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POWER PLAY:

ARTHUR MILLER’S THE ARCHBISHOP’S CEILING


June Schlueter

Nowhere in his forty-year canon does Arthur Miller, elder statesman of


American dramatic realism, play with the complexities of truth and fiction
with more urgency or more finesse than in The Archbishop ’s Ceiling. A
sophisticated foray into the epistemological nature of reality and of art, the
play combines and extends the private illusions of a Joe Keller or a Willy
Loman and the public myths that control lives in The Crucible and Incident
A t Vichy. Miller’s measure of truth, which ultimately is incapable of
discriminating between the fictive and the real, is the world-stage metaphor,
created through the presumed presence of hidden microphones in the Arch­
bishop’s ceiling. The former Archbishop’s residence, now government-
owned, may or may not be bugged, but the possibility that it is fundamentally
affects the behavior and the thinking of at least one of the writers who assem­
ble there. Under the Archbishop’s ceiling, Adrian Wallach casts life and fic­
tion in a power struggle that unsettles the writer’s assumptions about life and
art.
Adrian has returned to this Communist-controlled country for a brief visit
with Maya, a woman he had spent time with before and who, when Marcus is
away, lives in his house, under the Archbishop’s ceiling. An established,
wealthy American writer, Adrian was attending a conference in Paris when
he had a “ blinding vision of the inside of [Maya’s] thigh” (8) and made ar­
rangements to fly east. His mission is one of repossession, not only of Maya’s
body but of Maya, who will be the central character in his novel, and of the
feeling of the country, which “ escapes me the minute I cross the border”
(17). After spending two years writing such a novel, he had set it aside, un­
satisfied. Now, as he speaks with Maya under the Archbishop’s ceiling, at
first only vaguely aware of the possibility of microphones, he attempts to
move out of his American mentality and into that of this paranoid country,
in which writers are more often scorned as criminals than celebrated as
heroes. Maya and Adrian talk of themselves and of Marcus and Sigmund,
who later join them to discuss the crisis created by the government’s confisca­
tion of Sigmund’s manuscript—an event that occurred since the writer had
dinner with Adrian the evening before. Each of the characters must cope in­
dividually with the constant surveillance of the government, but the
American visitor is most disturbed by it and by his growing knowledge that he

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can never have full access to anything he can satisfactorily call truth.
It has been two years since Adrian was last in this country; since that time
he has talked with Allison Wolfe, who provided him with two pieces of fac­
tual or invented information: first, Maya and Marcus imported girls and held
orgies for writers, whom they subsequently blackmailed; and, secondly, the
ceiling in Marcus’ house is bugged. Though Adrian knows his source is a
gossip, the play begins with the somewhat tentative American alone in the
Archbishop’s room, lifting the cushions and the lamp, peering into the open
piano, and looking searchingly at the cherubim in the ceiling. The
microphones become the arbiter of Adrian’s behavior as he and the theatre
audience test the probability that someone is listening and wonder about
Maya and Marcus’ relationship to the Secret Police that have possessed their
private lives. Adrian speaks of an op-ed piece he wrote for The New York
Times attacking their country, but Maya hardly reacts; when he pur­
sues the issue further, she changes the subject: is she underwhelmed by an
American writer’s liberalism, expressed freely from outside her country’s
boundaries, or does she wish to protect her friend, who has also been her
lover, from the listening ears?
If the possible presence of the microphones gives Adrian the feeling that he
is counterfeiting his speech and if Maya’s possible complicity creates an
uncertainty in his trust, so also does a recent crisis in Adrian’s personal life
contribute to his doubts about human behavior and about art. Ruth, the
woman he traveled with last trip and whom everyone always assumed was his
wife, returned from this country severely depressed. But a pill reclaimed her,
turning her into an active and productive woman, freed from the suicidal
urge. Adrian connects the medication with the power of the government,
questioning the control any human being ultimately has over his or her own
life. And, just as seriously, he questions the validity of art that assumes
psychology has something to do with human behavior.
Adrian’s return to this country, then, is not simply a response to nostalgia
or to lust, nor is it wholly an attempt to recreate the feelings he would like to
record. It is the life-or-death quest of the artist to connect with a justifying
truth that accommodates both his writing and life. As long as Adrian cannot
validate the connection between motivation and behavior nor accept a power
that neutralizes the human will, he cannot dispute Maya’s contention that
“ It is unnecessary to write novels anymore” (10). But his experience in this
country repeatedly frustrates what he would like to believe about human
behavior and, in turn, his faith in the validating power of art. For under the
Archbishop’s ceiling, he sees fragments of what may be the truth, but he is
unable to see anything whole.
Adrian’s quest brings him in contact not only with Maya and Marcus, who
may be government agents, but also with Sigmund, a dissident writer who
takes masochistic pleasure in tempting the government to censure him and
who will not leave the country even when threatened with imprisonment.

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Adrian never learns whether he can trust Maya and Marcus, whether Sig­
mund is courageous or foolish, or whether, as an American, he is capable of
understanding what motivates any of them—if indeed even they can under­
stand. He had left the pompous Parisian symposium on the contemporary
novel and come to this country, where he could “ sit down again with writers
who had actual troubles” (7). But at the end of his stay, he can only repeat
his original epistemological question:

Whether it matters anymore, what anyone feels . . . about


anything. Whether we’re not just some sort of whatever power
there is (73).

Coming to terms with that power, whatever it may be, is fundamental to


Adrian’s quest. Ruth had not had the “ psychic energy to pull her stockings
up,” but now she does “ fifty laps a day in the swimming pool.” The pill
“ plugged her into some . . . some power. And she lit up.” But her “ interior
landscape has not changed. What has changed is her reaction to power”
(9-10). Hearing Adrian’s response to Ruth’s experience, Maya retorts, in
calamitous understatement: “ So you have a problem.” Adrian is a writer,
and he knows that “ a writer has to write” (9). Here in this country, where
“ power is very sharply defined” (11), he may learn something about the com­
patibility or incompatibility of power and will. But even before he begins,
Maya questions the purity of artistic expression, observing that she never met
a writer “ who did not wish to be praised, and successful. . . and even power­
ful” (11).
As Adrian remarks to Maya, “ it’s hard for anyone to know what to believe
in this country” (16). But in such a country he can test connections between
motive and behavior and he can measure the capacity of art to validate truth.
The fictional center of Adrian’s abandoned novel is Maya, whom Adrian
made a secret agent, operating in a country in which freedom is an illusion.
Maya will also be the fictional center of the rewrite he plans, though in this
version she and Marcus may well be underground champions of the literary
world. Adrian pleads with Maya to cooperate, to expose herself freely in the
next few days so that he may possess her in art. But Adrian finds no certainty
in his life model and realizes during their interview that the fictional version
of Maya he has created may indeed endorse life: she may be a secret agent
after all.
When Adrian observes that “ Sigmund isn’t permitted to write his
books. . . . ” Maya can only respond, “ My God—don’t you understand
anything?” (18). Adrian’s simplistic vision of life and of art has led him to
question both and to discard his latest artistic effort in frustration. Sigmund’s
paradox—that lying is our only freedom—is an eloquent defense of fiction
and a sober acknowledgement that literature and life are both lies. But if life

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is a lie and fiction reflects it, then fiction is truth and is worth defending. The
Archbishop’s ceiling becomes a powerful world-stage metaphor, transform­
ing all human action into performance and endorsing the false even as it
precludes the possibility that anything but the false can exist.
But within the world prescribed by the microphoned canopy, each of the
characters creates, interprets, and revisions the truth, lying or not lying in
order to shape an accommodating and an effective reality. The visitors do not
know for certain whether the room is bugged or not, and the two
residents—Maya and Marcus—claim that they do not know for sure either.
Yet Marcus operates confidently beneath the cherubed plaster, using his
power, which rests either in knowledge or in naivete, to orchestrate action.
In the corridor outside the Archbishop’s room, Marcus tells Adrian that he
has always warned writers about the microphones; Adrian, not knowing
whether or not to trust Marcus, challenges him to repeat this comment within
the room. Later in the play, when word comes that the government is return­
ing Sigmund’s manuscript, Adrian is only further confused. He does not
know whether this is part of a plan to get Sigmund to leave, whether Marcus
is director of that plan, or whether his own threat to expose the government
was indeed overheard and made a difference. Adrian needs to know what the
gesture means, but Maya explains “ it is nothing. . . . They have the power to
take it and the power to give it back” (78).
If truths regarding others are elusive on this foreign turf, truths about
himself are equally so, and Adrian’s quest necessarily leads to a self-
evaluation that is fundamental to his identity. Each time he questions the
motives of the government or of Marcus or Sigmund, Maya dismisses his in­
quiry as naive, convinced no American can understand what being a part of
such a country is like. Even Sigmund is out of patience with Adrian, accusing
him of pretending engagement when he is merely a scientist observing
specimens. For despite his efforts at participation, Adrian is finally only an
observer, secure in his reputation, his wealth, and his smugness.
But it is Marcus who asks the critical question that demands that Adrian
separate his personal self from his artistic self. In the early stages of their con­
versation, Adrian speaks openly of how he would react to the destruction of
Sigmund’s manuscript. Encouraged by Marcus’ gestures to continue, he pro­
mises to go on national television and to bring the matter to the attention of
the United States Congress. However sincere his original intention, though,
his threats and promises sound hollow as the microphones become not mere­
ly a presence but Adrian’s audience: Adrian is performing for the govern­
ment, participating in a power play directed by the authorities. And if he can­
not be anything but a contrived self under the Archbishop’s ceiling, can he be
any more real even in the corridor? Marcus suggests that Adrian’s concern
for Sigmund’s manuscript is really a concern for the story he is recording and
creating:

New York Times feature on Socialist decadence. . . . To whom

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am I talking, Adrian—the New York Times, or your novel, or
you? (71)

Adrian does not know the answer. But the charge contains an acknowledge­
ment of the theatricality that seems to be the only form of behavior possible
in this arena, where rooms may or may not be bugged, where friends may or
may not be trusted, and where writers may or may not be capable of living
lives as something other than clinicians. Sigmund sums up the action in a
comment that endorses Adrian’s earlier reservation and makes authenticity
impossible: “ Is like some sort of theatre, no? Very bad theatre—your emo­
tions have no connection with the event” (79).
The play’s setting—a room with a four-hundred-year-old ceiling, styled in
early Baroque, with the Four Winds blowing through puffed-up cheeks and
angels and cherubim holding up the plaster—adds a special contemporary
irony to Adrian’s efforts at understanding power. In this country, God has
yielded to the Secret Police, figures of angels concealing the omniscient
microphones that represent absolute power. In such a world, it may well be
unnecessary to write novels anymore—or at least to write traditional novels
that imitate life. For the contemporary novelist, whose theorists bored
Adrian at the Paris conference, the coherent, affirming form of mimetic
literature may no longer connect with the real. But, in such a world, where
life itself is artificial, where the microphoned ceiling prescribes human action,
art asserts itself as creative, not recreative, power.
The novelists who assemble under the Archbishop’s ceiling approach their
artistic commitments in special ways. Marcus continues to write in the
realistic mode, but as Maya observes, “ he can’t write anymore; it left him. . .
it left him!” (75). Sigmund insists on exposing the government, involving
himself in literature as an expression of political discontent, but he is ineffec­
tive. It is Adrian, unsettled by the power of the microphones to reorder reali­
ty, who sees contemporary literature as a fictive construction no more or less
valid than life. For, as Christopher Bigsby points out, “ in the Archbishop’s
palace,” which becomes, metaphorically, both literature and life, “ there are
no certainties; there is no touchstone of veracity, no proof of sincerity and
authenticity” (95). Under the Archbishop’s ceiling, the world is a stage.

WORK CITED

Miller, A rthur. The Archbishop ’s Ceiling (L ondon: M ethuen, 1984).

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