Giraudoux's La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu and Homer's Iliad: The Scales of Zeus as Dramatic Device

Giraudoux's La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu and Homer's Iliad: The Scales of Zeus as Dramatic Device BRIAN POCKNELL It has become common practice in myth criticism and in thematological studies to link Giraudoux's La Guerre de Troie /I'aura pas lieu with the Iliad. Sometimes a critic pursues the matter further and points to interesting reworkings of the original material; often the usefulness of the comparison for the philosophical and political climate of the modem period is the focal point. Giraudoux's play offers rich opportunities for critics seeking the diachronic patterns in myth forms described by Professor Ruthven,' but here our task will lead us beyond these questions towards consideration of an intertextual relationship in a new light. The success and popularity of recent revivals of La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu should encourage us to take this fresh look at a familiar comparison in the hope of giving a more precise definition to Giraudoux's use of Homer's text and a reassessment of the basis of the play. By the time Giraudoux was writing this work he had gained considerable insight and experience with regard to the staging process, thanks to the expert tutelage of Louis Jouvet at the Athenee theatre. The importance of the techniques of mise en scene should not be overlooked in the present reading of the text and analysis of Giraudoux's use of Homer's Iliad, for a careful investigation ofthe two texts reveals more than a nodding acquaintance with the narrative content of the Iliad as well as an imaginative dramatic adaptation of the resources the Greek text offers. The apparent sources ofGiraudoux's play are well-known; they are indicated in every edition of the text intended for schools in France and in every commentary aimed at student readership elsewhere. Yet the fact remains that there is no clear model for La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu. The play is a special case. No portion of the work ofHomer or Euripides directly portrays the events immediately preceding the Trojan War. The title of Giraudoux's play alone indicates that there is no model; it signifies future peace where the myth-historians have repeatedly recorded war, and it places the events of the BRIAN POCKNELL play before those of the Iliad, some nine years before in effect. The play is a deliberate addition to the information provided by Homer, an original contribution to the myth-legacy of Troy, and, as such, not a distortion of the Homeric text, if we heed Professor Ruthven's advice on thematological approaches to the study ofmyths.'It becomes linked to Homer's account ofthe events by a familiar network of characters and foreseen happenings as well as by the particular metaphor and structural device that concerns us here. As ifto forestall the objection that his play is an adulteration ofa pure original text to be found in Greek literature, Giraudoux exploits the resources of his anachronisms; as a result, any study trying to show the playas an historic re-enactment of events preceding the war would necessarily conclude that Giraudoux lacked adequate knowledge of primary sources as well as what drama critics sometimes call a "sense of period." There is clearly no attempt to disguise departures from a faithful representation of Homer's world. The ritual scene-setting for the "photographer," the metaphors concerning soap (unknown to the Greeks), the allusion to diplomats riding in caleches, all point to Giraudoux's establishing his play apart from Homer's work. The playwright removes it further still when he introduces Demokos, Abneos and Oiax as characters in his drama; they have no Homeric models and they need none. Professor Jacques Robichez's attempt to show that Demokos is an echo of Demodokos in the Odyssey is interesting as a study of intenextuality, but it may be missing the point.' Giraudoux has chosen names that have their authentic place only in his playas an original contribution to the Trojan War myth; to consider Homer's work as the only true version and to explain Giraudoux's inventions conjecturally as distorted allusions to it may be taken as an...