542
PARTISAN REVIEW
THE READING HAD STOPPED. The political actualization of the famous
play had been realized in the very last sentences of the text:
For twenty years a wall stood blocking change in East Germany. Not until this
year was the last "Berenger" overrun by the Rhinoceroses, and the wall
removed, opening up space for growth.
Perplexity should finally have burst out. Did the Rhinos remove the
wall? Didn't they actually build it? ...What kind of "growth" did they
want? asked the cricket buzzing imperceptibly in the Eastern European's
thoughts and in the American sentences read to the American youngsters.
No one seemed in a hurry to comment.
I
remembered the school of
long ago, in the country of long ago and far away. "Get back to your
seat, moron," the Teacher Rhino would roar at the silent class. The iron
roar and the iron and gall words had made me shrink in my desk,
ashamed at the shame of the classmate standing at the blackboard, and
terrified that the same thing would somehow happen to me all too soon.
ONE OF THE RIGHTS the exiled had discovered in America was exactly
this: the right to... "stupidity." Stupidity, ignorance, candor, and inno–
cence-cultural, political, social, and other. The nerve with which aber–
rant beliefs, feelings, and experiences are being proclaimed! And the
sacrosanct justification: "This is my opinion!" The void full of "self–
esteem," in which landmarks, comparisons, and inhibitions are
annulled; any admonition becomes "paternalistic," and therefore unac–
ceptable. Certainly the show is not necessarily funny. And yet, the unin–
hibited display of qualities and defects is quite rich in revelations (even
that "stupidity" is not always so foolish as it seems).
The inexhaustible energy of self-achievement is the hallmark of
American democracy. A people's democracy (how could it be other–
wise?), therefore also "vulgar" and "stupid," but impetuous in its
renewing vitality.
The exile had not forgotten the words of a poet who returned to
socialist Romania after spending a year in America and who, when asked
what seemed
to
him unique, unrivaled, one single thing, just one, finally
answered, overwhelmed: "The status of the ugly woman.
It
is the only
