The Circus and the Eschatological Realm

It is only since putting aside childish things that it has come to mind so forcefully -- and so gladly -- that the circus is among the few coherent images of the eschatological realm to which people still have access and that the circus thereby affords elementary insight into the idea of society as a consummate event. The circus, thus, furnishes a precedent of a commendable style of life in community.

This institution, this art, this veritable liturgy, this common enterprise of multifarious creatures called the circus enacts a hope, in an immediate and historic sense, and simultaneously embodies an ecumenical foresight of radical and wondrous grandeur, encompassing, as it does, both empirically and symbolically, the whole of creation.

I suppose some -- ecclesiastics or academics or technocrats or magistrates or potentates -- may deem the association of the circus and the kingdom scandalous or facetious or bizarre and scoff quickly at the thought that the circus is relevant to the ethic of society. Meanwhile, some of my friends of the circus may consider it curious that during intervals when I have been their guest and, on occasion, confidant, that I have had theological second thoughts about them and about what the corporate existence of the circus tells and anticipates about the gift of life in society in a general and ultimate sense. I only respond that the connection seems to me to be suggested when one recalls that biblical people, like circus folk, live typically as sojourners, with few possessions and in tents, in this world.

In America, during the earliest part of this century, the circus enjoyed a “golden age.” It was the era of P.T. Barnum and Adam Fourpaugh and the Ringling Brothers, to name but a few of the showmen who assembled congregations of performers, animals, and oddities. It was then that the circus was most lucidly an image of the eschaton in its magnitude, diversity, and scope. There were, for example, few permanent zoological collections in those days and the circus menagerie was the opportunity for people to see rare birds, exotic animals, wild beasts. Indeed, when the Ringling Brothers advertised their “mammoth millionaire menagerie” as the “greatest gathering since the deluge” it was not a very exaggerated boast. Much the same can be said of the “side shows” or “museums” traditionally associated with the American circus. A separate feature from the main circus performance, the side show was an origination of Barnum. It assembled and exhibited human “oddities” and “curiosities” -- giants, midgets and the extraordinarily obese; Siamese twins, albinos and bearded ladies; those who had made themselves unusual like the fire eaters, sword swallowers, or tattooed persons. If the side show seems macabre because “freaks” were sometimes exploited, it must be mentioned that in those days little medical help and few means of livelihood were available to such persons and that the premise of these exhibits was educational. In any case, so long as they continued, they symbolized the circus as an eschatological company in which all sorts and conditions of life are assembled.

It is in the performance that the circus is most obviously a parable of the eschaton. It is there that human beings confront the beasts of the earth and reclaim dominion over other creatures. The symbol is magnified, of course, when one recollects that, biblically, the beasts generally designate the principalities.

There, too, in the circus are humans represented as freed from consignment to death. There a person walks a wire fifty feet above the ground, another stands upside down on a forefinger, someone juggles a dozen incongruous objects simultaneously, another hangs in the air by the heels, one upholds twelve in a human pyramid, another is shot from a cannon. The circus performer is the image of the eschatological person -- emancipated from frailty and inhibition, exhilarant, militant, transcendent over death.

The eschatological parable is, at the same time, a parody of conventional society in the world as it is. In a multitude of ways in circus life the risk of death is bluntly confronted and the power of death is exposed and, as the ringmaster proclaims, defied. Clyde Beatty, at the height of his career, actually performed forty tigers and lions in one arena. The Wallendas, not content to walk the high wire one by one, have crossed it in a pyramid of seven people. John O’Brien managed 61 horses in the same ring, in what a press agent called “one bewildering act.” Mlle. La Belle Roche accomplished a double somersault at great speed and height in an automobile at a time when autos were still novelties. The circus performance happens in the midst of a fierce and constant struggle of the people of the circus, especially the roustabouts, against the hazards of storm, fire, accident, or other disaster, and it emphasizes the theological mystique of the circus as a community that calamity seems always impending.

Meanwhile, the clown makes the parody more poignant and pointed in costume and pantomime, commenting, by presence and performance, on the absurdities inherent in what ordinary people take so seriously -- themselves, their profits and losses, their successes and failures, their adjustments, and compromises -- their conformance to the world.

So, the circus, in its open ridicule of death in these and other ways -- unwittingly, I suppose -- shows the rest of us that the only enemy in life is death and that this enemy confronts everyone, whatever the circumstances, all the time. People of other arts and occupations do not discern that they are, as St. Paul mentioned, idiots. The service which the circus does -- more so, I regret to say, than the churches do -- is to openly, dramatically, humanly portray that. The circus is eschatological parable and social parody; it signals a transcendence of the power of death which exposes this world as it truly is while it heralds the kingdom.

When this article appeared, William Stringfellow was an attorney, lay theologian and social critic and author of An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land.