RILKE
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
Shenandoah Fish: Sarah Harris
Elsie Fish: Edna Harris
Mrs. Goldmark: Jack Strauss
Jacob Fish: Harry Lasky
Walter Fish and wife: Edith Strauss
Joseph Fish and wife: Bertha Lasky
Leonard Fish: The baby Shenandoah
Dolly Fish: Dr. Adamson
[Enter SHENANDOAH, to the right. A spotlight shines on him as the theater is darkened and the curtain rises on a darkened stage.]
SHENANDOAH:
This was the greatest day of my whole life!
I was eight days of age:
Twenty-five years
Consume my being as I speak (for we
Are made of years and days, not flesh and blood),
And no event since then is as important!
In January 1914 a choice was made
Which in my life has played a part as endless
As the world-famous apple, eaten in Eden,
Which made original sin and the life of man
— Or as the trigger finger with a bitten nail
Which Prinzip’s mind was soon to press
In Sarajevo, firing at Verdun,
St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Berlin—
And like the length of Cleopatra’s nose,
And like the grain of sand in Cromwell’s kidney,
As Pascal said, who knew a thing or two,
Or like the pinpoint prick which gave the great
Eloquent statesman lockjaw in the prime of life
(O Death is eminent, beyond belief!)
— Return with me, stand at my point of view,
Regard with my emotion the small event
Which gave my mind and gave my character,
Amid the hundred thousand possibilities
Heredity and community avail,
Bound and engender,
the very life I know!
[The stage lights up and the curtain rises.]
The curtain rises on a dining room
In the lower middle class in 1914:
Gaze briefly at the period quality,
Not at the quaintness, but at the pathos
Of any moment of time, seen in its pastness,
The ignorance which prophet, astrologist,
And palmist use as capital and need
— The dining room contains in vivid signs
Certain clear generals of time and place:
Look at the cut glass bowls on the buffet,
They are the works of art of these rising Jews,
— The shadow of Israel and the shadows of Europe
Darken their minds and hearts in the new world.
They prosper in America. They win the jewels
(My mind intends no pun, but falls on one:
Jews are no jewels, as Angles are no angels.)
Of cut glass bowls to place upon their tables,
Moved by the taste and trend of the middle class—
[Enter ELSIE FISH with her child in a bassinet and EDNA GOLDMARK, her next door neighbor. Both are young married women, but MRS. GOLDMARK is plainly the older of the two. As SHENANDOAH speaks, ELSIE is engaged in tending the baby, while MRS. GOLDMARK regards her.]
Explain the other furniture yourself,
But lift your mind from the local color,
For the particular as particular
Is not itself, as a house is not its front,
And as a man is not his flesh:
Come now,
See the particular as universal,
Significance like sunlight, the symbol’s glory,
As two crossed sticks of wood shine with the story
Of Jesus Christ and several institutions,
— The union of particular and universal,
That’s what one ought to see, as Aristotle
Has said for years:
he knew a thing or two—
[During the speeches of all the characters except SHENANDOAH, there is a systematic shift back and forth from formal speech to colloquial speech, a shift which is reflected in their actions, and echoed, so to speak, in the shift from verse to prose.]
ELSIE FISH: My father-in-law is coming to see me before the ceremony. I wonder what he wants. When he called, he was very disturbed and upset.
MRS. GOLDMARK: Maybe he wants to spend some time with his new grandson before the ceremony. We do not know what it is to be a grandparent, we are too young. Just think, a grandparent has all the pleasure, none of the pain and expense.
ELSIE FISH: I do not think he is so pleased. This is no novelty to him. He has been made a grandparent five times already by his other sons and daughters. Do you know, he said it was a question of life and death that he wanted to speak to me about. What can it be? But he is always like that, always nervous, always disturbed.
MRS. GOLDMARK: Maybe he wants to speak to your husband too. Where is your husband now?
ELSIE FISH: How should I know where my husband is? Who am I to know such a thing?
SHENANDOAH[standing at an angle to the scene, unseen and unheard]:
This marriage is a stupid endless mistake,
Unhappiness flares from it, day and night,
The child has been desired four long years,
For friends have told the young married woman
The child will change his father, alter herimage
Both in his mind and heart. For he is cruel.
How can two egos live near by all their days,
If Love and Love’s unnatural forgiveness
Do not give to the body’s selfishness
And the will’s cruelty lifelong carte blanche?
[A doorbell rings. The negro SERVANT GIRL passes from the kitchen at the left through doorway in back of dining room which leads to the hall.]
ELSIE FISH: That must be my father-in-law now. Since he has come about something very important, would you go now, Mrs. Goldmark, and come back when he has gone? You have been a wonderful neighbor.
MRS. GOLDMARK [departing]: I have had two children myself. I know what it is to be a mother for the first time.
[Enter JACOB FISH, a man of sixty.]
JACOB FISH [plainly preoccupied]: Dear Elsie, I was very anxious to see you before the ceremony. So this is my new grandson: what a fine boy! May he live to a hundred and ten!
SHENANDOAH:
God save me from such wishes, though well meant:
This old man has not read Ecclesiastes
Or Sophocles. Yet he has lived for sixty years,
He should know better what long life avails,
The best seats at the funerals of friends.
JACOB FISH: My dear girl, last night I heard that you were going to name the boy Jacob, after your dead father. Have you forgotten that Jacob is my name also? Have you forgotten what it means to have a child named after you, when you are still living?
ELSIE FISH: What is it, except an honor? An honor to you, father-in-law, as well as to my dear dead father, although I admit I had him in mind first of all.
JACOB FISH: Elsie, I do not blame you for not knowing the beliefs of your religion and your people. You are only a woman, and in this great new America, anyone might forget everything but such wonderful things like tall buildings, subways, automobiles, and iceboxes. But if the child is named Jacob, it will be my death warrant! Thus all the learned ministers have said. It is written again and again in various commentaries and interpretations of the Law. It has been believed for thousands of years.
SHENANDOAH:
How powerful the past! O king of kings,
King of the elements,
king of all thinking things!
ELSIE FISH: I am surprised that you accept such beliefs, father-in-law. I never thought that you were especially religious.