Author Information
Nocturnes: Portrait Of Armstrong Custer
I like to help an artist when I can---
especially students, because they try
so hard to obtain that first crucial choice.
Only a few days left to spend here in
Vienna, then to Berlin and elsewhere:
they tell me you are rapid as well as
gifted, so paint me quickly, my young friend.
That first chance is important to artists.
Mine came when Wilkes Booth made a stupid choice:
he brought a loaded pistol on the stage,
and fired it wildly durning his grand speech
as Brutus. Oh, the shot just barely missed
the President, but struck his wife instead.
After the court sentenced Wilkes Booth to death,
the Great Pardoner pardoned him---with one
condition, that he never act again.
Lincoln resigned, shortly after that time
(an act of cowardice, if you ask me),
to practice law on the prairie again;
for there, they say, his sole Beloved's tomb
is; often he went there, at night, to weep.
I turned twenty-six years the year Wilkes Booth
shot Mary Lincoln, and Ford's Theater
needed an actor to fill in for him.
That was my chance, I changed my name slightly:
"George Custer" sounds like nobody of note,
But "Armstrong Custer"---well, that is a name.
"The Strong Arm of the West" the critics called
me in their accolades, after I had
come into prominence. I often thought
we had too much of Europe and Shakespeare
performed repeatedly. So I required
American plays on American
themes and ideas---the Conquest of the West,
first and foremost, to do what Spain had failed
to do during her so-called "Golden Age":
to rid these Western continents of all
the inbred and inferior peoples;
then, on their bones and rubbled cities, raise---
erect---a new American state that
lasts for a thousand years, more worthy of
our Founding Father's fondest fantasies,
far greater than this cheap democracy
forced on us by that hick from Tennessee,
General Andrew Jackson, Old Hickory.
But none of this must mean much to you, here,.
I doubt that American history
is taught in Austria, most certainly
not in its school of art. Take my advice:
put spectacle into your paintings. Give
the public the destruction that it yearns
to see, the devestation that it dreams.
I slaughtered native warriors every way,
on every stage---and gained greatest applause
for that. The animal in each of us,
although evolved, must still enjoy the kill,
at least as spectator; the kill reminds
us that we are superior, fittest
to thrive, survive, and dominate the land.
To that end, I commissioned many plays---
always including bloodshed, torture, death,
and fierce extermination of whole tribes,
all to the glory of Armstrong Custer
upon the stage, and to the glory of
his audience and those for whom he played.
I have become more than a mere actor
who entertains merely to pass the time.
I am an artist of Total Effect,
like Wagner was, controlling each aspect
and every detail of performances,
from text to ticket sales, complete control.
I have become the Symbol of the world
that I inhabit on the stage, and thus
all efforts of the cast and crew must tend
toward that, extension of the Symbol to
its fullest and immeasurable degree---
and, at that point, an immortality
accrues in this life and eternally.
So paint me well, give me the look of that.
And when you have completed it, spare no
expense to have it framed, then ship it to
me either in Berlin, Paris, or Prague,
or even London. Yes, I will be there,
after this continental tour is done.
We have a three month venue there, and then
sail home, back to American, upon
the White Star Line's new luxury ship that
they say cannot be sunk. Of course, first class:
I was one of the first to book passage,
before their advertisements drove the price
up. And be sure, young man, to sign your name
upon my portrait so that I can boast
of you to all my friends who will view it.
I will tell them---"A. Hitler is a name
"to watch for, he will soon be quite well known."
