What would have happened (even to the most seasoned proletarian) if any of the Old Howard’s corps de ballet had ever even partially disrobed, heaven alone knows. At the National Winter Garden, whose females bore more than a slight resemblance to females, I seem to recall a glittering runway which now and again served as an auction block and on which more or less living statues were deprived of “lan-joo-ray” for the proletariat’s benefit. But Irving Place was a phenomenon of another color. Gone was the plaster nymph of yesteryear and banished to oblivion were the hideous harpies of Ye Goode Olde Days. Pulchritude had entered burlesque. And, with the advent of pulchritude, the focus of burlesque had shifted.
Whereas, formerly, sketches and comedians had constituted a pièce de résistance for which soi-disant sex appeal served as trimming, sketches and comedians now served as trimming for Sex with a capital S. Sentimentality had diminished. Humor, filth, slapstick and satire were all present, but they functioned primarily to enhance the Eternal Feminine. And when you saw that Feminine you understood why. It was no static concept, that pulchritude. It moved, and in moving it revealed itself, and in revealing itself it performed such prodigies of innuendo as made the best belly dancer of the Folies Bergère entr’acte look like a statue of liberty.
The essence of the Old Howard epoch had been subhuman, neuter, and collective. The essence of the National Winter Garden era had been human, masculine, and Jack Shargel. The essence of the Irving Place burlesque was, is, and I hope will continue to be, Das Ewigweibliche—alias Miss June St. Clare. And I beg to state that I speak as a poet and a painter, neither of whom is a press agent.
To see June St. Clare walk the length of the Irving Place stage, or the Apollo stage, or any other stage, is to rejoice that a lost art has been revived. There have been epidemics of women who swam when they walked and of women who floated when they walked. When Miss St. Clare walks, she walks. But when she does something else, she very easily becomes all the animals who ever came out of the ark, rolled into one. Most people move by not keeping still; a very few move by moving; she does neither. She propagates—that is perhaps the word for it—a literally miraculous synthesis of flying and swimming and floating and rising and darting and gliding and pouncing and falling and creeping and every other conceivable way of moving; and all these merely conceivable ways are mysteriously controlled by an inconceivable way which is hers alone. The personality of a Gypsy Rose Lee is where personalities generally are, in the present. The personality of a June St. Clare wanders from prehistoric Then to posthistoric When, but is most at home in timelessness; and if you think I exaggerate, one of two things is a fact. Either you haven’t seen her, or you didn’t deserve to.
From Stage, March 1936.
SPEECH FROM AN UNFINISHED PLAY: I
Solely as an experiment: stop thinking. Forget, nobly and purely, everything. Undo, graciously relax, break yourselves out of a thousand pieces, and come together. Can you feel (proudly or minutely, humbly or enormously feel) what’s coming into this world? Not anything unknown—someone, everyone, even an economizing politician with his life at the end of a leadpencil and his arse on the clouds, can predict that. Not something dreamed—no one, anyone, can guess that; even a physicking mathematician with his hand on the square root of minus one and his mind at the back of his own neck. O no; what’s arriving is as unlike meaning, or anything I and somebody and you and everybody didn’t dream and nobody knows, as a child’s breathing is like geography: form never was where, between them air is; I say it. I say it; which does not tell you. Give a woman’s eyes the right man and they’ll tell you; rhythm invents when—what’s coming is not to compare and include and discuss. What’s coming is not to tremble at, to stand up and scream about, to gasp one’s heart out for and vomit all over the new rug about. Don’t worry; don’t try to imagine, the stars know; and the trees even when bursting with buds, sometimes if bending under snow. Wave your voice, make people die, hide in the nonexistence of an atom, get the garbage concession tovarich—that makes no difference; only flowers understand. O little, O most very little civilization, pull your eyes in and kiss all your beautiful machines goodnight; yesterday was another day, which doesn’t matter—roses are roses. I swear to you by my immortal head: if sunsets are magnificent (though leaves fall, smiles pass) there shall arrive a whisper—but after the whisper, wonder; and next, death; then laughter (O, all the world will laugh—you never smelled such a world): finally, beginning; a bird beyond every bird, oceans young like mountains, universe absurdly beyond opening universe opening, freedom, function of impossibility, the philo-psycho-socialistico-losophers curl up; you die, I melt—only we may happen, suddenly who by disappearing perfectly into destiny are fatally alive. Be alive therefore; generously explode and be born, be like the sea, resemble mountains, dance; it shall not be forgiven you—open your soul as if it were a window and with a not visible cry bravely (through this immeasurable intensely how silent yesterday) fall upon the skilful thunderously and small awful unmeaning and the joy and upon the new inexcusably tomorrowing immensity of flowers.
From The New American Caravan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1936).
SPEECH FROM AN UNFINISHED PLAY: II
by virtue of by virtue, I,
by hereby virtue of the hereby powers vested in hereby me,
do hereby declare and say that in the opinion of this court you are completely guilty of any crime or crimes of which you are absolutely innocent;
and in the name of this great hypocrisy,
which, as you hereby know, can do no wrong,
being a society based upon the equality of importunity, irrespective of andsoforth andsoforth or andsoforth, with liberty and justice for all,
I hereby affirm that to the best of my knowledge and belief you have been conclusively proved,
in flagrante delicto, with full benefit of testimony,
to have committed a foul degenerate heinous and inhuman offense against your innocent and unsuspecting fellowcitizens, not to mention their lives their fortunes and their sacred andsoforth,
namely and to wit,
that hereby you were black in colour at the time of your hereby birth.
In consideration of which, I,
by hereby virtue of andsoforth,
do hereby extend to hereby you, on behalf of the government of the Benighted States of Hysterica, that glorious andsoforth alternative which is the illustrious andsoforth prerogative of every andsoforth citizen; and which is in accordance with the dictates of justice and of mercy, as revealed to our forefathers in the Declaration of Interdependence; and which, in the ultraenlightened opinion of the supercivilized majority of the hyperhuman andsoforth race, constitutes a glowing andsoforth nucleus andsoforth of radiant andsoforth andsoforth:
e pluribus eunuch, or to make a long story brief,
I give you the choice of either being dead or of not being alive, nolens volens, whichever you prefer.
And in the sacred name of commonsense, I,
by hereby virtue and by hereby andsoforth and by hereby whathaveyou,
do hereby pronounce and decree that hereby you shall be punished for said crime or crimes according to that unwritten law which, according to all rightthinking people, governs the actions of all rightthinking people;
namely and to wit,
that you shall have your right eye suitably excised with a very dull penknife, and placed in your mouth which has previously been opened with a hatchet;
that you shall be soaked with gasoline,
hanged with a rope,
lighted with a match,
cut down while you are alive,
slit up the middle by good women,
stamped on by little children,
and made to kiss the flag by strong men.
Finally: it is the irrevocable verdict of this impeccable court, in due session assembled, that your organ of generation, having been suitably tinged and bedewed with the liquid and solid excrement of all lawabiding citizens in ge
neral and of all patriotic persons in particular, shall be forcefully proffered to your own mother, who shall immediately and joyfully eat thereof under penalty of death.
In Hoke signo:
God save the people From the people!
God save All of the people for Some of the people!
God save Some of the people All of the time, and all of the people will take care of themselves.
AMEN
From the Partisan Review, March 1938.
SPEECH FROM AN UNFINISHED PLAY: III
O my voices, don’t forget me; voices, come to me, I am afraid, I am nothing, nothing without you—you are myself which I shall never know, for to know is to hold: O but you are what everyone may not keep, the poor are not poorer than the rich, the sick are not weak and the well are not strong and captains are soldiers of this who will never be commanded; but this is you, you—and it is much brighter than everything will be very dark and not anyone believes me: women are not so women and men so men that they may imagine the wonder of it, and without wonder they are no one; for this wonder is themselves: all of them can be less than nothing; but each may be more than any someone, each may be everywhere and forever and each may be alive: each of them may become this wonder wholly and the here of this wonderful now and its beautiful moving—O my voices, not all the boys who shall ever die can take you from all the girls who were ever born; and if the young moon sleeps your hands are under her sky (but without you the first star does not breathe) and your fingers are waking the earth
. . . silence.
Then carefully I’ll remember how I found you; it was a summer day, the earth was made of sky and the sun was full of bells but in the bells are cries, and then into the air came another brightness; everything around me climbed and fell like a heart, my life flew and swam. She was a little girl, my life. After a while it was a summer day; then she stood, she did not swim and fly, she was not trembling for she was me; and near me were my animals, who are kind and who are not afraid, who do not hate and who cannot lie because their minds are in their eyes. “Jehanne is going” my life tells them “someone is calling me, his name is Michael, he is slender and shining and his armour fits him like water; beside him are two ladies who live before the altar sometimes, they are very beautifully tall but I know their names, Margaret and Catharine. If these three speak to a little girl, she is made of flowers.” My animals look at me and look at me and they understand; they are my friends. “Flowers” I tell them “flowers” and their eyes do not need to speak.—But you took me from these friends, O my voices, and you put me on a wide road into the dark world; and I went through cities as if they were clouds, and I came to a silence and in the silence was a fire and men and women stood in this fire. Perhaps the silence was a palace, I don’t know; perhaps the fire was torches, fifty torches, a thousand, a hundred, I don’t know; I only looked and looked: and in the center of the fire moved men and women beautifully dressed. Then someone whispered “where is he whom you seek?” and now those three who are my voices came to me bright and clear—brighter, much brighter, than music and a little brighter than the morning; they are so bright, no one but me can see their words: they are so clear, no one but me can hear this light who sings “don’t fear, Jehanne, for the fire is not a man, Jehanne, but in the fire is the only man.” And (smiling) someone who I am went up into it and flames are all above me and all around her, but we are not afraid, for she sees him only, although he was dressed like the others, he has no crown and no sceptre: but I knew she had found him. And I stand before that man. And I say “you are the king.”
Silence . . .
ah—how they laughed: the haters, not men and not women; the goddams, which do not fear or dare, the English; which are awake if they are asleep and asleep if they are awake: swarming under a blue steep sky by thousands of tens of thousands they come, laughing and laughing; laughing because we are so few, so very few—yes: but beyond this colour you are breathing and above it is a silence, and I tell you the silence is full of armies and these armies are my armies; I tell you my armies are hundreds of thousands and thousands of hundreds of thousands: I say “you cannot see them; these armies are so huge, only I can see these armies.” Yes, the few around me are amazed; breathing, they stare and stare at nothing and at nothing: the air is the air; these men can breathe but these men cannot see, and they are less amazed than I who see and do not breathe. No—it is a dream: no; only blue air is shining and is shining and before me the lice of England come laughing. Her men look at Jehanne. And (trembling) I ask my life “who has spoken?” and my life answers “me.”—Then Jehanne The Maid cries to her soldiers “do you believe?” and all together like one man these men answer her “yes!” and the world spoke arrows and a bird sang and the earth opened. Who rides first, in clear armour, lifting high the whiteness of a banner which is wings? Jehanne: and around Jehanne men without wings live to their shoulders in the smoke of bursting bellies, and behind Jehanne men who cannot swim skate on the ice of English brains; and beyond me and above me perfectly are charging millions whom no life but only mine has dreamed. . . . Then how those haters leaped through their laughter and tripped—look, the lines writhe; see: the shapes wince and cringe—now they run: everywhere before us not women who are not men are running, they are running; stumbling, are tumbling; as we lop hit and chop stab smite until down down they go bubbling and down screaming whose flesh wilts under us (their heads are not laughing these teeth bite through these necks) and why? This has no why: this now is more than ours, here we are not some shadows called ourselves, now we are in God together you and I; His are such armies as will fill our blood with always: this is His meaning and our own, my friends; now we are made of one secret. —O for those armies over me again and over you, my soldiers; you thrusting yanking you grappling hacking mowing you diving through dead laughter, you and the good stink of you and the tough blaze of your eyes, yes; and a yell of steel split and clean wriggling of bright flags all grabbed with new sunlight and all the roaring of a high battle around us all with souls dying and walls falling, and the floating of a black horse under me!
. . . silence . . .
someone is lost, someone I must find. Where is she; where? I only look and look, but there is nothing and this nothing neither moves nor does not move—and then within this nothing is another, a nothing which is something. Or someone? It has eyes. Hush. Speak very softly: whisper: can this be the someone whom you seek? No. No; for my someone was made of flowers, and they move—flowers grow and open and they close and disappear; this someone does not die or live, this someone only seems: it cannot grow. Only this something is not asleep but it is dreaming; it is dreaming but it is speaking—I hear words; hark: I hear it saying “Jehanne who has knocked big-fisted knights out of their armour, Jehanne who has smashed princes into smithereens, Jehanne who has seen a man kneeling and a king rising and him, only him, standing: crowned with a crown and sceptred with a sceptre, while people cried and laughed and danced and fell down and the bells swung out into the mountains and the rivers of France melted.” These are the words I hear in its dream; and I am afraid.—You less than no one; you something within a nothing: where are my good friends gone, my true kind friends who cannot hate and who do not fear? It dreams, but it speaks.—where have they gone, and their eyes which cannot lie, only who understand me and whom I understand: where? It looks, but it does not see. Answer: who are you?—Me? No—! Don’t look: take your eyes into your eyes again! You not—you it—could you have been . . . my Jehanne? O can I have dreamed a king? Were those bells crashing and were those dancers living in my head and falling down and were those people laughing in my heart and crying? Creatures which are not men and are not women—have I dreamed them? Was there ever any fire and any silence and any summer day? You—you with the murdered hair—tell me; was there once any someone in armour like water and ladies much taller than sunlight, calling to me gently and very sweetly crying, until a little girl is made of flowers?
s
ilence.
—But they believed! My soldiers did not see, no; they could only breathe, yes; but they believed. Now I can only breathe; now I can believe: I am a soldier now; I am not a dream—someone else is gone, someone else is dead and the someone who I am is all alone: no . . . no, now she can hear a little girl crying and crying, and saying “help me—I am lost: I am standing in a dark place, I am terribly afraid of this dark, I am my heart falling and climbing but everywhere is dark; dark—speak to me, my voices! O speak! The great doctors have faces like books and I cannot read: speak: —O my voices, their faces which are not faces hate me only because I love you: these are not dead, they are not even English—they are things: I am in the power of things which have no hands and no feet: things follow me everywhere; they listen to my dreaming when I am asleep, things are picking my one red life into large little pieces; hear me, my voices—things undress me with their deaf eyes and I am cold when they cover me with questions. Tell me—it is Jehanne—speak to her, you voices: have I come to die among things because I would not become a thing?” —So the little girl cries and cries; and I am not dead. Once upon a time she was made of flowers. Therefore the big faces which I cannot read will eat me. And still I shall not read. I shall not know. Ever; for to know is to hold. I shall only understand . . . quietly. —But you shall live, but nothing shall ever hurt you, my voices, who are everything beautiful and everything free; perfectly you are gladness and singing, you are spring when she touches the first tree with her eyes and the fields dance, you are all the white brooks who laugh and cry and the green hills who grow—anywhere sun and stars and the moon are only alive because your light is their light and they play in your day, which is always much nearer than near, nearer than is, nearer than nearer and nearest and now and nearer than how the birds swim through the air and why the fish fly through the sea.
A Miscellany (Revised) Page 29
