by Susan Sontag
I get through it, though it doesn’t sound just right, not as good as the way you did it. The new person grins, laughs, sighs. But I doubt that I’m getting as much pleasure from telling this joke as you did. I’m doing something that doesn’t come naturally to me, that’s an imitation of a skill. I like to be witty, I’m good at turning phrases—my way with words. A joke is never mine. Stop me if you’ve heard this one, says the joke-teller, about to share his latest acquisition. He is right to assume that other people must be telling it too: a joke circulates.
The joke is this impersonal possession. It doesn’t have anyone’s signature. It was given to me—but you didn’t make it up; it was in my custody, and I chose to pass it on, keep it going. It isn’t about any of us. It doesn’t describe you or me. It has a life of its own.
It goes off—like a pop, like a laugh, a sneeze; like an orgasm; like a little explosion, an overflow. Its telling says, I am here. I knowenough to appreciate this joke. I’m convivial and expressive enough to pass it on. I enjoy entertaining. I enjoy showing off. I enjoy being appreciated. I enjoy feeling competent. I enjoy being behind my face and driving this little vehicle to its quick destination—and then getting off. I’m in the world, which has many things which are not me and which I appreciate.
Pass it on.
2
Tableau. Their backs are toward us, and we see what they are looking at, saluting, pointing out to each other, with one arm stretched out and up, the age’s characteristic way of greeting some prospect of the marvelous in long-shot. A spread of ruins; a brilliant moon sailing behind a rim of clouds; the enlarging smoky plume of the mountain.
They have already marveled from afar—experience as promontory—before trudging up the side of the mountain, where they had to keep their eyes trained on the spiky rocks beneath each step so as not to stumble, and now, after the final clamber, they are at the top, they have reached the broad moat surrounding the cone, where once again, on level ground, they are looking up—and they can make the gesture, the gesture that says there—but it is here, dangerously near. They are being pelted with a shower of stones and ash. The cone is belching black smoke. A fiery rock falls only a few yards away—watch your arm! But they are bent on a view, at least the poet is. Another view. He hasn’t climbed this far to continue to look up. He wants to look down, inside.
See, it’s stopping. The poet took out his timepiece. You go cower over there, behind that crag. I’m going to see just how long the monster can behave. This stricken monster, it’s like the breathing of a stricken monster, with some twelve minutes between each breath, his watch tells him, during which the shower of stones subsides as well; and in one of the intervals, the poet suggested to his timorous friend, the painter, that they might get their guides to pull them swiftly to the top for a quick look into the crater.
It was done and they stood on the lip of the enormous mouth, as the poet was later to write. A light breeze blew the smoke away, the burbling and gurgling and spitting ceased, but the steam that rose from a thousand fissures veiled the interior of the crater, allowing no more than a shifting glimpse of the cracked rock walls. The sight, he wrote, was neither instructive nor agreeable.
Then the monster took another breath and from its entrails came a tremendous thundering roar—no, from the depths of the cauldron rose a cloud of searing steam and dust—no, from the mightiest of bombards hundreds of stones, large and small, were lobbed into the air—
Their guides tugged at their coats. One of them, the one-eyed boy whom the Cavaliere had recommended to the poet, rushed them to a boulder behind which they could shelter. It was too noisy to appreciate the great sweep of the gulf below and the city in the distance, whose contours, like an amphitheatre in oblique view or like a titanic chair, you have the impression you can take in as a whole, in one glance. The painter shouted, I shall descend now. After the poet crouched under the lee of the boulder a few moments more to demonstrate his courage and to turn over in his mind several other images, he too made a prudent retreat.
That was Goethe, with his friend the painter Tischbein, on the first of his three climbs up the mountain. The poet, no longer in his first youth but an exceptionally fit thirty-seven, has dutifully braved the fire-breathing dragon. If the old English knight can do it regularly, then he can too. It’s what every able-bodied gentleman tourist does when he comes here. But the poet does not, like the Cavaliere, find it beautiful. He is both cold and hot, and tired, uncomfortable, a little frightened. It all seems a bit foolish. One does not see the feckless, pleasure-loving natives tramping up the awesome hill that rises some miles outside their paradise. Definitely a sport for foreigners. And among foreigners, rather English. Ah, these English. So refined and so coarse. If they did not exist, nobody would ever have invented them. So eccentric, so superficial, so reserved. But how they enjoy themselves.
One must try to enjoy oneself with them.
The poet arrived in the evening. Accompanied by another German painter resident in Naples, he and his friend had already been received by the Cavaliere and been shown the treasures in his public rooms. The walls covered with paintings, gouaches, and drawings, the tables piled high with cameos and vases, the cabinets crammed with geological curiosities. There seemed no method or organization in it, which is the first thing the German visitors noticed. And this created a certain unpleasing impression, not just of abundance but of disorder or chaos. But if you looked closely (the look every collector craves), you could recognize the sensitivity and sensuality of the person who had brought together these expressions of his taste, as Tischbein was to recall many years later. The walls, he said of the Cavaliere’s walls, showed his inner life.
Then the poet, the poet alone, was invited to tour the Cavaliere’s cellar storerooms. (The privilege of such a visit was reserved for only the most distinguished guests.) And the poet, who reported everything to his painter friend, was amazed at a different kind of profusion. There was an entire small chapel in the cellar. From where had he taken it? The painter shook his head, raised his eyes to heaven. The poet saw two ornate bronze candelabra which he knew had to have come from the excavations at Pompeii. And many objects of no distinction whatever. The collections upstairs were a map of the Cavaliere’s fantasies, an ideal world. The cellar was the cavernous underbelly of the Cavaliere’s collecting, for every collector soon reaches the point where he is collecting not only what he wants but what he doesn’t really want but is afraid to pass up, for fear he might want it, value it, some day. He can’t help showing these objects to me, the poet thought, even those he should not.
Of course to show off one’s possessions may seem like boasting, but then the collector did not invent or fabricate these things, he is but their humble servant. He does not praise himself in exhibiting them, he offers them humbly for the admiration of others. If the objects a collector has were of his own making, or even if they were a legacy, then it would indeed seem like boasting. But building a collection, the anxious activity of inventing one’s own inheritance, frees one from the obligation of reticence. For the collector to show off his collection is not bad manners. Indeed, the collector, like the impostor, has no existence unless he goes public, unless he shows what he is or has decided to be. Unless he puts his passions on display.
* * *
People told the poet that the Cavaliere had acquired, then fallen in love with, a young woman who was beautiful enough to be a Greek statue, had begun improving and educating her in the manner of any protector who is a man, older, rich, wellborn (all the things his beloved is not), and had become a kind of Pygmalion in reverse, turning his Fair One into a statue; more accurately, a Pygmalion with a round-trip ticket, for he could change her into a statue and then back into a woman at will.
In conformity with the Cavaliere’s taste, she was dressed on these evenings in antique costume, a white tunic with a belt around her waist, her auburn, some say chestnut, hair falling free down her back or turned up by a comb. When she consente
d to begin a performance, according to one account, two or three cashmere shawls were brought to her by a stout elderly woman, some kind of housekeeper or perhaps a widowed aunt; certainly more than a servant, for she was allowed to sit at the side and watch. Maids would bring an urn, a scent box, a goblet, a lyre, a tambourine, and a dagger. With these few properties, she took her position in the middle of the darkened drawing room. When the Cavaliere came forward, holding a taper, the performance had begun.
Over her head she threw a shawl long enough to reach the ground and cover her entirely. Thus hidden, she wrapped herself with other shawls and started making the inner and outer adjustments (drapery, muscle tone, feelings) that will permit her to emerge as someone else, someone other than she is. To do this—it was not like donning a mask—one must have a very loose relation to one’s body. To do this one must have a gift for euphoria. She floated up, she drifted down, she settled—her heart pounding, while she wiped the perspiration from her face. A flurry of grimaces, tightening of tendons, stiffening of hands, head rocketing back or to the side, sharp intake of breath—
And then she suddenly lifted the covering, either throwing it off entirely or half raising it, and making it form part of the garment of the harmonious living statue she had become.
She would hold the pose just long enough for it to be read, then cover herself again. Then she threw off the long shawl to reveal another figure, under a different disposition of shawls—she knew a hundred ways of arranging this drapery. One pose followed another, at least ten or twelve, almost without a break.
* * *
The Cavaliere had first asked her to pose inside a tall velvet-lined box open on one side, then within a huge gilt frame. But he soon saw that her artistry was frame enough for these simulations. Her whole life had prepared her to be the Cavaliere’s gallery of living statues.
At fourteen, newly arrived in London, she had dreamed of becoming an actress, like the splendorous creatures she watched at night prancing out of the Drury Lane stage door. At fifteen, a scantily-veiled figure in the tableaux vivants staged by a fashionable sex therapist, she learned to stand without moving, breathing shallowly, the muscles in her face tightened to impassivity—expressing obliviousness to the sexual exertions taking place nearby, under Doctor Graham’s supervision, in the Celestial Bed. At seventeen the favorite model of one of the great portrait painters of the era, she learned to think inventively about emotions and about how to express them, and then to hold these expressions for a long time. The painter said she often surprised him and inspired his conception of his subject; that she was a true collaborator, not a passive model. For the Cavaliere, she posed as herself posing—in a sequence of poses, a living slide show of the iconic moments of ancient myth and literature.
* * *
This was an extremely precise enterprise. First the subject had to be chosen. The Cavaliere would open his books and show the young woman the plates, or lead her to a painting or a statue in his collection. They would discuss the ancient stories. She always wanted to play them all. Then, once she was in possession of the subject, came the challenging part—finding the right moment, the moment that presents meaning, that sums up the essence of a character, a story, an emotion. It was the same hard choice painters were supposed to make. As Diderot wrote, “The painter has but one moment; he may no more record two different moments than two separate movements.”
* * *
Illustrate the passion. But don’t move. Don’t … move. This is not dance. You are not a proto—Isadora Duncan in freeze-frame, for all your bare feet and Greek costume and loose limbs and unbound hair. Illustrate the passion. But as a statue.
You can lean—yes, like that. Or clasp something. No, a little higher. And turn your head to the left. Yes, you can seem to dance. Seem. Absolutely immobile. Like that. No. I don’t think she would kneel. The left foot a little bit freer. Loll a little. Without the smile. Eyes half lidded. Yes. Like that.
* * *
Everyone said her expressions were altogether remarkable and convincing. But even more remarkable was the rapidity with which she moved from one pose to another. Change without transition. From sorrow to joy, from joy to terror. From suffering to bliss, from bliss to horror. It seems the ultimate feminine gift, to be able to pass effortlessly, instantly, from one emotion to another. How men wanted women to be, and what they scorned in women. One minute this. The next minute that. Of course. Thus do all women.
In principle, every kind of character and emotion was represented. But nymphs and muses, Juliets and Mirandas, were far outnumbered by the forlorn and the victimized. Mothers bereft of their children—her Niobe; or driven by an intolerable injury to kill them—her Medea. Maidens dragged by their fathers to the sacrificial altar—her Iphigenia. Women yearning for the lovers who have discarded them—her Ariadne. Or about to kill themselves in despair at being abandoned—her Dido; or to atone for the dishonor of a rape—her Lucrece. These were the poses that excited the greatest admiration.
When the poet saw her, only a year after she arrived in Naples, she had just begun performing at the Cavaliere’s assemblies. Her lover had released an astonishing talent, which she would practice for many years and which would never cease to be admired, even by her fiercest detractors. Her gifts as a performer seemed at first identical with her beauty. But her beauty was more like genius, with its conviction of its own persistence, even in discouraging circumstances. For after her beauty went, she still felt like a beauty—available for display and appreciation. Even when she became heavy, she still felt light.
She did not want to be a victim. She was not a victim.
She doesn’t miss Charles any more. She is resigned, she is triumphant. She knew she would never experience passionate love again, nor does she hope to. But she was genuinely fond of the Cavaliere, and easily faithful to him. She knows how to give pleasure, and does so as wanted. That Charles was rather chilly and strained in bed had not made her feel rejected. That the Cavaliere turned out to be more amorous than his nephew made her understand, for the first time, what it was to have sexual power over someone. Now she feels like a woman (which is safer than being a girl)—like many women, all of them irresistible. Her capacity for expressiveness, her unslakeable desire to make contact with others, had found its highest outlet in this theatre of simulated, ancient emotions.
* * *
What people made of antiquity then was a model for the present, a set of ideal examples. The past was a small world, made smaller by our great distance from it. It had only familiar names (the gods, the great sufferers, the heroes and heroines) representing familiar virtues (constancy, nobility, courage, grace), embodying an irrefutable idea of beauty, both feminine and masculine, and a potent, unthreatening sensuality—because enigmatic, broken, bleached of color.
People wanted to be edified. Knowledge was fashionable then—and philistinism unfashionable. Since each of the poses of the Cavaliere’s protégé was a figure from ancient mythology or drama or history, to watch her run through her Attitudes, as they were called, was to be subjected to a kind of quiz.
She unbinds her hair, she rises from her haunches, she lifts her arms in supplication, she drops the goblet to the floor, she kneels and points the knife at her breast …
Gasps. A murmur from the audience. The beginning of applause, while somebody who doesn’t recognize the figure is coached in a whisper by a fellow guest. The applause mounts. And the shouts. “Brava, Ariadne!”
Or “Brava, Iphigenia!”
And the Cavaliere standing nearby, both stage manager and privileged spectator, nodded gravely. He would have smiled had he thought it becoming to smile. Observing the old man’s tense immobility, his age and thinness contrasting with her youth and opulent body, the poet smiled.
* * *
The significant moment! said the poet in his stilted French. That is what great art must render. The moment that is most humane, most typical, most affecting. My compliments, Madame Hart.
&n
bsp; Thank you, she said.
Yours is a most unusual art, said the poet gravely. What interests me is how you move so quickly from one pose to another.
It just comes to me, she said.
But of course, he said, smiling. I understand. It is the function of art to conceal the difficulties of its execution.
It just comes, said the young woman, reddening. Surely he was not really asking her to explain how she did it.
How do you do it, said the poet. Do you see the personage you are incarnating in your mind’s eye?
I think so, she said. Yes.
Her hair looked damp. The poet wondered what it would be like to embrace her. She was not his type. He was attracted to women who were more articulate, or who were humbler, less animated. Her talent had made her feverish. For there was no doubt that her performance was remarkable. She was not only, as was said knowingly by all, a work of art, but was herself an artist. The model as artist? Why not? But genius was something else. And so was happiness. He thought again how lucky the Cavaliere was. He was happy because he did not want more than he had.
There was a long, uncomfortable pause. The young woman did not flinch while this stiff German stared at her.
Would you like some wine?
Later, said the poet. I am not used to such heat.
Yes, the young woman exclaimed. It’s hot. Very hot.
The great end of art is to strike the imagination, the poet told her. She agreed. And, in pursuing the true grandeur of design, it may sometimes be necessary for the artist to deviate from vulgar and strict historical truth. She was sweating. And then she told the poet that she had read, she had admired to distraction, his Werther, and was very sorry for poor Lotte, who must have felt so guilty for having inspired, innocently, the fatal passion in the too susceptible young man.