The End of the World: An Introduction to Contemproary Drama by Maurice Valency (review)

Book Reviews 115 Waiting/or Godot), counterpointing the drama of"seeming inaction" with the drama of "manic activity" (lonesco' s The Chairs), both of which portray man poised in a state of pendency. neither immobile nor secure. Throughout his discussion, Vas's examples range widely within the better-known European and American plays, but they are noticeably dominated by post-World-War-II choices. While the phenomenon of which Vas speaks is clearly more pronounced in recent decades . since his reference is the modern age as opposed to earlier. more orderly ones, his almost total neglect of the fathers of modem drama - Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg. and Shaw - seems unjustified. Their near absence in this book intimates a possibility which could severely damage Vas's thesis, that is, that events more recent than the demise of the Chain might be responsible for man's altered self-view. Even without these late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century examples, however, Vos's catalogue convinces through sheer accumulation,leaving the reader with the feeling that such images are indeed endemic in modern drama. The real strength ofVos's work, though. rests in its vision. His theoretical framework may not be entirely successful, his examples may not be so representatively chosen as they might have been, and the book has neither index nor bibliography. But Vas's implicitly Christian vision of modem drama as a reflection of a temperament unique to modern man is solidly and consistently conceived, presenting an approach to recent theater capable of encompassing the major images of several decades of play-writing. Though offering few new insights, The Great Pendulum o/Becoming collects, collates, and synthesizes recurring images of modem drama into a simply stated but significant philosophical statement; as such it will be ofcertain value to students of modem drama. JUNE SCHLUETER, LAFAYElTE COLLEGE MAUR.ICE VALENCY. The End o/the World: An Introduction to Contemproary Drama. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1980. Pp. ix, 46<). "This is a book mainly about Symbolism," begins Valency's preface. Herein lies the chieforiginality ofThe End o/the World: it studies the modem and contemporary theatre as an evolution ofSymbolism. Although any sensitive reader is aware ofdebts ofauthors like Giraudoux and Ionesco to the Symbolist aesthetic, Valency is the first (so far as I know) to treat the works of these and other modern dramatists as direct extensions of Symbolism. A brief opening chapter contrasts the Naturalists and Symbolists of the latter nineteenth century, points out the frequent similarities, the paradoxical crisscrossing of currents, and elucidates them by reference to other arts, chiefly painting. The entire book betrays a vast background and erudition, Professor Valency's deep understanding of the humanist tradition. It is a tradition which, occasionally, one feels, gets in the way ofan appreciation ofcontemporary arts. Aristotle and Aristotelianism are alluded to so often that the reader begins to wonder why all current attainments must necessarily be measured by classical standards. "Compared with the art and letters ofthe sixteenth century," Valency writes in his opening chapter, "contemporary art and contemporary literature seem provisional in substance and ephemeral in workmanship." While Beckett may suggest the ephemerality ofart and existence, it is difficult to accept 116 Book Reviews the qualification of "provisional" as applied to the substance of his work, or to think of his carefully crafted pieces as "ephemeral in workmanship." Valency's strength lies in his broad view of modem theatre and in his feeling for and understanding of significant work in the period before midcentury. His preference is revealed by the number of pages devoted to two solid prewar authors. In 436 pages of text, Pirandello receives a full 121 and Giraudoux, 103 (fully halfthe book for these two authors), while Beckett gets short shrift with thirty. Perhaps this is dODe purposely, for Valency early on claims that, ambiguity being an essential element in Beckett, Ionesco and Mallanne, it is a disservice to interpret their works. Valency has certainly taken a much more positive attitude toward the theatrical avant-garde of the •50Sand '60s than he took twenty years ago. In 1960 he described this theatre as a "flight into lunacy," and claimed that it had contributed nothing of major importance. Godot he characterized as "long, futile and unbearably repetitious," and he branded the entire avant-garde as a theatre of no ideas, avid for novelty (Theatre Arts, August 1960). In The End of the World, he now admits the worth of these authors. He calls Les Chaises a masterpiece and "one of the great plays of the contemporary theatre." Of Beckett he says, "Few writers of our age have had words so completely at their conunand," And yet the reader senses a certain reluctance, betrayed in such declarations as, "There is, indeed, not much to be said about Happy Days," or in the unfair suggestion that Beckett's bitterness "was, in some sense, his literary capital, an investment which afforded a rich return all the rest ofhis life." In concluding, Valency states, "The modem Symbolist has nothing to conceal. His work is as obscure to him as to anyone." If we would quarrel with emphases and opinions expressed in the I 08 pages devoted to Artaud, Ionesco and Beckett, we are willing to suspend our disbelief for the earlier chapters. There, in his usual graceful, witty style, chiseled, lapidary, epigranunatic ("Obscurity is a form ofsilence that enables one to shout without being heard"), Valency treats dramatists who are apparently closer to his sensibility. Here we recognize and admire the author of The Flower and the Castle and other masterful studies of the founders of modem theatre. Short chapters on Mallarm~ and Maeterlinck lead into the major studies of Pirandello and Giraudoux, clear, perceptive, illuminating. One might quarrel with the choice ofthese particularauthors for the major focus of(he book, or regret the exclusion of dramatists like Yeats and Larca. But there is no denying the importance and influence of Pirandello and Giraudoux, and Valency makes a good case for their Symbolist ties and offers them as contrasting approaches to that aesthetic, one a realist enamored of the ideal, the other an idealist enamored of the real. Let us hope that his volume will not be the last, as Professor Valency intimates, in the distinguished series of books on modem drama he began in 1963, LEONARD C. PRONKO, POMONA COLLEGE KIMBALL KING. Twenty Modern British Playwrights: A Bibliography, 1956 to 1976. New York: Garland 1977. pp.xiii, 289. KIMBALL KING . Tell Modern Irish Playwrights: A Comprehensive AnnotatedBibliography . New York: Garland 1979. pp. xiii, III. Kimball King's two annotated bibliographies ofcontemporary English and Irish dramatists , though marred by errors, omissions and aberrations, are not only useful but in ...