"the cocktail party": a criticism

Irish Jesuit Province

"The Cocktail Party": A CriticismAuthor(s): I. T. QuinSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 79, No. 936 (Jun., 1951), pp. 259-263Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20516380 .

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"THE COCKTAIL PARTY" A CRITICISM

By I. T. QUIN

(Mr. Quin here offers an analysis and criticism of a much discussed play. He does not expect to find all in ready agreement with what he has to say; for his criticism is based on his own personal views about the function and scope of art in general, and' of drama in particular. But all should

find his remarks both interesting and thought-provoking.)

THE Irish premi?re of T. S. Eliot's comedy, The Cocktail Party,

presents an occasion for a review of this much-debated play. The present writer intends to regard the work exclusively as

an abstract, dramatic and, perhaps, literary chef d* uvre, prescinding as much as possible from any actual stage presentation.

Is the play a success? To answer we must split the question into two further questions and answer each separately: Is the play a

satisfying and unified dramatic work for an audience? Is the play satisfying and unified in itself?

The first question is the simpler to answer, though the value of

the answer is not very great. Eliot's play, to my mind, is not a

successful play for any audience. At the University College presenta tion in Newman House there was present an almost ideal audience,

with cultured taste and theatrical sensibility. It was also a Christian

audience, imbued with all the principles embodied within the play. And yet, in so far as I could judge, Eliot's theodicy left these few

hundred souls frankly perplexed and somehow aware of a gross

incongruity. True, the wit and incisiveness appealed to them, the

powerful situations pleased and intrigued them. But the play as an

entirety left them, if not completely non-plussed, at least (to coin a

Wodehousian phrase) far from plussed. Now I cannot believe

that a philosophic dramatist would find anywhere a similar

group of people who would be more fit to pass judgment Save

for Martian or angelic intellects, these are as good as the world

provides in theatre audiences. Consequently, The Cocktail Party's failure with them can be universalized without injustice into a general failure.

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IRISH MONTHLY

But the second question is the vital one. To answer it requires that we undertake an analysis of the work itself to discover the

intrinsic cause of its lack of. success. For it is not a success as a

drama?though at this point it must be conceded that it may be a

great work in the realm of didactic and moral literature.

Summarized, The Cocktail Party is an attempt to dramatize the

inner conflict between man's boundless yearning for happiness and

his very limited powers of attainment. In this strict sense the work

is a comedy of frustration. Edward, Lavinia, Celia and Peter are

four very enviable people. They are what are popularly called "

successful "

people, since they appear to have everything that wealth

and position can give, without being handicapped by that super abundance of effects which is more wearisome than want. For

simplicity's sake the dramatist has placed them in the ideal (though

possibly unreal) situation of having no obstacles to the gratification of their hunger for felicity. Celia, a flaming fiercely-eager soul, loves passionately the stolid Edward, who finds himself glorified and

renewed in this blaze of passion. Lavinia, Edward's disillusioned

wife, goes away, leaving the lovers free. It is this sudden opportunity of making their dreams reality that actually shakes them out of their

dream-world. Celia suddenly finds that she never has loved the

real Edward; her own idealization of Edward was the true object of

her desire. Edward, too, finds that Celia, the real Celia, can never

be his because to accept her as his lover or his wife would reduce

their relationship to the drab ordinariness of his life with Lavinia.

Both discover that they are pursuing a dream; any attempt to make

it real means its destruction.

This infatuation with unreality is extended to include Lavinia and

Peter, who, in their own way, are endeavouring to capture the will

o'-the-wisp. This is a world, so like our own, where they find them

selves "always on the verge of some marvellous experience", but

like the waters from the lips of Tantalus, that margin moves as they move, yet never moves sufficiently to lose its urgent, imminent, im

pending attraction.

And so the scene is set, and into this world of complex but

perfectly understandable psychological perplexity (still perfectly good

theatre) comes Sir Henry Harcourt "

One-Eyed "

Reilly. Sir Henry is to prove the rub. As an eminent psycho-analyst we are not

perturbed when he successfully reveals to these tortured men and

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" THE COCKTAIL PARTY "

women the cause of their inner unrest. Only when he comes to assume the r?le of

" ang?lus "-cum-professor-who-knows-all-the

answers does our sense of artistic truth begin to protest. Still, we

can endure his expounding to Lavinia and Edward the Christian

synthesis on married sacramental life, with its "ceasing to

regret", its "avoidance of excessive expectation", its loneliness

mingled with communion, and its glorious reward of rapturously fulfilled desire. But when he speaks of

" saints

" and

" sanatoria ",

when he asks from Celia an utter and supreme renunciation of

worldly happiness in return for an eternal beatitude, that sense of

artistic propriety clamours aloud that it is being outraged. Such was my experience with this comedy. If I am to justify

myself, an apparent digression must be introduced here. Drama is one of the arts and, as such, its lessons are not the explicit didac

ticisms of the dramatis person? but the inner convictions that well

up within the consciousness of the beholder. The truths of the

players' words pass into our ears; the situations, as they reveal them

selves, are absorbed by all our senses, but the moral resultant from

all these, the great truths of their lives and actions are created by ourselves within.

Now, Eliot's play fails fundamentally because its lesson is not

expressed through art. Nothing that Celia, Lavinia, Edward or Peter

do, say or neglect could excite within us sentiments and impressions in the least degree comparable to the world-shattering profundity of

Reilly's diagnosis. Even the profoundest of aesthetic emotions cannot

be interpreted as an act of faith. It is this infinite gulf that yawns between artistic and religious belief that has baulked the dramatist

of success. In striving to arrive at the essence of Christian revelation

by purely artistic means, Mr. Eliot has attempted the impossible.

By-passing the conventional routes of ethics, moral and dogmatic

theology, attempting to lead us direct to the heart of the matter, he

has set us on a road that leads to nowhere.

Let it be plainly understood that the end sought by Mr. Eliot in

The Cocktail Party is wholly praiseworthy. But his efforts to propa

gate the Gospel are misplaced. For, while admittedly the pulpit can

learn much from theatrical effectiveness, this does not imply that the

artistic approach to life and eternity can ever be a practical one,

because art is a human function with human limitations, and drama

as a branch of art is equally confined. The dramatist is fully justified 261



IRISH MONTHLY

in treating of human actions, good and evil, but he is not entitled to pursue these to a specified, definite eternal consequence. To venture into that transcendental realm of beatitude or damnation, wherein even our knowledge is but analogous, is to lay aside his artistic vocation and assume the new and more awe some r?le of prophet and evangelist. The eternal verities will allow

of no artistic liberties. They are stern, unyielding, adamantine in

their self-insistence. They are as changeless as God Himself, for

Justice, Truth and Mercy as they emanate from God are but attributes and aspects of His Divine Transcendent Nature.

What then are we to say of Celia and the others with their "

divine "

unsatiated hunger? Can we not treat of such a theme in

drama? Most certainly we can, since such desire for happiness

springs spontaneously from human nature?and human nature is

the artist's arena and proper sphere. But man's natural yearning, unless supernaturalized by divine faith, is an inchoate longing, a

reaching outward forever towards the indefinite and indefinable

object called supreme felicity. But the definition and specification of that object of our longing is completely a revelation from outside.

It is something that we acquire when we make our first act of faith, an act requiring the grace of God and our co-operation with that

grace. Now, Mr. Eliot has overlooked such a distinction between

man and Christian. He evidently assumes that if his art leads us

along the path which his faith has mapped for him, we too will arrive

with him at the desired goal. But he forgets that between himself

and the thousands of Edwards and Celias who constitute his readers

and his audience there is fixed a great gulf of faith which no man

may cross unaided. This a priori argument is borne out in watching the play itself. We readily accept Eliot-Reilly as an analyser of

human difficulties; but the metamorphosis into a prophet and pre cursor, signalled by the introduction of those peculiar sanatoria and

still more curious valedictions, alienates our entire artistic sensibility.

Up to this point we have followed eagerly in the bright daylight of

Mr. Eliot's artistic genius. But when he beckons us to go forward

into the darkness beyond we become aware that our confidence in

him has disappeared, and we look around for some other light to

dissipate the gloom. And if we have no faith, then we will not find

such a light, and Eliot's solution to the problem will be but an empty

mockery. In a word, the human ailments and their causes in this

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"THE COCKTAIL PARTY"

play are legitimate themes for drama. Their ultimate perfect solution

is a matter for belief, and this is a realm in which Mr. Eliot, and

for that matter every other human man, is not competent to be our

guide.

Probably at this stage the reader is conjuring up situations from

Dante and phrases from Milton, pondering on the problem of faith

in art; it will be urged that Greek tragedy is preponderantly religious in theme and treatment. To do more than give a brief outline of

the method of resolving these objections would require more space than is here available. It should, however, be noted that all success

ful leligious drama requires an audience thoroughly permeated with

the religious beliefs portrayed; so that the players merely reiterate

the popular religious convictions. Moreover, the Olympian

theocracy, being so definitely anthropomorphic, lent itself freely to

dramatization. As for the pity and emotion of Aristotle's Poetics, these are not divine attributes but abstract human virtues.

The success of Milton's Paradise Lost and Samson Agonist es is no

more valid an objection to the views already advanced; for the

Puritan poet's heavens, angels and devils are human almost to a

ludicrous degree. Milton was an artistic master. Consequently he

humanized eternity to make it successful art. But his success in the

latter sphere is no argument for his veracity as a portrayer of the

supernatural. Let it be stressed and noted here that Mr. Eliot

attempted the very antithesis of Milton's work?his effort is to

supernaturalize art to give a supernatural message.

Anyone who is at all attentive to the condition of the world of our

time will pardon the playwright his presumption. Men are in

desperate need of a focus for their lives, and this was a praiseworthy effort to fill that need. Mr. Eliot's failure, too, is no reflection on

his artistic ability, for it denotes solely that, though a supreme artist, he has not recognized the limitations of his own art.

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"the cocktail party": a criticism

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