Tamed Savagery and Anarchy

Witold Gombrowicz, Yvonne, Théâtre National de la Colline, Paris, November 18-December 20, 1998. Director: Yves Beaunesne. Cast: Bernard Ballet (the King), Marc Citti (the Prince), Bulle Ogier (the Queen), and Aline le Berre (Yvonne).

"I am a humorist, a punter, I am an acrobat and a provocateur. My works turn things topsy-turvy to please, I am of the circus, I am lyricism, poetry, horror, jumble, game, what else do you want?" These words of the classical iconoclast-writer Witold Gombrowicz, whether boastful or, on the contrary, full of wry modesty--placing him deliberately among the masters of doubtful nobility--are to the point. Gombrowicz is not someone to be squeezed into conventional categories. His novels and plays fortunately break rules; they challenge forms in usage, embrace overtly contradictions; they dynamite theories.

Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy, his first play, written in 1935 when he was twenty-nine, delightfully proves this talent of subversive irony. The first odd feature of the play: Yvonne, the central character, is not only exceptionally ugly but totally mute and passive throughout the fast-speeding action. Charmless, apathetic, anemic, and frightened--how can she set in motion the world around her? Precisely with these queer features. Her otherness is provoking, unbearable, for the royal family of cruel imbecility. "Why is she apathetic? Because she has the blues. And why does she have the blues? Because she is apathetic. You see the circle? The hell, not the circle!" This is the way the young prince describes her disturbing presence. And this reasoning betrays more his angry inanity than hers. She becomes a negative catalyst, a "factor of decomposition" in Gombrowicz's words, strong enough to reveal the monstrosity of the court. The King and the Queen and all the Prince's men have to mobilize their skill and pompous splendor, their superior ruses and illustrious rituals, to get rid of her. And they'll succeed in doing so, killing her with a happily barbarous satisfaction.

If the lead is so uncommon, no wonder that the unfolding of the events, their capricious logic and causal motivation, will bring about no less surprise. The spoiled, deadly-bored prince feels particularly challenged by the sudden chance to revolt against the laws of nature, refusing the obvious repulsion caused by ugliness. To fall for beauty and attraction? Much too simple. He won't cede to the prescribed behavior, he'll defy the young woman's muteness, her body of blind indifference. The more she resists, the more he wants to get engaged, and in a split second he dares to propose to her, enjoying the scandal following his gesture. And from now on a diabolic race with its unpredictable ups and downs comes into force. In an utmost accelerated and emblematic way all the potential forms of responses will be enacted--constrained acceptance, confusion, flattering and feigning, anxiety and growing hatred--until they arrive at the ultimate, liberating decision: destroying her, yes, finding pleasure in assassinating, annihilating her for ever, for the crime of having elicited everything unbearable in their lives through her unwanted presence.

A tragi-comic fable, Yvonne doesn't resemble any traditional plays. In a mocking gallop we still have room and time to observe the fears and cheap dreams, the nasty petty games and pitiful vanity of people. They are all victims of their cowardice or, to put it in another way, their lack of freedom. It is no accident that this play has so frequently been interpreted as a parody of the exercise of power, as a devastating satire of mad rulers. Clearly, the oppressors, the privileged ones, are deprived of their free will; they are hopelessly limited in their actions. They have little choice: either blindly pursue their interests with the haughtiness of the dictator or listen to other people's needs. But arrogance has rarely taught the Kings such humbleness. It is much easier to resort, to their...