7. JUDITH and ELECTRE

I have already indicated that in Giraudoux' theatre the secret of happi- ness lies in being ignored by the gods or by fate itself. This moral is preached by the author in his '' Judith (November 4, 1931) and his 'play' Electre (May 13, 1937). Again Giraudoux has borrowed a ready-made myth, first a biblical one, later a Greek. As far as it concerns Judith, the change wrought by the playwright is particularly significant: he changed Manasses' widow into a virgin. Friedrich Hebbel (1813-1863) had already treated the subject in 1840, introducing an element of irony into the story by making Judith fall in love with Holophernes. At the end of Hebbel's play, Judith asks to be put to death lest she give birth to her victim's son. In addition she was what the French call a 'veuve blanche', untouched by her husband for mysterious reasons. For Giraudoux, according to Maurice Martin du Gard, Judith is "une jeune personne à la mode, mais dont la frivolité n'atteint point la vie profonde, doublement éloquente parce que vierge et parce que juive" {... a fashionable young girl, but in whom frivolity doesn't attain a deeper life, doubly eloquent because she is a virgin and because she is Jewish].1 Judith is the sum of all the ele- ments that constitute Giraudoux' tragic irony: we find here the duel of two ideals, the conflict between eternity granted to a few elect or the brief terrestrial life for whose sake one is unwilling to accept a doubt- ful immortality, offered in guise of a gift with strings attached. Judith is a kind of anti-Joan of Arc; she hears no voices sending her forth (except those of public opinion), she resists her mission until she is goaded into action by the man she thinks is in love with her. But she

* M. Martin du Gard, "Le Théâtre", Les Nouvelles Littéraires, 14, XI (1931). JUDITH AND ELECTRE 135

is more than a petulant, capricious upper-class girl. In Giraudoux' theatrical production, Judith is the first clear manifestation of the author's tragic sentiment. He sacrifices his most cherished creation in this play, the 'jeune fille', and with her that other vision of himself represented by Holophernes. Judith contains the stuff of Giraudoux' greatest drama. Critical opinions differ considerably respecting the worth of this play. Helmut Hatzfeld calls Judith 'a dramatized insolence,'2 and an- other Catholic writer has said that "Giraudoux lui en veut (à Judith) de céder à la contrainte divine" [Giraudoux is angry at her for giving in to God's command].3 This same critic, Louis Chaigne, sees Girau- doux as an epicurean, a talented writer who is on the wrong path. In an article appearing in the Catholic journal Etudes, Chaigne writes: "Un Giraudoux sans intensions autres que celle de nous ménager des plaisirs est inconcevable. Cet homme, gêné par le poids de la chair, hésitant devant les sollicitations de l'esprit, s'exaspère de rencontrer dans le champs d'étoiles où il se meut les signes visibles de ces choses invisibles dont il se refuse l'accès" [Giraudoux without intentions other than that of providing pleasures for us is inconceivable. This man, hindered by the weight of the flesh, hesitating before attractions of the mind, loses patience when he finds in the starry regions wherein he moves, visible signs of invisible things which he considers inaccessible].4 I believe that there is so little religious mysticism in Giraudoux that this problem of fighting against accepting 'invisible things', unless it be the caprice of destiny, is largely in the mind of Father Chaigne. Nevertheless, as I have stated in the introduction, it is extremely difficult to know how Giraudoux really felt about these matters. It is even possible that he used irony to cover up his own uncertainties. André Gide, who often criticized Giraudoux' style as being too precious and not virile enough, had this to say about Judith, in a letter to the playwright, which the posterity-conscious Gide kept for his Journal, dated November 12, 1931:

! H. Hatzfeld, Trends and Styles in 20th Century French Literature (CUA Press, 1957), p. 125. 3 L. Chaigne, "Jean Giraudoux", Etudes, 20, XII (1939), p. 634. 4 Ibid., p. 635. 136 JUDITH AND ELECTRE

Mon cher Giraudoux, Je m'affectais hier soir de trouver si facilement des places pour votre Judith. Après avoir entendu la pièce, je m'étonne moins que la salle ne fût pas pleine: ce n'est qu'à ses propres dépens que l'on force à penser le paresseux public. Seul le "happy few" vous saura gré d'avoir osé une "pièce d'idées." Il a fallu votre art prestigieux pour en doubler le débat abstrait et l'étoffer d'un drame passionnel. Pourtant, en écrivant ceci, je doute si, dans votre esprit, le drame passionnel n'a pas précédé le drame d'idées et si celui-ci n'est pas venu par surcroît. Car (le drame d'idées débordant l'autre, et de beaucoup, en signification, ampleur et poids) la pyramide semble poser et prendre appui sur sa pointe. Et c'est du reste ce qui lui permet de ne pas se reposer du tout: elle oscille; elle vibre et tremble, sans toutefois chanceler jamais. ... (Il s'agit de) faire pivoter un problème de métaphysique religieuse sur une question de psychologie très particulière... je l'accepte, mais demeure malgré tout gêné: si l'on admet fort bien que Judith s'éprenne d'Holopherne, par contre on ne comprend pas bien comment elle en vient à le tuer. "Par amour" affirme-t-elle. Il faut bien qu'elle le dise pour qu'on le sache. Elle le proclame d'autant plus véhémentement qu'elle a plus de mal à nous en persuader. Cela reste subtil et ne saute pas à l'esprit. Je ne puis, quant à moi, me retenir de regretter que ce "miracle" ne soit point établi sur une évidence qui rendit flagrante sa fausseté. (Gide ends with the following sentence: L'émotion de certaines scènes se dégage mal du papillotement et du chatoiement dont un style trop précieux les revêt.)5

My dear Giraudoux, I was surprised yesterday evening to find tickets so easily for your Judith. After hearing the play, I am not suprised that the room was not full: it is only at their own expense that one can force the public to think. Only the happy few will be grateful to you for having dared a "play of ideas." It needed your prestigious art to enhance the abstract struggle by filling it with a drama of passion. However, in writing this, I doubt whether, in your mind, the drama of passion did not precede the drama of ideas and that the latter did not become super- numerary. For (the drama of ideas outweighing the other, and by quite a bit, in significance, scope and weight) the pyramid seems to settle on its point. And this is, moreover, what permits it not to rest at all: it os- cillates, it vibrates and trembles, yet without ever staggering.... It's a mat- ter of pivoting a religious, metaphysical problem on a very particular psychological question ... I accept this, but despite it all, I am uncon- vinced: if you admit that Judith falls in love with Holophernes, on the other hand, you can't very well understand how she comes to kill him. "Out of love" she says. She must indeed say this in order for us to find

5 A. Gidfe, Journal, Oeuvres Cbmplètes d'André Gide, XV, NRF (1939), pp. 461-62. JUDITH AND ELECTRE 137 out. She proclaims it all the more vehemently because she has much trou- ble in persuading us. This remains subtle and doesn't come to mind. As for me, I can't keep from regretting that this "miracle" is not established on evidence which would make its falseness obvious. . . . The emotion in certain scenes emerges badly from the fluttering caused by an overly pre- cious style.

The great Gide, master of irony himself, apparently feels that the play's message remains ambiguous by reason of Giraudoux' manner of treating the love theme, and by the stylistic embellishments. Yet, given the essential matter of the story (trenchantly described by Vol- taire as "Aller coucher avec un général d'armée pour lui couper la tête: cela n'est pas modeste"), could the author have been much more explicit ? Giraudoux clearly prefers the very oscillation of which Gide speaks. In any case, the tragic irony of fate and comic verbal irony are both present in this tragedy, and some claim for their interdependence in producing a 'drame d'idées' can be made. What distinguishes Judith from Giraudoux' other quasi- (Electre, Sodome et Gomorrhe, Pour Lucrèce) is the bitter irony of the survival of the fittest, as God had conceived the plan. In the three other plays, the human element triumphs: finds out the truth she was looking for, Lia and Jean continue their endless discourse even after the end of the world, and Lucile's suicide seems at least to emphasize her free will. (In this connection, La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu comes closer to the definition of tragedy than the afore- mentioned plays.) In Judith, God triumphs, but He does not triumph according to the rules of rabbinical literature, which tell us that an un- shakeable faith has always been the outstanding trait of Jewish heroes if not always of the people of Israel. Holophernes' epicureanism which leads to his denial of the existence of sin is clearly in direct contradic- tion to the general conception of Judaism, which stresses every man's duty to give a full account of his actions. Together with the new material that Giraudoux brought to the apocryphal tale, he not only demonstrated his creative imagination, but he also showed an attitude "assez anti-sémite dans l'ensemble, en dépit du cadre où il (le sentiment) est placé", as was pointed out by one of the most favorable critics, Maurice Martin du Gard, in the Nouvelles Littéraires. It is interesting' to note, in passing, that almost all the 138 JUDITH AND ELECTRE actors of the troupe were Jewish, and according to Maurice Martin du Gard "ne le dissimulaient point" [... rather antisemitic on the whole, in spite of the framework in which the feeling is placed, ... nor were they hiding it].6 Giraudoux had wanted Elisabeth Bergner to play the title role, but last minute production difficulties prevented the great actress from accepting the part. As early as 1922, when he wrote Siegfried et le Limousin, Girau- doux had given vent to anti-semitic feelings and in subsequent works there are often gratuitous derogatory remarks about Jews. Hans, in Ondine, considers himself a 'misérable humain moyen' who is not ready for Ondine's love. Furthermore, says he: "Les hommes faits pour l'amour, ce sont les petits professeurs à gros nez, les rentiers gras avec des lippes, les juifs à lunettes" [Men made for love are little profes- sors with big noses, fat stockholders with blubber lips, Jews with glasses].7 The remark is decidedly unflattering to Jews. In his political writings, Giraudoux goes so far as to agree with Hitler when he says: "Le pays ne sera sauvé que provisoirement par les seules frontières armées; il ne peut l'être définitivement que par la race française, et nous sommes pleinement d'accord avec Hitler pour proclamer qu'une politique n'atteint sa forme supérieure que si elle est raciale, car c'était aussi la pensée de Colbert ou de Richelieu" [The country will be saved only temporarily by having its borders armed; it can be definitely saved only by the French race, and we agree completely with Hitler for proclaiming that a policy will attain its highest form only if it is racial, for this was also the thought of Colbert or Richelieu].8 Al- though Giraudoux modifies his stand by aspiring to the purification of 'un type moral et culturel', this kind of reasoning smacks of racism. At another point in Pleins Pouvoirs, Giraudoux deplores the high percentage of naturalized Jews among Polish refugees in France. ("If Freud wants to become a Frenchman, let him wait." 9) The reasons for these often ironic utterances against an obviously vulnerable minority cannot easily be discovered. Voltaire, who professed tolerance for many an underdog at the risk of his own safety, was himself decidedly

* Article cited, Nouvelles Littéraires (November 14, 1931). 7 Ondine (Neuchâtel and Paris, Ides et Calendes, 1946), p. 161. 8 Jean Giraudoux, Pleins Pouvoirs (Gallimard, 1939), pp. 75-76. • Ibid., p. 73. ("Freud, s'il veut être Français, attendra.") JUDITH AND ELECTRE 139

anti-semitic, a feeling he shared with many a 'philosophe' of the eighteenth century. Sometimes Giraudoux plays with ideas which Jewish people utilize when making fun of themselves, but in such cases the ink of his non- Jewish pen is again easily tainted with anti-semitism. In Judith, Giraudoux attacks certain 'Jewish' traits: the indecision which Judith shows in the first Act is fairly common among Jewish heroes, and Giraudoux brought it out well by illustrating a scene where the young girl drinks from a river sullied by Jewish blood to bolster her own courage. The Old Testament is full of examples indicating indecision among the chosen. A particular insistence on the part of God was needed to make Moses plead his people's cause to Pharaoh, and Mordecai had to exert great pressure upon Esther before she finally agreed to tell Ahasuerus the plight of her people (as well as her own Jewish origin). Giraudoux evokes certain moments of Racine's Esther in the scene where Judith is facing the false Holophernes, Egon. Sarah, the procuress, makes the reference as she tries to humiliate Judith by telling her: "Vas-y, Esther. C'est le moment. Assuérus t'écoute" [Go to it, Esther. It is time. Ahasuerus hears you}.10 Judith's pride is ac- centuated throughout the play, and is considered a particularly Jewish characteristic (The 'pride of Israel' was often rebuked by the prophetic voices of the Old Testament). At one point Sarah asks the Assyrian captain: "Que hais-tu, dans les Juifs?" [What do you hate in Jews?] and Egon answers: "Je ne suis pas original. L'orgueil!" [I am not original. Pride!]11 Judith is proud of her wealth, of her beauty and of her virginity. As she explains her role to her double, the prostitute Suzanne, who would like to take her part in the official mission, Judith says:

Ne croyez pas que j'irai là-bas en victime consentante. Ce n'est pas la reine de Sabba qui va se rendre chez ce roi, pour un couchage officiel, mais une fille juive, déchaînée, hypocrite et impitoyable, et prête à braver, pour mieux leur obéir, toutes les lois de Dieu.12 Do not think that I'm going there as a willing victim. It is not the queen of Sheba who is going to call on this king, for an offical get-together, but

10 Judith (Neuchâtel and Paris, Ides et Calendes, 1945), p. 72. 11 Ibid., p. 62. " Ibid., p. 51. 140 JUDITH AND ELECTRE a young Jewish girl, wild, an unpitiable hypocrite ready to defy, in order better to obey all the rules of God. Judith will become a heroine despite her own feelings, rather than be- cause of them. After having been insulted as a Jewess, she will be insulted as a virgin. To add to the irony of the confrontation between Judith and the false Holophernes, Giraudoux has made Egon a pederast, from whom any form of misogyny is, to see it his way, quite natural. A virgin, for him "c'est une future femme, prête aux horttes grotesques qui rendent femme" [. . . is future woman, ready for the grotesque dishonors which make her a woman].18 The scene in which this Assyrian officer impersonates Holophernes is reminiscent of Joan of Arc being confronted by the wrong Dauphin at the court in Chinon, in Shaw's Scant ]oan. But Giraudoux' irony works against Judith who fails to recognize the stratagem. Nor are the anti-semitic remarks limited to Egon. When the latter says of Judith that "c'est la royauté de Judas qui flotte autour d'elle", Sarah, who, after all, is Jewish herself, answers: "Non, la haute banque" [... it is the royalty of Judas which floats around her. ... No, high finance].14 Already in the first scene of the play there had been an ironic contrast between a 'modern' rabbi and a rather puritanical banker, Judith's uncle, who advises his niece to mistrust God. When he hears the shouts of "Judith!", the banker, who is appropriately called Joseph, answers: "D'autres nations mâchent la gomme. Aux Juifs, il faut toujours un nom propre à sucer" [Other nations chew gum. The Jews always need a proper name to suck on].18 There are many elements of ironic language that serve to relieve the tension created by Judith's mission, both before and after she has met Holophernes. At times this irony takes the form of preciosity, Girau- doux' specialty in delaying dramatic action. When Judith refuses Suzanne's offer to take her place, she asks: "Comment suis-je ce soir?" and Suzanne answers: "Oh! Judith, comme toujours." To this casual, almost trite reply, Judith counters: "Comme toujours? Merci, Suzanne. Que ce soir Judith soit comme toujours, quel compliment pour les autres jours" [How am I this evening? . .. Oh, Judith, as always. . ..

13 Ibid., p. 72. 14 Ibid., p. 69. 15 Ibid., p. 13. JUDITH AND ELECTRE 141

As always ? Thank you, Suzanne. That Judith is as always this evening, what a compliment for the other days].16 These quips, often recalling the 'badinage' of Marivaux' and Mus- set's plays, serve a specific function: they tend to build up a gradual progression of intensity, culminating in a verbal violence of sheer ferocity. Judith's virginity is attacked with hatred and jealousy precise- ly by the one person who fears this quality most, namely Sarah, the old procuress (a prototype of Barbette in Pour Lucrèce). Here are some of her remarks about Judith:

... je t'ai dit qu'elle était vierge: c'est donc avant tout une bavarde.17

... I told you she was a virgin: this means above all a chatterbox.

Elle n'est pas ma pensionnaire. Elle a été étudiante. Elle sait se prostituer elle-même.1»

She is not my boarder. She has been a student. She knows how to pros- titute herself.

En effet, c'est une vierge. Aucune virginité n'a été désirée et frôlée de plus près. Mais c'est encore une virginité: Elle a même des certificats du grand prêtre.... Je la déshabille?1»

Indeed, this is a virgin. No virginity has been desired and rubbed against more closely. But it is still a virginity. She even has certificates from the high priest.... Should I undress her?

At the height of mockery, when Egon kisses Judith fully on the mouth, Sara shouts:

Ah! Judith! pauvre niaise! Où te croyais-tu? Dans ta cour d'amour ou dans ta sacristie, avec tes fiancés et tes prêtres? Te voilà jusqu'au cou dans la honte! Quel beau spectacle tu as donné à ces soldats de l'intelligence juive en prenant ce pédéraste pour Holopherne! Merci, Egon. Sur cette riche, tu as vengé tous les pauvres de la terre; sur cette bavarde, tous les bègues et les muets, sur cette étroite, tous les ventres ouverts jusqu'au nombril.20

Ah! Judith! poor fool! Where do you think you are? In the court of love or in your sacristy, with your betrothed and your priests? Here you are

" Ibid., p. 55. 17 Ibid., p. 64. 18 Ibid., p. 67. 1S Ibid., p. 69. *> Ibid., p. 78. 142 JUDITH AND ELECTRE up to your neck in dishonor. What a handsome spectacle you have given these soldiers of Jewish intelligence by taking this pederast for Holopher- nes! Thank you, Egon. On this rich girl you have avenged all the poor of the land; on this chatterbox, all the stammerers and the mutes, on this slim creature, all the bellies split open to the navel.

The procuress' pride is opposed to that of the virgin:

Ah! Tu crois que les Juifs mourront, adjudant naïf! Ils vivront et leur Messie viendra. Et il viendra non par cette bourgeoise et son pucelage, mais par Sarah, l'entremetteuse... .21

Ah! You think the Jews will die, naive adjutant! They shall live and their Messiah will come. And he will come not through this bourgeoise and her virginity, but through Sarah, the procuress.

This long, almost grotesque interlude, with its brutal verbal irony as voiced in Sarah's and Egon's anti-virginal and anti-semitic statements, is an effective means of preparing the audience for the character of Holophernes who will now make his entrance. He is called by Judith, as if she were calling for divine help, and indeed he will become her God to whom she will give herself entirely (at least so it appears). Ironically, the supposed villain becomes the romantic hero. Holopher- nes brings with him an air of reality, of defiant humanism. Suddenly the stage is empty except for two young people who are rapidly falling in love. When she says: "Je ne suis plus digne de toi" [I am no longer worthy of you],22 Judith adopts a tone of coquetry indicating that she demands nothing more than to be conquered. With his decla- ration of being a free man, Holophernes assumes the impossible posi- tion of the 'giralducian' hero, whom R. M. Albérès defined in this concise manner: "Il est à la fois l'instrument d'un irrationnel inévi- table et le défenseur de l'humanité contre cet irrationnel" [He is at the same time the instrument of an inevitable irrationality and the defender of humanity against this irrationality}.23 His hubris pre- figures his downfall: "Je suis le pire ennemi de Dieu" [I am the worst enemy of God].24 His poetic language, vaguely reminiscent of Baudelaire, evokes echoes of immediate temptation:

" Ibid., p. 80. " Ibid., p. 82. 15 R. M. Albérès, Esthétique et morale chez Jean Giraudoux (Nizet, 1957). 14 ]udith, op. cit., p. 86. JUDITH AND ELECTRE 143

Que fais-tu au milieu des Juifs et de leur exaltation, enfant charmante? Songe à la douceur qu'aurait ta journée, dégagée des terreurs et des prières.... Songe aux jeunes gens et aux jeunes filles s'étreignant simple- ment dans les draps frais, et se jetant les oreillers à la tête, quelques talons roses en l'air, sans anges et sans démons voyageurs ... ! Songe à l'homme innocent.. ,25

What are you doing in the midst of the Jews and their exaltation, my charming child? Think of the sweetness your day would have, free from fears and prayers. ... Think of the young men and women embracing among clean sheets, throwing pillows at each other's heads, casting pink feet in the air, without angels or demons milling around. Think of the innocent man ...

The free man makes his final offer: "Je t'offre le plaisir, Judith. . .. Devant ce tendre mot tu verras Jéhovah disparaître. .. ." [I am offer- ing you pleasure, Judith. .. . Before this tender word, you will see Jehovah disappear}.29 But Judith is afraid: "Jéhovah revient terrible- ment vite. Il faudra vous hâter" [Jehovah comes back very quickly. You'd better hurry].27 She actually taunts Holophernes to commit the act of love in a hurry, when he clearly wants to savour it in calm and voluptuousness. At this precise moment, Giraudoux teases the public by bringing Suzanne, the false Judith, onto the stage. Judith suddenly sees her mission: she will have to face destiny as a woman in love, and she gives up her virginity to Holophernes with the same zeal that she had shown in protecting it shortly before. She goes so far as to explain God, the prime mover of her mission, to her rival, Suzanne:

Je le connais mieux que toi, Dieu. Dieu s'occupe de l'apparence et de l'ensemble, non du détail. Dieu exige que notre oeuvre ait la robe du sacrifice, mais il nous laisse libres, sous cet ample vêtement, de servir nos propres penchants, et les plus bas. Puisqu'il a épuisé mon dévouement et ma haine contre des pantins avant de me mettre en face du vrai Holo- pherne, c'est qu'il avait besoin de mon geste, non de mon appui! La pre- mière lingère aurait découvert Holopherne déguisé entre ses serviteurs. Pas moi, la sainte! Dieu veut me perdre! Je me perdrai!28

25 lbid., p. 86. 26 lbid., p. 87. 27 lbid., p. 87. 28 lbid., p. 92. 144 JUDITH AND ELECTRE

I know God better than you. God is interested in appearance and the whole, not in details. God requires our work to have the robe of sacrifice, but He leaves us free, underneath this ample vestment, to follow our own inclinations, and even the lowest. Since He consumed my devotion and hate against mere puppets before putting me face to face with Holopher- nes, it means that He needed my gesture rather than my help! The first laundress would have discovered Holophernes disguised among his ser- vants. Not I, the saint! God wants to ruin me! I shall be ruined!

Suzanne feels beaten and lashes out in female fury:

Gloire à Holopherne, seul homme en ce monde... Adieu. Mais qu'il se méfie. Elle est venue pour tuer Holopherne. Elle a une arme sous sa robe.2»

Glory to Holophernes, the only man in the world . . . Goodby. But let him beware. She has come to kill Holophernes. She has a weapon under her dress.

The last words of the scene are loaded with double, or even triple meanings. Giraudoux has the prostitute tell them to the virgin: "Choisis donc ta blessure!" [Then choose your wound!]"0 Here again, Giraudoux' irony assumes a form of expression that is dangerously close to vulgarity. When she is again left alone with Holophernes, Judith tries to deny her virginity: "Je me suis donnée avant de partir à celui que j'aimais" [Before leaving I gave myself to the one I loved].®1 Holophernes refuses to believe it: "Une femme est un être qui a trouvé sa nature. Tu la cherches: tu es vierge" [A woman is a being who has found her nature. You are looking for it: you are a virgin].82 The free man is as lucid and all-knowing as God himself; he is His rival and that is why he will have to die. Before Holophernes' death, Judith says farewell to her virginity and to her mission. This highly dramatic transition is broken by the ironic utterance of the deaf-mute slave-girl Daria, to whom Judith addresses her long monologue. For Judith, Daria represents if not God, then at least a force of mystery and incomprehension, and the brief 'Amen' that ends the scene, is the foretaste of God's will.

» Ibid., p. 9i. *o Ibid., p. 94. S1 Ibid., p. 95. » Ibid., p. 96. JUDITH AND ELECTRE 145

Judith: ... Qu'il me pardonne, Daria, car je sais que tout ce que j'ai dit est blasphème, et qu'un jour viendra bientôt, en toute hâte, où toi-même retrouveras ta langue, et où s'effondront les vengeances du ciel sur ceux qui nous ont valu ces hontes, et cette volupté.... (Elle entre dans l'alcove) Daria: Ainsi soit-ilîsa

Judith: ... May he forgive me, Daria, for I know that all I have said is blasphemous, and a day will soon come, with all possible speed, when you yourself will find your voice and when the vengeance of heaven will fall on those who brought us these dishonors, and this voluptuousness ... (She goes into the alcove) Daria: Amen!

This last speech of Judith is hardly in keeping with the obedient widow of Manasses who goes forth to slay the enemy, a simple tool of God's will. And yet in the next scene Judith will have killed Holophernes. Why? Out of love, we are told, and Gide had not seemed convinced. Isn't it simply to accomplish the first part of a suicide pact? Judith's statement to Suzanne seems to bear this out: "Ah! Suzanne, parle franchement, la vue d'un corps endormi peut-elle appeler autre chose que le meurtre comme suprême tendresse?" [Ah, Suzanne, speak frankly, can the sight of a sleeping body call for anything else but murder as the supreme love?]34 The irony of the situation is irre- futable: truth has been forged far in advance, and Judith's explana- tions come to naught. Her human emotion will not convince anyone for "la fonction des Juifs est d'embaumer le mensonge dans des cantiques" [. .. the function of the Jews is to embalm falsehood in the canticles . ..] S5 — another anti-semitic quip of the author. Judith's martyrdom is of brief duration. By means of a highly cinematographic effect (Marcel Carné had used it subsequently in his Les Visiteurs du Soir (1942)), the Jews Joachim and Paul are immobilized and the dead-drunk guard becomes an archangel. He will tell Judith that she was under God's special protection, that she killed because it was His

M Ibid., pp. 101-02. 34 Ibid., p. 113. 35 Ibid., p. 120. 146 JUDITH AND ELECTRE

will and he goes so far as to insinuate that Judith's virginity has re- mained intact. God's irony takes delight in revealing the trick, and human impotence will have to buckle under as Abraham, Moses and job had been forced to do. Just like them, Judith will try to argue, but such words as 'le droit', 'trop tard' and 'quelle vérité?' have lost their meaning. She has simply become "Judith, première en classe, élue de Dieu!" [Judith, first of her class, chosen by God}.38 The archangel explains: "Dieu se réserve, à mille ans de distance, de projeter la sainteté sur le sacrilège et la pureté sur la luxure. C'est une question d'éclairage" [God waits, from a distance of a thousand years, to cast holiness on sacrilege and purity on lewdness. It's a question of lighting].»7 The poor girl, unlike Hebbel's heroine, begs to bear a son for Holophernes, in memory of a night of love. All is in vain. The arch- angel, who mistakenly showed pity for Judith, will lose his rank and seniority, but his message of God's will has been heard. As soon as the drunken guard sheds the angel's form, the author quickly puts a few choice vulgar sentences in his mouth, so that Judith will order his execution : "Judith, qu'elle s'appelait! Et elle en avait, un corps!. . . Toute la nuit, sans s'arrêter. ..." [Judith was her name! And man, what a body she had . . . All night long, without stopping. . . .]88 Such a witness must be eliminated as Judith becomes at the same time saint and prostitute. The perfect mistress of the first perfect man will be made to understand that her first act of prostitution was a miracle of God. Her second act, dictated by despair, will be to proclaim that she killed Holophernes out of hatred and not for love, but by this time no one pays heed. The true tragedy, as M. P. Leefmans has pointed out, is that "the town has been saved, but what was worth saving in it, has been destroyed". Besides this divine irony, Leefmans sees in this play also the irony of love ("it must becomes less as time passes in a world of change"39). Judith kills Holophernes in a vain effort to immolate this love. In the end, by a sort of involuntary irony, Judith accepts the role of 3' Ibid., p. 130. 37 Ibid., p. 135. 38 Ibid., p. 139. s* Bert M. P. Leefmans, "Giraudoux's Other Muse", Kenyan Review (Autumn 1954), p. 613. JUDITH AND ELECTRE 147 heroine which she has been assigned to fulfill. "Que votre procession approche. ... Judith la sainte est prête" [Let your procession draw near. .. . Judith the saint is ready}.40 God's lie has carried the day. Or, to carry the example from the concrete to the abstract, destiny has sought out its prey. Misfortune and anguish await the being who has not succeeded in remaining obscure and negative enough not to be singled out by fate. The idea of a mission to be fulfilled, that glorious theme of legend and literature, has its negative side, its defeat and its falsity. Giraudoux' theatre never really exhausts this theme of mission, presented in Siegfried in 1928, and still found in La Folle de Chaillot and Pour Lucrèce. Since this idea is so permanent, it follows that Giraudoux had been attracted by the myth of the , and partic- ularly by that ill-starred deputy of the Fates, Electra. Her story has meanings parallel with that of Judith, but also significant deviations which merit some attention.

ELECTRE

The irony of this play has been analyzed in great detail in the doctoral thesis of Renée Hoigné (Zurich 1954), Die Welt des Voll- kommenen im Werke von Jean Giraudoux.41 Her central thesis is based on the quest for the absolute, so characteristic of Giraudoux' heroines. The dissertation, during its entire 118 pages, draws upon the text of the play, grouping such headings as "Kontrastwirkung", "Das Spiele- rische", "Paradox" and "Das Ahnungsvermögen der jungen Mädchen" (the ability of young women to foretell the future) around the tragic figure of Electra, caught in a web of circumstances of which she is ignorant. Miss Hoigné also shows the resemblance of Giraudoux' Electre with Anouilh's Antigone and Camus' Caligula. The contrast between truth, the stark absolute, and humanity, the frail ever- changing essence that we have, constitutes the irony of the play, the vast gap between the permanent absolute and the relative. Since almost all ironic aspects of the play have been treated in Miss Hoigné's thesis,

40 Judith, op. cit., p. 139. 41 R. Hoigné, Die Welt des Vollkommenen im Werke von Jean Giraudoux (Zurich, 1954). 148 JUDITH AND ELECTRE

I shall speak of Electre very briefly, first citing an important passage from her book which underscores this basic opposition:

Truth and humanity become aware of each other only through the pres- ence of Electra. Thanks to her attitude and her goal-directed actions, these two poles challenge each other. and Agathe will be in- fluenced by Electra and will find their proper role, befitting them. Thus the drama presents an ascesis. Aegisthus goes so far as to recognize Elec- tra's greatness. The outcome might even be a happy one. But Electra is a choosy person and very insistent, so that Aegisthus cannot benefit from his own evolution toward a good, albeit excessively modest king, and he will be shown no pity.42

In some respects the play, although activated by Electra, thus becomes the tragedy of Aegisthus; and in the long tale of the murder which the Beggar tells while the crime is actually being committed back stage, we find out that Aegisthus' last cry was "Electre". In the Girau- doux issue of the Tuletne Drama Review (Summer 1959) John Gass- ner deplores the artificiality of this dramatic condensation. He calls it "a transparent and fundamentally gratuitous contrivance that diverts attention from the dramatic substance of the climax to the dramatic method as method" .4S This may well be so, but I believe Giraudoux intended this 'true' to break the romantic agony of the classically trained playgoer, and Professor Gassner's accusations against 'Girau- doux' self-conscious and self-advertising playwrighting'44 seem a little severe. We find an element of hubris in all of Giraudoux' 'jeunes filles', and one of the author's frequent devices is to prick the romantic bubble his heroines have blown up by and for themselves. (Only Alcmene can have both her husband and Jupiter too, and she is not really allowed to know it.) Just as Judith's pride is punished by God and her apotheosis ends on a note of total disillusion, so Electra's search for justice ends in murder and chaos. Her words, "J'ai la justice. J'ai tout" [I have justice. I have everything],45 seem as bitterly ironical as Judith's self-acknowledged sainthood.

4t Ibid., p. 83. (My ) 45 J. Gassner, "At War with Electra", Tulane Drama Review, (Summer 1959), p. 49. 44 Ibid., p. 49. 45 Electre (Neuchatel and Paris, Ides et Calendes, 1946), p. 161. JUDITH AND ELECTRE 149

Unlike Sartre's , who becomes 'engagé' in assuming the guilt of Argos and thus faces the Furies' persecution with courage, Girau- doux' Electra is a gad-fly who urges others into action. Having 'de- clared' herself, upon the Beggar's insistence, she watches and listens as the drama unfolds. In Judith Giraudoux attacks the false patriotism which breaks a proud girl's will, in Electre absolute justice becomes the target of his irony. Fate, or God, may choose their instrument be- cause of blood ties as well as because of some attribute such as Judith's fatal beauty. In either case, the heroine is also the victim, but while the Greek model furnished the basic irony of justice (since Orestes' sense of guilt will carry on the dilemma), the apocryphal tale's irony is self-contained in the tragic figure of Judith. Essentially Electre is a tragedy of disproportions: the young maid is caught between fate and nothingness, the brother is trapped between his sister and mother, the mother between death and her children, Aegisthus between his casual position as the queen's lover and his potential greatness as a king; action at times bogs down between the little-girl Eumenides who announce it and the Beggar who reports it. Tragedy is torn between the family and the city; the Gardener deplores being stranded between his garden and a tragic involvement, and Man himself (represented alternately by Electra and Aegisthus) is tossed about between human needs and the gods' indifference. Orestes re- mains a peripheral character, much weaker than his sister, lacking con- viction both in himself and in the mission. (Sartre did exactly the contrary in Les Mouches (1943), where Orestes becomes the existen- tial hero who finds his freedom beyond despair.) As he does in all his plays, Giraudoux emphasizes certain modern interpretations, such as the sibling rivalry between . And he has added to the cast a young woman who represents the op- posite side of Electra, Agathe Théocathoclès, a tricky little deceiver, whose language fits well into the mouth of a modern French bour- geoise. The major change of plot that Giraudoux has contributed is the fact that Electra ignores everything about her father's murder and cannot understand her hatred for her mother . There is also a comic personage in the play, the President, Agathe's cuckold husband, who continually proffers clichés as if they had been invented by him. The truths he announces invariably turn against him, as, for 150 JUDITH AND ELECTRE instance, in the case of his lengthy homily against adultery. Fernand Baldensperger sees in the modernity of the play an outlet for Giraudoux' irony: "L'ironie animatrice se contente donc de sup- primer les catégories établies par la vénération des siècles et par les nécessités de la pédagogique ou de la couleur locale sacrosainte" [The animating irony is content to abolish categories established by the veneration of centuries and by necessities of pedagogy or sacrosanct local color].48 There is a certain brutality in the paradox of the little Eumenides, whose language approaches that of American bobby-soxers in the first few scenes, and who grow into adults during the short duration of the play. While they prefigure the inevitability of the disaster, they hold onto the innocent appearance of their childish games. Perhaps the author meant to protest against the cruelty of children, their frequent lack of compassion and understanding; most certainly, by their phenomenal growing up, he desired to symbolize the vertiginous velocity which builds up at moments of crisis. The symbol- ism is not inept: the little events, the return of Orestes and the pro- posed marriage of Electra will engender action which terminates in a blood bath. With the exception of the charming little schoolgirls in Intermezzo, there are no children in any of Giraudoux' plays, but those he does create are precocious and pert, giving their contribution to the ironic content of the plays. It is not easy to decide whether the message of Electre is an entirely pessimistic one, as Miss Hoigné seems to think. Her evalution is: "Absolute truth can remain effective as such only when all that is mediocre and relative has been totally devaluated".47 There are indica- tions that Giraudoux thought of Electre as a 'femme à histoires', and there is a certain link between the 'épisode Isabelle' and the 'cas Electre', if only to the extent that both heroines set out to find a truth that threatens their previous existence. There is, moreover, a definite stand that the author takes against the romantic heroine, and this at- titude is not entirely tragic. In a commemorative article in June 1946 Yves Lévy synthesized this 'prise de position' :

" F. Baldensperger, "L'esthétique fondamentale de J. Giraudoux", French Review (Oct. 1944), p. 6. 47 R. Hoigné, op. cit., p. 83. JUDITH AND ELECTRE 151

L'ironie de Giraudoux s'attaque au héros romantique lui-même; elle est l'expression de vanité (au sens de l'Ecclésiaste) qu'éprouve chacun de nous à l'égard du héros romantique qu'il porte en soi. Elle est la con- damnation du héros romantique.48

The irony of Giraudoux attacks the romantic hero himself; it is the ex- pression of vanity (in the sense of Ecclesiastes) that each of us feels with respect to the romantic hero that he carries in himself. It is the condem- nation of the romantic hero.

For Hans Sorenson, Electre ends on a note of great hope with the curtain line of the Beggar's explanation: "Cela a un très beau nom, femme Narsès. Cela s'appelle l'aurore" [It has a very beautiful name, woman of Narses. It is called dawn].4» To me, this statement seems to incarnate the biting wit of the ironist (the Beggar) who had also dis- covered with great equanimity that the eagle which floated above Aegisthus' head turned out to be a vulture. Screnson says:

Nous pouvons regarder cette pièce comme une intervention dans le débat politique de l'honnêteté intégrale dans la vie d'une nation. Giraudoux savait que la sécurité d'un pays est souvent assurée grâce à une multitude de demi-vérités, et il nous a montré ici ce qu'il en coûte de les transformer en vérités implacables et absolues. Tout est à perdre, mais la conclusion reste toujours optimiste: un nouvel espoir pousse sur les ruines du mensonge.50

We can consider this play as an intervention in the political debate of the whole integrity in the life of a nation. Giraudoux knew that the security of a country is often assured thanks to a multitude of half-truths, and he shows us here what it costs to transform them into unrelenting, absolute truths. Everything can be lost, but the conclusion will always remain optimistic: a new hope rises on the ruins of falsehood.

This is a noble interpretation of the dawn that follows tragedy, and lends itself, like all of Giraudoux' curtain lines, to multiple explana- tions. To me, the play appears unresolved. There are too many possible interpretations of the author's intentions, and none of the protagonists is characterized sufficiently clearly to act as a center of gravity. The action seems to resolve at times around Electra, at others around Orestes,

48 Y. Lévy, "Giraudoux et les problèmes sociaux", Paru, (June 1946), p. 10. 49 Electre, op. cit., p. 162. 50 H. Sorensen, Le Théâtre de Jean Giraudoux, technique et style (Acta Jut- Iandica, 1950), p. 120. 152 JUDITH AND ELECTRE or even Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. The Beggar tells part of the story, the Gardener tells another, and at one point the Eumenides, having grown considerably during the night, enter into the story by acting out their version of the forthcoming murders. Too many ambiguities tend to dull an audience's sensitivity. If Judith was Giraudoux' most ambitious play, Electre is certainly the most complete (and longest!). Ironically, this overabundance may well be the play's chief weakness. The most successful instance of dramatic irony resides in the parallelism of the Beggar, the ironist par excellence — played of course by Jouvet himself — and the events that take place on the stage. But the dramatic concentration in those scenes where the Beggar is present does not compensate for the extraneous material. All in all, the uncut version of Electre is too long, and one could suppress many of the speeches without changing the overall effect of the play, which is, in my opinion, almost as tragic as Judith. Giraudoux, even when he casts his glance afar at or pre-Christian Palestine, is aware that his 'adorable Clio' is a living muse, that the past has strong links with the present, not only in the permanent traits of human nature, but in the lessons of the historical and legendary events themselves. This twentieth-century writer also knows how to focus his attention on his own era, even if he keeps a certain cleavage between his role in political events and his creative writing. In the midst of those late years of his life, when he was intimately engaged in the anguishing events besetting his own coun- try, he created another character, one not derived from past literary works but cogently his own invention, one who, like Judith and Electra, had a mission to fulfill. He calls her openly a 'Mad-woman', but the ironic question as to who is really mad and who is sane allows some latitude of interpretation. Isabelle, Judith, Electra, Ondine her- self had all offered points of view and courses of action which do not exactly coincide with our trite and banal definitions of what is sane and reasonable, but in La Folle de Chaillot the presentation takes on a new crudity of outline, one which is perhaps not inappropriate for the century in which we live.