by Tom Stoppard
(This is too much for TZARA.)
TZARA: By God, you supercilious streak of Irish puke! You four-eyed, bog-ignorant, potato-eating ponce! Your art has failed. You’ve turned literature into a religion and it’s as dead as all the rest, it’s an overripe corpse and you’re cutting fancy figures at the wake. It’s too late for geniuses! Now we need vandals and desecrators, simple-minded demolition men to smash centuries of baroque subtlety, to bring down the temple, and thus finally, to reconcile the shame and the necessity of being an artist! Dada! Dada! Dada!! (He starts to smash whatever crockery is to hand; which done, he strikes a satisfied pose. JOYCE has not moved.)
JOYCE: You are an over-excited little man, with a need for selfexpression far beyond the scope of your natural gifts. This is not discreditable. Neither does it make you an artist. An artist is the magician put among men to gratify – capriciously – their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist’s touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships – and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes – husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer … It is a theme so overwhelming that I am almost afraid to treat it. And yet I with my Dublin Odyssey will double that immortality, yes by God there’s a corpse that will dance for some time yet and leave the world precisely as it finds it – and if you hope to shame it into the grave with your fashionable magic, I would strongly advise you to try and acquire some genius and if possible some subtlety before the season is quite over. Top o’ the morning, Mr Tzara!
(With which JOYCE produces a rabbit out of his hat, puts the hat on his head, and leaves, holding the rabbit.)
(CARR’s voice is heard off.)
CARR (Voice off): ‘Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example what on earth is the use of them? They seem as a class to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.’
(TZARA has moved to CARR’s door. He opens it, and goes through.)
(Voice off) ‘How are you, my dear Ernest. What brings you up to town?’ – ‘Pleasure, pleasure – eating as usual, I see, Algy…’
(CARR enters, as Old Carr, holding a book.) Algy! The other one. Personal triumph in the demanding role of Algernon Montcrieff. The Theater zur Kaufleuten on Pelikanstrasse, an evening in Spring, the English Players in that quintessential English jewel ‘The Imprudence of Being –’ Now I’ve forgotten the first one. By Oscar Wilde. Henry Carr as Algy. Other parts played by Tristan Rawson, Cecil Palmer, Ethel Turner, Evelyn Cotton … forget the rest. Tickets five francs, four bob a nob and every seat filled, must have made a packet for the Irish lout and his cronies – still, not one to bear a grudge, not after all these years, and him dead in the cemetery up the hill, unpleasant as it is to be dragged through the courts for a few francs – after I’d paid for my trousers and filled every seat in the house – not very pleasant to be handed ten francs like a tip! – and then asking me for twenty-five francs for tickets – bloody nerve – Here, I got it out –
(From his pocket, a tattered document.)
– Bezirksgericht Zuerich, Zurich District Court, in the case of Dr James Joyce – doctor my eye – plaintiff and counter-defendant versus Henry Carr, defendant and counter-plaintiff, with reference to the claim for settlement of the following issues: (a) Suit: is defendant and counter-plaintiff (that’s me) obliged to pay the plaintiff and counter-defendant (that’s him) twenty-five francs? (b) Counter-suit: is plaintiff and counter-defendant bound to pay defendant and counter-plaintiff three hundred francs? Have you got that? Joyce says I owe him twenty-five francs for tickets. I say Joyce owes me three hundred francs for the trousers, etcetera, purchased by me for my performance as Henry – or rather – god dammit! – the other one …
Incidentally, you may or may not have noticed that I got my wires crossed a bit here and there, you know how it is when the old think-box gets stuck in a groove and before you know where you are you’ve jumped the points and suddenly you think, No, steady on, old chap, that was Algernon – Algernon! There you are – all coming back now, I’ve got it straight, I’ll be all right from here on. In fact, anybody hanging on just for the cheap comedy of senile confusion might as well go because now I’m on to how I met Lenin and could have changed the course of history etcetera, what’s this?? (the document) Oh yes.
Erkannt – has decided that. I. Der Beklagte, the defendant, Henry Carr, is obliged to pay den Klager, the plaintiff, James Joyce, twenty-five francs. The counter-claim of Henry Carr is denied. Herr Carr to indemnify Doktor Joyce sixty francs for trouble and expenses. In other words, a travesty of justice. Later the other case came up – Oh yes, he sued me for slander, claimed I called him a swindler and a cad … Thrown out of court, naturally. But it was the money with Joyce. Well, it was a long time ago. He left Zurich after the war, went to Paris, stayed twenty years and turned up here again in December 1940. Another war… But he was a sick man then, perforated ulcer, and in January he was dead … buried one cold snowy day in the Fluntern Cemetery up the hill.
I dreamed about him, dreamed I had him in the witness box, a masterly cross-examination, case practically won, admitted it all, the whole thing, the trousers, everything, and I flung at him – ‘And what did you do in the Great War?’ ‘I wrote Ulysses,’ he said. ‘What did you do?’
Bloody nerve.
(BLACKOUT.)
ACT TWO
THE LIBRARY
Apart from the bookcases, etc. the Library’s furniture includes CECILY’s desk, which is perhaps more like a counter forming three sides of a square.
CECILY: To resume.
The war caught Lenin and his wife in Galicia, in Austro-Hungary. After a brief internment they got into Switzerland and settled in Berne. In 1916, needing a better library than the one in Berne, Lenin came to Zurich …
(The Library set is now lit.)
… intending to stay two weeks. But he and Nadezhda liked it here and decided to stay. They rented a room in the house of a shoe-maker named Kammerer at 14 Spiegelgasse. Zurich during the war was a magnet for refugees, exiles, spies, anarchists, artists and radicals of all kinds. Here could be seen James Joyce, reshaping the novel into the permanent form of his own monument, the book the world now knows as Ulysses! – and here, too, the Dadaists were performing nightly at the Cabaret Voltaire in the Meierei Bar at Number One Spiegelgasse, led by a dark, boyish and obscure Romanian poet…
(JOYCE is seen passing among the bookshelves; and also CARR, now monocled and wearing blazer, cream flannels, boater… and holding a large pair of scissors which he snips speculatively as he passes between the bookcases. JOYCE and CARR pass out of view.)
Every morning at nine o’clock when the library opened, Lenin would arrive.
(LENIN arrives, saying ‘Good morning’ in Russian: ‘Zdrasvuitiye’.)
He would work till the lunch hour, when the library closed, and then return and work until six, except on Thursdays when we remained closed. He was working on his book on Imperialism.
(LENIN is at work among books and papers.)
On January 22nd, 1917, at the Zurich People’s House Lenin told an audience of young people, ‘We of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of the coming revolution.’ We all believed that that was so. But one day hardly more than a month later, a Polish comrade, Bronsky, ran into the Ulyanov house with the news that there was a revolution in Russia …
(NADYA enters as in the Prologue, and she and LENIN repeat the Russian conversation previously enacted.
This time CECILY translates it for the audience, pedantically repeating each speech in English, even the simple ‘No!’ and ‘Yes!’ The LENINS leave.
NADYA says ‘Das vedanya’ to CECILY (i.e. ‘Goodbye’) as she goes.)
As Nadezhda writes in her Memories of Lenin, ‘From the moment the news of the February revolution came, Ilyich burned with eagerness to go to Russia.’ But this was easier said than done, in this landlocked country. Russia was at war with Germany. And Lenin was no friend of the Allied countries. His war policy made him a positive danger to them;
(CARR enters, very debonair in his boater and blazer, etc. CARR has come to the library as a ‘spy’, and his manner betrays this until CECILY addresses him.)
indeed it was clear that the British and the French would wish to prevent Lenin from leaving Switzerland. And that they would have him watched. Oh!
(CECILY sees CARR who hands her the visiting card he received from BENNETT in Act One.)
CECILY: Tristan Tzara. Dada, Dada, Dada … Why, it’s Jack’s younger brother!!
CARR: You must be Cecily!
CECILY: Ssssh!
CARR: You are!
CECILY: And you, I see from your calling card, are Jack’s decadent nihilist younger brother.
CARR: Oh, I’m not really a decadent nihilist at all, Cecily. You mustn’t think that I am a decadent nihilist.
CECILY: If you are not then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. To masquerade as a decadent nihilist – or at any rate to ruminate in different colours and display the results in the Bahnhofstrasse – would be hypocritical.
CARR: (Taken aback): Oh! Of course, I have been rather louche and devil-take-the-hindmost.
CECILY: I am glad to hear it.
CARR: In fact now you mention the subject I have made quite a corner in voluptuous disdain.
CECILY: I don’t think you should be so proud of it, however pleasant it must be. You have been a great disappointment to your brother.
CARR: Well, my brother has been a great disappointment to me, and to Dada. His mother isn’t exactly mad about him either. My brother Jack is a booby, and if you want to know why he is a booby, I will tell you why he is a booby. He told me that you were rather pretty, whereas you are at a glance the prettiest girl in the whole world. Have you got any books here one can borrow?
CECILY: I don’t think you ought to talk to me like that during library hours. However, as the reference section is about to close for lunch I will overlook it. Intellectual curiosity is not so common that one can afford to discourage it. What kind of books were you wanting?
CARR: Any kind at all.
CECILY: Is there no limit to the scope of your interests?
CARR: It is rather that I wish to increase it. An overly methodical education has left me to fend as best I can with some small knowledge of the aardvark, a mastery of the abacus and a facility for abstract art. An aardvark, by the way, is a sort of African pig found mainly –
CECILY: I know only too well what an aardvark is, Mr Tzara. To be frank, you strike a sympathetic chord in me.
CARR: Politically, I haven’t really got beyond anarchism.
CECILY: I see. Your elder brother, meanwhile –
CARR: Bolshevism. And you, I suppose …?
CECILY: Zimmervaldism!
CARR: Oh, Cecily, will you not make it your mission to reform me? We can begin over lunch. It will give me an appetite. Nothing gives me an appetite so much as renouncing my beliefs over a glass of hock.
CECILY: I’m afraid I am too busy to reform you today. I must spend the lunch hour preparing references for Lenin.
CARR: Some faithful governess seeking fresh pastures?
CECILY: Far from it. I refer to Vladimir Ilyich who with my little help is writing his book on ‘Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism’.
CARR: Of course – Lenin. But surely, now that the revolution has broken out in St Petersburg, he will be anxious to return home.
CECILY: That is true. When the history of the Revolution – or indeed of anything else – is written, Swizterland is unlikely to loom large in the story. However, all avenues are closed to him. He will have to travel in disguise with false papers. Oh, but I fear I have said too much already. Vladimir is positive that there are agents watching him and trying to ingratiate themselves with those who are close to him. The British are among the most determined, though the least competent. Only yesterday the Ambassador received secret instructions to watch the ports.
CARR (Ashamed): The ports?
CECILY: At the same time, the Consul in Zurich has received a flurry of cryptic telegrams suggesting intense and dramatic activity – ‘Knock ‘em cold’ – ‘Drive ‘em Wilde’ – ‘Break a leg’ – and one from the Ambassador himself, ‘Thinking of you tonight, Horace.’
CARR: I think I can throw some light on that. The Consul has been busy for several weeks in rehearsals which culminated last evening in a performance at the Theater zur Kaufleuten on Pelikanstrasse. I happened to be present.
CECILY: That would no doubt explain why he virtually left the Consulate’s affairs in the hands of his manservant – who, fortunately, has radical sympathies.
CARR: Good heavens!
CECILY: You seem surprised.
CARR: Not at all. I have a servant myself.
CECILY: I am afraid that I disapprove of servants.
CARR: You are quite right to do so. Most of them are without scruples.
CECILY: In the socialist future, no one will have any.
CARR: So I believe. To whom did this manservant pass the Consul’s correspondence?
CECILY: Your brother Jack. Oh dear, there I go again! You are not a bit like your brother. You are more English.
CARR: I assure you I am as Bulgarian as he is.
CECILY: He is Romanian.
CARR: They are the same place. Some people call it the one, some the other.
CECILY: I didn’t know that, though I always suspected it.
CARR: Anyway, now that Earnest has opened, no doubt the Consul will relieve his servant of diplomatic business. In all fairness, he did have a personal triumph in a most demanding role.
CECILY: Earnest??
CARR: No – the other one.
CECILY: What do you mean by Earnest?
CARR: The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.
CECILY: Wilde?
CARR: You know him?
CECILY: No, in literature I am only up to G. But I’ve heard of him and I don’t like him. The life is the art, as Vladimir Ilyich always says.
CARR: Ars longa, vita brevis, Cecily.
CECILY: Let us leave his proclivities in the decent obscurity of a learned tongue, Mr Tzara. I was referring to the fact that Oscar Wilde was a bourgeois individualist and, so I hear, overdressed from habit to boot.
CARR: From habit to boot?
CECILY: And back again.
CARR: He may occasionally have been a little over-dressed but he made up for it by being immensely uncommitted.
CECILY: The sole duty and justification for art is social criticism.
CARR: That is a most interesting view of the sole duty and justification for art, Cecily, but it has the disadvantage that a great deal of what we call art has no such function and yet in some way it gratifies a hunger that is common to princes and peasants.
CECILY: In an age when the difference between prince and peasant was thought to be in the stars, Mr Tzara, art was naturally an affirmation for the one and a consolation to the other; but we live in an age when the social order is seen to be the work of material forces and we have been given an entirely new kind of responsibility, the responsibility of changing society.
CARR: No, no, no, no, no – my dear girl! – art doesn’t change society, it is merely changed by it.
(From here the argument becomes gradually heated.)
CECILY: Art is a critique of society or it is nothing!
CARR: Do you know Gilbert and Sullivan??!<
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CECILY: I know Gilbert but not Sullivan.
CARR: Well, if you knew Iolanthe like I know Iolanthe –
CECILY: I doubt it –
CARR: Patience!
CECILY: How dare you!
CARR: Pirates! Pinafore!
CECILY: Control yourself!
CARR: Ruddigore!
CECILY: This is a Public Library, Mr Tzara!
CARR: GONDOLIERS, Madam! (Another ‘time slip …’)
CECILY: I don’t think you ought to talk to me like that during library hours. However as the reference section is about to close for lunch I will overlook it. Intellectual curiosity is not so common that one can afford to discourage it. What kind of books were you wanting?
CARR: Any kind at all. You choose. I should like you, if you would, to make it your mission to reform me. We can begin over lunch.
CECILY: I’m afraid I am too busy to reform you today. You will have to reform yourself. Here is an article which I have been translating for Vladimir Ilyich. You may not be aware, Mr Tzara, that in the governments of Western Europe today there are ten Socialist ministers.
CARR: I must admit my work has prevented me from taking an interest in European politics. But ten is certainly impressive.
CECILY: It is scandalous. They are supporting an imperialist war. Meanwhile the real struggle, the class war, is being undermined by these revisionists like Kautsky and MacDonald.
CARR (Puzzled): Do you mean Ramsay MacDonald, Cecily?
CECILY: I don’t mean Flora Macdonald, Mr Tzara.
CARR: But he’s an absolute Bolshie.
CECILY: He is working within the bourgeois capitalist system and postponing its destruction. Karl Marx has shown that capitalism is digging its own grave.
CARR: No, no, no, no, my dear girl – Marx got it wrong. He got it wrong for good reasons but he got it wrong just the same. By bad luck he encountered the capitalist system at its most deceptive period. The industrial revolution had crowded the people into slums and enslaved them in factories, but it had not yet begun to bring them the benefits of an industrialized society. Marx drew the lesson that the wealth of the capitalist had been stolen from the worker in the form of unpaid labour. He thought that was how the whole thing worked. That false premise was itself added to a false assumption. Marx assumed that people would behave according to their class. But they didn’t. In all kinds of ways and for all kinds of reasons, the classes moved closer together instead of further apart. The critical moment never came. It receded. The tide must have turned at about the time when Das Kapital after eighteen years of hard labour was finally coming off the press, a moving reminder, Cecily, of the folly of authorship. How sweet you look suddenly – pink as a rose.