Travesties (8 page)

JOYCE
: What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Tzara's thoughts about Ball's thoughts about Tzara, and Tzara's thoughts about Ball's thoughts about Tzara's thoughts about Ball?

TZARA
: He thought that he thought that he knew what he was thinking, whereas he knew that he knew that he knew that he did not.

JOYCE
: And did he?

TZARA
: He did and he didn't.

JOYCE
: What did Dada bring to pictorial art, sculpture, poetry and music that had not been brought to these activities previously in …
(
The appropriate flags start coming out of the hat
.)
… Barcelona, New York, Paris, Rome and St Petersburg by, for example, Picabia, Duchamp, Satie, Marinetti, and Mayakovsky who shouts his fractured lines in a yellow blazer with blue roses painted on his cheeks?

TZARA
: The word Dada.

JOYCE
: Describe sensibly without self-contradiction, and especially without reference to people stuffing bread rolls up their noses, how the word Dada was discovered.

TZARA
: Tristan Tzara discovered the word Dada by accident in a Larousse Dictionary. It has been said, and he does not deny, that a paper-knife was inserted at random into the book. Huelsenbeck recounts how
he
discovered the word one day in Hugo Ball's dictionary while Tzara was not present. Hans Arp, however, has stated, ‘I hereby declare that Tristan Tzara found the word Dada on February the 8th 1916 at six o'clock in the afternoon.'

JOYCE
: Were there further disagreements between Tzara and Huelsenbeck?

TZARA
: There were.

JOYCE
: As to?

TZARA
: As to the meaning and purpose of Dada.

JOYCE
: Huelsenbeck demanding, for example?

TZARA
: International revolutionary union of all artists on the basis of radical Communism.

JOYCE
: As opposed to Tzara's demanding?

TZARA
: The right to urinate in different colours.

JOYCE
: Each person in different colours at different times, or different people in each colour all the time? Or everybody multi-coloured every time?

TZARA
: It was more to make the point that making poetry should be as natural as making water –

JOYCE
(
Rising: the conjuring is over
): God send you don't make them in the one hat.
(
This is too much for
TZARA
.)

TZARA
: By God, you supercilious streak of Irish puke! You four-eyed, bog-ignorant, potato-eating ponce! Your art has failed. You've turned literature into a religion and it's as dead as all the rest, it's an overripe corpse and you're cutting fancy figures at the wake. It's too late for geniuses! Now we need vandals and desecrators, simple-minded demolition men to smash centuries of baroque subtlety, to bring down the temple, and thus finally, to reconcile the shame and the necessity of being an artist! Dada!
Dada! Dada!! (He starts to smash whatever crockery is to hand; which done, he strikes a satisfied pose
.
JOYCE
has not moved
.)

JOYCE
: You are an over-excited little man, with a need for selfexpression far beyond the scope of your natural gifts. This is not discreditable. Neither does it make you an artist. An artist is the magician put among men to gratify – capriciously – their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of
nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships – and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes – husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer … It is a theme so overwhelming that I am almost afraid to treat it. And yet I with my Dublin Odyssey will double that immortality, yes by God
there's
a corpse that will dance for some time yet and
leave the world precisely as it finds it –
and if you hope to shame it into the grave with your fashionable magic, I would strongly advise you to try and acquire some genius and if possible some subtlety before the season is quite over. Top o' the morning, Mr Tzara!
(
With which
JOYCE
produces a rabbit out of his hat, puts the hat on his head, and leaves, holding the rabbit
.)
(
CARR
's
voice is heard off
.)

CARR
(
Voice off
): ‘Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example what on earth is the use of them? They seem as a class to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.'
(
TZARA
has moved to
CARR
's
door. He opens it, and goes through
.)
(
Voice off
) ‘How are you, my dear Ernest. What brings you up to town?' – ‘Pleasure, pleasure – eating as usual, I see, Algy…'
(
CARR
enters, as Old Carr, holding a book
.) Algy! The other one. Personal triumph in the demanding role of Algernon Montcrieff. The Theater zur Kaufleuten on Pelikanstrasse, an evening in Spring, the English Players in that quintessential English jewel ‘The Imprudence of Being –' Now I've forgotten the first one. By Oscar Wilde. Henry Carr as Algy. Other parts played by Tristan Rawson, Cecil Palmer, Ethel Turner, Evelyn Cotton … forget the rest. Tickets five francs, four bob a nob and every seat filled, must have made a packet for the Irish lout and his cronies – still,
not one to bear a grudge, not after all these years, and him dead in the cemetery up the hill, unpleasant as it is to be dragged through the courts for a few francs – after I'd paid for my trousers
and
filled every seat in the house –
not
very pleasant to be handed ten francs like a
tip!
– and then asking me for twenty-five francs for tickets – bloody nerve – Here, I got it out –
(
From his pocket, a tattered document.)
– Bezirksgericht Zuerich, Zurich District Court, in the case of Dr James Joyce – doctor my eye – plaintiff and counter-defendant versus Henry Carr, defendant and counter-plaintiff, with reference to the claim for settlement of the following issues: (a) Suit: is defendant and counter-plaintiff (that's me) obliged to pay the plaintiff and counter-defendant (that's him) twenty-five francs? (b) Counter-suit: is plaintiff and counter-defendant bound to pay defendant and counter-plaintiff three hundred francs? Have you got that? Joyce says I owe him twenty-five francs for tickets. I say Joyce owes me three hundred francs for the trousers, etcetera, purchased by me for my performance as Henry – or rather –
god dammit!
– the other one …

Incidentally, you may or may not have noticed that I got my wires crossed a bit here and there, you know how it is when the old think-box gets stuck in a groove and before you know where you are you've jumped the points and suddenly you think, No, steady on, old chap, that was Algernon –
Algernon!
There you are – all coming back now, I've got it straight, I'll be all right from here on. In fact, anybody hanging on just for the cheap comedy of senile confusion might as well go because now I'm on to how I met Lenin and could have changed the course of history etcetera, what's this?? (
the document
) Oh yes.

Erkannt – has decided that.
I
. Der Beklagte, the defendant, Henry Carr, is obliged to pay den Klager, the plaintiff, James Joyce, twenty-five francs. The counter-claim of Henry Carr is denied. Herr Carr to indemnify Doktor Joyce sixty francs for trouble and expenses. In other words, a travesty of justice. Later the other case came up – Oh yes, he
sued me for slander, claimed I called him a swindler and a cad … Thrown out of court, naturally. But it was the money with Joyce. Well, it was a long time ago. He left Zurich after the war, went to Paris, stayed twenty years and turned up here again in December 1940. Another war… But he was a sick man then, perforated ulcer, and in January he was dead … buried one cold snowy day in the Fluntern Cemetery up the hill.

I dreamed about him, dreamed I had him in the witness box, a masterly cross-examination, case practically won, admitted it all, the whole thing, the trousers, everything, and
I flung
at him – ‘And what did you do in the Great War?' ‘I wrote
Ulysses
,' he said. ‘What did you do?'

Bloody nerve.

(
BLACKOUT
.)

THE LIBRARY

Apart from the bookcases, etc. the Library's furniture includes
CECILY
's
desk, which is perhaps more like a counter forming three sides of a square
.

CECILY
: To resume.

The war caught Lenin and his wife in Galicia, in Austro-Hungary. After a brief internment they got into Switzerland and settled in Berne. In 1916, needing a better library than the one in Berne, Lenin came to Zurich …

(
The Library set is now lit
.)
… intending to stay two weeks. But he and Nadezhda liked it here and decided to stay. They rented a room in the house of a shoe-maker named Kammerer at 14 Spiegelgasse. Zurich during the war was a magnet for refugees, exiles, spies, anarchists, artists and radicals of all kinds. Here could be seen James Joyce, reshaping the novel into the permanent form of his own monument, the book the world now knows as
Ulysses!
– and here, too, the Dadaists were performing nightly at the Cabaret Voltaire in the Meierei Bar at Number One Spiegelgasse, led by a dark, boyish and obscure Romanian poet…
(
JOYCE
is seen passing among the bookshelves; and also
CARR
,
now monocled and wearing blazer, cream flannels, boater… and holding a large pair of scissors which he snips speculatively as he passes between the bookcases
.
JOYCE
and
CARR
pass out of view
.)
Every morning at nine o'clock when the library opened, Lenin would arrive.
(
LENIN
arrives, saying ‘Good morning' in Russian: ‘Zdrasvuitiye'
.)
He would work till the lunch hour, when the library closed, and then return and work until six, except on Thursdays when we remained closed. He was working on his book on Imperialism.

(
LENIN
is at work among books and papers
.)
On January 22nd, 1917, at the Zurich People's House Lenin told an audience of young people, ‘We of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of the coming revolution.' We all believed that that was so. But one day hardly more than a month later, a Polish comrade, Bronsky, ran into the Ulyanov house with the news that there was a revolution in Russia …
(
NADYA
enters as in the Prologue, and she and
LENIN
repeat the Russian conversation previously enacted. This time
CECILY
translates it for the audience, pedantically repeating each speech in English, even the simple ‘No!' and ‘Yes!' The
LENINS
leave
.
NADYA
says ‘Das vedanya' to
CECILY
(
i.e. ‘Goodbye') as she goes
.)
As Nadezhda writes in her
Memories of Lenin
, ‘From the moment the news of the February revolution came, Ilyich burned with eagerness to go to Russia.' But this was easier said than done, in this landlocked country. Russia was at war with Germany. And Lenin was no friend of the Allied countries. His war policy made him a positive danger to them;
(
CARR
enters, very debonair in his boater and blazer, etc
.
CARR
has come to the library as a ‘spy', and his manner betrays this until
CECILY
addresses him
.)
indeed it was clear that the British and the French would wish to prevent Lenin from leaving Switzerland. And that they would have him watched. Oh!
(
CECILY
sees
CARR
who hands her the visiting card he received from
BENNETT
in Act One
.)

CECILY
: Tristan Tzara. Dada, Dada, Dada …
Why, it's Jack's younger brother!!

CARR
: You must be Cecily!

CECILY
: Ssssh!

CARR
: You are!

CECILY
: And you, I see from your calling card, are Jack's decadent nihilist younger brother.

CARR
: Oh, I'm not really a decadent nihilist at all, Cecily. You mustn't think that I am a decadent nihilist.

CECILY
: If you are not then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. To
masquerade
as a decadent nihilist – or at any rate to ruminate in different colours and display the results in the Bahnhofstrasse – would be hypocritical.

CARR
: (
Taken aback
): Oh! Of course, I have been rather
louche
and devil-take-the-hindmost.

CECILY
: I am glad to hear it.

CARR
: In fact now you mention the subject I have made quite a corner in voluptuous disdain.