A lecture on playwright Tom Stoppard's use of literary form and literary history, including the Modernist movement Dadaism and the poetic form of the limerick, in his surreal-historical play Travesties.

1. Tom Stoppard: Life and Career
Tom Stoppard (1937-) Biography
• Born Tomáš Straussler, at Zlín,
Czechoslovakia.
• Family fled after Nazi invasion on March
15, 1939.
• His family moved to Singapore .
• His mother and siblings then fled to India
because of the Japanese invasion of
Singapore.
• His father died in Japanese prison camp.
• His mother married a British military
officer in 1945.
• At age 9, he moved with his mother and
stepfather to England, where he
completed his education.
• Left school at age 17; started working as a
journalist.

2. Tom Stoppard
Bristol Old Vic Stoppard: Life and Career
• He worked on a well-known local newspaper,
the Western Daily Press and Bristol Evening
World in the 1950s and early 1960s.
• He became a feature writer and drama critics.
• He made contacts at the Bristol Old Vic.
• By 1960 he is writing drama.
• A Ford Foundation grant helped him complete
his first dramatic success, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead (1967), which in some
ways reworks Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
(1953).
• His works reveal two main characteristics: (a) an
interest in comically revising/remaking well-
known literary works and genres, and (b) a
fascination with scholarly ideas, debates about
literature and aesthetics, and artistic practices.
• One his more recent plays, The Invention of Love
(1997), looks at the figure of the gay literary
writer—with reference to the poet, A. E.
Housman (author of A Shropshire Lad [1896)
and Oscar Wilde.

3. Title: Travesties
• Meanings of “travesty”
• 1. Dressed so as to be made ridiculous;
burlesqued. (Const. as pa. pple.) Obs. or only
as F.
• c1662 DAVENANT Play House to Let I. i, What
think you Of Romances travesti..Burlesque
and Travesti? These are hard words, And may
be French, but not Law-French.

4. Title: Travesties
• 1. A literary composition which aims at
exciting laughter by burlesque and ludicrous
treatment of a serious work; literary
composition of this kind; hence, a grotesque
or debased imitation or likeness; a caricature.
• 1674 BUTLER Hud. I. III. Annot. 196 This
Vickars..translated Virgils Æneides into as
horrible Travesty in earnest, as the French
Scaroon did in Burlesque.

5. Title: Travesties
• 2. a. Chiefly Theatr. In etymological sense: An alteration of
dress or appearance; a disguise. spec. (dressing in) the
attire of the opposite sex. Freq. (en) travesti.
The phr. en travesti(e), which is not recorded in Fr.,
represents a misinterpretation of the F. pa. pple. as a n.
• 1732 SIR C. WOGAN Let. to Swift 27 Feb., My design was to
have travelled..incognito... But all my art and travestie was
vain. 1823 BYRON Juan V. lxxiv, ‘At least’, said Juan, ‘sure I
may inquire The cause of this odd travesty?’ 1850
THACKERAY Pendennis II. x. 102 He went into the pit, and
saw..that eminent buffo actor, Tom Horseman, dressed as
a woman. Horseman's travestie seemed to him a horrid
and hideous degradation.

6. Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Zurich
Kaufleuten, Zurich, where Wilde’s Comedy
was Performed in March 1918

7. Time of Play: March 1918
Switzerland during WWI
• Switzerland remained
neutral during World war
One.
• The country became a
haven for pacifists, socialist
revolutionaries, and avant-
garde artists.
• Zurich was a haven for
Bolsheviks, Dadaists, and
artistic and literary exiles.
1914-1918: Timeline
• February 4, 1914, Lenin moves to
Switzerland, protesting WWI, and in 1916
publishes Imperialism, the Highest Stage
of Capitalism.
• James Joyce moves to Zurich in 1915 to
escape WWI. He lives there until 1920.
• February 6, 1916—founding of Cabaret
Voltaire, Zurich, a Dadaist nightclub: home
of experimental sound poetry,
performance art, anarchism, and anti-war
protest.
• February 1917: Tsar Nicholas II abdicates.
Lenin leaves Switzerland for Russia.
Arrives in April 1917.
• March 1918: English Players perform The
Importance of Being Earnest, with James
Joyce and Henry Carr in the production.

8. Source: Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce
(1959, revised 1982)
Ellmann’s Famous Biography Richard Ellmann (1918-87)
• High acclaimed literary
biographer.
• Author of three influential
biographies:
• W.B. Yeats: The Man and
His Masks (1948, rev. 1979)
• James Joyce (1959, rev.
1982)
• Oscar Wilde (1987)

9. The Event: A Production of Oscar Wilde’s The
Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Wilde’s Posthumous Reputation
• Wilde’s name was so besmirched at
time of his death that obituary
writers sometimes did not mention
his name.
• February 1902, George Alexander
revives Earnest in London.
• February 1905: edition of Wilde’s De
Profundis (his memoirs) brings
Wilde’s name back into circulation.
• 1914: Jacob Epstein’s monument to
Wilde’s unveiled at Père Lachaise,
Paris. (The sphinx’s testicles cause
offense.)
• By WWI, Wilde popular again. Joyce,
in particular, is immersed in Wilde’s
writings.

10. Key Players: James Joyce (1882-1941)
Life and Career through WWI
• Born into large Catholic family that
experienced deepening poverty, owing to
father’s drinking and inability to maintain job
as a tax collector.
• From 1888 to 1892 attended Clongowes
Wood School, a Jesuit institution.
• 1898-1903 studies modern languages
(French, Italian, English) at University College
Dublin.
• June 1904: marries Nora Barnacle.
• Moves to Zurich, then Pola (Croatia), and
finally Trieste, where he teaches at a
language school until 1915.
• Publishes book of brilliant short stories,
Dubliners, in 1914. Stories were written in
1906.
• Serializes Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man in the Egoist 1914-1915.
James Joyce at Zurich, 1919

11. James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
Joyce, Ulysses, First Edition, Published by Sylvia
Beach at Shakespeare and Company, Paris History of Ulysses
• Began composing work in 1914.
• Serialized in the American Little
Review, 1918-1920. Banned in US
after court case in 1921.
• Focus on life of Leopold Bloom,
on June 14, 1904, in Dublin.
• Takes its structure from Homer’s
Odyssey.
• First US edition appeared in 1934;
first UK edition issued in 1936.
• The work is a monument of
literary modernism; it amounts to
over a quarter of a million words.

12. Extract from Joyce, “Oxen of the Sun,”
episode 14 of Ulysses
• Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus.
• Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn,
quickening and wombfruit. Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.
• Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!
• Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are
being held as most profitably by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that
which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind's ornament
deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other
circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously
asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that
proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the
certain sign of omnipotent nature's incorrupted benefaction. For who is there who anything of some
significance has apprehended but is conscious that that exterior splendour may be the surface of a
downwardtending lutulent reality or on the contrary anyone so is there unilluminated as not to perceive
that as no nature's boon can contend against the bounty of increase so it behoves every most just citizen
to become the exhortator and admonisher of his semblables and to tremble lest what had in the past
been by the nation excellently commenced might be in the future not with similar excellence
accomplished if an inverecund habit shall have gradually traduced the honourable by ancestors
transmitted customs to that thither of profundity that that one was audacious excessively who would
have the hardihood to rise affirming that no more odious offence can for anyone be than to oblivious
neglect to consign that evangel simultaneously command and promise which on all mortals with prophecy
of abundance or with diminution's menace that exalted of reiteratedly procreating function ever
irrevocably enjoined?

13. Joyce, “Oxen of the Sun”
Carmen Avale
• enos Lases iuvate
enos Lases iuvate
enos Lases iuvate
• neve lue rue Marmar sins incurrere in pleoris
neve lue rue Marmar sins incurrere in pleoris
neve lue rue Marmar sins incurrere in pleoris
• satur fu, fere Mars, limen sali, sta berber
satur fu, fere Mars, limen sali, sta berber
satur fu, fere Mars, limen sali, sta berber
• semunis alterni advocapit conctos
semunis alterni advocapit conctos
semunis alterni advocapit conctos
• enos Marmor iuvato
enos Marmor iuvato
enos Marmor iuvato
• triumpe triumpe triumpe triumpe triumpe
Joyce’s Imitation of the Carmen
Arvale
• Deshil: from Irish deasil or
deisiol—meaning to turn to
the right in a ritual
pertaining to good fortune
or consecration.
• Holles: Holles Street—
location of the maternity
hospital in Dublin where
Mina Purefoy gives birth.
• Eamus: Latin for “Let us go.”

14. Key Players: Tristan Tzara (1896-1963)
Tristan Tzara Tzara: Life and Career
• Jewish-Romanian artist,
performer, and writer.
• Raised in Moldavia and
Bucharest.
• As a student, he became
deeply involved with the
Romanian avant-garde.
• Impulse of his art was anti-
establishment, anti-
war/pacifist, and anti-”Truth.”
• Moves to Zurich in 1915.

15. Dadaism
Bulletin Dada Der Dada

16. Dada Manifestoes:
First manifesto, 1916 by German poet Hugo Ball (1886-
1927)
• Dada is a new tendency in art. One can tell this from the fact that until
now nobody knew anything about it, and tomorrow everyone in Zurich
will be talking about it. Dada comes from the dictionary. It is terribly
simple. In French it means "hobby horse". In German it means "good-
bye", "Get off my back", "Be seeing you sometime". In Romanian: "Yes,
indeed, you are right, that's it. But of course, yes, definitely, right". And so
forth.
• An International word. Just a word, and the word a movement. Very easy
to understand. Quite terribly simple. To make of it an artistic tendency
must mean that one is anticipating complications. Dada psychology, dada
Germany cum indigestion and fog paroxysm, dada literature, dada
bourgeoisie, and yourselves, honoured poets, who are always writing with
words but never writing the word itself, who are always writing around
the actual point. Dada world war without end, dada revolution without
beginning, dada, you friends and also-poets, esteemed sirs,
manufacturers, and evangelists. Dada Tzara, dada Huelsenbeck, dada
m'dada, dada m'dada dada mhm, dada dera dada, dada Hue, dada Tza.

17. Dada Manifestoes:
Second manifesto, 1918, by Tristan Tzara
• DADA DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING
• If we consider it futile, and if we don't waste our time over a word that doesn't mean anything... The first thought
that comes to these minds is of a bacteriological order: at least to discover its etymological, historical or
psychological meaning. We read in the papers that the negroes of the Kroo race call the tail of a sacred cow: DADA.
A cube, and a mother, in a certain region of Italy, are called: DADA. The word for a hobby horse, a children's nurse,
a double affirmative in Russian and Romanian, is also: DADA. Some learned journalists see it as an art for babies,
other Jesuscallingthelittlechildrenuntohim saints see it as a return to an unemotional and noisy primitivism - noise
and monotonous. A sensitivity cannot be built on the basis of a word; every sort of construction converges into a
boring sort of perfection, a stagnant idea of a golden swamp, a relative human product. A work of art shouldn't be
beauty per se, because it is dead; neither gay nor sad, neither light nor dark; it is to rejoice or maltreat
individualities to serve them up the cakes of sainted haloes or the sweat of a meandering chase through the
atmosphere. A work of art is never beautiful, by decree, objectively, for everyone. Criticism is, therefore, useless; it
only exists subjectively, for every individual, and without the slightest general characteristic. Do people imagine
they have found the psychic basis common to all humanity? The attempt of Jesus, and the Bible, conceal, under
their ample, benevolent wings: shit, animals and days. How can anyone hope to order the chaos that constitutes
that infinite, formless variation: man? The principle: "Love thy neighbour" is hypocrisy. "Know thyself" is utopian,
but more acceptable because it includes malice. No pity. After the carnage we are left with the hope of a purified
humanity. I always speak about myself because I don't want to convince, and I have no right to drag others in my
wake, I'm not compelling anyone to follow me, because everyone makes his art in his own way, if he knows
anything about the joy that rises like an arrow up to the astral strata, or that which descends into the mines strewn
with the flowers of corpses and fertile spasms. Stalactites: look everywhere for them, in creches magnified by pain,
eyes as white as angels' hares. Thus DADA was born* , out of a need for independence, out of mistrust for the
community. People who join us keep their freedom. We don't accept any theories. We've had enough of the cubist
and futurist academies: laboratories of formal ideas. Do we make art in order to earn money and keep the dear
bourgeoisie happy? Rhymes have the smack of money, and inflexion slides along the line of the stomach in profile.
Every group of artists has ended up at this bank, straddling various comets. Leaving the door open to the
possibility of wallowing in comfort and food.

18. Tristan Tzara, “To Make Dadaist
Poem” (1924)
• Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the
length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words
that make up this article and put them all
in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the
other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which
they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are--an infinitely original
author of charming sensibility, even
though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.
*
• * Example:
when dogs cross the air in a diamond like ideas and the
appendix of the meninx tells the time of the alarm
programme (the title is mine) prices they are yesterday
suitable next pictures/ appreciate the dream era of the
eyes/ pompously that to recite the gospel sort darkens/
group apotheosis imagine said he fatality power of
colours/ carved flies (in the theatre) flabbergasted
reality a delight/ spectator all to effort of the no more
10 to 12/ during divagation twirls descends pressure/
render some mad single-file flesh on a monstrous
crushing stage/ celebrate but their 160 adherents in
steps on put on my nacreous/ sumptuous of land
bananas sustained illuminate/ joy ask together almost/
of has the a such that the invoked visions/ some sings
latter laughs/ exits situation disappears describes she 25
dance bows/ dissimulated the whole of it isn't was/
magnificent has the band better light whose lavishness
stage music-halls me/ reappears following instant
moves live/ business he didn't has lent/ manner words
come these people

19. V.I. Lenin (1870-1924)
V.I. Lenin Life and Career
• Raised in an anti-establishment family that
opposed the Tsar.
• Trained in law and modern languages.
• Active in revolutionary organizations in Russia in
the 1890s.
• Traveled in Europe in 1900.
• Active in the 1905 Revolution.
• In exile again after the failed 1907 November
Revolution.
• Prolific Marxist writer.
• He broke with many other revolutionaries in
their support of their homelands in WWI.
• Manage to reach St. Petersburg in spring of
1917.

20. Literature and Nonsense: Limericks
From Edward Lear, A Book of
Nonsense (1845) History of the Limerick
• Five-line poem that originates in Ireland, dating from the
eighteenth century.
• Popularized by Edward Lear in his 1845 Book of Nonsense.
• Tends to be written in anapestic meter (x x /): two lines of
anapestic trimiter + two lines of anapestic dimiter + one line
of anapestic trimiter.
• The striking movement of the meter makes often clashes in
tone with the words that take the stress—i.e. the stresses
give undue weight to specific words (such as “rabbits”).
• Limericks, which usually follows an aabba rhyme scheme,
sound as if they take the form of epigrammatic wisdom.
• But limericks generally create nonsensical or meaningless
formulations—ones that have no moral insight whatsoever.
• Limericks tend to be much more interested in silly rhymes,
childish word play, and verbal absurdities.
• The form has frequently been used for writing obscene verse.
• The dialogue in limericks (pp.16-17) focuses attention on the
“nonsense” of art in a time of war.

21. Limericks and Ballad Measure
Ballad Measure
• 4 lines of 4 beats (Long Meter):
• / / / /
• Twinkle, twinkle little star.
• / / / /
• How I wonder what you are.
• / / / /
• Up above the world so high,
• / / / /
• Like a diamond in the sky.
• Common Measure alternates 4-3-4-3 with a silent offbeat:
• / / / /
• Because I could not stop for Death—
• / / / ( / )
• He kindly stopped for me—
• / / / /
• The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
• / / / ( / )
• And Immortality.
Short Meter
• 4 lines alternating 3 – 3 – 4 – 3
• / / / ( / )
• Hickory dickory dock!
• / / / ( / )
• The mouse ran up the clock.
• / / / /
• The clock struck one; the mouse ran down.
• / / / ( / )
• Hickory dickory dock!
• Many nursery rhymes and hymns are in this
measure, and Emily Dickinson’s poetry uses all
of these traditional hymn forms

22. Limericks and Ballad Measure
Short Meter
• 3-3-4-3 becomes 3-3-2-2-3:
• / / / ( / )
• Hickory dickory dock!
• / / / ( / )
• The mouse ran up the clock.
• / /
• The clock struck one;
• / /
• the mouse ran down.
• / / / ( / )
• Hickory dickory dock!
P. 16
• I . . . sorry . . . would you say that again?
• Begob – I’d better explain
• I’m told that you are a –
• Miss Carr! Mr. Tzara!
• B’jasus’. Joyce is the name.
• I’m sorry! – how terribly rude!
• Henry – Mr. Joyce! How d’you do?
• Delighted! Good day!
• I just wanted to say
• How sorry I am to intrude.

23. Limericks
p. 30
• / / /
• I’m sorry! – how terribly rude!
• [ ] / / /
• Henry – Mr. Joyce! How d’you do?
• / /
• Delighted! Good day!
• / / /
• I just wanted to say
• / / /
• How sorry I am to intrude.
P. 30
• / / /
• Dublin, don’t tell me you know it?
• Only from the guidebook, and I gather you are in
the process of revising that. Yes.
• [ ] / / /
• Oh! I’m sorry – how terribly rude!
• [ ] / / /
• Henry – Mr Joyce – How’d you do?
• / /
• Delighted. Good day.
• / /
• I just wanted to say –
• / / /
• Do you know Mr. Tzara, the poet?

24. Tzara Does a Dada Cut-Up of
Shakespeare’s Sonnet #18
Sonnet #18
• Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course
untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his
shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Tzara’s Method
• “All poetry is a reshuffling
of a pack of picture cards,
and all poets are cheats’
(35).
• “I do not know what
poetical is” (35).
• “I was not born under a
rhyming planet” (36).
• “It has no meaning” (38).

25. Joyce Challenges Tzara’s Methods
Tzara on Dada
• “Tzara discovered the word
Dada by accident in a
Larousse Dictionary” (40).
• “The right to urinate in
different colours” (41).
• “It’s too late for geniuses!
Now we need vandals and
desecrators” (41).
Joyce on Art
• “An artist is the magician put
among me to gratify-capriciously
—their urge for immortality”
(41).
• “What now of the trohjan War if
it had been passed over by the
artist’s touch?” (42)
• Sounding like Lady Bracknell
when he speak to Tzara: “I would
strongly advise you to try and
acquire some genius and if
possible some subtlety before the
season is quite over” (42).

26. Why Perform The Importance of Being
Earnest in the Middle of a War?
Joyce’s Ostensible View
• “By the fortune of war,
Zurich has become the
theatrical center of Europe”
(32).
• But there is “nothing from
England” (32).
• “The English Players intend
to mount a repertoire of
masterpieces that will show
the Swiss who leads the
world in dramatic art” (32).
Carr’s and Gwen’s Responses
• Carr: “It is a play written by
an Irish . . . Gommorahist”
(33).
• Gwen to Carr: “You were a
wonderful Goneril at Eton,
Henry” (32).
• Carr: “But could he be
wearing a—boater? . .
Cream flannel” (34).

27. End of Act I: Carr Recalls the Law Suits
• Carr and Joyce took out separate law suits
against each other over money from the
production of The Importance of Being Earnest.
• The two men were at war with each other over
small sums of money and professional dignity.
• They took this dispute over the production of
Wilde’s comedy in deadly earnest.
• The fact that the stakes were so high for them in
a time of war looks utterly absurd—a travesty.

28. Act II: Carr (Who Plays Algernon)
Pretends to be Tristan Tzara to Cecily!
Travesties Rewrites Earnest
• Travesties performs a “cut-up” of
Earnest, in a manner that at times
resembles Tzara’s methods.
• But the “cut-up” has a purpose.
• Carr, pretending to be Jack Tzara,
reveals that he is not a “decadent
nihilist.”
• Carr is too muddled to see that he can
use Cecily to find out everything the
British secret service want to find out
about Lenin’s activism.
• Cecily reveals everything she knows
about Lenin—especially the ways in
which Lenin’s ideas inform
understandings of art.
Cecily Spouting Lenin
• “Oscar Wilde was a bourgeois
individualist” (49).
• “The sole duty and justification
for art is social criticism” (49).
• “[W] e live in age when the social
order is seen to be the work of
material forces and we have been
given an entirely new kind of
responsibility, the responsibility
of changing society” (50).
• “Ever since Jack told me he had a
younger brother who was a
decadent nihilist it has been my
girlish dream to reform you and
to love you” (53).

29. Why Does Travesties Make Lenin Sound (Momentarily)
like Lady Bracknell?
Lenin Prepares to Leave for St.
Petersburg
• Lenin has to figure out how to
make his way to Russia—with
the help of stand-ins,
individuals who impersonate
him and Zinoviev, and disguise
(“I can wear a wig” [54]).
• “Really, if the lower orders
don’t set us a good example
what on earth is the use of
them! . . . To lose one
revolution is unfortunate. To
lose two would look like
carelessness” (58).
Why this Travesty of Lenin?
• By making Lenin sound like Lady Bracknell on
p.58, it may be that Travesties wants to point
to a sharp social or political critique in
Earnest.
• Then again, by focusing on Lenin’s interest in
disguise, Travesties may be pointing to the
theatricality of his journey to the Finland
Station.
• Or it could be that Travesties wants to show
that there was an absurdity in the Russian
Revolution, which led in the end to Leonid
Brezhnev’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia
—where Stoppard was born.
• Or it might reveal that Leninism needed an
injection of rebellious humor and art in its
desire to transform the material conditions
of society.

30. Lenin on Literature and Artistic
Freedom: The Marxist Hard Line
• “Today, literature must become party literature. Down with non-partisan
literature!” (58)
• “We want to establish . . . A press press, free . . . from bourgeois anarchist
individualism” (59).
• “Socialist literature and art will be free because the idea of socialism and
sympathy with the working people, instead of greed and careerism, will bring ever
new forces into its ranks!” (59)
• “Tolstoy reflected the stored –up hatred and the readiness for a new future—and
at the same time the immature dreaming and political flabbiness which was one of
the main causes for the failure of the 1905 revolution” (60).
• Quoting Maxim Gorky: “We artists are irresponsible people” (60). Gorky became
one of the most vexed figures in the subsequent Stalinist censorship of literature
and art because Gorky believed in “culture” as a key component in strengthening
the socialist state.
• Gorky wrote The Lower Depths (1902): a realist play that depicts the oppressed
Russian underclass in a pessimistic manner. Lenin, we learn on p.61, watched the
drama in 1903; it made him avoid “the theatre for a long time.”

31. Lenin Hearing Mayakovsky’s Poetry (“he nearly
jumped out of his skin”) (61)
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-
1930) Mayakovsky and Futurism
• Influenced by Italian poet F.T. Marinetti’s
Futurist Manifesto (1909).
• Marinetti famously declared: “We declare that
the splendor of the world has been enriched
by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing
automobile with its bonnet adorned with
great tubes like serpents with explosive breath
... a roaring motor car which seems to run on
machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the
Victory of Samothrace.”
• And this: “Beauty exists only in struggle. There
is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive
character. Poetry must be a violent assault on
the forces of the unknown, to force them to
bow before man. “
• Mayakovsky’s Futurist poetry became popular
in the early Soviet Union but it did not fit into
the program of Stalinist art.
• He shot himself in 1930.

32. Soviet Art under Stalin (in Power form
1927 to 1953)
Favored: Arkadii Piastov, Life on
the Collective Farm (1937)
Disfavored: Kazemir Malevich,
composition dating from 1916

33. Travesties: The Ending
What has Been the Point of the
Play?
• In old age, the married couple,
Cecily and Carr, recall their
time at Zurich in 1917-18.
• They look back on an age
when Joyce, Tzara, and Lenin
occupied the same time and
place.
• But it was a time when the
three individuals could not
create the kind of dialogue
that Travesties has put on
stage.
What Historical Sense Can We
Make of this Setting?
• Is it a travesty that these revolutionary
artists and political revolutionaries
could learn nothing from one another?
• Is it absurd that their respective
revolutions became alienated from one
another?
• In a different world, might avant-garde
art/literature and Leninism been able
to learn from one another?
• Isn’t it absurd that Joyce and Carr went
to war with each other over the profits
from the production of Earnest—when
what mattered was the excellence of
Wilde’s play during a politically
distraught era?