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446 / A M E S [ 1918]They went off to the Gerichtshof, but came back like Jack and JillFor the pants came tumbling after, and the judge is laughing still.CHORUS:Oh, the C.G. is not literary,And his handymen are rogues.The C.G.'s about as literaryAs an Irish kish of broguesSo farewell, bruiser Bennett,And goodbye, Chummy Carr,If you put a beggar up on horseback,Why 'e dunno where 'e are.Joyce made a more serious statement of his position to Georges Borachsix days after the firsttrial. He told him on October 21, 1918, 'As anartist, I attach no importance to political conformity. Consider: RenaissanceItaly gave us the greatest artists. The Talmud says at one point,"We Jews are like the olive: we give our best when we are being crushed,when we are collapsing under the burden of our foliage." Material victoryis the death of spiritual preeminence. Today we see in the Greeks ofantiquity the most cultured nation. Had the Greek state not perished,what would have become of the Greeks? Colonizers and merchants.' Hewent on to explain, 'As an artist I am against every state. Of course Imust recognize it, since indeed in all my dealings I come into contactwith its institutions. The state is concentric, man is eccentric. Thencearises an eternal struggle. The monk, the bachelor, and the anarchist arein the same category. Naturally I can't approve of the act of the revolutionarywho tosses a bomb in a theatre to destroy the king and his children.On the other hand, have those states behaved any better whichhave drowned the world in a blood-bath?' 50On a more trivial level the English Players, heartened by the decisionagainst Carr, and amused by Joyce's song of victory, next began rehearsalson a play of Sykes's choosing, which Joyce thought mere commercialism,Hindle Wakes by Stanley Houghton. But the war intruded upon evenZurich's dramatic life. Before the Armistice was signed on November 11,the German revolution spread to Switzerland and caused a general strike.The cantonal government divided Zurich into sections and filledit withmountain troops who disliked the Zurichers and could be depended uponto enforce order. Each night the English Players, who generally rehearsedat the flat of Mrs. Turner, had to make their way on foot past warysentinels. The city's disruption, and the influenza epidemic which tookthe life of one member of the cast, delayed production of the play untilDecember 3, and it lost money. Joyce then thought of a new way ofattracting a polyglot audience instead of just an English-speaking one; heproposed they give three short plays, in Italian, French, and English.Accordingly he coached some amateur Italian actors in Felice Cavallotti'sII Cantico dei Cantici; two actors from the Theatre-Francais of Zurich