-
"The Will to Live": An Interview with Arthur Miller
- Modern Drama
- University of Toronto Press
- Volume 27, Number 3, Fall 1984
- pp. 345-360
- 10.1353/mdr.1984.0017
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
"The Will to Live": An Interview with Arthur Miller STEVEN R. CENTOLA This interview, the transcript of a conversation I had with the playwright on June 25, 1982 at his Roxbury, Connecticut home, has been deliberately left in its colloquial form. I have tried to re-create as closely as possible the sound and spirit of our conversation in the hope of sharing with the reader the distinctive intonation, quick wit, and candor of Miller's responses. S.R.C. I've always been fascinated by your ability to maintain a singleness of vision in plays remarkably different from each other in form, style, mood, theme, characterization, plot, and even at times in language. Would you agree that this underlying continuity in your work derives from a vision of the human condition that can be described as a kind ofexistential humanism - a vision that emphasizes self-determinism and social responsibility and that is optimistic and affirms life by acknowledging man's possibilities in the face of his limitations and even sometimes in the dramatization of his failures? ' ARTHUR MILLER That's very good. I would agree with that. That's a fair summary of what I feel about it - my own views about it. S.R.C. The one play that seems to provide the clearest revelation of your vision is After the Fall. ARTHUR MILLER Just about, yes. S.R.C. Not many people see it that way. ARTHUR MILLER Well, I think they were, to be quite frank - I've said this before; it's no news - but I think that they were blinded by the gossip and the STEVEN R. CENTOLA easy way out. But it's not just in my work. I think people go for tags for any writer; you don't have to think about what he's doing any longer, especially if he's around a long time. But then simply you know what you think you want to expect. It mayor may not have much to do with what he's doing. But, they find whatever in the work fits that expectation, and the other is simply not dealt with or is rejected. This is an old story here that we all know. S.R.C. Your vision, what I've called your existential humanism, seems to have a lot in common with Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist philosophy. ARTHUR MILLER You know that Sartre did the screenplay for The Crucible, and we were on the verge of meeting three or four times and never managed to because he was out ofFrance when I was there. There was always a mix-up, and I always thought that there was more time than there actually turned out to be. But I think there was a relationship which was not programmatic in any way. It just means people leaning in the same kind of direction. S.R.C. So you wouldn't say it was a matter of influence? ARTHUR MILLER No, no. S.R.C. Would you feel as though I were going for a tag if I pointed out some of the similarities between your vision and Sartre's existentialism? ARTHUR MILLER Well, I don't think that's a danger because he certainly was always attractive to me in a vague way. But I'll tell you, I'm not a methodical, philosophical writer; I don't spring out of that kind of tradition. I work out of instinct. And so whatever similarities that there tum out to be, somebody's always related to something. S.R.C. Do you think an identification ofthese Sartrean correspondences in your plays could bring out the metaphysical issues in your work and help to put to rest the notion that you're merely a social realist, the tag which you seem to have been stuck with for some time now? ARTHUR MILLER The social realist thing is what they were doing with Ibsen all his life. He was supposed to be interested in sewers because ofAn Enemy ofthe People, or in syphilis because ofGhosts, or in women's rights or something like that because of A Doll's House, and all the rest of...