T. S. Eliot's Parisian Year

3. The Theatre

· 3 · The Theatre The richness and variety of the Parisian theatre scene provided Eliot with inspiration for both the aspiring poet and the latent dramatist within him. His description of Paris as a perfect present in its combination of past and future (“What France” 94) is brilliantly illustrated in that cultural arena. As Martin Esslin notes, “The Comédie-Française and other state-assisted theatres . . . continued on their centuries-old course of presenting the classics but were more and more influenced by innovations of pioneers like [André] Antoine and [Aurélien] Lugné-Poe” (374). The innovations were numerous and often conflicting. For example, the daring and sensational productions of the Ballets Russes, which first appeared in Paris in 1909, had numerous effects on stage design, such as bolder use of color. On the other hand, a reaction against such “spectacularly visual theatre” resulted in a desire for “simplicity, intellectual clarity, and the pure impact of the poetic word” (Esslin 375). Indeed, close on the heels of Eliot’s arrival, the writer and theatre critic Jacques Rouché’s article “L’Art théâtrale moderne” in the literary supplement of the November 12, 1910 issue of Le Figaro first made known to the French the ideas of various international pioneers in modern drama and proposed that set design should demonstrate the kind of experimentation occurring in modern art. He revived the Théâtre des Arts to put these ideas into practice in Paris, and Eliot went to see its inaugural production, the acclaimed adaptation of Dostoevsky’s novel Les Frères Karamazov, in April 1911 (Letters 25).1 That his sojourn in Paris occurred in the midst of exciting developments in the field of drama is evident in a lecture on contemporary French drama given at the Sorbonne by the eminent scholar M. Ossip-Lourié on November 26, 1910. In his report of the lecture, which appeared in the column Aux Écoles [At the Schools] in Le Figaro directly beneath one on the beginning of courses at the Sorbonne, Jacques-Pierre revealed that it was “warmly welcomed” by the audience of students, playwrights, and critics. Ossip-Lourié explained that the theatrical movement of the last thirty years in France was highly influenced by the innovators Henry Becque and Antoine, that naturalistic, sociological, scientific, and psychological 102 . T. S. Eliot’s Parisian Year drama had recently come to the forefront, and that there had been a reciprocal influence between the theatre and the development of ideas. The lecturer concluded this part of his talk by exclaiming, “What a flowering, sirs, since Becque, and what a surprising diversity of subjects treated!” However, he also revealed that for several years the theatre in France had been experiencing a crisis, the causes of which were diverse, noting that, “with some exceptions, we look in vain in recent French drama for the France that works, thinks, and acts.” He ended by asserting that the crisis would not last long (2). Despite Ossip-Lourié’s commentary on the crisis in French drama, the Parisian theatre scene at the time could only be described as flourishing, with numerous and varied offerings of both the established and the contemporary. Theatre was an integral part of the Parisian cultural, intellectual, and social scene. An amusing cartoon entitled “Théâtre moderne” in the December 8, 1910 issue of Le Figaro demonstrates how they were intertwined, as it spoofed the fact that the names of the costume-designers were of greater importance than the name of the playwright , as noted in Chapter 2. The influence of theatre on current fashions had been enormous since the advent of the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909 and continued throughout Eliot’s year there. Eliot’s interest in drama and his desire to immerse himself in every aspect of French culture suggest that he would have partaken of the wealth of theatre offerings . He could certainly have afforded to go because not only was his year abroad financed by his family, but tickets to most productions were extremely reasonable. For example, according to the article “Le Théâtre Shakespeare au Théâtre Femina” in the November 29 issue of Le Figaro, tickets to A Midsummer Night’s Dream or The Merry Wives of Windsor were seven and ten francs for box seats and four and five francs for seats in the orchestra or balcony with a one franc booking fee (4), and at most theatres student tickets were available at even lower rates. And, despite...