John Whiting (1917-1963)

In the collection of John Whiting‘s essays At Ease in a Bright Red Tie: Writings on Theatre from Oberon Books, there is an undated note called “Statement for a Play,” which is very much a reminder to himself about the urgency with which attention must be paid to the creative impulse. I imagine most dramatists have felt these things at one time or another, especially those like myself in the midst of completing a first draft, and so a few excerpts here:

I want to achieve something very raw: not coarse in texture, no, raw in the sense of an agony of an exposed nerve. As such it must carry at its beginning the sob of pain, the half-laugh, and then, in progress, rise through the crescendo scream to a finale of realisation and awe.

The whole must have a brevity of expression and a considerable sense of pace. … Speed, clarity, simplicity of expression, and motive — remember this. Never wait for effect. … Never pause for an audience’s realisation: never! But repeat — again and again if necessary — a boxer hitting monotonously in the same vulnerable spot. Find that spot — find the nerve centre of the play and then hit it — hard! and keep on hitting. …

Keep a line — a steel thread — from beginning to end. Do not deviate. No digressions for the building of character, so-called, for the moment of atmosphere or for that moment when you can show what a clever fellow you can be. Work on the principle that the cutting of one word will throw the meaning — the meaning, not the rhythm of a sentence. I mustn’t build consciously dramatic peaks. Let them come. Don’t worry about how someone comes on or goes off — don’t worry, that is, as to whether it fits. Let them come in or go off, and if it makes a balls of the surface don’t worry — let it tear into the surface — let it stick out like a sore thumb.

Write it fast. I must set a time when I’m ready to begin, and then down it must go on this bloody machine and I mustn’t stop until it is down to the last word in some kind of shape — any kind of shape — but let me get it down. …

How to put it down. Words. Ordinary: brief: caustic: (a styptic pencil applied to a pimple): funny if you like but contribute to the story.

Get on the inside. Don’t use even the smallest property which you can’t now get up and fetch and touch — feel its weight, its warmth, its shape. Try not to use any phrase which you haven’t heard — actually heard. (Forget your “wonderful use of language.” Language is dying — hopelessly perverted — then use that perversion to bring home certain facts.)

Get on the inside. Remember what you have learnt. It doesn’t matter what it looks like on the page. It can’t be balanced in the writing as you thought. (It can — you will allow no one experiment.) Balance the dialogue. Look through the conventional plays. Just put it down — that’s all.

Just put it down.

On the other hand, when writing a play, I find it important to stay quite clear of some other plays and writings that have addressed the same issues. Given the themes of The Elf King, I am keeping at arm’s length other plays that rise to similar challenges, such as Peter Nichols’ A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1967), about parents raising a handicapped child, and David Rudkin’s Ashes (1974), about a couple trying to conceive. The problems I set myself in writing a play require my own solutions — and while I’m curious to read these plays again to rediscover their tactics, best to keep them aside for now and struggle through the forest myself.

The same applies to work that I haven’t seen or read before. Tomorrow, Lars von Trier’s Melancholia opens in New York, and much as I’d like to see it, again I shall keep it at arm’s length too. After the events of the last few days, I find it unlikely that the Academy Awards voters will choose to nominate for best director a man who says, even in jest, “Okay, I’m a Nazi,” but that is a foolish man talking, and not the art, and it wouldn’t be the first time that foolish people created great art. That doesn’t prevent me, however, from taking a peek now and then; below are the disturbing but sublime final few minutes from Melancholia. Beauty is beauty, however difficult to watch, and one should welcome it. (The Russian dubbing subsides after the first 15 seconds or so, and the remainder of the film plays out without dialogue.) For those who need one, a spoiler alert: One day, the world ends.

Paul Cava. Bobby and Jackie (letter). 1999. Iris print and collage, 20 x 20 inches.

While The Elf King is not an erotic tragedy as I’ve explored that idea over the past several years, its theme does partake somewhat of the metaphysical qualities of sexuality and human reproduction. Though I do not find his arguments entirely persuasive, Arthur Schopenhauer’s “The Metaphysics of Sexual Love,” found in volume 2 of The World as Will and Representation, informs the spirit of eros that opens the play; two relevant excerpts below.

That which makes itself known to the individual consciousness as sexual impulse in general, and without direction to a definite individual of the other sex, is in itself, and apart from the phenomenon, simply the will-to-live. But what appears in consciousness as sexual impulse, directed to a definite individual, is in itself the will-to-live as a precisely determined individual. Now in this case the sexual impulse, though in itself a subjective need, knows how to assume very skilfully the mask of an objective admiration, and thus to deceive consciousness; for nature requires this stratagem in order to attain her ends. But in every case of being in love, however objective and touched with the sublime that admiration may appear to be, what alone is aimed at is the generation of an individual of a definite disposition. … The true end of the whole love-story, though the parties concerned are unaware of it, is that this particular child may be begotten …

The growing attachment of two lovers is in itself in reality the will-to-live of the new individual, an individual they can and want to produce. … The quite special and individual passion of two lovers is just as inexplicable as is the quite special individuality of any person, which is exclusively peculiar to him; indeed at bottom the two are one and the same; the latter is explicite what the former was implicite. The moment when the parents begin to love each other … is actually to be regarded as the very first formation of a new individual, and the true punctum saliens of its life; and as I have said, in the meeting and fixation of their longing glances there arises the first germ of the new being …

“The Metaphysics of Sexual Love”
In The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 2
Trans. E.F.J. Payne, p. 535-536
Emphasis added

Franz Schubert.

The poem “Erlkönig” by Goethe has been set to music several times (you can find Sir Walter Scott’s translation of the poem at this earlier post). Below, in a performance infused with a very contemporary raw anxiety, Anne Sofie von Otter sings Franz Schubert’s setting of the poem, accompanied by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, conducted by Claudio Abbado:

Arthur Schopenhauer, c. 1818.

After completing the first third (30+ pages) of The Elf King this weekend, I take a short breather so that speed does not overwhelm craft. This is always a challenge, this balancing act: one wants to finish a draft of a play, and to get it right the first time, but such things often require a considered and restful pace rather than haste. So I scale back, at least for a few days.

In the meantime, I post here a few passages from Arthur Schopenhauer that seem to be germane to a few issues of the play. The first is from the philosopher’s epistemology as described in the first volume of The World as Will and Representation, and concerns the nature of consciousness, knowledge, and the world. It is relevant here because it suggests that along with the birth of every new human being, the world itself is born anew: that every “first light” that a child sees is indeed the first light of the universe, and that, consequently, with every individual death the world is eradicated:

And yet the existence of this whole world remains for ever dependent on that first eye that opened, were it even that of an insect. For such an eye necessarily brings about knowledge, for which and in which alone the whole world is, and without which it is not even conceivable. The world is entirely representation, and as such requires the knowing subject as the supporter of its existence. That long course of time itself, filled with innumerable changes, through which matter rose from form to form, till finally there came into existence the first knowing animal, the whole of this time itself is alone thinkable in the identity of a consciousness. This world is the succession of the representations of this consciousness, the form of its knowing, and apart from this loses all meaning, and is nothing at all.

The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1
Trans. E.F.J. Payne, p. 30

The parents of The Elf King find that the knowledge that their child will die is a useless knowledge: it, like perhaps the most important knowledge, confers neither wisdom to be passed on, nor comfort, nor a lesson to be taught to others. Obviously, this flies into the face of the truisms of traditional drama and theatre, which insist upon reconciliation, catharsis, and some kind of practical lesson to be learned from the experience of the characters on the stage. Instead, the question becomes how to continue to live with this knowledge, which once gained can no longer be lost. Every individual must find the answer to this question for themselves; there is no one response that can be shared among the community as a whole. In a late essay, Schopenhauer provides an intimation of one response, which also provides the basis for his consideration of morals:

In fact, the conviction that the world and thus also man is something that really ought not to be, is calculated to fill us with forbearance towards one another; for what can we expect from beings in such a predicament? In fact from this point of view, it might occur to us that the really proper address between one man and another should be, instead of Sir, Monsieur, and so on, Leidensgefährte, socii malorum, compagnon de misères, my fellow-sufferer. However strange this may sound, it accords with the facts, puts the other man in the most correct light, and reminds us of that most necessary thing, tolerance, patience, forbearance, and love of one’s neighbour, which everyone needs and each of us, therefore, owes to another.

“Doctrine of the Suffering of the World”
In Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 2
Trans. E.F.J. Payne, p. 304

Finally today, Emily Rapp, whose essay “Notes from a Dragon Mom” provided one of the inspirations for The Elf King, offers a consideration of some of the same issues in her new essay, “Where is God in Tay-Sachs? The Shadow World and a New (or New-ish) World Order,” published last week at The Nervous Breakdown. The conclusion of the essay:

I’ll think about all those mothers and fathers of kids all over the world — so many of them, so much suffering — who know or have known or will know how I feel now, how I’ll feel tomorrow, how I’ll feel forever. We are all walking together under the same invisible net. I know and they know that losing a child gradually or suddenly — however, whenever — and then making the choice to go on is to enter each remaining day of one’s life by walking carefully down a steep set of unlit, winding stairs into some new unknown. That shadow world bumping up against the other one that may — or may not — have specks of light. Grief and gratitude right next to one another. Cosmic or not, time is passing and things are changing and Ronan is dying. No reasons, no answers, no apologetics. Just another seal on another baby day. Just a slow descent; this is the only act of faith I have, and it signals no choice, it only is.

The rest can be found here.