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It's hard exactly to articulate what makes these so important to me - but whatever it is, I found echoes of it in Orpheus Descending.
It's something to do with the fact that both these excerpts are about the limits of logic and science to nourish our souls. That we need something more - and sometimes that something flies in the face of logic.
The first is an excerpt from The Lady's Not for Burning by Christopher Fry. For those who don't know his work (and there probably aren't a lot who do - he's never been particularly fashionable, which IMO is a great pity), Fry wrote just about everything in iambic pentameter - the metre used by Shakespeare in his great speeches.
The play was written in the 20th century, but set in the 16th.
The main character - Thomas - who is too intelligent and sensitive for his own good (sound like someone we know?) has returned from war, soul weary and looking for a way out of the world.
He hears that they've arrested a witch and decides to claim that he is the Devil so that they will hang or burn him, and hopefully save her. The "witch" turns out to be a beautiful young woman whose father was an alchemist. She is trying to use logic to understand, and find her way out of, the nightmare into which she has fallen.
Thomas (still insisting he is the devil, but knowing that she isn't for a moment fooled by that) chides her for her inability to move beyond the sterile bounds of logic.
...as for you, you with no eyes, no ears,
No senses, you the most superstitious
Of all - (for what greater superstition
Is there than the mumbo-jumbo of believing
In reality?) - you should be swallowed whole by Time
In the way that you swallow appearances.
Horns, what a waste of effort it has been
To give you Creation's vast and exquisite
Dilemma! where altercation thrums
In every granule of the Milky Way,
Persisting still in the dead-sleep of the moon,
And heckling itself hoarse in that hot-head
The sun. And as for here, each acorn drops
Arguing to earth, and pollen's all polemic. -
We have given you a world as contradictory
As a female, as cabbalistic as the male,
A conscienceless hermaphrodite who plays
Heaven off against hell, hell off against heaven,
Revolving the ballroom of the skies,
Glittering with conflict as with diamonds;
We have wasted paradox and mystery on you
When all you ask us for, is cause and effect! -
A copy of your birth-certificate was all you needed
To make you at peace with Creation. How uneconomical
The whole thing's been.
To really get the power of that one, you need to hear it - read it aloud. I was lucky enough that the only production I've ever seen of the play starred Derek Jacobi, so in my mind those words resound in his beautiful voice.
But really, the pacing and metre forced by the words exactly match what is being expressed (compare the slow heaviness forced on the tongue by "dead-sleep of the moon" with the pace allowed, encouraged by "heckling itself hoarse in that hot-head the sun" - so whoever reads it almost has to catch the correct intonation.
And then there's this one - an excerpt from a play called "Wonderful Tennessee" by Brian Friels.
Again for those who aren't familiar with the name - Friels is an Irish playwright (his most well-known play is probably Dancing at Lughnasa) and I was lucky enough to see this one in Dublin - at the Abbey Theatre no less.
That was another evening at the theatre that was deeply meaningful - even cathartic - for me. And this particular part of the play was key to that experience.
The story (which is actually nothing to do with Tennessee - either the state or the playwright) is about a group of friends who are travelling to a small island in County Sligo. They miss the ferry and get stranded and have to wait quite some time on the docks.
Berna is ... let's say a neurotic. The others are alternately exasperated by her, frightened of her, frightened for her, and almost universally patronising towards her.
She gets a little fed up with this, and announces that she is going to tell them a story. The story she tells them is that of the Holy House of Loreto. This is an actual Christian legend, miracle, what you will, which basically says that in the early 13th Century the angels took the small house in Nazareth that had been the home of Mary, Joseph and their son, Jesus, and flew it across the seas to a small town in Italy called Loreto. And there it sits to this day.
The response she gets is either uncomfortable or patronising or both. A couple of people try to change the subject, one says weakly that it's a wonderful story.
This is her response:
Berna: No, it's not a wonderful story, Trish. It's a stupid story. And crude. And pig-headed. A flying house is an offence to reason, isn't it? It marches up to reason and belts it across the gob and says to it, 'Fuck you, reason. I'm as good as you any day. You haven't all the fucking answers - not by any means'. That's what the story says. And that's why I liked it.
Seriously ... I wanted to stand up and cheer.
It's something to do with the fact that both these excerpts are about the limits of logic and science to nourish our souls. That we need something more - and sometimes that something flies in the face of logic.
The first is an excerpt from The Lady's Not for Burning by Christopher Fry. For those who don't know his work (and there probably aren't a lot who do - he's never been particularly fashionable, which IMO is a great pity), Fry wrote just about everything in iambic pentameter - the metre used by Shakespeare in his great speeches.
The play was written in the 20th century, but set in the 16th.
The main character - Thomas - who is too intelligent and sensitive for his own good (sound like someone we know?) has returned from war, soul weary and looking for a way out of the world.
He hears that they've arrested a witch and decides to claim that he is the Devil so that they will hang or burn him, and hopefully save her. The "witch" turns out to be a beautiful young woman whose father was an alchemist. She is trying to use logic to understand, and find her way out of, the nightmare into which she has fallen.
Thomas (still insisting he is the devil, but knowing that she isn't for a moment fooled by that) chides her for her inability to move beyond the sterile bounds of logic.
...as for you, you with no eyes, no ears,
No senses, you the most superstitious
Of all - (for what greater superstition
Is there than the mumbo-jumbo of believing
In reality?) - you should be swallowed whole by Time
In the way that you swallow appearances.
Horns, what a waste of effort it has been
To give you Creation's vast and exquisite
Dilemma! where altercation thrums
In every granule of the Milky Way,
Persisting still in the dead-sleep of the moon,
And heckling itself hoarse in that hot-head
The sun. And as for here, each acorn drops
Arguing to earth, and pollen's all polemic. -
We have given you a world as contradictory
As a female, as cabbalistic as the male,
A conscienceless hermaphrodite who plays
Heaven off against hell, hell off against heaven,
Revolving the ballroom of the skies,
Glittering with conflict as with diamonds;
We have wasted paradox and mystery on you
When all you ask us for, is cause and effect! -
A copy of your birth-certificate was all you needed
To make you at peace with Creation. How uneconomical
The whole thing's been.
To really get the power of that one, you need to hear it - read it aloud. I was lucky enough that the only production I've ever seen of the play starred Derek Jacobi, so in my mind those words resound in his beautiful voice.
But really, the pacing and metre forced by the words exactly match what is being expressed (compare the slow heaviness forced on the tongue by "dead-sleep of the moon" with the pace allowed, encouraged by "heckling itself hoarse in that hot-head the sun" - so whoever reads it almost has to catch the correct intonation.
And then there's this one - an excerpt from a play called "Wonderful Tennessee" by Brian Friels.
Again for those who aren't familiar with the name - Friels is an Irish playwright (his most well-known play is probably Dancing at Lughnasa) and I was lucky enough to see this one in Dublin - at the Abbey Theatre no less.
That was another evening at the theatre that was deeply meaningful - even cathartic - for me. And this particular part of the play was key to that experience.
The story (which is actually nothing to do with Tennessee - either the state or the playwright) is about a group of friends who are travelling to a small island in County Sligo. They miss the ferry and get stranded and have to wait quite some time on the docks.
Berna is ... let's say a neurotic. The others are alternately exasperated by her, frightened of her, frightened for her, and almost universally patronising towards her.
She gets a little fed up with this, and announces that she is going to tell them a story. The story she tells them is that of the Holy House of Loreto. This is an actual Christian legend, miracle, what you will, which basically says that in the early 13th Century the angels took the small house in Nazareth that had been the home of Mary, Joseph and their son, Jesus, and flew it across the seas to a small town in Italy called Loreto. And there it sits to this day.
The response she gets is either uncomfortable or patronising or both. A couple of people try to change the subject, one says weakly that it's a wonderful story.
This is her response:
Berna: No, it's not a wonderful story, Trish. It's a stupid story. And crude. And pig-headed. A flying house is an offence to reason, isn't it? It marches up to reason and belts it across the gob and says to it, 'Fuck you, reason. I'm as good as you any day. You haven't all the fucking answers - not by any means'. That's what the story says. And that's why I liked it.
Seriously ... I wanted to stand up and cheer.
