World of the Paperback; Character types in literature

The world of the paperback the University of Chicago invites you to join us for this series of 15 minute programs dedicated to the discussion of literary topics and the review of significant paper bound books each weekly program will bring to the microphone a different author authority or educator with his particular viewpoint towards the topic for discussion. Today's discussion concerns character types and literature. Our guest is Mrs. R. Lampert an actress with the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Here is your discussion host from the University of Chicago Robert C. Albrecht one sometimes feels when reading a book that he he finds connections with with other books of all all types all kinds. You said that you find the way of all flesh is connected with numerous other books. SIEGEL What connects these things. My interest. I think this is often the thing that kind of. There are people for whom ordinary life mundane life has no inspiration no coal.

Right and these we call artists. Yeah. And they're not satisfied with what we call conventional reality and dreams to sustain them dreams give them the life force that more pedestrian living offers the masses and young people often can't find their way because they are torn by their dreams versus the existence that convention and their family and their schools tell them they are to live. Both the character of Ernest Pontifex and the way of all flesh and Constantine the so-called hero of the Seagull are lost boys. Constantine manifestly end and cognizant Lee last unfortunate words and Ernest eventually realizes retrospectively his last illness when an accident and I would say that both these people need to find themselves and make an earnest enough unintended and sometimes tragic in casting Dean's

case effort to grow with self-respect. The cost. And Jeanne makes such a of a terrible effort in some way. Me giving him notices you mean innocence and painful painful yes yes he's so conscious of his own notices that's right and yeah I mention that. Yes well they all are not without pain and yet some like Nina the female counterpart in The Seagull who wants to be an actor says he wants to be a writer managed to take their misfortunes and their disappointments and turn them into hope and drive. But Constantine one might say is without the life force for whatever either overbearing or under baring mother cannot make this change which is really only a change of a degree and so loses himself loses his way you know and in the

possessed. There is a quotation by Pushkin which beginnings strike me dead. The track is vanished. Well what now. This situation in which the hero of the possessed finds himself lost without chemo all standard without strength without with the kind of ambivalence of morality and suffering can one say that is a clear all these characters of course find that all youth finds itself with this let's say at the beginning of puberty. This not knowing this and these writers have all taken their youngsters middle age stares through the road on the road to finding some way to deal with life without losing them. As I said Self respect is curious as you mentioned two three Russian

writers have yeah. Yes friend does taskin yet and Butler. But Levinsky and yet of course this thing is not a Russian thing by any means. No no certainly as a matter of fact although I can't mention numbers I'm working on a translation of it. There's a German playwright who has dealt with this there and that may very well be why it occurred to me by the way exactly who is dealing with taking the lives of young people through with through the terrors of the businesses coming to maturity. Do you have a particular passage in The Seagull which seems to in a way I do. Please read it. There are so many and yet remember I mentioned that Nina does find herself although she goes through a series of disasters comparable even greater than Constantine's in her struggle to become an actress and a woman. And history color man and writer she comes back to him having separated herself from him for several years no

longer loving him as a woman loves a man but as a friend and seeing his disappointment in turmoil and then defying them with her. She says after having confessed her agonies she says I was so hated without meaning I did not understand the stage. I had no control over my voice and she knew right what she couldn't do. She says you can't imagine how one feels when one knows one is acting disgracefully and then she says. But now it's not like that. She has made her she's found the branch to hold on to but now she says it's not like that. I'm a real actress now and when I act I rejoice. I delight in it I'm intoxicated and I feel that I'm splendid. And ever since I got here meaning since I've come back to the Talon which we did as children I've been walking around thinking thinking feeling that my inner strength grows day by day and I see at last Constantine that I now work in

acting or in writing. That what counts what matters is not fame not glory not what I once dreamed but the ability to endure. One must bear one's cross and have faith and when I think of my work I'm no longer afraid of life. Does Constantine ever reach a point. Kills Well yes. Immediately see because he turns to her and on the other side of the ledger this young man says after she has said my faith makes me suffer less and when I think of my work I'm no longer afraid of life. He says you have found your road. You know where you're going. But I'm still adrift in the chaos of images and dreams and I can't tell what use it is to anyone I have my faith and I don't know what my work is. Constantine you call it a so-called hero or not to demean him but merely to because all of the characters in this

wonderful play are true and touching and significant. I didn't mean to demean him and him but he is of all of them certainly with me the most soulful sound that I I certainly would call him a check up seems to. I'm so I apologize for putting as much as you can check off revival. Yeah doesn't it always with you until it's done well perhaps. And it's curious how someone who plays a track of our kind of drawing room players I mean in the home or. Yes yes yes. Well now does simply that is a dick place you know. Home and very limited settings for instance remains set in kinder conversational if I can quote it verbatim but on the back of one of the I think the pack edition of the scene of the three sisters he says I want to write about the way things

really are so that between the taking of the toast and tea set to speak at the dinner table. Lives are thrown into chaos or earth or into joy so that things change as they do irrevocably significantly in a whole atmosphere and in every day. Do you suppose talk often make all day realistic route I say write realistic drama that's two down. True drama or rather realistic drama. Would you prefer that the word true to realistic. Well only because perhaps there's a quarrel about realism today and a confusion about what it means. But in the age of Freud is this A Yeah one always must search for reality. So I would call anything good real. We were talking before about last nice I suppose of the characters people who are more lost than one is I was reminded of that

the lost generation the phase the lost generation is that new thing is new at all a supposedly Gertrude Stein I believe had given us something to people in the 20s. But when one goes back to literature one finds again and again of course. Yes characters are lost in the sense of same sense as the generation of the twenties perhaps was lost I think to be lost is to be alive and to be found is to be active but this last not means much more than that. That terrible phrase searching searching always yes yes yes what does that mean in The Seagull for instance that the boy is lost. It means a number of things. He comes from a background that is impoverished in this way he was given no confidence. I think by his mother in this case it was a demanding stage taking woman.

But an interesting woman an honest woman and he probably I imagine this is the reason the boy has no manhood to fortify him on his way so to speak he has no way to identify himself with something useful he says in the quotation I don't know what you do anyway. He has a talent as a writer and others around him say I think that there is something. When they hear his flowery but profound sentiments you know he overwrites And so when they see that it's a real soul in my mind at work. But he has no confidence. Yes this is. One of the curious things I think about the character in The Seagull Constantine superficially one might decide this is what's lacking other than this is a characterization of and that he has now come to the US. But really this is only kind of a manifestation of his last nights isn't it. Of course but when one speaks quickly one thinks confidence is so necessary to an

artist despite his own self awareness and ruthlessness with his no one could be more ruthless than he or any just I'm sure even that the slightly more pompous to go and speaks of himself deprecatingly. Nino sticks when I quote it just now speaks of her work. They all are relentless about the quality of their work. But this thing that enables to go in and we need to go on independently. She I think even more sensitively aware is missing from the void I don't know what one calls it some people call it a life choice. Some ability to see in despair. It's obvious what another would see by what is missing what could be what one would want. One of the amazing things in an artist Jacka for instance and I think is to show people what confidence is. You know that in other words we've been saying that the perhaps the I was saying that perhaps the word confidences was implying a confidence as a kind of weak

words in a way to check off. Creates a drama which explains what confidence can mean in the words and then become meaningful because you see other tactics coming to life. Yes the word the word confidence a kind of abstraction. Suddenly he's there on stage I think and Chekhov tells you shows you what this means in the world has no meaning and it becomes a very meaningful word instead of just some sort of abstraction Yes I didn't mean it that way. You mean for example the way Nick comes and confesses agony and whatever I want. Yes and then says but nevertheless I can survive. Yes. And also that that puts these opposing things before us. Nina and Constantine the lost and found the lost if found the confident norms lacks confidence in such a way that it's like you know the way. Yeah. Its quality has suddenly there are again the things that we tend to forget the names all all there once one thing one hopes that it would be well dense and could have the

pleasure of seeing it come to life. The guest for today's discussion was Mrs. Laura Lambert an actress with the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Your host for the world of the paperback is Robert C. Albrecht assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago. Next week sir Tyrone Guthrie will discuss his book A Life in the theater the world of the paperback is produced for a national educational radio by the University of Chicago in cooperation with W A I T. This is the national educational radio network.