NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND
TONY PALMER
Last January, Peter Sellers was due to rehearse and perform a two-handed play at London's Roundhouse. It was to have marked his return to the London stage from which he had been absent for over ten years. Not since his success in Brou-haha had West End audiences been given the benefit of his immaculate timing and eloquent melancholy. Films and other problems had kept him away. Directed by Jack Bond and co-star- ring Francesca Annis, the play and its dis- tinguished cast were awaited with much expectancy, not least by their financial backers. Suddenly, after all the contracts had been signed, Sellers withdrew. It was rumoured that he felt he was unworthy of the part, the play, the author and the aud- ience. He did not feel that he could contri- bute toward the play's deserved success. Later he was to claim that illness had pre- vented him from participating and produced doctor's evidence in support, but at the time it seemed that nerves were the cause. To experienced Sellers-watchers, his behaviour seemed characteristic and not at all surpris- ing. Apparently he offered to underwrite any financial losses which the production com- pany might have incurred—again charac- teristic of the generosity of which the man is sometimes capable. Now, it seems, that offer has been withdrawn and the production company is intending to sue Sellers for breach of contract. There is much bitterness all round.
Sellers seems to be at fault. Largely as a result of Sellers's involvement in the project resources were committed which utimately have to be accounted for. He once told me: 'you can buy anyone in the film business, and I mean anyone. Including myself.' yes, so long as other people are not damaged in the process, as they might be held to have been in this instance.
But on the other hand. Sellers's behaviour like that of countless others of his kind is often discounted because it is thought to be part of some mystical artistic temperament which is different from that of normal mor- tals and has to be allowed lest it wither and die. Read any biography of Scott Fitzgerald and you are constantly nagged by the thought that if only he hadn't drunk so much or behaved in such an outrageous fashion or had such a neurotic and schizophrenic wife, then he would have lived longer and not been torn apart by these weaknesses. Or were these indeed his strengths? Did he ac- tively need these crosses he had to bear in order to survive as an artist at all? Did he actually encourage their prevalence in order to gain stimulus for his creation? The idea that great art only arises out of great suffer- ing is a belief central to the romantic tradi- tion of the artist and there are many who are witness to this psychological curiosity. Ken Russell's film about Tchaikovsky cap- tures this seedy and wracked self-indulgence to such a phenomenal degree that one begins
to wonder about the element of wish fulfil- ment in the movie.
Although clearly related to the Christian ethic of redemption through suffering, this tradition did not gain wide currency until after the Middle Ages, until after the Church's influence had ceased to be domi- nant in Western culture. In the Middle Ages and before and in other more oriental cul. tures, the artist was a craftsman like any other who would be punished like any other if he transgressed the accepted codes of social behaviour. Not for him the privilege of broken contracts. The pattern of drug addicts, alcoholics, profligates and degene- rates which litters the history of art subtly begs the question as to whether more normal behaviour in these people might not have produced the same results. And that in itself begs the question as to what exactly con- stitutes normal behaviour. It is a well-known psychiatric fact that frequently beneath the most respectable and pin-striped exterior. rages a ferocious tumult in the mind.
Fitzgerald was aware of this dilemma. He refused to have psychiatric treatment himself, although he advocated it for his wife, because he was afraid to tamper with his temperamental make-up lest he destroy what diminishing talent he felt he had. His confusion of wants and needs is almost a casebook study. Likewise, it was not until some years after the death of T. S. Eliot that it was realised the full extent of his personal unhappiness with his first wife and how Mitch of that unhappiness found ex- pression in his poetry. Ironically, to the world he appeared as the epitome of nor- malcy, the very essence of the bank clerk, which, of course, he was. But still, he was a genius so he was allowed to be unhappy. And moody. And difficult. And rude. And whatever.
Actually, Eliot was none of those things but there are many others who are and these conveniently use the word 'genius' to excuse their otherwise inexcusable behaviour. 'Gen- ius' is among the more overworked words in current popular usage. You've only got to kick a ball into a net with more accuracy and perhaps more skill than anyone else to find yourself suddenly awarded the accolade of genius. If by genius we mean someone who gains fresh insight into something and then communicates the sense of exhilaration that this insight entails, then my accountant warrants the description as much as any man.
Perhaps we have become so over-im- pressed by anyone who displays any element of the extraordinary that we are prepared to tolerate extravagances of behaviour in order to see that extraordinariness survive. But perhaps if we stopped calling these people geniuses and stopped pretending that their contribution to society was in any way more important than that of a doctor or a road- sweeper, then it is possible that, for example, Sellers and the Roundhouse production company wouldn't have got themselves into the fix they have. After all, art and the artists certainly have their place. But they should keep to it.
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