Seven Plays by Michel de Ghelderode (review)

BOOK REVIEWS SEVEN PLAYS, by Michel de Ghelderode, translated and with an introduction by George Hauger, Hill and Wang, New York, 1960,304 pp. Price $4.50. Since Eric Bentley's discovery of Michel de Ghelderode's play Fastes d'Enfer (Rites of Hell) in Paris during the 1949 season, several American drama critics, directors, and scholars (Wallace Fowlie, Bill Penn, Donald Hugh Dickinson, and others) have set forth Ghelderode's cause. This exotic Flemish name now glows with lustre as the most neglected pLtywright of our era whose rightful place among great modem dramatists has been withheld too long. One of the reasons for the oversight of Ghelderode's work is the complexity of his French and the lack of English translations. (Ghelderode's drama has been translated into eighteen languages and played in more than forty countries.) The recent publication of Ghelderode: SeVen Plays was greeted with appropriate acclaim until one had the opportunity to regard George Hauger's English versions. Then, instead of being jubilant about the advent of these seven representative works, one finds his reaction the reverse. We are not closer to understanding Ghelderode's satiric scenes and strange violence but rather further away. The advent of these versions is a retreat from Ghelderode. The English in six of the seven plays is too British to be enjoyable to Americans. (Gerard Hopkins has done well in the seventh.) Hauger's translations are inept, inaccurate, and perhaps worst of all, mostly unplayable. He has made Ghelderode's plays academic (What irony!), not lively and strong like their French original. Such flabby, crippled, and pedantic versions are not du theatre. They are stuffy, stilted pieces born in the study. To put the matter succinctly: such versions are almost transliterations, not translations. Give this clumsy Hauger line in Barabbas to any actor and watch his jaw drop: "But before 1 submit to the lot they are reserving for me, I will have meted out justice to the extent that 1 understand it by instinct." A more playable, idiomatic translation of the same line by Donald Dickinson: "But before 1 suffer the fate they have in store for me, 111 see my kind of justice done to the hilt." In The Women at the Tomb, Hauger has the Washer of the Dead say: "We're afraid of a serious hurt," meaning we're afraid of a surprise attack or serious attack (mauvais coup). What is a "serious hurt" in English? Hauger's false Biblical language is totally out of keeping with Ghelderode's timeless and highly idiomatic play. Toads may "weep" in French and in Hauger's English, but in standard English they "croak." How can Hauger's women "share out" the linen cloth stolen from Christ's face by Veronica? Most people would say "divide" it. How much more natural if the Cured Woman would say, "Vve Christians know how to forgive insults" rather than "forgive injuries" as she says in this volume. Let this one speech by Barabbas demonstrate several of the weaknessess in these Hauger translations: "Meanwhile, Barabbas greets you, my brother malefactors, my dear rabble! Greetings from the depths of my pestilential darkness! I can no longer see you, but I can sniff your musky smell anc. I know that you are multiplying abundantly, that your kind will never allow itself to pass away. Make crime live forever, for as long as man himself!" Donald Dickinson's translation of the same passage is far more in keeping with the spirit of the original: "Meanwhile, my comrades in crime, my beloved riff-raff, Barabbas salutes you! From the depths of this black pest-hole, all hail! I cannot see you, but I sniff your rank smell. I know you breed your kind still. You won't let it be stamped out. Make sure crime lasts as long as man!" 217 218 MODERN DRAMA September Ghelderode constantly reminds us in these seven plays and in all his dramatic OefJVf'e that there are certain eternal things which defy analysis. He does not agree with nor understand those playwrights who are seeking to classify, dissect, prove, and cure mankind's ills. Although Ghelderode is revolting against the evil...