Aria da Capo & What Makes a Man Powerful?

Power: Good Will or Owning Things?

In Aria da Capo Corydon finds a bowl of colored confetti—and says they are jewels:

Corydon:  Red stones - and purple stones-
And stones stuck full of gold!
...They all belong to me...
Wouldn't I be a fool to spend my time
Watching a flock of sheep go up a hill,
When I have these to play with...[I could] buy a city...

I like those lines "Red stones - and purple stones - And stones stuck full of gold" very much. Edna St. Vincent Millay gives form to tight, narrow greed—you almost feel someone licking his chops. Yet the words, the colors sound rich and wide—red stones, purple stones and gold. The "o"s give a sense of width and wonder. So even as Corydon clutches you feel something expansive.

Like Corydon, I used to think I would be powerful if I could buy whatever I pleased. But often when I got home with a new present I had bought myself, I was agitated. In an Aesthetic Realism class, Ellen Reiss asked me:

Ellen Reiss:  Suppose you had a lot of money, and at the same time, you felt you weren't kind. Would that be a disadvantage?

Bennett Cooperman:  Yes.

When I said I could be preoccupied with thoughts of buying things, she explained "These things are all substitutes." And describing what they are substitutes for, she asked: "Will a person ever feel he cares for himself if he doesn't have good will?" The answer, I've seen, is no!

In Aria da Capo Corydon says he'll give Thyrsis a bowl of jewels, if Thyrsis will give him a bowl of water. They agree, but each secretly plots: Corydon makes necklaces of the jewels as Thyrsis chops up a poisonous root and puts it in the bowl of water. They approach at the wall, and in a dramatic tableau, Thyrsis puts the bowl to Corydon's mouth, as Corydon puts the necklaces around Thyrsis's neck. He pulls them tight:

Thyrsis:  You're strangling me! Oh, Corydon!
It's only a game!
Corydon:  ...only a game is it?-Yet I believe
You've poisoned me in earnest!

Then, I believe, is Edna St. Vincent Millay's most scathing indictment of people. Cothurnus puts their bodies under the table on which, at the beginning of the play, Pierrot and Columbine had been dining. Pierrot and Columbine return, and on seeing the dead bodies, Pierrot calls to Cothurnus:

Pierrot:  Come drag these bodies out of here! We can't
Sit down and eat with two dead bodies lying
Under the table!...The audience wouldn't stand for it!

Cothurnus:  What makes you think so?-Pull down the tablecloth...And play the farce. The audience will forget.

Here, Edna St. Vincent Millay is saying people don't want to see evil, they'll cover it up and try to get on with their comfortable lives. Yet she, as playwright is showing that evil straight, and it makes for drama the power of which is described by something Eli Siegel once said, "The ability to see in ourselves evil...is a kind of strength." Aria da Capo ends as Pierrot and Columbine nonchalantly begin again their chatter:

Columbine:  Pierrot, a macaroon! I cannot live
Without a macaroon!
Pierrot:  My only love,
You are so intense...

Curtain begins to close slowly.

I am going to quote lines of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay because they are the antithesis to the tragedy of Aria da Capo. The poem is Renascence, and in The Right Of Mr. Siegel said of it, and of the power of Edna St. Vincent Millay:

...it is right to present the self as clearly large. In this century, no one has done this better than Edna St. Vincent Millay in...her poem Renascence...For a self to be large is that self's being able to become another self, to have other feeling...

Renascence begins:

A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.

... No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
And later Miss Millay writes:

About the trees my arms I wound;
Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;

... O God, I cried, no dark disguise
Can e'er hereafter hide from me
Thy radiant identity!

I love Aesthetic Realism because it is the greatest opposition to man's contempt, and encourager of what Edna St. Vincent Millay is describing, our true power—to feel what others feel, to have good will, and to like the things of this world. I love what I am so lucky to be learning—as a man, actor, consultant, husband, friend. Aesthetic Realism is the powerful and kind education that all people and nations need.

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