He has a brutal tongue, cannot resist
Speaking his brutal insights as if
No one else knew the human heart. Yet this
Proves that such motives are intense in him,
How would he know them, why would he mock them,
Smiling with keen pleasure when he sees them
At work in other hearts, except in great
Relief at finding colleagues, finding peers?
JACK STRAUSS: I bet the boy will make a million dollars—
HARRY LASKY: I bet that he will be a famous lawyer—
GRANDMOTHER HARRIS: I hope that he will be a famous doctor—
SHENANDOAH:
How utterly they miss the mark, how shocked,
How horrified if they but knew what I
Will one day be: if from their point of view
They saw me truly, saw my true colors,
grasped
And understood the rôle of my profession!
O, their emotions would approximate
Those of a man who has found out his wife
Has been unfaithful or was born Chinese—
[Enter NATHAN HARRIS, a good-looking and tall young man who has recently become a doctor. It is obvious as he is greeted that he is well-liked and respected by all and as he shakes hands, his boundless self-assurance and sense of authority shows itself.]
NATHAN HARRIS: Where is my wonderful nephew, Jacob or Jacky Fish?
ELSIE FISH: Nathan, we have decided to give him another name since my father-in-law has the same name. We are going to call him Shenandoah—
NATHAN HARRIS: Shenandoah! How in a hundred years did you think of such a foolish name?
WALTER FISH: I fail to see anything foolish about Shenandoah?
NATHAN HARRIS: It is foolish in every way. It does not sound right with Fish. The association of ideas is appalling. The boy will be handicapped as if he had a clubfoot. When he grows up, he will dislike his name and blame you for giving it to him.
SHENANDOAH:
How moved I am! how much he understands!
He is both right and wrong. He sees the danger,
But does not see the strange effect to come:
Yet what a friend he is to me, how close
I feel to him! He means well and he knows
How difficult Life is,
climbing on hands and knees—
JACK STRAUSS: You are exaggerating, Dr. Harris.
HARRY LASKY: This is not a matter of the human body, in which you are an expert, Dr. Harris.
NATHAN HARRIS: No, not the human body, but the human souclass="underline" nothing is more important than a name. He will be mocked by other boys when he goes to school because his name is so peculiar—
SHENANDOAH:
He is intelligent, that’s obvious:
Perhaps his youth permits a better view
Of cultural conditions of the Age—
NATHAN HARRIS: Don’t you see how pretentious the name is?
WALTER FISH: Nathan, there is nothing wrong with me. I am as good as the next one and maybe better. My son has a right to a pretentious name.
NATHAN HARRIS: Walter, to be pretentious means to show off foolishly.
[The infant has begun to cry again and cries louder as they quarrel.]
WALTER FISH: Thank you very much for explaining the English language to me. That’s very pretentious of you—
NATHAN HARRIS: Excuse me, Walter: what I meant to say is that the two names of Shenandoah and Fish do not go well together—
WALTER FISH: I suppose you think something like Fresh Fish would be better? [Laughter from the others.]
NATHAN HARRIS: All right, go ahead and laugh. But if this helpless infant is going to be named Shenandoah, I don’t want to be his godfather.
WALTER FISH: Don’t do me any favors! Others are willing to pay for the privilege. I am glad that you don’t want to be his godfather—
NATHAN HARRIS: I am glad that you are glad!
GRANDMOTHER HARRIS: Nathan, don’t lose your temper. What a shame, to quarrel on a day like this: what will the minister think?
WALTER FISH: He has come here to insult me and to insult an eight-day old child. Who do you think you are, anyway? Just because you are a doctor does not mean you are better than us in every respect—
ELSIE FISH: Nathan, you ought to be ashamed of yourself: you should have heard the fine things Walter was just saying about you and how he wanted you to be the boy’s godfather. I was the one who chose the name of Shenandoah—
NATHAN HARRIS: Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself! I am not going to stay here another moment to see a helpless child punished for the rest of his life because his parents have an inadequate understanding of the English language—
[NATHAN goes out as everyone follows him, trying to stop his departure. The child is given to SHENANDOAH again. Spotlight and half-light once more, as SHENANDOAH comes to the footlights, trying to stop the child’s tears.]
SHENANDOAH:
This is hardly the last time, little boy,
That conflict will engage the consciousness
Of those who might admire Nature, pray to God,
Make love, make friends, make works of art,
make peace—
O no! hardly the last time: in the end
All men may seem essential boxers, hate
May seem the energy which drives the stars,
(L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle!)
And war as human as the beating heart:
So Hegel and Empedocles have taught.
— It is impossible to tell you now
How many world-wide causes work this room
To bring about the person of your name:
Europe! America! the fear of death!
Belief and half-belief in Zion’s word!
The order of a community in which
The lower middle class looks up and gapes
And strives to imitate the sick élite
In thought, in emptiness, in luxury;
Also the foreigner whose foreign-ness
Names his son native, speaking broken English—
Enough! for this is obvious enough:
Let us consider where the great men are
Who will obsess this child when he can read:
Joyce is in Trieste in a Berlitz school,
Teaching himself the puns of Finnegans Wake—
Eliot works in a bank and there he learns
The profit and the loss, the death of cities—
Pound howls at him, finds what expatriates
Can find,
culture in chaos all through time,
Like a Picasso show! Rilke endures
Of silence and of solitude the unheard music
In empty castles which great knights have left—
Yeats too, like Rilke, on old lords’ estates,
Seeks for the permanent amid the loss,
Daily and desperate, of love, of friends,
Of every thought with which his age began—
Kafka in Prague works in an office, learns
How bureaucratic Life, how far-off God,
A white-collar class’ theology—
Perse is in Asia as a diplomat,
— He sees the violent energy with which
Civilization creates itself and moves—
Yet, with these images, he cannot see
The moral apathy after The Munich Pact,
The’unnatural silence on The Maginot Line,
— Yet he cannot foresee The Fall of France—
Mann, too, in Davos-Platz finds in the sick
The triumph of the artist and the intellect—
All over Europe these exiles find in art
What exile is: art becomes exile too,
A secret and a code studied in secret,
Declaring the agony of modern life:
The child will learn of life from these great men,
He will participate in their solitude,