tore down all the churches on the street corners, and there weren't any
more Sunday morning sermons, everybody would run wild. But there again
it's the same thing as with art: the man who has the spirit of the thing
in him feels that the spirit itself is a far better control than heaps of
stones and sermons. It's all a matter of _living_. Imagine asking one of
the Apostles which church he went to!
MR. WENTWORTH
Wait! We are getting art mixed up with too much else. Didn't you say, Mr.
Carson, that pictures died when they no longer gave out impulses of
beauty?
JOE
Yes.
MR. WENTWORTH
Well! I admit there are dead pictures, too many of them, but they are the
canvasses that were still-born. The masterpieces in the Louvre _still_
give out impulses--beautiful impulses--to many of us, thank heaven!
SILVIA
But that's just it! The impulses you mean aren't those of art at all.
They--
JOE
Those pictures don't give out impulses to the _artist_. The impulses they
do give out are only the emotions that satisfy the student who has learned
some rules and then sees the rules worked out. The artist produced the
rules as a side issue, but you are trying to make the rules produce the
artist. That's the difficulty when people as a whole lose the creative
sense. They are satisfied with things at second-hand. Second-hand
expressions of life, and second-hand philosophies to justify the
expressions. It's a kind of conspiracy in which everybody works against
everybody else. Only the few real artists in any generation break through
it into the light.
SILVIA
The light of the sun!
MR. WENTWORTH
I fear we are hopelessly at odds in this question. Well, as the Romans
said, there's no disputing about tastes. Every one to his own taste.
JOE
No!
MR. WENTWORTH
What do you mean?
JOE
I mean that it's a disgrace that Americans only study and only buy old
masters. It's a burning shame that all they know about art is what they
have been taught in books. They let their own artists starve--they make
them come over here--while they bid up a Raphael like a block of shares.
What good does it do Raphael? He had his day. And look how it holds back
our own possible Raphaels!
MR. WENTWORTH
Raphael? Ah, you are still very young. You don't understand the attitude
of the majority, Mr. Carson. Raphael is one of our great inspirers of
beauty.
JOE
You mean culture!
SILVIA
Oh, it's getting quite dark. Joe, light the light.
MR. WENTWORTH
Dear me, so it is! What time is it? It must be getting late--Good
gracious! I have an engagement.
SILVIA
You can't stay for a little dinner with us in the Quarter, Mr. Wentworth?
Afterward we could go to one of the cafés.
MR. WENTWORTH
I'm afraid I can't, Silvia. It's been a great pleasure to meet you both, I
assure you. These little differences of opinion....
SILVIA
Oh, that's all right. We argue art and religion every day, don't we, Joe?
Of course, though, we _do_ feel strongly about the young artists--the
young American artists. They come over here, and then they have to burn
their bridges ... and we see how wonderful America could be if they were
given things to do instead of being neglected....
JOE
Here's your coat, Mr. Wentworth.
MR. WENTWORTH
Thank you. Thank you for the delicious tea, Silvia. If I weren't leaving
town so soon.... Good night.
SYLVIA
Good night. The stairs are rather dark.... (_He goes out_)
JOE
Damn!
SYLVIA
Yes, I know, Joe. It's discouraging....
JOE
Discouraging? It's immoral! Oh, these smug people who have been taught
what to admire! These unborn souls who want to shut us all up in the dark!
I suppose he went away thinking I put myself up higher than Raphael. Who
are we painting for? _They_ don't want it--wouldn't take it for a gift.
And here we are, a poor little group, standing amazed before the glory of
the sun, and painting it--for the blind!
SILVIA
Some day, Joe....
JOE
Some day--yes, when the life has oozed out of all our bright canvasses,
when only the "rules" are left. And we won't be able to rise from our
graves and curse them!
SILVIA
Now, Joe!
JOE
I guess I let you in for a hard time, Silvia. I wish sometimes I could
really paint the kind of thing that goes with stupid people's dining
rooms. They with their _Long Island_ Louvres!
SILVIA
If you did, Joe, I'd put it in the stove. Don't think you are having all
the fun of being a pioneer. It's exciting to be within a mile of it!
JOE
Good girl. Ugh! Let's go to Boudet's and have dinner. I want to get the
bad taste out of my mouth!
HIS LUCK
_The living room in a small flat in Beekman Place. Two women, one of them
in mourning, sit beside the remains of tea._
VERA
But Jean, where are you going, when you pack up here?
JEAN
I'm not leaving here. I'm staying on.
VERA
Oh. But I thought that now ... you were talking about being free for your
own work at last....
JEAN
If I have any work to do, I can do it here. You don't understand, quite.
All these years I have been living from whirlpool to whirlpool, never
settled, always _deraciné_--the thought of getting accustomed to another
place makes me shudder.
VERA
I can imagine, now, how it has been, Jean. But can you find any peace
here? With all these things about? You are so sensitive--lamps, and
pictures, and rugs--these aren't just _furniture_ to you, they are images
of the past. Won't they be, too--real? Too personal? Won't you feel more
at liberty with yourself if you create your own atmosphere?
JEAN
Ah, they are real enough! That table is a winter in Munich; the samovar is
Warsaw one night in May; the lucerna is Rome ... and all that those places
mean to me. I never realized how _things_ could be _alive_--be
personal--until I was left all alone in the midst of these.
VERA
There, don't you see? They're so _dominating_. I knew you before all
this.... I wish you would get away--be _yourself_.
JEAN
No. I shall stay here. As close as possible.
VERA
But really, Jean! I'm thinking of your work. Perhaps you don't appreciate
what an insidious drug memory can be. Especially the memory of
unhappiness. Let's be frank, Jean, for the sake of your future. You _have_
been unhappy.
JEAN
Unhappy? Yes, I have been outrageously unhappy! Years of it! Sharp arrows
and poisoned wine. I wanted to die....
VERA
_Jean!_
JEAN
You read a play by Strindberg, and you say it's very strong, very
artistic, but all the while you believe it is only the nightmare of a
diseased mind. It's just a _play_--you shut the book and return to "real"
life, thankfully. Well, the Strindberg play has been my real life, and
real life my play, my impossible dream. You can't imagine how terrifying
it is to feel the situation develop around you. Two bodies caught naked in
an endless wilderness of thorns. Every movement one makes to free the
other only wounds him the more. Two souls, each innocent and aspiring,
bound together by serpents, like the Laocoon.... It is one of those things
that are absolutely impossible ... and yet _true_.
VERA
I'll help you pack. Now. You _must_!
JEAN
We had the deepest respect and admiration for one another, but somehow we
never walked in step. His emotion repressed mine, my emotion repressed
his. Sometimes one was the slave, sometimes the other. We couldn't both be
free at the same time. There was always something to hide, to be afraid
of.... Not words nor acts, but moods. It passed over from one soul to the
other like invisible rays. And we couldn't separate. That was part of it.
We just went on and on....
VERA
People wondered. The first time I met Paul--
JEAN
What do you feel?
VERA
I wondered, afterward, what it really was. He seemed to impress me like a
powerful motor car stalled in a muddy road.
JEAN
Ah. I know!
VERA
Poor child.
JEAN
No. You don't understand, I _was_ unhappy, in the ordinary sense,
unbelievably so. But that wasn't all. I was alive! I lived as the man
lives who faints in the dark mine underground, and I lived as the aviator
lives, thrilling against the sun, and as the believer in a world of
infidels. That was what _he_ did for me. And slowly, as I learned how
deeply the very pain was making me live, I put my unhappiness by. It was
there, but it no longer seemed important. It was the lingering complaint
of my old commonplace soul standing fearfully on the brink of greater
things and hating the situation that led it there.
VERA
You are a big woman, Jean.
JEAN
No, I am a small woman in front of a big thing. One of the biggest,
genius. And the force of it, relentless as nature, made me what I am.
_Paul._ Oh, Vera, when I think of his music, tempestuous as the sea,
healing as spring.... And now where is it? He had what all the world wants
most, _flight_, and the world stalled him in its own mud. You saw it....
That's why I shall stay here. It's the only place with _his_ atmosphere.
All these things are _he_. I face them here in silence, and I bare my
breast to the arrow. Here I am, the only one who knows Paul's music in its
possibility. To the rest, it is a heap of stones by the roadside. The
architect is dead.
VERA
But didn't he ever ... why didn't he...?
JEAN
You ask it, of course. You have the right. Sometimes I ask it, too, why
Paul never _succeeded_. While we were struggling along, the things that
held him back seemed only details. Only now do I see them as a whole.
In the first place, Paul never aimed directly at success. He was
all-round. If it had been merely a question of exploiting his talent,
sticking to the one idea day in, day out, never letting an opportunity
slip by of meeting the right people and getting to the right places ...
that would have been easy. He had tremendous energy. I used to grudge his
interest in other things. I hated to see him lose the chances and let them
be snapped up by littler men. He seemed to waste himself, right and left,
prodigally. But it wasn't that, it wasn't waste. It was all as much a part
of him as his music. He detested the stupidity of wealth and poverty, he
rebelled against laws that aren't laws, but only interests enforced by
authority, he fought against the sheer deadness of prejudice. How he hated
all that! And why not? You see, Vera, he was sensitive to it not only as a
thinker, but as a musician, too. It was all a part of the discord, and
what I used to think his wasting himself was really an effort to create a
larger harmony. He used to say that the beauty of music is only the image
of beauty in life, and that life must come first. He couldn't endure
discords anywhere. Paul despised the musicians who scream at a flatted
_f_ but hunger for the flesh pots after the performance. No, he was never
_that_. And people resented it. The very people who ought to have
understood.
VERA
But he didn't neglect his music, that is...?
JEAN
No. He made enormous efforts to get his violin before the public. And
several times he was "discovered" by men who could have made him famous
overnight. We all believe that genius will out, despite anything, but it
doesn't always. Musicians respected him, but they were afraid of him, too.
He criticized them for their shortcomings in other things, just as he
criticized others for their shortcomings in art. He wouldn't accept any
talent, no matter how fine, if it went with anything small or destructive.
You can imagine the china shops he left in fragments! Just think! Once in
Berlin it was all arranged for him to have a recital--he was working
furiously on his program and I was dancing on air--when just at the last
moment he heard the director make some light remark or other about women.
Paul was raging! He threw the words back in the fellow's teeth, and made
him apologize, but there we were. They called off the recital, naturally.
And I couldn't blame Paul. I was just beginning to understand. Another
time ... no, he never had luck. Paul had bad luck. I often think of the
Greek tragedies.
VERA
Another time?
JEAN
Another time--it was in Warsaw--we had gone with a letter of introduction
to Sbarovitch--
VERA _The_ Sbarovitch?
JEAN
Yes. It was a chance in ten thousand. We pawned stuff to get there. Well,
Paul played like a god. Sbarovitch was quite overcome. He swore he would
compose something especially for Paul. We had visions of playing before
the Czar.
VERA
But what happened?
JEAN
What happened? One night a woman called on Paul at the hotel. He went
down, not knowing who it was or anything about her. He said afterward that
she started in flattering him and asking him to play for her some time....
Then Sbarovitch rushed in, seizing the woman and cursing Paul with
mouthfuls of Slavic hate. So _that_ dream ended!
VERA
But why? Was it Sbarovitch's wife?
JEAN
No, worse luck--it was his mistress. Ah, you can't imagine the re-action
from such disappointments! The long, slow warming to the full possibility
of the occasion, until the artist's mind and body become one leaping
flame--and then the sudden fall into icy water. It takes months to work up
to the same pitch again.... And then Rome.
VERA
What, again?
JEAN
Oh, yes. Again. This time--for a wonder everything went smoothly. I had
watched over him like a cat, to save him from others' stupidity and his
own impetuousness. It came the very moment when he had to go to the
theatre. He asked me if I were ready, I wasn't. _I didn't want to go._
VERA
You didn't want to go?
JEAN
No. It's difficult to explain, but somehow by then I had grown aware that
the long series of little obstacles, each one accidental and temporary,
seemed to express something unseen, something impersonal, a kind of fate
... as if the verdict had gone forth from the lords of things that Paul
was _not_ to succeed. And everything seemed to hang in the balance that
night. I thought that the fact I was aware of Paul's bad luck made me all
the likelier instrument for it to work through. So I told him I had a
headache.... He must have felt something in my voice. He dropped his
violin and demanded I tell him why I didn't _want_ to go. His intuition
told him it was a matter of will with me. I hadn't thought to have a story
ready. Besides, I was so worn out that I was on the verge of hysteria. He
stormed, and I sat staring at him without a word, wondering only why he
didn't forget poor insignificant me and go forth to his glory. I despised
him for considering me at such a moment. I didn't understand. _My_
opinion, _my_ feeling, was more important to Paul than the rest of the
world. So, after all, I _was_ the instrument.
VERA
But why didn't you just get up and go?
JEAN
As soon as I saw how much it meant to Paul, I tried to. But it was too
late.... We sat there arguing until three in the morning. An orgy of tears
and self-immolation for us both.... I suppose he might have explained to
the director afterward and arranged another concert, but those things are
never the same the second time. Well, I forced myself to get rid of that
feeling about his bad luck. How I ever succeeded I don't know, for Paul
caught my mood and began to believe it himself. But somehow I did. And
then I made him give up his violin and begin composing. Of course we had
to have money for that. I wrote a relative and demanded, point blank,
shamelessly, two thousand dollars. I felt it was my restitution to Paul. I
received the money. What the relative thought, I don't know. I suppose he
paid it to avoid getting another such letter from me. I don't blame him.
So we came over here and Paul started at work. I was fighting for him and
with him every moment. How he worked! Six months, like a coal heaver. Then
he finished and played it over. He tore it all up. Every note.
VERA
Why?
JEAN
He said it was written in an old-fashioned style. It was curious--in his
playing he appreciated the most advanced technic, but when be came to
compose he found himself imitating the things he had admired when he was
eighteen. It had to be worked out of his mind. Well, he did it all through
again. This time he said he was only about two years behind. Tore it up
again. But now he was convinced he could succeed. And he was magnificent!
I would have shared him with the world gladly, but I knew it was best for
him to do this work. The hours this room has seen! Well, he made a few
notes, stopped a few days to take breath, and then caught the cold that
wore him out. Over there, in that drawer, are the notes, a few scraps of
paper. The rest of it--the experience of a strong life, a visioning life,
are with the mind that is dumb. Sometimes when I sit here I hear it all
played, an orchestra ... new harmonies, pure emotion.... The wonder and
then the pain of it are almost unbearable.
VERA
Ah, Jean, I begin to understand.
JEAN
Over in London there are half a dozen men and women who caught a glimpse
of Paul as he really was. In Munich there are half a dozen more. He was at
his best in a studio among friends with a congenial atmosphere. _They_
knew... but what is that?
I tell you, Vera, the only way I can explain it all is by seeing two
forces, two moralities; the morality of God and the morality of nature.
Perhaps in some people they both work together for the same end, but they
don't always.... In the sight of heaven, Paul was an apostle of harmony.
In the sight of nature, he was the seed too many on the tree, the bird
wrongly colored in the forest. I sit among these things, the fast-ebbing
beats of his memory, thinking of what he might have been for others as he
was to me, and my heart breaks. Our unhappiness? A cloud passing before
the sun--nothing more. And during this past year I have come to love him
all over again, not as mate but as mother.
VERA
Ah, Jean, with all his bad luck, he had you! Who knows what might have
happened if you had not been there?
JEAN
He had _me_? No, he never had me--he _made_ me.... And that's why I sit
all alone with the things that are Paul,--Paul, the flame that was never
lit on the altar, the sword that was never drawn from the scabbard.... We
talk together, Vera. Paul and I. We talk together, and I wait for him to
tell me what to do.