Plays, fictions, music: from T.S. Eliot

After Death of a Salesman, I decided to keep reading plays. I just finished T.S. Eliot’s Cocktail Party. This is the first Eliot’s work I’ve read. I was prepared for him by Leonard Bernstein’s Unanswered Question lectures in which he compared Eliot to Stravinsky. I can see exactly what Bernstein meant. Arthur Miller is a classic, a romantic, a Schubert, a Chopin, a Mahler, who takes his subject seriously and writes directly from the heart. Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee William, Albee are the same way. They express the deepest feelings of our existence through their work.

In comparison, T.S. Eliot and Stravinsky are playful with and removed from their subject, in the same way that Calvino and Vonnegut are. Their works are more intellectual construct than emotional outcries. We find ourselves first intrigued by their works, and upon further introspection, we come to see our existence in connection with the outside world.

In the old days, art was also not a tool for self-expression as in the romantic period. Bach and Mozart wrote for the pure creative joy. I try to think of old dramatic works for comparison. Old opera composers such as Monteverdi and Handel wrote to entertain. I read Voltarie’s Candide and ancient Roman plays by Platus, and they were in a way playful like Eliot’s Cocktail Party. Perhaps we have come to a full circle that goes between the need for self-expression and the celebration of our creativity.

And there is Shakespeare, who is so removed from his subjects but his works are so close to our existence—our feelings and knowledge—that we often forget ourselves in his plays and we are immersed in the world and the life he has created for us in the image of our own world and life.