In America by Susan Sontag

if he were indifferent to how he himself is being insulted. But to a man like Bogdan it’s either this silence or what happened two years ago, when behind my back he challenged a critic here in Warsaw to a duel; luckily for Bogdan, critics are cowards. My heart is breaking. Now Bogdan’s brother will really hate me. I hear that everyone is talking about it since the play opened last week, but of course no one speaks of it with us. On Saturday we dined with the Gazeta Polska critic, but Bogdan said nothing and he didn’t say anything either. The next time I saw the man, he always comes to our Tuesdays, my impulse was to lead him to a corner and ask if he was angry with me—I think many people are angry with me because I do so many foreign plays—but the conversation, which was about true liberty and the sufferings of our nation, was so enthralling that I felt ashamed to be preoccupied by my own torments. Instead, I wrote two letters, calm, indignant, dignified, one to his newspaper, the other to the theatre’s manager, an admirer of mine, or so he said, but I didn’t mail them. I should have known that if you have success, one day, long before you are tired, the public will turn against you—I’m not thinking only of that play. The public is fickle. My public wants to love a newer, younger face. Yes, the public must be dissatisfied with me, and I can’t perform any better, not in Warsaw. We must escape from here. Bogdan must not pay for the enmity that surrounds me, though to be sure there are many people who defend me. Friends will blame the play for driving me away, even those who know that for some time I’ve been thinking of going abroad. But they will also blame me for being offended, offended to the point of finally doing it. Bogdan, who regrets that he ever agreed to our leaving, never lets me out of his sight, and I can see that he hopes to guide my confused spirit—as my husband, no doubt he regards it as his duty. I ought to be grateful to him. I am grateful. Oh God, oh God, I’ve been looking forward so fervently to this change—it’s been so hard to organize everything—and now it’s all ruined! I don’t look forward to leaving anymore, people will think I’m running away, and I’ve always looked forward to something. In my childhood I had Christmas, though we were so poor and there were never any presents, and I looked forward to growing up, oh how I looked forward to it, I won’t pretend to have been happy in that dark tiny room with the other little ones, but I didn’t feel little, I was dreaming of when I would be free and strong and far away and people would— No, I won’t slander my childhood. I was happy, I knew there was light inside me, I thought with such confidence of the future. Oh God, do not forsake your weak child. I am muddleheaded and tired of acting!

Two
    GOD IS an actor, too.
    Appearing for countless seasons in a variety of old-fashioned costumes, animating many tragedies and a few comedies; multiform—though usually in male roles—and always statuesque, commanding, lately (this is the second half of the nineteenth century) He has been getting some bad reviews, though not enough bad reviews, yet, to close the show. His dear familiar name continues to froth on everyone’s lips. His participation still bestows unquestioned importance on any drama.
    Wind rising. Constellations pulsing. Earth turning. People breeding. (Soon there will be more of them walking on the ground than lying under it!) History thickening. Dark people groaning. Pale people (God’s favorites) dreaming of conquest, escape. Deltas and estuaries of people. He tilts them westward, where there is more space waiting to be filled. It is eleven in the morning, European time. Wearing neither the kingly robes nor the peasant garb He often affects, today He is God the Office Manager, His costume a three-piece worsted suit,