The Polyvalence of the Theatrical Language in No Exit

The Polyvalence of the Theatrical Language in No Exit MICHELINE SAKHAROFF • IN ATIEMPTING TO DEFINE the fundamental characteristics of the new theater, Martin Esslin, in The Theatre of the Absurd, contrasts it with that of Camus and Sartre. According to Esslin, both Camus and Sartre have been satisfied to express new thoughts within the limits of a ready-made and conventional form. And Esslin feels that while the Theater of the Absurd, less logical and less discursive, reflects the art of the poet, the plays of Camus and Sartre reveal the attitude of the philosopher.1 When Michel Corvin or Genevieve Serreau study the avant-garde theater, they also leave these two playwrights outside the boundaries of their studies, and for the same reasons as Esslin.2 Ruby Cohn, however, in her recent book on contemp'orary theater, asks, without totally refuting Esslin's point of view, the only valid question: whether theater, however philosophical, is ever an expression of philosophy. And she suggests that it may be time to look at the plays of Camus and Sartre as plays.3 This is what I propose to do here, limiting my study to one of Sartre's plays: No Exit. Far from being a "message" neatly wrapped in clear concepts to be quickly administered to the spectators, No Exit, just as much as a Beckett play, presents itself as a vast and complex poem. Its intricate images mingle with hidden themes and its structures interact upon each other and are inseparable. Sartre's play does not develop along the line of a logical plot in order to represent, like the "well-made" play of the late nineteenth century, the adventures of characters endowed with an easily recognizable psychology. It is embodied, instead, in the materiality of theater. Gestures, words, dramaturgy, settings, lighting, all take on the function of "signs." And thus a new language is created within language, more ambiguous undoubtedly, but going beyond the obvious meaning (Ie signifie) to reach another, less readily 199 200 MICHELINE SAKHAROFF grasped one (la signification). It is a theater of conscience, not of action; of problem, not of answer; as any literary language, it serves to formulate, not to do. It is true that Sartre does not seem to innovate. The plot remains quite close to conventional melodrama; its eternal triangle, sordid stories of adultery, cowardice, jealousy, bitter reproaches - everything is there. Indeed it .is melodrama at its best. But here the use of tradition is such that the melodramatic elements serve as symbols charged with multiple meanings. Let us first note that these elements exist essentially at the level of the narration within the play, in the characters' confessions. But the famous triangle, transposed on the stage among the three protagonists, loses its expected quality to represent in a concrete way the human problem of the relations of the individual to others. Drama, as a rule, implies the notion of an action capable of being modified by external and startling events. This is certainly not the case in Sartre's play. The door which opens at its conclusion is but an empty deus ex machina. A gaping mouth, it reveals the empty space of the future which is eluded by the characters, who allow themselves to be caught in the toils of an eternal and stifling present because they are afraid of the perpetual state of flux inherent to "becoming." They refuse life, its inventions, its risks and its multiple changes. Finally the door will close on a drama henceforth relegated to the past and reduced at the same time to a mere conversation, "an infmitely sterile conclave." At the very core of the play's apparent structure another dramaturgy, no less traditional than the first, manifests itself: that of French classical tragedy. No Exit is, in fact, quite close to a Racine tragedy. Based on a very limited subject-matter, the play has few characters: the three protagonists and the valet. The latter, reduced to the functions of concierge, corresponds quite well to the definition given by Barthes of the "confidant" in his essay On Racine. In that essay Barthes sees the "confidant" as one who has the capability of leaving...