Giraudoux: Three Faces of Destiny by Robert Cohen (review)

436 February what was'already dark. The moral is' clear: it is in his works that ·we must seek Chekhov, not in the details of his comings and goings, his 8irtations, or his money .problems. It might perhaps be added that it requires humor to evaluate the -work - of a great ironist. This biography is a very earnest and sympathetic, but completely hum.orle.s~ work. Moreover, Mr. Gilles shows no aptitude whatever for the art of the drama and, whatever its virtues, this book is not a work likely to recommend itself to students of the theater. MAURICE VALENCY Columbia University GIRAUDOUX: THREE FACES OF DESTINY, by Robert Cohen, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1968, 164 pp. Price $8.00. Robert Cohen's book is a good book, intelligently conceived and put together with authority in a language aptly and graciously handled. l~'ew other 'books have taken such careful account of Jean Giraudoux's work in light of his dramatic theory. The study suffers from some; unbalance, however. in presenting the rela_ tive accomllIishment of Gir~udoux. Mr. Cohen proposes to show that Giraudoux's "highly stylized" work is "under· laid by an intellectual system at least as profound as those of dramatists more ostentatiously thoughtful, such as Sartre. Beckett, or Brecht." (Preface) On this assumption ' rests the critic's method, which is to organize the playwright's dramatic work "according to th~ ideas .•. [he finds] roughly central to them." Mr. Cohen emphasizes the dialectic nature of a giJ;alducian play. Instead of presenting a mimetic action in the Aristotelian manner. the act,ion of the play is frozen "between two equivalent poles." (p. 138) Specifically. the dramatic te'n- -sion of a Giraudoux play results .from a dialectic struggle between two worlds in opposition: destiny and humanity. Man is "an alloy .composed of these two worlds." (p. 2) He first experiences the world of "destiny"-"preconscious. prenatal state of teq.der sensations, animal instincts, and spiritUal harmony"equated with childlike innocence , and simplicity. He eventua.lly enters the worJd of "humanity," which is "cold, rationa,l, mendacious"-the world of .adult human .affairs, of compromise and hypocrisy. Man's desire to return to the world of des.tiny cIashe, s with his very real situation . in ~e world. Qf humanity. "Three Faces of Destiny" refers to this conflict, "played out on three distinguish· able battlefields: sexual, metaphysical, and political...." (p. ' ]32) These three "faces" variously comprise Parts One·Three of the book. Among the sexual plays, which highlight the antithetical states of love or libido (destiny) and marriage or !1ecessity (humanity) (p. 5). Mr. Cohen places Judith , Song of Songs, Sodom and Gomorrah, and For Lucfetia. The metaphysical plays (Amphitryon 38, Intermezzo, Ondine, and The A.pollo oj .Bellac) illustrate the I.ove relationship between human's and spirits. or man tom between his human situation and his longing for 'the fantastic or the Absolute. The political plays (Siegfried, . The Trt?jan War Will Not Take Place, Electra, and The Madwoman of Chaillot) present this same strife on a political level. between man's gross instincts and his idealism. Finally. Part Four examines the style of Giraudoux. Mr, Cohen offers us lucid and careful analyses of the Giraudoux repertoire, And though I do not buy such arguments as the one labeling certain of 1970 BOOK REVIEWS 437 Giraudoux's plays as "political plays," it is valid to look at them ina political context. Essentially Mr. Cohen does just that-looks at various plays in various, but not exclusive, contexts, and in doing so evinces considerable discernment and discretion. A rare exception is his analysis of The Madwoman of Chaillot, where .irrelevancies crowd out good sense. In referring back to Mr. Cohen's statement of purpose, and comparing it to his remarks (mostly in Part Four) on Giraudoux's total achievement and significance , I encounter some difficulties. Mr. Cohen proposed to illustrate in Giraudoux "an intellectual system at least as profound as those of . . . Sartre, Beckett, or Brecht." And yet he acknowledges several times that Giraudoux's theater is not basically intellectual. Why then does he emphasize an "intellectual system" underlying it with the intention of comparing...