Q&A with ‘Candide’ lyricist Richard Wilbur

Richard Wilbur's place in literary history rests securely on his nine books of classically elegant poems and just about every award a poet can win, including two Pulitzer Prizes and being named poet laureate of the United States. And his story isn't over: At age 87, he's at work on a new book of poems and about to begin a new faculty position at his alma mater, Amherst College.

To some, however, he will always be known best as the last surviving link to Candide, the Broadway musical whose original creative team boasted astronomical I.Q. points. As the primary lyricist in the original 1956 production of the Voltaire-inspired operetta, he worked with composer Leonard Bernstein, playwright Lillian Hellman and director Tyrone Guthrie in an adaptation of Voltaire's satiric, age-of-reason novella.

The title character, a feckless lad, is constantly upended by wars, the Spanish Inquisition and all manner of swindling politicians in what was, when it opened, a veiled commentary on the 1950s McCarthy witch hunts as well as the post-war America Dream, where modern science created ever more conveniences as well as bombs that could blow up the world.

Wilbur was hired for this unlikely project at a stage when it already had gone through three lyricists - James Agee, John Latouche, Dorothy Parker - on the strength of his English translations of Voltaire's 18th-century contemporary, Moliere. After meeting with Bernstein, the adventure began, taking him through summertime work sessions on Martha's Vineyard, a chaotic out-of-town tryout in Boston, and past Bernstein's 1990 death: Roughly a decade ago, Wilbur was asked to write new lyrics for the National Theater of Great Britain's revival, one of the more successful attempts to rehabilitate what has often been perceived as a brilliant but eternally troubled show.

Those improvements, heard in the song "What's the Use?", are being heard at the Arden Theater through Oct. 19 for the first time in a professional U.S. production. In an hour-long interview at his home in rural Massachusetts, Wilbur admitted he hasn't followed the progress of the show that closely, but cherishes those months spent with some of the great theatrical talents of the last century.

Q: Why did you get along with Leonard Bernstein when the three previous lyricists did not?

A: He and I didn't always get along. There were times when we fussed at each other for this and that. Neither of us was a good quarreler - we both tended to be hurt and sulk and withdraw. Perhaps that kept us from saying the unpardonable things that would break up the collaboration.

Most of the time we just had a lot of fun. One of the earliest songs I did was "Dear Boy." We had an initial standoff. Lenny was saying he just couldn't think of a tune for it. But we all hollered at him, including Tony Guthrie, and he set it, and I think very satisfactorily.

Q: The score sounds effortlessly melodic.

A: He [Bernstein] was not a great fount of tunes. He said, "I only have about 10 tunes in me." But when he got hold of one, he put a great deal of life into it. . . . One day, at his house on Martha's Vineyard, we were sitting opposite each other sulking, unable to agree on something. And apparently I began to whistle . . . the way you do when you're twitching silently in a chair. And Lenny said . . . "You were whistling 'Pace pace mio dio' from La forza de destino . . . I wish I were like Verdi. He could take a jump-rope tune and make it something grand and unforgetable . . .." Then I remember driving back in his car on the Vineyard, there was something of Saint-Saens on the radio . . . and he said, "Oh my God! I borrowed that too! Is there anything new of mine in that show?"

Q: Tell me about the first performance in Boston.

A: Tony Guthrie appeared before the curtain and said, "We're in the expected ragged condition. We scarely know whether to raise the curtain . . . but here we go. Keep your peckers up!" I don't think Americans understood the innocence of that expression. He meant be brave!

Q: Was there some new writing in Boston?

A: There's one section of Act II when everything seemed to go dead . . . Finally it occurred to us that we needed to . . . write something new. Sitting around in the table of the men's lounge at the Colonial Theater, Lenny and Lillian and Tyrone Guthrie talked about what it might be. I suggested a plan . . . Lenny said "I want this to sound like carnival in Venice, or the sort of song that a winning basketball team sings on the way back on the bus." . . . Tony smote me on the shoulder like a British captain in a war scene . . . and I went home to my hotel room and started writing the number. Lenny and I completed it by 3 o'clock in the morning. It's titled "What's the Use?"

Q: It's widely thought that Candide sank due to ego overload on the part of its starry creators.

A: I'm not sure that was our trouble at any time. Everybody came round to cooperating ultimately. I think it was Lillian's most miserable experience in the theater . . . She had originally conceived writing a play adaptation for Candide for which Lenny would write some music. Every time she wrote a good scene we'd say, 'That could be a good number!' and take it away . . . but I found her always good company and a good sport.

Q: So what was the problem?

A: Voltaire was making the same joke again and again . . . people being cheerful about catastrophes.

Q: Yet some say the show wasn't really a flop, but that it lost its theater to something more commercially promising.

A: As soon as it was known that the show was not going to run forever, we began to have very big audiences and a very responsive audiences too. I've heard it said that Ethel Reiner, the main producer of the show, didn't really have to close it but did so because she was on the outs with Lillian. Who knows? . . . I think people were enjoying it. It could've stayed on. . . . I was glad to have been dragged into the world of musical theater. It had abeen a lot of fun for me, conceiving and executing numbers. But I wasn't perfectly satisfied with everything I did.

Q: Do you have any partial ownership in Candide?

A: I don't own a piece of it of it . . . but through ASCAP I've received a lot of money over the years. Every time they play Lenny's overture to Candide, I have a few dollars coming.

Q: You worked on another show, The Madwoman of Chaillot, based on the famous Giraudoux play. Lyrics you wrote for it were featured in your Collected Poems. And they're wonderful.

A: Back in the middle 1960s I worked with Michel Legrand, and I think we had a very good show shaping up. We were actually at the casting stage when it collapsed . . . We had a young producer who couldn't pay the Giraudoux estate for the adaptation rights. We lost control of the material. . . . I haven't worked in musical theater since. If you're in the theater world, you're used to big crashes . . . and doing a lot of good work for nothing. But I couldn't bring myself to do that again.

Q: It's often said that there's an optimistic quality to your poems, at least in comparison to, say, Anne Sexton. To what extent do you subscribe to the everything-is-right-and-good philosophy in Candide?

A: I don't think everything is for the best that goes on in the human world . . . but I do find the world as beautiful. I find that life, in many ways, is good. And I know that all of that goes into my poems. But I'm not trying to sell anybody in my view of things. It's just to say that's how I see things.

It's partly because I've had a very lucky life. I loved one girl and I got to marry her. People have liked my poems enough that that can be a major profession for me. There are dreadful things that have happened in my life. You can't spend a couple years in combat in World War II . . . without getting some memories you don't want. My fourth son was born autistic. But he's working in a restaurant job. He can keep his own bank accounts, and go to his own church and ride his own bicyle. I think he may be the most cheerful one in the family.

Q: How has the death of your wife last year affected your creativity?

A: She wanted me to write poems and to translate 17th-century French plays ,and I went to her with every couplet I translated to get her okay. She had very good taste and very good French. . . . Since I lost her, I've been writing poems and feeling her encouraging presence all the time, doing what she'd want me to do. A good marriage is bound to be a collaboration - and one that will go on after the death of one of the collaborators.