Surrealism And Today's French Theatre

Author(s): Ruby Cohn

Source: Yale French Studies , 1964, No. 31, Surrealism (1964), pp. 159-165
Published by: Yale University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2929739

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Yale University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Yale French Studies

This content downloaded from

2.83.149.43 on Sun, 02 Aug 2020 11:22:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
RUBY COHN

Surrealism And Today's French Theatre

Although poetry and painting were rocked to their foundations by the

Surrealist explosion of the imagination, the theatre of the time was
virtually untouched. And yet, indirectly, Surrealism has elevated three
men of the theatre to the hagiology of the poe'te maudit. Although
these three men - jarry, Apollinaire, Artaud - knew a limited
succes de scandale during their lifetime, it is only today that their im-
pact on the theatre is being widely felt.
Alfred Jarry drew his grotesque Ubu from life (that of his physics
teacher Hebert), then patterned his own life grotesquely on Ubu,
before he died of alcoholism at the age of 34. Guillaume Apollinaire,
admirer of Jarry, poet, pornographer, art critic, and dramatist, died
at 38, and was buried on Armistice Day, 1918. It was in 1917 that
Apollinaire invented the word "surrealism," using it twice for theatri-
cal works - in May for the Cocteau-Satie-Picasso-Diaghilev ballet
Parade; and in June for his own Mamelles de Tiresias. The context
of the latter is worth quoting: "To attempt, if not a renovation of the
theatre, at least a personal effort, I thought it necessary to return to
nature itself, but without imitating it in the manner of photographers.
When man wanted to imitate walking, he created the wheel, which
does not resemble a leg. He thus practiced Surrealism without know-
ing it." Andre Breton adopted the word "surrealism" rather than Ner-
val's "surnaturalism" as he admitted, "en hommage a Guillaume
Apollinaire."
In Breton's first Surrealist Manifesto occurs the name of Antonin
Artaud, who was for a time part of the group. Arriving in Paris in
1920, Artaud almost immediately met Max Jacob, Apollinaire's friend,
and through him came to know painters and poets who were to for-
mulate the tenets of Surrealism. A poet and painter himself, Artaud
at the age of 25 was already sure of his mission in the theatre. He
studied acting with Gemier, who had played Ubu in the famous per-
formance of 1896, and he had a small part in a production of Lugne-
Poe, who had produced that same Ubu. When Artaud finally founded
his short-lived theatre, he called it the Alfred Jarry Theatre. But that
was not until 1927.
Before that date Artaud hobnobbed with Surrealist painters and
poets, wrote for Surrealist reviews, and published Surrealist texts in
his own Bilboquet (among them a "cadavre exquis" dialogue between
Artaud and Breton). Far more important was Artaud's gradual for-

159

This content downloaded from

2.83.149.43 on Sun, 02 Aug 2020 11:22:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Yale French Studies

mutation of a mystique of the theatre that shares its vital attitude w

Breton's mystique of art. For both Breton and Artaud, life is primary
and art secondary. Both wanted nothing less than to redefine civili-
zation, shifting emphasis from the conscious to the unconscious, from
reason to emotion. In that re-definition, that re-vision, literature was
a tool for Breton, theatre a tool for Artaud, but a tool of great power
and significance in each case. At the very time when Freud's writings
were becoming known, Breton and Artaud separately flouted the status
quo of logic and law, probing instead into man's dreams and primitive
instincts. Both Breton and Artaud wished to shock man out of his
bourgeois complacency, and towards this end both delighted in ob-
scenity, practical jokes, temper tantrums, and Manifestoes.
Perhaps it was inevitable that two powerful personalities with so
much in common, should clash. The sequence of their frictions is still
not objectively documented, but the open break came in June, 1928,
on the occasion of the production of Strindberg's Dream Play by the
Alfred Jarry Theatre. The Surrealists denounced this venture into
commercial theatre, and they ordered Artaud and Aron (his co-pro-
ducer) to close the show or be closed down by Surrealist intervention.
Bristling with defiance, Artaud and Aron finally (and shamefacedly)
requested police protection; a few Surrealists were arrested, and the
show went on, but polemics continued to burst on both sides. In spite
of this open warfare, however, Artaud did not attack the principles
of Surrealism (in any document I have seen), but only its practice,
and above all its practitioners. In his most sustained statement A la
grande nuit ou le bluff surrealiste, Artaud draws the contrast between
himself and the Surrealists: "What separates me from the Surrealists
is that they love life as much as I despise it."
In his anger Artaud does not point out his kinship with the Sur-
realists, but this is revealed in his Manifestoes, in some of his baroque
imagery, and in the daring visuality of his productions and production
plans. Artaud's actual productions were few and far between; the Al-
fred Jarry Theatre presented the third act of Partage de midi by
Claudel, the Dream Play of Strindberg, and Mysteries de Vlamour and
Victor ou les enfants au pouvoir by Roger Vitrac (an ex-Surrealist).
Then, unable to find funds, the Alfred Jarry Theatre had to abandon
Artaud's plan to revive Jarry's Ubu (triumphantly produced by Vilar
only in 1958). Living from hand to mouth, playing occasional roles
in the movies, Artaud continued his passionate theorizing about re-
newal of civilization through renewal of the theatre - all aspects of
the theatre.
After seeing the Bali dancers in 1931, Artaud wrote the First Mani-
festo of the Theatre of Cruelty: "Without an element of cruelty at
the root of every spectacle, the theatre is not possible," he proclaimed.
"In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that meta-

160

This content downloaded from

2.83.149.43 on Sun, 02 Aug 2020 11:22:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
RUBY COHN

physics must be made to re-enter our minds." Thus, cruelty for Artaud
acts much as love for Breton - as leaven and mystique. Artaud's
essays on the theatre were published as Le Theatre et son double in
1938, a year after he was confined to a mental institution.
Artaud and Breton returned to Paris in 1946 - Artaud from nine
years in various asylums, and Breton from four years in America. In
spite of their quarrel, Breton made his first public appearance at a
benefit for Artaud. In Breton's speech, he summarized what both men
had intransigently stood for: "transformer le monde, changer la vie,
refaire de toutes pieces l'entendement humain."
It was in this climate that today's men of the theatre set to work.
Artaud lived less than two years after his release, but he worked in-
defatigably, and became an increasingly familiar figure in the small
world of avant-garde Parisian theatre. His importance has been ac-
knowledged by Jouvet, Vilar, Camus, Barrault, Blin, Adamov,
Pichette, Dullin, Arnold, Audiberti, Weingarten. Since his works were
largely out of print, Gallimard undertook republication (not yet com-
pleted), but only the first volume appeared before his death in 1948.
When he died, Artaud was immediately hailed as the man who had
lived rather than written the adventure of Surrealism to its bitter end:
madness and death.
Artaud died without realizing his dreams of a Theatre of Cruelty,
but in the fifteen years since his death, a theatre of cruelty has domi-
nated the French avant-garde stage. In this theatre, metaphysics re-
enters the minds of the audience through its skin, as Artaud wished.
Today's French theatre derives from the metaphysics of Existent-
ialism, the oneiric imagery of Surrealism, and the Black Humor shared
by both movements. Unlike the few Surrealist plays of the 30's to-
day's avant-garde theatre reaches out tentacularly far beyond a coterie
audience.
The Surrealists' self-conscious promulgation of the importance of
dreams influenced such prewar plays as Vitrac's Mysteres de l'amour,
Cocteau's Orphe'e, Schehade's Monsieur Bob'le, Neveux' Juliette ou
la cle' des songes. Postwar playwrights like Audiberti, Pichette, and
Vauthier exploit the fantastic and lyrical aspects of dreams, but the
playwrights of the Absurd use the alogical, sharply visual character-
istics of dreams to convey metaphysical absurdity. Absurdist drama
awakens anguish at "this divorce between man and his life, the actor
and his setting," as Camus phrased it in terms of the theatre. More-
over, the absurdity of man's cosmic situation is revealed through such
farcical techniques as the obscenity of Ubu and proliferation of Les
Mamelles.
Of the big four Absurdist playwrights (Beckett, lonesco, Genet,
Adamov) only Adamov was in any sense a Surrealist, by association
rather than commitment. Adamov published very little before his har-

161

This content downloaded from

2.83.149.43 on Sun, 02 Aug 2020 11:22:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Marcel Duchamp: To be looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass) With
One Eye, From Close By, For Almost an Hour (Glass panel, collage, oil
paint)
Collection Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.

162

This content downloaded from

2.83.149.43 on Sun, 02 Aug 2020 11:22:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
RUBY COHN

rowing confession L'Aveu in 1946; directly afterwards, perhaps be-

cause of his admiration for Artaud, he began to write plays. Influenced
by Strindberg's Dream Play and Jung, as well as Artaud and the Sur-
realists, Adamov consciously exploited his nightmares and neuroses
for theatrical effect. In L'Aveu he asserts, "The neurosis which exag-
gerates a man's particularity of vision defines that much more com-
pletely his universal significance." Four of his plays are based on
dreams (La grande et la petite manoeuvre, Le Professur Taranne,
Comme nous avons ete, Les Retrouvailles), and he has deliberately
used his dream-plays as psychological therapy, moving towards what
he considers a healthier, socially oriented theatre, beginning with
Paolo Paoli in 1956. Rarely produced in this country, Adamov's
earlier Absurdist plays reveal a nightmare imagination admittedly
nourished by Le thedtre et son double. But whereas Artaud conceived
of Cruelty as technique and emotion, Adamov finds it in the human
condition, which he summarizes: "Whatever man does, he is crushed."
Although Adamov has abandoned his theatre of cruelty for one of
hope, the influence of his nightmare stage imagery may be seen in
the plays of Arrabal.
Adamov's Parodie, completed in 1947, is perhaps the first self-
consciously Absurdist play, with its flattened characters, non-sequen-
tial scenes, stripped plot, commonplace language, black humor, and
above all the dramatic expansion of psychological intensity into meta-
physical statement. In 1947, too, Apollinaire's Mamelles de Tiresias,
set to music by Poulenc, opened at the Opera Comique, and became
part of the standard repertory. And in 1947, Barrault produced Gide's
adaptation of The Trial by Kafka, a poete maudit adopted by both
Surrealists and Existentialists. Although the French intellectual climate
thundered with Absurdity at the turn of the half-century, Adamov was
unable to find a producer for his plays, and he published La Parodie
and L'Invasion in a single volume. Performance followed within a few
months, and 1950 saw three Absurdist plays on the Paris stage:
Nicolas Bataille's production of Ionesco's Cantatrice Chauve, Jean-
Marie Serreau's production of Adamov's La Grande et la petite man-
oeuvre, and Vilar's production of Adamov's Invasion. Far from the
near-riot of Ubu in 1896, far from the tumultuous greeting of Les
Mamelles in 1917, the three plays faced silence and neglect. Until the
production of Beckett's Godot by Blin in 1953, the Absurdist theatre
was a coterie theatre. But with Godot - to the astonishment of every-
one concerned - metaphysics did indeed re-enter our minds through
our skins.
Although neither Beckett nor Genet is sympathetic to Surrealism,
both writers benefit from the receptive climate it helped create for the
unconventional and shocking, as they benefit from Artaud's ideal of
a theatre of cruelty. Their theatre rigorously bares man's cruellest

163

This content downloaded from

2.83.149.43 on Sun, 02 Aug 2020 11:22:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Yale French Studies

drives, and bares them through exploitation of the theatre, the whole
theatre, and nothing but the theatre. With Artaud, their insistence is
upon a theatre purified of photography, psychology, and sociology.
Both the stripped plays of Beckett and the lavish scenes of Genet are
faithful to Artaud's intention, for both are highly, excruciatingly aware
of the theatre as theatre. Other strands - the old theatrum mundi
metaphor, Pirandello's plays, Oriental ritual - also contribute to their
self-conscious theatricalism, and yet one may wonder whether either
Absurdist would have attained his stage idiom without the Surrealist
encouragement of pit-of-the-stomach imagery.
Of all the Absurdists, it is Ionesco who has received the acclaim of
the Surrealists themselves. In Notes et contre-notes Ionesco writes:
"They [Breton, Soupault, Peret] said to me, 'That's what we wanted
to do!' But I never belonged to their group, nor to the neo-Surrealists,
although the movement interested me. For that matter, I can well
understand why a Surrealist theatre has been produced only recently;
the theatre is always twenty or thirty years behind poetry."
Like the Surrealist poets, and Absurdist Adamov, Ionesco has
drawn much of his imagery from his dreams, but unlike these writers,
he has blended oneiric strangeness with quotidian familiarity to dram-
atize man's metaphysical situation. He is surely speaking of his own
drama when he writes, "To feel the absurdity and improbability of
daily life and language is already to go beyond it; in order to go be-
yond it, one must first plunge into it. The comic lies in the purely
unexpected; nothing seems more surprising to me than the banal; the
surreal is there, within reach, in everyday chatter." Nevertheless, it
demands extraordinary imagination to see the surreal in the ordinary,
to convey the daily drama of Roberta's snake-fingers, Amedee's grow-
ing corpse, Mother Pipe's geese or their incarnation as rhinoceroses.
Ionesco has paid tribute not only to the poetic impact of Surrealism
but also to the dramatic impact of Jarry's Ubu and Apollinaire's
Mamelles. The savage farce of the former and the visual brilliance of
the latter are reflected in many Ionesco plays. More specifically, how-
ever, L'Avenir est dans les oeufs seems to me a "ionescization" of
Apollinaire's Mamelles. Both are plays about reproduction, visually
expressed through proliferation. Like Apollinaire's Man-Mother,
Ionesco feminizes the father in his play where Jacques lays the eggs.
The ubiquitous balls and balloons of Mamelles become the eggs of
L'Avenir, and the cradles of the former become the baskets of the
latter. (Even the Lady of Cambron is parallelled in Robert-pere's in-
junction, "Va donc au chateau de Merdailles," and both dimly echo
the explosive opening of Ubu.) But similar techniques develop dif-
ferent tones; in Mamelles the balls and balloons are thrown to the
audience as gay symbols of reproduction; with tongue in cheek per-
haps, and yet with irrepressible high spirits, Apollinaire advocates

164

This content downloaded from

2.83.149.43 on Sun, 02 Aug 2020 11:22:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
RUBY COHN

repopulation of France in the old, traditional way. As he says in the

very preface where he defines Surrealism, "On ne fait plus d'enfants
en France parce qu'on n'y fait pas assez l'amour. Tout est la'." How
darkly different is the farce of lonesco's Avenir, which suggests that
there is no meaningful future in a posterity that is mechanically pro-
duced and reproduced by bourgeois prescription. In Ionesco's frenetic
conclusion, the characters disappear as they scream for production.
Which brings us back to Artaud's distinction between himself and
the Surrealists, based on their love and his contempt for life. In their
cruel theatre the Absurdists are heirs of Artaud, but they also profit
from the Surrealist liberation of the imagination. Like the Surrealists,
the Absurdist playwrights (and directors and actors) turn inwards,
but unlike them, they do so to explore a No Man's Land in which
Everyman stumbles. They have set this land so vividly on stage that
audiences the world over recognize it as home.

165

This content downloaded from

2.83.149.43 on Sun, 02 Aug 2020 11:22:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms