A Miscellany (Revised) Read online

  But suppose, now, that an exciting experiment is attempted. Why not try to consider the circus directly, or as a self-sufficient phenomenon independent of the theatre, movies, radio and similar lofty amusements? I have in mind neither a detailed analysis of the American circus of today, nor yet a pompous monologue on the circus throughout the ages, but merely a few personal remarks anent the menagerie, the freaks, and the “big show” of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus.

  And speaking of the menagerie, nothing can shake my conviction that a periodic and highly concentrated dose of wild animals—elephants, tigers, lions, leopards, jaguars, bears, wolves, giraffes, kangaroo, zebras, horned horses, camels, hyenas, rhinoceri and at least one hippopotamus—is indispensable to the happiness of all mature civilized human beings. Were Congress to pass a bill compelling every adult inhabitant of the United States of America to visit the circus at least twice a year, with the stipulation that each visitor must spend (willy-nilly) not less than half an hour in the menagerie, I believe that, throughout the entire country, four out of five hospitals, jails and insane-asylums would close down. It is my hunch that, as an immediate result of this simple legislation, hundreds of cripples—lame, halt and blind—would toss their infirmities to the winds, thousands of ill-starred homes would break into paeans of rejoicing—and millions of psychoanalysts would be thrown out of employment.

  For the benefit of any disciple of Freud who may chance to peruse the above statement, I hereby whisper that my own totem is the elephant. And what, gentle subscriber to Vanity Fair, may your totem be? In case you aren’t sure, or think you haven’t any, I counsel you to take the very next train for whatever city the circus may happen to occupy (unless you are so fortunate as to have it with you at the moment). Above all, don’t be satisfied with a trip to some mere zoo; for zoos—poor, placid, colourless things that they are—completely lack that outrageous intensity which makes the circus menagerie unique as a curative institution and endows the denizens of that institution with a fourth- or fifth-dimensional significance for the neuroses.

  By this time, surely, my worthy readers have doubtless decided that I myself am a salaried member of that branch of the circus which comprises “the strange people.” Although this is an error—although I am neither a Missing Link nor a Fat Lady nor yet an Ambassador from Mars—I may mention that I feel highly complimented at being mistaken for one or all of these prodigies. For (in my opinion) happy is that writer, who, in the course of his lifetime, succeeds in making a dozen persons react to his personality as genuinely or vividly as millions react, each and every year, to the magnetic personality of Zip, the What-Is-It! Nor can I refrain, at this point, saluting also the Giant, the Pygmy, the Pin-Head, the unutterably refined Human Skeleton and the other distinguished members of Zip’s very select society. Having done this, I shall spare my readers further rhapsody. In return for the favor, I ask that all who are interested in a sensitive interpretation of certain world-famous oddities, as well as in the origin of what we now call the American circus, will hasten to consult (if by mischance they have not already done so) M.R. Werner’s excellent and extremely entertaining biography: Barnum.

  Having cast rapid glances at the menagerie and the freaks, we enter “the big top”—where dwells the really-truly circus-show. This may be described as a gigantic spectacle; which is surrounded by an audience,—in contrast to our modern theatres, where an audience and a spectacle merely confront each other. The show itself, we immediately notice, has a definite kind of bigness. By “definite kind,” I mean that the bigness of the circus-show is intrinsic—like the bigness of an elephant or of a skyscraper—not superficial, as in the case of an enlarged snapshot. The nature of this bigness becomes apparent when we perceive that it is never, for so much as the fraction of an instant, motionless. Anyone who has stood just across the street from the Woolworth Building and has watched it wriggle upward like a skyrocket, or who has observed the irrevocably, gradually moving structure of an elephant which is “standing still”—anyone who has beheld these miracles, will understand me when I say the bigness of the circus-show is a kind of mobility. Movement is the very stuff out of which this dream is made. Or we may say that movement is the content, the subject matter, of the circus-show, while bigness is its form; provided we realize that here (as in all true “works of art”) content and form are aspects of a homogeneous whole.

  At this great spectacle, as nowhere else, the adult onlooker knows that unbelievably skilful and inexorably beautiful and unimaginably dangerous things are continually happening. But this is not all: he feels that there is a little too much going on at any given moment. Here and now, I desire to point out that this is as it should be. To the objection that the three-ring circus “creates such a confused impression,” I beg to reply: “Speaking of confused impressions—how about the down-rush of a first-rate roller coaster or the incomparable yearning of the Parisian balançoirs à vapeur, not to mention the solemn visit of a seventy-five centimetre projectile and the frivolous propinquity of Shrapnel?” For it is with thrilling experiences of a life-or-death order (including certain authentic “works of art”—and most emphatically not with going to the movies or putting out the cat) that the circus-show entirely belongs.

  Within “the big top,” as nowhere else on earth, is to be found Actuality. Living players play with living. There are no tears produced by onion-oil and Mr. Nevin’s Rosary, no pasteboard hovels and papier-mâché palaces, no “cuts,” “retakes,” or “N.G.’s”—and no curtain calls after suicide. At positively every performance Death Himself lurks, glides, struts, breathes, is. Lest any agony be missing, a mob of clowns tumbles loudly in and out of that inconceivably sheer fabric of doom, whose beauty seems endangered by the spectator’s least heartbeat or whisper. As for the incredible and living designs, woven in this fabric by animal trainers, equestrians, acrobats—they are immune to forgetfulness in the same way that certain paintings, poems and musical compositions are immune. Although it was only once, and twenty-odd years ago, that my eyes had the extraordinary honour to behold a slight young man whose first name was DANGER DERIDING DEATH DEFYING DESPERATE DAREDEVIL DIAVOLO LOOPS THE LOOP ON A BICYCLE (his last name being, if I am not mistaken, PORTHOS: LEAPS THE GAP OVER FIVE ELEPHANTS), I have not forgotten this person and shall never forget him, simply because he was a great artist—who, like Paul Cézanne, died the most fortunate and illustrious of deaths: died at the motif, and in the execution of his art.

  So, ungentle reader, (as you and I value what we should be ashamed—after witnessing a few minor circus-marvels—to call our “lives,”) let us never be fooled into taking seriously that perfectly superficial distinction which is vulgarly drawn between the circus-show and “art” or “the arts.” Let us not forget that every authentic “work of art” is in and of itself alive and that, however “the arts” may differ among themselves, their common function is the expression of that supreme alive-ness which is known as “beauty.” This being so, our three ring circus is art—for to contend that the spectacle in question is not an authentic manifestation of “beauty” is as childish, as to dismiss the circus on the ground that it is “childish,” is idiotic.

  In closing, the present writer wishes to state (1) that an extremely intimate connection exists between Con Colleanos’ forward somersault (from and to a wire in mid-air) and Homer’s Odyssey (2) that a sure method of understanding Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, is to study the voluminous precision and fugual delicacy of Mr. Ringling’s “Ponderous Pachyderms under the direction of the greatest of all animal trainers” (3) that El Greco, in painting, and “Ernest Clark, in his triple somersaulting double-twisting and reverse flights through space” give strikingly similar performances, and (4) that the fluent technique of seals and of sea lions comprises certain untranslatable idioms, certain innate flexions, which astonishingly resemble the spiritual essence of poetry.

  From Vanity Fair, October 1925: line drawings by the author.
/>   THE VERY LATEST SCHOOL IN ART

  An unconsciousnist painter and a kindly critic of ye olde schoole exchange ideas

  By Scribner Tickel

  TIME: Midnight

  SCENE: A basement cellar, minus wallpaper, furniture and windows. The artist, a pallid youth whose mouth is crammed with brushes, chalk, charcoal palette knives, pencils, etc., stands in a thoroughly smashed straw hat and a pair of arsenic-green pyjamas—splashing, slashing, scraping, smudging, at a gigantic canvas. The intense darkness of the cellar is broken only by the fitful glow of a cigarette, which indicates that the critic (a respectable old gentleman well past his dotage, seated timidly on a cracker-box in the opposite corner) is smoking nervously. From all possible directions in the apartments above, come noises of phonographs, radios, pianolas, quarrelings, screams, and an occasional pistol shot.

  THE CRITIC: (After some minutes, crying out shrilly above the uproar) You’re quite sure I’m not disturbing you—I think I’d really better go—I’ll come another time.

  THE ARTIST: (Shouts through his nose) Remain! Don’t budge! Proceed!

  C: But really—I don’t wish to interrupt—

  A: (Scornfully) You couldn’t interrupt if you tried!

  C: (Quaking) But you see. . . . I just dropped in with the idea of asking a few questions—I didn’t expect to find you busy—

  A: For Heaven’s sake, ask your questions: ask me something—nothing—everything—anything. . . . I must have some distraction, some excitement. (Bawls out at the top of his voice) It’s too quiet in here!

  C: (In amazement) Do you really mean to say that you enjoy this hideous racket?

  A: (Shouts) Hideous?—Not at all, Beautiful! Noise is the sublime incarnation of the spirit of the twenty-second century in terms of the twentieth—I love it!

  C: (Doubtfully) But I should think it would inhibit your—

  A: On the contrary. Stimulates me! I tell you I love it: the more noise the better.

  C: Indeed! But what of your art?

  A: You don’t understand. That’s the whole point: my art is unconscious.

  C: You mean you’ve never attended any schools?

  A: I should hope NOT! But that’s neither here nor there.

  C: Just how do you use the word “Unconscious?”

  A: In the usual, ultra-Freudian-infra-Jungian-extra-Adlerian sense.

  C: Oh, I see—but what on earth has noise got to do with your “Unconscious?”

  A: Stupid!—it’s all perfectly simple. I am an Unconscious artist: so long as my Conscious interferes with what I’m doing, my art is at a standstill; I am helpless, thwarted, frustrated.

  C: Yes, but—

  A: (Fiercely) No “buts!” I tell you the thing as it is. In order to create a picture, I am first of all forced to eliminate my conscious mind and will.

  C: (Timidly) I should think that would be rather difficult—

  A: Difficult? Just the opposite. Noise is the solution! Racket—tumult—hurly-burly—that’s what does it!

  C: (Cringing, as a revolver shot is heard directly overhead, followed by a long drawn-out scream) You certainly seem to have succeeded in finding a place suited to your . . . let us say, tastes.

  A: (Shouts back proudly) It is noisy, isn’t it! And let me tell you, I sought far and wide before I came on this paradise! It was not an easy matter getting myself a domicile as thrilling and distracting and conscious-killing as this one!

  C: And as dark.

  A: Ah—that’s my second great discovery!

  C: (Confused) But my dear fellow, do you mean to tell me that you paint in the dark by preference?

  A: Certainly! Of course I do.

  C: May I inquire why?

  A: (Simply) Because, otherwise, I might see what I was doing—and that would be fatal to my art. That would make me conscious.

  C: Really?

  A: (With conviction) Absolutely fatal. (A pause, during which the sounds of many drunken people of various genders hurling themselves hither and thither, above the studio, are heard: cries of “Police! Murder! Fire!” come from various directions: a table is upset with a thunderous crash of glass.)

  C: (In a trembling voice) I say—excuse me . . . would you mind—would you very much object if I lit a match—

  A: (Sternly) What for?

  C: Just—just to see the picture you’re working on—for a moment—

  A: Impossible. That would spoil everything.

  C: But you don’t need to see it yourself—suppose I first blindfolded you? (Coaxingly) With a nice silk handkerchief?

  A: No, no. That doesn’t work—I used to paint blindfolded, by candle light: but it didn’t work: I found myself peeping. (Sadly) We are all human.

  C: Still, after all, I’ll see the picture sometime, so why not now?

  A: (Ferociously) You will see it? When? Where? How?

  C: In some gallery—

  A: (Witheringly) Gallery?

  C: —When you exhibit it—

  A: (With great emotion) I want you to know, sir, that I am not an exhibitionist!

  C: You don’t understand—surely, some time—

  A: The parasitic art galleries are clamouring with slavering mouths for my work, sir, but I want you to know that I am too much in love with my art to stoop to such a vile, degenerate and neurotic act as the exhibition of my canvases.

  C: (In great confusion) But—but you never intend to show your paintings—?

  A: (Emphatically) Never, sir! (With a touch of pride) Not even to myself!

  C: In that case, excuse me for asking . . . how do you expect to live?

  A: (Proudly) I am an artist, sir, and the world owes me a living.

  C: But if the world refuses to believe—

  A: —That it owes me a living? Then, sir, I shall starve: it is my prerogative.

  C: I meant, supposing the world (never having had an opportunity to behold your efforts) does not recognize the fact that you are an artist?

  A: (Contemptuously) So much the worse for the world!

  C: (Much amazed) A very remarkable idea, certainly!

  A: My own idea, sir, and nobody else’s.

  C: But what of the great masters?

  A: I acknowledge no masters.

  C: And may I ask, where did you get the idea of painting?

  A: I didn’t get it—it got me.

  C: H’m . . . and what becomes of your, let us say, works of art, when they’re finished? Do you hide them away, or—(A frightful crash: the critic starts to his feet with a cry—the whole cellar trembles to its very foundations.)—My God! What on earth happened then?

  A: (Calmly) I have answered your question.

  C: My—? My question?

  A: (Even more calmly, laying aside an axe) I have finished your portrait.

  C: Good Heavens—

  A: You may now strike a match. (The critic does so: revealing the gigantic canvas in ruins at the artist’s feet.)

  C: So that was my—my portrait—which you were working on all this time?

  A: It was.

  C: And you have destroyed it utterly.

  A: I have.

  C: Why?

  A: Why not? It was finished.

  C: How could you be sure?

  A: The answer to that question is very simple: I knew that your portrait was finished when I found that I had no more charcoal, that my last pencil was broken, that all my pastels were gone, that my palette knife had bent double, and that my colours were exhausted.

  C: (Putting his hand to his brow) Extraordinary . . . I feel as if I were going mad . . . excuse me—good day. (He totters feebly toward the door.)

  A: (Interposing) Stop! (The critic halts, in terror.) You have forgotten something!

  C: (Desperately) I have my hat.

  A: You have forgotten something very much more important than your hat.

  C: (Almost weeping) What—what have I forgotten?

  A: (Folding his arms) You have forgotten—to ask the price.

/>   C: (Astounded) Price?

  A: Certainly.

  C: Price of what?

  A: Of the finished portrait of you, my dear sir.

  C: Do you mean . . .

  A: I mean exactly what I say: you owe me five thousand five hundred and fifty dollars plus fifty-five cents war tax.

  C: (Falling on his knees) Spare me—spare me—I am but a poor man—

  A: (Coldly) So am I.

  C: (Imploringly) I have a large family—

  A: (Icily) That is not my fault.

  C: (Sobbing) Take a check for a thousand dollars and let me go!

  A: (With polar frigidity) I take no checks.

  C: (Hysterically pulling a bill from his pocket) But I have only five dollars with me in cash. . . .

  A: Five dollars!!! (Leaping on him and embracing him wildly) My dear man—my good, kind friend—my patron—my mentor—my saviour! (He pockets the bill.) May Heaven prosper you! (He shakes the swooning critic’s hands, kisses him fervently again and again on the forehead, pulls him affectionately by one ear toward the door, kicks him up the basement stairs caressingly, and fondly throws him into the middle of Great Jones Street, where he is immediately run over by a two-ton truck belonging to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.)

  From Vanity Fair, October 1925.

  HELEN WHIFFLETREE, AMERICAN POETESS