Capacity To Disappoint Poem by gershon hepner

Capacity to disappoint
is one that’s very much enjoyed
by those determine to pinpoint
our failures with their Schadenfreude.
We’ve also the capacity
to bother, irritate, annoy
the people whose veracity
we find that we cannot destroy
with half truths and equivocation
that beat like time that’s out of joint,
and add, like Freud, to the frustration
of Freunde whom we disappoint.
If only they could understand,
we think, as we console ourselves;
they do, and that’s why they demand
we be remaindered on the shelves.

Inspired by Christoper Isherwood’s review of two plays currently playing in Manhattan, “Blasted, ” a 1955 play by Sarah Kane, and Chekhov’s “The Seagull” (“A Healthy Dose of Misery for Company, ” NYT, October 26,2008) :
If “Blasted” all but flays your soul, Chekhov’s “Seagull” strums gently on the heartstrings, although its worldview is hardly more comforting. “Blasted” depicts man’s potential for savagery in extraordinary circumstances; “The Seagull” is a drama of ordinary sadness, everyday frustration, more attuned to our capacity to disappoint than to destroy. Chekhov was no less dry-eyed than Ms. Kane as he observed his characters’ self-absorption, and he was no less heart-sore, at bottom, that life should be this way. Although Chekhov classified “The Seagull” as a comedy, and the actors — led by the ravishing Kristin Scott Thomas as the vain Arkadina — infuse their performances with a gentle awareness of their characters’ absurdities, the production strikes a consistently bleak note. Mr. Rickson and Christopher Hampton, who provided the supple new English translation, quietly but insistently trace the agony of hopes unrealized: the yearning for understanding that is denied, the aching, desperate sense that the possibility of happiness is decaying moment by moment. The somber palette, the eerie, shuddering music and the echoing silences between speeches subtly underscore the play’s proto-existentialist underpinnings. Even the symbolist drama written by Konstantin, which is almost always played for comedy as the arch attitudinizing of an immature writer, radiates a dark fundamental truth here. The production honors the honest emotion behind Konstantin’s clumsy poetry, the ache for a “universal soul” that would unite the scattered hearts of humanity. Tellingly, a single phrase — “If you only knew” — echoes like a musical refrain throughout Mr. Hampton’s text. “If you only knew how much I hated leaving you! ” Nina confesses to the assembled company when she must leave the charmed circle on Sorin’s estate to return home. “If you only knew how much they upset me, ” Polina complains when her husband causes an unnecessary kerfuffle. “If you only knew how unhappy I am, ” Konstantin upbraids Nina, repeating the same phrase to his mother when he has lost Nina’s love. “If you only knew! ” the distraught Nina cries to Konstantin in her last scene, unable to describe the suffering she’s endured.


10/27/08