Going Too Far

by Robin Morgan

THALIA A bit excessive, I’d say.

  EUTERPE No, no, Thalia, think back. They’ve come within visionary distance of it a few times. Remember the Middle Ages? Chartres? The anonymous collective united shared chorused expression of aesthetic love? Think of the troubadours, the jongleurs, the tapestry weavers working together on one loom—

  MELPOMENE They were burned for being who they were. There were millions of common artists, for once. And then there were millions of torches who screamed in the night. And then there was silence again. (At this last THE POET, who has been steadily taking everything down and who has broken rhythm only once or twice to insert a new sheet in her typewriter or to gesture frantically at the air as if her own thoughts were coming too fast and thick to be got down on paper—THE POET, at this last comment of MELPOMENE’S, buries her face in her hands and utters one long rasping groan of despair. THE MUSES above her exchange pitying looks. POLYMNIA reaches out a hand as if to stroke THE POET’S hair, but does not touch her. TERPSICHORE is rocking slowly from front to back, as if she were keening for her dead. THALIA has moved lightly from her place to sit next to MELPOMENE; THALIA draws MELPOMENE’S head down to her breast. MELPOMENE submits to this embrace in grateful silence)

  CLIO If we mourn, we will be given over to mourning.

  EUTERPE (softly) Can not one of us speak something which will bring us back to gladness? We must celebrate our living as well as our dead.

  URANIA Yes, my dear sister. And we have work before us. Erato?

  ERATO I—cannot speak yet. That age Melpomene spoke of was my own. The Age of Courtly Love, it has been called. My Daughters bore it, ruled it, wrote, sang, strung, wove, painted it, and perished for it. No, I—cannot speak yet, not of other things.

  THALIA (after a pause, almost glumly) It certainly makes you long for the good old days when Euphrosyne and Aglaia were still tripping about, doesn’t it? (She sighs and scuffs her toe) All this mythomorphosizing into new versions gets me down sometimes. I’m the only Grace left.

  URANIA (appealing for help in reviving the discussion) Calliope?

  CALLIOPE (slowly rousing herself to the task) Yes. Yes, I hear. Celebrate the present and future as well as the past. (She clears her throat and adopts a brisk tone) But for celebration we must look to what is being produced. And for this we need create new standards for a new age, for these new artists, for these Daughters who would give birth to a new culture. (THE MUSES begin to return from their grief, resuming their old positions, drying their eyes, and once again giving their attention to the conversation. At this THE POET, too, blows her nose, sighs deeply, and settles back to her work) Authentic art is not born of chaos, but of an order all unto itself. (CALLIOPE, seeing the effect her speech is having on her Sisters, smiles, pleased with herself, and exchanges a proud look with URANIA.) How do our Daughters develop new standards—their own—for artistic excellence? Because some criteria are necessary; art in a very real sense is not democratic.

  URANIA The Daughters are of course suspicious of standards because of the way the Sons have used them.

  THALIA To say the least.

  EUTERPE But ought that mean that the Daughters refuse any standards at all? I think not. It is merely that in their flight from the old oppressive restrictions they have preferred formlessness to any structure. One can sympathize with that, surely.

  CALLIOPE To a point, yes. But art is structure. The form is to the aesthetic as matter is to energy—without it there is no life.

  EUTERPE Agreed. I also chafe at ignorance, especially in the Daughters. Yet I rejoice at the number of women who are writing poems, more than I can ever remember. Even formless, aimless, artless poems. They have the longing, I rejoice at that.

  THALIA Then you do your own Daughters a disservice, Euterpe. Please. Don’t misunderstand me. I too rejoice at this catharsis, expression, exorcism, release. But it is one thing to rejoice because so many women are at last putting their feelings on paper. It is quite another thing to consider this writing.

  CALLIOPE For once I find myself in agreement with Thalia. Women have the right to this expression, and it is wondrous that feminism has exploded a space in which that right may finally be exercised. Art, however, requires something more.

  THALIA Also there is just so much catharsis one can take without being put in mind of laxatives or reduced to quoting Nietzsche on the creativity of the artist: “One does not get over a passion by representing it; rather, it is over when one is able to represent it.”

  CLIO (dryly) Nietzsche seems an unsavory example to raise in any political context, don’t you think, Thalia?

  THALIA Touché, Clio. But it’s hard for me to pass up a good quote when I inspire one.

  CALLIOPE For myself, I confess that I am becoming impatient with Daughters who appear to feel that any set of words blatted out on a page with the right-hand margins unjustified is a poem. Do you think that I am becoming a crochety old grump?

  EUTERPE No, you are an admirable old grump, Calliope. You’re right, of course. “Having a lot to express” is all very well, but if one is indifferent to color and line then one should refrain from making that expression on canvas, and if one is indifferent to language, to the richness of vowels and the wit of consonants, indifferent to rhythm and echo and music and rhyme and simile and metaphor, then one had best refrain from making that expression on the page. Or do so, by all means, but have the civility not to call it art.

  ERATO Brava, Euterpe! “And where love’s form is, love is; love is form.”

  CLIO Chapman said that.

  THALIA A man, tsk-tsk.

  ERATO Indeed, Thalia. And why, pray, should I pass up a good quote when I inspire one?

  THALIA (throwing up her hands in a gesture of surrender) Touché again! (She is laughing wickedly) I see I’m actually infecting you all with wit.

  MELPOMENE (with a nod toward THE POET, who has just ceased typing and begun twisting her hands nervously) She sometimes refuses to tell these harsh truths to her people. For fear. Of hurting them, of their hating her as the messenger of such news. As if the kindest lie were owed any but one’s adversary. This fear is her gravest sin against her people. If she loves them she owes them some truth, and the most severe judgments of art are the best and most enduring form of that truth, for her.

  TERPSICHORE She will unlearn her fear in time, and move on her truth.

  MELPOMENE Truth needs no time, and art has none to give. Her people waste themselves on trivialities. She knows this; she must speak. (THE POET has become increasingly agitated during the above speeches; she has left her desk and begun pacing back and forth, wringing her hands)

  CALLIOPE She must do more. She must inspire them to develop excellence.

  URANIA More. To redefine excellence so that it means not excelling over someone else but excelling and exceeding the self, so that the Daughters compete each with the best in herself, bettering herself and the Work thereby.

  CLIO They will not understand for a long time. She will have reason to fear.

  POLYMNIA She must pass beyond the fear, into devotion.

  ERATO Into love.

  MELPOMENE She will need love and devotion indeed when at last she ceases to fear. For then she will have most cause.

  (A sudden calm seems to steal over THE POET, as if the exhortatory statements of the Muses above her have woven a cloak of peace which now enfolds her. She seems to stand taller and move with confidence, as someone resigned to a fate. She walks quietly to her desk, seats herself, and, smiling faintly, returns to work)

  THALIA (deliberately breaking the tension) Well, I shall steel her courage and entertainingly demonstrate to you, dear Sisters, how great is the need for those aforementioned standards. I happen to have with me (she extends an empty hand into the air and a sheaf of papers appears in it) a few wee exercises in parody which I could not resist after leafing through certain feminist publications which the Daughters, in their well-meaning but sometimes soporiferous manner had produced. Ahem—


  CALLIOPE Must we?

  THALIA Indeed you must! (In mock pain) I burned with a hard, gem-like flame when I wrote them. (Impatiently) Is it true, then, that Muses have lost their sense of humor?

  ALL (with assorted moans) Very well then, Thalia. Have done. All right, get it over with. Go ahead, then.

  THALIA (delighted) Well. You’ll miss the spelling and visual jokes, but it can’t be helped. This one is an exercise on the current “Heavy” Radical Woman poem which-must-touch-all-the-correct-bases. It has alternate titles (THALIA reads all the following in dramatic fashion):

  “How Now Frau Mao”

  or

  “The Bilge My Sisters Won’t All Burble with Me”

  Wimminlovers we

  burn my tongue in yr lap

  here in the streets of Hanoi oy o O labia

  O Ho O Ho Chi Minh

  who saw them bomb the dykes

  Omelting oreo cookie in the jeans

  Ihate my square old mother O but Ho

  is my dear uncle angle ankle lick my ankle

  she u u she O she u

  inkling of chlorine chorine water

  Drown she said and I bid, I bid

  two posters at the wimmincenter auction

  (of those great wimmin Evelyn Waugh

  and that Maria Rilke)

  in exchange for one NLF flag I sooed

  into the crotch of my womon’s wombone’s pants

  for you are who you creep with

  and Susan Sexe she tells it like it his

  O Ho u she i ho Ho to t—

  to touch ano—

  to touch anoth—another—

  to touch another wo—

  to touch another wommon’s

  wommon’s wombon’s womon’s

  little

  red

  book.

  (THE MUSES valiantly are trying to sit in prim and judgmental postures and to refuse THALIA the sight of their genuine amusement. Small, revealing smiles prickle at the corner of their mouths. CLIO, however, is simply unable to resist correcting an historical inaccuracy)

  CLIO I just want to say that “dear old Uncle Ho” put all the lesbians he knew of in dear old jail.

  THALIA O Ho. As if we didn’t know.

  ERATO Which reminds me. (She has a twinkle in her eye) If male artists always claimed to woo us and have us as their mistresses, whatever must they think goes on between the woman artist and her Muse? (THE MUSES all giggle, except for POLYMNIA and MELPOMENE)

  MELPOMENE They never understand that every artist, female or male, is ultimately alone with the self. An onanist, if you insist.

  POLYMNIA Not quite, dearest Melpomene. Alone, rather, with what is eternal in the self. That is quite different, you know, and that is what they do not understand.

  THALIA Pish-tosh. What they don’t understand would fill the Library at Alexandria and did. They probably refuse to visualize The Poet and her Muse (the giggles again, lovely and wicked) and so translate us into great hairy jockish hulks—voilà! The solution: male muses!

  CALLIOPE (wrinkling her delicate nose) I may die. (Then, noticing:) Oh look, Terpsichore’s rolled herself into a ball!

  (They give themselves over to unashamed laughter, while THALIA seizes the opportunity for another dramatic delivery)

  THALIA Girls, girls, do settle down, I’m not finished. There are a few more short examples which I must share with you so that you’ll be Up On Current Trends. This next one is my version of the Real Woman Poet’s work; if the first example I read could be found in the centerfold of something that might be called Sappho Gurley Flynn Speaks then this one would be lodged in the pages of a prestigious journal with a name like The Duluth Poetry Forum of America. Now you must remember, Sisters, that the Real Woman Poet is abstract on self-protective purpose. Look not for concrete images herein. And yet, show pity: our parodied author has imitated masculinist poetry and dutifully gone to literary cocktail parties for decades. She is at last Accepted. Now, hoist by her own Petrarch, she kicks lovingly at other women, will not publish in anthologies of women’s poetry (because she’s “not a woman poet, but a poet”), yet runs the feminist fashion through her subject mill, you bet. I call this one:

  “The Ontological Anatomy of Areopagitica Assessed”

  or, simply,

  “Poem”

  To make

  & unmake

  ourselves & each other

  makes for a making

  of others & selves

  unmade & unselfish

  but selflessly making

  a selfmade made self.

  & if I am angry

  & if I am guilty

  my needs & my anger

  are guiltless & grouchy

  and if I am thoughtless

  la plume de ma tante

  your thoughts for the making

  of my self, my guilt, needs, & anger are made.

  To believe ) is to alter Once more into

  the bleach, split ends,

  humming upon a peak in Darien.

  EUTERPE (doubled over and holding her stomach) I can hardly breathe, but I can’t tell whether it’s from laughter or from pain.

  THALIA (barreling on while she has them enthralled) Both, dear, both. But take comfort. Here’s one for you, Erato. It’s my humble version of the New Raunchy Women’s Lib Poet who thinks Mailer, Miller, and no doubt even Mahler are just wonderful guys and who has created the new sex-and-food genre:

  “Brussel Sprouts and Balls”

  Ooooo honey your balls are just like

  brussel sprouts and you

  know how I love them all adribbling Promise

  margarine and just a

  smidgen

  dollop

  of

  fresh

  pepper

  I adore to grate myself.

  ERATO (Opening her eyes wide and taking a deep breath) I. Can. Tell. You. Euterpe. For. Certain. It’s. Pain. (Then she explodes in laughter, the contagion running through the rest of the helpless Muses. Tears course down their cheeks and they strive in vain to recover their solemnity)

  TERPSICHORE (gasping) Thalia, you’re a ham. Incurable.

  EUTERPE (wiping her eyes) I do think, Thalia, that you might try to be a bit more charitable. Look, you’ve made our Poet exceedingly uncomfortable.

  THALIA Only a false love lies, Euterpe. You know that. My love for the Daughters would carve away their laziness with the sharp blade of humor. And as for her (THALIA peers down at THE POET, who is indeed looking discomfited, albeit amused), she isn’t uncomfortable enough. If she were secretly chortling at my little efforts before, perhaps she’ll laugh out loud at my last offering. It is my Big Cheese poem—a rallying cry to all women to take to their noses, put their barricades to the wheel, stand fast at the shoulder, and raise high the grindstone. It is too long for recital here (or anywhere) but I shall read you a sample fragment. The poem is called:

  “Muenster”

  Listen.

  I said listen.

  LISTEN, DAMMIT!

  Ah, sister.

  There they are, around us, all

  the biggest cheeses:

  cheddar, parmesan, romano,

  see?—there’s cream, and cream-with-chive

  and oh dear goddess there’s the big

  oppressor stinky cheeses: gorgonzola,

  stilton, roquefort, danish blue, and liederkranz:

  my sisters, hear me

  we are marching

  they will crumb before us

  we are winning

  they will melt before us

  sisters listen hear me say it;

  let us say it openly, without shame, and together.

  I

  am

  a muenster.

  I am

  a muenster.

  I am a muenster.

  And I am loud.

  (THALIA finishes with a flourish of melodrama, and THE MUSES, despite themselves, applaud her heartily. The feeling of shame
faced good will has even extended itself to THE POET, who, chagrined and chastened, has ceased smirking at others, laughed openly at herself, and once again settled down to record the meeting—or what she can manage to catch of it)

  MELPOMENE I know you better than most, Thalia, and I love you for what you dare see and sing. I too have watched the Daughters hunger for their own culture, for too many centuries. Now that that hunger can be fed, I worry in a different way. I know it is a voracious hunger; they are at present so starved as to be indiscriminate. They can make themselves ill by gorging and then turn away from such fare entirely, nauseated at the thought of art and culture when they have glutted themselves on whatever was offered them. And in the meanwhile, what of the cooks, the artists? When faced with famished people does one fuss over correcting the seasonings? The temptation—and the pressure—not to is considerable. Yet one must, even if this means watching other cooks offer unbalanced menus and bad nutrition to be gulped down eagerly by those whom one would rather see fed well, sustained. One must wait and create nothing less than the best one is capable of—and those standards rise like a further challenge from within onself, never from the crowd.

  EUTERPE To reevaluate everything! What an enormous task lies before the Daughters! I wonder, for instance, what would a wholly new feminist humor be? What do you think, Thalia?

  THALIA I am evolving through them, as are you, Euterpe. I cannot tell yet. But I do know that laughter itself has almost always necessitated a retreat into the self. If I wish to laugh at something in X’s situation I must separate myself from it (objectify it) and then I may see the humor. If I empathize, much less give myself to a spiritual exercise into her reality, I lose all sense of humor.

  ERATO Is laughter then born of alienation?

  THALIA Some might say it is born of worse—hostility and aggression. But I believe there is another possibility, a laughter born of recognition, of surprised similarity, of identification. A defenseless laughter, lovely, loving, and new. (THALIA turns to MELPOMENE and addresses her with a humility we have never seen in the brash THALIA) Yet all of these would still comprise the laughter of humor; not, of course, of joy. (THALIA’S eyes fill with tears and her smile is like a beacon through their dazzle) Joy has nothing to do with alienation and is quite beyond such a tepid emotion as empathy. Joy is born actually of a sense of tragedy, and the laughter that rings from joy knows that nothing funny exists.