The Human Touch

AFTER looking around a little, Rabbi Wise, who had arrived in Heaven only a few minutes before, decided to suggest certain changes in the organization of the ## to Peter. So, when Peter ## the erstwhile spiritual lead of the Free Synagogue to announce him to the Heavenly Father, the rabbi said: “I’m Rabbi Wise. Now listen, Peter. I don’t think you’ve got this place organized just right. Why don’t you let me put things straight for you?” Peter scratched his head awhile and then a bright idea struck him, an idea which would give him time, anyway. “I’ll tell you what. Suppose you go back and take it up with the American Jewish Congress.” So Rabbi Wise went back to earth and took it up with the American Jewish Congress. He returned to Heaven with a fully worked out program, which he took up with Peter at the pearly gates. Then while Rabbi Wise was left in the ante-room, Peter went in to put the rabbinical suggestions to the Heavenly Father. He came back a little too soon, and this is what he said to Rabbi Wise: “The Almighty thinks very well of your proposition, Rabbi Wise, but He doesn’t want to be vice-president.”

JOSHING THE SAINTS

The other night, at the Forty-fourth Street Theatre, from which it has since, regrettably, departed, I saw most of the Gertrude Stein-Virgil Thomson opus, “4 Saints in 3 Acts.” I enjoyed the music far more than the libretto, for two reasons: the music was conventional and I could hear every note; whereas the text, not being conventional, requires an adjustment to the ears and of the intelligence which I had not made before the curtain rose. Also, no matter how clearly the members of a singing cast enunciate, there is much that even the sharpest pair of ears must miss. Perhaps the best preparation for an evening of this kind is to have a couple of drinks under the belt; come in a mental attitude, or lack of mental attitude, suitable for the proper reception and enjoyment of nonsense. Sober, Carl Van Vechten can understand and relish “4 Saints in 3 Acts” probably better than I can drunk. But that’s the way of the world. There was for me, in my sober state, only one continuing source of enjoyment in the opera, the silly inappropriateness of the words to the nature of the characters by whom they were spoken.

I think that probably a lot of silly nonsense has been written about “4 Saints in 3 Acts” by reviewers who did not enjoy or understand the work, but who were too intimidated by the literary reputation of Miss Stein and also by the prestige of the litterateurs who commend Miss Stein as caviare to the general. Critics who are lowbrow (and it is perfectly possible to be a lowbrow and a “critic” in New York) are afraid to confess their honest lack of understanding of what Miss Stein was trying to say because they might, in that way, admit unfashionable limitations.

THE JEWISH MORAL

But there is a Jewish moral, it seems to me, in “4 Saints in 3 Acts.” The all-Negro cast of characters plays, for the most part, saints of the Catholic calendar, most particularly Ignatius and the two Theresas. They are made to say and sing things of no extraordinary consequence, perhaps rather silly things. Not indecent things, for the whole performance is on a very clean level, and every saint, no matter how minor, is clad in full monastic garb, full enough to withstand a bad winter, except for one or two ballet girls.

But the things they say are not the things which we associate with saints, normally, although if you will read, as I have, Glenway Wescott’s “Calendar of Saints for Unbelievers,” you will realize that some of the saints were people of the world, that some of them were rather sinners, for a time.

Now the point about the production of this opera is that the Catholics did not raise a row about it, did not publicly excommunicate it, and thereby advertise it.

I think that if I were a Catholic; a believing, professing Catholic, I would object to “4 Saints in 3 Acts.” At the beginning of the first act I recall that a couple quietly arose and left the theatre. Perhaps they were Catholics and, if they were, they acted perfectly within their rights. The action of that couple was in perfect harmony to Catholic policy, if there was a policy, in relation to the Stein-Thomson work. Public demand gave the opera a four weeks’ run in New York, instead of the expected two. Had the Catholics of New York boiled over into print and pulpit objection, as Jews faced by a similar situation undoubtedly would, the life of “4 Saints in 3 Acts” might have been indefinitely extended and thousands would have rushed to the Forty-fourth Street Theatre to see the Steinian opus.

NIGHT ON POLISH SOLL

The other night, aboard the S. S. Pulaski, of the Gdynia-America Line, a dining roomful of guests got a taste, in the literal sense, of Polish hospitality, Polish hospitality with a Jewish accent. I am not one to remember and gloat over repasts enjoyed in the past, because I believe that too much thought about food, and too frequent references to it, is a manifestation of vulgarity. But, boy! that was a pleasant evening. From references made by the speakers I gather that two groups of American Jews of Polish descent are to make excursion tours this summer to the old country, under the aegis of the Federation of Polish Jews in America. For those present aboard the Pulaski the other night, that repast was a pleasant forestate of the future. Without seasickness.