Is drama poetry?

a sneak peek at my new play

I don’t have an opera of the week because I didn’t get to it this week, partly because spring cleaning and getting the garden ready and partly just because of being a mom.

I do, however, want to share a snippet from the second part of my Rabelais trilogy (The Death of Rabelais, forthcoming in October). There’s been a little chatter on here about whether drama can be poetry, etc. etc. and so on. I’m incessantly interested in “what is poetry” discussions, not because they really serve any purpose for a true artist but because they are so deliciously medieval.

The medievals loved distinctions and categories. They loved to group things each according to its kind. They loved it so much that they made an art not just of putting things in categories, but of talking about putting things in categories (Isidore comes to mind, of course, but there are many other examples). They reveled in contemplating the Filing-System-in-Speech, and not a dead filing system but a living and vibrant one, like Miss Lemon’s elusive card system from the Poirot stories. They longed for an utterly simple filing system, one in which all relations between all things were clear, transparent even, so they could see through the mesh of things to the God beyond (or within, or behind, or above, or however we put it) them.

There’s something wonderfully human about making an art form out of talking about the things we love. We’ve done this with literary criticism too; a lot of literary criticism is awful, but the best is incandescent with a beauty of its own. If we’re at a wedding (as we all always are, the wedding between the flesh and the spirit), Art is the bride, and she’s worth looking at. But sometimes it’s worth stealing a peek at the groom, whose face is radiant beholding her. That’s good literary criticism, and it’s a joy to see it.

I find finicky discussions of categories and types so very fun. They’re like cavier: it doesn’t give us any nutritional value to speak of, but dang it’s fun to eat. It’s fun to put those little red (or black, but I like red) globes on little pieces of toast with a tiny spoon and crunch them up. It makes me feel polished, cosmopolitan, urbane—all the things that actually making the art doesn’t.

So is The Death of Rabelais (and its older brother, Sonnez Les Matines, and its little sister whose name I can’t share yet but oh my she’s lovely) poetry? Is it drama? Is it both?

Can poetry live on stage? Or is it, as someone posted on here, “a thing of language only”? But is that really any distinction? Isn’t language itself a drama, a musical even, “full of sound and fury?

Does any of this matter? Not really. But it’s fun.

With that in mind, here’s your very own sneak peek at the opening speech of The Death of Rabelais, in which he begins his own struggle with categories, a struggle that launches him off on some very strange adventures.

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Act I
 
Scene I: A dark night—January 5th, the eve of Epiphany, the region of Champagne. The road runs through desolate wintry vineyards, and a freak snowstorm has blown up. A strong wind is in evidence. Across this scene tramps RABELAIS, a small pack on his back, walking with obvious difficulty. He is wearing a tattered but garish cape of several colors in broad patches, and his cap has been ingeniously split into two peaks, each tipped in tiny clay bells, though it is clearly improvised and the effect is less than striking. The road is deserted, but at the center of the stage it forks. There is no road sign. Reaching this crossroads, RABELAIS stops.
  
RABELAIS          

Now what is this? No crossroad should be here.

(He draws the cloak around himself against the wailing wind and blowing snow. Throughout this speech he stamps his feet, rubs his hands, and demonstrates increasing dismay.)
 
This road should run straight through the yards, and clear 
on to my aim, but now behold: my one
road has become two, even worse than none.
My brain’s not equal to the choice; tell me,
someone, where to go, since I’m not free
to follow in some simple way! Wicked 
days—each fool must walk the road he’s picked. 
Though what road I’ve picked, I cannot say--
hanging between patrons, every day
accus’ed by some former friend of what 
I yesterday denounced, each tiny cut
a chisel to my soul, till I don’t know 
myself if I am heretic or hero,
conspirator or clown, prophet or 
pariah . . . and all because I write a more
cheerful tale than my fellows do!
The world’s reforming, sure, and to a rougher
mold. All lines are sharper, chuckles gruffer,
slighter margin now for mirth, and every
joke’s a body only fit to bury.
I start to doubt if comedy is true, 
or if the surface only of this world 
is joy, and in the depths lies sorrow curled. 

(Thunder cracks and lightning flashes; it is that rare combination of a blizzard and a thunderstorm. Rabelais looks around for shelter, but there is none.) 
 
How this wind blows! Blows, now there’s a word at once
a thing and not a thing … there never was a dunce 
took heavier blows from iron fist than I from empty
wind today! What are these awful puns? Folly,
help me! My humor’s stopped and soured! This must be Death.
 
And on Epiphany Eve! When I sprawl, out of breath, 
upon this chilly earth, I’ve an epiphany 
forthcoming—the epiphany, most probably,
the last epiphany, the world’s buttocks fleeing
as I freeze . . . that’s for me, if I don’t quickly
escape this wind! 
                               This is when philosophers
would rattle on about existence, and adjure 
me to accept the evil fate I’m given, indenture 
myself to death’s teeth upon my throat, secure
his cape even while I’m strangled by it, capitulate 
my little head to every swinging axe, situate 
my grave here in this humdrum place, consider 
the stars whirling above my space and not be bitter,
Oh no! along with many other Latinate 
words that play so nicely beneath the sedate 
Tuscan sun but here, what here? Who bids me revel
in this outrageous weather? Who besides the devil
has the fiery balls to mention, as my nose
and fingers freeze, how sweetly, freely my soul goes! 
Who, in a maelstrom, bandies possibility
with airy spirits hellbent on hostility? 

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Hope you enjoy! I’ll share a few other snippets from the play here, leading up to the release this fall!