THE
D E F I N E D C O M E D Y
of
KEITH H. PETERSON
——————— ————— ———
People must not do things for fun. We are not here for fun. There is no reference to fun in any Act of Parliament. — A.P. Herbert.
That's the slovenly way in which these Acts are always drawn. — W.S. Gilbert.
Being a parody, in light verse, of Dante's LA DIVINA COMMEDIA, set to the tune of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor ("Sin"), Op. 67, and annotated to within an inch of its life.
[ Date: February 14, 1976 ] The First Anniversary of P.G. Wodehouse's Death. © Keith H. Peterson 1985
Infunno © Keith H. Peterson 1976
Perkistorio © Keith H. Peterson 1978
Parodieso © Keith H. Peterson 1984
PUBLICATION OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS WORK WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE ANNOTATOR IS PROHIBITED. THE POET AND THE PILGRIM, FRANKLY, COULDN'T CARE LESS.
NOTICE
The depictions in The Defined Comedy of real persons, formerly in the public eye, are not intended to be accurate representations of those persons. The Poet has imputed to them acts, words and characters that are entirely fictitious, for the purpose of creating an absurd effect. TO M.J.S.1
"Se fosse tutto pleno il mio dimando," rispuosi lui, "voi non sareste ancora dell'umana natura posto in bando; chè 'n la mente m' è fitta, e or m'accora, la cara e buona imagine paterna di voi quando nel mondo ad ora ad ora m'insegnavate come l'uom s'etterna: e quant' io l'abbia in grado, mentr' io vivo convien che nella mia lingua si scerna."
—Inferno, XV:79-87.
"Believe me, Nick, that, if I'd had my druthers," I answered him, "you'd never've been banished from here, where alle Närrchen werden brothers; for from my heart of hearts has never vanished the tintinnabulation of your chortle as, day by day, my tarnished wit you planished and taught me how to make a jest immortal; so, while I've yet a tongue to sing your praises, If anything can last, your good report'll."
—Homemade translation.
1Well—to S.L.B., actually. PERFORMANCE NOTES
The Defined Comedy is set to Beethoven's Fifth, as interpreted in the 1961 recording by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic (Columbia Records ML 5868/stereo MS 6468; Sony CD SMK 47516). Bernstein's tempos are best suited to the abilities of "the amateur tenor"; he repeats the exposition in the last movement; and, of the several versions I considered when I began the work, he best expressed my perception of Dante. Because I wrote with it in mind, any merit The Defined Comedy may have as a lyric to a pre-existing tune would be entirely lost, if it were sung to any other rendition.
Through most of the Fifth, Beethoven makes this or that voice so dominant as to suggest at once the melody to which the words are set. (You may fake it where the tune is unsingable; I do.) When two voices are more or less equally emphasized, I have sometimes set words to the tune of the one more easily sung, using the rhythm of the other, and the words should be sung accordingly. These passages occur as follows:
LINES MEASURES MELODY/RHYTHM Infunno, 68-75 I:109-117 strings/winds Infunno, 146-153 I:109-117 strings/winds Infunno, 294-301 I:361-369 strings/winds Parodieso, 225-233 IV:132-140 winds/strings Parodieso, 367-369 IV:349-361 strings/winds Parodieso, 379-381 IV:378-389 strings/winds
In Parodieso, lyrics are sometimes set to melodic phrases that answer the phrases of the primary melody; the "answering" lines are indented and in italics.
"Thus" (Infunno, line 179; mm. I:149-150) fits the melody only if one ignores (as I did) the tie joining its note to that on which "Euk" (line 178) is sung. "I/Just" (Parodieso, lines 402-403; mm. IV:430-432) must be sung to but a single note; Bernstein gives the cutoff there with such vigor, that I fancy I hear a second, separate note. Curet licet non de minimis lex; at ioca curant. APOLOGIA PRO VERBIS SUIS
Meet Calliope, Euterpe— She's Vergilius's gal. Give Euterpe, here, a chirpy "Howdy," not-so-silent Cal! Though you've suffered an estrangement Since old Homer "knew you when," Here's a modern-day arrangement To unite you once again.
It's a swipe at solemn Dante To the tune of Ludwig van (One, a moral vigilante; One, a mighty music man); An interminable lyric Born of one colossal Pun, Part pooh-pooh, part panegyric— All supposedly for fun.
For, let's face it, Dante's GLOOMY. (And, besides, he's nice and dead. So, I ask you, who can sue me? [His Executors!!—ye Ed.]) Girls, you know I love the Poet, But his grimness goes too far; As for Ludwig! An inchoate Carol lurks in every bar!
* * * *
Gentle Reader! Pass me over, If you're certain you would writhe As I mow such precious clover With my sophomoric scythe. Shun the silly dilettante, If you think his jingle jars; I'd not have you end as Dante Did—he wound up seeing stars. THE SYSTEM OF KEITH'S INFUNNO
SINS AGAINST SINS AGAINST SINS AGAINST PHONOLOGY SYNTAX SEMANTICS Humorous Serious Serious Serious Serious Tacit Tacit Explicit Explicit Explicit Acquired Acquired Acquired Innate Innate Honest Honest Honest Honest Dishonest LIMBO: William Schwenck Gilbert a
VOCATION: b J. Pierpont Morgan RELIGION: c Dante d
SNOBBERY: the pilgrim e
MORALITY: Percy Bysshe Shelley Baron Acton F.I.S.H. f Points of Interest: LOYALTY: a. Repeat of Exposition Begins Bismarck's dupe b. The Gorgon g c. Development Begins ATHLETICS: d. Gate of Dis; Hon. Galahad Threepwood Sonny Liston e. Recapitulation Begins h f. The Styx g. Beelze Pub; the Centaur CONCEIT: h. Geryon; Coda Begins Geo. Bernard Shaw i. Jehovah and His Seven Seraphs i
DECEIT: Will Rogers Oscar Hammer- stein II the Snark Victoria Regina a Pope [HERE BE DRAGONS] THE STRUCTURE OF KEITH'S INFUNNO: HOW COME? by the Annotator
[In the beginning was the Word; but whether the Word actually was God or was merely with God is a moot point. I'm told that what John meant was that God was both Word and Referent. Now, philosophers may dispute whether referents exist, but they all agree words exist. Making God a referent would cause controversy, and the way I feel this morning, I don't need any controversy. If we're agreed He's a word, let's leave it at that.1 We thus avoid ontological chasms, which wins the empiricists over and puts us that much ahead of Tom Aquinas. Your catchy Theology, then, must be very, very simple. Well—here goes nothing:]
The Word is triune: Semantics (Father), Syntax (Son), and Phonology (Holy Ghost/Holy
Spirit/Holy-Owned Subsidiary of Father & Son, Ltd.).2 A person who twists subjective truth3 sins against Semantics. A person who values innate traits over acquired ones sins against Syntax, which embraces all acquired traits, not just grammar; although, in a Theology of words, grammar is central. In any case, Syntax is not what the IRS withholds from the Wages of Sin, which is something else entirely. A person who inflicts his words on others sins against Phonology. Thought words are sounded sublimely, while expressed words are sounded imperfectly—especially if you're from Brooklyn.4
Owing to Original Sin,5 though, even the sound of thought words is imperfect. To compensate for the low-fidelity of the human brain, which keeps us from doing right by the Word in all its aspects, we were given a sense of humor when we fell from grace. Only Humor can save our souls (such as they are) from damnation. Humor allows us to pull an end-run around the requirements of the Word. Humorists never mean to be taken seriously (Ha!), so it is meaningless
1This is known as "Consensus Theology."
2See? No referents—no ontological chasms—just words!
3And no objective, universal Truths, either. I'm dogmatic, but I'm not crazy.
4Don't ask me to explain this "tacit-explicit" dichotomy further, because I can't make heads or tails of it. All I know is that, when I read anything aloud, it never sounds half as good as when I read it to myself.
5If you thought this Theology never dealt with cold, cruel facts, think again. Fortunately, I haven't invented the history of Original Sin yet. to classify their words as honest or dishonest. Words that spark laughter are phonologically etherealized by that laughter, so whether the words were originally tacit or explicit becomes irrelevant. As for Syntax, if something's funny, who cares if it offends William Safire? In the words of St. Augustine of Hippo, ish kabibble. Until P.G. Wodehouse proved it, though, people could only guess that Humor meant salvation. It would have been unseemly to allow good guessers into Heaven. No religion has ever taught that people can be saved by sheer dumb luck, and I'm not about to start a new trend. Hence, Humorists who died before Wodehouse's Passion were judged by the impossibly high standard of the Word, and were cast into Limbo to await His Coming; for Wodehouse, if you haven't guessed, is the Syntax Made Flesh, the Everlasting Grammarian, the Prince of Wit, amen. Wodehouse made salvation possible, which was awfully decent of him. Infunno's structure is easy to understand, once you grasp this gobbledy-gook. W.S. Gilbert expressed his words in writing, but only to preserve them, human memory being what it is. He never dreamed of attracting attention with them.6 Since his words were practically tacit, he wound up in Limbo, the one lighted place in Hell. (In creating Hell, the Word deemed it better to curse one little candle than to try to light the whole darkness.) Gilbert's damnation poses the same problem as Virgil's: "Is it fair to damn someone who honored the Word and practiced Humor, just because of the circumstances of his birth, over which he had no control?" The answer is, Yes. (Funny—that doesn't sound any more sensible when I say it than when Dante says it.) The vocationists and the religious, whose words were tacit but who undervalued Humor, occupy the next two circles of Hell. Dante is here, rather than among the moralists, because no one's ever really read him, so, as a practical matter, he wrote only for himself. Thus, Gilbert is judged by his intentions, while Dante is judged by the results of his actions, in a feeble attempt to lower the Theology of Humor to the rational level of Christian theology.
6If you have incredulity, prepare to shed it now. Those who inflicted their words on others fill the fourth and fifth circles: snobs and moralists. Snobs differ from conceited people in believing themselves superior in acquired traits like artistic taste, dress and genealogy (an acquired sense of family). Conceited people affect superiority in innate traits like personal appearance, intelligence and talent. Only snobs, therefore, are in tune with Syntax. Morality, too, is an acquired trait: however Romantics may rave about innate Goodness, those around them know from bitter experience that it doesn't exist. Loyalists and athletes, in the sixth and seventh circles, violated Syntax, because group identity and physical prowess are essentially innate traits.7 These sinners are, in a way, the most dangerous of all: they alone have managed to organize themselves. Every two (formerly four) years, they conduct a massive orgy called an "Olympics" and indulge their hideous propensities in a frenzy of nationalism and perspiration. The lowest rings in Hell punish violators of Semantics. The sinners above were at least honest, even if they talked your ear off or dangled participles. A conceited person knows there is no innate superiority. Everybody knows that.8 A dishonest person knows he won't deliver what he's promising his listeners.
That the sinner against Semantics also sins against Syntax and Phonology is inherent in Hell's structure. If a conceited person were tacit, he'd be merely vain. If a con artist were tacit, he'd be out of a job, pronto. Likewise, both types are ungrammatical. If a person seriously contends that "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously," then he's not only dishonest, but ungrammatical. Syntax is merely the servant of Semantics: when meaning is distorted, grammar is violated. To hell with what the transformational grammarians argue; only a Humorist can say "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" with impunity. Anyone else risks his immortal soul talking like that.
Legend has it that Jesus suffered persecution, was crucified, and harrowed Hell. Wodehouse's Passion was exactly the reverse: During World War II, the Nazis arrested Him, and
7Because I say so, that's why.
8At least, everybody did when I last checked. They may have stopped teaching that idea since then. He went through Hell9 while in a series of internment camps. After His release from internment, He made radio broadcasts to His American friends satirizing the Nazis, and thus was crucified (in the British press, that is); for as Jesus beheld Death with peace, so Wodehouse beheld Naziism and ridiculed it. He was then persecuted by the British, His own people, a persecution that gradually diminished until, at long last, He was knighted. At some point during the broadcasts, we were all saved, though there are three schools of thought as to when the magic moment was: the Primi contend that the first joke saved us; the Ultimi claim the last joke was the clincher; and the Optimi argue that the funniest joke turned the trick. Frankly, I think all three schools should be answering the age-old riddle, "How many butlers can buck-and-wing on the head of a pin?" Unless we settle that issue soon, we may come to the end of civilization as we know it. Or do we?
9On his way through, Wodehouse carried all of the pagan Humorists except Gilbert to Parodies. Apparently, Gilbert was passed over because of an incident in June, 1903, when Wodehouse attended a dinner party given by Gilbert. That night, Gilbert told an interminable joke, which Wodehouse ruined by laughing prematurely. Gilbert then glared at Wodehouse with eyes full of hate. Needless to say, one cannot glare at a Savior with eyes full of hate and hope to get away with it. It gets a Savior's back up, that sort of thing. All things considered, Gilbert got off pretty light, winding up in Limbo.
CANTICLE I.
INFUNNO.
Abandon Hope! Abandon Hope!! A sea of rhyme In duple time
5 'Ll see you drowned; You'll sink too deep- Ly into sleep
To come around. (If you think that
10 Was too obscure, Then I congrat- Ulate you; you're
About to go through HELL! Consider well!)
15 But if you laugh
At what I sing About the sector
DANTE plods, Then almost half
CANTICLE I.
NOTES TO INFUNNO.
3.-8. A sea of rhyme/In duple time/'Ll see you drowned;/You'll sink too deep-/Ly into sleep/To come around. The images of drowning and sleep are Dante's; Inferno, I:10-27. The poet here simply believes that they more aptly apply to the reader than to the pilgrim.
9.-13. (If you think that/Was too obscure,/Then I congrat-/Ulate you; you're/About to go through HELL! The courteous poet warns you at the outset of what you're letting yourself in for. In Paradiso, II:1-6, Dante warned his own readers that things would become a bit recondite, but by then it was just too late. 20 Of everything Will seem like nectar Of the gods. The theme is spacious, But I'm loquacious;
25 And, though the story's Allegories Are erratic,
Cut the static— Every phrase is
30 Full of praises
To the WORD! A fit that's floral Seemed to me a Fitting moral
35 Panacea, For I quarrel With a Theo- Phile in oral
Diarrhea—
40 So auroral An idea
Merits laurel, Though it be a Quixotic enterprise.
45 From the gloom of looming LIMBO, Have-his-carcase —held akimbo 32.-35. A fit that's floral/Seemed to me a/Fitting moral/Panacea. And so it seemed to Dante. To judge by his writings, civilization was at an ebb in the 14th Century: hypocrisy and venality pervaded Church and State; war, injustice and corruption were rife. But did he do anything constructive, like campaign for reform, give alms to the poor, foment a revolution, or even strive to set a good example? Of course not! Instead, he shut himself up and wrote an epic poem that, in all likelihood, no one to this day has ever managed to read all the way through. Civilization was thus miraculously saved, and everyone felt a whole lot better.
44. Quixotic enterprise. See W.S. Gilbert's His Excellency, Act II, Griffenfeld's solo (1894). The first allusion to Gilbert's works marks his advent, as Beethoven sounds a Virgilian note of reason-amid-frenzy.
46. Have-his-carcase. The writ of habeas corpus symbolizes Gilbert's preoccupation with the law; introduces Infunno's prison motif; alludes to the dictum of "Jeremiah" Dickens's Sam Weller, Jeeves's prototype; and recalls a novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, who, as a translator of The Divine Comedy and the creator of a Bertie Woosterish detective (to whom Bertie himself refers), was a bridge between Dante and Wodehouse.
By an overbearing bimbo.
WILLIAM GILBERT is his handle; I contend he holds a candle
50 To that phony Roman: Wit's his yeoman, Fools, his foemen; Ergo, he's the omen
Of the WORD!
55 (PROFESSOR TROLLER, You're pooh-poohing— But you'd holler, Were I screwing
Up a MAHLER
60 Tune, instead!
And, as for CIARDI, DANTE scholar?
I'd be spewing Spleen and choler After doing
65 This tolloller,
Were you chewing Off his head: You know the work
That I propose
70 Is mine alone, And well you know I'd go berserk Producing prose 50. That phony Roman. Virgil, that is, who was really a Mantuan.
49.-51. These lines contain a cheap attempt at a Dantesque acrostic.
51.-52. Wit's his yeoman,/Fools, his foemen. Anthony Hope Hawkins said of Gilbert, "His foe was folly and his weapon wit."
53.-54. Ergo, he's the omen/Of the WORD. Gilbert is Wodehouse's "Voice in the Wilderness," as well as the pilgrim's Virgil. "Our logical poet," as Pooh-Bah might say, "seeing no moral difference between John the Baptist [or Bab the Jaundiced; see line 78] and Virgil, has rolled the two offices into one." (You know, the possibility of ontological chasms in this Theology just occurred to me. I don't know, though. I'll have to think about it.)
55. PROFESSOR TROLLER. Beatrix Troller, Professor of Florentine Fourteenth Century Vices at Coatimundi College, Nankipoo, Tennessee, introduced the poet to Dante. She appears here apotheosized, as the poet's Muse.
63. Tolloller. Lord Tolloller is a character in Gilbert's Iolanthe (1882). The poet seems to suggest by this word a "tra- la-la" or "ditty."
On those who groan
75 In HELL below!—
"Belay the blab, GILBERT You little scab!"
Suggested BAB.
I could have wept!
80 I overslept!!
I wasn't terse, And so my verse Induced a doze. (Perhaps it would
85 Be rather good To sing in prose!) I failed to grab
The Delphic Bays
Or bask with BAB
90 In LIMBO's blaze;
My VI'GIL was not kept!
But on we crept!
"In Circle Two GILBERT Abide the slobs
95 Who left the Better Work to fools; The busy crew That suffered jobs On Earth to fetter 78. BAB. The pen name under which Gilbert composed The Bab Ballads. Bab apparently addresses the poet, not the pilgrim. If this confuses you, simply repeat aloud, "There are no ontological chasms in this Theology. There are no ontological chasms in this Theology." It won't end your confusion, but it'll impress your friends no end. (Actually, I've almost concluded that there are ontological chasms in this Theology. I certainly seem to be falling into something.)
80. I overslept. Dante claims he fainted on starting for Hell and awoke to find himself receiving a pat on the back from Homer, who was probably just trying to get the circulation going again. This pilgrim sleeps through the whole thing and misses out on the kudos that Dante gave himself.
100 Them to stools." Beside a Gorgon
Sits J.P. MORGAN:
"I find enjoyment J.P. MORGAN In employment,
105 And, as sev'rance Pay for rev'renc- Ing Endeavor,
I shall never Be employed!"
110 "Thus all offensive THE PILGRIM
Sons of ASTOR: Apprehensive Of disaster."— I, thus pensive,
115 Asked my Master, "Who must ken sev-
Ere ALASTOR? Tell me, whence ev-
Olved the vaster
120 Scheme's extensive Tax cadastre?
Why this depression strange?"
"First, the sole remaining Pagan; GILBERT
Next, the filching fils of FAGIN;
125 He who worships GOD—or SAGAN; He whose attitude is haughty; 98.(ante)-100. Jobs/On EARTH to fetter/Them to stools. H.M.S. Pinafore, Act I, Sir Joseph Porter's solo (1878).
101. A Gorgon. The Gorgon represents the idleness of the vocationists in Hell; for what could be idler than someone who does nothing but turn people to stone? Unless it's her victims, of course.
112. Apprehensive. Morgan speaks in the present and future tenses, as if his doom were yet to come. This is a habit among businessmen, who never admit that disaster has struck until it is profitable to do so. If you don't buy that explanation, chalk it up to the time warp that afflicts souls in Dante's Hell; Inferno, X:61-69, 100-109. Just don't bother me with the problem, okay? I got enough troubles.
121. Tax cadastre. A cadastre is a register of property for tax purposes, or Doomsday Book; the vocationists' jargon has colored the pilgrim's diction. What he means is, "Who divided Hell into parcels, assigned a particular type of sinner to each parcel, and assessed the appropriate levy of punishment for each type?" Going through Hell, though, seems to afflict some folks with galloping ellipsis. They become incapable of coming right out and saying what they mean, plainly and simply. Naw, they gotta be mysterious about it.
122. Why this depression strange. The Sorcerer, Act I, Mrs. Partlett's recitative to Constance (1877).
He who'd interdict the naughty; He who sniffs the Anus; Tries to train us;
130 CORIOLANUS;
He whom two-faced JANUS Would avoid!
Facetious GLORY Wrought each hairy
135 Category In this airy Territori- Al refrain. Why take my patter a priori?
140 If you're wary Of my story,
Ask the scary Ghost of hoary
ALIGHIERI
145 To explain."
"Don't waste your breath! DANTE I read your mind. It's my belief
That BAB is right.
150 Before my death, I was so blind, I held a fief Of Christian Light; 123.(ante)-132. The chart of Infunno lists the sinners Bab names. Bab himself is the "sole remaining Pagan," passed over when Wodehouse harrowed Hell. "GOD—or SAGAN" broadens religion to cover any dogma. That Sagan may be right is immaterial; his dogma is still a sin if its adherents let it interfere with the important things in life, like clowning around. Beethoven's basses growl "abandon hope" as each sinner is named, to drive the point home.
133. GLORY. Meaning "Primal Power," the force that created the world. When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less, as the transformational grammarians would say.
152. Fief. The poet likens religion to vocation by putting a medieval economic term in Dante's speech. I'm darned if I know what he's driving at, though. Perhaps it has to do with their parallel goals: the vocationist stores up riches on Earth; the religious stores them up in Heaven.
And, for my crime,
155 I do my time Without a dime!
"My name is AL, And I'm your pal! So don't enrich
160 Your sheepish ghost
At full expense Of earthly skills: You'll gain a niche That holds a host
165 Who can't pay rents Or foot the bills. Though but a bum
In SATAN's brig,
At purple PLUM
170 I square the fig!"
"Accept my wrath, THE PILGRIM
Eccentric one, For one plumb bath- Ymetric pun!
175 Colossal boor, You make me puke! Begone, you poor Benighted Euk!"
Thus I, jocose (but dour); 157.-158. My name is AL,/And I'm your pal. From E. Y. Harburg's Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? (1932). Dante, who stored up riches in Heaven, suffers poverty in Hell.
160. Sheepish. The word reflects Dante's present mood and recalls the Third Beatitude: "Blessed are the meek [sheeplike], for they shall inherit the earth." Matthew reports seven active Beatitudes (the last two, "Blessed are they which are persecuted" and "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you," require no action from the blessee); and Purgatory has seven terraces, one for each deadly sin. In assigning a Beatitude to each terrace, however, Dante uses only six; he cuts "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst" in two, assigns the halves to avarice and gluttony and omits "Blessed are the meek." This disharmony has never been explained to my satisfaction. I think he should have assigned "hunger and thirst" to gluttony and "meek" to avarice. My reason (an attempt at Dantethink) is this: The first three terraces of Purgatory purge sins against others: pride, envy and wrath. A complacent reader might say, after reading of them, "If I commit none of these sins, I do not wrong my fellows. I must therefore be meek." Dante, always on the lookout for readers like that, would produce the "meek" Beatitude at the terrace of avarice and say, "Wrong. One may avoid pride, envy and wrath, and still injure others through avarice—doing them down in the marketplace. Meekness is not merely the avoidance of the first three sins, but an active virtue. And, since the avaricious seek to gain the world, be advised that they go about it in the wrong way—for the meek shall inherit the earth." Meekness was not Dante's forte, and perhaps he gave it too little thought. The poet repairs Dante's omission by placing the word "sheepish" in his mouth.
169. PLUM. Wodehouse's nickname. Dante assumes here the role of Vanni Fucci; Inferno, XXV.
172. Eccentric one. From a Bab Ballad, The Bishop and the Busman, line 16 (1867).
173.-174. One plumb bath-/Ymetric pun. By topping Dante's pun with a triple play on words, the pilgrim recalls Dante's behavior in Inferno, VIII, when he indignantly ticks off furious Filippo Argenti, as if to say, "If there's one thing that makes me angry, it's wrath!"
178. Poor/Benighted Euk. The Bishop and the Busman, line 28. "Euk," slang for Christian, is short for "eucharist," and an acrostic in Greek: ' , or "Make Ye Manifest the Son of God." The term is meant to sting.
180 And, having broken
DANTE's neck, I got a token Peck!
"My lip just slipped." GILBERT
185 "On CUPID's Day?!" THE PILGRIM
"I must have tripped—" GILBERT
"The hell you say!!" THE PILGRIM
"Upon that crypt . . ." GILBERT
"Of all the—!" "Hey, THE PILGRIM/GILBERT
190 It's in the script!"
"Okay, okay!! THE PILGRIM I'm no one's fool, So cool your tool! Let's shake a leg, and skip Romance!"
195 "?!?—The keys to HELL are in my other pair of pants!!" GILBERT
"We can't advance?!" THE PILGRIM
"Not a chance! GILBERT —Circumstance! . . ."
Just then came GALAHAD!
200 "Why, oh why, can't I soliloquize? GILBERT
The best VALHALLA had
Cramped my style a bit, dactylic-wise! —This breed was born disdainful: Boo-boo baneful!
205 Fields of ordure: Torture 182.-183. A token/Peck. Inferno, VIII:43-44; Ruddigore, Act I, Richard Dauntless's solo (1887).
195. The keys to HELL are in my other pair of pants. The travelers reach the gate of Dis, only to find it locked for the weekend. Hell keeps regular business hours, like any other going concern.
199. GALAHAD. The Hon. Galahad Threepwood, brother of the Earl of Emsworth, and the Force for Good in Plum's Blandings Castle novels, appears as the Angel of Plum, opening the gate of Dis with a flash of his monocle. Beethoven's violins sound a cavalry charge to accompany him, but fail miserably, being violins. Counting by measures, he comes at the near-center of the movement; a cheap attempt at Dantesque symmetry. Gally's advent cuts short Bab's apostrophe to Circumstance, paralleling Plum's interruption of Bab's joke at a dinner party in 1903 and the meeting of Jesus and John the Baptist, Matt. 3:13, ff. Nothing is left to chance in this Theology, as you can see.
200. Why, oh why, can't I soliloquize. A common gripe with Gilbert's characters; see Bunthorne in Patience (1881); Ko-Ko, twice, in The Mikado (1885); and Hamlet, in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (1874).
203. Born disdainful. A figure of speech, snobbery being an acquired trait. Cf. Pooh-Bah's "I was born sneering"; The Mikado, Act I. Any true snob will tell you he had to work like the dickens to cultivate that air of unstudied snottiness.
So painful! . . ."
"(See them stumble . . . THE PILGRIM Hear them mumble . . .
210 Eyes plumb spang up . . . What's their hang-up?) . . . —My protoplasmal roots!!" At that second,
GILBERT beckoned:
215 "Stop talking rot GILBERT And wipe your shoes! We haven't got A bar to lose— The buggers fly
220 At such a rate, That even I
Capitulate!—
"The Moral Grist Will not be missed!!
225 A stiff harangue Of Sturm 'n' Drang Annoys the ears
Of PERCY BYSSHE,
LORD ACTON, F.I.S.H.
230 And all their peers. With snorts and shouts Of False! and True!, 208.-211. The pilgrim, a genealogical snob, identifies with the sinners and hypnotically joins them in their punishment, which is to walk with their noses in the air through a used cow pasture.
212. My protoplasmal roots. As Beethoven breaks the almost comatose mood of the music, the pilgrim steps in something and snaps out of his stupor. His outburst (which has made the poet plenty sore, since it fouls up his rhyme scheme) recalls Pooh-Bah's protoplasmal ancestor; The Mikado, Act I.
224. Will not be missed. The Mikado, Act I, Ko-Ko's solo.
229.-231. Another cheap attempt at a Dantesque acrostic.
Fanatic Krauts Confuse their view,
235 And, if you'd learn, then list:—"
". . . Right is wrong. A MYSTICAL GERMAN
To make a short story long, . . ."
"On second thought, GILBERT Let's cross the Styx
240 And see who's cooking
Down the road." And so we're brought To Cell Block Six, And now we're looking
245 At the TOAD.
"Behold the hireling GILBERT Who killed at May'rling:
He's puling plaudits, As he audits
250 Down at MORY's All the glories
Of that bally
RUDY VALLEE Whiffenpoof!
255 —You'll be content-er After luncheon, With your venter Full of nuncheon. Quickly enter 225.(ante)-234. The moralists are sent to hear sermons from mystical Germans who preach from ten to dies irae. Those named are Shelley, topping the list for arrogating to himself, in his Defence of Poetry, the power to legislate for the rest of us; Baron Acton, for his aphorism on absolute power; and Jesus ("F.I.S.H." is an acronym for "Fools Invariably Seek Him," a bumper-sticker popular among fundamentalists, Jesus freaks and tax evaders).
235. Learn, then list. The Gondoliers, opening chorus (1889). The Germans, represented by the woodwinds, have been muttering in the background ever since our heroes arrived in this circle. The particular German who speaks during the cadenza actually sounds more like a dyspeptic Englishman than a German.
246.-247. Behold the hireling/Who killed at May'rling. Bismarck is thought to have ordered the murder of the Austrian heir at Mayerling, to assure Prussian supremacy in Germany. His patriotic hit-man is now in Hell.
254. Whiffenpoof. The Mayerling murderer must listen to the most inane expression of the most inane species of loyalty, forever and ever, worlds without end, amen.
256. After luncheon. Dante repeats over and over how unearthly the World Beyond is, when nothing there is more unreal than Dante himself. He seems to be entirely free of bodily functions—in several days of constant trudging over rough terrain, he never once stops for anything to eat or drink. The Hays Office was a more modern type of such biological absurdity; any movie character who spent a week in a life raft in mid-ocean couldn't afford to urinate if he hoped to play in Peoria. Our poet, on the other hand, is a Child of Probability: his characters stop to nosh at a local eatery, the Beelze Pub.
260 On your munchin', While your Mentor Drains a puncheon. —Mind the Centaur With the truncheon,
265 Representer Of the bunch in The race for god-like grace:
When alive, the Jock-Strap Genus Over-emphasized 'duh Pee-nus';
270 Now, they're prima ballerinas. But observe: a shade has seen us."
It's the former SONNY LISTON, Entrechat-ing like a piston:
"I preferred a callous, SONNY LISTON
275 Footling phallus
Over PALLAS; Now, 'San Quentin's' Penal sentence
Makes me crave repentance
280 For my goof!!"
"Enough of tarryin'! GILBERT
Note the narrow, Strait Caesarean
Slit the HARROW-
285 ING GRAMMARIAN Made, pell-mell: 267. The race for god-like grace. Patience, Act I Finale, Angela's recitative. Beethoven's orchestration in the exposition for these measures is now emasculated, reflecting the mood of this circle.
275. Footling. Scholars and critics are having a heated textual argument about this word. The majority contend that the poet meant it when he typed "footling," but there are others who argue, with some justice, that what he intended to type was "footlong."
284.-285. HARROW-/ING GRAMMARIAN. I.e., Wodehouse; a grammarian, being, in a sense, Syntax Made Flesh. Still, it's hard to see how Wodehouse, a Dulwich alum, could be described as "Harrowing."
286. Pell-mell. The word suggests Plum's first name and draws a vivid picture of the average Messiah harrowing a typical Hell—He tends to race around like a chicken with its head cut off. I recently spoke with a Messiah who confirmed this image. "Nasty business, this Hell-harrowing," he muttered. "I didn't mind the nails, but the harrowing afterwards was pandemonium from start to finish. All that moaning and screaming, not to mention teeth-gnashing, for My sake! By the time I reached the center of the Earth, I didn't know which way was up."
If you'd pursue the PARDONED CARRION Through the marrow, Toot a clarion!
290 Shoot an arrow!
Summon GERYON! He will barrow
Us through HELL."
So saying, BAB
295 Produced a bow And shot a shaft With mighty strength;
THE CHECKER CAB
OF ALL OUR WOE
300 (An awesome craft!) Appeared at length;
And, with my Lord, I climbed aboard
The DIS CONCORDE.
305 At BAB's command, We plummet straight Through doleful deep
Like lumps of lead. I keep my head,
310 But cannot keep The lunch I ate; And, as we land, 291. GERYON. The beast that carries Dante and Virgil to the Malebolge. The poet apparently kept this character to give his work the credibility Inferno enjoys. For Dante's opinion of Geryon's credibility, see Inferno, XVI:124, ff.
295.-296. Produced a bow/And shot a shaft. The Yeomen of the Guard, Act I, Jack Point's solo (1888). Bab uses the orthodox medieval summons, popularized by Robin Hood, whereas Virgil summoned Geryon by stripping Dante of his belt and tossing it into the abyss. Critics have yet to explain this move. "It must be symbolic," they agree in whispers; "but symbolic of what?" The answer is simple: in Dante's day, it foretold that the person unbelted would soon feel a draft about the knees. And indeed, Dante feels a chill soon after; Inferno, XVII:85, ff.
299. OF ALL OUR WOE. How a gag from a Puritan poem like Paradise Lost ever wormed its way into a spoof on medieval Catholicism is more than I can fathom. But then, there's a lot about this poem I can't fathom.
308. Like lumps of lead. The Yeomen of the Guard, Act II, Jack Point's and Wilfred Shadbolt's duet.
We witness SHAW, Whose meager wit
315 Gets no guffaw
In SATAN's pit—
Nor yet a grin: " " He rattles off His very best;
320 His critics scoff
At every jest; And so his sin— Has done him in! A life devoid of mirth:
325 It would be hell on earth! Beyond the murk before us, Seraphs chorus
Vera nova
At JEHOVAH.
330 Once we've truckled
At the CUCKOLD,
Then ELIJAH's
GOD obliges:
"Basement! Bilkers, JEHOVAH
335 Fleecers, milkers, Wines and liquors, Ladies' knickers!" Must the roster's Worst impostors 317. The silence following line 317 (measure 389) represents the reaction of Shaw's audience.
324.-325. A life devoid of mirth:/It would be hell on earth. Cf. Jack Tanner's assessment of a life of happiness in Man and Superman, Act I (1903).
327.-329. Seraphs chorus/Vera nova/At JEHOVAH. What Dante took for a ring of giants was really Jehovah and his seven seraphs, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, all upstarts against Plum. The seraphs' "hosannas" have become chiding "new truths."
330.-333. Once we've truckled/At the CUCKOLD,/Then ELIJAH's/GOD obliges. As usual, you have to truckle like the dickens to Jehovah to get him to do the least little thing. Jehovah is a "cuckold" because he mistakenly believed he was the father of the Universe.
334.-337. As Jehovah lowers the travelers to the ninth circle, he rehearses aloud for the Eukish Last Judgment, when the dead will be summoned and judged one by one, and which is bound to be trying for folks who don't like standing in lines. Plum's dies irae should be much more fun. He'll probably herd us into a theater (reserved seating, natch), tell us some funny stories, and we'll all have a good laugh and go home. More a dies risi than otherwise, really.
340 Each be cited By this blighted Bore?! Hear the jawing
ROGERS, gnawing
345 OSCAR HAMMER-
STEIN, the Shammer, Claim his dinner
Is a sinner:
"UGOLINO?! WILL ROGERS
350 What does he know? I'm in chokey With this hokey
OKIE—!"
"HELL, you rotten, THE PILGRIM
355 Misbegotten Scum, is not an Oklahoma! score!!"
The solemn SNARK,
So grave and stark,
360 Makes one brief, sad remark:
"To quote the QUEEN THE SNARK
Who quakes between My jaws, Because
365 'WE'RE NOT AMUSED,' WE STAND ACCUSED!! 344.-346. ROGERS, gnawing/OSCAR HAMMER-/STEIN, the Shammer. Will Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II, two of the biggest prigs of recent times. Hammerstein's punishment, like that of Archbishop Ruggieri, Inferno, XXXIII, is to be devoured for eternity; in Oscar's case, by a native of the State he so disgraced. Rogers, on the other hand, must act out his infamous lie, "I never met a man I didn't like," in the most odious way imaginable. Rogers's damnation shows, by the way, that there is no "free Will"—unless you count Shakespeare, who, not abiding our question, is free.
358. The solemn SNARK. Lewis Carroll's Snark, a name arguably derived from snake, is Satan. Carroll, the true Isaiah because his love of mirror images foreshadowed Plum's Passion-in-Reverse, identified the Snark as Satan when he noted its "slowness at taking a jest"; III Isaiah 2:18. The poet does not name the type of Snark, thus creating a troubling ambiguity. If Satan is a common Snark, it can do no manner of harm; but if it is a Boojum, the pilgrim, on beholding it, must softly and suddenly vanish away, making him a figment of the poet's imagination from here on in. The dilemma resembles that in the Aeneid, when Aeneas chooses to exit Hell by the gate through which false dreams pass, thus placing his subsequent existence in doubt. Cf. II Isaiah 4, where the Red King's dream of Alice within her dream threatens her existence. If that doesn't drive you bananas, nothing will.
361.-366. The QUEEN/Who quakes between/My jaws. The Snark refers, of course, to Victoria, whose condemnation of Humor got her so firmly disliked by all right-thinking people. She stands in for Cassius and is buried feet first up to her waist in Satan's mouth, because she told Britain it had achieved Utopia—a lie so transparent it fooled no one but Gladstone. She was also pretty rude to Bab. For anyone who cares, Adolph Hitler is in Judas Iscariot's place, buried head first in Satan's mouth, to hide his moustache. Even Hell has some aesthetic sensibilities.
(Oh, by the way—
About the cheat
Upon the fosse-
370 Fed stope?
The Sabbath Day
Were incomplete
Without a cross-
Patch Pope!)"
375 We left the dope To sit and mope; Then up the slope, With smiles and soap, A band in hope,
380 We crope!! * * * * 369.-370. The fosse-/Fed stope. "Fosse," or "drainage ditch," is Dante's word; Inferno, VIII:76. Dante thought Hell's rivers—Acheron, Styx, etc.—flowed down to Cocytus, carrying the tears of the world. In fact, the fosses of Hell carry the pomposities, pretensions and used razor blades of the world down to the ninth stope of Hell, to be sorted, refinished and repackaged. The pomposity and pretensions are sold at a profit to politicians, spiritual leaders, media celebrities and avant-garde artists. In spite of the large inventory of used razor blades on hand, Hell holds a Fortune 500 record: Satan has paid a dividend every quarter since fiscal 1300.
371. The Sabbath Day. Scholars have attacked this line with considerable heat, claiming it contradicts line 185. Surely, they cry, February 14, 1976, fell on a Saturday! Look, gang, maybe a whole day has elapsed since line 185. Maybe time is all fouled up at the center of the Earth. Maybe the Snark's Jewish (it would serve Adolph right). How the hell should I know?
374. Pope. This Pope is Sixtus V, who ruled from 1585 to 1590. According to Dumas (The Three Musketeers, Chapter 48), the only authority on Catholic dogma that the poet consulted, Sixtus V raised pigs, animals sacred to Plum, before retiring to take up Poping. His severe punishment may be owing to having strayed thus from the true path.
378. Smiles and soap. The traditional tools for hunting a Snark, and both are considered purgatives; smiles by Humorists, and soap by Euks.
379. A band in hope. Another ambiguous line, goddammit. Does it echo the canticle's opening lines? Express the optimism of Bab and the pilgrim? Or refer to the orchestra's feelings of relief along about now? Why did I ever become an English major?
380. We crope. Among Plum's lower classes, "crope" is the past tense of "creep." Cf. line 92. As Dante, emerging from Hell, saw God's handiwork in the stars, so the pilgrim encounters the first (and no doubt the last) evidence of Wodehousian style. Besides, it's a funny noise to make at the end of this turkey. THE SYSTEM OF KEITH'S PERKISTORIO
BREVITY PERFECTED BLANDINGS CASTLE: The Church Militant Revealed Dorothy Parker j
VERBOSITY: i Franklin Pierce Adams
BREVITY PERVERTED OBSCURITY: h [THIS SPACE TO LET] g
PERSISTENCE: f Franklin Pierce Adams e
BREVITY DEFECTIVE PARODY: Allan Sherman
FECULENCE: d Lenny Bruce Points of Interest:
BREVITY INJEST: a. B Theme Begins; Welcoming Hymn EXCESSIVE Jack Benny c b. A Theme (Doubled) Returns Fred Allen c. B Theme Returns d. A Theme (Redoubled) Returns e. Perkistory Explained; Pilgrim Sleeps f. Free Fantasy of A Theme Begins SLAPSTICK: b g. B Theme Consummated Oliver Hardy h. A Theme in Minor Begins i. The Ring of Fire j. Coda Begins
GATEKEEPER: a Beach
THE STRUCTURE OF KEITH'S PERKISTORIO: WHAT GIVES? by the Annotator Perkistory's plan is based on the dictum of the Old Testament prophet that "brevity is the soul of wit." In Perkistory, each Humorist is prepared for Parodies by amending his sense of brevity and, hence, his sense of Humor. The poet took brevity so much to heart that he eliminated many features of Dante's Purgatory. Of course, for each omission, there is a profound theological reason (excuse): 1. The pilgrim's shadow. If the pilgrim were to see his own shadow, he'd scamper back to his hole and we'd be forced to sit through six more weeks of Infunno. 2. Lethe. A dip in Lethe would wipe the follies of his past from the pilgrim's memory. In this Theology, though, you're supposed to remember your goofs on Earth; otherwise, what would you have to laugh about in Parodies? 3. The examples of virtue and vice on each terrace, the seven angels and the Beatitudes. In constructing Perkistory, Plum sought to avoid the cost overruns that plagued Jehovah's operation. Humorists don't need all the new-fangled educational gimmicks Euks apparently do; just give 'em a log to sit on with Plum at the other end, and they've got their lessons by heart in no time. Franklin Pierce Adams, for example, reformed in only sixteen years (1960- 1976), not twelve centuries, like Statius, his Dantesque counterpart. In fact, Adams took that long only because, for years, he didn't realize the reflections in the pots and pans on the fourth terrace were distorting his features. 4. Ante-Perkistory. In Dante's work, a tardy penitent does penance in Ante-Purgatory before entering Purgatory, implying that even the vilest sinner can escape Hell by simply repenting at the last minute, like an American taxpayer funding an IRA on April 14. In this Theology, that won't wash. We're all judged by a lifetime ratio of solemn moments to comic moments.1 If you spend your whole life acting like Andrew Lloyd Webber and then die with a limerick on your lips, you can't expect the past to be forgotten.
1The value of that ratio is what Euks would call a "Great Mystery." 5. Cato. Cato is absent because, for once, the poet left well enough alone. By Dante's own rules, Cato was a three-time loser: a pagan, an enemy of the Empire and a suicide. By placing him outside Hell, Dante is effectively saying, "April Fool! Only kidding about eternal damnation!" The poet was not about to gild Dante's one attempt at being silly. But to return to brevity: what is it? It's hard to explain in a few words. One way to look at Humor is to see it as a distillation of comicality from the sour mash of Life. (Those of you who don't want to look at it that way needn't do so, as long as you don't disturb the rest of us.) Come to think of it, I don't want to look at it that way, either. Let us consult Scripture, instead: in Gilbert, it is written, "Humour is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse." The fashion for Humorists, that is. Serious people don't abuse Humor; they just ignore it. Since Humorists are exempt from the Law of the Word, abuse of brevity is no sin. Instead of seven deadly sins (peccata), Perkistory purges seven deadly military coats (paludamenta), symbolizing the abuses of brevity. Its sojourners are inductees performing drills, not penitents doing penances. The whole thing adds up to THE CHURCH MILITANT—Plum's way of saying, "You're in the Army now."
The coats worn for slapstick, injest and feculence represent Brevity Excessive. Humorists on these terraces so abbreviated the expressions of their Humor, that comic form no longer had any room for comic content. Pratfalls, inside jokes and gratuitous profanities are so elliptic, in other words, that they just aren't funny.2 Slapstick, being wordless, must be purged first. Once the slap- stick artist can verbalize Humor, he's ready for further drilling. Injest resembles the Eukish sin of incest in restricting propagation to a small circle, resulting in idiotic offspring. Inside jokes take so little intelligence to make that they barely rank as verbal Humor.3 The feculent Humorist errs in thinking that volumes of social satire can be packed into a four-letter word, which is, of course, a crock.
2Actually, they are, but there's no percentage in inventing a theology, unless you indulge the occasional whim.
3In fact, scientists have found that the brain plays no part in their formation. They seem instead to emanate from ganglia at the base of the spine. Parody is Brevity Defective, because a parodist doesn't apply a sense of brevity to comic form at all, but allows the work he is lampooning to set the dimensions of his Humor for him. Why does parody abuse brevity, when Heaven itself is called "Parodies"? The words are admittedly similar, and the laziness of parodists does resemble the serenity of the heavenly hosts. But an observer of Euks might easily mistake saintly contemplation for goldbricking. Certain soul-states in other religions are indistinguishable from stupefaction. These observations, however acute, may not answer the question, but they cloud the issue sufficiently to justify abandoning it for other topics.
The spirits on the terraces of Brevity Perverted abbreviated content, not form. The persistent Humorist, usually found slapping backs at cocktail parties and repeating the punchlines of jokes more times than is necessary, is a purveyor of "corn," the sort of joke that, like John Barleycorn, resurfaces no matter how often you plow it under. A corny joke always appears in the form of a joke, but its comical kernel has wizened to nothing. The obscure Humorist hides comic content so that it seems too small for its form. His abuse differs from injestuous obscurity, as over- intellectualization differs from underintellectualization.4 The verbose Humorist doesn't abridge comic content, apparently or in fact; he enlarges comic form. His otherwise flawless gags drown in an excessively unnecessary superfluity of redundant verbiage. Those, then are the Seven Deadly Military Coats, and the poet is afraid he'll never see his shirtsleeves again. (Schniff!)
4The poet has limited characters in his work to persons of note and could not find a well-known obscure Humorist, so the terrace of obscurity on the chart reads "This Space to Let."
CANTICLE II.
PERKISTORIO.
Disembark; Wit will light our way; We pray Our Knight to fight the dark
5 With solar ray; The whole array Extollere.
—TRIXIE TROLLER!
(Here's a dollar.)
10 Mighty Muse! —Pippin— Chip in!
BAB's got to pay dues! Must so perverse a knell
15 Toll personnel
Who spurred SHAW to effuse Boffo reviews? What can you lose? Mmm! Mmm! Mmm!
CANTICLE II.
NOTES TO PERKISTORIO.
1.-2. Disembark;/Wit will light our way. The bark of the poet's wit discharges the pilgrim upon the shores of Perkistory. The lines echo a chorus in H.M.S. Pinafore, Act II: "Pull ashore in fashion steady,/Hymen will defray the fare." Beethoven must have noticed the resemblance, for his theme is clearly derived from Sullivan's tune.
4. Our Knight. This allusion to Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse raises one of the Great Mysteries of the Theology of Humor: "How come the Lord never made it past knighthood?" For a consideration of Plum as an underachiever, see the preface to Parodieso.
7. Extollere. Latin; "to raise, uplift." The word's vowel quantities make it a pretty lousy rhyme, but it does suggest a Latin idiom, animos extollere, "to lift the spirits," which is what Humor does.
9. Here's a dollar. This is perhaps the first time in history that a poet has attempted to bribe his Muse.
17. Boffo reviews. Shaw actually gave Gilbert rather poor reviews. The poet is stretching a point, though, in his zeal to argue Bab's case for salvation. In fact, he's lying through his teeth.
19. To perform this line, beat your breast three times in mea culpa fashion and whine on each A flat.
20 BEACH, unlatching the gates, Surreptitiously states,
"If you drill, BEACH You can still Take the hill—"
25 SLAM!! "—but don't look back,
JACK!"
"PARKER hints that there could THE INDUCTEES
Be a tryst, if you're good! Scuttlebutt's
30 That you're—" "Nuts! BEACH Can the speech, I beseech,"
Whimpers BEACH. "—Just go find
35 Good News, But mind P's and q's!"
"Here Buffoonery GILBERT Makes bivouac,
40 So that the pack
May sooner re- Instate Hilarity Upon a parity With Eukish Charity.
45 The place is 20. BEACH. Blandings Castle's butler guards Perkistory's gates. Considering the impostors and crooks he has admitted to that Eden, he is an apt substitute for Dante's gatekeeper, since he errs anzi ad aprir ch'a tenerla serrata.5
25.-26. SLAM!! "—but don't look back,/JACK." Beach has loosened up considerably since his buttling days, when his vocative vocabulary never dipped below "sir." Once again, the pilgrim does not get the respect Dante got on entering a new world. In Purgatorio, Dante was warned before the gate shut not to look back when it did, or he would have to return to Earth. Beach's nunc pro tunc warning to this pilgrim is perfunctory, at best.
27.-28. PARKER hints that there could/Be a tryst, if you're good. Dorothy Parker is Beatrice, the brains behind this whole scheme.
30.-32. Nuts!/Can the speech,/I beseech. Pro tempore, Beach is Cato, otherwise absent from Perkistory; Purgatorio, II:118-123. (Beach was always versatile, often doffing the role of butler to pinch-hit as pig-purloiner.) He has interrupted a welcoming hymn from the shades of Perkistory (Purgatorio, IX:140-145) in the key of C major (strange that the pilgrim should receive the key to Parodies so soon!).
37. P's and q's. The P's are seven paludamenta, denoting the abuses of brevity; cf. Purgatorio, IX:112-113, and the Baker in III Isaiah 1:8, who "had seven coats on when he came." During his admonition, Beach helps the pilgrim to don the coats, to be shed as the pilgrim ascends Perkistory. In keeping with military s.o.p., not a single one of them fits. The Q's are given to the pilgrim by Beethoven.
5Purgatorio, IX:128; "Rather in opening than in keeping locked." And I know I'm in trouble when I start footnoting the footnotes. Full of mummers schlepping pies Upon their faces, Slowly dripping on their ties." I questioned lardy,
50 Hemispheric HARDY,
"OLLIE, THE PILGRIM Folly Marked you for her own."
"A somewhat jolly 'Fie!' OLIVER HARDY
55 I'll qualify;
Besides, HORNER has shown Pies are a zone Commonly known
For their PLUMS."
60 We ascend for review
Of Platoon Number Two:
"With a joke, GILBERT Every bloke Must evoke
65 Giggles in the Laugh Staff."
FRED and JACK lead the clique,
And in concert they speak:
"Here's a pun: THE INDUCTEES
70 'Nun' and 'none'! . . . (Though we muff Off-the-cuff 45.(ante)-47. The place is/Full of mummers shlepping pies/Upon their faces. In the Church Militant's Mess Hall, slapstick Humorists walk about with pies on their faces, which would have been more appropriate to Dante's terrace of pride than carrying a great silly rock about. Nothing chastens pride quicker than a good pie in the face, especially humble.
49. Questioned. Why isn't the pilgrim's "question" to Hardy interrogative? Dante wastes reams of paper asking the Dead questions to which he already knows the answers. The Dead, for their part, know long before he speaks what Dante will ask. It gets to a point in Paradiso when you begin to wonder why anyone bothers to open his yap at all, especially when the only answer Dante gets to his questions is "It's a Mystery." (It seems Heaven's all-time bestseller isn't the Bible, it's Lardner's Shut Up, He Explained.) For the sake of economy, the poet replaces the pilgrim's question with Hardy's answer, and we are all spared a good deal of pain.
52.-53. Folly/Marked you for her own. If you're miffed to find Oliver Hardy in Perkistory, not Parodies, take comfort in knowing that this Mess Hall is the last fine mess Stanley will ever get him into.
56. HORNER. Buffoons, as they work their way back to verbal humor, begin by mastering Mother Goose, the simplest verbal Humorist.
63.-66. Every bloke/Must evoke/Giggles in the Laugh/Staff. The injestuous shed their coats by testing gags before the Laugh Staff, a court martial that is very hard to break up (you know how those courts martial are).
67. FRED and JACK lead the clique. Fred Allen and Jack Benny conspired in an in-joke; for years, they threw insults back and forth—insults incomprehensible to all but the very few million who were in on the joke—until everyone's brain was so gelatinized that the world was engulfed in war. Of course, Hitler and Tojo may have been contributing factors.
Funny stuff, We aren't sunk,
75 Unless We flunk O.C.S.)"
"Let's inspect the therapy GILBERT Embarrassin'
80 The garrison Who wear a 'P' For 'porn' And looked with scorn
On DR. SEUSS:
85 To under- Stand their blunder,
Eyeball LENNY BRUCE— But if you're wise, Avert your eyes;
90 So very dirty
Is their penance, That the tenants Must be thirty-
Six, and even
95 Then, ST. STEPHEN Needs assur- Ance from each Mommy
That her TOMMY 88.-89. But if you're wise,/Avert your eyes. Bab covers the pilgrim's eyes, so that he cannot watch the feculent Humorists doing something so foul that it shames them into shedding their coats (Dante was also blinded on this terrace; Purgatorio, XVI). One critic has suggested that the shades are flashing their P's at each other. A more likely theory, however, is that they are cleaning latrines for the Church Militant.
95. ST. STEPHEN. Stephen Leacock, the economist-humorist who runs Perkistory G.H.Q. in Parodies. Christopher Morley canonized Leacock in a tribute marking his sixtieth birthday; Laugh with Leacock (1930).
Is mature!
100 Or lazy aping, with its automatic gimmickry: Original Religion'll Set mimicry Aright
105 With mirrored light That mocks at Sloth
And teaches Each his breaches Of the Cock-Eyed Oath.
110 Thus, ALLAN SHERMAN's Slip determines Just what tithe he
Owes our SAVIOR
For behavior
115 Less than slithy. —So that, yonder, You can ponder
On this butte, On architecture
120 I will lecture
You, en route.. . ."
(I dreamt I saw JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD Ejaculating, "Bah!" I looked again, and found, instead,
125 A PLAYTEX LIVING BRA. 101.-102. Original/Religion'll. The unoriginality of parody's formal sloth is suggested by a rhyme stolen from Tom Lehrer's Vatican Rag (1965). Dante would have loved that song; indeed, he would have had a field day with the Ecumenical Council that inspired it. As one of the first poets to argue the virtue of the vernacular, he'd no doubt have been quick to condemn the Council for calling his bluff.
103.-106. Set mimicry/Aright/With mirrored light/That mocks at Sloth. Parodists polish pans in the Kitchen Patrol of the Church Militant until they can see their faces in them. The unflattering reflections they behold strip them of their paludamenta. Frankly, this is the most asinine drill I've ever heard of.
109. The Cock-Eyed Oath. A sacrament of the Theology of Humor, akin to baptism, except that it involves a good deal of drinking first.
114.-115. Behavior/Less than slithy. In II Isaiah, Humpty-Dumpty defines "slithy" as "smooth and active," and that's what parodists are just about anything but (a bit of hypocrisy, just to make the Euks feel at home).
116. Yonder. The word refers to the world of the living. Dante believed that the world of the living could speed the purgation of the dead through prayer. Of course, if the guy you're praying for is in Hell—and how are you to know?— you can get in BIG trouble praying for him. In Dante's world, you have to watch your step. By contrast, reading Plum yonder won't help anyone in Perkistory. In this Theology, you can't bribe a person's way into Parodies.
"Perhaps you'd be so kind," I said, "To sing O! Mein Papa."
"Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti—") ". . . It GILBERT Ramifies a lot of Wit!"
130 "The chief THE INDUCTEES Relief For grief:
Be brief . . ." As we vault
135 For the Fifth Plateau, Of its fault
GILBERT lets me know:
"Here they salt GILBERT Fosterers of strife;
140 Gagsters who, in life, 'Offered you their wife.' Butlers ply the swine Who spewed persistent levity
With brack and brine,
145 While pith is paid in wine. Soon, they will combine
Their salt with Attic brevity. —It won't hurt you To take some, too;
150 With that in view, I think I'll strew 122.(ante)-128. I dreamt I saw JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD, etc. While Bab explains Perkistory's structure, the pilgrim dozes off. (Dante had the courtesy to hear Virgil out first; Purgatorio, XVIII.) He dreams a stanza of The Mad Gardener's Song from Isaiah's Sylvie and Bruno, a poem just as sensible as one of the Dante's dreams. John Hollingshead first teamed Gilbert with Sullivan, producing their Thespis in 1871. The show was a reasonable success, yet Hollingshead effectively washed his hands of the two (the "Bah" in line 123). The pilgrim dreams that Hollingshead is turned into a singing brassiere to punish his bad judgment, and the bra's practice scales merge into Bab's closing remarks on Perkistory, as the pilgrim hovers between sleep and waking. Cf. the ambiguous way dreams end in I Isaiah, II Isaiah and III Isaiah 6:18.
129. Wit. This word is at the center of the movement; another in a series of cheap attempts at Dantesque symmetry. Collect them all!
142.-145. Butlers ply the swine/Who spewed persistent levity/With brack and brine,/While pith is paid in wine. In the Infirmary of the Church Militant, butlers administer saline solution or wine to the inductees, as their senses of Humor warrant. This reward/punishment stuff typifies the psychological subtlety for which army discipline has always been noted. Bab takes especial pleasure in their penance: in his day, actors engaged in an odious practice called "gagging," in which they "improved" dramatists' lines with ad libs. Bab's reforms helped to eliminate gagging from the stage (and from the audience, as well).
The sharp emulsion—" Sharp convulsion!!
THE INDUCTEES CADENCE, "Thanks to PLUM, F.P.A. THE INDUCTEES
155 Was discharged A-OK! Center ranks! Rear and flanks! Offer thanks!"
"Am I free?" FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS
160 "Yessiree!" THE INDUCTEES
"I regret FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS That I yet Owe a debt To the Knight
165 With the Bright- Shining Light
—Why the trace Of a grimace Upon your face?
170 —So what's with him?"
"It's just his whim! GILBERT His lights are dim! In fact, he's—"
"Death would not be drab, FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS
175 If I could nab A little dab Of friendly gab
With good ol' BAB 153. Sharp convulsion. The convulsion is two-fold: Perkistory shudders with joy as Franklin Pierce ("Statius") Adams completes his basic training, and the pilgrim shudders with cloy as Bab, shaken by the quake, pours too much salt on his tongue.
155. A-OK. Military slang popularized by Alan Shepard of the Mercury Project, which foreshadowed the Apollo Project (Parodieso, lines 9-11), just as Beethoven foreshadows the last movement.
156.-158. Center ranks!/Rear and flanks!/Offer thanks. Cf. Patience, Act II: "By sections of threes—Rapture!"
161-166. Franklin Pierce Adams resembles his counterpart, Statius, in several ways. He tends to run off at the mouth, as we shall see; he wrote parodies to fill pre-measured newspaper space, and so visited the fourth terrace, as well as the fifth; and, as Statius did time on the fifth terrace for prodigality rather than avarice, so Adams was too anti-persistent: he despised corn. He has now learned that corn in moderation is a capital thing. Adams also immediately acknowledges his debt to Virgil-Bab (the "Knight with the bright-shining light"; Purgatorio, XXII:67-69).
Or make a stab
180 At light confab- Ulation . . ."
"What duress THE PILGRIM
—'MIKE' —must these endure? Which excess
185 Meets discomfiture?"
"I confess GILBERT
—'PAT'—that I'm unsure; But I guess They were too obscure.
190 Their wits immure Them, till they're pure."
Thud!! Glib ADAMS, being prolix,
Joined the Word-aholics, Which pleased me
195 Much—by the tum's rush
GILBERT seized me,
Giving me the bum's rush—! Then through flame and fire I fairly flew, Until the glow of Humor's hue
200 Brought BLANDINGS CASTLE into view- Halloo! Clowns of every creed Precede The geriatric queue 167.(ante)-181. Contrast the stark realism of the characters' motivations here with the absurdities of Purgatorio, XXI:97, ff. The pilgrim's grimace results not from the irony that Adams doesn't recognize Bab, but from the lingering mouthful of salt. Bab craves anonymity not out of modesty, but to avoid the man who wrote a four-million-word journal, The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys (I told you this guy was wordy. I wouldn't be surprised if he still has time to do among the verbose.)
183. MIKE. The pilgrim, sensing Bab's wish to give Adams plenty of chill, cleverly addresses him as "Mike." Bab responds with "Pat," making lines 182-191 a sort of Irish cross-talk act, a plot device Plum often uses (see The Mating Season [1949] and Young Men in Spats [1936]).
182.-191. In the background, Adams (1st violins) refutes Statius's claim that souls are created at the end of the first trimester of pregnancy (Purgatorio, XXV:68-75), with proof, thanks to the latest medical advances of Ma Church, that they exist at conception (or even earlier—God sometimes jumps the gun).
192.-193. Glib ADAMS, being prolix,/Joined the Word-aholics. What did I tell you? And the travelers are so glad to escape him, they don't even stop to note the drill of the verbose, which is to burn their verbiage in a bonfire circling Blandings Castle. The seventh terrace is the Firing Range of the Church Militant.
195.-196. By the tum's rush/GILBERT seized me. Like Dante, the pilgrim has around his tummy a rush denoting induction into a higher spiritual plane; Purgatorio, I:94-96, 133. (How the pilgrim got it, though, is unclear. Bab was such a Victorian, I doubt he'd ever give anybody a rush.) The rush, or reed, symbolizes the greatest pre-Plum Humorists, Gilbert and Sullivan; as one critic put it, their works were, "like Moses, cradled among the Reeds." Wearing it around one's tum also suggests Bab, who may have coined the word in the Bab Ballad, Ben Allah Achmet (1867).
205 Of militants Who billet aunts With dilettantes; Then my Lady's Black Mercedes;
210 Then a snout!—
"Salve, GILBERT Alway:
I'm still up the spout. I was subliminal-
215 Ly criminal,
So PLUM's mocking redoubt Puts me to rout, Back to the gout."
"Must you quit THE PILGRIM
220 BLANDINGS and retreat To the pit Sunk in self-deceit?
GILBERT, must you split, when, what with all the wit you wrote, you're fit to sit at
[PELHAM's feet?" But lo! A spark fills the heath!
225 Behold! The sparkle of PARKER's teeth!
As she barks a remarkable "KEITH—!" MRS. PARKER
"Please! Don't be snotty, THE PILGRIM
DOTTIE!
Stretch WODEHOUSE's rule!" 202.(ante)-207. The pilgrim beholds the Church Militant Revealed, as the first theme returns fortissimo. The echoing obbligato in the winds depicts the music to which the Church marches. "Clowns of every creed" are the spirits of pre- Plum Humor; "geriatric queue," the spirits of Plum's 97 books, which house scores of aunts and young fops ("dilettantes").
208.-210. Then my Lady's/Black Mercedes;/Then a snout. "These three lines," writes a critic, "are perhaps the most pregnant in the opus. The poet, though, labors under a misconception." Mrs. Parker, hidden in a glory, pulls up in a Mercedes, symbolic of the Empire. (The strings, clarinets and bassoons depict the shifting gears.) In the back seat, obscured by her glory except for its snout hanging over the side, is a pig. The juxtaposition of Mrs. Parker and a porker (the first of three puns on her name) suggests her famous comeback, "Pearls before swine," and the many Blandings Castle episodes in which pigs are shunted about in cars. The pig in question is winged, alluding to Isaiah's repeated prophecy, most notably in The Walrus and the Carpenter, fulfilled by Plum when He wrote Pigs Have Wings (1952). The winged pig is here in lieu of Dante's gryphon. Everybody knows that gryphons don't exist.
211.-212. Salve,/Alway. Salve, means both "hello" and "good-bye," so you might prefer something like, "Ave!/Rahway/Still carries some clout." But ave means both "good-bye" and "hello." It seems the ancient Romans didn't know if they were coming or going. Maybe they didn't care, since all roads led to Rome, anyway.
214.-215. I was subliminal-/Ly criminal. Another first! Freud meets Dante, and the Mystery of the virtuous-but- damned pagan is solved. Virtuous pagans are damned because, subliminally, they want to be damned. Secretly, they desire everlasting punishment and will do anything to get it, even going so far as to be born before the Coming of Plum, and then perversely leading blameless lives in a cheap attempt to engage the sympathies of posterity. You can't trust anyone these days. Or those days, either.
218. The gout. In life, Gilbert was a martyr to gout (see? This Theology even has martyrs!). Apparently, it still afflicts him in Limbo.
223. GILBERT, must you split, etc. Beethoven reinforces this disgusting slop by writing three "tears" into the oboe part.
226. As she barks a remarkable "KEITH." Mrs. Parker acts the role of the pilgrim's drill instructor. Parker/barker is the second pun on her name. The mention of the pilgrim's name is remarkable, because it is the only time the pilgrim is called by name in the entire work.
230 "Don't interrupt me, chum. MRS. PARKER Of course he'll come!
It pleases PLUM. So keep your cool." We embark;
235 PARKER starts the car; Shifts from "park"; Marks the pilot-star;
But the spark
Doesn't arc.
240 "(Dash it all! MRS. PARKER Time to call For your fall Overhaul!) —If you're late for postliminy,
245 Jiminy! Postputabimini!— Anyway, here's a congratulatory cigar!"
"(TRIXIE TROLLER! THE PILGRIM
Thank you!
250 Here's your dollar!)" * * * * 231. Of course he'll come. Bab's salvation, as the first theme reaches its most expressive moment, is the poet's one improvement on Dante's plot. You can quote me Scripture till your eyes bubble; I'll never believe that Virgil was justly damned. Anyone who can dream up gags like "Nate! exclamat; fuge, nate! Propinquant!" ought to be saved, in my book.
236. Shifts from "park." Mrs. Parker appears as a parker of cars, the third pun on her name. The tune accompanying lines 234-237, by the way, resembles an old music hall song, Champagne Charlie, which Bab parodied in Dulcamara; or, The Little Duck and the Great Quack (1866). This coincidence has no theological significance whatever; I just thought I'd mention it.
244.-246. If you're late for postliminy,/Jiminy!/Postputabimini. "Postliminy" is a term of military law referring to the right of the captive to assume his former status upon his liberation. In this Theology, we are all the Snark's prisoners-of- war. When Plum liberates the World on Judgment Day, we will regain the comic glory we enjoyed before the Fall. Postputabimini means, roughly, "you will be forced to take sloppy seconds."
250. Here's your dollar. The pilgrim (or poet) rewards his Muse for interceding on Bab's behalf with the cigar Mrs. Parker gave him. "Another insult," as Pooh-Bah might say, "and, I think, a lighted one." Perkistorio is revealed as a germinal Plum plot, in which the young master rewards his faithful servant for helping the master's pal out of a tight spot. (Okay, okay, so you can bribe someone's way into Parodies!)
ENTR'ACTE by the Annotator Dante, in The Divine Comedy and De Monarchia, goes on and on about the roles of Church and Empire. I haven't read De Monarchia and probably never will (I hear it's pretty tedious), so I can't claim to see with any depth of comprehension what he was driving at; but, apparently, this was the general idea: he thought we had two beings, a physical and a spiritual. Unless someone rode herd on both beings, the whole shebang would come crashing down about our ears. He called for a
Church to rule the soul and an Empire to rule the body, and advertised for the R.C. Church and the Holy Roman Empire to fill the posts--No Others Need Apply. As of last night, the R.C. Church was still filling out the application. Its prospects are poor: under Previous Experience, it lists the Spanish Inquisition, and it gives the Children of Israel as a Reference. The Holy Roman Empire never even answered the ad, owing to lack of existence. So much for Dante's scheme. The Humorist Church, frankly, doesn't improve on Dante's one iota. It's hard for a theology that took fifteen (well, call it twenty) minutes to develop to top one that had been percolating for
1,200 years when Dante came along. The miracle is that it's no worse. Humorists don't sell salvation, burn books, damn unborn babies, murder heathen or pull any of the cute tricks Euks do. On the other hand, Humorism isn't as comforting, because it encourages Doubt, which for Euks is the original sin.
Some Euks say Pride was the original sin, since Adam and Eve ate the apple to become like gods. Milton made no bones about it, and was extremely down on Pride. This is a smokescreen, though, to lull suspicion; Pride being a nice, uncontroversial sin that no one can argue about. What
Genesis describes first, and what Euks are really out to destroy, is Doubt. Euks are probably saying, "Waitaminnit! Waitaminnit! Doubt is a normal, human emotion! We'd never blame anyone for doubting!" They say so; but, sure as God might have made little green apples, when you're through doubting, you'd better come down on the right side of the fence, if you know what's good for you.1 The first thing Satan said in tempting Eve didn't appeal to pride, but to uncertainty. Eve thought that if she ate of the tree she would die. Satan's words, "You will not die," caused her to doubt. It was the first contradictory thing anybody had said since Creation. Eve debated the matter, marshalling arguments to resolve her doubt; and, after weighing God's unsupported word against the actual evidence, she ate. This was her mistake. It's her fault God made the tree appetizing; her fault God gave her eyes, ears and some ordinary horse sense; her fault God just couldn't be bothered to explain why she mustn't eat; IT'S ALL HER FAULT. She tried to be sensible, and it is fatal, in the Eukish view, to try to be sensible. And it is fatal to doubt. In this Theology, Doubt is a virtue. You may doubt all you want; we take a dim view of Certainty around here. Certainty builds places like Nazi Germany. As Heywood Broun said, the road to Hell is paved with great granite rocks hewn from the hearts of those who say, "I can do no other." If people weren't so darned certain, there wouldn't be so many traffic accidents, either. With all this Doubt about, Humorism isn't very comforting. The first thing a Humorist learns to doubt is himself; he soon doubts others, like Popes, Presidents and Professors; and finally, he doubts Great Things, like the existence of God, life after death and where his next meal is coming from. A Humorist eventually finds that there's not a thing he can count on. But at least the unborn babies can't kick.2
The Humorist Church is presently a bit amorphous, owing to lack of cash. Each year, we dun the flock for tithes to defray the cost of building cathedrals and monasteries, optioning a nice bit of realty in downtown Rome, and supporting a bloated bureaucracy of cardinals, bishops, priests and general clerical personnel in the style to which they're accustomed; and each year the flock to a man chuckles softly as if we were kidding and goes back to work. As a result, the Church keeps a
1Look at Hans Küng.
2Actually, I'm told they do. low profile. It isn't easy to run a church on empty coffers, even with the tax incentives Congress gives in an attempt to establish religion.3 Having proved to our satisfaction (at least, my satisfaction) that laughter is Good, it follows that our Empire is the one that most fosters that Good. But what Empire fosters laughter? Every government known to man is against laughter, and therefore evil. The only good Empire is a dead one. Hence, the best Empire is the nonexistent one that is the greatest enemy of laughter, since the absence of the greatest Evil must be the greatest Good.
And what defunct Empire glorified every evil and foible of humanity that laughter despises, including depravity, cruelty, envy, bureaucracy, self-satisfaction, inhibition, certainty, egoism, stupidity, insanity, ignorance, bigotry, compulsiveness, laziness, hypocrisy, conceit, oppression, violence, fear, deceit, hubris, unreason, wrath, blindness, self-deception, filth, greed, hatred and humorlessness? Right--the Third Reich. Name a sin, and the Reich not only practiced it, but bragged about it. Ceasing to exist was the best thing it ever did. The impotence of Dante's Empire owing to nonexistence was a point against it; the nonexistence (and consequent inactivity4) of the Third Reich is its finest quality, and one of the few nice things about the Postwar World. Devout
Humorists are committed to keeping it that way. With a penniless Church and a nonexistent Empire, though, governing mankind is a breeze. You can have no idea what we save on paperwork alone.
3We're the first nation in history to have a non-denominational state religion.
4Cf. Iolanthe, Act II, Lord Mountararat's solo, in which he commends the House of Peers for ensuring England's greatness by doing nothing in particular, and Mr. Dooley on Colleges and Degrees (Mr. Dooley's Opinions [1901]), in which he commends Yale for "nestlin' undher th' ellums iv New Haven" in moments of national crisis. THE SYSTEM OF KEITH'S PARODIESO
YOU ARE HERE THE STRUCTURE OF KEITH'S PARODIESO: NOW WHAT? by the Annotator Let's get one thing clear from the outset: Parodies has no plan. There are no grades of comic grace or pecking orders among the blessed. Once you're in, you're in, period. This business of saying, "We're all saved, but some are more saved than others," is hogwash, and the sooner that's settled, the better. Everybody's here to have a good time, and the last thing we need is a lot of silly rules about who's supposed to be in which planet, and petty squabbles over who gets to sit on the right hand of God. (I fancy there are a few tiffs in Dante's Heaven on that account.) The Word is very laid-back about protocol, which is why the map of Parodies recalls the Bellman's sea chart in III Isaiah 2:2. Of course, the very idea of a place where people are supposed to have a good time is so alien to the human mind, that it might be well to pretend there is a pecking order in Heaven. That way, we can relate it to our ordinary experience. Instead of describing Heaven as it is, we'll describe it as it isn't, so we can understand it better. This is Dante's way of coming to grips with the Ungrippable, and if you think I'm going to start messing with that bozo at this point, think again.
Then again, why bother? The brain's become a trifle unhinged by now, anyway. I'll just list the souls the pilgrim meets in Parodies, which resembles one of those country houses where so many of Plum's stories occur. Outside the House [in Earth's shadow]: Samuel Johnson, conversationalist, in the Pool [Moon]; Michael Flanders, lyricist, on the Terrace [Mercury]; and
Harpo Marx, actor, in the Garden [Venus]. Inside the House [beyond Earth's shadow]: Fanny Brice, Gracie Allen and Bert Williams, comedians, in the Hall [Sun]; Ogden Nash, versifier, in the Pantry [Mars]; Joseph Haydn, et al., composers, in the Library [Jupiter]; and Oscar Wilde and
Ambrose Bierce, essayists, on the Stairs [Saturn]. Beyond the Stairs are the Landing [Stars], where the pilgrim is examined by Jeeves and encounters Robert ("St. Bernard") Benchley; the Drawing Room [Crystalline]; and the Blue Room [Empyrean]. For the sake of general sanity, the poet has eliminated (for the most part) the pseudo- scientific digressions that clog Dante's work. Nothing undercuts his theme quite so neatly as his asinine attempts to prove without empirical evidence that the Moon is made of green cheese. It's hard to believe Jesus died for our sins, when his apologists try to prove it by babbling of green cheese.1 Dante's paeans to Beatrice are also omitted. Frankly, the poet is indifferent to Mrs. Parker's stuff; but, as she succeeded Plum as drama critic for Vanity Fair, she was saddled with leading the pilgrim through Parodies. The Word, as always, decided the matter, which could explain why the world is in the state it's in.
You may be wondering about Plum's qualifications to be Lord of the Universe. One expects a Lord of the Universe to be several ranks above a baron, and Plum wasn't even that. I cannot account for this, but it's crystal clear that He could out-God God with one hand tied behind His back. Genesis says that God, who was plural at the time, made Light, Darkness, Day, Night, Heaven and Earth in three days. Not bad; but consider Plum: One day (a figure of speech), the Trinity decided it might be nice to have a fourth for bridge. Chaos had been sitting in on a few rubbers, but she tended to throw her cards about and was a poor sport about being dummy every hand. It occurred then to the Son, Syntax (P.G. Wodehouse, baritone), that One might create a world of dummies from which a fourth could be drafted; where- upon He arose and said, in His best fourth-form Latin, PARO DIES, or, "I prepare the days," and bingo! He did with two words what God took three days to sweat out.
To begin with, He created Day; but he also created Night, by negative implication. God overlooked that point: as soon as he created Day, he should have known that all that other stuff floating about was Night, and that "dividing one from the other" was a lot of busy work. Plum simultaneously created Light and Darkness, because these are inherent in Day and Night. Without Darkness, Night
1What possessed Euks to found a faith on patchwork postulates like "Love thy neighbor" and "The world is flat"? Once somebody figured out the world was round, they found themselves saying, "What to do? If we admit the world isn't flat, we'll have to admit that people shouldn't love their neighbors!" If they really believed that the kingdom of Jesus was not of this world, they'd have chucked physics and stuck to metaphysics, secure in the knowledge that no Einstein can ever disprove "Love thy neighbor" (Heisenberg, maybe). is apt to be garish; and without Light, Day is pretty much a total washout. What's more, with these particular words, He created Parodies and, by negative implication, Earth. Consequently, He went God one better; for, by creating Day and Heaven with the same words, He perpetrated the Primal Pun and created Humor, the all-pervasive spirit that moves the Sun and other stars. All this, without perspiration. Why does Beethoven's Fifth Symphony remind one of The Divine Comedy? Because Beethoven wrote the second movement andante.
How many Virgils does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two: one to turn the bulb, and one to decide whether to turn to the left or to the right. (To get this joke, read Inferno and Purgatorio— a lot to go through just for a punchline.) Alternate answer: None; screwing is a sin. Judging by Purgatorio, XXII:67-69, where he is said to have "carried the light behind him," Virgil would have had to be double-jointed to screw a light bulb in. But enough abstruse theological argle-bargle; Parodies awaits. And, since we have to go there sooner or later, we might as well get it over with.
CANTICLE III.
PARODIESO.
P A R A D I S E Is really rather nice. (That was far Under par.
5 I need PHOEBEAN phraseology to start; My opus has to have a modicum of heart; It shouldn't sound as though a constipated Spart-
An tried to fart!
—When you're calling on APOLLO, summon several;
10 Not the Greek who haunts a peak like MR. PEVERIL, But the kind that you can find at Cape Can-everil.)
Lingering in DEVERILL, I'd begun to feel Like someone down-at-heel
15 Who'd undergone ordeal
In something by O'NEILL; And, at the morning meal, I stoked a careworn fork With corrugated pork
CANTICLE III.
NOTES TO PARODIESO.
1.-11. The Invocation of Apollo. Paradiso, I:13-33. This iffy opening echoes Plum, whose Bertie Wooster often balks at the outset of his novels (Right Ho, Jeeves [1934]; Much Obliged, Jeeves [1971]); Dante, who doubts that he can carry Paradiso off and invokes the divine Apollo (though the kind that uses a Saturn rocket might have been more helpful); and Beethoven, whose opening for the movement is one of the most wishy-washy in Western music.
8. Fart. Inferno, XXI:139; Infunno, line 39.
9. Summon several. Paradiso, I:61-63.
10. MR. PEVERIL. Patience, Act I, Colonel Calverley's solo, alluding to Scott's Peveril of the Peak (1823).
12.-58. The Evocation of P.G. Wodehouse. Lines 1-60 are a pastiche of a Plum novel, featuring brekker and a cabled invite to the country (Right Ho, Jeeves and The Code of the Woosters [1938]); some cross-talk between master and servant; allusions to Doyle, Shakespeare (Hamlet, V:ii:232), Bab (Iolanthe, Act II Finale) and the Bible (Isaiah 66:1), Plum's usual references; and a typical Drones Club antic (Very Good, Jeeves [1930]). Plummifying Dante is only fair, since Dante uses a Plum gag when he says that Beatrice looked at him "with the look a mother gives her delirious child"; Paradiso, I:101-102. That's how every woman looks at Bertie Wooster at one time or another.
12. DEVERILL. Deverill Hall, in The Mating Season (1949), contains more aunts and quarreling lovers than any other in Plum's canon, making it a fit metaphor for this life.
20 And poured a spot, When, like a shot, I dropped the pot
And yelled—or ululated—, "DOT! THE PILGRIM This cable is rum:
25 'COME STOP FONDLY SIR PELHAM.'
DOT, what can this bean-buster mean?
If SHERLOCK HOLMES read between
The lines, He would find no signs
30 Of the sense that whines To be seen."
"Permit me, sir.— MRS. PARKER I should infer He'd have you come."
35 "But should I come?" THE PILGRIM
"'Tis not to come—" MRS. PARKER
"Awright, we'll come!" THE PILGRIM Soon as we may,
Off and away,
40 Leaving the Stool; Zap! And we're there—
SONNY AND CHER (Minus the tare), Landing in rack.
45 Grabbing a ring, Both of us swing 42. SONNY AND CHER. A metaphor for the pilgrim and Mrs. Parker (or Dante and Beatrice); he's slow on the uptake, and she's a smart-ass.
43. Tare. Paradiso, I:73-75. The container, net of which the pilgrim ascends to Parodies, is his corporeal being. In failing to deliver the pilgrim's body to Parodies, as per the have-his-carcase (Infunno, line 46), Mrs. Parker may be in contempt of Plum. But that's so like her.
44. Landing in rack. Paradiso, II:31.
Over the POOL, Only to find Someone unkind
50 Managed to wind One of 'em back. Chortle-increased
DOTTIE (deceased) Follows the least
55 Troublesome tack:
"'Bandon the hoop, MRS. PARKER Kiddo, and swoop Into the soup." I dropped instanter in the drink
60 And made an effort not to sink. Up (looking scrofulous, but otherwise distinctly in the pink),
With headstrong breast-stroke, swam The indefatigable Cham,
SAM:
65 "Sir, my wit was flimsy; SAMUEL JOHNSON
Mots are always mimsy. His is greater whimsy. Still,
I was skil-
70 Ful; so PLUM applied a pruning.
Please! Don't think I'm MOONING: Thanks to His lampooning
SHAKESPEARE, in His piece, sir, is our WILL. 52. Chortle-increased. Beatrice's ever-widening smile marks the ascent to each new sphere. By Saturn, it has virtually become a leer, so she switches it off to save Dante's eyes. Mrs. Parker's laugh marks each ascent in Parodies, but she silences it on the Stairs, where it would be so infectious that, if the pilgrim heard it, it might prove fatal; cf. Holmes's The Height of the Ridiculous (1830).
56. 'Bandon the hoop. See Infunno, line 1. If you still need notes like this one, you can't be paying attention.
57. Swoop. The pilgrim's arrival in Parodies is marked by an allusion to one of Plum's first comic novels, The Swoop (1909).
59.-76. The Pool: Samuel Johnson, Conversationalist. Parodieso, III:10-18 (the piccolo in these measures suggesting a swimmer shaking wet hair out of his eyes). Johnson's humor imbued all his works, from his sardonic letter to Lord Chesterfield to his amusingly frank notes to Shakespeare, in which he often admits he doesn't know what the Bard was driving at. Consider his definition of Tariff:
A Tax, levied upon the Products of foreign Labour, to secure Employment to domestick Labour, ensuring it sufficient Income, wherewith to purchase the Products of foreign Labour.
Since his written works are taught in English Literature courses, though, it is for his conversation that he is chiefly remembered as a wit. He now recognizes the flaw of conversation: ephemerality. Boswell was a better Humorist, not only for having a superior sense of the ludicrous and the desire to indulge it, but for having the wits to Write It Down. Boswell's salvation was assured when he referred to Britain in his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), as the "main land," as if Eurasia were merely an island off the coast of Kent.
63. Cham. Smollett dubbed Johnson "the great Cham of literature"; Life of Johnson, I:348. I don't know about you, but it comforts me to know we live in a Universe with an overhead Cham.
70. Pruning. Paradiso, IV:130-131.
73. In His piece, sir, is our WILL. Johnson hated puns, but he speaks three now to show his enlightenment, the last punning on Piccarda Donati's words, "In His will is our peace"; Paradiso, III:85. Believe it or not, that is the most memorable gag in Paradiso.
Praise
75 PELHAM's ways!"
DOT tee-hee's; One of these
On the TERRACE plays,
"I've found my horn: MICHAEL FLANDERS
80 My wit is now reborn.
Man, to thrive, Ought to jive: Regarding writers' making gravity their aim, The sullen satirist is equally to blame;
85 And geese who smirk and geese who piously declaim Look just the same.
In this weft is what is left of MRS. FLANDERS' son;
Though MERCURIAL, I can speak with perfect candor, son,
And if 'Glory' makes you think of MAXWELL ANDERSON,
90 Take another gander, son: It's a comic style
Sufficient to en-aisle Confederates of bile, Like Huns who think it vile
95 Anathema to smile."
Undaunted DOT, her ris- Ibilities with his, Sang "ho, ho, ho"'s
For LONDON's woes, 77.-100. The Terrace: Michael Flanders, Lyricist. The last classic comic lyricist echoes Paradiso, VI:97-111, where Justinian knocks Guelph and Ghibelline for making a political football of the Papacy. As Guelphs exploit the sacred for profane political ends, so satirists err by using Humor for serious ends. Humorists may kid foibles, but, being sensible, they don't try to reform.
79.-120. The last cheap attempt at a Dantesque acrostic: Immortalitatis clavis facetiarum veneratio est, or, the key to immortality is love of comicality. The Romans used "V" to express the sounds of "U" and "V"; the poet perversely spells the acrostic with "U"'s, instead.
79. I've found my horn. The poet echoes Flanders's lyric to Mozart's Horn Concerto in Eb, K. 495, entitled Ill Wind, which begins:
I once had an urge and I couldn't allay it: To peddle French porn in a panderer's shop. I printed some up and I tried to purvey it, Despite John O'Connor, who summoned a cop.
Well, something like that.
89. If 'Glory' makes you think of MAXWELL ANDERSON. Alluding to a foul bit of tripe by Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings, What Price Glory? (1924) (I haven't read it, mind you).
91.-95. It's a comic style, etc. Flanders refers to the Archenemy of Laughter, the Empire; see the Entr'acte. "En-aisle" means "to cause to roll in the aisles."
99. LONDON's woes. Paradiso, VI:91-93; VII:19-51. Dante says that, since Jesus was only half-human, it was only half-just to crucify him; so God destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70 to semi-avenge his death. Dante calls this "vengeance on the vengeance." Likewise, London, where Plum was crucified, was bombed in A.D. 1940. Humorists call this "the Snappy Comeback"; but, in keeping with Plum's Passion-in-Reverse, London was bombed in advance, so that the Crucifixion was ready-avenged. Cf. the White Queen's tears in II Isaiah 5, and Robin's disinheriting his unborn son in advance in Ruddigore, Act II (1887).
100 And, in her throes,
Caved in the RHODODENDRON ROWS Embower the Mime
Twanging ROMBERG in Rag Time.
"I would have you see CASE's pride MRS. PARKER
105 And ENGELS' partner and guide Resolved, Understood and solved:
MESSRS. MARX evolved Unallied."
110 Ecstatic ART's Nirvana starts,
Ere PARKER's hoot Reveals our route,
And HARPO's boot
115 Tattoos my! glute.
"Isn't it nice? GRACIE ALLEN
Occupant BRICE Entered the digs."
"Such is the fate, FANNY BRICE
120 Too, of the late Funny-but-straight
Occupant BURNS."
"Purely by chance, GRACIE ALLEN Both of us dance
125 Horas and jigs."
"SOLELY by wit, FANNY BRICE 101.-115. The Garden: Harpo Marx, Actor. The only allusion to Venus here is the sphere's location: in Full Moon (1947), Veronica Wedge, receiving word that Tipton Plimsoll desires a rendezvous in the garden, reasons that men do not lightly ask to meet women behind rhododendrons, giving them a Venereal air. Thus, the sphere's name and location merge, making it the ideal sphere, as Harpo's humor is perfect of its kind. (When a masterpiece is humorous, that is the proper description. Hamlet is perfect; The Mikado is merely perfect "of its kind." That every absurdist play ever written is but a warmed-over bit of Bab doesn't matter; humor is never just "perfect.") Considering Harpo's proclivities, Venus is the best sphere for him:
The motto of Harpo Was virginem carpo, A view, among others, He shared with his brothers.
Harpo was connected to Gilbert and Sullivan: Sullivan's nephew appeared in Duck Soup (1934). Though a star, Harpo was always a supernumerary, and he is the only soul in Parodies who doesn't speak. Contrast Paradiso, VIII:39, where Charles Martel announces he's going to shut up, and then spouts poetry for the rest of the canto.
103. Rag Time. Alluding to Harpo's jazzing light classics on his harp. Beethoven injects a bit of cakewalk rhythm here, to help things along.
104. CASE's pride. Harpo frequented the Round Table at Frank Case's Algonquin Hotel. (Legend has it that Plum was born in a manger because there was no room at the Algonquin.)
104.-109. I would have you see, etc. Paradiso, VIII:91-148. Using inadequate intellectual equipment, Martel tried to solve a problem in genetics and bungled it. Mrs. Parker, in one of her rare forays into pseudo-science, pricks the pop myth that Harpo and Karl Marx were related.
116.-138. The Hall: Fanny Brice, Gracie Allen and Bert Williams, Comedians. Brice and Allen, representing two ethnic strains in vaudeville, substitute for Dominic and Francis. Their mutual back-patting, like that of Dante's saints (Paradiso, XI-XII), makes them as indistinguishable as the two Euks (cf. Tweedles Dee and Dum). How do we know Francis isn't Dominic praising himself, and vice versa? How do we know anyone in Heaven is who he claims to be? They're so lit up they're unrecognizable, and they all repeat the same guff over and over: "God is good," "Man is sinful," "Life was better in the good old days," "Hey, how 'bout those Mets," etc.
Women are scarce in Parodieso because, historically, they could not clown; it wasn't feminine. Men traditionally resent women who can out-joke them, proving that Humor is not a menial calling. If it were, women would have had to be as funny as men, if not funnier. This absurd bias against funnywomen so limited their numbers in the past, that nearly all of them who ever lived were alive in 1976; and, not being dead, they couldn't be in Parodies. (The poet deplores any social attitude that interferes with half the species' delivering every single laugh he has coming to him.)
The third circle of souls in the Sun is enigmatic; Parodieso, XIV:67-84. It may suggest an ideal monkhood to end the rivalry of the Franciscans and the Dominicans; sort of a bureau to battle bureaucracy. It may suggest that Truth is more than all we know, ignoring the possibility that it may be much less. Our third soul, Bert Williams, represents a third ethnic strain in vaudeville. Lines 135-136 refer to his theme song, Nobody (1905); cf. II Isaiah 7, where Alice sees Nobody coming. Plum's Princess show, Oh! Lady! Lady!! (1918), took its title from a Williams catchphrase; Williams and Groucho Marx both spoofed Tosti's Good-Bye!; the Marx Brothers made Duck Soup with Sullivan's nephew; Sullivan's partner once met Plum; and so we come full circle.
The three souls are a plea for unfashionable ethnic humor, befitting a nation of immigrants. Stripped of asinine pejorative terms and well-told, an ethnic joke is America's commedia dell'arte, a form that generates humor by juxtaposing a cast of stock characters, each with one outrageously exaggerated trait. No one can say they're in bad taste, as long as they don't make fun of the English, the Swedish, the Normans or the Scotch-Irish (a free trip to Parodies for the first person who correctly guesses the poet's ethnicity). Both of us split Doing the 'bit,' Laughing by turns."
130 Luckily, my Fortunate eye Happened to spy (Back of the ferns)
BERT, the buffoon
135 (Him, or his "coon" Signature tune)—
But DOTTIE cachinnated twice;
We quit the HALL in half a trice;
Attained an entrée to the PANTRY, where a spoon is apt to slice,
140 And caught the back-swung mash- Ie, appertaining unto rash
NASH:
"Shoot! When I was current, OGDEN NASH Woe had one deturrent.
145 Glum? We simply wurrent;
Folks Rolled in jokes, Then—but now, polluting anguish
MARS the English Languish.
150 PELHAM's cross-bred gang wish Pure-bred goofs would brush up on their strokes."
"Swing! THE VERSIFIERS Pock! Ka-zing! 139.-160. The Pantry: Ogden Nash, Versifier. Nash plays Indoor Golf, described in an early Plum essay, and Beethoven's piccolo depicts his practice swings. Golf is a one-man sport suited to Humorists, who are individualists (crackpots). It suits Nash especially, whose verse is like a hole of golf: starting hundreds of yards from the point, it zeros in on the pin in a series of bounds.
Nash neared the limits of what verse can be and remain light. Light verse, since its diction is calculatedly unpoetic, cannot utterly ignore rhyme and meter without losing its formal appeal to the sense of humor: the incongruity of its form and substance. (Without rhyme and meter, colloquial language also tends to be prose.)
A Humorist, unlike an artist, must observe limits of form and execution to succeed. Cartoons odder than George Price's or Saul Steinberg's cannot be comic. A musical comedy that omits melodies and jokes isn't; see A Chorus Line and Evita (better yet, don't). All a comedian evokes by reading The Great Gatsby on Saturday Night Live, instead of entertaining, is the momentary existential amusement an especially effete audience feels in contemplating its own boredom. He gets no laughs, because he is evading his duty to amuse. Hence, the chasm between archy and Gregor Samsa.
In Mars, by the way, Dante met his ancestor, Cacciaguido. The poet has no humorous forebear, but he may be a distant cousin of Roark Bradford, whose work inspired Green Pastures (1930). Speaking of related Humorists, O. Henry was Benjamin Franklin's first cousin, six times removed (you're thrilled, I know).
143.-151. Shoot! When I was current, etc. Paradiso, XVI:34, ff.
Clatter, clang!
155 Rattle, bang!" The assembled sing.
Aft-
Er NASH's ha'nt re- Placed his plasters
160 In the PANTRY,
PARKER laughed
Me up to MOZART, Where the Masters Of the Notes' Art
165 Now are staffed, Marching abaft
PAPA's baton.
Lo and behold! See them unfold
170 Into the old Sine qua non.
Sonnovabitch! Look at the rich "W" switch
175 Into a SWAN!
The birds' ROLLS ROYCE At once gives voice:
"Music is daft; THE SWAN OF COMPOSERS It means 152.(ante)-156. Swing! Pock! Ka-zing!, etc. The souls' hymns in Paradise increase in beauty as Dante rises, until they are unintelligible. This may account for the gibberish of these lines.
159. Plasters. The indoor equivalent of divots.
161.-206. The Library: Joseph Haydn, et al., Composers. The souls in Jupiter form a glorified marching band. The poet, following suit, has organized here a marching band of comic composers (Joseph Haydn, Drum Major). Here are Poulenc, Beethoven, Offenbach, Mozart, Bach, Brahms, Schubert; anyone, in short, whose music evidences wit. Here are most definitely not Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Liszt, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner or Chopin (the only composer to write scherzos that weren't funny; a pretty neat trick, actually).
The band forms a Fraktur W (Paradiso, XVIII:88-114), Humor's sine qua non on the authority of Robert ("St. Bernard") Benchley, who gave Plum the idea for The Nodder in Blandings Castle (1935). In Why We Laugh; Or Do We? (Benchley—Or Else! [1932]), St. Bernard said that a joke isn't funny unless it begins with a W (apropos of Abie's Irish Rose, he pointed out that the French alphabet has no letter W, proving that the French are not a funny race). The W turns into a Swan, a bird sacred to Plum (Very Good, Jeeves and the Valley Fields books), because, like swans, Humorists are calm and unruffled on top, and paddling like hell underneath:
176. The birds' ROLLS ROYCE. Cf. Infunno, line 298.
180 Itself, but mark what moods Self-reference begets: Such is the craft
Of KEANS, Who move the multitudes
185 With alphabets. Music was bluff Funny-enough
JOVIAL stuff; Formerly sage,
190 Now, we're an Age
Caught in a CAGE.
—WAGNER and LISZT,
PELHAM is pissed You should persist
195 Selling your name, Merely to claim Infamous Fame; It's wholesale graft.
Holes in your shoes
200 Cannot excuse Giving the Muse
The twelve-tone shaft. Hiding your tush Under a bush
205 Doesn't un-push The Button—" 179.(ante)-180. It means/Itself. Music, the most abstract art, has no referent but itself, yet it arouses powerful emotions; a paradox making it intrinsically the most comic art. The only phenomenon remotely like it was Garrick's power to move audiences to tears or laughter by saying "Mesopotamia." This is what the poet means, apparently, by "the craft/Of KEANS,/Who move the multitudes/With alphabets."
199. Holes in your shoes. The traditional badge of the serious artist.
186.-206. Music was bluff, etc. Paradiso, XIX:100-148.
But on we push!
"Oh, child AMBROSE BIERCE (Parry the flit!),"
210 Says BIERCE
(SATURNINE wit), "When riled (Having a fit), I'm fierce
215 (That was a hit!)."
"Though mild OSCAR WILDE (Rather than tart), My tierce (Parry and carte),"
220 Says Wilde (Jester of Art),
"Can pierce (Right to the heart!)."
But topping the STAIRS with a 64-buck interrogative shimmers the feudally-spirited
[JEEVES!
225 "'There once was an abbot of Brittany,' JEEVES Somebody wrote, 'Who chanted a desolate litany,'
Sir, and I quote:
'"If CHRIST is the Source
230 Of Divine Intercourse,"' He'd emote, '"Then how come I don't ever gitany?"'" 207.-223. The Stairs: Ambrose Bierce and Oscar Wilde, Essayists. Paradiso, XXI:25-42. Bierce and Wilde fence on the Stairs. Their symmetrical duet recalls the Palmieris in The Gondoliers and Scaphio and Phantis in Utopia, Ltd. (1893). Both wits are related to Bab: Bierce and Bab wrote for Fun (but not Profit), and Wilde was a model for Patience's Bunthorne (some scholars dispute this, but only the fat-headed ones). The Importance of Being Earnest shows that the influence was mutual:
JACK WORTHING. The upshot, Lady Bracknell, is I haven't got a parent— Ah, me! An orphan boy am I! 'Twere false asserting otherwise, and so, you see, I daren't— Fiddle-faddle, fiddle-faddle, fal, lal, la! Although my "line"'s a lengthy one, and prominent my "station," I illustrate a paradox of human generation: I'm son and heir to no one, but my parents are the Nation— Fiddle-faddle, fiddle-faddle, fal, lal, la!
LADY BRACKNELL. I'm sorry, Mr. Worthing, but you may not wed my daughter— Oh, fie! An orphan boy is he! To marry into cloakrooms is a thing I've never taught her— Fiddle-faddle, fiddle-faddle, fal, lal, la! To lose a single parent, if you're small and pink and hairless, Is undoubtedly unfortunate; I couldn't well declare less; But losing both, I grieve to say, is getting rather careless— Fiddle-faddle, fiddle-faddle, fal, lal, la!
219. Carte. Richard D'Oyly Carte sent Wilde to America to boost Patience, but the word is also a fencing term.
224.-245. The Landing: Jeeves and the Examination of the Pilgrim. Paradiso, XXIV-XXVI, resembles a game show; a Let's Make a Deity, with Dante Hall. Jeeves, in lieu of Peter, James and John, quizzes the pilgrim on the cardinal virtues, Doubt, Hope and Wit. (Eukish Hope, a faith in Faith, differs from Humorist Hope, a doubt about Doubt.) Coming at the center of the movement, it is the last cheap attempt at Dantesque symmetry.
Dante's idea of Faith proves his orthodoxy: he bases faith on the Miracles; but even if the Miracles never occurred, the world's conversion to Eukism without such proof is itself such a Miracle (and who could disagree with that?), that, taken alone, this Miracle supports faith. Here is a distillation of Dante's reasoning: My faith in Christianity rests on the Bible. My faith in the Bible rests on God's authorship. My faith in God's authorship rests on the Miracles. My faith in the Miracles rests on your faith in Christianity. Your faith in Christianity rests on the Bible. Your faith in the Bible rests on God's authorship. Your faith in God's authorship rests on the Miracles. Your faith in the Miracles rests on my faith in Christianity. My faith in Christianity, etc., ad infinitum.
In other words, "I want to be Eukish, but I can't be Eukish, till I make you Eukish, too," to paraphrase a famous lyricist whose name escapes me (Humorists never render unto Irving Caesar that which is Irving Caesar's). If that's not orthodoxy, I don't know what is. Dante's logic rivals that of the greatest mind of the Modern Age: the mind that developed the defense known as Mutual Assured Destruction.
224. Topping the STAIRS. Paradiso, XXII:100-105.
224. Feudally-spirited. Paradiso, XXII:111. Dante enters the Stars through his zodiacal sign; the pilgrim sees the Jeeves of Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954), which was published within hours of the birth of the poet, who acquired his first edition within hours of Plum's death. (Look at the Note.)
"My STARS! MRS. PARKER
235 Thar's
JEEVES!
—JEEVES," DOTTIE pressed, "I request That the pest
240 Be assessed
By the Blest, And suggest That a test Would be best!"
245"Start that clock.—[spoken] If I may, sir. What distinguishes Doubt?" JEEVES
"Um . . . Could we come back to that one?" THE PILGRIM "As you wish, sir.—What typifies Hope?" JEEVES "Why not ask CROSBY? He'll be along in a minute." THE PILGRIM "Indeed, sir?—What characterizes Wit?" JEEVES "'Talent does what it can; Genius does what it must; but Wit does THE PILGRIM what it chooses.'" "Your own, sir?" JEEVES "As a matter of fact—no. It's based on a gag of OWEN MEREDITH's, THE PILGRIM actually [etc., ad libitum]—
"PRAISED BE PLUM! THE HUMORISTS
YOU'RE ONE OF US, BY GUM!"
"ST. BERNARD— MR. BENCHLEY
Here's m'card.
250 —But now the fun, my son, has only just begun!"
("Is that a threat?") THE PILGRIM
"You take a two-week trip for two beyond the SUN!" MR. BENCHLEY
("You wanna bet?") THE PILGRIM 233. Look at the Note. Jeeves quotes a verse in the "snide new style" from the poet's juvenile period (still in progress). Cf. Purgatorio, XXIV:49-51.
246.-285. The Convocation of Humorists. You expected maybe Shriners?
"Or you can trade for what's behind Door No. One, MR. BENCHLEY
255 Before you're done!"
"I'm not nearly dead enough to be a panelist! THE PILGRIM I'm not even on the 'mustard-oil-and-flannel' list! If I die, how shall I break it to my analyst? —Maybe if I plan a list:
260 'Gotta say good-bye'; 'I really gotta fly';
'I gotta meet a guy'; 'I'm moving to the "Y"'; 'In fact, I gotta die'—"
265 But, while I vacillate
In DODD-induced debate Both con and pro And to and fro,
All apropos
270 "To go" or "Not to go to—" "GO MR. BENCHLEY
DIRECTLY TO JAEL!
WHEN DID SHE EVER QUAIL?
Prodded by a bloodthirsty god, She nailed her foe to the sod."
275 "He should've not stood in bed." THE PILGRIM
"You've hit the nail on the head, MR. BENCHLEY M'boy; That was smartly said, For a goy!"
280 "But what has she THE PILGRIM 258. If I die, how shall I break it to my analyst. Cf. Bab's Gentle Alice Brown, stanzas 12-13 (1868).
266. DODD-induced debate. The pilgrim is descended from the perennially indecisive Boston Dodds. (One Dodd, unable to choose between two Boston sites for his home, built in both places and lived in the houses alternately.)
275. He should've not stood in bed. See the Preface to Infunno for a justification of this syntax.
To do with me?"
"To do with you? MR. BENCHLEY Perhaps my view Is still askew—
285 I thought you knew!" (Pity the tale's Argument fails, Now that I've scored;
GUSSIE rebukes
290 Fallible Euks' Flipping perukes Over a plot. As a result, Those of the Cult
295 Tend to be bored—
Touching ennui, Critics agree Canticle III Isn't so hot.
300 This'd explain
DANTE's insane Passion for Pain—
Boring, it's not. Nevertheless,
305 ELIOT NESS— But I digress.)
"The Born-Again can never die— THE PILGRIM 286.-306. The Advocation of Plot. Augustine of Hippo ("Gussie") considered it a sin to feel pity for fictional persons like Dido and Aeneas. If this attitude is typical of Euks, it may explain why Eukism (unlike Judaism, Greek, Roman and Norse mythology and just about every other religion) has no good stories and why Dante avoided plot in his work. The New Testament does tell one story, but it tells it four times in a row and sticks in a lot of preaching that stalls the action, so the drama is a bit flat. It's easy for a story to be The Greatest Story Ever Told, when it's The Only Story Ever Told.
But if it is a sin to feel emotions one cannot help, Art must itself be a sin, since it induces sin in others. So let's ban all literature and burn all books! Down with La Divina Commedia! Let's emulate the Visitor from Porlock, and stop somebody from writing something!
If I ever meet the Visitor from Porlock, I will doff the hat and humbly tug the forelock. Though his fateful knock abbreviated Kubla, Its entendre was indubitably double; For the Knock of Fate begat my own Infunno. Are we better for the tradeoff, though? I dunno.
305. ELIOT NESS. Dante and Hollywood's Ness are both real persons in fictional worlds, and both are cheerfully sadistic to people they meet; but at least Ness is so in furtherance of an actual plot, with a beginning, a middle and an end.
Or so asserts IMMANUEL. If this is so, then tell me why
310 They cease to breathe and start to smell? Or does some life still throb In each obituary job,
BOB?"
"Squirt, you must be joking— MR. BENCHLEY
315 Folks are always croaking.
Age, disease and smoking Slay Them for aye. But of course—your old contusion!
320 That's what's caused confusion. This is all illusion—
No more real than something by DORÉ."
"You don't say . . . THE PILGRIM HEY!!
325 "ROBERT!" I hissed,
"Maybe I missed Part of the gist— What do you mean?"
"Here is the clear MR. BENCHLEY
330 CRYSTALLINE SPHERE— Now we are near
PLUM THE SERENE;
And now for PLUM—" 307.-347. The Provocation of St. Bernard. Dante's pilgrim, through 14,233 verses, credulously accepts all he hears. His poem's verity depends largely on the answer to a question he begs: "Is there or is there not an immortal soul?" It is sobering to think that so great a poem may be, for all we know, fundamentally false. The pilgrim, showing a healthy skepticism, taxes Mr. Benchley for an answer once and for all to the troublesome question.
319.-320. Your old contusion!/That's what's caused confusion. A common Plum gag is to describe someone as having been dropped on the head as a baby, and the poet seriously injured his occiput at the age of two.
321. This is all illusion. Oops. Forget everything I've said for the last hundred pages. I'm going to have to check into this . . .
— Hello? Is Keith there? . . . No, the poet.. . . Right.. . . Sure, I'll hold. — Keith! How ya doin'? Say, about this illusion stuff — it won't wash. Sorry, kid, we're gonna have to change that part — Hello? Hello?
Oh, well . . .
325. Hissed. The pilgrim is now completely Plummified; like any decent Wodehouse character, he can hiss a word that contains no S.
330. CRYSTALLINE SPHERE. In Paradiso, this sphere, the extreme limit of the physical world, somehow moves with infinite speed and abides with the Empyrean at the same time, like the Red Queen in II Isaiah 2. Our Crystalline Sphere (the Drawing Room) houses the Martyrs of Humor, like Arthur Sullivan, Gracie ("St. Prisca") Fields and Charles Lamb, who practiced Humor in the face of tragedy with especial nobility.
"Cut the routine!" THE PILGRIM
335 "And KINGDOM COME—" MR. BENCHLEY
"[SOMETHING OBSCENE] THE PILGRIM
To Hell with PLUM! Explain how come!
CHRIST!!
340 Why am I enticed? Scrutinize my Geist—
Has it not been disinfected, fumigated and de-liced? Why? How?
345 What—?" POW! "Ow.— So why the biff on the bonce?"
"You said you'd like a response; MR. BENCHLEY
350 And when a shmo Undertakes to know The official low-
Down on 'What Is So'
With THE WORD & CO.
355 Or the 'Existential Nature of the Dead,'
He gets a clip upside the head For asking. So face it, clown—you been had."
"Was DANTE star-craving mad?!" THE PILGRIM
360 "I can't see why MR. BENCHLEY 339. CHRIST. Dante could never have cut the mustard as a light versifier; in all the years he spent on his epic, he never found a rhyme for this word.
348.-392. The Equivocation of Revelation. "Equivocation"? This is becoming too much! Let me try this guy again.. . .
— Hello, Keith? Listen, this is serious. We have to change — Hello? Hello? Well, he can't get away with this.. . .
— Look, Keith. Why is it every time I mention the word "change" — Damnation!!
350. Shmo. Referring to people generally, not the pilgrim in particular. See Arthur Guiterman's Brave Laughter (1943), where he refers to the species as Homo sap. "Shmo" recalls the traditional definitions of schlemiel, schlimazel and nebbish, which describe the characters in this work: the schlemiel poet spills verse on the schlimazel pilgrim, and the nebbish annotator cleans it up.
You should start to cry Over something I Only prophesy; Oh, and by the by—
365 There was never any EMPYREAN SPHERE! And while I have your ear— That cockamamie chicken poetaster is responsible for penning this interminable tome,
Employing nothing but his CLEMENT WOOD and MAELZEL Metronome;
But now hold onto yer fedora, cuzzis sucker's goin' home!
370 You want it? Here's the emmis, ducky— Love is cacafucky. Here's another emmis— Truth is in extremis.
375 Hope is hocus-pocus;
Faith is out of focus; Life is fiddle-faddle; Doubt is in the saddle. Big Bangs may expand, perhaps—
380 But, then again, they may collapse; Even entropy's a muddle—if the gods are shooting craps.
The WORD is A P P L E S A U C E ! It doesn't mean a thing!
385 The whole megilla's bats! When all is said and done, The only thing to do is go insane— 361. You should start to cry. The piccolo here depicts the pilgrim's tears.
365. EMPYREAN SPHERE. In positing a sphere in Paradise outside the physical world, attainable through the stars, Dante endorsed the scientific theory that black holes lead out of our Universe. Plum has discredited this view. In fact, they are holes in a Celestial Links, on which the Word plays an Eternal Round. Owing to the nature of black holes, however, holing out always results in loss of ball.
381. The gods are shooting craps. That tears it.
— Come on, Keith, will you cut the comedy?! What in hell's the big idea, anyway? — I know that's what you wrote, but can't you see what you're doing here? Dante's final cantos and Beethoven's coda are the most emphatic affirmations of Truth with a capital "T" in Western Civilization, and you're . . . — What do you mean, "Maybe they were wrong"?! This isn't a couple of rock stars we're talking about, it's Dante and Beethoven! These are geniuses! You can't just . . . — What does the way they put their trousers on have to do with it? I'm telling you, Beethoven is never wrong! — It's written across the skies in words of fire, "BEETHOVEN IS NEVER WRONG," that's how I know! — Well, it's written in Bernstein's Joy of Music, which is the same thing. Now either you change — No! Wait! Don't hang up!
Grrrrrrrrr!
Or laugh: Ho! Ha! Hee!
390 Ha! Ho! Ha! Hee! Ha! Ho! Ha! Hee!"
"I'm THE PILGRIM At the end
395 Of my rope:
The temples start to pound; The stars are spinning 'round— Does profound Truth abound
400 On the ground? Up above?— I
Just Can't
405 Cope!
GOD
Is —Dead!" (Let's
410 Hope!!) * * * * 389.-392. Ho! Ha! Hee!/Ha! Ho! Ha!/Hee! Ha! Ho!/Ha! Hee. A reliable source tells the poet that, in Communist Poland, clergymen laughed "hee-hee-hee," intellectuals laughed "ha-ha-ha" and Party members laughed "ho-ho-ho." To propitiate all three blocs, prudent Poles laughed "Hee-ha, hee-ha, hee-ha-ha! Hee-ha, hee-ha, hee-ha-ha! Ho! Ho! Ho!" This was known as "Opportunistic Laughter." Mr. Benchley now advises using it in any eschatological crisis. And for the last time . . .
— Keith, will you or won't you listen to reason? — But think of the position you put me in. I'm going along saying "this is so" and "that is so," and then you come and pull the rug out from under me. I can see the headlines now: Dogma Bites Man. You're making me look like a complete idiot. — I won't dignify that with an answer. Just remember, we're trying to convert the world to the True Faith. How far do you expect to get if you go around — Look at it this way: where would Jesus be if Paul had said, "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity. Of course, I could be wrong"? You've simply got to — — Izzat so? Well, lemme tell you something — I'm through. You hear me? THROUGH! — Contract? What contract?! Oh.. . . — All right, I'll finish the notes. But I warn you, if you ever publish this thing with my name on it, I'll sue the living bejesus out of you!
How do you like that guy? Well, here are the rest of the stinky, slimy notes:
393.-410. The Revocation of Salvation. Explanation: salvation is revoked. See lots of things like Mark Twain and such.
393. I'm. Sing this line a la Jerry Colona. Just don't sing it a la the poet if the dogcatcher is within earshot.
397. The stars are spinning 'round. Paradiso, XXXIII:145.
410. Dante is one of those poets who force scholars to footnote line numbers, by ascribing mystical significance to the lengths of their cantos. The poet here has made his work 1040 lines long, in hopes of propitiating the IRS. I wish him luck.
And I hope to God he breaks his blasted neck.
APPENDIX
I CANTICLE II /II.
MORIBUNDO.
The following is a fragment of a rhymed proof that the soul does not exist, to the tune of the third movement of Beethoven's Fifth. It differs from previous essays on the topic in relying not on subtle logic or evidence gained from minute observation, but simply on stout denial, repeated over and over until the reader is sick and tired of the whole thing. Why it is unfinished is a mystery: perhaps the poet feared to write solo lyrics to the polyphonic trio; he may have felt that, as Dante wrote no canticle two-and-a-half, the parody fails for lack of an object; or he may have decided that comic lyrics to a scherzo would be gilding the lily. Many conductors who won't admit that anything could be humorous and yet not mirthful omit the movement from performances of the Symphony, claiming that it just doesn't make sense. Indeed, Toscanini argued that the movement was really a minuet, and sprained his eyebrow in a mad attempt to prove it by practical demonstration.
The Dead are as dead as dead can be. (Brother, that's extremely dead.)
The odds of a soul, you must agree With me,
5 Are slightly less than half a shred.
Dead as a dab Laid on a slab;
Deader than BAB
Under the sod;
10 Dead as a stone; Dead as your own Grandmother's bone;
Deader than AARON's rod; Deader than GOD.
15 (And, gee,
JEHOVAH's face is red.)
Were the Will completely free, And were Death a benison, Yet, given "to be" or "not to be,"
20 Believe you me, We'd choose "to be": It's a con- It's a con- Sum-
25 Ma- Tion To
Be Wished. [alternate fragment:]
30 Dead as the past; Deader than nits;
Deader than NAST; Dead as the pits
Deader than last LUCIFER spits, Saturday's bread; Eating a peach;
Dead as a roast; Deader than YALE;
35 Dead as a ghost; Dead as a nail; Dead as a post; Dead as a whale Dead as a lump of lead; Found on a Newport beach. Dead as the Red A Fed
40 Is shooting in the head. * * * * O, wie schlimm ist mir im Tode, mir im Tode; Wenn gedämpfte Glocken läuten, Glocken läuten.21 * * * *
The fragment ends with a pencilled comment in the poet's hand: "To hell with this." This seems to sum up everything admirably.
21 "Oh, how said am I in death, when muffled bells toll." These lyrics parody an old German folksong, the tune of which is suggested at one point by Beethoven's music. EPILOGIA PRO VERBIS SUIS
I know I've rhymed, I know I've scanned; I know I've tried to be a comic; I know you think this pome was planned From motives purely economic;
But oh, my friends, it isn't true! (At least, it isn't true completely. "I've got to eat, the same as you," The tart pontificated sweetly.)
Hell, no one but a blockhead writes, As Johnson said, except for money; So why deny me dough's delights, Provided I am also funny?
"Provided"—ay, now there's the rub; I doubt that I am funny, ever. Except you biff me with a club, I'm lucky if I manage "clever."
Yet only Laughter can excuse The Art that else induces snoozing; The man who'd choose to serve a Muse Had better choose to be amusing.
Well, sidestep, if you will, my stuff; I'll knuckle under, feeling lucky. (But if you should be kind enough To call my little bit of fluff "Not thoroughly emetic guff," I must confess, it would be ducky.)