Back to the Classcs #16

I read this book for the 2019 Back to the Classics Reading Challenge

Classic Play. George Orwell once said The Devil’s Disciple and the play discussed below were Shaw’s best. So that was recommendation enough for me since Orwell pointed me to Smollett too. Anyway, the script is at this link and a 1989 TV production with the distractingly beautiful and talented Helena Bonham Carter is at this link.

Arms and the Man (1896) – Bernard Shaw

Set in 1885, in Bulgaria during war with Serbia, a Swiss mercenary finds refuge in a Bulgarian rich girl’s bedroom. It turns out that she is the fiancée of a Bulgarian who led a mad charge that forced the Swiss merc and his men to flee the field. Raina is filled with poetic notions of war, the romance of battle, the savagery of the foeman. But  Bluntschli disabuses her of the nobility of war and sacrifice.

Bluntschli: You never saw a cavalry charge, did you?

Raina: How could I?

Bluntschli: Ah, perhaps not - of course not. Well, it's a funny sight. It's like slinging a handful of peas against a window pane: first one comes, then two or three close behind him and then all the rest in a lump.

Raina: [in rapture] Yes, the first one! - the bravest of the brave!

Bluntschli: Hm! you should see the poor devil pulling at his horse.

Raina: Why should he pull at his horse?

Bluntschli: [impatient of such a silly question] It's running away with him, of course! Do you suppose the fellow wants to get there before the others and be killed?

When we read these old plays, we may feel that they are going over old ground, about issues and notions we post-moderns don’t have to mind much anymore. Chivalry. Nationalistic romanticism. Inequality &injustice as expressions of the natural order as ordained by Heaven.

But Shaw makes an even more basic point that still resonates these days: that people court damaging their own self-respect when they are so idealistic that they can’t possibly live up to their own lofty ideals. Perfectionism and lack of discernment of their own abilities and preferences make them flail around, never decisive about their aspirations. Shaw also implies shallow knowingness, tacky worldliness, and cold-blooded cynicism will undermine courage and fortitude.

Know thyself. The romantic warrior Sergius sees how ridiculous his posturing is but only up to a point while Bluntschli doesn’t the time or energy or interest to put him wise:

Sergius: Bluntschli, I have allowed you to call me a blockhead. You may now call me a coward as well. I refuse to fight you. Do you know why?

Bluntschli: No, but it doesn't matter. I didn't ask the reason when you cried on and I don't ask the reason now that you cry off. I'm a professional soldier. I fight when I have to and am very glad to get out of it when I haven't to. You're only an amateur; you think fighting's an amusement.

Sergius: You shall hear the reason all the same, my professional. The reason is that it takes two men - real men - men of heart, blood and honor - to make a genuine combat. I could no more fight with you than I could make love to an ugly woman. You've no magnetism: you're not a man, you're a machine.

Bluntschli: [apologetically] Quite true, quite true. I always was that sort of chap. I'm very sorry.

You will feel insulted if you think you’ve been insulted. Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so, said that troubled Danish prince, way out of step with his honor-ridden culture.

Sergius. This is either the finest heroism or the most crawling baseness. Which is it, Bluntschli?

Bluntschli. Never mind whether it's heroism or baseness. Nicola's the ablest man I've met in Bulgaria. I'll make him manager of a hotel if he can speak French and German.

Be practical. Be reasonable. Don’t be attached to judging all the time. It’s a lot easier on the stomach.

I don't know enough about Shaw to know if he was indeed trying to make such points. But these points are pretty much where I am as yet another birthday grows more distant in the rear-view mirror.