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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL .SOTUDY OF PLACE OF
INDETERMINACY IN AXEL AND TINY ALICE

 

presented by

Marcellette G. Williams

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph. D. degree in English

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'vx

 

 

 

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY OF PLACE OF
INDETERMINACY IN AXEL AND TINY ALICE

 

By

Marcellette Gay Williams

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

l98l

may \.._ \ \ .0

ABSTRACT

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY OF PLACE OF
INDETERMINACY IN AXEL AND TINY ALICE

By
Marcellette Gay Williams

The plays Agel_and Tiny Afljge_are both provocative departures
from the norms of 19th century French and 20th century American drama.
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's Aégl heralded the genesis of Symbolist drama.
Edward Albee's Iigy_Alige, though not generally regarded as Symbolist
drama, has sufficient assumptions of Symbolism to pose similar prob-
lems of critical study. To the extent that Symbolism celebrates the
subjective poetic response and the expression of that response as the
proper concern and ultimate aim of art, so also it has engendered
variance in the critical responses often concerning the indetermina-
cies of such literature. The question is by what method and with what
criteria does one approach and analyze the communication of uniquely
personal feelings in a literary work.1

A possible answer to such a question resides in a description
of a mode of being of the literary work and its corresponding struc-
ture within which the mode of giveness peculiar to the literary work
is established.

Almost concurrent with the development of Symbolism in litera-

ture was the development of Phenomenology in philosophy. A

Marcellette Gay Williams

phenomenological model of reading espoused by Roman Ingarden, a
student of Husserl, the progenitor of Phenomenology, provides an
appropriate and effective reference for the consideration of the
question.

Ingarden's theory furnishes both method and structure for a
study of the relationship between the determinacies and indeterminacies
of the represented objectivities, the products of intentional con-
sciousness.2 This theory emphasizes the cognition of the literary
work and the attempt to conceive artistic structure in terms of the
concepts of strata and phases.

I shall treat the plays as literary works rather than as
stage plays.3 The latter contain means of representation precluded
by the essential nature of a literary work. The difference and its
effect on audience will be discussed.

To rehearse: it is the intent of this study to situate a
model of reading within a philOSOphical and chronological frame
which parallels the two plays and to study the structural and the-
matic significance of ”indeterminancy" in the two literary texts,
thereby suggesting a methodology and criteria for preaesthetic inves-

tigation and evaluation.

Marcellette Gay Williams

FOOTNOTES--ABSTRACT

l
’ Louise M. Rosenblatt, L'Idée de l'art pour l'art dans la
litterature anglaise pendant la période victorienne (Paris: Libraire
Ancienne Honoré Champion, l93l), pp. 299-300.

2Roman Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, l973), p. 50.

3Louise M. Rosenblatt, The Reader, The Text, The Poem
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, l978), p. l3.

Copyright by
MARCELLETTE GAY WILLIAMS
198l

To Keith A. Williams
and

Jonathan Keith Williams

with love

ii

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Dr. John Yunck, Chairman, Dr. Arthur Athanason,
Dr. Alan M. Hollingsworth, Dr. Herbert Josephs, Dr. Linda Wagner, and
Dr. Robert L. Wright for having agreed to serve on my doctoral com-
mittee and for having provided insight, encouragement, and valuable
editing.

A special thank you to Dr. E. Fred Carlisle who insisted that
I not permit my commitment to my job to overwhelm my continued work
on this project.

To my family, friends, and colleagues who urged me to comple—
tion and lent moral support goes sincere appreciation.

And to Sue, Linda, Teresa, and Lehua whose enormous strengths

and exceptional models sustained my efforts I shall always be grateful.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter
I. THE CRITICAL PARADIGM: AUTHOR, TEXT, READER

Footnotes-~Chapter I .

II. A PHENOMENOLOGICAL MODEL OF READING. ROMAN INGARDEN'S
LITERARY WORK OF ART . . . . - . .

Footnotes--Chapter II
III. AXEL .

Footnotes-~Chapter III
IV- 1mm

Footnotes-—Chapter IV
V. CONCLUSION .

Footnotes--Chapter V

BIBLIOGRAPHY

iv

Page

16

20
36
39
9T
93
l59
I63
T69
l7O

CHAPTER I

THE CRITICAL PARADIGM: AUTHOR, TEXT, READER

In l886 the first completed version of Villiers de l'Isle

Adam's Axgl_was published. It heralded the beginning of Symbolist
drama and as such proved a striking contrast to the realism and
naturalism that then presided over the French stage.1 Its critical
reception labeled it "mysterious . . . abrupt . . . wanting in action

. unnecessarily stylized,"2 a synthesis of years of authorial
philosophical reflection,3 an archetypal repository for all the heroes
of the Symbolists.4 Seventy-eight years later on the other side of
the Atlantic, Edward Albee offered Tiny Alice, a drama of strikingly

5

similar metaphysical concerns and Symbolist tenets, as his own aberra-

tion from the norm of a peculiarly American realism.6 It was called

"8 a "perpetrated hoax,"9

ll

a "metaphysical mystery,"7 ”liturgical drama,

"10 II and

"unreal in its action, affection contradicted by irony,"
"a substantial and impressive work."12 In the case of neither play
have critics had a congenial or appropriate frame of reference or set
of criteria by which to judge the works. Considerations of the plays
as departures from the norm only result in descriptions of what they
are not. Interviews with the authors and reports of their particu-
lar theatrical occupations can inform us of stated authorial intent
yet reveal little, if anything, of text. On some rare occasion will

l

a critic proffer a direction of analysis which is provocative in its
approach. One such offering suggested as a point of departure for the
clarification of Tiny Alice ". . . that it is obscure" rather than
accept such an observation as a conClusion to any analysis, but then
adds, "after one accepts this kind of obscurity he can concentrate
on Albee's reason for creating it."13 It should be acceptable to
consider the obscurities, to look at the text, without a concern for
the author's reason for having them there. What is clear in this
critical debate is the great variance in assumptions, however uncer-
tain, underlying the critical act. At times the focus is on the
author; other times it is on the text; always implied is the reader
in varying states of consciousness.

To say that meaning is the goal of reading is a fact and one
which assumes an author, a text, and a reader. To say what or even
where meaning resides is quite another matter, and one which requires
some attention because its consideration is intrinsic to the paradigm
with which literary criticism ultimately is concerned. Indeed, the
function of literary criticism is itself not a clearly defined issue.
We are told that its function is "to put the reader in possession of

14 ”to comment on the relationship between meaning

the work of art,"
and a person, a conception, a situation,"15 ”to talk about what the
poet knows but what he himself cannot say,”16 "to guard and defend
the culture,"17 "to reflect more of the dynamics of a reading, report—
ing it as an event in time, in a particular personal or environing
content for the purpose of sharing rather than prescribing perspec-

l8

tive." From the perusal of such a recitation it is apparent that

 

various theories of criticism posit meaning alternatively with author,
text, "right“ reader, or with the transaction between or among them.
Clearly I demonstrate a preference for the genesis of meaning by the
particular model of reading selected for this study. However, assump—
tions regarding the locus of meaning is such a crucial consideration
that a brief review of selected models of reading assumed by current
proponents of the various elements of the paradigm is very much in

order.

 

In Validity and Interpretation, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., makes a r“
case for the author's intention as the guide and only guide for cor- Ni
rect reading,19 a position postulated out of his understandable dis-
comfort with the implications of theories akin to the notion of
semantic autonomy. A ”banished author” had invited such phrases as
”best reading” with its implicit corollary of ”best reader,” or ”right

"20 u "2] " ”22 and other such

reader, sensitive reader, mature reader,
honorifically qualified readers, the penultimate of whom (one dare not
preclude the possibility of a reader inspired with divine vision)
would be the super-critic. Such specious inventions are, of course,
necessitated by the desire to escape the chaos of a democracy of

23 Without an author, Hirsch argues, as the determiner of

readings.
meaning, no interpretation can correspond to the meaning of the text
since the text itself cannot have a determinate meaning.24 To avoid
the trap of what he calls radical historicism,25 roughly, what a text
means to us today, (whether "us" be defined as new society or author

of the original text in question) Hirsch most exactingly distinguishes

between authorially intended textual meaning and a ”response” to the

 

text. The former he calls ”meaning," the latter, "significance.”26

Thus, even changing authorial responses are rendered irrelevant to
concerns of authorial intention. It becomes evident fairly quickly,
then, that Hirsch's construct admits the idea of the "intentional
fallacy" but only as it might apply to the more mundane question of
an author's artistic success, his stylistic effectiveness in conveying
what he intends, but not to the authorially intended meanings them-
selves. He regards the judgments of accomplishment, not intention,
as the object of evaluation.27
It is further necessary to clarify in this Hirschian construct
that the idea of meaning is obviously not all possibilities of mean-
ing--unconscious and conscious—-but quite specifically "verbal mean-
ings.”28 This specification necessarily excludes psychologistic
meaning experiences, any number of which could never provide access
to either the author's meaning experience or, more to the point, the
author's verbal meaning. Verbal meaning is ultimately defined as
”that aspect of a speaker's intention which, under linguistic conven-

29 In addition to the individual

tions, may be shared by others."
principle of authorial will, a social principle of linguistic genres
is also implied in this universe of verbal meaning. The principle
which informs this universe is the Principle of Sharability, the
definitive element in all linguistic norms,30 and one which here
squarely focuses on linguistic function rather than structure.

By virtue of the exclusivity of his own very careful dis—

tinctions and definitions, Hirsch argues that there is presently no

known normative concept other than the author's meaning which is uni-
versally compelling and generally sharable. He asks that we concur
that "on purely practical grounds, therefore, it is preferable to

3] To the

agree that the meaning of a text is the author's meaning."
extent that Hirsch's model promises relief from the din of voices
claiming best reader status, so also it is inviting; but when criti-
cal thumbs can, in effect, merely extract authorial plums the fare,
disappointingly, pales. It appears that Hirsch, too, was not satis-

fied with what he had "intended" in Validity in Interpretation. Three

 

years after its publication in the essay, "The Three Dimensions of
Hermeneutics,“ he speaks in somewhat less authorial terms: “. . . the
meaning of a text is not an independent reality, but a reality that we
ourselves have willed into existence. We, not our texts, are the
makers and hostelers of the meanings we understand, the text being
only the occasion for meaning, and devoid of that consciousness where

"32 It appears that Hirsch has re—thought or is

meaning abides.
re-thinking the ontological status of a text which admits disparately
construed meanings. Indeed, meaning itself is redefined as "that
which is re-created, re-spoken when an interpreter realizes a text

. meaning is nothing more or less than the determinate sense of a
text for an interpreter."33 That this new definition now embraces
those interpreters who may disregard authorial will clearly announces
a more moderate pendulum apex and makes explicit the necessary dis-

tinction between intention and meaning. We are reminded of Northrup

Frye's tautologically expressed idea of intention: a poet's intention

is “directed towards putting words together, not towards aligning

words with meaning."34

More immediately, Hirsch's new definition
reiterates the query, from whence does control emanate, what is the
genesis of meaning?

Murray Krieger responds in almost canonical rhetoric in his

Theory of Criticism which celebrates the literary work of art as

 

self-referential. His particular paradigm is brilliantly illuminated
by the Work made flesh, before which the submitted reader kneels in
adoration waiting to be ”overcome by it, surrendering his own con-

t,ll35

texts to i and being rewarded with a ”new way of seeing that

expands his normal capacities, renders them more precise, and permits

'"36 While it may

him to face up to a new consciousness of 'reality.
be true that the promise of a bestowal of such beatific visions has
its own seductively aromatic incense, one need only recall that our
context here is reading, with its concomitant expectation of meaning,
not ritual with its promise of transcending reward. That Krieger
imparts such essential import to the literary work is not in itself
objectionable or problematic, but that he posits the mode of existence
of the literary work in the realm of faith frustrates us with its
implicit corollary charge of heretical to any reading consciousness
which is less than totally submitted. At times Krieger's tones are
almost patronizing in his understanding of a reader's "rage for pure,
unimpeded experience that resists the intervention of cool rational-

ity."37 And lest a reader feel he has no way to grace, Krieger pre-

sents the theorist "as thrusting himself between reader and poem with

a priori principles that preclude the open innocence of a free
empiricism, imposing his discursive continuities and overrunning
incoherence.“38 The literary theorist/critic (who does not fear the
autonomy of the text), then, and not the author is really the priest
of the metaphor. To the author falls ”a repetition of genesis in
the finite mind since, by lifting up anew the language that ties him

the poet takes on the incarnating power, the power to turn words into

living substance, into breathing flesh itself.”39 The author is the
divinely inspired writer of scripture. The distinction between critic _
and poet and the responsibilities and importance of each is very .

clearly drawn:

It is the critic's responsibility, then, to create the ideas
that must be made available to the poet. These the poet can
only combine: they are his received materials, but their
creation is not under his control qua poet. The critic's
task is ”analysis and discovery,” the poet's is only ”synthe-
sis and exposition.”40

It comes as no surprise that in this model the meaning resides
in the words which remain only marks on a page “awaiting the mind

”41 Krieger's phrasing here is crucial;

that brings them to meaning.
the mind neither brings nor construes meaning, but rather brings the
words to meaning; it is the readerly act of transubstantiation. Both
the mimetic and expressive theories collapse in the path of this new
poetic that gives the poem the power to totally reconstitute its
meaning. For Krieger the question is not the poem as mirror of real-
ity or the poem as mirror of the lamp because in either case the poem
is a mirror; rather, the new poetic makes the poem itself into a lamp,

”42

"itself the expressive source of meaning. In his haste to garb

his "guardians and defenders of culture (who) shepherd its newest

forms"43

in clerical attire, Krieger appears to have ignored the fact
that they are first of all readers who do indeed engage the text
directly--and rightly so. It is simply not the case, even in this
model, that a divinely bestowed compendium of literary theoretical
assumptions constitutes the sacrament of Holy Orders which in turn
allows the unapologetic, direct, intimate engaging of a literary work.
To shroud a theory of literature (criticism) in ecclesiastical
(ir)relevancies may make it a fixed form "resisting the flow from
past to future that denies the present as a possible category of
thought"44--to use Krieger's own Keatsian analogy--but it contributes
precious little to ontological considerations of meaning which ack-
nowledge the agt_of reading.

If in his flight from the confusion of right, best, mature, and
sensitive readers Hirsch sought refuge in authorial will; and if, in
his escape from intending authors and egalitarian readings Krieger
retreated to the literary work as scriptual covenant, then we should
wince no more (or no less) when in his eagerness to expound his belief
that "reading is an activity, and that meaning, insofar as it can be
specified, is coextensive with that activity,"45 Stanley Fish affec-
tively engages the mind itself in the act of making sense. The meta-
phor employed here is the broader and more powerful one of the good
physician, specifically, the dialectician. Fish argues that the
success of the dialectical presentation is dependent on its own

abandonment, its self-consumption, as it were. The reader "(or at

least his inferior self) is consumed as he responds to the medicinal
purging of the dialectician's art, and that art, like the medicines,
is consumed in the workings of its own best effects."46 The self-
consumed artifact succeeds, then, when it ”points away from itself

to something its forms cannot capture . . . it is concerned less with
the making of a better poem than with the making of better persons."47
By extending his aesthetic of the good physician to an underlying
assumption of literary theory, it is clear that Fish regards the
reader and not the work as the proper object of analysis thereby,
in a braggadocious gesture of critical daring, embracing the Affective
Fallacy. ”But of course,”48 he postulates with self-evident inflec-
tion, “the poem itself as an object of specifically critical judgment

49 suggesting somehow that the notion is implicit

tends to disappear,”
in the activity of reading. The question precisely concerns what
Wimsatt and Beardsley regard as a confusion between the poem and its
result. The contextualist position that “what it means is what it
is" is anathema to Fish who argues that “what it does is what it
means.”50 He assumes further that to regard the literary work as a
container from which a reader extracts a message is to ignore the
temporal perspective of the reading process. Contrastingly, meaning
as "what it does” acknowledges the event, “something that happens to,
and with the participation of, the reader.“51
To argue the efficacy of his postulate, Fish examines this

line from Paradise Lost (1, 335): "Nor did they not perceive the

evil plight" and shows it to be problematic only if it is regarded as

 

l0

an object promising meaning in its essence. However, the sentence as
occurrence eliminates any problem by admitting that the reader's
experience of the not truly double negation, the unfulfilled expecta-
tions, and the syntactic uncertainty is what permits a sense of
closure to the question "did they or didn't they?" The event, the
co-creative happening to the reader, responds with “they did and they
didn't." But it is not to the intricate critical potential of such a
promising line that Fish's methodology is shown in its clearest
relief, but rather to Umamore seemingly mundanely assertive sentences
which in their "contextual" paucity hold the big guns of exegesis
agreeably at bay. Fish regards as unfortunate that "most methods of
analysis Operate at so high a level of abstraction that the basic
data of the meaning experience'Hsslighted and/or obscured."52 His
own method is one in which the question "what is the work about?"

has no place; it is an analysis of the temporal responses of the
reader in relation to the work rather than an analysis of the features
of the work; the result of this methodology describes the structure
of the response and may in fact contrast with or only abstrusely

53 Its direction of focus is away from evaluation and

relate to text.
toward description, making no assumptions of literary superiority.

The carte blanche veneer of the method does have its constraints: the
system of rules shared by the speakers of the language, and semantic
competence.54 Fish's reader is an "informed” reader whom he defines

as "a competent speaker of the language out of which the text is built

up . . . in full possession of the semantic knowledge of a mature

ll

55 His method (though he

listener . . . has literary experience."
insists it is not really method but "process")56 asserts his refusal
to be intimidated by the compelling physicality of text; he would
rather have "an acknowledged and controlled subjectivity than an
objectivity which is finally an illusion."57 The extent of Fish's
insistence on an affective response to ontological considerations of
meaning quite probably is in direct proportion to the extent of his
disgust with methods which, while virtually ignoring language, its
constituents and its Operations, seek to determine what distinguishes
literature from ordinary language.58
To the extent that I have illustrated methodologies of select
authorship which posit meaning in authorial intention, the Work
itself, and the mind of the reader respectively, so also I have
implied a need for a model of reading which ever broadens, not limits,
its purview of polysemous meanings while insisting on ontological
premises which explicitly acknowedge phil050phical foundations to serve
as guiding principles in criticism. Such a model must assume reading

59 It seem perhaps an embarrass-

to be an activity, not an artifact.
ingly simplistic assumption but one that needs voice; because, while

it may be more critically prudent to be textually objective than
affectively tolerant, tacit support for somnambulistic states of mind
that make of reading an act of willing beyond a reader's competence and
make of readers surrendered consciousnesses, potential disabilities,

or cases for remediation must be recognized for the insidious approval

that it is. No matter how imposingly wroughtthe facade of permanence

 

 

l2

of "the literary work of art,“ the epistemological earth shifts and
slides beneath the feet of those in the throes of rendering to read—
ers "what it is, what it means." If to the notion of "reader" we
extended the privileges implicit in the notion of "consenting
adult," there perhaps would result a more comfortable facility with
which the third part of the critical paradigm (the reader) be regarded.
To neglect to distinguish between the kind of theories that civilize
criticism and the kind of theories that reduce it to quandry is to
conscribe an arena ensuring the perpetuity of critical restriction.
Such civilizing criticism must emerge from behind the screens of empty
metaphor.

The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of

the Literary Work by Louise M. Rosenblatt represents such an emergence.

 

It is essential to note at the outset that the theory she expounds
regards neither tabula rasa readers awaiting the imprint of "the

poem” nor psychologizing readers bringing context to ”the poem” but
rather readers who encounter a text "and proceed to meet the basic
questions that flow from this event.”60 While admitting author, text,
and reader, this model focuses on readers encountering a text and,
more significantly, construes a paradigm for literary criticism that
sets ontological constraints on meaning within the transaction61 (not
interaction) between a reader and a text. There has been no reference
in this paragraph to the literary work or the poem--except as ironi-
cally presented in quotation marks. Rosenblatt eliminates an enormous

confusion in critical theory by semantically distinguishing between

A

 

T3

"the text" and "the poem." By text is designated "a set or series
of signs interpretable as linguistic symbols . . . printed signs in

"62 Poem, on the other hand, is

their capacity to serve as symbols.
an event in time and designates "the whole category of aesthetic
transactions between readers and texts without implying the greater
or lesser 'poeticity' of any specific genre."63 Nothing her model
postulates attempts in any way to denigrate any notion of author.
Indeed, it is the author's creative activity to which the text gives
outward and visible evidence. But the result of that activity is
not a poem, the requisite of which is "always a reader, if only the
author himself."64 Neither is text merely an assumed element; it is
an essential but not "sufficient condition for the re-creation of a
particular work."65

In large measure the failure of literary criticism to provide
a more stable definition of the literary work of art has resulted in
precisely those tenuous and tentative pr0positions of sometimes valid,
often unreconcilable claims. It is this constant state of ambiguity
and doubt that has accounted for what I call the pendulum syndrome.
Refusing to fall victim to such syndrome, Rosenblatt distinguishes
between two reading stances; aesthetic and efferent. The distinction
is derived from what the reader does. In aesthetic reading "the
reader's attention is centered directly on what he is living through

t. "66

during his relationship with that particular tex In efferent

reading, on the other hand, "the primary concern of the reader is with

"67

what he will carry away from the reading. Not only does this

 

 

l4

distinction imply that the same text may be read from either stance,
but also is it essential to this model's paradigm for literary criti-
cism in which a critic moves from "an intensely realized aesthetic
transaction with a text to reflection on semantic or technical or
other details in order to return to, and correlate them with, that
particularly personally apprehended aesthetic reading."68 That is
to say, close textual analysis constitutes efferent reading, a neces-
sary but insufficient condition of criticism. This model, then,
might define as literary works ”all readings in which the reader
attends to the lived through experience engendered by the text."69
Text for Rosenblatt is both open and constrained having two criteria
for valid interpretation: "that the reader's interpretation not be
contradicted by any element of the text, and that nothing be pro-
jected for which there is no verbal base.”70
It is not my intention here to provide a detailed analysis of
the model of reading postulated by Rosenblatt, but rather to present
it as a model which, while explicitly regarding reading as an activity,
attempts to exclude or relegate to echelons of "lesser? relevance
neither the author nor the text. It is a model which specifically
addresses the "openness" of the text in which the notion of "place
of indeterminacy" would have relevance. It is a model whose advantages
are all complementary to the phenomenological model of Roman Ingarden
to be used in this study and explicated in the following chapter.

Rosenblatt discussed Ingarden in her book and, though she expresses a

general sympathy for his model, she is somewhat uncomfortable with his

 

l5

use of "strata." Any sense of argument or disagreement is, I feel,
inconsequential and more a matter of the semantics of a few select
phrases. I shall refer to this matter again in the consideration

of these phrases in Chapter V. Far more important is the presentation
of a model of reading which insists upon the efficacy of each element
of the paradigm and which provides criteria for the consideration

of each. Ingarden's model is more inclusive than Rosenblatt's in its
specification of the mode of existence of the literary work (with the
dual meaning of both "text" and "poem"); and inasmuch as I regard the
transactional view as described by Rosenblatt as implicit in pheno—
menological methodology as applied by Ingarden, I have selected his
model as the reference for the investigation of the place of inde-
terminancy in Axel and Tiny Alice. It is a model which in its
inclusivity instills intellectual confidence and induces the habit

of thought.

FOOTNOTES--CHAPTER I

1A. W. Raitt, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam et le mouvement sym-
boliste (Paris: Libraire Jose Corti, l965), p. 59.

2Rodolphe Palgen, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam: auteur dramatique
(Paris: Libraire Ancienne Honore Champion, l924), pp. 53, 59, 6l, 65.

 

 

3William T. Conroy, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (Boston: Twayne
Publishers, l978), p. l42.

 

4Edmund Wilson, Axel's Castle (New York: Scribner, l943),
p. 264.

 

5Wilson, Axel's Castle, pp. l9-20.

 

6Ronald Hayman, Theatre and Anti-Theatre (New York: Oxford
University Press, l979), p. l57.

 

7Theophilus Lewis, ”Tiny Alice,” America ll2 (March 6, l965):
336-337.

8Paulette Martin, "A Theatre of Mystery: From the Absurd to
the Religious," Commonweal 84 (September 6, l966): 583.

9Robert Brustein, ”Three Plays and a Protest,” New Republic
l52 (January 23, l965): l52.

l0

 

Harold Clurman, "Tiny Alice," Nation 200 (January l8, l965):
65.

HJohn Stark, ”Camping Out: Tiny Alice and Susan Sontag,"
Players 47 (l972): l66.

12Tom Prideauz, "Who Needs Answers for Albee?" Life 58
(January 29, l965): l4.

13John Stark, ”Camping Out,” p. l67.

14Cleanth Brooks, "Forward," in Critiques and Essays in Criti-
cism, ed. Robert Stallmann (New York: Ronald Press Co., 1949), p. xx.

15E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven:
Yale University Press, l967), pp. 8w9.

 

l6

l7
16Northrup Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1957), p. 5.

17Murray Krieger, Theor of Criticism (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, l976 , p. 8.

18Louise M. Rosenblatt, The Reader, The Text, The Poem
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, l978), p. l49.

 

'9Hirsch, Validity, p. 57.

201. A. Richards, Practical Criticism (New York: Harcourt,
Brace and World, l929), pp. l73-l8l.

21T. 5. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber and Faber,
l957), p. 126.

22Krieger, IDEQEX: p. 6. '£
23Hirsch, Validity, p. 5.

24Ibid., p. 5.

251bid., p. viii.

26Ibid., p. 8.

271bid., p. 12.

28Ibid., p. l8.

291bid., p. 2l8.

30Ibid., p. 3l.

3'Ibid., p. 25.

32E. D. Hirsch, Jr., "Three Dimensions of Hermeneutics,”
New Literary History 3 (l97l): 252.

 

33Ibid., p. 255.

34Frye, Anatomy, p. 86.
35Krieger, Iheeey, p. l7.
36Ibid., p. 204.

37Ibid., p. 5.

381bid., p. 5.

391bid., p. 131.

40Ibid., p. 132.

4'Ipid., p. 13.

42Ibid., p. 82.

43Ibid., p. 8.

44Ibid., p. 208.

45Stanley Fish, Self-Consuming Artifacts (Berkeley: University
of California Press, l972), p. xi.

 

46Ibid., p. 3.
471bid., p. 4.
48Ibid.

49William Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon (Lexington: University of
Kentucky Press, l954), p. 2l.

50Fish, Artifacts, p. 393.

5‘15id., p. 390.

521bid.

53Ibid., p. 399.

54Ibid., p. 402.

55Ibid., p. 405.

56Ibid., p. 426.

571bid., p. 407.

58Ibid., p. 408.

59Eric Havelock, The Ori ins of Western Literac (Toronto:
The Ontario Institute f0rTSEITié$3777§fifiififitfiirfifififinj_%fl l8.

6ORosenblatt, The Reader, The Text, The Poem, p. 5.

l9

611bid., p. l7. Her notion of transaction carries the sense
of reciprocity and duration in contrast to "interaction” with its
implication of "confrontation" and "precipitant."

62Ibid., p. 12.
63Ibid.
64Ibid., p. 15.

651bis., p. 23.

66Ibid., p. 25.

67Ibid., p. 24.

68Ibid., p. l62.

691bid., p. 155.

7OIbid., p. 115.

CHAPTER II

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL MODEL OF READING: ROMAN
INGARDEN'S LITERARY WORK OF ART

Why phenomenology? As Joseph J. Kocklemans has observed, as
soon as the term "phenomenology" is used, one enters the realm of
ambiguity.1 Risking oversimplification, I am nevertheless obliged to
say a few words about the conceptual framework in which Ingarden's
theory of literature--its structure and phases--was conceived. Roman
Ingarden was a student of Edmund Husserl, the name most often recalled
when one speaks of phenomenology.

Extensively described in Cartesian Meditations and Ideas,

 

Husserl's approach required that philosophy be regarded as a vigorous
science; thus, it was essential that the absolute knowledge of things
preclude every possibility of doubt.2 His subject matter, knowledge
and consciousness, made it imperative that he not adopt a point of
view that interpreted or explained actions which themselves were gen-
erated in consciousness; rather, he sought to employ a method that
adhered to the principle of no presuppositions.3 Any acceptable
investigation then must be descriptive. Husserl's phenomenology
describes objects instead of constructing explanations about them.4

Such descriptions are dependent upon a reduction of things

from the particular to the purely general-—its essence. Husserl's

20

2T

"reduction" is, in effect, the procedure by which one occasions the
opportunity to perceive things as they are, unencumbered by any pre-
conceptions; it is a radical attitude of perception, so to speak,
that enables a more profound attention to other aspects of what we
thought we had already perceived.

At least two such reductions are possible: the eidetic and the
phenomenological. In leeee Husserl describes the eidetic direction
leading from the realm of facts to that of general essences and the

phenomenological from the world of realities to that of their ultimate

 

preconceptions.5 Eidetic meaning, then, arises from the consciousness;
the essence of the thing itself is for consciousness; it is the only
way it ”is” at all. Phenomenological reduction disallows any consid—
eration based on the natural attitude—-the frame of mind that holds

the "here" (consciousness) and ”there” (world—out-there)—-but, rather,
espouses consciousness as a pure field and any object as a phenomenon
or appearance within that field. Tymieniecka‘s formulation of the
phenomenologic reduction is apt: she says it consists of ”suspending
successively certain of the natural customary aspects and components

.“6 Thus transformation of our cognitive atti—

of our cognition.
tude from the natural—-providing only confused, uncertain cognition--
to the “reflexive attitude” (in Husserl's view) opens the field of
apodictically certain knowledge.

It is on the issue of transcendentally pure experiences

within the phenomenological attitude that Roman Ingarden takes issue

with his teacher. For Husserl an object is only conceivable as the

22

correlative of an act of consciousness. His focus is on objects
apprehended, not on objects existent in the world. By positing all
reduction within consciousness-—to conceive the real world and its
elements as purely intentional objectivities which have their ontic
and determining basis in the depths of pure consciousness that con-
stitutes them7--Husserl asserts that all modes of being are thus
contingent upon consciousness. Or as Lauer notes, this concept makes
it possible ”to know what something is without any reference at all

to whether it is or not.”8

 

Regarding consciousness itself as a field of experientially
given phenomena yields as a first finding the intentional structure of
consciousness. Any object appears as an object fee or an object
”intended” by a subject--”noema“ intended by ”noesis.” Edie's defini-

tion of intentionality in Speaking and Meaning is succinct: “the

 

ability of consciousness to entertain and hold before itself 'objects,

III9

noemata. Or to phrase it another way, it is a "descriptive char-

acterization of the basic situation in consciousness in which there

lO In

is an attentiveness-to a meaning on the part of a subject.”
other words, it is of the essence of consciousness to form a meaning,
to constitute its own objects thereby making the object of any act an
inseparable aspect of the meaning phenomenon itself."11

In his preface to the first German edition of the Literary
Work of Art, Ingarden described his point of disagreement with
Husserl:

My findings agree with Husserl's view, expressed in his
fermal and Transcendental Logic, that word meanings, sentences,

 

L—_* A.

23

and higher units of meaning are formulations which arise from
subjective conscious operations. Thus they are not ideal
objectivities in the sense in which Husserl himself determined
them in his Logical Investigations. But while Husserl keeps
the term ”ideal" in most instances in his Logic and only at
times adds the word "unreal" (irreal) in parentheses, I have
totally abandoned this term and seek sharply to counterpose
these formations to ideal objectives in the strict sense.

This is the first essential difference: all objectivities
which he previously held to be ideal--in the old sense—-
Husserl now considers to be intentional formations of a
particular kind, and in this way he arrives at a universal
extension of transcendental idealism; whereas I today still
maintain strict ideality of various ideal objectivities

(ideal concepts, ideal individual objects, ideas and essences)
and indeed see in ideal concepts an ontic foundation of word
meanings that enables them to have intersubjective identity
and an ontically autonomous mode of existence. 2

 

Thus Ingarden comes to the literary work of art, not to study
it in and of itself, but rather motivated mainly by general philosophy
with its nagging problem of idealism versus realism. In order to take
a stand against Husserl's transcendental idealism, Ingarden chose to
focus on purely intentional objects so that he could subsequently
determine whether real objectivities had the same structure and mode
of being.

The conceptual framework, then, is Husserl's phenomenology to
which Ingarden is faithfully descriptive in spite of his marked dif-
ferences on the issue of transcendental idealism. It is important to
note here that the phenomenological method does not repudiate the
possibility of explanatory approaches, each yielding its own special
insights; the difference between phenomenological and explanatory
approaches is precisely the difference between description (of the
thing itself) and speculation (about the thing with concomitant

reference to something else). With a basic ontological conclusion--

24

that the literary work is neither psychic nor physical, but rather
intentional-—and a major premise--that literary works have a struc-
ture common to all--Ingarden then proceeds with a description of the
literary work.

He establishes four, although not necessarily inexhaustible,
strata in the literary work: the stratum of linguistic sound forma—
tions, the stratum of meaning units, the stratum of represented objec-
tivities, and the stratum of schematized aspects. There is an eidetic
specificity to each stratum which clearly distinguishes one from
another; however, it is the unity, the totality of the work which
affords the possibility for actualization of any specific stratum.

In the first stratum of linguistic sound formations are found
sound units of individual words, sentences, and sentence combinations.
It is a structure that remains constant and is integral to the iden—
tity of the work. The phonic material of the work achieves the
fullness of its devices when read aloud.13 This is of particular
relevance to poetry and drama. So when I talk about the "sameness”
or "constancy” of the sound structure, I do not imply the necessity
for constancy in performance. Obviously, each individual utterance
of a given sound will itself have tonal, rhythmic, sonorous, and a
full array of suprasegmental phonemic identity. For example, not
only will Sir John Gielgud as Brother Julian in Tiny Alice produce
different concatenations of the ”same” sound from those produced by,
say Richard Burton, but also will Sir John Gielgud in successive

performances produce different pitch, tone, and modulations of the

25

"same” sound. It is not the case that the specific sounds constitute
the work of art but rather that they, along with their individual
utterances, contribute to the possibility of the concretization of the
work. I think it is important to remember here while discussing
sounds that are the "same” yet ”different” that we are describing

the properties of a construct--the literary work--which, although
having a physicality in the real world--the paper, printed words,

for example--enjoys its existence through the intentionality of its
creator. The object of the intentionality, then, is a context born
of consciousness,and within that context the sameness of the sound
structure is of the essence of that object. Ingarden describes this
apparent immutability of sounds in this way:

One would have to agree, then, that we know word sounds by
discovering them to be timeless, unchangeable entities and
that we find them to be simply existing, as we find mathe-
matical objects or pure essences. Nevertheless, a word
sound is built only in the course of time, under the influ—
ence of various real and cultural conditions, and it under—
goes, with changing time, numerous and varied alterations
and modifications. It is not real; yet it is anchored in
reality, and it is changeable according to changes in the
latter. But its change is fundamentally different from
change in the concrete phonic material, which originates

at some point in time, exists, and then forever ceases to
exist. Whereas the word may be uttered countless numbers
of times, and the concrete phonic material may always be
new, the "word sound” remains the same. Only a radical
change in the cultural atmosphere of an epoch or a change
in the external circumstances under which a certain word

is used can effect a change in the word sound.14

Because this uniformity of sound longitudinally permeates the
work, translationsof a work completely eliminate this stratum and
its particular array of possible concretions and replace it with

quite another. My own phenomenological approach to Ayel made me aware

 

 

26

of translation concerns, some of which I mention later in the chapter
on Axel where I have provided, in most cases, the original portion of
the French text and English translation for reader convenience. Com-

parisons in this regard are rather fascinating and sometimes provoca-

tive. Ingarden refers to the ”otherness" of the translated individual

word sounds which bears different phonetic constructs.15

It is true that this stratum of linguistic formations--words,
sentences, and sentence combinations--as "language” does provide us

with “access, as it were, to the literary work, but that fact is in
no way its primary role according to Ingarden. Rather, it functions
as both the external, unchanging shell of the literary work in which

"16

the other strata find "their external expression, and as the con-

structs to which the meaning units of the second stratum are bound
since meaning units "necessarily require a word-sound material."17

In our approach to the second stratum, the stratum of meaning
units, I think it may be helpful at the outset to distinguish between

Husserl's conception of meaning as "ideal" and therefore contained 1e

words, and Ingarden's conception of meaning “lent” to words. This

view is a radical departure from Husserl's base for objective inquiry.

Tymieniecka is again helpful with her definition:

A meaning intentionally "signifies" (symbolizes) an object,
determining it naturally and formally. This significance is
rooted in the physical world, but is not the property of the
word. It is, in a way, "lent to it“ by the signifying act
of conscious; thus, it is not a physical entity. Neither is
it identical with the individual act of consciousness; thus,
the meaning is not psychical. Although it is brought about
and sustained by an act of consciousness, it is transcendent
to the act. The same meaning can be repeatedly concretized
in new conscious acts. In spite of the alteration a meaning

 

27

can undergo it does not make a substantial part of our psy-
chological acts or of the stream of experience (in the sense
of William James). . . . Meanings are . . . created and

can be modified by the conscious act of one who conceives
them, intentionally "lending” identical content to them,
while in the concretions the performer or spectator incor-
porates them into his actual experience.

Clearly, then, what is here meant by “meaning" precludes its
relegation to some ideal or inner form as well its verification by
empirical reference. What it does admit is a view of meaning having
properties of its own--a multi-level concept of meaning. One rapidly
begins to appreciate the intricacy of structure of the literary work: 7
the potential for a multiplicity of meanings emerges from a stratum N
characterized by continuity and sameness of sound. We have all
observed in both our readerly and writerly acts the significant
changes that can and do occur in word meanings when words are used
in isolation or repositioned in various places in a sentence; it is
apparent that the structure of the entire unit is affected rather
than merely embellished by the inclusion of a word meaning. This
shifting and, in the case of units larger than sentences, accumulation
of meaning as Ingarden describes it envisions the entire work as

something dependent which arises from the total meaning con-
tent and from the order of the individual sentence. At the
same time, however, one should not forget that individual
sentences appear in a determinate sequence and in determin-
ate connections and that as a result . . . their total meaning
content (and in some cases even their phonetic side) is not
determined solely by the word meanings appearing in the
individual sentences (taken in isolation) but quite frequently
is formed in detail and modified in various respects by the
meaning content of other (preceding) sentences.19
This phenomenon sounds very much like what Frank Smith describes in
Psycholinguistics and Reading as exploiting redundancy as an efficient

strategy for negotiating meaning.20

 

28

The contribution of the meaning stratum is its participation
in the "whole“ of the literary work by bringing out "unique moments
that are characteristic of the entire work and that appear in its
polyphony.”2]

The third stratum, the stratum of represented objectivities
is probably the most familiar of the literary work; persons, events,
situations, acts are included in this stratum. Ingarden is most
explicit in his use of the expression ”represented object or objec—
tivity;" he explains that he is using it ”to be understood in a very i
broad sense, incompassing, above all, everything that is nominally ‘
projected regardless of objectivity category and material essence.

. At the same time, however, the stratum of what is represented
can also contain the nominally projected, as, in particular what is
intended purely verbally.”22 Because these objects represented often
so closely resemble objects in the real world, it is again timely to
restate that they are derived, "purely intentional objects projected

“23 24 valid

by units of meaning which are themselves quasi—statements
within the constraints of the work. This is an important considera—
tion for it presents a criterion for the validity of judgments about
the represented objectivities. Ingarden is careful to mention in

this regard that objects of a different ontic kind are not necessarily
precluded by this stratum of represented objectivities; he cites an
example of a ”represented" mathematician, for example, who, to be
credible, would deal with ”ideal" mathematical objects in his quasi—

real or intentional world. It is this interspersal of ontic types

29

that sometimes makes it easy to forget that, however much they might
resemble the autonomous objects of the real world, and however much
those objects "appeal" because they seem so real, the represented
objectivities are, in fact, purely intentional constructs.

Precisely because they are intentional and not their real
correlates they are not fully determined. Ingarden uses the analogy
of a beam of light "illuminating a part of a region the remainder of
which disappears in an indeterminate cloud but is still there in its
indeterminancy."25 This analogy will later be most appropriate in the a
latter part of the discussion in Chapter IV when the lights in the l
model castle in Tiny Alice begin to go out. The projection of these
objectivities by a finite number of meaning units is the essential
feature differentiating them from objects in the real world. Ingarden
refers to the aspect or part of the represented object which is not
specifically determined by the text as a ”place of indeterminacy."26
These places of indeterminancy are not the “result of faulty compo-
sition;" rather, they are ”necessary in every literary work.”27 There
are several indeterminacies regarding objects represented in a text
even when the determinacy of, say, A imples an array of other attri-
butes. Ingarden uses the example of ”representing” Julius Caesar;
from the fact that the represented object is human we can assume that
he has all the "normal" limbs, but cannot assume anything else about
him which is not a necessary determinacy. In other words, ”whatever
is variable in the concept of 'human being' is thus indeterminate."28

This is an interesting choice of example; the question of indeterminacy

 

30

and "assumed normal limbs” becomes significant and is discussed in
greater detail in Chapter III.

Let me delay for just a moment the discussion of concretiza-
tion of places of indeterminancy in order to complete the description
of the strata. The fourth stratum, the stratum of schematized
aspects, is the stratum through which the represented objectivities
appear. The schematized aspects are not generated by the experience
of the individual perceiver but have a potential existence through
the perceiver. The imagery—~visual, olfactory, auditory, kinaesthetic
—-emerging in one's consciousness when confronting a represented
object is what is meant by aspect--the ”how” of the reader's expe-
rience, so to speak. As Ingarden says, an aspect is ”something
which is phenomenally present and not merely significantly intended.“29
This phenomenal presence avoids the issue of the psychical; although
an aspect is in continuous reference to a perceiving subject, it is
not solely dependent on that subject. Neither does phenomenal pres-
ence in object represented admit an aspect to an occurrence in the
mind of the perceiving subject. Thus we can see that aspects are
”in continuous contact with the simultaneously effected acts of
consciousness of a perceiving subject and are sensitive to a high
degree to changes occurring in acts and manifolds of acts.”30
Ingarden cites the example of our perception of a red sphere to indi-
cate the flux of our experiencing it, the interchangeability of the

sphere in spite of our perception of it, the fact of its being per—

ceived as accidental to its existence, and the individuality of the

 

3T

aspect from the object given by it.31

I find it a useful example for
the elucidation of the fourth stratum of schematized aspects.

The stratified structure of the literary work, then, reveals
an individuality, yet close cooperation among the various strata.
Tymieniecka observes that the homogeneous unity of the strata is
derived from the intentional mode of being of the literary work; that
is, that this “unity is the result of the distinctive 'objectifying'
functions of the intentional act which 'lends' to its objects a con~
tent separable from it."32 a

Ingarden devotes considerably less attention to the question
of time sequence or phases in the literary work. Suffice it to say
that there are two of any real significance here: the time sequence
of the represented objects themselves and the sequence of parts of
the literary work. In a staged drama there is also the "playing
time" of the staging itself through which an audience experiences the
staging through the individual expectations of each member of an
audience as well as the accumulation of ”cued‘I inter—audience
responses. From the reader's perspective there is also the time of
the lived-through experience of its reading. In drama there seems
to be an abundance of present tense forms giving the semblance of
permanence, of going beyond time, of moving with a constantly new
present moment.33 Occasionally a character will respond in a way
that suggests a confusion of represented times. In Chapter IV I
refer to one of these ”breaches“ which assumes contextual signifi-

cance.

32

Ingarden refuses to admit the notion of the temporal extension
of the literary work, however feasible it may first appear given such
characteristics as "beginning” and "end." For Ingarden the work
exists "simultaneously in ell of its parts and . . . none of these

parts is 'earlier' or 'later' in a temporal sense."34

While I sym-
pathize with his reluctance to attribute different temporal extensions
to the same work based on the length of any given reading, I think that
this is precisely the argument for establishing Ingarden's "literary
work"as merely "text“ and acknowledging the temporality of the lived
through experience of concretization, or "poem," to use Rosenblatt's
term.35
Given this stratified intentioned object, how then are the

places of indeterminacy filled in? How is it going to ”mean?” How
do we as readers concretize the text? It is not with a conscious
expectation of places of indeterminacy that we confront represented
objectivities largely because these objects appear through those
aspects positively asserted by the meaning units of the second stratum.
It is during the reflective attitude that we become conscious of the
presence of indeterminacies. Further, some places of indeterminacy
are actualized by the reader during the reading process; in addition,
a reader often goes beyond the text to flesh out the indeterminacies
or replace them completely by determinacies that may or may not be

in agreement with the positively determined objective moments.

In a word, the literary work is to be distinguished from its

respective concretizations, and not everything that is valid

for the concretization of the work is equally valid for the

work itself. But the very possibility that one and the same
literary work can allow any number of concretizations, which

 

33

frequently differ significantly from the work itself and also,

in their content, differ significantly among themselves, has

its base, among other things, in the schematic structure of

the object stratum of a literary work, a structure which allows

spots of indeterminacy.36

The directing of ourselves to the stratified object attending

to the temporal process of our cognitive acts is what Ingarden means
by the apprehension of a work. Because of the complexity of a total
apprehension, a reader cannot attend equally to all parts of this
apprehension but accomplishes instead a ”perspectival foreshortening

. not so much dependent on the work itself as on the given con-

"37 Ingarden is careful to distinguish not only

ditions of reading.
the literary work from its apprehensions but also its concretizations
from either, although the concretizations are dependent upon the appre-
hensions. This dependence in no way implies that concretizations are
thus psychic phenomena. Another Ingardian analogy is helpful here:
. . just as a rainbow is not something psychic, even though
it exists concretely only when a visual perception is effected
under certain objective circumstances, so also the concretiza-
tions of a literary work, though it is conditioned in its
existence by corresponding experiences, has at the same time
its second ontic basis in the literary work itself; and with
respect to the experiences of apprehensions, it is just as
transcendent as the literary work itself. 38
Concretizations of the work, then, involve the reader in a co-creative
activity of filling out places of indeterminacy.

Ingarden differentiates among the aesthetic, preaesthetic (he
once referred to it as "extra-aesthetic," which is probably less
ambiguous than the term preaesthetic), and post-aesthetic (or reflec-
tive cognition) attitudes, the second term of which would include the

study of the literary work.39 We can recall that Rosenblatt is much

 

 

34

clearer here in her distinction between aesthetic and what she calls
"efferent" reading: in the aesthetic stance one's primary concern

is with what is happening eerleg_the actual reading event, while the
primary concern of the efferent stance is with what one will "carry

away” from the reading, so to speak.40

This is what Ingarden pro—
poses as preaesthetic investigation.

One other consideration needs to be made here: the issue of
side (or sub) text and main text in a drama. Although my attention
is focused on two dramatically represented objectives, I have chosen
to study them here as literary works assuming that prior to any stag-
ing they would first have to be read. I cannot, in fact, within the
constraints of the stratification described above, discuss the staged
play because it appears by other means of representation precluded by
the literary work; namely, actors and the aspects held in readiness
by their representations and the cueing and shareability of audience
context.

The conspicuous presentation of the main text and stage direc—
tions (side text) in ”written” drama in effect constitute a ”double

"4] of represented objectivities in that the spoken words

projection
and the speaking characters are representations of the side text and,
further, these sentences ”project by themselves a new object stratum,
that is, that of the objects and viscissitudes that are being spoken

"42 The two texts are complementary, the side

of in these sentences.
text frequently ”complet[ing] the states of affairs projected by the

main text . . . and although the spoken words of the characters should

 

35

provide the substance (givens, information) of the drama, the side
text is essential to this genre for the specification of ”truly
spoken sentences.“43 Now we are ready to approach the works them-

selves.

FOOTNOTES--CHAPTER II

lJoseph J. Kocklemans, Phenomenology and Physical Sciences,
trans. Henry J. Koren (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1966),
p. 30.

 

ZEdmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. Forian Cairns
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), and Ideas, trans. W. R. Boyce
Gibson (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1931).

 

 

3Edmund Husserl, Recherches logiquee, trans. Hubert Elie,
Vol. I (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), p. 17.

4Richard Schmitt, "Husserl's Transcendental-Phenomenologica1
Reduction," Philosophy and Phenomenologjcal Research 20 (1959-1960),
p. 238.

 

 

5Husserl, Ideas, pp. 8-10.

6Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Phenomenology and Science in Con-
temporary European Thought (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Cudahy,
1962), p. 9.

 

 

7Roman Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art (Evanston: North-
western University Press, 1973), p. lxxii.

 

8Quentin Lauer, S. J., The Triumph of Subjectivity (New York:
Fordham University Press, 1958), p. 21.

 

9James M. Edie, Speaking and Meaning (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, l976), p. l.

 

10Ronald Bruzina, Logos and Eidos (The Hague: Mouton, 1970),
p. 58.

ll

 

Kocklemans, Phenomenology and Physical Science, p. 37.

12Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art, p. lxxiv.

13Ibid., p. 35.

14Ibid.. pp. 37—38.

15Ibid., p. 57.

36

37
16Ibid., p. 59.

17Ibid., p. 61.

18Tymieniecka, Phenomenology and Science, pp. 26-27.

19Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art, p. 147.

 

20Frank Smith, ed., Peycholigguistics and Reading (New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), p. 23.

21

 

Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art, p. 211.

 

22Ibid., p. 219. 1

23Ibid., p. 218.

24Ibid., p. 167.

 

25Ibid., p. 218.

26Roman Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 50.

 

27Ibid., p. 51.
28Ibid.
29Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art, p. 260.

 

30Ibid., p. 257.
3'Ibid., pp. 257—258.

32Tymieniecka, Phenomenology and Science, p. 32.
33

 

Ingarden, Cognition, p. 125.
34Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art, p. 125.

 

35Louise M. Rosenblatt, The Reader, The Text, The Poem
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), p. 12.

36Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art, p. 252.

 

37Ibid., pp. 333-334.
38Ibid., p. 336.

391ngarden, Cognition, p. 53.

38

4ORoseanatt, The Reader, The Text, The Poem, p. 24.

 

41Ingarden, The Literary work of Art, p. 209.

 

42Ibid., p. 208.
43Ibid., p. 209.

CHAPTER III

AXEL

Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's Axel was conceived and written

 

probably between 1862 and 1885 and revised, but not reprinted, prior

to Villiers' death in 1889.1

For my purposes here this information

is significant only to the extent that the criticism of the play has
been largely biographical, often attempting to accommodate both the
original work of art and its later revisions as a single work of art.2
Indeed, such a consideration of the latter is almost necessitated

by employing as critical method the former. The revisions appear

separately at the end of Oeuvres Completes de Villiers de l'Isle-

 

Adam, Volume Four, but I shall only consider the original version here,
making only summary reference to the revisions.

To summarize the drama briefly, Part One, Le Monde Religieux,
begins on Christmas Eve about 1828 in a Catholic convent in Flanders
where the Abbess is preparing her reluctant ward, Sara de Maupers, to
pronounce her religious vows at the stroke of the Nativity. Not
only will Sara's soul be saved from the world, but also the Order of
Appollodorawillbecome immeasurably richer as custodians of the
de Mauper inheritance. Before the ceremony the Abbess advises the
Archdeacon of Sara's reluctance and of her penchant for reading works

from the Rosicrucians, an occult sect which has centuries earlier

39

 

 

 

40

occupied the convent, and an ancient parchment sent by a Master Janus.
In spite of the Archdeacon's efforts to persuade Sara to take her
vows, she rejects his offer of Light, Hope, and Life, threatens him
with a votive— offering axe when he tries to punish her insubordina-
tion, and escapes from the convent to search for the treasure she
has read about in the manuscripts.

Part Two, Le Monde Tragique, takes place on Easter Eve deep
in the Black Forest in the Auersperg's medieval castle where three
elderly retainers and Axel‘s young page, Ukko, discuss Axel d'Auers—
perg, Master Janus, and Commander Kaspar d'Auersperg, a visiting
cousin. The Commander,a Dionysian practitioner who recognizes that
his younger cousin‘s physical beauty and title could indeed be useful
for his own purposes at court, is eager for Axel to abandon his seclu-
sion and occultism and return with him to court. Herr Zacharias,
another aged retainer, fearful lest he die with a momentous secret,
confides to the Commander that hundreds of millions in thalers and
jewels transported from the public reserve for safe-keeping during the
war with the French under the Command of Count Gherard d'Auersperg,
Axel's father, are buried in caverns near the castle. The Commander's
lust for the treasure alters his plans to have Axel accompany him;
rather, he decides to murder him after indirectly questioning him
about the location of the treasure. It is quickly apparent to Axel
that the Commander has learned of the treasure's existence; in his
desire to have the treasure remain secret, to protect the seclusion
of his castle, and to remain untainted, unseduced by the fortune,

Axel provokes the Commander into a duel and kills him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

41

Part Three, Le Monde Occulte, continues without interruption
of place or time with Axel telling Master Janus that he has just
killed the Commander, but that the killing has aroused his desire for
the gold-~that is, the world--and that his life of asceticism will
suffice no longer. When Master Janus asks if Axel will accept Light,
Hope, and Life, he too, although with slight hesitation, answers no.
One of the retainers announces the arrival of a woman; Sara has reached
her destination. As Master Janus leaves the scene, he remarks to him-
self that the two renunciators are about to meet.

Part Four, Le Monde Passionnel, takes place in the vaults
beneath the castle where the retainers and page are burying the Com-
mander as Axel has requested, when, having considered that all was
indeed vanity and decided to commit suicide, Axel arrives to tell
them good-bye and designate Ukko as his heir. As soon as they
leave, Sara enters as Axel conceals himself. She opens the vault to
the cavern revealing its enormous treasure which cascades about her.
Sensing that she is not alone and guarding her right to the treasure,
Sara fires into the darkness wounding Axel who is nevertheless able
to subdue her, wounding her with his own knife. Sara's beauty
immediately transforms Axel's anger to adoration; and Sara, too, is
affected by his charm. But it is Axel who persuades Sara that what
they have just experienced is an ideal moment whose attempted explica-
tion would only diminish its essence and that death is the only
assurance of preserving that moment. They drink poison and die in

each other's arms as a chorus of woodcutters and Ukko's preparations

42

for his marriage are heard through the slight opening in the
vault.
Thus it appeared to critics that Villiers' "message” was
the rejection of cloistered life, jaded life, esoteric life, and
death-in-life (suicide) as Life, and that he was, in fact, espousing

his own Gospel.3

That there may be parallels between the lives of
Axel, Sara, and Christ is a given; to suggest it sufficient explica-
tion as a nihilist mystery play, however, is to confine, limit, and
restrict in such a manner as even the text refuses to tolerate.
Whatever is here indeterminate has structural import; the reader is
expected, although sometimes neglected and scarcely encouraged to
remain (I refer to the often critically discussed textually indulgent
sections of Part Two and the esotericism of Part Three).4

While acknowledging the religio-biographical reading of the
play, I should like to look again at this compendium of Symbolist
tenets5 attending to the language of the text, to the structure of
this literary work of art—~what is determined and what is yet
indeterminate--in the making of this poem.6

Part One, Le Monde Religieux, is introduced by an epigram
by Lamartine which specifically addresses the reader:

Coeurs tendres, approchez: ici l'on aime encore!
Mais l'amour, épuré, s'allume sur l'autel:
Tout ce qu'ila d'humain a ce feu s‘évapore,
Tout ce qui reste est immortel.
Tender hearts, come here to timeless love!
For chaste love at the altar bursts in flame:

Dispersed the mortal dross to airs above,
None but th‘ immortal essence can remain.

 

43

We are invited to attend and participate in the drama about to unfold.
Further, in its statement of one of the philosophical concerns of the
play--mortality and immortality—-is also presented the technique of
counterpoint so prominent throughout the play. The two reflexive
verbs, "s'allumer" and ”s'évapore," suggest both a mode of analysis, a
reflection on the language itself, and a reiteration of the technique
of counterpoint, given here as a movement from the substance-—“l'amour
_épuré" encompassing both the human and the super human—-to its essence.
This is an early example in the play of the inter-relationship of the a
stratum of linguistic formations and that of meaning units, the former
giving expression to the latter.

The first of the two sub-sections of this first part entitled
". . . ET FORCES-LES D'ENTRER“ is set in the cloistered chapel of an
old abbey. Our senses are immediately focused on the recurring images
of gold, bells, censers, flowers, and the lamp. Sara is standing
beneath the lamp; the Archdeacon is kneeling in prayer and the Abbess
approaches Sara and unveils "un visage d'une beauté mysterieuse . .
Elle est immobile, les bras croises“ (p. 10). Both Sara's beauty and
her stance are textually significant. Their initial veiled appear-
ance followed by the brusk unveiling call attention to both. While
we might not expect Sara to be completely startled, her serene immo—
bility connoting a formidable resolve strikes the keynote for power
and endurance in the play and foreshadows the statues in the tomb
in the final scene.

With the first few lines of the play we are introduced to

several recurring motifs:

44

Sara! 1e minuit de Noél va sonner, remplissant nos ames
d'allégresse! L'autel va s'illuminer, tout a l'heure,
comme une arche d'alliance! nos priéres vont s'envoler
sur l'aile des cantiquesl Avant que cette heure passe
dans les cieux, i1 importe que je vous notifie 1a reso-
lution sacrée que j'ai prise touchant votre avenir (p. 10).
*Sara! The midnight hour of the Nativity is going to
peal, filling our souls with joy! Soon the altar will
be illuminated like an Ark of Covenant! Our prayers will
take flight on the wings of our carols! Before that hour
joins the eternal, I must tell you the sacred decision I
have made for your future (pp. 7-8).
Approaching the midnight hour marks an ending as well as a beginning--
Sara's cloistered preparatory life, and her quest for the gold. The g
l
anticipation is explicit in the syntax and implied is a Time Future 1
with its concomitant definition of man.9 The illumination connotes
the light of the intellect, the brightness of the imagination giving
life to Futurity. As well as marking time, the pealing bell reverber-
ates in reflexive waves and will re-sound at various points in the
play.
Here, too, is the bird/flight motif introduced, explicitly
with the verb “s'envoler" and the noun "l'aile” and implicitly in the

llA

graphemic display of ames" whose circumflex, metaphorically suffusing
the word, suggests the direction of movement throughout the drama.
(Implying contraction or the missing or silent ”s," the circumflex
becomes an indeterminate marker, as it were.) The word occurs twice
in this complete speech, each time referring to Sara.

That the act of reading is consequential in this drama is

also connotatively significant. The attention given to reading has

provided Sara and Axel with an ascetic proclivity encouraging a

45

renunciation of the experience of the external world for the expe-
rience of the imagination savored in solitude. It has also provided
Sara with the knowledge of the treasure, and her close textual scru-
tiny has rewarded her efforts with the key to its retrieval. To the
extent that Sara's reading ”sans cesse” (p. 11) suggests to the

Abess something other (somehow metaphysical: "Que peut signifier une
nature aussi studieuse et solitarie?" [p. 10])than an idle pasttime

so also might we attend to the text in the spirit of construing, nego—
tiating, transacting meaning using the full range--graphophonic, syn-

10

tactic, and semantic-—0f its linguistic array. What is apparent

 

here in the words, sentences, and sentence combinations is the
requisite relationship of word-sound material and meaning units
referred to in the descriptions of the first and second strata.

This rather lengthy, four and a half pages, opening speech
continues, providing a medley of images: ”des fleurs, des lumieres
et de 1'encens,“ (p. 13) and a description of Sara's characteristics
the compounding of which begin to reinforce the visual assessment
of strength already made by her stance and bearing:

. . vous etes une ame obscure. Sur votre visage toujours
pale brille 1e reflet d' on ne sait quel orgueil ancien.
Il sommeille en vous . . . malgré la réserve et la simplicité
de vos rares paroles et de tous vos actes . . . Vous vous
soumettez avec une sorte d'indifférence taciturne . . . vous
étes une lampe dans un tombeau. . . (p. 11

*. . . you are a dark soul. On your face, ever pale, a trace
of some ancient pride glimmers. It sleeps within. . . .
Despite the reserve and simplicity of your rare speech and
of all your acts. . . . You submit to the discipline of our
rule with sullen indifference . . . you are a lamp in a
tomb. . . . (p. 8 .

46

That Sara remains silent throughout the speech even as she, granting
the Abess' request, signs over the deed by which she abandons all her
possessions to the Order augments her aura of strength. The sub-
text directs that although she "signe impassiblement,“ she "est
rentrée dans son immobilité” (p. 14) before the Abess has had an
opportunity to thank her. Frequently regarded as anathema to dramatic
literature, particularly if and when the silence is devoid of action,
the silence in Ayel is premium, the sought, the desired, the subjec—
tive ideal of solitude, historical lessons teaching punishment for
exceptional talent as the indisputable fact of solitude, notwith-
standing. We feel it as such in the reading, and we read it in the
sub-text. Rhetorical as the Abbess' interrogatives probably are, they
simultaneously call attention to the responses not forthcoming-~the
silence--and beg determinacy, the reader's share.12
The choice of the name, Sister Emmanuele, selected for Sara
upon recitation of her vows has encouraged consideration of the issue
of the names Emmanuele and Axel both of which have Christian connota-

13 As significant, I suspect, is the “indefiniteness” rendered

tions.
a person (or object) identified by several names——Eve, Sara, Emmanuel,
Princess of Maupers. The effect is appropriately contrapuntal to the
"on ne sait quel" quality (of pride) the Abbess tries to articulate:
it is either given no word or multiple words to describe it, yet
remains somehow indefinite. Three other nuns are identified: offi-

ciously and obediently praising the rules of the order, Sister

Laudation regards Sara suspiciously; promising Sara allegiance unto

47

death, Sister Aloyse loves her dearly; and stammering at the audacity
Sara displays, Sister Calixte avoids her. Again the focus on names
is a metaphorical restatement of the determinate and the indetermin-
ate.
Exploiting the tenderness that she knows Sister Aloyse feels
for Sara, the Abbess charges her with watching and praying with Sara
during the time just before the midnight ritual. In Scene Two,
imploring Sara to accept the veil, Sister Aloyse's language becomes
religio-sensual and foreshadows the tomb exchanges between Sara and A”
Axel. She too searches for words, although not to describe, but to i
persuade:

Sara, souviens-toi de nos roses, dans l'allée des sépultures!
Tu m'es apparue comme une soeur inespérée. Aprés Dieu, c'est
toi. Si tu veux que je meure, je mourrai. Rappelle—toi mon
front appuyé sur tes mains pales, 1e soir, au tomber du soleil.
Je suis inconsolable de t'avoir vue. Hélas! tu es la bien-
aimée! . . . J'ai 1a mélancolie de toi. Je n'ai de force que
vers toi.

Un silence.

Cede; deviens comme nous, sous un voile! Partage l'épreuve
d'un instant. Tu sais bien que nous ne pouvons pas vivre!
Si vite nous serions ensemble, au meme Ciel, avec une seule
ame! . . Sara, vois 1e ciel étoile au fond de mes yeux: --
1a, 5 'éloignent des cieux toujours étoilés!--Laisse- toi venir!
Je veux te parer moi -meme comme une fiancée divine, une
épouse ineffable, un étre céleste. La douleur m'a rendue
charmante et tu ne me repousseras plus avec tristesse, si
tu me regardes. Quelles paroles trouver pour te fléchir?
Sara, Sara!

(Tactiurne, Sara décroise les bras: son front
s'incline sur celui de la novice. Celle-ce lui

prend la main. Toutes deux traversent 1e sanctuarie.
D'une voix oppressée, plus basse encore et soudaine.
n'appuie pas ton front! . . . mes genoux chancellent!
(Sara s'est redressée et soutenant, d'une main,

soeur Aloyse devenue blanche comme son voile, toutes
deux sortent, lentement, par l'abside latérale

(pp. 16-17)

0h

48

*Sara, do you remember our roses along the passage of the
tombs? You came to me like a sister beyond all my hopes.
To me you are next to God. I will die if you want me to.
Remember at dusk when I used to rest my forehead on your
pale hands. I am inconsolable because I have seen you.
Alas! You are the beloved! . . . You have plunged me in
dejection. I have strength only to come to you.

(A pause)

Yield; become one of us beneath the veil! Share the brief
earthly trial. You surely know that we cannot live! So
soon we should be together in the same heaven with a single
soul! . . . Sara, see the starry Heaven in the depths of my
eyes: --there extend skies forever bestarred! -—Yield and
come! I want to adorn you myself to be a divine bride, an
ineffable spouse, a celestial being. Sorrow has given me
charm, and you will no longer push me sadly away when you
look at me. What more can I say to persuade you? Sara,
Sara!
(Without speaking, Sara unfolds her arms; she rests
her forehead on the novice's. The latter takes her
hand. Both cross the sanctuary. In a choked voice,
still lower, Sister Aloyse, startled.)
Oh! don't rest your brow on mine! my knees are giving
way!
(Sara has straightened up and supports Sister Aloyse
with one hand. The latter has become as white as her
veil. Both slowly leave by the lateral apse)(pp. 11-12).

Although Sister Aloyse does not possess the strength of an Axel or a
Sara, it is clear that she is a kindred spirit to whom Sara responds
with unfolded arms, warmth, and the compliment (and complement) of
silence. Textually apparent is this kindred potential for the
passion of transcendency in the line, ”. . . au méme Ciel, avec une
seule ame." The connotative significance of the word ”ame“ referred
to earlier is here reinforced with the intesifier “meme” providing
a strikingly similar graphic display and a semantic invitation which
queries rhetorically, ”How many heavens are there?"

Witnessing Sister Aloyse's intoxication with Sara and con-

cerned that Sara’s excessive and dangerous beauty (as she regards it)

49

may urge Sister Aloyse to the brink of sin, the Abbess resolves to
rectify the situation by having Sister Aloyse herself cut Sara's
hair during the ceremony. The suggestion here, of course, is liter—
ally, one of severance; emotionally, one of disfigurement; and sym-
bolically, one of a loss of power and strength.

The third scene is a discussion between the Abbess and the
Archdeacon and presents the escutcheon of the de Maupers family
which shares the ducal of the house of Auersperg in the object of
a winged Death's head. The bird-flight motif is sustained here with i
the added image of death——a foreshadowing of the flight (or escape) 1‘.
that Axel and Sara ultimately choose.

Because of her anxiety that there never be any question about
the Order's acquisition of Sara's inheritance, the Abbess expresses
genuine alarm that the Auersperg line may in some way have bearing on
Sara's patrimony. Assuring her that the link in lineage was a matter
of agreement, of vain traditions, the Archdeacon recalls:

. . i1 s'agit simplement d'un récit de chevalerie et
?: cgggsades bu le merveilleux l'emporte sur le réel

*It's simply a romance of chivalry and crusades in which
fairy tale gets the better of fact p. 13).

The irony is implicit: that concern be expressed at the intersection
of the Veil and the Mantle is apropos; but that the besting of reality
by illusion be offered to allay fears is of no redemptive value.

What is further implied is that the issue of illusion-—reality is

primal.

50

The Abbess reports further concerns about Sara's will to the
Archdeacon; each observation makes Sara's formidable strength more
explicit:

Mon pere, cette jeune fille, haute et blanche comme
un cierge pascal, nous est un coeur fermé qui sait
beaucoup de choses. . . . Elle est trop froidement
exemplaire . . . sa soumission n'est qu'extérieure.
Le chatiment s'émousse sur elle et la corrobore en
son orgueil. Cette fille est comme l'acier, qui se
plie jusqu'a son centre, puis se détend ou se brise;
elle a (s'il est permis d'oser une telle expression)
l'ame des épées (p. 21).

*Father, this girl, tall and white like a Paschal taper,
for us is a closed heart which holds many things. . . .
She is too coldly exemplary . . . her submission is
only external. Chastisement blunts its edge upon her
and confirms her in her pride. This girl is like steel,
which bends to its centre, then stretches out or
breaks; she has (if I may use such an expression) the
soul of a sword (p. 14).

At the mention of Dr. Janus' name as sender of the parchment
from which the Abbess fears Sara has deciphered some occult clue, the
sanctuary lamp throws a brilliant light, then immediately dies out;
although explainable--Sister Laudation has forgotten to fill the
lamp-—it is a phenomenon the text tells us has never happened before.
The effect produces a contrapuntal interplay of Christianity and the
Occult (both of which have grave consequences in Sara's life) while
heightening the mystery of the parchment. To the extent that the
absence of light literally obscures the two discussants and surely
interrupts their conversation, so also does it encourage the reader
to attend to its significance, textually reinforced when light is

restored, with, ”Vous disiez donc, ma soeur, que Sara détraisait ce

parchemin?" (p. 24). The combination of the darkness, the

 

51

indeterminate, followed by the specific invitation, as it were, to
procede with the story, the details, the determinate, abruptly
remind the reader to participate actively.

Scene Four continues with prescriptions of treatment designed
to break Sara's "nature inpénétrable, grave et glancante” (p. 26).
The image of darkness extends into this scene and is signified by the
Abbess' inability to understand, to give meaning to Sara's visage ”si
atone, qu'il (lui) causa l'impression d'un danger,” (p. 25) as it
appeared when the Abbess had discovered her destroying the parchment.
Further, the Abbess believes Sara endowed with "du don terrible,
l'Intelligence," (p. 29) usually regarded as illuminating, not terrible
or frightening. The archdeacon echoes the Abbess' appraisal and adds:
”Surtout en une femme, ce don devient plus souvent une torche qu'un
flambeau . . .“ (p. 30)--to burn brightly, that is, and quickly die
out as has the sanctuary lamp just done. Urging the Archdeacon to be
persuasive with Sara while celebrating the Office of the Dead over
her, the Abbess assures him that:

Mon troupeau d'ames blances ne vous comprendre pas:
1e scandale n'est donc pas a craindre (p. 29).

*My flock of white souls will not understand you; so,
there is no risk of scandal (p. 18.

This flock represents the truly passive souls, the real contrast to
Sara's finely honed passivity.

Organ music, incense, flower petals, a choir of nuns, and
the pealing golden bell ringing at the beginning of the Introit,

announcing, as it were, the next or new phase of life for Sara,

52

fill Scene Five. The repeated sounding of the Bell of the Dead sig-
nals not Sara's cloistered death to the secular world as is antici-
pated, but, rather, the death of the iciness in the soul.

Throughout Scene Six while the Archdeacon, exhausting the
pedantic quotes of religious scholasticism and shifting from "vous”
to “tu,” tries to instruct and persuade Sara of the efficacy of vowing
Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience with his own homilic rhetoric, the
Bell of the Dead continues to sound. Much of what is said may be

construed on more than one level: he suggests to her that faith is

 

the evidence of things not seen-—although ostensibly suggesting that
she give herself to God in faith, the statement also points to the
significance of that which is not there, not apparent, not determined;
he admonishes her to study the teachings of the Church remembering
that ”l'exégese, la clef méme de l'Evidence" (p. 40) (note again the
complement of graphemics and semantics)—-while on a literal level
assuring that she be constructive in her “incessant” reading, this
strategy may also suggest a revealing approach to the readers of this
play; describing the acceptance of faith as an ”act,” he tells her
that “11 feet penser. 11 feet agir. . . . Pas un acte qui ne soit
créé d'une instinctive pensée!” (p. 4l)——although trying to convince
by acknowledging her intelligence, this statement as well connotes
the concept of intentionality which admits both the determined and
the indeterminate; and, finally, he reminds her that ”Tout S'EFFORCE
autour de nous. . . . C'est pourquoi i1 monte, par et a travers la

mort vers la lumiere . . .” (p. 4l)—-while urging that Sara move

 

53

through the death of the external world to the light of faith, the
statement is also an ironic comment on Sara and Axel's ultimate choice
and quite probably "a meaning” of their suicides: embrace death
before life destroys the illusion.14
With the twenty-third sounding of the bell of the dead,
marking her "worldly years," and the reading from St. Bernard's
Preparation for the Last Judgment, intoning the putrefaction of the
flesh, Sara, rising from her prostrate position occasioned by the
ceremony, resumes the position by which we have come to recognize

H
0

her: . elle se tient maintenant debout, immobile, les bras
croisés, les paupiéres baissée” (p. 45). The sameness of the position
suggests that the Archdeacon has failed, that there has been no
philosophical shift from worldly pleasures to cloistered ecstasy.
It is from this position of intimidating strength that, when approached
at the outset of the second sub-section--LA RENONCIATRICE--and asked
by the Archdeacon to accept La Lumiere, l'Espérance, et la Vie, Sara,"
(d'une voix grave, tres distincte et tres douce" (p. 46) responds
"Non."

The ensuing confusion--fainting nuns, abandoned flowers and
still-smoking censers, spilled holy oil spreading over the altar
steps, a stupefied Archdeacon, a staring Abess--becomes the ironic
counterpoint for the joyful midnight pealing of the Nativity bells
and ecstatic singing of the choir of nuns who have neither witnessed
Sara's renunciation nor could comprehend it if they had. It is, so

to speak, an axial scene; in contrast to the serenity of ritual, the

 

54

clamor, the cacophony appropriately accompany Sara's first and only
words in the play until Part Four when she defiantly struggles with
Axel. Having accumulated by her very silence, the tension and
energy it has produced is given full release, full voice in the mouths
of those who have been “compelled to come in," and full reverberation
in the golden Nativity bells. The immobility and stylized movements
of the first sub-section now give way to scurry and deliberate speed.
Violently striking her clapper to stop the singing thus permitting the
Abbess to restore some semblance of order, a heretofore very respon-
sible Sister Laudation approaches Sara, shouts an invective most
unbecoming a num, raises her hand to slap her, and freezes. Dis-
missed by the Abbess to contain her indignation in the sanctuary,
Sister Laudation leaves pensively bewildered: ”Quel trouble subit
m'a donc retenu 1e bras?—-Pourquoi n'ai—je pas frappé?” (p. 50). The
interrogatives here invite the reader to participate in their
responses. Sara's superior power affects not only the weak and gentle
(Sister Aloyse) but also the strong and wrathful (Sister Laudation).
It is a power to be felt, lived, and reckoned with throughout the
text--a power which ultimately permits Sara and Axel to escape life to
preserve the illusion.

Assuming that powers other than holy ones are at work, the
Abbess urges the Archdeacon to "sondez ce coeur sombre" (p. 50) to
discover what dreadful occultism must have been discovered from the
parchment. Now alone with Sara the Archdeacon tries first one tack--

we are responsible for your sou1--than another--having signed over the

 

55

inheritance, there is no way to effect the secret's discovery--and
another--no person or institution can override the supremacy of this
Faith, and if your repentance is sincere, we might consider you again
one day. Here, too, he interchanges ”vous” and ”tu" when he exchanges
his imperious "we” for his intimately persuasive ”I.”

As we might, with assurance, anticipate, Sara's response is
an unyielding and silent strength. Under the guise of divine inspira-
tion and imploring Sara to pray for his having to sequester her, the
Archdeacon directs her to an opening of an underground sepulchre.
The sub-test reads that Sara "(leve enfin les yeux sur le prétre)”
(p. 56) then looks at the excavation. Silently she walks toward a
pillar, removes a votive-offered axe, returns to the hole and silently
motions for the priest to descend. First recoiling in resistance, the
priest, now intimidated by Sara's threatening gesture, obeys her

deliberate yet silent imperative '(sous les yeux froids de Sara)”
(p. 56). The choice of preposition here in the subtext syntactically
signals the reversal of the Archdeacon's boast that:

Notre suprématie sur la terre est l'unique sanction d'une
lois quel-conque. Nul ne peut 1a contrOler. . . . (p. 53

*Our supremacy on earth is the unique sanction of any law
whatsover. No person or institution can override our
supremacy . . . (p. 35).

The final scene of Part One is entirely sub-text and describes
the intersection of Sara's strength and that of the elements: the
cold, the snow, the wind, the dark.

(. . . elle s'approche de la fenétre et secoue la corde

du vitrail; la fenétre s'ouvre avec violence, toute grande.
Une bouffée de neige et de vent nocturne envahit l'église et

 

56

éteint les cierges . . . ayant jeté un froc de pelerin sur
ses vétements de fétes, et debout sur la chaise abbatiale,
elle atteint, d'un élan svelte et vigoureux, l'un des barreaux,
de fer, le saisit d'une main et se dresse d'un bond sur le
bord de la fenétre. Puis elle se glisse, entre les barreaux,
sur le bord exterieur et regarde, au dehors, en bas, dans
l'espace, au loin, dans l'infini.

Au dehors la nuit apparait, affreuse, obscure, sans une
étoile.

Le vent siffle et rugit. La neige tombe. . . . puis elle se
baisse, décroit et disparait, au dehors, suspendue, dans la
nuit pluvieuse et glacée, silencieusement (pp. 56—57 .

*(. . . She approaches the stained glass window and pulls the
cord. The window swings open violently. Snow and night wind
blow through the church--putting out the tapers . . . having
thrown a pilgrims garb over her holy day vestments, she
stands on the abbatial chair. Then with a svelte, vigorous
leap, she seizes one of the iron bars with one hand, and
with a spring hoists herself onto the window sill.

Next she glides between the bars onto the outside sill

and looks out below, into space, distance, infinity. Outside

the night--dreadful, dark, starless. Winds blow and roar.

Snow falls. . . . then she lowers herself and disappears

outside, out of sight, suspended silently in the glacial,

snow-filled night) (p. 38).
That the window swings open with such fury suggests the extent of
the threat of the outside forces; the “toute grande” emphasizes,
intensifies the violence. Sustaining the imagery into the next
sentence, the text uses the verb "envahit” with its implied nuance of
opposition or resistence. Both the wind and the snow blow through
the church extinguishing the candles, the light, connotatively mark—
ing Sara's imminent absence from the cloister. (You will recall that
earlier she has been described as the light in the tomb.) “Fenétre”
both lexically and graphically rehearses the motif of flight. Indeed
she is even appropriately garbed as is evident in another textual

grapho-semantic marriage: “un froc de pelerin sur ses vétements de

 

57

féte,” the repeated circumflex and implied notion of “journey“ in the

word "pelerin.“15

Suggesting the scope of Sara's undertaking are the
words "l'espace, 1e loin, l'infini;" by extension we might also regard
these aspects of the text in the construal of meaning, "our poem,"

if you will, or concretization.

Although the complete absence of light, the falling snow, and
the blowing, roaring wind pose a multiple threat to the success of
her flight, Sara chooses to confront the elementsgthe text has already
determined her physical and intellectual ability to do so. So when we
read, "puis elle se baisse, décroit et disparait,” (emphasis mine)
we are linguistically assured of her own activity, not victimization,
and of her flight, not envelopment into a forbidding night; set apart
by a comma and occupying final word position in the sentence,
”silencieusement” renders further assurance of Sara's active choice
and probable success-~si1ence cultivate her strengths.

With the introduction of the iconography of weather in this
last scene of Part One we encounter what becomes throughout most of
Part Two a projection of inward tendencies in Axel. Part Two, Le
Monde Tragique, begins with an epigram from Pheeee, ”. . . quia
mominor leo,” (p. 59) giving body to the roar of the wind in the last
scene and becoming explicit later in the section where we find a
textual determinacy of Axel's physique: "l'air d'un jeune lion quoi
porte sa race dans ses yeux" (p. 68) sub-textual determinacy of Axel's
voice during an exchange with the Commander: "(. . . d'une voix si

rude et 51 sourde qu'elle semble, par instants, comme un rauquement

 

58

de lion,“ (p. 147) and later during a more heated moment of the same
argument Axel's three old faithful servants can no longer distinguish
the storm from Axel's voice: ”(. . . ils ont, meme, confondu, parfois,
les sons de bronze de ce verbe avec les éclats de la foudre)” (p. 150).

The three sub-sections of the second part are all set in an
enormous hall of Axel's castle. Its strength and immensity as are its
dampness and deterioration everywhere present in the description and
strike the keynote for the power<yfoel's later entrance. Setting the
tone for both parts two and three the sub-text reads: ”(--un lustre (
de fer pend du milieu des poutres entre —croisées)" (p. 61). *“(an ‘
iron candelabrum hangs from the center of the intersecting beams)

(p. 41). The motifs of strength and light ”intersect” foreshadowing
Axels' clashes with first the Commander, then Master Janus, and finally
Sara in the ultimate ideal of renunciation.

Whereas images of flight in Part One reside in the language,
the setting of Part Two with its ”d'énormes vautours et de grands
aigles fauves sont cloués les ailes étendues” (p. 62) is most explicit
with its static imagery of flight. Of significance, too, is the
fact that they are birdsof prey, reflecting the Commander's desired
relationship with Axel.

In contrast to the Commander's deception and subterfuge, the
three ancient retainers, presented in this sub—section as “les veilleurs
du souverain secret,” (p. 61) embody valor-- each wears the Iron
Cross--fidelity, and order--the castle and its maintenance is their

charge. The first scene is one of readiness for impending danger.

 

59

Alone polishing the weapons, Miklaus comments on the dark, the active
wind, and images of flight. The storm is so threatening that "les
chauves-souris ne vole pas,” (p. 63) *"the bats don't fly,” (p. 42)
thus reinforcing the static quality of the birds presented in the
setting.

Joining Miklaus in the grand hall in the second scene, two
other ancients, similar in bearing and identically honored, prepare
to light an enormous fire to diminish the chill and dampness in the
room. In addition to the room's immensity, its deterioration because
of its dampness is also readily apparent: the portraits are effaced,
the tapestries now have indistinct patterns, the armor has rusted,
and the wood of the lance has rotted. Of import is that this deteri—
oration has resulted from something unseen, the indeterminate-—the
non—illuminated region, to use Ingarden's analogy, but whose effects
have most surely been felt; and on this particular night the effect
is ”singulier”--the outside warmth and closeness and the inside cold
signal an approaching severe storm.

A further focus on the effect of things unseen is provided in
the militarily maimed bodies of the three ancients: one is missing a
part of his forehead, another a portion of his face, and the other an
arm. Although portions of their physical selves are not apparent--we
do not see them as physically whole, determined-—we are told that
what is absent is nonetheless felt and integral: in the following
scene during a rather light but poignant banter between Ukko, Axel's

young page, and the three ancients whose teasing hinders his eager

 

 

 

 

6O

efforts to relate the details of his recent engagement, the ancients
feign disbelief of his story because of his tender age:

HARTWIG
. tu es joli, mais tu es une ombre.

Mon bon Hartwig, est-ce que tu ne souffres pas a l'ombre
de ton bras gauche quand le temps change?
HARTWIG

Si.--Pourquoi cela, mon fils?

UKKO (rieur)
Ah! demande-le au boulet qui t'emporta sa réalité a
Lutzen. Je voulais seulement te faire constater qu'une
ombre est quelque chose (p. 85).

HARTWIG f
. . you are good-looking but you are a shadow.
UKKO 1

My good Hartwig, don't you suffer from the shadow of your
left arm when the weather changes?

HARTWIG
Yes.--Why do you ask that, son?

UKKO (joking)
Ah! ask that of the canon ball which took away its reality
at Lutzen. I just wanted to make you realize that a
shadow is something (p. 54).

 

There are also the added touches of the juxtaposition of illusion and
the real and the granting to the notion of “l'ombre” the privilege of
time-~extension, duration.

Another such reflection on the relationship between the
determined and the indeterminate occurs in the description of a basket
of fruit selected to grace the banquet-table: ”. . . ce sont les
meilleurs: ils ont été piqués par les aiseaux” (p. 65). That the
fruit is not whole here determines another of its qualities--succu—
lence--and, significantly, one for which it is selected to complement
the feast.

Contrasting ageand youth, experience and innocence, paternal

and filial, this scene is crucial in setting the stage for the

 

61

affirmation of Real life (lived by Ukko) in contradistinction to
Transcended life (sought by Axel). In spite of Ukko's age--he is
seventeen--he is highly regarded not only by Axel but also by the
three ancients who bestow on him the supreme compliment of age to
youth:

C'est le gaieté du vieux burg, ce page d'autrefois: de

plus, c'est un esprit déja ferme; subtil, et qui étonne.

-—Il a l'air d'une longue étincelle (PP. 68-69)

*This page is worthy of the good old days. He brings
gaiety to this old fortress, and what's more his mind is
already decisive, subtle, and astonishing. -—He's like
a spark that does not flicker out (p. 45).

That affirmation is suggested here is evident, and by synthe-
sizing time past, time present, and time future in the figure of Ukko
that affirmation reverberates. The relationship is not necessarily
one of succession but rather of juxtaposition, vitality, and con-
tinuity:

. Va, réchauffons nos dernieres songeries a sa belle

jeunesse, comme nous chauffons nos trois barbes blanches
a ce bon feu clair. Laissons-le jouer, --méme avec nous;
son sourire malin nous ranime et sa vue est bonne (p. 69).
*Go on with you, let's warm our last dreamings in his beauti-
ful youth, as we warm our three white beards in this good
bright fire. Let him play,--even at our expense, his roguish
smile revives us, and his company is good for us p. ).
Ukko's relationship with Axel is one of complement; he has the rare
privilege of being permitted to accompany Axel, who clearly demon-
strates a preference for solitude, during the hunt:

Oublies-tu qu'il n'aime que le silence!--S'il accepte,

parfois, Ukko pour compagnon, c'est que l'enfant devient

a ses c6tes plus muet que son ombre te qu'il se sait aimé

jusqu'a la mort par ce vigilant veilleir aux yeux de
faucon! (p. 72).

% - ,

 

 

62

*Are you forgetting that he is fond only of silence:--If

he sometimes accepts Ukko as a companion, it's because

at his side the child becomes more silent than his shadow

and because he knows that such a vigilant watchman with

falcon eyes will love him until death (p. 47).
The richness of imagery of this passage—-solitude, innocence, becom—
ing, shadow (with its implications of indeterminate reflection and
potential completion), fidelity, and flight--is surpassed only by the
tenderness implicit in Axel's extending to Ukko filial privilege with
the concomitant assumption of the earned.

The chorus of ancients in this scene has the final duties of

voicing suspicion about the Commander's visit, concern regarding
Herr Zacharias' uneasiness--the fact that he knows all the family

secrets, even ”1e TERRIBLE,“ could well make him a target—-and a

bewilderment about Master Janus:

Janus ne vieillit pas . . . ses yeux ne semblent pas étre
ceux d'un homme de ce siecle . . . il a quelque chose en
lui qui retient l'affection. . . . C'est un homme naturel-

lement impénétrable (pp. 74—75).
*Janus does not grow old . . . his eyes do not seem to belong
toeaman of this century . . . there is something in him
whichholdsback affection. . . . He is naturally unfathom—
able bp.48-49).
Their anxieties are proper given their respect, loyalty, and concern
that Axel be in no way threatened. In his absence the “weather"
speaks for him, giving textual testament to his ability to withstand
any threat:

(Depuis quelques moments le temps s'est couvert au dehors,

et des rafales annoncent une prochaine tempéte. --Cinq
heures sonnent) (p. 75

 

63

*(In a short time the sky outside has become overcast, and
squalls announce an approaching tempest. Five o'clock
strikes)(p. 49).

Both sub and main text attention to the storm occur contrapuntally
with references to Axel making explicit the connection between the
sound and intensity of the storm and Axel's voice and inner tenden—
cies:

GOTTHOLD
C'est égal: Lorsque Axel d'Auersperg rompra le silence
dans quelque solennel moment, cela sonnera, je crois,1e son

Aux grands vents battent les grandes partes!
GOTTHOLD (presque a lui-meme)
Ah! c'est qu'il fut toujours, en sa nature, de devenir
un homme . . . surhuma1n.
(Bruits de tonnerre; lueurs d'orage; lointaines
rumeurs des bois.)

rude.
MIKLAUS (hochant la téte) 1‘

MIKLAUS (se levant et allant a une
fenétre)
Mais, --que1 temps! . . . Le ciel a change pendant nos re-
ssouvenances! La tourmente secoue la montagne .
(Une vaste lueur, d'un bleu violet sillone les
ombres de la salle.)
Ah! 1e coup va sonner!
GOTTHOLD
Un triste et hideux éclair, c'est vrai.
MIKLAUS
J'ai cru voir un regard de l'enfer!
HARTWIG (apres le coup de tonnerre)
Et c'est la veille de Paques! (pp. 76-78).

GOTTHOLD
*Nevertheless, when Axel of Auersperg breaks his silence on
some solemn moment, in my opinion this place will ring.
MIKLAUS (shaking his head)
The main doors bang in the strong winds
GOTTHOLD (almost to himself)
Ah! the fact is that by nature he is always becoming a
man . . . a superman.
(peals of thunder; lights of a storm; distant echoes
from the woods.)

 

64

MIKLAUS (rising and going to a window)
But, --what weather! . . . The sky has changed during our
reminiscing! The storm torments the mountain . .
(A vast blue violet flash furrows the shadows of the

room.)
Ah! the thunderclap is going to burst!
GOTTHOLD
It gee a gloomy and hideous flash.
MIKLAUS

I thought I caught a glimpse of hell!
HARTWIG (after the clap)
And it's Easter Eve (p. 50).
The religious analogy accustomed by the season and the imminent
temptations augment both the mystery and the intensity of its solu-
tion.
Having heard about Axel and having experienced in the storm
a projection of his inner tendencies, we expect his physical self in
the following scene. Provided instead is the appearance of Ukko, his
shadow, appropriately dressed and with “(deux plumes d'aigle a son
bonnet de fourrure),” (p. 78) sustaining the imagery of flight and
strength and "determining" another aspect of Axel.
Asked about the success of the hunt, Ukko advises them that
among the catch was a vulture:
Le vautour était perdu dans les nuées noires, dans le
tonnerre, quand 1a balle du maitre s'en est allée l'y

surprendre (p. 79).

*The vulture was lost in black clouds, in thunder, when
the master's bullet took it by surprise (p. 51).

This explanation on a literal level describes one part of the hunt;
on an emotional level it synthesizes the tension and anxiety of the
previous scene; on a connotative level it suggests Axel's capability

of being a successful hunter; and on a symbolic level it foreshadows

 

65

the Commander's death by presenting the vulture(a scavenger, a threat)
lost in the story (Axel) and killed because of it. Assuring in its
symbols, the passage makes an effective transition.

Contrasting in tone to the previous scene, this one is not
anxious but anticipatory, not gloomy but veritably gay. It is here
that we learn about Ukko's meeting and imminent marriage to Luisa
G1uck--the "fortunate" name another affirmation. And although there
has been no time gap between the two scenes, the storm, so previously
apparent, is here nearly absent. The sub-text presents it as the
gentle accompaniment for Ukko's relating the circumstances of his good
fortune:

(Alors, debout entre les fleurs de la table, éclairé par les
candélabres . . . et des épars violets, i1 médite . . . Il
parle, en souriant, comme perdu en un réve—-tandis que des
harpes semblent, en des lointains l'accompagner, au fond de
l'orage) (p. 82).
*(Then, standing by the table flowers, lighted by the candel-
abra . . . and the rare violet flashes, he meditates. . . .

He speaks, smiling as if lost in a dream—-whi1e from the
depths of the story distant harps seem to accompany him)
).

(p. 52

Swept up in Ukko's ecstasy and eager to participate as best man and
godfathers, the three ancients are suddenly aware of the compression
of time, at once recalling the day Luisa was born and anticipating

the progeny of an already sixteen year old. Although Ukko's response
has been criticized as an authorial slip,16 it does, by calling atten-
tion to the words--the language--suggest a significant relationship
here between the concept of time and the levels of semantics and

lexicon:

 

 

 

66

L'un dit: «:Déja!>> l'autre: <<Enfin!>> Je commence a

croire que c'est la méme mot retourné (p. 84).

*One says "Already!" and the other "finally!" I am begin-

ning to believe that it is the same word turned around

(p. 54).
Additionally, the participle “retourné,” itself having been "turned
into" an adjective here, invites a rewarding reflection on and atten-
tion to language.

While they are all drinking a toast to Ukko's fiancee, the

Commander enters (Scene Four) observing in an aside that:

Ce sont des pierres—-est l'enfant est l'ame damnée de son
maitre (p. 87).

*They are rocks,--and the child is the damned soul of his
master (p. 55).

thus affirming both strength and loyalty and again presenting textual
lexical support for filial-paternal and flight imagery, and designating
Ukko as an aspect of Axel. This brief scene ends with sub—textual
information on weather:
(Depuis quelques minutes, l'ouragan parait s'étre apaisé:
i1 ne tonne plus qu'a de longs intervalles, et, au loin-
tain, la pluie a presque cessé; néanmoins, a travers les
vitraux 1e ciel demeure couvert et menacant) (p. 87).
*(For the past few minutes the storm seems to have abated;
it now thunders only at long intervals, and in the distance
the rain has nearly stopped; through the windowpanes the
sky remains overcast and threatening)(p. 55).
When Ukko and the three ancients exit the Commander is alone
for all of Scene Five, musing on what he considers Axel's vices and
virtures, that is, the degree to which other things and people influ-

ence him, and the extent to which he himself will be able to persuade

Axel to come with him to court.

 

67

Having been offered wine, tobacco, warm fire and books while
awaiting Axel's return, the Commander selects a book, Traité des
Causes secondes, and reads:

Chapitre premier: Les Silentiairies. -—Diable! «:Tout
verbe, dans le cercle de son action, crée ce qu'il exprime.
Mesure donc ce que tu accordes de volonte aux fictions de
ton esprit>>(p.88).
*Chapter I: Silentiaries. --What the devil! “Any word in
the circumference of its action, creates what it expresses.
Therefore, consider how much volition you grant to the inven-
tions of your mind” (p. 56).
Agitated, he closes it and tosses it among the others. Although
ostensibly designating the extent to which Axel has fallen prey to
occultist practitioners, the passage may also be construed as a

comment on intentionality:17

it is the author's intentionality which
represents the portrayed objects; but the creation of what the word
expresses, that is, meaning, is dependent on a transaction between
the words (text) and a perceiver.

That Axel has sequestered himself in the Forest living such a
solitary existence makes little sense to the Commander; and deciding
that there is another reason for his exile, he prepares to explore the
alternatives with Herr Zacharias, the uneasy old servant. Because
the solitude so consoling and nurturing to Sara and Axel is disturb-
ing to Zacharias--"1e silence m'oppresse depuis--oh! depuis tant
d'années!" (p. 96)--the Commander can procure the secret while vir-
tually allowing the old man to unburden himself. With his presentation
we again find attention given to the “choice” of word:

Monseigneur, je ne parle jamais qu'en pesant bien tous les
termes dont je me sers. Or il est vraiment impossible d'en

 

68

trouver d'exacts pour qualifier les faits que je désire vous

exposer. Bref, s'il est, sur la terre, un secret méritant

le titre de . . . SUBLIME . . . certes, on peut dire que

c'est celui—la. Y penser, seulement . . . me donne 1e

vertige . . . Vous le voyez: je suis inquiet--d'en parler!
(Brugssement de la tempéte. Il regarde autour de lui)
p. 5 .

*My lord, I never speak without weighing all my words care-
fully. Now it is really impossible to find words exact
enough to describe the facts which I desire to present to
you. In short, if there is on this earth a secret meriting
the title of SUBLIME--certainly, we can say it is this one.
Only to think about it . . . gives me vertigo . . . You see:
I am distracted . . . just talking about it.

(The tempest roars. He looks around) (p. 60).

To say that the facts will be left unqualified invites reader partici-
pation: ”SUBLIME" will need to be made more determinate. With the
sub-textual roaring tempest Axel's voice is raised, as it were, in
violent objection to Zacharias' disclosure, the breadth of whose
effects extends from the Auersperg's to Germany, and then the world.
This scope that renders Zacharias incapable of qualification also
connotes the range of "poems" to be made of all these images.

Herr Zacharias' story constitutes all of the second sub-
section of Part Two at the end of which Axel's approaching horn is
heard in the distance. His sub-textual description readily calls to
mind similar descriptions of Sara:

(Il est d'une tres haute taille et d'une admirable beauté
virile. L'élégance musculeuse et les proportions de sa
personne annoncent une puissante force corporelle. Son
visage, d'une paleur presque radieuse, ressortant sous

de longs et ondulés cheveux bruns, est dune expression
mysterieuse a force d'étre pensive . . . Il porte un

bonnet de loutre, a plume d'aigle . . . Il demeure un
moment immobile, au seuil de la salle) (p. 114).

 

69

*(He is very tall and has an admirable virile beauty. Both
his robust elegance and the proportions of his frame indi—
cate powerful physical strength. His face, almost radiantly
pale, emerging from long, wavy brunette hair, has an expres-
sion rendered mysterious by its excessive pensiveness. . . .
His otter bonnet has an eagle plume. . . . For a moment he
stands immobile on the threshold of the hall)(p. 73).
The superior strength, beauty, pensiveness, stance, and proclivity
for flight make Sara and Axel complementary images of each other.

In contrast to Sara's presentation in Part One--she was
seen but not heard--Axel has been heard but not seen. With the first
scene of the third sub-section of Part Two we see and hear Axel,
not as shadow and storm but in his physical presence. It is an amica—
ble scene although ironic because of the Commander's newly acquired
knowledge. As we might expect the sub-text reads: l'(La pluie cessé:
l'orage parait s'étre enforcé dans les bois)" (p. 116). *”(The rain
has stopped; the storm apparently has retreated to the woods)“ (p. 75).
Axel as congenial host can now speak for himself.

During the Bacchanalian banquet of the next scene, urging Axel
to accompany him to court, the Commander recites all the delights of
the flesh awaiting them there. Axel is cordial, but disinterested.
Impatient with Axel's insouciance, the Commander decides to murder
him after having exacted the location of the treasure.

Surmising that the Commander has discovered the secret, Axel
calls Zacharias for confirmation. The internal ramifications of the
disclosure for Axel are mirrored in the weather. Ukko's observation,

"Tiens, 1e tonnerre va tomber, ici" (p. 132). ”Say, lightening is

going to strike here" (p. 85) foreshadows the ensuing tumult iterated

 

 

70

for emphasis in the sub—text: ”(Dupuis quelques instants, l'orage

du dehors, apres l'accalmie, a repris son intensité. La pluie
recommence a bruire aux vitraux et il_éclaire) (p. 133). *"(During
the past few minutes the storm outside, which had been calmer,

resumes its intensity. The rain begins to rattle on the window panes,
and there is lightening)” (p. 85). His decision to duel Pa outrance:
a mort” (p. 136) *”To the end: to death” (p. 87) is in large measure
dictated by his need for solitude-~his need to have the Secret die with
the Commander: "Le silence de la grande Forét--marche dont je suis
margrave--n'est pas a vendre: i1 m'est plus cher que toutes paroles:
c'est un bien sacré, dont je n'entends pas qu'on m'exproprie et dont
l'or de vos banques ne m'indemniserait pas” (p. 159). *"The silence
of the great forest--the march of which I am the margrave——is not for
sale. It is a scared trust which I do not mean to have expropriated
and which could not be indemnified by the gold of your banks“

18

(p. 102). The extent to which the sanctity of Silence is incompre-

hensible to the Commander is emphasized by an explicit textual ref-
erence to the word itself:

AXEL

--puisque 1e Silence ne représente rien pour vous, qu'un
baillement. En effet, ce mot, vide quand vous usurpez 1e
droit do le prononcer, n'a pas (bien que de mémes syllabes)
l'ombre d'une parenté avec celui que j'ai proféré tout a
l'heure. C'est en vain que vous essayez de les confondre
en une méme valeur. .

(Souriant.)
Acte de faussaire ou de perroquet (p. 160).

*--since Silence means only yawning to you. Indeed, this
word, empty when you usurp the ri ht to pronounce it, has
not (even with the same syllables) a trace of a relationship
with the word as I have uttered it just now. It is futile
for you to try to confuse them in the same valuation. .

 

 

 

71

(Smiling)
Like a forger or a parrot (pp. 102-103)
The primacy of meaning is clearly the issue of this passage--even
the most correct pronunciation of the word renders it still meaning-
less.

It is interesting to note that the interminable wordiness of
this final scene of Part Two is to a great extent the Commander's
attempt to buy time, thus his life. Sometimes hypothetical, other
times metaphysical, but always abstruse,the scene becomes a demon—
stration of language devoid of any significant consequence: Axel has
already decided to kill theCommander; the excessive verbiage permits
a linguistic duel, a rehearsal of sorts, before the actual clash of
swords. Immediately before engaging swords Axel, having done with
the word play, observes: "Altieres paroles: a quand l'action?”

(p. 181). *"Lofty words; when the action?” (p. 116).

That Axel has the clear advantage is instantly apparent with
the sub—textual reinforcement of power: ”(Au dehors, 8 chaque
instant, éclats de tonnerre” (p. 182). *"Outside thunder bursts at
every instant” (p. 116). In spite of the Commander's skill, Axel's
superiority is circumscribed within himself and made explicit by
his description: "(. . . i1 demeure comme de pierre a l'abri de son
poignet mouvant, s'enfermant en son impénétrable épée)” (pp. 182—183).
*"(Axel stays like a stone statue in the shelter of his moving wrist,
secluding himself in impenetrable swordplay)” (p. 116). The reflexive,
"s'enfermant," makes even more poignant his strength and immovability.

Merging man and metal sword, the killing thrust brings "(1e bras et le

 

L...

72

fer horizontalement droits),” (p. 183). *”(his arm and iron into

one straight line),” (p. 117) epitomizing Axel's superior strength.
Having been ordered to bury the Commander below in the family

crypt, and reminding Axel that there is a grave already prepared--

Axel's own--Gotthold is forced to speak directly into Axel's ear

”(. . . protégeant, d'une main, ses paroles, a cause des assour—

dissants coups de tonnerre, qui, sans doute, frappent, maintenant,

7 1e sommet du donjon)” (p. 184). *“(protecting his words with his hand

becuase of the deafening roars of thunder which now strike the summit
of the keep)” (p. 118). The unleashed, raging voice of the storm,
threatening even Gotthold's words, is indicative of Axel's inner
turmoil: his having killed the Commander has not succeeded in leaving
dormant the Secret; Axel himself has been seduced by the potential
acquisition of the Gold. That this transference has occurred is sug—
gested in Axel's response to the Commander's burial in his own grave:
"Soit: cendre pour cendre" (p. 184). *“So be it: his ashes for
mine" (p. 118) and by his aside in reponse to Master Janus' appearance
at the top of the stairway: “Maitre Janus! (Un silence. Puis avec
un profond soupir.) Ah! je me sens redevenir seulement un homme, en
presence de ce vivant (p. 185). *”Master Janus. (A pause. Then with
a deep sigh.) Ah! in the presence of this living being I feel that

I have become a mere man once more'I (p. 119). It is as though Axel,
with his great sigh, has assumed the Commander's appetite for the
Gold, for things material, and having done so is no longer ”super" but

merely human.

 

 

73

Part Three, Le Monde Occulte, begins with a Lao Tse epigraph
which reads: "Accueille tes pensées comme des h6tes, et tes désirs
comme des enfants (p. 187). *“Welcome your thoughts like guests and
your desires like children" (p. 121). This introduction to Master
Janus' plea for Axel's acceptance of asceticism is an appropriate
transition from Axel's temptation by things material. Presumably,
mental, esoteric activities are properly entertained like guests, but
desires, while acknowledged, are fittingly contained, restrained,
controlled like children. The first sub—section of this third part
consists of Master Janus' argument for the ascetic life; this is the
world from which Axel now struggles to detach himself:

Jusqu'ici, j'avais seulement vu la lumiere de ce monde de
prestiges que cet homme m'a dévoilé: en ce moment toute
l'ombre m'en apparait. Un doute immense me saisit. . .
La Vie appelle ma jeunesse, plus forte, que ces pensées trop
pures pour 1' age de feu qui me domine! Ce mort m'a scandalisé,
. . 1e sang peut- ~etre. . . N'importe! Je veux rompre cette
chaine et goOter a la vie! . . . (p. 191)
*Until now I had seen only the light of the world of enchant-
ment which this man unveiled for me; at this moment I see
only its darkness. An immense doubt encompasses me. .
Life calls to my youth, stronger than these concepts which
are too pure for the fiery season ruling me! That dead man
ensnared me . . . the blood perhaps. . . . No matter! I
want to break my present chains and taste life (p. 124).
Axel's present attraction to life and its living precludes considera-
tion of any rewarded afterlife as well as a world of ideas.

AXEL
Je suis homme; je ne veux pas devenir une statue de pierre.

MAITRE JANUS
Libre a toi: seulement, l'univers ne se prosterne que devant
les statues Ip. 192).

 

74
AXEL
*I am a man: I do not want to become a stone statue.
MASTER JANUS
As you wish: but the universe prostrates itself only before
statues (p. 125).

It is ironic that, although Axel finds it unacceptable to
become a "statue," it is precisely this stance toward which both he
and Sara move and ultimately achieve in death. Janus' admonition to
Axel to die "en ascete, de la mort des phenix” (p. 200). *"ascetically,
like the phoenix” (p. 129) is similar in essence to Axel's disgusted
observation of the Commander's death: I'Tu tombesanlprofond de la Mort
comme une pierre dans la vide,--sans attirance et sans but" (p. 183).
*"You fall to the depths of Death like a stone into a void,--without
attraction and without a goal" (p. 117). The death that Master Janus
would have Axel seek is the death to the world of “cette vieille
Extériorité, maligne, compliquée, inflexible . . . La Mort, c'est
avoir choisi. C'est l'Impersonnel, c'est le Devenu" (p. 199). *"that
old Externality, malign, complicated, inflexible . . . Death is the
fulfilled choice. It is the Impersonal. It is Becoming finalized"
(p. 129). Axel, however will eventually choose a literal death in
order to preserve his illusions.

That Janus knows the potential of Axel's passion urges him to
further warn Axel of the dangers of "Le grand crime d'aimer et de
vivre. . . . Chaque fois que tu 'aimes', tu meurs d'autant" (p. 201).
*"The great crime of loving and living! . . . Each time you 'love,'
that much more of you dies" (p. 130). You will recall that early in

Part Two the three ancients, observing a certain ". . . quelque chose

 

 

75

en lui, ce maitre Janus, qui retient l'affection" (p. 74).
something in Master Janus that holds back affection,” (p. 48) pre-
figured this ultimate direction toward the denial of warmth and life.
That Master Janus' words are ironically construed on at least two
levels is also foreshadowed early by the three old retainers:
"Lorsqu'il parle, événement rare, ce qu'il dit bien que toujours
simple, semble comme 1e reflet c'entre deux miroirs: on s'y per-
drait a l'infini" (p. 75). *"When he speaks, a rare event, what he
says, although always simple, seems like a reflection between two
mirrors: you get infinitely lost in it” (p. 49). The focus here is
again on language, on words spoken and their polysemy suggested by
the words ”1e reflet" and ”l'infini.“

In this same vein, there is an interesting reference to read-
ing for the purpose of edification. Resting his own case of words
spoken, Master Janus advises Axel to continue reading: ”Si tu
desires d'autres paroles . . . N'essayois -tu pas de lire, tout a
l'heure? Reprends ta lecture. Petu-étre ce livre te répondra-t-il
mieux que moi: --je n'offre que ce qui suffit“ (p. 209). *“If you
desire other words. . . . Weren't you trying to read a little while
ago? Resume your reading. Perhaps the book will answer you better
than I. --I offer only what suffices" (p. 135). That Janus has
offered only what is sufficient-~perhaps in summary--suggests the
process of selection, intentionality, and it further suggests the
notion of textual redundancy with its attendant potential for making

meaning, for understanding: "Comprendre, c'est 1e reflet de créer“

 

 

76

(p. 209).” *"Understanding is the reflection of creating” (p. 135).
An earlier similar reference to the necessity for Axel's participa-
tion in the negotion of meaning even refers to the integral "behind
the eye" contributions:
Si tu n'entends pas 1e sens de certaines paroles, tu périras,
simplement, dans l'air qui m'entoure. . . . Je n'instruis
pas: j'éveille. --Alors que tu vagissais, dans tes langes,
si tu n'eus pas, sous tes paupieres fermées, 1e regard tout
empreint de cette Lumiere qui pénétre, reconnait et réfléchit
l'Esprit substantiel des choses, 1'esprit d'universalité
entre les choses, je ne puis te donner ce regard. . . . Nul
n'est initié que par lui-meme (p. 196).
*If you do not understand the meaning of certain words, you
will simply perish in Unaair surrounding me. . . . I do not
instruct: I awaken. sic. If you do not have beneath your
closed lids a sight already marked by this Light which pene-
trates, recognizes, and reflects the substantial Spirit of
things, the spirit of universality among things. . . . I
cannot give this sight to you now. . . . Only you can ini-
tiate yourself (p. 127).

In the second sub-section, “Le Renonciateur,” there is the
renunciation of the occult parallel to Sara's renunciation of the
religious life; the words are the same:

Acceptes-tu 1a Lumiere, l'Espérance et la Vie?

AXEL, apres un grand silence et relevant la tete.
Non (p. 137).
*Do you accept Light, H0pe and Life?
AXEL (after an extended pause raising his head.)
No (p. 137).
As the severity of the storm had connoted the intensity of Axel's
struggle, so too, the long silence preceding his response reflects

the degree of difficulty of his decision. Having renounced ascetism

77

and refusing response to Janus' indignation, Axel assumes a by now
familiar position:

(Axel s'est croisé les bras et demeure les yeux fixes, sans
paleur . . . coup de cloche au loin dans la nuit)(p. 214).

*(Axel has folded his arms. He remains staring without speak-
ing. . . . In the depth of the night a bell tolls once)
(p. 138).
The striking bell provides a parallel frame for the scene just as did
the bells of the dead and golden nativity bell as Sara renounced
sequestered life.

Gotthold's announcement of Sara's arrival at the end of this
third part finds a highly distraught Axel; his pallor is frightening
to the old retainer, and the extent of his distraction is suggested
by the fact that he calls for Ukko, momentarily forgetting that the
page is taking care of the Commander's burial. The intensity of the
scene and the anxiety attending Sara's arrival is attested to by the
last words of the third part:

MAITRE JANUS, a lui-meme, au sommet de l’escalier
de pierre

Le Voile et le Manteau, tous deux renonciateurs, se sont
croisés: l'Oeuvre s'accomplit (p. 216).

*The Veil and the Mantle both renunciators have intersected:
the Work nears fulfillment (p. 139

The two reflexives emphasize an internal focus--of attention to Axel
and Sara, to their own internal tendencies, to the text itself. While
"l'OEuvre" refers to the destinies of the houses of Auersperg and
Maupers, it may also suggest the work of art itself for the fourth

part does indeed mark the end of the drama.

78

The first scene of Part Four, ”Le Monde Passionnel,” finds the
three ancients and Ukko completing the Commander's burial. Rather than
the anticipated hushed tones and reverences fitting a burial, Ukko
interjects a certain candor, vitality, even ribaldry:

L'épitaphe? la voici:--Ce fut un signeur insoucieux,
qui prisa fort la bonne chere et les belles femmes.
Que cette excellente lame, d'ailleurs, intercede pour
nous dans la lumiére divine! (p. 220).
*The epitaph? here is one: --Here lies a carefree lord
who loved good cheer and beautiful women. And add this:
may his superlative sword intercede for us now and in the -
hour of our death! (p. 144).
The interrogative and pause of the first words invite a response or A
encourage an anticipatory attitude in the reader; the double entendre
stresses the import of the words. (There is the added association of
"lame” with “l'ame” at the level of sound and its concomitant conno-
tation of flight imagery, mentioned previously). Contrasting the
somber intensity of the previous scene, Ukko provides a fresh honesty
which invests him with a sense of hope, renewal, and continuity in
preparation for the following scene. Again there is a compression of
time suggested in the terms used and references made to Ukko by the

ancients; juxtaposed we find "Coleres d'enfant!” “mon garcon

qui as encore du lait dans le nez!" “Tu es dan l'age de la vigueur”
(pp. 222, 223). *”Childish anger!" My boy,” ". . . a nursling with
milk still on your nose!" ”You are in the season of strength”

(pp. 144, 145).
Appearing in the crypt, having come to bid them all farewell,

Axel assumes the tone and terms of paternal affection in his address

 

79

to the three ancient retainers: "Amis,——Amis! mes vieux enfants. 11
1e faut. Pardonnez!” (p. 224). *"Friends, --friends! my old child-
ren! —-I must. Forgive me“ (p. 146). It is immediately and pain-
fully apparent to his charges that Axel's leave-taking is from life
itself. Axel'sresponses to Ukko's protestations that he is not to
accompany his master is an affirmation of the continuity of life: ”Et
ta fiancee, enfant! et ta patrie! Je dois partir, sans vous revoir,
au lever du soleil, en ce jour de Paques” (p. 224). *“What about
your fiancee, child! and your fatherland! -—On this Easter day I must

leave at sunrise with out seeing you again" (D. 146). The season adds

 

again another level of significance: the concomitant death and neces-
ary rebirth. All Axel's power and potential vitality is literally
passed on to Ukko:

AXEL, l'embrassant.
Mon fils!
(Il ouvre les bras; Ukko s'y précipite et, tout
en larmes, l'embrasse.)
Tu trouveras, sur ma table, un parchemin signé d'Axel:
a toi ce chateau, si je n'y reviens plus (p. 225).

* AXEL (embrancing him)
My son!
(He opens his arms. Ukko runs to them and kisses
them tearfully.

You will find on my table a parchment signed Axel. If I

return no more the Castle is yours (p. 146).
That Axel is exceptional and has earned the respect and admiration
of Ukko as well as the three old retainers is evident in Miklaus'
lament: ”Lui,dont le regard nous nourrisait" (p. 226). *"And in his
glance we found our daily bread” (p. 147). The statement further

restores Axel to the sanctity of solitude he enjoyed prior to his

 

80

having been tainted by the Commander's lust for gold; this is the
Axel who is about to be tempted not by ”l'or'I but by "l'amour."

Alone now pondering for a final time the family escutscheon,
Axel hears Sara's approaching steps, attractive to him because
they are “bein assurée,” conceals himself, and watches her open
the vaulted treasure. As the jewels and coins cascade down around
her, Sara, aware of a presence, turns, sees Axel, and fires two
shots wounding him in the chest. The ensuring struggle, during which
Sara is superficially wounded by her own dagger, is in effect the
foreplay to a union to be consummated not in life with Axel but in

their deaths.19

Each is intoxicated by the beauty and prowess of the
other, and the passion of struggle is transformed to tenderness as
Sara, observing Axel's pallor from the loss of blood, removes his
jacket and applies ”1e grand voile noir tout trempé de l'eau funeraire”
(p. 235). *”the voluminous black veil soaked in funerary water"

(p. 153). While literally checking the flow of blood, the veil also
shrounds Axel, as it were.

Here Sara comes into her full power; she is confident, knowing
the extent to which she has already affected Axel and the degree to
which she can give him pleasure. To the extent that her silence in
Part One magnifies her determination and will, so also her erotic
language electrifies the close air of the sepulchre, scintillating
Axel's very essence:

(Elle se suspend languissamment, 1a téte renversée

et 1e regardant, avec des yeux de lumiere entre ses

cils; ses cheveux se dénouent, roulent et 1'enveloppent.
Elle parle d'une voix pure, tres sourde, tres douce,

 

 

81

presque basse, oppressée --Parfois elle ferme les

yeux tout a fait et son éclatonte beauté grave resplendit
sous les lueurs du flambeau, de la lampe et des pier-
reries. --Ha1etante, les narines frémissantes, les

bras languides.)

Sois indulgent pour toi-meme, enfant! Est'ce donc pour toi-
méme, enfant! Est-ce donc pour moi que je veux vivre! Ne me
tue pas. A quoi bon? Je suis inoubliable.

Sais-tu ce que tu refuses! Toutes les faveurs des autres
femmes ne valent pas mes cruautés! Je suis la plus sombre
des vierges. Je crois me souvenir d'avoir fait tomber des
anges. Hélas! des fleurs et des enfants sont morts de mon
ombre.

Laisse-toi séduire! --Je t'apprendrai les syllabes
merveilleuses qui enivrent comme les vins de l'Orient! Je
puis t'endormir en des caresses qui font mourir: je sais
1e secret des plaisirs infinis et des cris délicieux, des
voluptés OD toute espérance défaille. Oh! t'ensevelir en
ma blancheur, 0D tu laisserais ton ame comme une fleur
perdue sous la neige! Te voiler de mes cheveux oh tu
respirerais 1'esprit des roses mortes! —-Cede. Je te ferai
p311r sous les joies ameres; j'aurai de la clémence pour
toi, lorsque tu seras dans ces supplices! (pp. 237-238).

*(Her face upturned, her glittering eyes watching him
through her eyelashes, she languishes at his neck.
Her coiffure coming loose, her hair cascades and
envelopes her. She speaks in pure tones, her words
barely voiced, her voice very gentle, almost oppres-
sive. -—Sometimes she closes her eyes altogether, and
her dazzling grave beauty glows beneath the light of the
torch, the lamp, and the gems. --Breathless, her nos-
trils dilating, her arms languid.)

Be indulgent to yourself, little one! Do I want to live for
myself! Do not kill me. What good would that do? I am
unforgettable. Do you know what you refuse? All the favours
of other women are not worth my cruelties! I am the most
inhuman virgin. I think I remember causing the angels' fall.
Alas! flowers and children have died from my shadow.

Let me beguile you!--I shall teach you marvelous syllables
inebriating as Eastern wines! I can put you to sleep with
fatal caresses; I know the secret of infinite pleasures and
delectating cries, the secret of voluptuous sensations where
every hope expires.

Oh! let my white limbs enshroud you, burying your soul like
a flower, lost beneath the snow. Let me veil you in my hair
so you may inhale the attar of roses of all time! . . . Yield.

I shall make you pale beneath stinging joy; I shall be merci—
ful, when you are under this torture! (p. 155).

 

82

Sara is clearly the aggressor here, and it is a significant point.
Because of Countess Lisvia, Axel's mother—-a gentle, pensive woman
whose Book of Hours Sara has read in the convent thus discovering the
secret of the treasure--Sara is now with Axel to ennoble his death

as his mother has ennobled his life. Seeing a statue of Axel's mother
in the mausoleum, Sara observes: "C'est ta jeune mere, n'est-ce pas?
--Oui, tu as ce noble front . . . et, vois, que de mélancholie!

. Madame vous le voyez: Je donne a votre enfant tout ce que je
suis“ (p. 243). *”It's your mother, isn't it? —-Yes, you have this
noble brow . . . and see, what melancholy! . . . Madam, you see I
give your child all that I am” (p. 158), thereby sustaining the motif
of nourishment: Axel both nourishes and is in return nourished by a
woman stronger than he.

Sister Aloyse's relationship with Sara in Part One has prefigured
this aspect of Sara's character. That the early passage was of such
import is stressed here in Part Four when Sara pleads with Axel not
to seek retribution for the hardships she endured at the convent: it
is because of Sara's concern for Sister Aloyse, depicted as a kindred
soul, that Axel agrees to forgive rather than exact justice from the
convent:

Je t'intercede encore au nom d'une toute jeune fille, aussi

pale que nous, mais pareille aux séraphins de 1'exile—-et

dont 1e coeur, consume de l'amour natal, était si épris de

sacrifices . . . qu'il me donna 1e fleur de ses réves candides,

préférent se perdre a se garder! Grace! au nom de cette

enfant qu j'ai désolée! (p. 246).

*I intercede also in the name of a very young girl, pale like
us, but more like the seraphim of the exile—~and whose heart,

born consumed by love, was so enrapt with sacrifice . . . that
she gave me the flower of her white dreams; she would lose

 

83

herself for my sake! Pity! in the name of that child whom

I left disconsolate! (p. 160).
All the tenderness and religio-sensual language of the earlier
convent scene is recalled and intensified here with the "pale,"
"réves," and "Grace" providing, at the graphic level, the correla-
tive motif of sky, expansion, flight.

Enchanted and charmed by Sara, Axel confesses his love for her,

whereupon Sara intones a five-page litany of futurity, as it were,
inviting him to participate in naming his desires with the implied

promise of immediate fulfillment: ”Dis, cher aime! Veux-tu venir

. .? veux-tu vivre . . . ? veux—tu explore . . .? veux-tu voir
. ? veux-tu rever . . .?” (PP. 251-256). *”Tell me, dearly
beloved! Do you want to come . . .? do you want to live . . .?
Do you want to explore . . .? Do you want do see . . .? Do you want

to dream . . .?" (pp. 163-166). The motif of flight is also present
in this speech, but in a real, not transcended sense: ”Mais, plutOt,
envolons -nous, comme les alcyons, vers des horizons toujours bleus
et calmes, a Corinthe a Palerme, sous les portiques de Silistria!”
(p. 254). *”But, instead, let us fly away like halcyons toward the
horizons, always blue and calm, of Corinth or Palermo or beneath the
portico of Silistria! (p. 165). Sara's invitation is for a sharing of
mutual pleasures in the real world.

That Sara has indelibly affected Axel is evident; she has,
in fact, given him the resolve, the purpose to leave life in a supreme
gesture of renunciation: ”Sara! je te remercie de t'avoir vue.
Je suis heureux, 6 ma liliale épousée! ma maitresse! ma vierge!

ma vie! je suis heureux que nous soyons ici ensemble, pleins de

 

84

jeunesse et d'espérance, pénétres d'un sentiment vraiment immor-
tel. . .“ (p. 259). *”Sara! I thank you--for letting me see you. . .
I am happy, 0 my lily, my wife! my mistress! my virgin! my life!
I am happy that we are all together, full of youth and hope, imbued
with a truly immortal feeling. . .” (p. 167). Assuming that she has
persuaded Axel to ”come with her and be her love,” Sara ends the first
sub-section with ". . . tous les réves a realiser” (p. 259). *”.
all dreams to fulfill!‘I (p. 167).

In the final subsection of Part Four, "The Supreme Option,”
Axel responds to Sara's hope for realized dreams: “A quoi bon les
réaliser? . . . ils sont si beaux” (p. 260). *”What is the point of
fulfilling them? . . . they are too beautiful" (p. 169). Only then
does Sara sense that Axel has incorporated her zeal for futurity into
”des pensées divines.” To Sara's retort that life is here and now
with future promise Axel responds:

Vivre? Non. Notre existence est remplie,-—et sa coupe
déborde! . . . L'avenir? . . . Sara, crois en cette parole:
nous venons de l'épuiser. Toutes les réalités, demain, que
seraient—elles, en comparison des mirage que nous venons

de vivre. . . . La Terre, dis—tu? . . . c'est elle .,. . qui
est devenue l’Illusion . . . et c'est bien EN REALITE que
nous sommes devenus nos ames. . . . Vivre? les serviteurs
feront cela pour nous. . . . J'ai trop pensé pour daigner
agir (p. 261).

*Life? No. --Our existence is already full, and its cup
runneth over. . . . The future? Sara have faith in my
words: We have just exhausted it. What would all those
realities be tomorrow in comparison with the mirages we
have just lived through? . . . The Earth, you say? . . .
it is the Earth which has become Illusion . . . and indeed
in REALITY we have become our souls. . . . As for living?
our servants will do that for us. . . . I have thought too
much to stoop to act! (p. 169).

 

85

It is interesting to note here that Axel functions for Sara as
Master Janus and the Commander did for him in Parts Three and Two
respectively and as the Archdeacon did for Sara in Part One. While
not completely renouncing what Axel espouses, Sara does resist trying
to buy one more tomorrow, with its possibility of greater strength
for her to accede to Axel's wishes. But the ”demain" which holds the
potential for greater strength for Sara threatens to make Axel ”1e
prisonnier de (son) corps splendide!” (p. 265). *"prisoner of (her)
splendid body!" (p. 172). Sara's choice to follow Axel follows "un
profond silence,” so much a part of this work and from which both
Axel and Sara have garnered enormous strength throughout the play.

As Axel has relinquished the living of life to his servants, so also

20 ”Pour-

does Sara conclude her acceptance speech with this caveat:
tant, souviens--toi de la race humaine!“ (p. 265). *”However, remember
the human race" (p. 172).

Here, too, are there similarities that can be found between
the events in the Garden of Gethsemane and these in the Auersperg
sepulchre; there is even the similarity in language: ”. . . et qu'il
en soit fait selon ta volonté'I (p. 267). *”. . . and let it be done
according to thy will" (p. 173). This use of the future subjunctive,

2' with Axel's decision to

"Soit,” begins in Part Two. Scene Twelve
kill the Commander, and multiplies at an exponential rate through the
second and third parts and Scene One of Part Four. The focus again
is on language, on the relationship between syntax and semantics.

With the repetition of "Soit!” comes an urgent sense of the ”destined"

86

foreshadowed in Part One when the Abbess explains Master Janus' role
in the houses of Auersperg and de Maupers and made more explicit at
the end of Part Three where Janus observes that with the crossing
of the Veil and the Mantle the work accomplishes itself.

The use of the subjunctive further connotes the “irreal,”
very much a concern of this play and that to which Axel and Sara ulti-
mately give themselves in order to preserve ”le moment intérieur”

(p. 263).

That the imminent suicides be considered, in context, an
affirmation rather than a negation of values has been carefully pre—
pared throughout the drama. The dramatis personae are of two realms--
human and super-human. Among the humans are those who serve, those
who are served, and those who retreat to religion or asceticism
for none of these people would suicide be textually affirmative. But
for Sara and Axel, the super—humans, the extent of their success is
measured in terms of renunciation, the supreme option of which is,

in fact, suicide—-a turning inward to an ultimate degree: . c'est
bien en REALITE que nous sommes devenus nos 3mes!” (p. 261). *“and
in REALITY we have become our souls” (p. 169).

The question persists, however: why, when Sara and Axel's
circumstances are the most favorable that can be imagined--they are
young, beautiful, strong, intelligent, rich, free, and in love (p. 260)
--would they give it all up for an unknown? Sara herself poses the
same question:

SARA, un peu éperdue.
Quoi! renoncer a tant de joies!

 

 

 

87

AXEL
L'homme n'emporte dans la mort que ce qu'il renonca,
de posseder dans la vie. En verite--nous ne laissons
ici qu'une écorce vide. Ce qui fait 1a valeur de ce
trésor est en nous-memes (p. 266).

SARA (a little bewildered)
*What! how can you renounce so many pleasures?

Man carries into death only wHEELhe renounces in life.

Really-—we leave behind only an empty rind. What makes

this treasure valuable is in us (p. 172).
On a literal level the explanation satisfies the nagging question;
on a connotative level the latter sentences may extend to the notion
of text and reader. This connotation is augmented by Sara's specific 1
reference to readers (or audience) just two lines later: "Entends—-
tu 1e rire du genre humain, s'il apprenait jamais la ténébreuse
histoire, la folie surhumaine de notre mort?“ (pp. 266-267). *"Can't
you hear men's laughter if they ever learned this obscure story, this
super human madness behind our deaths?” (p. 172). In addition to
calling our attention to a textual reference to readers (or perceivers
of a story) with the attendant implication of participation, this
passage also acknowledges both a textual obscurity—-indeterminacy--and
the intentioned superhuman realm.

That Sara is the aggressor here is also suggested by her
supplying the suicide poison from her family—crested ring. All around
them is life in abundance. It is interesting to note that even this
"life" participates in their deaths in the form of the early morning
dew used to dissolve the poison grains of powder in the golden chalice:

"Ainsi, 1e ciel sera de complicité avec notre suicide!“ (p. 268).

88

*"Thus heaven will be an accomplice of our suicide!“ (p. 173). A
chorus of woodsmen can be heard in the distance singing songs of joy
and renewal. Ukko, too, can be heard going to meet his bride whose
wedding dress has "la rosée, au bas” (p. 269). *"dew on the hem”
(p. l74)--the same morning dew of the poison potion. In spite of,
or even perhaps because of death--part of the woodmen's song praises
the ”grands arbres dont la mort nous donne 1e pain!“ (p. 269).
*”high tress whose death gives us bread!" (p. l73)--there is the
expectation of fruition and continuity further suggested by the last
words of Ukko's song: ”C'est pourquoi ses pas sonneront sur la
terre” (p. 269). *"And thus her earthly steps will ring" (p. 174).
Preparing to drink the poison, Sara, bejeweled and resting her

head on Axel's shoulder,recites the last spoken words of the play:

Maintenant, puisque l'infini seul n'est pas un mensonge,

enlevons--nous, oublieux des autres paroles humaines, en

notre méme Infini! (p. 270).

*Now, since infinity alone is no deception, let us steal

away, oblivious of other human words, into our own

Infinity! (p. 174)

Striking is the reflexive ”enlevons-nous" instead of the repeatedly
used ”envolons-nous.” The phrase turns in on itself, convolutedly,
and becomes a symbol for the juxtaposition and self-referentiality
suggested by the language of this drama as the vehicle for the
realization of meaning potential. The reflexive verb is followed by
an adjective denoting a mental act and another specific reference to
"words,” a statement which may well suggest a caveat to readers con-

cerning the source of the realization of meaning. While sustaining

 

 

89

the motif of flight right to the end the circumflexed adverb of empha-
sis, "en notre méme Infini!” is semantically reflexive, for the final
time inviting the reader to a transaction between text and self.

To the sub-text falls the final counterpoint of this symbolist

melody22

of life and death, reality and illusion, continuity and

flight:
(A présent, 1e soleil jaunit les marbres, les statues . . .
Une piece d'or tombe. roule et sonne comme l'heure contre un
sepulcre. --Et--troublant le silence du lieu terrible on
deux étres humains viennent ainsi de vouer eux—mémes leurs
ames a 1'éXi1 du CIEL--on entend, du dehors, les murmures
éloignes du vent dans 1e vaste des foréts, les vibrations
d'éveil de l'espace, la houle des plaines, 1e bourdonnement
de la Vie)(p. 271).

*(Now the sun tints the marbles and statues. . . . A gold piece
falls, rolls, and rings like a clock striking against a
sepulchre. --and-—disturbing the silence of the awesome
place where two human beings have just freely dedicated
their souls to the exile of Heaven-—are distant murmurs of
the wind in the forest vastness, vibrations of the awaken-
ing of space, the surge of the plain, the hum of life) (p. 175).

There are revisions and fragments which Villiers, in an
alleged crise de conscience deciding to present a more orthodox view
of Catholicism, began but never indicated how and where the inserts
or substitutions were to be made (pp. 275-283). Although interesting
as literary fragments, the revisions need not be reconciled with the
original text; I have made no attempt to do so here, although I must
admit more than a momentary temptation to look more closely at such
phrases as, ”Toute syllable est irrevocable” (p. 278) and "Pourquoi
vraiment? un adverbe l'épee au c6te! Je vais envoyer des gens d'armes
demander ses papier a ce personnages . . .” (p. 279). The conscious

focus on language as vehicle by which the author ”intends" through

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

90

text requires the active participation of a reader and assumes a recog—
nition that meaning is actualized only in use, in transaction.

That Aeel may be an unevenly wrought Christian mystery play
might possibly be conceded in a narrowly defined frame. But it is
more, much more, and its language (determinacies and indeterminacies)
invites the reader (audience) to attend with other then only religio-
biographical assumptions so that meaning potential might be realized.
It is of particular importance to focus on its language because of
the inclination of Symbolist drama to celebrate the singularity of
emotions and sensations to an extent that detaches metaphors from
their subjects. Such detachment necessitates critical criteria
that consider the lived-through experience of the work as an essential
aspect of meaning construal and considers the linguistic formations as
both the external, immutable shell of the work in which the meaning
units are bound and the represented objects and in which schematized

aspects find eXpression.

 

 

FOOTNOTES--CHAPTER III

'William T. Conroy, Jr., Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (Boston:
Twayne Publishers, 1978), p. 133.

 

2The suggestion that Villier's own personal religious views
and pyschological states of mind are reflected in Axel and thus change
from Axel's beginnings to its revisions at the time of Villier's
death is found in E. Drougard, ”Le Vrai Sens d'Axel," La Grande Revue
135 (1931): 271-273. Also in Rodolphe Palgen, Villiers de l'Isle-
Adam: auteur dramatigue (Paris: Champion, 1925), pp. 53, 59, and 65.
And in Peter Brugisser, La Double Illusion de l'or et de l'amour
(Berne: Herbert Lang, 19697, pp. 11, 12, 37,738.

3

 

 

 

Drougard, "Le Vrai Sens d'Axel," p. 276.

4Marilyn Gaddis Rose, trans., Axel by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
(Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1970), p. x. Rose refers to the second act as
the ”most tedious in modern drama.”

 

5Edmund Wilson, Axel's Castle (New York: Scribner's Sons,
1931), pp. 13, 14, 20, 21

6Louise M. Rosenblatt, The Reader, The Text, The Poem (Carbon-
dale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), p. 12.

 

7Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Axel, Vol. IV of Oeuvres Completes
(Paris: Mercure de France, 1923), p. 7. Hereafter references to this
work will appear as page numbers in parentheses within the text itself.

8Rose, Trans., Axel, p. 5. Translations from the original
French are taken from this volume. When they appear in the text, they
will be preceded by an asterisk (*). Hereafter references to this work
will appear as page numbers in parentheses within the text itself.

 

9George Steiner, After Babel (London: Oxford University Press,
1975), p. 159.

10Kenneth S. Goodman, ”Psycholinguistic Universals in the Reading
Process,“ in Psycholinguistics and Reading, ed. Frank Smith (New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1973), p. 25.

 

91

 

 

92

"Rose translates the phrase "on ne soit quel" as "some.” My
preference is for a translation focusing on dweinability to give it
words. Rose discusses Ukenecessity for basic assumptions when trans-
lating literary works in "From Literary Analysis to Literary Trans-
lation: Some Basic Assumptions of Literary Translation,” Equivalence
7 (1978): 15-24.

 

'2Richard Macksey, "The Consciousness of the Critic: Georges
Poulet and the Reader's Share," 'hi Velocities of Change, ed.: Richard
Macksey (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 307.

 

'3Conroy, Villiers, p. 136.

'4A. W. Raitt, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam et le mouvement symbol-
iste (Paris: Libraire Jose Carti, 1965), p. 260.

 

15Even a perfunctory glance at the phrasing here makes it
clear that in translation even at the graphic level can some of the
textual import be lost. One would be hard pressed to sustain the
double flight imagery with its corresponding sound stratum complement.

'6Rose, trans., Axel, p. 54. The note on the bottom of this
page indicates that there may have been some ”slip" in the writing
of the manuscript to the effect that the author could not remember what
he had already written.

171 use the word here in the Ingardian phenomenological sense.

'81n Rose's translation there is no mention of "paroles“; in
fact, the entire phrase, "i1 m'est plus cher que toutes paroles,” is
eliminated. In the June Guicharnaud translation, Axel (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc.), p. 109, the phrase does appear
as "it is dearer to me than any words." Because the issue of "words”
and ”language" has so central a focus here, an omission such as this
significantly alters the meaning units.

 

19Rose makes the observation of the sexual allusion in her
forward to the play, p. xi.

20Raitt, Villiers, p. 261. Raitt observes here the similarity
between these lines and those of another of Villier's plays, Isis.
Raitt feels that this is "pour Villiers une derniere tentative dgsespéré
de suivre 1e conseil que Forsiana donne a Wilhelm dans 1sis: "Gardéz
vou reves! . . . Ils valent mieux que la réalité!" This repulsion
of life because of its inferiority to some ideal is typical of the
symbolist movement; but life is also somehow essential if nothing more
than that from which these symbolist heroes transcend.

2'This use of the subjunctive begins in Axel, Vol. IV, p. 150
and in Rose, trans., p. 96.

22Wilson, Axel's Castle, p. 13.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IV

TINY ALICE

In 1964, just two years before he received the Pulitzer Prize
and during the season in which he had four plays running concurrently,1
Edward Albee wrote Tiny Alice. The mixed critical reception greeting
this play threatened its early closure. Taking the critics to task a
for believing it their responsibility to reflect what they consider 3
the tastes of their readers, and admonishing readers (audience) for
abdicating their right to establish their own criteria for taste,

Albee asked that the play be given a fair chance: . entered into
and experienced without preconception, without pre-determination of
how a play is supposed to go . . . sit back, let it happen to you,
and take it in rather as you would a piece of music or a dream."2
Earlier Albee had addressed himself to the audience's (reader's)
responsibility to a work of art saying that it demanded of them ”the
willingness to bring to it some of the intensity and perception its
creator put into it. The more concrete the work, the less passive may
be the audience. Unless of course the audience does not desire par-
ticipation . . . and far too little is ever said about the responsi—
bility of an audience.”3
Just what was this dramatic chimera that has caused such contro—

versial dramatic criticism?4 To briefly summarize the plot I shall

93

 

 

 

94

use Albee's own summary, aware that it is itself selectively ”deter—
mined" yet nonetheless succinct:

A lay brother, a man who would have become a priest
except that he could not reconcile his idea of God with
the God which men create in their own image, is sent by
his superior to tie up loose ends of a business matter
between the church and the wealthy woman. The lay brother
becomes enmeshed in an environment which, at its core and
shifting surface, contains all the elements which have
confused and bothered him throughout his life: the rela-
tionship between sexual hysteria and religious ecstasy;
the conflict between selflessness of service and the con-
spicuous splendor of martyrdom. The lay brother is brought
to the point, finally, of having to accept what he had
insisted he wanted . . . union with the abstraction,
rather than (a) man-made image of it, its substitution.
He is left with pureabstraction--whatever it be called: God,
Alice——and in the end, according to your faith, one of two
things happens: either the abstraction personifies itself,
is proved real, or the dying man, in the last necessary
effort of self—delusion, creates and believes in what he
knows does not exist.5

Describing Albee as one of the four leading American dramatists
of this century, Ruby Cohn observes that it is Albee's finely honed
use of dialogue to successfully advance plot and delineate character
that makes him so deserving of attention. Adding monologue, I concur.
The direction of this study is encouraged by Albee's own suggestion
that Tiny Alice be ”approach(ed) on its own terms,”6 Cohn's regard
for his dialogues, and the English translations of the third edition

of Das literarische Kunstwerk and Vom Erkennen des literarischen

 

 

Kunstwerks.7 This chapter will consider the work “on its own terms”--

its language, in both the text (dialogue/monologue) and the sub—text

(stage directions), and its various levels of structural significance.
In an ”Author's Note" to the play a comment that Tiny Alice

is "less opaque in reading than it would be in any single viewing”8

 

95

further suggests a focus on the full array of language as a fruit-
ful course of study and reminds us that, although dramatic literature
is ultimately written to be performed, it must first be read by its
director and actors.9
The import of both the sub—text and the main text is imme-

diately apparent in Act One, Scene One of Tiny Alice. The sub-text
directs:

(The CARDINAL'S garden. What is needed . . .? Ivy climbing a

partial wall of huge stones? An iron gate? Certainly two

chairs—-one, the larger, obviously for His Eminence; the

other, smaller—-and certainly an elaborate birdcage, to

stage left, with some foliage in it, and two birds, Cardinals

. . which need not be real. At rise the LAWYER is at the

birdcage, talking to the birds)(p. 3).
For the reader the play begins with this rather abundant bit of infor-
mation, operative on several levels. That the garden represented
belongs to a Cardinal not only, by extension, presents a broader
sphere--a home, or an estate of which the garden is but a part-—but
also renders that sphere more determinate by attributing to it
ecclesiastical relevancies which are thus posited as context. The
incompleteness signified by the ellipsis, ". . .,” the interrogative
syntax of the second, third, and fourth sentences, and the agentless
passive voice of the second sentence present and reinforce the con—
cept of indeterminacy and the passive motif which pervade the play.
The ”climbing ivy” in the third sentence suggests in its "foliaging

'0 the incomplete wall a direction of effort or

out" (”fleshing out”)
a method of analysis of the play for a reader. The ”huge stones” as
the significant givens which comprise but a "partial wall" again sub-

stantiate the notion of indeterminacy. The syntactic interrogative

96

and the semantic strength presented in the fourth sentence connote the
authorial represented objectivities of the indeterminate and the
determinate. The sentence following the interrogative litany intones
with the declarative strength of two "certainlies" and one "obviously”
only to hedge its postulate with “. . .” followed by a caveat which
admits the "non-real”-—illusion--another significant aspect of the
play.
The foliaged bird cage with the two cardinals makes explicit
the macrocosmically persuaded extension of the first sentence by i
microscosmically replicating the incomplete ivy-covered stone walled ii
garden. The last sentence of the sub-text specifies the action with
which the play begins.
The main text, too, begins not only with a preponderance of
interrogatives but also with a self—conscious phonological focus:
LAWYER
Doom, yoom, yoom, um? Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Um?
You do, do, do, do, um? Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,
tick, um?
(He raises his fingers to the bars) Do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
Aaaaaawwwww! Oomm Yoom, yoom, yoom, um? (p. ).
As the side text contains indeterminacies on various levels, so too,
does the main text and in an immediately fundamental way. What is
"00mm, yoom, yoom, um?” How does it sound? Can I make it ”mean” if
I say it? The arrested attention given this odd assortment of squig-
gles on the page is drawn inquisitively to the easily discernible words
"tick” and "do." What do we have here? Might I suggest the presenta-
tion of the seven final interrogative “ticks" answered with an equal

number of interrogative ”do's” strike the keynote for an integral

97

relationship between time and action. That the interrogatives remain
suggest not only a focus on structural indeterminacy with its implica-
tion of engaging the reader but also on the issue of choice. The
exclamatory "Aaaaaawwwww!" which follows is phonetically and phenomeno-
logically a metaphorical response to, specifically, our protagonist's
responses to consequences of his choice. In addition, the "ticks,”
intrinsically signifying sound, prefigure the heartbeat at the end

of the play; at some level, then, sound is here integral to meaning.
That this introduction prefigures the end of the play is made more
explicit by the sub-textual note that the object of the Lawyer's words
need not be real, just as the object of Julian's final words may not

be real. The epistemological stance of the play views man as free

to make choices but not free to then escape the consequences of those
choices. If a man considers his life as limited existence in time,
then the success or failure of that life is dependent on how one spends

that time. The language of Tjgy Alice provides a vision of life pas-

 

sively lived and damningly judged.

That this first scene characterizes the Cardinal and the
Lawyer--representatives of religious and secular life, respectively--
announces the impetus of the play-~the grant--and introduces, by
reference, Brother Julian, the protagonist, is readily apparent;
somewhat more elusive, perhaps, but of insistent import is the per-
sistent and reflexive attention to language in its phonetic, graphic,
syntactic, and semantic array.

The Cardinal's first words to the Lawyer, “Saint Francis?” not

only, in its interrogative form, invite the supplying of information

 

98

but also extend the scope of the garden scene by bestowing on it
beatific privileges. One of the more striking features particularly
of the first five pages of dialogue, although it suffuses the text,
is that its sentences are incomplete or exaggerated by pauses desig-
nated by “. . .". Albee uses this device in such abundance and with
such regularity it seems almost one of the voices of the drama as
are the great silences in Aeel. And in a sense it is; it is we, the
readers, whose participation is essential for successful meaning
negotiations.

The multiplying of interrogatives, begun in the initial sub—

text and sustained throughout the play, is most apparent in this first

scene; its effect is to nag and tug at the reader to do his "share.”H

CARDINAL (a deep sigh)

Well. What should we do now? (Pause) Should we clap our
hands (Does so twice) . . . twice, and have a monk appear?

A very old monk? With just a ring of white hair around

the base of his head, stooped, fast-shuffling, his hands

deep in his sleeves? Eh? And should we send him for wine?
Um? Should we offer you wine, and should we send him scurry—
ing off after it? Yes? Is that the scene you expect now?

(99- 5-6).
Although the Cardinal's ”we” is imperious, that it occurs with these
repeated interrogatives implicates the reader.
This use of the imperious "we" is mimicked by the Lawyer and

specifically drawn to the Cardinal's attention:

LAWYER
Do you ever slip?

CARDINAL
Sir?

LAWYER

Mightn't you—~if you're not carefu1--(Tiny pause)
lapse and say "l” to me . . . not ye?

 

99

CARDINAL
(Pretending sudden understanding)
Ah ha! Yes, we understand.

LAWYER
Do we, do we.

CARDINAL
We do. We—-and here we speak of ourselves and not of
our station—-we . . . ee reserve the first person singular
for intimates . . . and equals (p. 8).

 

Later, learning of Miss Alice's desire to give millions to the Church,
the Cardinal's repeated pronominal transgression sends the Lawyer in
unrelenting pursuit:
CARDINAL
(Stuttering with quiet excitement)

Y-y—y-y-yes, b—b-but shall I just go to the house and pick
it up in a truck?

«mint»-

LAWYER (Great heavy relief)
AaaaaaaHHHHHHHhhhhhhhh.

CARDINAL (Caught up short)
Hm? (No reply) HM???

LAWYER
Say it again. Say it once again for me.

CARDINAL (Puzzled; suspicious)
What? Say what?

LAWYER (Leaning over him)
Say it again; repeat what you said. It was a sweet sound.

CARDINAL (Shouting)

SAY WHAT!

LAWYER
"Yes, but shall I just go the the house and pick it up in
a truck?"

CARDINAL

(Thinks on it a moment)
Well, perhaps there was a bit . . . perhaps there was too
much levity there . . . uh, if one did not know one . .

 

 

 

100

LAWYER (Coos again)
. "But shall l_just go to the house . . .”

CARDINAL
Wh . . . NO!

LAWYER (Sings it out)
Shall I I I I I I I I just go!

CARDINAL (Cross)
No! We . . . we did not say that!

LAWYER
I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I.

CARDINAL (A threat)
We did not say I'I."

LAWYER (Almost baby talk)
We said I. Yes, we did, we said I. (Suddenly loud and tough)
We said I and we said it straight. I! I! I! By God, we
picked up our skirts and lunged for it! I I I I I I 1! Me!
Me! Gimme!

CARDINAL
WE SAID NO SUCH THING!

LAWYER (Oily imitation)
We reserve the first-person singular, do we not, for . . . for
intimates, equals . . . or superiors. (Harsher) Well my dear,

you found all three applying. Intimate. How close would he
rub to someone for all that wealth? As close as we once did?

(pp. 17-19).
In spite of the Cardinal's request that he ”leave off” the Lawyer con-
tinues to verbally strip him of the pretense, revealing not a cleric
in service to the Church, but a depraved sycophant parading as ecclesi-
ast; finally the Lawyer thrusts: "We have come down off our plural'l
(p. 19).

The extent of the Cardinal's greed is emphasized by yet another

slip in which the ”I” is thrice repeated:

lOl

CARDINAL (Humble)
I would not bother the lady; I have not met her; Of course,
I would very much like to have the pleasure of .

LAWYER
We slip often now, don't we.

CARDINAL (Very soul—weary)

Pardon?
LAWYER

The plural is gone out of us, I see.
CARDINAL

Oh. Well, Perhaps.
LAWYER

Regird yourself. We eee about terminated. (Quick, insulting

finger snaps) Come! Come! Back up; back on your majesty!

Hup! (p. 21).
There is a lot going on here in this first person focus: there is the
use of language for character delineation; that the text has the char-
acters themselves discuss language qua language yields another dimen—
sional relevance—-a turning inward, an isolation of language itself; a
connection between the motif of isolation and language itself fore-
shadows the final scene of the play in which Julian, in a confused
state of dying, shifts from first to third person singular as he liter-
ally becomes progressively detached from life; and, finally, the homo-
sexual allusion made in the "rub someone” comment is sustained in the
phrases "come down off,” ”back up,”--with its double meaning supplying
yet another innuendo--and "back on your majesty."

The use of the word “do" receives and interesting amount of

attention; while stressing the already mentioned relationship between

time and action, it also isolates the word for further semantic consid-

eration. The arrested syntax of ”. . . who did talk to the birds so,

 

102

did he not" (p. 4) draws the reader's attention to the emphatic use of
"do" and the upper register non—contracted auxilliary "do” in the
interrogative tag. One may entertain at this point just a brief
flirtation withthe possibility of a connection between this and the
initial chatter to the birds. Just as one decides not to be seduced
by so slim a lure the lawyer himself draws the reader back to the
initial stage business: ”That was gibberish I was speaking to the
cardinals-~and it's certainly not accepted that St. Francis spoke

gibberish to his . . . parishioners . . . intentional gibberish or

.m” "AV 0

otherwise“ (p. 6). Now there is no comfortable way to ignore that
there may be an intentioned, represented, determined connection between
the two. Another almost immediate use of the word draws further atten-
tion to it:

LAWYER
No. May I smoke?

CARDINAL
Do (p. 7).

Not only is it bare in its isolated sentence form and glib in its
response but also is it stark, unadorned in its presentation on the
page. Another emphatic, "At school . . . we did loathe you so”
(p. 7) (ellipsis mine), a multiple exchange already cited in the
context of we/I, ”Do we, do we. We do” (p. 8) and an idiomatic use
of ”do” as in ”. . . I'll have you do your obeisance (Sweetly) As you
used to, old friend" (p. 8) contribute to the semantic consideration
of lexicon and syntax.

A prepositional distinction, ”And in the same class . . . but

not ej” (p. 9) (emphasis Albee's) occurring in the same sentence with

 

103

an ellipsis further focuses the readers attention on the thematic use
of language in the play. The Lawyer responds in kind to the ”in/of"
line:
LAWYER
. . . (ellipsis mine) You are in the Church, are you not?

We find it fitting.

CARDINAL
You're good! You eee! Still! Gutter, but good . . . (p. 9).

To the reader, of course, is left the same syntactic/semantic analogy,
and the inter-language word play of gutter/good.12
References to time are fairly self-conscious maintaining the
audibility provided by the initial ”ticks.” The Cardinal's ”heavy
schedule” (p. 4) as well as suggesting framed or boundaried time also
connotes activity implicit in the notion of schedule; and although
both the Lawyer and the Cardinal are nefariously characterized, they
are, to a large extent, conscious of the need to direct one's own
life in contrast to Julian who is "acted on“ by time. For example, the
Lawyer's equestrian allusion, “Hup! Back up on your majesty“ (p. 21)
which affects the desired response from the Cardinal is a sharp con-
trast to Julian's appearance in a later scene in which, although carry-
ing a riding crop, he is presented ineffectually and diminutively as
(p. 121).

Before the purpose of the Lawyer's visit is revealed, specific

"my little horse-back rider and crop switcher .

attention is given to time past: “Shall we . . . shall we talk about
times gone by” (p. 7). Then, having done so: "And now that we have
brought the past to mind, and remembered what we could not exactly,

shall we . . . talk business?” (p. 12). While there is much about

 

 

 

104

this play regarding place and time that remains inexplicit, it does
acknowledge a flow of time past, present, and future and its meta—
physical relationship to man.

A sense of orderly progression of time is also conveyed in
the textual considerations of child-boy-man. That Julian's ambi-
valence about the various stages of development is in some way
responsible for his death is supportedin his dying monologue in which
he pleads, ”bring me my slippers, the sacramental wine, (Little boy)
my cookie? (Usual again) . . . come bring me my ease“ (p. 187).

Both sub-textual instructions make explicit the thematic significance
of the drama's conscious vacillation between the two elements of time.

In this same vein, the Lawyer's reference to the Cardinal as
”buddy” calls attention to the appropriateness of nominal assignations
and the effect of their out of context usage. With ”vengeance” he
strikes at the Cardinal with ”You'll grovel, Buddy” (p. 8) and repeats
it in a similar tone in Act Three (p. 168); later, playing with the
pun of Julian's ”lay brother” status, he implies a homosexual rela—
tionship between Julian and the Cardinal: ”We geee, (for Julian's
benefit) His Eminence--buddy . .." (p. 37). Responding to Julian‘s
easy "Tch, tch” reprimand, the lawyer quickly asserts, "He was my
buddy at school . . . if you don't mind,” (p. 38) retreating suffi-
ciently to the appropriate while leaving just enough of the ambiguous
to sustain a focus not only on time but also on action. The word is
used both as a diminutive and as a function. Further, in addition to

being called Miss Alice's little horseback rider, the Lawyer also

105

refers to him as ”poor priestlet, poor former priestlet," (p. 145)
the repetition and the "time“ adjectival stressing the motif of time.
That this first scene calls attention to play-acting within
the drama (p. 14) affects a self—referential dramatic focus implying
potential thematic significance. Raising the issue of the real versus
illusion, it also refers us to the work itself in which actors
”direct" and talk about themselves acting and directing.13
Ending much as it begins, this scene again focuses on lan-
guage; this time it is the Cardinal talking to the cardinals:
Do . . . do you . . . do you have much to say to one another,
my dears? Do you? You find it comforting?
Hmmmmmmmm? Do you? Hmmmm? Do-do—do-do-do-do-do-do?
Hmmmmmm? Do?
CURTAIN (p. 22)
An appropriate linguistic frame for the scene, the ”intentional
gibberish” on another level provides essential textual redundancy
for a reader. Ingarden has suggested that thoughts ripen in their
speaking;14 here a reader's thoughts ripen with the iteration of
this self-conscious reflexive (a Cardinal talking to cardinals) con-
figuration.
Scene Two takes place in the library of Miss Alice's mansion.
The sub-text describes the setting:
Pillared walls, floor-to-ceiling leather bound books. . . . A
huge reading table to stage left--practical. A phrenological
head on it. To stage right jutting out of the wings, a huge
doll's house model of the building of which the present room
is a part. It is as tall as a man, and a good deal of it

must be visible from all parts of the audience. . . . At any
rate, it is essential (ellipsis mine)(p. 23).

 

 

 

106

That the scene takes place in a library walled with books and promi-
nently displaying a huge reading table clearly focuses on the activity
of reading, and the phrenological head suggests the mental act, or
more specifically, the intentional act. While the model sustains the
motif of the real versus illusion, that it is ”as tall as a man” pre-
figures Julian's end of the play plea to have the model welcome him.
The action begins with Julian's repetition of the word
”extraordinary" as he regards the model; Butler enters and echoes
the word in the interrogative, ”Extraordinary, isn't it?” (p. 23),
thereby arresting attention on the word and, at the same time, requir-
ing a response to it——a verification of what, in fact, Julian has

already observed:

BUTLER
I never cease to wonder at the . . . the fact of it, I
Suppose.

JULIAN

The workmanship .

BUTLER (a mild correction)
That someone would do it (pp. 23—24).

Strategically positioned, the ellipsis between the definite article
and a repeated definite article and noun interrupts the reader's
expectation of assured completion refusing to let the reader sit
passively by. The remainder of the exchange emphasizes precisely
this attention to the “active” in contrast to the passive--not the
abstraction (workmanship) but the action (that someone would do it):
not the competence, but the performance, as it were.

Although the purpose of the entire scene is to continue char—

acterization, the increasingly explicit references to language make

 

107

clear the essential role that language plays here not only in advanc-
ing plot but also in delineating character-~and by extension con-
struing meaning.

The extent of the effect of the model on Julian is subtextu-
ally directed and reinforced in the main text:

JULIAN
(The proper words won't come)

It's . . . It's . . . (p. 24).
The articulation of effect is left to the reader for Julian finally
and simply retreats to the already over-worked "extraordinary."
Implicit in the Chinese box model within a model is the idea of the
continual, but that the model is sealed juxtaposes the notion of
stasis sustaining the contrapuntal tone of the play.

Following some light chatter and witty repartee on the quan-
tity of work he has to do in the mansion, Butler's interjected
“Heigh-ho" (p. 27) is operative on several levels: it recalls the
dwarfs' song of "Snow White"--an appropriate focus on the diminutive,
the idea of work (action), and a reinforcing of "illusion" or non-
reality. Because the sub-text is most deliberate here——”(For no
reason, a sort of 'Oh, what the hell.') (p. 27)--and beguiling with its
"for no reason," the reader ponders the meaning of this piece of self-
conscious intentionality.

The pun of "lay” brother, the semantic distinction between
“gj_the cloth but have not taken it” (p. 28) (emphasis Albee's), a
textual stress and repeated emphasis on modality, which syntactically

broaches the issue of polysemous meaning--”JULIAN: You could say that.

108

BUTLER: You could say it, and quite accurately” (p. 29) (emphasis

Albee's), and this semantic confusion

JULIAN
. I don't have your name.

BUTLER
Fortunate.

JULIAN
No, I meant that . . .

BUTLER
Butler.

JULIAN
Pardon?

BUTLER
Butler.

JULIAN

Yes. You . . . you eee the butler, are you not, but .

BUTLER
Butler. My name is Butler.

JULIAN (Innocent pleasure)
How extraordinary.

BUTLER
N0, not really. Appropriate: Butler . . . butler. If
my name were Carpenter, and I were a butler . . . or if

I eeee a carpenter and my name were Butler . . . (pp. 29-30)
which, not surprisingly, has Julian intoning his favorite word, leav—
ing the reader to question the validity of a mind that perceives a
world in which everything is ”extraordinary”--all of these compounding
textual focuses on language connote the reality of language itself even
in its depiction of illusion.
Entering the library and exchanging with Butler terms of

endearment uttered with "no fondness,” (p. 31) the Lawyer provides a

 

109

display of language devoid of anticipated meaning but imparting possi—

ble sexual relevancies to a relationship, one of whose members has

already been characterized as depraved.
In possession of Julian's life history, save six years during

his thirties, the Lawyer asks him to ”. . . fill them for (them)”

(p. 33). While reluctant to make those years determinate, “They were

nothing,” (p. 33) Julian assures the Lawyer that although the years

are “blank,” they aren't ”black," just ”dull“—-shades of meaning,

partially determined, we might say. .
Because neither Julian nor the Lawyer, who never drinks "before 4:

the barn swallows start screeping around,” (p. 35) as Butler phrases

it, cares for a drink, Butler pours only one for himself. The

Lawyer corrects his observation:

There's no such word as screep.

BUTLER (Shrugs)
Fit.

JULIAN
I think it has a nice onomatopoetic ring about it . . . (p. 35).

Coined words and textual comment on their appropriateness and quality
are yet other cues signalling attention to lexicon and context as
explicitly essential elements of meaning.

The distinction made between a bequest and a grant is another
example of lexical attention to context. Quick to point out that a
bequest is made in a will and therefore contingent upon a death, the
Lawyer reminds Julian that Miss Alice is very much alive, and, as

such, her gift to the Church is a "grant.“ It is interesting to note

110

the irony here: Ostensibly this ”grant" does not require a death
as would a bequest, but it, in fact, ultimately does.
The Lawyer constantly completes Julian's sentences or
interrupts and interjects his own choice of phrase:
JULIAN (Taking a deep breath)
Of her overwhelming grant to the Church, and of my

assignment to come here, to take care of .

LAWYER
Odds and ends.

JULIAN (Shrugs one shoulder)
. . if you like. ”A few questions and andwers” was
how it was put to me (p. 37).

With the use of the word "ends” the Lawyer is off and running again
in a scatalogical tone, playing and varying it with another turn at
”lay brother” and a description of the Cardinal:

. (ellipsis mine) and bold, very bold; behind——or,
underneath--what would seem to be a solid rock of .
pomposity, sham, peacocking, there is a . . . flows a
secret river . . . of.

BUTLER (for Julian's benefit)
This is an endless metaphor.

LAWYER
Of unconventionality, defiance even. Simple sentences?
Is that all you want? . . . (p. 38

Juxtaposed with the Lawyer and Julian's discussion of Julian's
relationship with and charge from the Cardinal are Butler's musings
on the Lawyer's images:

. whose still waters .

(pretending to be talking to himself)
. . . run quiet? Run deep? Run geee. That's good! .
though I wonder if you intended to get involved in
tee watery metaphors there: underground river and
still waters (p. 39).

 

111

Such juxtaposition, by literally presenting two levels of dialogue,
connotes the relationship between conscious attention to language
and development of plot in this drama.
The syntax in this scene does much to characterize Julian as
a passive type—-Julian himself regards his passivity as obedience
which is ”not a fault;" he remains impervious to the Lawyer's retorted
caveat ”nor always a virtue. See Fascism” (p. 41). Leaving to
announce Julian's arrival to Miss Alice, the Lawyer says, “And if
she cares to, I will have you brought up” (p. 42) the causative struc—
ture calling attention to a passive Julian; shortly after when Julian,
reassured by Butler's disdain for the Lawyer, fills in the six—year
gap for Butler not only is his choice of syntax and semantics a reveal—
ing one, but also again is textual attention drawn to that choice:
JULIAN
I . . . declined. I . . . shriveled into myself; a glass-
dome . . . descended, and it seemed I was out of reach,
unreachable, finally unreaching, in this . . .paralysis,
of sorts. I . . . put myself in a mental home.
BUTLER
(curiously noncommital)
Ah.
JULIAN
I could not reconcile myself to the chasm between the

nature of God and the use to which men put . . . God.

BUTLER
Between your God and other's, your view and theirs.

JULIAN
I said what I intended . . .

BUTLER
Six years in the loony bin for semantics? (Pp. 43-44).

 

112

You will notice in his first speech that each first person pronominal

utterance hedges elliptically, rather by way of apology for having

made the assertion. The two reflexives project an inward tendency

rather than an extroverted persuasion; both the choice of verb and

the preposition governing the first further connoting withdrawal,

and the choice of verb of the second reflexive suggests in its

transitivity an object acted on by an agent—-the line could have

been, for example, ”I went to a mental home,” or, as is used later in

scene three, ”I committed myself” (p. 50), using the most obvious i
and frequent verb choice while retaining the reflexive; neither ”went” 1%.
nor ”commit” imparts the sense of being acted upon so character—

istic of Julian.

Interrupting their conversation, a chime sounds, sustaining
the motif of time at an audible level and recalling in a musical dis-
play the ”ticks" of the first scene. It also marks a settling of past
issues in that the interrupted conversation has just filled in the six
indeterminate years fulfilling a prophecy made earlier in the scene
by the Lawyer: ”You will . . . in time (10 Butler) Won't he, Butler?
Time? The great revealer?” (p. 42).

Being led up to Miss Alice's room, Julian ends the scene
asserting that “(His) faith and (his) sanity . . . they are one and
the same" (p. 45). In his equating of faith and sanity is the
passive implication that perhaps his metaphysical health is predicated
on the abdication required by faith.

Scene Three takes place in Miss Alice's sitting room where,

at curtain, she is seated in a winged chair with her back to the

 

113

audience in conversation with the Lawyer. The first words of the
scene, "Nor is it as simple as all that" (p. 46) have an interesting
syntactic effect. Not only does the negative ”nor” strongly imply
its affirmative assertion, but also does it require an inverted word
order of subject and verb; such an inversion--the seduction of Julian
from the lure of religion to the reality of Tiny Alice--is precisely
the concern of the play and overtly engaged in this scene. Further
the statement makes context demands on the reader by necessitating
that he ”flesh out” "all that.”

To the knock on the door that interrupts their conversation
the Lawyer announces to Miss Alice, ”That will be our bird of prey.
PRAY. P-R-A-Y. What a pun I could make on that; bird of prayL
Come in" (p. 46). This statement merges overt textual attention to
language and word play and the recurring motif of birds operative
on at least two levels. Surely diminutiveness and vulnerability are
suggested right from the beginning of the play with the two caged
cardinals nominally replicated by the Cardinal, a representative of an

'5 Butler has likened the Lawyer's imbibing habits to

even large body;
”barn swallows” (p. 35)--another pun embedded in the phrase; the
Lawyer refers to Julian as "the drab fledgling . . . pecking away

in the library (ellipsis mine) (p. 41), and later, Miss Alice iterates
the Lawyer's description with yet another diminutive for emphasis:
"Little bird, pecking away in the library" (p. 67) even the ”solid

rock of. .. peacocking" 03.37) that the Lawyer proffers as an attri—

bute of the Cardinal is subject to charges of sham and illusion; and

 

 

114

recalling a judgment OfEiSChOOI boy attempt at sonnet writing, the
Lawyer recalls his teacher having described it as having "all the
grace of a walking crow" (p. 175). On another level, the bird motif
suggests f1ight--what Julian has done with his retreat into religion

'5 That Miss Alice

in his avoidance of the real world that frightens.
is seated in a "winged chair” (p. 46),1ater opens her gown "unfurling

. great wings" (p. 126), then enfolds Julian "in her great wings”
(p. 127), and finally, insisting that he accept Tiny Alice, reminds
him that he had through herself as surrogate ”wrapped (himself) in
her great wings" (p. 163)--all connote Julian's return flight, as it
were, from illusion to the ultimate reality--the mouse in the model
(p. 107).

The previous scene's chiming reminder of marking time reverb-
erates into this scene with Butler's emphasized announcement that
”Brother Julian who gee (emphasis Albee's) in the library is now
here" (p. 46). With the assertion 0f.fl§§ and le is implied will be
in a synthesizing syntax whose completed paradigm of time is contingent
upon a reader's efforts. The effects of time on Julian will be seen
very shortly in the following act and made manifest in a shiver
(p. 95) signifying his fear of the future. Seeking reassurance from
Miss Alice that everything is going to be all right, Julian finds
instead the terrible confirmation of his fears:

JULIAN (Knowing there is)
Is there anything to be frightened of, Miss Alice?

MISS ALICE (After a long pause)
Always (p. 96).

 

115

Finding the fearful future so literally upon him, Julian shivers again
in the final act. Here the shiver is operative on yet another level
which I shall discuss later in conjunction with the play's treatment
of garb.

The question of what is real and what is illusory is raised
again when it is clear that Julian's expectations of Miss Alice are
other than what he finds: ”But I thought. .. His Eminence said
she was . . . young” (p. 47). Within this puzzling context it is most
appropriate that there be another focus on the word “do.” To Julian's I
shouted ”HOW DO YOU D0?” to the seemingly deaf Miss Alice, she retorts A
”How do I do ehel?" (p. 48) (emphasis Albee's). The effect is two-
fold: there is the suggestion that language be used to illumine, to
reveal, not to obscure; and the deliberate return to ”do” connotes
an emphasis on action in spite of an environment in which distinctions
between reality and illusion are elusive. Given a context by the
Lawyer,--the words just spoken have only been a formality, an ”opening
gambit” (p. 49)--Miss Alice can respond: ”Oh. (To Julian) How do yee
do?" (p. 49) thereby reinforcing the subject of the active verb.

The next eleven exchanges between Julian and Miss Alice con-
sist of her interrogative responses, each of which either containing
the word ”what” or constituting its whole, to each of his increasingly
frustrated and shouted statements. The implicit structural invita-
tion to "complete” the text referred to in the first scene's use of
the interrogative is evidenced here as well. That there is the neces—

SSity for such completion becomes apparent when Julian, now utterly

 

 

116

distraught with their series of meaning failures, says, “. . . this
eeele do;” (p. 52) (ellipsis mine, emphasis Albee's). Miss Alice,
divesting herself of wig and mask, twice agrees using his words and
emphasizing the second agreement with the adverbial intensifier ”at
all“-—to not act (do, and in this context to make meaning) will not
”do” (suffice).

The contrast in the use of language for the remainder of this
scene is striking; no more the wit, barb, and clever repartee of the
exchanges characterizing the Cardinal, the Lawyer, Butler, and even
Julian in his own ironically innocent fashion; rather, Miss Alice, i
sub-textually described as malevolent (p. 50) pronounces stark .
statements--that Butler had been and the Lawyer was presently her
lover--intended to unsettle Julian and encourage his detailing to her
those six unaccounted for years.

Listening to Julian's rationale for his confinement in the
mental institution, Miss Alice does comment on the unsuspected struc-
ture of his statement: ”I notice you do not say you lost your faith,
but that it abandoned you” (p. 60). Again, it appears that Julian has
said what he intended. To recast the statement with Julian in the
subject position would imply a kind of action uncharacteristic of him;
instead, he reconfirms his own passivity; ”Do 1. Perhaps at bottom I
had lost it, but I think more that I was confused . . . eee_intimi-
dated . . . by the world about me, and let slip contact with it .
with my faith” (p. 60) with the past perfect tense and inverted

false-causative affecting further suggested inactivity.

 

 

 

117

Demanding more facts about his life, Miss Alice asks Julian
how many women he has slept with--a curious question to pose to a lay
brother who has taken a vow of celibacy, yet just another of Miss
Alice's surprisingly candid utterances. Describing a fellow inmate
who thought herself the Virgin Mary, Julian details in a state of
religio—sexual ecstasy an evening which, by his own admission, may
or may not have happened:

. . was . . . was on a grassy space by the pool-—or this is
what I imagined--on the ground, and she was in her . .

a nightdress, a . . . gossamer, filmy thing, or perhaps she .
was not, but there she was, on the ground, on an incline, f
a slight incline, and when she saw me--or sensed me there-— 1‘

she raised her arms . . . (Demonstrates) . . . out, in a
supplication, and cried, ”Help me, help me . . . help me,
oh God, God, help me . . . oh, help, help.” This, over and
over, and with the sounds in her throat between. I . . . I
came closer, and the sounds, her sounds, her words, the
roaring in my ears, the gossamer and the milk film, I
. . A ROAR, AN OCEAN! Saliva, perfume, sweat, the taste
of blood and rich earth in the mouth, sweet, sweaty slip-
ping . . . (Looks to her apologetically, nods) . . . ejacu-
lation. (She nods) The sound cascading away, the rhythms
breaking, everything slowly, limpid, quieter, damper, soft
. soft, quiet . . . done (p. 62).

The nominal pounding of the first half of the description followed
by the adjectival ebbing of the second exerts a powerfully semantic
pressure on the word “ejaculation“ endowing it with both sexual and
religious relevancies.

To impart the structural strength of religious ejaculations
to the word, there are three contributing utterances juxtaposed with
Julian's continued yet less vivid story of the Virgin inmate. Even

the sub—text describes the phrases as curious and dispassionate:

 

 

118

I am a very beautiful woman.

And a very rich one

And I live here in all these rooms (p. 63).
At the end of Julian's story Miss Alice repeats her litanous phrases
seducing him with their promise of grace while holding the "little
recluse" (p. 67) in abeyance, advising him that their business for
the moment is concluded.

It is interesting to note that the contrastive behavior of
Miss Alice and Julian in this scene is marked by the verb “do:"
Miss Alice's early attention to the word--”How do I do what?”--is A.
contained in her little masquerade--”a little game . . . a little ‘
lightness to counter the weight” (pp. 52—53) (ellipsis mine)-—and
Julian's focus on the word is as the past participle ”done,” the
final and static adjective in his lengthy description. Both Miss
Alice's game and Julian's ”experience" are at least one step removed
from reality;17 however, the former is active (external in its direc-
tion) and the latter passive (internal) signalled by the forms ”do”
and ”done” respectively.
Instructing him to move into the mansion for the convenience

of discussions, Miss Alice dismisses Julian. He hesitates at her
extended hand and finally kneels to kiss it as he would the Cardinal's
ring. To his pause Miss Alice echoes a warning about inaction: "Ah,
ah, ah, he who hestiates loses all” (p. 67). Signalled by the genu—
flection, the conversion is underway—-from Church to secular, from the
Cardinal to Tiny Alice (through Miss Alice), from comfortable illusion

tc> frightening reality.

119

With Julian's departure the Lawyer returns to inquire about
the progress of events. As Miss Alice has just controlled Julian,
so now does it become apparent that the Lawyer is, in this con-
spiracy, the instrument of control. Responding to Miss Alice's
concern about the wisdom of their plan, the Lawyer says:

Wise? Well we'll see. If we prove not, I can't think of
anything standing in the way that can't be destroyed.

(Pause) Can you?

MISS Alice (Rather sadly)
No. Nothing (p. 68).

The act ends on a foreboding note of malevolent forces and doom empha- i

sized by the repeated negatives of the last words in the scene. ‘
The first scene of Act Two takes place in the library. Onto

the momentarily empty stage Miss Alice hurtles, suddenly freed from

the Lawyer's grip, and shouting, ”KEEP . . . GO! GET YOUR . . . LET

GO OF ME!”(p. 71). The malevolent note on which the first act ended

is echoed here; not only do the conspirators prey on Julian but on each

other as well. Suggested, too, in the Lawyer's pursuit of Miss Alice

is the idea of game, diversion, introduced in the previous act.

Ambiguous in their context, the first words of the scene play a bit

with the reader's expectations; is the "keep” both a maintaining and

a distancing? Certainly both are implied and a case for both inter-

pretations is made in Miss Alice's own ambivalent reponses to the

Lawyer for, although she loathes him, she participates to the extent

that she has called herself his mistress.

 

120

It is interesting to note in this scene the effect that Miss
Alice's words produce in the Lawyer; she provides a rare opportunity
for the revelation of the Lawyer's vulnerable spot. That Miss Alice
begins her attack by saying, "I have a loathing for you that I can't
describe” (p. 73), makes the thrust that much more lethal; despite
the fact that she is ”never one with words" (p. 73) the string of
adjectival invectives ultimately strikes home. It is cruelly ironic
that Miss Alice's paucity of language facility exacts from the Lawyer,
the master of vituperative intent, a rare admission of pain; "Every-

thing! Everything in the day and night, eating, resting, walking,

4.“ «.1 3" L.

rutting, everything. Everything hurts. Deeply” (pp. 76-77). Imme—
diately the subtext reads, ”(Quickly back to himself).” Rather than
choose passivity and be paralyzed by the pain, the Lawyer ”acts;“ in
rather rapid succession textual references to "acting” or ”playing
the part” make the point explicit: ”But you, little playmate, you're
what I want now. . . . Are you playing it straight, hunh? . . . Don‘t
you dare mess this thing up. You behave the way I've told you; you
PLAY-ACT. You do your part; STRAIGHT“ (p. 77) (ellipses mine).

The direct relationship between time and action established
at the outset of the play continues to reverberate here. Returning
from having conducted Julian through the wine cellar, Butler announces
the disarray and decay in which he has found things:

Some great years, popping, dribbling, away, going to vinegar
under our feet. There is a Mouton Rothschild--one I'm espe—
cially fond of--that's . . .

LAWYER (Pacifying)
Do. Do . . . fix it (p. 80).

 

121

The bursting bottles and popping corks of this act function as time
markers just as did the ”ticks" and "chimes” of the previous act.
In both cases is there a connection between time and action (Do).

Before Julian returns from the wine cellar the conversation
among the three--Miss Alice, the Lawyer, and Butler--projects a
greater sense of uneasiness and foreboding, broadening the con-
spiracy to include Butler of whom Julian is fond. Were it not for the
Lawyer's jealousy of Julian and dedication to Tiny Alice, an easy
atmosphere of comraderie might be suggested by such lines as, ”Well,
it's nice having him about” and “Oh, we'll be a foursome soon” (p. 80). 14'
But when Julian enters saying, ”Ah! There you all are,” to which the
Lawyer responds, ”We had wondered where yeg were” (pp. 81—82) (emph—
sis Albee's) the conspiratorial lines are clearly drawn in the empha—
sized pronominals ”we“ and ”you.”

The castle itself then becomes the focus of attention, first
on a descriptive level: the wine cellar is a wreck, the Chapel
although in good condition shows evidence of spider activity around
the altar, and the ”organ is . . . in need of use . . .“ (p. 83)--a
pun the Lawyer amusingly obliges but Julian chooses to ignore, hiding
his time and momentarily making the Lawyer the butt of another pun,

a play on the word solicitor. To the Lawyer's snide reference to the
Church as solicitor, Julian reminds him that in England he would be
referred to as solicitor. Denying both the truth and the appropriate-
ness of the comment, the Lawyer retorts that they are not in England

anyway. It is Butler who, suggesting that the comment may in fact be

 

 

122

apropos, reminds them that ”This pleee_was . . . in England" (p. 84)
(emphasis Albee's) thereby focusing on the symbolic level of signifi-
cance of the castle--is it replica, model, or original (actual,
real)? Every stone of the Castle has been marked and shipped from
England, so that, in one sense, it is not the replica that Julian
has taken it to be, but in another the Lawyer says ”it le_a replica

. in its way . . . (pointing to the model) of that” (p. 85). Sure
that he is being played with, Julian receives the Lawyer's comments in
rather a light vein; but it is clear that he is confused by which is
replica and which model--or, to put it another way, Julian is never Iii
quite sure throughout the entire play which is substance and which
symbol. To Julian's question whether Miss Alice's father had had the
castle put up, Butler, with affected innocence, becomes involved in a
bit of word play with Julian:

(To Julian pointing first to the model, then to the room),

Do you mean the model . . . or the replica?
JULIAN

I mean the . . . I mean . . . what we are in.
BUTLER

Ah-ha. And which is that?
JULIAN

That we are in?
BUTLER

Yes.

LAWYER (To Julian)
You are clearly not a Jesuit. (Turning) Butler, you've
put him in a clumsy trap.

BUTLER (Shrugging)
I'm only a servant.

 

123

LAWYER
(To Julian, too sweetly)
You needn't accept his alternative . . . that since we are
clearly not in a model we must be in a replica.

BUTLER (vaguely annoyed)
Why must he not accept that?

MISS ALICE
Yes. Why not?

LAWYER
I said he did not need to accept the alternative. I did
not say it was not valid.

JULIAN (Cheerfully)
I will not accept it; the problem is only semantic (pp. 85—86).

Fascinating in its subtleties, this bit of dialogue more firmly estab— 3'
lishes the Lawyer as mouth-piece of the conspirators (the Cardinal I
has earlier recalled that the Lawyer's schoolboy nickname was ”hyena”
-—a resourceful scavenger which dines on offal, devours its dead
scavenged prey by chewing into it through the anus (pp. 11-12),
Butler as something more culpable than merely the congenial servant,
Miss Alice as more of an ally with Butler, and Julian as again teeter—
ing precariously on the brink of lunacy-—recall that his earlier six-
year institutionalization was for ”semantics.”
Julian's inner confusion is reflected first in the words of
the conspirators and then in the model itself. While, on one hand, it
appears that the Lawyer is directing or is the instrument of direction
of the conspiracy—-I thought I had made it clear to you the way you
were to behave . . . (ellipsis mine). Remember what I told you.
Watch . . . your . . . step!” (pp. 87, 89)——his jealousy and need to

possess Miss Alice, on the other, reduce him to almost pleading to

 

124

stay overnight at the castle and asking to be forgiven for his over-
bearance! (p. 89). And Miss Alice, with malicious pleasure, reminds
the Lawyer, ”You forget your place” (p. 88) suggesting a deviation
from both script (acting) and propriety, yet still submits to his
physical abuse. That Julian is bewildered by these exchanges is evi—
dent; but it is with disbelief that he first spots the fire in the
sealed model: ”(Peering at the model rather amazed) Can it .
can it be?" (p. 88). Asked for the location of the fire a "jostled”
Julian responds, ”In the . . . over the . . .” (p. 90). Discovering
its location and while running out of the room, Butler asks Julian
whether he is coming. Yielding in faith to the non-sensibility of
the situation, Julian, ”confused, but following,” responds, “But I

. but . . . yes, of course" (p. 91).

The ambiguity-—in both its senses of confusion and multiple
meanings-—of the scene is augmented by Miss Alice's juxtaposed incan-
tation and natural tone address to possibly "someone in the model,“
(p. 92) while the Lawyer, Butler, and Julian have hurried off to
extinguish the fire. Her prayer alternates between a plea to save
the place, to let the resonance increase and her promise to hold on,
continuing to try to obey what she had not understood (p. 92). Her
natural-tone comments constitute a plaint of the hurts she has had to
endure over time--”the hurt the same, the name and face changing”

(p. 92).

Returning in time to hear the end of Miss Alice's rather odd

incantation, Julian begins to become somewhat fearful in addition to

his confusion:

 

 

125

I don't understand anything. The chapel was in flames
. and yet . . . I saw the fire here in the model
. and yet . . . the real chapel was in flames. We put
it out. And now the fire here is out as well. . . . I
don't understand. Why did it happen that way in both
dimensions? (pp. 93—94).
The scene ends with his fear and confusion physically made manifest
in his shivering.

The isolation expressed by both Julian in his confusion and
shivering and Miss Alice in her prayer (p. 92) is carried into the
second scene and marked by their physical absence; presumably they are
off riding together, suggestive in its innuendo derived from the rid- ,'
ing motif in Act One, Scene One. a

This scene takes place in the library where Butler and the
Lawyer, even more riddled with jealousy, discuss the progress of the
relationship between Julian and Miss Alice. The Lawyer's impatience
and anxiety are noted by the persistence of the repeated interroga-
tives again. Here the reader has not only to fill in gaps of time
and place for the sake of cogency, but also supply those answers
sufficient to assuage the Lawyer's anxiety. Butler tries to provide
the perspective-—”everything on schedule” (p. 98).

Recognizing his own “humanity“ in his complaint that Miss
Alice is "Too human; not playing it straight," (p. 98) the Lawyer
again lets his jealousy threaten his task. Butler reminds him that
yes, although he is human, his dedication will somehow provide a

balance and "On . . . and on . . . we go” (p. 99). Another momentary

shift in control is affected here:

 

 

126

BUTLER (Too offhand, maybe)
I've noticed you've let your feelings loose lately;
too much: possessiveness, jealousy.

LAWYER
I'm sorry.
BUTLER
You used to be so good.
LAWYER
I'm SORRY!
BUTLER
It's all right; just watch it.
LAWYER ;
Attrition: the toll time takes. 1‘
BUTLER "

I watch you carefully--you, too--and it's the oddest
thing: You're a cruel person, straight through; it's not
cover; you're hard and cold, saved by dedication; just that.

LAWYER (Soft sarcasm)
Thank you.

BUTLER
You're welcome, but what's happened is you're acting like
the man you wish you were.

LAWYER
Yes?

BUTLER
Feeling things you can't feel. Why don't you mourn for
what you are? There's lament enough there (pp. 99-100).
Butler rather imperceptibly has moved into the role of director, as it
were, using some of the pat phrases that have been used before by the
Lawyer to Miss Alice. The interchangeability made possible by this
script in some way, by extension, implicates the reader. The incom-

pleteness implicit in the Lawyer's humanity and in our own as partici—

pating readers is stressed in the use of the word ”want.“ When Butler

 

 

 

127

restores the reins to the Lawyer, the Lawyer directs him to accom-
pany him to go talk again to the Cardinal:
You COME! To back me up, when I want emphasis.
BUTLER
In the sense that my father used the word? Wants emphasis:
lacks emphasis.
LAWYER
No. The touch of the proletarian: your simplicity, guile-
lessness (p. 101).
That the Lawyer ”wants emphasis" is precisely the effect that his
jealousy has on his ability to direct the proceedings. Textual atten-
:‘,y I
tion is again focused on the worditself as a repository of potential i'
multiple meanings whose realizations are dependent on a reader's active

participation--"backing them up, so to speak.

Preparations to make another visit to the Cardinal provide the
occasion for textual presentation of scripted intention--a play within
a play; Butler assumes the role of the Lawyer while the Lawyer becomes
the Cardinal, immediately resorting to the ”we” of station. Musing

as themselves that the Cardinal should not only be told the ”whole

story“ but should, in fact, perform the marriage of Julian to

 

LAWYER
Alice.

BUTLER
M1ss Alice

LAWYER
Alice!

BUTLER

Well, all right; one through the other. But have him
marry them (p. 104).

128

the Lawyer lapses with gusto into an uncharacteristic yet easy and
appropriate vernacular: ”I will like that. It will blanch his
goddam robes . . . turn 'em white” (p. 103). Expressing second
thoughts about revealing the "whole thing” to the Cardinal causes
Butler and the Lawyer to consider just how much he can really take:
LAWYER
He is a man of God, however much he simplifies, however
much he worships the symbol and not the substance.
BUTLER

Like everyone.

LAWYER 3
Like most (p. 105). 3‘
There is at least a double implication here: first, metaphysically
implied is that we, as most of humanity, are culpable as worshipers
of the symbol instead of the substance; second, phenomenologically
implied in the issue of symbol and substance are the referential
functions of words which not only designate and signify--point to and
carry meanings——but also "bear intrinsic reference to the conscious-
ness which organizes experience--the ”intentional act of conscious-
ness.”'8 This technique of embedding a play within a play, while hav—
ing actors ad-lib the embedded script, draws conscious attention to the
intended objects of the literary work and stresses the potential for
multiple and simultaneous meanings whose realizations are dependent
upon a reader.
The play action continues with the Lawyer talking to Julian
played by Butler; in addition, Butler as Butler talks to the Julian

that he has "intended” in this scene. They talk to the issue of

Julian's previously stated inability to accept the symbol--the use

129

men put God to, the ”Gingerbread God with the raisin eyes” (p. 106)
--reassuring him that there is indeed an abstraction which cannot be

understood:

LAWYER
There is Alice, Julian. That can be understood. Only the
mouse in the model. Just that.

BUTLER (Being Julian)
There must be more.

LAWYER
The mouse. Believe it. Don't personify the abstraction,
Julian, limit it, demean it. Only the mouse, the toy. And

that does not exist . . . but is all that can be worshipped

. . Cut off from it, Julian, ease yourself, ease off. No l

trouble now; accept it. 1
BUTLER (Talking to Julian now)

Accept it, Julian; ease off. Worship it. . . . Accept

it (p. 107).

The motif of diminution here comes more into thematic relief. It is,
in fact, a strategy by which reality is made more acceptable after all
the glitter of illusion. If reality is indeed the darkness of the
isolated attic closet, as Julian has feared, then what the Lawyer and
Butler propose-~a limited, diminished abstraction——represents a palat-
ability of the real. What Butler and the Lawyer finally agree to tell
the Cardinal is not, in fact, the ”whole thing” but rather that
Julian's permanent presence with them benefits both the Church and
Julian's soul; the Lawyer's terse summary rationale: ”If it be saved
. . what matter how?” (p. 108) is somewhat of a linguistic synthesis
()f the scene: the conditional subjunctive supplies the tone of irreal-
ity and contingency; the ellipsis again as intended, indeterminate

trepresentation to be filled in by a reader; and the sparse,

130

attenuated nominal/adverbial interrogative begs definition in its
paucity.
The scene ends with the Lawyer addressing the model:

(quietly, but forecefully; no sarcasm)
Rest easy; you'll have him . . . Hum; purr; breathe; rest.
You will have your Julian. Wait for him. He will be
yours (p. 109).

As might be expected, this passage has been regarded in a variety of

19 20 for

ways—-the purr of a cat, the mechanized hum of a computer,
example. That it is the reality, the abstraction is connoted in the

intransitivity of ”hum,” ”purr,” ”breathe," and ”rest;" there is a

 

self-referentiality of substance implied in the repeated forms here
that contrasts it with the "other”- referentiality of i11usion--the
symbol ”for” the substance.

That Julian will be Alice's is the action of Scene Three which
takes place appropriately in Miss Alice's sitting room with the door
to the bedroom invitingly ajar. Julian's transition from religious
to secular 1ife--from cloister to coitus--is marked by clothing, tex-
tual reference to sequential events, and erotic poetry. Although
Julian's clothing is not specified in the subtext, we assume him to
be wearing his same clerical robes. We also know that he and Miss
lllice have been off horseback riding; when he appears in this scene
t:he sub-text instructs that he is carrying a riding crop. Later in the

sscene Miss Alice, showing off her own outfit, asks if Julian approves
c3f'it:

JULIAN
It is most . . . becoming.

 

 

131
MISS ALICE
We're dressed quite alike (p. 115).
Julian's choice of adjective to describe Miss Alice's outfit into
which she has changed at the beginning of the scene and sub-textually
described as a ”black negligee with great sleeves" (p. 111) also
suggests transition, process, or change, with its implied contrast,
“being.” ”Becoming” aptly specifies Julian's status at this point in
the play; it is emphasized by the addition to his habit, the riding
crop, by Miss Alice's seductive negligee, and by the dialogue itself

discussing that change.

{58%; <.

That there is another level of significance—~a sexual level—-
implied by the riding crop is also readily apparent. The sexual
connotations of the motif established in Act One, Scene One, with
the Lawyers insulting remark to the Cardinal--”Back up on your majesty!
Hup!“ (p. 21 )--are sustained here with the first exchanges of the
scene:

JULIAN
(After a moment; over his shoulder)
It was fun. Miss Alice; it was fun.

MISS ALICE
(From behind the door)
What, Julian?

JULIAN (Turns)
It was . . . I enjoyed it; very much.

MISS ALICE
(Her head appearing from behind the door)
Enjoyed what?

JULIAN
Riding; it was . . . exhilirating.

MISS ALICE
I would never have thought you rode. You were good.
(Disappears) (p. 110).

 

 

 

 

132

That Julian is alone on the stage save for Miss Alice's head appear-
ing only briefly permits the reader a defining focus for Julian's
transition; he is there, for our scrutiny, in his naivete, incongru-
ously riding-cropped, and in communication with a voice from the bed-
room. The necessity for completion is implied in Miss Alice's inter—
rogatives, the ellipses, and the sub-textual information that only
Miss Alice's voice, then head, are apparent. Julian's second comment
also tentatively asserts a shift from a passive to an active stance:

that Julian can say, ”It was . . . I enjoyed it: very much” suggests

70.x.) , 4.

the potential for his considering physical pleasure as much a virtue
as his self-abnegating religious obedience. Even though he hedges
with the ellipsis and semi-colon and quickly retreats to the safety
of the pronominal referent, his language here has represented his
inner tendencies.

The tensional balance derived from the different levels of
perception and connotation—-Julian really believes himself to be
talking about equestrian pursuits, and Miss Alice, although asking
the questions, understands well the seductive potential of the topic
—-contribute to the tone necessary for the consummation of the change.

The relief/release from the double entendre that might be
expected with Julian's explanation of his childhood familiarity
with horses is not forthcoming; explaining his having known a moneyed
family who kept horses, Julian says, ”It was one of their sons who was
my playmate . . . and we would ride," (pp. 110-111) thereby sustaining
the implication of impropriety fostered in the Lawyer's earlier comment

to the Cardinal.

 

 

 

 

133

Julian's recollection of his early riding triggers a specific

remembrance so vivid that time past and present almost merge:

You remember, you know how seriously children talk, the

cabalas we have . . . had. My friends and I would take two

hunters, and we would go off for hours, and talk ourselves

into quite a state--mutually mesmerizing, almost an hysteria.

We would forget the time, and bring the animals back quite

lathered. (Laughs). We would be scolded--no: cursed QEE"

by one groom or another; usually by a great dark Welshman—-

a young fellow who always scowled and had——I remember it

clearly, for I found it remarkable--the hairiest hands I

have ever seen, with hair--and this is what I found most

remarkable--tufts of coarse black hair on his thumbs.

(Looks at his own thumbs.) Not down, or a few hairs which

many of us have, but tufts. This Welchman (p. 111).
Not only do we sense the “presence” of Julian's past habits for Julian i
but also do we perceive that Julian's proclivity for near hysterical
mesmerization has a practiced, personal history. Clearly sensual, the
recollection affords an opportunity for Miss Alice to proceed with the
seduction by calling Julian's attention to the similarity in sensual
evocation between his own description and the D.H. Lawrence poem,
”Love On the Farm,“ which she proceeds to recite. Observing Julian's
obvious embarrassment, Miss Alice describes the effect that the poem
had on her classmates and herself at school as "early eroticism:
mental sex play” (p. 112). The remark is clearly calculated to
encourage Julian to make the same admission about this recollection of

his early horseback riding:

MISS ALICE
I've embarrassed you!

JULIAN
No! No!

MISS ALICE

Poor Julian; I have. And you were telling me about horse—
back riding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

134

JULIAN

No, I was telling you about the groom, as far as that goes.

And I suppose . . . yes, I suppose . . . those thumbs were

. erotic for gee-at that time; if you think about it;

mental sex play. Unconscious.

MISS ALICE
(Sweetly to divert him)

It gee fun riding. Today (pp. 112-113) (emphasis Albee's)
Success! Although it is necessary for Julian to posit his admission
outside the realm of responsible time, so to speak--“unconscious"
time--he nonetheless allows for the connotation of ”riding" to extend
to include the sexual. That such an admission can now be forthcoming
from Julian marks the extent to which the transition is underway. 'g»
Miss Alice's final statement synthesizes the relationship of time
past and time present asa further indication of transition; that
Julian responds to Miss Alice's emphasized statement focuses on con—
scious rather than unconscious time.

Sensing Julian's willingness to participate, however peri-
pherally, in this vaguely ribald repartee, Miss Alice pursues the
conversation succeeding in having Julian respond encouragingly.
Noticing the riding crop, she suggestively observes, "You're carrying
the crop. Are you still in the saddle?” (p. 113). This time there
is no embarrassment, no reticence, no affected naivete on Julian's
part, but rather an uncharacteristic yet nervously eager response:

JULIAN
(Laughing; shyly brandishing the crop)

Are you one of Mr. Lawrence's ladies? Do you like the smell

of saddle soap, and shall Itake my crop to you? (p. 114).
Julian's venture into erotic chatter is met by another of Miss Alice's

surprises; instead of tease and flirtation, Miss Alice expresses

regret that:

 

 

 

 

 

135

Nobody does things naturally anymore--so few people have the
grace. A man takes a whip to you--a loving whip, you under-
stand--and you know, deep and sadly, that it's imitation--
literary, seen. (Intentionally too much.) No one has the
natural graces anymore.
JULIAN

(Putting the crop down; quietly)

I have . . . not whipped . . .

MISS ALICE
But surely you have.

JULIAN (an apology)
I do not recall.

MISS ALICE (expansive)
Oh, my Julian! How many layers! Yes? f

JULIAN
We . . . simplify our life . . . as we grow older.

MISS ALICE (Teasing him)

But from understanding and acceptance; not from . . . emptying

ourselves (p. 114).
Miss Alice's shift from the sexual to the philosophical, artfully
re-focusing on symbol and substance—-here, it is ”imitation” and
"natural”--leaves Julian disappointed and apologetic. Her Gyntian
reference to layers, while connoting both Julian's transition from
religious to secular life signified by his alteration of Church
attire and the yielding of doubt--the abdication required by faith,
also implies a core of emptiness in contradistinction to Julian's own
notion of simplification; it is precisely Julian's difficulty with
understanding and acceptance that keeps him ”walking on the edge of
an abyss,” balancing, yet vulnerable to being "pushed . . . over,
back to the asylums“ (p. 106), as Butler describes his precarious
perch. Julian himself, you will recall, equates his faith and his

sanity (p. 45).

 

 

136

Because Julian senses the increasing difficulty of ”balancing"
in the castle, he voices his concern to Miss Alice: "I have too
much . . . of comfort, of surroundings, of ease, of kindness . . . of
happiness. I am filled to bursting" (p. 116). Reminding him that his
presence there is not for self-indulgence but for service to the
Church,MissAlice admonishes him for losing sight of his function. An
angry Julian responds:

What's being done to me. Am I . . . am I being temp—-tested
in some fashion?

 

MISS ALICE (Jumping on it) :
Tempted? l

JULIAN
Tested in some fashion?

MISS ALICE
Tempted?

JULIAN
BOTH . . . (ellipsis mine) WHY AM I BEING TESTED! . . . And
why am I being tempted? By luxury, by ease, by . . . con-
tent . . . by things I do not care to discuss (p. 117).

Here again is attention focused on the verb ”do." Although it is the
main verb in the first sentence, its passive rather than active con-
struction augments Julian's own passivity and sense of victimization.
That he expresses his anger in repeated passive constructions adds
another note of irony; the manner adverbials compound to suggest the
extent to which he feels himself a victim, isolated. The presentation
of the word ”content” stresses isolation—-it is itself separated from
the sentence by ellipses on either side; that it has two nominal forms
--conleel and eeetent, either and both of which have contextual appli—

cability-—contributes yet another level of significance. It is

 

 

 

 

137

Julian's uneasiness with his content that has triggered Miss Alice's

 

response of eeetent (substance). His final adverbial of manner
expects a more active reader's attention to the sentence.

Refusing to encourage Julian's victim fantasies, Miss Alice
advises him to be answerable to his own temptations. Such responsi-
bility is, however, more than Julian can summon for it requires
initiative, not just service. In this regard it is interesting to
note how effectively the play employs the word ”do“ with different
syntactic and semantic functions. More often used as an auxilliary
(for questions often requiring ”information” for completion, for )
negatives, for abridgements, and for emphasis) than a main verb, the
word enjoys high frequency usage in the language; it is an active
word, a service word, so to speak. Julian's explanation to Miss Alice
of his early and long practiced habit accounting for his discomfort
with being tempted/tested is a passage which consciously addresses
itself to the relationship between language with its many levels of

reference,2' and the delineation of character and development of

plot:
JULIAN
I have longed . . . to be of great service. When I was young--
and very prideful--I was filled with a self-importance that
was . . . well disguised. Serve. That was the active word:

I would serve! (Clenches his fist) I would serve and damn
anyone or anything that stood in my way. I would shout my
humility from the roof and break whatever rules impeded my
headlong rush toward obedience. I suspect that had I joined
the Trappist order, where silence is the law, I would have
chattered about it endlessly. I was impatient with God's
agents, and with God, too. I see it now. A . . . novice
porter, ripping suitcases from patron's hands, cursing those
who preferred to carry some small parcel for their own. And
I was blind to my pride, and intolerant of any who did not
see me as the humblest of men.

 

 

 

 

 

138
MISS ALICE (a little malice)
You phrase it so; I suspect you've said it before.
JULIAN

Doubtless I have. Articulate men often carry set para-

graphs (pp. 118-119).
This recitation of past habit is indeed presented with the precision
and detachment of a stock phrase. That the speech addresses itself
to a misguided notion of the ”active word, serve” connotes the play's
ironic treatment of Julian's idea of action proper to the time: he
equates passivity with obedience and extols it as a virtue. He
chooses not to eg, contrary to the ”do/tick” dictum established at
the outset and is quite literally consumed by time in the last scene.

Both the higher register syntax of the hypothetical statement,

". . . had I joined . . .” and'TUSsemantic contrast—-endless chatter
in spite of a vow of silence--combine to describe or present a
linguistic metaphor for Julian's metaphysically persuaded reticence
and his inverted notion of service. His response to Miss Alice's
pat-phrase barb also suggests an incongruency between his perceptions
of himself and those provided by the text: Julian is anything but
articulate; his inability to use language effectively is symptomatic
of his passivity. His three lengthy monologues--the description of
his asylum encounter with the mad virgin, his childhood recollections
of the aching joys and dizzying raptures of imagined martyrdom, and
his dying memory of a frightening childhood accident--are static; the
first two are his own practiced rehearsals of mental eroticisms, and
'the last an early predilection to his death-seeking hysteria. Just as

language in its linguistic array and in its conscious attention to

 

 

 

 

 

139

the readerly implications of the intentional act has been presented

by and about the other characters to permit their definition, so, too,
do Julian's words in the sterility and ineffectuality of their stock
responses signify his detachment, his hollowness. Unlike the Lawyer
who uses words to accomplish, Julian recites; unlike Butler who does
serve and who uses language to expressively communicate, Julian
chatters about service; and unlike Miss Alice who, although never one
with words, uncannily times her few remarks and supplements them with
effective action, Julian lacks both articulation and action. To the
extent that Julian talks and accomplishes nothing, uses language as )
symbol to chatter about substance, can we as readers develop a set of
expectancies of the relationship of language to plot.

Even Julian is not completely innocent of his illusionistic
use of language. His continued insistence upon wishing to serve, ”to
move great events,” (p. 120) prompts this revealing exchange:

MISS ALICE
(Pauses, then laughs)
You're lying!
JULIAN

(Then they both laugh, like conspiratorial children)(p. 120)
And, finally, Miss Alice comments on the whole business of Julian's
stated desires and his failure to attempt their accomplishment is a
blend of images and motifs employed to suggest his inner tendencies:

. my little lay brother and expert on wines; my little

horseback rider and crop switcher . . . my little whipper,
and RAPIST? (p. 120)
The vulnerable, the frail, and the incomplete is suggested in the

repeated diminutive; the sexual motif becomes increasingly explicit

 

 

 

140

with each of her phrases culminating not in passion but in the violence
of ”RAPIST,” hedged somewhat with the question mark; the element of
time is represented by "wine“ which is, ironically, ”popping, drib-
bling away" (p. 120) in the cellar of the castle; and the idea of
imitation (not natural) is sustained with her use of the word

”whipper, recalling her lament that no one has natural graces any-

more.
Her teasing and overt invitation to physicality come quickly
to a halt when Julian suggests she should just let him do his service
and not play games: ;.
MISS ALICE
(ellipsis mine) Games? Oh no, my little Julian, there
are no games played here; this is for keeps, and in dead
earnest. There ere cruelties, for the insulation breeds a
strange kind of voyeurism; and there is impatience, too,
over the need to accomplish what shouldnot be explained; and
at the end of it, a madness of sorts . . . but a triumph.

JULIAN (Hands apart)

Use me, then . . .for the triumph.
MISS ALICE
(Moving on him again)
You are being used, by little Julian . . . I am being used
. my little Julian. You want to be . . . employed, do

you not? Sacrificed, even?
JULIAN
I have . . . there are no secrets from you, Miss Alice . . . I
have . . . dreamed of scarifice (p. 123).
Here the transition from victim to willing participant is complete.
Julian's dream of sacrifice, because it is little more than pride-
ful illusion, will only serve him ill. His participation consists

of his rapturous eagerness for martyrdom, ”to go bloodstained and

worthy . . . upward“ (p. 124); that this desire is illusionistic is

 

 

141

evident in his quite sensual description of his childhood fantasies
of martyrdom. Miss Alice seizes the sensuality of the experience to
affect the climax of the seduction. The scene is fascinating in its
juxtaposition of the sensuality of espoused religious ferver and

overt eroticism. As Julian, in his self-trance, recites the ecstasies
of ”. . . com(ing) . . . bloodstained and worthy,” Miss Alice entreats

him: ”Marry me; and, shifting from the symbol to the substance,

”Come to Alice, Julian, in your sacrifice . . . give yourself to her,
Julian, . . . Alice says she wants you, come to Alice, Alice tells me
so, she wants you, come to Alice . . . come . . . come . . . come”
(pp. 125-126). Miss Alice opens her great gown with its winged

sleeves revealing her body to Julian who, with a ”dying cry, moves

toward her to be enfolded:

JULIAN (Muffled)
Oh my God in heaven . .

MISS ALICE
(Her head going back calling out)

Alice! . . . A11ce! . . .

JULIAN
(Slowly kneeling within the great wings)
. in . . . my . . . sacrifice . .

MISS ALICE (Still calling out)
He will be yours! He will be yours! AAALLLIIICCCEEE! (p. 127).

Act Two ends, then, with the seduction completed. The language here
has been incantatory, recollective, erotic, and supplicant, each
layer blending and lending a richer texture of simultaneity of meaning
potential--an appropriate context for Julian's deliverance to Alice

through Miss Alice.

 

 

142

The beginning of Act Three strikes a sharp contrast to the
emotional level of tumult and passion of the last scene. It is set
in the library and begins with no one on stage. Butler enters after
a few moments carrying heavy grey sheets; he has placed them on a
table and is counting them when Julian enters dressed now in a suit.
Marking the transition completed in the previous act, Julian's change
in garb also signals his further detachment from all things familiar.
From his long, flowing, ecclesiast robes to ”city clothes . . . bank—
er's clothers” (P. 144), as the Lawyer phrases it, sardonically
referring to the closing of the deal, Julian's change of garb sug—
gests in its removal of familiar layers a kind of psychic nudity leav-
ing him vulnerable to the chill of reality. His insistence that
“These are proper clothes” (p. 145) is acutely naive and underscored
with the Lawyer's response: ”As you will discover, poor priestlet,
poor former priestlet. Dressed differently for the sacrifice, eh”
(p. l45),the repeated diminutive stressing both innocence and play-
acting, and the use of the word ”former” implying in its contextual
ambiguity both the transformation from lay brother to husband and
the transcendence to martyrdom. "Proper clothes?“--for sacrifice,
yes; and to the extent that Julian shivers in his banker's clothes
can we measure the degree of the sacrifice, just as his initial and
repeated shivers signaled the ebbing of human warmth.

The alienation and isolation expressed by the suit is also
rnirrored in his speech. The attendant celebration and merriment one
vvould expect following a marriage is nowhere to be found; in contrast,

the heavy grey sheets with which Butler continues to busy himself

 

 

 

 

 

 

143

projects a funereal tone. That their counting is in progress main-
tains an impending atmosphere of moribund anticipation.

Julian is clearly discombobulated; his presence is self-
conscious and his speech erratic, hesitant, and becomes more agitated
when Butler is unable to provide him with answers:

Where . . . I . . . I feel quite lost. Well, uh . . . I will
confess I haven't participated in . . . been married before,
but . . . I can't imagine it's usual for everyone to disappear
. . . There I was . . . one moment married, flooded with
white, and . . . then . . . the next alone. Quite alone, in
the . . . echoes . . . for everyone to . . . vanish, as if

I'd turned my back for a moment, or an hour elapsed, or a

. dimension had . . . (pp. 131—132).

This echoing dimension inwhich Julian now resides is, in fact, not
the gladiatorial arena of his childhood fantasies, but rather the
actual arena of his chosen martyrdom-—a fact of which he becomes

increasingly and uneasily aware. Finally noticing that Butler is

engaged in some activity, Julian asks what he is doing:

BUTLER
What?
Julian
What are those?
BUTLER
These? (Looks at them) Un . . . sheets, or covers, more
accurately.
JULIAN

(Still quite nervous and staying away)
What are they for?

BUTLER
To . . . cover.

JULIAN (Ibid.)
Cover what!

BUTLER
0h . . . nothing; no matter. Housework, that's all. One of my
labors (p. 134).

 

 

 

1‘44
Apologizing for his upset state, Julian attributes it to his not
having been married before. But when Miss Alice hurries into and,
seeing Julian, out of the room the strangeness is too much to abide;
”Ifind everything puzzling today. Is something being kept from me?"
(pp. 137-138). The combination of the passive syntax of the last
sentence and Julian's sentence position as the object of the pre-
position effect an even more removed passivity. Julian is, as it were,
even obscured from the very language he speaks. The multiple unknowns

for Julian in this scene exist at several levels: he is married yet

 

states that the circumstances surrounding the marriage are ”confus-
ing;” his banker's clothes are conspicuous, yet he insists they are
"proper;" he claims to be dedicated to the reality of things rather
than to their appearance, yet finds that reality ”puzzling.” There
is nothing that he finds conforting or even orienting.

Butler likens his situation to that of a child locked in the
attic closet in the dark; the terror is so chilling that ”who” comes
to open the door doesn't matter. Presumably Butler is about to pro-
vide some sort of explanation, but first he leaves to get the "occa-
sional” champagne; it is the Cardinal who enters to ”open the closet

door, so to speak. The irony of his entrance is noted in Butler's
parting remark, ”Ah! Here comes the Church” (p. 139). Rather than
edification, what the Cardinal brings is more perplexity for Julian;
but because Julian has always found solace, safety, and sanity in

faith, he is almost relieved to have God's representative provide an

opportunity for yet another illusory handle. Perfunctorily assuring

145

Julian that the matter of his service has been ”resolved,” (emphasis
Albee's) the Cardinal is deliberately abstruse in his choice of
word. It is sufficient for Julian, however; he latches onto it and
adorns it with illusionistic chatter:

But than I judge it is God's doing, this . . . wrenching of
my life from one light to another . . . though not losing
God's light, joining it with . . . my new. (He is like a
bubbling little boy) I can't tell you, the . . . radiance,
humming, and the witchcraft, I think it must be, the

ecstasy of this light, as God's exactly; the transport the
same, the lifting, the . . . sense of service, and the
EXPANSION . . . the blessed wonder of service with a renewing,
not an ending joy--that joy I thought possible only through
martyrdom, now, now the sunlight is no longer the hope for
glare and choking in the dust and plummeting, but with cool !
and)green and yellow dappled . . . perfumes . . . (pp. 140-
141 .

 

The Cardinal tries three times, finally shouting, to interrupt this
self-mesmerizing recitation. In the company of something familiar--
the Cardinal, his confessor, the Church—~can Julian, though still
somewhat puzzled, create his own anchor with the texture and shading
of language as illusion. Performing a sort of last rites for Julian,
the Cardinal admonishes him to ”accept what . . . elll happen, mey
happen, and . . . accept what may come as God's will . . . that you
may be worthy of sacrifice, unto death itself . . . is asked of you;
that you may accept what you do not understand” (p. 144). The empha-
sized modality of the Cardinal's admonition and the nominal "will"
extension of the modal connote the multiplicity of meanings in the
events of the plot as well as in the language used to describe the
characters and develop the plot. The rite concludes with Julian's

hesitant, uncertain interrogative, ". . . A . . . Amen?” (p. 144)

146

verified by the Cardinal's nodded declarative, ”Amen.“ That two
sacraments, Marriage and Extreme Unction, are performed by the same
person for the same person on the same day without benefit of the
anticipated grace constitutes, in effect, rites of exclusion rather
than inclusion into a larger community for Julian; that he recedes to
the periphery becomes increasingly apparent.

As Julian leaves to look for his wife, the Lawyer returns to
hand over the money to the Cardinal. Having done so, completing
their end of the transaction, he removes a pistol from a drawer to
verify its readiness. Startled by the pistol and appalled by what
he senses to be its function, the Cardinal expresses the hope that,
contrary to the possibility allowed by the Lawyer, shooting Julian
may not be necessary. But for the Lawyer, Julian's death would be
a practical necessity to assure a larger continuity:

If the great machine threatens . . . to come to a halt .

the great axis on which all turns . . . if it needs oil

. well, we lubricate it do we not? And if blood is the

only oil handy . . . what is a little blood? (p. 148).
The repeated conditionals and the abundant ellipses here, while
firmly presenting an atmosphere of contingency, also convey a sense
of the inevitable made palatable in the name of the greater good.
The Cardinal's anxiety about Julian is lessened when he considers
that Julian's death, if it be necessary, may make him a martyr. The
Lawyer's response states the essence of the Grand Illusion:

Why not? Give me any person . . . a martyr, if you wish .

a saint. . . . He'll take what he gets for . . . what he

wishes it to be. AH, it is what I have always wanted, he'll

say, looking terror and betrayal straight in the eye. Why

not: face the inevitable and call it what you have always
wanted. How to come out on top, going under (p. 148).

 

147

At which point Julian returns, still not having found Miss Alice.
When the Lawyer notices and comments that he is alone, Julian responds:
"I seem not to be with anyone" (p. 148). Butler returns with Miss
Alice completing the cast of characters. A sub-textual direction of
stage blocking and its effect on the reader makes clear the relation-
ship between Julian's isolation and his embrace of the Grand Illusion:

(Something of a silence falls. The other characters are

away from Julian: unless otherwise specified they will

keep a distance surrounding him, but more than at arm's

length. They will observe him, rather clinically, and

while this shift of attitude must be subtle, it must also

be evident. Julian will grow to knowledge of it, will aid

us though we will be aware of it before he is) (p. 151).

The popping champagne cork, as has the cracking sound made by
Butler's opening one of the sheets earlier in the scene, prefigures
the gunshot which shortly follows; it is also a time marker in that
its release permits the flow of wine matured by time. As the time
(wine) was literally and haphazardly running out in Act Two, so also is
it now deliberately running out in Act Three. The subsequent gunshot
wound and loss of blood make explicit the significance of the motifs
of time, wine, and blood. The ritual of opening, pouring, and serv-
ing the champagne is in no way festive for Julian as a wedding cele-
bration ought to be; and when he asks what the ceremony is, the Lawyer
responds, ”When the lights go on all over the world . . . the true
world. The ceremony of Alice” (p. 125). The Lawyer's explanation is,
in effect, the pronouncement of last rites in the secular realm as
the Cardinal has just done in the religious realm. Just as Julian

"accepted” the Cardinal's pronouncements in spite of his bewilderment,

SO also does he try to participate in what he construes as the spirit

 

148

of the Lawyer's declaration to the extent that he also proposes a
toast:

To the wonders . . . which may befall a man . . . least where

he is looking, least that he would have thought . .

(ellipsis mine) To all that which we really want, until our

guile and pride . . . betray us (p. 157).
To this ironic participation the Lawyer ventures ”Amen?” to which
Julian responds with finality, ”Amen." The identical language is
employed here, this time with Julian taking the Cardinal's lines but
with still no greater edification of circumstance: the recitation of
benediction, as it were, has also failed to provide the promised grace,
for Julian is, in fact, about to get what he has claimed he really
wants-—a union with the abstraction—~but, of course, he in no way
realizes it.

It is interesting to note that this entire ”Ceremony of Alice”
is framed by two comments that seem not to pertain to the matter at
hand in the text, but rather to something beyond the text, to matters
directly engaging a reader. The first is Butler's as he busies him-
self with the champagne and is spoken to no one in particular:

(His back to them)
There's never as much in a champagne bottle as I expect
there to be; I never learn. Or perhaps the glasses are
larger than they seem (p. 52).
And the second is the Cardinal's, spoken as a delaying tactic when
Julian, a few lines after the “Amens,” suddenly realizes that the
others are about to leave:

Well. This champagne glass seems smaller than one would have
guessed; it has emptied itself . . . on one toast (p. 157).

 

149

Although these statements are several pages apart, the latter, tex-
tually compelling with its self-conscious use of the reflexive, seems
an appropriate response to the former, and they both concern the
issue of content (pronounced with first syllable stress, though there
is ample semantic evidence to make a case here for second syllable
stress as well). The ”eeetent” between the two statements has con-
sisted of the language of the Ceremony of Alice which has really been
a kind of chatter, illusion, to conceal the reality of Julian's immi-
nent death. This use of language as diversion is immediately made
explicit by the Lawyer's recollection of how as children fumbling with
each other's “most private parts” they would ”talk of other things

. of (their) schoolwork, or where (they) would travel in the
summer . . . (Laughs, points to the Cardinal) Like you! Chattering
there on the model! Your mind on us and what is happening. Oh, the
subterfuges" (p. 158). That Julian is as confused as he was at the
beginning of the act-—”What is . . . going on . . . here?” (p. 159)
emphasizes the interim use of language as diversion from plot but also
as self-referential ponderance.

Trying to explain the present situation to Julian, Miss Alice,
not surprisingly, finds it difficult to clarify the idea of illusion
and reality represented by herself and Alice:

Julian, I have tried to be . . . her. No; I have tried to be

. what I thought she might, what might make you happy,

what you might use as a . . . what?

BUTLER
Play God; go on.

 

 

150

MISS ALICE
We must . . . represent, draw pictures, reduce or enlarge to

. to what we can understand (p. 161).

Butler's use of the expression, ”Pley_God,” further augments the very
duality that Miss Alice is trying to explain; if we regard the word
”play” as an adjective then it describes an i11usionary, toy God;

if we consider it to be a verb, then the phrase itself connotes Miss
Alice's function in relation to Alice-—she is Alice's surrogate,
actress, who moves about presumably from one victim to another with
her wigs and changes of costume.

Not at all convinced by their urging him to stay with the
model and accept his ”accomplishment: (his) marriage, (his) wife,
(his) . . . special priesthood,“ (p. 160). Julian remains adamant:
”There is nothing there! We are heee. There is no one_teeee!”

(p. 163). At the Lawyer's insistence the Cardinal, too, participates
in a way that attempts to exploit Julian's acceptance of faith: "Uh
. yes, Julian, an . . . act of faith,indeed. It is .
believed," (p.165) his use of the passive here adding an ironic note.
That the Lawyer is aware of the irony is suggested by the following
comment:
LAWYER (Deadly serious but with a smile)
Yes, it is . . . believed. It is what we believe, therefore
what we know. Is that not right? Faith is knowledge (p. 165).
The recasting in the active voice in the second sentence strikes the
contrast between the conspirators and Julian; the passive not only
suggests a vulnerability but also isolates in both instances by the
Visual array of the ellipsis separating the auxilliary and past parti—

ciple. Because of Julian's equation of faith with sanity, the

151

isolated verb, ”believed,” suggests the precariousness with which he
is balanced:

I . . . cannot be so mistaken, to have . . . I cannot have So
misunderstood my life; I cannot have . . . was I sane then?
Those years? My time in the as lum? WAS THAT WHEN I WAS
RATIONAL? THEN? (pp. 168-169 .

 

Julian's interrogatives are finally answered by a bullet to the
stomach, the sub-text reading ”(Julian does not cry out, but clutches
his belly)" (p. 170). That the expected cry does not come focuses
greater attention on his ”belly." We can recall his mild uneasiness
in Scene Three, Act Two that the ”many bellies” of gluttony, luxury,
ease, and content filled him to bursting. That Julian may indeed
have lost sight of his function, as Miss Alice has charged, and over—
indulged himself in his passivity (his inability to "improvise")

(p. 169) perhaps accounts for his having been unnecessarily (p. 171)

22 Without the medical attention that the Lawyer refused to

shot.
permit, Julian will bleed to death, a scene prefigured by the decaying
and declining wine cellar with its great years "popping, dribbling
away.“ That his death will have been needless is apparent in the

tone of Butler's lament, ”Oh, poor, Julian . . .” (p. 170), and
iterated by Miss Alice, ”Poor, Julian! (Goes to him; they create some-
thing of a Pieta) Rest back, lean on me" (p. 173).

Julian's unnecessary death is contrasted with the continuity
of life signalled by the Cardinal's ”repetition“ in the religious
world:

LAWYER
(Withdrawing his offer of the briefcase)

Perhaps your gee secretary can pick it up. You will go
on, won't you--red gown and amethyst, until the pelvic

 

 

 

152

cancer comes, or the coronary blacks it out, all of it?
The good with it, and the evil? (p. 174).

and the others' in the secular world:

MISS ALICE
(Looking up; sad irony)
Am I ready to go on with it, do you mean? To move to the
city now before the train trip south? The private car?
The house on the ocean, the . . . same mysteries, the evasions,
the perfect plotting? The removed residence, the Rolls

twice weekly into the shopping strip . . . all of it? .
(ellipsis mine) The years of it . . . to go on? For how
long?

LAWYER

Until we are replaced . . . (ellipsis mine) Or until every-

thing is desert (Shrugs) . . . on the chance that 1e runs out

before ee do (pp. 177—178).
The juxtaposition and counterpoint, employed with effect throughout
the play, occurs again in this final act, operating on several levels.
While Miss Alice attends to poor Julian, trying to provide him with
warmth and company but still losing him to shivering, loneliness, and
the awesome dark of the “attic room,” the Lawyer, reminded of school-
days by the departing Cardinal, tells Butler about a sonnet described

23 Because

by his teachers as having the "grace of a walking crows.”
the Lawyer recalls, he had neither seen nor could imagine how crows
walked, he approached the teacher and was told that "crows don't walk
much . . . if they can help it . . . if they can fly.” Butler
responds "(snapping open a cover) l_could have told you that; sur-
prised you didn't know it. Crows walk around a lot only when they're
sick” (p. 176).

Minimum levels of maturity are an issue in both centers of

action: Miss Alice tells Julian how like a ”little boy'I (p. 175)

 

 

 

153

he is in his desire to be held and in his fear of the dark; the story
that the Lawyer relates took place when he was a schoolboy and
”green in those years" (p. 175).

Consideration of the "nature" of a thing and that which it
requires to maintain that nature is another issue in both realms:
it is the ”nature" of a crow to fly; that one would walk around
signals sickness, a state of imbalance in its nature; by extrapola—
tion we may view Julian's present condition as the consequence for
actions not proper to his nature-—his passivity. The play makes it
abundantly clear that to maintain life it is necessary to act, to ge,
to function in accordance with one's nature in time.

The crow is employed as part of the bird motif in the play
suggesting diminutiveness and vulnerability. In this scene the images
merge; poor little Julian is at his most diminished and vulnerable;
the Lawyer's youthful sonnet was vulnerable to the charges of his
teacher. The particular line of the sonnet so vulnerable to attack
was “Santayanian finesse” (p. 176). Miss Alice phrases well the fear
of viewing one's life as wasted: “I dreaded once, when I was in my
teens, that I would grow old, look back over the precipice, and
discover that I had not lived my life" (p. 180).

Different levels of time are presented here as well. The
Lawyer, during the portrayed time of the play, relates a story of
time past to which Butler than responds as though the latter were
Occurring during the former, again focusing on the proper response to

a given time. This ”breach,” so to speak, of time sequence brings

154

into relief Ingarden's delineation of the time sequence of the
represented objectivities and that of the parts of the work. Their
convolution in this exchange highlights the thematic import of

time. It is interesting in this regard to recall that Julian's most
animated and vivid use of language has been the recollections and
fantasies of his past life which neither illuminate nor advance his
present condition.

The intentional act is also a conscious aspect of this scene:
the playwright has written about a young author's writing and the
criticism of that writing. The sub—text draws further attention to
the "texts” by its description of the Lawyer during this segment as
"(fully aware of the counterpoint by now, aiding it)" (p. 175). The
effect of this sort of self—referentiality is to invite specific
attention to the levels of language in the play.

On a literal level, then, Miss Alice is trying here to provide
comfort to Julian while the Lawyer relates a ”story" to pass the time,
so to speak. On an emotional level, the ”story” functions to assuage
the fears and gloom of the ”attic” darkness with a bit of levity.

On a connotative level the awkward sonnet strikes the keynote for

immaturity and underdeveloped affection--Julian's state--and on a sym-
taolic level the contrapuntal dialogues with their similar images focus
carilanguage as mimesis requiring the active participation of a reader.

Preparing to leave the castle, the Lawyer describes an envir-
oriment of sterility, cold, and isolation: ”Bed stripped, mothballs

lyring on it like hailstones; no sound, movement, nothing” (p. 183);

155

this is, in effect, Julian's tomb suggested further by the cadaver-
like phrenological head on which the Lawyer places Miss Alice's wig
designating it as a friend (p. 183) a companion for Julian.

Angrily dismissing Miss Alice, presumably recognizing her
culpability and ultimate betrayal, and cursing the Lawyer as ”Instru-
ment!" (p. 185),Julian props himself against the model in an uneasy
preparation for his death, whereupon Butler cushions his head and
kisses him—-the sub—text designates ”(not a quick kiss)” (p. 185)--
good-bye; it is the ultimate and ritualistic betrayal. The conspira-
tors all exist leaving Julian alone, isolated, denied all possibili-
ties of warmth.

Having called for and been denied help from the Lawyer, the
Cardinal, Miss Alice, and Butler, Julian now calls out to God.

Oh . . . GOD! ”I come to thee, in agony.“ (cry to the void)

HELP . . . ME! (Pause) No help . . . (ellipsis mine) But

to live again, be born once more, sure in the sight of . .

(Shouts again) THERE IS NO ONE! (Turns his head toward the

closed doors, sadly) (pp. 186-187).
That there continues to be no response, no answer forthcoming augments
his fear of death; he repeats that he had never dreamed of it, never
imagined what it would be like:

I have—-oh, yes——dwelt (Laughs at the word) . . . dwelt . . .

on the fact of it, the . . . principle, but I have not

imagined dying. Death . . . yes. Not being, but not the
act of . . . dying? (p. 187).

 

lieere the focus rests on language again both by Julian's use of so
sitatic a word as “dwelt” and by the sub-text's attention to the droll
us;e of such a word. The issue of the active versus the passive is

al s<3 again posited in the structure of the language--death vs. dying;

156

in large measure, Julian's fear is due to his unfamiliarity with
”the active"--the "fact” of it, yes, for it requires mere faith;
butthe lived-through experience of it requires a participation pre-
cluded by passivity.

That Albee ends the play with such a lengthy and internalized
soliloquy provides the occasion for the reader to live through the
experience of dying, the experience of confronting the ultimate
reality, with language as guide enhancing the content and enriching
the texture of meaning potential. Calling ultimately, then, for Alice,
"Hast thou? Alice? Hast thou forsaken me . . . with . . . all the
others?” (p. 187). Julian observes a light in the chapel of the model
go out. The sub~text instructs:

(We begin to hear it now, faintly at first, slowly growing,

. so faintly at first it is subliminal: the heartbeat .

thump thump . . . thump thump . . . and the breathing .

the intake taking one thump-thump, the exhaling the next.

Julian neither senses nor hears it yet, however) (p. 188).
Fixing on the wigged phrenological head and sensing the nagging irony,
Juling asks:

Thou art my bride? Thou? For thee have I done my life?

Grown to love, entered in, bent . . . accepted? For thee?

Is that the . . . awful humor? Art thou the true arms, when

the warm flesh I touched . . . rested against, was . .

nothing? And ehe . . . was not real? Is thy stare the true

look? Unblinking, outward, through the same horizon? And

her eyes . . . warm, accepting, were they . . . not real?

Art thou my bride? (To the ceiling again) Ah God! Is that

the humor? The ABSTRACT? . . . REAL? The REST? . . .

FALSE? (To himself with terrible irony) It is what I

have wanted, have insisted on. Have nagged . . . for (Looking

about the room; raging) IS THIS MY PRIESTHOOD, THEN? THIS

WORLD? THEN COME AND SHOW THYSELF! BRIDE? GOD? (p. 118).
Demanding that Alice show herself, a startled Julian observes yet

another light, the bedroom light, fade and move across the upper

157

story and down the stairs as the sound begins to grow louder. We
recall here Ingarden's analogy of a beam of light illuminating a
part of an area, the remainder of which, however, is present in its
indeterminacy. Here at the end of Tiny Alice that which is indeter—
minate visibly increases until everything disappears in indeterminate
"blackness.“ The sub-text directs that "(a great shadow, or darken-
ing)”(p. 189) fill the stage. When the sounds are finally ”deafen-
ing” Julian, "(smiling faintly, his arms resembling a crucifixion,
almost--whispers loudly)“ his ultimate acceptance: ”I accept thee,
Alice, for thou art come to me. God, Alice . . . I accept thy will”
(p. 190). Thus Julian dies and the play ends with this sub-text:

(Sounds continue thusly: thrice after the death . . .

thump thehp thump theme thump thhhp. Absolute silence

for two beats. The lights on Julian fade slowly to black.

Only when all is black, does the curtain slowly fall) (p. 190).

The ”ticks” of the intentional gibbersih of the opening scene
have become the life sound of the heartbeat in this closing scene;
Julian himself has "intentioned” the sound, as it were, in his embrace
of the ultimate illusion. Having received no satisfying response from
Alice, and with time literally running out, Julian has occasioned his
own response by personifying rather than demeaning the abstraction;
that the sub-text specifies the cessation of the sounds in Julian's
fossilized language (“dwelt,” “thrice”) suggest they have been of his
creation.
That Julian has chosen not to he, to be faithfully and obed-

iently passive, has occasioned his premature death. The hum of life

continues in the repetition of the “do's” in the lives of the other

 

158

characters of the play. The engagement that this play expects,
indeed exacts of a reader is perhaps alluded to in Albee's prefatory
Note that "Tiny Alice is less opaque in reading than it would be in
any single viewing,” a note considered by at least one critic to be
an unconscionable breach of the ethics of playwriting (p. 134).

To approach Tiny Alice on its own terms--its language--with
the expectation of construing meaning is not only to celebrate its
intrinsic value independent of ulterior considerations24 but also to
accept the readerly responsibility occasioned by a text which actively

engages a reader in its thematic linguistic self-referentiality.

FOOTNOTES-—CHAPTER IV

'Richard Amacher, Edward Albee (New York: Twayne Publishers,
Inc., 1969), pp. 21-22.

2John W. Markson, ”Tiny Alice: Edward Albee's Negative Oedipal
Enigma,“ Annals of Iowa 23 (1966): 5.

3Ibid.

4As John Stark has said in ”Camping Out: Tiny Alice and

Susan Sontag," (1972), p. 166, any consideration of Tiny Alice must
begin with the one point of agreement among the critics: that is is
obscure. The critical postulations for that obscurity are varied
indeed. Gordon Rogoff, ”The Trouble with Alice,” eporter 32 (January
28, 1965): 53-54, wonders whether we have been given the proper clues
or if the author is cheating a little; because as questions prolifer—
ate, answers recede further into the background. Rogoff, modifying
the charge of obscurity, rather, decided that Tiny Alice is not quite
there. Mary Elizabeth Campbell, “The Statement of Edward Albee's

Tiny Alice," Papers on Language and Literature 4 (Winter 1968): 87,
regards the play as allegory in the tradition of medieval morality
plays. That the characters have such a multiplicity of facets makes
either viewing or studying it for her impossible to conceive a struc—
ture to include all the ”luxuriant multiplicity.” Harold Clurman,
Theatre," Nation 209 (October 27, 1969): 451, finds the play insuffer—
ably tiresome and shallow both in theatrical devices and in text; he
calls it Albee's most pretentious and weakest play, and is indignant
that the play's actual proceedings fail to jibe with anyone's inter-
pretation. Sharing Clurman's views, Jack Kroll in ACT in New York,”
Newsweek 74 (October 13, 1969): 125, charges that the play tries to
buy its way into meaning with very inflated metaphysical and rhetori-
cal coin. Henry Hewes, ”Theater Paprika, Saturday Review 52 (October
18, 1969): 20, prefers to ride with the emotional steam of the char—
acters rather than try to clarify complexity; he allows that such
clarification may be fine for the classroom but on the stage it reduces
the richness of a play's texture. A psychiatrist, Edmond Lipton, M.D.,
”The Tiny Alice Enigma,” 48 (February 20, 1965):21, views the play
within the framework of psychoanalysis and finds it rich, perceptive
and “woven on many levels.” John McCarten, ”Mystical Manipulations,”
Flew Yorker 40 (January 9, 1965): 84, feels himself led by Albee into
éin allegorical maze only to have Albee's sense of direction fail

 

159

160

leaving his followers bewildered. In 1969 a revival of the play
prompted such comments as, ”Tiny Alice can't be revived since it was
never alive,” a no-by line note in Time 85 (October 17, 1969): 72.
And another no-by line, "Tinny Allegory," Time 85 (January 8, 1965):
32, claimed the play to be preaching mystery and practicing mystifi-
cation. Stanley Kauffmann, ”Stanley Kauffmann on Theater,” Nee
Republic 161 (November 1, 1969): 22, found the original stage version
a ”piece of arrogant pseudo-literary pretentiousness” and finds that
five years later it seems worse. Robert Brustein, "Three Plays and

a Protest,” New Republic 152 (January 23, 1965): 33-34, considers
that some of the obscurity is sham profundidity or pure playfulness
designed to coax the spectator into looking for non-existent meaning.
Paulette Martin, "A Theater of Mystery: From the Absurd to the
Religious," Commonweal 84 (September 6, 1966): 584, sees mystification
as an essential component of the success of the theater of which Tiny
Alice is a part; she feels that Albee is intentionally eluding any
attempt to give the play coherent meaning. And C. W. E. Bigsby,
"Tiny Alice,” Edward Albee (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall,
1975), although fascinated by much of the play finds the atmosphere
too ”rarefied” to be convincing. It is clear that the criticism of
Tiny Alice is as much concerned with what isn't apparent as with what
15.

 

 

 

 

5Markson, "Tiny Alice,” p. 6.
6Ibid., p. 5.

7Ruby Cohn, Dialogues In American Drama (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, l97l), p. 137. Cohn's consideration of Edward Albee
as one of America's leading playwrights is well founded. She finds his
use of dialogue, in Aristotelian terms, to furtherplot and reveal char-
acter worthy of considerable attention with its distinct American
flavor and cadence. She regards Albee as a master of language. Roman
Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art (Evanston: North—
western University Press, 1973), discusses the structure of the work
of art and the responsibility of a perceiver to bring the work to
appearance only in a multiplicity of successive aspects. Cohn's atten—
tion to dialogue and Ingarden's phenomenological focus on structure
and a reader's experience<yfconcretization suggested the direction of
study for this chapter.

 

8Edward Albee, Tiny Alice (New York: Atheneum, 1965), Author's
Note. Hereafter references to this work will appear as page numbers
in parentheses within the text itself.

9Louise M. Rosenblatt, The Reader, The Text, The Poem (Carbon-
dale: Southern Illinois University Press), p. 13

'OIbid., p. 14.

161

1]Richard Macksey, ”The Consciousness of the Critic: George
Poulet and the Reader's Share,” in Velocities of Change, ed. Richard
Macksey (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974),
pp. 304 and 308.

 

'ZAmacher, Edward Albee, p. 23. Albee has called Berlin his
second home because in 1959 Zoo Stor has its first production there.
Information such as this issurely extrinsic,sure1y anathema to pheno—
menological studies; however, it appeals to me at the linguistic level.
That Albee spent time in Berlin and heard the cadences of the language
suggests, with his ear for linguistic utterance as evidenced in his
dialogues, that there was probably conscious attention to language to
an extent that might permit the potential for such interlanguage
punning.

13Cohn, Dialogues In American Drama, p. 4. Cohn mentions
Samuel Beckett's play called Play and Witold Gombrowicz(s) Operetta
called Operetta both representative of the improvisation and experi-
mentation toward a "unique theatrical event.

 

'4Roman Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art (Evanston: North-
western University Press, 1973), p. 391.

'SRuby Cohn, Edward Albee (Minneapolis: University of Minn-
esota Press, 1969), p. 33.

 

'6C. W. E. Bigsby, “Tiny Alice,“ in Edward Albee ed. C. W. E.
Bigsby (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall), p. 125. Bigsby
makes the point that in Albee the individual craves spiritual dis-
traction as much as he craves a carnal one.

17Nelvin Vos, Eugene Ionesco and Edward Albee (n.p.: William
B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1968), p. 39. Vos' discussion of the
use of game and ritual in absurdist drama encouraged my taking a closer
look at the syntax of the dialogues and side text accompanying these
games.

 

'8E. Fred Carlisle, ”Literature, Science, and Language: A
Study of Similarity and Difference,” Pre/Text 1 (1981): 46. Car—
lisle's discussion here of Edie's phenomenological theory of reference
not only encouraged a closer study of Edie's major work but also pro-
vided a crucial and elucidating perspective for my consideration of the
intrinsic phenomenon of intentionality in language.

19Paulette Martin, ”A Theater of Mystery: From the Absurd to
the Religious,“ Commonweal 84 (September 6, 1966): 584.

20Mary Elizabeth Campbell, "The Statement of Edward Albee's
Tiny Alice,” Papers on Languege and Literature 4 (Winter 1968): 93.

162

21James M. Edie, Speaking and Meaning (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1976), pp. 154-158.

22Miss Alice indicates here that the Lawyer didn't have to
shoot Julian because she could have made him stay.

23Cited previously in the discussion of the bird motif.

24Louise M. Rosenblatt, l'Idee de l'art pour l'art dans la
littérature anglaise pendant la periode victorienne (Paris: Libraire
Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1936), p. 304. Paraphrasing A. C. Bradley,
1901 ”Poetry for Poetry's Sake” she says: 11 affirme dans son dis-
cours que, bien que la poésie puisse avoir une valeur ultérieur
comme moyen pour la culture et la religion et bien que la poésie ait
au lien ”souterrain” avec la vie, puisqu'elle sort de la vie elle—
méme, cependant la poésie ”a une valeur intrinséque” indépendent de
ces considérations ultérieures. Le professeur Bradley accentue de
fagon typique la nature spéciale de l'expérience imaginative et
émotionnelle produite par l'oeuvre d'art.

 

 

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

After having determined the need for a model of reading which
provides a basis and criteria to accommodate the evaluation of a
variety of literary styles and genres in Chapter I, I have presented
in Chapter II, a brief exegesis of Ingarden's ontological theories of
the nature of the literary work, a description of its strata and
phases, and a definition of the role of the reader in this model.
Chapters III and IV were analyses which have investigated the struc-
tural and thematic place of ”indeterminacy” in heel and Tiny Alice.

Both plays are dramatic culminations of the denial of life.

In heel, Sara and Axel renounce religious life, secular life, ascetic
life, and passionate life for the transcendent life in death, the
ultimate means of preserving illusion. In Tiny Alice, Brother Julian
opts for a life of obedient servitude while secretly yearning for the
imagined joys of martyrdom, the ultimate giving of self to substance,
as he sees it. The epistemological relationship between time and
action is presented, dramatized, and judged. In both plays the how of
existence is predicated on the necessity to act, to do. Thus the mode
of denial in heel is active--Sara and Axel commit suicide as their
ultimate rite of passage; and in Tiny Alice the mode is passive--

Brother Julian is murdered in the name of dedication to "getting on

163

164

with it” when, in his passivity, he had failed to participate in an
appropriate manner. The plays also explore the nature of illusion
and reality or, more specifically in Tiny Alice, symbol and sub—
stance.

While it is heel that is considered the progenitor of Symbolist
drama, both plays are self-conscious in their approximation of the
indefinite, the indeterminate, achieved both by juxtaposing real and
imagined (or represented and ideal) images and by their self-
referentiality to the ”fact” of indeterminancy in their represented
objectivities. The risk of such internal reflection on such private
and subjective responses is, of course, that the reader is denied
access to or at best must beg entry to the text, to meaning poten-
tial.

It is in the examination of works that celebrate the subjective
response, the communication ofuniquely personal feeings, that a phe—
nomenological approach can be most effective; in its fidelity to and
insistence on description rather than explanation can themeaning
units find expression in the concretization of unique moments char-
acteristic of the entire work, which, as Ingarden says, appears in
its polyphony.

One of Ingarden's major contributions to reading theory
is his identification of the concept of indeterminacy as not only a
part of the structure of the literary work, but intrinsic to it in
that the distinction between represented and real objectivities is

that the former are not precisely determined.

165

Although this phenomenological focus has revealed a familiar
metaphysical terrain in heel and Tiny Alice, it does accommodate,
indeed, exact, a more explicit examination of the topography and its
ontic base. Ingarden's original question—-what are the essential
properties of that mode of being which the literary work of art
possesses?--answered with descriptive phenomenological fidelity to
the work itself has provided a richly textured model of reading cele-
brating the reader no less than the author and text.

Ronald Bruzina draws attention to two particular terms in
Husserlian phenomenology—-Besinnung (cognitive realization or ”prise
de conscience”) and Erlebnis (experience-in-the—living-of—it) and
combines them--”Besinnung der Erlebnis: cognitive realization of

)”'—-to define phenomenology in a way

(what) lived consciousness (is
that makes readily apparent its potential fullness for literary criti-
cism as well as its appropriateness to the recent Goodman model of
reading that samples, predicts, tests, and confirms.2

To be invited, nay, seduced by the structure of the work
itself, to attend to its language--its sonority, tempo, visual dis-
play, syntax, semantics (literal, connotative, emotional, and symbolic),
stress, juncture, and measured silences-~and within its constraints
to satisfy one's sense of closure, that is, to negotiate meaning, is
to fully participate in the lived through experience of a work of
art.3 Up to this point I have not provided a full definition of the
literary work (of art) in part because it has not been essential to

do so before an ”attitude” or approach to a “work” had been expressed,

166

and also in part because of a probable question of semantics: had
Ingarden referred to the literary work as ”text” (a less honorific
and far more neutral term) as does Rosenblatt, the issue of the locus
of meaning in the transaction between reader and text might have been
more readily tenable.

A comparison of Rosenblatt's and Ingarden's definitions of a
work of art makes explicit the essential criteria of "work of art:”
Rosenblatt's transactional view accepts “ell_readings in which the
reader attends to the lived-through experience engendered by the
text;"4 Ingarden describes it as

a purely intentional object which has its basis of being in
the creative acts of consciousness of its author. Its deter—
mining qualities are not immanent in it in a strict sense but
are lent and attributed to it intentionally by appropriate
conscious acts of the author. As soon as it is fixed in an
existing intersubjective language in any kind of physical
material . . . it is in theory cognitively accessible, as a
pre—given object, to any reader who has a command of the
language' but it must be read and reconstructed during the
reading.5
Both Rosenblatt and Ingarden assume active readers temporally engaged
and adapted to the spirit of the work, that is, concretizing in the
aesthetic attitude ”under the influence of the previously read parts
of the work.”6

One of the most intriguing facets of Ingarden's concept of
strata is its inclusion of the concept of place of indeterminacy
subsumed in at least one stratum as part of the structure of the work

itself. These indeterminacies require reader attention, sometimes to

fill them out, other times to leave them indeterminate letting our

 

l67

awareness of their “sojourn in the darkness of the periphery”7 aug-

ment our apperceptions of the artist's intended work.

The ”interior”focus of Axel and Tiny Alice--the former ideal-
izing the renunciation of the experience of the external world in
favor of the experience of the imagination, and the latter projecting
multiple reflexive states of affairs with its model-within—a—model--
necessitates an approach or a critical method that, while firm and
encompassing in its scope, permits a delicacy and nuance appropriately
and comprehensively elucidating to the works. In addition to language
as linguistic utterance, expressions of meaning “are also to be found
in more basic and inchoate experiences, such as moods, affections,

8 making it incumbent upon the

sentiments, and levels of experience"
critic to exercise sound and valid methodological judgment.

Where might we go from here? I suspect there is a relation-
ship between the concept of intentionality with its attendant ten-
sional balance between objects in the real world and objects
represented, and number and type of indeterminacies present in a work;
and while it would be orderly to have the ratio of indeterminacies
increase in direct proportion to the ”distance” between objects in
the real world and objects represented, the relationship quite proba-
bly has more to do with altered reader expectations and metaphorical
juxtaposition. Empirical studies to determine strategies employed
for assimilating apperceptions might be undertaken to elucidate the
phenomenon.9 Further, a vigorous relationship between phenomenological

methodology and literary scholarship may well enhance preaesthetic

 

 

l68

evaluations of literary work by strengthening its metaphysical under-

pinnings.

 

FO0TNOTES--CHAPTER V

1Kenneth S. Goodman, "Psycholinguistic Universals in the
Reading Process," in Psycholinguistics and Reading, ed. Frank Smith
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., l973), p. 23.

 

2Ronald Bruzina, Logos and Eidos (The Hague: Mouton, l970),
p. 45.

3Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics (Ithica, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, l975), p. l37.

 

4Louise M. Rosenblatt, The Reader, The Text, The Poem
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, l978), p. l55.

 

5Roman Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, l973), p. 335.

 

61bid., p. 291.
71bid., p. 292.
Zygmunt Adamczewski, “Being and Sense,"

8 in Phenomenolo in
America, ed.: James Edie (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, l967l, pp. l3,
63, 65.

 

9E. B. Huey, The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, l968, first published l908), p. 83.

l69

 

 

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