Herman Melville’s short story, about a reclusive copyist who refuses to adhere to the norms of a “snug” legal firm in mid-nineteenth century Manhattan, might not appear the most theatrical of material. But its sparse, masterly dialogue, adapted by Andrés Chan, lends itself aptly to stage performance.
courtesy of 'Bartleby the Scrivener'
The theatre’s intimate setting, coupled with its stark set, places the audience firmly in the humdrum world of legal clerks. Employees, including the “piratical-looking” Nipper (Gervasio Levalle) and the obstreperous Turkey (Diego Patrisso), are presided over by the narrator – a mild, law-abiding citizen (Guillermo Caranzano). Caricatures of Dickensian proportions, their eccentric tics and fits of rage are counterpointed like clockwork.
An increased demand in copies prompts the firm to bring in a strange young man by the name of Bartleby (Germán Pierotti). “Pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn,” his world-weary, anonymous mode of existence, the narrator laments, confounds biography.
Bartleby, for his part, is apportioned a mere 37 lines, which he delivers with ever so slight, tantalising variations on the same theme. His taciturn mode of resistance is commensurate with his refusal to proffer any backstory or anecdote that might contextualise his existence and identify him as a full-rounded ‘character’.
The concision and deceptive transparency of Melville’s text is preserved in the Borgesian translation, deflecting and multiplying signification a pace with the copies penned by its deferential clerks. The dull routine is punctured only by the comic duo’s droll gaggle and by the absurdity of the narrator’s attempts to account for his taciturn employee’s eccentricities.
Initially, Bartleby punches the clock admirably, producing copies at a mechanical rate. But it soon becomes clear that he is not cut out for this style of work, refusing point blank to reexamine his own quadruplicate copies. Declining to participate in the daily round of mutual rehashed pleasantries, Bartleby’s disarming peculiarities, his bizarre exemptions from conventional ‘duties’, confound his coworkers. His laconic, disconcerting refrain, “I would prefer not to”, sends his placid boss into spasms of consternation that soon boil over into full-blown fury.
Bartleby’s air of reasonableness, his platitude and impersonality nonetheless command attention, and elicit sympathy from his superior. In line with Melville’s narration, the stage performance is interspersed with spotlit monologues from the narrator. Caranzano delivers a virtuoso performance as he tries to rationalise the passive resistance of his reticent subject according to the law of cause and effect. But the more he tries to wrestle with Bartleby’s enigma, the clearer it becomes that he eludes all conventional understanding. At the same time that his signature retort, suspended as it is without any qualifications, implicates him in Bartleby’s fate.
By the time the office workers have involuntarily cottoned on to Bartleby’s subversive lexicon of “preference”, the narrator resolves that his errant employee will have to go. But to little avail. Bartleby refuses to comply with the codes of conduct that would demand that he remove himself from the premises. His continued, unremunerative presence subverts the whole notion of tacit acceptance engrained in the Anglo-American work ethic.
Bartleby is given an ultimatum: either he must act or be duly punished. In line with his mode of passive nihilism, he relinquishes himself to the authorities. Comic beginnings herald tragic ends. But Bartleby’s damned phrase echoes on, threatening to dismantle the whole system of privatised bureaucratic functionality. In the wake of Anonymous’ recent incursion upon America’s financial heartland – the play’s subtitle ‘A Story of Wall Street’ – seems more relevant than ever.
