The Animated Artifice, Creation and Illusion in Puppetry

“ Ventriloquists almost always exaggerate nature, especially as a means of indicating distance; and they make up the illusion by prompting their audiences to imagine the effects they fail themselves to represent completely; as any one may see any night of his life in the case of Herr Von Joel, who persists in looking and inducing his audience to look for his “leetle singing lark,” up in the ceiling of Evans’s supper room.
With the assistance of this sort of prompting, it is really extraordinary what ventriloquists can accomplish, and the extent to which they can affect a sympathising audience. ”

“ By an art like that of the ventriloquist, he throws his imagination out of himself, and makes every word appear to proceed from the very mouth of the person whose name it bears. His plays alone are properly expressions of the passions, not descriptions of them. ”

“ That is why a puppet play is not only more amusing but more artistic than a real one.” He continues: “Puppets, moreover, have style. They are cut out sharply to represent their particular characteristics, and those characteristics are pronounced. The manager of a puppet show has a free hand in the fashioning of such a company as best carries out his creative impulse. But with real actors it is impossible to make them other than they are, to subordinate them entirely to the manager’s will. I have been an actor, both in Germany and in Russia ... ”

“ The originality of a comic artist is thus expressed in the special kind of life he imparts to a mere puppet.
We will, however, leave on one side the immediate application of the principle, and at this point insist only on the more remote consequences. The illusion of a machine working in the inside of the person is a thing that only crops up amid a host of amusing effects; but for the most part it is a fleeting glimpse, that is immediately lost in the laughter it provokes. To render it permanent, analysis and reflection must be called into play. ”

“ He found something comic in the pantomime of the puppets, "whose every motion is effected by wires, who imitate the gestures of despair with hands that cannot shut, and, with a wooden gravity of countenance, throw their bodies into terrible contortions to make up for the lack of expression in the face." In mere pantomime it is probable that the puppets would labor under a serious disability, for if a performer cannot use his voice, he needs facial expression to assist the gestures by which only can he then convey his meaning to the other performers and to the spectators. ”

“ Too much attention cannot be bestowed on the study of sound as it falls on the ear, and an endeavor to imitate it as it is heard—for the “secret” of the art is, that as perspective is to the eye so is ventriloquism to the ear. When we look at a painting of a landscape, some of the objects appear at a distance; but we know that it is only the skill of the artist which has made it appear as the eye has seen it in reality. In exactly the same manner a ventriloquist acts upon and deceives the ear, by producing sounds as they are heard from any known distances. ”

“ In our engraving may be seen two methods of arranging the fingers for forming a doll’s head with the hand. The illusion is produced by making a few simple lines with charcoal, and wrapping a handkerchief or napkin around the hand; then, if one has a little aptness for ventriloquism, he may hold a conversation with the head.
In our time, most ventriloquists who exhibit in public considerably facilitate the illusion that they desire to produce by using large articulated dummies, which they make speak and sing, and talk to one another—each in a different voice. ”

“ You can put a child apprentice to a tumbler or rope-dancer with a comfortable prospect of success, if they are but sound of wind and limb: but you cannot do the same thing in painting. The odds are a million to one. You may make indeed as many H—s and H—s, as you put into that sort of machine, but not one Reynolds amongst them all, with his grace, his grandeur, his blandness of gusto, ‘in tones and gestures hit,’ unless you could make the man over again. To snatch this grace beyond the reach of art is then the height of art—where fine art begins, and where mechanical skill ends. ”

“ It is like having a company of actors whose exclusive concern is to pronounce the lines of a play perfectly, without any attempt at interpretation or characterization, thus suppressing their own personalities for the sake of the texts. If the plays thus being performed are by Shakespeare, they may well gain a great deal, but most plays will not stand up to such treatment. This is always true of the puppet theatre, for none of the charm or individual talent of the accomplished actor can save the faulty text. ”

“ It is simply practice, not perfection. Its use trains the eye and the hand of the painter, its abuse produces in his work an effect of mere posing and prettiness. It is the secret of much of the artificiality of modern art, this constant posing of pretty people, and when art becomes artificial it becomes monotonous. Outside the little world of the studio, with its draperies and its bric-à-brac, lies the world of life with its infinite, its Shakespearean variety. ”

“ ECRASIA. Well, have you ever hesitated to criticize our best flute players, and to declare whether their music is good or bad? Pray have I not the same right to criticize your busts, though I cannot make images anymore than you can play?
ARJILLAX. Any fool can play the flute, or play anything else, if he practises enough; but sculpture is a creative art, not a mere business of whistling into a pipe. The sculptor must have something of the god in him. From his hand comes a form which reflects a spirit. He does not make it to please you, nor even to please himself, but because he must. ”

“ The more interest the public and the dramatist take in human nature—that is to say, the better developed they are as regards dramatic sympathy—the more, rich, vivid, and subtle will be the play of character and passion, in the drama demanded and produced. In a word, the less wooden-pated and wooden-hearted they become, the less mechanical and commonplace will their drama be.
We are slowly emerging from the puppet-show conception of drama. Our dramatists are beginning to do more than refurbish the old puppets, and move them about the stage according to the rules of the "well-made" play. ”

“ For when the old ideals become decrepit, we must go back to nature to get the stuff wherewith to make new ones.
As our dramatists advance with the times, people begin to go to the theatre to see plays, and not merely an actor in a part. The "well-made play," which was a piece of mechanical contrivance into which the puppets were ingeniously fitted, may some day develop into a work of art—a thing born rather than made—growing up like a flower in the imagination of the dramatist. ”

“ The clever playlet writer is advertised by the ease—the simplicity—with which he condenses every bit of the exposition into the opening speeches. You are right in the middle of things before you realize it and it is all done so skillfully that its straightforwardness leaves never a suspicion that the simplicity is not innate but manufactured; it seems artless, yet its artlessness is the height of art. The beginning of a playlet, then, must convey to the audience every bit of information about the characters and their relations to each other that is necessary for clear understanding. ”

“ And this riddle of riddles we discover in the fact that a mere piece of mechanical craft can become an instrument one with our life, which enables us to follow, as through a flash of lightning, a power of ideal conception no less than execution, by virtue of which the imagination of genius penetrates to the core of life as instantaneously as it vanishes therefrom. ”

“ Does science give happiness? I am not aware of it; and as to mechanics, they lower the common intelligence. Mechanics replace the work of the human mind with the work of a machine. That is the death of art. It is that which has destroyed the pleasure of the inner life, the grace of that which we call industrial art—the art of the furniture-maker, the tapestry-worker, the goldsmith. It overwhelms the world with uniformity. Once artisans created ”

“ In them there would therefore be two categories of force: “material forces,” or rather, material energies obeying the laws of universal energetics; and in the second place, intelligent “spiritual forces,” the dominants. When the sculptor is working his marble, in every blow which elicits a spark there is something more than the strong force of the hammer. There is thought, the volition of the artist, which is realizing a plan. In a machine there is more than machinery. ”

“ Upon this fact is based the distinction between the mechanical and the fine arts, although since both kinds of power have a share in all production nobody has ever been able to draw a sharp and definite line at which the mechanical arts end and the fine arts begin. The power which is incommunicable is that of imagination, that indefinable grace and skill, that enchantment of creative ability which is born with rare individuals, and for which he who is not dowered with it by nature struggles in vain. ”

“ Time and time again mechanical efforts have been made to preserve all these infinite subtilities and some truly wonderful machines have been invented, but not until the sculptor's marble can be made to glow with the vitality of real flesh can this be accomplished. ”

“ He says:—“If by an operation of mechanism, animated nature could be copied with the accuracy of a cast in plaster, a tracing on a wall, or a reflection in a glass, without modification, and without the proprieties and graces of art, all that utility could desire would be perfectly attained, but it would be at the expense of almost every quality which renders art delightful.” ”

“ Conventions, on the other hand, are the very life of the musical drama, which is in its whole scheme a travesty on nature and a violation of dramatic art. The musical drama is art purposely artificial. Consequently, while the [61] actor in the spoken drama strives to the best of his ability for sincerity and conviction, and feels that he has attained the highest when he causes the spectator of his mock frenzy to forget absolutely that the emotion engendered is only a wilful simulation of the genuine article, the actor in the musical comedy is purposely and frankly artificial. ”

“ There is none, and it is only needful to study the imagination of the audience, in order to become acquainted with that of the author. The starting-point for this art is the child's play that makes everything out of everything; in conformity with this, the sportive mood of the artist transforms playthings into natural creations, into supernatural beings, into heroes, and, vice versa, uses everything natural and everything supernatural—heroes, sprites, and fairies—for playthings, that is to say, for artistic means which through each artistic combination are remodelled and freshly stamped. ”

“ It need scarcely be added that the more serious a play is, or aspires to be, the more carefully should the author avoid any such effects as call for the active collaboration of the stage-carpenter, machinist, or electrician. Even when a mechanical effect can be produced to perfection, the very fact that the audience cannot but admire the ingenuity displayed, and wonder "how it is done," implies a failure of that single-minded attention to the essence of the matter in hand which the dramatist would strive to beget and maintain. ”

“ To sharpen our sense of what is illusive in the illusion of the puppets, let us sit not too far from the stage. Choosing our place carefully, we shall have the satisfaction of always seeing the wires at their work, while I think we shall lose nothing of what is most savoury in the feast of the illusion. There is not indeed the appeal to the senses of the first row of the stalls at a ballet of living dancers. But is not that a trifle too obvious sentiment for the true artist in artificial things? ”

“ He expresses himself “fully satisfied, that the imagination alone of the spectators, when skilfully managed, may be rendered subservient in a considerable degree to the purposes of the ventriloquist;” and he is rather inclined to think, that “when seconded by such powers of imitation as some mimics possess, it is quite sufficient to account for all the phenomena of ventriloquism of which we have heard.” ”

“ That the puppets themselves did not speak, I had already decided; that of themselves they did not move, I also conjectured; but, then, how came it all to be so pretty, and to look just as if they both spoke and moved of themselves? and where were the lights, and the people that managed the deception? These enigmas perplexed me the more, as I wished to be at the same time among the enchanters and the enchanted, at the same time to have a secret hand in the play, and to enjoy, as a looker-on, the pleasure of illusion. ”

“ That is the true illusion, when the spectators are so completely carried away by the impressions of the poetry and the acting, that they overlook the secondary matters, and forget the whole of the remaining objects around them. To lie morosely on the watch to detect every circumstance that may violate an apparent reality which, strictly speaking, can never be attained, is in fact a proof of inertness of imagination and an incapacity for mental illusion. ”

“ What illusion?" rejoins the critic, with a contemptuous snort. "On the word of a gentleman, I see nothing illusive in the wretchedly bedaubed sheet of canvass that forms your back-ground, or in these pasteboard slips that hitch and jerk along the front. The only illusion, permit me to say, is in the puppet-showman's tongue,—and that but a wretched one, into the bargain!"
"We public men," replies the showman, meekly, "must lay our account, sometimes, to meet an uncandid severity of criticism. ”

“ Over zeal on the part of the audience, and over vanity on the side of the actor, drags away the veil of mystery which is our make-believe of reality, and shows glaringly the make-believe of the whole thing. ”

“ I am no longer Hanswurst, but rather an individual addressing the audience, an individual who is not a part of the theatrical illusion but is, as it were, outside the illusion: removed, rational, independent, untouched by the absurdity of art. ”