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the comparison between the two plays offers a good example of what
I have called the partial perspectives of the modern theater.
But in spite of its greater artistry and self-consciousness,
Heart–
break House
has its blemishes. Ellie, like Major Barbara, is not quite
objectified; the author has, and demands of us, a sympathy for
her which violates the convention of farce . And at the end of the
play, when the bombs fall and it is time to send the audience
hom~
Shaw cannot resist a little preaching: he seems to wish to say that
his farcical vision need not be accepted at all
if
we will only mend
our ways; that we are all right, really. The therapist and drawing
room entertainer is even here not quite replaced by the inspired clown,
with his disinterested vision of action as rationalizing in the void.
Thus we are brought to the crux of our problem: why is it that the
Shavian inspiration, so strong and lively, never quite finds a con–
sistent convention and a completely-accepted form?
Shaw never discovered a publicly-acceptable, agreed-on basis
in reality outside his peculiar comic perspective, whereby it might
have been consistently and objectively defined. All comedy is con–
ventional, and hence unreal; but Shaw does not make the distinction
between the real and his own ironic perspective upon it. This is as
much as to say that his perspective, or comic inspiration, is that of
romantic irony: the basis of this theses, of his rationalized characters,
and of the movement of his dialogue, is the
unresolved
paradox.
The paradoxes of the discursive reason cannot be resolved without
an appeal to something outside the discursive reason.
If
the Emanci–
pated Mind is to be really emancipated, its freedom must be that of
the squirrel cage, and its life (having neither beginning, middle, nor
end) as formless as the squirrel's perpetual race.
In
The Magic M ounlain
Hans Castorp and Settembrini are
discussing irony. The only variety which Settembrini admits is what
he calls "direct, classic irony," in which the ambiguity is a rhetorical
device only, and the meaning of the ironist is unmistakeable. I should
prefer to call it neoclassic, to distinguish it from Sophoclean irony,
and because it is certainly the irony of Moliere. For example, consider
the platform of Moliere's imaginary invalid, Argan: it is as absurd
as Lady Brit's. Argan is making a career of invalidism, and (like
a Shavian character) he is prepared to accept all the logical conse–
quences of his position. But in the light of the sturdy common sense
