Paul Goodman

Perhaps the deepest distinction between the noh-play and our western drama is that the former imitates a State, of the soul or nature, and the latter an Action. The movement of drama is the working out of will, character in a situation coming to an act, and one act leading to another; the movement of noh is rather enlightenment, a coming to awareness (on the part of the audience and of the character, the waki), and a corresponding change from an apparent to a true state (on the past of the dancer). This effect of initiation into a true awareness of something, that dawns on one, so to speak, is not unknown to European lyric poetry,—I am thinking especially of such poems as Wordsworth’s “Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” or “The Solitary Reaper”,—and Ezra Pound has called a noh-play a “long imagist poem”. But the Japanese have invented a technique for producing this effect in a play; and it is to this single aspect of the noh I have tried to borrow from, and not the music, which I have never heard, nor the harmonious ensemble of dance and mask, which I have never seen. It is the adoption of this technique that has made me call my own poems noh-plays. . . .

Paul Goodman, ‘A Drama of Awareness’

The Cyclist (1941)

First actor: a POEM

Second actor: a CYCLIST

Scene: a wood near Tenafly

CYCLIST

Thus far my gleaming bicycle has brought me
along the open road and thru the thickets;
here I will rest; the evening fog
among the wire spokes obscures the path
unwound by Indians thru the ancient wood.
Here will I rest; this place is Tenafly,
I know it well, the past and present of it,
the excellent villages of north New Jersey,
Englewood, Bogota, Teaneck, Milford,
and Fort Lee where the highway leaps the river.

Now have I eaten, and my wheel
turned upside down amid the foliage
spins noiselessly to my touch, wisely oiled,
all ready for tomorrow! Why shall I
not go to sleep on my arm?

CHORUS

What fear has he? He knows the country well.

CYCLIST

I love it well, so it is home to me.

CHORUS

There are no savage beasts in Tenafly.

CYCLIST

No tramps molest me: I have nothing to steal.

CHORUS

How physically well at home is he,
yet lacks the luxury of a soft pillow.

CYCLIST

My ease is spiritual, I love this land
my bed and know its ancient history.
Therefore, red fire at my head for warmth,
I now have fallen asleep.
(he is awakened by a midnight thunderstorm)
Oh! oh! the thunder and lightning,
the big drops of rain:
roughly dashed am I from sleep,
snatched from nightmare to a worse awakening.
No stars were in the sky,
the clouds were scuttling from the south and east:
behold the horrible tempest!
I am alone in the forest.
hola! holaa!
My shouts are swallowed in the wind
racing by at 50 miles an hour.
I can no longer lie upon the ground,
streams of mud begin to flow beneath me.
Out in the open, I
am like one locked up in a shower closet
amid the millions of drops.—
I cannot turn the water off!
my shoes are melting away—
I fear lest it rise and drown me!
Hark! the great trees crashing down—
some are thunderstruck and hit the ground,
for thunderbolts descend like hail;
some are torn up by the monstrous wind.

CHORUS

What can God mean, to be so prodigal?

CYCLIST

I cannot see, blinded by the lightning,
and then left seeing green in the pitchy night.

CHORUS

He scatters light and dark with a large hand.

CYCLIST

How cold I am! yet cannot light a fire
red amid the strings of rain.

CHORUS

Do not despair: you will outlive the storm,
there are many examples.

CYCLIST

No no! I shall be crushed by an oak,
my bicycle will be a heap of wires
rusty by dawn;
my lonely body shall be washed away. . . .

(enter poem)

POEM

I need not explain that there are eternal forms:
it is an ancient doctrine:
by love and abstraction are they known,
a process of 2 steps.
Yon fellow loves the woods and the loud tempest;
as for the rest,—
having reached the bottom of his panic,
now is he become more than a man.

CYCLIST

Who are you, moving in a golden space?

POEM

I am the poem of this place and moment.
I am a pause amid the seas of motion.

CYCLIST

I see you not and yet I feel you near.

POEM

I have no body I am Proteus.

CYCLIST

You come and go, passing among the trees.

POEM

I flicker like a candle off and on.

CYCLIST

Where do you come from, brightening the storm?

POEM

Why, I was always there.

CYCLIST

Yes, so you were
(laughs)

CHORUS

How joyous! how joyous!
is the scene about us now!
Forgotten is the terror of the storm.
The rain comes splashing down upon our brow
and is a welcome drink if we are thirsty.

CYCLIST

The rain is a rope net
imprisoning a roaring beast,
the lightning is a tiger’s yellow stripes!

CHORUS

There are no savage beasts in Tenafly.

CYCLIST
Our cat can be made a tiger at will!

POEM

Obviously there are more than a hundred contexts
for interpreting this scene: geometrical, pictorial,
zoological, and each of these in a variety of modes.

CYCLIST

I am enjoying an ecstatic emotion, like one who
seeking shelter from the rain under an awning, there
meets a person who becomes a lifelong friend. I have
a tendency to say everything over and over.

CHORUS

How joyous! how joyous!
is the scene about us now!
Forgotten is the terror of the storm.
The rain comes down splashing down upon our brow
and is a welcome drink if we are thirsty!

POEM

Now will I dance for you: attend closely,
much is to be got from the evolutions of a dance.

But you, meantime, chop wood for a red fire:
the mind is clearer when the hands are busy.

CYCLIST

There are plenty of dead branches blown down
by the wind.

CHORUS

How clear his hatchet rings thru the deep wood:
it rings a high A-flat and middle C.

POEM
(dancing with a lantern)

Such be the rhythm of my dance.—
One two! one two!

CHORUS
(for the dancer)

Attend closely to all sights and sounds:
how great, how small the world becomes!

In the wood 2 trails form an X;
far off growls the thunder;

along the gas-lit road to Paterson
the thunder is loud and prolonged.

How vast, how bright, how broad spread is the vision!
Overhead passes the Boston mail.

(for himself)
Golden, golden indeed is the spell!
in the wood the tree-trunks have begun to gleam!

(for the dancer)
Beyond the rapid clouds glow the fixed stars—

(for himself)
Space! time! annihilated, annihilated—

POEM

Where now the noiseless wheel spins in the drizzle,
the Indian fought the aborigine.
Shall I recall the day the lordly Hudson
began to cleave a channel in the rock?
There is ocular demonstration
for even a remoter past.

CYCLIST

Cease! my brain is trembling like a wire.—
What shall I pay for this ecstatic dance?

POEM

What are the obligations of those who love the arts?

CHORUS

To love one another both near and far!

POEM

Write thou a poem in the manner of Seami Motokiyo,
starting ‘thus far my gleaming bicycle—‘
(exit)

CYCLIST

Look! he is gone! unseen among the trees—

CHORUS
The rain is over, all a vivid memory—

CYCLIST

My feet no longer firmly grip the earth,
my mind is wandering far as in a dream.

CHORUS

Like a girl’s dream on a summer night,
the one poem seems to have many faces.

Paul Goodman (1911-1972) was a pacifist, social activist, and writer who published mainly in avant-garde journals and struggled with poverty until the age of forty-nine, when the enormous success of Growing Up Absurd (New York: Random House, 1960) made Goodman a major figure in the cultural milieu of 1960s America. Following on the success of Growing Up Absurd Goodman published a series of widely-read volumes in various genres on a remarkable range of subjects, including from 1962 to 1964 alone Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals, The Community of Scholars, and Drawing the Line from Random House, Making Do, the novel The Empire City, and The Lordly Hudson: Collected Poems from Macmillan, The Society I Live in is Mine and Compulsory Mis-Education from Horizon, How to Make a College from Cunningham, Seeds of Liberation from Braziller, and The Structure of Literature from the University of Chicago Press. For critical notes on ‘The Cyclist’ and the volume in which it appeared, Stop-Light: 5 Dance Poems and an Essay on the Noh, see CA12 in the Bibliography.

Despite his role as an public intellectual in the United States in the 1960s only three Goodman titles are in print and readily available there in 2003, The Empire City (available here), The Galley to Mytilene: Stories, 1949-1960 (here), and Format and Anxiety: Paul Goodman Critiques the Media (here). In the UK the selection is more generous. It includes The Empire City (available here), A Ceremonial, The Facts of Life, and The Galley to Mytilene (vols. 2-4 of Collected Stories, (here, here, and here), The Break-up of Our Camp: Stories, 1932-35 (here), Compulsory Mid-Education (here), Communitas (here), Format and Anxiety (here), Decentralizing Power (here), USA: An American Record (here), Creator Spirit Come: Literary Essays (here), and Nature Heals: The Essays of Paul Goodman (here).