Assess The Role Of Carr In — страница 2

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is someone who makes art mean the things he does’. By means of this redefinition, Tzara apparently hopes that art can regain the importance it once had as an improver of the human condition:> When the strongest began to fight for the tribe, and the fastest to hunt, it was the artist who became the priest-guardian of the magic that conjured the intelligence out of the appetites. Without him, man would be a coffee-mill. Eat – grind – shit. Hunt – “> eat<- “fight “>grind<”> – saw the logs – ” shit”>. The difference between being a man and being a coffee-mill is art. Thus, in spite of his rejection of traditional art forms, Tzara sees art itself as a superior kind of activity. In this regard, he chides Carr, who has escaped the war by

coming to Switzerland, for spending his time as a diplomat rather than as an artist. Carr’s position develops out of the interchange with Tzara. In the first place, Carr disagrees with Tzara’s account of the demise of traditional values and of logic and causality. He claims vehemently to have gone to war out of a sense of duty, for the sake of patriotism and love of freedom, and he dismisses Tzara’s more cynical interpretation – that war is ‘capitalism with the gloves off’ – as being mere phrasemaking. Furthermore, Carr’s view of the war gains credence from his actually having served in the trenches. While he admits to having forgotten what the causes of the war were, still he maintains that the war had causes and therefore cannot be pointed to as proof of the

inapplicability of causality to human affairs. Also, he undercuts Tzara’s rejection of cleverness by pointing out that the rejection itself is cleverly phrased. Secondly, Carr refuses to accept Tzara’s redefinition of art. As before, he insists that Tzara’s reassigning of labels cannot change the reality of the things labelled; just as to call a pedestrian activity ‘flying’ does not lift one off the ground, so to call a nonartistic activity ‘art’ does not make that activity artistic. Carr himself defines art in a more traditional way: ‘An artist is someone who is gifted in some way that enables him to do something more or less well which can only be done badly or not at all by someone who is not thus gifted’. Like much of Carr’s thinking, this definition lacks

brilliance but possesses a certain aura of practicality or common sense. Finally, Carr assigns to art a much lower valuation than Tzara does. To be an artist, according to Carr, is to abandon more serious concerns, such as those of the political realm: ‘to be an artist “>at all”> is like living in Switzerland during a world war’. The business of the artist is ‘to beautify existence’, and while this purpose has some importance, it does not have the overwhelming importance that has been assigned to it by artists: CARR: Art is absurdly overrated by artists, which is understandable, but what is strange is that it is absurdly overrated by everyone else. TZARA: Because man cannot live by bread alone. CARR: Yes, he can. It’s art he can’t live on. . . . What is an

artist? For every thousand people there’s nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard, who’s the artist. . . . The idea of the artist as a special kind of human being is art’s greatest achievement, and it’s a fake! In conclusion, Carr seems to consider art a form of clever nonsense, capable of providing amusement and even beauty to human life, but not deserving the kind of esteem that has been bestowed on it either for its contribution to the improvement of the human situation, as Tzara would have it, or for its own sake, as Joyce will argue. The discussion between Carr and Tzara ends inconclusively, and Joyce enters with Gwendolen. The remainder of Act One deals primarily with Joyce’s views and the reactions of Tzara and Carr

to them. Joyce’s arguments with Tzara serve to establish Joyce’s status as defender of the traditional approach to art as an activity of great importance. In the main, the interaction between Carr and Joyce in Act One focuses on Joyce’s proposal to mount a production of “>The Importance of Being Earnest”> and his invitation to Carr to take part in the production. Little overt discussion of contrasting views of art and politics takes place between Carr and Joyce, but a criticism of Joyce’s position is contained in the version of their interaction which is supplied by Carr’s memory. In the first place, Carr cannot remember Joyce’s name; he calls the Irishman Doris, then Janice, then Phyllis. Of course, this misnaming serves in part to show up the limits of