BOOKS AND WRITERS
MR. ELIOT is, from all appearance, one of that class of poets who work from the " meaning " or intuition to the symbol, what he has called " the objective correlative," rather than from the spectacle of life to an " imitation " so shaped that some meaning will emerge from it, some attitude be induced. It is for this reason, one supposes, that his chief technical difficulty would seem to be the fusing together of the various planes of reality, which must co-exist to some degree in any play, and which with him is a major problem, as it -must be with any playwright whose work is at the same time original and highly complex. The problem did not trouble the Elizabethans, who, living in a pre-scientific age, were prepared to accept the simultaneous presentation of various planes (as, say, in The Tempest): but it did trouble Ibsen, as it does M. Sartre. To some extent the re-handling of an old myth is a solution, as so many French playwrights including M. Anouilh have found, and as Mr. Eliot did when he flirted with one in The Family Reunion: but here, in his new play,* though his Furies have become Eumenides, or Guardians, they are not ghostly characters, but, at the same time as Guardians, men and women living in the world. Strange vessels of the spirit indeed, to whom we shall return.
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His other technical problems Mr. Eliot seems, finally to ,have resolved. He never had much difficulty over dramatic movement ; the sense of it is in his blood: it shaped The Waste Land and gave form to Four Quartets: but to translate this into stage terms was not the less an operation needing experience, and Mr. Eliot stumbled a little in Murder in the- Cathedral; but afterwards there was no hitch. His medium of speech was not so easily attained: too heavily rhythmed in Sweeney, uncertain and wavering in The Rock, it was nearly right in The Family Reunion, though there it occasionally swung off into a lyrical movement which in the setting was a little disturbing, though by itself, in the study, enchanting. Now, we feel secure, Mr. Eliot has achieved his mastery: he has worked out a form of speech suitable for an actor to say, and actor-proof, cadenced enough to enable the stresses to tell, flexible enough to be either portentous or light ; and while it is a universal medium. it yet carries his own individual rhythms. A third problem, still not quite solved, perhaps, is how to get the important universalising statements made by the characters. The chorus simply will not do today, as others together with Mr. Eliot have discovered: it was cunningly disguised in The Family Reunion: but here, though perhaps vestigial traces remain in the libation scene at the end of the second act, the effect is more that of ritual utterance among the Guardians than of a chorus. Indeed the Guardians throughout carry the sententiae; but in so far as they are ordinary people living in the everyday humdrum world, they do not draw undue attention to the fact that they are doing so. Here and there, however, they seem a little self-conscious about it.
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A comedy ? What you think of that label will depend upon your idea of comedy. In so far as comedy is concerned with man's relation to man, the goings-on of the Chamberlayne-Quilpe group are certainly comic, indeed at moments brilliant comedy with all the classical implications of the word: but in so far as tragedy deals with man's relation to God, then the other group, and certainly Celia Coplestone, belong to the world of tragedy. Yet, in so far as they are humans—the outrageous society harridan, the prepos- terously complacent psycho-analyst, the man of the world, half- social half-business, the Guardians are comic. You might even say that the chief Guardian, Reilly, is a figure of hideous sardonic comedy, a kind of Sir Epicure Mammon in another sphere ; but I do not think Mr. Eliot meant this. And if you object that the Celia scene in Act II is of a grave and high beauty incompatible with comedy, you may remind yourself that certain scenes of Le Misanthrope also have this quality. All, of course, depends on the attitude the play finally induces in you, in which particular world you feel involved, and what you think the play is really about.
* The Cocktail Party : A Comedy. By T. S. Elicit. (Faber. 10s. 6c1.)
And it is here, perhaps, that Mr. Eliot has not quite conquered his medium: though he himself, it would seem, can now move with perfect freedom within the form, it is not quite clear in what direc- tion he is expecting us to move. There are, perhaps, too many meanings, and we may come away regarding the play either as a comedy within a thin outer shell of tragedy, or as a tragedy within a thick casing of comedy. And the trouble, I think, is that there are moments when we do not know what plane of reality we are supposed to be on: we sometimes feel that we are being offered two or three planes at one time in one person, especially at the transitions. What, at any given moment we might ask, is Julia ? A superannuated frippery, a Lady Wishfort? Or a divine messenger? As a rule the transitions, or the fusings, in the tone of the play itself are admirable. There are, we may say, four planes. First, the a-moral one of Sweeney: the conversation of the first few moments might come directly from Sweeney Agonistes; then, when the yet undiscovered Reilly after some witty cynicisms says:
" But let me tell you, that to approach the stranger Is to invite the unexpected, release a new force, Or let the genie out of the bottle. It is to start a train of events Beyond your control. . . ."
we are on the plane of Agatha in The Family Reunion, the moral one. Later, when first Peter and then Celia speak of the nature of reality, we are on a metaphysical plane: finally, with the Guardians in session as Guardians, on a transcendental one. And the main " meaning " of the play seems to be dual—moral and transcendental.
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Yet the statement in either case is that every individual must find that place in life which suits him : it is the old conception of degree in the chain of being, combined with a Stoic acceptance. " Resign yourself to be the fool you are," Sir Henry Reilly tells Edward Chamberlayne. To lead the humdrum life is itself good. Each and every person is offered a choice and must make one, though it is not very illuminating to be told that " the right choice is the choice you cannot but make," though indeed a sense of destiny runs faintly through the play. Celia, predestined as we are later told, made a choice based on " the kind of faith that issues from despair," and found crucifixion in the vicinity of an ants' nest. Each person, in short, gets what he hungers for. A Chacun Selon sa Faint, such is the title of a play by a young playwright, M. Jean Mogin, now running at the Vieux Colombier, and that might well be the sub- title of Mr. Eliot's play, for the themes are not dissimilar, and in each play a young woman chooses a path which leads, a little wilfully, to martyrdom. But there are so many fascinating themes in The Cocktail Party, the play is so rich, so amazingly complex, that each person will gain from it what he can, or put in it what he must : for, as Mr. Eliot himself has said, in a poem of any complexity the poet himself is not aware of all the possible meanings.
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With a play of such original texture as this, it is difficult to judge from however imaginative a reading what it would be like to see on the stage. That it is a tense play which will hold an audience one would suspect ; that it does hold audiences through laughter is, I understand, being proved by the event, though it is difficult to see how the shock of Celia's crucifixion, and the theological implications which will revolt more people than Lavinia Chamberlayne, can in the final passages be resolved into the apprehensions of comedy. The forthcoming production in London will enable one to put theories to the test. Some scenes, obviously, are intensely amusing ; many of the quiet ones are the highest Meredithian comedy. The play is a disturbing experience, and certainly nobody will lay the book down —and it is to be suspected that nobody will come away from seeing the play—without feeling that somewhere some barb has pierced beneath the skin. If -he does not feel that, he had better begin looking into himself : or perhaps, on reflection, he had better not.
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