Mummers and Mimers
DURING the last decade a great deal of un- necessary attention has been paid in English- speaking literary circles on both sides of the Atlantic to poseurs who will be lucky if they col- lectively add one comma to either English or American literature. Yet during the same period in France, the experimental theatre has not only broken new ground but has in the persons of Samuel Beckett, Michel de Ghelderode and Eugene lonesco produced three major contem- porary artists.
This scholarly and at times stodgy book by Professor Pronko is a concise and balanced assessment of that achievement. His work, despite its clumsiness, is of real worth and value, for criticism is to literature what its lines of communication are to an army—its very life. That is why cheap and irresponsible criticism is a crime against society, for it is an attempt, in the name of mediocrity, to deprive us of the use of the best things men are capable of producing.
The little shabby Theatre Babylon, in a Seine- side back street in Paris, where most of these splendid, and in some cases great plays were first produced, has more to do with the real grandeur that is France than the policies at present being determined in the Elysee Palace. The true universalism of France, that France that all really cultured people have learnt to love, almost as they love their own country and its culture, can be no more clearly shown than by the fact that five of the ten dramatists whose work is discussed in this book were originally foreigners, not only to France but also to the French language.
This is a specialised book, and perhaps no reviewer who is not a specialist can do it full justice. But it says a lot for the generosity of Professor Pronko's criticism that one feels cer- tain that he would not take it amiss if one advised one's readers to see the plays them- selves rather than read his book. Of course they could do both. The outstanding figure in the book, as well as in the contemporary theatre in France, is the Anglo-Irishman Samuel Beckett. Professor Pronko has much to say about his work, which after the meaningless criticism of the last few years is as refreshing as it is illuminating. It is made understandably plain that Beckett is as deeply concerned with the meaning of man's existence and his role in society as are artists more conventional in their art-form.
By far the best essay here is the opening chapter which deals with the whole question of modern theatre not only in France but also in Germany. The presence and existence of Brecht are felt in the whole book.
Yet the outstanding figure in modern French drama, which itself is one of the great achieve- ments in art since the war, is not lonesco or Adamov or even Beckett himself, but the Belgian dramatist Michel de Ghelderode, all of whose work was written in the Twenties and Thirties, and has remained unknown until the work of Beckett and lonesco and the other
playwrights discussed in this book became a major concern of contemporary France. He is truly the John the Baptist of the modern avant- garde in French literature, and possibly the greatest of all Belgian writers.
It is a surprising fact that even in this secular age, those who believe in man as they believe in God, tend to believe more deeply and rever-
ently and more hopefully in man. Michel de Ghelderode reminds one of Charles Peguy and Leon Blore, yet he has much in common with Beckett and Adamov and Genet and lonesco. He is something very rare in the contemporary world, a romantic, Christian humanist who is far more deeply democratic and optimistic than most left-wing secular atheists. He is deeply endowed with the Latin reverence for the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, yet he is as contemporary as today's newspaper. He com- bines the vision of a Blake with the faith of Ignazio Silone. A collection of his plays has recently been published in England in English by MacGibbon and Kee. It is truly an extra- ordinary thing that work of this stature should have remained almost unknown for nearly twenty-five years. It makes one think of Patrick Kavanagh., This book includes an excellent appendix and notes, telling where the plays were first produced and who directed them. It will be a standard manual for the serious student of the avant-garde theatre in France.
PAUL POTTS
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