Travesties

  ‘Who is the man, when all the gallant nations run to war,

  Goes home to have his dinner by the very first cable car,

  And as he eats his canteloupe contorts himself with mirth

  To read the blatant bulletins of the rulers of the earth?’

  –and ending:

  ‘It’s Mr Dooley

  Mr Dooley

  The wisest wight our country ever knew!

  “Poor Europe ambles

  like sheep to shambles”

  Sighs Mr Dooley-ooley-ooley-ooo.’

  or some other cause altogether, the impression remains that I

  regard both sides with equal indifference.

  CARR: And you don’t?

  JOYCE: Only as an artist. As an artist, naturally I attach no importance to the swings and roundabout of political history. But I come here not as an artist but as James A. Joyce. I am an Irishman. The proudest boast of an Irishman is – I paid back my way …

  CARR: So it is money.

  JOYCE: A couple of pounds would be welcome – certainly, but it is to repay a debt that I have come. Not long ago, after many years of self-reliance and hardship during which my work had been neglected and reviled even to the point of being burned by a bigoted Dublin printer, there being no other kind of printer available in Dublin, I received £100 from the Civil List at the discretion of the Prime Minister.

  CARR: The Prime Minister –?

  JOYCE: Mr Asquith.

  CARR: I am perfectly well aware who the Prime Minister is – I am the representative of His Majesty’s Government in Zurich.

  JOYCE: The Prime Minister is Mr Lloyd George, but at that time it was Mr Asquith.

  CARR: Oh yes.

  JOYCE: I do not at this moment possess £100, nor was it the intention that I would repay the debt in kind. However I mentioned the English Players. By the fortune of war, Zurich has become the theatrical centre of Europe. Here culture is the continuation of war by other means – Italian opera against French painting – German music against Russian ballet – but nothing from England. Night after night, actors totter about the raked stages of this alpine renaissance, speaking in every tongue but one – the tongue of Shakespeare – of Sheridan – of Wilde … The English Players intend to mount a repertoire of masterpieces that will show the Swiss who leads the world in dramatic art.

  CARR: Gilbert and Sullivan – by God!

  GWEN: And also Mr Joyce’s own play Exiles which so far, unfortunately –

  JOYCE: That’s quite by the way –

  CARR: Patience!

  JOYCE: Exactly. First things first.

  CARR: Trial by Jury! Pirates of Penzance!

  JOYCE: We intend to begin with that quintessential English jewel, The Importance of Being Earnest.

  CARR (Pause): I don’t know it. But I’ve heard of it and I don’t like it. It is a play written by an Irish – (Glances at GWENDOLEN) Gomorrahist – Now look here, Janice, I may as well tell you, His Majesty’s Government –

  JOYCE: I have come to ask you to play the leading role.

  CARR: What?

  JOYCE: We would be honoured and grateful.

  CARR: What on earth makes you think that I am qualified to play the leading role in The Importance of Being Earnest?

  GWEN: It was my suggestion, Henry. You were a wonderful Goneril at Eton.

  CARR: Yes, I know, but –

  JOYCE: We are short of a good actor to play the lead – he’s an articulate and witty English gentleman –

  CARR: Ernest?

  JOYCE: Not Ernest – the other one.

  CARR (Tempted): No – no – I absolutely –

  JOYCE: Aristocratic – romantic – epigrammatic – he’s a young swell.

  CARR: A swell…?

  JOYCE: He says things like, I may occasionally be a little overdressed but I make up for it by being immensely overeducated. That gives you the general idea of him.

  CARR: How many changes of costume?

  JOYCE: Two complete outfits.

  CARR: Town or country?

  JOYCE: First one then the other.

  CARR: Indoors or out?

  JOYCE: Both.

  CARR: Summer or winter?

  JOYCE: Summer but not too hot.

  CARR: Not raining?

  JOYCE: Not a cloud in the sky.

  CARR: But he could be wearing – a boater?

  JOYCE: It is expressly stipulated.

  CARR: And he’s not in – pyjamas?

  JOYCE: Expressly proscribed.

  CARR: Or in mourning?

  JOYCE: Not the other one – Ernest.

  CARR (Claps his hands once): Describe the play briefly, omitting all but essential detail.

  JOYCE: Act One. The curtain rises. A flat in Mayfair. Teatime.

  You enter in a bottle-green velvet smoking jacket with black frogging – hose white, cravat perfect, boots elastic-sided, trousers of your own choice. Act Two.

  CARR: I shall have to make certain expenditures.

  JOYCE: A rose garden. After lunch. Some by-play among the small parts. You enter in a debonair garden party outfit – beribboned boater, gaily striped blazer, parti-coloured shoes, trousers of your own choice.

  CARR (Instantly): Cream flannel.

  JOYCE: Act Three. The morning room. A few moments later.

  CARR: A change of costume?

  JOYCE: Possibly by the alteration of a mere line or two of dialogue…

  CARR: You have brought a copy of the play?

  JOYCE: I have it here.

  CARR: Then let us retire to the next room and peruse it.

  (CARR opens the door of’his’ room for JOYCE.)

  JOYCE: About those two pounds –

  CARR (Generously, reaching for his wallet): My dear Phyllis … !

  (–and closes it after them.)

  (Pause. Freeze.)

  GWEN (Absently): Gomorrahist… Silly bugger.

  (TZARA comes forward with rare diffidence, holding a hat like a brimming bowl. It transpires that he has written down a Shakespeare sonnet and cut it up into single words which he has placed in the hat.)

  TZARA: Miss Carr …

  GWEN: Mr Tzara! – you’re not leaving? (The hat)

  TZARA: Not before I offer you my poem.

  (He offers the hat. GWEN looks into it.)

  GWEN: Your technique is unusual.

  TZARA: All poetry is a reshuffling of a pack of picture cards, and all poets are cheats. I offer you a Shakespeare sonnet, but it is no longer his. It comes from the wellspring where my atoms are uniquely organized, and my signature is written in the hand of chance.

  GWEN: Which sonnet – was it?

  TZARA: The eighteenth. In English.

  GWEN: ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day…’

  ‘… Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May

  And summer’s lease hath all too short a date …’

  (And she continues accompanied by a romantic orchestra.)

  ‘Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,

  And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

  And every fair from fair sometime declines,

  By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

  But thy eternal summer shall not fade

  Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

  Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

  When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

  So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

  So long lives this and this gives life to thee …’

  TZARA: Yes, that’s the one.

  GWEN: You tear him for his bad verses?

  (She lets a handful of words fall from her fingers, back into the hat, and her sadness starts to give way to anger.)

  These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.

  TZARA: Ay, Madam.

  GWEN: Truly I wish the gods had made thee poetical.

  TZARA: I d
o not know what poetical is. Is it honest in word and deed? Is it a true thing?

  GWEN: Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability, and god-like reason to fust in us unused.

  TZARA: I was not born under a rhyming planet. Those fellows of infinite tongue that can rhyme themselves into ladies’ favours, they do reason themselves out again. And that would set my teeth nothing on edge – nothing so much as mincing poetry.

  GWEN (Rising to his vicious edge): Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter – Put your bonnet for his right use, ‘tis for the head! (Sniffs away a tear) I had rather than forty shilling I had my book of songs and sonnets here.

  (She has turned away. He approaches with his hat offered.)

  TZARA (Gently): But since he died, and poet better prove, his for his style you’ll read, mine for my – love.

  (GWEN hesitates but then takes the first slip of paper out of the hat.)

  GWEN: ‘Darling’.

  (She now continues, holding on to all the pieces of paper she takes out.)

  shake thou thy gold buds

  the untrimm’d but short fair shade

  shines –

  see, this lovely hot possession growest

  so long

  by nature’s course –

  so … long–heaven!

  (She gives a little shriek, using ‘heaven’ and turns her back on the hat, taking a few steps away from TZARA, who takes out the next few words, lowering the temperature …)

  TZARA: And declines,

  summer changing, more temperate complexion …

  GWEN (Still flustered): Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr Tzara. Whenever people talk to me about the weather I always feel quite certain that they mean something else.

  TZARA (Coming to her): I do mean something else, Miss Carr. Ever since I met you I have admired you.

  (He drops his few papers into the hat, she does likewise with hers, he puts the hat aside.)

  GWEN: For me you have always had an irresistible fascination. Even before I met you I was far from indifferent to you. As you know I have been helping Mr Joyce with his new book, which I am convinced is a work of genius. Alas, in fashionable society, genius is regarded as an affront to the ordinary decencies of family life. A girl has few opportunities to meet a man like yourself who shares her regard for Mr Joyce as an artist.

  TZARA: I, Gwendolen?

  GWEN: Did you think, my darling, that I had not noticed you at the library? – how you gaze at him in admiration all the way from Economics to Foreign Literature? When I elicited by discreet questioning that you, too, were a poet of the most up-to-date disposition, I knew I was destined to love you.

  TZARA (Amazed): Do you really love me, Gwendolen?

  GWEN: Passionately!

  TZARA: Darling, you don’t know how happy you’ve made me.

  GWEN: My own Tristan!

  (They embrace.)

  TZARA (Breaking off): But you don’t mean that you couldn’t love me if I didn’t share your regard for Mr Joyce as an artist?

  GWEN: But you do.

  TZARA: Yes. I know I do, but supposing –

  (She kisses him on the mouth.)

  (They embrace. JOYCE re-enters.)

  JOYCE: Rise, sir, from that semi-recumbent posture!

  (TZARA and GWEN spring apart. JOYCE walks across to the main door, picking up his hat, opens the door, addresses TZARA.)

  Your monocle is in the wrong eye.

  (TZARA has indeed placed his monocle in the wrong eye. He replaces it. JOYCE has left on his line.)

  GWEN: I must tell Henry!

  (GWEN gives TZARA the folder she acquired in the Prologue.)

  Here is a chapter of Mr Joyce’s book which I have been transcribing for him.

  TZARA: But have you ever come across Dada, darling?

  GWEN: Never, da-da-darling! The chapter we are doing next is cast in the form of the Christian Catechism!

  (GWEN kisses him and runs into Henry’s room.)

  (The main door opens again and JOYCE re-enters, pausing in the threshold. He is covered from head to breast in little bits of white paper, each bit bearing one of the words of Shakespeare’s eighteenth sonnet, i.e. TZARA was using Joyce’s hat.)

  JOYCE: What is the meaning of this?

  TZARA: It has no meaning. It is without meaning as Nature is. It is Dada.

  JOYCE: Give further examples of Dada.

  TZARA: The Zoological Gardens after closing time. The logical gardenia. The bankrupt gambler. The successful gambler. The Eggboard, a sport or pastime for the top ten thousand in which the players, covered from head to foot in eggyolk, leave the field of play.

  JOYCE: Are you the inventor of this sport or pastime?

  TZARA: I am not.

  JOYCE: What is the name of the inventor?

  TZARA: Arp.

  JOYCE: By what familiarity, indicating possession and amicability in equal parts, do you habitually refer to him?

  TZARA: My friend Arp.

  JOYCE: Alternating with what colloquialism redolent of virtue and longevity?

  TZARA: Good old Arp.

  JOYCE: From whom did Arp receive encouragement and friendship?

  TZARA: From Hugo Ball.

  JOYCE: Describe Ball by epithet.

  TZARA: Unspherical. Tall, thin, sacerdotal, German.

  JOYCE: Describe him by enumeration of his occupations and preoccupations.

  TZARA: Novelist, journalist, philosopher, poet, artist, mystic, pacifist, founder of the Cabaret Voltaire at the Meierei Bar, number one Spiegelgasse.

  JOYCE: Did Ball keep a diary?

  TZARA: He did.

  JOYCE: Was it published?

  TZARA: It was.

  JOYCE: Is it in the public domain by virtue of the expiration of copyright protection as defined in the Berne Convention of 1886?

  TZARA: It is not.

  JOYCE: Quote discriminately from Ball’s diary in such a manner as to avoid forfeiting the goodwill of his executors.

  TZARA: ‘I went to the owner of the Meierei Bar and said, “I want to start a nightclub.” That same evening Tzara gave a reading of poems, conservative in style, which he rather endearingly fished out of the various pockets of his coat.’

  JOYCE: Is that the coat?

  TZARA: It is.

  JOYCE: In what regard is a coat inferior, and in what superior, to a hat in so far as they are interchangeable in the production of poetry?

  TZARA: Inferior to a hat in regard to the tendency of one or both sleeves to hang down in front of the eyes, with the resultant possibility of the wearer falling off the edge of the platform. Superior to a hat in regard to the number of its pockets.

  JOYCE: Amplify discreetly from any contemporary diarist whose estate is not given to obsessive litigation over trivial infringements of copyright.

  TZARA: ‘On February 26th Richard Huelsenbeck arrived from Berlin, and on March 30th Herr Tristan Tzara was the initiator of a performance, the first in Zurich and in the world, of simultanist verse, including a poème simultané of his own composition.’

  JOYCE: Quote severally your recollections of what was declaimed synchronously.

  TZARA: I began, ‘Boum boum boum il déshabille sa chair quand les grenouilles humides commencerent a brûler.’

  Huelsenbeck began, ‘Ahoi ahoi des admirals gwirktes

  Beinkleid schnell zerfallt.’ Janco chanted, ‘I can hear the

  whip o’ will around the hill and at five o’clock when tea is set

  I like to have my tea with some brunette, everybody’s doing

  it, doing it.’ The title of the poem was ‘Admiral Seeks House To Let’.

  (All this time, JOYCE has been picking bits of paper from his hair and from his clothes, replacing each bit in his hat, which is on his knees. Casually, he conjures from the hat a white carnation, apparently made from the bits of paper (he turns the hat up to show it is empty). He tosses the carnation at TZARA.)

&
nbsp; JOYCE: How would you describe this triumph?

  TZARA (Putting the carnation into his buttonhole): As just and proper. Well merited. An example of enterprise and charm receiving their due. (JOYCE starts to pull silk hankies from the hat.)

  JOYCE: What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Tzara’s thoughts about Ball’s thoughts about Tzara, and Tzara’s thoughts about Ball’s thoughts about Tzara’s thoughts about Ball?

  TZARA: He thought that he thought that he knew what he was thinking, whereas he knew that he knew that he knew that he did not.

  JOYCE: And did he?

  TZARA: He did and he didn’t.

  JOYCE: What did Dada bring to pictorial art, sculpture, poetry and music that had not been brought to these activities previously in …

  (The appropriate flags start coming out of the hat.)

  … Barcelona, New York, Paris, Rome and St Petersburg by, for example, Picabia, Duchamp, Satie, Marinetti, and Mayakovsky who shouts his fractured lines in a yellow blazer with blue roses painted on his cheeks?

  TZARA: The word Dada.

  JOYCE: Describe sensibly without self-contradiction, and especially without reference to people stuffing bread rolls up their noses, how the word Dada was discovered.

  TZARA: Tristan Tzara discovered the word Dada by accident in a Larousse Dictionary. It has been said, and he does not deny, that a paper-knife was inserted at random into the book. Huelsenbeck recounts how he discovered the word one day in Hugo Ball’s dictionary while Tzara was not present. Hans Arp, however, has stated, ‘I hereby declare that Tristan Tzara found the word Dada on February the 8th 1916 at six o’clock in the afternoon.’

  JOYCE: Were there further disagreements between Tzara and Huelsenbeck?

  TZARA: There were.

  JOYCE: As to?

  TZARA: As to the meaning and purpose of Dada.

  JOYCE: Huelsenbeck demanding, for example?

  TZARA: International revolutionary union of all artists on the basis of radical Communism.

  JOYCE: As opposed to Tzara’s demanding?

  TZARA: The right to urinate in different colours.

  JOYCE: Each person in different colours at different times, or different people in each colour all the time? Or everybody multi-coloured every time?

  TZARA: It was more to make the point that making poetry should be as natural as making water –

  JOYCE (Rising: the conjuring is over): God send you don’t make them in the one hat.