588
PAR
TIS AN REV
lEW
though the liquor is usually more important to him.
In
short, he is
Jamie Tyrone. Very often-since he represents in the Irish national
drama the Prince of Darkness-he is positively "Mephistophelean,"
which is the word used to describe Jamie Tyrone. Lest we think this
is an artistic stroke of O'Neill's imagination, we may remember that,
according to Frank Budgen, Joyce, who was in his own inimitable
wayan Irish "ne'er-do-well," was called by the chorus girls in the
Stadt theater in Zurich "Herr Satan" .and that Budgen's landlady was
actually afraid of this satanic gentleman, with his long thin face,
thick glasses, high forehead, and jaunty demeanor.
The Tyrones, like their ancient ancestors, are, to a man, non–
communal. Save for the reference to the Standard Oil Company and
a trip to the drugstore, modern American society does not exist for
them and certainly it plays no role in the play. But it
is
not only a
question of society; other people have no existence for the Tyrones.
The father, it is true, has his drunken cronies, but the family has
no social life at all, and the two sons and the mother are lone wolves.
The mother in particular feels and laments their isolation and
loneliness :
If
there was only some place I could go to get away for a day, or even
an afternoon, some woman friend I could talk to--not about anything
serious, simply laugh and gossip and forget for a while-someone besides
the servants-that stupid Cathleen!
Now it is true too that the Irish are indefatigably gregarious-witness
the people in
Ulysses.
Yet they are capable, especially in an alien
environment, of great isolation and loneliness, as
Long
Days
Journey
evidences.
For they are most profoundly and primarily committed-to get
to my last point-to the family. Everything pales
besid~
the fact of
the
family,
which is the macro-microcosm that blots out the universe
and takes the place of Hardy's Cosmic Forces, or Marx's march of
history, or Shaw's evolutionary powers, or Sinclair Lewis's middle
class, or Arthur Miller's "changing America." They are always swarm–
ing all over one another, simultaneously loving and torturing each
other. They can't leave one another alone, either in love or hate, yet
each assault-"you wish I were dead!" is punctuated by an un–
abashed sentiment and humorous affection.
