'_Essere, o non essere, è qui il punto._'
To be or not to be was the question for Hamlet to settle. It is no
longer our question, at least, not in the same sense. When it is a
question of death, the fashionable young suicide declares that his
self-destruction is the final proof of his own incontrovertible being.
And as for not-being in our public life, we have achieved it as much as
ever we want to, as much as is necessary. Whilst in private life there
is a swing back to paltry selfishness as a creed. And in the war there
is the position of neutralization and nothingness. It is a question of
knowing how _to be_, and how _not to be_, for we must fulfil both.
Enrico Persevalli was detestable with his '_Essere, o non essere_'. He
whispered it in a hoarse whisper as if it were some melodramatic murder
he was about to commit. As a matter of fact, he knows quite well, and
has known all his life, that his pagan Infinite, his transport of the
flesh and the supremacy of the male in fatherhood, is all
unsatisfactory. All his life he has really cringed before the northern
Infinite of the Not-Self, although he has continued in the Italian habit
of Self. But it is mere habit, sham.
How can he know anything about being and not-being when he is only a
maudlin compromise between them, and all he wants is to be a maudlin
compromise? He is neither one nor the other. He has neither being nor
riot-being. He is as equivocal as the monks. He was detestable, mouthing
Hamlet's sincere words. He has still to let go, to know what not-being
is, before he can _be_. Till he has gone through the Christian negation
of himself, and has known the Christian consummation, he is a mere
amorphous heap.
For the soliloquies of Hamlet are as deep as the soul of man can go, in
one direction, and as sincere as the Holy Spirit itself in their
essence. But thank heaven, the bog into which Hamlet struggled is almost
surpassed.
It is a strange thing, if a man covers his face, and speaks with his
eyes blinded, how significant and poignant he becomes. The ghost of this
Hamlet was very simple. He was wrapped down to the knees in a great
white cloth, and over his face was an open-work woollen shawl. But the
naïve blind helplessness and verity of his voice was strangely
convincing. He seemed the most real thing in the play. From the knees
downward he was Laertes, because he had on Laertes' white trousers and
patent leather slippers. Yet he was strangely real, a voice out of
the dark.
The Ghost is really one of the play's failures, it is so trivial and
unspiritual and vulgar. And it was spoilt for me from the first. When I
was a child I went to the twopenny travelling theatre to see _Hamlet_.
The Ghost had on a helmet and a breastplate. I sat in pale transport.
''Amblet, 'Amblet, I _am_ thy father's ghost.'
Then came a voice from the dark, silent audience, like a cynical knife
to my fond soul:
'Why tha arena, I can tell thy voice.'
The peasants loved Ophelia: she was in white with her hair down her
back. Poor thing, she was pathetic, demented. And no wonder, after
Hamlet's 'O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!' What then of
her young breasts and her womb? Hamlet with her was a very disagreeable
sight. The peasants loved her. There was a hoarse roar, half of
indignation, half of roused passion, at the end of her scene.
The graveyard scene, too, was a great success, but I could not bear
Hamlet. And the grave-digger in Italian was a mere buffoon. The whole
scene was farcical to me because of the Italian, '_Questo cranio,
Signore_--'And Enrico, dainty fellow, took the skull in a corner of his
black cloak. As an Italian, he would not willingly touch it. It was
unclean. But he looked a fool, hulking himself in his lugubriousness. He
was as self-important as D'Annunzio.
The close fell flat. The peasants had applauded the whole graveyard
scene wildly. But at the end of all they got up and crowded to the
doors, as if to hurry away: this in spite of Enrico's final feat: he
fell backwards, smack down three steps of the throne platform, on to the
stage. But planks and braced muscle will bounce, and Signer Amleto
bounced quite high again.
It was the end of _Amleto_, and I was glad. But I loved the theatre, I
loved to look down on the peasants, who were so absorbed. At the end of
the scenes the men pushed back their black hats, and rubbed their hair
across their brows with a pleased, excited movement. And the women
stirred in their seats.
Just one man was with his wife and child, and he was of the same race as
my old woman at San Tommaso. He was fair, thin, and clear, abstract, of
the mountains. He seemed to have gathered his wife and child together
into another, finer atmosphere, like the air of the mountains, and to
guard them in it. This is the real Joseph, father of the child. He has a
fierce, abstract look, wild and untamed as a hawk, but like a hawk at
its own nest, fierce with love. He goes out and buys a tiny bottle of
lemonade for a penny, and the mother and child sip it in tiny sips,
whilst he bends over, like a hawk arching its wings.
It is the fierce spirit of the Ego come out of the primal infinite, but
detached, isolated, an aristocrat. He is not an Italian, dark-blooded.
He is fair, keen as steel, with the blood of the mountaineer in him. He
is like my old spinning woman. It is curious how, with his wife and
child, he makes a little separate world down there in the theatre, like
a hawk's nest, high and arid under the gleaming sky.
The Bersaglieri sit close together in groups, so that there is a
strange, corporal connexion between them. They have close-cropped, dark,
slightly bestial heads, and thick shoulders, and thick brown hands on
each other's shoulders. When an act is over they pick up their cherished
hats and fling on their cloaks and go into the hall. They are rather
rich, the Bersaglieri.
They are like young, half-wild oxen, such strong, sturdy, dark lads,
thickly built and with strange hard heads, like young male caryatides.
They keep close together, as if there were some physical instinct
connecting them. And they are quite womanless. There is a curious
inter-absorption among themselves, a sort of physical trance that holds
them all, and puts their minds to sleep. There is a strange, hypnotic
unanimity among them as they put on their plumed hats and go out
together, always very close, as if their bodies must touch. Then they
feel safe and content in this heavy, physical trance. They are in love
with one another, the young men love the young men. They shrink from the
world beyond, from the outsiders, from all who are not Bersaglieri of
their barracks.
One man is a sort of leader. He is very straight and solid, solid like a
wall, with a dark, unblemished will. His cock-feathers slither in a
profuse, heavy stream from his black oil-cloth hat, almost to his
shoulder. He swings round. His feathers slip into a cascade. Then he
goes out to the hall, his feather tossing and falling richly. He must be
well off. The Bersaglieri buy their own black cock's-plumes, and some
pay twenty or thirty francs for the bunch, so the maestra said. The poor
ones have only poor, scraggy plumes.
There is something very primitive about these men. They remind me really
of Agamemnon's soldiers clustered oil the seashore, men, all men, a
living, vigorous, physical host of men. But there is a pressure on these
Italian soldiers, as if they were men caryatides, with a great weight on
their heads, making their brain hard, asleep, stunned. They all look is
if their real brain were stunned, as if there were another centre of
physical consciousness from which they lived.
Separate from them all is Pietro, the young man who lounges on the wharf
to carry things from the steamer. He starts up from sleep like a
wild-cat as somebody claps him on the shoulder. It is the start of a man
who has many enemies. He is almost an outlaw. Will he ever find himself
in prison? He is the _gamin_ of the village, well detested.
He is twenty-four years old, thin, dark, handsome, with a cat-like
lightness and grace, and a certain repulsive, _gamin_ evil in his face.
Where everybody is so clean and tidy, he is almost ragged. His week's
beard shows very black in his slightly hollow cheeks. He hates the man
who has waked him by clapping him on the shoulder.
Pietro is already married, yet he behaves as if he were not. He has been
carrying on with a loose woman, the wife of the citron-coloured barber,
the Siciliano. Then he seats himself on the women's side of the theatre,
behind a young person from Bogliaco, who also has no reputation, and
makes her talk to him. He leans forward, resting his arms on the seat
before him, stretching his slender, cat-like, flexible loins. The
padrona of the hotel hates him--'_ein frecher Kerl_,' she says with
contempt, and she looks away. Her eyes hate to see him.
In the village there is the clerical party, which is the majority;
there is the anti-clerical party, and there are the ne'er-do-wells. The
clerical people are dark and pious and cold; there is a curious
stone-cold, ponderous darkness over them, moral and gloomy. Then the
anti-clerical party, with the Syndaco at the head, is bourgeois and
respectable as far as the middle-aged people are concerned, banal,
respectable, shut off as by a wall from the clerical people. The young
anti-clericals are the young bloods of the place, the men who gather
every night in the more expensive and less-respectable cafe. These young
men are all free-thinkers, great dancers, singers, players of the
guitar. They are immoral and slightly cynical. Their leader is the young
shopkeeper, who has lived in Vienna, who is a bit of a bounder, with a
veneer of sneering irony on an original good nature. He is well-to-do,
and gives dances to which only the looser women go, with these reckless
young men. He also gets up parties of pleasure, and is chiefly
responsible for the coming of the players to the theatre this carnival.
These young men are disliked, but they belong to the important class,
they are well-to-do, and they have the life of the village in their
hands. The clerical peasants are priest-ridden and good, because they
are poor and afraid and superstitious. There is, lastly, a sprinkling of
loose women, one who keeps the inn where the soldiers drink. These women
are a definite set. They know what they are, they pretend nothing else.
They are not prostitutes, but just loose women. They keep to their own
clique, among men and women, never wanting to compromise anybody else.
And beyond all these there are the Franciscan friars in their brown
robes, so shy, so silent, so obliterated, as they stand back in the
shop, waiting to buy the bread for the monastery, waiting obscure and
neutral, till no one shall be in the shop wanting to be served. The
village women speak to them in a curious neutral, official, slightly
contemptuous voice. They answer neutral and humble, though distinctly.
At the theatre, now the play is over, the peasants in their black hats
and cloaks crowd the hall. Only Pietro, the wharf-lounger, has no cloak,
and a bit of a cap on the side of his head instead of a black felt hat.
His clothes are thin and loose on his thin, vigorous, cat-like body, and
he is cold, but he takes no notice. His hands are always in his pockets,
his shoulders slightly raised.
The few women slip away home. In the little theatre bar the well-to-do
young atheists are having another drink. Not that they spend much. A
tumbler of wine or a glass of vermouth costs a penny. And the wine is
horrible new stuff. Yet the little baker, Agostino, sits on a bench with
his pale baby on his knee, putting the wine to its lips. And the baby
drinks, like a blind fledgeling.
Upstairs, the quality has paid its visits and shaken hands: the Syndaco
and the well-to-do half-Austrian owners of the woodyard, the Bertolini,
have ostentatiously shown their mutual friendship; our padrone, the
Signer Pietro Di Paoli, has visited his relatives the Graziani in the
box next the stage and has spent two intervals with us in our box;
meanwhile, his two peasants standing down below, pathetic, thin
contadini of the old school, like worn stones, have looked up at us as
if we are the angels in heaven, with a reverential, devotional eye, they
themselves far away below, standing in the bay at the back, below all.
The chemist and the grocer and the schoolmistress pay calls. They have
all sat self-consciously posed in the front of their boxes, like framed
photographs of themselves. The second grocer and the baker visit each
other. The barber looks in on the carpenter, then drops downstairs among
the crowd. Class distinctions are cut very fine. As we pass with the
padrona of the hotel, who is a Bavarian, we stop to speak to our own
padroni, the Di Paoli. They have a warm handshake and effusive polite
conversation for us; for Maria Samuelli, a distant bow. We realize
our mistake.
The barber--not the Siciliano, but flashy little Luigi with the big
tie-ring and the curls--knows all about the theatre. He says that Enrico
Persevalli has for his mistress Carina, the servant in _Ghosts_: that
the thin, gentle, old-looking king in _Hamlet_ is the husband of
Adelaida, and Carina is their daughter: that the old, sharp, fat little
body of a queen is Adelaida's mother: that they all like Enrico
Persevalli, because he is a very clever man: but that the 'Comic', Il
Brillante, Francesco, is unsatisfied.
In three performances in Epiphany week, the company took two hundred and
sixty-five francs, which was phenomenal. The manager, Enrico Persevalli,
and Adelaida pay twenty-four francs for every performance, or every
evening on which a performance is given, as rent for the theatre,
including light. The company is completely satisfied with its reception
on the Lago di Garda.
So it is all over. The Bersaglieri go running all the way home, because
it is already past half past ten. The night is very dark. About four
miles up the lake the searchlights of the Austrian border are swinging,
looking for smugglers. Otherwise the darkness is complete.
