Читать книгу Landscapes - John Berger - Страница 12

You have come here to act plays

But now you are to be asked:

For what purpose?

You have come here to reveal

Yourselves in all that you can do.

You think this worthy of being watched.

And you hope the people will applaud

As you transport them

Out of the narrowness of their world

Into the largeness of yours,

Sharing with you the dizzy peaks

And the tumults of passion.

But now you are to be asked:

For what purpose is this?

On their low benches

Your spectators begin to argue.

Some hold and maintain

You must do more than show yourselves.

You must show the world.

Where is the use, they ask,

Of being shown time and time again

How this one can be sad

How she is heartless

How that one would make a wicked king?

Where is the use in this endless

Exhibiting of grimaces,

These antics of a handful

In the hands of their fate?

You show us only people dragged along,

Victims of foreign forces and themselves.

An invisible master

Throws them down

Their joys like crumbs to dogs.

And so too the noose is fitted round their necks –

The tribulation that comes from above.

And we on our low benches

Held by your twitches and grimacing faces,

We gape with fixed eyes

And feel at one remove

Joys that are given like alms,

Fears beyond control.

No. We who are discontented

Have had enough on our low benches.

We are no longer satisfied.

Have you not heard it spread abroad

That the net is knotted

And is cast

By men?

Even now

In the cities of a hundred floors,

Over the seas on which the ships are manned,

To the furthest hamlet –

Everywhere now the report is: man’s fate is man.

You actors of our time,

The time of change

And the time of the great taking over

Of all nature to master it

Not forgetting human nature,

This is now our reason

For insisting that you alter.

Give us the world of men as it is,

Made by men and changeable.

Thus the gist of the talk on the low benches.

Not all of course agree.

Most sit, their shoulders hunched,

With brows furrowed

Like stony fields ploughed

Repeatedly in vain.

Worn away by increasing daily struggles

They avidly await the very thing their companions

Hate.

A little kneading for the slack spirit.

A little tightening for the tired nerve.

The easy adventure of magically

Being led by the hand

Out from the world given them,

Out from the one they cannot master.

Whom then, actors, should you obey?

I’d say: the discontented.

Yet how to begin? How to show

The living together of men

That it may be understood

And become a world that can be mastered?

How to reveal not only yourselves and others

Floundering in the net

But also make clear how the net of fate

Is knotted and cast,

Cast and knotted by men?

Above all other arts

You, the actor, must conquer

The art of observation.

Of no account at all

How you look.

But what you have seen

And what you reveal does count.

It is worth knowing what you know.

They will watch you

To see how well you have watched.

But one who observes only himself

Gains no knowledge of men.

From himself he hides too much of himself.

And no man is wiser than he has become.

Therefore your training must begin among

The lives of other people. Make your first school

The place you work in, your home,

The district to which you belong,

The shop, the street, the train.

Observe each one you set eyes upon.

Observe strangers as if they were familiar

And those whom you know as if they were strangers.

Look. A man pays out his taxes. He differs from

Other men paying their taxes.

Even though it is true

No man pays them gladly.

In these circumstances

He may even differ from his normal self.

And is the man who collects the taxes different

In every way from the man who must pay?

The collector must also contribute his due

And he has much else in common

With the one he oppresses.

Listen.

This woman has not always spoken with her present harshness;

She does not speak so harshly to all.

Nor does that charmer charm every one.

Is the bullying customer

Tyrant all through?

Is he not also full of fear?

The mother without shoes for her children

Looks defeated,

But with the courage still left her

Whole empires were conquered:

She is bearing – you saw? – another child.

And have you seen

The eyes of a sick man told

He can never be well again

Yet could be well

Were he not compelled to work?

Observe how he spends such time as remains

Turning the pages of a book telling

How to make the earth a habitable planet.

Remember too the press photos and the newsreels.

Study your rulers

Walking and talking and holding in their pale

Cruel hands

The threads of your fate.

Make pictures

Unfolding and growing like movements in history.

For later that is how you must show them on the stage.

All this watch closely. Then in your mind’s eye

From all the struggles waged

The struggle for work,

Bitter and sweet dialogues between men and women,

Talk about books,

Resignation and rebellion,

Trials and failures,

All these you must later show as

Historical processes.

(Even of us here and now

You might make such a picture:

The playwright, having fled his country,

Instructs you in the art of observation.)

To observe

You must learn to compare.

To be able to compare

You must have observed already.

From observation comes knowledge.

But knowledge is needed to observe.

He who does not know

What to make of his observation

Will observe badly.

The fruit grower will look at the apple tree

With a keener eye than the strolling walker.

But only he who knows that the fate of man is man

Can see his fellow men keenly with accuracy.

The art of observing men

Is only part of the skill of leading them.

And your job as actors

Should make you prospectors and teachers

Of this larger skill.

By knowing and demonstrating the nature of men

You will teach others to lead their own lives.

You will teach them the great art of living together.

Yet now I hear you asking:

How can we –

Kept down, kept moving, kept ignorant

Kept in uncertainty

Oppressed and dependent –

How can we

Step out like prospectors and pioneers

To conquer a strange country for gain?

Always we have been subject to those

More fortunate than us.

How should we

Who have been till now

Only the trees that bear the fruit

Become overnight

Fruit growers?

Yet, as I see it,

That is the art you must now acquire,

You, my friends, who on the same day are

Actors and workers.

It cannot be impossible

To learn that which is useful.

You are the very ones,

You in your daily occupations,

In whom the art of observing is naturally born.

For you it is of use

To know what the foreman can and cannot do,

To know also the ways of your mates exactly

And their thoughts.

How else save with a knowledge of men

Can you wage the fight of your class?

I see all the finest among you

Impatient for knowledge, making

Observation more keen

Thus adding again to itself.

Already the best of you learn

Those laws which govern

The living together of men,

Already your class makes ready

To overcome all that hindering you

Stands in the way of mankind.

Here is where you

Acting and working,

Learning and teaching,

Can intervene from your stage

In the struggles of our time.

You with the intentness of your studies

And the elation of your knowledge

Can make the experience of struggle

The property of all

And transform justice

Into a passion.