Jean Anouilh: An Annotated Bibliography by Kathleen White Kelly (review)

352 BOOK REVIEWS Father, St. Joan, The Dutchman, Krapp's Last Tape - Bermel has found that amalgam of timelessness and symbolic action, character and conflict, that defines great theatre. This is dramatic criticism for scholar and theatre worker alike; both will find it provocative and rewarding. GARY BLAKE Baruch College JEAN ANOUILH: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY, by Kathleen White Kelly. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1973. viii & 132 pp. $5.00. As the writer of thirty-two plays, countless articles, adaptations, film scenarios , and ballet scripts, reflecting in various ways forty-three years during which France withstood a depression, a traumatic defeat, an occupation, a political purge, and numerous governments including De Gaulle's, Jean Anouilh is a giant of the French stage. Besides, although seemingly as phlegmatic as a boulevardier, Anouilh is a deceptively complex, Protean moralist. Therefore, compiling an annotated bibliography on him takes considerable patience and knowledge. The chief value of Mrs. Kelly's book lies in three chapters: chapter three, which lists full length studies: chapter four on "Shorter Studies of Anouilh" (although the title is a misnomer since many works listed tum out to be general drama studies not exclusively concerning Anouilh); and chapter five, the most valuable of the book since it groups critiques directly related to each individual play. But neither the librarian nor the graduate student for whom this work is intended will find a complete list of critical studies on plays. Many listings one finds in the PMLA bibliographies , for example, are missing, some dating back to 1955. Annotating such a volume of material is fraught with dangers when one is not an authority on the man and his work. In this bibliography, the intended user would be best served if all annotations were strictly a compilation of critical works. The preface, introduction, and the plot summaries in Mrs. Kelly's book lack accuracy and depth, and they often are misleading. For example, to say that Anouilh's lack of success in the United States is due in part to "the use Anouilh makes of situations ... typically French (for example the cuckhold husband and the menage a trois) ... that are not understood by Americans," is an oversimplification that speaks for itself. The division of plays into pieces roses, pieces noires, pieces gri{:antes , pieces costumees points to a wealth of dramatic situations, as Robert de Luppe aptly shows in his chapter on "Espace poetique." Then chapter two, titled "Anouilh's Use of Greek and Roman Myths," mars the book. Mrs. Kelly wants to compare the myths and Anouilh's plays. First of all she does not really state clearly what point the comparison will study, then she proceeds to present us with a series of notations which tum out to be umelated to any analysis or to one another, and prove nothing. Unfortunately quotations of fine critiques on the subject such as those of Pronko, Marsh, Didier, and Borgal, are obscured by the indecipherable discussion that precedes them. Another serious mistake is the statement heading this purported study, which BOOK REVIEWS 353 would have us believe that the period between 1941 and 1946 is the single one when Anouilh "examined the problem of heroic man facing life," in three plays and one fragment. The facts are that in the same period, Anouilh showed the same preoccupation in another two plays at least: L 'Hermine and La Sauvage; then in the fifties he did so again in L 'Alouette and Becket. Furthermore, for Anouilh any man who makes his stand against the erosion of life is heroic, even the old buffoon General Saint-pe. In chapter five, the plot summaries, oscillating between paraphrases of plot line and interpretations of plots, are often needlessly misleading. For example, Ardele can hardly be labelled a farce since it encompasses the suicide of two human beings driven to despair by their relatives' cannibalism. Then there is a baffling statement about Antigone which is beyond any possible explanation: "Creon is eloquently portrayed with the tyrant being a wealthy collector of bindings. Here he speaks of several of Hitler's sentimen ts." Where in Anouilh's play Creon "collects bindings" is a riddle one cannot solve. As to Hitler, all...