Continual Conversation with a Silent Man or Waiting for Stevens

Abstract

Continual Conversation with a Silent Man or Waiting for Stevens Tony Sharpe This is the last day of a certain yearBeyond which there is nothing left of time.It comes to this and the imagination’s life. Setting: “Fernando’s Hideaway,” a bar in space Characters: Interlocutor (I), “Wallace Stevens” (WS), sitting side-by-side on barstools, facing the mirror behind the bar Performance Note: This is intended for a solo performer. A gesture is therefore needed to signify the silent responses made by “WS” (for whom an empty seat should be provided). Similarly, some gesture—such as “scare-quotes” fingers— should signify when “WS” actually speaks. When “I” returns to the stage to ventriloquize the final pronouncement of “WS,” “I” should sit in the latter’s seat. I: So, beers are on you tonight, huh, Wally? (punches him playfully on arm) WS: -------------------------------------------------------- I: Jest kidding—tho’, speaking as a native of poverty myself, I’m not sure how much Meursault or Johannisberger I’ll be knocking back in this here oddly glacial hostelry, beyond the last thought at the utmost crown of night. A really icy Elysée it seems to me, by no means as congenial and folksy as your Canoe Club was back home in Hartford, but in most ways even more exclusive, and certainly more apocalyptic. We do not talk poetry here, out on the edge of space. WS: -------------------------------------------------------- I: Whilst one may observe there’s a fire burning in that trompe l’oeuil hearth, crude foyer, its arctic effulgence emits only frigid brilliances. And out of [End Page 268] the window I see how the planets gather like leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa, blown like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing. It ain’t no crisp café in here, fer sure; but I sort of like its bronze decor and the palm tree with a fire-fangled bird in it, and isn’t that gal over there your old flame Stella Pallor? WS: -------------------------------------------------------- I: We’ll get round to girl talk—by which of course I mean boy talk about girls—maybe later. Stella doesn’t look too well, it’s true, but then none of us does, existing here in the stale grandeur of annihilation, so to speak— and who doesn’t speak so? For it is with a strange malice that we distort the world: malice in wonderland, really, shouldn’t we admit that? We dislike the world because we do . . . Your old flame: out of all the bars in all the galaxies she walks into this one, in the wee small hours of the morning. But, talking of wee, which way’s the restroom? And why do Americans call it that, anyway—it’s not as if you’d find armchairs to relax in or somewhere to put your feet up, fer Pete’s sake. Rest, rest, perturbèd bladder: I need to euphemate. WS: -------------------------------------------------------- I: You’re telling me it’s out of order? Ideas of disorder, irritating minor ideas, pour forth in this last-chance saloon; ideas, however, always trump bric-a-brac. Absent thee from facilities awhile . . . or maybe that’s not what you meant by “piss off.” I know I’m babbling a bit to fill the void, but you’ll get chattier later, I feel sure. I feel afraid. But if it is the accent of deviation in the living thing that is its life preserved, can we contrariwise deduce that the impulse to submission in the dying thing is its death accomplished, the convergence not too steep to follow downward to darkness, that surrenders difference in the conformism of death and its totalitarian gerund: Nox est perpetua una dormienda? Death is absolute and without memorial, difference disappears. WS: -------------------------------------------------------- I: As I’m sure you recall, Catullus wrote that, trying to get his girl into bed. Grrreat chat-up line! Una Dormienda sounds like she might well be some sort of Spanish dancer, she and Stella could maybe snap their castanets in a fandango, don’t you think, accompanied on his blue guitar by who else but Ramon Fernandez? And yet, sometimes, the Hispanic note in what you wrote leads on to severance: to some...