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George Bernard Shaw
(1856-1950)
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Born in Dublin in 1856, Shaw lived for nearly a century, distinguishing himself as a dramatist, a literary critic,
and a social observer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.
Shaw had a lifelong fascination with chiasmus. Reflecting on his childhood, with an alcoholic
father and a cold, emotionally distant mother, he told one of his biographers that he developed an ability
"to make trifles out of tragedies instead of tragedies out of trifles." Examples of chiasmus
appear frequently in his early works, well before he became famous:
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"People are fond of blaming valets
because no man is a hero to his valet.
But it is equally true that no man is a valet to his hero."
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This intriguing observation shows up in one of Shaw's earliest novels, The Irrational Knot,
originally written in 1880 but not published until years later. Here are three more chiastic
quotes from his earlier writings:
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"It is feeling that sets a man thinking
and not thought that sets him feeling."
— From a Fortnightly Review article, Feb., 1894.
"Most men begin to go to the theatre
when they arrive at the stage of having …
pocket money, but no family; and they
leave off when they arrive at the stage of
a family and (consequently) no pocket money."
— From an article in The World, July 27 1893.
"No man in these islands ever believes
that the Bible means what it says;
he is always convinced that it says what he means."
— From a Saturday Review article, April 6, 1895.
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Shaw was fond of reversing the words of other writers. You saw this earlier
with the "no man is a valet to his hero" observation. In another example, Shaw
observed, "Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of
power, corrupt power." But perhaps the most famous example of this kind of
"chiastic piggybacking" occurs in Shaw's first famous play, Man and Superman, which
premiered in 1903. The play is Shaw's re-telling of the Don Juan story, and the
hero is a witty ideologue named John Tanner.
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"I said, with the foolish philosopher,
'I think; therefore I am.'
It was the woman who taught me to say,
'I am; therefore I think.' "
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Here, Tanner chiastically alters Descartes' famous maxim. In the play,
Tanner is the author of The Revolutionist's Handbook. To add a touch
of verisimilitude to the play, Shaw included the Handbook in full as an appendix
to the play. The Handbook contains a number of chiastic maxims, many of which
have become some of Shaw's most quoted lines:
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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists
to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on
the unreasonable man."
"When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport;
when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity."
"Take care to get what you like
or you will be forced to like what you get."
"Youth, which is forgiven everything,
forgives itself nothing;
age, which forgives itself everything,
is forgiven nothing."
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In British Literary Anecdotes, Robert Hendrickson says Shaw probably holds the literary record
for writing the most letters in a lifetime—more than 250,000 in all! (How he found time to
write a single play or essay, I'll never know!). While living in a passionless (and possibly
even celibate) marriage, Shaw maintained a passionate, lifelong correspondence with two of the most
beautiful women of his time, the actresses Ellen Terry and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. He wrote
thousands of letters to others as well, and it is not surprising that chiasmus found its way
into his correspondence:
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"I realize the full significance of
the singular fate which has led me
to play with all the serious things of life
and to deal seriously with all its plays."
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This observation, which appears in a letter to a friend, Janet Achurch, captures Shaw's essence.
While quite serious about the craft of play-writing—his own plays and the plays of others—he had a playful
attitude toward other aspects of life that most people consider quite serious, especially religion and government.
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"Standing between you the Englishman,
so clever in your foolishness,
and this Irishman, so foolish in his cleverness,
I cannot in my ignorance be sure
which of you is the more deeply damned."
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This line is delivered by Father Keegan in John Bull's Other Island, first produced in 1904. Born in
Ireland, Shaw had no particular love for the people of his ancestry. And a lifelong resident of London,
he wasn't particularly fond of his fellow Englishmen. Here, he finds a clever way of expressing
his disdain for both.
 Continue to Part 2
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