Carr's Views on Art and Politics in Tom Stoppard's Travesties

Carr's Views on Art and Politics in Tom Stoppard's Travesties DAVID K. ROD Most critical treatments of Tom Stoppard's Travesties have characterized the playas a debate about the proper relationship between art and politics. I Critics have recognized that the three major historical figures in the play - James Joyce, Lenin, and Tristan Tzara - represent contrasting views on the issue, views that Stoppardjuxtaposes with one another within the comic framework of the play. For the most part, critics have focused on the conflict between Joyce's and Lenin's positions; Tzara is generally acknowledged as a third party in the debate but not considered to be a serious contender.2 The aesthetic-political views of Henry Carr, the protagonist of Travesties, are frequently ignored altogether.3 Yet the debate occurs, as the critics point out, within Carr's memory, and the play makes it clear that the events presented are highly colored by Carr's remembering them. Indeed, Carr's introductions of each of the other three participants in the debate emphasize their status as products of his memory: "James Joyce As I Knew Him" (p. 22), "Lenin As I Knew Him" (p. 23), "Memories ofDada by a Consular Friend ofthe Famous in OldZurich: A Sketch" (p. 25).4 Furthermore, Carr takes his own position on the aesthetic-political issue, a position which he defends against the opposing views of Tzara, Joyce, and Lenin (as he remembers them). By contrast, Joyce and Lenin never argue directly with each other in the play. Given the controlling perspective provided by Carr and his active participation in the debate embodied in Travesties, the widespread critical inattention to his views seems unjustified.s A careful examination of the scenes in which Carr's views conflict with those ofTzara, Joyce, and Lenin will reveal both Carr's centrality to the aesthetic-political debate and a clearer picture of the position he espouses. In Act I, Carr's views are contrasted with those of Tzara and Joyce. The contrast appears first, in caricatured form, in the scene where Tzara and Joyce behave in nonsensically exaggerated fashion and the dialogue takes the form of Tom Stoppard's Travesties 537 a series of limericks. This scene establishes the basic position that each of the three characters will develop later. Tzara protests against the artistic tradition represented by Joyce; he is scornful of "[c]ulture and [r]eason" (p. 34) and rejects "[t]he classics - tradition" (p. 35). Joyce asserts the value of his own work - he calls himself"[a] fine writer who writes caviar/ for the general, hence poor" (p. 33) - and he asks for money. Carr takes the middle ground. He accepts neither Joyce's valuation of traditional art for its own sake nor Tzara's outright rejection of traditional art; instead, Carr comments that "H.M.G. is considered pro-Art" (p. 34) and considers the possibility of scoring diplomatic points against the Germans by means of the play that Joyce proposes to produce. On the whole, Carr's approach might be characterized as practical, even if his selection of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe as the prime representative of British culture reveals the limits of his vision. Of course, the manic nature of the scene will predominate, at the expense of any careful examination ofthe issues. Still, the scene sets forth the basic positions that will be explored later. The more careful examination begins in the following scene, which parodies the conversation between Jack and Algernon in Act I of The Importance of Being Earnest. The very fact that Carr and Tzara assume the major roles here should suggest that their views will weigh heavily in the aesthetic-political debate; Joyce and Lenin, to the extent that they can be identified with characters in Wilde's play at all, assume subordinate roles. Furthermore, the interchange between Carr and Tzara constitutes the first extensive discussion of aesthetic and political issues in Travesties. Tzara's argument is that the war has made a mockery of the values and the schemes oflogic and causality which have served as the basis for traditional art. Withoutlogic, art must be nonsense, and Tzara rejects all attempts to present art...