Tom Stoppard: Life and Career

Tom Stoppard (1937-) Biography• Born Tomáš Straussler, at Zlín,

Czechoslovakia.• Family fled after Nazi invasion on March

15, 1939.• His family moved to Singapore .• His mother and siblings then fled to India

because of the Japanese invasion of Singapore.

• His father died in Japanese prison camp.• His mother married a British military

officer in 1945.• At age 9, he moved with his mother and

stepfather to England, where he completed his education.

• Left school at age 17; started working as a journalist.

Tom Stoppard

Bristol Old Vic Stoppard: Life and Career• He worked on a well-known local newspaper,

the Western Daily Press and Bristol Evening World in the 1950s and early 1960s.

• He became a feature writer and drama critics.• He made contacts at the Bristol Old Vic.• By 1960 he is writing drama.• A Ford Foundation grant helped him complete

his first dramatic success, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967), which in some ways reworks Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953).

• His works reveal two main characteristics: (a) an interest in comically revising/remaking well-known literary works and genres, and (b) a fascination with scholarly ideas, debates about literature and aesthetics, and artistic practices.

• One his more recent plays, The Invention of Love (1997), looks at the figure of the gay literary writer—with reference to the poet, A. E. Housman (author of A Shropshire Lad [1896) and Oscar Wilde.

Title: Travesties

• Meanings of “travesty”• 1. Dressed so as to be made ridiculous;

burlesqued. (Const. as pa. pple.) Obs. or only as F.

• c1662 DAVENANT Play House to Let I. i, What think you Of Romances travesti..Burlesque and Travesti? These are hard words, And may be French, but not Law-French.

Title: Travesties

• 1. A literary composition which aims at exciting laughter by burlesque and ludicrous treatment of a serious work; literary composition of this kind; hence, a grotesque or debased imitation or likeness; a caricature.

• 1674 BUTLER Hud. I. III. Annot. 196 This Vickars..translated Virgils Æneides into as horrible Travesty in earnest, as the French Scaroon did in Burlesque.

Title: Travesties• 2. a. Chiefly Theatr. In etymological sense: An alteration of

dress or appearance; a disguise. spec. (dressing in) the attire of the opposite sex. Freq. (en) travesti. The phr. en travesti(e), which is not recorded in Fr., represents a misinterpretation of the F. pa. pple. as a n.

• 1732 SIR C. WOGAN Let. to Swift 27 Feb., My design was to have travelled..incognito... But all my art and travestie was vain. 1823 BYRON Juan V. lxxiv, ‘At least’, said Juan, ‘sure I may inquire The cause of this odd travesty?’ 1850 THACKERAY Pendennis II. x. 102 He went into the pit, and saw..that eminent buffo actor, Tom Horseman, dressed as a woman. Horseman's travestie seemed to him a horrid and hideous degradation.

Location: Zurich, Switzerland

ZurichKaufleuten, Zurich, where Wilde’s Comedy

was Performed in March 1918

Time of Play: March 1918

Switzerland during WWI• Switzerland remained

neutral during World war One.

• The country became a haven for pacifists, socialist revolutionaries, and avant-garde artists.

• Zurich was a haven for Bolsheviks, Dadaists, and artistic and literary exiles.

1914-1918: Timeline• February 4, 1914, Lenin moves to

Switzerland, protesting WWI, and in 1916 publishes Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.

• James Joyce moves to Zurich in 1915 to escape WWI. He lives there until 1920.

• February 6, 1916—founding of Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, a Dadaist nightclub: home of experimental sound poetry, performance art, anarchism, and anti-war protest.

• February 1917: Tsar Nicholas II abdicates. Lenin leaves Switzerland for Russia. Arrives in April 1917.

• March 1918: English Players perform The Importance of Being Earnest, with James Joyce and Henry Carr in the production.

Source: Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce (1959, revised 1982)

Ellmann’s Famous Biography Richard Ellmann (1918-87)• High acclaimed literary

biographer.• Author of three influential

biographies:• W.B. Yeats: The Man and

His Masks (1948, rev. 1979)• James Joyce (1959, rev.

1982)• Oscar Wilde (1987)

The Event: A Production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Wilde’s Posthumous Reputation• Wilde’s name was so besmirched at

time of his death that obituary writers sometimes did not mention his name.

• February 1902, George Alexander revives Earnest in London.

• February 1905: edition of Wilde’s De Profundis (his memoirs) brings Wilde’s name back into circulation.

• 1914: Jacob Epstein’s monument to Wilde’s unveiled at Père Lachaise, Paris. (The sphinx’s testicles cause offense.)

• By WWI, Wilde popular again. Joyce, in particular, is immersed in Wilde’s writings.

Key Players: James Joyce (1882-1941)

Life and Career through WWI• Born into large Catholic family that

experienced deepening poverty, owing to father’s drinking and inability to maintain job as a tax collector.

• From 1888 to 1892 attended Clongowes Wood School, a Jesuit institution.

• 1898-1903 studies modern languages (French, Italian, English) at University College Dublin.

• June 1904: marries Nora Barnacle.• Moves to Zurich, then Pola (Croatia), and

finally Trieste, where he teaches at a language school until 1915.

• Publishes book of brilliant short stories, Dubliners, in 1914. Stories were written in 1906.

• Serializes Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the Egoist 1914-1915.

James Joyce at Zurich, 1919

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)Joyce, Ulysses, First Edition, Published by Sylvia

Beach at Shakespeare and Company, Paris History of Ulysses• Began composing work in 1914.• Serialized in the American Little

Review, 1918-1920. Banned in US after court case in 1921.

• Focus on life of Leopold Bloom, on June 14, 1904, in Dublin.

• Takes its structure from Homer’s Odyssey.

• First US edition appeared in 1934; first UK edition issued in 1936.

• The work is a monument of literary modernism; it amounts to over a quarter of a million words.

Extract from Joyce, “Oxen of the Sun,” episode 14 of Ulysses

• Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. • Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn,

quickening and wombfruit. Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. • Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! • Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are

being held as most profitably by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind's ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipotent nature's incorrupted benefaction. For who is there who anything of some significance has apprehended but is conscious that that exterior splendour may be the surface of a downwardtending lutulent reality or on the contrary anyone so is there unilluminated as not to perceive that as no nature's boon can contend against the bounty of increase so it behoves every most just citizen to become the exhortator and admonisher of his semblables and to tremble lest what had in the past been by the nation excellently commenced might be in the future not with similar excellence accomplished if an inverecund habit shall have gradually traduced the honourable by ancestors transmitted customs to that thither of profundity that that one was audacious excessively who would have the hardihood to rise affirming that no more odious offence can for anyone be than to oblivious neglect to consign that evangel simultaneously command and promise which on all mortals with prophecy of abundance or with diminution's menace that exalted of reiteratedly procreating function ever irrevocably enjoined?

Joyce, “Oxen of the Sun”

Carmen Avale• enos Lases iuvate

enos Lases iuvate enos Lases iuvate

• neve lue rue Marmar sins incurrere in pleoris neve lue rue Marmar sins incurrere in pleoris neve lue rue Marmar sins incurrere in pleoris

• satur fu, fere Mars, limen sali, sta berber satur fu, fere Mars, limen sali, sta berber satur fu, fere Mars, limen sali, sta berber

• semunis alterni advocapit conctos semunis alterni advocapit conctos semunis alterni advocapit conctos

• enos Marmor iuvato enos Marmor iuvato enos Marmor iuvato

• triumpe triumpe triumpe triumpe triumpe

Joyce’s Imitation of the Carmen Arvale

• Deshil: from Irish deasil or deisiol—meaning to turn to the right in a ritual pertaining to good fortune or consecration.

• Holles: Holles Street—location of the maternity hospital in Dublin where Mina Purefoy gives birth.

• Eamus: Latin for “Let us go.”

Key Players: Tristan Tzara (1896-1963)

Tristan Tzara Tzara: Life and Career• Jewish-Romanian artist,

performer, and writer.• Raised in Moldavia and

Bucharest. • As a student, he became

deeply involved with the Romanian avant-garde.

• Impulse of his art was anti-establishment, anti-war/pacifist, and anti-”Truth.”

• Moves to Zurich in 1915.

Dadaism

Bulletin Dada Der Dada

Dada Manifestoes: First manifesto, 1916 by German poet Hugo Ball (1886-

1927)• Dada is a new tendency in art. One can tell this from the fact that until

now nobody knew anything about it, and tomorrow everyone in Zurich will be talking about it. Dada comes from the dictionary. It is terribly simple. In French it means "hobby horse". In German it means "good-bye", "Get off my back", "Be seeing you sometime". In Romanian: "Yes, indeed, you are right, that's it. But of course, yes, definitely, right". And so forth.

• An International word. Just a word, and the word a movement. Very easy to understand. Quite terribly simple. To make of it an artistic tendency must mean that one is anticipating complications. Dada psychology, dada Germany cum indigestion and fog paroxysm, dada literature, dada bourgeoisie, and yourselves, honoured poets, who are always writing with words but never writing the word itself, who are always writing around the actual point. Dada world war without end, dada revolution without beginning, dada, you friends and also-poets, esteemed sirs, manufacturers, and evangelists. Dada Tzara, dada Huelsenbeck, dada m'dada, dada m'dada dada mhm, dada dera dada, dada Hue, dada Tza.

Dada Manifestoes: Second manifesto, 1918, by Tristan Tzara

• DADA DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING • If we consider it futile, and if we don't waste our time over a word that doesn't mean anything... The first thought

that comes to these minds is of a bacteriological order: at least to discover its etymological, historical or psychological meaning. We read in the papers that the negroes of the Kroo race call the tail of a sacred cow: DADA. A cube, and a mother, in a certain region of Italy, are called: DADA. The word for a hobby horse, a children's nurse, a double affirmative in Russian and Romanian, is also: DADA. Some learned journalists see it as an art for babies, other Jesuscallingthelittlechildrenuntohim saints see it as a return to an unemotional and noisy primitivism - noise and monotonous. A sensitivity cannot be built on the basis of a word; every sort of construction converges into a boring sort of perfection, a stagnant idea of a golden swamp, a relative human product. A work of art shouldn't be beauty per se, because it is dead; neither gay nor sad, neither light nor dark; it is to rejoice or maltreat individualities to serve them up the cakes of sainted haloes or the sweat of a meandering chase through the atmosphere. A work of art is never beautiful, by decree, objectively, for everyone. Criticism is, therefore, useless; it only exists subjectively, for every individual, and without the slightest general characteristic. Do people imagine they have found the psychic basis common to all humanity? The attempt of Jesus, and the Bible, conceal, under their ample, benevolent wings: shit, animals and days. How can anyone hope to order the chaos that constitutes that infinite, formless variation: man? The principle: "Love thy neighbour" is hypocrisy. "Know thyself" is utopian, but more acceptable because it includes malice. No pity. After the carnage we are left with the hope of a purified humanity. I always speak about myself because I don't want to convince, and I have no right to drag others in my wake, I'm not compelling anyone to follow me, because everyone makes his art in his own way, if he knows anything about the joy that rises like an arrow up to the astral strata, or that which descends into the mines strewn with the flowers of corpses and fertile spasms. Stalactites: look everywhere for them, in creches magnified by pain, eyes as white as angels' hares. Thus DADA was born* , out of a need for independence, out of mistrust for the community. People who join us keep their freedom. We don't accept any theories. We've had enough of the cubist and futurist academies: laboratories of formal ideas. Do we make art in order to earn money and keep the dear bourgeoisie happy? Rhymes have the smack of money, and inflexion slides along the line of the stomach in profile. Every group of artists has ended up at this bank, straddling various comets. Leaving the door open to the possibility of wallowing in comfort and food.

Tristan Tzara, “To Make Dadaist Poem” (1924)

• Take a newspaper.Take some scissors.Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.Cut out the article.Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.Shake gently.Next take out each cutting one after the other.Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.The poem will resemble you.And there you are--an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd. *

• * Example:

when dogs cross the air in a diamond like ideas and the appendix of the meninx tells the time of the alarm programme (the title is mine) prices they are yesterday suitable next pictures/ appreciate the dream era of the eyes/ pompously that to recite the gospel sort darkens/ group apotheosis imagine said he fatality power of colours/ carved flies (in the theatre) flabbergasted reality a delight/ spectator all to effort of the no more 10 to 12/ during divagation twirls descends pressure/ render some mad single-file flesh on a monstrous crushing stage/ celebrate but their 160 adherents in steps on put on my nacreous/ sumptuous of land bananas sustained illuminate/ joy ask together almost/ of has the a such that the invoked visions/ some sings latter laughs/ exits situation disappears describes she 25 dance bows/ dissimulated the whole of it isn't was/ magnificent has the band better light whose lavishness stage music-halls me/ reappears following instant moves live/ business he didn't has lent/ manner words come these people

V.I. Lenin (1870-1924)

V.I. Lenin Life and Career• Raised in an anti-establishment family that

opposed the Tsar.• Trained in law and modern languages.• Active in revolutionary organizations in Russia in

the 1890s.• Traveled in Europe in 1900.• Active in the 1905 Revolution.• In exile again after the failed 1907 November

Revolution.• Prolific Marxist writer.• He broke with many other revolutionaries in

their support of their homelands in WWI.• Manage to reach St. Petersburg in spring of

1917.

Literature and Nonsense: LimericksFrom Edward Lear, A Book of

Nonsense (1845) History of the Limerick• Five-line poem that originates in Ireland, dating from the

eighteenth century.• Popularized by Edward Lear in his 1845 Book of Nonsense.• Tends to be written in anapestic meter (x x /): two lines of

anapestic trimiter + two lines of anapestic dimiter + one line of anapestic trimiter.

• The striking movement of the meter makes often clashes in tone with the words that take the stress—i.e. the stresses give undue weight to specific words (such as “rabbits”).

• Limericks, which usually follows an aabba rhyme scheme, sound as if they take the form of epigrammatic wisdom.

• But limericks generally create nonsensical or meaningless formulations—ones that have no moral insight whatsoever.

• Limericks tend to be much more interested in silly rhymes, childish word play, and verbal absurdities.

• The form has frequently been used for writing obscene verse.• The dialogue in limericks (pp.16-17) focuses attention on the

“nonsense” of art in a time of war.

Limericks and Ballad Measure

Ballad Measure• 4 lines of 4 beats (Long Meter):• / / / / • Twinkle, twinkle little star. • / / / / • How I wonder what you are. • / / / / • Up above the world so high, • / / / / • Like a diamond in the sky.

• Common Measure alternates 4-3-4-3 with a silent offbeat:• / / / /• Because I could not stop for Death—• / / / ( / )• He kindly stopped for me—• / / / / • The Carriage held but just Ourselves—• / / / ( / )• And Immortality.

Short Meter• 4 lines alternating 3 – 3 – 4 – 3

• / / / ( / )• Hickory dickory dock!• / / / ( / )• The mouse ran up the clock.• / / / /• The clock struck one; the mouse ran down.• / / / ( / )• Hickory dickory dock!

• Many nursery rhymes and hymns are in this measure, and Emily Dickinson’s poetry uses all of these traditional hymn forms

Limericks and Ballad Measure

Short Meter

• 3-3-4-3 becomes 3-3-2-2-3:

• / / / ( / )• Hickory dickory dock!• / / / ( / )• The mouse ran up the clock.• / / • The clock struck one;• / /• the mouse ran down.• / / / ( / )• Hickory dickory dock!

P. 16• I . . . sorry . . . would you say that again?• Begob – I’d better explain• I’m told that you are a – • Miss Carr! Mr. Tzara!• B’jasus’. Joyce is the name.

• I’m sorry! – how terribly rude!• Henry – Mr. Joyce! How d’you do?• Delighted! Good day! • I just wanted to say• How sorry I am to intrude.

Limericks

p. 30

• / / / • I’m sorry! – how terribly rude!• [ ] / / / • Henry – Mr. Joyce! How d’you do?• / /• Delighted! Good day! • / / / • I just wanted to say• / / / • How sorry I am to intrude.

P. 30• / / /• Dublin, don’t tell me you know it?

• Only from the guidebook, and I gather you are in the process of revising that. Yes.

• [ ] / / / • Oh! I’m sorry – how terribly rude! • [ ] / / / • Henry – Mr Joyce – How’d you do?• / / • Delighted. Good day.• / / • I just wanted to say –• / / / • Do you know Mr. Tzara, the poet?

Tzara Does a Dada Cut-Up of Shakespeare’s Sonnet #18

Sonnet #18• Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed,And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature's changing course

untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his

shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Tzara’s Method

• “All poetry is a reshuffling of a pack of picture cards, and all poets are cheats’ (35).

• “I do not know what poetical is” (35).

• “I was not born under a rhyming planet” (36).

• “It has no meaning” (38).

Joyce Challenges Tzara’s Methods

Tzara on Dada• “Tzara discovered the word

Dada by accident in a Larousse Dictionary” (40).

• “The right to urinate in different colours” (41).

• “It’s too late for geniuses! Now we need vandals and desecrators” (41).

Joyce on Art• “An artist is the magician put

among me to gratify-capriciously—their urge for immortality” (41).

• “What now of the trohjan War if it had been passed over by the artist’s touch?” (42)

• Sounding like Lady Bracknell when he speak to Tzara: “I would strongly advise you to try and acquire some genius and if possible some subtlety before the season is quite over” (42).

Why Perform The Importance of Being Earnest in the Middle of a War?

Joyce’s Ostensible View• “By the fortune of war,

Zurich has become the theatrical center of Europe” (32).

• But there is “nothing from England” (32).

• “The English Players intend to mount a repertoire of masterpieces that will show the Swiss who leads the world in dramatic art” (32).

Carr’s and Gwen’s Responses• Carr: “It is a play written by

an Irish . . . Gommorahist” (33).

• Gwen to Carr: “You were a wonderful Goneril at Eton, Henry” (32).

• Carr: “But could he be wearing a—boater? . . Cream flannel” (34).

End of Act I: Carr Recalls the Law Suits

• Carr and Joyce took out separate law suits against each other over money from the production of The Importance of Being Earnest.

• The two men were at war with each other over small sums of money and professional dignity.

• They took this dispute over the production of Wilde’s comedy in deadly earnest.

• The fact that the stakes were so high for them in a time of war looks utterly absurd—a travesty.

Act II: Carr (Who Plays Algernon) Pretends to be Tristan Tzara to Cecily!Travesties Rewrites Earnest

• Travesties performs a “cut-up” of Earnest, in a manner that at times resembles Tzara’s methods.

• But the “cut-up” has a purpose.• Carr, pretending to be Jack Tzara,

reveals that he is not a “decadent nihilist.”

• Carr is too muddled to see that he can use Cecily to find out everything the British secret service want to find out about Lenin’s activism.

• Cecily reveals everything she knows about Lenin—especially the ways in which Lenin’s ideas inform understandings of art.

Cecily Spouting Lenin• “Oscar Wilde was a bourgeois

individualist” (49).• “The sole duty and justification

for art is social criticism” (49).• “[W] e live in age when the social

order is seen to be the work of material forces and we have been given an entirely new kind of responsibility, the responsibility of changing society” (50).

• “Ever since Jack told me he had a younger brother who was a decadent nihilist it has been my girlish dream to reform you and to love you” (53).

Why Does Travesties Make Lenin Sound (Momentarily) like Lady Bracknell?

Lenin Prepares to Leave for St. Petersburg

• Lenin has to figure out how to make his way to Russia—with the help of stand-ins, individuals who impersonate him and Zinoviev, and disguise (“I can wear a wig” [54]).

• “Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example what on earth is the use of them! . . . To lose one revolution is unfortunate. To lose two would look like carelessness” (58).

Why this Travesty of Lenin?• By making Lenin sound like Lady Bracknell on

p.58, it may be that Travesties wants to point to a sharp social or political critique in Earnest.

• Then again, by focusing on Lenin’s interest in disguise, Travesties may be pointing to the theatricality of his journey to the Finland Station.

• Or it could be that Travesties wants to show that there was an absurdity in the Russian Revolution, which led in the end to Leonid Brezhnev’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia—where Stoppard was born.

• Or it might reveal that Leninism needed an injection of rebellious humor and art in its desire to transform the material conditions of society.

Lenin on Literature and Artistic Freedom: The Marxist Hard Line

• “Today, literature must become party literature. Down with non-partisan literature!” (58)

• “We want to establish . . . A press press, free . . . from bourgeois anarchist individualism” (59).

• “Socialist literature and art will be free because the idea of socialism and sympathy with the working people, instead of greed and careerism, will bring ever new forces into its ranks!” (59)

• “Tolstoy reflected the stored –up hatred and the readiness for a new future—and at the same time the immature dreaming and political flabbiness which was one of the main causes for the failure of the 1905 revolution” (60).

• Quoting Maxim Gorky: “We artists are irresponsible people” (60). Gorky became one of the most vexed figures in the subsequent Stalinist censorship of literature and art because Gorky believed in “culture” as a key component in strengthening the socialist state.

• Gorky wrote The Lower Depths (1902): a realist play that depicts the oppressed Russian underclass in a pessimistic manner. Lenin, we learn on p.61, watched the drama in 1903; it made him avoid “the theatre for a long time.”

Lenin Hearing Mayakovsky’s Poetry (“he nearly jumped out of his skin”) (61)

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) Mayakovsky and Futurism

• Influenced by Italian poet F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto (1909).

• Marinetti famously declared: “We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.”

• And this: “Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man. “

• Mayakovsky’s Futurist poetry became popular in the early Soviet Union but it did not fit into the program of Stalinist art.

• He shot himself in 1930.

Soviet Art under Stalin (in Power form 1927 to 1953)

Favored: Arkadii Piastov, Life on the Collective Farm (1937)

Disfavored: Kazemir Malevich, composition dating from 1916

Travesties: The EndingWhat has Been the Point of the

Play?• In old age, the married couple,

Cecily and Carr, recall their time at Zurich in 1917-18.

• They look back on an age when Joyce, Tzara, and Lenin occupied the same time and place.

• But it was a time when the three individuals could not create the kind of dialogue that Travesties has put on stage.

What Historical Sense Can We Make of this Setting?

• Is it a travesty that these revolutionary artists and political revolutionaries could learn nothing from one another?

• Is it absurd that their respective revolutions became alienated from one another?

• In a different world, might avant-garde art/literature and Leninism been able to learn from one another?

• Isn’t it absurd that Joyce and Carr went to war with each other over the profits from the production of Earnest—when what mattered was the excellence of Wilde’s play during a politically distraught era?