Chaplin a De

The Massachusetts Review, Inc.

The Chaplinade: A Film PoemAuthor(s): Yvan Goll, Clinton J. Atkinson and Arthur S. WensingerSource: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring-Summer, 1965), pp. 497-514Published by: The Massachusetts Review, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25087311 .

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THE CHAPLINADE

A FILM POEM

(Dcitin Ftratnd Legco

by

YVANGOLL

with drawings from the original edition by Fernand Leger

AND A POSTSCRIPT ON HUMOR

BY

LUIGI PIRANDELLO



AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Clinton J. Atkinson and Arthur S. Wensinger

Yvan

Goll was born in St. Die, France, in 1891, and died in Paris

in 1950. A wanderer throughout a great part of his life, he lived in

the United States from 1939 to 1947. In 1920 the author wrote of

himself: "Yvan Goll has no home; by fate a Jew, born by chance a

Frenchman, made by the whim of a rubber stamp a German." Goll is

known primarily as a Surrealist, but his dramatic oeuvre ranges from the

early years of Expressionism to a prefiguring of the Theatre of the

Absurd. Jean Sans Terre, a Surrealist poem cycle, has been thus far

his only work readily available to the English-reading public, and even

that is now almost impossible to find.

It is unfortunate that a poet as perceptive and original as Goll has been neglected in this country; yet this may be somewhat more readily understood when it is realized that, although he wrote with equal facility and felicity in French and German (and even at times in English) and

could presumably have had, so to speak, a double, if not triple public, even in his European languages he has never been adequately appreci ated. In Germany, of course, the ascendancy of the National Socialist

regime contributed to the eclipse of GolPs early reputation. Still, how ever easy it is to blame the vicissitudes of political history and a sort of

unintentional deracination for Goll's failure to achieve wide recognition and leave it at that, to do so would be to overlook altogether how deeply involved he was indeed in the literary and artistic life of the countries

in which he resided. His published volumes have been illustrated by his

friends Grosz, Miro, Berman, Chagall, Leger, and Dali; and in the

United States the depth (if not the breadth) of respect his work has com

manded is attested by a partial list of the translators and commentators

who contributed to the single Jean Sans Terre volume: Louise Bogan, Babette Deutsch, Paul Goodman, Galway Kinnell, Kenneth Patchen, Kenneth Rexroth, William Jay Smith, William Carlos Williams, Allen

Tate, and W. H. Auden. In the literary salons, it would seem, Goll's

work has, at least in part, been known and appreciated for some time.

The key to the quietness of his wider reputation lies, perhaps, in the fact

that so much of what Goll wrote was either too richly executed for

498



ready acceptance or?as is most especially seen in his dramas?too ad

vanced for comfortable comprehension and too truthful in its observa

tion of bourgeois foibles.

"The Expressionist Courteline"?as Brecht, an early admirer, called

him?is represented by no more than a handful of plays and the film

poem The Chaflinade. Still, Goll's theatre may in time prove to be his

most effective contribution to literature. His major piece, Methusalem

(produced in Berlin in 1922 with direction by William Dieterle and de

cor by George Grosz), is an amazingly prescient work with entire

scenes that reappear nearly verbatim in the much later work of Ionesco

(particularly in The Bald Sofrano). When this play was revived in

various German theatres in 1962 the press was universal in acknowledg

ing the prophetic nature and direct influence of Goll's work.

The Chaflinade, written in 1920, is one of Goll's more explicitly

delightful creations and, with such a work as Garcia Lorca's Buster

Keaton's Promenade, is evidence of the influence which the great clowns

of America's silent films had on the literary artists of Europe. In this

scenario-poem Goll has captured and presented the loneliness of the

public hero, the private anguish of the world's buffoon. The fidelity with

which the author mirrors the famous actor's dilemma is fully attested

by a number of passages from Charles Chaplin's recent My Autobiogra

fhy, especially the recollection of a "triumphal" tour made about two

or three years before Goll wrote his film poem.

It is gratifying to report that today more of Yvan Goll's poetry is

appearing in anthologies and separate paperbacks in France and the

United States. The shadow of the German past withdrawing slowly over the past years has revealed in that country likewise what we can

only call a reputation ripe for harvest. And the Society of Friends of

Yvan Goll, presided over in America by Padraic Colum and in France

by Jules Romains, has begun to cultivate new possibilities. The most

voluminous instances of Goll's growing recognition are the recent 835

page German edition of selected writings (Darmstadt: Luchterhand,

1960) and the newly announced edition of the correspondence of the

poet and his wife Claire (herself still a notable and active figure in

literary Paris). We might also mention the translation of the Methus

alem in the forthcoming edition of the New Directions Anthology. It

is to be hoped that some enterprising publisher here will eventually pro duce a volume of Goll's lyric and dramatic poetry in translation so that

we may then begin, in this country, to evaluate a reputation slighted.

499



(Dessin Fernand L?ger)



THE GHAPLINADE

i

chaplin, on one of the thousands of posters that adorn the city, be

gins to move. Wide-eyed, he stares at the passers-by, smiles, cautiously

descends from his pedestal, where he is depicted as The King of

Hearts, and solemnly places his crown, scepter, and orb on a garbage

pail: The kings and I have now been posters long enough. In rain or shine, smiling, smiling,

Grinning, grinning, into eternity! I want to be myself, I want to weep when I suffer,

Have my hair cut in the summertime?

And forget all about the whole police force.

the billposter comes diagonally

across the street from the side

walk opposite and begins to post an advertisement for perfume. Chaplin

quickly slips behind the kiosk and presently emerges in his customary costume: bowler hat, short jacket, little cane, corkscrewed trousers. The

Billposter curses and gesticulates angrily:

What's gotten into you, Chaplin ?

Back to your poster, you fool!

Work, smile, do your job!

chaplin pokes around

pensively in the garbage can and picks up the

crown with the crook of his cane:

I'll give you my crown: just let me be!

I'm so moved by the poor passer-by who's so bored,

I'd like to decorate the drab streets for him.

You know, it's harder living for one single person than dying for all of humanity!

Translated by Clinton j. atkinson and arthur s. wensinger.

501



the billposter boxes Chaplin's ears:

Wisdom comes easy to the man who earns five

million a year! I'm a Socialist by the way,

Each of us has his own morals and his own raincoat.

Pedestrians begin to parade grotesquely around the kiosk, seeming to be

looking for something. They speak cliches in infinitely bored tones, like

catechisms.

a private tutor : A bush in the hand is worth two in the bird.

journalist: The early bird catches a cold.

lieutenant: I do believe that we're going to have rain.

a lady : It's not raining now.

a private tutor: It is raining slightly.

an elderly gentleman: Not quite yet, but it will be raining soon.

lieutenant: Why it's raining cats and dogs.

the billposter, enraged:

Back to your poster, you wretch!

chaplin : A tragedy of the fool who mimes stupidity, And of the acrobat who dies for a smile:

They are the world's loneliest men!

Woe to them if they are recognized! The crowd can never forgive the lonely Their loneliness!

The Billposter grabs Chaplin by the collar and pushes him against the

kiosk. For a second Chaplin is seen as Christ with the crown of thorns.

Nevertheless the Billposter inexorably pastes him with his brush to the

poster.

502



Suddenly Chaplin appears again life-size on the billboard.

The passers-by greet him, a smile on every face. Now a somber and un

happy hunchback walks by. Chaplin starts, saddens, and then begins to

laugh, flashing his white teeth, holding his stomach. He gives the Bill

poster a kick in the seat of the pants and laughs until the hunchback also

begins to laugh. Then he turns aside and secretly wipes a tear from his

eye.

Somebody hands the Billposter a coin. He exults, leans against Chap lin's poster and like a beggar extends his cap to the crowd. Boys come leapfrogging excitedly around the kiosk. They are laughing. Chaplin becomes happy again. (Chaplin is but the mirror of the world.)

On the film appears the inscription: suffer the little children to

come unto me. . . . And Chaplin, placing a foot on the Billposter's head, jumps down to become the last member of the boys' game.

The Billposter falls flat. His money rolls into the gutter. Chaplin runs

away. All the passers-by follow him. Pursuit through the streets. A chase across boulevards, in and out of busses, through restaurants, apart

ments, subway stations. The pursuers, grasping for illusive happiness, in crease in number. But suddenly Chaplin posters all over detach from

kiosks, hoardings, billboards, construction fences: Chaplin in every imag inable costume, in full dress, as a cook's apprentice,

as a soldier, as king, as salesclerk, as a violinist, group together so that the pursued

soon out

number the pursuers.

The crowd becomes confused and doesn't know which one to chase. As soon as one of them catches a Chaplin, it collapses limply to the ground, a piece of paper. The Chaplins of the earth continue to multiply, but

suddenly all face front and become one: the living Chaplin. He laughs. Everybody laughs, and all embrace. (The symbolic victory of The Genius of Good over The Poor in Spirit.)

chaplin stands alone. His face becomes radiant:

To be human is enough to make us great. Silence is an ecstasy beyond compare,

The world turns softly: And you are balancing the globe on your fingertip And will toss it back to infinity!

503



II

An express train passes. Chaplin swings up into an empty compartment and finds himself suddenly in a small library, with a table covered with

all manner of writing instruments. Repeatedly he leans out of the com

partment window and examines the landscape through huge binoculars.

Suddenly he leans back in the desk chair and writes:

To be inspired, does that mean to be thoughtless? One awaits the crashing

waves of the sunset

And for marble blocks to build themselves into

Doric temples;

My intellect has been turned off.

chaplin points the field glasses out the window again. Grandiose

Alpine landscape. Jagged peaks. Plunging waterfalls. On a glacier, a

herd of mountain goats:

I was more moved when colored postcards

Brought the elegy of the Matterhorn to me.

In the autumn of my youth:

Inspiration was

genuine then!

The Alpine glow of longing and of life

Delivered by the postman Was enough to make me poet then.

The field glasses turn. A barren railroad embankment is seen. Leaning

telegraph poles follow the tracks. Peasant lineman's house with tulips in the garden, and an elder bush. A motionless figure, squatting:

Little landscape of the everyday: my eye idolizes you! Grass! How noble! Bellflowers speaking to the wind:

Just wait: in two thousand years you'll love me

much more!

Living ages. Death rejuvenates.

chaplin puts down the binoculars. Very sad. Suddenly he picks up a fountain pen. New landscape. Meadow. Herd of brown cows. Twisted

willows:

Oh tender little calf in the cosmic clover,

504



How sad your mystical eye! You know as much about this suffering world as I!

The train stops. A lady gets on, leading a doe on a silk leash.

chaplin withdraws into a corner and speaks:

I've been robbed of my solitude.

My contact with metaphysical space is interrupted. It was a day like this when man invented Fate.

the lady smiles:

Are you on a round trip to Elysium too?

My brother-in-law wants to set up a dye factory there, But I'm advising him not to. The connections are bad.

chaplin : Wouldn't you like to commit suicide ?

lady: Perhaps. What else can one do to be interesting?

My daughter, Deerie, has legs as fragile as porcelain. Whenever a

gentleman greets us she falls all over

herself.

Springtime and sunset are hardly worth it anymore. Men understand nothing about us women.

chaplin : I will carry your daughter in my arms through the world.

Each day I will give her fresh leaflets to eat:

All my poems, The ones with the swallows inscribed on them:

Poets should write only for deer, Verses belong back in the forest!

lady : You are a quiet soul. I should like to travel with you. I have old memories of Parnassus.

Have you your checkbook with you?

505



chaplin, searching his pockets:

I have The Book of Ruth. But a checkbook . . .

lady, embracing him:

How much are you making it out for? Ten thousand?

the deer: Should I lie down now, mamma?

lady, to Chaplin:

Shall we stop at the Hotel Zeus or The Terminus?

chaplin, in despair:

Wherever you want to! But separate bathtubs!

He looks out the window.

Don't I belong to Nature ? In the shadows of the

fir trees?

Where I can see the rivers flow into the sea?

Madam, oh please, don't love me!

Let me be lonesome, with no consolation, let me beat

my head in pain against the rocks, Have mercy! Don't love me! It makes me so tired!

Chaplin takes his cane from a hook and stabs it into the Lady's heart.

She falls dead.

the deer: Should I cry now, mamma?

Chaplin reaches out to the Deer and pets it. He pushes the Lady's body under the seat. The train stops and he springs out with the Deer.

Ill

chaplin enters the station restaurant. It is empty, except for the

Restaurateur's family, eating lunch in one corner. Chaplin looks sad,

paces to and fro, to and fro, a bit faster at each turn. His hunger dance.

He begins to clamber up and down the walls, then he gets onto a table

and marches about among the platters. The family gorges without no

ticing him.

506



the wife gets up suddenly and crosses herself:

Jesus, that's Charlie!

You look pale like all who make this journey. Behind the house the Parnassus Graveyard lies

Overgrown with pink laurel; There's where all the poets are buried, the ones who

were as tired as you!

The restaurateur looks angrily at his wife and stamps on her foot

under the table. Chaplin shakes his head but sits down at the table, ties

a napkin around his knee, gesticulates with knife and fork. The Res

taurateur puts a thin slice of bread on Chaplin's plate and then carves a

roast chicken in two and serves himself and his wife.

the wife: Living is so expensive. Potatoes are so

expensive.

You're dining with us?

Chaplin pushes the slice of bread around on his plate, holds it up to

the light, takes a postage scale out of his pocket, and weighs it.

chaplin: Couldn't you give me a rose

petal?

the restaurateur: Give him one from the withered rose in the vase.

The wife rises, takes the slice of bread from Chaplin, and pulls apart the rose on the plate instead.

the wife: And how bread prices have risen.

The Man and Wife now divide an entire cauliflower between them.

chaplin : This rose heart is too much for my wolfish hunger.

the restaurateur: Yes, you ought to be careful of your stomach.

Whoever once begins to hunger?that is to say begins to become an idealist. . .

507



At this moment the Deer jumps in through the window, knocks over

their table, and rushes over to Chaplin. Pandemonium. Chaplin goes

slowly to the window with the animal, produces a piece of paper, looks out at the evening landscape, and writes. The writing is seen in the

film:

Whoever sees this pink cloud with me, This gentle event

In the dying evening, If only one out of millions salutes this cloud, From the waiting room, from the counter, from the

boulevard,

He is my friend.

Chaplin folds the paper; the Deer sniffs it.

A train is announced. The Restaurateur dashes out of the room. His wife sets the signals.

Meanwhile, Chaplin rushes to the buffet and eats everything there:

cutlets, sausages, oranges; he pours the contents of all the liquor bottles over his hair and washes his hands in champagne. Whereupon he and

the Deer escape. Confusion. Pursuit. Chaplin walks, twirling his cane,

smoking a cigar, on the roofs of the railroad cars. His image splits and

then multiplies by ten, to the confusion of his pursuers.

Movement accelerates. Finally Chaplin lies back on the locomotive and

he and the Deer travel away on the back of this modern Pegasus.

chaplin: Parnassus abandoned by birds and treetops, You are a gray clay hill of ancient centuries!

Express train, tell me about a land of purity!

Maybe in Japan the girls are true ?

Have I a friend perhaps on the islands of Hawaii?

Does our final divinity live in Greenland?

I, poor Chaplin, had I a homeland, I'd be at home everywhere

at once,

And yet, can a poet ever find peace ?

508



IV

chaplin is wandering through the desert. He is pulling the doe be

hind him on a rope. He sits down on a dune but only after he has

spread out his handkerchief and, like a Bedouin, kissed the sand:

Any sufferer who beats his head against the wall

understands me.

Any fool waiting day after day at the subway station

for his impossible love knows my pain. Whoever is disgusted by a hotel bed, whoever suffocates

in family parlors,

May all of you come to my prophetic heart

And weep with me three wellsprings in the desert!

That is the goodness that we can do!

Absent-mindedly he tips his hat.

How many suicidal acts have I performed! A million are regaled this evening with my clowning. But now I finally have the time to mourn!

Chariot of Assisi!

You know of suffering, shy deer, as I!

Poor pitiful hungry creature!

He yawns.

So quiet and peaceful

Yawning.

?here at the feet of God!

The sky is eternally the same,

My shadow creeps in boredom next to me.

Europe is so far! Deep beneath us at the bottom of

the radius

A purple city surely lies:

How I long, how I long, to see it!

509



He begins to dig with his hands. The ground opens up and the film

shows fantastic views of the interior of the earth. Having arrived at the

center of the earth, Chaplin holds a telephone receiver to his ear, listen

ing to the voices of the globe as if he were at the central switchboard of

the world?reproduced on the sound track:

Ten million butter flies / The old baker murdered / Un jour viendra / In the year 800 Charlemagne became / Pll tell you

everything and nothing / A fever of 76 degrees / Macaroni

with red tomatoes / lym m love with a lady from Zanxibar / Bitteschon / Christsson and Comfany, Collars and Gentlemanys Linens / Milk train to Marathon / The Radical Left has gotten

frightened / La la la petite femme / No, it would be better

yesterday than tomorrow / Charlottenburg six / Baked brains in

butter . . .

chaplin: Is that what people are thinking? The center of the earth is roaring

With a tumult of lies, stupidity of telephones, insanity of telegrams.

How poverty-stricken man is. All literature melts away

In the face of this golden syllable: pain! The fountain of the brain is spewing numbers

And empty bubbles float down from the starry sky To explode in the dirty waters of canals.

Graveyards with their heavy stones weigh down on

all memory: And our love is always false.

The only truth is longing For the infinite illusion!

But the truth will always make us yawn!

The film suddenly shows the harbor of Marseilles. Wild confusion of

humanity. Streetcars. Lumbering trucks. People of all races.

Shouting.

newsboy yells into Chaplin's ears:

Socialist Daily: The Red Heart!

510



Chaplin tips his hat courteously and bows deeply to the paperboy, who is quite startled by this. Twirling his cane with eminent self-satisfac

tion, he continues through the streets. Only slowly does he notice the new social order of Europe: everybody is working. People begin to

point at Chaplin who stands, pensive. Skinny bespectacled intellectuals are rhythmically hammering paving stones into place. Women are

climbing onto roofs and are lowering pulleys. Men in top hats are

streetcar conductors. Children are assisting their parents at every kind

of work and next to every one of these individuals stands a policeman with bayonet and gas mask. At street corners where formerly there

were signs saying "Protect our Animals!" large signs proclaim:

Protect Our Brains!

Join the Thinkers' Union!

The newsboy and a large troop of policemen pursue Chaplin. By dint

of quick thinking, Chaplin escapes his attackers and is seen suddenly first

in a public square in Cairo and then in a street in Hong Kong. Then the same street in Marseilles. From one side a new mob comes forward with a placard: "Intellectual

Wanted! Earn a Million!" The leader of the mob dashes up to Chap lin and kneels before him:

Ave Chariot!

Hail to the one who has liberated us from a century's work!

Lead us back again to ourselves!

Rare brother of the deer, prophet of the desert nomads, Here we languish and thirst for your healing art, Beat at the rocky wellspring of our breast!

Give us back our laughter And pour the heavens back into our eyes.

We can no longer think!

We can no longer recognize ourselves!

Release us from work! Bring us the Communism

of the Soul!

chaplin: And what about the one million?

the leader: Not one, ten million hearts are sure to be yours! Save mankind from its boredom!

Bring us the Revolution!

511



ChapKn looks at him askance, steps back a pace, and wipes off his

tie and vest with his handkerchief.

chaplin, gently:

Couldn't you please speak a little to the right or the left:

You keep spitting on me.

The crowd thinks that Chaplin has whispered something of great im

portance to the leader, shouts with joy, presses forward, and lifts him to

the roof of a halted streetcar.

From that position he tips his hat to the crowd, then wipes the dust from his sleeves, looks about, smiles, laughs, and tips his hat again.

The excited mob surges forward, shrieks, pulls him to the street, and

bears him off in triumph. New confrontation with the newsboy and his countless policemen. The mobs merge and fight. The armed police gain the upper hand. The other crowd disbands. Chaplin remains alone on the street, produces

a

little ocarina from his vest pocket, sits down on the sidewalk, and plays. His eyes clear, his brow becomes smooth and solemn.

Otherwise the street is totally empty. Suddenly there appears in the

background a single harmless-seeming policeman. Looking up, Chaplin is frightened, throws the ocarina away, and runs off as fast as he can.

He is seen until he disappears over the horizon.

V

Chaplin is walking in a dark forest. Tall fir trees. Thickets of berry bushes. Violets as big as sunflowers. Birds circle around his head. He has a butterfly net hanging over one shoulder.

The Deer trips along beside him. A pink ribbon is about its neck. From

time to time Chaplin stops and looks at it, emotionally. Then he opens a knapsack and produces a poetry machine. After a moment of pensive

ruminating, he mimes typing on a birch limb, and the film shows the

following poem:

All the birds

Besung by spring,

512



All blond brooks

Besprung from the heart of God, What is the world: Beloved?

Invented only

By thee and me.

The Deer is transformed into Reha, a young girl.

reha. That's enough deerplaying and poetizing! Enough of sentimental pantomime!

Yearning is tubercular, nothing else.

chaplin. I believed in dreams: But even the nymphs are bourgeoises!

reha. Whoever gets his fill of stars? Who respects us for philanthropy? The whole world laughs at you. You are a miserable hypochondriac And not a happy match for me!

I do not love you any more! I do not love you any more!

From the depths of the forest appear a red wild boar, a bearded hunter, a dog. Reha immediately runs away from Chaplin and embraces the hunter. They disappear together.

Chaplin picks up the pink ribbon, looks around, and makes solemn

preparations to hang himself on the birch tree. Comic interlude. At the last moment a squirrel bites through the ribbon. He goes to a pond, takes off his shoes, puts them on again, off again, and puts them back on.

He takes a variety of unsuccessful running starts and finally he slips into the pond up to his knees, but it is too cold for him. Meanwhile, in the

forest, Reha runs away from the hunter. Chaplin is about to spring to her rescue when the hunter shoots and she falls to the ground, dead.

chaplin. Now I'm poorer than on the primal day. My fate trickles down me like raindrops,

My heart is frozen as a stopped watch:

513



And that is Chaplin! Lonelier than all the others!

Europe laughs, New York and every village laughs And will not understand my deepest sorrow.

Even that one, the little lady who behind the

curtained windows, Has waited more than twenty years for a letter from

her Charlie:

The only one, who never saw my films, Should she see me sobbing, Even she would laugh!

During the final speech the posters have been slowly stealing in as in the

opening scene. They bow deeply to Chaplin. The Billposter grabs him

and glues him back onto the kiosk.

the end

riLviifomis

(Dessm Fernand Lcger)

514



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Chaplin a De