Hirgen at 07:21, 19 September 2008

2008-09-19T07:21:04Z

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	humor, humility, and idealism. It is of all faculties the most		humor, humility, and idealism. It is of all faculties the most
	desirable, being very agreeable to honor and to true religion.		desirable, being very agreeable to honor and to true religion.
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Hirgen at 20:35, 7 September 2008

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<CENTER>XII 

A SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC</CENTER>

 ENGLISHMEN have a horror of being thought "theatrical"
or "poseurs." If a man is described as "theatrical,"
they immediately picture a person of inordinate vanity and no
real character striving after outward effect. He may be a petty
criminal of weak intellect, glorying because he is the centre
of a Police Court sensation., and because his case and his photo
are in all the evening papers. He may be a mediocre and not too
honest politician trying to exploit some imaginary scandal to
increase his own notoriety. These are the types that the Englishman
associates with being "theatrical" or a "poseur,"
and he hates and despises them. But by "a sense of the
dramatic" I mean something absolutely different. I mean getting
outside yourself and seeing yourself and other people as the characters
of a story. You watch them and criticize them from a wholly detached
point of view. You just want to see what sort of a story you are
helping to make, and what points of interest it would be likely
to offer to an outside observer. There is no vanity or superficiality
or egoism about this. It is simply realizing the interest in your
own life, and it will often enable you to see things in their
proper perspective, and so to avoid being bored or oppressed by
circumstances which you cannot alter.

 After all, every life has a certain amount of interest and
romance attached to it if looked at from the right angle. Every
one can see something interesting in another fellow's life.
We all experience at times a curiosity to know what it feels like
to be something quite different from what we are. It is a relic
of our childhood, when we used to play at being anything, from
the Pope of Rome to a tram-conductor. But it is nearly always
the other fellow's job that is interesting, and hardly ever our
own. There is romance in dining at the Carlton, except to the
habitués of the place. There is romance in dining
for a shilling in Soho, unless you are one of the folk who can
never afford to dine anywhere else. If you are rich there is romance
in poverty, in wresting a living from a society which seems to
grudge it you. If you are poor there is romance in opulence and
luxury. There is romance in being grown up if you are a child,
and there is romance in youth if you are old or middle-aged.

 Now a sense of the dramatic means that you see the romance
in your own life. If you are rich, it will enable you to see the
munificent possibilities in your wealth, as the poor man sees
them. You will catch at an ideal, and try to live up to it. Every
now and then you will get outside yourself, and compare yourself
with your ideal, and see how you have failed. If you are a workman
it will enable you to understand the glory of work well done,
of strong muscles and deft fingers, of a home which you have built
up by your own exertions. Without this sense the rich man is bored
by the easiness of his existence, and will always be striving
after new sensations, probably unwholesome ones, in order to stimulate
his waning interest in life; while the poor man will become oppressed
by the grinding monotony of his existence, and will become a waster
and a drunkard.

 Suppose you are an uncle. If you have no sense of the dramatic
you will miss all the fun in tipping your small nephew. You will
do it with no air at all. You will do it in a mean and grudging
spirit. You will wonder how little you can with decency give the
young rascal, and will dispense it with a forced smile like the
one which you reserve for your dentist. The urchin will probably
make a long nose at you when your back is turned. But if you have
a sense of the dramatic, you will see the possibilities of the
incident from the nephew's point of view. You will understand
the romance of being an uncle. You will disburse your largess
with an air of genial patronage and bonhomie which will endear
you to the boy for ever. You will go away feeling that you have
both been a huge success in your respective parts.

 A sense of the dramatic is, of course, closely connected with
a sense of humor. If you have this faculty for getting outside
yourself and criticizing yourself, you will be pretty sure to
see whether you look ridiculous. If you are a real artist in the
exercise of the gift, you will also see yourself in your right
perspective with regard to other people. The artist must not be
an egoist. He must not allow the limelight to be centred on himself.
He will see himself, not as the hero of the story, but as one
of the characters---the hero, perhaps, of one chapter, but equally
a minor character in the others. The greatest artist of all, probably,
is the man who prays, and tries to see the story as the Author
designed it. He will have the truest sense of proportion, the
most adequate sense of humor of all. Undoubtedly prayer is the
highest form of exercising this sense of the dramatic.

 Probably there is no one to whom this saving grace is more
essential than to the fighting soldier, especially in winter.
Every detail of his life is sordid and uncomfortable. His feet
are always damp and cold. He is plastered with mud from head to
foot. His clothes cling to him like a wet blanket. He is filthy
and cannot get clean. His food is beastly. He has no prospect
of anything that. a civilian would call decent comfort unless
he gets ill or wounded. There is no one to sympathize with his
plight or call him a hero. If he has no sense of the dramatic,
if his horizon is bounded by the sheer material discomfort and
filth which surround him, he will sink to the level of the beast,
lose his discipline and self-respect, and spend his days and nights
making himself and everyone else as miserable as possible by his
incessant grumbling and ill-humor. On the other hand, if he has
any sense of the dramatic, he will feel that he is doing his bit
for the regeneration of the world, that history will speak of
him as a hero, and, like Mark Tapley, he will see in his hardships
and discomforts a splendid chance of being cheerful with credit.
He will know that God has given him a man's part to play, and
he will determine to play it as a man should. There are many men
of this kidney in the army of the trenches, and they are the very
salt of the earth. They have been salted with fire. They are the
living proof that pain and suffering are something more than sheer
cruelty---rather the conditions which turn human animals into
men, and men into saints and heroes fit for the Kingdom of God.

 Imagination has its disadvantages; but on the whole, and when
well under control, it is a good quality in a leader. Often in
war, when the men are tried and dejected, and seemingly incapable
of further effort, a few words of cheer from a leader whom they
trust will revive their spirits, and transform them into strong
and determined men once more. The touch of imagination in their
leader's words restores their sense of the dramatic. They see
the possibilities in the part which they are called upon to play,
and they resolve to make the most of it. The appeal so made is
generally not one to individual vanity. In the picture of the
situation which his sense of the dramatic conjures up it is not
himself that the soldier sees as the central figure. Probably
it is his leader. He sees himself, not as an individual hero,
but as a loyal follower, who is content to endure all and to brave
all under a trusted captain. He looks for no reward but his leader's
smile of approval and confidence. His highest ambition is to be
trusted and not to fail. Happy is the leader who can command such
loyalty as this! And there are many such in the army of the trenches.

 Here, again, religion gives the highest, the universal example
of the particular virtue. The most perfect form of Christianity
is just the abiding sense of loyalty to a divine Master---the
abiding sense of the dramatic which never loses sight of the Master's
figure, and which continually enables a man to see himself in
the rôle of the trusted and faithful disciple, so that he
is always trying to live up to his part.

 No, a sense of the dramatic is not theatrical, not conducive
to, or even compatible with egoism. It is a faculty which gives
zest to life: putting boredom and oppression to flight; stimulating
humor, humility, and idealism. It is of all faculties the most
desirable, being very agreeable to honor and to true religion.

XII A SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC - Revision history

Hirgen at 07:21, 19 September 2008

Hirgen at 20:35, 7 September 2008