Tartuffe by Moliere (Moliere in the Park 2020)

As I have mentioned before, I was homeschooled from 2nd grade on, after two years of missing school regularly due to my poor health. After 9th grade, my mom realized she wasn’t really able to teach me stuff like algebra. At that time, there weren’t a lot of great options available like there are now, so we went with the (new at the time) A Beka video courses. The advantage of this was real video of real classes, as well as the fact that I actually have a high school diploma from the school. (This isn’t a huge deal in California, because you can take an equivalency exam and get a state diploma here rather than just a GED, but still.) 

There were advantages and disadvantages to the course. It certainly meant I learned math and science at a level my parents otherwise couldn’t have taught. Most of the teachers were actually quite good and a joy to learn from. There were a few duds, though. The mandatory bible course each year was...tedious. I mean, singing “The Bible Stands” every single freaking day. And what IS it with a certain quasi-Baptist tradition and waving arms to “lead the singing” without the motion having ANYTHING to do with the time signature? Gah! (We also got that in Gothard’s cult and in churches we were in. Either learn to conduct or play a guitar or something.) 

Possibly the most influential subject for me was English, specifically the 10th Grade (World Literature) and 12th Grade (English Literature) classes taught by Mr. William Collins. Mr. Collins was most certainly not like the stuffy and hypocritical character in Pride and Prejudice. He was an old, somewhat crust sort, who probably wished he was teaching at the college level. But he loved his subject and went out of his way to teach it well. And, in his own way, he subverted the “values” of Fundamentalism whenever he could, giving background that was not in the bowdlerized curriculum, pointing out in a backhanded way the naughty parts (I suspect it went over the heads of both students and parents), and refusing to parrot the “analysis” in the book. I learned a lot about literature, discovered books I hadn’t heard of before, and got a fairly solid foundation in literature up through about the 1930s. (A Beka in general pretends that modernism and postmodernism didn’t happen. Ditto for the Civil Rights movement.) 

One of the things in retrospect that is interesting is the choice of books. Many paralleled the public school curriculum. We did The Scarlet Letter, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth, as have my high schoolers.  But some choices were...different. Not in a bad way, necessarily. Other than missing 20th Century works, the substitutes were worthy choices. For example, rather than Oedipus, which is the usual choice, we read Antigone. I assume that the Fundies who wrote the curriculum didn’t want to have the whole “sex with your mother” thing, which is why they went with Antigone. Mr. Collins, of course, was happy to fill the class in on the themes of Oedipus so we wouldn’t miss out. Antigone is a great play, though, and I think it the better choice, with its questions of rules versus morality - ironically subversive of the Fundie worldview. 

The one most unusual substitution, however, was Tartuffe by Moliere. I read this in 10th Grade and very much enjoyed it. I have loved Moliere ever since, finding his plays to be startlingly relevant in our time, despite being over 300 years old. Tartuffe was also an interesting choice because it is the story of a religious huckster and hypocrite who worms his way into the life of a gullible aristocrat, and nearly succeeds in stealing his property and raping his wife. Hmm. Not that much different from sexual predator Bill Gothard who managed to fool my parents. And yes, I felt a bit like Damis trying to explain why I didn’t want to join. 

Anyway, here is the basic idea. Orgon is the father, and he has (along with his mother Madame Pernelle) become infatuated with Tartuffe, who has played on his sympathy, claiming to be a formerly wealthy man who lost it all. Tartuffe drips piety, asceticism, and religious obsession. Soon, Orgon will do nothing without consulting Tartuffe. 

The rest of the family sees right through him. Orgon’s wife, Elmire, is genuinely pious, and realizes right away that Tartuffe is putting on a show. In fact, there is a line in the play (which I cannot find easily) to the effect that genuine religion doesn’t show off, but performative piety (which I need to write about) hides bad morals. 

Orgon’s adult children (Elmire is the stepmother) likewise are astonished at how gullible and foolish their father has become. Damis is the hotheaded son who would love nothing more than to turn Tartuffe out with a sound beating. Mariane is engaged to Valere, who, as an outsider to the family, has few options if Orgon won’t give his blessing. In addition to the family itself, Elmire’s brother Cleante tries to talk sense into Orgon. Finally, the maid, Dorine, loathes Tartuffe, and uses her wit and her schemes to expose him. (In all Moliere plays, the maid gets the best and most pointed lines. In essence, she is allowed to say things the aristocrats can’t.) 

Tartuffe overplays his hand, however, by trying to seduce Elmire. Interrupted by Damis, he uses a combination of reverse psychology and lies and gets Damis banished by his father instead. Orgon even refuses to listen to his own wife, insisting she misunderstood. Orgon insists that Mariane marry Tartuffe against her wishes, and eventually even signs his property over to Tartuffe. Finally, Elmire insists that Orgon hide under a table and watch Tartuffe, who tries again to seduce Elmire. At that point, Orgon finally sees the light - but now his property is gone, and his reputation is compromised. It is only the intervention of the king himself which rights the injustice at the end. 

Moliere, despite living a rather soap opera life, was not anti-religious, even if the religious establishment got their panties in a wad over Tartuffe. It is clear that he isn’t condemning religion, but the twin evils of hypocrisy and gullibility. It is easy to see so many religious charlatans in this play, from Gothard on down, of course. But also, in our own time, it is easy to see Tartuffe as Trump, performing his piety and fooling gullible white Evangelicals, who are all too willing to sell their souls. 

The performance in this case was interesting. Put on by Moliere in the Park in Brooklyn, it was a “virtual” stage, so to speak. There was a basic background of the interior of the house, and the faces of the actors appeared as they entered and exited. It was done as a “green screen,” which made for some weird glitches, just like a Zoom meeting. At the very end, we get to see the actors in their homes, where the performance was recorded. Ah, the age of Covid-19 and the compromises artists have to make. I salute their creativity, and will refrain from further comment on the glitches. 

Orgon hiding under the table while Tartuffe attempts to seduce Elmire

The acting, in any event, was superb. These are true professionals in the best sense, and they brought the chemistry despite distance. The cast was African American with four exceptions: Tartuffe, Dorine, Madame Pernelle, and the bailiff. Orgon was played by Samira Wiley, in a trousers role. She was so convincing as a chauvinist male that I didn’t realize it until I looked at the cast afterward. She was perfect as a counterpart to the smarmy Tartuffe, played by Raul Esparza (with a beard that made him look like Ray Stevens). Also props to Naomi Lorrain as Damis - an older sister rather than brother in this production, which felt natural as well. Kaliswa Brewster was innocent and vulnerable as Mariane, Toccarra Cash brought gravitas and confidence as Elmire, and Jenny Mudge was brassy and snarky as Dorine. Actually, everyone was excellent, and I appreciated the fine acting, particularly under challenging circumstances.

The text was the Richard Wilbur translation, which preserves the rhymed couplets, yet sounds modern and understandable. There were French subtitles for those who can read French. 

I am seriously sad that I missed their version of Le Misanthrope earlier in the year. I love that play, and it appears to have had Samira Wiley in a “Make America Gay Again” hat, which...well...that sounds interesting. I’ll be following them and watching the next show, if possible. 

 

Darwin's Ghosts by Rebecca Stott

Source of book: I own this.

 

“Masterpieces are not single solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.” ~ Virginia Woolf

 Thus opens this fascinating book, which looks at the many men of the past who predated Charles Darwin and laid the foundation for his theory of evolution by natural selection. With the exception of a few of Darwin’s contemporaries (many who were obscure even then), nobody put it all together in coherent form the way Darwin did, but they did come up with ideas that had much in common with Darwin. 

 

Charles Darwin remains a controversial figure in my extended family. My mother is descended from the Josiah Wedgwood family - she actually got a check from the estate of one of the scions back in the 1970s. Both Charles and his grandfather Erasmus were close relatives of the Wedgwoods, and the families intermarried at several points. I am thus related to, although not descended from, Charles Darwin. Because of the embrace of Fundamentalism in the early 1900s, my ancestors were embarrassed about the connection, and I didn’t really hear about it until I was older. This is a shame, because Darwin indeed expanded our understanding of the world in a huge way, and certainly was not the horrible person Fundies claim he was. 

Rebecca Stott also grew up in a Fundie household. Here is what she says about it, from the preface. 

I grew up in a Creationist household. As a child, I often thought about Charles Darwin; I wondered who he was and whether he knew, as my grandfather and the other preachers alleged, that he had been sent to earth to do Satan’s work. It seemed an odd reason to make a man, I thought, but then, in the scale of things, perhaps no more odd than the story of God and Satan tormenting Job or the angels who appeared in Sodom and Gomorrah, no more strange than the pillar of salt that Lot’s wife was turned into, or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I also wondered if, as Satan’s man, Darwin might have hooves or scales. But generally, it wasn’t a good idea to ask questions about such things. 

Her grandfather had gone so far as to remove all references to Darwin from the family copy of Britannica. Later, as it turns out, her parents left Fundamentalism and became Anglicans (before her father lost his faith entirely), and she was able to read on her own. She says she never has lost the feeling of transgression. 

The book starts with a quick history of the publication of The Origin of the Species. Darwin had to rush to publish, because a (friendly) rival was also close to publication of similar ideas - and Darwin had been working on them a lot longer. Because of this, he failed to include his intended list of people whose ideas he had built upon. In subsequent editions, the list was added, and changed a bit over time as better information became available. For example, Darwin completely missed a living author who had mentioned natural selection...but this was understandable because the quote was buried in a footnote in a specialized book on forestry that probably only a handful of people had read. Darwin added the name once he became aware of it. 

Stott lays out the history in chronological order after the opening chapter, starting with Aristotle. It would be exaggeration to say that Aristotle was an evolutionist - he wasn’t - but he did spend a portion of his early years collecting and classifying creatures, and noted the similarities. He tried to find common rules, but was puzzled by creatures (like sponges) that appeared to straddle the line between plant and animal. 

Likewise, Muslim biologist (and polymath writer) Jahiz expanded the understanding of related species, but did not make the jump to common ancestry. In this chapter, one of the interesting things was the way that the society of his time valued books, and translated hundreds from Greek to Arabic, preserving a number of works that did not survive in their original forms. The Abbasid Empire was a remarkable example of pluralism and culture, with educated citizens, lending libraries, and a thriving book sale industry. Jahiz died at the remarkable old age of 94, and legend states that he was crushed to death when a wall of books fell on him. True or not, I suspect this might be my cause of death someday…

While there were these ancient predecessors, most of those who got close to the idea of common ancestry were relatively modern. In part, this was because of better technology and better ways of sharing information. In particular, the invention of the microscope enabled humans to see microorganisms for the first time. The world in a drop of pond water was populated with thousands of these “wee beasties” that seemed to be neither plant nor animal, or perhaps both. 

Along with the science also came the enlightenment, which had a huge impact on thought, to put it mildly. For much of this period, you can see a battle between the organized church and the free-thinking sorts who moved science forward. (To be clear, the battle wasn’t exactly between religion and science, but between science and certain politically powerful religious organizations who depended on a literalist view of scripture to maintain their power. Plenty of scientists were religious, just not Fundamentalist.) 

One interesting bit in this vein was the inevitable result of world travel. As Europeans travelled and experienced the world outside of Christendom, they discovered other religious traditions. As it became clear that there were many well-developed religious systems, with often similar rituals and ceremonies - and ethics - it was harder to see the Catholic (or Anglican) Church as the “only true church.” As one religion among many, it lost its infallible authority. 

One of the key early men in the modernist tradition of “transformism” was Benoit de Maillet. Beginning in 1697, he wrote a book that was clearly heretical, but couched inside a framing story to distance the author from the ideas. This book, Telliamed, is considered the first ever to posit that species mutated and were not fixed. The book was not published until a decade after Maillet was safely dead and buried. It went on to become a huge seller, as well as a huge scandal. Even fellow heretic Voltaire condemned it in what are now amusing terms: “It was he who, abusing the story of some upheaval that arrived in the world, claims that the seas had formed the mountains, and that fish have turned into men.” This is, ironically, agreed to be an accurate if incomplete account of natural history. We do have mountains which formed in the sea, and the ancestors of fish are indeed our ancestors as well. 

The authorities didn’t take too well to these early scientists. That fatal combination of church and state cannot abide the idea of losing one ounce of authority and power, and sought to suppress the new ideas. For “natural philosophers,” persecution came with the job. Diderot summed it up pretty well:

“He who resolves to apply himself to the study of philosophy [meaning science in this case], may expect not only the philosophical obstacles that are in the nature of his subject, but also the multitude of moral obstacles that will present themselves, as they have done to all the philosophers preceding him. When, then, it shall come about that he is frustrated, misunderstood, calumniated, compromised, and torn to pieces, let him learn to say to himself, ‘It is in my century only, am I the only one against whom there are men filled with ignorance and rancour, souls eaten by envy, heads troubled by superstition?’ I am then, certain to obtain, some day, the only applause by which I set any store, if I have been fortunate enough to merit it.” 

Eventually, the book gets to Erasmus Darwin, Charles’ grandfather, who did much to further science as well. Also, he had a comically soap opera sort of life. Anyway, I did want to mention his work in exploring caves and obtaining fossils from the limestone. One of those was known at the time as Devil’s Arse Cavern, because of the flatulent noises it made when water was draining away. Apparently, Queen Victoria was offended, so they changed the name to “Peak Cavern” for her visit. 

Oh, and he also put the motto E Conchis Omnia on his family crest - the heretical “Everything from shells.”

I also have to mention that Erasmus Darwin’s ideas were suppressed, as was his society of scientists. A judge set up a euphemistically named “Association for Preserving Liberty and Property Against Republicans and Levellers,” complete with a spy network. I note that the language is a lot like that used by our modern-day fascists, who equate “liberty” with their own economic and social privilege. The threat to their “liberty” is equality - those who would raise all men to their level. 

I hadn’t really thought of the role that evolutionary thinking played in egalitarian political structures, but it makes sense. As the author notes, the idea that nature wasn’t fixed, but organisms either adapted and thrived, or died out, struck at the heart of social hierarchies. The enlightened future would belong to those with talent and adaptability, rather than those with money and an old name. That social darwinism (which Darwin did NOT invent or support) would be invented to give a scientific gloss to oppression was predictable, but it wasn’t the original result of Darwinism itself - it was a reaction to disruption of hierarchy. 

While religious persecution of scientists wasn’t limited to England, it did take on a distinctly English flavour by the time Charles Darwin came around. Transformism or any scientific idea that contradicted a young earth was considered to be a “French” heresy. It is fascinating to see that it is still the exact same arguments in use. For example, one of the reasons that Fundies today are infuriated with Environmentalism is that they have a religious dogma that states that the universe exists - indeed was created - solely for humans to enjoy it. The idea that other species exist for their own benefit, not ours, is anathema to them, and thus they are wedded to the idea that we are entitled to kill and destroy whatever we want if it gives us pleasure or profit. I happen to think this is contrary to both reason (we are part of nature and depend on it) and theology (we were tasked with caring for creation, not destroying it.) 

Likewise, there is still a rhetorical argument over what science should concern itself with. Religious authorities have always been jealously protective of their power and authority, and fight against any encroachment. Hence, the claim that Nature’s laws were “forever hidden from man” and thus humans should concern themselves with studying theology instead. 

Darwin’s Ghosts is a fascinating book, full of historical detail, well researched, and well written. For those interested in the history of why a belief in common ancestry was inevitable, this book can really help with that. But the characters which populate the book are delightful as well. Many of these men (no women, sadly, as the author points out), are either obscure now, or known for other things, but their stories are part of the reason we are in the scientific age we are. 

Dear Elizabeth by Sarah Ruhl

With theater venues closed due to Covid-19, our local thespians have had to be creative in order to keep making art. One of those creative ideas is this one. 

I first experienced Sarah Ruhl in her lovely adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, which used delightfully idiomatic language for a play which can often be stilted in more literalist translations. Seeing her name on one of her own plays, produced by one of our local institutions, therefore, I figured it was worth checking out. Even better was that the three actors were all ones I had enjoyed in the past, and the play was about Elizabeth Bishop, one of my favorite poets. 

Dear Elizabeth is based on the 30-year friendship between poets Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. They corresponded regularly, and left behind a rich trove of hundreds of brilliantly written letters. Ruhl combines the text of the letters, a couple of poems from each, and a minimalist narration of stage directions to tie it together. The play is perfect for the times, as the actors can act together, but at a distance. 

Bishop and Lowell had a fascinating relationship. As is apparent from their letters, there was a high degree of emotional intimacy, one that transcended that of their respective romantic relationships. The letters are often about professional stuff - they both won Pulitzers for their poetry, and critiqued each other’s works - but there are plenty of passages that get deep into personal issues and concerns. 

Both poets were complicated individuals, with flaws and struggles. Bishop fought alcoholism much of her life. Her great romance was with Lota Soares, a Brazilian architect she lived with for fifteen years. When Bishop returned to the United States as her inheritance ran out, Lota despaired and committed suicide. Lowell suffered from bipolar disorder, and was in and out of mental hospitals throughout his life. He was married three times, and his breakups were pretty harsh. All of this is worked out in their correspondence as well, although often by inside language and implication. 

What I was not prepared for entirely was that it appears Lowell proposed to Bishop after his first marriage failed. Bishop, of course, declined - she wasn’t into men that way, after all. Yet, she still experienced a certain jealousy over his marriages, particularly the last, when he married a much younger woman he had impregnated. 

The most emotional moment in the play, however, was Bishop’s critique of Lowell’s poetry collection, Dolphin, in which he used (yet altered) private letters from his second ex-wife. Both Bishop and Adrienne Rich castigated Lowell for this - Rich cut off her friendship with him, in fact. Bishop’s letters to him were strong and angry, and this came out in the play very well. 

All three actors were good in their roles. Julie Gaines, as Bishop, was particularly striking. I have loved her in every role I have seen her in. Steve Evans brought his usual folksy and good-natured vibe to the role of Lowell. Jan Hefner had just a small part as narrator, but played it with admirable transparency, so it didn’t feel intrusive.

Julie Gaines as Elizabeth Bishop
(BMT/Stars publicity photos throughout)

The play apparently is intended to be performed without rehearsal, for a spontaneous feel. I believe this production was rehearsed, but it still had the feeling of real-time thought. There were a few stutters and such that felt natural. My only quibble was with the sound mixing, which wasn’t particularly balanced. Fortunately, everyone could be heard, but the narrator was louder than the others. It is a challenge to put something like this together, particularly if you don’t have a large videography budget, so I am not complaining loudly about this. (I’ll be writing about some other productions later, and technology issues are not unique to small theater groups with low budgets either…) 

 

Steve Evans as Robert Lowell

In any event, it is good to see our local thespians keeping things going as best they can in hard times. I will be supporting them, and encourage everyone who can to support these small, local businesses of all sorts that make a community a community. 

Jan Hefner

The Early Poems of Yvor Winters

Source of book: I own this

Yvor Winters is often better known these days as a literary critic - and an idiosyncratic and cranky one at that. It is true that his taste was a bit different than the mainstream, particularly as to which poets from the last 400 years belonged in the canon, and which greats were overrated. That said, his criticism is certainly interesting and insightful, even if I do disagree with a number of his positions. 

As a poet, he isn’t as well known, which is a shame. At a library sale last year, there were a number of Library of America American Poets Project hardbacks for sale, and I snapped up a number of them, including one of Yvor Winters, edited by Thom Gunn. I decided to give it a chance, and rather enjoyed the ones I read. (With a few exceptions - there are a couple of wince worthy racial terms of the era, shall we say…) 

Winters’ poetry can be divided into two periods. In his early period, the poems are modernist, with influence from imagism and Native American styles. He later switched to a much more formalist poetry. I read a selection of the earlier poems in this case. 

I am a bit odd in my tastes in that I enjoy both formal and modernist poetry. I can’t really say I dislike either, as long as well written. In any event, I enjoyed these poems, and look forward to reading the more formal later poems in the future. 

Many of these early poems are in cycles of related ideas, and are best read as part of the whole. However, quoting them in full would take too much space and would probably violate copyright laws on the later ones. My hope is that if I share my favorite parts, readers will seek out the entire works and read them. 

I particularly love the images that Winters creates. Like many of my favorite poets, he has a knack for bringing nature to light, and painting a picture that lasts in the memory. 

Here are the ones that stood out to me:

One Ran Before

 

I could tell

Of silence where

One ran before

Himself and fell

Into silence

Yet more fair.

It’s a compact gem, and one I love. 

The Magpie’s Shadow is a set of very short verses, in a form Winters invented. Each is a six-syllable line, even more compact than a haiku, and intended to be minimalist imagist verses. They are grouped by the seasons, and each has a brief title. Here is one example:

Sleep

Like winds my eyelids close.

The sequence follows an arc, spanning four pages, and is delightful read end to end. 

The next sequence is The Bare Hills, the largest in the collection, spanning in excess of 35 pages. It rambles and has a number of recurring ideas and pictures. There is much to like in this sequence, and it cumulatively tells a journey through an emotional landscape set in a physical place. The headings are kind of odd, because of the sections and subsections. A legal writer would be proud, but it is a bit odd for poetry. Ultimately, I didn’t find them helpful and just read it. Here are my favorites. 

II. The Precincts of February

 

Junipers,

Steely shadows,

Floating the jay.

A man,

 

Heavy and ironblack,

Alone in the sun,

Threading the grass.

The cold,

 

Coming again

As spring

Came up the valley,

But to stay

 

Rooted deep in the land.

The stone-pierced shadows

Trod by the bird

For day on day.

In this one, I found the way the stanzas are split to add to a feeling of gradual revealing of the scene and its meaning. The lines also change length in an interesting way. 

X. October

 

The houses

Are more bare

And nothing

Dims the hills.

 

October

Comes and goes

And in the moonlight

I wait for winter.

 

The silence

Is like moonlight

In one thing:

That it hides nothing.

That last stanza is fantastic, and is probably my favorite in the collection. I know that kind of silence, both good and bad. 

I am a birder, so I enjoyed the mentions of birds, which show that Winters is observant of their habits. Here are a couple. 

III. Nocturne

 

Moonlight on stubbleshing 

hills

whirls down upon me finer than geometry

and at my very

eyes it blurs and softens like a dream

 

In leafblack houses

linen smooth with sleep

and folded by cold life itself for limbs so definite

 

their passion is

persistent like a pane of glass

 

about their feet the clustered

birds are sleeping

heavy with incessant life

 

The dogs swim close to earth

 

A kildee rises

dazed and rolled amid the sudden blur of sleep

above the dayglare of the fields

goes screaming 

off toward darker hills.

 

V. The Grosbeaks

 

The beauty of

these hard

small birds is

clean as scattered seed--

dry penguins

of the cliffs of light!

 

Along crushed hills

they flutter watching men

who drag the earth

and lengthen

into wrinkles

above thickening frost.

 

They leap into 

the air and

gather, 

the blown chaff of

stony ground, and

so are gone. 

Toward the end of the cycle, there is a sequence of four longer poems, with longer lines, that describe part of the poet’s (or narrator’s?) spiritual journey. They seem different from the rest of the set, and are fascinating, but too long to quote. 

I’ll end with a couple of stand-alone poems.

 

The Solitude of Glass

 

No ferns, but

Fringed rock

Spreads on hills

To cover us.

 

On stone of pollen

At the bend of sight

Stiff rocks

Cast violet eyes

 

Like rays of shadow;

Roam

Impenetrable

In a cold of glass--

 

The sun, a lichen

Spreading on the sky

For days

Behind the cold;

 

The burros,

Like iron-filings

Gathered to

The adamant.

 

Orange Tree

 

Hard, oily,

sinuous 

your trunk,

 

black serpent,

struggling 

with your weight of gold--

 

great strength

massed 

against Time,

 

in an angry pride

you hold out

lacquered life

 

the classic leaf.

 

These poems were a nice change from the others I have read this year, with a rather different style and cadence. I feel like I have discovered some gems I was unaware of previously. Winters is worth a read.