by John Whiting
This short play is stark, horrifying, and perhaps somewhat enigmatic if taken too literally. But if we look at it as an image, a metaphor, it can also be seen as a very moving personal statement about the position of the artist, who must be what he is regardless of how his critics want him to be. That is the meaning of the title of the play. which derives from an epigram by the seventeenth-century German mystic. Antselus Silesius :
Die Ros' ist ohn' Warum, are blühet weil sie bliihet,
Sie ach'nicht Hirer selbst, front mcht, ob man sie siehtt
The Rose it knows no why-it crows because it srows
Heedless of Self, without concern who sees it or who knows
Produced by MARTIN Esslim
Second broadcast