Six Characters in Search of an Author

A tenuous light surrounds them, almost as if irradiated by them—the faint breath of their fantastic reality.
This light will disappear when they come forward towards the actors. They preserve, however, something of the dream lightness in which they seem almost suspended; but this does not detract from the essential reality of their forms and expressions.

The FATHER (coming forward a little, followed by the others who seem embarrassed). As a manner of fact… we have come here in search of an author…
The MANAGER (half angry, half amazed). An author? What author?
The FATHER. Any author, sir.
The MANAGER. But there’s no author here.

No, excuse me, I meant it for you, sir, who were crying out that you had no time to lose with madmen, while no one better than yourself knows that nature uses the instrument of human fantasy in order to pursue her high creative purpose.

The author who created us alive no longer wished, or was no longer able, materially to put us into a work of art. And this was a real crime, sir; because he who has had the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. He cannot die. The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die. And to live for ever, it does not need to have extraordinary gifts or to be able to work wonders. Who was Sancho Panza? Who was Don Abbondio? Yet they live eternally because—live germs as they were—they had the fortune to find a fecundating matrix, a fantasy which could raise and nourish them: make them live for ever!

The whole trouble lies here. In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do. Look here! This woman (indicating the Mother) takes all my pity for her as a specially ferocious form of cruelty.

Oh, all these intellectual complications make me sick, disgust me—all this philosophy that uncovers the beast in man, and then seeks to save him, excuse him… I can’t stand it, sir. When a man seeks to “simplify” life bestially, throwing aside every relic of humanity, every chaste aspiration, every pure feeling, all sense of ideality, duty, modesty, shame… then nothing is more revolting and nauseous than a certain kind of remorse—crocodiles’ tears, that’s what it is.

For the drama lies all in this—in the conscience that I have, that each one of us has. We believe this conscience to be a single thing, but it is many-sided. There is one for this person, and another for that. Diverse consciences. So we have this illusion of being one person for all, of having a personality that is unique in all our acts. But it isn’t true. We perceive this when, tragically perhaps, in something we do, we are as it were, suspended, caught up in the air on a kind of hook. Then we perceive that all of us was not in that act, and that it would be an atrocious injustice to judge us by that action alone, as if all our existence were summed up in that one deed.

The drama consists finally in this: when that mother re-enters my house, her family born outside of it, and shall we say superimposed on the original, ends with the death of the little girl, the tragedy of the boy and the flight of the elder daughter. It cannot go on, because it is foreign to its surroundings. So after much torment, we three remain: I, the mother, that son. Then, owing to the disappearance of that extraneous family, we too find ourselves strange to one another. We find we are living in an atmosphere of mortal desolation which is the revenge, as he (indicating Son) scornfully said of the Demon of Experiment, that unfortunately hides in me.

And they want to put it on the stage! If there was at least a reason for it! He thinks he has got at the meaning of it all. Just as if each one of us in every circumstance of life couldn’t find his own explanation of it! (Pauses.) He complains he was discovered in a place where he ought not to have been seen, in a moment of his life which ought to have remained hidden and kept out of the reach of that convention which he has to maintain for other people. And what about my case? Haven’t I had to reveal what no son ought ever to reveal: how father and mother live and are man and wife for themselves quite apart from that idea of father and mother which we give them?

Excuse me, all of you! Why are you so anxious to destroy in the name of a vulgar, commonplace sense of truth, this reality which comes to birth attracted and formed by the magic of the stage itself, which has indeed more right to live here than you, since it is much truer than you—if you don’t mind my saying so? Which is the actress among you who is to play Madame Pace? Well, here is Madame Pace herself. And you will allow, I fancy, that the actress who acts her will be less true than this woman here, who is herself in person. You see my daughter recognized her and went over to her at once. Now you’re going to witness the scene!

On the stage you can’t have a character becoming too prominent and overshadowing all the others. The thing is to pack them all into a neat little framework and then act what is actable. I am aware of the fact that everyone has his own interior life which he wants very much to put forward. But the difficulty lies in this fact: to set out just so much as is necessary for the stage, taking the other characters into consideration, and at the same time hint at the unrevealed interior life of each. I am willing to admit, my dear young lady, that from your point of view it would be a fine idea if each character couldtell the public all his troubles in a nice monologue or a regular one hour lecture (good humoredly). You must restrain yourself, my dear, and in our own interest, too; because this fury of yours, this exaggerated disgust you show, may make a bad impression, you know. After you have confessed to me that there were others before him at Madame Pace’s and more than once…

The darned idiot! I said “curtain” to show the act should end there, and he goes and lets it down in earnest (to the Father, while he pulls the curtain back to go on to the stage again). Yes, yes, it’s all right. Effect certain! That’s the right ending. I’ll guarantee the first act at any rate.

The illusion! For Heaven’s sake, don’t say illusion. Please don’t use that word, which is particularly painful for us.

The FATHER. Can you tell me who you are?
The MANAGER (perplexed, half smiling). What? Who am I? I am myself.
The FATHER. And if I were to tell you that that isn’t true, because you are I…?

If you think of all those illusions that mean nothing to you now, of all those things which don’t even seem to you to exist any more, while once they were for you, don’t you feel that—I won’t say these boards—but the very earth under your feet is sinking away from you when you reflect that in the same way this you as you feel it today—all this present reality of yours—is fated to seem a mere illusion to you tomorrow?

I’m not philosophizing: I’m crying aloud the reason of my sufferings.

Authors, as a rule, hide the labour of their creations. When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him; and he has to will them the way they will themselves—for there’s trouble if he doesn’t. When a character is born, he acquires at once such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody even in many other situations where the author never dreamed of placing him; and so he acquires for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving him.

The SON (to Manager who stops him). I’ve got nothing to do with this affair. Let me go please! Let me go!
The MANAGER. What do you mean by saying you’ve got nothing to do with this?
The STEP-DAUGHTER (calmly, with irony). Don’t bother to stop him: he won’t go away.
The FATHER. He has to act the terrible scene in the garden with his mother.
The SON (suddenly resolute and with dignity). I shall act nothing at all. I’ve said so from the very beginning (to the Manager). Let me go!

SOME ACTORS. He’s dead! dead!
OTHER ACTORS. No, no, it’s only make believe, it’s only pretence!
The FATHER (with a terrible cry). Pretence? Reality, sir, reality!
The MANAGER. Pretence? Reality? To Hell with it all! Never in my life has such a thing happened to me. I’ve lost a whole day over these people, a whole day!
Curtain.