Clean Hands (Civilization, Part Three)

Do you mean to say that I am just as bad as you are?

(Trench to Sartorius, Widowers’ Houses by George Bernard Shaw)

***

At the end of Moliere’s The Misanthrope the title character, Alceste, storms off the stage proclaiming his intention to leave society behind and dwell by himself in some place uninfected by other people. One dramatic character who has no desire to abandon society is Harry Trench, one half of the love interest in George Bernard Shaw’s first play, Widowers’ Houses. Like Alceste, Trench appears to be an upright person and, furthermore, as a newly-graduated doctor, he is intent upon doing good for society. Unlike Alceste, he is not a social misfit; he observes the social conventions, among other things, keeping an unpleasant truth from being revealed (to save a daughter’s image of her father), even when doing so, works against his interests.

The unpleasant truth that Trench keeps secret from his fiancée, Blanche Sartorius, is that her father is not a respectable businessman, but a slumlord. Honorable Harry Trench refuses to accept any money from his would-be father-in-law—it is tainted money, screwed out of the poorest citizens of London, who live in ramshackle hovels.

When Trench is challenged by Sartorius about the source of Trench’s own income, the latter claims, “M y* hands are clean as far as that goes,” for the money derives from “Interest on a mortgage.”

“Yes,” responds Sartorius, “a mortgage on my property.”

When I, to use your own words, screw, and bully, and
drive these people to pay what they have freely
undertaken to pay me, I cannot touch one penny of
the money they give me until I have first paid you
your £700 out of it.

And, so, shockingly, Trench learns that his hands aren’t clean.

Likewise, Vivie Warren, in Mrs. Warren’s Profession, another of Shaw’s early “Plays Unpleasant,” owes her comfortable upbringing (financed by profits from brothels) and quality education (her university scholarship was established by the owner of sweatshops) to “tainted” money. Even people of good will and highmindedness cannot escape being tarred by the corruption of their society.

There are no innocents in an imperfect society. And unless society is made perfect, the only way to free oneself from its taint is to flee to a desert island—but, then, what happens if a serpent bites you?

***

*For emphasis Shaw doesn’t italicize or underline; he
s p a c e s the letters (Well, of course, he has to italicize I, though, doesn’t he?).

To Tell the Truth (Civilization, Part Two)

In polite society, custom decrees
That we show certain outward courtesies . . . .
Wouldn’t the social fabric come undone
If we were wholly frank with everyone?

(Philinte to Alceste. The Misanthrope, by Moliere)

***

Philoctetes—marooned on a desert island for almost a decade. One person who would gladly change places with him is Alceste, the title character of Moliere’s The Misanthrope. In Act I he proclaims:

Sometimes, I swear, I’m moved to flee and find
Some desert land unfouled by humankind.

And at the very end of the play (in the last lines but two) as he stomps off to leave French society he reiterates his desire for isolation:

I’ll flee this bitter world where vice is king,
And seek some spot unpeopled and apart
Where I’ll be free to have an honest heart.

Strangely, what leads Alceste to his misanthropy is his idealism. He demands that mankind should never dissemble, that men

be sincere, and never part
With any word that isn’t from the heart.

When challenged by Philinte:

Then you’d tell old Emilie it’s pathetic
The way she daubs her features with cosmetic
And plays the gay coquette at sixty-four? . . .
And you’d call Dorilas a bore,
And tell him every ear at court is lame
From hearing him brag about his noble name?

Alceste stands his ground, replying, “I would.” He would spare no one: “All are corrupt.” And because “mankind has grown so base,” Alceste claims he is determined “to break with the whole human race.”

Philinte understands that mankind is (and always will be) imperfect; he points out that just as

the vulture dines upon the dead.
And wolves are furious, and apes ill-bred

it is natural for humans to be “knavish, selfish and unjust."

But he takes “men as they are,” recognizing their faults but refusing to “storm and rave” about them like Alceste. Your “philosophic rage,” Philinte tells him, “is a bit extreme/You’ve no idea how comical you seem.”

The “manners of our days” are most typified, according to Philinte, by the “flighty” Celimene, a young widow of “brittle malice and coquettish ways.” Yet she is the one whom Alceste favors. “How is it,” Philinte asks him,

that the traits you most abhor
Are bearable in this lady you adore?

Alceste admits that he sees Celimene’s faults, but he’s helpless to resist her, for “reason doesn’t rule in love, you know.”

Celimene, for her part, is surrounded by beaux, whom she quite blithely mocks in her letters. One letter that is passed on to Alceste gets him into a rage, because it seems to profess affection for a rival. But in the irrational weakness of his love for her, he asks her to

Take back that mocking and perverse confession;
Defend this letter and your innocence,
And I, poor fool, will aid in your defense.
Pretend, pretend, that you are just and true,
And I shall make myself believe in you.

And so it is down to this: the upholder of truthful speaking at all costs is forced by the irrational passion of his love to beg for pretense. Alceste, the idealist, is a misanthrope because he hates mankind’s inability to be perfect. But he has set the bar for mankind’s behavior far above the level that anyone can attain. Not even he can live by his principles. And any principles that cannot be lived by are as worthless as ships that can’t float or airplanes that can’t fly.

A recent fortune cookie told me that “Compromise is always wrong if it means sacrificing a principle.” Unfortunately, that cookie didn’t crumble correctly; a principle must be sacrificed when it is incompatible with reality And the test is: can it be lived by?

But, perhaps, there is a way to make sure that one needn’t sacrifice one’s principles: as noted at the beginning of this essay, Alceste is determined at the end of the play, to make good on his vow to separate himself from the rest of civilization. If he follows through, then he will be “free to have an honest heart,” for there will be nothing to confound him.

***

Note 1: Translations from the French by Richard Wilbur.
Note 2: We will re-visit Alceste in a later posting.

Lovers and Losers (Part Three)

Dum spiro, spero

(While I breathe, I hope.)

***

Tennis Match (Scenario 1):

It is match point for the server, but it is second serve. The receiver watches as the ball arches toward the far corner of the service box. He lunges for it, but to no avail. The ball, with the help of the wispiest of breezes, kicks up chalk; the serve is an ace and the receiver plunges into despair as the match is lost.

Tennis Match (Scenario 2):

It is match point for the receiver, and it is second serve. The receiver watches as the ball arches toward the far corner of the service box. He lunges for it, but to no avail. The ball, with the help of the wispiest of breezes, however, lands just outside the service box. It is a double fault. The receiver throws his racket into the air in joy at his triumph.

Now, what should be apparent from these scenarios is that in neither case did the receiver’s actions play any role in the outcome of the point. The laws of physics, the law of gravity, and the whim of Mother Nature determined where the ball would ultimately land. And yet, where the ball landed determined the receiver's emotional reaction. He let forces outside his command control him.*

***

In a recent article on Slate.com** Daniel Engber wrote of his rooting for the underdog (or whoever was behind in the game) during the 2010 NCAA basketball tournament:

Soon I found myself cheering for a Spartans team that couldn't get it together in the second half. They made a late run—closing to within one point in the final minute—but, alas, my disappointment was guaranteed. (If Michigan State had come back, I would have been pulling for Butler.) When the game ended, I fell into a sour mood.

So, here is a man who didn’t dribble one ball, shoot one basket, or attempt one free throw falling into “a sour mood” because of events completely out of his control.

***

Surely, the absurdity of allowing, like the tennis receiver or Mr. Engber or the pale lover of Suckling’s poem, agents beyond one’s control to determine one’s emotional well-being should be strikingly evident. To allow oneself to be blown about by the whims of others or to concede to the forces of nature the power to subject one to joy or despair is to surrender one’s emotional autonomy; in reality, to concede that one is a loser. And a loser has only one fallback—hope.

Hope is the food of losers.

***

At the beginning of this essay I quoted words written in his copy of Shakespeare’s Second Folio by King Charles I of England while imprisoned after being dethroned by the forces of Parliament. Charles was the consummate loser; he lost his breath, his hope, and his head simultaneously.

***

*In The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance, W. Timothy Gallwey looks at this from the perspective of the tennis ball.

**Daniel Engber, “The Underdog Effect: Why do we love a loser?” Available at: http://www.slate.com/id/2252372

Lovers and Losers (Part Two)

One of the loveliest ballads in the Great American Songbook is “I’ll Be Around” (words and music by Alec Wilder). It goes (in part):

I'll be around,
No matter how
You treat me now
I'll be around from now on.

Your latest love
Can never last,
And when it’s past,
I'll be around when he's gone.

A beautiful song—but totally wrong-headed.

The persona, having been dumped (once again) by his* former flame, will put his life on hold until she changes her mind and returns to him (he thinks). He is in despair now, but will be in seventh heaven when she recognizes that he is the true and steadfast lover. Unfortunately, no one can make another person love him (or her). And, so, the persona is left to spend his days allowing the fickleness and whims of another to control his emotional destiny.

He would do well to consider the advice offered in the third (and final) stanza of Sir John Suckling’s “Why So Pale and Wan?”:

Quit, quit for shame, this will not move,
This cannot take her;
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her;
The devil take her.

***

*The persona can, of course, be a woman.

Lovers and Losers (Part One)

A young actor, plucked from obscurity, is chosen to play Hamlet in a major new London production of Shakespeare’s tragedy. His director, knowing that the young actor will benefit from all the advice he can get, arranges an interview for him with Sir ____, the last of the great actor-managers, whose fame rests on his countless tours with his troupe, bringing the classics to regional theaters throughout Great Britain.
So, early one morning the young man boards a train to Leeds, where the grand old man of the theater is to play the title role in King Lear. Sir ____ is decidedly generous with his time, spending several hours describing his Hamlet experiences and answering the young actor’s questions. At last, Sir _____ gets up from his chair and begins to escort the other man to the door.
“You must excuse me,” the theatrical knight says, “but I must begin my preparations for this evening’s performance.”
“I want to thank you for your time and patience,” says the young man, “but, if you don’t mind, I do have one last, rather strange question. At any time during the course of the play, does Hamlet ever sleep with Ophelia?”
“Well,” answers Sir ____, “I can’t speak for London, but in the provinces, most definitely.”*

***

In actuality, from evidence in the play it is clear that Hamlet and Ophelia were never lovers. In Act II, Scene 1, Ophelia relates to her father, Polonius, the following appearance of Hamlet:

My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
No hat upon his head; his stockings foul'd,
Ungarter'd, and down-gyved to his ankle;
Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors,--he comes before me.

And what is Polonius’ response to this?

Mad for thy love?

Why is that Polonius’ instantaneous response?

Consider this excerpt from As You Like It (Act III, Scene 2), which was written at about the same time as Hamlet:

ROSALIND (disguised as Ganymed)
There is a man haunts the forest, that
abuses our young plants with carving 'Rosalind' on
their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies
on brambles, all, forsooth, deifying the name of
Rosalind: if I could meet that fancy-monger I would
give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the
quotidian of love upon him.

ORLANDO
I am he that is so love-shaked: I pray you tell me
your remedy.

ROSALIND
There is none of my uncle's marks upon you: he
taught me how to know a man in love; in which cage
of rushes I am sure you are not prisoner.

ORLANDO
What were his marks?

ROSALIND
A lean cheek, which you have not, a blue eye and
sunken, which you have not, an unquestionable
spirit, which you have not, a beard neglected,
which you have not; but I pardon you for that, for
simply your having in beard is a younger brother's
revenue: then your hose should be ungartered, your
bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe
untied and every thing about you demonstrating a
careless desolation; but you are no such man; you
are rather point-device in your accoutrements as
loving yourself than seeming the lover of any other.

Rosalind’s description of “her uncle” is that of the classic picture of the courtly lover who has been rejected by the woman he is enamored with. Disconsolate, he has no concerns about his appearance or most anything else in the world.
And, it is clear, Rosalind’s description of the rejected lover fits Hamlet down to his socks. (Earlier in Hamlet, Polonius had ordered Ophelia to have nothing further to do with Hamlet, and the dutiful daughter obviously obeyed.)

Most people, I would guess, do not realize that before Romeo set eyes on Juliet, he was mooning over Rosaline.

Act I, Scene 1
BENVOLIO
What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?
ROMEO
Not having that, which, having, makes them short.
BENVOLIO
In love?
ROMEO
Out--
BENVOLIO
Of love?
ROMEO
Out of her favour, where I am in love.

And that exchange explains this description of his son’s behavior by Romeo’s father (also I,1):

Many a morning hath he there been seen,
With tears augmenting the fresh morning dew.
Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs;
But all so soon as the all-cheering sun
Should in the furthest east begin to draw
The shady curtains from Aurora's bed,
Away from the light steals home my heavy son,
And private in his chamber pens himself,
Shuts up his windows, locks far daylight out
And makes himself an artificial night.

A few decades after Hamlet and AYLI, Sir John Suckling wrote the lines that best satirized the image of the disconsolate, disheveled rejected lover:

“Why so pale and wan fond lover?” (First two stanzas)

Why so pale and wan fond lover?
Prithee why so pale?
Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee why so pale?

Why so dull and mute young sinner?
Prithee why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can't win her,
Saying nothing do't?
Prithee why so mute?

***

*This joke I have retained in my memory for about half a century. As I recollect, I heard it on the Tonight Show when it was hosted by Jack Paar. I have always thought that it was told by the actor Laurence Harvey—but, then again, I have always associated the following joke with Harvey and the Tonight Show (so, after all this time, who knows who told what joke?):

A London bobby is given an unexpected half a day off.
He arrives home about mid-day to discover his wife in bed with three men.
“Allo! Allo! Allo! What’s all this then?”
The wife lifts herself up from the pillows and says, “What’s the matter? You not talking to me now?”

Meaningless

I was chagrined to discover some hours after I sent an email announcing my last blog post that the mailing had an erroneous subject line: it read “wallet” instead of “No Sweat.” Now, I am interested in what I call “errorology”—the understanding of how and why mistakes are made (I’m sure there’s a technical term for this, of which I’m totally unaware). Why, for instance, did a number of students one semester think that a poem by Poet A was written by Poet B?*

The explanation for my error was simple:

I usually compose my emails and other documents in Word. If you are sending multiple emails during a single on-line session, the email template will retain the address(es) of the previous recipient(s) and the previous subject line. In the case of the “wallet” email, I added everyone’s address to that of the recipient of the previous email (my daughter) but neglected to delete the previous subject line and paste the new subject, even though I had copied “No Sweat” from the body of the text itself.

My excuse for this (probably) tedious explanation is to point out that not all human actions have a meaningful connection with other actions. The placement of “wallet” as the subject of the text of “No Sweat” did not have any metaphysical or deep symbolic meaning. It was purely a screw-up. In this world, coincidences can be insignificant,** correspondences can be irrelevant, and seeming causes can have no relationship to effects.

Then again, it might be “The Normalvision Code.”

***

*The layout of the poetry book from page to page caused the confusion.

**Freudians in the audience, please refrain from making something of the obvious (?) female sexual symbolism of "wallet."

No Sweat

Bill Rigney, a former major-league shortstop and manager, once stated that while fans appreciated spectacular plays on the baseball field, professionals appreciated the routine. In a similar vein, Oleg Kolzig, who was the long-time number-one goaltender for the Washington Capitals hockey team, asserted that when he made a spectacular save, it was because he had been doing something wrong. If he had been in the perfect position, the stop of the puck would have been routine.

Consider the tournament golfer who has saved par on a difficult hole by sinking a spectacular putt from the edge of the green, causing the spectators to go wild. His putting feat merely covers up the fact that in his approach play he has done something wrong: perhaps a tee shot into the rough or a chip into a bunker. Compare his play to that of a competitor who has holed out a gimme three-footer for his par on that hole. He has hit the fairway, avoiding the rough and the bunkers, with accurate shots to land on the perfect spot on the green. One would hope that a few of the spectators who whooped at the first golfer’s putt would nod in appreciation of the solid, routine professionalism of the second golfer.

In my ballet days (no, not me in a tutu)—let’s amend that to ballet-going days, my favorite (male) dancer was Jacques d’Amboise of the New York City Ballet. One of the aspects of his work that I appreciated most was that no matter how difficult the task that George Balanchine laid out for him, d’Amboise seemed to accomplish it without showing us the effort involved. No “I’m going to do this grand jeté now; notice the oomph I’m putting into it.” The effortless effort was, of course, the result of hours and hours of effort in behind-the-scenes practice to make the spectacular routine.

I think it is worthwhile comparing the accomplishment of the routinizing of performance with the exertions of those needy singers and actors who beg us for our love with performances that cry out: “Look at all I’m doing for you! Look at my blood! Look at my sweat! Look at my tears!”