Truth As Signifier and Signified in „A Touch of the Poet“

Sonderdrucke aus der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

MONIKA FLUDERNIK

Truth as signifier and signified in „a touch of the poet“

A deconstructionist reading

Originalbeitrag erschienen in: Marta Gibinska (Hrsg.): Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference „New trends in english and american studies“, Cracow 1990 - April 2 – 7. Krakow: Universitas, 1992, S. 241-260 Alonika Fludernik University of Vienna

TRUTH AS SIGNIFIER AND SIGNIFIED IN A TOUCH OF THE POET: A DECONSTRUCTIONIST READING

In what follows I will argue for the relevance of a deconstructionist reading of O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet, concentrating on the manipulation of binary oppositions in the text and on the pe- culiar status of truth, a concept repeatedly apostrophized by all the characters in the play. Whereas in the present article I have tried to outline the deconstructionist potential of O'Neill's crossreferencing technique, I have earlier studied the complexity of the interlocking strands of repeated key phrases and key words ("Byron, Napoleon, and Thorough-Bred Mares: Symbolism and Semiosis in Eugene O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet [forthcoming in Sprachkunst 1991], as well as the loaded relationship between Melody and his daughter and the handling of the key concept of truth in the play — an aspect which I can only deal with very briefly in the present pages. See "The Illusion of Truth in Eugene O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet" (forthcoming in Amerikastudien/American Studies 1991). Reference to A Touch of the Poet are to the Jonathan Cape edition of 1957 and are given in page numbers. For readers using a different edition the following figures might help. In the Jonathan Cape edition Act I occupies pp. 7 through 43; Act II (44-72); Act III (73-101); Act IV (102-138).

241 In the O'Neill canon A Touch of the Poet has suffered a his- tory of neglect and disparagement, an instance of which is Doris Falk's estimation of the play, in her 1958 Eugene O'Neill and the Tragic Tension. An Interpretative Study of the Plays. Falk cri- tiques O'Neill's repetition of key phrases and his symbolic expla- nations in the play, arguing that these make over-explicit what is apparent to the audience in any case:

The play suffers from over-exposition of this theme [the Father as "Pride, Lust, and Greed", the mother as "submissive love", and the daughter as a "tormented combination of the two"]. Every action is explained by the characters — the word pride itself appears in one form or another in the text sixty-three times, usually followed by humiliation and shame. O'Neill is not satis- fied with having Con act out his ridiculous and pathetic illusion, but must always make him analyze them. [...] The symbolic meaning of the action [shooting the mare] hardly needs explanation, but we have it, anyway. [...] "For the love of God, don't take the pride of my love from me, Sara, for without it what am I at all but an ugly, fat woman gettin' old and sick' (Act I, p. 26) This is the bitter truth behind her [Nora's] constant submis- sion to and forgiveness of her husband — but need we be told?" 1

Falk, like most other writers on A Touch of the Poet, take such symbolic statements in the play at face value, believing them to mirror O'Neill's own interpretation. However, this forecloses any further play of signification and leaves the ambiguities of the ending as the only point of interpretative interest.

1 Dbris V. Falk, Eugene O'Neill and the Tragic Tension. An Interpretative Study of the Plays, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1958, pp. 167- 169. The second, revised edition has exactly the same wording: Doris V. Falk, Eugene O'Neill and the Tragic Tension. An Interpretative Study of the Plays, New York: Gordian Press, 1982, pp. 167-169.

242 In the wake of Ulrich Halfmann's discovery in O'Neill's oeuvre of what he calls the "musical theme dialogue" 2 — and what was concurrently described as "patterned language" by Egil TOrnqvist 3 — I would like to start out from a reevaluation of the repetitions in A Touch of the Post, which have a more radical function than the insistent retelling of commonoplace truths about the characters and their relationships. As TOrnqvist says, Far from making the issues too clear (as the critics would have it 4 , the verbal repetitions may, on the con- trary, be said to contribute to their mystifying complexity. For when we witness how one and same world. is used by several, often contrasting, characters in different situations and reffering to different things, we experience how the meaning of the word expands as the play develops until, finally, it has become so com- plex as to seem mysterious. (193) TOrnqvist's examples are taken from Horizon, where he concen- trates on the verb go, from Web, in which the curse Gawd recurs, Thrist (god), and Christie ('dat ole davil, sea"). Halfmann, on his part, takes his examples for the "musical theme dialogue" — repeated key phrases that occur both in the dialogue and in the stage directions — from Mourning Becomes Electra, where he shows how Lavinia's transformation into the role of her mother is signalled tex- tually both in the description of her in the stage directions (which

2 U1rich Halfmann., 'Unreal Realism." O'Neills Dramatisches Werk im Spiegel seiner szenischen Kunst, Berne: Franc.ke, 1969, pp. 120 ff. 3 Egil Tarnqvist, A Drama of Souls. Studies in O'Neill's Super-naturalistic Technique, New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1969. T6mqvist's book first ap- peared in 1968 under the same title: Egil TOrnqvist, A Drama of Souls. Stud- ies in O'iVeill's Super-naturalistic Technique, Acta Universitatis Uppsalien- sis. Historia litterarurn, vol. 3., Uppsala: .Almqvist Niksell, 1968, 1968. TOrnqvist cites to earlier studies that have a positive view on the repetitions in O'Neill: Stark Young, Immortal Shadows: A Book of Dramatic Criticism, New York and London, 1948: 175ff; and Jose Quintero, "Postcript to a Jour- ney", Theatre Arts 41, 1957, p. 28; TOrnqvist: 192-193, footnotes 8 and 9. 4 TOrnqvist had earlier referred to critics' "assumption that O'Neill is trying to pound home intellectual. ideas" (p. 193).

243 echoes precisely the former description of Mrs. Marmon), and in what the two women say in the dialogue in similar and different situations. Halfmann also analyzes more subtle correspondence and images. The cross-referencing to which TOrnqvist and Halfma:nn refer is a striking feature of the cycle plays, and in A Touch of the Poet it operates to undermine the literal reading of symbolic statements proffered in the dialogue. I will here use the terms -crossreferencing" or "verbal repetition" rather than either Halfmann's or TOrnqvist's "musical theme dialogue" and -patterned language". "Musical theme dialogue", besides implying that the device occurs only in the dialogue (whereas, as Halfmann himself so astutely pointed out, it is in fact part of a verbal pattern spanning the whole text, including the stage directions), also misleadingly suggests an affinity with the better-known "musical motif' (as, for example, employed in the "Sirens" episode of Ulysses). TOrnqvist's -patterned language", on the other hand, seems too vague for my pur- poses. In the following analysis I will attempt to demonstrate how the pattern of cross-referencing in A Touch of the _Poet, on the one hand, echoes characteristics of individual characters, which they share with others, but, additionally, manipulates these features in a deliberate pattern with some playful over-signification, thereby exceeding the uses of traditional motifs and themes. In the present paper I will concentrate on binary oppositions that recur in the text of A Touch of the Poet and are part of a more general network of cross-reference including the repetition of images and other key phrases. A Touch of the Poet, although its title seems to refer primarily to Simon Harford — a point to which we will return — centrally deals with the status, person and fate of Cornelius Melody, who is obviously the leading character. The interest, the intrigue, of the play seems to lie in the question of Melody's true identity. This question is put repeatedly and answered again and again both by Melody himself and by his sur- roundings. In the establishment of Melody's "essential nature" a number of binary oppositions come into play which are used to designate what he is or does. These views on Melody are contra-

244 dictory (hence the binary oppositions), and their application shifts throughout the play. As I will show below, these contradictory epithets describe Melody in terms of negation and affirmation, and the continuous deconstruction of the binary terms results in a semi- otic system closely akin to that within which difference is said to operate. I will first name and illustrate the oppositions posited in the text and then show how they are undermined, exchanged and merged in the course of the play. Melody is described in terms of a series of contradictory epithets. These oppose, first, true and falsehood/lies. (For easier reference, I capitalize relevant phrases).

If you ever dared face the TRUTH, you'd hate and de- spise yourself! (Passionately). All I pray to God is that someday when you're admiring yourself in the mirror something will make you see at 1st WHAT YOU RE- ALLY ARE! That will be revenge in full for all you've done to Mother and me! (80; Sara) Ain't he the LUNATIC, sittin' like a PLAY-ACTOR in his read coat, LYIN' about his battles with the French! (76; O'Dowd) His PRIDE, indade! What is it but a LIE? (105, Nora) But he's DEAD now, and his last bit av MIN' PRIDE is MURTHERED and stinkin". (127; Melody) She [Deborah] let you kiss her? [...] It's a lie, but I don" t doubt you've made yourself think it's the TRUTH by now. (82; Sara) Secondly, reality (the "living truth") is opposed to dreaming: God help you, it must be a wonderful thing to live in a FAIRY-TALE where only DREAMS are REAL to you. [...] Father! Will you never let yourself WAKE up — not even now when you're sober, or nearly? Is it stark MAD you've gone, so you can't tell any more what's DEAD A LIE, and what's the LIVING TRUTH? (39)

245 All I hope is that whatever happened WAKES him from his lies and MAD DREAMS so he'll have to face the TRUTH OF HIMSELF in that mirror". (114; Sara) The man you were. I'm. sorry I never knew that soldier. I think he was the only man who wasn't just a dream. (69; Sara)

These quotations also document another opposition which becomes particularly marked towards the end of the play. The position of falsehood and dreams is consistently compared to a state of death. The imagery is used to great effect in Act IV, when Melody is de- clared to be dead on his return from the battle royal, and later de- clares his former self to have died. Besides falsehood, dreaming and death, the opposite pole to the truth/reality position is moreover associated with madness or craziness. (I have marked such references already in above quotations, although these were primarily to . document the references to dreaming and lying/imposture in the play).

That DREAM again! God pity you! [...] And God help Simon. He must have thought you'd GONE OUT OF YOUR MIND! (85; Sara in reference to Melody's proposal of a settlement) There wasn't much PRIDE left in THE AULD LU- NATIC, anyway [...] (127; Melody) It was the Major PLAYED A GAME all his life, the CRAZY AULD LOON, and CHEATED only himself. (128; Melody)

Melody is said to "come.to his senses" when he turns into a peasant: "He ins't CRAZED, Mother. He's COME TO HIS SENSE for once in his life!" (119; Sara). As the above exemples further demonstrate, madness and imposture are equally identified with the traditional opposition of SEEMING versus BEING, resulting in the reproach that Melody is "play-acting", irresponsibly "play- ing a game" and donning himself "airs."

246 The dramatic role that Melody dons is that of the gentleman. By means of this fake identity he is able to distance himself from those that are the very opposite his Irish compatriots. The gentlemanly ideal is of course referred to as a mad dream throughout.

SARA [...] He [Simon]'s a born DREAMER with a raft of DREAMS, and he's very serious about them. {...] NORA (approvingly). That's the way a TRUE GEN- TLEMAN would feel — (23) You did not think, I hope, that I would give you away without a penny to your name as if you were some poverty-stricken PEASANT'S daughter? [...] BETWEEN GENTLEMEN, these matters can always be arranged. (39; Melody) She [Sara] can go far. (Then sneeringly) That is, if she can remember she's a GENTLEwoman and stop acting like a BOG-TROTTING PEASANT WENCH! (49; Melody) As a GENTLEMAN, I feel I have a DUTY, in HON- OUR, to Simon. Such a marriage would be a tragic MISALLIANCE for him [...] I cannot stand by and let him commit himself irrevocably to what could only bring him disgust and bitterness, and ruin to all his DREAMS. [...} No one, no matter how charitably in clined, could mistake you for a LADY. I have tried to make you one. It was an impossible task. God Himself cannot transform a SOW'S ear into a SILK purse! (87; Melody to Sara)

The peasant/gentleman opposition is further entrenched by accom- panying key words. Thus the castle that the Melodys used to own is juxtaposed with the peasant hovel with which Melody threatens Sara, and the noble mare complements the castle in the same way that the hovel is metonymically populated by pigs:

247 The man who would be the ideal husband for you, from a standpoint of conduct and character, is Mickey Malay [...] You and he would be congenial. [...] He's a healthy animal. He can give you a raft of PEASANT brats to squeal *and fight with the PIGS on the mud floor of your HOVEL. (87-88; Melody)5 MELODY. [...] I would remind you that I was born in a CASTLE and there was a time when I possessed wealth and position, and an ESTATE compared to which any Yankee upstart's home in this country is but a HOVEL stuck in a CABBAGE PATCH. I would remind him that you, my dauther, were born in a CASTLE! SARA impulsively, with a proud toss of her head). Well, that's no more than the TRUTH. (Then furious with herself and him). Och, what CRAZY BLATHER! (She springs to her feet). I've had enough of your MAD DREAMS! (86) It's the same CRAZY BLATHER he's talked every once in a while since they brought him to [...] speak- ing av the PIGS and his father one minute, and his PRIDE and HONOUR and his MARE the next. (120; Cregan)6 Finally, the gentleman of good breeding and honorable calling is identified as a poet, and particularly with 'Lord Byron — poet and nobleman" (34). Lord Byron is throughout contrasted with Napoleon (whose greed for power and territorial acquisition are em- phasized in connection with the rise of the liarfords). The peasant side of the opposition covers7a4.whole array of synonymous epithets, which are applied to Melodrs customers by both Sara and him. [...] I thought it was one of the DAMNED RIFFRAFF mistaking the barrodm door. (90; Melody)

61\lote the neat juxtaposition of "a raft of great dreams" (23) "a raft of peasant's brats". 6See also p. 119, Melody's version of this.

248 [...] we aren't the IGNORANT SHANTY SCUM he [the Fatheri's used to dealing with" (22; Sara) Everywhere the SCUM rises to the top. (30; Melody) CURSED IGNORANT CATTLE. (51; Melody) I said, less noise, you DOGS. (77; Melody) Into the bar, you LOUTS! (79; Melody) 7

The oppositions we have named so far are manipulated throughout the play. This appears most prominently in four respects. First of all, the epithets which are applied to Melody in the course of the play change colour dramatically. When Melody first dons his new 'peasant' role, his non-gentlemanly behaviour arouses immediate suspicion and attracts exactly the same epithets that used to apply to his earlier gentlemanly role:

God preserve us, it's CRAZED he is ! (119; Nora) I've never heard him talk like that in all the years — with that CRAZY DEAD look in his eyes. (121; Nora) 8 It's only the club on the head makes him QUARE a while. [...I All the same it's no fun listening to his MAD BLATHER [...] (122; Cregan) NORA [...] I heard him opening the closet in his room where he keeps his auld set of duelling pistols [...] CREGAN [...] Oh, the LUNATIC! [...] Sara L.] Oh, the MAD FOOL! (122-123)

At the end of the play everybody except Sara is happy to revert to the original estimation of Melody's gentleman role, which has now been relegated to the position of untruth and negation. At

"'Compare also - those drunken scum!" (80, 133), and Sata's involuntary behaviour when serving Cregan: "But I do owe you an apology for the quality of the service. I have tried to teach the waitress not to snatch plates from the table as if she were feeding dogs in a kennel (75: Melody). 8 Compare also the stage direction: "Melody laughs crazily and springs to his feet" .(120)

249 this point, of course, Melody himself, thanks to his new identity as 'the peasant', is able to concur in this evaluation:

Me brains, if I have any, is clear as a bell. And I'm not puttin' on brogue to tormint you, me darlint. Nor PLAY-ACTIN', Sara. That was the Major's GAME. It's QUARE, surely for the two av ye to object I talk in me natural tongue, and yours, and don't put on AIRS bike the late lamented AULD LIAR and LU- NATIC, MAJOR Cornelius Melody, av His Majesty's Seventh Dragoons, used to do. [...] But he's DEAD now [...] He'll nivir again hurt you with his sneers, and his PRETINDIN' he's a GENTLEMAN, BLATH- ERIN' about PRIDE and HONOUR, and his boastin' av in the days that's gone [...] prancing around drunk on his beautiful THOROUGHBRED MARE — (127; Melody)

The terms of the binary opposition thus exchange their value and shift their reference. A second means of subverting the schema of binary opposites arises from the extension of reference to characters other than Con Melody. For example, Simon Harford, as well as Melody, is consistently referred to as a poet, a gentleman, and a dreamer, and he is also said to be enthusiastic about Lord Byron:

Well, it's easy to tell young Master Harford has a TOUCH AV THE POET in him — (She addes before she thinks). The same as your father. (24; Nora) Be God, he'll nivir resist that, if I know him, for he's a young FOOL, full av dacency and DREAMS, and LOONEY, too, wid a TOUCH AV THE POET in him. (129; Melody on Simon) I don't think Simon imitates Lord Byron. I hate Lord Byron's poetry. And I know there's a TRUE POET in Simon. (63; Sara to Deborah)

250 Sara, and Nora too, acquire some of Melody's characteristics. They both indulge in a pride of their own (although Nora's is different from Melody's). Sara defends the family honour, whereas she shares her woman's dream with her mother:

NORA [...] You've a QUEER way of talking, as if you'd been asleep and was still half in a DREAM. SARA. In a DREAM right enough, Mother, and it isn't half me that's in it but all of me, body and soul. And it's a DREAM tha's TRUE, and always will be to the end of life, and NEVER WAKE FROM IT. (107)

Note also that the Harfords are great dreamers according to Deb- orah:

[...] the Harfords never part with their dreams even when they deny them. (65)

A third means of subverting the binary oppositions lies in the identification of opposites, and in the reinterpretation of key words to suggest their very opposite. Thus, as we have seen, the poles of truth and falsehood exchange their reference. More subtly, some of the opposites — Byron and Napoleon; the gentleman and the peasant — turn out to be identical rather than intrinsically different. For instance, the Byron passage which Melody keeps quoting is indicative, not of a romantic love of nature (such as Simon's poetry seems to convey, and his Thoreauvian exile confirms), but of a radical contempt for man in the mass, and of aristocratic arrogance. It is significant that this is the very passage which Deborah and Simon recite in More Stately Mansions, where it illustrates the Harford characteristics and metonymically implies their obsession with power and money. 9 This greed surfaces already in A Touch of

See Eugene O'Neill, More Stately Mansions. Shortened from the author's partly revised script by Karl Ragner Gierow and edited by Donald Gallup, New Haven S.: London: Yale Univ. Press, 1964, pp. 107-108. In the recent unexpurgated edition of the play Deborah first reads this passage to Simon's son Wolfe, and adds the next stanza, which tones down its contemptuousness.

251 the Poet in Deborah's story of the Harford family, in which dreams, acquisitiveness, and an adoration for Napoleon emerge as quasi- synonymus concepts. (63-65) Note also that Deborah's encounter with nature when she goes to visit her son in the wilderness evokes neither a peaceful contemplation of the harmonies of nature, nor an enthusiasm for natural forces, but a shocking recognition of nature's insinuating and dangerous powers, powers that are explicitly suggested to provoke sexual arousal:

yes, I did find my walk alone in the woods a §trangely overpowering experience. Frightening — but intoxicat- ing, too. Such a wild feeling of release and fresh en- slavement. I have not ventured from my garden in many years. There nature is tamed, constrained to obey and adorn. I had forgotten how compelling the brutal power of primitive, possessive nature can be — when one is suddenly attacked by it. (66)

Compare this with her reaction to Melody's seduction:

She shrinks and looks up at him. Their eyes meet and at the naked physical appraisement she sees in his, a fascinated fear suddenly seizes her. (53) Deborah's amuse- ment is gone. She is again confused, and in spite of herself, frightened and fascinated. (54) DEBORAH (feeling herself borne down weakly by the sitter force of his physical strength, struggles to release her hand... (55)

Not only does nature thus show itself to be red in tooth and claw, but these very forces are displayed additionally as the equivalent of

Deborah also tells Wolfe that she does not like the poem because it is -much too bitter and disdainful a dream for a contented grandmother. (pp. 1 71-1 72) Later on, hovewer, she and Simon recite the same passage with their former enthusiasm and disdain. (pp. 188-189) See Eugene O'Neill, More Stately Mansions. The Unexpurgated Edition, edited by Martha Gilman Bower, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988.

252 Deborah's (and hence gentility's) repressed sexuality (and former ruthless acquisition of territory and power). The parallel will of course receive further emphasis in More Stately Mansions, where greed and love come to be equated both by their mutual exchange and by the fact that both are calculated in terms of money --I the expansion of the firm, Sara's hold over Simon and the dream of the castle which is to be built from the money accumulated in this manner. Indeed, Byron from the start does not fit the Wordswor- thian role which he seems to fulfil in Simon's poetry. One final aspect of the subversion of binary oppositions can be found in the use of key terms which radically change their meaning and thus undermine their original reference. I will here only briefly note this in connection with the terms gentleman and honour. Melody terms himself a gentleman and regards Harford as his equal in breeding and honour. Both Melody and Harford do not behave as gentlemen, however, Melody because he identifies gentility with possession and with the prerogative of condescending arrogance, Harford because he sees himself absolved from regard- ing Melody as his equal. Melody lords it over his Irish compatriots, a fact they resent but do not rebel against for pecuniary reasons. 10 When Sara criticizes her father for his association with what she too holds to be the "scum" , she does so by ironically applying to her father's boon companions terms most appropriate for Melody's equals:

O'DOWD. Thank ye, yer Honour. [...] SARA (in derisive brOgue). Sure it's well trained you've got the poor RETAINERS on your American ESTATE to RESPECT the MASTER! [...] Don't let me keep you from joining the GENTLEMEN! (42) I suppose you've given orders to poor Mother to cook a grand feast for you, as usual, and you'll wear your beautiful uniform, and have the HONOUR of wait- ing on table. (45)

10 "Don't be wishin: him harm, for it's thirsty we'd be without him". ((77, O'Dow.d)

253 Can't you — and the other GENTLEMEN — finish gettin' drunk in the bar and lave me clear the tables? (79)

Even more unsettling is use of the word honour, which is origi- nally applied to reinforce the gentility of both Melody and Simon:

It has been a privilege to be able to converse with a cultured gentleman again. (37; Melody) I told him I appreciated the honour he did me in asking for your hand. (84-85; Melody)

The term, however, breaks loose from thee moorings when Melody encounters his humiliation at the hands of Gadsby:

Your pardon, sir. When I called, I thought it was one of the damned riffraff mistaking the barroom door. Pray be seated, sir. {...] And whom have I the HONOUR of addressing? (90; Melody to Gadsby) It does me HONOUR, sir, that Mr Hardford appreci- ates he is dealing with a gentleman and has the breeding to know how these matters are properly arranged. (92) [After the true terms of Hardford's 'settlement' with Melody have come to light:] MELODY (so overcome by a rising tide of savage, humiliated fury, he can only stammer hoarsely). So Henry Harford does me the HONOUR — to suggest that, does he?

The word undergoes even more ironic reversals in its application to Sara's virginity and Simon's gentlemanly standing:

MELODY, [...] you must make the young Yankee gintle- man have you in his bed, and after he's had you, weep great tears and appeal to his HONOUR to marry you and save yours. (129) And let me hear no more gab out of you about not marry-in' the young lad upstairs. Be Jaysus, haven't

254 ye any HONOUR? Ye seduced him and yell make an HONEST GENTLEMAN av him L.] (135)

A similar reversal happens to the word pride:

SARA. Father! Don't! He's only a paid lackey. Where is your PRIDE that you'd dirty your hands on the like of him? (94) Be the living God, it's me should be PROUD this night that one av the Yankee gintry has STOOPED TO BE SEDUCED by my SLUT of a daughter! [..] And won't we be PROUD watchin' her rise in the world till she's a GRAND LADY! (130; Melody)

We can therefore now recapitulate that there is a series of binary oppositions which are explicitly contrasted in the play, and that these oppositions are deconstructed by a variety of means. They exchange reference, are applied to various (incompatible) characters, become synonymous, and some of them undergo a radical change of meaning. Let me now turn to the notion of truth in the play. The central question of A Touch of the Poet seems to be what or who Melody is, and/or was. All views about Melody, including his own, posit a true, unitary essence of what he is, and they either define him., positively, as a "gentleman" or, negatively, as a -fool". He is additionally pictured in terms of a Being vs. Seeming opposition, in the terms of which he is not what he seems to be, i.e. he is a "fake", a "liar", but also a gentleman in fallen circumstances. Even Melody himself sees himself as either the gentleman or the peasant, and Sara consistently gives voice to her belief in her father's real self:

All I pray to God is someday when you're admiring yourself in the mirror something will make you see at last what YOU REALLY ARE! (80) Oh, Father, why can't you ever BE THE THING YOU can SEEM TO BE? (A sad scorn comes into her voice).

255 The man you were. I'm sorry I never knew the soldier. I think he was the ONLY MAN who WASN'T JUST A DREAM. (69)

The play thus abounds in references to truth and reality. Yet, as we have seen, no "true" identity of Melody ever emerges and the epithets applied to him keep shifting reference, merge into one an other and extend to other characters in the play. One can therefore recuperate a structure of signification that corresponds to deconstructionist views about the relationship of signifiers and signifieds. On one level, Melody's true self is a signified that is apostrophized throughout the whole text by a series of signifieds (the terms of the binary oppositions we have analyzed above). It is apparent that none of these signifiers ever attains a reference to Melody, whose "meaning" keeps the chain of signification in constant movement yet eludes eventual definition or closure. Like its philosophical counterpart, the notion of truth in A Touch of the Poet slides under its many signifiers out of reach of nomination:

Le signifie de connotation est a la lettre un index: il pointe mais ne dit pas; ce pointe, c'est le nom. c'est la verite comme nom; il est a la fois la tentation de nommer et l'impuissance a nommer (pour amener le nom, Pinduction sera plus efficace que la designation): il est ce bout de la /angue,d'oil va tomber, plus tard, le nom, la verite. [...I la verite est de la sorte longuement desiree et contournee, maintenue dans une sorte de plenitude enceinte, dont la percee, a la fois liberatoire et catastrophique, accomplira la fin mème du discours

11 Roland Barthes, S/Z, Paris: Seuil, 1970, p. 69. - The connotative signified is literally an index: it points but does not tell; what it points to is the name, the truth as name; it is both the temptation to name and the impotence to name (induction would be more effective than designation in producing the name): it is the tip of the tongli.e, [pun with au bout de, i.e. at the end] from which the name, the truth, will later fall. [...] the truth is thereby long desired and avoided, kept in a kind of pregnancy for its full term, a pregnancy whose

256 One could also say that Melody, the meaning of Melody, is established not by the terms applied to him, but by their difference from each other. As the value of a linguistic unit is established by the enumeration of its positive traits and, negatively, by its opposition to other ternis, Melody's signification emerges from the various names and features applied to him, none of which define him, but within the system of which he emerges as that locus which keeps the system in flux. Melody's function can thus be compared to the dynamics of differance — that which produces binary opposition. 12 From a psycho-analytic stance even more interesting aspects can be detected. Thus Melody stands in the position of unmarked- ness and attracts meaning (i.e. interpretation) from every side. He seems to be the Lacanian empty field which makes possible the signification of the other elements in the system. Even more ap- propriately, one can view Melody's own self-definitions as typical appropriations of specular others. Throughout the play, Melody steers clear of self-recognition, of a coming to terms with his past, or his failings. Instead, whenever he seems to be losing control over his role of the gentleman, he has to reassure himself in the mirror, refreshing his pose by means of Byronic impersonation. After the brawl on Harford's doorstep, when the gentlemanly role has be come untenable, he catches at another image, which equally fails to come to grips with his past. In the role of the gentleman Melody had repressed his fall from honour and wealth (and the reasons for it); as a peasant he represses his former social status and can con- tinue to leave unexplained why he took a fall. The role allows him to save his former pride by burying it as irrelevant; since he has never been anything but a "peasant", there is no humiliatiOn in being one. end, both liberating and catastrophic, will bring abut the utter end of the discourse:" - Roland Barthes, S/Z, trsl by Richard Miller, New York: Hill and Wang, 1974, p. 62. qui s'ecrit difference, cc sera donc le mouvement de jeu qui iproduitL, par cc qui n'est pas simplement une activite, ces differences, ces effets de difference". - Jacques Derrida, "La Difference", in: Merges de Ia philosophies Paris: Minuit, 1972, p. 16.

257 Nevertheless the play evokes a true Melody by its apostrophe of truth and reality, and there also are some signs of this fictive person on stage. Whatever Melody may possibly 'be', this can be glimpsed, however, only by implication. Thus Melody's past, whose reality is vouchsafed by Cregan's and Nora's evidence, remains a matter of conjecture and eludes the gentleman versus peasant dichotomy. Melody, of course, was neither a peasant, though the son of one, nor a gentleman, since he was excluded from the no- bility as a 'social upstart'. His 'true" past is resurrected twice in the play, when Melody comes down in his uniform, and in the hallucinatory sequence when he almost shoots Sara. 13 (There is a further resurrection off-stage, on Harford's doorstep, about which we hear from Cregan). All these resurrections center on Melody the major, honoured for his bravery, and Melody the famous duellist. His 'real' social role, such as it was across the Atlantic, has absolutely no place in American society, in which duelling is discountenanced, and in which the quasi-gentlemanly status of military officers did not exist. Melody as the officer can therefore appear merely as an unconvincing role, for which he dresses up, and as a dreamlike resurrection of the past. A similar pattern can be discovered with respect to Melody's linguistic roles. The language he uses in the play precisely conforms to the roles of the gentleman and the peasant, alternating between refined arrogance and brogue. Interestingly, there is also some linguistic evidence of his 'real self', which can be glimpsed in inconspicuous, unmarked environments — in the hallucinatory scene he remains, significantly, mute. Only when stung to the core by Sara's invectives or pleas, do we hear a distinctive voice, but it is the cry of anguish and self-forlornness rather than a true voice in its own right. Melody's 'true self' asserts itself whenever he loses control, and what emerges in these instances is either pitiable dis- orientation or self-demeaning violent rage:

SARA. Furthered my interests by giving her [Deborah] another reason to laugh up her sleeve at your pretences?

13 This resurrection is discussed at length in my - The Illusion of Truth".

258 (11'ith angry scron, lapsing into broad brogue). Arrah, God pity you! (She turns her back on him and goes off. right. Melody stands gripping ihe back of ihe chair at the foot of the table in his big, powerful hands in an effort to control himself. There is a crack as the chair back snaps in half). (71)14 Melody therefore, emerges as a center that does not hold. He generates the play's discourse about truth and himself as truth, but does not allow its closure in ultimate signification. Rather than repeating stock truths about the meaning of the play, O'Neill can therefore be seen to have manipulated the surface structure of the discourse in order to ambiguate and undermine unambiguous identifications and interpretations. Rather than proffering a series of clear-cut statements about Melody and his significance, the text leads the reader astray, engaging him/her in a round-dance of scintillating possibilities none of which turn into stable signification. This textual play, in which truth is continually named and searched for but never found, finds its counterpart in the set- ting and the visual realization. On stage we encounter a parade of Melody's imaginary egos in a variety of guises. The play's language presents us with the arrogant gentleman using a refined and haughty idiom, the vulgar -shebeen keeper' talking in brogue, and with an unmarked position in which Melody conforms to neither of these roles. Comportment, like the language, also repeats these categories, and so does dress — compare Melody's glamorous en- try in uniform as the handsome major with his reappearance in his torn uniform in Act IV. All these perspectives on Cornelius Melody allow glimpses of what he might possibly "be", but vouchsafe no actual manifestation of his "true" self. From the visual presen- tation on the stage, such a true self, as posited to exist by the many references to it in the text, emerges as taking up precisely

14 "He controls himself" (35); "controls his anger" (38): "He forces control on himself and sinks back in his chair, his hands gripping the arms". (40); "He controls himself, meeting Sara's contemptuous eyes". (46); -MELODY. Nora! For the love of God, stop — (Suddenly he is able to become the polished gentleman again [...D" (57).

259 the position of absence and lack that we have already uncovered to be characteristic of Melody's status within the binary oppositions on the textual level. Is it this shifting and unsettling of signification, then, which constitutes O'Neill's characteristic "touch of the poet?"

260