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The Power of Language By ROBERT BETHUNE The
curmudgeonly observer of contemporary theatre practice might well growl in
his long gray beard about language in today’s plays. The curmudgeonly
take on it all might come in the form of a wonderful rant about flat,
dull, impotent writing that no longer even tries to move, surprise, delight
or even tickle the ear. The curmudgeon might wonder why language that
would not be heard in aisle twelve of the local supermarket must not be
heard from the stage, and would, of course, point to the glories of the
past as the shining example for the future. But it doesn’t work anymore!” might be the cry of today’s playwrights in response. “I can’t write that stuff; it doesn’t work! I happened upon a case in point recently, attending a production of Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses. Oddly enough for a play based upon and celebrating Greek and Roman mythology — often without making much distinction between the two — it is written in the flat, dull prose of the supermarket, or, in one scene, the psychiatrist’s couch. However, there is a truly striking moment that vividly
demonstrates the power language does still possess on the stage. In
the second half of the play, rather toward the end as I recall, we have
the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus dearly loves Eurydice; she
dies; he goes to Hades and sings the gods of the underworld into releasing
her. However, as they leave the realm of the dead, he must not turn around
to see if she is following him; he must have faith until he gets back
to the world of the living. Well, he can’t do it; he turns around
too soon and loses her forever. At the crucial moment, Zimmerman brings
in the account of the story as told by the master German poet, Rainier
Maria Rilke. Now the thing about Rilke is that even in English translation — Zimmerman seems to have used the Stephen Mitchell translation
— the man writes black magic. Rilke didn’t
see the world the way the rest of us do. He saw the secret heart of being
in everything he looked at, and he created language that conveys it with
utterly mystical clarity — mystical in that you know what he has
led you to see, but you can no more express it yourself than the man in
the moon. The moment when the text shifts into
Rilke’s voice was electrifying, even in the mediocre production
I saw. Suddenly we had language, living, evocative, truly holy language
coming from live and present lips into live and present ears. The fundamental
truth I keep ranting about here
— that the fundamental, irreplaceable, inimitable
asset of the theatre is the living presence of the actor — was suddenly and brilliantly confirmed in the living sound
of great language. And the moment when we shifted back out of Rilke’s
voice was equally striking —
Monday morning back in the office after a wonderful weekend, and
the coffee is just a bit on the stale side. Rilke is a modern poet. Mitchell is
a modern translator. The text we heard is not all thee’s and thou’s
and obscure flights of Renaissance fancy. It is simple, clear, contemporary,
and utterly radiant. It demonstrates that language is not dead and that
what we say from the stage does matter, particularly how we say it. If the living presence of the actor
is heart of what we do, then the words spoken by actors are crucial; the
words that flow from living lips to living ears. Those words need to be
the best they can be; we don’t need to impose a regime of dullness
on ourselves in the name of some mistaken obeisance to superficial realism.
It can be done yet today; some playwrights do it; it should be the goal
of everyone who writes or translates for the stage. We could argue that
we need it, but as Lear says, “O, reckon not the need!” Rather
give it to us that we may rejoice in it! |
