Jalal Tehrani
Scene, No. 3
When Radi writes Hamlet with Seasonal Salad, he shows that he can write Hamlet with Seasonal Salad too; but when he does not do this, we understand that he does not want to. Yet we cannot help thinking that this method could have become more complete in his later works and one day turned into a masterpiece worthy of the stature and worth we recognize in the master. And, on the other hand, that which is supposed to be the simultaneous experience of the concept and content and language and outlook of the writer of our time could lean on Radi more than this, if only he would add a little Hamlet with Seasonal Salad to everything that has been said and to what he already has. Otherwise, even now, just as others say we have Shakespeare and just as we ourselves have always said we have Hafez, we also have Nima, and we say we have Radi. Except that this last one is sometimes accompanied by a little Hamlet-like hesitation, which always ends up reaching the point where: how many Radi’s do we have, after all? And this is always what, in the end, clamps our mouths shut.
Then, on the other hand, we see that such-and-such playwright, of the master’s generation and a graduate of such-and-such university, who has also spent thirty years of his precious life abroad, has brought us nothing but that same foreign mumbling (don’t dig into it; he isn’t famous at all), which, even with that material at hand, sometimes translates Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell, who is strangely a poet too. And once again our hands and hearts tremble, and we attack our own Radi. Which is no easy task either. Because the master can only be compared with himself, unless he himself has taken someone else as his measure. And I use Hamlet with Seasonal Salad as an example, not because I consider it Radi’s best work; it isn’t. But because I see no trace of a genius like Chekhov in it. And because I cannot forget that what Chekhov gives to his own age is exactly what we today expect from the master and do not receive. Although he writes Chekhov well, and sometimes even more Radi-like than Chekhov.
Radi also writes Ibsen well. Especially if we do not compare the accidental endings of his works with Ibsen’s calculated puzzle. Because although, in terms of meaning, the endings of Radi’s works are the most realistic and intelligent possible result for the circumstances he describes, they are often not the actual result of the dialectical process. Hamlet with Seasonal Salad is the story of “The Nose,” written in 1356 Solar. And the nose belongs to a deranged intellectual who has fallen into the pit of the Thousand Families and has turned out to be such a good, sweet, obedient boy that by the end one is left wondering why he is made the victim.
The Nose, who is supposed to become the family’s son-in-law, simply limits his studies to reading newspapers, accepts the ridiculous job offered to him, goes on a seven-year honeymoon. He becomes a plaything, is handled and pawed over, and after their stupid brawls they hang him, and that’s that.
For now, it is better for us not even to approach any comparison between this Hamlet and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Because, on the one hand, we would rather believe that this naming had nothing whatsoever to do with even a humorous treatment of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in this section and was simply an unrelated name, which is quite all right; and on the other hand, our agreement is not to interfere with the author’s beliefs. But since it serves our purpose, I have no choice but to mention, to this extent, that in Radi’s view intellectuals have two Hamlet-like and Don Quixote-like types. “Don Quixote, who needs the epic of action because he does not possess the tools for understanding this world, goes astray. But the Hamlet-like ones. These people, afflicted with thought, because of the many traditional taboos and legal prohibitions that have become entwined around their hands and feet like cobwebs, and have made their struggle internal, mental, and blind, are condemned to defeat. And it is only a rare concentration of the balanced mixture of these two types that has delivered devoted righteous men, great artists, and national leaders to the world.” But the master has left out the fact that one of the reasons for Hamlet’s hesitation is that he knows very well that no one is going to take responsibility for his actions except himself. So he has no choice but to make certain of their correctness before every action. And now, if this hesitation turns out to be what it is, let me use the master’s permission to say that this hesitation of Hamlet’s resembles a salek more than a psychosis. “And salek is an incurable sore that slowly eats away the flesh and disfigures the face. Even so, salek suits some people.” And Hamlet is one of these intellectual saleks, and it is a mistake to regard him as a deranged individual who weaves nothing. He does weave. Especially when he is supposed to be the axis of a play. And that is why from the very beginning we become concerned for his life at the end of the play. Because Shakespeare knows that even the thought-obsession of his central character is not supposed to cast its naked shadow over his entire play. Rather, his identification with the characters in his works is of another kind, as we know. And these considerations exist in the works of others as well. Even Strindberg’s Colonel, whom we see as extremely clumsy, unstable, and wretched in his confrontation with his wife Laura, plays his game all the way to the end. And very well, too. And let us leave aside the fact that we see not the slightest hope in the Nose, or in anyone else who might lead to a transformation (which, incidentally, was taking place at the time this play was being cooked, and I said that this is none of our business and the author is free to write it as he sees it, and vice versa); not the slightest disturbing hint concerning the Nose’s fate appears throughout the work. And let us remember the first lines of Strindberg, in which he speaks of the illegitimate child of that soldier.
But here, apparently, the author’s hatred of that hateful class has harmed his work. It seems that Radi, drowning in emotion, has forgotten that “however many times greater the wise man’s hatred of the ignorant, the ignorant man’s fear of the wise is,” and instead of seeing him as an authoritative witness and observer of the people and the course of his story, we see him right in the middle of the arena, entangled in personal emotions and the emotionless people of the story. And where his camera should search for the dramatic weaknesses of his characters and make dramatic use of them, he settles for mocking their bellies and breasts and mustaches. And consequently, quite apart from the fact that despite all the ignorance and incompetence of that family, which he describes masterfully, he also makes them flowing, pervasive, and indestructible, which is none of our business either, this characteristic deprives the entire work of its fundamental conflict. And this one is our business, and it is better that we devote a little more attention to it. But I should also make another irrelevant remark: when we decide to make a symbolic encounter with a period of a society’s history, and then, among the many vectors available to us in the real world, choose only two kinds of deranged people as our material, whom we probably do not particularly like either, while the rest are mice that exist only to praise, then obviously our handiwork will be Hamlet with Seasonal Salad. Which, in itself, is not a bad thing either, because Radi knows his craft. But let me take advantage of this parenthesis: when the two vectors of such a work are, on the one hand, an absolute ruler and, on the other, someone condemned from the outset, to the extent that he can be hanged without any dramatic motivation whatsoever, then there is no longer any room for drama. So we are forced to make amusing caricatures out of the people in order to create suspense, entertain the audience for an hour or two by making fun of them, and in the end cool our own hearts a little as well, which can happen too.
On the other hand, we are not supposed to compare this work with the rules of classical and realist works and start talking about protagonist and antagonist, complication, and these threadbare terms. But we must also keep in mind that in twentieth-century works, where experimentation in theatre emerges in the modern sense, the writer’s main dramatic device is his ruse, and if this one, with the intelligence we know in Radi, is merely the ornamentation of the play, it is going to diminish its dramatic value. Let us use an example to make the point clearer:
To put it briefly: the famous General Scott, who was supposed to be the first man to discover the Pole, did not, for certain reasons. That is, when he reached the Pole, others had planted their flag there before him. And he, already disheartened, froze to death on the way back. Of course, along with all his companions. Well, this is a tragedy which, if Shakespeare had written it, he would presumably have woven and worked out the cause of the freezing as the presence of a hamartia in the General and the betrayal of one of his companions. But what would Brecht have done? He would probably have taken class difference as the basis of the work. That is, General Scott, being an aristocrat, would not deem it appropriate for ordinary people to see him sitting on a sled pulled by dogs. So instead of dogs, he might buy, say, a few horses or small tattoos, leaving himself short of money to buy the other necessities of the journey, and freeze to death on the way because of a shortage of provisions and equipment. And Beckett would probably have begun the tragedy with the General and his companions suspended in a block of ice, crying out in voices to which there is no answer except the echo of their own voices. And if Dürrenmatt had written this tragedy, perhaps we would see the General and his companions, while buying the necessities of their journey, in a cold-storage room where they want to buy meat, and suddenly, through some stupid mistake, the cold-storage room is locked and they all freeze right there. With the difference that this time people have come into existence and made an income within close proximity to them. And it would have been much better if we had heard from Radi himself what he would have done. But since those who came before us have not said themselves what they did, let us guess for ourselves what the master does as well.
Radi’s General is probably, before anything else, a bald man with protruding ribs and a hanging belly, and a large nose on his face that has taken the rest of his facial features hostage. One morning, when he wakes up, he drinks his tea and leaves the house with one of his companions, who has a saucer-shaped ear, and they walk toward one of the Poles … and on the way they talk about a society that we understand is suffering from a crisis of values and, in confronting various kinds of paradoxes, does not produce desirable salivary secretions. In the next scene we see the General walking with his companion and one or two other companions, one of whom has a right leg that is slightly shorter and the second of whom has a left leg that is slightly longer, and they say things from which we realize all the unkindnesses and bullying that have taken place. And in the second scene of the third act, General Scott and his companions are walking at the Pole and are absorbed in dialogues from which we understand that “the weather is most unfairly cold,” and in the final scene, when they have said everything they have to say, they fall and die. Perhaps they die first and then fall. In any case, we realize that since this was General Scott, he will freeze too.
But let us say it, and this time let us also take the master’s own word that “in a play, the curve of action can be a broken line that divides the main crisis into smaller crises of low amplitude, and as a result psychological exchanges become disjointed, the pulse of the play weakens, and character development slows down, and the theme never takes shape in the form of a central conflict so as to expand and reach a climax in such a way that it ultimately brings about an emotional ejaculation and psychological relief.” As is the case in Chekhov’s works. Therefore, one may say that the master would never take the General’s tragedy as his material unless he wanted to make some unrelated use of the name. Just as he has done with Hamlet!
But on the other hand, we see that Radi also tells stories. And with such delicacy, too. Let us remember his The Staircase. But Radi’s storytelling has one fundamental difference from Chekhov’s storytelling. Chekhov’s characters live their own lives and have no idea at all that Chekhov is watching them. Whereas Radi’s characters are constantly consulted and guided by the author. So much so that sometimes one of them loses his temper and steps aside, and the author himself takes on his role for a few minutes and makes him understand: this is how you speak, and this is where such an action belongs, not what you thought. And as a result, although people are well differentiated in terms of age, education, and gender, they are always circling around Radi’s string of beads. And this in itself is not necessarily bad, and with Radi’s poetic language, detailed and penetrating knowledge, and unique emotions, we arrive, on the whole, at a witty and endearing literary work. Provided that we read Radi the poet, who is by no means a minor figure, and who could fail to appreciate the structures he builds out of red flowers and love. But it is precisely the master’s poetic quality that, from time to time, causes trouble for his plays. For example, the Excellency whose dialogues drip with “You little rascal,” and “You were such a little rascal,” and “What a sweet little talker you are, you cute little thing,” and things of this sort, when it comes time to hunt, says: “… when his blood, that fluid stuff, splashes against the wall, oh, there is a magic to it that polishes the heart.” And this is one of those cases in which the Excellency has gotten offended and raises his lip to one side, and Radi speaks in his place. And how beautifully, too.
In the domain of language, Radi has reached what he wanted before he even had to. He now possesses a language that is “high-pressure, leaping, a language with bite and blood and impact, and a turbulent, intense language whose steel-like texture he has found not in the open manner from the ‘magical’ culture of words, but right there in the street.” Radi says that for hours he has read through the progression, line by line, of the conversations in his plays, played them out with a very sensitive ear, sitting, standing, walking, under his breath, slowly, angrily, in measure, pleadingly … and then removed a conjunction, “that,” or moved an adverb backward or forward. Such lovemaking with language deserves appreciation and praise. And it has also been pointed out, and will be, that when such obsessiveness, where its aesthetic aspect outweighs the “structural network,” causes trouble for the characters of the play. For now, it is more necessary to ask this and move on: what share of the structure of a play does the architecture of language, which in its proper place can encompass the whole structure of a poem, actually carry? How much do we know about the architecture of Chekhov’s language? How much do we know about the quality of Shakespeare’s poetry? It is enough to put the work of the best translators of Hamlet side by side and compare their understandings to discover the share of language in the survival of a play for two tomorrows to come. I did not say it was small. And I said: the play. But Radi insists that language for him is “a piece of space, a design, a character, and that which plays a role in a creative process.” And he says, “Each time I have arrived at this concentrated language, I have in fact gained access to a mathematical embodiment of space, design, character, and, in a word, that nervous flow of communications which you call the ‘structural network.’” And now, following what we have said and heard about Radi’s style and manner, let me point to a few things in the text: until the entrance of the “Excellency,” Radi, with such mastery and skill, deflects the emotional pressure of the pen that one can boldly count these fifty pages as fifty golden pages in his body of work. But with the entrance of the “Excellency,” it is as though the emotional charge of the pen has overflowed and its secretions spill indiscriminately over the heads and faces of the characters. To the point that sometimes the poor “Excellency” himself is forced to make a mockery of himself. “We graze and put on fat” (he strokes his belly), “you can see it: we’re making progress. Meaning, in effect, we’re spreading out.” And somewhere else he describes his mole this way: “For example, this very hazelnut-sized mole of mine! What do we know, dear uncle? No! Suppose, just suppose, suddenly he said without either holding back or taking anything: Your Excellency! Was there no other place available that a lump of pure, unadulterated, lean meat had to emerge right in the middle of your head?” It is not clear what would have been wrong if the Nose had said these things within the framework of this same kind of neural network. And a little later, the matter of these irregular secretions reaches the point where “Pari the Tall,” immediately upon entering and without any regard for the master’s “structural network,” removes the fourth wall and, in a statement the length of a two- or three-page monologue, introduces herself completely, talks about the condition of her society, raises the necessity of bringing Amir Arsalan into the play, tells the story of her grandmother, and of course her grandfather as well, and also says that they are putting the country up for sale, and, incidentally, tells us where and why she has come here and what she intends to do, and then asks the audience for permission, and with the sentence “You’ve found yourself a free listener,” the darling of the fourth wall returns. Which, of course, means that Pari the Tall also saves the master a great deal of trouble. And again, somewhere else, the “Excellency,” whose wall in this play, in terms of the pen’s inappropriate expression of emotion, is even shorter than the wall-less Nose, is forced to deliver the author’s economic manifesto as well. And, of course, economic, moral, social, and so on. On this pretext, and not by way of citation, for there is no need for that, so that it may serve both as a conclusion and so that this little booklet may be adorned a little more with the master’s pen, let me present a passage, and so that there is no confusion of duties, let me say that these are spoken by the “Excellency”:
“Yes, yes. And so, I, who pick my teeth and smoke cigarettes, and in any case spy through the window of my office and keep watch everywhere like a goshawk, see nothing but a row of clean-shaven heads, lined up and orderly, rippling all the way to the infinite horizon. (Walking) Yes, my esteemed friends! To put it briefly: this is how the flag of justice and fairness is hoisted over our vast Plastic Complex, and under the cover of that very alleged participation of yours, Dr. Mouse, democratic economy or economic democracy, it makes no difference, comes fully into being at every level, from technical and specialized to moral and social and so on and so forth. And this is also how my personnel, from beast and beast of burden and wolf to sheep, drink from the same spring and graze on the same straw in delightful coexistence.
Dr. Mouse: And not a peep comes out of anyone, dear uncle.”
And putting all these matters aside, we arrive at that same accidental ending. That is, two dialogues before the end of the play, in the stage directions, without preamble, a rope is suspended above the Nose’s head, and that is that. It is enough simply to suppose that if, at least from the beginning of the audience, the possibility of this sacrifice had gradually been introduced and the action had risen smoothly toward it, where would the suspense and authority of this work not have reached. And let me finish with one word: the structural network of this work, despite the beauty of its language, and in my opinion precisely because of the beauty of its language, is loose.
Akbar Radi is a writer who, throughout the forties and fifties, armed himself with the word-hoards of his time and became the possessor of a uniquely personal, magical pen; and in the solar year 1357, with the publication of Hamlet with Seasonal Salad, he gave promise that, with such a worthy foundation behind him, he was going to pursue a fresh and dynamic current in playwriting, which he has not yet pursued, and has reached the point where, twenty years later, we are supposed to be confronted with Amizqalamdouni, at a level even lower than Decline, although Decline, too, is not far short of Radi’s other works.