T.S. Eliot actually focused a lot more on writing plays in his later career, it turns out. He didn’t just want to blast people with mystical poetic fragmentations; he also wanted to entertain. And he was seeking a way to be able to do both–an artistic quest I strongly admire.

He does a good job with The Cocktail Party, which has moments of both cute domestic repartee and deep spiritual longing all mixed up together. It reminds me of Chesterton (Man Who Was Thursday) and Lewis (Hideous Strength) where the crusty politesse of British society is flayed back to reveal an extremely occult and mystical layer of human desire. Sacred rites, supernatural beings, the struggle for salvation… all playing out with the utmost propriety behind closed doors.

I see that my life was determined long ago
And that the struggle to escape from it
Is only a make-believe, a pretence
That what is, is not, or could be changed.
The self that can say ‘I want this—or want that’—
The self that wills—he is a feeble creature;
He has to come to terms in the end
With the obstinate, the tougher self; who does not speak,
Who never talks, who cannot argue;
And who in some men may be the guardian—
But in men like me, the dull, the implacable,
The indomitable spirit of mediocrity.
The willing self can contrive the disaster
Of this unwilling partnership—but can only flourish
In submission to the rule of the stronger partner.

Oof.

I looked at your face: and I thought that I knew
And loved every contour; and as I looked
It withered, as if I had unwrapped a mummy.
I listened to your voice, that had always thrilled me,
And it became another voice—no, not a voice:
What I heard was only the noise of an insect,
Dry, endless, meaningless, inhuman—
You might have made it by scraping your legs together—
Or however grasshoppers do it. I looked,
And listened for your heart, your blood;
And saw only a beetle the size of a man
With nothing more inside it than what comes out
When you tread on a beetle.

Eliot is really good at conveying male helplessness, the neurotic spasms of the intelligent but weak man. (See also The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock for another example of this.) Apparently he was a sickly intellectual ever since childhood.

Illness offers him a double advantage:

To escape from himself—and get the better of his wife.

Here Reilly is speaking not just of physical illness but mental frailty–the willing pursuit of madness, in fact.

This play speaks to me deeply because of my own struggles with passivity and with womankind, and I admit the thought of insanity has crossed my mind as a possible escape from the problems — which I don’t believe, by the way! But the thought has nevertheless occurred. It would be a remarkably selfish thing to do. The insane people I’ve met are very interesting, and their condition lets them off the hook of a lot of things, but in the end they are mostly incapable of caring for anyone at all, barely even themselves.

What is hell? Hell is oneself,
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.

Anyway, the main tension in the play is between the call to a dutiful life and the call to the ascetic/erotic quest. This is a tension I have felt very strongly ever since my teenage years, and Eliot seems to be following the exact same pathways of thought that I have on the matter.

No . . . it isn’t that I want to be alone,
But that everyone’s alone—or so it seems to me.
They make noises, and think they are talking to each other;
They make faces, and think they understand each other.
And I’m sure that they don’t. Is that a delusion?

And then I found we were only strangers
And that there had been neither giving nor taking
But that we had merely made use of each other
Each for his purpose. That’s horrible. Can we only love
Something created by our own imagination?
Are we all in fact unloving and unlovable?
Then one is alone, and if one is alone
Then lover and belovèd are equally unreal
And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams.

And if that is all meaningless, I want to be cured
Of a craving for something I cannot find
And of the shame of never finding it.
Can you cure me?

Eliot does not disparage the bourgeois pleasure of settling down:

Reilly
…They may remember
The vision they have had, but they cease to regret it,
Maintain themselves by the common routine,
Learn to avoid excessive expectation,
Become tolerant of themselves and others,
Giving and taking, in the usual actions
What there is to give and take. They do not repine;
Are contented with the morning that separates
And with the evening that brings together
For casual talk before the fire
Two people who know they do not understand each other,
Breeding children whom they do not understand
And who will never understand them.

Celia
Is that the best life?

Reilly
It is a good life. Though you will not know how good
Till you come to the end. But you will want nothing else,
And the other life will be only like a book
You have read once, and lost. In a world of lunacy,
Violence, stupidity, greed . . . it is a good life.

But Celia, on the quest for transcendence, responds:

I know I ought to be able to accept that
If I might still have it. Yet it leaves me cold.
Perhaps that’s just a part of my illness,
But I feel it would be a kind of surrender—
No, not a surrender—more like a betrayal.
You see, I think I really had a vision of something
Though I don’t know what it is. I don’t want to forget it.
I want to live with it. I could do without everything,
Put up with anything, if I might cherish it.
In fact, I think it would really be dishonest
For me, now, to try to make a life with anybody!
I couldn’t give anyone the kind of love—
I wish I could—which belongs to that life.
Oh, I’m afraid this sounds like raving!
Or just cantankerousness . . . still,
If there’s no other way . . . then I feel just hopeless.

In the end, Eliot suggests there are only two good paths in life: leading a humble life as a householder, knowing that you can’t really control or even understand who your spouse or children are, or the horrifying and glorious path of martyrdom.

No lonelier than the other. But those who take the other
Can forget their loneliness. You will not forget yours.
Each way means loneliness—and communion.
Both ways avoid the final desolation
Of solitude in the phantasmal world
Of imagination, shuffling memories and desires.

Spoilers

It’s hilarious that the Unidentified Guest who they suspect to be the devil turns out to be a psychiatrist, and then the psychiatrist turns out to be a guardian angel. I thought the prayer of the angels was based.

Alex
The words for the building of the hearth.

[They raise their glasses]

Reilly
Let them build the hearth
Under the protection of the stars.

Alex
Let them place a chair each side of it.

Julia
May the holy ones watch over the roof,
May the Moon herself influence the bed.

[They drink]

Alex
The words for those who go upon a journey.

Reilly
Protector of travellers
Bless the road.

Alex
Watch over her in the desert.
Watch over her in the mountain.
Watch over her in the labyrinth.
Watch over her by the quicksand.

Meanwhile, in Act III, the monkey discussion is hilarious, vivid and disturbing. You only realize a moment too late what it’s all building up to.

It was difficult to tell.
But from what we know of local practices
It would seem that she must have been crucified
Very near an ant-hill.

There are two ways to die, to approach death through the course of your life: the way of comfort or the way of pain. And each has its glories! But each has its suffering as well. Each has its loneliness and each has its communion. But above all one must avoid the “final desolation of solitude in the phantasmal world of imagination” — that is idolatry; that is, of loving images rather than loving God; of being caught up in yourself. That is hell.