In America

by Susan Sontag

“Go on,” said Bogdan.

  Yes, nonsense to feel what she was feeling. Or perhaps not. How awful to impose this unhappiness, if that’s what it was, on Bogdan, who took whatever she said so literally. Why did she always feel like saying something that would crease his brow and tighten his jaw? “I’m thinking how good you are to me,” she said, pressing her face against his throat, seeking the comfort and forgiveness of his body.

  * * *

  SHE FROWNED. “Yes, I hate to complain, but…”

  “But?” It was Ryszard speaking.

  “I do love to show off.” She clapped her hand to her forehead, moaned “Oh, oh, oh!” then smiled slyly.

  The young man looked stricken. (Yes she’d been ill. All her friends said it.)

  “Am I showing off?” she said, her eyes glittering. “You tell me, faithful cavalier.”

  Ryszard didn’t answer.

  “And if I am,” she continued relentlessly, “why?”

  He shook his head.

  “Don’t be alarmed. Aren’t you going to say, Because you’re an actress.”

  “Yes, a great actress,” he answered.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ve said something stupid. Forgive me.”

  “No,” she said. “Maybe it’s not showing off. Even if I can’t control it.”

  * * *

  “I DO TRY to master my feelings, believe me!”

  “Master your feelings?” cried the critic, a very friendly critic. “Whatever for, dear lady? It’s the profusion of your feelings that delights the public.”

  “I’ve always needed to identify myself with each of the tragic heroines I play. I suffer with them, I weep real tears, which often I can’t stop after the curtain goes down, and have to lie motionless in my dressing room until my strength returns. Throughout my whole career I’ve never succeeded in giving a performance without feeling my character’s agonies.” She grimaced. “I consider this a weakness.”

  “No!”

  “What would my public say if I decided to play comic roles? Comedy”—she laughed—“isn’t thought to be my strong point.”

  “What comic roles?” said the critic cautiously.

  * * *

  START TOO HIGH, and you have nowhere to go.

  “I remember”—she was confiding this to Ryszard—“I remember once when I lost control, and the result was a disaster though I was not made to pay for it. The play was Adrienne Lecouvreur, a favorite of mine. An actress is a plum role, and Lecouvreur was the greatest of her era. Well, the call-boy had come, I had left my dressing room, I was standing in the wings, it was time for me to go on and, although it was hardly my first time in the role, I realized I had stage fright. That often used to happen to me. If it was just enough to make my heart pound and my palms sweat, it didn’t bother me. On the contrary, I considered it a sign of professionalism. If I didn’t have some flutter and fever before I went on, I was probably going to give a bad performance. However, it was a little worse than usual that night—not the kind of fear that paralyzes (I’ve had that, too!) but the kind that makes you lose your head. I entered the stage, and the whole house started clapping, and went on applauding for several minutes. In acknowledgment I sank into a deep stage curtsy, my crossed hands just touching my right knee and my head bent, and as the homage subsided and I raised my head I said to myself, You’ll see, you’ll see what I can do. Rachel had created this role, her voice was stronger, deeper than mine, and people still remember when she brought the play to Warsaw many years ago, but everyone thinks my Adrienne is superb, and that night I thought I was about to give the best performance of my life. And in this clenched state of mind, I started my scene—and took my first lines too high. I was lost. It was impossible to lower the pitch once I had begun. Adrienne is backstage at the Comédie-Française studying a new part, but she can’t concentrate, her pulse is racing, for she’s expecting to meet again the man with whom she’s just fallen in love. And when she tells her confidant, the prompter, who is in love with her, though he dares not avow it, of her new, secret passion, I shouted, shouted like the most untalented of actresses. Having started on that note, imagine what I became when the prince, this man whose true identity is unknown to Adrienne, enters the greenroom. As any experienced actor will tell you, I had no choice, I had to keep it up. I could only rise higher as the sentiment I had to express became stronger and more pathetic. I sighed, I writhed, and all was genuine. By the fifth act, after Adrienne has kissed a bouquet of poisoned flowers sent by her rival for the prince’s affections, my physical suffering was atrocious, and the arms that stretched out to my leading man as I lay dying were contorted with real desire. When the curtain fell, he carried me senseless to my dressing room.”

  * * *

  “I LOVE YOUR STORIES,” said Ryszard. Meaning, of course: I love you. “And because I love your stories,” he continued (but this didn’t make any sense at all), “I shall make the greatest sacrifice a writer can make.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Even if I write a hundred novels—”

  “A hundred novels!” she exclaimed. “Vast program. And to think”—she smiled—“you’ve only written two.”

  “Wait,” he said, “this is a solemn moment. I am taking a vow.”

  “Actor!”

  “My vow, Maryna.” He raised his hand. “Even if I write a hundred novels, there will never be one whose main character is a great actress.”

  * * *

  THEY WERE in her dressing room. Ryszard was on a low stool, sketching her. She was pacing back and forth, offering him her astonishing silhouette.

  “Something about makeup,” she mused. “I have a foolish picture in my mind that I don’t put all of this”—she pointed at the tray of jars and vials—“on my face, this old face”—she laughed—“that I don’t transform myself to look different from the way I really do”—she sighed—“that I can stay myself and still be all the roles I love”—she shook her head—“which is impossible.”

  “Why impossible?” said Ryszard. “Why can’t you?”

  “Spoken like the writer you are.” She smiled. How he ached to seize her hand. “No writer can understand that acting isn’t about sincerity. It isn’t even about feeling, that’s an illusion. It’s about seeming. It’s about deciding. It ought to be about not feeling.”

  “That can’t be true. You’ve told me that you feel, to the point of physical discomfort, all the emotions of the characters you play.”

  “Oh, what does it matter what I say about myself!”

  “But you—”

  “Ryszard, I’m talking about how to become a better actor. I don’t know that I’m so good, I’m only better than the others. And why are most actors so bad? They think that being overwrought is the way to show a strong feeling. They don’t know how to act. They don’t know how to hide. I try to tell this to our young actors. I remember what Mr. Załężowski said more than once when he was admonishing me. ‘Don’t mistake this impetuosity of yours for genius,’ he’d say. ‘There’s much to be shorn away before you turn out to be … somebody.’ He was right. More right than he could ever have known, for Mr. Załężowski was a very”—she was choosing her words carefully—“old-fashioned man.”

  * * *

  “IMAGINE,” she said to Krystyna, “that you’re a young girl living with a man much older than you, a foreigner. He has promised marriage but there is a legal impediment, a wife somewhere, though of course you say he’s your husband. And there is a baby now. Sometimes he is harsh, but you love him and make excuses for whatever he does that pains you. For the moment your home is an ill-furnished room in a drab mining town, far from the beautiful city where you were born and the love-filled home of your childhood. Imagine the room. A dirty window. A stove. An armoire. A large bed. A cradle in the corner with your little girl, blessedly asleep. The plain wooden table and two chairs. You’re at supper. And he, after wolfing down the frugal meal you’ve prepared and wiping his mouth on his s
leeve, has announced that he is leaving you. He rises from the table. You follow him to the door, pleading. He slams the door. In fact, he will be back. Oh yes, you’ll not be rid of the brute so easily, but you can’t know that. For you, he is gone forever. Now, what would you do? Show me. You’re in an agony of despair. Show me. No. Go over there, by the door.”

  Standing by the door, Krystyna hesitated a moment, then began to sob. She staggered, shoulders heaving, to the middle of the room; then collapsed in the chair and threw her upper body on the table, arms extended straight out in front of her, and dropped the right side of her head on her arms; then sank to her knees, lifting her arms at a forty-five-degree angle, and clasped her hands together; then—

  “No! No! No!!”

  Krystyna flushed and rose to her feet.

  “But, Madame, I’ve seen you do that. Remember, when you played—”

  “No!”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  “You walk back into the room slowly … but not too slowly … you collect the dishes … you sit down in the chair, slumping a little. You stare at the table.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t pray?”

  “I said, That’s all.”

  * * *

  GOD, OH GOD, she said to herself, it’s not as if Maryna were really religious except when tormented (but when was she not tormented now?), oh almighty God be merciful! Take this dissatisfaction from me, or give me the means to accomplish my desire. For a while the anguish ceased, but now all Bogdan sees are the obstacles, he has decided it is folly, and asks why he should leave everything, and for me to promise that we will return. I must speak to Bogdan tonight. I’ll sit him down on his bed and take his dear hands in mine and gaze into his eyes, but, no, I don’t want to bribe him with a show of emotion, when I persuaded him, it was without any actorish wiles—oh God, how discouraged I am now. And yet, Bogdan must admit this: I have done all that I, with my abilities, could do. I’ve given what I have to give to our country, mindful of its patriotic importance. To think that in Warsaw the only official platform from which Poles are permitted to speak in Polish is a stage! I have been humble, I have been prudent. And I have been grateful, where I should have been grateful. To Heinrich too, for all his betrayals, for all his brutal returns to my life and my bed whenever it pleased him—to Heinrich above all others. He could not reproach me for ingratitude. And my dear friend, the wife of the Russian administrator of theatres, knew how grateful I was for her protection. Everything that became possible here in Warsaw was due to her intervention. When I decided it was time to show my Ophelia to the Warsaw public and the censor-in-chief denied the theatre a license to put on Hamlet—because it showed the murder of a king!—she invited the man to her house and persuaded him that the murder was a family affair only, and therefore perfectly harmless, and the license was granted. That was only one example of her goodness to me. But ever since Madame Demichova died there has been no one to protect me. If she were alive they would not have dared to put on that play, that … comedy, about an aging actress with a husband from a rich landowning family, whose Tuesday receptions are represented in such an unfriendly manner. Of course, I see it now, a popular actress whom marriage has brought into the ranks of society was bound to arouse mockery. The impudence! Frivolous salon chitchat, our elevated, patriotic conversations? Doesn’t it count that they are elevated and patriotic enough to have stirred the vigilance of the Russian authorities, who post two policemen at our door every Tuesday, observing and writing down the names of each of our guests and asking those who come from abroad their addresses and their business with us? But what our oppressors do never surprises me. It’s the critics here! It’s the jealous actors and mediocre playwrights! If I knew how to hate, perhaps hatred would bring me relief. I ought to have a steel brow and a heart of stone—but what true artist possesses such armor? Only one who feels can produce feeling, only one who loves can inspire love. And would I suffer less if I appeared cold and haughty? No, no, I should just be acting! Yes, a public life is not suited to a woman. Home is the proper place for her. There she reigns—inaccessible, inviolable! But a woman who has dared to raise her head above the others, who has extended her eager hand for laurels, who has not hesitated to expose to the crowds all that her soul contains of enthusiasm and despair—that woman has given everyone the right to rummage in the most secret recesses of her life. To the curious there is nothing more amusing than some overheard snatches of an actress’s candid talk, or the rumor of an irregular liaison or a misunderstanding in her home. Oh God, God, is my life to be an eternal expiation for sins, mine and not mine? Yet none of this would matter if it touched me only. But when cruelty and malice claw at those who are dear to me, then I start to hate that pillory called the Stage. Bogdan, selfless generous Bogdan, cannot protect me. That the actress in this play has an uxorious husband born and reared in Poznań he cites only as evidence that the actress is I, as if he were indifferent to how he himself is being insulted. But to a man like Bogdan it’s either this silence or what happened two years ago, when behind my back he challenged a critic here in Warsaw to a duel; luckily for Bogdan, critics are cowards. My heart is breaking. Now Bogdan’s brother will really hate me. I hear that everyone is talking about it since the play opened last week, but of course no one speaks of it with us. On Saturday we dined with the Gazeta Polska critic, but Bogdan said nothing and he didn’t say anything either. The next time I saw the man, he always comes to our Tuesdays, my impulse was to lead him to a corner and ask if he was angry with me—I think many people are angry with me because I do so many foreign plays—but the conversation, which was about true liberty and the sufferings of our nation, was so enthralling that I felt ashamed to be preoccupied by my own torments. Instead, I wrote two letters, calm, indignant, dignified, one to his newspaper, the other to the theatre’s manager, an admirer of mine, or so he said, but I didn’t mail them. I should have known that if you have success, one day, long before you are tired, the public will turn against you—I’m not thinking only of that play. The public is fickle. My public wants to love a newer, younger face. Yes, the public must be dissatisfied with me, and I can’t perform any better, not in Warsaw. We must escape from here. Bogdan must not pay for the enmity that surrounds me, though to be sure there are many people who defend me. Friends will blame the play for driving me away, even those who know that for some time I’ve been thinking of going abroad. But they will also blame me for being offended, offended to the point of finally doing it. Bogdan, who regrets that he ever agreed to our leaving, never lets me out of his sight, and I can see that he hopes to guide my confused spirit—as my husband, no doubt he regards it as his duty. I ought to be grateful to him. I am grateful. Oh God, oh God, I’ve been looking forward so fervently to this change—it’s been so hard to organize everything—and now it’s all ruined! I don’t look forward to leaving anymore, people will think I’m running away, and I’ve always looked forward to something. In my childhood I had Christmas, though we were so poor and there were never any presents, and I looked forward to growing up, oh how I looked forward to it, I won’t pretend to have been happy in that dark tiny room with the other little ones, but I didn’t feel little, I was dreaming of when I would be free and strong and far away and people would— No, I won’t slander my childhood. I was happy, I knew there was light inside me, I thought with such confidence of the future. Oh God, do not forsake your weak child. I am muddleheaded and tired of acting!

  Two

  GOD IS an actor, too.

  Appearing for countless seasons in a variety of old-fashioned costumes, animating many tragedies and a few comedies; multiform—though usually in male roles—and always statuesque, commanding, lately (this is the second half of the nineteenth century) He has been getting some bad reviews, though not enough bad reviews, yet, to close the show. His dear familiar name continues to froth on everyone’s lips. His participation still bestows unquestioned importance o
n any drama.

  Wind rising. Constellations pulsing. Earth turning. People breeding. (Soon there will be more of them walking on the ground than lying under it!) History thickening. Dark people groaning. Pale people (God’s favorites) dreaming of conquest, escape. Deltas and estuaries of people. He tilts them westward, where there is more space waiting to be filled. It is eleven in the morning, European time. Wearing neither the kingly robes nor the peasant garb He often affects, today He is God the Office Manager, His costume a three-piece worsted suit, starched white shirt, cuff protectors, bow tie, and—God, too, wants to be modern—He is chewing tobacco. The dominant hues of the set are yellow and brown: the blond wood of His swivel chair and immense desk; the smooth brass fixtures of the desk, whose drawers are crammed with papers; the worn, slightly dented brass of the gooseneck lamp, of the nearby spittoon. Elbows on the desktop, which is stacked with ledgers, He has been consulting population reports, economic bulletins, land surveys. Now He has made an entry in one of the ledgers.

  Histories fusing. Obstacles faltering. Families sundering. News arriving. God the Travel Agent has dispatched messengers everywhere to proclaim that a New World beckons, where the poor can become rich and everyone stands equal before the law, where streets are paved with gold (this to illiterate peasants) and land is being given away (ditto) or sold on the cheap (this to those who can read). Villages are starting to empty out, the bravest or most desperate going first. Hordes of landless are surging toward the water (Bremerhaven, Hamburg, Antwerp, Le Havre, Southampton, Liverpool), surrendering themselves to be packed into the bottom of stinking ships. From the encrusted cities, which lie under the canopy of night with their lights on, the swell of departures is less noticeable—but steady. God is looking over shipping schedules. No more Middle Passage horrors, He thanks Himself: only those who want to go. Also—thanks, too—it is becoming much safer to cross the Atlantic, even if five of His faithful Franciscan nuns did perish last year when the Deutschland, soon after leaving Bremerhaven for North America, foundered off the treacherous Kentish coast. And quicker: by the new steamships it takes only eight days. Of course, God looks forward to the day when people can be moved across oceans in much less time. And eventually, and even more quickly, through the sky. God likes speed as much as the next pale person. Everything is speeding up now, getting faster. This is perhaps a good thing, since there are so many more people.