4. Exercises poem: The poem as a libretto
Writing poetry still is a different world from writing libretto. If we look at how a libretto is composed, we can see the difference with poetry. In Acting for Singers it is explained operas often have a four-part form:
· Exposition: the introductions of the characters and their relationships.
· Development: situations that bring conflict.
· Climax: ultimate confrontation
· Resolution: the closing of the conflicts and a new order.[1]
If you have, for example, Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro you see that first, they introduce the characters, Susanna and Figaro are going to get married, but Susanna is afraid the Count will take her in her wedding night. The count and his wife have some problems. Then in the development, you see that the Count is chasing Susanna and that everybody is displeased. In the climax, the Countess dresses as Susanna to catch the Count in his pursuit. The resolution comes when the Count asks for forgiveness and Susanna and Figaro can marry in peace. Opera librettos are written for their ongoing story and the interesting interaction between characters. A poem is often a lot shorter and transfers a deeper meaning or a joke. There is no clear division of the four stages. The characters often also have conflicts with themselves. [2]
Dramatic structure
To explore the dramatic possibilities in ‘I’m Nobody’ I approached it as an opera libretto. The poem has an exposition, development, climax and resolution. This might sound artificial, but as you will see below, it is far from that:
Exposition: the introduction of the characters
There are four characters:
- Nobody (I)
- Nobody too (you)
- Somebody, Frog (they, implied)
- Admiring Bog (they, implied)
The ‘you’ and ‘I’ are allies, they are a pair of Nobody’s, even though it is not sure that the ‘you’ likes the scheme of ‘I’. There are clear introductions of the characters:
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
How dreary - to be - Somebody!
The only one that isn’t properly introduced is the ‘admiring bog’. It is immediately clear that ‘I’ wants to have a good relationship with ‘you’ and isn’t a great fan of ‘Somebody’.
Development of the conflicts
This poem is all about the conflicts. The Nobodies are in conflict with the Somebodies: there is a difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’.
Don’t tell! they'd advertise - you know!
— don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
In the development of the poem, it becomes clear that the ‘I’ sets up the ‘you’ against the ‘them’, the Somebody. It must stay a secret that ‘I’ and ‘you’ are Nobody, the shared, secret identity is emphasised and ‘they’ are a threat to that identity.
You could also say that being a ‘Nobody’ is also a conflict with the self of the ‘I’ because maybe the ‘I’ isn’t sure enough about him or herself to define the identity. So in that way even the statement ‘I’m Nobody!’ is a conflict in itself.
Climax of the conflicts
The last stanza of the poem is the climax, there is the challenging of the Somebody. The Somebody is scolded at, degraded to an animal, a slimy and hairless animal that lives in a slimy environment. Instead of the conspiracy of the first stanza, there is the confrontation with the other.
How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!
Resolution of the conflicts:
This poem doesn’t have a resolution. It is one of the strong points of it, the internal and external conflict never ends.
Dividing the poem into these three parts, you can see that it is not completely compatible with the operatic system. The development is very short and there is no resolution. Still, it was a nice way to discover more about the structure of the poem. Besides that, there is a clear introduction of the characters and they have conflicts. They just lack the details and the background story that Dickinson lets people fill in themselves. To get closer to some more detailed characters I went a bit deeper into the conflicts that the character has within him/herself or with the ‘other’.
Exercise: break it down
I did an exercise from the book Acting for Singers. It is called: break it down:
“Objective: to practice analysing the structure of music-theatre pieces to reveal the conflicts between characters.
2. choose a song, lied or art song you know well. Make a list of the conflicts the I of the song is experiencing. Remember that his conflict may be an internal struggle (…), identify the source of his conflicts, what’s at stake when the climax comes, and how the piece handles the conflict at its conclusion. (Skip any step that truly doesn’t apply.)”[3]
Because there are several settings of this same poem, it was necessary to look for as many possible conflicts and sources as could be fitting with the poem ‘I’m Nobody’.
Conflicts
- to not be able to be yourself,
- to feel diminished
- to be misunderstood
- to be lonely
- to be afraid to be left out
- to fight with your own gender
- to be annoyed by stupid people
- to want to change the world
- to be bored
Source
- because society expects you to behave well
- because you are different from others
- because you feel you didn’t get anywhere in your life
- because every day is the same
- because you have no friends
- because all the people around you are the same boring people
- because all the people around you cannot think for themselves
- because you get no recognition
Effect:
- Lose your own identity
- The well-being of the soul
- That you will be left out
- That your friends and family will never talk to you anymore
- That you become famous and you’ll become the same as everybody
- That you won’t be able to be original
- That you’ll become boring/ that life will be grey
- People make you who they want you are
- Everything stays the same
These elements aren’t listed together on purpose, because conflicts can have various reasons and various consequences. This exercise was very useful to do. From here I thought of characters that have these conflicts. The characters got their own stories around these conflicts.
Characters that fit with conflicts in I’m Nobody
- Characters that don’t want to be put in a box, that don’t want to be mainstream.
- Characters that are unsure about themselves
- Characters that are (very) sure about themselves
- Characters that are unhappy with their situation
- Lonely characters
- Cynical characters
- Characters that are not recognised
- Characters that don’t fit in their environment.
So still, these characters aren’t very detailed. There are tons of possible personalities and situations you can think of with these character traits. So here I will list a few that my fantasy came up with, sometimes based on existing people and situations:
Characters that are lonely. She is lonely because she has no friends which makes her lose her identity.
An old woman that lives on her own, husband dead or non-existent and no children. There is a song for a woman that lay dead in her apartment for 10 years without someone noticing. This could be a character, someone that lonely that no one even notices she died. The poem becomes a way to accept her situation, to comfort her that it is fine that she is alone. She can speak to her dead cat, to a picture of her husband, or to the television.
Characters that don’t want to be mainstream. She wants to change the world, because all the people around her are boring, so life will not get grey
An old woman, Trui, that lives on her own in Amsterdam, her husband died after being ill for a very long time. Now she is discovering more again about the world. She bought the regional bus card and she can even travel to Zaandam. Sometimes she passes the bus to the Zuidas, where all the office people go. She is surrounded by the same young people, going to their work. She remembered she had three children at that age and hardly education, a thing she always regretted. Bur now, she feels free. Free from having to be like that. She starts talking to the person next to her. How can everybody be so individual together? She is nobody, she doesn’t even have a high-school diploma, but at least she is free to be who she wants. The one spoken to doesn’t want to play along with the game and instead of joining the old lady in her Nobodiness, he stays a Somebody, saying the same things all over with his friends.
Status: high
Characters that don’t fit in their environment. A little girl that’s not able to be herself, because she is different from the others, but to fit in will challenge the wellbeing of her soul.
In the book Iris Grace, a girl that has autism and has problems communicating with the world, but she has a lot of creativity. Her best friend is her cat, Thula. This character is inspired by her. It is a girl of 8 that isn’t compatible with her surroundings. At school, she has no friends. She feels she is different from the rest. She could try, but she cannot fit in, because she is just not like that. Other children like to play games together, but she doesn’t. She prefers to stay quiet and read a book together with her cat, making her own worlds in her fantasy. There she has her freedom.
Status: low, but also high
Characters that don’t fit in their environment. A man that isn’t able to be himself, because the boring society expects him to behave well. He might be left out if he tries to be himself.
Sales manager, Rob, has meetings every day. Al the time they are the same ones. He sees no way to escape this life and yet he feels different from the others, only he cannot show it, because maybe he will lose his credibility and people won’t give him recognition anymore. This interpretation works best with the ‘banish’-version of the poem. Getting up for another day of work, another repetitive day of work full of meetings in which colleagues will boast about what they did, Rob looks in the mirror and thinks: “Why didn’t I follow my dreams?”. The other Nobody is his mirror, the Somebodies are his colleagues.
Status: medium
Characters that are (very )sure about themselves. A woman is annoyed by stupid people because they all are boring and repetitive and cannot think for themselves, so her company cannot deliver original messages anymore.
Mary is a self-assured creative designer with her own company who cannot understand how people can be so uncreative in their daily jobs. She has a very good career and a bold personality. She doesn’t need to please everybody, just herself. She challenges people whose only business is to become somebody by desperately trying to please their superiors: her. She can make a speech in front of her office that she askes all the employees to stand out and be themselves and use that in their work to get more creative designs. ‘They’d advertise’, is sarcastically said, because that’s what it is all about: having the guts to create sensation. She mocks that they are Nobodies, like her. That being a Somebody will stop you from being creative. Her employees in reality now faking to be Somebody instead of putting the work before themselves.
Status: high
Characters that are (very) sure about themselves. An anarchistic hippie girl wants to change the world because she that sees that all the people just repeat each other and don’t think for themselves to be different and make the world a better place.
Ann was born in a rich, but strict family. But now she is an adult and free to do what she wants. She wants the world to be a better and peaceful place. With the poem, she is making a speech. She thinks the world is going down. Politicians just think about themselves and just preach for the same old people that do not care about the earth and their environment, about hunger an about war. She is the brave Nobody, her crowd are her fellow brave Nobodies. The politicians are the Somebodies, their followers the Bog.
Status: mixed
Characters that are unhappy with their situation. The drunk that feels diminished, because he feels he didn’t get anywhere in his life and he loses his own identity.
Matthew drinks a lot every evening when he comes from work. He doesn’t want this, but he can’t stop himself. After drinking, he sits next to a woman that has her life completely in her own hands. He mockingly starts to speak to her in a philosophical way and asks if she is any different from him. But yes, deep down he is ashamed of himself and he wants to change into a better person. The other Nobody is the woman, who later turns into the Somebody because she doesn’t pay attention to him. status: low
Characters that are not recognised. The cleaner that feels diminished, because no-one sees her boring work as important and so people put a label on her.
The cleaner, Sandra, that is bored with her job. She sees no way out of this life because she doesn’t have a good education. The same day, same house, same vacuum cleaner, same chair. All the same. Vacuum cleaner against chair, bam, annoying. But the chair is not to blame. The chair is an ally because the chair is also Nobody. She is a pair with the chair, so sits in it. How dreary it is anyway to be somebody. The people that she works for are all rich, they reached something in their lives, but can’t even clean their own houses. They have to talk all the time, and who is listening? A stupid bog of rich friends. She consoles with herself.
Status: mixed
