Complete Poems and Plays (75 page)

C
OLBY
.
A potter!

S
IR
C
LAUDE.
     A potter. When I was a boy

I loved to shape things. I loved form and colour

And I loved the material that the potter handles.

Most people think that a sculptor or a painter

Is something more excellent to be than a potter.

Most people think of china or porcelain

As merely for use, or for decoration —

In either case, an inferior art.

For me, they are neither ‘use’ nor ‘decoration’ —

That is, decoration as a background for living;

For me, they are life itself. To be among such things,

If it is an escape, is escape into living,

Escape from a sordid world to a pure one.

Sculpture and painting — I have some good things —

But they haven’t this … remoteness I have always longed for.

I want a world where the form is the reality,

Of which the substantial is only a shadow.

It’s strange. I have never talked of this to anyone.

Never until now. Do you feel at all like that

When you are alone with your music?

C
OLBY
.
                                                     Just the same.

All the time you’ve been speaking, I’ve been translating

Into terms of music. But may I ask.

With this passion for … ceramics, how did it happen

That you never made it your profession?

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
Family pressure, in the first place.

My father — your grandfather — built up this business

Starting from nothing. It was
his
passion.

He loved it with the same devotion

That I gave to clay, and what could be done with it —

What I hoped I could do with it. I thought I despised him

When I was young. And yet I was in awe of him.

I was wrong, in both. I loathed this occupation

Until I began to feel my power in it.

The life changed me, as it is changing you:

It begins as a kind of make-believe

And the make-believing makes it real.

That’s not the whole story. My father knew I hated it:

That was a grief to him. He knew, I am sure,

That I cherished for a long time a secret reproach:

But after his death, and then it was too late,

I knew that he was right. And all my life

I have been atoning. To a dead father,

Who had always been right. I never understood him.

I was too young. And when I was mature enough

To understand him, he was not there.

C
OLBY
.
You’ve still not explained why you came to think

That your father had been right.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
                                     Because I came to see

That I should never have become a first-rate potter.

I didn’t have it in me. It’s strange, isn’t it,

That a man should have a consuming passion

To do something for which he lacks the capacity?

Could a man be said to have a vocation

To be a second-rate potter? To be, at best,

A competent copier, possessed by the craving

To create, when one is wholly uncreative?

I don’t think so. For I came to see

That I had always known, at the secret moments,

That I didn’t have it in me. There are occasions

When I am transported — a different person,

Transfigured in the vision of some marvellous creation,

And I feel what the man must have felt when he made it.

But nothing
I
made ever gave me that contentment —

That state of utter exhaustion and peace

Which comes in dying to give something life …

I intend that you shall have a good piano. The best.

And when you are alone at your piano, in the evening,

I believe you will go through the private door

Into the real world, as I do, sometimes.

C
OLBY
.
Indeed, I have felt, while you’ve been talking,

That it’s my own feelings you have expressed,

Although the medium is different. I know

I should never have become a great organist,

As I aspired to be. I’m not an executant;

I’m only a shadow of the great composers.

Always, when I play to myself,

I hear the music I should like to have written,

As the composer heard it when it came to him;

But when I played before other people

I was always conscious that what
they
heard

Was not what I hear when I play to myself.

What I hear is a great musician’s music,

What they hear is an inferior rendering.

So I’ve given up trying to play to other people:

I am only happy when I play to myself.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
You shall play to yourself. And as for me,

I keep my pieces in a private room.

It isn’t that I don’t want anyone to see them!

But when I am alone, and look at one thing long enough,

I sometimes have that sense of identification

With the maker, of which I spoke — an agonising ecstasy

Which makes life bearable. It’s all I have.

I suppose it takes the place of religion:

Just as my wife’s investigations

Into what she calls the life of the spirit

Are a kind of substitute for religion.

I dare say truly religious people —

I’ve never known any — can find some unity.

Then there are also the men of genius.

There are others, it seems to me, who have at best to live

In two worlds — each a kind of make-believe.

That’s you and me. Some day, perhaps,

I will show you my collection.

C
OLBY
.
                                          Thank you.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
And perhaps, some time, you will let me hear you play.

I shan’t mention it again. I’ll wait until you ask me.

Do you understand now what I meant when I spoke

Of accepting the terms life imposes upon you

Even to the point of accepting … make-believe?

C
OLBY
.
I think I do. At least, I understand
you
better

In learning to understand the conditions

Which life has imposed upon you. But … something in me

Rebels against accepting such conditions.

It would be so much simpler if you
weren’t
my father!

I was struck by what you said, a little while ago,

When you spoke of never having understood your father

Until it was too late. And you spoke of atonement.

Even your failure to understand him,

Of which you spoke — that was a relationship

Of father and son. It must often happen.

And the reconcilement, after his death,

That perfects the relation. You have always been his son

And he is still your father. I only wish

That I had something to atone for!

There’s something lacking, between you and me,

That you had, and have, and always will have, with your father.

I begin to see how I have always thought of you —

As a kind of protector, a generous provider:

Rather as a patron than a father —

The father who was missing in the years of childhood.

Those years have gone forever. The empty years.

Oh, I’m terribly sorry to be saying this;

But it goes to explain what I said just now

About rebelling against the terms

That life has imposed.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
                     It’s my own fault.

I was always anxious to avoid the mistakes

My father made with me. And yet I seem

To have made a greater mistake than he did.

C
OLBY
.
I know that I’m hurting you and I know

That I hate myself for hurting you.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
                                         You mustn’t think of that.

C
OLBY
.
I’m very grateful for all you’ve done for me;

And I want to do my best to justify your kindness

By the work I do.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
              As my confidential clerk.

C
OLBY
.
I’m really interested by the work I’m doing

And eager for more. I don’t want my position

To be, in any way, a make-believe.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
It shan’t be. Meanwhile, we must simply wait to learn

What new conditions life will impose on us.

Just when we think we have settled our account

Life presents a new one, more difficult to pay.

— I shall go now, and sit for a while with my china.

C
OLBY
.
Excuse me, but I must remind you:

You have that meeting in the City

Tomorrow morning. You asked me to prepare

Some figures for you. I’ve got them here.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
Much depends on my wife. Be patient with her, Colby.

— Oh yes, that meeting. We must run through the figures.

CURTAIN

The
flat
in
the
mews
a
few
weeks
later.
C
OLBY
is
seated
at
the
piano;
L
UCASTA
in
an
armchair.
The
concluding
bars
of
a piece
of
music
are
heard
as
the
curtain
rises.