When I began to write plays in the 1970s, I used to keep random thoughts and notes about plays both planned and underway in a spiral-bound notebook. At that time, I found most of my creative affinities in books and other writing and often used the notebook as a commonplace book, copying passages that might come in handy as either inspiration or reminders of how I’d like the plays to proceed. For me (and for many others, I’m guessing), the World Wide Web changed all that, and in addition to text, film excerpts on YouTube, various online images, and sound files served the same purpose as those brief passages of text that I might store away for future reference. Of course, you can’t copy video or sound files into a spiral bound notebook. The question becomes — apart from bookmarking relevant Web pages — how to collect these things in one place, as a virtual, digital notebook.

So why not here? Posting these images, sound files, and text to Superfluities Redux will give away neither my creative process nor the play as it proceeds (both of which I will hold close to my vest), but they will perhaps be an indication of where the impulse to write a play comes from. (Not to mention that keeping this blog seems to have become something of an unbreakable habit, no matter my intentions.) For other playwrights it might be a situation, or (in the case of Harold Pinter) an image of two people in a room talking, or a political issue, or something else. I find that for me it’s a matter of fortunate circumstance: I come across various events or passages or images, the associations between them sparking something off. This, then, is a collection of commonplace-book entries for myself, to which I can readily refer. I am far enough along in the play that, in making these public, I am not jeopardizing the completion of the drama, and in a few years’ time it may be interesting to look back at these, to see just how these inspirations are reflected in the final composition.

The name of my new play is The Elf King. This title is taken from the poem by Goethe of the same name, in the German original “Erlkönig.” While the Erlkönig is a long-standing European legend, Goethe’s poem revises and constricts it to a very brief span of time. The poem has been set to music many times, most famously by Franz Schubert as his Opus 1, but last month my wife Marilyn performed Hugues Dufourt’s piano solo based on the poem at an NYU concert. Below, as the first entry in this notebook, is Sir Walter Scott’s translation of the poem, under the more literal title “The Erl-King”:

O who rides by night thro’ the woodland so wild?
It is the fond father embracing his child;
And close the boy nestles within his loved arm,
To hold himself fast, and to keep himself warm.

“O father, see yonder! see yonder!” he says;
“My boy, upon what doest thou fearfully gaze?”
“O, ’tis the Erl-King with his crown and his shroud.”
“No, my son, it is but a dark wreath of the cloud.”

The Erl-King Speaks

“O come and go with me, thou loveliest child;
By many a gay sport shall thy time be beguiled;
My mother keeps for thee full many a fair toy,
And many a fine flower shall she pluck for my boy.”

“O father, my father, and did you not hear
The Erl-King whisper so low in my ear?”
“Be still, my heart’s darling — my child, be at ease;
It was but the wild blast as it sung thro’ the trees.”

Erl-King

“O wilt thou go with me, thou loveliest boy?
My daughter shall tend thee with care and with joy;
She shall bear thee so lightly thro’ wet and thro’ wild,
And press thee, and kiss thee, and sing to my child.”

“O father, my father, and saw you not plain
The Erl-King’s pale daughter glide past thro’ the rain?”
“Oh yes, my loved treasure, I knew it full soon;
It was the grey willow that danced to the moon.”

Erl-King

“O come and go with me, no longer delay,
Or else, silly child, I will drag thee away.”
“O father! O father! now, now, keep your hold,
The Erl-King has seized me — his grasp is so cold!”

Sore trembled the father; he spurr’d thro’ the wild,
Clasping close to his bosom his shuddering child;
He reaches his dwelling in doubt and in dread,
But, clasp’d to his bosom, the infant was dead.

I’ve already noted briefly the broad outline and structure of the play, but should point out again that, along with this, at about the same time that Marilyn performed the Dufourt work, Emily Rapp’s essay on caring for a child with Tay-Sachs disease appeared in the New York Times. I was quite affected by this, not least because I have two daughters of my own now. My final entry in the notebook today is this photograph of the macula of a child’s eye. Although The Elf King is not specifically about a child with Tay-Sachs disease (it’s neither a documentary nor an “issue” play), the photograph is to me a stunning image; to me, it is as much a planet as a human macula. The cherry-red spot and the surrounding white cloud indicate the presence of Tay-Sachs disease in the child: