FINE ART IS THE ONLY TEACHER EXCEPT TORTURE

Sometimes one gets carried away when browsing the Internet, and you end up reading an article published eight years ago. In this case, the alleged Shaw quotation is one of those that, to quote the Italian dictum, "se non è vero è ben trovato." A truly Shavian turn of phrase. 

Indeed, it doesn't take long to confirm that the sentence in question appears in one of Shaw's plays. Well, actually, it is from the preface to one of them. Misalliance to be precise. You can either read the preface (and the whole play) here. Or you may choose to listen to the preface in the voice of Robert Shaw here. 

Whatever the case, you'll soon come across the relevant passage: 

Art Teaching

"By art teaching I hasten to say that I do not mean giving children lessons in freehand drawing and perspective. I am simply calling attention to the fact that fine art is the only teacher except torture. I have already pointed out that nobody, except under threat of torture, can read a school book. The reason is that a school book is not a work of art. Similarly, you cannot listen to a lesson or a sermon unless the teacher or the preacher is an artist."

It should come as no surprise that Shaw compares education to torture, given his personal experience with formal schooling and his success as a self-taught genius. 

But being the avid linguist I am, I was more interested in finding out whether Shaw resorted to drawing parallels with torture with any frequency. I wanted to shed some light on what things or issues Shaw (or his characters) compares to torture. The answer (below) may surprise you - although I hope it is more bearable than its subject matter. 

To begin with, imagination is equated to torture in the words of Doyle (John Bull's Other Island): 

DOYLE [...]. If you want to interest him in Ireland you've got to call the unfortunate island Kathleen ni Hoolihan and pretend she's a little old woman. It saves thinking. It saves working. It saves everything except imagination, imagination, imagination; and imagination's such a torture that you can't bear it without whisky. [With fierce shivering self-contempt] At last you get that you can bear nothing real at all: you'd rather starve than cook a meal; you'd rather go shabby and dirty than set your mind to take care of your clothes and wash yourself; you nag and squabble at home because your wife isn't an angel, and she despises you because you're not a hero; and you hate the whole lot round you because they're only poor slovenly useless devils like yourself...

Of course, it should not be forgotten that in the very preface to this play ("Preface for Politicians") Shaw argues that hanging "is the least sensational form of public execution: it lacks those elements of blood and torture for which the military and bureaucratic imagination lusts."

For precisely "blood and torture" can help us gauge a man of true military disposition, but with a classic Shavian twist. As Shaw explains in a letter to Frank Harris (20 October 1916):

"There is an old story, told sometimes about Mazarin, sometimes about Richelieu, of a minister's antechamber hung with pictures: those on one side being all idyllic landscapes and scenes of domestic sentiment: those on the other scenes of battle and blood and torture. The minister, when he wanted to size up a new man, watched how he took the pictures. If he clung to the battle pictures, the minister knew that he was a timid man of peace, for whom action and daring were full of romantic fascination. If he wallowed in cottage senti­ment and the Maiden's Prayer, he was immediately marked down for military preferment and [a] dangerous job."

But once again Shaw returns to art as the ultimate form of torture. His letter to Arnold Bennett (20 October 1921) begins thus: 

"My dear Bennett

The art of pleasing an audience is a very easy one compared to the art of torturing it. Last Tuesday night the artistic torture which was the object of the style of execution adopted was inevitably mixed up with the non-artistic torture of a terrible strain of nervousness, of the mental indigestion of half assimilated parts, of bewilderment, of voices that could be steady at first only by forcing them, and of the excitement and terror of parts that felt wonderful but were quite incomprehensible. That alloy of non-artistic terror will, I hope, presently disappear, and make the difficult parts as smooth and certain as the easy parts were last night. But the artistic torture will be all the more poignant; for none of the difficulties are shirked. Strictly between ourselves, the production was hurried under finan­cial pressure."

Paradoxically, the one place that we mistakenly associate with torture is Hell, as the Devil himself reminds us: 

THE DEVIL. [...] Hell is a place far above their comprehension: they derive their notion of it from two of the greatest fools that ever lived, an Italian and an Englishman. The Italian described it as a place of mud, frost, filth, fire, and venomous serpents: all torture.

This may all be due to the fact that Hell (to paraphrase the popular song) is a place on Earth. After all, as Shaw intelligently argues in the preface to Androcles and the Lion: 

"...we have been judging and punishing ever since Jesus told us not to; and I defy anyone to make out a convincing case for believing that the world has been any better than it would have been if there had never been a judge, a prison, or a gallows in it all that time. We have simply added the misery of punishment to the misery of crime, and the cruelty of the judge to the cruelty of the criminal. We have taken the bad man, and made him worse by torture and degradation, incidentally making ourselves worse in the process. It does not seem very sensible, does it?"

No, it doesn't.

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.

CHRISTIANITY MIGHT BE A GOOD THING IF ANYONE EVER TRIED IT

Derek McGovern has recently sent an email that was forwarded to me asking for the source of an elusive quotation, one "of those quotations that pops up everywhere, and yet no one ever provides the source:"

"Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it."

Indeed, many dictionaries of quotations include this statement in the Shaw section, but everybody seems to have forgotten to provide a source.

My database does not contain the exact words in this quotation, so for the time being I'll have to put it in the "Apocryphal" folder. However, there are a few passages that may have originated the paraphrase we've been looking for.

To begin with, as other ISS members have suggested, the preface to Androcles and the Lion contains a section entitled "Why not Give Christianity a Trial?" that sums up the spirit Shaw's alleged words:

"This man" [Jesus] has not been a failure yet; for nobody has ever been sane enough to try his way.

A similar notion was reported in The Shaw Society Bulletin 48, in an article summarizing "an address given to the Society by Dan Laurence on November 21st, 1952." In it, we can read that 

"It was suggested that Shaw had considered Christianity im­practicable, but Mr. Laurence disagreed. Christianity, Shaw had clearly stated, was impracticable only in the sense that it had never been tried."

Perhaps Laurence was thinking of the preface to Misalliance ("A Treatise on Parents and Children"), where Shaw literally states that Christianity has never been "put into practice:"

"It is true that the Bible inculcates half a dozen religions: some of them barbarous; some cynical and pessimistic; some amoristic and romantic; some sceptical and challenging; some kindly, simple, and intuitional; some sophistical and intellectual; none suited to the character and conditions of western civilization unless it be the Christianity which was finally suppressed by the Crucifixion, and has never been put into practice by any State before or since."

This does not necessarily mean that Shaw thought that really trying Christianity for the first time would be something good. In the preface to Getting Married, Shaw puts it in classic Shavian style: 

"There is no more dangerous mistake than the mistake of supposing that we cannot have too much of a good thing. The truth is, an immoderately good man is very much more dangerous than an immoderately bad man: that is why Savonarola was burnt and John of Leyden torn to pieces with red-hot pincers whilst multitudes of unredeemed rascals were being let off with clipped ears, burnt palms, a flogging, or a few years in the galleys. That is why Christianity never got any grip of the world until it virtually reduced its claims on the ordinary citizen's attention to a couple of hours every seventh day, and let him alone on week-days. If the fanatics who are preoccupied day in and day out with their salvation were healthy, virtuous, and wise, the Laodiceanism of the ordinary man might be regarded as a deplorable shortcoming; but, as a matter of fact, no more frightful misfortune could threaten us than a general spread of fanaticism."

Therefore, it is clear that the idea was put forward by Shaw on several occasions, and it was processed by the Shavians of this world - perhaps to the extent of choosing a deliberately "Shavian" wording, however inaccurate. All in all, however, I think I prefer Shaw's choice of words when, during one of his lectures, a clergyman in the audience rose and asked him: "Are you a Christian?" He responded: "Yes, but I often feel very lonely." (As quoted in Vivian Elliot's Dear Mr Shaw: Selections from Bernard Shaw's Postbag, pp. 269-70).

QUOTATIONS WE ALL NEED... (BLINK, BLINK)

In no particular order:

Anything like a holiday is out of the question for me. Must I endure in addition the insults of a publisher for whom I am preparing, with unheard-of toil, a gigantic triumph? Read “Mrs Warren”; and then blush for your impatience if you can.’

(Collected Letters Vol. II Aug 26 1897, to Richards.)

EPIFANIA. When had you last a holiday?

THE WOMAN. Me! A holiday! We cant afford holidays. I had one on Armistice Day, eighteen years ago.

EPIFANIA. Then it cost a world war and the slaughter of twenty millions of your fellow creatures to give you one holiday in your lifetime. I can do better for you than that.

(The Millionairess)

There are twenty-four concerts this week. Consequently I give myself a holiday; for if anyone asks me what I thought of this or that performance, I reply “How can I possibly be in twenty-four places at the same time?

(Music in London as Heard by Corno di Bassetto. 1 March 1889) 

HYPATIA.  At last.  Oh, if I might only have a holiday in an asylum for the dumb.  How I envy the animals!  They cant talk.

(Misalliance)

There are many more, but I think this is more than enough. We all need a holiday. Enjoy your summer!

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?

IF YOU WANT TO SUCCEED IN EXAMS, YOU MUST NOT LET YOURSELF GET INTERESTED IN THE SUBJECT.

One of the reasons why I haven't had the chance to update this blog for more than a week can be summed up in one word: exams. I have been making them, printing them, grading them, giving feedback on them - even crying over them. So, I thought I'd have a look at what Shaw had to say about exams, given that he had such scanty formal education, and that he did not think much of his school years, not to mention the educational system he had to endure. Perhaps the best piece of Shavian wit on exams can be found in one of the most precious items of my Shaw collection: THE SPOKEN WORD, a 2-CD set with a selection of his historic radio broadcasts. 

In a broadcast entitled "Talks for Sixth Forms: Modern Education," Shaw discusses everything he considers of interest for young children, including a piece of advice I've already mentioned in this blog. This audio extract used to be available online on the BBC website, but the link provided here is now broken. At least, Radio 4 still offers a nice audio clip with a decent account of Shaw's life and works. At any rate, perhaps one of the most amusing bits in this talk is the quotation I used for the title of this post: 

"If you want to succeed in exams, you must not let yourself get interested in the subject."

However paradoxical, it is true that for someone of Shaw's talent and imagination, Victorian schools must have been stifling, to say the least. I guess that is why he describes his school years as an "educationally null imprisonment" where "I learnt nothing from the curriculum, and at last forgot a good deal of what my uncle had taught me." These and similar remarks belong to the opening paragraphs of "Shame and Wounded Snobbery," one of his famous Sixteen Self Sketches. Perhaps you may want to read a review of the first edition in The Spectator. It's no wonder, then, that A Treatise on Parents and Children (the preface to Misalliance) should include another piece of Shavian wit deriding the type of schooling that children had to undergo in his lifetime: 

"...there is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But it is in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and the governor."

Other people have endorsed similar views in later BBC broadcasts, but with very different aesthetic interests.