evening gowns, evening dress, shirtsleeves, and so on. SEVERAL VOICES: —It's number 53. —It's on the fourth. —On the fourth. —53? —A woman. —Do they know who she is? —She's living alone. —She's an actress. —An American. —A housewife. —A prostitute. —The poor woman; what's wrong with her? —She's gone mad. —There's noth­ ing wrong with her. —She's hysterical. —She's wrecking everything. —She's wrecking the furniture. —She's breaking the windows. —She's about to set fire to the whole building. ONE LOUDER VOICE (from above): We can't get it open. Will you open up? (A pause.) No? (A pause.) Break down the door. A loud cry, followed by absolute silence. The elevator comes down. Leah, her hands dripping blood, her white dress in tatters, is in it between Two Policemen. Jostling on the stairs as the lodgers rush down to watch. FIRST POLICEMAN (to the Manager): What's her name? THE MANAGER: We don't know. Here we call her Madame Leah. SECOND POLICEMAN: Hasn't she filled in a police form? THE MANAGER: Police matters are your concern. FIRST POLICEMAN: That's right. In that case, Madame Leah—since Madame Leah it is—kindly follow us. LEAH (exaltedly): I will follow you to the ends of the earth, to the ends of the earth. (Bursts of laughter.) SECOND POLICEMAN: Either she's crazy or she's drunk. Do you know if she has any vices, sir? THE MANAGER: I've been trying to tell you that I don't know her at all. FIRST POLICEMAN: That's no answer. Couldn't she be injecting herself or inhaling drugs? THE MANAGER (to Leah): Do you inject yourself? Do you inhale drugs? LEAH: I neither inject myself nor do I inhale drugs. FIRST POLICEMAN (to the lodgers): Does anyone here know Madame Leah? Is there someone here who can tell us anything about her? ALL: Madame Leah? Madame Leah? Madame Leah? . .. FIRST POLICEMAN: Now, then, what has she done, this Madame Leah? THE MANAGER: She smashed the wardrobe. She made a shambles of the bathroom. She strangled the goldfish in their tank. She set fire to the curtains in her room. That's what she's done, this Madame Leah. She'll have to pay for it too, this Madame Leah.

Did you hear what he said, Madame? You will admit these facts, I assume? LEAH (to the Manager): I did not come here, sir, to occupy a number, not even Number 53. You say I smashed the wardrobe: Patrick had promised to take me to the pole. Did he do it? You say I made a shambles of the bathroom? Patrick had promised me some stars which he had made himself. You press on a coiled spring: you're supposed to see the sea, the trees, and the clouds. What did I see? You say I strangled the goldfish in their tank? I sold all I could of Saint Patrick's body. The rest had gone on a trip. Has the rest come back? If it has, why hasn't someone told me? I will build you artificial grottoes at my own expense and I will buy you clocks made of silk and human flesh. And I will stock your holy-water pond in which carp and Holy Sacraments will swim. As for your curtains, sir, I set them ablaze to please you. Marlborough, Marlborough died in the wars. It's only right that you should resurrect his mouth on the balcony of your hotel. I did what I could to open his eyes. But your walls are of iron, sir, your walls have nickel pupils. They have stripped off the flesh from my insect hands, my little Frenchwoman's frogs.

FIRST POLICEMAN:

Charming! Mad? Charming! Mad, but charming. The lodgers slowly withdraw. THE MANAGER: Ladies and gentlemen, kindly, I beseech you, return to your apartments. May I ask that you be a little discreet? I myself am mortified by this scandal. Happily, it's all over. All's well that ends well, isn't that right, gentlemen? Good night, ladies. (To the Policemen.) See what you can do with her. No more scenes, right? I don't want to make an issue of this. I just want to be left in peace. Good night. FIRST POLICEMAN: Madame Leah, please come with us. SECOND POLICEMAN: Come with us. LEAH: Officers! (Pointing to the door.) Look at that door. SEVERAL VOICES:

FIRST POLICEMAN: So what? SECOND POLICEMAN: I see it.

It's about to open. It must open. FIRST POLICEMAN: That's right, it must open. I'm going to open it myself right away. LEAH (sadly): Don't trouble yourself, Officer. It will open by itself. The door opens by itself. Just look at the power of words. POLICEMEN (together): What about the power of words? LEAH: You'll see. Say the word "light." POLICEMEN (together): Light. LEAH (disconcerted): Now you have followed the light. Not a thing changed. The light keeps shining. It keeps shining all by itself. LEAH:

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The Policemen shrug their shoulders. And now, say: "the night." POLICEMEN (together): Let's humor her. The night. LEAH: It's waiting for you, just as your shadows wait for you to follow you. The night gets along without us. It passes all by itself. But I, I say, I am going to say, that I carry him . . . and he passes . . . as though molded by my throat and sprung from my mouth: "Patrick." Enter Patrick. The Policemen flee in terror. Ah! Patrick, what joy! They kiss. PATRICK: Weren't you still waiting for me? Were you still waiting for me? LEAH: I was hardly waiting for you at all. Still, yesterday while I was eating strawberries, I said to myself: "Will I ever see the cream on the table again? Patrick in his place?" And I took some sugar. PATRICK: And you took some sugar? LEAH: I took some. Ah! All that sugar I wasted! PATRICK: And the house? LEAH: Now it's in the hands of the electricians. Clap of thunder. PATRICK: What is that sound? LEAH: It's thunder.

But the sky is like lead. LEAH: Today is Corpus Christi day. PATRICK: Today is Corpus Christi day. Enter some Children. FIRST CHILD: Mr. Patrick, what did you bring in your shoes? PATRICK: Elephants beneath the palms. SECOND CHILD: And that lion looking at us? PATRICK: That, my boy, is liberty. THIRD CHILD: And the automobile, is it for us? PATRICK: It's unbreakable and deep. PATRICK:

FIRST CHILD: Are you giving us any new scents?

Take these birds. SECOND CHILD: Give us something more. PATRICK: Leah, don't you have anything for these children? LEAH: Children, leave your father alone. THE CHILDREN: But Patrick isn't our father! PATRICK: Who is your father, then, children? FIRST CHILD: Mine is the bakery's horse. SECOND CHILD: Mine is my mother's sewing machine. PATRICK:

PATRICK (to the Third Child): And who is yours? THIRD CHILD: My father, Mr. Patrick? Rather say my son who is off fighting the Arabs. He has a large face like an apple tart and giant's ears. My son's beard grows in his wallet and he has eyes in all his pockets. They say he's quite a character. But, then, what don't they say? Isn't that right, Mr. Patrick? They also say you buy Negresses to make grape preserves and that you sell the leavings to the goldsmiths. Such a disgusting trade fairly makes me retch. My son will never get over it when he finds out. He's a good friend of Leah's, isn't he, my girl? This is what he said to me before he went away: "Be happy, little father! Leah is the finest of the finest, and it won't be long before Patrick smashes the terrace of the house against her face." I didn't say anything to such nonsense. Leah forbids me to talk about it, but she thinks a lot of characters like me. Isn't that right, children? THE CHILDREN (together): Yes, sir. Long live the colonel's father! PATRICK: Ah! sir! Your son is a colonel? THIRD CHILD: We've been knocking ourselves out repeating it. My son is a colonel of Zouaves. PATRICK: Go on, dear child, assemble your troops and leave me in peace. THIRD CHILD: By my command! Fall in! The Children line up side by side. The colonels father pulls a revolver from his pocket and kills them point-blank. Write that down in your hunting record, Mr. Patrick! PATRICK: Oh, my son, my son! Think of the future of our line! Come here and let me decorate and embrace you properly. THIRD CHILD: What do you want, Papa? I was the father of a colonel of Zouaves by accident, but I'll always be a child of love. Clap of thunder. PATRICK: Begin reading the proclamation. LEAH: My God, you've given me the breasts of a cow—give me today the crested helmet of rebellion, for Patrick and my child have forsaken me. Clap of thunder. THIRD CHILD: Rise, Madame. Your Patrick has lost nothing in his travels. The Nile flows through many lands, and I was my family's joy before the age of reason. Give thanks to your son while you accept mine. If Patrick had met the colonel of Zouaves, he would have lacked for nothing. He would have been restored to you a eunuch, Leah. And my father would today have that bayonet-like voice which is the sign of imminent genius. LEAH: Thank you, little one. You speak like a book. THIRD CHILD: Mother, books don't speak. PATRICK: What do they do, my son? THIRD CHILD: They read. Clap of thunder.

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Oh, my dear, what big teeth you have! The better to rock you with, my child. PATRICK: Well, then, let's go to sleep. LEAH: No, I want you to tell me a story. PATRICK: Well, then, Fll tell you one. It will be the last. The factory chimneys are harvested at the end of November. First they are polished by being rolled in sand. They come out smooth and bright after that operation. Some are set aside for reproduction, on the right; the others are placed on the left. The latter are divided into two parts. One part is for arma­ ments. Cannons are made from them. The rest are sold at auction. These are therefore scattered. But as they change hands, they wear out, and soon nothing is left of these former factory chimneys. All that remains is the factories and the cannons. Then the cannons are aimed at the facto­ ries. A cannon is given away to every lady who asks for one, so that finally not a single cannon remains. LEAH: And, dear Patrick, what do the ladies do with all those cannons? PATRICK: My dear, you don't have to believe me—but they eat them. LEAH: It's not true. Enter the Author. THE AUTHOR: Hey there! Patrick! LEAH: Who are you? PATRICK: He's the Author. THE AUTHOR: Do you need me? PATRICK: No, thank you. THE AUTHOR (handing him a revolver): Here, take this; you'll need it.

PATRICK:

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PATRICK: LEAH:

PATRICK: You're

right. (He fires at the Author.) THE AUTHOR: It's no use, my dear Patrick! Those bullets can't penetrate me. And it's a shame! PATRICK: Well, then, keep the thing. I have no use for it. THE AUTHOR: Please. If you won't do it for me, then do it for the sake of the drama you are enacting. I assure you that a shot at the end of the play is absolutely necessary for the development of the plot. PATRICK: Do you think so? THE AUTHOR: I'm sure of it. PATRICK: Then I will obey you. Good-bye, sir. THE AUTHOR: Farewell, Patrick. LEAH (to the Author): Tell me something. THE AUTHOR: Madame?

Aren't you going to give me anything? That's a reasonable question. Take this. (He hands her another revolver.) LEAH: Is it loaded, at least? (To Patrick.) I'm sure you haven't examined your weapon. THE AUTHOR: Have no fear; they are both suitably provided [equipped]. LEAH (to Patrick): Don't you think the gentleman takes after Dovic a little? PATRICK: The gentleman has all his parts properly in place. That's enough, Leah. THE AUTHOR: You should make allowances, Patrick. Leah is a woman. PATRICK: What did you say? THE AUTHOR: I said: Leah is a woman. PATRICK: I'm a woman too, then. What would you say to that? THE AUTHOR: What I say is this: I know more about it than you do, but I must say I didn't think you'd turn out so well. PATRICK: See how white my skin is. THE AUTHOR: That wouldn't prove very much. PATRICK: It wouldn't prove anything, actually, if it were not for the perpetual snows. The perpetual snows, sir, if you care to know, have taught me to see clearly into this. The mountains, it is true, did somewhat disturb me. But do you know what I did with the mountains? THE AUTHOR: What did you do with the mountains? PATRICK: I turned them into men. THE AUTHOR: Your words make everything impossible, my friend. PATRICK: Well, then, write plays without words. THE AUTHOR: Did I ever intend to do otherwise? PATRICK: Yes, you put words of love into my mouth. LEAH:

THE AUTHOR:

You should have spat them out. I tried to, but they turned into gunshots or dizzy spells. THE AUTHOR: That's hardly my fault. Life is like that. PATRICK: Leave life alone, then, and increase the size of your brain. THE AUTHOR: Without fail. PATRICK: When it gives birth, save a little brain for me. THE AUTHOR: You can count on me. PATRICK: I can really do without it, but it will amuse Leah's child. THE AUTHOR: Don't you have anything else to ask me?

THE AUTHOR: PATRICK:

PATRICK: N o .

May I ask you for something too? THE AUTHOR: If you don't ask for too much. LEAH: Then give us two little brains. One for the child and the other for me. THE AUTHOR: For you? LEAH: Yes, that will give me three. THE AUTHOR: How is that? LEAH:

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LEAH: Mine, Patrick's, and yours. (hastily): Count on me, count on me. (To Patrick, in low tones.) One bit of good advice, my friend; use that thing you're holding. Your future depends on it. (He runs away.) PATRICK: Where are you running off to? Where are you running off to? THE AUTHOR: I'm going to give birth. Good night. A long pause. Patrick and Leah look at each other. PATRICK: Ah, Leah, there's still love! LEAH: Love worn down to the bare rope, and the rope to hang yourself. Love: the secret work of wear. There's just you, Patrick. PATRICK: Me, let's talk about it! Me, a little cork of marrow bobbing on a string. There's you, Leah. LEAH: Ah, Patrick: the beautiful architecture of wrath! I would be quite willing to live on roses: they have a flowery odor. I need coal and bedsheets. There is pain, Patrick. PATRICK: Pain? A burning drop of oil engendering a body. The curving of the earth is the pain of the world, as the tongue is the pain of thought, as the isthmus of the neck is the pain of the body and, when it is sliced through, the most painful criminals are severed from life. Pain? The great genesis. But there is kindness, Leah. LEAH: Kindness? No, Patrick. Kindness, a gift at the end of a rubber band, the flabby malady of death. Fat cheeks and overburdened knees. Don't try to touch me with that. The trained-dog factory. But there is forgiveness, Patrick.

THE AUTHOR

Forgiveness, like the sun. Forgiveness, like returning. Forgiveness, like a boomerang. Forgiveness, like births. Forgiveness, like the seasons. Forgiveness, without any ill feelings. LEAH: There is death. PATRICK: Yes, death. But death like forgiveness. Like snow on the mountain. Forgiveness, like fire you slice with a knife. Forgiveness, like the water houses are made of. Forgiveness, like the murderer other crimes are made of. Forgiveness, like the living other dead are made of. Forgiveness, like the secret the storms are made of. Forgiveness, like the horse fortunes are made of. Forgiveness, like the old man the clouds are made of. Forgiveness, like me, whom I am making a criminal of. Forgiveness, like you whom I am making a deadly acid of. The heart is red already. Flow. Leah. Hands on the copper of shadows. The heart is red already as far as the end of the theater, where someone is about to die.

PATRICK:

LEAH: Enough, Patrick! (She fires a shot) PATRICK: What have you done, Leah? What have you done? YouVe just killed a spectator. END OF THE FIFTH TABLEAU AND THE THIRD ACT

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^ ^ ndre Breton, poet, novelist, playwright, theorist, and editor, ^ ^ H was born on February 18, 1896, in Tinchebroy (Orne), ^ ^ # France. Although he never practiced medicine, Breton attended medical school, and his study of mental illness and his exposure IQJP^ to the writings of Sigmund Freud fueled his interest in dreams. The earliest influence on Breton's poetry was Symbolism, particularly the poetry of Paul Valery and Arthur Rimbaud. By 1916 he had joined the Dada movement, and although he was a follower of Tzara, Breton contributed to the demise of Dada when in 1924 he and Jacques Vache founded Surrealism as a movement. The Magnetic Fields (1919), on which Breton collaborated with Philippe Soupault, is generally regarded as the first genuine Surrealist work, and their subsequent play, If You Please (1920), remains one of the earliest and best examples of "automatic writing," a technique the Surrealists developed to help them bypass their brains' logical functions. As editor of the magazine Litterature, Breton became the official leader of the Surrealist movement. He published three theoretical documents central to the development of Surrealism: First Surrealist Manifesto (1924), Second Surrealist Manifesto (1930), and What Is Surrealism? (1934). In the first, he defined Surreal­ ism as "pure psychic automatism" and stated Surrealism's central goal: to bridge the gap between the waking moments of reality and the dream state of sleep. He moreover advocated the denial of logic and even morality in the creation of art. Later, communism became the central focus of the Surrealists' agenda—until 1935, that is, when Breton broke with this political movement. He remained a Marxist and Surrealist, however, and while he was in exile in New York during World War II introduced Surrealism as an influence on American art. He died on September 28, 1966, in Paris.

First Surrealist Manifesto Andre Breton

We are still living under the reign of logic, but the logical processes of our time apply only to the solution of problems of secondary interest. The abso­ lute rationalism which remains in fashion allows for the consideration of only those facts narrowly relevant to our experience. Logical conclusions, on the other hand, escape us. Needless to say, boundaries have been assigned even to experience. It revolves in a cage from which release is becoming increasingly difficult. It too depends upon immediate utility and is guarded by common sense. In the guise of civilization, under the pretext of progress, we have succeeded in dismissing from our minds anything that, rightly or wrongly, could be regarded as superstition or myth; and we have proscribed every way of seeking the truth which does not conform to convention. It would appear that it is by sheer chance that an aspect of intellectual life— and by far the most important, in my opinion—about which no one was supposed to be concerned any longer has, recently, been brought back to light. Credit for this must go to Freud. On the evidence of his discoveries a current of opinion is at last developing which will enable the explorer of the human mind to extend his investigations, since he will be empowered to deal with more than merely summary realities. Perhaps the imagination is on the verge of recovering its rights. If the depths of our minds conceal strange forces capable of augmenting or conquering those on the surface, it is in our greatest interest to capture them; first to capture them and later to submit them, should the occasion arise, to the control of reason. The ana­ lysts themselves can only gain by this. But it is important to note that there is Excerpt reprinted from Avant-Garde Drama: A Casebook, ed. Bernard F. Dukore and Daniel C. Gerould; trans. Patrick Waldberg (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976), 563-72.

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no method fixed a priori for the execution of this enterprise, that until the new order it can be considered the province of poets as well as scholars, and that its success does not depend upon the more or less capricious routes which will be followed. It was only fitting that Freud should appear with his critique on the dream. In fact, it is incredible that this important part of psychic activity has still attracted so little attention. (For, at least from man's birth to his death, thought presents no solution of continuity; the sum of dreaming m o m e n t s even taking into consideration pure dream alone, that of sleep—is from the point of view of time no less than the sum of moments of reality, which we shall confine to waking moments.) I have always been astounded by the extreme disproportion in the importance and seriousness assigned to events of the waking moments and to those of sleep by the ordinary observer. Man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all at the mercy of his memory, and the memory normally delights in feebly retracing the circumstance of the dream for him, depriving it of all actual consequence and obliterating the only determinant from the point at which he thinks he abandoned this constant hope, this anxiety, a few hours earlier. He has the illusion of continuing something worthwhile. The dream finds itself relegated to a parenthesis, like the night. And in general it gives no more counsel than the night. This singular state of affairs seems to invite a few reflections: 1. Within the limits to which its performance is restricted (or what passes for performance), the dream, according to all outward appearances, is con­ tinuous and bears traces of organization. Only memory claims the right to edit it, to suppress transitions and present us with a series of dreams rather than the dream. Similarly, at no given instant do we have more than a distinct representation of realities whose coordination is a matter of will.* It is impor­ tant to note that nothing leads to a greater dissipation of the constituent elements of the dream. I regret discussing this according to a formula which in principle excludes the dream. For how long, sleeping logicians, philoso­ phers? I would like to sleep in order to enable myself to surrender to sleepers, as I surrender to those who read me with their eyes open, in order to stop the conscious rhythm of my thought from prevailing over this material. Perhaps my dream of last night was a continuation of the preceding night's, and will be continued tonight with an admirable precision. It could be, as they say. And as it is in no way proven that, in such a case, the "reality" with which I am concerned even exists in the dream state, or that it does not sink into the immemorial, then why should I not concede to the dream what I sometimes refuse to reality—that weight of self-assurance which by its own terms is not exposed to my denial? Why should I not expect more of the dream sign than * We must take into consideration the thickness of the dream. I usually retain only that which comes from the most superficial layers. What I prefer to visualize in it is everything that sinks at the awakening, everything that is not left to me of the function of that preceding day, dark foliage, absurd branches. In "reality," too, I prefer to fall

I do of a daily increasing degree of consciousness? Could not the dreams as well be applied to the solution of life's fundamental problems? Are these problems the same in one case as in the other, and do they already exist in the dream? Is the dream less oppressed by sanctions than the rest? I am growing old and, perhaps more than this reality to which I believe myself confined, it is the dream, and the detachment that I owe to it, which is aging me. 2.1 return to the waking state. I am obliged to retain it as a phenomenon of interference. Not only does the mind show a strange tendency to disorientation under these conditions (this is the clue to slips of the tongue and lapses of all kinds whose secret is just beginning to be surrendered to us), but when functioning normally the mind still seems to obey none other than those suggestions which rise from that deep night I am commending. Sound as it may be, its equilibrium is relative. The mind hardly dares express itself and, when it does, is limited to stating that this idea or that woman has an effect on it What effect it cannot say; thus it gives the measure of its subjectivism and nothing more. The idea, the woman, disturbs it, disposes it to less severity. Their role is to isolate one second of its disappearance and remove it to the sky in that glorious acceleration that it can be, that it is. Then, as a last resort, the mind invokes chance—a more obscure divinity than the others— to whom it attributes all its aberrations. Who says that the angle from which that idea is presented which affects the mind, as well as what the mind loves in that woman's eye, is not precisely the same thing that attracts the mind to its dream and reunites it with data lost through its own error? And if things were otherwise, of what might the mind not be capable? I should like to present it with the key to that passage. 3. The mind of the dreaming man is fully satisfied with whatever hap­ pens to it. The agonizing question of possibility does not arise. Kill, plunder more quickly, love as much as you wish. And if you die, are you not sure of being roused from the dead? Let yourself be led. Events will not tolerate deferment. You have no name. Everything is inestimably easy. What power, I wonder, what power so much more generous than others confers this natural aspect upon the dream and makes me welcome unre­ servedly a throng of episodes whose strangeness would overwhelm me if they were happening as I write this? And yet I can believe it with my own eyes, my own ears. That great day has come, that beast has spoken. If man's awakening is harsher, if he breaks the spell too well, it is because he has been led to form a poor idea of expiation. 4. When the time comes when we can submit the dream to a methodical examination, when by methods yet to be determined we succeed in realizing the dream in its entirety (and that implies a memory discipline measurable in generations, but we can still begin by recording salient facts), when the dream's curve is developed with an unequaled breadth and regularity, then we can hope that mysteries which are not really mysteries will give way to

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the great Mystery. I believe in the future resolution of these two states— outwardly so contradictory—which are dream and reality, into a sort of abso­ lute reality, a surreality, so to speak. I am aiming for its conquest, certain that I myself shall not attain it, but too indifferent to my death not to calculate the joys of such possession. They say that not long ago, just before he went to sleep, Saint-Pol-Roux placed a placard on the door of his manor at Camaret which read: THE POET WORKS.

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There is still a great deal to say, but I did want to touch lightly, in passing, upon a subject which in itself would require a very long exposition with a different precision. I shall return to it. For the time being my intention has been to see that justice was done to that hatred of the marvelous which rages in certain men, that ridicule under which they would like to crush it. Let us resolve, therefore: the Marvelous is always beautiful, everything marvelous is beautiful. Nothing but the Marvelous is beautiful. . . . One night, before falling asleep, I became aware of a most bizarre sentence, clearly articulated to the point where it was impossible to change a word of it, but still separate from the sound of any voice. It came to me bearing no trace of the events with which I was involved at that time, at least to my conscious knowledge. It seemed to me a highly insistent sentence—a sentence, I might say, which knocked at the window. I quickly took note of it and was prepared to disregard it when something about its whole character held me back. The sentence truly astounded me. Unfortunately I still cannot remember the exact words to this day, but it was something like: 'A man is cut in half by the window'; but it can only suffer from ambiguity, accom­ panied as it was by the feeble visual representation of a walking man cut in half by a window perpendicular to the axis of his body. * It was probably a simple matter of a man leaning on the window and then straightening up. But the window followed the movements of the man, and I realized that I was dealing with a very rare type of image. Immediately I had the idea of incorporating it into my poetic material, but no sooner had I invested it with poetic form than it went on to give way to a scarcely intermittent succession of sentences which surprised me no less than the first and gave me the impression of such a free gift that the control which I had had over myself up * Had I been a painter, this visual representation would undoubtedly have dominated the other. It is certainly my previous disposition which decided it. Since that day I have had occasion to con­ centrate my attention voluntarily on similar apparitions, and I know that they are not inferior in clar­ ity to auditory phenomena. Armed with a pencil and a blank sheet of paper, it would be easy for me to follow its contours. This is because here again it is not a matter of drawing, it is only a matter of tracing. I would be able to draw quite well a tree, a wave, a musical instrument—all things of which I am incapable of furnishing the briefest sketch at this time. Sure of finding my way, I would plunge into a labyrinth of lines which at first would not seem to contribute to anything. And upon opening my eyes I would experience a very strong impression ofjamais vi/." What I am saying has been proved many times by Robert Desnos. To be convinced of this, one has only to thumb through No. 36 oiFeuilles Libres, which contains several of his drawings (Romeo and Juliet, A Man Died This Morning, etc.). They were taken by this review as drawings of the insane and innocently published as such.

to that point seemed illusory and I no longer thought of anything but how to put an end to the interminable quarrel which was taking place within me.* Totally involved as I was at the time with Freud, and familiar with his methods of examination, which I had had some occasion to practice on the sick during the war, I resolved to obtain from myself what one seeks to obtain from a patient—a spoken monologue uttered as rapidly as possible, over which the critical faculty of the subject has no control, unencumbered by any reticence, which is spoken thought as far as such a thing is possible. It seemed to me, and still does—the manner in which the sentence about the man cut in two came to me proves it—that the speed of thought is no greater than that of words, and that it does not necessarily defy language or the moving pen. It was with this in mind that Philippe Soupault (with whom I had shared these first conclusions) and I undertook to cover some paper with writing, with a laudable contempt for what might result in terms of literature. The ease of realization did the rest. At the end of the first day we were able to read to each other around fifty pages obtained by this method, and began to compare our results. Altogether, those of Soupault and my own presented a remarkable similarity, even including the same faults in construction: in both cases there was the illusion of an extraordinary verve, a great deal of emotion, a considerable assortment of images of a quality such as we would never have b e e n capable of achieving in ordinary writing, a very vivid graphic quality, and here and there an acutely comic passage. T h e only difference between our texts seemed to m e essentially due to our respective natures (Soupault's is less static than mine) and, if I may hazard a slight criticism, due to the fact that he had m a d e the mistake of distributing a few words in the way of titles at the head of certain pages—no doubt in the spirit of mystification. O n the other hand, I must give h i m credit for maintaining his steadfast opposition to the slightest alteration in the course of any passage * Knut Hamsun attributes the kind of revelation by which I have just been possessed to hunger, and he may well be right. (The fact is that I was not eating every day at that period.) Unquestionably the manifestations that he describes below are the same as mine: The next day I awoke early. It was still dark. My eyes had been open for a long time when I heard the clock in the flat overhead sound five o'clock. I wanted to go back to sleep, but had no success. I was completely awake and a thousand things ran through my mind. All of a sudden several good pieces came to me, just right for use in a sketch or article. I found abruptly, and by chance, very beautiful phrases, phrases such as I had never written. I repeated them to myself slowly, word for word: they were excellent. And they kept coming. I rose and took a piece of paper and pencil to the desk behind my bed. It was as though a vein had burst in me, one word followed another, set itself in place, adapted itself to the situation, scenes accumulated, action unfolded, replies surged in my brain. I enjoyed myself prodi­ giously. Thoughts came to me so rapidly and continued to flow so abundantly that I lost a multitude of delicate details because my pencil could not go fast enough, and even then I was hurrying, my hand was always moving. I didn't lose a minute. Sentences continued to be driven from me, I was at the heart of my subject. Apollinaire affirmed that Chirico's paintings had been executed under the influence of cenesthesiac pains (migraines, colic).

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which seemed to me rather badly put. He was completely right on this point, of course.* In fact, it is very difficult to appreciate the full value of the various elements when confronted by them. It can even be said to be impossible to appreciate them at the first reading. These elements are outwardly as strange to you who have written them as to anyone else, and you are naturally distrust­ ful of them. Poetically speaking, they are especially endowed with a very high degree of immediate absurdity. The peculiarity of this absurdity, on closer examination, comes from their capitulation to everything—both inad­ missible and legitimate—in the world, to produce a revelation of a certain number of premises and facts generally no less objective than any others. In homage to Guillaume Apollinaire—who died recently, and who ap­ pears to have consistently obeyed an impulse similar to ours without ever really sacrificing mediocre literary means—Soupault and I used the name SURREALISM to designate the new mode of pure expression which we had at our disposal and with which we were anxious to benefit our friends. Today I do not believe anything more need be said about this word. The meaning which we have given it has generally prevailed over Apollinaire's meaning. With even more justification we could have used supernaturalism, employed by Gerard de Nerval in the dedication of filles du feu. f In fact, Nerval appears to have possessed to an admirable extent the spirit to which we refer. Apollinaire, on the other hand, possessed only the letter of Surrealism (which was still imperfect) and showed himself powerless to give it the theoretical insight that engages us. Here are two passages by Nerval which appear most significant in this regard: I will explain to you, my dear Dumas, the phenomenon of which you spoke above. As you know, there are certain storytellers who cannot invent without identifying themselves with the characters from their imagination. You know with what conviction our old friend Nodier told how he had had the misfortune to be guillotined at the time of the Revolution; one became so convinced that one wondered how he had managed to stick his head back on. And since you have had the imprudence to cite one of the sonnets composed in this state of supernaturalist reverie, as the Germans would say, you must hear all of them. You will find them at the end of the volume. They are hardly more obscure than Hegel's metaphysics or Swedenborg's MEMORABLES, and would lose their charm in explication, if such a thing were possible, so concede me at least the merit of their expression.! * I believe increasingly in the infallibility of my thought in regard to myself, and it is too accurate. Nevertheless, in this writing down of thoughts, where one is at the mercy of the first exterior distraction, "transports" can be produced. It would be inexcusable to seek to ignore them. By definition, thought is strong and incapable of being at fault. We must attribute those obvious weaknesses to suggestions which come from outside. t And also by Thomas Carlyle in Sartor Resartus (chap. 8, "Natural Supernaturalism"), 1833-34. + See also L'IDEOREALISME by Saint-Pol-Roux.

It would be dishonest to dispute our right to employ the word SURREAL­ ISM in the very particular sense in which we intend it, for it is clear that before we came along this word amounted to nothing. Thus I shall define it once and for all: Surrealism, noun, masc, Pure psychic automatism by which it is in­ tended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations. Encycl. Philos. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association heretofore neglected, in the omnipotence of the dream, and in the disinterested play of thought. It leads to the permanent destruction of all other psychic mechanisms and to its substitution for them in the solution of the principal problems of life. The forms of Surrealist language adapt themselves best to dialogue. Here, two thoughts confront each other; while one is being delivered, the other is busy with it; but how is it busy with it? To assume that it incorporates it within itself would be tantamount to admitting that there is a time during which it is possible for it to live completely off that other thought, which is highly unlikely. And, in fact, the attention it pays is completely exterior; it has only time enough to approve or reject—generally reject—with all the consideration of which man is capable. This mode of language, moreover, does not allow the heart of the matter to be plumbed. My attention, prey to an entreaty which it cannot in all decency reject, treats the opposing thought as an enemy; in ordinary conversation, it "takes it up" almost always on the words, the figures of speech, it employs; it puts me in a position to turn it to good advantage in my reply by distorting them. This is true to such a degree that in certain pathological states of mind, where sensory disorders occupy the patient's complete attention, he limits himself, while continuing to an­ swer the questions, to seizing the last word spoken in his presence or the last portion of the Surrealist sentence some trace of which he finds in his mind. Q. "How old are you?" A. "You." (Echolalia.) Q. "What is your name?" A. "Forty-five houses." (Gamer syndrome, or beside-the-point replies.) There is no conversation in which some trace of this disorder does not occur. The effort to be social which dictates it and the considerable practice we have at it are the only things which enable us to conceal it temporarily. It is also the great weakness of the book that it is in constant conflict with its best, by which I mean the most demanding, readers. In the very short di­ alogue that I concocted above between the doctor and the madman, it was in fact the madman who got the better of the exchange—because, through his replies, he obtrudes upon the attention of the doctor examining him—and

because he is not the person asking the questions. Does this mean that his thought at this point is the stronger? Perhaps. He is free not to care any longer about his age or name.

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Poetic Surrealism, which is the subject of this study, has focused its efforts up to this point on reestablishing dialogue in its absolute truth, by freeing both interlocutors from any obligations of politeness. Each of them simply pursues his soliloquy without trying to derive any special dialectical pleasure from it and without trying to impose anything whatsoever upon his neighbor. The remarks exchanged are not, as is generally the case, meant to develop some thesis, however unimportant it may be; they are as [disin­ terested] as possible. As for the reply that they elicit, it is, in principle, totally indifferent to the personal pride of the person speaking. The words, the images are only so many springboards for the mind of the listener. In Les champs magnetiques, the first purely Surrealist work, this is the way in which the pages grouped together under the title Barrieres must be conceived of— pages wherein Soupault and I show ourselves to be impartial interlocutors.

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The Theater of Cruelty

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ntonin Artaud, poet, theorist, playwright, actor, director, and designer, was born in Marseilles, France, on September 4, 1896. From 1921 to 1924, he worked as an actor for some of the most respected and influential avant-garde directors in Paris, in­ cluding Aurelien Lugne-Poe, Charles Dullin, and Georges Pitoeff (in the last case, in Georges and Ludmilla PitoefTs influential production of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author). In 1924, Artaud joined the Surrealist movement and served as director of the Bureau of Sur­ realist Research in 1925. Because of his devotion to theater, however— a theater that Andre Breton found to be too oriented toward commer­ cial production—and also because of his "unorthodox" interest in occultism, mysticism, and Oriental religion, Artaud split with the Surrealists. Along with Roger Vitrac and Robert Aron, he founded the Theatre Alfred-Jarry in Paris in 1926. For the Theatre Alfred-Jarry, he directed the premieres of Vitrac's Mysteries of Love (1927) and V7ctor, or The Children Take Over (1928), but not even the success of the latter production could save the theater, which closed after two seasons. Artaud attempted to start another theater, the Theater of Cruelty, in 1935, but its first and only production, his own The Cenci (based on works by Shelley and Stendhal), received poor reviews and closed quickly. Ultimately, Artaud influenced the avant-garde more through his theoretical writings than through his plays and productions. In The Theater and Its Double (1938), a collection of his articles, Artaud articulated his concept of a theoretical language dependent on the body rather than the word as its primary unit of expression. He coined the term "theater of cruelty" to capture his vision of theater, in which a visceral attack on the senses would be used to confront what Artaud saw as a diseased society. The plays he wrote during the 1920s—The Spurt of Blood (1925), The Philosopher's Stone (1926), and The Burnt Belly, or The Crazy Mother (1927)—are all characterized by violent images in disconnected

sequences that defy ordinary logic. Artaud's theories were heavily influenced by the physical style of a Balinese dance company he saw at the Colonial Exposition of 1931 in Paris, as well as by his own battles with psychosis. He was first institutionalized at the age of eighteen and then confined to sanatoriums from 1937 to 1946. He died of cancer in Ivry-sur-Seine on March 4, 1948, yet his writings and dramatic vision exerted a powerful influence on avant-garde the­ ater, including the work of Adamov, Genet, Arrabal, lonesco, Beckett, Grotowski, the Living Theater, and Peter Brook, for the rest of the century. >■

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Artaud's Theater of Cruelty and The Spurt of Blood u-^—, ^ ^ rtaud's revolutionary ideas took written shape in the 1930s, lu^^ ^^m when he wrote the essays later collected in The Theater and Its ng^ ^^0 Double. To realize his theatrical aims, he founded the Theater ^^^ of Cruelty in 1935. Its only production was The Cenci, a tale of incest D ^ F * and murder, based on Stendhal's story and Shelley's tragedy—the only full-length play Artaud wrote. With musique concrete plus frenzied shouting and ritualistic chanting by the actors, including himself as Count Cenci, the production—also directed by Artaud—was badly received (possibly owing to philistine incomprehension), lasted just seventeen days, ruined him financially, led him to despair, and probably exacerbated his insanity. As his cruel theater ultimately would have been, Artaud's impassioned essays in The Theater and Its Double are a jeremiad against the traditional theater. To Artaud, the idolatry of masterpieces is an act of bourgeois conformism. "No More Masterpieces!" he cries. Valid for the past, they have nothing to say to the present, and their forms "no longer respond to the needs of the time." Instead of subordinating theatrical elements to the text, Artaud would either get rid of the text or else subjugate it to theatrical language (such as movement, lighting, scenery, and sound). Anxious to put an end to the dominance of the spoken word, he wants "a language halfway between gesture and thought," a language addressed not to the spectator's mind but to the senses. It would express what is "beyond the reach of the spoken language." To Artaud, theater should not be an intellectual experience but should "shake the organism to its foundations and leave an ineffaceable scar." In his theater, "violent physical images [would] crush and hypnotize the sensibility of the spectator^]," assaulting them with sensual, theatrical means. Neither reas­ suring nor restful, discursive nor detached, Artaud's theater aims at disturbing the senses, pushing the audience's experience to new extremes, revealing our cultural hypocrisies, and releasing subconscious as well as anarchic impulses. In these respects, he says, it resembles the plague, which is likewise "a delirium and is communicative." Like the plague, theater "is the revelation, the bringing forth, the exteriorization of a depth of latent cruelty by means of which all the per­ verse possibilities of the mind, whether of an individual or a people, are lo­ calized." Artaud's proposed theater is one of cruelty, by which he does not mean decapitation, dismemberment, or assault with knife and meat cleaver, but rather the cruelty of existence, of humans' precarious position in the universe. "We are not free," he declaims. "And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all." (Ironically, while Europe was suffering convulsions like those of the plague, while cruelty in all senses of the word lacerated civilization during World War II, he was safely incarcerated in an insane asylum.) Artaud, then, sought total theater. Demolishing the traditional barrier beBy Bert Cardullo. Published here for the first time.

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tween stage and spectator, he would place the latter in the middle of the action. With their senses bombarded on all sides, the spectators would become part of a stage-spectator space in which there was little or no distinction between playing area and audience area. For such a theatrical event, Artaud would aban­ don the conventional theater building and, reconstructing the interior of a barn or a hangar, deploy the action all over the floor, as well as in galleries and on catwalks. Moreover, the action could occur in various parts of the room, even on various levels, at the same time. In this theater, the audience's senses would be overwhelmed by groans, shrieks, incantations, harmonic tones, apparitions, ritualistic costumes and masks, giant effigies, and swift changes of dazzling light, together with pulsating sexual rhythms. Words would be used less as language than as sounds, and noises also would figure prominently. In Artaud's radio production of his To End God's Judgment (1947)—a blasphemous and obscene but hypnotic, powerful poem about humanity, God, and the cosmos—shouts and incantations mixed with the sounds of percussion instruments. In his production plan for Strindberg's Ghost Sonata (around 1928), the steps of some characters would be muffled, those of others magnified; the voice of the Cook, to be played by a dummy, would be amplified by several loudspeakers, thus hiding its source; and the wind would blend with people's voices. Lighting would not merely illuminate but also create special effects and assault the audience's senses. In Artaud's production of The Cenci, blinding lights terrified the characters—and the specta­ tors—while unrealistic costumes vividly projected these figures' inner states. As Count Cenci, for instance, Artaud wore a tight-fitting costume upon which his chest, stomach, and leg muscles were outlined in white—as if his skin had been stripped off—a grotesque visualization of the character's grotesque, tortured soul. The Spurt of Blood—written in 1924 but not performed until forty years later in Peter Brook's London Theatre of Cruelty—can be seen in traditional, literary terms, but it can also be seen in Artaud's untraditional terms. Regarded conven­ tionally, it symbolically dramatizes such themes as the movement from inno­ cence and faith to lust and fear (the Young Man), degeneration (in place of the godliness of the body are "the little obscenities of man"), blasphemy (the Bawd's biting of God's wrist) and its consequences, the reality behind myths (the greed, brutality, and selfishness behind the idealistic image of the Knight, for instance), and the dangerous fascination of women (represented by scorpions that crawl from beneath a skirt). To regard the play only in this manner, however, is to regard an unconventional work conventionally. The Spurt of Blood is also an early example of the theater of cruelty. Employing not only language but also purely theatrical means, such as shifting tones of voice, to convey meaning, Artaud creates violent images of the cruelty of human exis­ tence in a world in which the sky bombards human beings and shakes them to their core. In a nightmarish universe in which a Young Man's exclamation that the world is beautifully built is followed by a rending of the heavens ("The sky has gone mad," he says next), Artaud presents a fantastic temporal spectrum of creation and destruction speeded up and slowed down, like a phonograph rec-

ord. Associating gluttony and lust, sex and violence, even innocence and swinish­ ness, The Spurt of Blood attacks the senses with bizarre sights and sounds as it reaches toward our subconscious impulses and fears.

Select Bibliography on Artaud Barber, Stephen. Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs. London: Faber and Faber, 1993. Bermel, Albert. "The Dreamer as Mankind: The Fountain of Blood, by Antonin Artaud." In Bermel, Contradictory Characters, 256-68. New York: Dutton, 1973. . Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, 47-54,62-64. New York: Taplinger, 1977. Cohn, Ruby. "Artaud's Jet de sang: Parody or Cruelty?" Theatre Journal 31(1979): 312-18. Costich, Julia F. Antonin Artaud. Boston: Twayne, 1978. Esslin, Martin. Artaud. London: Calder, 1976. Goodall, Jane. Artaud and the Gnostic Drama. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Greene, Naomi. Artaud: Poet Without Words. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970. Knapp, Bettina. Antonin Artaud: Man of Vision. 1969. Chicago: Swallow, 1980. Sellin, Eric. The Dramatic Concepts ofAntonin Artaud. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1968. See Ahrends; Benedikt and Wellwarth, Modern French Theatre; Finter; Hayman; Kott; Matthews, Theatre in Dado and Surrealism; Plunka; Torelli; Torn; and Wellwarth, in the General Bibliography.

T h e Spurt of Blood Antonin Artaud

CHARACTERS A YOUNG MAN A YOUNG GIRL A KNIGHT A WET-NURSE A PRIEST A COBBLER A BEADLE A BAWD A JUDGE A PEDDLER A HUGE VOICE

YOUNG MAN: I love you and everything is beautiful. YOUNG GIRL: [With quavering voice] You love me and everything is beautiful. YOUNG MAN: [In a lower tone] I love you and everything is beautiful. YOUNG GIRL: [In an even lower tone] You love me and everything is beautiful. YOUNG MAN: [Leaving her abruptly] I love you. [Silence] Face me. Reprinted from A Treasury of the Theatre, vol. 2, 4th ed., ed. John Gassner and Bernard F. Dukore; trans. Ruby Cohn (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), 705-6.

YOUNG GIRL: [As before, standing opposite him]

There. [In an exalted, high-pitched voice] I love you, I am great, I am lucid, I am full, I am dense. YOUNG GIRL: [In the same high-pitched voice] We love each other. YOUNG MAN: We are intense. Ah, how beautifully the world is built. [Silence. There is a noise as if an immense wheel were turning and moving the air. A hurricane separates them. At the same time, two stars are seen colliding, and from them fall a series of legs of living flesh, with feet, hands, scalps, masks, colonnades, porticos, temples, alembics, falling more and more slowly, as if in a vacuum; then three scorpions one after another, and finally a frog and a beetle which come to rest with desperate slowness, nauseating slowness] YOUNG MAN: [Crying with all his strength] The sky has gone mad. YOUNG MAN:

[He looks at the sky] Let's hurry away from here. [He pushes the Young Girl before him] [Enter a medieval Knight in gigantic armor, followed by a Wet-Nurse holding her breasts in her hands, and puffing because her breasts are swollen] KNIGHT: Let go of your tits. Give me my papers. WET-NURSE: [Screaming in high pitch] Ah! Ah! Ah! KNIGHT: Damn, what's the matter with you? WET-NURSE: Our daughter, there, with him. KNIGHT: Quiet, there's no girl there. WET-NURSE: I'm telling you that they're screwing. KNIGHT: What the Hell do I care if they're screwing? WET-NURSE: Incest. KNIGHT: Midwife.

[Plunging her hands deep into her pockets, which are as big as her breasts] Pimp. [She throws his papers at him]

WET-NURSE:

KNIGHT: Let me eat.

[The Wet-Nurse rushes out] [He gets up, and from each paper he takes a huge hunk of Swiss cheese. Suddenly he coughs and chokes] KNIGHT: [With full mouth] Ehp. Ehp. Show me your breasts. Show me your breasts. Where did she go? [He runs out] [The Young Man comes back] YOUNG MAN: I saw, I knew, I understood. Here on a public street, the priest,

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the cobbler, the peddler, the entrance to the church, the red light of the brothel, the scales of justice. I can't stand it any longer! [Like shadows, a Priest, a Cobbler, a Beadle, a Bawd, a Judge, a Peddler, arrive on stage] YOUNG MAN: IVe lost her; give her back to me. ALL: [In different tones] Who, who, who, who? YOUNG MAN: My wife.

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[Very fat] Your wife, you're kidding! YOUNG MAN: Kidding! Maybe she's yours! BEADLE: [Tapping his forehead] Maybe she is. [He runs out] [The Priest leaves the group and puts his arm around the neck of the Young Man] PRIEST: [As if confessing someone] To what part of your body do you refer most often?

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N o More Masterpieces Antonin Artaud

One of the reasons for the asphyxiating atmosphere in which we live without possible escape or remedy—and in which we all share, even the most revolu­ tionary among us—is our respect for what has been written, formulated, or painted, what has been given form, as if all expression were not at last exhausted, were not at a point where things must break apart if they are to start anew and begin fresh. We must have done with this idea of masterpieces reserved for a selfstyled elite and not understood by the general public; the mind has no such restricted districts as those so often used for clandestine sexual encounters. Masterpieces of the past are good for the past: they are not good for us. We have the right to say what has been said and even what has not been said in a way that belongs to us, a way that is immediate and direct, corresponding to present modes of feeling, and understandable to everyone. It is idiotic to reproach the masses for having no sense of the sublime, when the sublime is confused with one or another of its formal manifesta­ tions, which are moreover always defunct manifestations. And if, for exam­ ple, a contemporary public does not understand Oedipus Rex, I shall make bold to say that it is the fault of Oedipus Rex and not of the public. In Oedipus Rex there is the theme of incest and the idea that nature mocks at morality and that there are certain unspecified powers at large which we would do well to beware of, call them destiny or anything you choose. There is in addition the presence of a plague epidemic which is a physiReprinted from Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove, 1958), 74-83. Used by permission of Grove Atlantic, © 1958.

cal incarnation of these powers. But the whole in a m a n n e r and language that have lost all touch with the rude and epileptic rhythm of our time. Sophocles speaks grandly perhaps, but in a style that is no longer timely. His language is too refined for this age; it is as if he were speaking beside the point. However, a public that shudders at train wrecks, that is familiar with earthquakes, plagues, revolutions, wars; that is sensitive to the disordered anguish of love, can be affected by all these grand notions and asks only to b e c o m e aware of them, but on condition that it is addressed in its own language, and that its knowledge of these things does not come to it through adulterated trappings and speech that belong to extinct eras which will never live again. Today as yesterday, the public is greedy for mystery: it asks only to be­ c o m e aware of the laws according to which destiny manifests itself, and to divine perhaps the secret of its apparitions. Let us leave textual criticism to graduate students, formal criticism to aesthetes, and recognize that what has b e e n said is not still to be said; that an expression does not have the same value twice, does not live two lives; that all words, once spoken, are dead and function only at the m o m e n t when they are uttered; that a form, once it has served, cannot be used again and asks only to be replaced by another; and that the theater is the only place in the world where a gesture, once made, can never be m a d e the same way twice. If the public does not frequent our literary masterpieces, it is because those masterpieces are literary, that is to say, fixed; and fixed in forms that no longer respond to the needs of the time. Far from blaming the public, we ought to blame the formal screen we interpose between ourselves and the public, and this new form of idolatry, the idolatry of fixed masterpieces which is one of the aspects of bourgeois conformism. This conformism makes us confuse sublimity, ideas, and things with the forms they have taken in time and in our minds—in our snobbish, precious, aesthetic mentalities which the public does not understand. How pointless in such matters to accuse the public of bad taste because it relishes insanities, so long as the public is not shown a valid spectacle; and I defy anyone to show m e here a spectacle valid—valid in the supreme sense of the theater—since the last great romantic melodramas, i.e., since a h u n d r e d years ago. T h e public, which takes the false for the true, has the sense of the true and always responds to it when it is manifested. However, it is not upon the stage that the true is to be sought nowadays, but in the street; and if the crowd in the street is offered an occasion to show its h u m a n dignity, it will always do so. If people are out of the habit of going to the theater, if we have all finally come to think of theater as an inferior art, a means of popular distraction,

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and to use it as an outlet for our worst instincts, it is because we have learned too well what the theater has been, namely, falsehood and illusion. It is because we have been accustomed for four hundred years, that is since the Renaissance, to a purely descriptive and narrative theater—storytelling psy­ chology; it is because every possible ingenuity has been exerted in bringing to life on the stage plausible but detached beings, with the spectacle on one side, the public on the other—and because the public is no longer shown anything but the mirror of itself. Shakespeare himself is responsible for this aberration and decline, this disinterested idea of the theater which wishes a theatrical performance to leave the public intact, without setting off one image that will shake the organism to its foundations and leave an ineffaceable scar. If, in Shakespeare, a man is sometimes preoccupied with what tran­ scends him, it is always in order to determine the ultimate consequences of this preoccupation within him, i.e., psychology. Psychology, which works relentlessly to reduce the unknown to the known, to the quotidian and the ordinary, is the cause of the theater's abasement and its fearful loss of energy, which seems to me to have reached its lowest point. And I think both the theater and we ourselves have had enough of psychology. I believe furthermore that we can all agree on this matter sufficiently so that there is no need to descend to the repugnant level of the modern and French theater to condemn the theater of psychology. Stories about money, worry over money, social careerism, the pangs of love unspoiled by altruism, sexuality sugar-coated with an eroticism that has lost its mystery have nothing to do with the theater, even if they do belong to psychology. These torments, seductions, and lusts before which we are nothing but Peeping Toms gratifying our cravings, tend to go bad, and their rot turns to revolution: we must take this into account. But this is not our most serious concern. If Shakespeare and his imitators have gradually insinuated the idea of art for art's sake, with art on one side and life on the other, we can [stick to] this feeble and lazy idea only as long as the life outside endures. But there are too many signs that everything that used to sustain our lives no longer does so, that we are all mad, desperate, and sick. And I call for us to react. This idea of a detached art, of poetry as a charm which exists only to distract our leisure, is a decadent idea and an unmistakable symptom of our power to castrate. Our literary admiration for Rimbaud, Jarry, Lautreamont, and a few others, which has driven two men to suicide, but turned into cafe gossip for the rest, belongs to this idea of literary poetry, of detached art, of neutral spiritual activity which creates nothing and produces nothing; and I can bear witness that at the very moment when that kind of personal poetry which involves only the man who creates it and only at the moment he creates it

broke out in its most abusive fashion, the theater was scorned more than ever before by poets who have never had the sense of direct and concerted action, nor of efficacity, nor of danger. We must get rid of our superstitious valuation of texts and written poetry. Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us, deadens our responses, and prevents us from making contact with that underlying power, call it thought-energy, the life force, the determinism of change, lunar menses, or anything you like. Be­ neath the poetry of the texts, there is the actual poetry, without form and without text. And just as the efficacity of masks in the magic practices of certain tribes is exhausted—and these masks are no longer good for anything except museums—so the poetic efficacity of a text is exhausted; yet the poetry and the efficacity of the theater are exhausted least quickly of all, since they permit the action of what is gesticulated and pronounced, and which is never made the same way twice. It is a question of knowing what we want. If we are prepared for war, plague, famine, and slaughter we do not even need to say so, we have only to continue as we are; continue behaving like snobs, rushing en masse to hear such and such a singer, to see such and such an admirable performance which never transcends the realm of art (and even the Russian ballet at the height of its splendor never transcended the realm of art), to marvel at such and such an exhibition of painting in which exciting shapes explode here and there but at random and without any genuine consciousness of the forces they could rouse. This empiricism, randomness, individualism, and anarchy must cease. Enough of personal poems, benefiting those who create them much more than those who read them. Once and for all, enough of this closed, egoistic, and personal art. Our spiritual anarchy and intellectual disorder are a function of the anarchy of everything else—or rather, everything else is a function of this anarchy. I am not one of those who believe that civilization has to change in order for the theater to change; but I do believe that the theater, utilized in the highest and most difficult sense possible, has the power to influence the aspect and formation of things: and the encounter upon the stage of two passionate manifestations, two living centers, two nervous magnetisms is something as entire, true, even decisive, as, in life, the encounter of one epidermis with another in a timeless debauchery. That is why I propose a theater of cruelty.—With this mania we all have for depreciating everything, as soon as I have said "cruelty," everybody will at once take it to mean "blood." But "theater of cruelty" means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And, on the level of performance, it is

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not the cruelty we can exercise upon each other by hacking at each other's bodies, carving up our personal anatomies, or, like Assyrian emperors, send­ ing parcels of human ears, noses, or neatly detached nostrils through the mail, but the much more terrible and necessary cruelty which things can exercise against us. We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all. Either we will be capable of returning by present-day means to this superior idea of poetry and poetry-through-theater which underlies the Myths told by the great ancient tragedians, capable once more of entertain­ ing a religious idea of the theater (without meditation, useless contempla­ tion, and vague dreams), capable of attaining awareness and a possession of certain dominant forces, of certain notions that control all others, and (since ideas, when they are effective, carry their energy with them) capable of recovering within ourselves those energies which ultimately create order and increase the value of life, or else we might as well abandon ourselves now, without protest, and recognize that we are no longer good for anything but disorder, famine, blood, war, and epidemics. Either we restore all the arts to a central attitude and necessity, finding an analogy between a gesture made in painting or the theater, and a gesture made by lava in a volcanic explosion, or we must stop painting, babbling, writing, or doing whatever it is we do. I propose to bring back into the theater this elementary magical idea, taken up by modern psychoanalysis, which consists in effecting a patient's cure by making him assume the apparent and exterior attitudes of the de­ sired condition. I propose to renounce our empiricism of imagery, in which the uncon­ scious furnishes images at random, and which the poet arranges at random too, calling them poetic and hence hermetic images, as if the kind of trance that poetry provides did not have its reverberations throughout the whole sensibility, in every nerve, and as if poetry were some vague force whose movements were invariable. I propose to return through the theater to an idea of the physical knowl­ edge of images and the means of inducing trances, as in Chinese medicine, which knows, over the entire extent of the human anatomy, at what points to puncture in order to regulate the subtlest functions. Those who have forgotten the communicative power and magical mime­ sis of a gesture, the theater can reinstruct, because a gesture carries its energy with it, and there are still human beings in the theater to manifest the force of the gesture made. To create art is to deprive a gesture of its reverberation in the organism, whereas this reverberation, if the gesture is made in the conditions and with the force required, incites the organism and, through it, the entire individu­ ality, to take attitudes in harmony with the gesture. The theater is the only place in the world, the last general means we still

possess of directly affecting the organism and, in periods of neurosis and petty sensuality like the one in which we are immersed, of attacking this sensuality by physical means it cannot withstand. If music affects snakes, it is not on account of the spiritual notions it offers them, but because snakes are long and coil their length upon the earth, because their bodies touch the earth at almost every point; and because the musical vibrations which are communicated to the earth affect them like a very subtle, very long massage; and I propose to treat the spectators like the snake charmer's subjects and conduct them by means of their organisms to an apprehension of the subtlest notions. At first by crude means, which will gradually be refined. These immedi­ ate crude means will hold their attention at the start. That is why in the "theater of cruelty" the spectator is in the center and the spectacle surrounds him. In this spectacle the sonorization is constant: sounds, noises, cries are chosen first for their vibratory quality, then for what they represent. Among these gradually refined means, light is interposed in its turn. Light which is not created merely to add color or to brighten, and which brings its power, influence, suggestions with it. And the light of a green cavern does not sensually dispose the organism like the light of a windy day. After sound and light there is action, and the dynamism of action: here the theater, far from copying life, puts itself whenever possible in communi­ cation with pure forces. And whether you accept or deny them, there is nevertheless a way of speaking which gives the name of "forces" to whatever brings to birth images of energy in the unconscious, and gratuitous crime on the surface. A violent and concentrated action is a kind of lyricism: it summons up supernatural images, a bloodstream of images, a bleeding spurt of images in the poet's head and in the spectator's as well. Whatever the conflicts that haunt the mind of a given period, I defy any spectator to whom such violent scenes will have transferred their blood, who will have felt in himself the transit of a superior action, who will have seen the extraordinary and essential movements of his thought illuminated in extraordinary deeds—the violence and blood having been placed at the service of the violence of the thought—I defy that spectator to give himself up, once outside the theater, to ideas of war, riot, and blatant murder. So expressed, this idea seems dangerous and sophomoric. It will be claimed that example breeds example, that if the attitude of cure induces cure, the attitude of murder will induce murder. Everything depends upon the manner and the purity with which the thing is done. There is a risk. But let it not be forgotten that though a theatrical gesture is violent, it is disin­ terested; and that the theater teaches precisely the uselessness of the action which, once [performed,] is not to be [performed,] and the superior use of the state unused by the action and which, restored, produces a purification.

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The first speaker is the dog Vera, who recites a poem. The one-year-old boy Petya comes in and he and the dog converse. At one point the dog asks him if he is surprised that she is talking and not barking. Petya's answer? "What can surprise me, at my age? Calm down." At the end of the scene, brother and sister Misha Pestrov and Dunya Shustrova enter. Misha wishes her a Happy Christmas, then declares: "Soon there will be a Christmas pee." Dunya replies, "Not pee but bee. No bee but tree. Best wishes. Is Sonya sleeping?" The dog Vera answers the question, saying, "No. She is peeing." The scene shifts next to a courtroom, where no sooner does the judge appear than he declares that he is dying and is quickly replaced with another judge. But the second judge also dies and has to be replaced. The court protocol read by the Secretary consists of nothing more than a series of nonsense qua­ trains. Finally, the nurse who killed Sonya is sentenced to be executed by hanging. The fourth act [follows,] with another typical Vvedensky stage direction: The ninth scene, like all the preceding ones, represents events which took place six years before my birth, or forty years ago. That is the least of it. So why should we grieve and weep that somebody was killed? We didn't know any of them, and anyway they have all died. (p. 185) The children are at last permitted to view the Christmas tree. The mother plays the piano and sings, but the mood becomes somber when the mother recalls Sonya's death and begins to weep. At this point, the twenty-five-year-old son Volodya shoots himself in the temple and then tells his mother not to cry but to laugh for he too has shot himself. The mother replies by singing that she will not spoil their good time. But the topic of death again intrudes when the oneyear-old son Petya says that life will pass quickly and soon they will all die. Thereafter the characters onstage die (after announcing that they are about to die), leaving just the father and mother. Before they too die, they exchange the following (p. 189)..

FATHER P.: They've died too. They say the woodcutter Fyodor has finished his studies and become a teacher of Latin. What has happened to me? A stab­ bing in the heart. I see nothing. I'm dying. MOTHER p.: What are you saying? You see there is a man of the common people, and he's worked his way up. God, what an unhappy Christmas we're having. (She falls down and dies.) In their shocking, often puzzling, yet often delightful blending of the absurd, grotesque, and nonsensical t h e plays of Kharms and Vvedensky represent an e x t r e m e f o r m , perhaps the most extreme, o f Russian avant-garde drama of the first t w o decades of the twentieth century. But in order t o view them in the proper perspective, they should be regarded, I think, as the end of a tradition rather than as an isolated episode in the history of twentieth-century Russian drama o r as the beginning of anything new. T h e absurd and grotesque permeate 3 the most original Russian plays of the N E P [ N e w Economic Policy] era, but the a5 plays of Kharms and Vvedensky are anything but typical NEP satires. Apart from o the names of the characters, there is nothing Russian about the plays, nor do § they bristle with the topical satire of the comedies of Erdman, Romashov, Buift gakov, and Mayakovsky. They also lack the philosophical dimension and social tf implications of the plays of such later absurdists as lonesco, Beckett, Pinter, and t the Poles Siawomir Mrozek and Tadeusz Rozewicz. Christmas at the Ivanovs is a _ spoof on the ritual of Christmas celebration but it cannot be seen as directed £§ against a Russian celebration o f Christmas. For all its nonsense, Elizabeth Bam does evoke a sense of dread but what further o r m o r e specific meaning does the play have? Because of their apparent absence o f meaning, their experimental nature, their sexual frankness, and their mocking irreverence, the plays o f Kharms and Vvedensky lay beyond any possible redemption once socialist realism became the aesthetic law of the land. Their suppression and the fate suffered by their authors meant that a watershed in postrevolutionary Russian literature had been reached; N E P was definitely at an end, not only as an economic policy but, more grievously, as an artistic ambience.

Select Bibliography on Vvedensky Nakhimovsky, Alice Stone. Laughter in the Void: An Introduction to the Writings ofDaniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky. Vienna: Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, 1982. Nikol'skaia, Tat'iana. "The Oberiuty and the Theatricalization of Life." In Daniel Kharms and the Poetics of the Absurd, ed. Neil Cornwell, 195-99. Houndmills, England: Macmillan, 1991. Vishevsky, Anatoly. "Tradition in the Topsy-Turvy World of Parody: Analysis of Two 'Oberiu' Plays." Slavic and East European Journal 30.3 (Fall 1986): 355-66. See also Gibian; Listengarten; and Roberts, in the General Bibliography.

Christmas at the Ivanovs Aleksandr Vvedensky

CAST OF CHARACTERS The children: PETYA PEROV—one-year-old boy NINA SEROVA—eight-year-old girl VARYA PETROVA—seventeen-year-old girl VOLODYA KOMAROV—twenty-five-year-old boy

SONYA OSTROVA—thirty-two-year-old girl MISHA PESTROV—seventy-six-year-old boy DUNYA SHUSTROVA—eighty-two-year-old girl

PUZYROVA—mother PUZYROV—father FYODOR THE WOODCUTTER THE DOG VERA UNDERTAKER Nannies, policemen, woodcutters, a clerk, a medical attendant, a doctor, patients, judges, court employees, a secretary, a giraffe, a lion, a piglet, chambermaids, cooks, soldiers, teachers of Latin and Greek. The action takes place in the 1890s. This translation is published here for the first time. Trans. Julia Listengarten and Karin Coonrod.

ACT I SCENE 1

(There is a painted bathtub in the first scene. Christmas Eve, so the children are bathing. A chest of drawers stands there, as well. To the right of the door, cooks are slaughtering chickens and slaughtering piglets. Nannies, nannies, nannies are washing the children. All the children are in the big bathtub, except Petya Perov, a one-year-old boy, who is bathing in a pan standing directly in front of the door. A clock hangs on the wall to the left of the door. Its face shows nine in the evening.) ONE-YEAR-OLD BOY PETYA PEROV Will there be Christmas? There will be. Yet suddenly there will not be. Suddenly I will die. NANNY Wash yourself, Petya Perov. Soap your ears and neck. You can't talk

yet. I can talk inside my thoughts. I can cry. I can laugh. What do you want? VARYA PETROVA (seventeen-year-old girl) Volodya, scrub my back. God knows, moss has grown on it. What do you think? VOLODYA KOMAROV (twenty-five-year-old boy) I think nothing. I burned my PETYA PEROV

belly. (seventy-six-year old boy) Now you will have a blot. Which I know nothing will remove. Ever. SONYA OSTROVA (thirty-two-year old girl) You, Misha, are always wrong. Better look at what has happened to my breasts. DUNYA SHUSTROVA (eighty-two-year-old girl) Bragging again. You bragged about the buttocks, now the breasts. Fear God. SONYA OSTROVA (thirty-two-year-old girl. Hangs her head like a grown-up Ukrainian.) You hurt me. Fool, idiot, slut. NANNY (waving an axe as though it were a small hatchet) Sonya, if you keep cursing, I will tell your father and mother, I will kill you with the axe. PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) And you will feel for a brief flash how your skin splits open and how the blood spurts out. What you will feel next is unknown to us. NINA SEROVA (eight-year-oldgirl) Sonyechka, that nanny is crazy or criminal. She can do anything. Why did they bring her to us? MISHA PESTROV (seventy'-six-year-old boy) Children, quit quarreling. Nobody will live to see Christmas this way. The parents have bought candles, candies, and matches—matches to light the candles. SONYA OSTROVA (thirty-two-year-old girl) I don't need the candles. I have a finger. VARYA PETROVA (seventeen-year-old girl) Sonya, don't persist in this. Don't persist. Clean yourself better. MISHA PESTROV

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(twenty-five-year-old boy) Girls must wash more often than boys or they become repulsive. I think so. MISHA PESTROV (seventy-six-year-old boy) Oh, enough of this rubbish. Tomor­ row is Christmas, and we will all be celebrating. PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) Only I will sit in the arms of the guests in turn, with a serious and stupid look, as if I understood nothing. I and invisible God. SONYA OSTROVA (thirty-two-year-old girl) And when I enter the hall, when they light the Christmas tree, I will hold up my skirt and show everything to everybody. NANNY (becoming ferocious) No, you won't. You have nothing to show—you are still little. SONYA OSTROVA (thirty-two-year-old girl) No, I will show it. I still have a little one. This is true, what you say. This is even better. This is not what you have. NANNY (Seizes the axe and chops off her head.) You deserved this death. CHILDREN (scream) Murderer. She is a murderer. Save us. Stop the bath. (The cooks stop slaughtering chickens and slaughtering piglets. Having moved away from the body two paces, the bloody, reckless head lies on the floor. The dog Vera howls behind the doors. The police enter.) POLICE Where on earth are the parents? CHILDREN (in chorus) They are at the theater. POLICE They left a while ago, then? CHILDREN A while, but not forever. POLICE What are they watching, A ballet or a drama? CHILDREN Must be a ballet. We love our mama. POLICE Such cultured people discern we. CHILDREN Do you always wear cothurni? POLICE Always. We see a cadaver And a head disengaged. Here a person is lying ineffectively, Herself not whole entirely. What happened here? CHILDREN Nanny with the axe Killed our sister-dear. POLICE And where is the murderer? NANNY I am here in front of you. Tie me up. Lay me down. And execute me.

VOLODYA KOMAROV

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POLICE

Hey, servants, a light. SERVANTS We sob immoderately. And the light burns shamelessly. NANNY (sobbing) Sentence the horse, Pity my remorse. POLICE Why sentence the horse, If the horse is not guilty Of this bloodshed? We will never find A guilty horse. NANNY I am mentally deranged. POLICE Hurry up, get dressed. They'll decide over there. You'll go through examination by the experts. Put handcuffs or fetters on her. ONE COOK NOW, nanny, your destiny lies with these fetters. ANOTHER COOK Killer. POLICE

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Hey, cooks, quiet. Hurry up, hurry up, let's go. Good-bye, children.

(A knocking on the door is heard. Puzyrov-father and Puzyrova-mother rush in. They are driven mad with grief. They shout, bark, and bellow horribly. A clock hangs on the wall to the left of the door. Its face shows twelve midnight.) SCENE 2

(The same evening and a forest. There is so much snow that one could carry it off by cartloads. And, in fact, this is happening. In the forest woodcutters cut down Christmas trees. Tomorrow many Russian and Jewish families will have Christmas. Among other woodcutters one called Fyodor stands out. He is the fiance of the nanny who committed the murder. What does he know about it? He knows nothing yet. He gently cuts down the Christmas tree for Christmas at the Puzyrovs. All the beasts have hidden in their lairs. The woodcutters sing a hymn in chorus. On the same clock to the left of the door the same nine in the evening.) WOODCUTTERS

How pleasant in a wood, How bright the snowfall. Pray to the wheel so good, It is rounder, rounder than all. The silent, lovely trees Lie lengthwise on horses' backs. Stepchildren squeal angelically, And in their sleds make tracks. Tomorrow is Christmas Day, And we dishonorable folk

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To toast it, shout "hooray" And drink until we choke. God watches us from his throne, Gently and knowingly he smiles. "Ah, people," he softly intones, "You are my little orphan exiles." FYODOR (pensively) No, you don't know what I will tell you now. I have a fiancee. She works as a nanny for the big Puzyrov family. She is very beautiful. I love her very much. She and I are already living together as husband and wife.

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(Each woodcutter, to the extent of his ability, makes a gesture to indicate interest in what Fyodor just said. As it turns out, they cannot speak. The fact that just now they were singing is simply an occurrence of the sort life is so

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FYODOR

But she is very nervous, that fiancee of mine. Nothing to be done. Hard job. Big family. Many children. Nothing to be done.

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WOODCUTTER A fruit.

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(Although he spoke, he spoke out of order. So it doesnt count His friends always talk out of order.) SECOND WOODCUTTER Jaundice.

After I have done with her, I never feel bored and never feel dis­ gusted. We have one soul.

FYODOR

THIRD WOODCUTTER Suspenders.

So now I will bring the tree, and at night I will go to her. She has bathed the children and is waiting for me now. Nothing to be done.

FYODOR

(Fyodor and the woodcutters sit down on the sled and ride out of the forest) (Beasts emerge: a Giraffe, a wonderful beast; a Wolf, a beaverlike beast; a Lion, the king; and a porky Piglet.) GIRAFFE The clock is ticking. WOLF Like a herd of sheep. LION Like a herd of bulls. PIGLET Like sturgeon gristle. GIRAFFE The stars shine. WOLF Like the blood of sheep. LION Like the blood of bulls. PIGLET Like the milk of a wet nurse. GIRAFFE The rivers flow. WOLF Like the words of sheep.

LION

Like the words of bulls.

PIGLET

Like the goddess salmon.

GIRAFFE

Where is our death?

WOLF In the souls of sheep. LION In the souls of bulls. PIGLET In the spacious vessels. GIRAFFE

Thank you very much. The lesson is over.

(The beasts—the Giraffe, a wonderful beast; the Wolf, a beaverlike beast; the Lion, the king; and the porky Piglet, just as they are in life—exeunt. The forest remains alone. The face on the clock to the left of the door shows midnight)

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(Night Candles, floating down river. Glasses. Beard. Saliva. Tears. Puzyrovamother. She wears feminine armor. She is a beauty. She has a large bosom. Sonya Ostrova lies prone in the coffin. She is bloodless. Her cut-off head lies on the cushion right up against her former body. A clock hangs on the wall to the left of the door. Its face shows two in the morning.) PUZYROV-FATHER (cries) My little girl, Sonya, how can this be? How can this be? In the morning you were still playing with the ball and running around as if alive. PUZYROVA-MOTHER Sonyechka. Sonyechka. Sonyechka. Sonyechka. Sonyechka. Sonyechka. Sonyechka. PUZYROV-FATHER (cries) T h e devil m a d e us go to the theater and watch that silly ballet with woolly fat-bellied ballet dancers. As I now recollect, o n e of them, jumping and shining, smiled at m e . But I thought, why do I need her: I have children, I have a wife, I have money. And I was so exhilarated, so exhilarated. T h e n we left the theater, and I called the c o a c h m a n and told h i m : Vanya, drive us h o m e fast—my heart tells m e something is wrong. PUZYROVA-MOTHER (yawns) O h cruel G o d , cruel G o d , why are you punish­ ing us? PUZYROV-FATHER (blows his nose) We were like a flame, and you are ex­ tinguishing us. PUZYROVA-MOTHER (powders herself) We wanted to celebrate Christmas for our children. PUZYROV-FATHER

(kisses her) And we will celebrate, we will. No matter what.

(undresses herself) Oh, we will have a Christmas tree. The Christmas tree of all Christmas trees.

PUZYROVA-MOTHER

(his imagination on fire) You are my beauty, and the chil­ dren are such sweethearts.

PUZYROV-FATHER

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(gives in to him) God, why does the sofa creak so? How

awful this is. (having finished his business, he cries) God, our daughter has died, and we are here like beasts. PUZYROVA-MOTHER (cries) Didn't die, didn't die, that's the thing. She was killed. PUZYROV-FATHER

(A nanny enters carrying the one-year-old Petya Perov.) The boy woke up. There is no peace in his soul. He is frowning. He looks at everything with repugnance. PUZYROVA-MOTHER Sleep, Petenka, sleep. We are keeping you safe. PETYA (one-year-old boy) But is Sonya still dead? PUZYROV-FATHER (sighs) Yes, she is dead. Yes, she was killed. Yes, she is dead. PETYA (one-year-old boy) I thought so. So will there be Christmas? PUZYROVA-MOTHER There will be. There will be. What are all you children doing right now? PETYA (one-year-old boy) All of us children are sleeping right now. And I am falling asleep. (He falls asleep.) NANNY

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(The nanny takes him to the parents, who bless him with the sign of the cross and kiss him. The nanny takes him away.) (to his wife) You stay alone for a while by the coffin. I will be right back. I will go to see if the Christmas tree is coming in. (He runs out of the room. He returns in a second, rubbing his hands.) We need to add more candles—these are sinking into oblivion. (He bows low to the coffin and his wife and exits on his toes.) PUZYROVA-MOTHER (alone) Sonyechka, you know, as we were climbing the stairs, a black crow was flying above me all the time, and I felt my heart twisting with sorrow, and when we came into the apartment, and when the servant Stepan Nikolaev said, "She was killed, she was killed," I did not cry out in a gloomy voice. How frightened I was. How frightened. How uneasy.

PUZYROV-FATHER

(Sonya Ostrova—formerly a thirty-two-year-old girl—lies still like a cut-down rail post. Does she hear what her mother is saying to her? No, how could she? She is completely dead. She was killed.) (The door opens wide. Puzyrov-father enters. Followed by Fyodor. Followed by the woodcutters. They carry the Christmas tree. They see the coffin, and all of them take their hats off. Except the Christmas tree, which does not have a hat and which understands nothing about this.)

Quiet, my boys, quiet. Here is my little daughter-girl breath­ ing her last breaths. But not even her last (he sobs)—her head is cut off. FYODOR You are speaking about grief to us. But we are bringing happiness to you. Here we brought the Christmas tree.

PUZYROV-FATHER

FIRST WOODCUTTER A fruit.

SECOND WOODCUTTER An epistle to the Greeks.

A person is drowning. Save him. (All exeunt. Sonya Ostrova, the former thirty-two-year-old girl, remains alone. Her remains: head and body.) THE HEAD Body, did you hear it all? THE BODY I, Head, heard nothing. I have no ears. I felt it all. THIRD WOODCUTTER

(The face on the clock to the left of the door shows three in the morning.) ACT II SCENE 4

(Precinct. Night Sealing wax. Police. The clock face to the left of the door shows midnight. The clerk is sitting and the constable is sitting.) CLERK Sealing wax always has hot lips. The quill pen has two beautiful hips. CONSTABLE

I am bored, clerk, I stood guard all day, eclipsed. I froze. I shivered. And nothing matters to me, Wandering rain and pyramids Egyptian in sunny Egypt. Amuse me. CLERK You, constable, I see, have lost your mind. Amuse you? I am your boss. CONSTABLE

Oh, God, Pharmacies, taverns, and houses of ill repute Will one day drive me mad and dissolute. Instead of taking poisoned people to the pharmacy, Fd prefer to sit in a library And read various passages of Marx and dream, And in the morning, drink not vodka but cream. CLERK And what happened to that drunk? Is he still swinging? CONSTABLE

He is swinging like this pendulum, And the Milky Way is swinging above him. How many there are of these toilers of the sea, Outcast folk and peasant serfs.

(Enter Police Chief and gendarmes.) Everyone stand. Everything clear. Pray to God. Right here, right now, they are bringing a criminal.

POLICE CHIEF

(Soldiers, servants, cooks, and teachers of Latin and Greek drag in the nanny who killed Sonya.) Let her go. (Addresses the nanny.) Go to prison. NANNY My hands are covered with blood. My teeth are covered with blood. God has abandoned me. I am mentally deranged. She is doing some­ thing now. POLICE CHIEF You nanny, who are you talking about? Look, don't ramble in your speech. Give me a glass of vodka. Who is she? NANNY Sonya Ostrova, whose head I cut off. She is thinking something now. I am cold. My head hurts, as does my stomach. CLERK And still young. And still not bad-looking. And still beautiful. And still like a star. And still like a string. And still like a soul. CONSTABLE (to nanny) I can imagine your situation, You killed the girl with the axe. Now your soul suffers mutilation, A spiritual parallax. POLICE CHIEF SO, nanny, how do you feel? Is it pleasant to be a murderer?

POLICE CHIEF

NANNY NO. Difficult.

You know, they'll execute you. My God, they'll execute you. NANNY I bang my fists. I bang my feet. Her head is in my head. I am Sonya Ostrova—the nanny cut my head off. Fedya-Fyodor, save me. POLICE CHIEF

CONSTABLE

Once, I remember, I stood on guard in a bitter frost. People walked by, animals ran wildly. A cloud of Greek horsemen passed by on the boulevard like a shadow. I blew a loud whistle, calling the janitors to myself. For a long time we all stood looking through the telescopes. Putting our ears to the ground, we waited for the clatter of hooves. Then, vainly and idly we looked for the army of horsemen. Quietly sobbing, alas for us, we departed for our homes. POLICE CHIEF Why have you told us this? I am asking you. Fool! Climber! You do not know the civil service. CONSTABLE I wanted to distract the murderer from her dark thoughts. CLERK Knocking. These are medics. Medics, take her to your lunatic asylum.

{Knocking on the door, the medics enter.) MEDICS Whom do we take—that Napoleon? {Exeunt The face on the clock to the left of the door shows four in the morning.) SCENE 5

{Lunatic asylum. A doctor stands near the barrier and aims at the mirror. Flowers, paintings, and small rugs are around. The face on the clock to the left of the door shows four in the morning.) DOCTOR God, how terrifying. Everyone is crazy around here. They haunt me. They devour my dreams. They want to shoot me. Here is one of them; he sneaked up and is aiming at me. He aims but doesn't shoot, he aims but doesn't shoot. He doesn't shoot, he doesn't shoot, he doesn't shoot, but he aims. So I will shoot.

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{He shoots. The mirror breaks. Enter a stony attendant.)

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Who fired the cannon? DOCTOR I don't know—probably the mirror. And how many of you are there? ATTENDANT There are many of us. DOCTOR Now, now. My foolishness hurts a little. Somebody has been brought in. ATTENDANT The nanny-murderer has been brought in from the precinct. DOCTOR Is she black as coal? ATTENDANT You know I don't know everything. DOCTOR What to do? I don't like this little rug. {He shoots it. The attendant falls as though dead.) Why did you fall? I shot the little rug, not you. ATTENDANT {gets up) It seemed to me I was a little rug. I was mistaken. This nanny says she is mentally deranged. DOCTOR That is what she says; we don't say that. We won't say that without reason. I, you know, hold all our garden with all its trees and under­ ground worms and silent clouds right here, right here—what is it called? {He points to the palm of his hand.) ATTENDANT Grapes. DOCTOR No. ATTENDANT Wall. DOCTOR No. In the palm of my hand. So, bring in this nanny. ATTENDANT

{The nanny enters.)

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NANNY I am mentally deranged. I killed a child. DOCTOR It is not good to kill children. You are healthy. NANNY I did not do it on purpose. I am mentally deranged. I can be executed. DOCTOR You are healthy. You have color in your face. Count to three. NANNY I can't.

One. Two. Three. DOCTOR You see, and yet you say you can't. You have a constitution of iron. NANNY I am talking desperately. I didn't count, your attendant did. DOCTOR At this point it is difficult to prove. Do you hear me? ATTENDANT I hear you. I am the nanny, I must hear everything. NANNY God, my life is ending. Soon I'll be executed. DOCTOR Take her away and bring in the Christmas tree. Thank God, that's better. Just a little bit jollier. I am sick and tired of being on duty. Good night.

ATTENDANT

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(Patients sail from the hall into the room in a boat, pushing the oars against the floor.)

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Good morning patients, where are you going? To pick mushrooms, to pick berries. DOCTOR Very good. ATTENDANT I'll go for a swim with you. DOCTOR Nanny, go execute yourself. You are healthy. You are blooming with health. DOCTOR

LUNATICS

(The face on the clock to the left of the door shows six in the morning.) SCENE 6

(Corridor. Doors over here. Doors over there. And doors right here. Dark. Fyodor the woodcutter, fiance of the nanny who killed Sonya Ostrova, in a tailcoat, with candy in hand, walks through the corridor. For some unknown reason he is blindfolded. The face on the clock to the left of the door shows five in the morning.) FYODOR (enters through one of the doors) Are you sleeping? VOICE OF ONE OF THE MAIDS I am sleeping, but come in. FYODOR That means you are in bed. Look, I brought you a treat. THE MAID Where did you come from? FYODOR I was at the public baths. I washed myself with brushes, like a horse. They blindfolded me. Why don't I take off my tailcoat? MAID Take your clothes off. Lie on me.

I will, I will. No rush. Eat the treat. MAID I am eating it. And you do your work. Tomorrow we will have Christmas. FYODOR (he lies on her) I know. I know. MAID And our girl was killed. FYODOR I know. I heard. MAID She is already lying in the coffin. FYODOR I know. I know. MAID The mother cried, and also the father. FYODOR (gets up off her) I am bored with you. You are not my fiancee. FYODOR

MAID SO what? FYODOR You

are a stranger to my spirit. I will soon disappear like a poppy. MAID Who needs you? But, do you want to do it one more time? FYODOR No, no, I have a terrible sadness. I will soon disappear like happiness. MAID What are you thinking about right now? FYODOR About how the whole world has become uninteresting to me after you. And the table lost the salt and the sky and the walls and the window and the sky and the forest. I will soon disappear like the night. MAID You are impolite. I will punish you for that. Look at me. I will tell you something unnatural. FYODOR Try. You are a toad. MAID Your fiancee killed the girl. Did you see the killed girl? Your fiancee cut off her head. FYODOR (croaks)

(grins) Do you know the girl Sonya Ostrova? That is who she killed. FYODOR (meows) MAID What, are you in pain? FYODOR (sings like a bird) MAID And this is the one you loved. And why? And what for? And you yourself probably . . . MAID

FYODOR No, not myself. . .

Sure, sure, do you think I believe you? FYODOR Word of honor. MAID G O away. I want to sleep. Tomorrow will be Christmas. FYODOR I know. I know. MAID What are you babbling now? I want nothing to do with you. FYODOR I am babbling out of great grief. What is left for me to do? MAID Grieve, grieve, grieve. And still nothing will help you. You are right. FYODOR And still nothing will help me. MAID Yet maybe you will try to study, study, study. MAID

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FYODOR

I will try. I will learn Latin. I will become a teacher. Good-bye.

MAID Good-bye.

(Fyodor disappears. The maid sleeps. The face on the clock to the left of the door shows six in the morning.) ACT III SCENE 7

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(Table. Coffin on the table. Sonya Ostrova in the coffin. A heart inside Sonya Ostrova. Coagulating blood inside the heart. Red and white corpuscles in the blood. And of course putrefaction of the corpse. Everybody sees that it is dawn. The dog Vera, with her tail between her legs, walks around the coffin. The face on the clock to the left of the door shows eight in the morning.)

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THE DOG VERA

Around the coffin walk I Looking carefully with my eye. _ What could this death signify? A poor person prays for bread. Bronze folk pray to blue sky spread. A priest will say the Mass instead. The corpse lies here freezing. The taste of ham is pleasing. Dulcinea is dead—no appeasing. Every place there are bloody spots. What evil manners, evil plots. Nanny, your action rots. Life is for decoration. Death is for trepidation. Why, Nanny, this annihilation? For the most important arteries And the most courageous bacteria, What, nanny, are your criteria? Fyodor would your buttocks pet Always in the morning sweat, Now you'll be a corpse to forget. (The one-year-old boy Petya Perov enters, stumbling.) I am the youngest—I wake up earlier than everybody else. I remember now that two years ago I didn't remember anything. I hear the dog reciting a speech in verse. She is crying ever so quietly.

PETYA PEROV

THE DOG VERA

How cold it is in the hall. What, Petya, did you call? PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) What can I call? I can only announce some things. THE DOG VERA

I howl, I howl, I howl, I strive, Wishing Sonya were alive. PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) She was unusually indecent. And now it is

frightening to look at her. THE DOG VERA Are you not surprised that I speak and do not bark? PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) What can surprise me at my age? Relax. THE DOG VERA Give me a glass of water. This is too much for me. PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) Don't worry. During my short life I will see even worse things. THE DOG VERA This Sonya, wretched Ostrova, was immoral. But I showed her . .. Explain all this to me. PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) Daddy, Mummy, Uncle, Aunty, Nanny. THE DOG VERA What are you saying? Come to your senses. PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) I am now one year old. Don't forget. Daddy. Mummy. Uncle. Aunty. Fire. Cloud. Apple. Stone. Don't forget. (He leaves the room in his nanny's arms, while pooping in his pants.) THE DOG VERA (recollecting) He actually is still little and young. (Misha Pestrov and Dunya Shustrova enter, mumbling and holding hands.) MISHA PESTROV

(seventy-six-year-old boy) Happy day! Today is Christmas.

Soon there will be glee. DUNYA SHUSTROVA (eighty-two-year-old girl) Not glee but a bee. And not a bee but a tree. Happy day. Happy day. Is Sonya sleeping? THE DOG VERA No, she is peeing.

(The face on the clock to the left of the door shows nine in the morning.) SCENE 8

(There is a painted courtroom in the eighth scene. Vintage judges—judging in wigs. Insects are hopping. Mothballs are gathering strength. Gendarmes are inflating. The face on the clock to the left of the door shows eight in the morning.) JUDGE (croaking) Having not been able to wait until Christmas—I died.

{He is quickly replaced by another judge.) I feel bad, I feel bad. Save me. {He dies. He is quickly replaced by another judge.) ALL {in chorus) We are frightened by the two deaths. It is a rare occasion—judge for yourself. ANOTHER JUDGE

ALL OTHERS {in turn):

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We judge. We will judge And so awake. They carry The court And the vessel Of the people. They carry The judges On dishes. {Having started its session, the court gets down to the case of Kozlov and Oslov.) {reads from the record) One winter evening Kozlov Went to wash his nanny goats. At the river he met Oslov, Who had scrubbed his donkeys' coats.

THE SECRETARY

Oslov says to Kozlov: "What I say to you is true. And written in the Chasoslov: Wet goats are taboo." Kozlov says to Oslov: "You can spare the reprimand. It's the psalter that I'm fond of; Let the Chasoslov be damned!" Oslov says to Kozlov: "But the Psalms us likewise tell That goats you mustn't wash off, Or, by God, you'll go to Hell!" Kozlov says to Oslov: "Oh, shut up, you stupid twit. My goats have had enough of you And think you're full of shit!"

Oslov says to Kozlov: "Hey, don't you treat me like a fool. Fll break this willow branch off And beat your goats—you mule!" Kozlov says to Oslov: "Touch my goats and by this hand, Pll beat your stupid donkeys down Until they cannot stand!" "You stupid ass!" "You old nanny!" And the snow is turning red; For now there's lots of blood, And nearly all the livestock's dead. For just like wilting flowers, The goats lie on the snow; And the donkeys, overpowered, Have fallen to their foe. Kozlov brays at Oslov, "Resuscitate my goats!" Oslov bleats at Kozlov, "Revive my donkeys!" JUDGES The phenomenon of death is evident THE SECRETARY Hmm, evident. JUDGES Do not say "hmm." THE SECRETARY All

right, I won't.

JUDGE

I begin the trial: I judge, I argue, I sit, I decide —No, I do not transgress. Once more: I judge, I argue, I sit, I decide —No, I do not transgress. Once more: I judge, I argue, I sit,

I will decide —No, I will not transgress. I have finished judging—everything is clear to me. Adelina Franzevna Shmetterling, who has been a nanny and has killed the girl Sonya Ostrova: execute—hang her. NANNY (shouts) I cannot live. THE SECRETARY So you will not. So we are meeting you halfway. (Everybody understands that the nanny was present at the court trial, and the conversation about Kozlov and Oslov took place simply to divert attention. The face on the clock to the left of the door shows nine in the morning.) (End of Scene 8. End of Act III) |

ACT IV

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(Scene 9, like all the previous ones, depicts events that took place six years before my birth or forty years before us. At least. So there is no need for us to get upset and grieve that somebody was killed. We didnt know any of them, and they all died, in any case. A couple of hours passed between Act 3 and Act 4. In front of the tightly closed doors stand the children, freshly washed, wreathed with flowers. The face on the clock to the left of the door shows six in the evening.) PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) They will open right now. They will open right now. How interesting. I will see the Christmas tree. NINA SEROVA (eight-year-old girl) You saw it last year, too. PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) I saw, I saw. But I don't remember. I am still young. Still silly. VARYA PETROVA (seventeen-year-old girl) Ah, Christmas tree, Christmas tree. Ah, Christmas tree, Christmas tree. Ah, Christmas tree, Christmas tree. DUNYA SHUSTROVA (eighty-two-year-old girl) I will jump around. I will shout with laughter. VOLODYA KOMAROV (twenty-five-year-old boy) Nanka, I want to go to the toilet. NANNY Volodya, if you need to go to the toilet, whisper in your own ear; otherwise you will embarrass the girls. MISHA PESTROV (seventy-six-year-old boy) But do girls go to the toilet? NANNY They do. They go. MISHA PESTROV (seventy-six-year-old boy) But how? How do they go? And do you go? NANNY They go the way it needs to be done. I go too. VOLODYA KOMAROV (twenty-five-year-old boy) See, I went. See, it feels better. How soon will they let us in?

(seventeen-year-old girl, whispers) Nanny. I also need to go. I am excited. NANNY (whispers) Pretend that you are going. MISHA PESTROV (seventy-six-year-old boy) Where does she want to go with you? GIRLS (in chorus) Where the tsar goes on foot. (They cry and stay back.) NANNY You fools. You should have said that you were going to play the piano. PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) Why do you teach them to lie? What is the use of this lie? How boring to live, no matter what they say.

VARYA PETROVA

(Suddenly the door opens. In the doorway stand the parents.) Well, let's celebrate. I did what I could. Here is the Christ­ mas tree. And right now Mama will play. PUZYROVA-MOTHER (true to what was said, sits down at the piano, plays, and sings) Suddenly the music thunders Like a sword smiting granite asunder. All open the door And we enter Tver. Not Tver, but simply the festive hall, Filled with the Christmas tree so tall. All hide the sting of spite: One flies like a bee in sunlight, Another like a moth in a chase Above the trunk of the tree in space, And the third like a huge fireplace, The fourth like chalk erased, The fifth brushes up against the candle and screams, And I growl, I growl, I growl in dreams. PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) Christmas tree, I must tell you: How beauti­ ful you are. NINA SEROVA (eight-year-old girl) Christmas tree, I want to explain to you: How good you are. VARYA PETROVA (seventeen-year-old girl) Ah, Christmas tree, Christmas tree. Ah, Christmas tree, Christmas tree. Ah, Christmas tree, Christmas tree. VOLODYA KOMAROV (twenty-five-year-old boy) Christmas tree, I want to inform you: How splendid you are. MISHA PESTROV (seventy-six-year-old boy) Bliss, bliss, bliss, bliss. DUNYA SHUSTROVA (eighty-two-year-old girl) Like teeth. Like teeth. Like teeth. Like teeth.

PUZYROV-FATHER

I am very glad that everybody is having fun. I am very unhappy that Sonya died. How sad that everybody is sad. PUZYROVA-MOTHER (sings) Aouyeeya BGRT. (Unable to continue singing, cries.) VOLODYA KOMAROV (twenty'-five-year-old boy. He shoots at his temple above the ear.) Mama, don't cry. Laugh. See, I shot myself. PUZYROVA-MOTHER (sings) All right, I will not darken your celebration. Let's celebrate. And yet, poor, poor Sonya. PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) It's okay, it's okay, Mama. Life will pass quickly. Soon everybody will die. PUZYROVA-MOTHER Petya, are you joking? What are you saying? PUZYROV-FATHER He doesn't seem to be joking. Volodya Komarov has already died. PUZYROVA-MOTHER Did he really die? PUZYROV-FATHER Yes, certainly. He shot himself. DUNYA SHUSTROVA (eighty-two-year-old girl) I am dying while I sit in the armchair. PUZYROVA-MOTHER What is she saying? MISHA PESTROV (seventy-six-year-old boy) I longed for longevity. There is no longevity. I have died. NANNY Children's diseases, children's diseases. When will they ever learn to conquer you? (Dies.) NINA SEROVA (eight-year-old girl) Nanny, nanny, what is it with you? Why do you have such a sharp nose? PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) The nose is sharp, but the knife and razors are still sharper. PUZYROV-FATHER We still have our two youngest children left. Petya and Nina. Well, we will carry on somehow. PUZYROVA-MOTHER That doesn't console me. What, is the sun outside the window? PUZYROV-FATHER What sun? It is evening right now. We will put out the lights on the Christmas tree. PETYA PEROV (one-year-old boy) I want to die so much. Passionately. I am dying. I am dying. So, I have died. NINA SEROVA (eight-year-old girl) And I. Ah, Christmas tree, Christmas tree. Ah, Christmas tree, Christmas tree. Ah, Christmas tree. That is all. I have died. PUZYROV-FATHER And they too have died. They say that the woodcutter Fyodor has finished studying and has become a teacher of Latin. What is it with me? What a sharp stab in the heart. I see nothing. I am dying. PUZYROV-FATHER

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What are you saying? You see, there is a man of the masses who achieved what he wanted. God, such an unhappy Christmas we are having. (Falls and dies.)

PUZYROVA-MOTHER

(End of Scene 9, and also of the act, and also of the whole play.) (The face on the clock to the left of the door shows seven in the evening.)

„-^^ lk^» n j ^

^ p 3 aniil Ivanovich Kharms, playwright, children's fiction writer, M V poet, and theorist, was born on December 30, 1905, in St. ^ L ^ k Petersburg, Russia. A self-styled eccentric who, like Alfred Jarry, attempted to draw public attention to his work through his odd 0 ^ * personal behavior, Kharms was a member of several avant-garde writ­ ing groups during the 1920s. In 1925, he met Vvedensky, and together they became the center of a group of writers who in 1928 officially founded Oberiu; as early as 1926, though, they had produced work along the lines of their 1928 manifesto. Kharms' writing, most notably in his early play Elizabeth Bam (1928), rejects Realism and conventional plot structure in favor of dissemination of a Maeterlinckian-Kafkaesque aura of doom that gives way to a Gogolian atmo­ sphere of absurdity; a dark, even tragigrotesque humor; and an extreme, non­ sensical violence of the kind favored by Artaud in the Theater of Cruelty. Following the disbanding of Oberiu, Kharms limited his published work to children's stories. In 1931, he was arrested and then exiled on account of his writing. Kharms was jailed again on August 23, 1941, and he is believed to have died of starvation in a Ukrainian prison on February 2, 1942. In the late 1960s, his work began to be rediscovered in Eastern Europe and the West, and, in the wake of glasnost, the reprinting and translation of his writing have resulted in a re­ newed appreciation of the contributions of Kharms and the Oberiuty to the dramatic avant-garde.

T h e Oberiu Manifesto Daniil Kharms, Aleksandr Vvedensky, and others

Oberiu (the Association for Real Art) works with the House of the Press and unites those working in all forms of art who accept its program and apply it in their work.1 Oberiu is divided into four sections: literature, fine arts, theater, and cinema. The fine-arts section carries on its work in experimental ways; the other sections are presented at evening programs, in stage productions, and in print. At this time Oberiu is organizing a musical section.

The Social Role of Oberiu The great revolutionary shift in culture and the conditions of everyday life so characteristic of our age is being impeded in the area of art by many abnormal phenomena. We have not yet completely understood the undeni­ able truth that the proletariat cannot be satisfied in the area of art with the artistic method of old schools, that its artistic principles go much deeper and undermine old art at the roots. It is ridiculous to think that when Repin is painting in the year 1905, he is a revolutionary artist. It is still more ridicu­ lous to think that all AKHRR'S [Associations of Artists of Revolutionary Russia] bear within themselves the seeds of a new proletarian art. Reprinted from The Man with the Black Coat: Russia's Literature of the Absurd—Selected Works of Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky, ed. and trans. George Gibian (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971), 245-54. © George Gibian. 1. Oberiu was a word made up out of the initial sounds of the words for Association for Real Art (Ob'edinenie Real'nogo Iskusstva). The sound u was added at the end just for fun.

ec 1 O Q < >■* u> uj 2 ^ ■* not on a static figure, but on the collision of a number of objects, on their UJ interrelationships. At the moment of action, the object assumes new conUJ crete traits full of real meaning. The action, turned inside out, in its new 2 appearance still keeps a classical touch and at the same time represents a > broad sweep of the Oberiu worldview.

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Very well Very well She has not gone to hell Who is she Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel And what has happened to her A viper has bitten her And if Doctor Faustus does not cure her It will go all through her And he what does he say He says he cannot see her Why cannot he see her Because he cannot look at her He cannot look at Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel But he cannot cure her without seeing her They say yes yes And he says there is no witness And he says He can but he will not And she says he must and he will And the dog says thank you And the boy says very well And the woman says well cure her and she says she is Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel. There is silence the lights flicker and flicker, and Marguerite Ida and He­ lena Annabel gets weaker and weaker and the poison stronger and stronger and suddenly the dog says startlingly Thank you Doctor Faustus says I cannot see you The viper has forgotten you. The dog has said thank you The boy has said will you The woman has said Can you And you, you have said you are you Enough said. You are not dead. Enough said Enough said. You are not dead. No you are not dead Enough said Enough said You are not dead.

All join in enough said you are not dead you are not dead enough said yes enough said no you are not dead yes enough said, thank you yes enough said no you are not dead. And at the last In a low whisper She says I am Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel and enough said I am not dead. Curtain ACT II Some one comes and sings Very Very Butter better very well Butcher whether it will tell Well is well and silver sell Sell a salted almond to Nell Which she will accept And then What does a fatty do She does not pay for it. No she does not Does not pay for it. By this time they know how to spell very Very likely the whole thing is really extraordinary Which is a great relief All the time her name is Marguerite Ida Marguerite Ida They drift in and they sing Very likely the whole thing is extraordinary Which is a great relief All the time her name is Marguerite Ida Marguerite Ida. Then they converse about it. Marguerite Ida is her name Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel who can tell if her name is Marguerite Ida or Helena Annabel Sillies all that is what makes you tall. To be tall means to say that everything else is layed away. Of course her names is Marguerite Ida too and Helena Annabel as well. A full chorus Of course her names is Marguerite Ida too and Helena Annabel as well. A deep voice asks Would a viper have stung her if she had only had one name would he would he. How do you know how do you know that a viper did sting her.

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How could Doctor Faustus have cured her if there had not been something the matter with her. Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel it is true her name is Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel as well and a viper has stung her and Doctor Faustus has cured her, cured her cured her, he has sold his soul to hell cured her cured her cured he he has sold his soul to hell and her name is Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel and a viper had to bite her and Doctor Faustus had to cure her cure her cure her cure her. The curtain at the corner rises and there she is Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel and she has an artificial viper there beside her and a halo is around her not of electric light but of candlelight, and she sits there and waits. The chorus sings There she is Is she there Look and see Is she there Is she there Anywhere Look and see Is she there Yes she is there There is there She is there Look and see She is there. There she is There there Where Why there Look and see there There she is And what is there A viper is there The viper that bit her No silly no How could he be there This is not a viper This is what is like a viper She is there And a viper did bite her And Doctor Faustus did cure her And now And now

And now she is there Where Why there Oh yes there. Yes oh yes yes there. There she is Look and see And the viper is there And the light is there Who gave her the light Nobody did Doctor Faustus sold his soul And so the light came there And did she sell her soul. No silly he sold his soul She had a viper bite her She is there Oh yes she is there Look there Yes there She is there. Marguerite Ida begins to sing I sit and sit with my back to the sun I sat and sat with my back to the sun. Marguerite Ida sat and sat with her back to the sun. The sun oh the sun the lights are bright like the sunset and she sat with her back to the sun sat and sat She sits A very grand ballet of lights. Nobody can know that it is so They come from everywhere By land by sea by air They come from everywhere To look at her there. See how she sits See how she eats See how she lights, The candle lights. See how the viper there, Cannot hurt her. No indeed he cannot. Nothing can touch her, She has everything And her soul, Nothing can lose her,

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See how they come See how they come To see her. See how they come. Watch They come by sea They come by land They come by air And she sits With her back to the sun One sun And she is one Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel as well. They commence to come and more and more come and they come from the sea from the land and from the air. And she sits. A man comes from over the seas and a great many are around him He sees her as she sits. And he says Pretty pretty dear She is all my love and always here And I am hers and she is mine And I love her all the time Pretty pretty pretty dear. No says the chorus no. She is she and the viper bit her And Doctor Faustus cured her. The man from over seas repeats Pretty pretty pretty dear She is all my love and always here And I am hers and she is mine And I love her all the time. Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel suddenly hears something and says What is it. He comes forward and says again Pretty pretty pretty dear she is all my love and she is always here. She sings slowly You do or you do not. He Pretty pretty dear she is all my love and she is always here. Well well he says well well and her name is Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel and they all say it was a viper, what is a viper, a viper is a serpent and anybody has been bitten and not everybody dies and cries, and so why why say it all the time, I have been bitten I I I have been bitten by her bitten by

her there she sits with her back to the sun and I have won I have won her I have won her. She sings a song You do or you do not You are or you are not I am there is no not But you you you You are as you are not He says Do you do what you do because you knew all the way through that 11 was coming to you answer me that. She turns her back on him. And he says I am your sun oh very very well begun, you turn your back on your sun, I am your sun, I have won I have won I am your sun. Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel rises. She holds the viper she says Is it you Doctor Faustus is it you, tell me man from over the sea are you he. He laughs. Are you afraid now afraid of me. She says Are you he. He says I am the only he and you are the only she and we are the only we. Come come do you hear me come come, you must come to me, throw away the viper throw away the sun throw away the lights until there are none. I am not any one I am the only one, you have to have me because I am that one. She looks very troubled and drops the viper but she instantly stoops and picks it up and some of the lights go out and she fusses about it. And then suddenly she starts, No one is one when there are two, look behind you look behind you you are not one you are two. She faints. And indeed behind the man of the seas is Mephistopheles and with him is a boy and a girl. Together they sing the song the boy and the girl. Mr. Viper think of me. He says you do she says you do and if you do dear Mr. Viper if you do then it is all true he is a boy I am a girl it is all true dear dear Mr. Viper think of me. The chorus says in the back, Dear dear Mr. Viper think of them one is a boy one is a girl dear dear viper dear dear viper think of them. Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel still staring at the man from over the seas and Mephisto behind them.

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She whispers, They two I two they two that makes six it should be seven they two I two they two five is heaven. Mephisto says And what if I ask what answer me what, I have a will of iron yes a will to do what I do. I do what I do what I do, I do I do. And he strides forward, Where where where are you, what a to do, when a light is bright there is moonlight, when a light is not so bright then it is daylight, and when a light is no light then it is electric light, but you you have candlelight, who are you. The ballet rushes in and out. Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel lifts the viper and says Lights are all right but the viper is my might. Pooh says Mephisto, I despise a viper, the viper tries but the viper lies. Me they cannot touch no not any such, a viper, ha ha a viper, a viper, ha ha, no the lights the lights the candle lights, I know a light when I see a light, I work I work all day and all night, I am the devil and day and night, I never sleep by any light by any dark by any might, I never sleep not by day not by night, you cannot fool me by candlelight, where is the real electric light woman answer me. The little boy and girl creep closer, they sing. Mr. Viper dear Mr. Viper, he is a boy I am a girl she is a girl I am a boy we do not want to annoy but we do oh we do oh Mr. Viper yes we do we want you to know that she is a girl that I am boy, oh yes Mr. Viper please Mr. Viper here we are Mr. Viper listen to us Mr. Viper, oh please Mr. Viper it is not true Mr. Viper what the devil says Mr. Viper that there is no Mr. Viper, please Mr. Viper please Mr. Viper, she is a girl he is a boy please Mr. Viper you are Mr. Viper please Mr. Viper please tell us so. The man from over the seas smiles at them all, and says It is lovely to be at ease. Mephisto says What do you know I am the devil and you do not listen to me I work and I work by day and by night and you do not listen to me he and she she and he do not listen to me you will see you will see, if I work day and night and I do I do I work day and night, then you will see what you will see, look out look out for me. He rushes away And Helena Annabel and Marguerite Ida shrinks back, and says to them all What does he say And the man from over the seas says Pretty pretty dear she is all my love and she is always here. and then more slowly I am the only he you are the only she and we are the only we, and the chorus sings softly

And the viper did bite her and Doctor Faustus did cure her. And the boy and girl sing softly. Yes Mr. Viper he is a boy she is a girl yes Mr. Viper. And the ballet of lights fades away. Curtain ACT III SCENE I

Doctor Faustus' house Faustus in his chair, the dog and the boy, the electric lights are right but the room is dark. Faustus Yes they shine They shine all the time. I know they shine I see them shine And I am here I have no fear But what shall I do I am all through I cannot bear To have no care I like it bright I do like it bright Alright I like it bright, But is it white Or is it bright. Dear dear I do care That nobody can share. What if they do It is all to me Ah I do not like that word me, Why not even if it does rhyme with she. I know all the words that rhyme with bright with light with might with alright, I know them so that I cannot tell I can spell but I cannot tell how much I need to not have that, not light not sight, not light not night not alright, not night not sight not bright, no no not night not sight not bright no no not bright. There is a moment's silence and then the dog says Thank you. He turns around and then he says Yes thank you.

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And then he says Not bright not night dear Doctor Faustus you are right, I am a dog yes I am just that I am I am a dog and I bay at the moon, I did yes I did I used to do it I used to bay at the moon I always used to do it and now now not any more, I cannot, of course I cannot, the electric lights they make it be that there is no night and if there is no night then there is no moon and if there is no moon I do not see it and if I do not see it I cannot bay at it. The dog sighs and settles down to rest and as he settles down he says Thank you. The little boy cuddles up close to him and says Yes there is no moon and if there is a moon then we do not bay at the moon and if there is no moon then no one is crazy any more because it is the moon of course it is the moon that always made them be like that, say thank you doggie and I too I too with you will say thank you. They softly murmur Thank you thank you thank you too. They all sleep in the dark with the electric light all bright, and then at the window comes something. Is it the moon says the dog is it the moon says the boy is it the moon do not wake me is it the moon says Faustus. No says a woman no it is not it is not the moon, I am not the moon I am at the window Doctor Faustus do not you know what it is that is happening. No answer. Doctor Faustus do not you know what is happening. Back of her a chorus Doctor Faustus do not you know what is happening. Still no answer All together louder Doctor Faustus do not you know do not you know what it is that is happening. Doctor Faustus. Go away woman and men, children and dogs moon and stars go away let me alone let me be alone no light is bright, I have no sight, go away woman and let me boy and dog let me be alone I need no light to tell me it is bright, go away go away, go away go away. No says the woman no I am at the window and here I remain till you hear it all. Here we know because Doctor Faustus tells us so, that he only he can turn night into day but now they say, they say, (her voice rises to a screech) they say a woman can turn night into day, they say a woman and a viper bit her and did not hurt her and he showed her how and now she can turn night into day, Doctor Faustus oh Doctor Faustus say you are the only one who can turn night into day, oh Doctor Faustus yes do say that you are the only one who can turn night into day. The chorus behind says

Oh Doctor Faustus oh Doctor Faustus do say that you are the only one who can turn night into day. Faustus starts up confused he faces the woman, he says, What is it you say. And she says imploringly, Oh Doctor Faustus do say you are the only one who can turn night into day. Faustus slowly draws himself erect and says Yes I do say I am the only one who can turn night into day. And the woman and the chorus say, He is the only one who can turn night into day. And the dog says He is the only one who can turn night into day, there is no moon any night or any day he is the only one to turn night into day, and the little boy says Yes he is the only one to turn night into day. And the woman then says But come Doctor Faustus come away come and see whether they say that they can turn night into day. Who says says Doctor Faustus She says says the woman Who is she says Doctor Faustus The answer Marguerite Ida or Helena Annabel She says Doctor Faustus Who said I could not go to hell. She she says the woman She she says the chorus Thank you said the dog Well said Doctor Faustus Well then I can go to hell, if she can turn night into day then I can go to hell, come on then come on we will go and see her and I will show her that I can go to hell, if she can turn night into day as they say then I am not the only one very well I am not the only one so Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel listen well you cannot but 11 can go to hell. Come on every one never again will I be alone come on come on every one. They all leave.

SCENE II

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The scene as before, Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel sitting with the man from over the seas their backs to the sun, the music to express a noonday hush. Everybody dreamily saying Mr. Viper please Mr. Viper, some saying Is he is he Doctor Faustus no he isn't no he isn't, is he is he is he all he loves her is he is he all she loves him, no one can remember anything but him, which is she and which is he sweetly after all there is no bee there is a viper such a nice sweet quiet one, nobody any body knows how to run, come any one come, see any one, some, come viper sun, we know no other any one, any one can forget a light, even an electric one but no one no no one can forget a viper even a stuffed one no no one and no one can forget the sun and no one can forget Doctor Faustus no no one and and no one can forget Thank you and the dog and no one can forget a little boy and no one can forget any one no no one. (These words to be distributed among the chorus) and the man from over seas murmurs dreamily Pretty pretty pretty dear here I am and you are here and yet and yet it would be better yet if you had more names and not only four in one let it be begun, forget it oh forget it pretty one, and if not I will forget that you are one yes I will yes I will pretty pretty one yes I will. Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel stiffens a little Well will you yes I will, no one can know when I do not tell them so that they cannot know anything they know, yes I know, I do know just what I can know, it is not there well anywhere, I cannot come not for any one I cannot say what is night and day but I am the only one who can know anything about any one, am I one dear dear am I one, who hears me knows me I am here and here I am, yes here I am. The chorus gets more lively and says Yes there she is Dear me says the man from over the seas. Just then out of the gloom appear at the other end of the stage Faust and the boy and the dog, nobody sees them, just then in front of every one appears Mephisto, very excited and sings Which of you can dare to deceive me which of you he or she can dare to deceive me, I who have a will of iron I who make what will be happen I who can win men or women I who can be wherever I am which of you has been deceiving which of you she or he which of you has been deceiving me. He shouts louder If there is a light who has the right, I say I gave it to him, she says he gave it to

her or she does not say anthing, I say I am Mephisto and what I have I do not give no not to any one, who has been in her who has been in him, I will win. The boy and girl shrilly sing She is she and he is he and we are we Mr. Viper do not forget to be. Please Mr. Viper do not forget to be, do not forget that she is she and that he is he please Mr. Viper do not forget me. Faustus murmurs in a low voice I sold my soul to make it bright with electric light and now no one not I not she not they not he are interested in that thing and I and 11 cannot go to hell I have sold my soul to make a light and the light is bright but not interesting in my sight and I would oh yes I would I would rather go to hell be I with all my might and then go to hell oh yes alright. Mephisto strides up to him and says You deceived me. I did not says Faustus Mephisto. You deceived me and I am never deceived Faust, you deceived me and I am always deceived, Mephisto, you deceived me and I am never deceived. Faustus Well well let us forget it is not ready yet let us forget and now oh how how I want to be me myself all now, I do not care for light let it be however light, I do not care anything but to be well and to go to hell. Tell me oh devil tell me will she will Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel will she will she really will she go to hell. Mephisto I suppose so. Faustus Well then how dear devil how how can I who have no soul I sold it for a light how can I be I again alright and go to hell. Mephisto Commit a sin Faustus What sin, how can I without a soul commit a sin. Mephisto Kill anything Faustus Kill Mephisto Yes kill something oh yes kill anything. Yes it is I who have been deceived I the devil whom no one can deceive yes it is 11 who have been deceived. Faustus

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But if I kill what then will. Mephisto It is I who have an iron will. Faustus But if I kill what will happen then. Mephisto Oh go to hell. Faustus I will He turns he sees the boy and dog he says I will kill I will I will. He whispers I will kill I will I will. He turns to the boy and dog and he says Boy and dog I will kill you two I will kill I will I will boy and dog I will kill you kill you, the viper will kill you but it will be I who did it, you will die. The dog says Thank you, the light is so bright there is no moon tonight I cannot bay at the moon the viper will kill me. Thank you, and the boy says And I too, there is no day and night there is no dog tonight to say thank you the viper will kill me too, good-bye to you. In the distance the voices of the boy and girl are heard saying Mr. Viper please listen to me he is a boy she is a girl. There is a rustle the viper appears and the dog and the boy die. Faustus They are dead yes they are dead, dear dog dear boy yes you are dead you are forever ever ever dead and 11 can because you die nobody can deny later I will go to hell very well very well I will go to hell Marguerite Ida Helena Annabel I come to tell to tell you that I can go to hell. Mephisto And I, while you cry I who do not deny that now you can go to hell have I nothing to do with you. Faustus No I am through with you I do not need the devil I can go to hell all alone. Leave me alone let me be alone I can go to hell all alone. Mephisto No listen to me now take her with you do I will make you young take her with you do Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel take her with you do. Faustus Is it true that I can be young. Mephisto Yes. Faustus

All right. He is young he approaches Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel who wakes up and looks at him. He says Look well I am Doctor Faustus and I can go to hell. Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel You Doctor Faustus never never Doctor Faustus is old I was told and I saw it with my eyes he was old and could not go to hell and you are young and can go to hell, very well you are not Doctor Faustus never never. Faustus I am I am I killed the boy and dog when I was an old man and now I am a young man and you Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel and you know it well and you know I can go to hell and I can take some one too and that some one will be you. Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel Never never, never never, you think you are so clever you think you can deceive, you think you can be old and you are young and old like any one but never never, I am Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel and I know no man or devil no viper and no light I can be anything and everything and it is always always alright. No one can deceive me not a young man not an old man not a devil not a viper I am Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel and never never will a young man be an old man and an old man be a young man, you are not Doctor Faustus no not ever never never and she falls back fainting into the arms of the man from over the seas who sings Pretty pretty pretty dear I am he and she is she and we are we, pretty pretty dear I am here yes I am here pretty pretty pretty dear. Mephisto strides up Always deceived always deceived I have a will of iron and I am always deceived always deceived come Doctor Faustus I have a will of iron and you will go to hell. Faustus sings Leave me alone let me be alone, dog and boy boy and dog leave me alone let me be alone and he sinks into the darkness and it is all dark and the little boy and the little girl sing Please Mr. Viper listen to me he is he and she is she and we are we please Mr. Viper listen to me. Curtain

Plays Gertrude Stein

In a book I wrote called How to Write I made a discovery which I con­ sidered fundamental, that sentences are not emotional and that para­ graphs are. I found out about language that paragraphs are emotional and sentences are not and I found out something else about it. I found out that this difference was not a contradiction but a combination and that this combination causes one to think endlessly about sentences and para­ graphs because the emotional paragraphs are made up of unemotional sentences. I found out a fundamental thing about plays. The thing I found out about plays was too a combination and not a contradiction and it was some­ thing that makes one think endlessly about plays. That something is this. The thing that is fundamental about plays is that the scene as depicted on the stage is more often than not one might say it is almost always in syncopated time in relation to the emotion of anybody in the audience. What this says is this. Your sensation as one in the audience in relation to the play played before you your sensation I say your emotion concerning that play is always either behind or ahead of the play at which you are looking and to which you are listening. So your emotion as a member of the audience is never going on at the same time as the action of the play. This thing the fact that your emotional time as an audience is not the same as the emotional time of the play is what makes one endlessly troubled Reprinted from Gertrude Stein: Writings and Lectures, 1911-1945 (London: Peter Owen, 1967), 93-131.

about a play, because not only is there a thing to know as to why this is so but also there is a thing to know why perhaps it does not need to be so. This is a thing to know and knowledge as anybody can know is a thing to get by getting. And so I will try to tell you what I had to get and what perhaps I have gotten in plays and to do so I will tell you all that I have ever felt about plays or about any play. Plays are either read or heard or seen. And there then comes the question which comes first and which is first, reading or hearing or seeing a play. I ask you. What is knowledge. Of course knowledge is what you know and what you know is what you do know. What do I know about plays. In order to know one must always go back. What was the first play I saw and was I then already bothered bothered about the different tempo there is in the play and in yourself and your emotion in having the play go on in front of you. I think I may say I may say I know that I was already troubled by this in that my first experience at a play. The thing seen and the emotion did not go on together. This that the thing seen and the thing felt about the thing seen not going on at the same tempo is what makes the being at the theater something that makes anybody nervous. The jazz bands made of this thing, the thing that makes you nervous at the theater, they made of this thing an end in itself. They made of this different tempo a something that was nothing but a difference in tempo between anybody and everybody including all those doing it and all those hearing and seeing it. In the theater of course this difference in tempo is less violent but still it is there and it does make anybody nervous. In the first place at the theater there is the curtain and the curtain already makes one feel that one is not going to have the same tempo as the thing that is there behind the curtain. The emotion of you on one side of the curtain and what is on the other side of the curtain are not going to be going on together. One will always be behind or in front of the other. Then also beside the curtain there is the audience and the fact that they are or will be or will not be in the way when the curtain goes up that too makes for nervousness and nervousness is the certain proof that the emotion of the one seeing and the emotion of the thing seen do not progress together. Nervousness consists in needing to go faster or to go slower so as to get together. It is that that makes anybody feel nervous. And is it a mistake that that is what the theater is or is it not. There are things that are exciting as the theater is exciting but do they make you nervous or do they not, and if they do and if they do not why do they and why do they not.

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Let us think of three different kinds of things that are exciting and that make or do not make one nervous. First any scene which is a real scene something real that is happening in which one takes part as an actor in that scene. Second any book that is exciting, third the theater at which one sees an exciting action in which one does not take part. Now in a real scene in which one takes part at which one is an actor what does one feel as to time and what is it that does or does not make one nervous. And is your feeling at such a time ahead and behind the action the way it is when you are at the theater. It is the same and it is not. But more not. If you are taking part in an actual violent scene, and you talk and they or he or she talks and it goes on and it gets more exciting and finally then it happens, whatever it is that does happen then when it happens then at the moment of happening is it a relief from the excitement or is it a completion of the excitement. In the real thing it is a completion of the excitement, in the theater it is a relief from the excitement, and in that difference the difference between completion and relief is the difference between emotion concerning a thing seen on the stage and the emotion concerning a real presentation that is really something happening. This then is the fundamental difference between excitement in real life and on the stage, in real life it culminates in a sense of completion whether an exciting act or an exciting emotion has been done or not, and on the stage the exciting climax is a relief. And the memory of the two things is different. As you go over the detail that leads to culmination of any scene in real life, you find that each time you cannot get completion, but you can get relief and so already your memory of any exciting scene in which you have taken part turns it into the thing seen or heard not the thing felt. You have as I say as the result relief rather than culmination. Relief from excitement, rather than the climax of excitement. In this respect an exciting story does the same only in the exciting story, you so to speak have control of it as you have in your memory of a really exciting scene, it is not as it is on the stage a thing over which you have no real control. You can with an exciting story find out the end and so begin over again just as you can in remembering an exciting scene, but the stage is different, it is not real and yet it is not within your control as the memory of an exciting thing is or the reading of an exciting book. No matter how well you know the end of the stage story it is neverthe­ less not within your control as the memory of an exciting thing is or as the written story of an exciting thing is or even in a curious way the heard story of an exciting thing is. And what is the reason for this difference and what does it do to the stage. It makes for nervousness that of course, and the cause of nervousness is the fact that the emotion of the one seeing the play is always ahead or behind the play. Beside all this there is a thing to be realized and that is how you are being

introduced to the characters who take part in an exciting action even when you yourself are one of the actors. And this too has to be very much thought about. And thought about in relation to an exciting real thing to an exciting book, to an exciting theater. How are you introduced to the characters. There are then the three ways of having something be exciting, and the excitement may or may not make one nervous, a book being read that is exciting, a scene in which one takes part or an action in which one takes part and the theater at which one looks on. In each case the excitement and the nervousness and the being behind or ahead in one's feeling is different. First anything exciting in which one takes part. There one progresses forward and back emotionally and at the supreme crisis of the scene the scene in which one takes part, in which one's hopes and loves and fears take part at the extreme crisis of this thing one is almost one with one's emotions, the action and the emotion go together, there is but just a moment of this coordination but it does exist otherwise there is no completion as one has no result, no result of a scene in which one has taken part, and so instinctively when any people are living an exciting moment one with another they go on and on and on until the thing has come together the emotion the action the excitement and that is the way it is when there is any violence either of loving or hating or quarreling or losing or succeeding. But there is, there has to be the moment of it all being abreast the emotion, the excitement and the action otherwise there would be no succeeding and no failing and so no one would go on living, why yes of course not. That is life the way it is lived. Why yes of course and there is a reasonable and sometimes an unreason­ able and very often not a reasonable amount of excitement in everybody's life and when it happens it happens in that way. Now when you read a book how is it. Well it is not exactly like that no not even when a book is even more exciting than any excitement one has ever had. In the first place one can always look at the end of the book and so quiet down one's excitement. The excitement having been quieted down one can enjoy the excitement just as any one can enjoy the excitement of anything having happened to them by remembering and so tasting it over and over again but each time less intensely and each time until it is all over. Those who like to read books over and over get continuously this sensation of the excitement as if it were a pleasant distant thunder that rolls and rolls and the more it rolls well the further it rolls the pleasanter until it does not roll any more. That is until at last you have read the book so often that it no longer holds any excitement not even ever so faintly and then you have to wait until you have forgotten it and you can begin it again. Now the theater has still another way of being all this to you, the thing causing your emotion and the excitement in connection with it. Of course lots of other things can do these things to lots of other people

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that is to say excite lots of people but as I have said knowledge is what you know and I naturally tell you what I know, as I do so very essentially believe in knowledge. So then once again what does the theater do and how does it do it. What happens on the stage and how and how does one feel about it. That is the thing to know, to know and to tell it as so. Is the thing seen or the thing heard the thing that makes most of its impression upon you at the theater. How much has the hearing to do with it and how little. Does the thing heard replace the thing seen. Does it help or does it interfere with it. And when you are taking part in something really happening that is exciting, how is it. Does the thing seen or does the thing heard affect you and affect you at the same time or in the same degree or does it not. Can you wait to hear or can you wait to see and which excites you the most. And what has either one to do with the completion of the excitement when the excitement is a real excitement that is excited by something really happening. And then little by little does the hearing replace the seeing or does the seeing replace the hearing. Do they go together or do they not. And when the exciting something in which you have taken part arrives at its completion does the hearing replace the seeing or does it not. Does the seeing replace the hearing or does it not. Or do they both go on together. All this is very important, and important for me and important, just important. It has of course a great deal to do with the theater a great great deal. In connection with reading an exciting book the thing is again more complicated than just seeing, because of course in reading one sees but one also hears and when the story is at its most exciting does one hear more than one sees or does one not do so. I am posing all these questions to you because of course in writing, all these things are things that are really most entirely really exciting. But of course yes. And in asking a question one is not answering but one is as one may say deciding about knowing. Knowing is what you know and in asking these questions although there is no one who answers these questions there is in them that there is knowledge. Knowledge is what you know. And now is the thing seen or the thing heard the thing that makes most of its impression upon you at the theater, and does as the scene on the theater proceeds does the hearing take the place of seeing as perhaps it does when something real is being most exciting, or does seeing take the place of hearing as it perhaps does when anything real is happening or does the mixture get to be more mixed seeing and hearing as perhaps it does when anything really exciting is really happening. If the emotion of the person looking at the theater does or does not do what it would do if it were really a real something that was happening and

they were taking part in it or they were looking at it, when the emotion of the person looking on at the theater comes then at the climax to relief rather than completion has the mixture of seeing and hearing something to do with this and does this mixture have something to do with the nervousness of the emotion at the theater which has perhaps to do with the fact that the emo­ tion of the person at the theater is always behind and ahead of the scene at the theater but not with it. There are then quite a number of things that any one does or does not know. Does the thing heard replace the thing seen does it help it or does it interfere with it. Does the thing seen replace the thing heard or does it help or does it interfere with it. I suppose one might have gotten to know a good deal about these things from the cinema and how it changed from sight to sound, and how much before there was real sound how much of the sight was sound or how much it was not. In other words the cinema undoubtedly had a new way of under­ standing sight and sound in relation to emotion and time. I may say that as a matter of fact the thing which has induced a person like myself to constantly think about the theater from the standpoint of sight and sound and its relation to emotion and time, rather than in relation to story and action is the same as you may say general form of conception as the inevitable experiments made by the cinema although the method of doing so has naturally nothing to do with the other. I myself never go to the cinema or hardly ever practically never and the cinema has never read my work or hardly ever. The fact remains that there is the same impulse to solve the problem of time in relation to emotion and the relation of the scene to the emotion of the audience in the one case as in the other. There is the same impulse to solve the problem of the relation of seeing and hearing in the one case as in the other. It is in short the inevitable problem of anybody living in the composition of the present time, that is living as we are now living as we have it and now do live in it. The business of Art as I tried to explain in Composition as Explanation is to live in the actual present, that is the complete actual present, and to completely express that complete actual present. But to come back to that other question which is at once so important a part of any scene in real life, in books or on the stage, how are the actors introduced to the sight, hearing and consciousness of the person having the emotion about them. How is it done in each case and what has that to do with the way the emotion progresses. How are the actors in a real scene introduced to those acting with them in that scene and how are the real actors in a real scene introduced to you who are going to be in an exciting scene with them. How does it happen, that is, as it usually happens.

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And how are the actors in a book scene introduced to the reader of the book, how does one come to know them, that is how is one really introduced to them. And how are the people on the stage that is the people the actors act how are they introduced to the audience and what is the reason why, the reason they are introduced in the way that they are introduced, and what happens, and how does it matter, and how does it affect the emotions of the audience. In a real scene, naturally in a real scene, you either have already very well known all the actors in the real scene of which you are one, or you have not. More generally you have than you have not, but and this is the element of excitement in an exciting scene, it quite of course is the element of excite­ ment in an exciting scene that is in a real scene, all that you have known of the persons including yourself who are taking part in the exciting scene, although you have most probably known them very well, what makes it exciting is that insofar as the scene is exciting they the actors in the scene including yourself might just as well have been strangers because they all act talk and feel differently from the way you have expected them to act feel or talk. And this that they feel act and talk including yourself differently from the way you would have thought that they would act feel and talk makes the scene an exciting scene and makes the climax of this scene which is a real scene a climax of completion and not a climax of relief. That is what a real scene is. Would it make any difference in a real scene if they were all strangers, if they had never known each other. Yes it would, it would be practically impossible in the real scene to have a really exciting scene if they were all strangers because generally speaking it is the contradiction between the way you know the people you know including yourself act and the way they are acting or feeling or talking that makes of any scene that is an exciting scene an exciting scene. Of course there are other exciting scenes in peace and in war in which the exciting scene takes place with strangers but in that case for the purpose of excitement you are all strangers but so completely strangers, including you yourself to yourself as well as the others to each other and to you that they are not really individuals and inasmuch as that is so it has the advantage and the disadvantage that you proceed by a series of completions which follow each other so closely that when it is all over you cannot remember that is you can­ not really reconstruct the thing, the thing that has happened. That is some­ thing that one must think about in relation to the theater and it is a very inter­ esting thing. Then in a case like that where you are all strangers in an exciting scene what happens as far as hearing and seeing is concerned. When in an exciting scene where you are all strangers you to yourself and you to them and they to you and they to each other and where no one of all of them including yourself have any consciousness of knowing each other do you have the disadvantage of not knowing the difference between hearing and seeing and is that a disadvantage from the standpoint of remembering. From that stand­ point the standpoint of remembering it is a serious disadvantage.

But we may say that that exciting experience of exciting scenes where you have really no acquaintance with the other actors as well as none with yourself in an exciting action are comparatively rare and are not the normal material of excitement as it is exciting in the average person's experience. As I say in the kind of excitement where you have had no normal intro­ duction to the actors of the scene the action and the emotion is so violent that sight sound and emotion is so little realized that it cannot be remem­ bered and therefore in a kind of a way it has really nothing to do with anything because really it is more exciting action than exciting emotion or excitement. I think I can say that these are not the same thing. Have they anything to do with the way the theater gets you to know or not to know what the people on the stage are. Perhaps yes and perhaps no. In ordinary life one has known pretty well the people with whom one is having the exciting scene before the exciting scene takes place and one of the most exciting elements in the excitement be it love or a quarrel or a struggle is that, that having been well known that is familiarly known, they all act in acting violently act in the same way as they always did of course only the same way has become so completely different that from the standpoint of familiar acquaintance there is none there is complete familiarity but there is no proportion that has hitherto been known, and it is this which makes the scene the real scene exciting, and it is this that leads to completion, the proportion achieves in your emotion the new proportion therefore it is com­ pletion but not relief. A new proportion cannot be a relief. Now how does one naturally get acquainted in real life which makes one have a familiarity with some one. By a prolonged familiarity of course. And how does one achieve this familiarity with the people in a book or the people on the stage. Or does one. In real life the familiarity is of course the result of accident, intention or natural causes but in any case there is a progressive familiarity that makes one acquainted. Now in a book there is an attempt to do the same thing that is, to say, to do a double thing, to make the people in the book familiar with each other and to make the reader familiar with them. That is the reason in a book it is always a strange doubling, the familiarity between the characters in the book is a progressive familiarity and the familiarity between them and the reader is a familiarity that is a forcing process or an incubation. It makes of course a double time and later at another time we will go into that. But now how about the theater. It is not possible in the theater to produce familiarity which is of the essence of acquaintance because, in the first place when the actors are there they are there and they are there right away. When one reads a play and very often one does read a play, anyway one did read Shakespeare's plays a great deal at least I did, it was always necessary to keep one's finger in the list of characters for at least the whole first act, and in a way it is necessary to do the same when the play is played. One has one's

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program for that and beside one has to become or has become acquainted with the actors as an actor and one has one's program too for that. And so the introduction to the characters on the stage has a great many different sides to it. And this has again a great deal to do with the nervousness of the theater excitement. Anybody who was as I was, brought up and at the time that I was brought up was brought up in Oakland and in San Francisco inevitably went to the theater a lot. Actors in those days liked to go out to the coast and as it was expensive to get back and not expensive to stay there they stayed. Besides that there were a great many foreign actors who came and having come stayed and any actor who stays acts and so there was always a great deal to see on the stage and children went, they went with each other and they went alone, and they went with people who were older, and there was twenty-five cent opera to which anybody went and the theater was natural and anybody went to the theater. I did go a great deal in those days. I also read plays a great deal. I rather liked reading plays, I very much liked reading plays. In the first place there was in reading plays as I have said the necessity of going forward and back to the list of characters to find out which was which and then insensibly to know. Then there was the poetry and then gradually there were the portraits. I can remember quite definitely in the reading of plays that there were very decidedly these three things, the way of getting acquainted that was not an imitation of what one usually did, but the having to remember which character was which. That was very different from real life or from a book. Then there was the element of poetry. Poetry connected with a play was livelier poetry than poetry unconnected with a play. In the first place there were a great many bits that were short and sometimes it was only a line. I remember Henry VI which I read and reread and which of course I have never seen played but which I liked to read because there were so many characters and there were so many little bits in it that were lively words. In the poetry of plays words are more lively words than in any other kind of poetry and if one naturally liked lively words and I naturally did one likes to read plays in poetry. I always as a child read all the plays I could get hold of that were in poetry. Plays in prose do not read so well. The words in prose are livelier when they are not a play. I am not saying anything about why, it is just a fact. So then for me there was the reading of plays which was one thing and then there was the seeing of plays and of operas a great many of them which was another thing. Later on so very much later on there was for me the writing of plays which was one thing and there was at that time no longer any seeing of plays. I practically when I wrote my first play had completely ceased going to the theater. In fact although I have written a great many plays and I am quite sure they are plays I have since I commenced writing these plays I have

practically never been inside of any kind of a theater. Of course none of this has been intentional, one may say generally speaking that anything that is really inevitable, that is to say necessary is not intentional. But to go back to the plays I did see, and then to go on to the plays I did write. It was then a natural thing in the Oakland and San Francisco in which I was brought up to see a great many plays played. Beside there was a great deal of opera played and so all of it was natural enough and how did I feel about it. Generally speaking all the early recollections all a child's feeling of the theater is two things. One which is in a way like a circus that is the general movement and light and air which any theatre has, and a great deal of glitter in the light and a great deal of height in the air, and then there are moments, a very very few moments but still moments. One must be pretty far advanced in adolescence before one realizes a whole play. Up to the time of adolescence when one does really live in a whole play up to that time the theater consists of bright filled space and usually not more than one moment in a play. I think this is fairly everybody's experience and it was completely mine. Uncle Tom's Cabin may not have been my first play but it was very nearly my first play. I think my first play really was Pinafore in London but the theater there was so huge that I do not remember at all seeing a stage I only remember that it felt like a theater that is the theater did. I doubt if I did see the stage. In Uncle Tom's Cabin I remember only the escape across the ice, I imagine because the blocks of ice moving up and down naturally would catch my eye more than the people on the stage would. The next thing was the opera the twenty-five cent opera of San Francisco and the fight in Faust. But that I imagine was largely because my brother had told me about the fight in Faust. As a matter of fact I gradually saw more of the opera because I saw it quite frequently. Then there was Buffalo Bill and the Indian attack, well of course anybody raised where everybody collected arrow heads and played Indians would notice Indians. And then there was Lohengrin, and there all that I saw was the swan being changed into a boy, our insisting on seeing that made my father with us lose the last boat home to Oakland, but my brother and I did not mind, naturally not as it was the moment. In spite of my having seen operas quite often the first thing that I remem­ ber as sound on the stage was the playing by some English actor of Richelieu at the Oakland theater and his repeated calling out, Nemours Nemours. That is the first thing that I remember hearing with my ears at the theater and as I say nothing is more interesting to know about the theater than the relation of sight and sound. It is always the most interesting thing about anything to know whether you hear or you see. And how one has to do with

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the other. It is one of the important things in finding out how you know what you know. Then I enormously remember Booth playing Hamlet but there again the only thing I noticed and it is rather a strange thing to have noticed is his lying at the Queen's feet during the play. One would suppose that a child would notice other things in the play than that but that is what I remember and I noticed him there more than I did the play he saw, although I knew that there was a play going on there, that is the little play. It was in this way that I first felt two things going on at one time. That is something that one has to come to feel. Then the next thing I knew was adolescence and going to the theater all the time, a great deal alone, and all of it making an outside inside existence for me, not so real as books, which were all inside me, but so real that it the theater made me real outside of me which up to that time I never had been in my emotion. I had largely been so in an active daily life but not in any emotion.

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over which one stumbled to such an extent that the time of one's emotion in relation to the scene was always interrupted. The things over which one stumbled and there it was a matter both of seeing and of hearing were clothes, voices, what they the actors said, how they were dressed and how that related itself to their moving around. Then the bother of never being able to begin over again because before it had commenced it was over, and at no time had you been ready, either to commence or to be over. Then I began to vaguely wonder whether I could see and hear at the same time and which helped or interfered with the other and which helped or interfered with the thing on the stage having been over before it really commenced. Could I see and hear and feel at the same time and did I. I began to be a good deal troubled by all these things, the more emotion I felt while at the theater the more troubled I became by all these things. And then I was relieved. As I said San Francisco was a wonderful place to hear and see foreign actors as at that time they liked it when they got there and they stayed and they played. I must have been about sixteen years old and Bernhardt came to San Francisco and stayed two months. I knew a little French of course but really it did not matter, it was all so foreign and her voice being so varied and it all being so French I could rest in it untroubled. And I did. It was better than the opera because it went on. It was better than the theater because you did not have to get acquainted. The manners and customs of the french theater created a thing in itself and it existed in and for itself as the poetical plays had that I used so much to read, there were so

many characters just as there were in those plays and you did not have to know them they were so foreign, and the foreign scenery and actuality replaced the poetry and the voices replaced the portraits. It was for me a very simple direct and moving pleasure. This experience curiously enough and yet perhaps it was not so curious awakened in me a desire for melodrama on the stage, because there again everything happened so quietly one did not have to get acquainted and as what the people felt was of no importance one did not have to realize what was said. This pleasure in melodrama and in those days there was always one theater in a theatrically inclined town that played melodrama, this pleasure in melodrama culminated for me in the Civil War dramas of that period and the best of them was of course Secret Service. Gillette had conceived a new technique, silence stillness and quick movement. Of course it had been done in the melodrama already by the villains particularly in such plays as the Queen of Chinatown and those that had to do with telegraph operators. But Gillette had not only done it but he had conceived it and it made the whole stage the whole play this technique silence stillness and quick move­ ment. One was no longer bothered by the theater, you had to get acquainted of course but that was quickly over and after that nothing bothered. In fact Gillette created what the cinema later repeated by mixing up the short story and the stage but there is yet the trouble with the cinema that it is after all a photograph, and a photograph continues to be a photograph and yet can it become something else. Perhaps it can but that is a whole other question. If it can then some one will have to feel that about it. But to go on. From then on I was less and less interested in the theater. I became more interested in opera, I went one went and the whole business almost came together and then finally, just finally, I came not to care at all for music and so having concluded that music was made for adolescents and not for adults and having just left adolescence behind me and besides I knew all the operas anyway by that time I did not care any more for opera. Then I came to Paris to live and there for a long time I did not go to the theater at all. I forgot the theater, I never thought about the theater. I did sometimes think about the opera. I went to the opera once in Venice and I liked it and then much later Strauss's Electra made me realize that in a kind of a way there could be a solution of the problem of conversation on the stage. Beside it was a new opera and it is quite exciting to hear something unknown really unknown. But as I say I settled down to Paris life and I forgot the theater and almost forgot opera. There was of course Isadora Duncan and then the Russian ballet and in between Spain and the Argentine and bullfights and I began once more to feel something about something going on at a theater. And then I went back, not in my reading but in my feeling to the reading

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of plays in my childhood, the lots of characters, the poetry and the portraits and the scenery which was always of course and ought always to be of course woods that is forests and trees and streets and windows. And so one day all of a sudden I began to write Plays. I remember very well the first one I wrote. I called it "What Happened, a Play," it is in Geography and Plays as are all the plays I wrote at that time. I think and always have thought that if you write a play you ought to announce that it is a play and that is what I did. What Happened. A Play. I had just come home from a pleasant dinner party and I realized then as anybody can know that something is always happening. Something is always happening, anybody knows a quantity of stories of people's lives that are always happening, there are always plenty for the newspapers and there are always plenty in private life. Everybody knows so many stories and what is the use of telling another story. What is the use of telling a story since there are so many and everybody knows so many and tells so many. In the country it is perfectly extraordinary how many complicated dramas go on all the time. And everybody knows them, so why tell another one. There is always a story going on. So naturally what I wanted to do in my play was what everybody did not always know nor always tell. By everybody I do of course include myself by always I do of course include myself. And so I wrote What Happened, A Play. Then I wrote Ladies Voices and then I wrote a Curtain Raiser. I did this last because I wanted still more to tell what could be told if one did not tell anything. Perhaps I will read some of these to you later. Then I went to Spain and there I wrote a lot of plays. I concluded that anything that was not a story could be a play and I even made plays in letters and advertisements. I had before I began writing plays written many portraits. I had been enormously interested all my life in finding out what made each one that one and so I had written a great many portraits. I came to think that since each one is that one and that there are a number of them each one being that one, the only way to express this thing each one being that one and there being a number of them knowing each other was in a play. And so I began to write these plays. And the idea in "What Happened, a Play" was to express this without telling what happened, in short to make a play the essence of what happened. I tried to do this with the first series of plays that I wrote. I have of course always been struggling with this thing, to say what you nor I nor nobody knows, but what is really what you and I and everybody knows, and as I say everybody hears stories but the thing that makes each one what he is is not that. Everybody hears stories and knows stories. How can

they not because that is what anybody does and what everybody tells. But in my portraits I had tried to tell what each one is without telling stories and now in my early plays I tried to tell what happened without telling stories so that the essence of what happened would be like the essence of the portraits, what made what happened be what it was. And then I had for the moment gone as far as I could then go in plays and I went back to poetry and portraits and description. Then I began to spend my summers in Bilignin in the department of the Ain and there I lived in a landscape that made itself its own landscape. I slowly came to feel that since the landscape was the thing, I had tried to write it down in Lucy Church, Amiably and I did but I wanted it even more really, in short I found that since the landscape was the thing, a play was a thing and I went on writing plays a great many plays. The landscape at Bilignin so completely made a play that I wrote quantities of plays. I felt that if a play was exactly like a landscape then there would be no difficulty about the emotion of the person looking on at the play being behind or ahead of the play because the landscape does not have to make acquaintance. You may have to make acquaintance with it, but it does not with you, it is there and so the play being written the relation between you at any time is so exactly that that it is of no importance unless you look at it. Well I did look at it and the result is in all the plays that I have printed as Operas and Plays. The landscape has its formation and as after all a play has to have forma­ tion and be in relation one thing to the other thing and as the story is not the thing as anyone is always telling something then the landscape not moving but being always in relation, the trees to the hills the hills to the fields the trees to each other any piece of it to any sky and then any detail to any other detail, the story is only of importance if you like to tell or like to hear a story but the relation is there anyway. And of that relation I wanted to make a play and I did, a great number of plays. The only one of course that has been played is Four Saints. In Four Saints I made the saints the landscape. All the saints that I made and I made a number of them because after all a great many pieces of things are in a landscape all these saints together made my landscape. These attendant saints were the landscape and it the play really is a landscape. A landscape does not move nothing really moves in a landscape but things are there, and I put into the play the things that were there. Magpies are in the landscape that is they are in the sky of a landscape, they are black and white and they are in the sky of the landscape in Bilignin and in Spain, especially in Avila. When they are in the sky they do something that I have never seen any other bird do they hold themselves up and down and look flat against the sky.

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moment's hesitation, puts down the papers and begins once again to pace the floor nervously. AGNES, who has not found what she was looking for, leaves by the door at upstage center. The FIRST CALLER, who had turned toward her, remains with his back to the audience.) THE MOTHER (she gets up and moves toward the FIRST CALLER): Well, isn't that the Croix de Guerre? FIRST CALLER (proudly): No, that is the Award for Civil Merit. THE MOTHER: We need more men like you. (Pause.) What do you think is going to happen? Are we finally going to do something definite? FIRST CALLER: I hope SO.

(stopping a second, angrily): You know as well as I do that nothing will be done, (AGNES comes back, a pair of trousers over her arm. She plugs in the iron, then kneels and begins to iron the trousers on the floor, downstage left. The FIRST CALLER, turning on his heels to follow the slightest movements of AGNES, takes a step toward her. THE MOTHER goes back to sit down in her chair, TRADEL stops and watches AGNES and the FIRST CALLER from across the room.) FIRST CALLER (to AGNES): What? You mean you don't even have an ironing board? That's no way to live! (Pause.) You weren't cut out for . . . such gymnastics. AGNES (ironing): I wonder what I was cut out for? (She starts, and accidentally pulls out the plug. The FIRST CALLER goes to replace it, then returns to his place, AGNES nods her thanks and continues ironing.) FIRST CALLER (to AGNES): Why are you so sad? As pretty as you are . . . you must have something on your mind. Tell me what! AGNES (lifting her head): I never talk about myself. FIRST CALLER: But why not? To me, a woman's secrets are always sacred. (Pause.) Who has hurt you? AGNES (ironing): The pain that someone else causes you matters no more

TRADEL

than the pain you cause someone else. That's the trouble, no one can be blamed for anything that happens. {Pause.) I have no right to complain about Pierre. FIRST CALLER: Pierre? AGNES

{looking up again): That's my husband. I don't like to talk about him.

FIRST CALLER: W h y not?

AGNES {looking up): Because no one has a right to judge him, least of all me. FIRST CALLER: Ah! He's really that unusual, is he? I get the impression that you're the one who is different. {He laughs.) AGNES: I'm no different from anyone else. TRADEL {going toward THE MOTHER, in a low voice): She's talking about Pierre to the First Caller. THE MOTHER: See here, Tradel, we can speak of Pierre to anyone we wish. What's it got to do with him? {Sound of an elevator. Pause, PIERRE enters feverishly. He goes over to kiss THE MOTHER, then AGNES, still on her knees, who turns away from him. The FIRST CALLER, frightened, moves away upstage left, where he finds the ball. He takes it between his feet and dribbles it a bit, almost without moving. From his position, he watches everyone.) PIERRE {to TRADEL, coldly): It was nice of you to come, {TRADEL notices the tone of voice.) I'm sorry, but I can't be familiar with anyone any more. {Pause.) Except Agnes, of course. {He begins to pace back and forth.) THE MOTHER: Agnes, you haven't introduced our guest. {She makes a motion to the FIRST CALLER, who lets go of the ball and comes over.) This man has come to see Mr. Weisenhauer. Since no one was there, we asked him to stay for a while, {PIERRE stops; the FIRST CALLER goes to meet him. They shake hands.) FIRST CALLER {to PIERRE): But I haven't told you my name . . . {He searches for something in his pockets, but finds nothing, PIERRE goes toward TRADEL.)

{to TRADEL): Did you read my letter carefully? I hope you under­ stood. The work is done, at least, well, it's as good as done . . . But I'm getting bored . . . I'm being swallowed up by my own methods . . . I'm becoming entangled in my own discoveries... I can't even see straight any more. TRADEL: I understand . . . That's exactly what happened to me, two years ago, when I was doing the green notebook . . . I ended with the realization that I could no longer see anything. PIERRE: What has that got to do with me? I haven't lost track of my starting point. {Changing his tone.) You could never know what sort of questions come up when everything is finished, and looking back you see that you really haven't accomplished much.

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But why look back? I don't know, myself, I see things much more clearly... (AGNESgets up, takes a few steps, then goes and sits down on the couch and takes a book which she leafs through aimlessly. The FIRST CALLER wants to follow her, hut thinks better of it, and remains where he is. AGNES throws the book on the couch. The FIRST CALLER moves toward her.) PIERRE (to TRADEL): Listen to me. I have now come to the point where I have at my disposal several hypotheses for each doubtful word. Until today, I didn't want to make a choice. But, now, the right word has got to come out. FIRST CALLER (moving toward PIERRE): Excuse me. Fm not really familiar with what you're doing, but it seems to me . . . (THE MOTHER makes a sign to the FIRST CALLER to come away. He obeys slowly, and goes to stand behind AGNES, trying in vain to attract her attention by whistling. He takes the book from the couch and leafs through it, all the while watching AGNES, who still doesnt take any notice of him.) PIERRE (to TRADEL): Unfortunately, Fve become too familiar with all the hypotheses. The right word is buried, it can't get out. By working with you, I can once again become indifferent to each of the possible words. It's the only way for me to be sure. TRADEL: I knew we could work together again. PIERRE: Nothing has been done. We still have a lot of work before us. For once, I ask you to try to be patient. (He goes to the chest of drawers and looks among the papers piled there, TRADEL paces up and down. The FIRST CALLER holds the book toward AGNES.) FIRST CALLER (to AGNES): Fve heard about this book. It's supposed to be very good. AGNES: I haven't read it. (The FIRST CALLER looks discouraged, then begins to file his nails. He will keep himself occupied in various ways: fixing his clothes, his tie, etc. PIERRE takes out a sheet of paper from the chest of drawers and goes to

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show it to TRADEL.)

Look, here's just one example. I'm not even going to ask myself why this particular one has given me so much trouble. I never thought I'd find it. But, I managed to get it down to four possibilities. (Pause.) Is it "suffer­ ing"? Is it "summoning"? . . . TRADEL (bending over the paper): Wait.. . That looks familiar. Of course .. . It's that page that's all spotted with ink at the top. Yes, I remember . . . There's no problem there. (Pause.) Give me a little time, and I could reconstruct the whole sentence, perhaps even the entire conversation that we had on this topic, which left such an impression on me t h a t . . . PIERRE: It's not a question of reminiscence, or "perhaps," or "more or less." I have to have the exact word. PIERRE:

But who could know it? Who cares about recognizing it? And then, who would dare condemn us for errors which can't even be proved to be such? Besides, what counts most of all for the reader is the beauty of the lines. THE MOTHER: The reader? Do you still think that someone is going to read that? PIERRE {wearily): Then, after all my work, we're back to arguing about some­ thing that's already been settled once and for all. We are not going to publish. At least, not as long as there is no one who is equipped to understand this work that I'm responsible for. FIRST CALLER {leaning toward AGNES): Your husband is right. In life, you've got to know what you want, {AGNES gets up, takes a few steps, hesitates, then goes to the window. The FIRST CALLER follows her. PIERRE watches them both.) TRADEL {to PIERRE, shouting): Right, it is your responsibility. And what if you missed your chance to reach this reader you were talking about, who does perhaps exist... How do you know he doesn't? In any case, I won't follow you up this blind alley. {He strides to the door at right, then turns around.) Basically, you're just like the rest of the family: you're afraid. {He exits.) THE MOTHER: Poor Tradel! This time, I have the feeling that he has said too much. FIRST CALLER {walking toward PIERRE, swinging his arms): Your friend is a little excited. PIERRE {he hesitates, then goes toward AGNES, who is still at the window): Have you thought about going to buy some paper?

TRADEL:

AGNES: N o . PIERRE: You still don't want to work with me? AGNES {she turns around, hesitant): No. PIERRE: I guess that means I'll have to go get the paper myself. THE MOTHER: Pierre, since you're going out, will you bring me the newspaper? PIERRE: All right. {Rather than leave, he goes to the chest of drawers.) THE MOTHER: You're not going out without a coat in this weather? {THE MOTHER goes to look for an overcoat hung on the coat rack, and comes hack and hands it to PIERRE. He wants to put it over his shoulders, hut she makes him put it on, while pushing him toward the door at right, AGNES takes a step toward PIERRE. THE MOTHER turns toward AGNES.) PIERRE {his coat on, at the door): Thanks. {He goes out. THE MOTHER stays by the door, AGNES doesnt move.) FIRST CALLER {triumphantly going toward AGNES, juggling the ball): I feel sorry for you. You didn't tell me your life was so complicated. {He puts his hand on AGNES7 shoulder. She moves away.)

AGNES: I'm going with him. I can still catch him. THE MOTHER (preventing her from leaving): Be reasonable. You're just getting better. You're not going out in that cold, (AGNES hesitates, then turns suddenly as if to go toward the door at left, and finds herself face to face with the FIRST CALLER. He begins to laugh, THE MOTHER laughs in turn. AGNES is surrounded.) Curtain ACT HI

^ Z Q 4

♦ oo

Same scene, but the papers are no longer scattered all over the furniture: they are piled neatly on the chest of drawers. Upstage, at left, AGNES stands on a stepladder cleaning the window, which is open. The FIRST CALLER, in his shirtsleeves, stands behind AGNES, his feet spread, his hands behind his back. THE MOTHER is sitting in her chair reading the newspaper. FIRST CALLER (with one foot on the ladder, to AGNES): YOU shouldn't be doing that. (In a low voice.) Since we're both going to be leaving... (AGNEStums, and hesitates for a moment, her arm raised, a sponge in her hand.) FIRST CALLER: You'll see, at my place you won't have to worry about things like this. You'll have all your time to yourself.. . and me. (He laughs.) AGNES: I don't understand. Pierre should be back by now. (She looks out the window, the FIRST CALLER steps down from the ladder.) THE MOTHER: He stopped at a cafe to get some work done. As usual. (Pause.) I imagine people are getting to know him by now. I'm sure that he takes up at least three tables for himself. (She laughs.) FIRST CALLER (once again putting his foot on the ladder, in a low voice, to AGNES): It's just as well that he hasn't come back yet. You don't want him to come now. It's still too soon. AGNES: I don't know what I want. FIRST CALLER: Fortunately, I know for you. (He shrugs his shoulders and comes away from the ladder, going toward the right) THE MOTHER (lowers the paper, to the FIRST CALLER): Just between the two of us, what do you think is going to happen? FIRST CALLER (mysteriously): I'd rather not say. THE MOTHER:

But you're in a good position to tell us.

FIRST CALLER: Uh . . . Exactly.

If you want my opinion, nothing's going to happen. In the end, they won't have the courage to resort to force. And that's all that's neces­ sary, really, to get things back into normal working order. FIRST CALLER: If it only depended on me! (He turns his head toward AGNES, who has not moved: she is still looking out the window, THE MOTHER gets

THE MOTHER:

up and taps the FIRST CALLER on the shoulder, pointing out AGNES and laughing. The FIRST CALLER nods and laughs, then, feeling more sure of himself, he takes AGNES by the waist and lifts her down from the ladder. THE MOTHER sits down again, still laughing.) AGNES {to the FIRST CALLER): What's gotten into you? FIRST CALLER: I just didn't want you to catch cold, that's all. . . {He leans on the ladder and watches AGNES, triumphantly, AGNES takes several hesitant steps, then goes back to the window and presses her nose against the glass. The FIRST CALLER struts around the room, TRADEL comes in from the right, takes a few steps and stops.) THE MOTHER: Agnes, Tradel has come to get Pierre's old overcoat. You know, the one he put aside for him. {The FIRST CALLER laughs.) AGNES {turning, casually): What overcoat? I don't know what you're talking about. THE MOTHER {to TRADEL): The fact is that these last few days, there's been so much going on. {TRADEL makes a gesture of irritation meaning: "Don't bother, it's not that at all") TRADEL {going toward THE MOTHER): I came to warn Pierre. We've got to hide the papers right away. No matter what they do, we're helpless. The law is on their side. FIRST CALLER {putting his hand on TRADERS shoulder, paternally): Don't get upset. You'll see, everything will work out fine! TRADEL {moving away, to THE MOTHER): Isn't Pierre here? THE MOTHER: You can see he isn't. {The FIRST CALLER laughs.) TRADEL {to THE MOTHER): I'm sorry I got so upset the other day. But, after all this time, Pierre knows me well enough to know that my fits of temper don't mean anything . .. Of course, I haven't changed my position . .. THE MOTHER: You've come too late. Not that it really matters. Thank God, Pierre has managed to finish the work all by himself, and, I might add, to his complete satisfaction. AGNES: You're always satisfied with everything! THE MOTHER: Ah, yes! I often say I'm satisfied before I really am. TRADEL {approaching AGNES): In any case, his absence doesn't seem to bother you too much. FIRST CALLER {to TRADEL): We've done all we could in that respect. (Pause.) Does it bother you? {He moves menacingly toward TRADEL.) TRADEL {backing off): I don't have to answer to the First Caller. {The FIRST CALLER moves toward TRADEL once again, but then quickly goes back, shrugging his shoulders, TRADEL begins to pace the floor.) AGNES {turning): What a fuss you're all making! {She nervously takes a few steps. The FIRST CALLER goes toward her.)

You ought to go for a little walk, Agnes. The air will do you good. But don't go out alone. The streets are full of soldiers. Unless you're not afraid of them . . . {The FIRST CALLER laughs. Sound of an elevator, AGNES and TRADEL stop, PIERRE enters. He walks slowly, his head down, TRADEL and the FIRST CALLER rush to meet him. AGNES stays where she is and watches PIERRE. THE MOTHER does the same.) TRADEL {who has reached PIERRE before the FIRST CALLER, to PIERRE): I'm sorry about the other day. I shouldn't have gotten angry. It would've been so simple to explain right away. FIRST CALLER {to PIERRE, eagerly): Did you have a nice walk, Mr. Pierre? {PIERRE absently continues to walk slowly, TRADEL following him. The

THE MOTHER:

FIRST CALLER watches

{she goes toward PIERRE, stammering): Our friend came to keep us company. He was afraid that the news had frightened us. {Pause.) Someone told him about i t . . . You know, people haven't begun to talk yet, but the negotiations are under way. {The FIRST CALLER extends his hand to PIERRE, who continues to pace without paying any attention to him. He then assumes a disinterested pose, his hands in his pockets, AGNES starts toward PIERRE, then toward the FIRST CALLER. ) TRADEL {coming face to face with PIERRE): The news that I have is not very reassuring. This time, it seems, they have decided to act. {To AGNES.) I'm convinced that it was your father who started things going again . . . You should've been able to keep us posted. AGNES: You know very well that I never see him any more, {PIERRE goes and takes AGNES by the hand and leads her toward THE MOTHER, who is still in her chair, AGNES does not resist, TRADEL follows PIERRE. The FIRST CALLER looks to THE MOTHER for a reaction. She is ignoring him. He reverts to Dhis usual position: hands on hips, chest thrust out, etc.) PIERRE {to AGNES and THE MOTHER): I must speak to the two of you. TRADEL {to PIERRE): Am I being excluded for some reason? PIERRE {continuing): I've come to a very serious decision. I would like to give you my reasons, but that is impossible for the time being. You've got to have confidence in me. I'm sure that later everything will be fine for all of us. {Pause.) I can't continue working under these conditions. I've got to go away, that is, I've got to go somewhere where I can be alone for a while . .. I've got to . . . AGNES: But you're always alone as it is. Do you call this living together? {THE MOTHER takes PIERRE'S hand and holds it in her own.) TRADEL: So you're running away. I figured this would happen. It had to. {The FIRST CALLER, from the back of the room, seems to be listening carefully.)

AGNES

0 J Q ♦ §8

AGNES.)

(wearily): You wouldn't understand. And I don't have the energy to go back over each step of the work, and show you every obstacle, and all the problems I had to solve, and which I did solve. I can only say this much: everything that I have brought to light remains desperately life­ less. Flat. (He repeats several times the word "flat" like a man who no longer understands the meaning ofwords7 but is hypnotized by their sound, as if he had never heard them before.) Do you know exactly what that means? Flattened? Suddenly removed from space? (THE MOTHER lets go of PIERRE'S hand. The audience must feel that PIERRE'S words have caused a general consternation.) TRADEL: But that's crazy! You're insulting Jean as if you were a . . . common critic. PIERRE: I won't be satisfied until these things have got their meaning back again. TRADEL: But there's nothing for them to get back. They are what they are, and that's that. If you're disappointed it's because you no longer have faith in your own work. PIERRE: It wasn't so long ago that I couldn't even get to the end of a sentence; I used to torture myself for hours with the simplest questions. (Separating his words.) Why does one say: "He is coming"? Who is this "he"—what's he got to do with me? Why does one say: "on time," rather than "at the time"? I've lost too much time thinking about such things. (Pause.) What I must find is not the meaning of a word, but its shape, its movement. (Pause.) I'm not going to look for anything any more. (Pause.) I'll just wait, patiently, in a vacuum. I'll become very attentive. (Pause.) I've got to leave as soon as possible. AGNES: But not right away. TRADEL: You're not going to leave now, when the papers can be taken from us at any moment. THE MOTHER: Will you be gone long? PIERRE: Don't worry, I won't be going far. I just want to spend a few days in there (pointing to the door at upstage center), in the back room. AGNES: But you can't live in there. You'll suffocate. THE MOTHER: We could make it more liveable. TRADEL: Where will you keep the papers in there? PIERRE: I'm not going to take them. It's the only way I can keep from breaking down again. TRADEL (rushes toward PIERRE and seizes his arm): Stop! I beg you to stay here! I feel, no, I'm sure that between the two of us we can work some­ thing out. (PIERRE listens to TRADEL and begins to pace the floor again. TRADEL stands speechless where he was. AGNES goes to PIERRE as if she were going to speak to him, but the FIRST CALLER comes toward her. PIERRE stops and watches the two of them.)

PIERRE

(low, to AGNES): Is there still something you want to tell him? {half-turning, in a low voice): No, everything has been said. {She goes back to sit down, PIERRE watches her for a second. The FIRST CALLER goes toward AGNES, but THE MOTHER signals for him to move away. He goes to the window, opens it, and leans out.) PIERRE: If anything else is going to happen, it's going to have to happen in there, {AGNES stands up. PIERRE goes to kiss THE MOTHER, and then AGNES, who pulls away. He goes toward the door at upstage center.) TRADEL {preventing PIERRE from leaving): You don't know what you're doing! AGNES {she goes to PIERRE and places her hands on his shoulders; he hesitates): Don't go. {The FIRST CALLER turns and slams the window shut. TRADEL is still standing by the door.) PIERRE {separating himself slowly from AGNES'S arms): Don't worry about me. {AGNES moves away.) FIRST CALLER

AGNES

>

^ ^ ^ i § ^

I'll see to it that the room is heated. Not now, please. We'll see about that later on. THE MOTHER: I'll bring you your meals at the usual hours. PIERRE: I must ask you especially never to talk to me. {He goes to the chest of drawers and points to the papers.) I'm leaving these here. I know you'll take good care of them. THE MOTHER: Don't worry. TRADEL {exploding): You know what you're risking. You've been warned. I've done all I could to keep you here. {He goes to the door.) O.K. Let them take them. Let them take everything you've got, that's what you'd like! {He goes out.) FIRST CALLER {he moves toward PIERRE, swinging his arms): At least we're finally rid of that creep! AGNES {to PIERRE): Will I be able to come and see you? PIERRE (still at the chest of drawers, obviously undecided): We'll see, later. AGNES: Very well, (PIERRE goes quickly to the door at upstage center and leaves, AGNES buries her face in her hands and doesnt move. The FIRST CALLER is questioning THE MOTHER in sign language, THE u MOTHER answers him with a gesture meaning you can leave now." The THE MOTHER: PIERRE:

FIRST CALLER goes toward

AGNES.)

(going to AGNES, arms open): And what about me, who dreams only of you? AGNES (uncovering her face, distressed): You're very kind. THE MOTHER: I didn't want to go against Pierre's will. Besides, no one could, even if he had a right to. (The lights suddenly go out. Total darkness. First, only whispers can be heard, then low voices. They become more and more distinct, until at the end they are perfectly clear.) FIRST CALLER

AGNES: No, not now. I can't leave just like that, without anything. FIRST CALLER: We can find your things. I'll help you. AGNES: I'll never be able to write a letter in this darkness. I want to leave a note, at least. FIRST CALLER: You can write to him tomorrow. (Good-naturedly.) You'll feel better. AGNES: I can't leave without my notebook. FIRST CALLER: What notebook? AGNES: The one that Jean gave me. He made me promise always to keep it with me. That's one promise I want to keep, at least. FIRST CALLER: Remember mine, Agnes. (A long silence.) AGNES: That raincoat's still there. Have you got it? FIRST CALLER (laughing): Yes, and you with it. AGNES (in one breath): You're taking me far away from here, aren't you? We'll be going near the Nive River. I've only been there once, with Pierre, just after we met. . . The whole length of it was fenced off, but I was able to see anyway. (Pause.) It was raining, and we got soaked. (She laughs nervously.) I wonder why they're always working around there? (Pause.) I would like so much to see it again, but, at the same time, I'm afraid. FIRST CALLER: Not of me, I hope. AGNES: No, with you, I won't be afraid. You can lift me up in your arms. I'll be able to see it easily. You're so tall. .. FIRST CALLER: And you so small! AGNES: Hold me in your arms. (A very harsh light fills the room. We see the FIRST CALLER, AGNES in his arms, going toward the door at right, AGNES is dragging a raincoat. The FIRST CALLER is carrying two overcoats. THE MOTHER bursts into a vulgar laugh, slapping her hips.) Curtain ACT IV Same scene, but now everything is in complete order. The furniture is very neatly distributed; there are no papers anywhere in sight. There are curtains on the window and doilies on all the furniture. THE MOTHER'S armchair is now downstage center, facing the audience. The typewriter is no longer in the same place and is now covered. On the chest of drawers, a hot plate and a tea kettle. Beside it is a serving cart, on which is a tea service. At the back of the room, a little to the left, a large mirror. The floor is completely carpeted. THE MOTHER is sitting in her armchair. She is without her newspaper. She is wearing an impressive housecoat. One must get the idea, as soon as the curtain goes up, that she is now mistress of the house.

>

O < ^ ♦ 02 ^H

THE WOMAN FRIEND, standing before the mirror, is looking approvingly at herself from head to foot She has just come to visit, and is still wearing her hat. THE MOTHER {gets up and goes to the chest of drawers to prepare some tea): I haven't felt this happy in a long while. THE WOMAN FRIEND: In any case, we had a narrow escape. THE MOTHER: I knew that everything would turn out all right. {She pours tea into the cups.) The only thing was, I couldn't tell just when things would fall into place. THE WOMAN FRIEND: We didn't let up once. THE MOTHER {pushing the serving cart toward the front of the stage): I never liked the idea of preserving peace at any price. What I've always looked for is ordered justice. {Pause.) You know, you won't believe this, but yesterday, when I learned that this immigration, which was really becoming an obsession with me, was finally stopped, it was such a relief—more than a relief: a kind of joy. {She hands a cup to THE WOMAN FRIEND, who has moved over to her. THE WOMAN FRIEND sits down, cup in hand.) THE MOTHER {sitting down in her chair): Pierre is coming back today. THE WOMAN FRIEND: I don't believe it! Really? {She gets up.) I really must congratulate you. {She leans toward THE MOTHER and kisses her, then sits down again.) THE MOTHER: He just told me, when I took him something to eat. He should be out any minute now. THE WOMAN FRIEND: I don't know how he's been able to stand being cooped up in there for two weeks! THE MOTHER: Two weeks! As a matter of fact, it has only been two weeks. Somehow it's seemed much longer than that to me. THE WOMAN FRIEND: And Agnes? Have you heard from her? THE MOTHER: From what I've heard, it gets worse every day. THE WOMAN FRIEND: What do you mean? Didn't her friend work out? THE MOTHER: But that was inevitable. After all, all you had to do was look at him . . . THE WOMAN FRIEND: He was handsome enough, but so ill-bred! {She laughs knowingly.) Naturally, Pierre doesn't know anything about it? THE MOTHER {more serious): Not yet. {PIERRE enters from the back, very tiredlooking; his mind seems to be elsewhere. His clothes are wrinkled, and he has a two-week-old beard. He takes several steps, looking all around. He is obviously looking for something.) THE MOTHER {getting up): Oh, I'm so glad this is finally all over with! Come here so I can kiss you. {PIERRE goes toward THE MOTHER and kisses her, mechanically.)

{leaning toward him): How about me? {PIERRE doesnt seem to notice THE WOMAN FRIEND; he is pacing up and down.) THE MOTHER: Promise me that from now on you'll try to conserve your strength. PIERRE: Don't worry. There's no longer any question of research or work. THE WOMAN FRIEND: But . . . {THE MOTHER makes a sign to her not to say anything.) PIERRE: You will be very happy to know that I have decided to live like everyone else. What I learned in there {pointing at the door) is that I'll never get anywhere until I can learn to live a completely ordinary life. {He looks around once more, takes a step toward THE MOTHER as if he wants to speak to her, hut thinks better of it. The lights begin to grow dim.)

THE WOMAN FRIEND

Are you looking for your papers? I piled them in a chest. {She points to a huge object covered with a red curtain.) There, behind you; just lift the curtain. {To THE WOMAN FRIEND.) Turn the lights on, will you? The electricity must be back on by now. {THE WOMAN FRIEND gets up and goes to the right.) PIERRE: I see, you've put everything in order, {PIERRE goes to the chest, opens it, and stands there in front of it. THE WOMAN FRIEND turns on the light switch.). THE WOMAN FRIEND: Perhaps we'll be able to see, at least! {She goes back and sits down. PIERRE stands for a second before the open chest, his back to the audience. He kneels down, slowly takes the papers from the chest, looks at some of them, and sets them all on the floor. He contemplates them for at least a minute, then takes several of them and tears them, first very quickly, then more and more slowly. The scraps begin to accumulate, PIERRE appears to be drowning in the middle of them. Since PIERRE has come in, THE MOTHER has not taken her eyes off him. THE WOMAN FRIEND, who is also watching him, suddenly gets up and tries the light switch again. The light still doesnt come on.) THE WOMAN FRIEND: Still no light. This can't go on! PIERRE {stops tearing the papers for a second, almost to himself): Forgive me for not having understood sooner. {He takes the last few pages and gets up, tearing them as he walks across the room, almost in a trance. The torn papers now take up a good part of the room.) THE WOMAN FRIEND {to THE MOTHER): I would like so much to stay. But you must excuse me. I'm already very late. {She goes toward the door at right.) THE MOTHER: Of course, of course, {THE WOMAN FRIEND gets ready to leave.) THE MOTHER:

(sits in a chair, in a corner, to the left of the stage): Where is Agnes? I want to see her. (THE WOMAN FRIEND stops at the door, and comes back to the window, from where she watches PIERRE.) THE MOTHER (she stands, her hands resting on the back of her chair): Pierre, it's time you knew the truth. Agnes is gone. THE WOMAN FRIEND: With the First Caller! PIERRE: What do you mean, gone? You mean she has gone out? THE MOTHER: No. She left, right after you did. PIERRE: Right away! THE MOTHER (laughing): There was some trouble. I guess she took advantage of it. (PIERRE tries to get up, but cannot.) PIERRE: There was nothing else she could do, of course. Where would she have found the energy to put up with such disorganization? THE MOTHER (going toward PIERRE): But she was the one responsible for all the disorder. She brought it into our lives. PIERRE: She left too late, or too soon. If she had had a little more patience, we could've begun again. THE MOTHER: Then, it's perfect. You're so easy-going, you won't mind being alone. And then . . . you can get back to your work, (PIERRE gets up and goes toward the back room.) THE WOMAN FRIEND (to PIERRE): Did you forget something, in there? PIERRE: Yes. (He goes out. THE MOTHER goes back slowly and sits down in her chair. Pause.) THE WOMAN FRIEND (to THE MOTHER): You have always been too indul­ gent with her. (She takes a few steps, THE MOTHER doesnt move. The stage gets darker. Then suddenly, the sound of hurried footsteps, TRADEL appears at the door at left, a suitcase in his hand, THE WOMAN FRIEND is once again very much at ease. She will continuously circle TRADEL, sneering.) PIERRE

£ Z Q ♦ a>

TRADEL:

Didn't anyone come? (THE MOTHER makes an evasive movement. motions toward the wings as if to invite someone to come

TRADEL

in. enters, a very thin and pale woman, followed by THE an ordinary-looking boy of about seven. Both are poorly dressed and carry canvas bags rolled under their arms.) TRADEL (quickly): They'll be here any minute now. Don't you understand? I know, since I was the one who told them to come. Yes, it's a rendezvous, but I won't be there. Nor will they find what they're looking for. (Pause.) What have I done? All this, just because of a moment's aberration. (Pause.) Where is Pierre? Where are all the papers? THE MOTHER: There—right under your feet. You're walking on them. (TRADEL jumps, then bends down and feverishly gathers the scraps of MME TRADEL

CHILD,

paper. He sees some others farther on, then still others. He panics, runs to gather them all, and ends up almost crawling on all fours. THE WOMAN FRIEND laughs loudly. MME TRADEL Watches TRADEL without moving, THE CHILD sits down on the floor.) THE MOTHER: You shouldVe c o m e five minutes ago . . . Pierre has just finished tearing t h e m u p . {TRADEL and MME TRADEL gather the scraps of paper and push them into the suitcase and the bags. They put one of the bags on a chair at left, the other bag and the suitcase at the foot of the chair.) T H E WOMAN FRIEND (to THE MOTHER):

W h y don't you stop t h e m ? {THE

MOTHER makes a gesture meaning: "What do I care? There's nothing I can do.yy) TRADEL {handing

a bag to MME TRADEL):

YOU go on, Fll be with you

shortly. MME TRADEL {putting the bag down): But what'll I do if I meet them? I'd rather wait for you. {Sound of an elevator, TRADEL grabs the curtain that covered the chest and throws it over the suitcase and the bags. The chair also disappears under the curtain. The lights come back on.) T H E WOMAN FRIEND: At last! {She goes and sits down near THE MOTHER. AGNES appears at the door at right. She is wearing her raincoat, MME TRADEL starts toward AGNES, then stops.) T H E MOTHER {turning her head toward AGNES): Well, c o m e in, Agnes. AGNES {she comes over timidly, looking around as if lost): Nothing has changed. {Pause.) Yes, it is a little brighter. {She takes a few steps toward the back, THE MOTHER gets up suddenly, but AGNES changes direction, and THE MOTHER sits back down, TRADEL has noticed this action. He paces back and forth.) AGNES {she walks, hesitatingly, aimlessly): I don't see the typewriter. {To THE MOTHER.) I'm sorry I mentioned that, b u t I was so used to seeing it there. {She looks at where the machine used to be.) Anyway . . . I just came to borrow it from you . . . I've been trying to rent one, b u t . . . THE MOTHER: I know, they're hard to find. AGNES {stammering): Yes. . . We're having so m u c h trouble, that I thought I m i g h t . . . I know Pierre uses it quite a lot. But we won't keep it long. Only a few days. . . THE WOMAN FRIEND: We didn't think we'd be seeing you again. {She gets up and goes to look at herself in the mirror.) MME TRADEL {going to kiss AGNES):

I've thought about you a lot since you

left. THE MOTHER (to AGNES): Yes, Pierre was just talking about you. AGNES: How is he? {THE WOMAN

AGNES begins to walk

around.)

FRIEND sneers, MME TRADEL

moves

away.

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He was asking for you. (AGNES starts.) But not all that much. wants to speak.) To tell the truth, the typewriter isn't in very good condition. It will have to be repaired. I think that would cost you less than getting another, though. AGNES (stammering): Thank you. THE WOMAN FRIEND (still in front of the mirror, turning): Does your friend still have his job? AGNES (to THE MOTHER): There is something else I wanted to ask Pierre. Do you think he'll be back soon? I can't wait. I have very little time. THE MOTHER (getting up): You know as well as I do that Pierre never tells anyone whether he's coming or going. (She takes a step toward AGNES.) You risk waiting for nothing, and since you are in a hurry . . . (She takes another step toward AGNES, who still does not move.) MME TRADEL (to AGNES): Promise me that you'll come and see us. AGNES (vaguely): I'll come. (She starts toward the door at right, THE MOTHER, still standing, doesnt move, THE WOMAN FRIEND goes toward AGNES. ) THE WOMAN FRIEND: Do you have a minute? AGNES: Oh! No, I've got to be going. I must get back before the doctor gets there . . . The nurse is sick, and I have to give him his s h o t s . . . THE WOMAN FRIEND: What, your friend is sick? Such a strong fellow . . . AGNES: He took sick all of a sudden. He didn't even feel it coming on. THE WOMAN FRIEND: That's terrible. Who takes care of his business? AGNES: No one at present. I can't do it. I was never able to learn accounting. For me, numbers are a complete mystery . . . THE MOTHER (she goes toward AGNES, forcing her back to the door at right): You were always full of good wishes. (She takes AGNES by the arm and pushes her outside, closing the door after her. THE WOMAN FRIEND cackles.) MME TRADEL (almost to herself): Poor Agnes! (THE WOMAN FRIEND, snickering, taps THE MOTHER on the shoulder, THE MOTHER pulls away and goes back to her chair with some difficulty. She sits down and places her hands on the arms of the chair. THE CHILD has grown tired of sitting still and has lifted a corner of the curtain that was covering the chair and the bags. He takes from the bag on the floor some scraps of paper that he scatters about him. TRADEL is still pacing the floor.) TRADEL (stopping suddenly, to THE MOTHER): YOU lied. (Pointing to the door, upstage center.) I have a feeling that Pierre is in there. THE MOTHER: Yes, he's in there, (TRADEL bounds toward the door and goes out. THE MOTHER doesnt move, MME TRADEL starts, as if to follow Tradel, but stops, THE WOMAN FRIEND puts her ear to the door at upstage center. THE CHILD continues to empty the bag at the foot of the chair and to scatter the papers around him.)

THE MOTHER: (AGNES

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. Twentieth-Century Russian Drama: From Gorky to the Present. 1979. Rev. ed. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

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Slowacki, Juliusz, 326 socialist realism, 22, 292, 379, 393 social-problem play, 5. See also problem plays Sokel, Walter, 2 Solarljou (Poetic, or Elder, Edda), 131-32 Sophocles, 210, 383 Sorge, Reinhard, 15, 25; Odysseus, 207; Prometheus, 207; Antichrist, 207 Soupault, Philippe, 23, 369, 370; If You Please, 329-30, 364; The Magnetic Fields, 19 Sphinx und Strohmann (Kokoschka), 266 Spinoza, Baruch, 502 Spring Awakening (Wedekind), 209 The Spurt of Blood (Artaud), 373, 376 Stanislavksy, Konstantin, 42 Stati d'animo (Carli), 192 Stein, Gertrude, 18, 23,421; Curtain Raiser,

ing of, 26; and relation to communism, 24; Sorge's influence on, 209; Strindberg's influence on, 128-29 Sutherland, Donald, 422 Symbolism, 2 - 3 , 5, 8, 20, 33,41-76; and interest in mysticism, 26; Jarry's influence on, 79; Marinetti's early association with, 189; Strindberg's affinities with, 129; sub­ jectivity in, 6; and synesthesia, 36; and the­ ory of correspondences, 171 Symbolist drama: acting style for, 7 Symbolist theater: design for, 7 Synge, John Millington, 42 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 130-32, 370; Arcana Cozlestia, 161-67

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Taine, Hippolyte, 14 Tairov, Aleksandr, 22 462; Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, 421; Taymor, Julie; The Lion King, 35 Four Saints in Three Acts, 421,463-64; Teatrino delVamore, 192 Geography and Plays, 462; In Circles, 421; "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting" It Happened, a Play, 421; Ladies Voices, (Boccioni), 187 462; Lucy Church, Amiably, 463; Operas Terentev, Igor, 389 and Plays, 463; "What Happened, a Play," Theater of the Absurd, 32-33,42,77,128, 462 292,327,380,423,467-502 Stevens, Wallace, 4 The Theater and Its Double (Artaud), 322, Stoppard, Tom: Arcadia, 31-32 373, 375 Storm Weather (Strindberg), 128 Theater Cricot, 293 Strindberg, August, 2, 34,42; The Black Theater of Cruelty, 24, 322, 373-77,414 Glove, \2S; The Burned House, 128,130; Theater of Pure Form, 291-326 The Dance of Death, 128, 209; A Dream "The Theater of Surprise" (Marinetti), 188 Play, 24-25, 128; dream plays of, 24-25, Theater of Surprise Company, 188 467; The Father, 127; The Ghost Sonata, Theatre Alfred-Jarry, 327, 373 24, 29, 376; Miss Julie, 123,127; naturalis­ Theatre d'Art, 42 tic plays of, 1; The Pelican, 128; Storm Theatre Michel, 265 Weather, 128; To Damascus, 24, 127, 208 Theatre de l'Oeuvre, 7-8,42,124,189, 265 Studio des Champs-Elysees, 468 theosophy, 131 Suicide in B-Flat (Shepard), 29 Tieck, Ludwig, 6, 28 supernaturalism, 370. See also Surrealism To Damascus (Strindberg), 24,127,208 Le surmale (Jarry), 81 To End God's Judgment (Artaud), 376 Surrealism, 2 - 3 , 5, 22-23, 292-93, 295-96, Toklas, Alice B., 421 327-72 (see also Breton, Andre; superToller, Ernst, 23, 25, 211 naturalism); Adamov's association with, Der Tor und der Tod (Hofmannstahl), 209 467; American, 421-65; birth of, 265; and total theater, 41,44 collages and objects, 17; definition of, 23; Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 77 dreams and madness in, 17; film's influ­ The Treasure of the Humble (Maeterlinck), ence on, 3; and formal similarities to Stein, 41 422; and influence of Jarry, 77, 81; and Tretyakov, Sergei: Gas Masks, 38 influence on performance art, 37-38; and Tzara, Tristan, 8, 10,18, 265, 364 the machine age, 29; psychological prob­

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Ubermarionette. See Craig, Edward Gordon Ubu Bound (Jarry), 77 Ubu Cuckolded (]any), 77 Ulysses (Joyce), 130 Uncle Tom's Cabin (Stowe), 459 Uncle Vanya (Chekhov), 74-75 Unruh, Fritz von, 211

Wagner, Richard, 182-84; Gesamtkunstwerk, 8,171 Waiting for Godot (Beckett), 32,499 The Waste Land (Eliot), 130 The Water Hen (Witkiewicz), 291 The Wayfarer (Briusov), 62 Wedekind, Frank, 38; Spring Awakening, 209 "Weights, Measures, and Prices of Artistic Genius" (Futurist manifesto), 205 Vache, Jacques, 364 Weil, Simone, 14 Vaginov, Konstantin, 417 Weingarten, Romain; Akara, 81 Vakhtangov, Evgeny, 22 well-made play, 20-21 Valery, Paul, 364 Wellwarth, George, 2 Valle-Inclan, Ramon Maria del, 32 Weston, Jessie L., 130 "The Variety Theater" (Marinetti), 189, 205 What Is Surrealism? (Breton), 364 "Variety Theater Manifesto" (Marinetti), 188 When We Dead Awaken (Ibsen), 74 Wilde, Oscar, 42,62 Vauthier,Jean,81,502 Wilder, Thornton, 421; Our Town, 422-23 Vengono (Marinetti), 192 Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Goethe), 210 Verhaeren, Emile, 125 Williams, Tennessee: The Glass Menagerie, 1 Verlaine, Paul, 62,124 Verso la conquista (Corra and Settimelli), 193Wilson, Robert, 421; Deafman Glance, 34 Witkiewicz, Stanislaw Ignacy (Witkacy), 22Vian, Boris, 81-82 Victor, or The Children Take Over (Vitrac), 23; The Crazy Locomotive, 291; The Cuttlefish, 291; Janulka, Daughter of Fizdejko, 327,333,373 291; The Water Hen, 291 Vilar, Jean, 468 Woolf, Virginia, 4 Villiers de l'lsle Adam, Auguste, 73; he Wooster Group, 33 nouveau monde, 73 Vinaver, Michel: Overboard, 33-34 Vio/er(Kandinsky), 169,171 A Visit to the Paris Exposition of 1889 (Rous­ Yeats,W.B.,4,42 seau), 36 Vitrac, Roger, 23, 327, 373; The Mysteries of Yes Is for a Very Young Man (Stein), 421 Love, 327, 373; Victor, or The Children Take Over, 327, 333,373 Voltaire, 14 Zabolotsky,Nikita,418 Vuillard, Edouard, 77 Vvedensky, Aleksandr, 22-23, 389, 392-93, Zoncada, Luigi, 206 414,417

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