Le Monde Theatral de Michel de Ghelderode by Auréliu Weiss (review)

1967 BOOK REVIEWS 327 the possibility of modern tragedy, claiming that from Ibsen to Camus we have had 'almost a century of important and continuous and insistent tragic art'. Anxious to widen the connotations of the word 'tragedy', he distrusts those critics who would apply it only to a particular kind of literature; 'in the case of ordi· nary death and suffering', he asserts, 'when we see mourning and lament, when we see men and women breaking under their actual loss, it is at least not selfevident to say that we are not in the presence of tragedy'. As argument the last two clauses in this statement are indecisive (and, in my opinion, highly questionable ) but the idea they express is central to Mr. Williams's thesis, because he be~ lieves that the revolutionary march of history in the present century has constituted an action which can be described as 'tragedy'. Hence his own dramatisation of it in Koba. Hence his claim that Camus's work as a political journalist was 'one form of his deliberate exposure to the tragic experience of his time'. Hence, too, his interpretation of tragedy since Ibsen. In the work of Strindberg he finds the apotheosis of 'private tragedy', in which man is frustrated not only by society and the family but also by a self-destructive force within himself, culminating in The Road to Damascus in a world of overwhelming gUilt from which death is a welcome release. He illustrates the persistence of this form in the work of O'Neill and Tennessee Williams. The transition from Ibsen to Chekov, Pirandello, and Beckett represents another development in modern tragedy; a transition from deadlock to stalemate. 'In a deadlock, there is still effort and struggle, but no possibility of winning ... In a stalemate, there is no possibility of movement . . . every willed action is self-cancelling'. In this predicament , Pirandello's characters find that fantasy is the only defence against suffering, whereas Beckett's two tramps in Waiting jor Godot achieve 'what had seemed to be lost: the possibility of human recognition, and of love, within a total condition still meaningless'. Mr. Williams's choice of the restrictive word 'possibility' here is well·advised. I, for one, am not convinced that tragedy can subsist in the pessimism of the dramatists mentioned in the foregoing paragraph. His discussion of Anna Karenina and Dr. Zhivago, on the other hand, leaves the reader confident that they are tragedies. What is ultimately disappointing in Modern Tragedy, however, is that the close and sometimes highly illuminating scrutiny of particular works does not lead to a vindication of the application of the word 'tragedy' to so many plays in which the human will is so baffled and the human intelligence is so self-deluding . A different term seems necessary for them. But if it were adduced, Mr. Williams 's argument might well collapse. WILLIAM A. ARMSTRONG University of Hull, England LE MONDE THEATRAL DE MICHEL DE GHELDERODE, by Aureliu Weiss, Librairie 73, Paris, 1966. 106 pp. Price 6 F. On peut etre sur que Ie petit volume consacre par Aureliu Weiss a Ghelderode ne passera pas inapen;u. Qu'il suscite l'indignation des admirateurs enthousiastes du dramaturge beIge, ou qu'il apparaisse a d'autres comme faisant justice d'une reputation usurpee, il marque en tout cas un tournant dans la critique, qui avait jusqu'ici accueilli sans murmure ce the~tre insolite. La critique de A. Weiss-dont je rappelle les essais posthumes parus recemment aux Etats-Unis: The interpretation of dramatic works, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, spring 1965. The Remorseless Rush of Time, Tulane Drama Review, spring 1966, et De l'adaptation des oeuvres thedtrales, Criticism, spring 328 MODERN DRAMA December 1967-est celle d'un lecteur et d'un spectateur irrite, agace, qui refuse de se laisser prendre plus longtemps a. ce qu'il considere comme une oeuvre en trompel 'oeil, comme un bric-a.-brac ou beaucoup de clinquant dissimule peu de veritables richesses. Ghelderode, dit A. Weiss, n'a cree aucun personnage vivant: ses heros sont de pures constructions intellectuelles, sans psychologie, ni epaisseur. Chez lui Ie bruit, Ie tintamarre sont destines a...