A REVOLUTION ALWAYS SEEMS HOPELESS AND IMPOSSIBLE THE DAY BEFORE IT BREAKS OUT

A few days ago I discovered that the terrorist who was responsible for the 2011 Norway attacks had written a manifesto in which he quotes Shaw twice. The first quotation is one of the aphorisms in "Maxims for Revolutionists," one of the addenda to Man and Superman, and it reads: 

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."

The other quotation is a little bit more complex. Not only because the whole sentence has the usual convolute syntax that so many of us have grown to enjoy, but because it is part of a longer context that needs to be discussed as well. The quotation in question is the following: 

"A revolution always seems hopeless and impossible the day before it breaks out and indeed never does break out until it seems hopeless and impossible."

As many of you may remember, this fragment is from the Preface to Back to Methuselah. Specifically, it is part of the section called "The Betrayal of Western Civilization." In this section, before writing the sentence I have quoted above, Shaw is complaining about the abuses on the part of allegedly democratic governments in the form of censorship and repression (though not exclusively) because they are afraid.

"Statesmen are afraid of the suburbs, of the newspapers, of the profiteers, of the diplomatists, of the militarists, of the country houses, of the trade unions, of everything ephemeral on earth except the revolutions they are provoking; and they would be afraid of these if they were not too breaks out, and indeed never does break out until it seems hopeless and ignorant of society and history to appreciate the risk, and to know that a revolution always seems hopeless and impossible the day before it impossible; for rulers who think it possible take care to insure the risk by ruling reasonably."

In other words, what may seem like encouragement for revolutionists is actually a plea for reasonable government. This surprises no-one among Shavians, for we know Shaw was not a man of action. 

That is perhaps why Lenin called him "a good man fallen among Fabians."

That is perhaps why he decided to walk away from the Bloody Sunday riots.

That is perhaps why he joined and promoted a political (Fabian) society that was named after a Roman general that defeated Hannibal with delaying tactics.  

And that is perhaps why we find interesting connections between censorship and revolution in Shaw's writings. So, for example, we can read something to the same effect of the above in the Statement of the evidence in chief of George Bernard Shaw before the Joint-Committee on Stage Plays (1909).

"The Inquisition and the Star Chamber, which were nothing but censorships, made ruthless war on impiety and immorality. The result was once familiar to English­men, though of late years it seems to have been for­gotten. It cost England a revolution to get rid of the Star Chamber. Spain did not get rid of the Inquisition, and paid for that omission by becoming a barely third-rate power politically, and intellectually no power at all, in the Europe she had once domin­ated as the mightiest of the Christian empires."

Paradoxically (not quite), as he points out in his famous letter to H. M. Hyndman (28 April 1900), Shaw is a revolutionary himself, but a "moral revolutionary"

"I am a moral revolutionary, interested, not in the class war, but in the struggle between human vitality and the artificial system of morality, and distinguishing, not between capitalist & proletarian, but between moralist and natural historian." 

Shavians of the world, unite! 

SHAW AND ISLAM (I)

A few days ago, someone posted a question on the ISS Facebook page wondering if Bernard Shaw ever "praised Islam or Mohamed in any of his books or statements." It is no wonder someone should ask such a question, because the issue is all over the Internet. Admittedly, very few of these claims are based on known sources or sound research, as some have noted. 

At any rate, there is no gainsaying the fact that Shaw's opinions on Islam are certainly of interest to many, given that I have found more than 450 mentions of words like "Islam," "Mohammed," Mahometan," and "Muslim" - in their various forms and spellings - in Shaw's works and, more importantly, in the pieces of criticism in my database.  I will try to bring to light as much material as I possibly can, and I am sure my intelligent readers will be able to draw their own conclusions. 

Well, where do I begin? Perhaps the plays are a safe choice (there will be another entry devoted to his non-dramatic texts exclusively). Generally speaking, Shaw does not go beyond a few scattered cultural commonplaces in the text of his plays, albeit with a pinch of Shavian humor on occasion. The most trite include the phraseological "If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must come to the mountain" (The Doctor's Dilemma) and the merely descriptive, like the Egyptian doctor in The Millionairess, who is "what you call a Mahometan" and keeps "a clinic for penniless Mahometan refugees." 

More often than not, however, there is a conventional component in the references to muslims and their religious practices. Thus, in the first act of Captain Brassbound's Conversion, which takes place in "Mogador, a seaport on the west coast of Morocco," we are reminded that "Mahometans never spend money in drink." Likewise, in Man and Superman Jack Tanner urges Straker to take him to "any port from which we can sail to a Mahometan country where men are protected from women" - but not viceversa, I may add. In this play, like in the rest - as we shall see - most references to Islam are intertwined with other creeds, amidst a general sense of religious relativism, at least as regards the established religions Shaw was acquainted with. Fittingly, it is in the "Don Juan in Hell Scene" that we find this type of discussion: 

DON JUAN. That is perhaps why battles are so useless. But men never really overcome fear until they imagine they are fighting to further a universal purpose—fighting for an idea, as they call it. Why was the Crusader braver than the pirate? Because he fought, not for himself, but for the Cross. What force was it that met him with a valor as reckless as his own? The force of men who fought, not for themselves, but for Islam. They took Spain from us, though we were fighting for our very hearths and homes; but when we, too, fought for that mighty idea, a Catholic Church, we swept them back to Africa.

THE DEVIL. [ironically] What! you a Catholic, Senor Don Juan! A devotee! My congratulations.

THE STATUE. [seriously] Come come! as a soldier, I can listen to nothing against the Church.

DON JUAN. Have no fear, Commander: this idea of a Catholic Church will survive Islam, will survive the Cross, will survive even that vulgar pageant of incompetent schoolboyish gladiators which you call the Army.

THE STATUE. Juan: you will force me to call you to account for this.

DON JUAN. Useless: I cannot fence. Every idea for which Man will die will be a Catholic idea. When the Spaniard learns at last that he is no better than the Saracen, and his prophet no better than Mahomet, he will arise, more Catholic than ever, and die on a barricade across the filthy slum he starves in, for universal liberty and equality.

Similarly, in Major Barbara, Undershaft expresses an equally relativistic idea about faith with special reference to Islam when he claims that "It is cheap work converting starving men with a Bible in one hand and a slice of bread in the other. I will undertake to convert West Ham to Mahometanism on the same terms."

In addition, the social, political, and cultural nature of religion allows for hilarious scenes with a running thread of earnestness "in the womb of time." Take, for instance, the different takes on marriage that three different religions (including Islam) have, as discussed in The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles: 

HYERING. Anything fresh from London or Delhi?

SIR CHARLES. The same old songs. The Church of England wont tolerate polygamy on any terms, and insists on our prosecuting Iddy if we cannot whitewash him. Delhi declares that any attempt to persecute polygamy would be an insult to the religions of India.

PRA. The Cultural Minister at Delhi adds a postscript to say that as he has been married two hundred and thirtyfour times, and could not have lived on his salary without the dowries, the protest of the Church of England shews a great want of consideration for his position. He has a hundred and seventeen children surviving.

SIR CHARLES. Then there's a chap I never heard of, calling himself the Caliph of British Islam. He demands that Iddy shall put away all his wives except four.

HYERING. What does the Foreign Office say to that?

PRA. The Foreign Office hails it as a happy solution of a difficulty that threatened to be very serious.

There exists, however, a very peculiar element shared by a few of Shaw's plays that is worth commenting on. On two different occasions, characters of Shaw's plays foresee (or live in) a world in which Mohammedanism is the dominant religion. So, for example, Hotchkiss (Getting Married) remarks that 

HOTCHKISS. [...] I happen, like Napoleon, to prefer Mohammedanism. [Mrs George, associating   Mohammedanism with polygamy, looks at him with quick suspicion]. I believe the whole British Empire will adopt a reformed Mohammedanism before the end of the century. The character of Mahomet is congenial to me. I admire him, and share his views of life to a considerable extent.

Although Hotchkiss's speech ends with the explicit acknowledgement of "the quintessential equality of all the religions," it is also true that this idea of Islam as the official religion of the world remained in Shaw's dramatic arsenal for decades. So, for instance, part IV of Back to Methuselah (Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman) depicts a futuristic world where the long-lived want to destroy the British Commonwealth (Capital City: Baghdad) before its short-lived inhabitants destroy themselves. The British Envoy is shocked to learn that "the old uns prefer Mahometans." As the Elderly Gentleman explains: 

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [...] There can be no doubt, I am afraid, that by clinging too long to the obsolete features of the old pseudo-Christian Churches we allowed the Mahometans to get ahead of us at a very critical period of the development of the Eastern world. When the Mahometan Reformation took place, it left its followers with the enormous advantage of having the only established religion in the world in whose articles of faith any intelligent and educated person could believe.

If I may interrupt my train of thought for a second, reading Shaw makes many of the so-called "enfants terribles" of literature appear outmoded and conventional - I don't know what the hype is about. 

At any rate, I personally believe that Shaw tries to provoke his audiences when he portrays a muslim future, especially as a counterpoint to the prevailing religious (not exclusively religious) bigotry of his time - an issue that also pervades some of his plays, hence the following exchange from On the Rocks: 

SIR ARTHUR. [...] The Archbishop says "Avoid figures; and stick to the fact that Socialism would break up the family." I believe he is right: a bit of sentiment about the family always goes down well. Just jot this down for me. [Dictating] Family. Foundation of civilization.  Foundation of the empire. 

HILDA.  Will there be any Hindus or Mahometans present? 

SIR ARTHUR. No. No polygamists at the Church House. Besides, everybody knows that The Family means the British family.

Needless to say, there is a play where the religious element is so strong and the tone so serious that any reference to Islam should be considered carefully. I am talking, as you have rightly guesssed, about Saint Joan. Towards the end of Scene IV, there is a lively discussion between Cauchon and Warwick that involves several references to the muslims in the Middle Ages. Shaw's natural tendency to anachronism in his historical plays, and his habit of comparing even the most remote places and eras to the British Isles of his own lifetime, would lead anyone to believe that there is a bit of twentieth-century philosophy in what follows. In fact, as we shall see, practically all the notions that have been discussed hitherto can be found in this scene. 

To begin with, Cauchon, the man of the Church, certifies Joan's heresy on the grounds that she does not use the Church as the rightful interlocutor in her conversations with God. 

CAUCHON. [...] She sends letters to the king of England giving him God's command through her to return to his island on pain of God's vengeance, which she will execute. Let me tell you that the writing of such letters was the practice of the accursed Mahomet, the anti-Christ. Has she ever in all her utterances said one word of The Church? Never. It is always God and herself.

The idea that Mahometanism may one day be successful because it has a philosophy/creed but not a caste of clergymen seems to be turned on its head here for dramatic purposes, but it remains basically unaltered. 

Warwick, the seasoned soldier who has travelled the world, embodies the idea of religious relativism that has previously been discussed. 

WARWICK. I am a soldier, not a churchman. As a pilgrim I saw something of the Mahometans. They were not so ill-bred as I had been led to believe. In some respects their conduct compared favorably with ours.

After these words, when Cauchon reprimands him for his lack of theological knowledge and the boldness of his statement, Warwick once again stands his ground and addresses the question of religious bigotry as the basis for religious conflict - be it the Crusades or any of their present-day counterparts, I guess. 

WARWICK. [...] I am sorry you think I must be either a heretic or a blockhead because, as a travelled man, I know that the followers of Mahomet profess great respect for our Lord, and are more ready to forgive St Peter for being a fisherman than your lordship is to forgive Mahomet for being a camel driver. But at least we can proceed in this matter without bigotry.

After all, in Warwick's own words, Christendom and Islam "are only east and west views of the same thing."

If we forget for a moment about the abstract - and sometimes abstruse - concept of religion, Shaw also makes some personal comments about the figure of the prophet Mohammed (Mahomet). Although most of the juicy bits about him belong in the second part of this post, I think it is fair to end this one with the comments included in Buoyant Billions, especially because they frame Shaw's vision of Mohammed. First of all, this play lists the prophet of Islam as one of the "World Betterers" the world has known, with some illustrious company: 

SON. No: you have always been a model father. But the profession I contemplate is not one that a model father could recommend to his son. 

FATHER. And what profession is that, pray?

SON. One that is always unsuccessful. Marx's profession. Lenin's profession. Stalin's profession. Ruskin's profession. Plato's profession. Confucius, Gautama, Jesus, Mahomet, Luther, William Morris. The profession of world betterer.

Despite this, we have to take Mahomet as a "righteous man" who perhaps had no other choice but to do what he did: 

SON. Yes; and when they find them why do they run after them? Only to crucify them. The righteous man takes his life in his hand whenever he utters the truth. Charlemagne, Mahomet, St Dominic: these were righteous men according to their lights; but with Charlemagne it was embrace Christianity instantly or die; with Mahomet the slaying of the infidel was a passport to Heaven; with Dominic and his Dogs of God it was Recant or burn.

Finally, in a brilliant flash of Shavian wit, we cannot possibly forget that Mahomet's wisdom may have something very earthly about it.

THE WIDOWER. Oh, she is not dead: I let her divorce me. We are now quite good friends again. But to understand this question it is not enough to have been married once. Henry the Eighth would be the leading authority if he were alive. The prophet Mahomet was married more than fourteen times.

In this blog entry, the first of a series of posts on "Shaw and Islam," I have tried to illustrate how this religion and its symbols are portrayed in Shaw's plays. Because of the filter of literary language and dramatic technique, one cannot take the above excerpts as representing Shaw's personal opinions - at least not faithfully. However, they provide a background against which I hope the next set of fragments (from prefaces, letters, speeches, and interviews) will stand out. Let us hope we can shed some light on the subject and leave unsourced voices to the sphere of mysticism. 

ALL GREAT TRUTHS BEGIN AS BLASPHEMIES - OR ARE THEY DIVINELY INSPIRED?

I guess most readers will immediately recognize the first part of the title of this post. In Annajanska, The Bolshevik Empress, the Grand Duchess admits how decayed and disintegrated her reigning house is, a fact that Strammfest cannot wrap his head around:

THE GRAND DUCHESS. Do not deceive yourself, General: never again will a Panjandrum reign in Beotia. [She walks slowly across the room, brooding bitterly, and thinking aloud.] We are so decayed, so out of date, so feeble, so wicked in our own despite, that we have come at last to will our own destruction.

STRAMMFEST. You are uttering blasphemy.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. All great truths begin as blasphemies. All the king's horses and all the king's men cannot set up my father's throne again. If they could, you would have done it, would you not?

Before we move on, has anyone ever tried looking up the two German words that plausibly make up Strammfest's name? 

At any rate, if it is easy to see how Shaw would probably agree that great truths begin with an upturn of the statu quo, the paradox remains all the more striking when we read the following lines, from  the preface to The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God:

"I hold as firmly as Thomas Aquinas that all truths ancient or modern are divinely inspired; but I know by observation and introspection that the instrument on which the inspiring force plays may be a very faulty one."

In other words, truths may strike many people on the head, but not so many will recognize them when they're struck. It is also to be noted that Shaw admitted to having experienced the incapability to ascertain the truth "by introspection" amidst his many inspired thoughts. A rare example of modesty. 

At the same time, the leap from blasphemy to divine inspiration is rather shocking. Given that Annajaska was written more than 10 years before The Black Girl, this evolution in Shaw's philosophical outlook is quite striking - if, of course, you believe that there is a piece of Shaw in the words of his characters. 

Perhaps we can bridge the gap between divine revelation and blasphemy if we understand, as we read in the preface to Back to Methuselah, that 

"Freethinkers read the Bible: indeed they seem to be its only readers now except the reluctant parsons at the church lecterns, who communicate their discomfort to the congregation by gargling the words in their throats in an unnatural manner that is as repulsive as it is unintelligible. And this is because the imposition of the legends as literal truths at once changes them from parables into falsehoods [...] All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain. And nothing stands between the people and the fictions except the silly falsehood that the fictions are literal truths, and that there is nothing in religion but fiction." 

In other words, divine inspiration must be filtered by an intelligent - however unreasonable - mind if you want to create something good out of it. 

If we return to Shaw's seemingly contradictory - paradoxical, to say the least - views on how truth is to be known, it is also important to point out that Shaw tried to separate philosophical truth from practical truth. This is perhaps one of the keys to understanding the paradox. In the question of practical truth, as we read in the preface to On the Rocks, 

"It was very generally believed as lately as in Victorian times that religious education consisted in imparting to children certain eternal, final, and absolute truths. I, for instance, being the son of an Irish Protestant gentleman, found myself, at the dawn of my infant conscience, absolutely convinced that all Roman Catholics go to hell when they die, a conviction which involved not only a belief in the existence of hell but a whole series of implications as to the nature and character of God. […] No future education authority, unless it is as badly educated as our present ones, will imagine that it has any final and eternal truths to inculcate: it can only select the most useful working hypotheses and inculcate them very much as it inculcates standard behaviour throughout that vast field of civilized conduct in which it does not matter in the least how people act in particular situations provided they all act in the same way, as in the rule of the road.  All the provisional hypotheses may be illusions; but if they conduce to beneficial conduct they must be inculcated and acted on by Governments until better ones arrive."

Even if it is hard for us to reconcile Shaw's philosophy and his practical ideas - both regarding the truth and in more general terms - I think we cannot forget that, in the words of Tarleton (Misalliance): 

TARLETON.  [following him and sitting down on his left]  Paradox, paradox.  Good.  Paradoxes are the only truths.

IN THE ARTS OF LIFE MAN INVENTS NOTHING; BUT IN THE ARTS OF DEATH HE OUTDOES NATURE HERSELF

A couple of weeks ago I received a message whereby the sender requested my help in finding an alleged Shaw quotation "to the effect that we have surpassed ourselves in the art of war, but not so in the art of peace." 

After trying many different word combinations, I finally found the passage the original query referred to. It belongs to a long speech from Don Juan in Hell by the mouth of the Devil. The relevant fragment reads as follows: 

THE DEVIL. [...] And I tell you that in the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine. The peasant I tempt to-day eats and drinks what was eaten and drunk by the peasants of ten thousand years ago; and the house he lives in has not altered as much in a thousand centuries as the fashion of a lady's bonnet in a score of weeks. But when he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanism that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden molecular energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, the blowpipe of his fathers far behind. In the arts of peace Man is a bungler. I have seen his cotton factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons. This marvellous force of Life of which you boast is a force of Death: Man measures his strength by his destructiveness.

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We cannot disagree with Shaw in that "homo homini lupus;" in fact, many readers will find a certain parallelism between the words quoted above and Undershaft's (Major Barbara) peculiar philosophy of constant improvement in the "arts of death": 

UNDERSHAFT. Not at all. The more destructive war becomes the more fascinating we find it. No, Mr Lomax, I am obliged to you for making the usual excuse for my trade; but I am not ashamed of it. I am not one of those men who keep their morals and their business in watertight compartments. All the spare money my trade rivals spend on hospitals, cathedrals and other receptacles for conscience money, I devote to experiments and researches in improved methods of destroying life and property. I have always done so; and I always shall.

Another interesting thing that I've learned in the process of finding this quotation is that Shaw quite often connects the concepts of life and death in the form of another dichotomy with more social and political implications: war and peace. Let us take a look at some examples. I have decided to focus solely on quotations from the plays, because one could write a book if the prefaces, letters, pamphlets and speeches are considered.  

To begin with, and despite the socio-political implications I've alluded to, the drive for both war and peace are to be found within each individual person. For example, when Anderson (The Devil's Disciple) learns that the soldiers had come for him, the stage direction tells us that "the man of peace vanishes, transfigured into a choleric and formidable man of war." 

Conversely, as Aubrey (Too True to Be Good) argues when the Sergeant excuses his behaviour because "that was war,"

AUBREY. It was me, sergeant: ME. You cannot divide my conscience into a war department and a peace department. Do you suppose that a man who will commit murder for political ends will hesitate to commit theft for personal ends? Do you suppose you can make a man the mortal enemy of sixty millions of his fellow creatures without making him a little less scrupulous about his next door neighbour?

Of course, war and peace are closely connected in collective terms as well. First, because the existence of either does not depend on their ethical superiority, but on business questions instead - as Undershaft reminds us once again: 

UNDERSHAFT [with a touch of brutality] The government of your country! I am the government of your country: I, and Lazarus. Do you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a row in that foolish gabble shop, can govern Undershaft and Lazarus? No, my friend: you will do what pays US. You will make war when it suits us, and keep peace when it doesn't.

The consequence of all this is that the dividing line between war and peace in practical terms gets thinner and thinner. The second part of Back to Methuselah ("The Gospel of the Brother Barnabas") contains some words to that effect: 

BURGE. We won the war: don't forget that.

FRANKLYN. No: the soldiers and sailors won it, and left you to finish it. And you were so utterly incompetent that the multitudes of children slain by hunger in the first years of peace made us all wish we were at war again.

Likewise, the Commander-in-Chief in the second of the Farfetched Fables knows all too well what the outcome of the situation will be, but he also knows that he cannot intervene because of certain technicalities: 

C.-IN-C. Not a bit of it. Ketch is far too cunning to go to war with us. He did not go to war with anybody. He dropped his bombs on the Isle of Wight just to shew Capetown and the rest that the world was at his mercy. He selected the Isle of Wight because it's a safe distance from his own people, just as we selected Hiroshima in 1945. He thinks islands are out-of-the-way little places that dont matter to us. But he maintains that his relations with the Commonwealth are friendly; and as you have not declared war on him we are still technically at peace. That makes it your job, not mine, though as usual when there is anything to be done except what was done last time, I shall have to do it.

Given all the grey areas between war and peace, I have to agree with Shaw's Caesar and proclaim that both war and peace are sophisticated arts that only the greatest artists can master, preferrably if an imperialist. 

CAESAR. What! Rome produces no art! Is peace not an art? Is war not an art? Is government not an art? Is civilization not an art? All these we give you in exchange for a few ornaments. You will have the best of the bargain.

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YOU USE A GLASS MIRROR TO SEE YOUR FACE; YOU USE A WORK OF ART TO SEE YOUR SOUL

Shaw's Corner Twitter feed recently incorporated a Shaw quotation that had been posted by Vintage Books. The quotation reads as follows: 

The source of the quotation is quite easy to find. Towards the end of "As Far As Thought Can Reach," the fifth and last part of Back to Methuselah, the She-Ancient supports Ecrasia's impression that art brings happiness to one's life. 

ECRASIA. You have no right to say that I am not sincere. I have found a happiness in art that real life has never given me. I am intensely in earnest about art. There is a magic and mystery in art that you know nothing of.

THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yes, child: art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul.

The first time one reads this quotation (at least the bit quoted by Vintage Books), you may have the impression that both Ecrasia and the She-Ancient support a view of art that is not in consonance with Shaw's personal ideas. Nothing new there. After all, why would all Shaw characters think like "the master of puppets"?

However, I must admit that I have omitted some of the She-Ancient's words. Specifically, her final sentence suggests that art as a medium to experience life - and the Life Force - must be superseded by more direct means in order to achieve the ultimate stage in the realization of human beings. 

THE SHE-ANCIENT. [...] But we who are older use neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys and your dolls.

Thus, these words should perhaps be understood along the lines of the many other instances of Shavian contempt for "art for art's sake". Among these, two oft-quoted passages stand out. The first, from the Epistle Dedicatory to Man and Superman, summarizes Shaw's views on the necessary didacticism of art (and drama): 

"No doubt I must recognize, as even the Ancient Mariner did, that I must tell my story entertainingly if I am to hold the wedding guest spellbound in spite of the siren sounds of the loud bassoon. But 'for art’s sake' alone I would not face the toil of writing a single sentence."

The other example is from Caesar and Cleopatra, where Apollodorus is the quintessential example (comically distorted, in this case) of the aesthete whose motto is "art for art's sake."

SENTINEL. So you are the carpet merchant
APOLLODORUS (hurt). My friend: I am a patrician.
SENTINEL. A patrician! A patrician keeping a shop instead of following arms!
APOLLODORUS. I do not keep a shop. Mine is a temple of the arts. I am a worshipper of beauty. My calling is to choose beautiful things for beautiful Queens. My motto is Art for Art's sake.
SENTINEL. That is not the password.
APOLLODORUS. It is a universal password.

Even in the preface to one of his latest plays (Farfetched Fables), Shaw could not help but insist on this idea that "the Shavian idiosyncrasy...disgusts the Art for Art's Sake Faction."

It is not difficult to trace this neglect for this idea of art to the seemingly antithetical views that Shaw and Oscar Wilde held in this respect. Indeed, this notion seems to have caught on among critics, because the Introduction to Arms and the Man (written by some mysterious "M.") includes a clear definition of Shavian poetics with special reference to the "Art for Art's sake" controversy: 

"There never was an author who showed less predilection for a specific medium by which to accomplish his results. He recognized, early in his days, many things awry in the world and he assumed the task of mundane reformation with a confident spirit. It seems such a small job at twenty to set the times aright. He began as an Essayist, but who reads essays now-a-days?—he then turned novelist with no better success, for no one would read such preposterous stuff as he chose to emit. He only succeeded in proving that absolutely rational men and women—although he has created few of the latter—can be most extremely disagreeable to our conventional way of thinking.

As a last resort, he turned to the stage, not that he cared for the dramatic art, for no man seems to care less about "Art for Art's sake," being in this a perfect foil to his brilliant compatriot and contemporary, Wilde. He cast his theories in dramatic forms merely because no other course except silence or physical revolt was open to him."

Of course, as was always the case with Shaw, his approach to aestheticism and the theory of literary art is far more complex than these lines can possibly express, even summarily. Others have tried their hand at that, luckily for me. Be that as it may, and regardless of your personal philosophical preferences, we may as well sit back and enjoy good drama, whether for art's sake, for world betterment, or simply for fun. This is something the a Monty Python Flying Circus gag does exceedingly well. 

LIFE IS NO 'BRIEF CANDLE' TO ME

A few days ago, while I was dozing off in the heat of a summer afternoon, I got a message from ISS treasurer and compulsive emailer Richard Dietrich. In it, he challenged me to find the source for the following oft-quoted "Shawism": 

The first time these words were printed was in an article entitled 'Art and Public Money', published in the Sussex Daily News (7 March 1907). 

This quotation is an all-time favourite among Shavians. For instance, Michael Holroyd used it as the heading for the second part of Chapter XII in his Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition. It also populates play programmes and biographical summaries. 

So far, this is as straightforward a post as it can be. But I pride in what some call "added value," so I'll give you a little more information on the occasion.

To begin with, the article in the Sussex Daily News was a printed version of a talk Shaw delivered at the prize-giving of the Brighton School of Art, as explained in another article from The Press dated three months later. By the way, it should come as no surprise that the Shaws toured New Zealand a few years later, given the amount of media attention Bernard was getting. 

Apart from the bibliographical record of these words, the first things that strikes the eye is perhaps the negation of the famous Shakespearean line from Macbeth's monologue. Well, apart from the infamous "Better than Shakespear?" controversy, Shaw seems to have some sort of fixation with the "brief candle" metaphor, for he uses it far too often when he "sticks pins into Shakespeare". 

For instance, Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington (B.B) is one of the most risible characters in The Doctor's Dilemma, especially because "his speech is a perpetual anthem; and he never tires of the sound of it." His pretentious scholarship when quoting different authors is less than perfect, as in the case when he mixes up a series of Shakespearean lines in a hilarious monologue: 

B. B. Ah, well, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Still, de mortuis nil nisi bonum. He died extremely well, remarkably well. He has set us an example: let us endeavor to follow it rather than harp on the weaknesses that have perished with him. I think it is Shakespear whosays that the good that most men do lives after them: the evil lies interredwith their bones. Yes: interred with their bones. Believe me, Paddy, we are all mortal. It is the common lot, Ridgeon. Say what you will, Walpole, Nature's debt must be paid. If tis not to-day, twill be to-morrow.

     To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow

     After life's fitful fever they sleep well

     And like this insubstantial bourne from which

    No traveller returns

    Leave not a wrack behind.

[Walpole is about to speak, but B. B., suddenly and vehemently proceeding, extinguishes him.]

     Out, out, brief candle:

     For nothing canst thou to damnation add

     The readiness is all.

Nothing to do, of course, with Patrick Stewart's rendering of the same monologue in an acclaimed production of Macbeth:

Similar humorous uses of the "brief candle" can be found in Shake Versus Shav, when the puppet Shakespeare ends the play and Shaw's "glimmering light" by puffing out the candle between them while he quotes himself.

The brief candle was also employed to describe the existence of the "shortlived" in Back to Methuselah. Cain's offspring, who "invented killing and conquest and mastery and the winnowing out of the weak by the strong," are no longer the leaders of mankind. Accordingly, Cain acknowledges his defeat: 

CAIN. There is no place for me on earth any longer. You cannot deny that mine was a splendid game while it lasted. But now! Out, out, brief candle! [He vanishes].

So, where was I? Oh, yes. Life's no brief candle. Well, just in case I'll stop wasting my holiday time on these digressions and hit the pool right away. Have fun!

SILENCE IS THE MOST PERFECT EXPRESSION OF SCORN

Some of the most popular (and reliable) facebook and/or twitter feeds that will provide you with interesting Shaw quotations are The Shaw Chicago Theater Company, Shaw's Corner, and the International Shaw Society. You'll find direct links to their social network profiles on their web sites, so you can have your daily fix of Shavian wisdom at mouse cord's length. 

Swedish acting couple Olof and Frida Winnerstrand on stage 1908, as Valentine and Gloria, in George Bernard Shaw's play "Man kan aldrig veta" ("You Never Can Tell") at Vasateatern (the Vasa Theatre) in Stockholm.

Of course, these sites usually include manageable bits of Shavian witticisms as a way to encourage viewers and potential visitors/audiences to get involved in the enthralling world of Shaw's life and works. For the most part, however, little or no mention is made as to the original source of the quotations they post. Well, that's what friends are for. 

For example, Shaw Chicago latest post on facebook reads as follows: 

"Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn."

Although the idea is expressed with Shaw's usual pithy syntax, its precise meaning could be completely different had it been written as a part of a personal letter, in a piece of musical criticism, or - as the case has it here - as part of dramatic dialogue. 

In this case, in the fifth part of Back to Methuselah ("As Far As Thought Can Reach"), we witness how Arjillax and Ecrasia have a heated argument over who is capable of modelling the finest sculptures, which seems to come to an end when Arjillax describes the supremacy of his artistic creation

ARJILLAX. Skilful! You high-nosed idiot, I could turn such things out by the score with my eyes bandaged and one hand tied behind me. But what use would they be? They would bore me; and they would bore you if you had any sense. Go in and look at my busts. Look at them again and yet again until you receive the full impression of the intensity of mind that is stamped on them; and then go back to the pretty-pretty confectionery you call sculpture, and see whether you can endure its vapid emptiness.

...before asking for silence so that he can proceed to discuss a much more important matter: 

ARJILLAX. Listen to me, all of you; and do you, Ecrasia, be silent if you are capable of silence.

Ecrasia, however, refuses to accept Arjillax's notions on their respective artistic prowess, and utters the now famous

ECRASIA. Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. Scorn! That is what I feel for your revolting busts.

Another George Bernard (O'Neill) also showed interest in the aesthetic importance of silence. 

DEATH IS FOR MANY OF US THE GATE OF HELL; BUT WE ARE INSIDE ON THE WAY OUT, NOT OUTSIDE ON THE WAY IN.

When the Serpent assures Eve in the first part of Back to Methuselah that "Death is not an unhappy thing when you have learnt how to conquer it," we are puzzled by the implications these words have. For Shaw, at least at that time, death is nothing but a necessary incident in evolution that allows species to survive by avoiding overpopulation. However, that does not mean that we cannot conquer death. As the Serpent puts it, 

THE SERPENT. The serpent never dies. Some day you shall see me come out of this beautiful skin, a new snake with a new and lovelier skin. That is birth. 

But the words that triggered this post are to be found in the Preface to Misalliance ("A Treatise on Parents and Children"). Shaw's train of thought to arrive at this conclusion is quite straightforward: If you follow the teachings of Judeochristianity, "if you wish to live for ever you must be wicked enough to be irretrievably damned, since the saved are no longer what they were, and in hell alone do people retain their sinful nature: that is to say, their individuality."

That is why "Death is for many of us the gate of hell; but we are inside on the way out, not outside on the way in. Therefore let us give up telling one another idle stories, and rejoice in death as we rejoice in birth; for without death we cannot be born again; and the man who does not wish to be born again and born better is fit only to represent the City of London in Parliament, or perhaps the university of Oxford."

I particularly enjoy the last bit, don't you?

BERNARD SHAW AND THE GAME OF CRICKET

Richard Dietrich, treasurer and webmaster of the ISS, asked me a few weeks ago about whether Shaw had ever said the following words: 

"The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity."

Although we all know Bernard Shaw was very interested in all sorts of methods to keep healthy and fit - including his passion for certain sports, such as boxing - he did not hold many other sports and games in high esteem. Cricket seems to be one of the latter. 

As for the alleged quotation, it is true that Shaw always saw some sort of connection between religion and cricket. For instance, in the introduction to the second volume of Dan H. Laurence's Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters, the editor mentions a letter to The Times in which Shaw 

on the subject of political electioneering by the Church, argued that, although it was quite Protestant and independent and proper, still, regarded as elec­tioneering, “it is not cricket.”

Similarly, on a more serious note, as we can read in the preface to Back to Methuselah, cricket is the equivalent of Marx's opium of the people, in the sense that it is one of the various activities and interests that kept the British people "[in]capable of serious reflection on the nature and attributes of God" or "on Darwin's discoveries." In his own words, 

"I have pointed out elsewhere that the British nation does not consist of atheists and Plymouth Brothers; and I am not now going to pretend that it ever consisted of Darwinians and Lamarckians. The average citizen is irreligious and unscientific: you talk to him about cricket and golf, market prices and party politics, not about evolution and relativity, transubstantiation and predestination."

Curiously enough, Back to Methuselah also deserved cricke-like consideration for some critics. As James Agate recounts in My Theatre Talks (1933)

"Mr. Will Rogers, the new American humorist, has said that Back to Methuselah is like a test match: nobody can finish it."

Even Shaw himself resorted to cricket metaphors to describe his crafting of dramatic conversation. Thus, in a letter to his German translator, Siegfried Trebitsch (p.36), he states that

"Half the art of dialogue consists in the echoing of words—the tossing back & forwards of phrases from one actor to another like a cricket ball."

However (there's always a however, isn't there?), the quotation that Richard Dietrich looks for - and which, incidentally, has been published unsourced as a Shaw one-liner in The Shavian 10 (3) - is nowhere to be found. At any rate, it is suspiciously similar to the words used by Lord Mancroft in his biography Bees in Some Bonnets (1979) p. 185. Specifically, Lord Mancroft says that cricket is

"a game which the English, not being a spiritual people, have invented in order to give themselves some conception of eternity"

It may still be possible to discover that Lord Mancroft was actually quoting Shaw, but he does not cite him in the book. In fact, several reputed dictionaries of quotations attribute these words to Mancroft's book. I hope I can update this post one day with a Shavian source, but for now the quotation must remain Mancroft's.