Produced by Nicole Apostola
THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS
A TRILOGY
By August Strindberg
English Version By Graham Rawson
With An Introduction By Gunnar Ollen
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
INTRODUCTION
Strindberg's great trilogy _The Road to Damascus_ presents many
mysteries to the uninitiated. Its peculiar changes of mood, its gallery
of half unreal characters, its bizarre episodes combine to make it a
bewilderingly rich but rather 'difficult' work. It cannot be recommended
to the lover of light drama or the seeker of momentary distraction. _The
Road to Damascus_ does not deal with the superficial strata of human
life, but probes into those depths where the problems of God, and death,
and eternity become terrifying realities.
Many authors have, of course, dealt with the profoundest problems
of humanity without, on that account, having been able to evoke our
interest. There may have been too much philosophy and too little art in
the presentation of the subject, too little reality and too much soaring
into the heights. That is not so with Strindberg's drama. It is a
trenchant settling of accounts between a complex and fascinating
individual--the author--and his past, and the realistic scenes have
often been transplanted in detail from his own changeful life.
In order fully to understand _The Road to Damascus_ it is therefore
essential to know at least the most important features of that
background of real life, out of which the drama has grown.
Parts I and II of the trilogy were written in 1898, while Part III was
added somewhat later, in the years 1900-1901. In 1898 Strindberg had
only half emerged from what was by far the severest of the many crises
through which in his troubled life he had to pass. He had overcome
the worst period of terror, which had brought him dangerously near the
borders of sanity, and he felt as if he could again open his eyes and
breathe freely. He was not free from that nervous pressure under which
he had been working, but the worst of the inner tension had relaxed and
he felt the need of taking a survey of what had happened, of summarising
and trying to fathom what could have been underlying his apparently
unaccountable experiences. The literary outcome of this settling of
accounts with the past was _The Road to Damascus_.
_The Road to Damascus_ might be termed a marriage drama, a mystery
drama, or a drama of penance and conversion, according as preponderance
is given to one or other of its characteristics. The question then
arises: what was it in the drama which was of deepest significance to
the author himself? The answer is to be found in the title, with its
allusion to the narrative in the Acts of the Apostles of the journey of
Saul, the persecutor, the scoffer, who, on his way to Damascus, had an
awe-inspiring vision, which converted Saul, the hater of Christ, into
Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles. Strindberg's drama describes the
progress of the author right up to his conversion, shows how stage by
stage he relinquishes worldly things, scientific renown, and above all
woman, and finally, when nothing more binds him to this world, takes the
vows of a monk and enters a monastery where no dogmas or theology, but
only broadminded humanity and resignation hold sway. What, however,
in an inner sense, distinguishes Strindberg's drama from the Bible
narrative is that the conversion itself--although what leads up to it
is convincingly described, both logically and psychologically--does
not bear the character of a final and irrevocable decision, but on
the contrary is depicted with a certain hesitancy and uncertainty. THE
STRANGER'S entry into the monastery consequently gives the impression of
being a piece of logical construction; the author's heart is not wholly
in it. From Strindberg's later works it also becomes evident that his
severe crisis had undoubtedly led to a complete reformation in that it
definitely caused him to turn from worldly things, of which indeed he
had tasted to the full, towards matters divine. But this did not
mean that then and there he accepted some specific religion, whether
Christian or other. One would undoubtedly come nearest to the author's
own interpretation in this respect by characterising _The Road to
Damascus_ not as a drama of conversion, but as a drama of struggle,
the story of a restless, arduous pilgrimage through the chimeras of
the world towards the border beyond which eternity stretches in solemn
peace, symbolised in the drama by a mountain, the peaks of which reach
high above the clouds.
In this final settling of accounts one subject is of dominating
importance, recurring again and again throughout the trilogy; it is that
of woman. Strindberg him, of course, become famous as a writer about
women; he has ruthlessly described the hatreds of love, the hell that
marriage can be, he is the creator of _Le Plaidoyer d'un Fou_ and
_The Dance of Death_, he had three divorces, yet was just as much a
worshipper of woman--and at the same time a diabolical hater of her
seducing qualities under which he suffered defeat after defeat. Each
time he fell in love afresh he would compare himself to Hercules, the
Titan, whose strength was vanquished by Queen Omphale, who clothed
herself in his lion's skin, while he had to sit at the spinning wheel
dressed in women's clothes. It can be readily understood that to a man
of Strindberg's self-conceit the problem of his relations with women
must become a vital issue on the solution of which the whole Damascus
pilgrimage depended.
In 1898, when Parts I and II of the trilogy were written, Strindberg
had been married twice; both marriages had ended unhappily. In the year
1901, when the wedding scenes of Part III were written, Strindberg had
recently experienced the rapture of a new love which, however, was soon
to be clouded. It must not be forgotten that in his entire emotional
life Strindberg was an artist and as such a man of impulse, with the
spontaneity and naivity and intensity of a child. For him love had
nothing to do with respectability and worldly calculations; he liked to
think of it as a thunderbolt striking mortals with a destructive force
like the lightning hurled by the almighty Zeus. It is easy to understand
that a man of such temperament would not be particularly suited for
married life, where self-sacrifice and strong-minded patience may be
severely tested. In addition his three wives were themselves artists,
one an authoress, the other two actresses, all of them pronounced
characters, endowed with a degree of will and self-assertion, which,
although it could not be matched against Strindberg's, yet would have
been capable of producing friction with rather more pliant natures than
that of the Swedish dramatist.
In the trilogy Strindberg's first wife, Siri von Essen, his marriage to
whom was happiest and lasted longest (1877-1891), and more especially
his second wife, the Austrian authoress Frida Uhl (married to him
1893-1897) have supplied the subject matter for his picture of THE LADY.
In the happy marriage scenes of Part III we recognise reminiscences from
the wedding of Strindberg, then fifty-two, and the twenty-three-year-old
actress Harriet Bosse, whose marriage to him lasted from 1901 until
1904.
The character of THE LADY in Parts I and II is chiefly drawn from
recollections--fairly recent when the drama was written--of Frida
Uhl and his life with her. From the very beginning her marriage to
Strindberg had been most troublous. In the autumn of 1892 Strindberg
moved from the Stockholm skerries to Berlin, where he lived a rather
hectic Bohemian life among the artists collecting in the little tavern
'Zum Schwarzen Ferkel.' He made the acquaintance of Frida Uhl in the
beginning of the year 1893, and after a good many difficulties was able
to arrange for a marriage on the 2nd May on Heligoland Island,
where English marriage laws, less rigorous than the German, applied.
Strindberg's nervous temperament would not tolerate a quiet and peaceful
honeymoon; quite soon the couple departed to Gravesend via Hamburg.
Strindberg was too restless to stay there and moved on to London. There
he left his wife to try to negotiate for the production of his plays,
and journeyed alone to Sellin, on the island of Ruegen, after having
first been compelled to stop in Hamburg owing to lack of money.
Strindberg stayed on Ruegen during the month of July, and then left for
the home of his parents-in-law at Mondsee, near Salzburg in Austria,
where he was to meet his wife. But when she was delayed a few days on
the journey from London, Strindberg impatiently departed for Berlin,
where Frida Uhl followed shortly after. About the same time an action
was brought for the suppression of the German version of _Le Plaidoyer
d'un Fou_ as being immoral. This book gives an undisguised, intensely
personal picture of Strindberg's first marriage, and was intended by him
for publication only after his death as a defence against accusations
directed against him for his behaviour towards Siri von Essen.
Strindberg was acquitted after a time, but before that his easily fired
imagination had given him a thorough shake-up, which could only hasten
the crisis which seemed to be approaching. After a trip to Bruenn, where
Strindberg wrote his scientific work _Antibarbarus_, the couple arrived
in November at the home of Frida Uhl's grandparents in the little
village of Dornach, by the Upper Danube; here the wanderings of 1893 at
last came to an end. For a few months comparative peace reigned in the
artists' little home, but the birth of a daughter, Kerstin, in May,
brought this tranquillity to a sudden end. Strindberg, who had lived in
a state of nervous depression since the 1880's, felt himself put on one
side by the child, and felt ill at ease in an environment of, as he put
it in the autobiographical _The Quarantine Master_, 'articles of food,
excrements, wet-nurses treated like milch-cows, cooks and decaying
vegetables.' He longed for cleanliness and peace, and in letters to
an artist friend he spoke of entering a monastery. He even thought of
founding one himself in the Ardennes and drew up detailed schemes for
rules, dress, and food. The longing to get away and common interests
with his Parisian friend (a musician named Leopold Littmansson)
attracted Strindberg to Paris, where he settled down in the beginning of
the autumn 1894. His wife joined him, but left again at the close of the
autumn. In reality Strindberg was at this time almost impossible to live
with. Persecution mania and hallucinations took possession of him and
his morbid suspicions knew no bounds. In spite of this he was half
conscious that there was something wrong with his mental faculties, and
in the beginning of 1895, assisted by the Swedish Minister, he went by
his own consent to the St. Louis Hospital in Paris. During his chemical
experiments, in which among other things he tried to produce gold, he
had burnt his hands, so that he had to seek medical attention on that
account also. He wrote about this in a letter:
'I am going to hospital because I am ill, because my doctor has sent me
there, and because I need to be looked after like a child, because I
am ruined.... And it torments me and grieves me, my nervous system is
rotten, paralytic, hysterical....'
Never before had Strindberg lived in such distress as at this period,
both physically and mentally. With shattered nerves, sometimes over
the verge of insanity, without any means of existence other than what
friends managed to scrape together, separated from his second wife, who
had opened proceedings for divorce, far from his native land and without
any prospects for the future, he was brought to a profound religious
crisis. With almost incredible fortitude he succeeded in fighting his
way through this difficult period, with the remarkable result that the
former Bohemian, atheist, and scoffer was gradually able to emerge with
the firm assurance of a prophet, and even enter a new creative period,
perhaps mightier than before. One cannot help reflecting that a man
capable of overcoming a crisis of such a formidable character and of
several years' duration, as this one of Strindberg's had been, with
reason intact and even with increased creative power, in reality, in
spite of his hypersensitive nervous system, must have been an unusually
strong man both physically and mentally.
Upon trying to define more closely what actual relation the play has
to those events of Strindberg's restless life, of which we have given a
rough outline, we find that for the most part the author has undoubtedly
made use of his own experiences, but has adapted, combined and added to
them still more, so that the result is a mixture of real experience and
imagination, all moulded into a carefully worked out artistic form.
If to begin with, we dwell for a while on Part I it is evident that
the hurried wanderings of THE STRANGER and THE LADY between the street
corner, the room in the hotel, the sea and the Rose Room with the
mother-in-law, have their foundation--often in detail--in Strindberg's
rovings with Frida Uhl. I will give a few examples. In a book by Frida
Uhl about her marriage to the Swedish genius (splendid in parts but not
very reliable) she recalls that the month before her marriage she took
rooms at Neustaedtische Kirchstrasse 1, in Berlin, facing a Gothic church
in Dorotheenstrasse, situated at the cross-roads between the post
office in Dorotheenstrasse and the cafe 'Zum Schwarzen Ferkel' in
Wilhelmstrasse. This Berlin environment appears to be almost exactly
reproduced in the introductory scene of Part I, where THE STRANGER and
THE LADY meet outside a little Gothic church with a post office and
cafe adjoining. The happy scenes by the sea are, of course, pleasant
recollections from Heligoland, and the many discussions about money
matters in the midst of the honeymoon are quite explicable when we know
how the dramatist was continually haunted by money troubles, even
if occasionally he received a big fee, and that this very financial
insecurity was one of the chief reasons why Frida Uhl's father opposed
the marriage. Again, the country scenes which follow in Part I, shift
to the hilly country round the Danube, with their Catholic Calvaries
and expiation chapels, where Strindberg lived with his parents-in-law in
Mondsee and with his wife's grandparents in Dornach and the neighbouring
village Klam, with its mill, its smithy, and its gloomy ravine. The Rose
Room was the name he gave to the room in which he lived during his stay
with his mother-in-law and his daughter Kerstin in Klam in the autumn
of 1896, as he has himself related in one of his autobiographical books
_Inferno_. In this way we could go on, showing how the localities which
are to be met with in the drama often correspond in detail to the places
Strindberg had visited in the course of his pilgrimage during the years
1893-1898. Space prevents us, however, from entering on a more detailed
analysis in this respect.
That THE STRANGER represents Strindberg's _alter ego_ is evident in many
ways, even apart from the fact that THE STRANGER'S wanderings from place
to place, as we have already seen, bear a direct relation to those of
Strindberg himself. THE STRANGER is an author, like Strindberg; his
childhood of hate is Strindberg's own; other details--such as for
instance that THE STRANGER has refused to attend his father's funeral,
that the Parish Council has wanted to take his child away from him, that
on account of his writings he has suffered lawsuits, illness, poverty,
exile, divorce; that in the police description he is characterised as
a person without a permanent situation, with uncertain income; married,
but had deserted his wife and left his children; known as entertaining
subversive opinions on social questions (by _The Red Room_, _The New
Realm_ and other works Strindberg became the great standard-bearer
of the Swedish Radicals in their campaign against conventionalism
and bureaucracy); that he gives the impression of not being in full
possession of his senses; that he is sought by his children's guardian
because of unpaid maintenance allowance--everything corresponds to the
experiences of the unfortunate Strindberg himself, with all his bitter
defeats in life and his triumphs in the world of letters.
Those scenes where THE STRANGER is uncertain whether the people he sees
before him are real or not--he catches hold of THE BEGGAR'S arm to feel
whether he is a real, live person--or those occasions when he appears
as a visionary or thought-reader--he describes the kitchen in his wife's
parental home without ever having seen it, and knows her thoughts before
she has expressed them--have their deep foundation in Strindberg's
mental make-up, especially as it was during the period of tension in the
middle of the 1890's, termed the Inferno period, because at that time
Strindberg thought that he lived in hell. Our most prominent student
of Strindberg, Professor Martin Lamm, wrote about this in his work on
Strindberg's dramas:
'In order to understand the first part of _The Road to Damascus_ we
must take into consideration that the author had not yet shaken off his
terrifying visions and persecutionary hallucinations. He can play with
them artistically, sometimes he feels tempted to make a joke of them,
but they still retain for him their "terrifying semi-reality." It is
this which makes the drama so bewildering, but at the same time so
vigorous and affecting. Later, when depicting dream states, he creates
an artful blend of reality and poetry. He produces more exquisite works
of art, but he no longer gives the same anguished impression of a soul
striving to free itself from the meshes of his _idees fixes_.'
With his hypersensitive nervous system Strindberg, like THE STRANGER,
really gives the impression of having been a visionary. For instance,
his author friend Albert Engstroem, has told how one evening during
a stay far out in the Stockholm skerries, far from all civilisation,
Strindberg suddenly had a feeling that his little daughter was ill, and
wanted to return to town at once. True enough, it turned out that
the girl had fallen ill just at the time when Strindberg had felt the
warning. As regards thought-reading, it appears that at the slightest
change in expression and often for no perceptible reason at all,
Strindberg would draw the most definite conclusions, as definite as
from an uttered word or an action. This we have to keep in mind, for
instance, when judging Strindberg's accusations against his wife in _Le
Plaidoyer d'un Fou_, the book which THE LADY in _The Road to Damascus_
is tempted to read, in spite of having been forbidden by THE STRANGER,
with tragic results. In Part III of the drama Strindberg lets THE
STRANGER discuss this thought-reading problem with his first wife. THE
STRANGER says:
'We made a mistake when we were living together, because we accused
each other of wicked thoughts before they'd become actions; and lived in
mental reservations instead of realities. For instance, I once noticed
how you enjoyed the defiling gaze of a strange man, and I accused you of
unfaithfulness';
to which THE LADY, to Strindberg's satisfaction, has to reply:
'You were wrong to do it, and right. Because my thoughts were sinful.'
As regards the other figures in the gallery of characters in Part I,
we have already shown THE LADY as the identical counterpart in all
essentials of Strindberg's second wife, Frida Uhl. Like the latter THE
LADY is a Catholic, has a grandfather, Dr. Cornelius Reisch--called THE
OLD MAN in the drama--whose passion is shooting; and a mother, Maria
Uhl, with a predilection for religious discourses in Strindberg's own
style; another detail, the fact that she was eighteen years old before
she crossed to the other shore to see what had shimmered dimly in the
distant haze, corresponds with Frida Uhl's statement that she had been
confined in a convent until she was eighteen and a half years old.
On the other hand, the chief female character of the drama does not
correspond to her real life counterpart in that she is supposed to have
been married to a doctor before eloping with THE STRANGER, Strindberg.
Here reminiscences from Strindberg's first marriage play a part. Siri
von Essen, Strindberg's first wife, was married to an officer, Baron
Wrangel, and both the Wrangels received Strindberg kindly in their home
as a friend. Love quickly flared up between Siri von Essen-Wrangel
and Strindberg. She obtained a divorce from her husband and married
Strindberg. Baron von Wrangel shortly afterwards married again, a cousin
of Siri von Essen. Knowing these matrimonial complications we understand
how Strindberg must have felt when, on the point of leaving for
Heligoland to marry Frida Uhl, he met his former wife's (Siri von Essen)
first husband, Baron Wrangel, on Lehrter Station in Berlin, and found
that, like Strindberg himself, he was on a lover's errand. Knowing all
this we need not be surprised at the extremely complicated matrimonial
relations in _The Road to Damascus_, where, for example, for the sake
of THE STRANGER, THE DOCTOR obtains a divorce from THE LADY in order to
marry THE STRANGER'S first wife. In addition to Baron Wrangel a doctor
in the town of Ystad, in the south of Sweden--Dr. Eliasson who attended
Strindberg during his most difficult period--has stood as a model for
THE DOCTOR. We note in particular that the description of the doctor's
house enclosing a courtyard on three sides, tallies with a type of
building which is characteristic of the south of Sweden. When THE DOCTOR
ruthlessly explains to THE STRANGER that the asylum, 'The Good Help,'
was not a hospital but a lunatic asylum, he expresses Strindberg's own
misgivings that the St. Louis Hospital, of which, as mentioned above,
Strindberg was an inmate in the beginning of the year 1895, was really
to be regarded as a lunatic asylum.
Even minor characters, such as CAESAR and THE BEGGAR have their
counterparts in real life, even though in the main they are fantastic
creations of his imagination. The guardian of his daughter, Kerstin, a
relative of Frida Uhl's, was called Dr. Caesar R. v. Weyr. Regarding THE
BEGGAR it may be enough to quote Strindberg's feelings when confronted
with the collections made by his Paris friends:
'I am a beggar who has no right to go to cafes. Beggar! That is the
right word; it rings in my ears and brings a burning blush to my cheeks,
the blush of shame, humiliation, and rage!
'To think that six weeks ago I sat at this table! My theatre manager
addressed me as Dear Master; journalists strove to interview me, the
photographer begged to be allowed to sell my portrait. And now: a
beggar, a branded man, an outcast from society!'
After this we can understand why Strindberg in _The Road to Damascus_
apparently in such surprising manner is seized by the suspicion that he
is himself the beggar.
We have thus seen that Part I of _The Road to Damascus_ is at the same
time a free creation of fantasy and a drama of portrayal. The elements
of realism are starkly manifest, but they are moulded and hammered into
a work of art by a force of combinative imagination rising far above
the task of mere descriptive realism. The scenes unroll themselves in
calculated sequence up to the central asylum picture, from there to
return in reverse order through the second half of the drama, thus
symbolising life's continuous repetition of itself, Kierkegaard's
_Gentagelse_. The first part of _The Road to Damascus_ is the one most
frequently produced on the stage. This is understandable, having regard
to its firm structure and the consistency of its faith in a Providence
directing the fortunes and misfortunes of man, whether the individual
rages in revolt or submits in quiet resignation.
The second part of _The Road to Damascus_ is dominated by the scenes of
the great alchemist banquet which, in all its fantastic oddity, is
one of the most suggestive ever created on the ancient theme of the
fickleness of fortune. It was suggested above that there were two
factors beyond all others binding Strindberg to the world and making him
hesitate before the monastery; one was woman, from whom he sets himself
free in Part II, after the birth of a child--precisely as in his
marriage to Frida Uhl--the other was scientific honour, in its highest
phase equivalent, to Strindberg, to the power to produce gold. Countless
were the experiments for this purpose made by Strindberg in his
primitive laboratories, and countless his failures. To the world-famous
author, literary honour meant little as opposed to the slightest
prospect of being acknowledged as a prominent scientist. Harriet Bosse
has told me that Strindberg seldom said anything about his literary
work, never was interested in what other people thought of them, or
troubled to read the reviews; but on the other hand he would often, with
sparkling eyes and childish pride, show her strips of paper, stained at
one end with some golden-brown substance. 'Look,' he said, 'this is
pure gold, and I have made it!' In face of the stubborn scepticism of
scientific experts Strindberg was, however, driven to despair as to his
ability, and felt his dreams of fortune shattered, as did THE STRANGER
at the macabre banquet given in his honour--a banquet which was, as a
matter of fact, planned by his Paris friends, not, as Strindberg would
have liked to believe, in honour of the great scientist, but to the
great author.
In Part I of _The Road to Damascus_, THE STRANGER replies with a
hesitating 'Perhaps' when THE LADY wants to lead him to the protecting
Church; and at the end of Part II he exclaims: 'Come, priest, before I
change my mind'; but in Part III his decision is final, he enters the
monastery. The reason is that not even THE LADY in her third incarnation
had shown herself capable of reconciling him to life. The wedding day
scenes just before, between Harriet Bosse and the ageing author, form,
however, the climax of Part III and are among the most poetically moving
that Strindberg has ever written.
Besides having his belief in the rapture of love shattered, THE
STRANGER also suffers disappointment at seeing his child fall short of
expectations. The meeting between the daughter Sylvia and THE STRANGER
probably refers to an episode from the summer of 1899, when Strindberg,
after long years of suffering in foreign countries, saw his beloved
Swedish skerries again, and also his favourite daughter Greta, who had
come over from Finland to meet him. Contrary to the version given in the
drama, the reunion of father and daughter seems to have been very happy
and cordial. However, it is typical of the fate-oppressed Strindberg
that in his work even the happiest summer memories become tinged with
black. Once and for all the dark colours on his palette were the most
intense.
The final entry into the monastery was more a symbol for the struggling
author's dream of peace and atonement than a real thing in his life. It
is true he visited the Benedictine monastery, Maredsous, in Belgium in
1898, and its well stocked library came to play a certain part In the
drama, but already he realised, after one night's sojourn there, that he
had no call for the monastic life.
Seen as a whole the trilogy marks a turning point in Strindberg's
dramatic production. The logical, calculated concentration of his
naturalistic work of the 1880's has given way to a freer form of
composition, in which the atmosphere has come to mean more than the
dialogue, the musical and dreamlike qualities more than conciseness.
_The Road to Damascus_ abounds with details from real life, reproduced
in sharply naturalistic manner, but these are not, as things were in
his earlier works viewed by the author _a priori_ as reality but become
wrapped in dreamlike mystery. Just as with _Lady Julia_ and _The Father_
Strindberg ushered in the naturalistic drama of the 1880's, so in the
years around the turn of the century he was, with his symbolist cycle
_The Road to Damascus_, to break new ground for European drama which had
gradually become stuck in fixed formulas. _The Road to Damascus_ became
a landmark in world literature both as a brilliant work of art and as
bearer of new stage technique.
GUNNAR OLLEN
Translated by ESTHER JOHANSON
THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS
PART I.
English Version by Graham Rawson
CHARACTERS
THE STRANGER
THE LADY
THE BEGGAR
THE DOCTOR
HIS SISTER
AN OLD MAN
A MOTHER
AN ABBESS
A CONFESSOR
less important figures
FIRST MOURNER
SECOND MOURNER
THIRD MOURNER
LANDLORD
CAESAR
WAITER
non-speaking
A SMITH
MILLER'S WIFE
FUNERAL ATTENDANTS
SCENES
SCENE I Street Corner SCENE XVII
SCENE II Doctor's House SCENE XVI
SCENE III Room in an Hotel SCENE XV
SCENE IV By the Sea SCENE XIV
SCENE V On the Road SCENE XIII
SCENE VI In a Ravine SCENE XII
SCENE VII In a Kitchen SCENE XI
SCENE VIII The 'Rose' Room SCENE X
SCENE IX Convent
First Performance in England by the Stage Society at the Westminster
Theatre, 2nd May 1937
CAST
THE STRANGER Francis James
THE LADY Wanda Rotha
THE BEGGAR Alexander Sarner
FIRST MOURNER George Cormack
SECOND MOURNER Kenneth Bell
THIRD MOURNER Peter Bennett
FOURTH MOURNER Bryan Sears
FIFTH MOURNER Michael Boyle
SIXTH MOURNER Stephen Patrick
THE LANDLORD Stephen Jack
THE DOCTOR Neil Porter
HIS SISTER Olga Martin
CAESAR Peter Land
A WAITER Peter Bennett
AN OLD MAN A. Corney Grain
A MOTHER Frances Waring
THE SMITH Norman Thomas
THE MILLER'S WIFE Julia Sandham
AN ABBESS Natalia Moya
A CONFESSOR Tristan Rawson
PRODUCER Carl H. Jaffe
ASSISTANT PRODUCER Ossia Trilling
SCENE I
STREET CORNER
[Street Corner with a seat under a tree; the side-door of a small Gothic
Church nearby; also a post office and a cafe with chairs outside it.
Both post office and cafe are shut. A funeral march is heard off,
growing louder sand then fainter. A STRANGER is standing on the edge
of the pavement and seems uncertain which way to go. A church clock
strikes: first the four quarters and then the hour. It is three o'clock.
A LADY enters and greets the STRANGER. She is about to pass him, but
stops.]
STRANGER. It's you! I almost knew you'd come.
LADY. You wanted me: I felt it. But why are you waiting here?
STRANGER. I don't know. I must wait somewhere.
LADY. Who are you waiting for?
STRANGER. I wish I could tell you! For forty years I've been waiting for
something: I believe they call it happiness; or the end of unhappiness.
(Pause.) There's that terrible music again. Listen! But don't go, I beg
you. I'll feel afraid, if you do.
LADY. We met yesterday for the first time; and talked for four hours.
You roused my sympathy, but you mustn't abuse my kindness on that
account.
STRANGER. I know that well enough. But I beg you not to leave me. I'm a
stranger here, without friends; and my few acquaintances seem more like
enemies.
LADY. You have enemies everywhere. You're lonely everywhere. Why did you
leave your wife and children?
STRANGER. I wish I knew. I wish I knew why I still live; why I'm here
now; where I should go and what I should do! Do you believe that the
living can be damned already?
LADY. No.
STRANGER. Look at me.
LADY. Hasn't life brought you a single pleasure?
STRANGER. Not one! If at any time I thought so, it was merely a trap to
tempt me to prolong my miseries. If ripe fruit fell into my hand, it was
poisoned or rotten at the core.
LADY. What is your religion--if you'll forgive the question?
STRANGER. Only this: that when I can bear things no longer, I shall go.
LADY. Where?
STRANGER. Into annihilation. If I don't hold life in my hand, at least I
hold death.... It gives me an amazing feeling of power.
LADY. You're playing with death!
STRANGER. As I've played with life. (Pause.) I was a writer. But in
spite of my melancholy temperament I've never been able to take anything
seriously--not even my worst troubles. Sometimes I even doubt whether
life itself has had any more reality than my books. (A De Profundis is
heard from the funeral procession.) They're coming back. Why must they
process up and down these streets?
LADY. Do you fear them?
STRANGER. They annoy me. The place might be bewitched. No, it's not
death I fear, but solitude; for then one's not alone. I don't know who's
there, I or another, but in solitude one's not alone. The air grows
heavy and seems to engender invisible beings, who have life and whose
presence can be felt.
LADY. You've noticed that?
STRANGER. For some time I've noticed a great deal; but not as I used to.
Once I merely saw objects and events, forms and colours, whilst now I
perceive ideas and meanings. Life, that once had no meaning, has begun
to have one. Now I discern intention where I used to see nothing but
chance. (Pause.) When I met you yesterday it struck me you'd been sent
across my path, either to save me, or destroy me.
LADY. Why should I destroy you?
STRANGER. Because it may be your destiny.
LADY. No such idea ever crossed my mind; it was largely sympathy I felt
for you.... Never, in all my life, have I met anyone like you. I have
only to look at you for the tears to start to my eyes. Tell me, what
have you on your conscience? Have you done something wrong, that's never
been discovered or punished?
STRANGER. You may well ask! No, I've no more sins on my conscience than
other free men. Except this: I determined that life should never make a
fool of me.
LADY. You must let yourself be fooled, more or less, to live at all.
STRANGER. That would seem a kind of duty; but one I wanted to get out
of. (Pause.) I've another secret. It's whispered in the family that I'm
a changeling.
LADY. What's that?
STRANGER. A child substituted by the elves for the baby that was born.
LADY. Do you believe in such things?
STRANGER. No. But, as a parable, there's something to be said for it.
(Pause.) As a child I was always crying and didn't seem to take to
life in this world. I hated my parents, as they hated me. I brooked no
constraint, no conventions, no laws, and my longing was for the woods
and the sea.
LADY. Did you ever see visions?
STRANGER. Never. But I've often thought that two beings were guiding
my destiny. One offers me all I desire; but the other's ever at hand
to bespatter the gifts with filth, so that they're useless to me and
I can't touch them. It's true that life has given me all I asked of
it--but everything's turned out worthless to me.
LADY. You've had everything and yet are not content?
STRANGER. That is the curse....
LADY. Don't say that! But why haven't you desired things that transcend
this life, that can never be sullied?
STRANGER. Because I doubt if there is a beyond.
LADY. But the elves?
STRANGER. Are merely a fairy story. (Pointing to a seat.) Shall we sit
down?
LADY. Yes. Who are you waiting for?
STRANGER. Really, for the post office to open. There's a letter for
me--it's been forwarded on but hasn't reached me. (They sit down.) But
tell me something of yourself now. (The Lady takes up her crochet work.)
LADY. There's nothing to tell.
STRANGER. Strangely enough, I should prefer to think of you like that.
Impersonal, nameless--I only do know one of your names. I'd like to
christen you myself--let me see, what ought you to be called? I've got
it. Eve! (With a gesture towards the wings.) Trumpets! (The funeral
march is heard again.) There it is again! Now I must invent your age,
for I don't know how old you are. From now on you are thirty-four--so
you were born in sixty-four. (Pause.) Now your character, for I don't
know that either. I shall give you a good character, your voice reminds
me of my mother--I mean the idea of a mother, for my mother never
caressed me, though I can remember her striking me. You see, I was
brought up in hate! An eye for an eye--a tooth for a tooth. You see this
scar on my forehead? That comes from a blow my brother gave me with
an axe, after I'd struck him with a stone. I never went to my father's
funeral, because he turned me out of the house when my sister married.
I was born out of wedlock, when my family were bankrupt and in mourning
for an uncle who had taken his life. Now you know my family! That's
the stock I come from. Once I narrowly escaped fourteen years' hard
labour--so I've every reason to thank the elves, though I can't be
altogether pleased with what they've done.
LADY. I like to hear you talk. But don't speak of the elves: it makes me
sad.
STRANGER. Frankly, I don't believe in them; yet they're always making
themselves felt. Are these elves the souls of the unhappy, who still
await redemption? If so, I am the child of an evil spirit. Once I
believed I was near redemption--through a woman. But no mistake could
have been greater: I was plunged into the seventh hell.
LADY. You must be unhappy. But this won't go on always.
STRANGER. Do you think church bells and Holy Water could comfort me?
I've tried them; they only made things worse. I felt like the Devil when
he sees the sign of the cross. (Pause.) Let's talk about you now.
LADY. There's no need. (Pause.) Have you been blamed for misusing your
gifts?
STRANGER. I've been blamed for everything. In the town I lived in no one
was so hated as I. Lonely I came in and lonely I went out. If I entered
a public place people avoided me. If I wanted to rent a room, it would
be let. The priests laid a ban on me from the pulpit, teachers from
their desks and parents in their homes. The church committee wanted
to take my children from me. Then I blasphemously shook my fist... at
heaven!
LADY. Why did they hate you so?
STRANGER. How should I know! Yet I do! I couldn't endure to see men
suffer. So I kept on saying, and writing, too: free yourselves, I will
help you. And to the poor I said: do not let the rich exploit you.
And to the women: do not allow yourselves to be enslaved by the men.
And--worst of all--to the children: do not obey your parents, if they
are unjust. What followed was impossible to foresee. I found that
everyone was against me: rich and poor, men and women, parents and
children. And then came sickness and poverty, beggary and shame,
divorce, law-suits, exile, solitude, and now.... Tell me, do you think
me mad?
LADY. No.
STRANGER. You must be the only one. But I'm all the more grateful.
LADY (rising). I must leave you now.
STRANGER. You, too?
LADY. And you mustn't stay here.
STRANGER. Where should I go?
LADY. Home. To your work.
STRANGER. But I'm no worker. I'm a writer.
LADY. I know. But I didn't want to hurt you. Creative power is something
given you, that can also taken away. See you don't forfeit yours.
STRANGER. Where are you going?
LADY. Only to a shop.
STRANGER (after a pause). Tell me, are you a believer?
LADY. I am nothing.
STRANGER. All the better: you have a future. How I wish I were your old
blind father, whom you could lead to the market place to sing for his
bread. My tragedy is I cannot grow old that's what happens to children
of the elves, they have big heads and never only cry. I wish I were
someone's dog. I could follow him and never be alone again. I'd get a
meal sometimes, a kick now and then, a pat perhaps, a blow often....
LADY. Now I must go. Good-bye. (She goes out.)
STRANGER (absent-mindedly). Good-bye. (He remains on the seat. He takes
off his hat and wipes his forehead. Then he draws on the ground with his
stick. A BEGGAR enters. He has a strange look and is collecting objects
from the gutter.) White are you picking up, beggar?
BEGGAR. Why call me that? I'm no beggar. Have I asked you for anything?
STRANGER. I beg your pardon. It's so hard to judge men from appearances.
BEGGAR. That's true. For instance, can you guess who I am?
STRANGER. I don't intend to try. It doesn't interest me.
BEGGAR. No one can know that in advance. Interest commonly comes
afterwards--when it's too late. Virtus post nummos!
STRANGER. What? Do beggars know Latin?
BEGGAR. You see, you're interested already. Omne tulit punctum qui
miscuit utile dulci. I have always succeeded in everything I've
undertaken, because I've never attempted anything. I should like to call
myself Polycrates, who found the gold ring in the fish's stomach. Life
has given me all I asked of it. But I never asked anything; I grew tired
of success and threw the ring away. Yet, now I've grown old I regret it.
I search for it in the gutters; but as the search takes time, in default
of my gold ring I don't disdain a few cigar stumps....
STRANGER. I don't know whether this beggar's cynical or mad.
BEGGAR. I don't know either.
STRANGER. Do you know who I am?
BEGGAR. No. And it doesn't interest me.
STRANGER. Well, interest commonly comes afterwards.... You see you tempt
me to take the words out of your mouth. And that's the same thing as
picking up other people's cigars.
BEGGAR. So you won't follow my example?
STRANGER. What's that scar on your forehead?
BEGGAR. I got it from a near relation.
STRANGER. Now you frighten me! Are you real? May I touch you? (He
touches his arm.) There's no doubt of it.... Would you deign to accept
a small coin in return for a promise to seek Polycrates' ring in another
part of the town? (He hands him a coin.) Post nummos virtus.... Another
echo. You must go at once.
BEGGAR. I will. But you've given me far too much. I'll return
three-quarters of it. Now we owe one another nothing but friendship.
STRANGER. Friendship! Am I a friend of yours?
BEGGAR. Well, I am of yours. When one's alone in the world one can't be
particular.
STRANGER. Then let me tell you you forget yourself...
BEGGAR. Only too pleased! But when we meet again I'll have a word of
welcome for you. (Exit.)
STRANGER (sitting down again and drawing in the dust with his stick).
Sunday afternoon! A long, dank, sad time, after the usual Sunday dinner
of roast beef, cabbage and watery potatoes. Now the older people are
testing, the younger playing chess and smoking. The servants have gone
to church and the shops are shut. This frightful afternoon, this day of
rest, when there's nothing to engage the soul, when it's as hard to meet
a friend as to get into a wine shop. (The LADY comes back again, she
is noun wearing a flower at her breast.) Strange! I can't speak without
being contradicted at once!
LADY. So you're still here?
STRANGER. Whether I sit here, or elsewhere, and write in the sand
doesn't seem to me to matter--as long so I write in the sand.
LADY. What are you writing? May I see?
STRANGER. I think you'll find: Eve 1864.... No, don't step on it.
LADY. What happens then?
STRANGER. A disaster for you... and for me.
LADY. You know that?
STRANGER. Yes, and more. That the Christmas rose you're wearing is a
mandragora. Its symbolical meaning is malice and calumny; but it was
once used in medicine for the healing of madness. Will you give it me?
LADY (hesitating). As medicine?
STRANGER. Of course. (Pause.) Have you read my books?
LADY. You know I have. And that it's you I have to thank for giving me
freedom and a belief in human rights and human dignity.
STRANGER. Then you haven't read the recent ones?
LADY. No. And if they're not like the earlier ones I don't want to.
STRANGER. Then promise never to open another book of mine.
LADY. Let me think that over. Very well, I promise.
STRANGER. Good! But see you keep your promise. Remember what happened
to Bluebeard's wife when curiosity tempted her into the forbidden
chamber....
LADY. You see, already you make demands like those of a Bluebeard. What
you don't see, or have long since forgotten, is that I'm married, and
that my husband's a doctor, and that he admires your work. So that his
house is open to you, if you wish to be made welcome there.
STRANGER. I've done all I can to forget it. I've expunged it from my
memory so that it no longer has any reality for me.
LADY. If that's so, will you come home with me to-night?
STRANGER. No. Will you come with me?
LADY. Where?
STRANGER. Anywhere! I have no home, only a trunk. Money I sometimes
have--though not often. It's the one thing life has capriciously refused
me, perhaps because I never desired it intensely enough. (The LADY
shakes her head.) Well? What are you thinking?
LADY. I'm surprised I'm not angry with you. But you're not serious.
STRANGER. Whether I am or not's all one to me. Ah! There's the organ! It
won't be long now before the drink shops open.
LADY. Is it true _you_ drink?
STRANGER. Yes. A great deal! Wine makes my soul from her prison, up into
the firmament, where she what has never yet been seen, and hears what
men never yet heard....
LADY. And the day after?
STRANGER. I have the most delightful scruples of conscience! I
experience the purifying emotions of guilt and repentance. I enjoy the
sufferings of the body, whilst my soul hovers like smoke about my head.
It is as if one were suspended between Life and Death, when the spirit
feels that she has already opened her pinions and could fly aloft, if
she would.
LADY. Come into the church for a moment. You'll hear no sermon, only the
beautiful music of vespers.
STRANGER. No. Not into church! It depresses me because I feel I don't
belong there.... That I'm an unhappy soul and that it's as impossible
for me to re-enter as to become a child again.
LADY. You feel all that... already?
STRANGER. Yes. I've got that far. I feel as if I lay hacked in pieces
and were being slowly melted in Medea's cauldron. Either I shall be sent
to the soap-boilers, or arise renewed from my own dripping! It depends
on Medea's skill!
LADY. That sounds like the word of an oracle. We must see if you can't
become a child again.
STRANGER. We should have to start with the cradle; and this time with
the right child.
LADY. Exactly! Wait here for me whilst I go into the church. If the cafe
were open I'd ask you please not to drink. But luckily it's shut.
(The LADY exits. The STRANGER sits down again and draws in the sand.
Enter six funeral attendants in brown with some mourners. One of them
carries a banner with the insignia of the Carpenters, draped in brown
crepe; another a large axe decorated with spruce, a third a cushion with
a chairman's mallet. They stop outside the cafe and wait.)
STRANGER. Excuse me, whose funeral have you been attending?
FIRST MOURNER. A house-breaker's. (He imitates the ticking of a clock.)
STRANGER. A real house-breaker? Or the insect sort, that lodges in the
woodwork and goes 'tick-tick'?
FIRST MOURNER. Both--but mainly the insect sort. What do they call them?
STRANGER (to himself). He wants to fool me into saying the death-watch
beetle. So I won't. You mean a burglar?
SECOND MOURNER. No. (The clock is again heard ticking.)
STRANGER. Are you trying to frighten me? Or does the dead man work
miracles? In that case I'd better explain that my nerves are good, and
that I don't believe in miracles. But I do find it strange that the
mourners wear brown. Why not black? It's cheap and suitable.
THIRD MOURNER. To us, in our simplicity, it looks black; but if Your
Honour wishes it, it shall look brown to you.
STRANGER. A queer company! They give me an uneasy feeling I'd like to
ascribe to the wine I drank yesterday. If I were to ask if that were
spruce, you'd probably say--well what?
FIRST MOURNER. Vine leaves.
STRANGER. I thought it would not be spruce! The cafe's opening, at last!
(The Cafe opens, the STRANGER sits at a table and is served with wine.
The MOURNERS sit at the other tables.) They must have been glad to be
rid of him, if the mourners start drinking as soon as the funeral's
over.
FIRST MOURNER. He was a good-for-nothing, who couldn't take life
seriously.
STRANGER. And who probably drank?
SECOND MOURNER. Yes.
THIRD MOURNER. And let others support his wife and children.
STRANGER. He shouldn't have done so. Is that why his friends speak so
well of him now? Please don't shake my table when I'm drinking.
SECOND MOURNER. When I'm drinking, I don't mind.
STRANGER. Well, I do. There's a great difference between us! (The
MOURNERS whisper together. The BEGGAR comes back.) Here's the beggar
again!
BEGGAR (sitting down at a table). Wine. Moselle!
LANDLORD (consulting a police last). I can't serve you: you've not paid
your taxes. Here's your name, age and profession, and the decision of
the court.
BEGGAR. Omnia serviliter pro dominatione! I'm a free man with a
university education. I refused to pay taxes because I didn't want to
become a member of parliament. Moselle!
LANDLORD. You'll get free transport to the poor house, if you don't get
out.
STRANGER. Couldn't you gentlemen settle this somewhere else. You're
disturbing your patrons.
LANDLORD. You can witness I'm in the right.
STRANGER. No. The whole thing's too distressing. Even without paying
taxes he has the right to enjoy life's small pleasures.
LANDLORD. So you're the kind who'd absolve vagabonds from their duties?
STRANGER. This is too much! I'd have you know that I'm a famous man.
(The LANDLORD and MOURNERS laugh.)
LANDLORD. Infamous, probably! Let me look at the police list, and see if
the description tallies: thirty-eight, brown hair, moustache, blue eyes;
no settled employment, means unknown; married, but has deserted his wife
and children; well known for revolutionary views on social questions:
gives impression he is not in full possession of his faculties.... It
fits!
STRANGER (rising, pale and taken aback). What?
LANDLORD. Yes. It fits all right.
BEGGAR. Perhaps he's on the list. And not me!
LANDLORD. It looks like it. In any case, both of you had better clear
out.
BEGGAR (to the STRANGER). Shall we?
STRANGER. We? This begins to look like a conspiracy.
(The church bells are heard. The sun comes out and illuminates the
coloured rose window above the church door, which is now opened,
disclosing the interior. The organ is heard and the choir singing Ave
Maris Stella.)
LADY (coming from the church). Where are you? What are you doing? Why
did you call me? Must you hang on a woman's skirts like a child?
STRANGER. I'm afraid now. Things are happening that have no natural
explanation.
LADY. But you were afraid of nothing. Not even death!
STRANGER. Death... no. But of something else, the unknown.
LADY. Listen. Give me your hand. You're ill, I'll take you to a doctor.
Come!
STRANGER. If you like. But tell me: is this carnival, or... reality?
LADY. It's real enough.
STRANGER. This beggar must be a wretched fellow. Is it true he resembles
me?
LADY. He will, if you go on drinking. Now go to the post office and get
your letter. And then come with me.
STRANGER. No, I won't. It'll only be about lawsuits.
LADY. If not?
STRANGER. Malicious gossip.
LADY. Well, do as you wish. No one can escape his fate. At this moment
I feel a higher power is sitting in judgment on us and has made a
decision.
STRANGER. You feel that, too! I heard the hammer fall just now; and the
chairs being pushed back. The clerk's being sent to find me! Oh, the
suspense! No, I can't follow you.
LADY. Tell me, what have you done to me? In the church I found I
couldn't pray. A light on the altar was extinguished and an icy wind
blew in my face when I heard you call me.
STRANGER. I didn't call you. But I wanted you.
LADY. You're not as weak as you pretend. You have great strength; and
I'm afraid of you....
STRANGER. When I'm alone I've no strength at all; but if I can find
a single companion I grow strong. I shall be strong now; and so I'll
follow you.
LADY. Perhaps you can free me from the werewolf.
STRANGER. Who's he?
LADY. That's what I call him.
STRANGER. Count on me. Killing dragons, freeing princesses, defeating
werewolves--that is Life!
LADY. Then come, my liberator!
(She draws her veil over her face, kisses him on the mouth and hurries
out. The STRANGER stands where he is for a moment, surprised and
stunned. A loud chord sung by women's voices, rather like a cry, is
heard from the church. The rose window suddenly grows dark and the tree
above the seat is shaken by the wind. The MOURNERS rise and look at the
sky, as if they could see something terrifying. The STRANGER hurries out
after the LADY.)