A Touch of the Postmodern: Marco Millions and Nietzschean Perspectivism

In a 1927 letter to critic Benjamin de Casseres, Eugene O'Neill wrote, "Zarathustra has influenced me more than any book I've ever read . . . every year or so I reread it and am never disappointed."¹ The influence of Nietzsche's philosophy in general and of Thus Spake Zarathustra in particular on O'Neill has been documented often and well. Yet it is difficult to find any literary analysis of O'Neill's plays that directly addresses the influence of Nietzsche's Zarathustra in a comprehensive manner. Rather, scholars such as Egil Törnqvist use O'Neill's affinity with Zarathustra to establish a connection between these two writers and then create an analytical framework using instead The Birth of Tragedy, a key work of dramatic theory. While such analyses illuminate O'Neill's work, it is surprising that Thus Spake Zarathustra has not played a more direct role in O'Neillian analysis.

Perhaps one reason for this lack of attention to Zarathustra in O'Neill criticism can be attributed to the lack of attention to Zarathustra in general within scholarly discourse. Will Durant's Story of Philosophy claims The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music is Nietzsche's "first and only complete book," illustrating the general reluctance of the scholarly community to engage much of Nietzsche's work, including Zarathustra, within a broader context.² Moreover, philosophy scholars early in this century, such as M. A. Mügge in 1909, offered an interpretation of the concepts in Zarathustra that was highly inflammatory and obviously skewed to support a racist perspective. This interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy was propagated by Nietzsche's sister, Elizabeth Förster Nietzsche, who successfully associated Nietzschean ideas with those advanced by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf and insured the marginalization of his ideas from the scholarly community for decades following the war.

According to Laurence Lampert, author of the 1986 analysis, Nietzsche's Zarathustra, "Zarathustra had baffled even the most intelligent of the few readers it had attracted . . . [and] a full century later Nietzsche's book remains dark and hidden and ridiculous to everyone."³ Kathleen Marie Higgins suggested the following year that the emotional response Zarathustra elicits from its readers has kept it "a work apart from the rest of the Western philosophical canon." "Zarathustra," she said, "is treated as an exception, perhaps even a philosophical embarrassment, even more distant from the mainstream of philosophical texts than Nietzsche's other outrageous works."⁴ The lack of recognition of the significance of Nietzsche's thought, especially with regard to Thus Spake Zarathustra, during the bulk of the last century, has been examined by both Lampert and Higgins, among others. The general conclusion reached by these contemporary scholars is that Nietzsche's metaphysic was unintelligible within a modernistic context. In short, Nietzsche was writing for an audience that would not emerge for almost a century.

In more recent years, however, the ideas Nietzsche presented in Thus Spake Zarathustra have emerged as a cornerstone of postmodern thought. Clayton Koelb suggested, in his introduction to Nietzsche as Postmodernist, that "the production of postmodernity begins with Nietzsche."⁵ This view is shared by Madan Sarup, Ernst Behler, and Christopher Norris, who identify direct ties between Nietzsche and many postmodern thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, and Michel Foucault.⁶ The emerging importance of Nietzsche's thought seems to lend credence to Nietzsche's own self-prophecy in Ecce Homo: "My time has not yet come; some people are born posthumously."⁷ Moreover, Lampert emphasized the importance of Zarathustra as "the only book that affords entry into Nietzsche's essential thought."⁸ This essential core to Nietzsche's worldview, in short, envisions a world that rejects the absolutist metaphysic of the past and, unlike the modernists of his own time, moves beyond nihilism or speculating an alternative Truth. Instead, Nietzsche explores a perspectivist world that embraces metaphysical inconsistency. It is this essential thought of Nietzsche's philosophy as communicated in Zarathustra that provides the point of departure for examining O'Neill's work within a postmodern context.

It is impossible to know O'Neill's critical understanding of Nietzsche's ideas as he did not share his views directly. O'Neill did not read Zarathustra as an intellectual exercise. O'Neill read the book multiple times, reporting new experiences and deeper understanding with every reading. In Zarathustra, O'Neill found the solace and inspiration that many find in religious tracts. Thus, this analysis is not an attempt to examine O'Neill's purposeful articulation of Nietzschean themes. Rather, it is an exploration of possible affinity between the playwright and one of his most profound philosophical influences. This examination of -Marco Millions considers an approach to the play vis-à-vis a contemporary understanding of Nietzschean perspectivism.⁹

Nietzschean perspectivism "argue[s] that all attempts to become aware of what is fundamentally the case employ an instrument that fixes what is flowing and makes the unlike like."¹⁰ In other words, the human desire to live within an organized environment has resulted in the creation of the perception of metaphysical unity where, according to Nietzschean perspectivism, only plurality exists. Perspectivism can be seen in opposition to absolutism, which bases its concept of existence on a perceived fixed condition upon which it, in turn, bases its improvable assumed "Truths." With regard to this idea Nietzsche wrote, "We can comprehend only a world of that we ourselves have made. . . . The most strongly believed a priori 'truths' are for me—provisional assumptions."¹¹ Perspectivism refers to a rejection of truth as absolute and regards the human condition as pluralistic and subjective.

The first chapter of Thus Spake Zarathustra, written in the form of a parable, provides insight into Nietzsche's thesis.¹² Entitled "The Three Metamorphoses," it speaks of three manifestations of the human spirit. The first manifestation is the camel, a spirit that uses its immense strength to bear weight for others. This spirit represents absolutism. It is an outward-looking spirit, which demands to suffer for something outside of itself. It bears humiliation, loneliness, and even hatred serving the cause of its master. It takes the teaching of its master to "its wilderness." Once in the wilderness, away from the source of its burden, "the spirit becometh a lion" (24).

The lion spirit is an oppositional spirit, whose sole purpose is to repudiate what Nietzsche calls "its last God." This god comes in the form of a great golden dragon named "Thou-Shalt" and represents "all the values of things" (24). The purpose of the lion spirit is to deny an absolute dogma providing unquestionable "Truth." The lion provides itself freedom by saying, "Nay even unto duty" (24). This spirit represents a modernist perspective. While the lion-spirit cannot create its own system of values, it can deny values that are meaningless by virtue of being imposed without explanation. The lion creates for itself the will to create its own values but sees the world in opposition to the values represented by the dragon and is, therefore, still connected to the old values.

The final and highest level of Nietzsche's metamorphosis is the child spirit. This spirit is moved by "innocence . . . , and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea" (25). The child spirit is able to create values, to make judgments based on its own experiences and creativity. Such a spirit represents postmodern perspectives. Its values are not based on the dogma of the past or the promise of future fulfillment, but on the present. It creates "its own will." Disassociated from structure and dogma, the child spirit creates its own values and is able to change these values as its experiences and intellect dictate. Unlike the camel whose values are provided by an outside source and whose purpose is to carry the burden of those values or the lion who denies the values of others but has no purpose beyond this denial, the child lives in the present and has no need for Truth because its existence is not based on maintaining values, but in creation and experience. Thus, the child is beyond good and evil because these forces do not vie for his allegiance. They no longer exist.

This parable roughly outlines the history of the Western cultural zeitgeist as it morphed from an absolutist to a modernist to a postmodernist perspective. More significantly for this examination, Nietzsche's parable also describes the artistic articulation of Western culture as it moved from the narrowly defined art of the classical periods, to the various modern movements that rejected those narrow definitions, followed by today's pluralistic postmodern artistic discourse. Of these three perspectives, O'Neill has, for obvious reasons, been interpreted through the prism of modernism, what Robert Brustein calls "the theatre of revolt."¹³ Primary to this vision is the "attitude of revolt" in which a play's meaning is defined through its antagonism to the status quo.¹⁴

The traditional modernist approach to interpreting Marco Millions is as a satirical critique of Western materialism. Travis Bogard states in Contour in Time that in Marco Millions "O'Neill's sense of the dangerous realities of materialistic America are presented."¹⁵ Virginia Floyd extends this approach to a comparison of Western and Eastern cultures when she states that Marco Millions can be characterized by "the clash of cultures . . . New World versus Old, East versus West." Yet as a critique of Western materialism (as opposed to "non-Christian . . . pristine purity"), Marco Millions falls short.¹⁶ Many of the Eastern characters are just as materialistic as their Western counterparts. An intersection between Eastern and Western cultures is demonstrated in the prologue in which four characters representing different religions argue over the "true" significance of a tree. The argument is won not by rhetoric or religious doctrine, but by one man enslaving those who disagree with him (353). Similarly, the leaders of the Eastern countries visited by the Polos en route to Cathay are all flanked by "the inevitable warrior" and "the inevitable priest—The two defenders of the State" (364). The priests and the warriors flanking the Eastern rulers can be seen as direct parallels to the "Knight-crusader" and the "Dominican Monk" who flank Tedaldo, the papal legate, in act 1, scene 2. The exception to this convention is Kublai Kaan, who is flanked by a warrior and a philosopher. Thus, materialism or culture or geography does not adequately define the conflict of worldviews that separate Marco and Kublai.

In a general way, one might consider the main conflict to be between absolutism and perspectivism. Marco's absolutism is defined by but not limited to the Christian concept of the soul's immortality and by the notion that a person can be measured by the sum of his possessions. Moreover, Marco represents an absolutist perspective toward marriage and family, in his commitment to marrying his childhood sweetheart despite their twenty-year separation. In opposition to this view is Kublai Kaan, who surrounds himself with representatives of all religions but commits himself to none, and who possesses great wealth and power but concerns himself with gaining wisdom. The most profound example of Kublai as a representative of the perspectivist worldview is found in act 3, scene 2. Here, Kublai is confronted with the dead body of his granddaughter. In turn, he asks the priests of Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Islam for an explanation of death. In spite of each religion's claim to knowledge of ultimate truth, each priest can only respond, "Death is." Kublai's response to this acknowledgment of ignorance is to forbid prayer for Kukachin as "she was a prayer" (434). He then orders them to "contemplate the eternal life of Life!" (435). Kublai's response reflects Joan Stambaugh's interpretation of Nietzsche when she wrote, "we seek, if not something beyond existence, a way leading above existence. . . . Nietzsche is saying that we have not yet found that way because we have been looking for something outside ourselves, even outside our 'world.'"¹⁷ Kublai's order to his people demands that they look inside rather than outside themselves and find answers to the philosophical puzzle of life's meaning and the purpose of death. Like Nietzsche, Kublai (and by extension O'Neill) refuses to retreat to the security of an absolutist worldview, which provides meaning in life by deferring meaning to a future afterlife, robbing the present of significance. In addition, Kublai accepts a world that is not unified by an arbitrary metaphysic, which gives the world a false sense of logic and order. Rather, Kublai embraces suffering, inconsistency, and plurality as parts of the mystery and joy of life. In this way, Kublai can be seen as a personification of Nietzsche's Übermensch.¹⁸

If Marco and Kublai can be seen as representative of the opposing views of absolutism and perspectivism, the character of Kukachin, Kublai's granddaughter, represents the modernist who is caught between the realization that absolute stances are false and the yearning for the security and certainty that absolutism brings. In the original complete draft of the play, titled Marco's Millions, O'Neill more fully develops Kukachin's love for Marco, which begins with his arrival in Cathay. He meets Kukachin as a precocious, pampered four-year-old. In their first meeting, his refusal to follow her orders, as is custom in the palace, fascinates her, and she develops a crush on him, which develops over the course of the first half of this greatly expanded draft.¹⁹ This fuller version gives insight into O'Neill's intent for this character. The child observes Kublai's acceptance of multiple perspectives juxtaposed with Marco's absolute certainty. As a child, she perceives Marco as strong and assertive. As she matures, this perception influences her judgment. She comes to equate Marco's certainty with Truth. While Kublai sees Marco as a buffoon who is so narrow-minded in his absolutism that he "has looked at everything and seen nothing" (387), Kukachin perceives this same characteristic as superior will, determination, and strength. So while Kukachin is raised by Kublai as a perspectivist, the comfort and certainty of an absolutist stance move her emotionally, and she falls in love with the persona she believes is Marco.

Once Kukachin falls in love with Marco, her perception of the world and of truth are wholly shaped by her overwhelming feelings for him, just as Marco's views are shaped by his absolutist assumptions. Thus, at the crisis of the play, Marco must prove to Kublai that he has a soul. Kukachin proves the existence of his soul when she bears witness to its existence. She says, "Whenever he has been with me I have always felt—something strange and different—and that something must be his Honor's soul, must it not?" (397). Kukachin's faith that her feelings "prove" that Marco has a soul parallels Marco's religious assumptions that lead him to the same conclusion.

Kukachin's words articulate the absolutist paradox, which serves as the main theme of the play. Kukachin's misplaced reverence and subsequent love of Marco provide an underlying assumption of Truth, a grand narrative defining her vision of reality. This reality is only logical when viewed in light of its grand narrative. Thus, when Marco delivers her to her future husband and leaves, Kukachin's life ceases to have meaning and she dies. Like Kublai, we view Kukachin's death as tragic because it occurred as a result of false life-affirming assumptions. Nietzsche describes nihilism similarly with regard to the death of "the Christian god" when he writes, "and how much must collapse now that this faith has been undermined because it was built upon this faith, propped up by it; grown into it; for example, the whole of our European morality." Nietzsche recognizes the inevitable destruction of social order that must occur as human beings realize the extent of their metaphysical errors: "Indeed, we philosophers and 'free spirits' feel, when we hear the news that 'the old god is dead,' as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectations."²⁰

Like Nietzsche's reaction to the death of god, Kublai's reaction to Kukachin's death provides an affirmation of life. He prays, "Be proud of life! Know in your heart that the living of life can be noble! Know that the dying of death can be noble! Be exalted by life! Be inspired by death!" (435). For Kublai, even the death of a loved one serves as experiential material that allows him to explore life's truth as it is revealed to him.

Marco, on the other hand, is ignorant of life's experience and possibility. Life's meaning has been defined for Marco. Within the narrow scope of his absolutism, Marco has been wholly successful and wholly ignorant. The final image of Marco on the stage is his description of his trip after he has been formally betrothed to a woman he has not seen for twenty years. The tale is told in terms of commerce rather than in terms of experiences, relationships, or exotic culture. It is told to an audience whose only concern is swilling food and drink (430-32). In the epilogue, the same Marco rises from the audience of the theater after seeing his own story. He is unmoved, not recognizing that what he has seen is his own story.

In terms of the play's form, it is only this final action that is overtly postmodern by virtue of its self-reflection, its nonlinear placement, and its playful contradiction of traditional theater convention. In most other respects Marco Millions is a modernist play. Its premiere in 1928 had a respectable run of 92 performances.²¹ While it received positive reviews, its success was no doubt impeded by its concurrent run with O'Neill's smash opus, Strange Interlude, which opened three weeks after Marco and ran for over 400 performances. Critics almost universally approached Marco Millions as a dramatic cousin of Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt, published six years earlier. Thus, Marco Millions is remembered today as an opulent but minor play within the O'Neill canon. Its chief source of interest today is its focus on social satire rather than O'Neill's usual metaphysical speculation.

The possibility that Marco Millions advocates a postmodern metaphysic demands artistic as well as critical re-evaluation of the play. In a brief conversation in 1995, José Quintero revealed to this author that he found the play structurally problematic when he directed it in 1964. While the conflict between Kublai Kaan and Marco fit neatly into a modernist structural form, the significance of Kukachin's action within the play as a whole was unclear to him. Quintero stated that his production suffered as a result. Marco's ambivalence toward the princess in light of her devotion to him obscures rather than illuminates the author's meaning. The two intertwining threads of plot do not successfully maintain the single line of action typical of an Aristotelian structure. On the one hand, we see a critique of Marco's materialism and, to a lesser extent, his religious dogmatism in light of Kublai Kaan's more perspectivist worldview. On the other hand, we see a shallow melodramatic plot of unrequited love between Marco and Kukachin. The plot involving Marco and Kaan is clearly dominant. Thus, one would expect that the subplot would relate or comment on the primary plot in some meaningful way. But this relationship is not realized. The relationship between Marco and the princess neither informs the primary plot nor supports the perceived modernist themes.

O'Neill clearly suggests that Marco's worldview is inferior to that of Kaan and that Marco is a philistine. However, the play never suggests that Marco is responsible for Kukachin's feelings for him, nor does it suggest that her love is based on some kind of inner beauty that Marco possesses. His relationship to the princess does not produce greater self-awareness in either Kaan or Marco. In keeping with their characters, Kaan attempts to understand Kukachin's death and to integrate it into his worldview, while Marco moves forward with his life back in Italy. Thematically, Kukachin's actions serve little purpose if we are to believe that the play is a critique of Western values, of religion, or of American materialism. What we see, rather than the typical modernist opposition between status quo and alternative truth, is an interaction between the dogmatic sensibility of absolutist Marco and the curious and wise perspectivism of Kaan. Kukachin serves as a personification of the modernist who understands that all absolute truths are based on mere perspectivism, but who is unable to ignore the comfort and security promised by absolutism.

Seen as a metaphysical play, Marco Millions illustrates O'Neill's deep understanding of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. Like its philosophical sire, the play articulates thematic content more relevant today than when it was conceived. Our contemporary world engages in a continuous culture war in which absolutism and perspectivism struggle to be heard and understood. Those brave souls who are able to maintain perspectivism in a world that constantly offers the security and comfort of absolute certainty walk a narrow tightrope between fear and potential. Just as our contemporary culture provides a new context for understanding Marco Millions, Marco can provide insight into our contemporary culture. Individuals today, like Kukachin, are often caught between these two perspectives. Few plays, contemporary or otherwise, are able to capture this struggle more clearly or more powerfully than Marco Millions.