“are there any people who still pay for tickets?” i was asked in all seriousness by a man, who, as a result of his numerous connections, had been able to develop the art of getting passes to its utmost possibilities.
ridiculous though the question may sound to some, there is, nevertheless, something very profound in it. the pursuit after passes is in our day a favourite “sport” of residents of large cities. to most such people a journalist or a writer is not an artist who laboriously strives to give adequate expression to his thoughts, who has to listen to the secret voices within his breast and to translate them into the language of every day. no, in their mind a writer is the croesus of passes. he only sits in front of his desk, as there accumulate before him green, blue, and red tickets, the magic keys that open the doors to all the temples of art without having to go to the trouble of digging into his money bag and experiencing the pleasure of paying out his shining coins. and they take it ill of the croesus that he is so niggardly as to guard his treasures so greedily and not make everybody he comes in contact with happy by distributing the little papers. for to them getting a pass is considered [pg 109]a great piece of good fortune, almost like drawing a grand small prize in a lottery. it enables one to temporarily enjoy the greatest sensation in life: pleasure without cost. that is, it should so enable one.
with a pass one gets everything,—the respect of the upper classes, the right to be rude and the enforcement of courtesy. if it were possible to say of certain young women that for a ride they would part with their honour, then one might aptly vary the phrase and say: for a pass, with everything.
there are human beings, persons with so-called “good connections,” who lead a wonderful life with the aid of passes. the physician who is at their beck and call throughout the year is compensated for his efforts by the presentation from time to time of a box or a pair of seats for the theatre. so, too, the lawyer. the cerberus rage of the most terrifying of all apartment-house superintendents melts into the gentlest humility at the prospect of a pass. we expect a thousand little favours from our fellow-citizens who assume the obligation to render these favours by the acceptance of a pass.
there are probably only very few persons who feel any shame on going on a trip with a pass. these exceptional beings have not yet discovered that nowadays it is only the person who pays who is looked down upon. every one takes his hat off to the possessor of a pass. the train conductor makes a respectful bow [pg 110]because he does not know whether the “dead-head” is an officer of the company or some other “big gun.” the ticket collector does the same because experience has taught him that the dead-head usually overcomes by a treat the social inferiority associated with “enjoyment without payment.” in short, a pass invests its possessor with the mysterious air of a great power and weaves about his head a halo which lifts him above the misers plebs contribuens.
but you must not think that the possessor of passes constitutes that part of the public that is particularly grateful for and appreciative of the artistic offerings. on the contrary! artistic enjoyment in the theatre requires a certain capacity for illusion, and the purchase of a ticket exercises a considerable influence on this capacity. for one who has dearly paid for his seat has imposed the moral obligation upon himself to be entertained.
down in his subliminal self there dwell forces that may be said to have been lessoned to applaud. the higher the price, the more painfully the pleasure was purchased, the greater is the willingness to be carried away by the work of art and the artists. the poor student who has stood for hours in front of the opera house and been lucky enough to secure admission to standing room in the gallery will have a better time than his rich colleague down in the orchestra, and a very much better time than the envied possessor of a free seat. for his capacity for [pg 111]illusion has been tremendously heightened. he expects a reward commensurate with the trouble he went to and the money he sacrificed. his tension being much higher, the relaxation of that tension must yield him a much greater quantity of pleasure. the greater the restraints that one has to overcome the greater the pleasure in having succeeded in overcoming them.
the necessity for illusion is absent in the possessor of a pass. there is nothing to make it incumbent on him to be entertained; he has not paid anything. he can even leave the performance before it is concluded if it does not please him. he is more sceptical, more critical, and less grateful.
any dramatist who at a première would fill the theatre with his good friends by giving them passes would have little knowledge of human nature; certain failure would await him. not only because these so-called good friends, in obedience to their unconscious envy, frankly join the enemy’s ranks, but because the possessors of passes involuntarily get into the psychic condition which is characteristic of “dead-heads,” viz: indifferent critical smugness and a diminished capacity for illusion.
i know of a striking example of this that came under my own observation. one of my friends, a young playwright, invited his tailor and his wife to go to his première, and not to be backward in expressing their approval. he had distributed a sufficiently large number of friends [pg 112]in the orchestra, but the gallery had not been provided for. he had, naturally, also sent two tickets to one of his competitors. it so chanced that i was in the thick of it, because i was interested in seeing how the simple public would receive the piece. i sat right behind the doughty tailor couple, who, of course, did not know me. several times during the performance we almost came to blows. the married couple hissed with might and main, whereas i applauded with all my power. we exchanged angry words and otherwise acted in a manner characteristic of such a situation and of such a youthful temper as mine then was. the play was a failure. later we discussed the reason for this failure. one said that the play was not deep enough for the enlightened public. i challenged this contention, and referred to the simple people who sat in front of me and whose names and station i had discovered from some neighbours. my friend would not believe me at first until i had convinced him by a detailed description of the couple that the tailor who had for so many years made his clothes had felt it incumbent on him to repay the author’s gift of a pass by contributing to the failure of his play.
to be under obligations always oppresses us. we have the instinctive impulse to disregard them. a pass is an obligation to acknowledge the excellence of the offered entertainment, to confirm that it is worth the price of admission. in addition to the absence of a need for illusion [pg 113]from material considerations we have to reckon with the impulse to disregard this obligation. these two psychic factors serve to bring about in the heart of the possessor of a pass the defence reaction that i have previously described.
notwithstanding this, the craving for passes, which formerly was the privilege of the few exceptional personages, keeps growing more and more, infecting other levels of society, and would easily become a serious menace to the directorate of the theatres if these had not hit upon an adequate remedy in distributing passes on the hom?opathic principle. they fight the “pass with the pass.” they distribute passes and reduced rate tickets very lavishly for the days on which they know the receipts will be poor and for plays which no longer draw large audiences. the exaction of a small fee on the presentation of the coupon serves to cover part of the running expenses; the house is filled and the many’s fire for passes is quenched. on the following days the people are much more willing to buy their tickets because they think that they can afford to be so extravagant, inasmuch as they had seen one or more performances free or practically so, and are swayed by the unconscious instinct that a purchased pleasure is sure to prove more delightful.
one would have to be a second limping mephisto to be able to follow the invisible stream of passes in a large metropolis. the romance of a pass is still to be written. it would [pg 114]yield us an insight into the psychology of modern man that would be second to none. it would prove that one of the most important impulses of our time is the desire not to have to work for one’s pleasures. i say “not to work for one’s pleasures” rather than “not to pay for one’s pleasures,” because money always means an equivalent for our work. the most industrious persons are in reality those who are most averse to work. for behind their zeal to accumulate money there is the burning desire to hoard up as much as will ensure an income sufficient to purchase enjoyment without additional work. in the language of every day this would be: a care-free old age. but, in sooth, worry is the main source of our pleasures. were there no cares the variegated colours of the spectrum that constitute the light of life would be replaced by dull monotonous grays that resemble each other as closely as the two links that unite the two ends of a chain converting it into a whole.
the pursuit after passes is only a small fragment of that mad pursuit after “pleasure without work” that is being enacted all around us. i have gone into the subject so minutely only because it is a typical example of mankind’s stupid beginning to free itself from the iron bonds of material dependence. for the more free we think ourselves, the more enslaved we really are.
