IRA HAUPTMAN
427
knowing than mos t, and less inclined to conceal that knowingness
than practically a ll .
The play is progress to consciousness and dea th by consciousness.
It begins with the charac ter who is call ed in the text for con venien ce
Em il J an nin gs, rousing himse lf from sleep iness with a vague, self–
conscious w ill simil ar to H amm 's " Me to play." His condition is
similar to the dream-like sta te of the horseman on the thinl y-frozen
lake in the anecdo te referred to by the play's titl e. When the ho rsem an
becomes full y conscious he understands hi s predicament and dies.
The predicament is our reli ance o n the mind's interpreta ti ons of
experience, and even more on arbitrary communal assignments of
meanings to actions so tha t minds can work together. This insisten ce
on the meaning of events g ives our perceptions a fun ction , g ives
o urselves a fun cti on of interpretation-something to do whil e
ex isting - and of course ma kes communica ti on poss ibl e. But it destroys
our own relat ion to the world and to our own experiences. This self–
es trangement is our dreamlike sta te. When the pl ay's characters wake
themselves into an authenti city where interpreta ti on of experi ence is
no lo nger unconsciously compul sive, they experi ence grea t joy, but
find it no longer possible to li ve. They don 't di e happy, but a troph y.
T his is in essence the acti o n of the pl ay.
In dreams the imagina tion holds the contradi cti ons of a ll the inner
and o uter worlds togeth er without awa reness of its fea t. The play wi ll
make us awa re. We become aware tha t conversa tions become silly when
we talk o f things that aren 't present. We see our interpretations of
events in the li ght of the gro tesque compl exity of their true causes .
George: And then I saw th e rin gs aga in , a nd when what I thought
and what I saw coin cided so magica ll y, I was so ha ppy for a moment
th a t I couldn 't help bUl put the cigar box in your hand....
Jannings: And I felt you were handing me th e box volunta rily.
When forms o f action, such as a sales transaction in a sto re, coll apse,
the characters don 't know how to behave. They fa lsify experi ence to
enter a fo rm aga in . Or a fo rm dictates what wi ll happen : someone
automa ti call y closes an umbrell a because he has crossed the street.
We discover we no longer know how to rela te to things except
thro ugh the menta l
im ag~s
conjured by language. The number of steps
in a sta ircase mus t correspond to the number we have for them in our
minds or we fa ll.
Lang uage in thi s p lay is the constri ctin g power of menta l images ,
