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Sonny the Secular Savior
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15393 |
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BOOK WORLD
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12 / 1989 |
5,874 Words |
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Michael Patrick Gillespie
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To many in this postmodern era, the inclination to offer instruction--especially the moral instruction so often associated with didacticism--seems out of place. Instruction surely implies a measure of certitude, and the possibility of achieving certitude in any but the most banal circumstances has become a condition that increasingly fewer individuals have proven willing to assent to. (One need only look to the work of playwrights like David Rabe or Harold Pinter for powerful illustrations of this attitude.) Such a perspective links didacticism to intolerance and authoritarianism. Thus, the argument goes, since we appear to share fewer and fewer common assumptions about the proper constitution of our society, the absolute values that grow out of certitude have become a threat rather than a source of comfort. Now, more often than not, we associate individuals who do espouse didactic positions with images of demagogues addressing large crowds who mindlessly assent to dangerous and radical positions (i.e., any opinions that differ significantly from our own).
George Bernard Shaw would have readily admitted to his own didactic tendencies, but he would, just as quickly, have disassociated himself from any link between the didactic approach and positions admitting no alternative perception and demanding complete intellectual submission to the idea presented. For Shaw, didacticism did not represent a means of homogenizing human attitudes but stood as an important form of personal definition. Shaw's didacticism in particular did not attempt to render individuals into a uniform whole; rather, it provided a desirable, even necessary, forum for asserting identity. One came, therefore, to a clearer sense of self through this public process of articulating personal beliefs. Shaw's determination to present a range of his views reflects not so much a desire to impose those opinions on others as a wish to affirm his own individuality in a society that had sought to suppress it for most of the early years of his life.
As Michael Holroyd tells us in volume 1 of his biography of Shaw, The Search for Love, a sense of isolation and uncertainty surrounded Shaw's childhood. (Holroyd takes this attitude to the point of raising questions of paternity, hinting that Shaw himself was unsure of his parentage.) As a consequence, when Shaw first arrived in London from Dublin in the spring of 1876, he did so not as the self-confident figure who would dominate English arts and letters for the first half of this century, but rather as a reticent young man still unsure of his own identity.
The atmosphere of the English capital hardly encouraged Shaw to abandon his attitude. This was a time when stage Irishmen still figured prominently in the repertoires of English theaters and music halls, not so subtly reflecting a prominent aspect of late-Victorian cultural and ethnic biases. The condition could hardly have gone unnoticed by Shaw, yet, as Holroyd's biography suggests, rather than cow him into shame over his ancestry, these attitudes only made him that much more determined to assert his independence of popular sentiment and acknowledge his heritage. As he made his way in London, Shaw certainly grew more secure in his individuality. At the same time he remained a man who, to his final days, saw himself as an Irishman.
Both elements of his nature emerge quite clearly in a letter of 11 June 1922 responding to Sylvia Beach's request that he join the list of subscribers to James Joyce's Ulysses. The self-reliance that Shaw enjoyed at that
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