A Miscellany (Revised)

by e. e. cummings

  One might suppose (were one to believe what one hears) that the technique of The Moscow Art Theatre Musical Studio resembled the technique of some recently invented cocktail; that a thorough, if not positively savage, shaking up of various in themselves merely dangerous aesthetic ingredients produced a taste suggestive of none, assuming the concoction to have been properly gulped, plus a kick beyond dynamite. Actually, however, the system of Nemirovitch-Dantchenko suggests that almost incredibly skilful edifice, familiar to American preprohibition imbibers under the salubrious pseudonym “pussy café,” which presents itself to the eye as a number of colours or succession of layers, each constituent layer or colour (obedient to the law of specific gravities) keeping its particular level and refusing to blend or mix with the others—whereof the gustatory pleasure results from an interaction, on the tongue, of storeys, as the edifice unrapidly is sipped. If New York post-prohibition audiences gulped the Synthetic Theatre, if the whole thing looked like a cocktail to them, if they approved because the gin apparently had been killed since the ugly taste of conventional Opera was absent, and if they disapproved because they didn’t get the kick which they expected to get out of a shaking up, by the gentleman with the hyphenated nomenclature, of various arts—it luxuriously is true that there was no gin, and that the aforesaid gentleman had not shaken up arts for the exuberant reason that he had done something exactly different, videlicet, he had made visible a law, he had demonstrated an aesthetic relativity, he had “produced” an homogeneity of arts precisely by not violating the discreteness of any one of them.

  What happens on this gentleman’s stage is a selfimposing nextness of arts, what happens in his audience (supposing the inhabitants of Jolson’s Theatre to constitute his audience) is an overlapping or interpenetration of arts. The law governing each specimen of his “Lyric Drama” is an aesthetic law, i.e., each instance, various arts, illustrating a certain order, cohere through the differences of their common volition (so to speak)—the principle at stake being not an agglomeration of ingredients but that spontaneous sequence of elements which inevitably is the expression of their respective densities. This out-of-Spontaneous-by-Inevitably idiom or audience-stage structure involves, before anything else, the existence of a mobile theatre. More accurately: it involves the elimination of a pennyintheslot peep show parlour and the substitution therefor of an aesthetic continent, throughout whose roamable depth and height and breadth the tourist pays his way in -ist currency (“constructivist” or expressionist” or what you will setting, lighting, costuming)—said currency being amply protected against depreciation, thanks to the seizure of that long-idle, inexhaustible treasure: the chorus.

  We shall inflict upon our readers neither a diary nor a geography of those portions of The Lyric Theatre (LYSISTRATA, LOVE AND DEATH, CARMENCITA) which it already has been our privilege to tour. Instead we shall remark that, as in the case of any authentic experiment, there is here not much failure and much invincibility. To be sure, The Moscow Art Theatre Musical Studio has its anecdotal feebleness in ALEKO (with too many not-thick-enough sounds attributed to Sergei Rachmaninoff), but it has its found solidity in CLEOPATRA (with the unspeakingly supreme protagonist “FLAVIUS—A Roman Warrior”), in CARMENCITA (with an exquisitely orchestrated ἀνάγκη of fans), and—best of all—in the immaculate roughhouse happeningly enclosed by LYSISTRATA. An exhibition of a different sort, of the cocktail variety in fact—the Quinn collection of modern art—reveals a total absence of Lachaise, many merely fifteenth-rate things, and a fatuous sought negligible unthing by Augustus John, but also a structurally sumptuous irrevocably itselfcoloured vibration by John Marin. And of whatever failures in taste the late Mr. Quinn or the living Nemirovitch-Dantchenko may be accused, these failures are honourable—unlike the failure which results when Miss Eva Le Gallienne and an equally incompetent cast “do” what, instead of being THE MASTER BUILDER, becomes a rigid mess vividly lighted by Emily Stevens’ superbly réussi penetration of Hedda Gabler.

  And now may we suggest some genuine home-brew?

  Neither the presence of LYSISTRATA, nor the absence, from the Musical Studio productions, of music by the greatest living composer (whose Sacre and Noces, alone and as Nijinska-Goncharova ballets, are equal in intensity to anything for which Nemirovitch-Dantchenko or Ibsen or any one else can possibly be responsible), nor even the luminous existence of a Strindberg DREAM PLAY at the Provincetown, chances to account for your humble servant’s naif idea that the NATIONAL WINTER GARDEN BURLESK at the corner of East Houston Street and Second Avenue is a singularly fundamental institution, whose Scratch is a noble clown, whose first wink is worth the struttings of a hundred thousand Barrymores, who are the unmitigated bunk: since the direction of all spectacle lives in Aristophanes and the “theatre” has a great future behind it, said “future” being The Circus.

  From The Dial, April 1926.

  THE THEATRE: II

  Since the writing of our last “theatre,” at least three events of extraordinary theatric import have transpired in New York City.

  1. LITTLE EYOLF, with Clare Eames as Rita Allmers (Guild Theatre). This intricately distinct play, thoroughly if not wonderfully understood, was given a more than creditable performance; a performance far more than creditable, or even than excellent, in so far as Clare Eames was concerned.

  2. The International Theatre Exposition, occupying two floors of the Steinway Building, and representing Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Jugoslavia, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.S.A. From copious chaff much authentic wheat separates quickly itself: Jean Hugo’s inspired costumes for that Joy Forever, Cocteau’s LES MARIÉS DE LA TOUR EIFFEL: the line-in-relief-against-plane “construction DER WAGEN DER PROSERPINA,” whose all scrawlish vitality and purely velocitous spontaneity mention the irrepressible Picasso; Rabinovitch’s now famous LYSISTRATA, Theatre Beresil; gorgeous turbine flangings for LOHENGRIN per Fedorovsky, and an exquisite thing by Vialoff; Depero; dolls by Remo Bufano; Mrs. Hansell, B. Aronson, Cleon Throckmorton. Regarding the situation which is responsible for this show, we are enlightened by Friedrich Kiesler as follows (programme, page 14):

  “The elements of the new dramatic style are still to be worked out. They are not yet classified.

  “Drama, poetry, and scenic formation have no natural milieu. Public, space, and players are artificially assembled. The new aesthetic has not yet attained unity of expression. Communication lasts two hours; the pauses are the social event.

  “We have no contemporary theatre. No agitators’ theatre, no tribunal, no force which does not merely comment on life, but shapes it.

  “Our theatres are copies of obsolete architectures. Systems of superannuated copies. Copies of copies. Barococo theatres. The actor works without relation of his environment. Ideal or material. He is set down in the middle of things, managerially obligated, coached by the director for his part. He must put life into a grave topped with red, gold, and white masonry, a parquet of mummies in evening dress, decolleté fillies, antiquated youths.”

  This all too familiar “grave” is further designated as “the picture-stage” or “the peep-show-stage.”

  “The peep-show-stage is a box appended to an assembly room. This box owes its form to technical considerations; it is not the result of deliberate artistic purpose. . . . Speech and action cease to be organic, or plastic; they do not grow with the scenery, but are decorative, textual byplay. Under such conditions the back of the stage is useless—excess space, vacuum, embarrassment, an exhibit room for the stage sets. The whole province of the stage has not yet been conquered for the actor; he is confined within the pale of the footlights. . . . The curtain is a cover for changes of scene. When it is lowered, the lights are turned on in the audience. Or the theatre is left dark. Hocus-pocus. The scenes are being shifted. . . . The stage frame, as peephole of the peep-show-stage, is like a panoramic camera shutter. The deployment of wings, actors, and ob
jects is perceived in relief, not tri-dimensionally. Optically, rigid space does not admit of precise cubic apprehension unless it has already been traversed by the observer, so that, when seen again, it is reconstructed with the aid of past experience. Every specific reconstruction arrived at purely from the experiencing of other spaces is inexact and does not suffice for theatrical effectiveness. Space is space only for the person who moves about in it. For the actor, not for the spectator. . . . The peep-show-stage functions as relief, not as space. The public’s shaft of vision pushes the stage space back towards the rear. As is always true of rigid space, it is projected onto the surface of the backdrop. . . . There is only one space element; motion. . . . The plastic element of this stage is not scenery, but man. . . . The antimony ‘picture-stage’ has remained generally unnoticed. For stage is space, picture is surface. The spatial junction of stage and picture produces a false compromise, the stage-picture. . . . The wings and backdrop are arranged pictorially, enlarged from charming little sketches to gigantic proportions, spaced for the furniture—and the actor stands out abruptly from these self-sufficient paintings, a body absolutely foreign. Scene and actor negate each other. No organic cohesion is possible. The stage director attempts to adjust the rivalry. The painter protests; the actor faces the public, turning his back upon the stage. The play falls halfway between nature and art.”

  Not so with the “space-stage,” “a kind of four-sided funnel, opening towards the audience”—

  “The actor is seen perfectly from any part of the theatre; and from all points on the stage his voice sounds with uniform intensity and accentuation. The flat expanse of the back-drop no longer dominates as background. It has become a narrow strip unfit to serve as a picture. The stage is empty; it functions as space; it has ceased to appeal as decoration. The play itself is required to give it life. Everything now depends upon the play. Agents of movement are: sound, structure, objects, stage mechanisms, light. The performance results from the organization of the histrionic elements, the moulding of stability and motion into unity. One element conditions another. Their innate antithesis is not obscured, but deepened. One cannot be effective without the other. Nothing is accessory: everything is a complement, a sequence, a development, a conclusion. The energies of the components heighten one another; they grow and crystallize beneath the eyes of the public. No mystery. The stage structure develops step by step: the simultaneity of the picture-stage is abandoned. There is no curtain, nor is the house darkened in lieu of a curtain. The performance is orchestral. The movement is carried from one element to another. The movements begin abruptly; accelerated and retarded, they continue without interruption until the play is ended.”

  —the ideal cherished by partisans of this movement being “elastic space” (versus “rigid space”); i.e. “space by whose relative tensions the action of a work is created and completed”—a noble ideal, to misunderstand which requires the peculiarly insulting stupidity of “critics.”

  3. Greb-Flowers, at Tex Rickard’s New Garden. On February 26, ’26, in a circus-theatre bulging with incredible thousands of human and nonhuman unbeings and beings, a Negro deacon named Tiger Flowers won the middleweight championship of the world. Mr. Flowers (who moves pleasantly, fights cleanly, and plays the violin) said:

  “Harry stuck his thumb in my eye once, but it may have been an accident for he fought a clean fight after that. The only thing I didn’t like was that he used some profane language at times. But I guess he was a little excited.”

  From The Dial, May 1926.

  CONEY ISLAND

  A slightly exuberant appreciation of New York’s famous pleasure park

  Although it is true that the inhabitants of the U.S.A. have ample cause for pessimism, thanks to Bad Art, Bootleggery and 26,000 lesser degrees of Bunk, it is also true that said inhabitants are the fortunate possessors of a perfectly genuine panacea. Were not this so, throughout the breadth and length of our fair land mayhem would magnify itself to prodigious proportions, burglary would bulge to deadly dimensions, policemen would populate our most secret sanctuaries and such notable nodes of Kultur as New York City would leap en masse to the celestial regions. Unbelievable as it may appear, there might even come a day when not a single campanulate congressman went to sleep on duty and not a single authentic artist starved at his Corona. In short (and to put it very mildly) anything might happen.

  But the panacea is genuine. Crime, accordingly, is kept within quite convenient bounds, murder is monotonously punished, unart and nonliquor exchange visiting cards and the dollar bill waves triumphant o’er the land of the free and the home of the slave—all of which is due to the existence of an otherwise not important island, whose modest name would seem to suggest nothing more obstreperous than the presence of rabbits. No wonder learned people state that we occupy an epoch of miracles!

  At the outset, one thing should be understood: it is not owing to sociological, political, or even psychological predilections that the present and unlearned writer partakes of the cure in question. Quite the contrary. Like those millions of other so-called human beings who find relief for their woes, each and every year, at Coney Island, he occupies these miraculous premises with purely personal intentions—or, more explicitly, in order to have a good time. And a good time he has. Only when his last spendable dime has irretrievably disappeared and his face sadly is turned toward his dilatory domicile, does it so much as occur to your humble servant to plumb the significance of his recent experiences. Such being the case, there can be no reasonable doubt as to his intellectual honesty re the isle and its amusements, concerning which (for the benefit of all thoroughly unbenighted persons and an unhappy few who are not accustomed to lose their complexes on The Thunderbolt) he hereby begs to discourse.

  The incredible temple of pity and terror, mirth and amazement, which is popularly known as Coney Island, really constitutes a perfectly unprecedented fusion of the circus and the theatre. It resembles the theatre, in that it fosters every known species of illusion. It suggests the circus, in that it puts us in touch with whatever is hair-raising, breath-taking and pore-opening. But Coney has a distinct drop on both theatre and circus. Whereas at the theatre we merely are deceived, at Coney we deceive ourselves. Whereas at the circus we are merely spectators of the impossible, at Coney we ourselves perform impossible feats—we turn all the heavenly somersaults imaginable and dare all the delirious dangers conceivable; and when, rushing at horrid velocity over irrevocable precipices, we beard the force of gravity in his lair, no acrobat, no lion tamer, can compete with us.

  Be it further stated that humanity (and, by the way, there is such a thing) is most emphatically itself at Coney. Whoever, on a really hot day, has attempted to swim three strokes in Coney Island waters will be strongly inclined to believe that nowhere else in all of the round world is humanity quite so much itself. (We have reference to the noteworthy phenomenon that every Coney Island swimmer swims, not in the water, but in the populace.) Nor is this spontaneous itselfness, on the part of Coney Island humanity, merely aquatic. It is just as much terrestrial and just as much aerial. Anybody who, of a truly scorching Saturday afternoon, has been caught in a Coney Island jam will understand the terrestrial aspect, and anybody who has watched (let alone participated in) a Coney Island roller coaster will comprehend the aerial aspect, of humanity’s irreparable itselfness. But this means that the audience of Coney Island—as well as the performance given by that unmitigated circus-theatre—is unique.

  Ask Freud, he knows.

  Now to seek a formula for such a fundamental and glorious institution may appear, at first blush, presumptuous. Indeed, those of our readers who are dyed-in-the-wool Coney Island fans have doubtless resented our using the words “circus-theatre” to describe an (after all) indescribable phenomenon. We hasten to reassure them: Coney for us, as for themselves, is Coney and nothing else. But certain aspects of this miracle mesh, so to speak, with the theatre and with the circus; a fact which we consider stri
ctly significant—not for Coney, but for art. We repeat: the essence of Coney Island’s “circus-theatre” consists in homogeneity. THE AUDIENCE IS THE PERFORMANCE, and vice versa. If this be formula, let us make the most of it.

  Those readers who have inspected the International Theatre Exposition will realize that the worldwide “new movement” in the theatre is toward a similar goal. Two facts are gradually being recognized: first, that the circus is an authentic “theatric” phenomenon, and second, that the conventional “theatre” is a box of negligible tricks. The existing relationships between actor and audience and theatre have been discovered to be rotten at their very cores. All sorts of new “theatres” having been suggested, to remedy this thoroughly disgraceful state of affairs—disgraceful because, in the present writer’s own lingo, all genuine theatre is a verb and not a noun—we ourselves have the extraordinary honour to suggest: Coney Island. And lest anybody consider this suggestion futuristic, we will quote from The Little Review the suggestion of Enrico Prampolini, entitled (among other things):