Sartre and Drama by Robert Champigny (review)

Book Reviews ROBERTCHAMPIGNY. Sartre and Drama. n.p.: French Literature Publications 1982. Pp. ii, 123. $12.95· A distinguished critic of modem French literature, Robert Champigny has put together a short book on Jean Paul Sartre's theatre. It is divided in two unequal parts: a short first part (Theory), and a longer, play-by-play- in chronological order- analysis of the entire dramatic oeuvre. A conclusion follows in which Sartre's plays are compared to some works by his contemporaries (Genet, Ionesco, Tardieu, Adamov and Beckett). There is also a sketchy bibliography. Champigny shows that Sartre's dramatic art is not psychological but "behavioristic" (p. 2). It is left up to the audience to make assumptions about the characters. In this sense, dramatic art parallels the ordinary conditions of life in which we cannot be certain of what other people think, judging them by their acts rather than by what they say about the latter or about the intentions behind these acts. In his subchapter "Humanism and Totalitarianism," Champigny detects a totalitarian tendency in Sartre, rooted in the French philosopher's fascination with Hegel; he is puzzled by Sartre's failure to stress diversity of experience in favor of the human "project of unification,· of self­ totalization" (p . 3). The fictional, ludic mode is explored in "Gestures." Towards the end of the book, Champigny states that "a ludic role need.s the support of an historical existence, from which it is detached" (p. 112). For example, a fictional Caesar can have an existence separate from the historical Julius Caesar, although our knowledge of the latter brings a certain depth of field to the histrionic incarnation.The same ambiguity applies to Sartre's portraits of literary figures, one still alive and the other dead: Genet and Flaubert. Champigny calls these essays "metadramatic, since they view their topic as a Romantic drama" (p. 21). The second section is more developed and stronger than the first. There are valuable analyses of plays which are almost never mentioned in discussions of Sartrean drama: Bariona (1940), a Christmas play which was composed while Sartre was a prisoner of war in Germany and shows the emergence of the familiar theme of freedom; Kean (I953), an adaptation of Dumas's romantic portrait of the passionate British actor with a focus on "the contamination of private life by profession" (p. 85); Nekrassov (1955), an Aristophanic comedy, according to Champigny, on the subject of the cold war between East and West, the hot struggle of the French extreme Right against the Communist party, and the rash of defections to capitalist countries despite De Gaulle's "detente game" (p. 88). There are numerous critical appraisals in Sartre and Drama. Freedom, in The Flies, swoops down upon Orestes "like a visitation of the Holy Ghost" (p.40). As to Jupiter, Champigny finds him the most enjoyable and human of all the characters. NoExit comes under attack for being static, "though suspense and variations are adroitly managed ... " (p. 56). Dead without Burial is deeply marked, according to Champigny, by the experiences of the Resistance. It is the "play in which the dialectic between individuals and groups is best developed" (p. 58). The dramatist's attemptto portray physical torture on the stage is questioned. There are sexual overtones in the relation of the torturer-tortured. Above all, "can evocations of grave physical pain be esthetically 268 Book Reviews convertedin a play to be performed, if at all?''(p. 6r). This is such an important question that it merits a whole chapter, if not a book. Champigny raises the question and hastily concludes that evocations of physical pain in Dead without Burial "do not fit a dramatic show" (p. 62). The Respectful Prostitute suffers from a superficial treatment of American racism, the result of a rapidjaunt to the United States. The Parisian public of 1946 received the play as a bit of exotica, forgetting that "racism was also a French phenomenon" (p. 64). A playful Champigny adds: "And, for most Parisians, maize, I mean com, was for pigs, I mean hogs" (p. 64). The Respectful Prostitute isjudged to be "Sartre's poorest play" (p. 64). Dirty Hands finds Champigny unreceptive to its simplified...