Travesties (4 page)

(
He has gone. Pause. Low light on motionless
CARR
in his chair
.)

CARR
: Well, let us resume.
Zurich By One Who Was There
. (
Normal light
.)

BENNETT
(
entering
): Mr Tzara.

(
TZARA
enters
.
BENNETT
retires
.)

CARR
: How are you, my dear Tristan? What brings you here?

(
TZARA,
no less than
CARR,
is straight out of
The Importance of Being Earnest.)

TZARA
: Oh, pleasure, pleasure! What else should bring anyone anywhere? Eating and drinking, as usual, I see, Henry? I have often observed that Stoical principles are more easily borne by those of Epicurean habits.

CARR
(
Stiffly
): I believe it is done to drink a glass of hock and seltzer before luncheon, and it is well done to drink it well before luncheon. I took to drinking hock and seltzer for my nerves at a time when nerves were fashionable in good society. This season it is trenchfoot, but I drink it regardless because I feel much better after it.

TZARA
: You might have felt much better anyway.

CARR
: No, no – post hock, propter hock.

TZARA
: But, my dear Henry, causality is no longer fashionable owing to the war.

CARR
: How illogical, since the war itself had causes. I forget what they were, but it was all in the papers at the time. Something about brave little Belgium, wasn't it?

TZARA
: Was it? I thought it was Serbia …

CARR
: Brave little Serbia…? No, I don't think so. The newspapers would never have risked calling the British public to arms without a proper regard for succinct alliteration.

TZARA
: Oh, what nonsense you talk!

CARR
: It may be nonsense, but at least it is clever nonsense.

TZARA
: I am sick of cleverness. In point of fact, everything is Chance.

CARR
: That sounds awfully clever. What does it mean?

TZARA
: It means, my dear Henry, that the causes we know
everything about depend on causes we know very little about, which depend on causes we know absolutely nothing about. And it is the duty of the artist to jeer and howl and belch at the delusion that infinite generations of real effects can be inferred from the gross expression of apparent cause.

CARR
: It is the duty of the artist to beautify existence.

TZARA
(
Articulately
): Dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada.

CARR
(
Slight pause
): Oh, what nonsense you talk!

TZARA
: It may be nonsense, but at least it's not clever nonsense. Cleverness has been exploded, along with so much else, by the war.

CARR
: You forget that I was there, in the mud and blood of a foreign field, unmatched by anything in the whole history of human carnage. Ruined several pairs of trousers. Nobody who has not been in the trenches can have the faintest conception of the horror of it. I had hardly set foot in France before I sank in up to the knees in a pair of twill jodphurs with pigskin straps handstitched by Ramidge and Hawkes. And so it went on – the sixteen ounce serge, the heavy worsteds, the silk flannel mixture – until I was invalided out with a bullet through the calf of an irreplaceable lambswool dyed khaki in the yarn to my own specification. I tell you, there is nothing in Switzerland to compare with it.

TZARA
: Oh, come now, Henry, your trousers always look –

CARR
: I mean with trench warfare.

TZARA
: Well, I daresay, Henry, but you could have spent the time in Switzerland as an artist.

CARR
(
Coldly
): My dear Tristan, to be an artist
at all
is like living in Switzerland during a world war. To be an artist
in Zurich, in 1917
, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have glazed over the eyes of Narcissus. When I sent round to Hamish and Rudge for their military pattern book, I was responding to feelings of
patriotism, duty
, to my love of freedom, my hatred of tyranny and my sense of oneness with the underdog – I mean in general, I never particularly cared
for the Belgians as such. And besides I couldn't be an artist
anywhere
– I can do none of the things by which is meant Art.

TZARA
: Doing the things by which is meant Art is no longer considered the proper concern of the artist. In fact it is frowned upon. Nowadays, an artist is someone who makes art mean the things he does. A man may be an artist by exhibiting his hindquarters. He may be a poet by drawing words out of a hat.

CARR
: But that is simply to change the meaning of the word Art.

TZARA
: I see I have made myself clear.

CARR
: Then you are not actually
an artist
at all?

TZARA
: On the contrary. I have just told you I am.

CARR
: But that does not make you an artist. An artist is someone who is gifted in some way that enables him to do something more or less well which can only be done badly or not at all by someone who is not thus gifted. If there is any point in using language at all it is that a word is taken to stand for a particular fact or idea and not for other facts or ideas. I might claim to be able to fly … Lo, I say, I am flying. But you are not propelling yourself about while suspended in the air, someone may point out. Ah no, I reply, that is no longer considered the proper concern of people who can fly. In fact, it is frowned upon. Nowadays, a flyer never leaves the ground and wouldn't know how. I see, says my somewhat baffled interlocutor, so when you say you can
fly
you are using the word in a purely private sense. I see I have made myself clear, I say. Then, says this chap in some relief, you cannot actually
fly
after all? On the contrary, I say, I have just told you I can. Don't you see my dear Tristan you are simply asking me to accept that the word Art means whatever you wish it to mean; but I do not accept it.