Miranda Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone / Multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal on the English- speaking world

19 | 2019 Rethinking Laughter in Contemporary Anglophone Theatre

Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/19821 DOI : 10.4000/miranda.19821 ISSN : 2108-6559

Éditeur Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès

Édition imprimée Date de publication : 7 octobre 2019

Référence électronique Miranda, 19 | 2019, « Rethinking Laughter in Contemporary Anglophone Theatre » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 07 octobre 2019, consulté le 08 mars 2021. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/ 19821 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda.19821

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Miranda is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 1

SOMMAIRE

Rethinking Laughter in Contemporary Anglophone Theater

Rethinking Laughter in Contemporary Anglophone Theatre Sophie Maruejouls

“'In the heart of each joke hides a little holocaust' (George Tabori): Horrendhilarious Wit on the British Contemporary Stage" Elisabeth Angel-Perez

Hand to God: The Irreverent Laughter of Robert Askins - “Laugh, motherfuckers, that shit’s funny” (Askins 31) Marianne Drugeon

Laughing Out Young: Laughter in Evan Placey’s Girls Like That and Other Plays for Teenagers (2016) Claire Hélie

« Naissance des comiques gays et lesbiens américains : le rire queer comme performance esthético-politique » Xavier Lemoine

Anasyrma et la hantise du rire dans le théâtre de Tennessee Williams Emmanuel Vernadakis

Prospero's Island

Pushing for Efficiency: Gifford Pinchot and the First National Parks Jean-Daniel Collomb

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, or the promise of “something further” Thomas Velasquez

Humanités numériques et études anglophones : Comprendre et explorer Géraldine Castel

The Shulamite of Sodom: Wilde’s Subversion of the Song of Songs and the Birth of the Monstrous-Feminine Gerrard Carter

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Ariel's Corner

Theater

The Snapper by Roddy Doyle and Alys, Always by Lucinda Coxon Performance Review William C. Boles

Textures and Layers of Sound: An Interview with Marcus Fischer Interview Alice Clapie

The Scarlet Letter : A comme adaptation Critique Aliette Ventéjoux

Tennessee Williams in translation : retour sur la première traduction en français de Camino Real Retours d’expérience Bertrand Augier

Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome: The Emcee and the Master of Metaphors in Bob Fosse’s Cabaret Essay Gerrard Carter

Music, dance

Regard sur Holy de la compagnie Affari Esteri Festival Le Temps d’Aimer la Danse, Biarritz, Le Colisée, 7 septembre 2019 Nathalie Vincent-Arnaud

Singing to the Most High for those below: the construction of gay male identity and the motifs in Josiah Wise’s “cherubim” Alejandro Gouin

Three Ballerinas: A Moving Sketch (Jellybean Dance Collective, 2019) An interview with dancer and choreographer Victoria Niblett Nathalie Vincent-Arnaud

Breaking Virginia’s Waves (1931): from page to stage Jean-Rémi Lapaire

Film, TV, Video

Interview with Maria Giese, April 16, 2019 Cristelle Maury et David Roche

Conference Report: 25th SERCIA Conference: “Trouble on Screen” Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest, France, September 4-6 2019 - Conference organized by Elizabeth Mullen and Nicole Cloarec Sophie Chadelle et Mikaël Toulza

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British visual arts

Elizabethan Treasures, Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver Exhibition review - National Portrait Gallery, London, 21 February - 19 May 2019 Alice Leroy

Recensions

François-René de Chateaubriand, Voyage en Amérique. Édition de Sébastien Baudoin. Christine Dualé

Julien Nègre. L’Arpenteur vagabond. Cartes et cartographies dans l’œuvre de Henry David Thoreau. Mathieu Duplay

Édouard Marsoin, Melville et l’usage des plaisirs. Mark Niemeyer

Rick Darke and Piet Oudolf, Gardens of the High Line: Elevating the Nature of Modern Landscapes. Claire Cazajous-Augé

Roy McFarlane. The Healing Next Time. Eric Doumerc

Jean-Pierre Richard, Shakespeare Pornographe. Un théâtre à double fond Armelle Sabatier

Julie Neveux. John Donne. Le Sentiment dans la langue. Claire Guéron

Carine Lounissi, Thomas Paine and the French Revolution. Rachel Rogers

Ophélie Siméon, Robert Owen’s Experiment at New Lanark; From Paternalism to Socialism. Alexandra Sippel

Xavier Kalck,“We said Objectivist”. Lire les poètes Lorine Niedecker, George Oppen, Carl Rakosi, Charles Reznikoff, Louis Zukofsky. Fiona McMahon

James Gifford. A Modernist Fantasy: Modernism, Anarchism, and the Radical Fantastic. Béatrice Duchateau

Silvia Pellicer-Ortín, Julia Tofantšuk (eds.), Women on the Move. Body, Memory and Femininity in Present-Day Transnational Diasporic Writing. Sara Strauss

Rachel Bouvet et Rita Olivieri-Godet, Géopoétique des confins Françoise Besson

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Sophie Maruejouls-Koch and Emeline Jouve (dir.) Rethinking Laughter in Contemporary Anglophone Theater Le Théâtre anglophone contemporain et les nouveaux enjeux du rire

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Rethinking Laughter in Contemporary Anglophone Theatre

Sophie Maruejouls

1 The revival on the contemporary stage of long-established aesthetic categories inherited from the comic tradition and comprising a wide variety of styles, ranging from the burlesque, the slapstick or the farcical to satirical and black comedies, calls for a re-examination of the role and function of laughter in anglophone theatre since the second half of the twentieth century. In a post-Auschwitz world where, according to Theodor Adorno’s much-quoted dictum, it has become impossible to write poetry, the diversity of comic forms seems to have provided playwrights with the means of filling the void of the unspeakable. As early as 1958, Ionesco felt the need for a theatrical medium that had to be violently comical, that had “to push everything to paroxysm, to the point where the sources of the tragic lie” (Ionesco quoted in Esslin 142). In this light, the comic voice, as it manifests itself on stage today, could prove to be the catalyst for a new understanding of the tragic. This idea was suggested by Mireille Losco-Lena in 2005, when she wrote that the use of comic forms could breathe new life into theatre and help redefine the tragic (249). So, if it is still possible for spectators to laugh today, what makes them laugh? What is the meaning of the bursting, inarticulate voice that shakes them? Is it simply the only possible answer to the strangeness of the world, to its radical inhumanity? Or, in that shared space created by laughter, couldn’t there be a desire to go beyond nihilism and an affirmation of humanity? The Rabelaisian experience of laughter as pure outburst or Baudelaire’s description of the intoxicating power of laughter seem indeed to hint at something absolute, “something terrible and irresistible” (Baudelaire 156) that unsettles the relation of the public to the spectacle and renews the comic tradition to expand the potentialities of laughter, making it not just “the only imaginable and definitively terminal result” (Bataille 99), but also a means of setting thought in motion and continuing to be human in a world that no longer seems to be so.

2 The use of the term “contemporary” has to be understood as covering the period from the Second World War to today, a period marked by the horrors of two world wars, by the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor, by climate change, by the

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gradual extinction of animal species, by terrorism… the list is long and could be even longer. Yet, through these troubled times, the comic form has developed into a highly reflective mode of understanding and representing the real. It has become a means of making sense of a multi-faceted, complex and ever-changing world whose propensity for not making sense, whose absurdity, resists our interpretative power, our need for coherence and order, a world that leaves us at times with only two options: laughing or crying. In its multiplicity of forms, motives and effects, laughter remains a highly enigmatic, highly theatrical externalization of something that cannot be named, which is why plays that make us laugh cannot simply be categorized as light-hearted art that refuses to take part in the violence of the world. After all, it is that violence that prompted such art, and it is because artists refused that violence that they chose to laugh at it.

3 Each contribution examines laughter from a specific angle, providing new insights on the political, cultural, ethical and mythical implications of laughter on contemporary British and American stages. Each offers us a glimpse of our times through the lens of humour, revealing the endless potentialities of the comic voice, its capacity for renewal and for addressing a wide range of audiences.

4 Elisabeth Angel-Perez demonstrates how post-Beckettian playwrights use wit as a new locus for tragedy to relocate, stretching the limits of language to produce a new form of laughter. Described as “horrendhilarious,” it is a laughter that bursts in the midst of horror, a laughter characteristic of a neo-satiricist tendency inherited from the theatrical and verbal experimentations of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. Her exploration of the way the innovative, politically committed playwrights of the last two decades have dealt with language, pushing its metaphorizing process to its limits while liberating it from the constraints of visual representation, sheds light on the infinite potentialities of wit as a political tool and as a central device in what has come to be known as In-Yer-Ear theatre.

5 In her analysis of American playwright Robert Askins’s play Hand to God, Marianne Drugeon explores the intricate connections tying comedy to tragedy. Drawing upon Bergson’s famous essay on laughter, Drugeon further extends the philosopher’s definition of comedy as mechanical repetition to shed light on Askins’s use of puppets, revealing the originality of a playwright influenced both by a post-modern, American tradition inherited from Edward Albee and by British In-Yer-Face theatre. The combination of the funny and the disturbing in Askins’s play is given particular attention, providing new insights into the regenerative power of the comic form as a means of putting thought in motion and creating alternative ways of seeing the world. Drugeon’s final comparison of the various venues for the play, from off-Broadway to Broadway, then to London and Paris gives a broader perspective on the different types of laughter induced by different types of staging, inviting further reflexion on the reception of comic plays.

6 Claire Hélie’s contribution focuses on British-Canadian playwright Evan Placey’s theatre for young audiences. Using research in psychology, her identification of the different types of adolescent laughter present in Placey’s texts brings to light both the exclusive and cohesive functions of humour. Analysing the modalities of laughter in the stage directions and in performance, she demonstrates how laughter participates in the creation of a “youth effect” that reaches the audience through the maintaining of a

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constant tension between distancing and empathy, laughter eventually serving as a means of involving the public into the aesthetic and ethical issues raised by the plays.

7 Xavier Lemoine’s article on queer laughter offers a well-documented and comprehensive overview of the history of queer stand-up from the 1960s until now in the United States. The variety of artists and shows mentioned richly illustrates the author’s argument, providing the reader with a new angle of perspective from which to approach queer studies. Drawing upon scholars Michael Warner, José Esteban Munoz and Jean Luc Nancy, to name a few, Lemoine explores such notions as “counterpublic,” “disidentification” or “presence” to find a theoretical ground for laughter and queerness to meet. Laughter as outburst, as something ephemeral and unfixed, belongs to the margins of humanity, to those moving limits that allow for the emergence of a queer subjectivity. As a privileged space where new horizons can be glimpsed at, the comic stage, queer stand-up especially, is reappraised by the author in order to bring to light its aesthetic as well as political potential and the significant part it has played in the transformation of American culture from the 1960s on.

8 Emmanuel Vernadakis’s analysis of Tennessee Williams’s ambivalent sense of laughter through the 1948 play Summer and Smoke and two short stories written around the same period explores the many layers of intertextuality present in Williams’s writing in order to shed light on the salutary, haunting authority of a laughter that originates in autobiographical material. Positing the gesture of anasyrma as a central, verbal as well as performative device in Williams’s theatre, Vernadakis traces the origins of the American playwright’s literary influences back to ancient Attic comedies, relating Williams’s use of puns to Aristophanes’s own mastery of language. The multiplicity of hidden meanings and influences that reverberates through Williams’s texts are thus brought to the surface in an in-depth study that reveals the multi-layered dimension of Williams’s comic voice, a voice that multiplies and overdramatizes the sense of “I” in order to bridge the gap between art and life, a voice that produces an ambivalent form of laughter, both apotropaic in its liberating, regenerative function and tragic in its stemming from a censored sexuality.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adorno, Theodor W. “Cultural Criticism and Society.” Prisms. Trads. Samuel et Shierry Weber. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983: 17-34.

Bataille, Georges. “The Use and Value of D. A. F. de Sade.” Ed. Allan Stoekl. Trads. Carl R. Lovitt et Donald M. Leslie. In Theory and History of Literature (Vol. 14). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (1985): 91-105.

Baudelaire, Charles. “Of the Essence of Laughter, and Generally of the Comic in the Plastic Arts.” In Baudelaire Selected Writings on Art and Artists. Trad. P. E. Charvet. New York: Cambridge University Press (1972): 140-162.

Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. New York: Random House (1961), 2004.

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Losco-Lena, Mireille. « FoRire, chaos, désastre : vers un nouvel espace comique dans le théâtre contemporain ». Recherches & Travaux (N°67), 2005: 239-249.

AUTHOR

SOPHIE MARUEJOULS Maître de conférences Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès [email protected]

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“'In the heart of each joke hides a little holocaust' (George Tabori): Horrendhilarious Wit on the British Contemporary Stage"

Elisabeth Angel-Perez

If we take it from Aristotle that comedy has to do with evil and the ugly1, then laughter becomes the symptom of some kind of merry fatality telling us about the inevitable evil of humanity. Laughter is therefore often (always?) the sign of an assertion (acceptation?) of the worst and tends to elect comedy as potentially even more tragic than tragedy: and this is because comedy does not repudiate ugliness and evil – on the contrary, it thrives on them. Even if it puts them at a distance, the basic rhetorical principle on which comedy is based is close to praeteritio (“I will not tell you what in fact I’m telling you”, as famously exemplified by the “He said Jehovah” joke in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian”). One can feel therefore, to put it with Edward Bond, that “the comic does not alleviate the suffering entailed by the tragic. It makes it worse – yet”, and this is what Bond adds, “so doing, it changes the nature of the real and gives us back our innocence.”2 Bond’s intuition deserves further analysis. Is this statement really valid in our post-Auschwitz, post-Adornian world? Can we be as optimistic as post-Marxist Edward Bond, who keeps repeating that he is “a citizen of Auschwitz and a citizen of Hiroshima” (Bond 2)? If “we come after”, as George Steiner puts it (Steiner 8), is innocence retrievable at all? The link between laughter and violence has been extensively commented upon. As shown by Laetitia Pasquet, one of the earliest critics who made a point about the violence of English humour is Baudelaire. In his well-known reaction to a British pantomime performed in France, he claimed that what struck him in the performance given by the English actors was the violence emanating from the performance3. Whereas Baudelaire’s impression invites us to consider violence as intrinsic to British humour or to British laughter, other theorists or philosophers, among whom Bergson of course, suggest that we understand laughter (no matter its cause or nationality) as a

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violence in itself: a violence performed on the body (both that of the farcical mechanised character and that of the laughing spectators who are jerked out of their rational composed stance). In parallel I would argue that wit can be seen as a violence performed on language which is forced out of its logic (nonsense, absurdism), taken off its course and severed from its conventional symbolical level. Ever since Beckett, we have known that laughter is the best of places for tragedy to relocate. Ever since Nell declared that “Nothing’s funnier than unhappiness”, the porosity between the tragic and the comic has been a fact. In Mein Kampf (farce), Hungarian playwright and theatre director George Tabori writes: “In the heart of each joke hides a little holocaust.” In this article, I will contend that wit is a privileged form to express trauma (be it intimate, domestic or collective) on the contemporary stage. Tabori’s cruel joke epitomises and radicalises the post-Adornian turn. The major rupture indeed concerns what Adorno calls “light-heartedness”: Art, which if not reflective is no longer possible at all, must swear itself off of light- heartedness. Compelling it to do so above all is what happened in the recent past. The proposition that after Auschwitz not one more poem can be written does not hold utterly, but it is certain that after this event, because it was possible and remains possible into the unforeseeable future, light-hearted art is no longer tenable. (Adorno 1981, 603-604) “[L]ight-heartedness”, “serenity”, “gaiety” (Heiterkeit, in German) can no longer be part of the frame and this paradigmatic turn delineates a new sort of laughter, a sort of laughter which becomes the best expression possible of the tragic feeling. A number of books have addressed the subject, starting with J. L. Styan or Kenneth Steele White who popularised such concepts as “the dark comedy” or “savage comedy”, or, on the French side, with Clément Rosset’s “exterminating laughter” in Logiques du pire (1971) and, more recently, Mireille Losco-Lena’s “Rien n’est plus drôle que le malheur” Du comique et de la douleur dans les écritures dramatiques contemporaines (2011). In her dissertation, Laetitia Pasquet demonstrates that these books focus on the contradiction there is between laughter and tragedy. In this paper, I would like to further Pasquet’s reflexion and demonstrate that on the contemporary stage, wit, as a specific form of laughter, plays a central role in the aesthetic experience of tragedy as the spectators “experience the tragic in the middle of a chuckle” (Pasquet 2013, 432). One could argue that, after the critical post-Brechtian often grotesque laughter the 1970-80 (Howard Barker’s first plays and Peter Barnes’s Laughter! and Red Noses are good examples of this) and the In-Yer-Face ‘grunge’ laughter (Kane’s Hippolytus masturbating in dirty socks in Phaedra’s Love, Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking in which men and women can be bought with yoghurts in the superstore), another kind of laughter takes precedence when considering the politically committed, formally innovative plays of these past two decades. These plays very seldom graphically represent the action and turn In-Yer-Face theatre into In-Yer-Ear theatre. They often embark on aural performances (not enacted ones), performances that rely on the power of voice alone, and therefore facilitate a kind of relaxed laughter – a laughter that is not constrained by the visual, frontal presence of the ugly –, a relaxed laughter that harbours a sort of horror all the more striking and destabilizing as it reveals itself concomitantly, even consubstantially with the act of laughing (not laughter provoked by horror but laughter in horror). This aural turn in the theatre, which relies essentially on a metaphoric use of language, may account for the necessity to focus on

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the new nature of wit on the contemporary stage, in which the “verbal image”, central to wit, is given a re-empowered position. The champions of this aesthetics are Caryl Churchill, Martin Crimp or Alice Birch: their plays provoke an apparently genuine, innocent and harmless laughter in the middle of which barbarity is unexpectedly exposed. They explore the intrinsic tragic nature of wit and turn witticisms into the genuine locus of tragedy, thus engraving the tragic feeling at the heart of laughter.4 Doing so, they redefine both the architecture of tragedy and the nature of contemporary wit. These plays elaborate a new sort of wit based on a striking network of metaphors and correspondences envisaged as a more powerful tool to try and have us understand the state of the world.5 I will argue that a new sort of wit, often apocalyptic or barbarous, exacerbates the violence of language already contained in any verbally comic situation, and lies at the basis of what I call neosatiricism.

Exploring Wit’s Tragic Potential

Wit, as is well known, comes from the old English word ‘wissen’ which means ‘to know’. To be witty therefore means that because of this knowledge, one is able to discriminate, to critically distinguish. Wit relies on the capacity of imagination to be faster than reason to explain the facts of the world: It was considered a terrible danger by the philosophers of the first modernity (Hobbes, Locke, Hume) because of the pleasant and seductive (and often funny) effect a shorter and powerfully imaged proposition produces compared to the meanderings of reason. When Congreve has Witwoud compare sputtering gentlemen to roasting apples, the imaginative simile is immediately suggestive but the farfetched nature of the image, beside the fact that it probably tells us Witwoud was hungry when uttering it, takes us too far away from reason and verisimilitude to be a seriously enlightening simile. Yet of course, Witwoud is only a wit-would and not a True Wit. Wit therefore relies on the idea of an associative world and on the capacity to ‘explain’ the world by a series of binary equations (comparisons or metaphors) bringing together two spheres that are sufficiently apart one from the other to arouse laughter but sufficiently near to perfectly illuminate both terms of the comparison (Dulck 1962). As often when one comes to study the contemporary stage, one needs to go back to Beckett. Beckett confirms the necessity of a new laughter: his characters tell jokes that are so pedestrian or worn out they signal the end of the traditional joke (that of the tailor’s pitiful suit made in seven days compared to God’s world made in seven days, for instance in Endgame6); they are generally only capable of emitting “brief laughs”, when at all (“I couldn’t guffaw again today”, says Clov when pondering over this possibility, [Beckett 2009, 37]). This impeded laugh is subsumed by a second-degree laugh, “a laugh that laughs”, a metalaughter, a “risus purus” (Beckett 1953, 49-50)7 that discloses the ontological nature of horror. This metalaughter can be achieved by reconfiguring wit: whereas traditional wit is based on comparisons, Beckett’s wit, much announced by Wilde’s epigrammatic style, is based on paradoxes (“nothing is funnier than unhappiness” [Beckett 2009, 20]) that inscribe the contradiction (the agon, so to speak) at the heart of laughter. Beckett’s laughter often rests on this paradoxical bringing together of antithetical situations whether physical or purely linguistic, as when moribund Nell asks moribund Nagg:

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“What is it my pet? (pause.) Time for love?” (Beckett 1957, 12). The oppositional binarity of wit is pushed to its most extreme expression. When Congreve, in The Way of the World, has the coquette Millamant compared to a “streamer with all its ribbons out”8, the image, though farfetched, is perfectly eloquent and immediately enlightening. On the contrary, what characterises Beckett’s wit is the very unlikely relevance of the spheres he brings together. The deconstruction (re-foundation) of wit on the contemporary stage is continued by Harold Pinter. Pinter initiates a revolution in the very formulation of wit as he creates a double degree of instability in language: we understand that wit, by putting the world in equations thanks to an associationist or analogical vision of the world, destabilizes the unicity/identity of what is being compared: this is the first degree in the deconstruction process. To say that A is like B (comparison), or worse to say that A is B (metaphor), negates A and B’s ontology9. Yet, to this first destabilizing process, Pinter adds a second one: he undermines the conventional meaning of words and phrases by playing on their literal, so to speak ‘archeo’-meaning which is often hidden and forgotten beneath convention. The opening line of The Room, for instance, uttered by Rose who serves tea to her husband Bert, provides an illuminating example. ROSE: Here you are. This’ll keep the cold out. She places bacon and eggs on a plate, turns off the gas and takes the plate to the table. It’s very cold out, I can tell you. It’s murder.” (Pinter 1960, 7) This set phrase (“here you are”) which by convention designates the object passed on to Bert – his bacon and eggs as a matter of fact – is all too banal at first sight. Yet, the phrase becomes particularly and disquietingly witty and meaningful when one understands that Bert is “here”, as opposed to “there” (for instance, in the basement or outside) as explicitly feared by Rose. One minute later, Rose insists on the malevolent presence of an outside world (“it’s murder”), another very Beckettian expression usually funny because of the exaggeration and meaning metaphorically that the cold is very intense yet here literally meaning that not to have the protection of the room means death. Literalised, the dead metaphor instils disquiet and terror inside wit. This literalisation of language and reactivation of catachreses form the basis of Pinter’s poetics of menace. Pinter’s terrible wit destabilizes all certainty: in the same play, the walls are said to be “running”, whereby one understands that the walls are not only damp but may literally be running away. The metaphor is disquietingly witty as we realise that what is at stake in the play consists precisely in trying to keep the walls around oneself. It needs a double take for you to realise that this wit shelters catastrophe. Pinter’s oeuvre is replete with this reconceptualised wit: as the language unfurls, so does its instability and we laugh at the discovery of the quick-sand nature of what we thought steady and firm; we laugh at this ontological instability.

Militant wit and neosatiricism

If, with Pinter, wit is both metaphysical, ontological and social (“Here you are”), more recent plays have taken a radically political turn that qualifies them for more obvious satire. Dramatists frontally address a whole range of political issues including that of violence against women, ecology or globalization. Because of the numerous impending dangers and crises (political, financial, environmental and scientific) (Angelaki 2017),

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playwrights Martin Crimp, Caryl Churchill, Alice Birch, Nick Gill or Rory Mullarkey, to name but a few have developed a neo-satiricist ethos which we may call ‘horrendhilarious’. All these dramatists take traditional metaphor-based wit to its end by extending it, beyond black farce, all the way to such categories as the ludicrous, the incongruous, the madcap, the surreal, the zany or the over the top, the preposterous, or the absurd. Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life tells us about a woman – Anne, whom we never see – through seventeen scenarios constructing her as a terrorist, a victim, an artist, a performer, a car, a tv set, a cigarette…: the metaphorizing process present in the creation of a witticism becomes the matrix of the seventeen scenarios. The associationist process offers a whole range of simulacra that read as many (mediatic) filters keeping us away from the “real” individual very much in the mode described by Baudrillard (Baudrillard 1981). The process culminates with scenario 14: She’s a pornographic movie star A killer and a brand of car A KILLER AND A BRAND OF CAR!

And we already know that “The New Anny” “comes with electric windows as standard” (scenario 7, Crimp 30).

She’s a terrorist threat She’s the mother of three She’s a cheap cigarette She is Ecstasy. (scenario 14 “The Girl next door”, Crimp 59) What is both very witty and very tragic about this metaphorical process is that it is based on the decategorisation of the referent (Anne). Crimp’s metaphors function as pure witticisms: they bring together incongruous and traditionally incompatible elements, which creates a comic effect. Yet – and here is where the tragic lies – a witticism consists precisely in introducing a simile or a metaphor which dislodges the solid knowledge we have as to the referent of the word (in this case, Anne, a woman) by substituting another referent to it, which is suggested or imposed from a different point of view (the choice of the image depends on who the enunciator is – Julie Neveu speaks of “indirect lyricism” [Neveu 2013]). If Ann is a cigarette or a brand of car, what is it that Ann is? consumable, smokable and burnt out rapidly? Reduced to the woman on the car’s bonnet? Funny at first because of their incongruity, these metaphors strike us by their violence and convey a pungent satire of contemporary society and of the place reserved to women in it. The primitive referent (Anne is categorised as a woman) is violently swept away to the profit of an outrageously reifying, commodifying, second referent (a cigarette). Another sort of violence comes from the multiplication of the suggested images: the proliferation of metaphors, as in the case of Anne/Anouchka/Anya in Attempts on Her Life in which Crimp tries to capture “All the things that Anne can be”, entails a progressive dissolution in the myriad of referenciations implied, and the identity of Anne is lost for good under the plethora of simulacra.

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Aural theatre

This affirmative bringing together of unlikely elements (Anne is “a cigarette”) is only possible because Crimp, like other dramatists of the very contemporary stage, opts for not showing, rather than showing on the stage: whereas Congreve’s Millamant is represented with her “streamers out”, Anne is not represented as a cigarette. The dismissal of graphic representation allows for what Dan Rebellato calls “a hypertrophy of violent imaginative representation” (Rebellato 2017). Unconstrained by visual representation, wit has all latitude to come quite close to surrealistic absurdism, a kind of absurdism which makes radically incompatible or improbable pairings, thus exacerbating the functioning of traditional wit. This linguistic humour is based on surprise and among its favourite rhetorical figures, zeugmas and hodge podge associations rank first. Caryl Churchill’s Far Away (2000) invents a sort of lexical zeugma (not syntactic ones, as is generally the case for zeugmas) and uses it as the basis of her wit: Todd: But we're not exactly on the other side from the French. It's not as if they're the Moroccans and the ants. Harper: It's not as if they're the Canadians, the Venezuelans and the mosquitoes. (Churchill 2000, 36) Mallards are not a good waterbird. They commit rape and they’re on the side of the elephants and the Koreans. (Id. 39) Surrealistic absurdism first allows for laughter because we take it for granted that this kind of humour is habilitated to dismiss meaning, but it soon strikes us as not being the “outcast of meaning” it pretends to be (Mourey 16). Quite the contrary: the madness of the world exceeds our imagination, and wit therefore is reinvested with a militant, activist political denunciating force. When first hearing that male ducks are said to be rapists, just like Latvian dentists, we may be tempted to believe that language has gone crazy. Yet on second thoughts, we cannot help trying to imagine what kind of a new world this would be if words still meant what it is they mean, if the metaphorical network at the basis of wit was to be taken as a valid system, and if language was to be taken at face value. It is precisely this strategy that Caryl Churchill exacerbates in her brilliant 2016 play, Escaped Alone. The play opened at the Royal Court and staged four seventy year old actresses in an English garden, a sort of comedy of nostalgic manners, or a ‘conversation piece’ set in a British back garden, the back garden being nostalgically reminiscent of Pastoral England, lost Eden or Arcadia. As all Pastorals that always bear the germs of their tragic reversibility, Churchill’s pastorality is systematically reversed into a dystopian revelation (apokalupsos), thanks to a sort of Brechtian cross-editing: at the end of each sequence or scene, Mrs Jarrett stands on the stage, alone against a black backdrop (therefore in the same chronotope as us), and describes Hieronymus Bosch- like portraits of hell: MRS J: The hunger began when eighty per cent of food was diverted to tv programmes. Commuters watched breakfast on iPlayer on their way to work. Smartphones were distributed by charities when rice ran out, so the dying could watch cooking. The entire food stock of Newcastle was won by lottery ticket and the winner taken to a 24 hour dining room where fifty chefs chopped in relays and the public voted on what he should eat next. Cars were traded for used meat. Children fell asleep in class and didn’t wake up. The obese sold slices of themselves until hunger drove

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them to eat their own rashers. Finally the starving stormed the tv centres and were slaughtered and smoked in large numbers. Only when cooking shows were overtaken by sex with football teams did cream trickle back to the shops and rice was airlifted again. (Churchill 2016, 22) Every apocalyptic image is anchored in a recognisable reality but of course all the situations are taken to the end of their logic and refer to the “anthropocene”, a concept introduced by Eugen F. Stoermer in the 1980’s and further explored by atmospheric scientist Paul J. Crutzen in 2000: The term Anthropocene (…) suggests that the Earth has now left its natural geological epoch, the present interglacial state called the Holocene. Human activities have become so pervasive and profound that they rival the great forces of Nature and are pushing the Earth into planetary terra incognita. (in Lavery and Finburgh 2015) The play, much in the continuity of Far Away, reads as a militant play. Elaine Aston analyses it through the prism of “dark ecology” and as part of a general demonstration about “greening” Esslin’s Theatre of the Absurd, as Carl Lavery and Clare Finburgh put it. Wit here consists precisely in the creation of this dystopian realism marked by the refusal of pathos and by the reasoned presentation of horror. The language used by Mrs J here is technical, precise, structured; sentences are perfectly syntactic and the diction is firm to speak of a world that has gone totally wild. Wit lies in the gap between the contents expressed and the perfectly mastered and composed syntax. Furthermore, in James McDonald’s production, Mrs Jarrett gave the audience a cold (not to say detached) account of what she had “Escaped” from, “Alone”. She did not opt for a lively pathos-prone hypotyposis. This normalized, somehow played-down hyperviolence triggered some horrendhilarious wit trapping the audience within their own laughter. At the Royal Court, dystopia had become a modality of realism, horrendous situations were banal and the audience experienced tragedy “within a chuckle of laughter”. Caryl Churchill’s absurdist dystopian realism is no isolated experiment. In an article entitled “Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in the Theatre” (Rebellato 2017), Dan Rebellato mentions two plays that I can read as part of the same horrendhilarious trend: Alice Birch’s Revolt. She said. Revolt Again and Rory Mullarkey’ s The Wolf From the Door, two plays that opened at the Royal Court in 2014 in a season dedicated to revolution and that contain their dose of eschatological wit. Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. (2014) was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company and directed by Katie Mitchell. In the 4th act, four women in a very composed manner discuss how they are going to take over the world: after marking their authority in the intimate sphere – “AndImgoingtotakemyvaginaandputitOnyouFIRST” (Birch 27) – women claim they are about to perform very violent and radical “revolutions”: -We’re going to dismantle the monetary system, overthrow the government, All jobs will be destroyed, And all couples broken, And we’ll take over the airwaves, the televisions, the Internet, etcetera, And we’ll eradicate all men.” (Birch 74) Less surrealistic than Caryl Churchill’s apocalypses, these prospective images of pure destruction whose unfeasibility is of course taken for granted are both comic and apocalyptic. Similarly, in The Wolf From the Door, Rory Mullarkey exacerbates this unfeasibility and therefore the comic dimension: the play imagines an apocalyptic uprising against the established order by the middle classes of middle England, a

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revolution carried out by very unlikely actors: Scene 14 is entirely made of stage directions: A women’s fencing association pull down Nelson’s Column. Buckingham Palace is raided by an over-seventies golf team. Harrods is looted by a group of 7 years old who’ve just got their hundred metre breaststroke badges. The BBC is bulldozed by South London Cossak Dance Society. A ukulele orchestra storm the Gerkhin (Mullarkey 42) Dan Rebellato remarks that this scene is entitled ‘The Sights’, and that yet, in James Macdonald’s production, “these sights were not seen; the stage directions were spoken chorally by the actors.” Rebellato concludes that “Nonetheless, these verbal images of violence, somewhat like those of Sarah Kane, push at the edges of realism; they are absurd, comic acts of violence and yet make claims on our imaginations” (Rebellato 2017). The power of the images is all the more important as these dramatists have renounced graphic representation: wit, therefore, is on the one hand disconnected from referential reality and creates what Barthes calls a “configuration de paroles” (“a configuration of words”), provoking an extra degree of fiction within the fiction (Barthes 1987, 89 sq.); yet on the other hand it does rely on solid and resisting categorizations (e. g. the obese “eating their own rashers”) and therefore, to say the least, it “makes a claim on our imaginations” (Rebellato, ibid.) and aggresses us so as to shake us awake.

Conclusion

These political contemporary plays redefine wit as the place where the spectator experiences tragedy. They re-empower verbal images and confirm the radically violent nature of laughter. All these plays, characterized by a “profound withdrawal from realism” (Rebellato, ibid.), rehabilitate wit not only as instrumental for a theatre whose mission would be to denounce the banality of evil, but in a more precisely repoliticized way: as a weapon and as a militant event. The “tone” is generally “apocalyptic” and addresses the Western world at large, the globalized (capitalistic) world and not, as was the case with the dramatists of the end of the 20th century (Steven Berkoff, for instance), “Maggot Scratcher”’s new ‘not cool’ Britannia. This epic neosatiricism targets globalized issues in the shape of absurdist epic fantasias. On the post-Adornian experimental stage, through a collusion between laughter and slaughter (only separated by one letter), wit has become a privileged place to cradle and harbour catastrophe and trauma. The aural turn taken by the post-In-Yer-Face theatre, the In-Yer-Ear theatre, allows for an “apocalyptic laughter” (Kristeva 1980), an eschatological wit that takes us to the extremities of absurdism, somehow rejuvenating the Beckettian project: En face Le pire Jusqu’à ce Qu’il fasse rire10 If this laughter does not give us back our innocence – Bond’s wishful thinking –, it certainly impulses a visceral experienced awareness of the tragic. Monstrous laughter “monsters”: it both shows and warns (according to the double etymology of the term).

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The contemporary stage exhibits a necessity to laugh “in spite of all” (Didi-Huberman 2004). Adorno, Theodor. “Is Art Light-hearted?” Notes to Literature, vol. 2, 1981. Angel-Perez, Elisabeth. Voyages au bout du possible. Les théâtres du traumatisme de Samuel Beckett à Sarah Kane. Paris: Klincksieck, 2006. ---. « Stoppard’s chaomedic wit ». Sillages critiques 13 (2011), online 1/12/2011, accessed 9 Feb. 2018. http://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/2477 Angelaki, Vicky. Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain. Staging Crisis. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, Methuen Drama Engage, 2017. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Paris: Seuil, 1957. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacres et simulation. Paris: Galilée, 1981. Beckett, Samuel. Watt. Paris: Minuit, 1953. ---. Endgame (1957). London: Faber & Faber, 2006, 2009. ---. Poèmes suivi de Mirlitonnades, Paris: Minuit, 1978 ---. Le Monde et le pantalon. Paris: Minuit, 1990. Birch, Alice. Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. London: Oberon, 2014. Bond, Edward. The Hidden Plot. London: Methuen, 2000. Blumenberg Hans, “Paradigms for a Metaphorology”. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1960. Congreve, William. The Way of the World. (1700). New York: Norton, 1992. Churchill, Caryl. Far Away. London: Nick Hern, 2000. ---. Escaped Alone. London: Nick Hern, 2016. Crimp, Martin. Attempts on Her Life. London: Faber and Faber, 1997. Didi-Huberman, Georges. Images malgré tout. Paris: Minuit, 2004. Dulck, Jean. Les Comédies de R.B. Sheridan. Paris: Didier, 1962. Hankins, Jerome. “Edward Bond : aux portes du comique”. Aux Nouvelles Écritures Théâtrales. Carnet de lecture n° 7 (2005). Jacquart, Emmanuel. Le Théâtre de la dérision, rév. et aug..Paris: Gallimard, 1974, 1998. Kristeva, Julia. Pouvoirs de l’horreur. Essai sur l’abjection. Paris: Seuil, 1980. Lavery, Carl and Clare Finburgh. Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd: Ecology, the Environment and the Greening of the Modern Stage. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Losco-Lena, Mireille. “Rien n’est plus drôle que le malheur” : Du Comique et de la douleur dans les écritures dramatiques contemporaines. Rennes: PUR, 2011. Mourey, Jean-Pierre et Jean-Bernard Vray, dir. Figures du loufoque à la fin du XXe siècle. Saint-Etienne: PU de St Etienne, 2003. Mullarkey, Rory. The Wolf From the Door. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014. Neveu, Julie. John Donne, le sentiment dans la langue. Paris: Editions Rue D’Ulm / Presses de l’Ecole normale supérieure, 2013. Pasquet, Laetitia. “Le Rire de l’horreur sur la scène anglaise contemporaine: vers une nouvelle poétique de la comédie ?” Thèse de doctorat, Sorbonne Université (2013). Pinter, Harold. The Room. The Room and The Dumb Waiter. London: Methuen, 1960. Rebellato, Dan. “Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in the Theatre”. Sillages Critiques 22 (2017). Online 30 mars 2017, accessed le 09 février 2018. URL: http:// journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/4798 George Steiner. Language and Silence. 1967. New Haven: Yale UP, 1999. Tabori, George. Mein Kampf (farce). 1987. trad.. George Lavelli. Arles: Actes Sud, 1993.

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NOTES

1. "Comedy is as we have said an imitation of characters of a lower type, —not however in the full sense of the word bad, the Ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly”(Poetics, 1449a) 2. « Le Comique n'apaise pas la souffrance du Tragique, il l'aggrave -- mais ce faisant il change la nature de toute réalité et nous rend notre innocence ». (Bond, in Hankins 11) 3. « Il m’a semblé que le signe distinctif de ce genre de comique était la violence. Je vais en donner la preuve par quelques échantillons de mes souvenirs. » Charles Baudelaire, « De l’essence du rire », section VI. Laetitia Pasquet dwells on this section of Baudelaire’s essay (Pasquet 2013). 4. Pasquet calls it “l’esthétique du leurre” (Pasquet 128). 5. This is Hans Blumenberg’s theory that metaphors are thought to be the only way to think the unthinkable see « Paradigms for a Metaphorology » (1960), (qdt in Neveu 154) 6. Beckett made this joke again in the title of the essay he dedicated to the painting of the Van Veldes, « Le Monde et le pantalon » (Beckett 1990). 7. Le rire sans joie est le rire dianoetique, de derrière le groin (…) c’est le rire des rires, le risus purus, le rire qui rit du rire, qui contemple, qui salue la plaisanterie suprême, en un mot, le rire qui rit — silence s’il vous plaît — de ce qui est malheureux. Emmanuel Jacquart describes Beckett as a « desperado of derision » (Jacquart 93) 8. MIRABELL: Here she comes i’ faith full sail, with her fan spread and her streamers out and a shoal of fools for tenders …” II,1. (Congreve 40). 9. Julie Neveu explains that metaphors, because they dispense with the propositional force of “like” or “as”, are much more violent and imply a more radical ontological questioning. (Neveu 2013) 10. This is Beckett’s first « mirlitonnade” in Poèmes suivi de Mirlitonnades (Beckett 1978, 35).

ABSTRACTS

This article argues that on the post-Adornian British experimental stage, wit has become a privileged place to cradle and harbour catastrophe. It analyses the way such In-Yer-Ear post- Beckettian playwrights as Harold Pinter, Martin Crimp, Caryl Churchill or Alice Birch explore the intrinsic tragic nature of wit and turn witticisms into the genuine locus of tragedy, thus engraving the tragic feeling at the heart of laughter. Doing so, they redefine both the architecture of tragedy and the nature of contemporary wit.

Cet article entend démontrer que sur la scène britannique expérimentale post-adornienne, le wit est devenu le lieu privilégié de la catastrophe. On analyse comment les dramaturges In-Yer-Ear que sont, dans le sillage de Beckett, Pinter, Crimp, Caryl Churchill ou encore Alice Birch, explorent la nature intrinsèquement tragique du wit et font du régime métaphorique qui en est le fondement le locus de la tragédie, gravant ainsi le sentiment tragique dans le rire. Ce faisant, ces dramaturges redéfinissent les contours de la tragédie et invitent à repenser la nature du wit sur la scène contemporaine.

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INDEX

Keywords: Beckett, Pinter, Crimp, Caryl Churchill, Birch, Mullarkey, wit, In-Yer-Ear, neosatiricism, tragedy, catastrophe, comedy, absurd, ludicrous, horrendhilarious Mots-clés: Beckett, Pinter, Crimp, Caryl Churchill, Birch, Mullarkey, wit, In-Yer-Ear, neosatirisme, tragédie, catastrophe, comédie, absurde, incongru, horrisible

AUTHOR

ELISABETH ANGEL-PEREZ Professeur des Universités Université Paris-Sorbonne [email protected]

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Hand to God: The Irreverent Laughter of Robert Askins - “Laugh, motherfuckers, that shit’s funny” (Askins 31)

Marianne Drugeon

1 Hand to God was written by Robert Askins in 2011 and first produced off Broadway in 2011 and 2014, then on Broadway in 2015, the latter production receiving five Tony Awards nominations, including for Best New Play. It subsequently opened in London at the Vaudeville Theatre in 2016, and was also adapted in French as Oh My God! and produced in Paris at the Théâtre Tristan-Bernard in the summer of 2017.

2 The play takes place in a quiet small town in Texas where Margery, a recently widowed mother, tries to find a new goal to her life. She has accepted Pastor Greg’s offer to run a puppet club. From the start, the context is defined as that of a traditionalist Christian congregation, a congregation which, as often happens in the United States, uses puppets to teach children how to follow the teachings of the Bible and avoid Satan. The teenage members of the puppet club are Margery’s son Jason, Jessica, a girl to whom Jason is attracted, and Timothy, the neighbourhood troublemaker. Violence and sexual tension are building up throughout the play as the teenagers are discovering and then giving vent to their wildest desires, wreaking havoc on the community. But the puppets themselves progressively come to life and take part in what turns into a destructive carnival. The couple formed by Jason and his puppet Tyrone takes centre stage, with the latter guiding the former on a path of violence and devastation. In a prelude, Tyrone introduces the main themes of the play as well as its tone, decidedly provocative and obscene and, as the play develops, he cuts himself off from his puppeteer, announces that he is Satan, expresses the dark secrets that everyone would have preferred untold, and becomes more and more physically violent. In the press, the play was variously described as an “irreverent puppet comedy” by Adam Hetrick in Playbill1, an “acrid comedy that will turn goose bumps into guffaws” by Charles Isherwood in The New York Times2, or “a scabrously funny scenario that steadily darkens

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into suspense and Grand Guignol horror” by David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter3. In The New York Daily News, Joe Dziemianowicz commented on it in those contradictory terms: “Hand to God is so ridiculously raunchy, irreverent and funny it’s bound to leave you sore from laughing. Ah, hurts so good.”4

3 This paper aims at looking deeper into the reasons why this play was at the same time considered very funny, and definitely ranked as a comedy, but also very disturbing; why spectators often cringed and felt ill-at-ease, some trying to cower out of the theatre, and why, at the same time, they shook with uncontrollable laughter (Isherwood). It will first explore Hand to God in the light of Bergson’s famous essay on laughter, as the play literalizes Bergson’s metaphor of the use of the puppet for comic relief. But Bergson’s analysis cannot explain the other reactions of unease, fear and shock which the play also provoked. Here, Mireille Losco-Lena’s study of the intricate relation between laughter and pain will help us define the very particular kind of dark comedy that Hand to God is. Indeed, the play is not only funny but also painful, for the characters and for the spectators who witness extreme psychological violence (in the vein of Edward Albee) but also physical violence. Our contention is that the play relies on the same tactics as in-yer-face drama, not merely evoking mental disorder but also showing physical pain, and in both cases triggering nerve-racking laughter among the audience who might feel physically assaulted. Finally, we will analyse to what extent the choices which are external to the text of the play itself may create a different relation between audience and actors. Depending on the various production teams, the staging in particular theatre buildings and the organization of space in the auditorium, the play may be received either as a mere vulgar comedy or as a disturbingly and painfully efficient in-yer-face dark comedy.”

Hand to God through the lens of Bergson and Losco- Lena

4 In his famous essay, Bergson outlines one of the first definitions of the comical as a mechanical and automatic behaviour. This explains why repetition, being mechanical and unnatural, is comical. It may in turn explain why imitation, which is a repetition of the same, or caricature, an exaggerated imitation, are all effective comical devices. In Bergson’s own words: “Imiter quelqu’un, c’est dégager la part d’automatisme qu’il a laissée s’introduire dans sa personne. C’est donc, par définition même, le rendre comique, et il n’est pas étonnant que l’imitation fasse rire. ” (Bergson 80) In Hand to God, the puppets can often be seen as the duplication, the doppelganger of their puppeteers, but also as their caricature. This is obviously the case with Tyrone, the depraved, foul- mouthed and ultra-violent puppet of a solitary, introverted and awkward teenager. The play thus echoes the dichotomy at the heart of works such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. But the stage directions describing the actors at the beginning of the play show that all the characters should in fact be felt to be grotesque and excessive: “The kids are played by actors that look young. But by no means the 15-17-year-olds that they are intended to be.” (Askins 6) There is no attempt at verisimilitude. On the contrary, theatricality is underlined. The play defines itself as a comedy about awkward teenagers as seen from an adult’s point of view. The teenagers are imitated, their way of speaking is turned to ridicule, their behaviour is exaggerated. It is clearly a satire. To that effect, the adults of the play are turned into

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puppets as well: this is the case in one of the first dialogues, between Margery and Pastor Greg, who tries to seduce the widow and plays the part of the manipulating puppeteer, putting the words into her mouth: PASTOR GREG. Try me you’ll like me. Least gimme a “we’ll see”? MARGERY. It hasn’t been but six months… PASTOR GREG. Just a “we’ll see” MARGERY. (Sigh) We’ll see. (Askins 10)

5 This metatheatrical situation, presenting Pastor Greg as the stage director and Margery as the actor, is recurrent throughout the play, which is based on comical repetitions. All the characters act at some point like puppets: they are shown as unable to think freely and to speak for themselves and the consequent frustration which they experience is at the heart of the plot. But they also all – even the actual puppets - turn into puppeteers, or manipulators, and dictate the behaviour of others, thus illustrating another metatheatrical aspect of the play, the mutability and instability of defined roles.

6 When Bergson only uses the image of the puppet to describe comical characters (Bergson 81), Askins literalizes the metaphor to activate humour. In his play humans act like puppets, and puppets reveal their power as puppeteers. What is more, Tyrone progressively turns into a devilish variant of himself, suggesting yet another repetition, or duplication, or exaggeration, so that three versions of the same teenager interact on stage: the introverted Jason, who is described in the stage directions as “Aspergersy” (Askins 11), the good puppet, and the devilish puppet who discovers, or uncovers, his personality at the end of the first act. Little by little the attention of the audience is drawn to him, as if he could live without the actor who holds him, not merely as an extension of his arm but as a separate being. The situation becomes particularly comical when Jason and Tyrone wrestle physically: the spectators laugh at the vision of a split body whose divided halves fight one another. This might be seen as an inversion of the plot of My Arm, in which Tim Crouch imagines that part of the body of his character becomes inanimate and open to all kinds of projections from the spectators. In his play, Askins suggests that Jason’s arm takes more life and meaning than Jason himself, because Jason’s personality has been stifled by the Christian congregation to which he belongs. Tyrone comes to express all the frustrations of teenagers whose sexual drives are being ignored or silenced by force. The sexual innuendoes are rife, and the imagery behind the puppet, an extension of the self which is brandished as a powerful – and manly – attribute, is quite effective. This tactic is named by Bergson as one of the roots of comedy: exaggeration is not comical as such, but becomes comical as it reveals a message, in this case, showing the relations of power between the characters and, more generally, their hypocrisy. For Bergson: “Pour que l’exagération soit comique, il faut qu’elle n’apparaisse pas comme le but, mais comme un simple moyen dont le dessinateur se sert pour rendre manifestes à nos yeux les contorsions qu’il voit se préparer dans la nature. ” (Bergson 76-77) Askins uses the puppet to show physically and materially the extent of the teenager’s mental strife. In the case of Hand to God, the hypocrisy of the Christian congregation as a whole is also demonstrated by Askins, all the more potently as its ritualization of all human interactions, made blatant by the puppet show, is also a comical device as such, according to Bergson (Bergson 87-88). The religious context of Hand to God is here expedient as the solemnity and unnaturalness of its rituals defeat its humanistic messages. Bergson explains the process:

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Dès que nous oublions l’objet grave d’une solennité ou d’une cérémonie, ceux qui y prennent part nous font l’effet de s’y mouvoir comme des marionnettes. Leur mobilité se règle sur l’immobilité d’une formule. C’est de l’automatisme. (Bergson 88)

7 As Bergson demonstrates, by dwelling on the body and the physical needs of a person, comedy makes the person laughable, whatever his or her status in society. This is the case with Pastor Greg, whose sexual drives completely erase the respect that his position and his dress, or costume, as a member of the clergy should earn him. Moreover, his stereotypical answers to the distressed members of the congregation who seek his help underline his insincerity: everything he says is mechanical, learnt by heart and recited without feeling, as when he tries to soothe the distraught Margery: “I know you’re a wounded thing that needs to be cared for […] I’mma go […] You’ll figure something out Margery. […] I hope you find what you’re looking for.” (Askins 14) Deflecting expectations, he does not really provide comfort or offer solutions, but merely states and repeats the obvious. Robert Askins’ dark comedy thus springs out of the discrepancy between the expected respect that a Christian congregation should muster, the values it is supposed to uphold, and the ungodly way in which the representatives of the Church behave in front of the spectators. At best the pastor is unsympathetic and hypocritical. His replies to Margery’s deep distress are insensitive and automatic and amount to canned messages reminding the spectators of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale: “PASTOR GREG. Have a blessed day. MARGERY. I am daily being taught lessons of patience and forgiveness.” (Askins 9) Once more, the use of puppets underlines that hypocrisy, as Margery, for instance, recites the litany of Christian values turned meaningless through repetition: “MARGERY. (through her puppet) Hey y’all my name is Rita and I love Jesus! […] (She looks around the room. Nobody seems to love Jesus.)” (Askins 7) Moreover, those empty words hardly hide the real obsession of all the characters, be they human or puppets: an obsession with sex. In the play, violent sex is liberating, it enables the characters to overcome their frustrations. The obscene is put in the spotlight, and the audience partakes, through laughter, in the freedom of the carnival and in the tradition of the farce. Indeed, following Patrice Pavis’ definition of farce5 rather than that of the Oxford Companion to the Theatre6 or that of the American International Dictionary of Theatre Language7 for instance, one finds in the play a progressive concentration on the body, as language is shown to be repetitive, inadequate and ineffective. Indeed, if we cannot say there is a lack of logic (Trapido) as those grotesque scenes do follow a progression in the plot, and if there is nothing really absurd (Hartnoll) in the situations presented either, Askins constantly exaggerates the consequences when characters’ bodies meet, collude and collide: Pastor Greig cannot touch Margery but he grabs her, love-making is never tender but always violent and extreme, and arguments turn into physical fights to the death, just as insults pervade the dialogue and stifle progressively the smooth and bland dialogues between good Christians. The play is grotesque, and the laughter produced is uncouth rather than sophisticated.

8 But the farce soon turns bitter, and the comedy darker, as the violent energy reveals disturbing situations of power. Jason, when he accuses (rightly) his mother of having had sex with an underage teenager, is cut short by the very same clichés and set phrases used so far in quite an innocent, or at least innocuous, way. This time though, the laughter in the audience is tainted with unease and disgust, as spectators are reminded of the all-too-real Catholic Church sex abuse cases:

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[This] puppet [is] possessed by the devil. […] The devil is in that puppet and we are going to exorcise him right out and have everyone back home by midnight. That’s what I want and that’s what Jesus wants and that’s what’s gonna happen. Right? (Askins 21)

9 Margery’s puerile vocabulary, made even more ridiculous by the alliteration in -p-, and the simplicity of her reasoning which equates her wish with that of God through the diacope on “that’s what”, itself repeated three times, make her sound like the possessed one. The scene finally closes with Timothy’s facetious answer: “Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters” (Askins 21) which, once more, plays on the mechanisation of behaviours, reactions and language, through a caricature of reality and intertextual allusions as potent sources of laughter. But by mixing that very light and innocent humour and dark comedy, and constantly wavering between the two, with the second progressively pervading the play, Askins creates unbalance, which is another characteristic of the grotesque (Pavis 154) and extreme unease for the audience. This works on many levels: the play as a whole, as its title suggests, may indeed be taken, to a certain point, at face value, with its characters and its author all swearing to God that their words should be taken seriously. But the hand of the title is also that of the puppeteer, the manipulator who, from the wings, twists the faces and the faith of his characters for mere comical effect. The whole work oscillates between a hysterical farce and a rather chilling representation of life in an American Christian congregation. In the words of Sarrazin in Le Rire et le Sacré, it is difficult to decide whether the laughter produced is liberating or agonizing (Sarrazin 36). The play is at the same time grotesque, not resolving anything, and politically committed, denouncing the violence of the Church.

10 To try and understand how the comedy turns sour, and how laughter in the audience is consequently also tainted with unease, the study of the links between comedy and unhappiness by Mireille Losco-Lena is very helpful. Interestingly, she observes that the Christian tradition, condemning laughter, considers it as the sign of the devil, which also may help us read the behaviour of the Christian congregation in Askins’ play: La tradition chrétienne […] considère que le rire est lié à la conscience du “mal” ou du “péché”, de la chute : de tout ce qui entame la joie pure. […] Le rire s’invente à partir du moment où l’homme a précisément perdu la béatitude édénique, où il commence à souffrir, à manquer, à être nostalgique. […] Pour que le rire advienne, il lui faut une conscience douloureuse. La drôlerie est tissée de souffrance, et, à ce titre, la comédie est tout le contraire d’un jeu innocent. (Losco-Lena 15)

11 Losco-Lena indeed notes that though some themes are defined traditionally as comical while others are deemed tragic, it is possible to write a comedy about human suffering, one that will not necessarily end with a return to order, one that will constantly play with the danger of chaos, and one which will leave the spectators perhaps dissatisfied and certainly uneasy (Losco-Lena 12-13). She concludes: Les pièces comiques qui s’écrivent aujourd’hui explorent si franchement cette ambiguïté qu’elles en deviennent troublantes. Elles se risquent à traiter de la violence politique ou intime la plus exacerbée, et les dommages y sont d’autant plus effectifs qu’ils peuvent référer à la réalité historique la plus terrible. (Losco-Lena 14)

12 The spectators of Hand to God thus find themselves in the uncomfortable position of mocking the intimate distress of suffering victims. From the first, they laugh at, rather than with, Jason or his mother. Thanks to his choice of writing in a comic vein, Askins effectively prevents any sense of empathy with the characters. Here a parallel with Beckett’s Endgame may be enlightening: Beckett’s plays do not definitely fall in the

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category of comedy, but they do make the spectators laugh, in an uncomfortable way, by emphasizing the physicality of the pain and the suffering embodied by the characters. The audience laughs at Clov who scratches himself because of a flee, or at Ham who is stuck in a wheelchair, in much the same way as they laugh at Tyrone who tears off Timothy’s ear. The violence is forced on the audience, and it materializes a psychological pain. Beckett also resorts to puppet-like characters, who paradoxically are obsessed with the slow decay of their bodies and are metaphors for existential anguish: Nagg and Nell, let out of their boxes from time to time, make for clownish comic relief and are clear references for Askins’ Tyrone. When Nell exclaims “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that” (Beckett 14), she voices the same idea: why not laugh at unhappiness? May comedy actually be more effective in confronting the spectators with uncomfortable truths?

13 But if Hand to God is defined as comedy, it is also constantly described as a very violent play. In that regard, it clearly echoes Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962). Indeed, in an interview published online, Askins mentions this particular work as having had a deep influence on his writing8. The frustration and mental distress expressed physically through violent games, the suggestion that the characters find refuge in illusion and that they have to go through a public exorcism to come back to reality, are themes which the two works share. The final choice that the characters face is also common to both plays: in the words of C.W.E. Bigsby in his study of the theatre of Albee, “either they must break the logic of the fantasy or surrender to it. Whichever option they choose will necessarily transform their lives” (Bigsby 131). When Albee attacks the false optimism of American society and the ideal of the perfect nuclear family, Askins mocks the hypocrisy of Christian teachings. Bigsby also notes Beckett’s influence on Albee: “Albee has been increasingly drawn to Beckett’s minimalism. […] His, too, are characters for whom habit has become a substitute for being.” (Bigsby 133) But if there are common points between Beckett, Albee and Askins, and if Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf has influenced Hand to God, the two plays differ on two main aspects: Askins’ work is defined from the start as a comedy, and it also goes further in staging a violence that does not remain psychological. While Martha dodges George’s bullet, blood is spilled onstage by Jason, Margery and Timothy. In that regard, in-yer-face theatre, though it is a British movement which has no equivalent in the United States, seems an unavoidable reference: Askins has achieved the strange association of sheer violence and comedy.

14 For Mireille Losco-Lena nevertheless, the two movements are at odds with each other: Les pièces à tonalité comique qui s’écrivent depuis une vingtaine d’années constituent […] une voix concurrentielle, mineure mais insistante, au mouvement in yer face impulsé par le théâtre anglo-saxon, et qui a fasciné toute l’Europe autour des années 2000 ; ce théâtre met en scène un monde « post-humain », un monde d’où l’homme a déjà disparu. Parfois non moins tragiques que lui, les pièces comiques sont en quête d’une joie vitale qui continue coûte que coûte à miser sur la vie et sur l’homme, malgré la prolifération des signes de mort et de désastre dans le paysage contemporain. (Losco-Lena 18-19)

15 Our view, on the contrary, is that Hand to God is an instance of in-yer-face dark comedy, resorting as it does to grotesque situations, but also forcing the spectators to witness the physical disintegration of humanity while making them laugh throughout the process.

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An American In-Yer-Face Dark Comedy

16 For Bergson, laughter is possible only if the heart is anaesthetized, it addresses solely our intelligence (Bergson 63). Mireille Losco-Lena qualifies slightly that statement: Le comique, surgi d’un grand écart entre réflexion et tempérament, est un phénomène fondamentalement contradictoire. Il l’a toujours été. Il semblerait toutefois que la modernité se soit attachée à le redécouvrir et à le penser avec une acuité nouvelle. (Losco-Lena 15)

17 Indeed, in the case of Hand to God, laughter may also be the consequence of strong feelings and deep emotional unease. It is comic relief in the midst of tragedy, or, in this case, dark comedy, offloading, releasing the tensions of ultraviolence. It is the laughter that might seem out of place when it comes as an answer to shock, the laughter of the spectators of Fargo, the dark comedy crime film written by Joel and Ethan Cohen. It is laughter facing the Holocaust, which was explored by playwright George Tabori in his play Le Courage de ma mère, where he writes about his mother’s arrest and deportation by the Nazis in 1944 (Losco-Lena 24-33). It may be explained as a coping mechanism, the only way for the spectators to bear violence. In the same interview where Askins names Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf as “the play that changed [his] life”9, he also mentions Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill as important influences for his work. Here, turning to Aleks Sierz’ analysis and definition of the relatively short-lived theatrical movement of in-yer-face, one is struck by how relevant it is to describe Hand to God: How can you tell if a play is in-yer-face? It really isn’t difficult: the language is usually filthy; characters talk about unmentionable subjects, take their clothes off, have sex, humiliate each other, experience unpleasant emotions, become suddenly violent. (Sierz 5)

18 In Askins’ play, characters fight, make love violently, and use foul language in abundance, especially to talk about religion, which is a taboo in the United States. The foul language is not only banter: it puts into question the foundations of the American moral standards and the Western definitions of right and wrong. In the play, Tyrone is the character who uses the most innovative insults, and he is also the one who challenges most efficiently the established dogmas of the Church. If, representing the devil as he does, he sometimes may bring to mind cheap horror movies such as Chucky [“I want you to go back to church. I want you to get up in front of the puppet club. I want you to tell them all what assholes they are. I want you to make Timmy bleed. I want you to fuck Jessica. I want you to toughen the fuck up.” (Askins 16)], he also quite believably gives voice and shape to the fantasies and frustrations of a depressed character, which was one of the functions of theatre for Sarah Kane. While the British playwright explored depression, self-mutilation and suicide in 4.48 Psychosis, Askins’ Hand to God centres on an introverted young man who mirrors the experience of the author himself, growing up as a maladjusted teenager in Texas, after his father’s death, with a mother who also ran a puppet ministry.

19 But foul language is not the only element which connects this play with in-yer-face drama. Physical violence also prevails progressively over all other kinds of intercourse between the characters. Indeed, the most striking characteristic of plays written by Sarah Kane or Mark Ravenhill are their pervading physical cruelty: rapes, mutilation, gory murders and cannibalism are not laughing matter…or are they? They are also present in the comedy Hand to God: Tyrone bites Jason’s finger and tears off Timothy’s ear, both actions projecting blood throughout the auditorium. Of course, this violence

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finds its roots in the grotesque and the farce, but I would argue that it creates in the spectators not only laughter, be it coarse and vulgar, but also deep unease and disgust, which they will also feel when presented with plays such as Shopping and Fucking or Blasted. Moreover, violence escalates in Askins’ play: Tyrone’s ear, after being torn, is sewn back by Margery, onstage, with the needle and thread of her puppet ministry. Margery and Timothy are seen having sex, biting and punching each other sadistically. Jason, who wants to get rid of his puppet, accidentally sticks a hammer in his mother’s hand. Most certainly, this violence does, to take up Sierz’s words “tap into more primitive feelings, smashing taboos, mentioning the forbidden, creating discomfort.” It also “takes the audience by the scruff of the neck and shakes it until it gets the message.” (Sierz 4) But the tactics of this comedy are poised between extreme violence and caricature, like a spoof horror movie. Thus, after blood has been splashed everywhere when Tyrone tears off Timothy’s ear, act one closes with a parody of a horror movie: “Tyrone loses his shit. Everyone stands struck. At the height of his tantrum the demonic puppet makes an awful noise and the lightbulb bursts. Everybody screams and turns to the door.” (Askins 20) The choice of words, though they are only used in stage directions, is telling: the puppet is a spoiled child, in the middle of his tantrum, rather than a real devil, and here Askins once more oscillates, and falls back on the safer grounds of a more traditional black farce10. But another scene, in which Margery, in a fit of anger, starts throwing furniture around, is quite representative of Askins’ particular style of in-yer-face comedy: TIMOTHY. What do you want. MARGERY. You know what I want. TIMOTHY. I do, but I want you to say it. MARGERY. You want me to say it. TIMOTHY. Yeah. MARGERY. Yeah. TIMOTHY. Yeah. MARGERY. Break it for me Timmy. TIMOTHY. Yes ma’am. (He takes the picture off the wall. He rips it in two.) MARGERY. Yeah. Rip it up. (Then in four.) TIMOTHY. Like that. MARGERY. Yeah Timmy, tear it to pieces. (Then again.) TIMOTHY. You like this. MARGERY. Smaller and smaller. (Rip.) TIMOTHY. Tell me what you want. (Rippy rip rip.) MARGERY. I want… TIMOTHY. What. MARGERY. I want… TIMOTHY. Tell me (Hands fulla pieces.) MARGERY. I want you to eat it. (He doesn’t even think. He just crams the poster into his mouth.) Eat is for me Timmy. (He does. He crams more and more of the ripped- up poster into his mouth. She starts to walk towards him.) TIMOTHY. (Through a full mouth). Yesh maam. MARGERY. Eat it all for me Tim-Tim. (He gives it a dry swallow.) TIMOTHY. I’m doing my best. MARGERY. Do better. (He chokes a piece down.) TIMOTHY. Yesh maaam. MARGERY. You’re missing pieces. There and there. (She bends down and picks up a piece of the poster off the ground.) TIMOTHY. I’m tryin’. MARGERY. Open your mouth. (He does. It is not pretty.) TIMOTHY. Ahhhh. (She shoves it in his mouth. He maybe chokes a little bit. He

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steps back.) MARGERY. You’re one stupid piece of trash ain’t you little Tim. TIMOTHY. You’re one crazy fucked-up bitch ain’t you Mrs. Stevens. (Askins 14-15)

20 The dialogue is of course farcical, playing on low comedy, buffoonery, deflating the intensity of the sexual tension by displacing it onto a poster and resulting in Timothy’s half smothered onomatopoeias. But it also shows on stage the violent rape of an underage and vulnerable teenager by an adult, which puts the audience in a very delicate position. The whole play thus swings between comedy and disturbing violence, constantly working on discrepancy, displacement, inappropriateness, indecency and bad taste, so as to effectively indict the unforgivable behaviour of violent adults. Interestingly, as we have seen in the various reviews mentioned at the beginning of this article, the reactions of the audience are also divided. This is another characteristic of in-yer-face drama which Aleks Sierz explains: “either they feel like fleeing the building or they are suddenly convinced that it is the best thing they have ever seen, and want all their friends to see it too.” (Sierz 5) The performance is indeed at least as much on the stage as it is in the auditorium (Sierz 3). Almost twenty years later, audiences are certainly more accustomed to violence and sex on the stage, even on Broadway or in the West End, but the reviews of Hand to God all describe similar reactions to those witnessed by Siez in 1998. Charles Isherwood sums up: Hand to God popped open on Tuesday at the Booth Theatre like a cackling jack-in- the-box, scaring away (really) a couple of audience members at the performance I caught, but bringing peals of joy to most everyone else. (Isherwood)

21 Mark Shenton, echoing the mood of the play and its literalization of metaphors, describes it graphically as “a show that is going to divide people right down the middle”11, while Michael Billington states: “My objection to the play is that using violence and hysteria as a way of combating hard-sell religion and hypocrisy plays into the enemy’s hands.”12 Surprisingly, the British specialist seems to think that taking the audience “by the scruff of the neck and shak[ing] it” is not effective anymore. Generally, the play was indeed less successful in the United Kingdom than it had been in the United States, for several reasons that are illuminating to look into.

Places of Performance

22 Comedy today is often considered as a lower form of theatre. As Mireille Losco-Lena describes for France, but this would also fit American drama, theatre is divided between innovative avant-garde and traditional popular culture, with the latter endorsing comedy as its form of choice: Dans la plupart des cas on laisse le comique aux cafés-théâtres, aux théâtres privés parisiens, aux salles spécialisées dans le “one man show”, voire aux studios de télévision, qui y présentent un art souvent médiocre. C’est là une façon de se dessaisir de l’art comique et d’accepter d’en faire un produit de consommation de plus. (Losco-Lena 11)

23 The history of Hand to God’s varied productions, both in the United States and abroad, both in avant-gardist studio theatres and in popular private theatres on Broadway and in the West End, enables to understand how the conditions, stakes and choices of a production are going to influence the reception of a play. This is true of all plays, but even more so of such a protean comedy.

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24 In the United States, the play was produced in very different places, but by the same stage director, Moritz von Stuelpnagel, first off Broadway, at the Ensemble Studio Theatre in 2011 and at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in 2014, then on Broadway at the Booth Theatre in 2015. When the play was transferred to London in 2016, it was produced by the same stage director, at the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End. For one thing those different venues will necessarily attract different kinds of spectators: in New York the theatres are located in different neighbourhoods, and their outer appearance also creates specific expectations13. As Marvin Carlson explains about such smaller, experimental theatres as the Ensemble Studio, “[t]he basis of its audience is not the same as that of the standard commercial theatres of Broadway and the West End but rather a more specialized public often involved with or strongly interested in experimentation in the other arts as well.” (Carlson 116) What is more, the space in the auditorium is not only of a different size but also of a different shape. Indeed the capacity of the Ensemble Studio Theatre is between 50 and 150 spectators, the stage is on the same level as the seats and the spectators are seated on at least two sides of it. On the other hand, the more traditional Booth Theatre, or for that matter the Vaudeville in the West End, have horseshoe-shaped auditoriums where the capacity is between 600 and 800 spectators and where the illusion of the fourth wall is more difficult to break, as there is a clear separation between the stage and the auditorium, with the orchestra situated lower. This organisation of space will have a direct impact on the relation created between actors and spectators, and, in the case of Hand to God, it will define a specific type of comedy and a specific type of laughter. Theatre is confrontational if its provocation is impossible to ignore or avoid, if the spectators are being forced to see the play close up, and if they feel their personal space is being invaded. Sierz is once more very helpful here, when he describes different versions of in-yer-face plays, not according to their texts but according to the conditions of their production: A useful distinction can be made between the hot and cool versions of in-yer-face theatre. The hot version – often performed in small studio theatres with audiences of between fifty and two hundred people – uses the aesthetics of extremism. The language is blatant, the actions explicit, the emotions heightened. Here the aggression is open and the intention is to make the experience unforgettable. Cooler versions mediate the disturbing power of extreme emotions by using a number of distancing devices: larger auditoriums, a more naturalistic style or a more traditional structure. (Sierz 5-6)

25 One may thus infer that Hand to God had a hot version in experimental spaces, and a cool version in the more traditional spaces of Broadway and the West End, which may explain Billington’s cool reaction, when he saw the play at the Vaudeville. Of course, many other aspects have influenced the reception of the play, including a different religious context, and a settled tradition of in-yer-face drama on the British stage which had prepared the audience for decades. The play, for all those reasons, will have appeared more grotesque and exaggerated to Londoners.

26 It thus seems that space does matter particularly for Hand to God, and that only certain productions are able to do justice to Askins’ dark comedy. Indeed, some experimental companies may go much further to create a particular atmosphere which will induce a disturbed laughter. It was the case of a production by stage director Joanie Schultz in Washington, at the Studio Theatre in the summer of 2016. From the outside, the building did not advertise the presence of a theatre at all. As Marvin Carlson explains:

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[T]he absence of external signs reinforces the feeling of intimacy, exclusiveness, and focus on the internal event, and creates, as a result of all of this, a conscious and striking contrast to the traditional commercial house with its flashing lights, billboards, and lavish displays of quotes from favourable reviews. (Carlson 127)

27 After taking an elevator where the tickets were controlled, spectators were ushered in a rectangular room by someone dressed as a parson. The room was meant to look like a church basement, with no single stage but several dedicated spaces surrounded by long tables around which the spectators were invited to sit, one hour before the beginning of the performance, to create their own puppets, thus sharing the experience of the puppet club and getting to know each other in a festive though expectant mood. The play was afterwards performed among them, with actors sharing the same space as the audience, and circulating between the tables to reach their dedicated spaces. The boundaries between stage and auditorium were thus erased, and the graphic violence of the scenes was inescapable, as was the very concrete physicality of the interaction between the characters. The set designed by Dan Conway is described on the site of the theatre: Not only is the audience seated at round tables instead of traditional seats, but the production team has created an alley stage so that the audience is on the same level as the action: there is no divide between actor and audience, us and them. This total immersion will continue at intermission by inviting the audience to the functioning church canteen for refreshment without stepping out of the world of the play14.

28 That organization of the performance and of the relation between the stage and the audience is clearly influenced by what Richard Schechner called environmental theatre: Environmental theatre encourages give-and-take throughout a globally organized space in which the areas occupied by the audience are a kind of sea through which the performers swim; and the performance areas are kinds of islands or continents in the midst of the audience. The audience does not sit in regularly arranged rows; there is one whole space rather than two opposing spaces. The environmental use of space is fundamentally collaborative; the action flows in many directions sustained only by the cooperation of performers and spectators. Environmental theatre design is a reflection of the communal nature of this kind of theatre. The design encourages participation; it is also a reflection of the wish for participation. There are no settled sides automatically dividing the audience off against the performers. (Schechner 39)

29 But, in the case of Hand to God, the participation of the audience and the sense of a community thus created are meant to be disturbed by the jarring notes of the text: what is shared is not communion, whether it be social or religious, but unease, anxiety and misgiving. The laughter of comedy turns sour, as the aim of the stage director is not to entertain the audience, but to make them aware of the distress of Askins’s characters and take responsibility for it, as Taylor Gaines explains on the theatre’s website: “Hand to God is an intensely funny play, but Schultz’s ultimate concern is to let Askins’s humor open a door to his characters, who are desperately seeking community and relief from their daily pain.”15 This exemplifies how humour can be used quite effectively, and counters the traditional division between committed theatre, which should remain serious and may, if necessary, use violence to get its point across, and comedy which is reduced to entertainment and which, when it uses violence, is merely a grotesque farce. As a final instance of the impact of production choices on the reception of this particular play, one may turn to its adaptation by Sébastien Azzopardi (who was also stage director) and Sacha Danino for the French public in the summer of

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2017. The choices made by the adaptors completely changed, if not betrayed, the atmosphere of the original text, toning down its corrosive and provocative content. The play was set in Vendée, creating an altogether different situation when the Catholic priest, who cannot marry, is sexually attracted to the widowed mother, whereas the American play had Pastor Greg asking Margery to marry him. Moreover, the play was produced at the Théâtre Tristan-Bernard, which specializes in light comedy and French-style vaudeville: the spirit was thus more that of a very traditional entertainment, turning sometimes into farce through exaggeration, but with the same burlesque situations, misunderstandings, typical characters and bawdy humour as any other comedy representing the genre of Boulevard Theatre16. The result was very far from the tone of biting and disturbing in-yer-face dark comedy of the Washington production.

30 Comparing the French production and that in the studio in Washington may finally help define the different kinds of laughter the two plays have provoked. Indeed, one may go as far as defining them as two different plays. In the first, laughter is hollow, the result of pure and simple entertainment. In the second, laughter provokes feelings but also intelligence. The spectators are forced to ask themselves why they laugh and even if they should laugh. The first is regressive and inoffensive, the second is potentially subversive and, in the words of Mireille Lena-Losco, regenerating. Most of all, it may be the only way for comedy to escape futility: La farce est un détour certes puissant pour évoquer les corps ubuesques et monstrueux du pouvoir ; mais, si elle veut retrouver son potentiel régénérant, elle doit retrouver sa propre minorité, sa vocation de contre-culture à inventer. (Losco- Lena 205)

31 In the interview published online, Askins explains how he first viewed his writing as “Western surreal tragedy”, adding that it took him “a long time to figure out that it wasn’t tragedy; it was comedy”17. The playwright, wavering between the two genres, seems to have discovered the power of comedy to move audiences to tears and to make them sore with laughter at the same time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Albee, Edward. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. London: Vintage, 2001.

Askins, Robert. Hand to God. New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc, 2016.

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. London: Vintage Classics, 1985

Beckett, Samuel. Endgame. London: Faber and Faber, 1958, 2006.

Bergson, Henri. Le Rire. Paris: Garnier Flammarion, 2013.

Bigsby, C.W.E. Modern American Drama, 1945-2000. Cambridge: CUP, 2000.

Carlson, Marvin. Places of Performance. The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989, 1993.

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Crouch, Tim. My Arm. In Plays. London: Faber and Faber, 2003.

Hartnoll, Phyllis, (ed.). The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. Oxford: OUP, 1972, 1987.

Kane, Sarah. 4.48 Psychosis and Blasted. In Complete Plays. London: Methuen, 2000.

Losco-Lena, Mireille. « Rien n’est plus drôle que le malheur » Du Comique et de la douleur dans les écritures dramatiques contemporaines. Rennes: PUR, 2011.

Pavis, Patrice. Dictionnaire du théâtre. Paris: Dunod, 1996.

Sarrazin, Bernard. Le Rire et le Sacré. Paris: Descelée de Brouwer, 1991

Schechner, Richard. Environmental Theater, An Expanded New Edition including Six Axioms For Environmental Theater. New York: The Applause Acting Series, 1973, 1994.

Sierz, Aleks. In-Yer-Face Theatre. London: Faber and Faber, 2001.

Tabori, George. Le Courage de ma mère; Weisman et Copperface. Paris: Théâtrales, 1995.

Trapido, Joel, (ed.). An International Dictionary of Theatre Language. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985.

Internet sources

Billington, Michael. “Hand to God review – satanic sock-puppet satire gives in to temptation.” The Guardian. 16 February 2016. 25 September 2018. < https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/feb/ 16/hand-to-god-review-vaudeville-london >

Booth Theatre. 25 September 2018. < http://shubert.nyc/theatres/booth/ > (last visit 25 September 2018).

Dziemianowicz, Joe. “Hand to God review: Steven Boyer devilishly good in Robert Askins’ smart, funny, foul-mouthed comedy.” The New York Daily News. 7 April 2015. 25 September 2018. < http:// www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/theater-arts/hand-god-devilish-comedy-burns-bright- broadway-article-1.2175377 >

Ensemble Studio Theatre. 25 September 2018. < https://www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org/ history/ >

Gaines, Taylor, “Environmental Design.” Hand to God. Studio Theatre. August 2016. 25 September 2018. < https://www.studiotheatre.org/plays/play-detail/hand-to-god >

Hetrick, Adam. “Robert Askins’ Puppet Comedy Hand to God Opens Off-Broadway March 10.” Playbill. 10 March 2014. 25 September 2018. < http://www.playbill.com/article/robert-askins- puppet-comedy-hand-to-god-opens-off-broadway-march-10-com-215546 >

Isherwood, Charles. “Review: Hand to God Features a Foul-Talking Puppet.” The New York Times. 7 April 2015. 25 September 2018. < https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/theater/review-hand- to-god-features-a-foul-talking-puppet.html >

Rooney, David. “Hand to God: Theatre Review.” The Hollywood Reporter. 4 July 2015. 25 September 2018. < https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/hand-god-theater-review-786761 >

Shenton, Mark. “Hand to God review of Broadway’s naughty puppet play.” London Theatre. 16 February 2016. 25 September 2018. < https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/reviews/hand-to-god- review-of-broadways-naughty-puppet-play >

Stephens, Beth. “Hand to God Playwright Robert Askins on Being a Title Fetishist, Losing the Texas Tragedy and What Opens Doors”, Broadway Buzz. 14 April 2015. 25 September 2018.< https://

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www.broadway.com/buzz/180396/hand-to-god-playwright-robert-askins-on-being-a-title- fetishist-losing-the-texas-tragedy-what-opens-doors/ >

Théâtres parisiens associés, spectacle Oh my God!. 10 August 2018. 25 September 2018. < https:// www.theatresparisiensassocies.com/pieces-theatre-paris/oh-my-god--2942.html >

Trailer of Hand to God, Youtube. 16 February 2017. 25 September 2018. < https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOeTGd_Aw5k >

NOTES

1. Adam Hetrick, “Robert Askins’ Puppet Comedy Hand to God Opens Off-Broadway March 10.” Playbill, 10 March 2014 < http://www.playbill.com/article/robert-askins-puppet-comedy-hand-to-god-opens-off- broadway-march-10-com-215546 > (last visit 25 September 2018) 2. Charles Isherwood, “Review: Hand to God Features a Foul-Talking Puppet.” The New York Times, 7 April 2015 < https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/theater/review-hand-to-god-features-a-foul-talking- puppet.html > (last visit 25 September 2018). 3. David Rooney, “Hand to God: Theater Review.” The Hollywood Reporter, 4 July 2015 < https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/hand-god-theater-review-786761 > (last visit 25 September 2018). 4. Joe Dziemianowicz, “Hand to God review: Steven Boyer devilishly good in Robert Askins’ smart, funny, foul-mouthed comedy.” The New York Daily News, 7 April 2015 < http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/theater-arts/hand-god-devilish-comedy-burns- bright-broadway-article-1.2175377 > (last visit 25 September 2018). 5. “A la farce, on associe d’ordinaire un comique grotesque et bouffon, un rire grossier et un style peu raffiné” (Pavis. 138). 6. “an extreme form of comedy in which laughter is raised at the expense of probability, particularly by horseplay and bodily assault. (…) In modern usage the word farce is applied to a full-length play dealing with some absurd situations, generally based on extra-marital adventures – hence the term ‘bedroom farce’.” (Hartnoll 170). 7. “Fast-paced, broad comedy written to excite laughter, often with little regard for logic in plot or depth of characterization, but with plenty of physical action, notably mishaps, surprises, and reversals.” (Trapido 290). 8. Beth Stevens, “Hand to God Playwright Robert Askins on Being a Title Fetishist, Losing the Texas Tragedy and What Opens Doors”, Broadway Buzz, 14 April 2015 < https://www.broadway.com/buzz/180396/hand-to-god-playwright-robert-askins-on-being-a- title-fetishist-losing-the-texas-tragedy-what-opens-doors/ > (last visit 25 September 2018). 9. Beth Stevens, “Hand to God Playwright Robert Askins on Being a Title Fetishist, Losing the Texas Tragedy and What Opens Doors”, Broadway Buzz, 14 April 2015 < https://www.broadway.com/buzz/180396/hand-to-god-playwright-robert-askins-on-being-a- title-fetishist-losing-the-texas-tragedy-what-opens-doors/ > (last visit 25 September 2018). 10. Black farce is defined as “a form that both provokes and undercuts laughter by making audiences, as they laugh, perceive the bleakness of a character’s situation or of his/her existence in an irrational universe.” (Trapido 83). 11. Mark Shenton, “Hand to God review of Broadway’s naughty puppet play.” London Theatre, 16 February 2016 < https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/reviews/hand-to-god-review-of-broadways-naughty- puppet-play > (last visit 25 September 2018).

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12. Michael Billington, “Hand to God review – satanic sock-puppet satire gives in to temptation.” The Guardian, 16 February 2016 < https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/feb/16/hand-to-god-review-vaudeville-london > (last visit 25 September 2018). 13. One may compare the photographs of the façades and auditoriums of these theatres on their websites, or on google maps: < https://www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org/history/ > (last visit 25 September 2018). < https://www.google.fr/maps/place/Ensemble+Studio+Theatre/@40.7669463,-73.9929678,2a, 75y,47.76h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1saFpRnxiR_udrxUHUfP_ZPA!2e0!3e2! 6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DaFpRnxiR_udrxUHUfP_ZPA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dsearch.TACTILE.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w 7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c2585a99a9b3ad:0xa65be6cb924e079e!8m2!3d40.766961! 4d-73.992873 > (last visit 25 September 2018). < http://shubert.nyc/theatres/booth/ > (last visit 25 September 2018). 14. Taylor Gaines, “Environmental Design”, website of the Studio Theatre < https://www.studiotheatre.org/plays/play-detail/hand-to-god > (last visit 25 September 2018). 15. Taylor Gaines, “Environmental Design”, website of the Studio Theatre < https://www.studiotheatre.org/plays/play-detail/hand-to-god > (last visit 25 September 2018). 16. To have an idea of the atmosphere created at the Théâtre Tristan-Bernard, one may watch the short promotional video on the website of Théâtres parisiens associés: < https://www.theatresparisiensassocies.com/pieces-theatre-paris/oh-my-god--2942.html > (last visit 25 September 2018). One may also compare that video with the official trailer of the play in the United States: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOeTGd_Aw5k > (last visit 25 September 2018). 17. Beth Stevens, “Hand to God Playwright Robert Askins on Being a Title Fetishist, Losing the Texas Tragedy and What Opens Doors”, Broadway Buzz, 14 April 2015 < https://www.broadway.com/buzz/180396/hand-to-god-playwright-robert-askins-on-being-a- title-fetishist-losing-the-texas-tragedy-what-opens-doors/ > (last visit 25 September 2018).

ABSTRACTS

This article aims at defining the laughter provoked by the play Hand to God written by American playwright Robert Askins in 2011. This dark comedy uses the classical tools of humour, as analysed by Henri Bergson in his essay on laughter, but it creates a desperate atmosphere of mental and physical violence, which reminds of the tactics of British in-yer-face theatre. Askins aims at displaying the taboos and denouncing the hypocrisy of the American society in general, and more particularly that of Christian congregations faced to the sexuality of teenagers. The spectators’ reactions are a complex combination of laughter and unease, as Askins dares them to laugh as they cringe. But those reactions also depend on the conditions of production, which have greatly varied from Off-Broadway to Broadway, and from New York to London and Paris.

Cet article tente de définir le rire provoqué par la pièce écrite par le dramaturge américain Robert Askins, Hand to God en 2011. Cette comédie noire mêle en effet les effets comiques classiques, tels que Bergson les analyse dans son essai sur le rire, et une atmosphère désespérée de violence mentale et physique, qui n’est pas sans rappeler le mouvement britannique du théâtre In-Yer-Face. Askins cherche ainsi à exposer les tabous pour dénoncer l’hypocrisie de la

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société américaine dans son ensemble, et des communautés chrétiennes en particulier, face à la sexualité des adolescents. Entre le rire franc et le malaise, les réactions des spectateurs sont très complexes, et dépendent aussi des conditions de représentation de la pièce : rit-on de la même façon à Broadway que dans les petits théâtres expérimentaux, à New York, Londres ou Paris ?

INDEX

Mots-clés: théâtre In-Yer-Face, comédie noire, Broadway, Off-Broadway, le West End, marionnette, adaptation, rire, malaise Keywords: In-yer-Face theatre, dark comedy, Broadway, Off-Broadway, West End, puppet, adaptation, laughter, unease

AUTHORS

MARIANNE DRUGEON Maîtresse de conférences Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 [email protected]

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Laughing Out Young: Laughter in Evan Placey’s Girls Like That and Other Plays for Teenagers (2016)

Claire Hélie

1 Evan Placey1 is a Canadian-British playwright who writes for young audiences; but unlike playwrights such as Edward Bond, Dennis Kelly or Tim Crouch, he writes for young audiences only. Some of his plays target young children, like WiLd! (2016), the monologue of an 8-year-old boy with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), other young adults, like Consensual (2015), which explores the grey area between rape and consent. His favourite audience remain teenagers and four of the plays he wrote for them were collected in Girls Like That and Other Plays for Teenagers in 2016.

2 His plays have been performed in many teen theatre festivals, like the 2014 National Theatre Connections, an annual youth theatre festival in London during which ten plays from established playwrights are performed by youth theatre groups (plays by Enda Walsh, Mark Ravenhill, Howard Brenton or Alice Birch have featured in this festival). Girls Like That was awarded the Best Play for Young Audiences at the 2015 Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Awards. His plays have travelled all over the world and received critical acclaim. In France for instance, his plays were translated and performed during the 2015 Mousson d’hiver, the 2017 Regards Croisés, the 2018 Mousson d’été, to name but a few. His work is usually well received by the press and seen as an essential tool to help teenagers through the growing process and out of the pitfalls of adolescence. For instance, he is featured along Christine Quintana in “Teaching teens about #MeToo Through Theatre”. Instructors seem to see the didactic potential of Placey’s work and almost all his plays come with a “teachers’ resource pack” that will help teachers bring the plays to their students’ attention in class before watching them on stage. Performances can be given by professional young actors, but are also big hits among amateur groups from high school to university (Webb Schools in 2014, Princeton in 2017, Islington in 2018…) When performed at Edmonton Highschool in 2017, student reviewers all praised one of the actresses for her comic potential which gave them “fits of laughter”.

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3 Unsurprisingly, in his plays, which give a panoramic view of what adolescence is, Evan Placey portrays teenagers laughing a lot through puberty and life crises. Descartes had his cogito, youth have their “I laugh therefore I am.” As we shall see, paradoxically, these laughing-out-young moments, which are simultaneously dramatic gestures on stage and means of communication with the audience, are both naturalistic in that they induce a youth effect (as in Roland Barthes’s “effet de réel”) which aims at creating empathy, and anti-naturalistic in that character repeatedly question the source and target of laughter, thus introducing a Brechtian distancing effect.

Laughter in Evan Placey’s Plays for Teenagers: Some Definitions

4 Adolescence is researched in many different fields – sociology, psychology and psychiatry to name but a few; it even has its own branch in medicine, named hebiatrics. It is consistently defined as the transition undergone when a child, going through puberty, develops into an adult. From a physiological perspective, laughing is a way to discharge the tension accumulated and it helps bring release. According to Victorian philosopher Herbert Spencer in On the Physiology of Laughter, “Laughter naturally results only when consciousness is unawares transferred from great things to small—only when there is what we call a descending incongruity” (Spencer 225). In other words, laughter makes the release of pent-up energy possible. Since adolescence is characterised by many hormonal changes, laughing works as some sort of emotional thermostat, a defence mechanism when the body is under a lot of stress because of puberty. Psychiatrist Jean-Pierre Kamieniak also insists on the idea that humour is a response to physiological and psychical changes. Indeed, the traditional image of adolescents in a state of advanced lethargy on their sofa competes with that of a group of young people laughing together, or more likely, laughing at one another, in an attempt to meet the Other. Teenagers laugh about the same things; it is a way for them to check whether they share common fantasies. It is also a way for them to bond with other teens, which is why sociologists like Olivier Galland and Dominique Pasquier insist on the cultural dimension of adolescence which they claim is defined by “peer culture” and “horizontal sociability” on the one hand, and generational conflict on the other (Galland 5, my translation). Indeed, the concept of what makes adolescents laugh is not so easy to grasp and adults, whether educators or parents, often feel like old bores when in a room filled with young people. As Bergson demonstrated, laughter has a normative function: it is a social correction to any form of social abnormality and being an adult is not normal in a teen’s world, which makes it very challenging for artists to write for young audiences.

5 Theatre for young audiences remains an elusive term though. It is basically defined by its target audience, which seems to be exclusive of older audiences, even though child- carers and instructors are necessarily involved in the process, be it only by buying the ticket or giving a lift to the theatre. In the case of Girls Like That and other Plays for Teenagers, the audience are supposedly teens, between the age of 13 and 19, exactly the same age as the young people on the cover mugshots. The title play was commissioned by and performed at The Unicorn Theatre, a London theatre dedicated to children and young adults aged 2 to 21, it is regularly put on in schools and it won the 2015 Scenic

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Youth Award in Béthune (among other prizes). The other plays have received similar commissions and reception too.

6 This audience target suggests three features that seem to be common to all plays for teenagers in terms of themes, characters and intentions. Indeed, the themes developed are related to adolescence and the action is more often than not located on school grounds. Banana Boys (2011) is almost a coming-out story – the homosexuality of the captain of the football team is revealed, which forces him and his friends to reassess their friendship. Holloway Jones (2011) raises the question of determinism through the story of a girl who was born in prison, was named after a prison and whose mother is still in prison: is Holloway doomed to end up in prison or can BMX provide her with a way out? Girls Like That (2013) follows Scarlett, or rather her classmates, after a naked picture of her is circulated at school and she becomes the victim of constant bullying. Pronoun (2014) is a comedy based on a group of friends who need to renegotiate the terms of their relationships when one of them goes through gender reassignment. Consequently, almost all the characters and actors are the same age as the audience: the different dramatis personae specify the main characters are teenagers. People over 20 are usually figures of authority like parents, guards or teachers, who have minor roles to play, and who, more often than not, do not manage to solve the teenagers’ problems. For instance, in Banana Boys, the Banana Girls are a group of Black singers in their early twenties who act as an ironic, non-committal musical counterpoint to Cameron’s coming out story. In Holloway Jones, the mother, a tragi-comic character, does not have a clue about what her daughter is going through, even though she starts supporting her before the curtain falls. Finally, the author’s intentions also help classify a play as a play for young audiences. In the case of Placey’s collection, it is plainly seen in the choice of the subtitle and in the preface where the playwright repeatedly mentions – though hardly ever directly addresses – his target audience: “I write plays for young people, […] we need theatre for young audiences, […] we need plays for young people”… He concludes with a send-off that insists on the virtues of self-derision and laughing: “And like the fairy godmother sending you off to the ball I must say, ‘Remember to have fun.’ I certainly had loads of fun writing [these plays]” (Placey xiv).

7 Placey knows he is treading on a thin line here because theatre for young audiences is always at risk of falling into one or the other of two pitfalls: escapism and didacticism. Though his plays provide entertainment, they confront situations adolescents can experience in real life. Besides, he constantly rejects the label “cautionary tale” for his plays. In a lecture he gave at Lille University in 2015, he said, There isn’t a moral or message in these plays, so don’t try to find one. There aren’t any answers either. I don’t have them. But maybe these plays can act as provocations for young people to find the answers. It’s they who must find them. It’s their future. (Placey 2015)

8 In other words, Placey wants to tackle moral subjects without moralising, and he does so by opening a dialogue. In claiming, “it’s up to you, it’s up to the audience”, he conforms to the definition given by Marie Bernanoce and Sandrine Le Pors of what theatre for young audiences should be, that is to say, “a commitment which extends beyond theatre for young people and which questions both the world and theatre, youth and adulthood attempting to look at the world as it has been since its childhood”2.

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Laughter in the Text: Locating and categorizing the “youth effect”

9 There is a rather wide range of comic types in Placey’s plays for teenagers, and some scenes show the characters laughing, which is sometimes indicated in the stage directions. It should be noted that the very presence of the word laughter in playtexts has evolved in time. For instance, all the references to laughter were erased from early editions of Shakespeare because they pointed to the realities of the material body; on the contrary, in Beckett, the word is used repeatedly and modulated in terms of length, pitch and type, because it is part of an experimental presence of the body on stage (Pfister 178). Placey’s use of the word “laughter” in the stage directions is not consistent from one play to the other. The word appears 11 times in Holloway Jones (and the word “smiles” three times) whereas it is used just once in Girls Like That, which, incidentally, does not contain many stage directions, as opposed to the other plays. What is interesting in these numbers is that this non-verbal mode of expression is always described through the same word, “laugh”, whereas Placey uses a greater variety of words to convey tone (sarcastic, ironic…) and pitch (“she screams”, “in a whisper”…) in verbal modes of expression. Besides, allusions to laughing are not frequent in implicit stage directions, when a character mentions or comments upon his/her own laughter or upon the laughter of the characters on stage. Nor is phonetically transcribed laughter (the three syllables “ha ha ha”) to be found in the dialogues. Even when there are straightforward allusions to laughter, they do not come in early. For instance, in Banana Boys, the word appears in the stage directions for the first time after 13 pages of script and after a lot of joking and humour. In other words, evidence that the characters should laugh is sparse. And yet, they do, and so do the audience.

10 Laughter can be triggered by situations fraught with puns and wordplays that suggest a communion of minds. For instance, in Banana Boys, while in a sex-ed class, Ben, who is openly homosexual and being bullied for that, is working with Cameron, who is about to come out. They have been assigned the task of putting a condom on a banana: CAMERON (pinches the top while Ben rolls it down) What happens if you don’t pinch it? BEN Banana split. They share a laugh. (48)

11 The joke here is not detrimental to anyone, it is rather benign and yet effective in releasing the sexual tension between the two boys who find a way to communicate through laughter. Yet, while laughter can be benevolent when triggered by a spirit of resilience and sharing, it is more often than not generated by giving a tragic-comic twist to anagnorisis, especially when the characters come to realise that life is full of ironies and there is no way of escaping them. One such example is provided by Holloway Jones who narrates an episode of her life when her foster family gave her a very old bike and she practised hard at night to make them proud. One night, she forgot to lock the garage where the bike was kept – everything that was stored in the garage was stolen and she was removed from the family. She then laughs and tells the audience why: “Cleared everything from the garage, but left the bike, rubbish old thing” (126). Laughing is necessary to live past such absurdities which have dramatic consequences. Indeed, Evan Placey strongly believes in laughter as a sign and means of resilience. He said about his work with prisoners on Holloway Jones: “What inspired me

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about the storytellers was the sense of hope, of second chances, and the humour to be found in the most saddening situation” (Placey 3). Laughter is redeeming when the character is faced with the comic dimension of human experience.

12 If facing the absurdities of life is not restricted to a specific age group, coming to terms with a sense of ridicule because your body has urges that are beyond control may well be a hallmark of adolescence. No matter how meaningless the experience of teenage life becomes, never does Placey explore the Theatre of the Absurd – on the contrary, his work renews a deep faith in the possibilities of communication to bring redemption. Adolescence is a stage and laughing can help young people go through it.

13 Psychologists have classified adolescent laughter into three categories: gelotophilia, or the joy at being laughed at, at experiencing embarrassment; gelotophobia, or the fear of being laughed at, of being victimized; and katageliasticism, or the joy in laughing at others, in observing something embarrassing in other people (Proyer et al., 399-420). These three categories are given a specific young dimension by being set on school grounds.

14 Gelotophilia is embodied by characters acting silly, especially while discussing body changes, sexuality and modesty. In Banana Boys, there are two corresponding scenes – in the first one, the girl gang is discussing relationships with men in the light of feminism; in the second one, the boy gang is discussing relationships with women in the light of virility. The conversation is lively, but only do they burst out laughing when one of the characters goofily brags about having sex, which the other characters think is incongruous and discard both times by exclaiming, “Shut up. You haven’t even done it” (Placey 19, 40). Self-derision and allusions to the life of the body thus offer a counterpoint to the intellectualization of relationships.

15 Gelotophobia is not actualized in the present but belongs to the realm of fantasies, of alternate realities. For instance, in Banana Boys, when Calum discovers his brother and his girlfriend have been seeing each other, he asks, “Were you gonna tell me? Or you two just gonna keep laughing behind my back?” (Placey 92) In Holloway Jones, the fear of being laughed at again for being “a charity case” who dreams too big for her condition, as happened to Holloway after she won a race fair and square, gives the young girl the stamina she needs to train even harder but also turns her into someone looking for revenge as she imagines her future self asking her past bullies, “Who’s laughing now?” (Placey 114-116) Gelotophobia thus relates to the philosophical trend that sees laughter as evil, but it does not belong to the here and now.

16 Katageliasticism is omnipresent in Placey’s plays because the issue of bullying is so central to his work. In Girls Like That, the students will laugh at Scarlett’s naked body but those whose ethics are exposed are the laughers. Indeed, Scarlett has no harmatia to account for: the identity of the person who took and circulated the photo is never elucidated and the play makes it clear that she cannot be held responsible for other people’s reaction to her misfortune and that she will grow past these mean girls. Yet Placey does not overuse the castigat mores ridendo mode, even if he has one revenge scene in Banana Boys. Prom is coming and Riley has refused to go to the dance with Tanisha after she had sex with him, which he bragged about. Alisha therefore plans a practical joke by tricking him into taking a picture of his genitalia. She then sends it around so that everyone sees it and laughs at him as a form of collective punishment. Riley thus has a taste of his own medicine and through the exposure of his private part, it is his lack of ethics that is actually exposed.

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Laughter on stage: Moulding Group Structures

17 Whether the teenagers represented on stage mean good or evil, laughing is a way for them to question or reassess their position in the group, to find their place in “the pecking order”, the school implicit hierarchy in the words of the mean girls. Placey is used to a modus operandi when under commission to write a play for young audiences: he writes a first draft of the play, then he runs a workshop around the theme and form of the play with teenagers, a phase during which he makes a few changes to come closer to the world of his characters, and finally, he writes the version that will be put up. Even though he listens very carefully to what teenagers say to him and to how they say it, it is not verbatim theatre, except on very rare occasions. For instance, he mentions one joke he inserted in Girls Like That after a conversation with a young girl: “Like my brother says: if a key can open a lot of locks, it’s a really good key. Like a master key. But if a lock can be opened by lots of keys then it’s a really shit lock. Do you see?” (Placey 201) The humour here is based on the analogy of key and lock with male and female genitalia. What the analogy hides is the double standard that allows (or forces?) boys to have a lot of sex while girls must stay virgin (or at least silent about their sexuality). Laughter is elicited by the gap introduced by the analogy between the unquestioned social order and the disorder that language brings in. Laughing out loud thus participates in the youth effect – the actors look like teenagers and their characters speak and act like teenagers. Studying the modalities of laughter on stage makes it easier to understand the dramatic tensions between the characters, but also fosters the process of identification between the characters, depending on their age and gender.

18 Yet, readers and audience are not expected to identify with the laugher – they are far more likely to be on the side of the one who is being laughed at. For instance, in the parlour scene in Holloway Jones, Holloway’s mother is first introduced as an insane woman, unable to recollect her memories, let alone the exact date of her daughter’s birthday, prone to using her as a mule and bent on abusing her verbally: “Got Alzheimer’s or something?” (Placey 118) “You some Naomi Campbell now?” (Placey 119), a reference to the 90s when supermodels were attracting high media coverage that may be lost on most teenagers. The whole scene is framed by an image of the mother laughing, the first time “hysterically”, while the second occurrence gives way to manipulative tears since she wants her daughter to hand her a handkerchief filled with drug. Even though the mother claims “You have your mum’s sense of humour”, never does Holloway actually vilify others for fun. These hysterical and fake laughs enable the audience to see the distance between Holloway and her mother and therefore to pity and identify with the young girl.

19 Beside being related to age, laughing is also gendered: whereas the word “laugh” is systematically used for boys, the word “giggle”, which refers to a silly type of laughter that is due to embarrassment, is sometimes used for girls. In Banana Boys, it is used twice for Tanisha when she is locked up in a closet with Riley at a party and is trapped into showing him her breasts in exchange for some money she has “borrowed” and lost. “Giggle” here is used to make it explicit that the girl is not trying to flirt with the boy but that she is ill-at-ease with the sexual tension generated by the situation.

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20 Furthermore, laughing as a male group activity can be enhanced by other dramatic gestures borrowed from youth culture. This is obvious with high-fiving. In one of the many locker room scenes in Banana Boys, Zach and Max are making fun of Callum who has expressed his love to his girlfriend, who only replied with a cinematic and laconic “Ditto”. The stage direction “they laugh” is used three times over two pages and after Max says, “No giving flowers till you’ve deflowered” (Placey 84), he high-fives Zach, a recurring gesture to stress comradeship in laughter. In Girls Like That, one of the girls confirms the gendered nature of laughing. After one of the boys teases Scarlett with taunting words that make everybody laugh, the girl notices: The boys laugh, some of them high-five. I’ve never really understood the high-fives. When I was twelve I tried it out, started high-fiving my best friend every time I saw her or I made a joke. But it just never really took off. (Placey 191)

21 Therefore laughter has an important social role to play, namely that of moulding group structures, since it functions as a meta-communicative signal in society. René Girard in La Violence et le Sacré explained that the expulsion of the scapegoat – and laughing at someone is a way of expelling them from the herd – ensures the cohesion of the group. In Banana Boys, laughter is more often than not presented as a group activity: “they all laugh” (Placey 19), “they share a laugh” (Placey 48). Everyone has a role to play in the production of laughter: the one who generates laughter, the one who is the victim of laughter, the one who laughs, the one who does not laugh… and not only can the roles switch but the situation can be interpreted in very different ways depending on who is involved. For instance, there are two similar locker room episodes in Banana Boys that involve a game of piggy in the middle, first with Calum, who is a respected member of the group, who enjoys the game and takes part in it by laughing; then with Ben who is an outcast because of his homosexuality and make-up and who does not take part in the general jubilation. Thus, laughs participate in showing, rather than telling, the nature of the social relations between the different characters.

22 When used in a symbolic way to pit childhood against adolescence, laughing or not may suggest evolution in time. For instance, there are numerous flashbacks in Girls Like That, the second of which shows the girls when they were eight. After an afternoon of merriment, all the girls lie down in a perfect circle, touching each other, until one starts giggling because of a tickle and the next one does the same and the next one too until all the girls laugh together (Placey 194-195). What this contagious laugh shows is that the unity between the girls comes from a recognition of a connectedness in their bodies, a connectedness that puberty and smartphones put an end to by turning Scarlett’s body into a virtual image that is no longer her real body, not even her body at all. Throughout the play, there is a nostalgia for this moment of bonding and laughter. The emotional distance introduced with Scarlett’s physical body once it goes digital makes a more cynical type of laughter emerge – one that is normative in the Bergsonian sense of the word. Paradoxically, laughing at Scarlett, excluding her from the group, allows the other girls to pretend that the group still exists, be it for a brief moment. When Scarlett leaves the school and the body of a drowned girl is found, the girls unite again, this time in tears. But when she reappears, as if she were a ghost with a vengeance, her physical presence, the link that has been missing since they were eight, forces the group to dissolve. In one of the final scenes, at the end of the year farewell party, a time to look back merely on a common experience at high-school, some of the girls want to take a group picture. But the photo never gets taken and the

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laughs fade away. The play ends on a new chain of little girls with their arms linked, ready to start over and do it better. From the expression of cohesion to that of expulsion of what seems abnormal, laughter is a dramatic gesture on stage that not only fosters the process of identification between the characters but is also meant to reach the audience.

Laughter in the audience: How do distancing and empathy operate together?

23 The performance of laughter on stage is supposed to have a performative effect – it extends from the actors on stage to the audience. The youth effect allows the identification of the teenage audience with the characters and the action on stage. By watching people laugh on stage, the audience internalize the conflict about inclusion and exclusion – they have to face the same dilemmas as the characters. Through laughter, or its absence, as it is a collective experience, the conflict is transferred into the audience’s body. But laughter is never cathartic in a Placey play. Whether the audience are affected by contagious laughter or not, laughing still raises the question of identification: do they share the same codes as the character? Do they laugh with the laugher? Or do they feel compassion for the laughed-at? Laughter therefore also has a dramaturgical role, which is paradoxically to put at a distance what is happening on stage so that the audience can cast a reflexive look on the conflicts they are witnessing – it sharpens their critical sense. The emotional response really is an ethical choice. What Placey calls the “‘heightened’ realistic naturalism” of his plays can be seen as his own understanding of the epic tradition of constant solicitation of the spectator that comes from Brecht – laughing is a tool to develop critical analysis by inducing an alienation effect which it generates and by encouraging the audience to respond rationally rather than emotionally.

24 Such distance is introduced by the use of metacomments like “Secondary school is a cliché. Teenagers are a cliché” in Banana Boys, which points at the hyperrealism of the play, the construed nature of which is always denounced by the intrusion of the chorus of Banana Girls. The audience are therefore encouraged to question the clichés that are unravelling in front of them.

25 Besides, Placey, even though very attentive to youth speech, nonetheless uses a “heightened, poetic form of language” (Placey 2015). For instance, in Banana Boys, Riley delivers a monologue that is close to spoken word poetry to show that he is very well- versed in sex matters and to make the sex-ed student-teacher he is talking to uncomfortable and intimidated by his knowledge of sexuality (Placey 49). His speech is rife with slang, so much so that he sounds “ridiculous” (Placey 2017), nonsensical in an Edward Lear kind of way i.e. the words connect through alliteration and assonance more than through meaning. It is interesting to note that when Rupert Rowbothan, Head of Engagement at Nuffield Theatre, read this excerpt in the “Writers in Conversation” series at Southampton University, the audience laughed because of the distance between the over-articulate, costume-wearing, middle-aged man and the goofy content of this nevertheless poetic text. Another poetic device that jeopardizes the identification by pinpointing at the constructed nature of the play is that of anaphora. For instance, in Girls Like That, the girls, one at a time, rejoice in the collective memories they share, introducing each memory by “Girls who remember

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when…” (Placey 179-180). But the more the list goes, the more sad and gruesome memories become. In the video recording of the Webb Schools Fall Play (2014), an American high-school production of the play, the audience is heard laughing but the quality of the laughs changes to give way to an uncomfortable laugh. Parallel to this, on stage, at the end of the scene, the girls giggle and smirk, meaning that they put on fake smiles to keep up with the image of a united group while the audience, who sense the unity is breaking down, is left wondering whether this was funny at all in the first place.3 Of course, the audience’s laughter in this case is also due to affect since the audience are the actors’ schoolmates and families, who usually are happy to see a loved one on stage. But in a dialectic movement, the audience is also made uncomfortable: Can my friend or my child actually say something like that and laugh about it? Should I laugh too or give them a good tell off? How could I get carried away by such meanness?

26 In the end, laughter becomes corrective because the audience laugh at the object of laughter until they start laughing at the one who is passing on a judgment. Laughter therefore sets the world straight and such scenes create a community of laughter, which has nothing to do with the community of judgment that is evolving on stage. This is reminiscent of the Nietzschean philosophical tradition that privileges “laughter” and other gay forms of “sovereign communication” in the formation of “community”.

27 The question Placey’s plays raise therefore is: Should teenagers learn to conform to group expectations, accept social rules, or should they find their own way to be in the world? And should I, as a member of the audience, side with the laughers or with the laughed-at? The answer is not straightforward, because it is hard to blame someone who commits to the group knowing it is so hard to maintain the illusion of a united group. Empathy and distancing thus go hand in hand to make the audience reflect on their own ethics.

Conclusion

28 Such a teen kind of laughter raises the issue of the minor status of youth drama. There is undoubtedly a youth effect in the “laughing-out-loud” moments of Placey’s plays. Indeed it can be argued that laughter changes the aesthetic of the plays by turning them from “plays for teenagers” into “teenage plays”. Indeed, laughter is also part of “becoming-teen”, the equivalent of Deleuze and Guattari’s “becoming-child” (Deleuze and Guattari 313). Though written by an adult, the text is not adult-centred but open to a change of perspective. Becoming-teen allows the playwright to deconstruct normative identity, which is described by Deleuze and Guattari as “the average adult- white-heterosexual-European-male speaking a standard language” (Deleuze and Guattari 116). The audience are included in the process of defamiliarization introduced by the hyperrealistic youth language and culture and have to navigate between identification and distancing. The audience are constantly negotiating their position as spectators of the play: they are not passive but active in the process of construction of meaning, and every time they laugh – or don’t laugh – they make an ethical and aesthetic choice.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barthes, Roland. “L’effet de réel.” Communications 11 (1968): 84-89.

Bergson, Henri. Le Rire: essai sur la signification du comique (1900). Paris: Gallimard, 2013.

Bernanoce, Marie and Sandrine Le Pors. Poétiques du théâtre jeunesse. Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2013.

“Cappies Reviews: Girls Like That”. Edmonton Journal. March 22, 2017. https://www.cbc.ca/ news/entertainment/teen-theatre-consent-harassment-1.4643672. Last accessed: 30.09.18.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980). Transl. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

Drugeon, Marianne et Florence March. « Atelier de traduction de théâtre : un projet collaboratif de l’Université Paul-Valéry (Montpellier) ». Miranda 16 (2018). http://journals.openedition.org/ miranda/11680. Last accessed: 30.09.18.

Galland, Olivier. Sociologie de la jeunesse. Paris : Armand Colin, 2011.

Girard, René. Violence et Sacré (1972). Paris: Fayard, 2011.

Kamieniak, Jean-Pierre. “Les Humours adolescentes.” Topiques 92 (2005): 79-90.

Maguire, Tom and Karian Schuitema. Theatre for Young Audiences: A Critical Handbook. Institute of Education Press, 2012.

Pasquier, Dominique. Cultures lycéennes. La Tyrannie de la majorité. Paris: Editions Autrement, 2005.

Pfister, Manfred, ed. A History of English Laughter – Laughter from Beowulf to Beckett and Beyond. Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi, 2002.

Placey, Evan. Girls Like That and Other Plays for Teenagers. London: Nick Hern Books, 2016.

--- Conference at Lille University, “From text(ing) to staging,” 13.02.2015. https://rpn.univ- lille3.fr/public/aulias/evanPlacey/co/EvanPlacey-10.html Last accessed: 30.09.18.

--- “Word from the Playwright,” Synergy Theatre Project Resource Pack http:// www.synergytheatreproject.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/HJ-Teacher-Resource-Pack.pdf. Last accessed: 30.09.18.

Proyer René T., Lukas E. Meier, Tracey Platt, Willibald Ruch. “Dealing with Laughter and Ridicule in Adolescence: Relation with Bullying and Emotional Responses.” Social Psychology of Education 16:3 (2013): 399-420.

Spencer, Herbert. “On the Physiology of Laughter” (1860). Essays 2 (1901): 225.

Webb Schools Fall Play. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCokomk8I9E. Last accessed: 30.09.18.

Wong, Jessica. “Teaching teens about #MeToo Through Theatre”. CBC News. May 07, 2018. https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/teen-theatre-consent-harassment-1.4643672. Last accessed: 30.09.18.

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NOTES

1. In spite of the fact that Placey is recognized as an important writer for teenagers and actively participates in conferences all over the world (Lille in 2015, Montpellier in 2017 for France), little has been written on his plays, apart from reviews. The same can be said about teenage drama, a branch of children theatre. 2. « un engagement dépassant le seul théâtre destiné aux jeunes et interrogeant à la fois le monde et le théâtre, la jeunesse et les adultes soucieux de regarder le monde tel qu’il est depuis l’enfance. » (BERNANOCE and LE PORS back cover, my translation) 3. The same conclusion can be drawn from my experience of putting up extracts of Girls Like That with my Performing Arts Students during a one-day conference Evan Placey attended in 2015 – despite the language barrier, the performance elicited quite a few smiles that were not pity smiles but smiles of recognition that something funny was happening. These smiles faded into expressions of disgust.

ABSTRACTS

Evan Placey, an Anglo-Canadian playwright, writes for teenagers. In spite (or because) of the serious and painful themes he tackles in his plays (coming out in Banana Boys, social determinism in Holloway Jones, bullying in Girls Like That, gender reassignment in Pronoun), the characters laugh, and so do the audience. In Placey’s plays, humour – be it linguistic, cultural, contextual, steeped in the news or in the playwright’s field experience with young people – belongs to a specific youth culture; but laughter, more than humour itself, gives the play a youth effect. Besides, whether on stage or among the audience, laughter is no solitary experience; it is a collective one and it is contagious. It is also a defence mechanism against all those things that cannot be understood or controlled. And since the best defence is a good offence, laughter can unite by excluding everything that is marginal, which hints at its tragic dimension. Laughter, in Placey’s work, therefore serves to create a continuous tension between distancing and empathy.

Evan Placey, dramaturge anglo-canadien, écrit pour les adolescents. Malgré (ou à cause) des thèmes sérieux et douloureux abordés dans ses pièces (le coming out dans Banana Boys, le déterminisme social dans Holloway Jones, le harcèlement scolaire dans Girls Like That, la réattribution sexuelle dans Pronoun), les personnages rient, et le spectateur aussi. Linguistique, culturel et contextuel, nourri de l’actualité et de l’expérience de terrain du dramaturge auprès de jeunes gens, l’humour est un humour de jeunes, mais c’est le rire qui donne un effet de jeune. Par ailleurs, sur scène comme dans la salle, le rire n’est pas une expérience solitaire mais collective : le rire est contagieux. C’est aussi un mécanisme de défense face à ce qui échappe à la compréhension, au contrôle. C’est encore une stratégie d’attaque : le rire unit en excluant celui qui est maintenu en marge du groupe et a donc partie liée avec le tragique. Le rire, chez Evan Placey, sert donc à créer une tension constante entre distanciation et empathie.

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INDEX

Mots-clés: Evan Placey, théâtre de jeunesse, rire, distanciation et empathie, effet de jeune Keywords: Evan Placey, youth theatre, laughter, distancing and empathy, youth effect

AUTHOR

CLAIRE HÉLIE Maître de conférences Université de Lille [email protected]

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« Naissance des comiques gays et lesbiens américains : le rire queer comme performance esthético- politique »

Xavier Lemoine

1 La place centrale du rire dans le corpus des spectacles queer laisse à penser que le rire est une caractéristique constitutive de la représentation queer. En effet, depuis l’avènement du camp1 dans les années 1960 chez Jack Smith à la satire sociale de Penny Arcade (Longing Lasts Longer, joué en octobre 2014 au Public Theatre à New York), à l’autodérision des années SIDA, le rire pourfend les conventions attachées à la sexualité, au genre et à la racialisation. Qu’il soit provoqué par le trait d’esprit, l’humour, la provocation, la revendication, l’auto-défense, ou plus généralement par la manifestation de l’étrangeté au sein d’un système normatif, le rire est un ingrédient récurrent des spectacles queer. Si le rire de la parodie postmoderne révèle les mécanismes de pouvoir normatif et suggère une possibilité d’action (Hutcheon 6 ; Butler 1990) pour se défaire, se déprendre de l’emprise des conventions, alors il n’est pas étonnant de le retrouver sans cesse au cœur des spectacles queer. Mais qu’en est-il de cette forme de spectacle entièrement dédiée au rire : le spectacle comique ou stand- up comedy. Comme le rappelle le comique/performer latino John Leguizamo, il existe une certaine confusion sur les termes « (…) some say it’s performance art, others say it’s stand-up, or others say theater piece and others say comedic one-man show. » (Russell 236) Il propose néanmoins une définition : Stand up, you usually find a persona for yourself, and then from there you tell a lot of JPMs (jokes per minute) and they’re all stream-of-consciousness, and they all don’t have to relate to each other. You tell little bites, little riffs, they can tell stories, but it’s not as theatrical”. (Russell 236-7)

2 Pour Leguizamo, le stand-up est un genre distinct qui s’inspire de comiques tels Richard Pryor ou Lenny Bruce (références incontestées du genre). C’est un art de la condensation et du raffinement : « I want to do a stand-up show, because I feel that (…)

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it challenges me in terms of creating jokes and just making them quicker and sharper. It’s like a haiku. » (Russell 237) Le stand-up serait donc une fabrique du rire, épuré de sa pesanteur théâtrale, et donc l’endroit idéal, trop évident peut-être, pour explorer le sens du rire sur scène. Existe-t-il alors un rire queer et dans quelle mesure la pratique du comique éclaire cette notion critique et théorique ?

3 Afin de mieux saisir les liens qui se tissent entre rire et queer, il semble pertinent d’établir une perspective historique sur l’émergence et le développement du « stand-up gay et lesbien ». Plusieurs ouvrages (Stone, Karvosky, Limon) soulignent la naissance du comique gay visible dans les années 1970, notablement avec la comique lesbienne militante Robin Tyler (Karvosky 12). Puis dans les années 1980, des soirées gays et lesbiennes sont accueillies dans les salles de spectacles des grandes villes (particulièrement à San Francisco). Enfin, dans les années 1990 grâce à la demande de spectacles due à la croissance des chaînes câblées, les comiques homosexuels font leur entrée sur les plateaux de télévision. L’évolution de ce genre semble ouvrir des perspectives stimulantes entre les histoires personnelles gays, lesbiennes, trans et les enjeux sociaux de la représentation queer. Cette tendance se fait à la faveur d’un boom comique général stimulé par le profit et une actualité politique riche en événements (Stone xiii ; xix). La critique du Village Voice Laurie Stone dans son ouvrage sur les humoristes Laughing in the Dark éclaire sans ambages la nature commerciale du stand- up : The growth of comedy, on the other hand, is driven not by a grassroots initiative but by money. The organizers are club owners and producers scouting product. Comedy is showbiz, which means buck. (Stone xiii)

4 Le stand-up serait un art moins noble aux yeux d’une certaine critique intellectuelle car trop proche de l’industrie du divertissement. Paradoxalement, la recherche artistique ou culturelle en ferait alors un genre mineur en dépit de son omniprésence. Par-là même, cependant, il rejoint une dimension définitionnelle du queer, sa dimension minoritaire. Le rire pourrait être un point d’entrée dans la réflexion queer, balayant des définitions trop étroites de la subjectivation, et rebattant les cartes catégorielles de la scène. En d’autres termes, dans quelle mesure le rire queer propose-t-il une redéfinition non seulement d’un genre mais encore des processus d’élaboration des sujets hybrides contemporains ?

5 On peut identifier quelques déclinaisons du rire queer : le rire politique, le rire esthétique et le rire subversif. À travers un stand-up politique se déploie dans de nouveaux espaces un combat contre le rire homophobe afin de laisser advenir le sujet gay, lesbien, bi et trans* (LGBT+) via les narrations de coming out, les contre-discours et les « contrepublics »2. Au mieux, ce rire serait un mode opératoire du processus de « désidentification » tel que le définit Muñoz : Disidentification is meant to be descriptive of the survival strategies the minority subject practices in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that continuously elides or punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citizenship (Muñoz 1999: 4)

6 Le rire n’est cependant pas seulement un acte de résistance et d’opposition mais une tentative d’invention de nouveaux espaces et de nouvelles perceptions. En effet, le rire camp traverse les scènes et s’impose comme une force de subversion des genres masculins/féminins, de la sexualité, de la race afin de faire exister le sujet queer hybride. Il s’agit d’explorer le camp dans sa nature politique, comme l’avait proposé Moe Meyer dans l’introduction de son ouvrage collectif The Politics and Poetics of Camp

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(Meyer 7), mais aussi dans sa mécanique classique détaillée dans un numéro de Critique de 1988 consacré au rire. Tous les contributeurs s’accordent à caractériser le rire par son éclat. La montée du rire serait irrépressible, irréconciliable, et éphémère. Ainsi, le rire n’est pas une essence (Nancy) et, par-là, l’emploi de rire gay/queer ne défend pas une catégorie essentialiste mais, au contraire, traque la remise en circulation des identifications. Ces déclinaisons, (rire militant, rire subversif) ne sont donc qu’une configuration passagère, en déclin, pour proposer une trace possible du rire dans l’histoire de la performance queer.

Stand-up LGBTQ (queer) : le rire militant

7 Le spectacle comique LGBT a-t-il la moindre fonction politique ? Crée-t-il une alliance entre rire et homosexualité afin d’alimenter le mouvement queer ? En d’autres termes, le stand-up queer participe-t-il à une mise en échec du système hétéronormatif, genré, racialisée de la société ? Plus encore est-il la chute d’un ordre social, ou à tout le moins un point de rupture ? En proposant une généalogie du stand-up LGBT américain, l’on peut tenter d’apporter des éléments de réponse à ces questions générales grâce à des exemples précis.

8 Logiquement, l’on peut considérer que les spectacles comiques gays et lesbiens3 s’inscrivent dans le développement de la visibilité et des droits politiques gay et queer des années 1980 et 1990. Ils ont accompagné l’explosion dans les années 1980 de petits clubs à New York City qui ont donné jour à une multiplication de spectacles par des comiques gays/queer (Stone xiii) sur les deux côtes américaines. À l’intérieur de l’espace catégoriel du stand-up les comiques queer viennent brouiller les frontières du genre. Le stand-up est une catégorie friable, enfant de la tradition du Vaudeville – ces spectacles hybrides mêlant comiques, cirques, danse, strip-tease etc. Allen & Wilmeth 390-1) – qui est de nouveau modifié profondément par l’inclusion d’une subjectivité queer.

Espaces pour rire gay

9 La question d’espace, de lieu des possibles, est un aspect primordial de l’émergence du stand-up LGBT. À San Francisco le Valencia Rose Cabaret, serait le premier théâtre comique gay et lesbien du pays (Karvoski 13, 27). La comique lesbienne latina Marga Gomez se souvient de ses débuts et confirme l’importance de ce lieu : Founded in 1982, The Valencia Rose Cabaret was an ambitious project that housed the world’s first gay comedy club, a queer activist meeting center, a vegetarian eatery and more into a two-story Spanish style building with 3D camel sculptures jutting out of its walls. […] As a new comic and a Latina, I could barely get any stage time as it was. One day I noticed a flyer on a telephone pole about a “Gay Comedy Night” at The Valencia Rose. I showed up that Monday in a red vintage dress. The room was full. I told my first gay joke which involved an old lady telling me, “It’s good to see dykes wearing dresses again.” They laughed and I got something I hadn’t experienced from any audience till then; love. (Marga Gomez)

10 Dès la naissance des espaces comiques gay, la dimension culturelle, communautaire, sociale et politique est frappante. Le sentiment d’appartenir à une communauté chez

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Gomez est presque naïf mais n’en demeure pas moins profond lorsqu’elle ressent « l’amour » du public au Valencia. Cette impression est caractéristique du renversement de la polarité alors dominante entre la haine ressentie dans les circuits comiques hétérosexuels et ce nouvel espace d’amour. Une autre comique latina queer, Monica Palacios, corrobore qu’elle se sentait en sécurité au Valencia (Karvoski 43) et presque tous les comiques de cette époque évoquent cette idée d’un changement profond des perceptions entre un espace gay et non gay.

11 À New York plusieurs scènes s’ouvrent, hébergeant toute sorte de spectacles tant sur le plan thématique que formel. « The Duplex », ouvert dans les années 1950, au cœur de ce qui deviendra le quartier gay historique de la ville se consacre à la comédie gay mais pas uniquement (comme le site internet le rappelle fièrement, Woody Allen y a fait ses débuts). D’autres espaces accueillent les comiques queer mais aussi des spectacles dont la nature est mixte entre comédie, performance et pièces de théâtre : « Dixon Place », « WOW Café », « Joe’s Pub au Public Theater », « PS 122 » etc. Cette effervescence sur les planches permettra, grâce à la porosité entre scène et écran de télévision, de voir passer dix ans plus tard des comiques gays et lesbiens à la télévision.

12 Les premières apparitions à la télévision seront dans les niches procurées par la croissance des chaînes privées payantes dont une chaîne entièrement dédiée aux comiques (Comedy Central). Le besoin de remplir des grilles de 24 heures entraîne une recherche intensive de comiques et un passage de la scène à l’écran quasi automatique. Ainsi la comique butch hyper-active Lea DeLaria est l’hôtesse de la première émission télévisée consacrée aux comiques queer Out There, le 11 octobre 1993, avant une seconde édition en 1994 (Karvoski 14). Même si ce changement de medium n’est pas sans conséquence, la circulation du comique queer entre le petit écran, le cinéma, la grande salle, et l’espace alternatif fait partie des enjeux politiques de représentations. Les comiques dans les années 1980 et 1990 ont acquis une visibilité en rupture avec les décennies précédentes et ont ouvert la possibilité d’un sujet LGBT multiple au-delà d’identités médicalisées et marginalisées.

13 Cette évolution implique non seulement les artistes mais également le rapport au public, alimentant la réflexion queer et l’invention d’un contrepublic défendue par l’universitaire Michael Warner :Après avoir redéfini la notion de public, en insistant sur la dimension relationnelle et l’adresse publique impersonnelle, Warner identifie un contrepublic queer : Their members are understood to be not merely a subset of the public, but constituted through a conflictual relation to the dominant public. They are structured by different dispositions or protocols from those that obtain elsewhere in the culture, making different assumptions about what can be said or what goes without saying. In the sense of the term that I am here advocating, such publics are counterpublics, and in a stronger sense than simply comprising subalterns with a reform program. A counterpublic maintains at some level, conscious or not, an awareness of its subordinate status. The cultural horizon against which it marks itself off is not just a general or wider public but a dominant one. And the conflict extends not just to ideas or policy questions, but to the speech genres and modes of address that constitute the public, or to the hierarchy media. (Warner 423-4)

14 Warner explicite bien l’émergence d’une résistance d’un contrepublic contre les dispositifs hétéronormatifs et homophobes. Les comiques LGBT et leur contrepublic illustrent ce mécanisme clairement en convoquant l’existence du public queer par ce nouveau genre et cette nouvelle interpellation. Lors des émissions Out There, les plans

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sur les divers couples homosexuels sont appuyés et témoignent d’un changement qui se passe aussi bien sur scène que dans la salle. Le rire queer se construit à travers le public queer. C’est-à-dire que ce n’est pas seulement un comique queer qui semble naître à cette période-là mais également un public queer. L’un n’existe pas vraiment sans l’autre : comme le suggère Limon, à la suite de Freud,4 dans son ouvrage, Stand-up Comedy in Theory, Or, Abjection in America, la blague n’existe que par le rire de son public. Pour lui, l’éclat de rire est bien ce qui distingue le stand-up comique du spectacle contenant simplement de l’humour (qui n’implique par l’éclat de rire) : pas de rire, pas de blague, pas de comique, pas de stand-up, et on pourrait ajouter pas de queer. Limon exprime cette co-dépendance et cette co-création repérée également par les théoriciens de la performance (Dwight Conquergood puis E. Patrick Johnson) : Audiences turn their [comedians’] jokes into jokes, as the comedian had not quite thought or expressed a joke until the audience thinks or expresses it. (Limon 13)

15 Selon Warner, le contrepublic n’est pas défini comme une simple identité ou communauté. C’est la relation, le contexte et la circulation qui fondent son existence. Parallèlement, dans notre perspective, ce n’est pas le public mais son rire qui est déterminant. Par extension, on pourrait conclure que le rire queer serait la clé de voûte du stand-up queer, voire même de toute la communauté assemblée (ce contrepublic queer). Cette possibilité du spectacle comique serait un signe de la transformation de la société dans sa capacité à pouvoir accueillir un nouveau rire. Mais qu’est-ce qui a donc déclenché ce rire à l’époque ?

Rire contre l’homophobie ?

16 Alors que le rire devenait hétérosexuel grâce à l’exclusion du point de vue minoritaire homosexuel imbriqué dans l’exclusion raciste, misogyne (etc.), le rire queer briserait les chaînes de l’homophobie régnante non pas tant en inversant les rôles (se moquer des hétérosexuels, même si cela n’est pas exclu) mais en transformant l’oppression, voire l’insulte, l’injure, en potentiel de prise de liberté, en champ du possible de la blague.5

17 Le Valencia, selon les témoignages de nombreux comiques, devient un espace de liberté où l’omerta sur l’homosexualité, outre les moqueries, est désagrégée. Le bon mot de son directeur artistique évoque bien ce sentiment du point de vue du contrepublic : Donald Montwill, who became its artistic director in the second year, once said that queer audiences had been waiting for this place “where they could enjoy comedy and not be the butt of the joke, pun intended.” (Gomez)

18 En effet, comme le souligne Laurie Stone, nombreux sont les comiques qui ont utilisé la misogynie et l’homophobie dans le passé (Bob Hope, Stone 5) mais aussi plus récemment (Stone 46 et le témoignage de Paul Jacek, Karvoski 189-90). Dans l’émission de télévision comique des années 1990 produite par la Fox, In Living Color, les comiques noirs Damon Wayans et David Allen Grier jouent les rôles d’Antoine Merriweather et Blaine Edwards (ensemble de 12 sketchs programmés d’avril 1990 à février 1993) deux homosexuels stéréotypés à l’excès, entre autres parce qu’ils sont efféminés et maniérés. Dans le contexte grand public de la télévision, la moquerie insultante plutôt que la complicité subversive empêche une réception intersectionnelle de ce rire. L’universitaire E. Patrick Johnson s’interroge sur la répétition d’une homophobie dans le contexte de la masculinité hétérosexuelle noire, plus particulièrement à travers l’humour homophobe d’un Eddy Murphy ou de Wayans et Grier. Il souligne aussi la possibilité de

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queeriser ces représentations (Johnson 61-75) par la réappropriation. C’est justement ce que la circulation de la télévision à la scène, du grand public au contrepublic permet à la troupe afro-américaine gay « Pomo Afro Homos ». Le chorégraphe et danseur Djola Bernard Branner, le comédien Brian Freeman, et le chanteur, danseur et comédien Eric Gupton dans leur spectacle de 1991 Fierce Love joué à Josie’s Cabaret à San Francisco (Roman 165-166) subvertissent l’homophobie des sketchs de Wayans et Grier. Dans le numéro d’ouverture de ce spectacle, un militant du fictionnel ACT-BLACK zappe6 les critiques de cinéma Antoine et Blaine, joués par les deux autres membres de la troupe. Ainsi le spectacle retourne-t-il le rire contre la production d’un comique hétéronormatif ancré dans l’angoisse d’une masculinité noire menacée ontologiquement par le féminin et l’homosexualité. Cette parodie souligne à la fois les limites du groupe militant contre le SIDA, ACT UP, insuffisamment conscient des enjeux raciaux dans ses engagements et la circulation d’une image dégradante ou extrêmement limitée de ce que serait un homosexuel noir. Plus encore, la réappropriation des Pomo Afro Homos œuvre à désamorcer le stéréotype d’un « negro faggot » dénoncé par l’influent artiste queer afro-américain Marlon Riggs. Dans son article « Black Macho Revisited: Reflections of a Snap! Queen », Riggs produit un « SNAP » discursif contre les caricatures homophobes de l’homosexuel noir déployé par le rap, la télévision et le cinéma noir. Tout le monde n’était cependant pas nécessairement choqué, considérant le sketch comme une parodie outrancière à dessein s’accordant avec la logique invoquée par Wayans pour défendre sa liberté d’humoriste. Wayans et Grier, toujours prêts à réaffirmer leur hétérosexualité, incarnent néanmoins une version de l’homophobie persistante au début des années 1990. Plus exactement, au-delà de leurs intentions, ils signalent que la moquerie de l’homosexuel efféminé fait toujours recette. La différence tient à ce qu’un contre-rire est proposé grâce à la troupe « Pomo Afro Homos ».

19 Les comiques en permettant de rire avec et non contre l’homosexualité redéfinissent les limites du rire. Si le rire naît de la transgression, alors à une époque où l’homophobie est la norme les blagues sur les gays et les lesbiennes seraient mécaniquement transgressives. Et quelque part les comiques considérés homophobes jouent avec cet interdit. Le public dominant se rassure de ne pas faire partie du groupe minoritaire dont le comique se moque, plus encore, il est constitué par le rejet instinctif et physiologique du rire. Néanmoins, comme le suggère l’essai de Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen le rire n’est pas seulement disjonctif mais peut se placer davantage du côté de l’empathie : Riant de ce passant qui glisse sur une peau de banane (ou, cela revient exactement au même, riant de l’absurde destinée d’Œdipe), je ne ris pas d’être ce que l’autre n’est pas – supérieur, souverain, auto-suffisant, etc. Au contraire, je ris en participant joyeusement à sa chute, en glissant avec lui dans cette soudaine et souveraine nullité qui est la sienne. (Borch-Jacobsen, 32)

20 Sans doute, le rire homophobe (mais aussi misogyne, raciste) reste sur le premier versant : je ris « d’être ce que l’autre n’est pas » et je suis dans l’illusion phantasmatique d’être « supérieur », de croire que l’hétérosexualité, la masculinité, la race échappent à la construction phantasmatique de l’identification (Butler 1993 : 93-119). L’avènement des comiques LGBT, permet de réaliser la seconde proposition d’une chute commune, d’une compréhension que les incongruités rencontrées par les homosexuels participent pleinement à l’humanité et à ses limites. Le potentiel de queerisation est bien sûr politique puisqu’il touche aux rapports de pouvoir mais contribue aussi aux ressorts profonds du rire. La logique du rire queer participe à un

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élargissement de l’humanité, en incluant plusieurs groupes (voire en groupes) jusque-là exclus, et en redéfinissant les contours de l’humain par ses failles. En d’autres termes, les mécanismes d’identification sont mis au jour ce qui permet de produire ce que Butler décrit ainsi : « a dynamic map of power in which identities are constituted and/ or erased, deployed and/or paralyzed » (Butler 1993 : 117)

21 Dans les années 1970, le rire gay était peu répandu car l’homophobie résistait encore à son effondrement structurel. 1982 est donc un moment politique pour les comiques grâce à la création d’un espace de liberté, si petit soit-il, dans les faits quelques salles, quelques soirées, afin de pouvoir s’esclaffer queer. La filiation entre le comique et le politique est littérale sur la côte Ouest si l’on considère que l’un des fondateurs du Valencia Rose, Hank Wilson, était associé à Harvey Milk, le célèbre élu municipal de San Francisco assassiné le 27 novembre 1978 (voir le film Harvey Milk, 2008). Ensemble, ils ont lutté contre une proposition de loi de l’État de Californie destinée à interdire aux homosexuels d’être enseignants (Marche 79). Le rire queer est donc bien politique dans sa lutte contre l’oppression homophobe à travers ses représentations culturelles (Wayans) ou sociales (limitations des droits). La dimension politique et épistémologique n’est pas seulement sociale ou systémique (anti-homophobe), elle est aussi en conjonction avec des thématiques personnelles qui permettent de mettre en place des stratégies de résistance grâce au stand-up LGBT.

Le rire performatif ?

Les blagues de coming out

22 Il est délicat de faire une cartographie exhaustive des thématiques des comiques queer, dans la mesure où le stand-up est un art hautement contextuel, le rire est intimement lié à un moment et à un public et il y a donc autant de blagues que d’événements (politiques, culturels, médiatiques etc.), que d’individus7 et que de réceptions. Souvent les comiques tirent leurs gags de la presse comme c’était le cas avec The Joan Jett Blakk Show au « Josie’s Cabaret & Juice Joint » (Karvoski 160). Néanmoins, quelques grands thèmes sont récurrents tant sur le plan individuel que social dès les premiers spectacles des années 1980. Tout particulièrement la mise en scène comique du coming out, de l’annonce à sa famille ou à son entourage de son homosexualité, est si fréquente que ce thème semble constituer un passage particulier dans le stand-up gay et lesbien. En effet, la question du coming out est à la fois au cœur des politiques de visibilité LGBT et elle fait partie du processus d’identification de l’homosexualité. Elle est un point de tension entre le privé et le public, le caché et le manifeste propice à déclencher le rire. Si les blagues autour du coming out sont devenues un trope identifiable des spectacles gays et lesbiens, c’est sans doute qu’elles ont valeur d’acte performatif de l’identité comique LGBT, énonçant et créant à la fois le sujet queer et le genre même de ce comique. Ainsi la version la plus classique est-elle le récit de la révélation de son homosexualité aux parents, acquérant le statut d’un rituel spectaculaire qui inaugure le rire queer.

23 Monica Palacios transforme ce moment potentiellement tragique en comédie grâce à la diversité des réactions de sa famille : Finally the time was right. I gathered everybody around the room and I said, ‘My family – mi familia – this is my wife!’ Everybody stopped talking. (…) After a moment of thick intense silence, my mom says: ‘Come on, everybody, let’s eat. Food is getting cold. C’mon, andale. […]

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My Mom: ‘We know that you are…but we don’t want to know again” […] And my precocious niece: « LEZBO » (Karvoski 46-7)

24 De la dénégation maternelle à l’assertion ambivalente de sa jeune nièce, la tension entre rejet et acceptation peut déclencher le rire. L’interjection de sa nièce est drôle parce que libératrice dans son immédiateté sonore, aux antipodes du silence imposé par la mère, mais elle est aussi étonnante par sa fulgurance énigmatique, pouvant être à la fois une célébration, une revendication ou une insulte. La multiplicité des positions d’une même famille évoque aussi que les réactions ne correspondent jamais exactement à un modèle préétabli mais à un ensemble complexe et mouvant.

25 Le sketch de la comique Africaine Américaine Wanda Sykes où elle joue entre identités raciales et sexuelles, par exemple, fonctionne de façon frappante en montrant comment le coming out n’est jamais non plus complètement simplement personnel. Dans son spectacle pour HBO, I'ma Be Me, enregistré devant un public enthousiaste en 2009, elle mobilise un parallèle entre la visibilité de la couleur de sa peau et l’invisibilité de l’orientation sexuelle. Plutôt que d’inviter à une véritable opposition entre les minorités, il est plus productif de décrypter ce rire comme un processus intersectionnel8 dans la mesure où il met en exergue la nature transversale de l’homophobie mais aussi du racisme. D’abord le coming out est fait du point de vue d’une lesbienne noire. Sykes commence son sketch : There are some things that I had to do as gay that I didn’t have to do as black. I didn’t have to come out black. I didn’t have to sit my parents down and tell them about my blackness. “Mom, Dad, I gotta tell you all something. I hope you’ll still love me. I’m just gonna say it. Mom, Dad, I’m black.” (Sykes)

26 Ce qui fait rire c’est l’incongruité du script du coming out mélangé à un contexte racialisé, cas typique d’une mécanique désarticulée à la Bergson. Mais plus encore, la profondeur du rire semble sourdre de l’exposition de la double oppression liée à l’identité lesbienne noire. La substitution de noir à gay met le doigt sur une invisibilisation double que le corps et le discours de Sykes habitent simultanément en pleine lumière. Syke donne corps à une hypothèse loufoque en jouant les dialogues entre elle et sa mère, ses silences, en incarnant sa mère, ses intonations saturées d’émotions exposant l’ignorance de la mère mais aussi de la société tout entière. La communauté noire religieuse est parodiée mais aussi la communauté LGBT blanche qui doit aussi réfléchir au sens de faire son coming out en tant qu’africaine-américaine. Le rire éclate sur l’autel du racisme et de l’homophobie ouvrant la perspective d’une désidentification intersectionnelle. La tension entre l’acceptation et le rejet du sujet par sa famille ne peut pas faire l’économie des questions raciales mais ne peut pas non plus faire l’impasse sur les autres caractéristiques de subjectivation tel qu’ici le lesbianisme. L’articulation entre ces tensions fonde la force de son sketch et la fulgurance d’une gêne profonde qu’il faut vite congédier ou embrasser grâce au rire. En interpénétrant des scripts historiques de libération du sujet, Sykes desserre l’étau normatif qui fixe les identités, elle désamorce l’emprise hétéronormative et la dilue dans l’hilarité. Cet effet irradie la comique et son (contre)public qui peuvent se désidentifier à l’expérience lesbienne noire, occupant avec Sykes une position impossible (irréelle) et malgré tout rendue réelle par la présence de la performance, au moins le temps d’une histoire drôle. Ainsi, la conscience des oppressions multiples signale la nature complexe de ce rire qui peut mener à un supplément politique.

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Politique du gag gay

27 La politique de la visibilité dépasse donc le cadre familial, elle s’inscrit dans le champ culturel tout entier. Le comique Danny Williams suggère, non sans un certain sens de la provocation, cet état de fait en abordant des sujets politiques des années 1990 : I think our invisibility in the media is why the far right was able to demonize us in the discussion of gay men and lesbians in the military. (Karvoski 69)

28 La montée de la droite ultra conservatrice, accompagnant la révolution conservatrice des années Reagan, n’est pas le fait de l’absence de comique gay – voire plutôt l’inverse. Toutefois, l’impact de la visibilité, même s’il ne va pas modifier les positions des extrémistes, est bien en cause dans le ferment culturel menant à des positions d’ouverture ou d’ostracisme. Les débats sur l’acceptation des homosexuels dans l’armée étant au cœur de l’actualité de la fin des années 1980 et au début des années 1990, montrent bien l’importance cruciale des médias dans la fabrication de cette blague. Précisément, l’actualité, par ses choix de sujet, devient prescriptive de ce qui entre dans le champ du visible et donc de ce qui détermine la politique de la visibilité. Le nombre de comiques faisant référence à ce sujet est un indicateur clair. Lynda Montgomery, par exemple, souligne son plaisir de la pratique de « show and tell » du primaire comme la source d’inspiration de son désir d’être sur scène et l’oppose brillamment à la formule produite par le consensus homophobe de Clinton « Don’t Ask Don’t Tell » qui l’a conduite à être une comique lesbienne : Somehow, everything worked out as it should ; my love of show-and-tell came back into my life in the form of standup comedy. (And my discomfort with ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ led me to be an out lesbian comic!) (Karvoski 206)

29 L’homosexualité devient donc un outil politique pour ces comiques, une façon d’intervenir dans les débats publics sans tomber, toutefois, dans un positionnement naïf ou simpliste. Williams, en effet, ironise sur l’illusion des bienfaits de la visibilité dans la mesure où, bien sûr, les ultra-conservateurs ne changeraient pas d’idée même s’il y avait une meilleure visibilité des gays et lesbiennes dans les médias. Néanmoins, le rire constitue un arsenal pour se défendre des charges conservatrices – rire offensif et défensif à la fois.

30 Ainsi, cette montée de la droite ultra-conservatrice et religieuse se retrouve dans de nombreux sketchs (Bob Smith), révélant l’inscription contextuelle profonde des comiques et le conflit violent entre les positions queer et conservatrices alimentant les Culture Wars. Une guerre des mots, d’influence où le rire démasque les tensions extrêmes des systèmes normatifs en cours de réajustement et la constitution d’un contrepublic actif. Plusieurs comiques, Sykes comme nous venons de l’évoquer, utilisent la substitution terminologique/thématique à l’intérieur d’un canevas normatif mobilisant un rire subversif. Bob Smith dans « Under the influence » contrecarre le discours stigmatisant du chef des conservateurs au Sénat de janvier 1995 à janvier 1999, Newt Gingrich, en substituant un terme à un autre pour le décontextualiser et le recontextualiser, produisant cette distance et ce déplacement de la performance de la désidentification9. Smith puise dans les discours où Gingrich compare l’homosexualité à l’alcoolisme. Gingrich, inspiré par la pathologisation de l’homosexuel à la fin du 19e et au début 20e siècle, produit un canevas homophobe que Smith pastiche en remplaçant toutes les occurrences d’alcoolisme par gay ce qui crée une distorsion comique : (Gay blackouts do happen. Many public figures go their entire lives being gay and not remembering it.)

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It’s alarming to consider that Mr. Gingrich is capable of influencing the direction of our government’s public health policies. This further the stigmatization of homosexuality could even lead to the formation of new organizations with homophobic agendas – groups such as MADG (Mothers Against Driving Gay) (Karvoski 142)

31 La version parodique de l’association Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MAAD) fait rire par la mécanique d’une substitution loufoque, mais elle est aussi clairement politique par l’allusion à la responsabilité du politicien envers la défense de la santé publique. En outre, Smith met en avant le processus de déshumanisation propagé par Gingrich en le ridiculisant avec ses comparaisons insensées. L’inhumanité grotesque se retourne contre le politicien et ses angoisses conservatrices. L’homophobie politisée est donc dénoncée par le comique grâce à cette réappropriation ludique d’une homosexualité omniprésente qui déclenche l’hilarité d’un contrepublic qui s’oppose à une clôture du sujet queer par la stigmatisation.

32 Globalement, la visibilité politique du comique LGBT est hybride car elle implique un coming out structurel intégré aux spectacles. C’est bien un potentiel politique spectaculaire défini par la performance qui est en jeu. L’artiste en mobilisant son homosexualité de façon performative met en abyme la caractéristique du spectacle dans sa totalité puisqu’il est construit comme une sorte de coming out : je suis lesbienne donc mon spectacle est lesbien. En effet, la comique lesbienne existe par l’énonciation même de cette identité mais cette identification dépasse l’individu pour devenir un genre comique. Ce genre comique puise sa force dans une histoire en résistance contre la fixité et reste donc un genre ouvert, fluide, déterritorialisant. Sa nature performative est essentielle tant par sa valeur d’instanciation du sujet dans le présent que par sa nécessaire réitération dans l’espace public. Ainsi, la nature performative de l’éclat de rire valide la présence qui peut servir à définir, plus généralement, le spectacle vivant (Lemoine 2016 : 179). Le rire est donc une alliance politique mais aussi artistique garantissant simultanément la politique de visibilité et l’art de la présence. Le retournement du rire moqueur en rire complice serait la transformation qui qualifie aussi l’art de la scène : la production d’une mutation dans le champ de la représentation. Le charisme de Lea DeLaria ou de Sandra Bernhard illustrent le rire queer et suggèrent la nature politique de l’art de la subversion. Gilmore dans sa typologie définit la présence de DeLaria comme une sorte d’offensive permanente : For example Lea Delaria is a lesbian Bitch comic who constantly pushes the envelope, delivering her particular ‘in your face’ brand of stand up to gay and straight audience alike. (Gilbert 2013 189)

33 À l’autre bout de cette typologie, Sandra Bernhard serait la version « lesbienne chic » dont l’énergie irrévérencieuse de ses spectacles (Confession of a Pretty Lady ; I’m Still Here Damn It, 1998) perturbent les conventions. Ces formes de présence offrent des modèles de rire actif, affirmant la puissance plutôt que l’impuissance et donc un renversement de la domination hétéronormative des comiques.

34 Le rire politique est donc une première étape, presque binaire dans la mesure où il s’agit souvent d’inversion des rôles, comme le rappelle Butler « Heterosexuality does not have a monopoly on exclusionary logic » (Butler 1993 : 112) mais le rire et le queer (celui qui critique les dérives normatives des mouvements gays et lesbiens) s’accordent aussi car ils ne sont pas des catégories fermées. La réflexion du philosophe Jean-Luc Nancy aide à cerner ce caractère insaisissable du rire :

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(…) le rire n’a jamais proprement trouvé sa place dans la dialectique érotico- esthétique de la philosophie. […] Mais le rire ‘comme tel’, celui qui traverse toutes ces catégories esthétiques, psychologiques ou métaphysiques sans se plier à aucune d’elles, celui qui s’empare au moins aussi de l’angoisse et de la joie, celui-là reste en marge. (Nancy 44)

35 Le rire comme marge, le rire comme un processus fluide, le rire comme un refus des catégories figées sont autant de valeurs qui ont été affectées à la notion queer. D’après l’historiographie que l’on propose, il est donc tout à fait compréhensible que l’homosexualité de la fin des années 1970 et, plus sensiblement, dans les années 1980 occupe cet espace politique, avec bien d’autres minorités. Toutefois, les limites identitaires, pour aller vite les tendances essentialistes, justifient l’emploi du terme queer. Le queer marque la résistance à un désir de normalisation, un désir peu propice à la créativité et au questionnement politico-esthétique. Cette résistance a pourtant à voir avec un rire présent dès les années 1970 et 1960, un rire se moquant du genre souvent via la pratique du travestissement, de l’exagération et de la parodie.

Subversion de soi

Rire queer camp : subversion du genre

36 L’utilisation camp, c’est-à-dire un rire subversif, voire absurde, révélant les frontières du genre masculin et féminin, est une innovation importante à la source d’une esthétique recourant fréquemment au travestissement. La notion camp dépolitisée par les célèbres « notes » de Susan Sontag dans les années 1960 a depuis l’ouvrage de Meyer repris des couleurs militantes en revendiquant un positionnement queer (Meyer 1). En 1972, Esther Newton dans son étude anthropologique sur les travestis des années 1960, Mother Camp, avait réaffirmé la nature homosexuelle du camp (Newton 105) et son lien au stand-up pratiqué dans les bars et les cabarets (Newton 56). De la même façon, Laurie Stone noue le camp, le stand-up et le théâtre en incluant dans son ouvrage le Théâtre du Ridicule (Theater of the Ridiculous) des années 1970 et 1980, en particulier Charles Ludlam et ses héritiers dont Charles Busch dans les années 1980 et 1990 avec son Theater in Limbo. Comme le rappelle un critique à propos de ce genre : Above all, the Ridiculous sought, through laughter (...) a debunking of all mythologies that make this world, in the eyes of the Ridiculous, a place of unremitting insubstantiality. It viewed the world as bereft of all moorings, an ephemeral universe built around illusions and adrift in an ever-expanding black hole of simulacra. (Dasgupta & Marranca xi)

37 Cette filiation masculine inspirera un camp lesbien principalement nourri dans l’enceinte du « WOW Café » (Lemoine 2018 : 59) à New York, avec la troupe des « Split Britches » (les comédiennes Peggy Shaw et Lois Weaver venant des troupes pratiquant le camp « Hot Peaches » et « Bloolips »), et d’autres artistes tells que Holly Hughes et les cinq comédiennes de la troupe de théâtre « The Five Lesbian Brothers » (Lemoine 2008 : 331). Il est intéressant de relever que ces spectacles ont été beaucoup étudiés non pas en tant que stand-up comique mais plutôt en tant que pratique renouvelant le théâtre lesbien10. Leur inclusion dans une tradition comique, comme le suggère l’ouvrage de Stone, s’accorde avec l’idée que l’on a affaire à des formes ouvertes qui interrogent le(s) genre(s) et empruntent à de multiples traditions scéniques. Ces modes de représentation mettent en exergue un rire sans concession sur les contradictions, les

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obsessions et l’éclatante noirceur du désir lesbien11. Ce rire camp se moque aussi bien de la culture de masse que de la culture lesbienne, formulant une autocritique queer sur les conséquences de la vie publique LGBT résultant sans doute de la visibilité, de l’engagement et de l’action. Autre contribution majeure du camp lesbien au rire queer est sa déconstruction du genre. Si Butler a pu montrer la dimension performative du genre grâce à la pratique spectaculaire des drag queens, (Butler 1990) le rire camp pourrait bien révéler par l’absurde ridicule que le genre n’est rien (pour faire écho à la formulation de Borch-Jacobsen 34). Le travestissement camp voilerait alors ce rien pour provoquer un rire qui serait le souffle soulevant subrepticement ce voile.

38 Plus proche du stand-up dans la forme, le spectacle cabaret camp Kiki and Herb est né dans les bars du East Village à la fin des années 1990, puis est devenu pérenne dans divers espaces dont le « Flamingo East » (1998), et finalement a été produit sur Broadway sous le titre : Kiki & Herb : Alive on Broadway en 2006. Le show alterne récits et chansons, à l’instar des spectacles de Sandra Bernhard ou de Romanovsky & Phillips (Karvoski 55-63). Malgré l’absence d’une intrigue dramatique, Kiki (Justin Bond, performer) et Herb (Kenny Mellman, pianiste) racontent une histoire fantasque qui théâtralise le rire tout en restant proche de la structure à sketchs du stand-up. Grâce à son personnage Kiki, Bond produit une série de situations grotesques. Par les jeux de mots puisés dans la parodie musicale (« it’s better to be knocked down than knocked up » s’inspirant du titre de la chanson « I get knocked down » de « Chumbawamba », 1997), le performeur transgenre convoque sa condition improbable de femme biologique. Le récit d’une maternité difficile en décalage avec le corps travesti de Bond conduit à rire non pas en guise de lazzis et de quolibets mais d’émerveillement absurde à la fécondité d’un imaginaire enfantant des identités fluides. Cette sensation de fantastique est magnifiée par la ballade musicale composée par les numéros qui tressent la fiction des chansons avec le corps queer incarnés par Kiki, Herb et leur public fidèle12. Le camp dopé au glam rock de Bond chanteur révèle l’absurdité du genre binaire engoncé dans des normes étroites comme une célébration extatique d’un moi queer qui partagé dans l’espace public crée l’énergie pour faire communauté et suggérer une stratégie collective de résistance queer.

39 Cette dimension politique du camp est portée directement par la drag queen Joan Jett Blakk (créée par Terrence Smith à Chicago en 1989 pour les groupes engagés : Queer Nation et Radical Fairies) lorsqu’elle s’est présentée comme la candidate aux élections municipales de Chicago en avril 1991 pour Queer Nation avec des slogans tels que « Putting the Camp into campaign » (cité par Moe 6). Le rire camp fuse lorsqu’elle parodie la reine des talk-shows Oprah Winfrey (sa muse) : « Plus, we [Winfrey & Blakk] have the same sense of style, except I’m more like Oprah on ecstasy – too much makeup and too much jewelry. » (Karvoski 159). L’excès est donc un style assumé jusqu’aux plus hautes sphères de la représentation : la présidence des États-Unis. L’annonce de sa candidature à la présidentielle américaine contre Bush en 1992 toujours avec le groupe militant Queer Nation affirme l’utilisation du rire camp, à la suite d’ACT UP, à des fins contestataires de l’ordre social dominant. Elle crée une sorte de spirale vertigineuse des référents dans un dédoublement permanent entre des répétitions critiques et ridicules comme cette obsession vestimentaire réelle et fausse à la fois : « I’m wearing my faux faux Channel » s’amuse-t-elle à dire tout en raillant le débat sur les homosexuels dans l’armée : « We don’t even need a military, much less gays in it ! If I’m elected president, we’ll have Dykes on Bikes protecting this country! » (Karvoski 160). Le rire devient

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sérieux, ce qui est un contre-sens pour certains parmi les activistes gays et lesbiens en position de pouvoir (Moe 5-7), tandis que d’autres y voient la combinaison esthético- politique queer nécessaire pour perturber les hiérarchies dominantes et proposer une reconfiguration culturelle queer, voire un anarchisme queer. Ce qui est intéressant, c’est que le rire se déplace pour faire apparaître les contradictions, les convulsions entre les communautés queer/non queer et non plus simplement entre des groupes sexuels, raciaux ou de classes. Blakk rit avec la communauté pour ses travers dont elle n’est pas exempte. Elle rit d’elle-même, de ses obsessions et de son plaisir d’être dépassée par l’ambiguïté sexuelle régnant à San Francisco : Baby, the wimmin here put the boys to shame, you hear me? Foxy, foxy, foxy. (And it’s great when you’re on the People’s Limo [public transportation] watching faces of other passengers – well, a few of them, all right ? – as they try to figure out who’s a girl becoming a boy or a boy becoming a girl. I love that!) Girlies rule in San Francisco. (Karvoski 163)

40 La fluidité des genres devient une source de rire collaboratif et constructif dans l’espace public et non plus un point de terreur et de dissolution du sujet. Cet engagement du rire n’est pas sans évoquer les utopies queer défendues par de nombreux universitaires (Muñoz, Dolan13) comme source de projections créatives et collectives. On pourrait alors parler d’un rire queer utopique qui se place « sur l’horizon » (Muñoz 2009 : 11).

41 Cette perspective coexiste avec les pratiques du passé où le travestissement construisait et déconstruisait l’illusion du genre. Le couple plaisir/peur provoqué par l’oscillation entre les deux sexes était mis en exergue et, dans une certaine mesure, l’emprise normative rend cet acte transgressif encore aujourd’hui. Dans le Vaudeville de la fin du dix-neuvième siècle et du début du vingtième siècle (1875-1925), des numéros de travestis tel celui de Raymonde qui à la fin de son spectacle enlève une perruque pour apparaître comme un homme puis comme une femme puis comme un homme (Allen 578) illustre le frisson comique lié au ressort de la transgression du genre. Ce concentré du coup de théâtre du genre est aussi celui souligné par Esther Newton où certains spectacles travestis des années 1960 se concluent sur la révélation et la fixation du genre par la preuve du sexe masculin révélé par la nudité finale (Newton 44-45)14. Au-delà de ces rythmes binaires, le rire camp queer serait alors à tout le moins un brouillage qui témoigne d’une prise de liberté face aux normes sociales à travers une prolifération d’identités sexuelles, raciales etc : butch (ouvrière), femme (chic), folle (faible), travesti.e (brouillage des codes), transgenre (brouillage biologie/ culturel). On retrouve ce rire camp transgenre dans la pièce de Kate Bornstein Hidden : À Gender qui lui permet d’explorer et d’exposer les questions transgenres (Lemoine 2008). Si le rire camp fête la pluralité, il ne s’exonère pas des angoisses existentielles accrochées aux multiples identifications queer. L’exploration des expressions collectives queer s’adonne à un rire qui fouille tous les recoins de l’âme comme avec le camp lesbien. En d’autres termes, de nombreux comiques se moquent d’eux-mêmes bien sûr et de leur communauté.

Rire queer auto-critique : désintégration de l’être ?

42 La subversion des genres et du genre se déploie chez les comiques à travers de nombreuses critiques de la société et de soi-même. Cette autocritique, peut évoquer la tradition de la satire où les travers de l’humanité sont exagérés. Le reflet grossissant

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d’une subculture ajoute peut-être une sorte d’hyper-conscience de la fragilité de l’humain, mais paradoxalement renvoie le marginalisé à son destin général. La comique E.L Greggory prend un malin plaisir à déclarer « I don’t like Gay Pride Parades » (Karvoski 187) et à pointer les limites de cette célébration devenue trop festive et commerciale pour certains (promoteurs de la Gay Shame) ou trop instrumentalisée pour ses personnages stéréotypés comme pour Greggory.

43 Sur un ton léger mais non moins caustique Marga Gomez se moque aussi des images tendues par la société aux lesbiennes, ici à travers la série télévisée The L Word (Showtime, 18 juillet 2004 - 8 mars 2009) sur la vie des lesbiennes de Los Angeles. Gomez dans « Laugh Baby Laugh » joué en avril 2007 à La Pena, Berkeley, Californie raille la représentation affadie des lesbiennes butch dans la série. Cette faiblesse a été soulignée lors d’une rencontre entre les universitaires lesbiennes Jill Dolan et Sue-Ellen Case autour de la conférence d’ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Education) à San Francisco en 2004. Les reproches soulignaient une tendance à représenter des lesbiennes aseptisées, vivant dans un milieu très aisé, en évitant des personnages à la féminité masculine moins consensuelle. La caricature de Gomez est donc pertinente et fonctionne car les effets normatifs démasqués déclenchent généralement le rire. Gomez s’en prend aussi au personnage mièvre de Jenny (Mia Kirshner) dont les jérémiades lui donnent envie de faire avance rapide (« fast forward through Jenny »). Outre la remarque qui fait mouche (comme le confirment les rires et aussi les nombreux commentaires à la suite de cet extrait disponible en ligne), l’idée de pouvoir contrôler les éléments extérieurs renforce la portée de la plaisanterie. Le désir et l’impossibilité de cette toute-puissance – faire avance rapide sur tous les mauvais moments – se combinent à la spécificité du déficit de représentation des lesbiennes. Le moment est magnifié entre un trop plein et une absence radicale, lieu où se loge la désidentification défendue par Muñoz dans son ouvrage éponyme. L’introduction de son ouvrage s’ouvre d’ailleurs sur l’analyse d’une scène d’un spectacle de Gomez (Marga Gomez is Pretty, Witty, and Gay, 1992) où la comique transforme la représentation négative d’une lesbienne à la télévision dans une émission des années 1950 en un spectacle érotique (Muñoz 1999 : 3, 33). C’est cette expérience de réinvention comique et critique qui anime aussi la puissance du couple butch/femme que Gomez, comme de nombreuses comiques lesbiennes (Holly Hughes, « Split Britches » dans le style de la performance ; Lynn Lavner et sa Butch fatale ou Suzanne Westenhoefer, Lea DeLaria etc…), explore amplement. Le couple sulfureux est une source d’humour car il signale à la fois la difficulté d’être représentée et la fabrique d’une nouvelle figure rebelle. Le comique queer permet peut-être alors de dépasser certaines impasses des politiques de la visibilité. La capacité de se moquer des clichés des hétérosexuels mais aussi des homosexuels, même s’il ne s’agit pas d’une équivalence des points de vue, montre la force des stéréotypes qui aident sans doute à délimiter les angoisses et les peurs qui définissent la perception de l’altérité et des limites du sujet. C’est au cœur de ces tensions extrêmes que se trouve l’origine du rire qui masque et dans le même temps manifeste la limite la plus radicale du sujet : sa mort.

44 Bien sûr, le rire queer a été en première ligne avec les années SIDA. Si l’utilisation de l’humour et du rire est plutôt associée à une seconde génération de pièces sur le SIDA (Jones), certains comiques gays ont pu se saisir de cette crise directement et rapidement. Renouant avec la tradition morbide, Steve Moore (Karvoski 119-123) se moque de sa séropositivité grâce à tous les ressorts transgressifs de l’humour noir. Les

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jeux de mots douteux menant à la mort de l’individu et du sens fusent dans son spectacle. On retrouve là la chute de l’humain dans sa condition de perte. Le style plutôt âpre est accentué par la structure sérielle du stand-up qui enchaîne sans transitions les blagues funestes : The other day I went to the video store and rented Longtime Companion, And the Band Played On, Philadelphia and An Early Frost. The clerk asked me to pay cash in advance. I think that’s mean. Can you imagine the AIDS ward in heaven?! The good news is, I may get to meet Rock Hudson. The bad news is, I may have to listen to Liberace music for the rest of eternity! (Karvoski 121)

45 Toutefois dans la version filmée du spectacle Drop Dead Gorgeous (A Tragi-Comedy) : The Power of HIV-Positive Thinking (HBO, 1997) un fil narratif autobiographique donne l’impression d’un travail plus classique qui emprunte au style confessionnel mais tout en restant un spectacle comique architecturé par les rires chronométrés. Moore mobilise ici le matériau habituel des comiques : la culture populaire. À la frontière entre grand public et contrepublic, la blague du magasin de location vidéo témoigne d’une culture gay à la fois spécifique, avec la liste des films et téléfilms abordant le SIDA, et générale avec l’évocation de figures célèbres (le pianiste Liberace, la star de cinéma Hudson) dont le SIDA a mis sur la place publique l’orientation sexuelle. La présence du SIDA dans la comédie participe à la fonction du rire qui étend la définition de la sphère publique et de l’humain dans la mesure où la maladie, bien que rejetée par tous, s’impose à la société. Le SIDA, bien sûr, a été l’objet d’une marginalisation forcée entre autres pour les homosexuels masculins, les africains-américains, les immigrés mais l’humour ici vient justement éroder ces restrictions pour rappeler ce qui est au bout de la maladie : la mort. C’est aussi ce qui est au bout du rire : la chute, la mortalité, le rien de l’humain. Et pourtant la sexualité résiste, accroche comme désir de vivre sur la brèche qui soude et sépare l’individu de son environnement. La version filmée du spectacle oppose le rire à la mort aussi dans la mesure où l’artiste est devant les spectateurs qui témoignent de son existence, de sa résistance. Même si le début du numéro sur le SIDA déclenche peu de réactions de la salle, Moore finit par faire rire le public du « Comedy Club » (Los Angeles). Les spectateurs peuvent rire peut-être aussi car finalement grâce au progrès des traitements (expliqué dans le spectacle), l’on croit voir la vie triompher sur la mort, ne serait-ce qu’un instant. Et finalement, n’est-ce pas cela aussi le rire : une victoire, même brève sur la souffrance, l’oppression et la mort ?

Conclusion

46 Laurie Stone nous rappelle que le rire et le sexe sont intimement liés même si les comiques provoquent l’émotion avec les mots plutôt qu’avec leurs corps : Like sex, comedy is irrepressible, laughter libidinous, though comedians themselves are often sexually masked, funneling aggression through language rather than their bodies. (Stone xv)

47 Bien sûr, on comprend la différence entre la dimension physique d’un acte sexuel et la corporalité d’un.e comédien.ne, néanmoins l’utilisation du corps reste un ingrédient fondamental dans le genre du stand-up. L’énergie, la présence, les mimiques, la plasticité du visage, les ondulations des membres sont autant d’expressions du corps qui sculptent les mots, habitent l’espace et le temps du plateau. L’on peut voir d’ailleurs tout un éventail de stratégies pour faire exister le corps queer dans l’espace scénique :

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allant de l’énergie débordante de DeLaria au calme olympien de Tigo Notaro en passant par le camp flamboyant de Joan Jett Blakk ou Justin Bond. Tous ces artistes ont su à la fois ouvrir des espaces pour un comique dont le fond reste le rire mais dont la forme a su questionner, voire déstabiliser les limites normatives qui tentent sans cesse de policer l’individu et son environnement.

48 Le stand-up queer s’inscrit donc pleinement dans l’histoire de la performance queer même s’il ne jouit pas de la même aura. Selon les propos de Zoglin, la part des comiques dans la transformation de la culture américaine a trop souvent été négligée : The stand-up comics of the late ‘60s and ‘70s are the forgotten stars of this cultural revolution. At a time when young people were challenging the power structure and freeing their minds, stand-up comics struck an especially responsive chord. (Zoglin 4)

49 Si la périodicité diffère, le stand-up queer pourrait aussi avoir été délaissé par la critique queer. Peut-être parce qu’il existe une porosité des genres où le stand-up se transforme en performance solo (Tim Miller, Holly Hughes etc.), en performance drag queen (Kiki and Herb, Busch etc.) ou drag king (Peggy Shaw, Dred, etc.) et parfois le stand-up devient une satire sociale (Moore, « Pomo Afro Homos »). La circulation du rire queer permet de desserrer un peu plus l’étau oppressif, tout particulièrement en travaillant dans la transversalité, l’intersectionnel, la désidentification comme les hommes noirs gays de « Pomo Afro Homos » ou les comiques latinas lesbiennes (Maria Gomez, Carmelita Tropicana) et en créant un contrepublic. Le stand-up contribue à donner une forme, une esthétique à des mouvements politiques, mais une politique qui passe par la prolifération et l’hybridation de formes culturelles évanescentes. Comme le suggère l’action camp queer de Joan Jett Blakk, le mélange d’une élection politique et d’un style camp fait rire ou trembler non parce qu’il oppose un groupe sexuel à un autre mais parce que cette hybridation questionne la société toute entière. Le rire queer est donc à la poursuite d’une réouverture, même éphémère, des possibles tant sur le plan individuel que social. Au fur et à mesure de l’intégration gay et lesbienne, le risque de l’évaporation d’un rire homo risque d’être total. Toutefois, le positionnement queer tente de déjouer les rabattements normatifs pour réintroduire le rire queer sur l’horizon et maintenir le décalage, l’asymétrie qui est à la source de l’éclat de rire libérateur, provocateur et révolutionnaire.

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NOTES

1. Dans son étude Esther Newton relève l’importance de deux types de performance comique : le « slapstick » principalement visuel et le stand-up principalement verbal (Newton 52). Cette dernière est considérée comme centrale dans la culture homosexuelle et elle est associée au camp : « The stand-up comic is the specialized, professionally performing version of the best- defined role figure in homosexual life, the campy queen. » (Newton 56) 2. Voir les réflexions des universitaires queer Michael Warner (Warner 423-424) et José Muñoz (Muñoz 1999: 147-149). 3. L’utilisation des termes gays et lesbiens, LGBT, queer sont assez flottants selon les acteurs concernés. Il existe une prédominance des termes gays et lesbiens dans les années 1980 tandis que « queer » va venir s’opposer aux tendances essentialistes et normatives du mouvement gay et lesbien. LGBT s’impose aussi au cours des années 1980 de façon plus consensuelle. Ici tout en gardant ces grandes tendances en tête, on respecte également la façon dont les acteurs envisagent les choses quelle que soit la période. 4. Samuel Weber résume la position de Freud : « Le mot d’esprit n’est un mot d’esprit que par l’effet du rire qu’il provoque mais qui en retour le constitue pour ainsi dire rétrospectivement » (Weber 64) 5. Cette idée de la réappropriation de l’humour d’autodénigrement (« self-deprecating humor ») est repérée par Gilbert (Gilbert 319) même si bien sûr c’est une forme utilisée par de nombreux comiques (mais avec un sens différent selon la position des groupes représentés). Cet espace de liberté fait aussi écho au processus de désidentification. 6. Le « zap » est une interruption d’un événement souvent public dans le but d’exposer un problème ici l’homophobie. Cette pratique utilisée par le Gay Liberation Front dans les années 1970 sera ensuite un type d’intervention militante fréquemment utilisée par ACT UP. 7. Comme le rappelle Lynda Montgomery: « People are always interested when you reveal something personal about yourself » (Karvoski 202) 8. Voir l’article fondateur de Crenshaw qui veut mettre fin à une analyse sectorielle et disciplinaire afin de ne pas répéter les exclusions subies par les diverses minorités et dans le but de confronter simultanément les oppressions multiples. 9. « (…) disidentification is the hermeneutical performance of decoding mass, high, or any other cultural field from the perspective of a minority subject who is disempowered in such a representational hierarchy » (Muñoz 1999: 25)

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10. On pense ici aux auteures Jill Dolan, Kate Davy, Sue-Ellen Case pour citer les plus connues qui ont, elles-mêmes, renouvelé le critique théâtrale féministe et lesbienne. 11. Voir par exemple Dress Suits To Hire de Holly Hughes jouée à sa création par Weaver et Shaw. 12. Dans le public des spectacles auquel j’ai assisté en 1997-1998, se retrouvait le contrepublic d’étudiants inscrits aux divers séminaires queer des universités newyorkaises et aussi de leurs professeurs dont Muñoz, Michael Moon, etc. 13. Dolan conclut son article sur la proposition suivante: “This, for me, is the beginning (and perhaps the substance) of the utopic performative: in the performer's grace, in the audience's generosity, in the lucid power of intersubjective understanding, however fleeting.” (Dolan 479) 14. Newton souligne que ce final est plus courant dans les lieux « hétérosexuels ». Toutefois, on retrouve une fin similaire à la fin des années 1990s dans la comédie musicale queer, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. (Lemoine 2017)

RÉSUMÉS

Dans le monde du spectacle, les comiques ont souvent été relégués au rang d’art mineur, voire rejetés comme un pur produit commercial. Et pourtant la tradition du stand-up, construit sur l’enchaînement rapide de blagues, ne cherche-t-elle pas à saisir l’essence même du rire ? L’histoire des comiques LGBTQ (lesbien, gay, bisexuel, transgenre et queer) a été également négligée dans l’histoire du théâtre et de la performance queer. Cet article revisite donc ces histoires pour essayer d’identifier le rôle d’un rire queer à travers ses fonctions et ses effets théoriques. En explorant les dimensions politiques et esthétiques des comiques gays, lesbiens et transgenres depuis les années 1960, on peut comprendre le rôle du rire dans la constitution d’une pratique dissidente face aux normes et à la domination hétéronormatives blanches. Cette résistance du rire est articulée aux notions théoriques queer de désidentification et de contrepublic qui traversent les trois voies empruntées ici : le rire politique, performatif et subversif.

In the world of performance art, comedians have often been considered as minor artists or even have been rejected as mere commercial products. Yet doesn’t the stand-up tradition – defined by the delivery of fast paced jokes – seek to grasp the essence of laughter? The history of LGBTQ comedians has equally been neglected by the queer theater and performance history. This paper aims at revisiting these histories in order to account for the role of queer laughter thanks to its theoretical and functional effects. By exploring the political and esthetic dimensions of gay, lesbian and transgender people since the 1960s, we can understand the role of laughter in the construction of dissenting practices against white heteronormative norms and domination. This resistance through laughter is articulated here through the queer theoretical notions of dissidentification and counterpublicity present in the three paths taken by this work: political, performative, and subversive laughter.

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INDEX

Keywords : queer, comedians, stand-up, gay, lesbian, transgender, race, dissidentification, counterpublic, performance, camp, homophobia Mots-clés : queer, comiques, stand-up, gay, lesbien, transgenre, race, désidentification, contrepublic, performance, camp, homophobie

AUTEURS

XAVIER LEMOINE Maître de conférences Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, Laboratoire LISAA (LIttératures SAvoirs et Arts) [email protected]

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Anasyrma et la hantise du rire dans le théâtre de Tennessee Williams

Emmanuel Vernadakis

1 Dans A Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley se fâche parce que Blanche, sa belle-sœur, l’a appelé « Polak » : « I am not a Polack. People from Poland are Poles » (scène 8), dit-il. Le verbe « are » – plutôt que « call » (cf. People from Poland are called Poles) – permet ici la condensation de deux sens dans « P/pole », le deuxième licencieux : « pole is slang for a penis » (Urban Dictionnary). Si le spectateur découvre ce deuxième sens, une autre voie de signification s’ouvre pour permettre à Stanley de se présenter ouvertement à Blanche – et aux spectateurs – comme une bête sexuelle. D’un dialogue « réaliste » nous sommes ainsi introduits dans un espace d’échange libre, voire libertin, dont la nature poétique, au lieu de respecter les conventions, les brave. Le temps d’un éclair, l’auteur dévêt un angle voilé de la pièce pour éclairer la nature à la fois « physique » et symbolique d’un personnage qui personnifie la fécondité. On sait – ou on se doute – que Stanley est une bête sexuelle ; néanmoins on ne s’attend pas à ce qu’il se définisse de lui-même comme tel. Dans cet exemple, c’est comme si le texte nous défiait de lever le voile de décence que la langue revêt aux situations de communication formelle pour que la « nudité » du personnage concerné se révèle en éclair. Les spectateurs qui lèvent ce défi perçoivent un dénudement ; comme si le voile de décence qui revêt le discours de Stanley était soulevé. La déclaration du personnage brise les tabous par synecdoque – la partie pour le tout – pour exposer à nos yeux sa « nudité ». Ce processus mental évoque la gestuelle concrète d’anasyrma, retroussement rituel d’un vêtement dans l’antiquité grecque qui découvrait la nudité du sujet dans un objectif apotropaïque (Vernadakis 2000, 291). L’identité de Stanley se réduit alors à un phallus dévoilé par un anasyrma ; ce qui, dans l’espace théâtral, fait écho au lever du rideau et dans l’espace plus large du spectacle, au strip-tease. Cette dimension fortement sexuelle du personnage, révélée par « retroussement » – pensons au French cancan ou à la célèbre image de Maryline dans The Seven Year Itch (1955) – nous réjouit et nous fait rire.

2 Le rapport au rire1 est abordé de manière moins systématique que d’autres aspects de l’œuvre de Williams, comme par exemple l’homosexualité à laquelle il se rattache par une sémiotique gothique : invisible, néanmoins puissant, le rire y surgit comme une

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hantise. La mise en perspective de l’homosexualité par une sémiotique gothique dont les modalités se déclarent sur un plan moins manifeste que symbolique a été étudiée par Brian Peters. Sans aborder le rire, Peters analyse la manière dont la poétique visuelle de l’œuvre engage le langage dans la création d’images textuelles chargées d’érotisme qui recyclent et diffusent le désir2 (Peters 4-6). Le rire est suscité précisément par ce type d’images, chargées de sexualité.

3 La sexualité comme ressort du comique, surtout lorsqu’elle se polarise sur le phallus, est un trait caractéristique de l’ancienne comédie attique. Née en Grèce au cinquième siècle avant notre ère, la comédie est issue des κῶμοι (comoi), chants phalliques, joyeux et festifs, qui accompagnent les processions rituelles en l’honneur des dieux chtoniens, essentiellement Dionysos mais pas exclusivement. Elle se développe sur la scène des concours dramatiques autour d’un personnage phallique à travers plaisanteries grivoises ou scatologiques. Les onze comédies d’Aristophane parvenues jusqu’à nous illustrent de manière caractéristique ce trait (Harvey 44, 115-116, 320 ; Hartnoll 406). Leur marque principale est la liberté du langage (Abirached 130) qui donne lieu à des jeux de mots habiles, notamment des jeux d’onomastique, dont, toutefois, l’objectif n’est pas simplement de divertir. Hautement poétique, leur « indécence » est d’une facture artistique qui n’a rien à envier à la tragédie (Mpoukalas, 26). Williams a systématiquement recours à ces pratiques anciennes qui se combinent subtilement à la sémiotique gothique dont parle Peters. Pour étudier le rire invisible de son œuvre, cette sémiotique gothique sera éclairée par une série de références classiques qui nous permettront de déconstruire la condensation poétique extrême de ses œuvres. Le rapport du théâtre de Williams aux origines de la comédie, à l’ancienne comédie attique et aux rituels qui lui sont associés de près ou de loin, comme les chants et processions phalliques des mystères de l’antiquité, constituent un aspect peu étudié de l’œuvre de Williams. Dans l’ouvrage, désormais classique, de Judith J. Thompson, Tennessee Williams’ Plays: Memory, Myth and Symbol (Peter Lang 2002), il est question de l’intertextualité mythologique de son théâtre. L’intérêt de Williams pour l’antiquité grecque et sa connaissance de celle-ci n’y sont toutefois pas abordés, le rire non plus. Williams a étudié le grec à Washington University, St Louis et il en parle à plusieurs reprises (Notebooks 67, 87, 89). L’importance qu’il accorde à cette matière est manifeste dans une entrée du 25 janvier 1937 : « Now I must stop and study Greek. Oh, yes, Greek is so important just now. » (Notebooks 73) Sa perception de l’antiquité grecque ne se borne cependant pas à des connaissances universitaires formelles ; il s’y intéresse suffisamment pour l’étudier à travers des lectures personnelles3. La posture de l’œuvre de Williams face au rire s’inspire de la gestuelle de l’anasyrma, mot grec qui indique le retroussement d’un vêtement plus ou moins long, pour relever ce qui était initialement recouvert. Il trouve sa source dans les processions d’initiation aux mystères éleusiniens où il est associé à Iambé, inventrice de la poésie comique, Iacchos, avatar de Dionysos, dieu lumineux et tapageur du rire et Baubô, vieille nourrice qui révèle sa nudité à une déesse pour la faire rire (Vernadakis 2000, 291-293 ; 2032-33). L’intérêt de Williams pour ce geste indique un aspect cérébral ou érudit, parfois contesté4, de son théâtre. Selon mon hypothèse, le rire chez Williams émerge d’un anasyrma, geste initialement féminin effectué devant une assemblée d’hommes (Vernadakis 2000, 294). Connu pour avoir repoussé des héros et des fléaux naturels, l’anasyrma a une propriété apotropaïque5. Cependant, ainsi que le stipule l’épisode d’Iambé, alias Baubô, rapporté par Clément d’Alexandrie, lorsqu’il est exécuté devant une autre femme, l’anasyrma déclenche le rire (Vernadakis 2000, 292). Clément rapporte l’histoire de Baubô, une

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vieille nourrice d’Eleusis qui accueille Déméter en deuil de sa fille et lui offre le kykéon, breuvage régénérateur que la déesse éplorée dédaigne de prendre. Baubô retrousse alors ses vêtements et expose sa nudité : de son sexe surgit Iacchos, fils de la déesse et avatar de Dionysos, qui rit et gigote. Déméter rit, à son tour, et accepte le kykéon. L’anasyrma qui, dans ce mythe, sauve l’humanité de la famine par le rire, déclenche aussi un rire salutaire dans le théâtre de Williams. L’esprit de Baubô l’éleusinienne sera débusqué dans Bobo, l’oiseau jaune qui préside la destinée d’Alma Tutwiler dans la nouvelle « The Yellow Bird », et celui d’Iacchos, avatar de Dionysos et dieu lumineux du rire, dans Oliver Winemiller, protagoniste de « One Arm ». Les deux figures mythologiques œuvrent de pair dans Summer and Smoke dont l’héroïne, Alma Winemiller, réunit dans son nom ceux des protagonistes des deux nouvelles précédentes. Verbal, plutôt que gestuel, l’anasyrma déclenche un rire qui émane de la théâtralisation d’un « je » d’artiste. C’est un rire chthonien qui ne se révèle pas d’emblée parce qu’il procède des agissements d’un dramaturge filou qui cherche à « rouler » la censure autant que le désir de divertissement du public. Si la vigilance de l’une et les attentes de l’autre sont satisfaites, elles le sont par tromperie. La cohésion obtenue par l’expressionnisme qui revêt le réalisme et le naturalisme scénographiques des pièces est un masque conçu pour plaire au public et leurrer la censure. Motivées par le rire, les œuvres que nous étudierons procèdent à ces travestissements afin de refondre en drames sociaux les conflits internes de l’écrivain en herbe. Dans ce contexte métafictionnel d’écriture de soi, le rire est celui du dramaturge victorieux, triomphant des forces obscures du puritanisme, forces néanmoins domestiques qui ont nourri son âme. Si bien que ce rire d’auteur triomphant résulte d’un acte violent qui repose sur la capitulation et l’exécution de quelque chose de cher chez le jeune homme – pour utiliser une formule de Wilde, Williams rit en tuant ce qu’il aime6. Le souvenir de Wilde, de l’individu et de son œuvre, participe largement au processus. Les pièces de Williams traversent au moins deux filtres, très hétéroclites, pour parvenir à générer le rire : l’œuvre d’Oscar Wilde et les comics7. On s’attachera surtout au premier et surtout à la danse que Wilde a imaginée pour sa pièce française, Salomé (1893), « la danse des sept voiles », striptease symbolique inspiré par la descente aux enfers d’Ishtar (Vernadakis 2003, LXV). Il s’agit d’un motif finement masqué et récurrent chez Williams qui fait le lien avec l’anasyrma de Baubô8. Avant de commencer l’analyse des trois œuvres, il convient de vérifier rapidement ce point.

4 Les protagonistes de « The Yellow Bird » et de Summer and Smoke partagent le prénom Alma, dont la sonorité évoque vaguement « Salomé ». En tant que nom commun, en anglais, alma signifie danseuse orientale (Webster's 1913). Dans la nouvelle, le rapport d’Alma à la danse est visuellement évoqué par le verbe « juking », néologisme dérivé des Juke-boxes devant lesquels Alma se met systématiquement à danser : « She picked up men on the high-way and went out “juking” with them » (Williams 1996, 252). Ce rapport à la danse est aussi mis en scène dans Summer and Smoke où Alma a un double antithétique, un doppelgänger dans le personnage de Rosa, danseuse de flamenco qui se donne en spectacle au Moon Lake Casino, propriété de son père. À travers sa transformation de fille de pasteur en fille de joie, Alma adopte progressivement les traits de Rosa la danseuse. Si bien qu’à la fin de la pièce, elle invite un étranger au Moon Lake Casino, on présume pour « danser » (Williams 2000, 642). Pour ainsi dire, il y a donc un peu de la danseuse Salomé dans Alma.

5 Pour reprendre, le rire chez Williams se comporte comme un clandestin. Il se cache pour se déclencher une fois que le pathétique se métamorphose en matière

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métafictionnelle. Infernal et ingénu, primitif et cérébral, il agit tel un spectre espiègle mais salutaire, sans se montrer ; tout comme l’oiseau jaune de la nouvelle « The Yellow Bird ».

6 « The Yellow Bird » est une farce narrativisée. Elle s’articule autour de Bobo, oiseau jaune qui tient les fils de l’intrigue, même si sa propre existence tient, elle aussi, à un fil. Si ses actions ponctuent le récit, son existence est problématique. Bobo n’est littéralement présent qu’à travers son nom qui apparaît uniquement au début et à la fin de la nouvelle. Dans le premier paragraphe, le récit nous plonge dans les origines hawthorniennes de la littérature américaine par la relation qu’il tisse entre Bobo et le passé de la famille de l’héroïne, Alma Tutwiler : la première ancêtre américaine d’Alma aurait été pendue aux procès de sorcellerie de Salem, accusée de s’entretenir avec Bobo, oiseau jaune messager du diable. Dans le dernier paragraphe, Bobo se voit projeté vers l’éternité : son nom est gravé sur le marbre d’un monument élevé en l’honneur d’Alma – un dauphin chevauché par trois personnages androgynes dont le premier porte une croix, le deuxième une lyre grecque et le troisième une corne d’abondance. Entre le début et la fin du récit il n’est pas question de Bobo ; mais on se doute que les transformations d’Alma – fille de pasteur, prostituée, mère, sainte, monument, légende – se font sous l’égide de Bobo.

7 La navigation entre la « préhistoire » américaine – le Salem hawthornien – et l’éternité – symbolisée par le monument funéraire – pourvoient Bobo d’une qualité oxymorique : elle couvre le temps « historique » et son prolongement imaginaire étant partout sans se montrer. Son omniprésence absente témoigne du remarquable degré de condensation poétique atteint par le texte. Car, en effet, lorsqu’on considère les étendues couvertes par le récit sur le plan de la représentation des lieux, du temps et des personnages9, les huit pages de la nouvelle enveloppent une substance qui conviendrait mieux à une saga. Si le rythme rapide de l’action, l’aspect grotesque des personnages et leurs nombreuses entrées et sorties (Williams 2012, 251) relèvent de la farce, l’intrigue rattache la nouvelle non seulement au théâtre mais aussi à d’autres genres, comme la biographie, et à d’autres modes, comme le fantastique. Ainsi, marquée d’un « réalisme » conventionnel, la trame biographique du récit saute subitement dans le fantastique quelques paragraphes avant la fin : « Now from this point on the story takes a strange turn that may be highly disagreeable to some readers, if any still hoped it was going to avoid the fantastic. » (Williams 2012, 254) De plus, les évènements de l’intrigue qui se déroulent dans le Sud des États Unis, à la Nouvelle-Orléans, puis dans le Nord où Alma devient riche, cartographient l’itinéraire biographique de Williams dans un ordre chronologique10. On peut donc soupçonner qu’il y a également des éléments d’écriture de soi dans la biographie d’Alma – d’autant plus que celle-ci sert de modèle à cette autre Alma, protagoniste de Summer and Smoke, toujours fille de pasteur qui se transforme, elle aussi, en prostituée, et au sujet de laquelle Williams dit : « Alma of Summer and Smoke is my favourite—because I came out so late and so did Alma, […] Miss Alma grew up in the shadow of the rectory. And so did I. » (Devlin 228) Le lecteur des carnets de Williams est en mesure de remarquer nombre d’autres affinités entre le personnage et son auteur11. Si Williams s’identifie à Alma, comme il le déclare ici, au lieu de suivre un seul fil rouge dans sa lecture de « The Yellow Bird », il est possible d’en suivre deux : le premier nous guide à travers la trajectoire d’Alma, fille de pasteur qui se transformer en fille de joie ; le second à travers la trajectoire de Tom Williams qui se métamorphose en Tennessee Williams,

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destinée toute tracée qui va de l’apprentissage du métier à la consécration du dramaturge (Vernadakis 2013, 49-61).

8 Par un processus de condensation, propre surtout à la nouvelle, Williams a recours à une stratégie de représentation qui investit deux niveaux d’action ; le premier littéral, extérieur et social, le second implicite, intérieur, voire hermétique, et autobiographique. Cela est d’abord travaillé dans les nouvelles, puis dans ses pièces.

9 Comme plusieurs dramaturges, Goethe, Gogol, Pouchkine, Tchekhov, Wilde, Brecht, Pirandello, Beckett, Pinter, Miller etc., Williams cultive, lui aussi, la nouvelle. Cela se justifie parce que la fiction brève – surtout la nouvelle – et le théâtre se rencontrent sur quelques points qui émanent de contraintes formelles similaires. Par exemple, depuis la naissance du théâtre, la durée de la représentation d’une pièce ne dépasse généralement pas les deux ou trois heures12. Ce qui correspond plus ou moins au temps de lecture d’une nouvelle qui, comme l’a souligné Poe, se lit d’un seul trait (May 60-61). De même, associé au temps limité de la représentation, l’espace réduit de la scène incite le dramaturge à recourir à des artifices comparables à ceux du nouvelliste qui ne doit pas dépasser un certain nombre de signes prédéfinis pour respecter les ordres d’un éditeur, les besoins d’une revue, les règles du genre. Cette nécessité de concentration de contenu fait que la création du dramaturge et celle du nouvelliste reposent sur un défi poétique partagé : signifier plus en exposant moins.

10 Chez Williams, la condensation poétique se produit d’abord dans les nouvelles pour être, seulement ensuite, reprise dans les pièces. Elle met en œuvre un paradigme autobiographique sous forme de dévoilements instantanés indépendants, déclenchés à partir de montages poétiques à sens double ou multiple. Rattachés entre eux selon une logique indépendante de l’intrigue, ils évoluent en parallèle sur une trame implicite qui forme un deuxième récit. Invisible sur le plan littéral, ce récit hante le texte de propos, d’images et d’autres constructions figurées ou intersémiotiques dont la signification est parfois contraire à ce qui est littéralement signifié. La logique de progression discursive séquentielle de ces dévoilements, repérables à tout moment, se présente ainsi comme un double du récit. C’est un double démystifiant et comique. Par exemple, c’est par une série de condensations poétiques sur cette deuxième voie que l’héroïne de « The Yellow Bird » explicite la signification de son prénom, Alma, en anglais13, en latin, en grec, en hébreu et en espagnol, au moyen de représentations comiques narrativisées (Vernadakis 2013, 49-61). Ce sont tout d’abord l’onomastique et l’hétéroglossie qui éveillent les qualités performatives du discours narratif pour nous faire découvrir les mises en scène des différents sens du prénom Alma au cours des métamorphoses du personnage. Sur le plan du récit manifeste, Alma se met à fumer à outrance - voire à se droguer si l’on tient compte du double sens du mot Coke : « They had seen her smoking in the White Star drugstore while she was having her afternoon Coke » (Williams 2012, 250). La symbolique de la fumée, reprise pour la refonte dramatique de « The Yellow Bird » dans le titre Summer and Smoke, signale la métamorphose de la matière consumée d’Alma – sa foi puritaine – en un élément nouveau – en énergie vitale. En effet, le texte stipule que le renoncement à son éducation puritaine de vieille fille donne lieu à une énergie sans pareille chez une Alma « flambeuse » qui, grâce à la foi vigoureuse de ses ancêtres, fait sensation : « It was impossible to see how one human constitution could stand up under the strain of so much running around to night places, but Alma had all the vigor that comes from generations of firm believers. It could have gone into anything and made a sensation. Well, that’s how it was. There was no stopping her once

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she got started » (Williams 2012, 252). Avec ces propos le narrateur dévoile une exploitation rabelaisienne de la formule latine (d’où l’hétéroglossie) Alma mater, « mère nourricière » : les « cendres » d’Alma-la-puritaine nourrissent l’énergie sexuelle d’Alma la fille-de-joie. Cette performance narrativisée relève de l’autobiographie. Pour peu que l’on connaisse la vie de Williams, on reconnaît des résonances entre celle-ci et l’épisode précédent et percevons également le processus de condensation poétique à l’œuvre dans la nouvelle : élevé à l’ombre du presbytère, comme il le formule dans la citation précédemment utilisée, Williams s’est, comme Alma, adonné à la cigarette et à la drogue (Lahr 236, 280, 285, Smith-Howard 12). Du latin à l’hébreu, alma est aussi un mot de l’Ancien Testament qui intègre la tradition occidentale par l’intermédiaire du grec παρθένος, « vierge », ainsi qu’alma a été traduit dans le verset d’Isaïe VII, 14-15 sur lequel repose la doctrine de la virginité de Marie. Il se trouve que, sur la deuxième trame narrative, la vie d’Alma parodie au moins deux épisodes de la vie de la Vierge Marie, l’Immaculée Conception et la Dormition. Le puritanisme d’Alma confère de la pureté au physique du personnage qui, malgré le temps qui passe et sa vie de débauche, respire la pureté et l’innocence d’une vierge. Son miroir renvoie à Alma l’image d’un visage virginal qui n’accuse ni les effets du temps ni les excès physiques : « It might have seemed to some people that Alma was living a wasteful and profligate existence, but if the penalty for it was death, well, she was a long time dying […] It apparently did not have a dissipating effect on her […] it wouldn’t […] Her face had a bright and innocent look in the mornings » (Williams 2012, 239). En évoquant le célèbre héros débauché d’Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray, dont le physique reste inaltérable malgré le passage du temps, ce propos inaugure une mise en scène parodique d’Alma en tant que Vierge14. Mais il s’agit aussi d’une mise en scène de Tom tel qu’il se décrit en octobre 1941, lorsqu’il est en train de rédiger la nouvelle : « I look in the mirror. My face is fresh and glowing. I look young again. And pretty! » (Notebooks 245). La chambre d’Alma à la Nouvelle Orléans est décrite comme une « crèche » : « [a] miserable little furnished room—or crib, as it actually was » (Williams 2012, 238). Alma y reçoit une émissaire de ses parents qui constate que dans ce lieu tout est sale et maculé : « The bed was unmade and looked as if it had been that way for weeks. The two-burner stove was loaded with unwashed pots in some of which grew a pale fungus […] the doors of the big armoire hung open on white summer dresses that were covered with grass stains. »15 (Williams 2012, 237-238). Parodie de l’Immaculée Conception, cette visite se parachève avec l’annonce de la “bonne” nouvelle – le sens du mot « évangile » en grec – : « Shortly thereafter Alma discovered that she was becoming a mother » (Williams 2012, 238). Comblée de richesses grâce à son fils, enfant ensorcelé qui, nourrisson, sort de la maison en rampant pour aller à la mer et en revenir les mains pleines de trésors marins, Alma s’en va vivre « up North ». La résonance ici entre le récit fantastique et la vie de Williams est que, du Sud, l’auteur a déménagé à New York lorsque ses pièces lui ont valu la reconnaissance du public et la prospérité. Une parodie du récit de la Dormition et ascension de Marie clôt cette partie, inspirée par les apocryphes où la Vierge est miraculeusement rapprochée de Jean (Rhodes 194-277). Tandis qu’elle agonise, l’héroïne souhaite que son fils, John, parti dans la marine, vienne à son chevet ; mais, au lieu de cela, son lit la conduit à John, son amant préféré qui, tel Neptune, l’accueille au milieu de l’océan, tenant une corne d’abondance remplie de joyaux récupérés dans les épaves de galions espagnols. Il couvre le corps d’Alma de ces joyaux et, au lieu de l’envoyer au ciel, l’emmène avec lui dans les profondeurs marines (Williams 2012, 239). Loufoques et fantasmatiques, ces mises en scène du prénom d’Alma qui font d’elle un avatar de Marie, corroborent le lien

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autobiographique complexe qui rattache le récit manifeste aux dévoilements du récit latent et Alma, la prostituée, à Williams, l’auteur « croustillant » : la métalepse, figure de rhétorique qui dévoile l’intrusion de l’auteur – et pas du narrateur – dans sa fiction (Genette 31 passim), trouve une figure particulièrement convenable dans Marie. La Vierge, qui sert de modèle à la fabrication de la sainte courtisane de Williams est par définition, une figure métaleptique : en tant que mère de Dieu, elle est créatrice de son créateur. Il en est de même pour Alma qui, dans cette nouvelle, fonctionne comme une figure matricielle de son auteur (Vernadakis 213, 52). Ses « performances » de courtisane engagent un texte narratif dans la création d’une identité théâtrale, celle d’Alma, certes, mais aussi celle de son auteur dont la « personne » est créée par le récit de son personnage. La révélation de cette inversion où l’auteur figure comme la construction de sa création, suscite le rire sinon du lecteur du moins de l’auteur qui ruse ostensiblement aux dépens du premier tout en se positionnant contre ses attentes : « Now from this point on the story takes a strange turn that may be highly disagreable to some readers. » (238) Pour aller vite, sur la trame implicite de la nouvelle, cette inversion est un coming out inattendu imposé au lecteur. La surprise contrariée des lecteurs à cette révélation produit le rire de satisfaction de l’auteur triomphant, un rire dont le dauphin « arrogant » (239) du monument funéraire élevé à la mémoire d’Alma fait peut-être écho. Depuis l’antiquité, mais aussi selon les constats récents de certains chercheurs, le dauphin est perçu comme l’un des rares animaux qui non seulement ont une figure rieuse mais sont aussi capables de rire16. La manière dont ses contemporains décrivent le rire de Williams n’est pas sans évoquer le « rire » des dauphins17 tel qu’on le trouve filmé dans nombre de clips en ligne : « what Mr. Williams's colleagues remember best was his marvelous laugh - a nervous, funny laugh, half-way between a guffaw and a cackle, that erupted at the most improbable times » (Kakutani).

11 Nous pouvons faire le même type de constats à partir de la nouvelle « One Arm ». Boxeur de la marine qui a perdu son bras dans un accident de voiture, Oliver Winemiller, le protagoniste, se prostitue, comme Alma, mais pour une clientèle homosexuelle. La polysémie du titre (arm=membre/arme) ouvre un horizon d’attente à double entrée où le handicap—le bras amputé—rivalise avec la violence signalée par l’instrument de combat. Une deuxième intrigue qui évolue de manière latente, est encore éclairée par l’onomastique et l’hétéroglossie. Comme dans « The Yellow Bird », l’hétéroglossie double le sens d’un nom propre – ici d’un toponyme – dont la signification en langue étrangère dévoile des « performances » invisibles sur le plan du récit manifeste. Ainsi, une nuit, après avoir tué un de ses clients sur un yacht, Oliver Winemiller quitte le bateau en plongeant dans les eaux de Palm Beach (Williams 2012, 198-199). Ce plongeon entame, pour ainsi dire, une « descente aux enfers » pour Oliver qui se traduit concrètement par une série d’étapes qui vont de mal en pis : arrestation, procès, condamnation et exécution suivie de la dissection de son cadavre. Le toponyme Palm Beach ouvre à la fois sur le symbolisme issu de sa première composante, palm, et sur la descente aux enfers de Dionysos suggérée par la contextualisation de l’action. Pour commencer, palm le palmier, terme récurrent chez Williams, est systématiquement utilisé dans sa fiction par le truchement de l’hétéroglossie, à travers le sens de sa traduction grecque : « phénix ». En grec, ce mot désigne à la fois le palmier et l’oiseau mythologique égyptien qui renaît de ses cendres. Le deuxième sens de ce mot (i.e. phénix) fait que le plongeon d’Oliver dans ces eaux préconise le contraire de ce qui est exposé par l’action. La descente aux enfers du personnage est en quelque sorte devancée par l’annonce d’une régénération qui va à

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rebrousse-poil de l’action et qui repose sur un hypotexte comique scabreux. Dieu du vin, Dionysos habite le nom Wine-miller qu’Oliver partage avec l’Alma de Summer and Smoke. La descente aux enfers de Dionysos était célébrée dans l’antiquité au cours des mystères de Lerne, par une cérémonie d'évocation nocturne, le rite des Nyctelia, au lac Alcyonien, réputé pour communiquer avec le royaume d’Hadès18. Selon la légende à l’origine de ce rituel, pour descendre aux enfers, Dionysos demande l’aide de Prosymnos, un vieux berger de Lerne qui connaît bien le lac Alcyonien. En récompense pour son aide, le jeune dieu promet de se prêter aux désirs de Prosymnos, une fois rentré. Cependant il ne peut tenir sa promesse car Prosymnos meurt avant. Pour tenir malgré tout son engagement, Dionysos taille un morceau de figuier en forme de phallus et, assis sur la tombe de Prosymnos, s'acquitte de sa dette (Clément d’Alexandrie, Discours aux Gentils 34, Grimal 127, Callimach, 125). La résonance de cet épisode dans la nouvelle se manifeste par la volonté d’Oliver d’honorer sa dette morale à l’égard de ses anciens clients, à l’origine méprisés parce qu’homosexuels. Le phallus en bois est peut- être reflété par une punaise inversée, dessinée au milieu de la chaise électrique dans un croquis du type comics, élaboré par Oliver pour l’envoyer en réponse aux lettres que ses anciens clients lui écrivent en prison.

12 Annoncée par le phénix « caché » dans Palm Beach, la régénération du personnage se produit au moyen de ces lettres de soutien. Elles permettent à Oliver de comprendre qu’il a, malgré tout, compté dans la vie de ses correspondants (Williams 2012, 200). Elle s’opère aussi, de manière plus radicale et comique, à la fin de la nouvelle par les implications métatextuelles du personnage central qui, comme il a été suggéré par ailleurs, s’offre comme une personnification ou une métonymie de l’œuvre de Williams (Vernadakis 2016, 144-145). Ces implications sont introduites notamment par un télescopage de l’œuvre littéraire de Williams et de l’œuvre graphique d’Oliver, à travers « the hot seat », ce croquis de type cartoons dont il a été question plus haut. Cela représente une chaise électrique. Ambigu, son titre associe mort, sexualité et volonté de puissance. Inspiré de la Chaise de l’artiste (1888-9) de Van Gogh19, ci-contre à droite,

Van Gogh. La chaise de l’artiste, https://www.wikiart.org/en/vincent-van-gogh/van-gogh-s-chair-1889, domaine public.

13 ce croquis superpose une œuvre dont Williams est (forcément) l’auteur effectif – celle qui est reproduite dans le volume (Williams 2012, 202) et ci-contre, à gauche,

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T. Williams. The Hot Seat.

14 à celle dont Oliver est l’artiste présumé – celle envoyée aux correspondants. Si la chaise est censée représenter l’instrument d’exécution d’Oliver, le croquis reprend sur le plan de l’image la stratégie de condensation sémantique par ambivalence que l’on a constatée sur le plan textuel. Ainsi que l’annonce le titre « the hot seat », cette chaise peut être vue de plusieurs manières : instrument d’exécution, certes ; toutefois, les rayons qui l’entourent comme un halo, les spirales et étoiles qui « évoluent » autour d’elle l’associent également à la lumière des astres, voire à un astre (cf. l’expression une « star »), en reprenant ainsi ce que le texte relate de la manière dont Oliver était vu par ses anciens clients « [the youth] stood like a planet among the moons of their longing » (Williams 2012, 202). Sur la partie basse du croquis figure également un « HA-HA! » imposant, souligné et suivi de spirales et d’étoiles telles que l’on en trouve dans les bandes dessinées pour exprimer ce qui ne peut pas s’écrire, la colère ou des mots licencieux. Par les rayons de lumière, les étoiles et le rire qui l’entourent, la chaise peut être aussi associée à la symbolique d’Iacchos, le personnage qui, on l’a vu, sort du sein de Baubô comme un prolongement phallique de son corps, pour faire rire Déméter. Onomatopée du rire – en grec καγχάζω – Iacchos, le porteur de lumière des mystères d’Eleusis (Grimal, 220), aussi appelé « l’astre lumineux » des mystères d’Eleusis (Aristophane 171-172), est un avatar de Dionysos. Dans Lady Chatterley’s Lover de D. H. Lawrence, auteur particulièrement apprécié par Williams (Débusscher 167), Connie Chatterley, dont l’amant s’appelle Oliver Mellors, fait d’Iacchos une personnification du phallus20 (Lawrence 219, Vernadakis 2016, 148). Les échos entre Oliver Mellors et Oliver Winemiller ne sont pas seulement phonétiques : les deux Oliver ont eu une liaison avec la femme du propriétaire qui les embauchait. Ce qui pourrait signifier que Williams aurait initialement découvert la figure d’Iacchos chez Lawrence. De manière osée, néanmoins comique, la punaise inversée au milieu de la chaise remplace chez Williams la pipe de Van Gogh, pour faire d’abord le lien entre art et plaisir sexuel, puis entre violence et volonté de puissance. Un symbole phallique et par procuration le plaisir qui s’y rattache siègent ainsi dans le croquis de Williams ; ce qui pourvoit le « hot » du syntagme the hot seat, d’un troisième sens, cette fois sexuel. Par le biais de la langue, de manière métonymique le siège désigne le pouvoir de l’individu qui l’occupe (« seat », représenté de manière plastique en tant que « chair » = a person in charge of…). La chaise d’Oliver, qui éclaire l’espace de son halo, peut être aussi le siège de l’artiste Williams, sa chaire, et Oliver, condamné à trôner sur celle-ci, une représentation métonymique de l’œuvre des deux. Comme Oliver, la chaise associe le pouvoir idéologique du mythe à la question d’identités sexuelles et à la littérature du Sud dont la fragilité, représentée par le corps diminué d’Oliver, constitue aussi le pouvoir. Cette fragilité magique car puissante – qui se retrouve par ailleurs chez Laura de The Glass Menagerie21 – incarne l’homosexualité de Williams, perçue comme une « volonté de puissance » créatrice22

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déterminante pour l’œuvre (Vernadakis 2016, 152). La vision d’une nature homosexuelle fragile face à une virilité puissante est stéréotypée mais nécessaire pour l’articulation des conflits dramatiques de l’œuvre, sur le plan de leur littéralité, parce qu’elle répond mieux aux attentes du public. Les pièces de Williams redressent le stéréotype, par le fait que tous les personnages sont, dans une certaine mesure, des parcelles de la personne de l’auteur qui se représente aussi bien à travers leur violence qu’à travers leur fragilité. Ce qui constitue une nouvelle source de rire – du moins pour Williams lui-même.

15 L’aspect pathétique de la nouvelle, qui se termine avec le cadavre d’Oliver en attente d’être disséqué, s’avère du coup comique : car si le corps d’Oliver est aussi le corpus de Williams, les étudiants de la faculté de médecine qui n’osent pas le disséquer pour l’étudier, tant il est beau, sont moins réticents que nous, vous et moi, qui sommes en train d’éplucher, ici même, à travers la lecture de ces pages, une portion de ce corpus pour l’observer sous une loupe scientifique. Williams nous a « roulés ». Nous pouvons, à notre tour, imaginer le rire de l’auteur devant ce spectacle figuré par anticipation – nous en train de disséquer son œuvre. Ce serait un rire d’outre-tombe qui résonnerait un peu, imaginons-le, comme celui de Muttley < https://gfycat.com/fr/gifs/detail/ ignorantrespectfulerin>.

16 Un dernier exemple de « The Yellow Bird », nous permettra d’illustrer la manière organique dont les deux intrigues parallèles, manifeste et latente, fonctionnent dans la logique de condensation poétique précédemment esquissée pour que le texte soit ouvertement exposé à la contradiction sans qu’il y ait incohérence. Sur le plan thématique, l’intrigue manifeste s’engage dans une critique sociale ; l’intrigue latente dans une écriture de soi – qui dévoile le rire.

17 La subite transformation d’Alma en prostituée se déclenche par un dimanche estival où la chaleur est insupportable. Pour arrêter son mari, le pasteur, dans un trop long sermon, la mère d’Alma agite si violemment la feuille de palmier qui lui sert d’éventail que celle-ci finit par tomber en lambeaux : « The minister’s wife had plucked nervously at the strings of her palm-leaf fan till it began to fall into pieces » (Williams, 2012, 249). Le recours à l’hétéroglossie qui, comme déjà constaté, fait aussi du palmier un phénix se précise avec la phrase qui suit : « …the interior of the church was yellow oak, a material that made you feel as if you were sitting in the middle of a fried egg » (Williams 2012, 249). L’œuf au plat en question est, sans doute, celui de l’oiseau jaune du titre : il ne s’agit pas d’un bobolink, en français goglu des prés, mais d’un phénix. Cette comparaison de l’église à un œuf de phénix a une portée métaphorique qui ouvre sur la trame autobiographique et invisible, pour indiquer la naissance « ab ovo » d’une nouvelle Alma, sous l’égide de Bobo – ou de Baubô (?). Les événements qui évoluent sur le plan de l’intrigue latente ne sont pas relatés par le narrateur ; ils sont plutôt construits par le texte. Ils « doublent » ceux de la narration en évoluant à contre-sens de la volonté des personnages secondaires et de l’intrigue manifeste pour montrer que rien ne peut arrêter la trajectoire d’Alma dans son processus de devenir prostituée, puis sainte, ou Tom dans son processus de devenir dramaturge, puis d’être consacré en tant que tel. Par exemple, lorsqu’Alma se teint en blonde (manifestation visible qui déclare son allégeance à Bobo/Baubô, l’oiseau jaune, sur le plan invisible latent) le narrateur nous dit que la mère d’Alma veut empêcher sa fille de sortir dans la rue. Le texte, quant à lui, nous indique que la mère invite sa fille à faire exactement le contraire.

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[…] the mother came out of her faint… “Alma,” she said weakly, “Alma!” Then she said her husband's name several times, but neither of them paid any attention to her, so she got up without any assistance and began to take a part in the conversation. “Alma,” she said, “you can't go out of this house until that hair of yours grows in dark again.” (Williams 2012, 251)

18 Pourvu que notre lecture soit sensible aux ruses de Williams, nous reconnaissons un ordre dissimulé formulé par les prénoms, évoqués sans être produits, de la fille et du père. Increase, le prénom du mari, prononcé après celui d’Alma endosse une valeur de verbe à l’impératif : Alma increase, increase, increase ! Sa mère, sans s’en rendre compte, exhorte sa fille à assumer la destinée inscrite dans les différents sens de son nom. Présentée par voix narrative, si on la transforme en discours cette phrase s’avère être performative (J. L. Austin). Elle fonctionne comme une formule magique. La suite de la nouvelle illustre le pouvoir des mots à agir sur la « réalité » ; cet ordre modifie l’identité du sujet. Sur le plan de l’intrigue manifeste, il augure le « devenir prostituée » pour Alma ; sur le plan autobiographique de l’intrigue latente, le « devenir dramaturge » pour Tom. Le même récit nous raconte ainsi deux histoires.

19 La stratégie de condensation fait que les nouvelles s’offrent à une lecture sur deux plans si distincts qu’ils peuvent même évoluer à l’opposé l’un de l’autre : le premier manifeste, ramassé, contrôlé, relevant d’une thématique sociale, le second invisible, « latent », relevant de l’écriture de soi, libéré, libre, libertin et comique, fidèle à l’esprit poétique épicé de l’ancienne comédie attique telle qu’elle se manifeste chez Aristophane. Dans la partie suivante, nous verrons que la matière autobiographique développée dans les nouvelles est reprise dans le théâtre sous ce format condensé, à travers une double énonciation qui ouvre une voie d’action parallèle et invisible pour nous mettre face à la figure de l’auteur – qui rit.

20 Les résonances entre les noms d’Alma Winemiller de Summer and Smoke, Alma Tutwiler de « The Yellow Bird » et Oliver Winemiller de « One Arm » indiquent une perméabilité entre les genres qui nous permet de traiter cette pièce et ces nouvelles sur la base d’un dénominateur commun : le rire. Alma Winemiller est sujette à des rires nerveux, associés à sa nature : « Out of nervousness and self-consciousness, she has a habit of prefacing and concluding her remarks with a little breathless laugh. This will be indicated at points, but should be used more freely than indicated. » (Williams 2000, 107, 110) Oliver Winemiller représente son rire par un gros « HA-HA !!? » sur ce croquis comique, lumineux et « chaud » qui, on l’a vu, fait de lui un avatar d’Iacchos. Quant à Alma Tutwiler, elle est l’héroïne d’une des rares nouvelles de Williams où, au rythme rapide d’une farce narrativisée, le comique et l’humour ont libre cours. Enfin, les protagonistes des trois œuvres se rattachent par la thématique de la prostitution, choisie par Williams pour représenter, sur un plan symbolique et métatextuel, son métier de dramaturge. Il existe d’autres échos qui rapprochent ces textes ; toutefois nous aborderons uniquement ceux qui nous informent sur l’origine et les usages du rire. Ils sont tous en rapport avec Oscar Wilde et créent un réseau de correspondances rhizomiques que l’on tâchera de mettre en évidence entre ces trois œuvres.

21 Summer and Smoke repose sur la trame et les personnages de « The Yellow Bird » mais son action se concentre sur la première transformation d’Alma de fille de pasteur en prostituée. La pièce évolue autour de deux personnages qui, ironiquement, échangent leurs places. Amoureuse de John Buchanan, son voisin, médecin play-boy et matérialiste, Alma Winemiller, fille de pasteur idéaliste et réservée, refuse de se donner à lui lorsqu’un soir d’été il lui en fait la demande d’une manière qui blesse sa pudeur.

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Suite à quelques mois d’agitation extrême, elle finit par s’offrir à lui qui, devenu idéaliste, décline l’offre et, ayant lui-même traversé une relation trop passionnée avec Rosa Gonzales, danseuse de flamenco dont le père, dans son ivresse, tue le père de John, préfère épouser Nellie, une ancienne élève d’Alma. Alma se tourne alors vers un étranger, un commis voyageur de passage, qui sera son premier amant. L’action se déroule au cours de la fin d’une saison, couvrant un été, un automne et un hiver pour que la pièce se termine avec la perspective du printemps, saison de renouveaux. Sa division en deux parties, intitulées « A Summer », « A Winter », suggère l’existence d’une dimension mythologique dans sa structure, par l’association des saisons, sous forme de corrélats objectifs, aux humeurs des protagonistes qui naviguent entre chaleur et glace, fumée et transparence, deux paradigmes symboliques trompeurs car en réalité ils se rejoignent. C’est l’humeur de Déméter, la terre-mère, triste lorsque sa fille descend aux enfers (automne et hiver) et joyeuse lorsqu’elle en remonte (printemps et été) qui est suggérée par cette division structurelle qui évoque ici, comme dans nombre d’autres pièces de Williams, le rapt de Perséphone (Thompson 47 passim). Ce même mythe se trouve aussi à l’origine des mystères éleusiniens (Homer 460-489). Ces mystères nous intéressent par la place que leurs rituels d’initiation accordent à la sexualité et au rire. Au cours des processions, les initiés honoraient Baubô et Iacchos, figures de rire nodales de ces mystères (Olender 21-22, Magnien 80-82). Si en passant de la nouvelle à la pièce le mode n’est plus celui de la farce, on retrouve néanmoins le rire dans les didascalies et dans les dialogues sous une forme étouffée, violente ou hystérique. On le retrouve enfin qui hante la poétique et la structure de l’action à travers la thématique du double (John parlera du « doppelgänger » d’Alma). Cette thématique se dédouble et se démultiplie pour ouvrir la voie à une lecture autobiographique de la pièce dont (presque) tous les personnages émanent de l’héroïne de la nouvelle et sont des facettes diffractées de la figure de l’auteur. C’est peut-être dans cet aspect autobiographique et inattendu de cette œuvre que réside son côté farce – une farce jouée au public.

22 Tourmentés par une vie intérieure intense, Alma et John, sont modelés comme des jumeaux – des jumeaux inversés. L’un est rongé par le feu : « my head’s on fire » (Williams 2000, 620) ; l’autre par de la glace qui, à la fin, s’avère être du feu pris pour de la glace : « it was flame mistaken for ice » (Williams 2000, 637). Leur ressemblance différenciée et leur vie intérieure23 déclenchent la thématique du double et le symbolisme palingénésique du phénix. Il participe à la création du personnage de John dont l’entrée sur scène est annoncée par la formule métaphorique de Dusty : « Bright like a new silver dollar » (575). Ce qui associe ce personnage aux dollars dits « Morgan », frappés entre 1878 et 1921, dont le verso fait figurer l’aigle américain en position de phénix (cf. image ci-contre).

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Dollar Morgan. Photographie de l’auteur.

23 Le feu qui manque à cette représentation est évoqué dans les didascalies quelques lignes plus haut, lorsque John est qualifié de figure prométhéenne (Williams 2000, 575) – Prométhée est le titan qui a volé le feu aux dieux pour l’offrir aux hommes (Harvey 348). La chaleur et la fumée du titre suggèrent ce même symbolisme du phénix. Il se précise et se répercute à travers des décors et accessoires qui se rapportent aux palmiers, à la fumée, au feu, aux oiseaux et aux plumes. Pour aller vite, on peut mentionner quelques points qui véhiculent ce symbolisme en faisant écho aux deux nouvelles : la feuille de palmier utilisée comme éventail, puis détruite par Alma au début de sa transformation (« she crushes the palm-leaf fan », 601), reprend l’épisode similaire dans « The Yellow Bird » (supra 9) ; les cigarettes fumées par la mère d’Alma (596) reprennent cette même thématique de la même nouvelle ; « La Golondrina »24 (567), titre de la chanson d’Alma qui ouvre la pièce, fonctionne, par le biais de l’hétéroglossie, comme le plongeon d’Oliver dans les eaux de Palm Beach ; elle indique d’emblée la fin heureuse de la pièce sur le « double invisible » du récit littéral – à savoir la régénérescence et le renouveau annoncés par les hirondelles qui arrivent au printemps ; le flamenco, dansé par Rosa devant John (618), contient la composante « flame » dans sa poétique et son étymologie le rattache au phénicoptère25 (ou flamant rose), en anglais flamingo26, qui fait de la maîtresse mexicaine de John une autre émanation du phénix ; les plumes décoratives sur les chapeaux d’Alma et de sa mère (« wear a hat with a plume » Williams 2000, 589) indiquent enfin l’engagement de ces personnages à cette même thématique27 (Williams 2000, 590, 596).

24 Le symbolisme palingénésique du phénix est omniprésent parce que, dans les nouvelles comme dans cette pièce, voire dans nombre de pièces de Williams, il constitue le moyen par lequel le dramaturge fait la transition entre l’écriture dramatique et l’écriture de soi, la transition d’une vision qui fait pleurer à une autre qui fait rire. Dans la section qui suit, nous verrons que cette transition se fait par une subtile réappropriation de structures, de thèmes et de personnages de l’œuvre d’Oscar Wilde que Tennessee Williams, l’auteur, choisit comme l’un de ses ancêtres littéraires. « The Yellow Bird » comme Summer and Smoke explore la symbolique du phénix pour raconter l’autobiographie de la figure de l’auteur Tennessee Williams.

25 Dans Summer and Smoke, la présence de Wilde est explicite : Alma cite une phrase de Lady Windermere’s Fan (1891) prononcée par Lord Darlington 28, dandy « réformé » par son amour pour l’héroïne éponyme, puritaine et idéaliste. Alma reprend cette phrase pour exposer l’horizon idéaliste de sa perspective sans savoir qui en est l’auteur :

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ALMA: How everything reaches up, how everything seems to be straining for something out of reach of stone—or human—fingers? To me—well, that is the secret, the principle back of existence—the everlasting struggle and aspiration for more than our human limits have placed in our reach… Who was that said that –oh, so beautiful thing! “All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars!” JOHN: Mr. Oscar Wilde. ALMA (somewhat taken aback): Well, regardless of who said it, it’s still true. (612)

26 Cependant c’est la présence implicite de Wilde qui déclenche le rire. Systématiquement dissimulée, on la soupçonne derrière des répliques qui usent de l’esprit de repartie pour exercer une critique sociale. Williams n’est pas coutumier de cet usage qu’il emprunte à l’évidence à Wilde chez qui c’est une tactique systématique dans les comédies. Roger, personnage secondaire de Summer and Smoke, gentil et effacé29, montre des photos de sa mère jeune en costume de chasseresse à Alma : ROGER : That is Mother in a hunting costume. ALMA: […] what was she hunting? ROGER (gayly): Heaven knows what she was hunting. But she found Papa. (616)

27 Cette présentation du mariage comme jeu de chasse est courante dans les comédies de Wilde qui attribue le rôle du chasseur non aux hommes mais à des femmes comme la Duchess of Berwick dans Lady Windermere’s Fan, ou Lady Backnell dans The Importance of Being Earnest. Cependant, ce ne sont pas tant les comédies de Wilde mais son roman, The Picture of Dorian Gray, puis ses deux pièces symbolistes, Salomé et La Sainte Courtisane or The Woman Covered with Jewels qui déteignent sur Summer and Smoke. On commencera à esquisser le rapport entre celles-ci à partir de l’entrée sur scène de Rosa Gonzales, au tout début de la première scène. (As if brought by the courier of the tropics, Rosa Gonzales enters and crosses to the fountain. Her indolent walk produces a sound and an atmosphere like the gulf wind on the palmettos, a whispering of silk and a slight rattle of metallic ornaments. She is dressed in an almost outrageous finery, with lustrous feathers on her hat […] a cascade of them, also diamond and emerald earrings.) (Williams 2000, 583).

28 Le son émis par le vent sur les feuilles des palmiers et la cascade de plumes sur sa coiffure, indiquent que l’arrivée sur scène de Rosa s’ancre dans la symbolique du phénix (par hétéroglossie et synecdoque). Les bijoux de Rosa évoquent la fin d’Alma dans « The Yellow Bird », lorsque son fils, John, lui en apporte tous les matins pour la rendre riche et lorsque son amant préféré, John lui aussi, lui recouvre le corps de joyaux au moment de sa consécration (Williams 2012, 255). Par ailleurs, danseuse de flamenco, Rosa évoque le sens de « danseuse » du prénom d’Alma de « The Yellow Bird » (supra p. 3 et Williams 1996, 252). Danseuse couverte de bijoux, Rosa est aussi dangereuse. Elle peut ruiner la carrière et la vie de John et, comme déjà mentionné, son père tue Dr Buchanan, père de John. Rosa s’apparente ainsi au type de la femme fatale. Ces aspects font écho à la figure éponyme du drame symboliste de Wilde, Salomé, rédigé en français en 1891, inspiré en partie par deux tableaux de Gustave Moreau, L’Apparition (1875) et Salomé dansant devant Hérode (1876), (Richmont-Garza 29, Russ 39) : ces tableaux représentent Salomé couverte de joyaux. Plusieurs détails de l’action de Summer and Smoke s’inspirent de Salomé comme la thématique du double et la création des protagonistes comme des jumeaux. Comme John et Alma, Salomé et Iokannaan sont construits comme des jumeaux inversés (Clement 123). De même, sur le plan de l’onomastique, terrain que Williams exploite régulièrement, ce n’est pas seulement le prénom John qui évoque Jean-Baptiste de Salomé : le nom de famille Buchanan fait écho

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à Iocanaan, le Jean-Baptiste de Wilde. La danse de Rosa rappelle la danse des sept voiles de Salomé, y compris dans les détails. A la phrase obsessionnelle « Je baiserai ta bouche Iokanaan » de Salomé (Wilde 1993, 89, 91) fait écho celle que Rosa adresse à John « I want you – I, I want you! » (Williams 2000, 619). Les propos d’Hérode : « Dansez pour moi Salomé. Je vous donnerai tout ce que vous me demanderez…Tout ce que vous voudrez je vous le donnerai… » (Wilde1993, 133-135) sont repris dans « Anything that she want (sic) I get for her » de Papa Gonzales (Williams 2000, 620). Comme pour Dorian Gray de Wilde et Alma de la nouvelle (Williams 1996, 253), la vie dissolue menée par John avec Rosa n’affecte pas le physique de John. Toutefois, dans Summer and Smoke, la référence à Dorian Gray se “téléscope” avec la danse de Salomé avec une ruse qui dissimule le renvoi au chiffre sept du nombre des voiles : en regardant Rosa danser, John parle de son physique qui reste inaltérable en l’associant à ses sept costumes disponibles (si l’on se donne la peine d’en faire le compte) : « Did anyone ever slide downhill as fast as I have this summer ? Ha-ha! Like a greased pig. And there isn’t a sign of depravity in my face. And yet every evening I put on a clean white suit. I have a dozen. Six in the closet and six in the wash, and one on me. » (Williams 2000, 618-619). Au meurtre d’Oliver Winemiller qui, dans « One Arm », associe le rire à la violence, fait écho le meurtre de Dr Buchanan par Papa Gonzales. Enfin, la structure chiasmatique de Summer and Smoke qui de manière ironique opère une permutation entre les protagonistes – la fille de pasteur devient courtisane et le play-boy médecin se dévoue, de manière idéaliste, à combattre le mal – fait écho à celle de La Sainte Courtisane or The Woman Covered With Jewels. Le titre de cette pièce inachevée de Wilde aurait pu être aussi celui de « The Yellow Bird » dont la fin présente la consécration d’une courtisane dont le corps est couvert de joyaux. La pièce de Wilde nous présente en effet la courtisane Alexandrine Myrhina et l’ermite Honorius qui se rencontrent à l’initiative de la première et décrivent chacun sa vie à l’autre. Leurs récits sont si convaincants qu’ils aboutissent à une double conversion : ironiquement, la courtisane reste dans le désert pour connaître l’amour de Dieu et l’ermite part à Alexandrie pour connaître les amours charnelles (Vernadakis 2009, 230-237).

29 On peut constater que certains traits d’Alma de « The Yellow Bird » sont redistribués à différents personnages de Summer and Smoke, notamment à Rosa et à John. Si Alma de « The Yellow Bird » est une représentation de la figure de l’auteur, John et Rosa mais aussi la mère d’Alma, Papa Gonzales, Dr Buchanan, Roger Doremus, Nellie et même Miss Bassett, sont aussi des parcelles identitaires de cette même figure, un personnage unique qui se démultiplie pour faire jouer aux uns et aux autres le rôle des différents prismes au travers desquels s’effectue la démultiplication. Cette logique de démultiplication fictionnelle du « je » de l’auteur se manifeste aussi dans The Picture of Dorian Gray : dans une lettre à Ralph Payne à ce sujet, Wilde écrit : « Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks of me: Dorian what I would like to be – in other ages perhaps. » (Wilde, Letters, 585)

30 Le « je » démultiplié du dramaturge nous permet de déceler la formation d’un lien chez Tom Williams, l’auteur en herbe, entre le rire en tant que concept et l’œuvre de Wilde. Ce lien devient manifeste par la mise en contexte autobiographique d’un épisode fictionnel comique de Summer and Smoke. Il s’agit cependant d’un épisode qui repose sur une expérience violente, et sans doute traumatique. L’épisode comique se déroule dans le presbytère où Alma reçoit quelques amis « intellectuels », dont Vernon, dramaturge en herbe à l’allure de Byron (Williams 2000, 598). Alma a également invité John qui, à

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l’étonnement de tous, a accepté d’y assister. Vernon doit donner lecture de sa pièce en vers, mais Alma ne veut pas que John trouve la réunion pénible. Mrs Bassett, personnage de farce, tout comme Vernon et Roger qui participent aussi à cet épisode, n’est pas là pour l’aider ; bien au contraire. Ses interventions, comiques pour le public, créent une tension dramatique forte pour Alma. ALMA: […] Well, Now! We are completely assembled. MRS. BASSETT (eagerly): Vernon has his verse play with him tonight! ALMA (uneasily): Is that right, Vernon? (Obviously, it is. Vernon has a pile of papers eight inches thick on his knees. He raises them timidly with downcast eyes.) (Williams 2000, 598)

31 L’épisode se termine en fiasco sans que la pièce ait été lue. Cependant, lorsque quelques semaines plus tard, Vernon a finalement lu sa pièce, Mrs Bassett fait le compte rendu suivant de sa réception : MRS BASSETT: At the last meeting Vernon read his verse play. ALMA: Oh ! How was it received? MRS BASSETT: Maliciously! Spitefully and vindictively torn to pieces like children tear the wings of butterflies! […] MRS BASSETT: But Vernon arose above it. There is nothing you can’t rise above if you keep your courage. (Williams 2000, 629)

32 Pour que les propos de Mrs Bassett participent au récit latent, il faut encore avoir recours à l’hétéroglossie qui, par ricochet, nous conduit au prénom d’Alma, l’héroïne préférée du dramaturge (supra p.4 et Devlin 228). En effet, en grec butterfly se dit « psyché » et signifie à la fois papillon et âme. Ame, à son tour, se dit « alma » en espagnol : « My name is Alma, and Alma is Spanish for Soul » (Williams 2000, 537). Comme Alma et John, Vernon est, lui aussi, une parcelle identitaire de Tom, dramaturge en herbe. Quant au papillon, il est ici une métonymie de l’âme de Williams30. Sa mise en pièces pourrait correspondre à la part de violence qui participe au processus de métamorphose de la chenille en papillon, de Vernon ou de Tom à Tennessee Williams.

33 On peut cependant se demander quel est le rôle de Wilde dans cet épisode et dans ce processus et comment le lien entre Wilde et le rire se justifie, puisque jusqu’à présent il n’a été question ni de l’un ni de l’autre. Métonymie de l’âme de Williams, la pièce en vers descendue en flammes est aussi une métonymie pour une pièce en vers, bien précise, composée par Tom Williams. Car cet épisode fictionnel fait écho à un épisode réel : la lecture d’Ishtar, œuvre de jeunesse non publiée de Tom, devant deux de ses amis dont l’avis comptait pour lui. Dans son avant-propos à Candles to the Sun, William Jay Smith rapporte le souvenir suivant relatif aux échecs de Tom au début de sa carrière : Tom Williams’ next failure was a private rather than a public one. …Tom read to Clark and me the just-completed draft of what was apparently his first attempt at poetic drama. It was Ishtar: A Babylonian Fantasy…. One would have left behind such attempts at Flaubertian exoticism, but no. Here presented to us in his rich Southern voice was a bit of Babylonian Gothic. … he did not get very far with his reading before Clark and I exploded with laughter. (Williams 2004, XIV)

34 Il se trouve qu’Ishtar de Williams est un pastiche incontestable de Salomé de Wilde. Personnage composite chez Wilde, Salomé réunit en elle diverses figures mythologiques, dont la déesse de l’amour babylonienne, Ishtar. La formule « la danse des sept voiles » s’inspire d’ailleurs de la descente aux enfers de cette dernière et fait

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référence aux sept arrêts d’Ishtar, à chacune des portes des enfers, pour se défaire, à chaque fois, d’un article de sa parure (McCall, 117-126). La formule, La danse des sept voiles, a été inventée par Wilde pour signifier – toute proportion gardée – que la danse de Salomé conjugue art, plaisir et passion dans un strip-tease à la fois physique et métaphorique (Vernadakis 1989, 148-154). Les thèmes, les personnages, le ton, l’esthétique, les sources de Salomé de Wilde se retrouvent dans Ishtar de Tom, dont le manuscrit, conservé au centre Harry Ransom (Austin, Texas), nous permet de constater que la relation entre les deux est – pour ainsi dire – intime. Le Cantique des Cantiques qui, chez Wilde, est utilisé pour démasculiniser et déféminiser les personnages, constitue également le canevas sur lequel Williams projette des gros plans de la lune. Les deux œuvres se répondent ainsi de manière profonde. SALOME: How good to see the moon! She is like a little piece of money […] she is cold and chaste […] HEROD: The moon has a strange look tonight […] She is naked too. She is quite naked […] Ah ! Look at the moon! She has become red. She has become red as blood. (Wilde 62, 94, 138)

35 Pour faire écho aux propos de Salomé, Ishtar les inverse ; cependant, dans le cas de reprise d’une œuvre de Wilde par Williams, l’inversion ne peut-elle pas faire partie de l’intention poétique de base ? Si l’objectif est de faire rire, c’est possible. THE BRIDE: Lo ! The moon is not cold […] Neither it is small and round. Like the silver coins that merchants jangle in their palms. The moon is heated with fountains of blood. […] Behold the moon has fallen, she has touched the lake she has dabbed it with her toes like a naked girl. (Ishtar, Harry Ransom (Austin, Texas) box 21, folder 10)

36 Dans l’apprentissage de son métier de dramaturge, Tom Williams commence par se réapproprier ce qu’il aime dans l’œuvre d’autrui. Cette attitude est implicitement représentée comme un acte sexuel dans « The Yellow Bird », sur le plan de l’action autobiographique latente, à travers le vécu fictionnel d’Alma dans l’épisode suivant : […] in her miserable little furnished room—or crib, as it actually was— […] Tickets from pawnshops were stuck round the edge of the mirror along with many, many photographs of young men, some splitting their faces with enormous grins while others stared softly at space (Williams 2012, 254).

37 Les photographies des amants évoquent des masques de comédie et de tragédie qui bordent le miroir où elle se regarde chaque matin. Ce qui évoque l’analogie entre l’évolution d’Alma et celle de Tom qui se projette dans la personne du dramaturge à venir Tennessee Williams. Les tickets des bureaux de prêteurs sur gage, intercalés entre les photos/masques de théâtre, peuvent aussi être interprétés comme les engagements d’Alma/Tom dans son processus de devenir dramaturge. C’est d’abord un engagement sentimental pour Alma, intellectuel pour Tom, face aux « amants » / écrivains fréquentés au cours de ses apprentissages. C’est ensuite un engagement de probité et commerçant, face aux prêteurs, aux agents artistiques31, aux journaux et revues qui font confiance à Tom et publient ses histoires ou tentent de promouvoir ses pièces, aux membres du jury de la fondation Rockefeller qui lui avaient attribué une bourse en 1939. Ishtar pourrait être vue comme l’un de ces tickets de « pawnshops » qui entourent le miroir d’Alma, et la lecture de cette pièce par Tom à ses amis, une tentative de laisser au mont-de-piété un objet de valeur créé par contact avec un amant. La sexualité qui fait rire se mêle ici à l’autobiographie par le biais de la phonétique : la voix de Tom Williams, marquée par ce riche accent du Sud, dont parle Jay Smith dans la citation plus haut, pourrait bien associer l’art de l’écriture dramatique et la prostitution par cette homophonie, ou presque, entre « pawnshops »

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et « porn-shops ». Certes, dans les années 1940, il n’existe pas des porn-shops ; le terme « porn » néanmoins existait. Williams, dont l’œuvre fait écho à l’ancienne comédie attique par le nombre d’exemples de poétique scatologique qui sert le rire, pourrait imaginer l’espace littéraire comme un espace d’échange « libre ». Après tout, l’image qu’il emploie pour l’auteur en herbe est celle d’une prostituée32. Si l’on ne rit pas avec l’image d’Alma qui se regarde dans ce miroir tous les matins pour constater que son visage ne porte ni les marques de sa vie dissolue ni celles du temps, on rit lorsque derrière l’évocation de Dorian Gray33 on reconnaît l’association « commerciale » de l’homosexualité des deux écrivains sous l’égide de deux autres homophones – ou presque – Bobo34 et Baubô, l’oiseau jaune des procès mystérieux de Salem et la vieille nourrice des processions initiatiques aux mystères éleusiniens. Auquel cas, le fils d’Alma pourrait être une représentation d’Iacchos, dieu du rire et porteur de lumière35. C’est aussi une nouvelle représentation figurative et métaphorique de l’œuvre – de l’enfant – de Williams.

38 Pour revenir à la lecture de Vernon, il convient de voir dans cet épisode une passerelle entre réalité et fiction sur laquelle Ishtar et Salomé jouent un rôle médiateur important : toute proportion gardée, en dévoilant sa création à ses amis Clark et Smith, Tom laisse transparaître une partie de son intimité – son âme. Seulement, dans les années 1940, l’œuvre de Wilde n’est plus d’actualité : l’intérêt de Tom pour l’idéalisme et son goût pour des formes d’art surchargées comme le symbolisme, l’orientalisme et la décadence, sa passion pour les mythes extravagants, son attrait pour l’esthétique baroque, bref, pour les matériaux que Wilde intègre dans Salomé et La Sainte Courtisane à la toute fin du XIXe siècle, ne passent plus dans les années 1940. A l’instar de ses amis, l’Amérique, réceptrice de l’œuvre de Williams, n’aurait accueilli ces tendances que par un rire moqueur de déni. Ce déni fait le lien avec l’homosexualité de Williams et de Wilde : les aspects esthétiques que Williams apprécie chez Wilde et qui avaient été acceptés dans le passé, sont alors rejetés parce qu’ils ne sont plus de son temps – tout comme son homosexualité. Williams engage ainsi des stratégies de détour. Du coup, il y a une confrontation permanente entre l’auteur et le public. Ce qui transforme chaque acte de création en acte de violence qui doit finir par le triomphe de l’auteur. Ce triomphe se traduit par un rire.

39 Le rire invisible qui hante les pièces de Tennessee Williams est la riposte de Tom au rire explosif de ses amis. Il émane d’une âpre transformation de sa vulnérabilité en force, de sa fragilité en provocation et, toute proportion gardée, en violence. C’est le rire de l’auteur qui, à travers des stratégies adaptées, parvient, malgré la résistance de ses amis – la résistance du public – à faire passer dans son œuvre tout ce qu’il veut, sans faire rire personne pour autant – si ce n’est lui-même.

40 Ce type de rire est partagé uniquement entre intimes ou – pour ne pas perdre de vue le contexte des mystères d’Eleusis qui cadre nos réflexions – entre « initiés ». On retrouve un rire analogue dans la comédie de Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest, pièce dans laquelle Wilde s’affronte à « earnestness », l’idéal le plus important des Victoriens. Jusqu’aux années 1990, la pièce se donnait sans que personne ne se soit avisé de la dimension homosexuelle du jeu de mots du titre : le prénom Ernest qu’endossent les deux protagonistes désigne aussi l’idéal de sérieux, earnest(ness). Cependant, Ernest est aussi une paronomase d’Uranist, « homosexuel » (Bristow, 18), détail qui éclaire une avalanche de sous-entendus et allusions, souvent scatologiques, d’inspiration autobiographique (Aquien 105). Earnest s’offre ainsi à une lecture autobiographique

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(Drugeon, Vernadakis 49) qui permet à Wilde de se rire de tout, y compris de son homosexualité qu’il « affiche » derrière le voile de ses jeux de mots d’onomastique.

41 Williams adopte la même attitude, à la fois secrète et provocatrice, pour révéler par condensation sémantique et dévoilement des traits identitaires que la société rejette. Comme on l’a vu avec l’exemple de Stanley dans A Streetcar Named Desire et comme il le fait dans Summer and Smoke où John, par exemple, est amateur de « cock-fights » organisés par Papa Gonzales (Williams 2000, 610), la sexualité est toujours dévoilée derrière le rire. Suscité par un anasyrma, le rire exige la connivence du public pour que l’objet sexuel qui le déclenche soit révélé.

42 A l’inverse de Williams, personne n’a reproché à Wilde son idéalisme – à l’exception de lui-même. En revanche, la révélation de son homosexualité qui, aujourd’hui, dans Earnest nous fait rire, lui a valu un procès, deux ans de travaux forcés et la fin de sa carrière de dramaturge. La nouvelle « The Yellow Bird » commence avec le procès que les puritains font à une ancêtre d’Alma, déclarée sorcière à Salem parce qu’elle fréquentait Bobo, l’oiseau jaune, messager du diable. The first American progenitor had settled in Salem, and around him and his wife, Goody Tutwiler, née Woodson, had revolved one of the most sensational of the Salem witch trials. Goody Tutwiler was cried out against by the Circle Girls…. They claimed that Goody Tutwiler ... had appeared to them with a yellow bird which she called by the name of Bobo and which served as interlocutor between herself and the devil to whom she was sworn. … Goody Tutwiler was accordingly condemned and hanged, but this was by no means the last of the yellow bird named Bobo, it had manifested itself in one form or another, and its continual nagging had left the Puritan spirit fiercely aglow, from Salem to Hobbs, Arkansas, where the Increase Tutwiler of this story was preaching. (Williams 2012, 248)

43 Il est fort probable que l’ancêtre d’Alma pendue à Salem soit une référence oblique à Wilde, dans le processus d’adoption d’ancêtres du dramaturge en herbe, Tennessee Williams. Wilde a aussi été condamné pour avoir osé exposer au rire de tous l’idéalisme puritain qu’il télescope avec son homosexualité. Dans ce cas, Bobo, l’oiseau jaune, serait l’esprit régénérateur du rire que Wilde a mis à l’honneur par cette révélation - un anasyrma qu’il entreprend en se faisant lui-même un avatar de Baubô. Iacchos, c’est l’enfant d’Alma, l’œuvre de Williams, qui éclaire le côté de l’humain gardé voilé, sa sexualité qui, une fois révélée, fait rire. Par condensation syncrétique, l’esprit de Baubô comporte la symbolique palingénésique du phénix qui, comme le désir, se renouvelle de ses cendres.

44 A la fin de Summer and Smoke, Alma finit par rire de manière naturelle ; toutefois, cela se fait uniquement après qu’elle aura procédé à un anasyrma : « Alma pushes her veil back with an uncertain gesture. » (Williams 2000, 640) Il s’agit, certes, d’une exposition non pas de son sexe, mais de son visage ; toutefois ce qu’elle relève, son voile, « veil », la rattache encore à la performance de Salomé qui se déshabille en dansant (cf. Dance of the seven veils), et par ce biais, aussi à Ishtar. Le dialogue qu’elle engage, en partie en espagnol, avec le jeune commis-voyageur, préconise, d’ailleurs, que ce premier anasyrma peut en cacher un autre. Et la révélation, cette fois, est plus drôle, plus radicale aussi. Elle s’apparente à un coming-out : THE YOUNG MAN (delightedly): Ha . . . ha . . . ha ! Sometimes un poquito is plenty ! (Alma laughs . . . in a different way than she has ever laughed before, a little wearily, but quite naturally.) What’s there to do in this town after dark? ALMA: There’s not much to do in this town after dark, but there are resorts on the lake that offer all kind of after-dark entertainment. There’s one called Moon Lake

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Casino. It’s under new management, now, but I don’t suppose its character has changed. THE YOUN G MAN: And what was its character? ALMA: Gay, very gay… (Williams 2000, 642)

45 Comme Alma et John ne parviennent pas à s’unir, la pièce s’achève sur une déception que le public partage largement. Toutefois, si le public parvient à percevoir ici la double énonciation, il lui serait difficile de retenir son rire.

46 Le rire est une réponse qu’Alma Winemiller et le théâtre de Williams proposent à la défaite pour révéler en profondeur l’ineptie de ce que l’on nous apprend à respecter « et dévoiler la vérité cachée, à la fois ridicule et sordide, qui se retrouve derrière les valeurs que l’on nous présente comme les plus incontestables » (Badiou 17). Insaisissable (ou presque), il retentit dans les choix de mots ambivalents et glissements de la langue qu’ils produisent pour les recontextualiser de manière à ce qu’ils signalent un sens implicite sexuel. Bergson, dont Williams avait étudiée l’œuvre en 1936 à l’Université de Washington, dans la conclusion de son traité sur le rire (1900), a recours à l’image : il compare le rire à l’écume des vagues (Bergson 153). Ce qui associe le déclenchement du rire à la naissance d’Aphrodite « née de l’écume ». C’est ainsi que des vagues luttent sans trêve à la surface de la mer, tandis que les couches inférieures observent une paix profonde. Les vagues s’entrechoquent, se contrarient cherchent leur équilibre. Une écume blanche, légère et gaie, en suit les contours changeants. Parfois le flot qui fuit abandonne un peu de cette écume sur le sable de la grève. L’enfant qui joue près de là vient en ramasser une poignée, et s’étonne l’instant d’après, de n’avoir plus dans le creux de la main que quelques gouttes d’eau, mais d’une eau bien plus salée, bien plus amère encore que celle de la vague qui l’apporta. Le rire naît ainsi que cette écume. Il signale, à l’extérieur de la vie sociale, les révoltes superficielles. Il dessine instantanément la forme mobile de ces ébranlements. Il est, lui aussi, une mousse à base de sel. Comme la mousse, il pétille. C’est de la gaieté. Le philosophe qui en ramasse pour en goûter y trouvera d’ailleurs quelquefois, pour une petite quantité de matière, une certaine dose d’amertume. (Bergson 152-153)

47 Cette écume, qui dans le texte d’Hésiode peut provenir de la lutte des vagues ou bien du sexe mutilé de Cronos (Hésiode 39-40), indique qu’il existe un rapport entre le rire et le désir, le rire et la sexualité, la violence et la mort. C’est ce rapport que Williams explore à travers l’anasyrma de Baubô pour faire écho aux derniers mots de Salomé de Wilde : « le mystère de l'amour est plus grand que le mystère de la mort. Il ne faut regarder que l'amour » (Wilde 1893, 163) - et en rire.

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NOTES

1. Plusieurs critiques se sont penchés sur l’humour des pièces de Williams mais le rire, même s’il est abordé par certains, n’a pas encore constitué un sujet d’étude à part. Jacqueline O’Connor insiste sur son importance dans «The “Neurotic Giggle”: Humor in the Plays of Tennessee Williams». Plus récemment, Annette J. Saddic l’associe à l’horreur pour l’aborder par le biais de l’excès dans Tennessee Williams and the Theatre of Excess: The Strange, the Crazed, the Queer. 2. Peters analyse ces images dans le cadre du sadisme et du masochisme, concepts qui ne sont pas intégrés dans cette étude. 3. Comme par exemple l’ouvrage volumineux de G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (Vernadakis 2003, 66-67). 4. “Williams was a man of feeling rather than intellect; an artist, not a scholar” (Debusscher 187). 5. Ainsi, les femmes perses retroussent leur vêtement pour renvoyer leurs fils et leurs époux sans courage au combat (Plutarque 89), et les femmes lyciennes ont recours au même procédé pour faire fuir Bélérérophont et faire en même temps reculer le raz-de-marée qui les menace (Plutarque 115). 6. “Yet each man kills the thing he loves”, The Ballad of Reading Gaol [1897], (Wilde 1989, 843). 7. Les comics sont convoqués sous forme graphique ou cinématographique. Dans « The Yellow Bird », le fils d’Alma qui, à peine né, se rend chaque matin à la mer en rampant (Williams 2012, 255), emprunte les traits de Swee’Pea, fils de Popeye le marin, créé en 1929 par Elzie Crisler Segar. Dans Summer and Smoke, Papa Gonzales, caricature grotesque du Mexicain stéréotypé, évoque Speedy Gonzales de Robert McKimson. Tom, dans The Glass Menagerie, se fait l’écho de Tom the Alley Cat. Derrière Blanche et Stanley dans A Streetcar Named Desire on reconnaît la relation entre Tweetie et Sylvestre – Blanche est comparée par Stanley à un canari (Williams, 2000, 530). Il se peut que les comics rattachent ici le rire aux traits du trickster. 8. Rosa de Summer and Smoke, Esmeralda de Camino Real se définissent comme danseuses ; nous verrons qu’Alma de « The Yellow Bird » et de Summer and Smoke et John Buchanan de la même pièce sont associés à la danse des sept voiles. Il en est de même pour Stanley, Stella et Blanche de Streetcar, ainsi que l’indique la dernière phrase de la pièce, « STEVE : This game is a seven-card stud. » (Williams 2000, 226), évocation « voilée » de cette danse par les sept cartes tirées. 9. De l’Angleterre aux Etats-Unis, du XVIe siècle à l’éternité, des ancêtres européens et américains d’Alma à la béatification de celle-ci. 10. Voir, par exemple, la chronologie proposée dans The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams (Roudané XVI-XXIV). 11. Alma de Summer and Smoke souffre de palpitations comme Williams vers la fin des années 1930 (Notebooks 111) et prend calmants et somnifères, comme lui, pour dormir (Notebooks 99, 113).

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Alma de la nouvelle occupe le grenier – the attic – de la maison parentale, comme Tom lorsqu’il habite encore chez ses parents (Notebooks 101, 107, 169). De même, on trouve bien, dans les virées en voiture d’Alma de la nouvelle, quelque chose de ce que Tom décrit de ses sorties en voiture avec Joseph Safra (Notebooks 117-119). 12. Bien évidemment, il existe des pièces (Shakespeare, Claudel etc.) qui durent plus longtemps. Toutefois, les metteurs en scène les abrègent pour que le temps de la représentation ne dépasse pas les limites « raisonnables » imposées par les usages et la disponibilité du public. 13. Alma : danseuse orientale, comme déjà vu. 14. Il indique aussi le rapport étroit entre Alma et l’héroïne de A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois dont le nom de femme mariée est Blanche Gray (le mari défunt se nommait Allan Gray, Williams 2000, 490) et qui refuse de vieillir. Blanche imagine sa mort se dérouler comme celle d’Alma de la nouvelle, au milieu de l’océan, sous le regard langoureux d’un jeune et beau docteur de la marine (Williams 2000, 559) en fusionnant ainsi deux expériences distinctes, éros et thanatos. 15. Cette scène est inspirée de la vie que Williams menait, pas à la Nouvelle Orléans, mais à Santa Monica, en Californie, en septembre 1943 – a moment où il découvrait l’œuvre de Wilde. Voir la description que Williams fait de sa chambre dans une lettre à Donald Windham datée du 20 septembre 1943. Il dit, par exemple, « The ants are literally taking over my place. I have left the dishes unwashed for about ten days. When I need a clean dish I just turn on the faucet and let one of them rinse off. » (Windham, 104-105). 16. Voir l’article de David Cox dans The Guardian du 17 novembre 2015, “Tickling Rats and Giggling Dolphins: Do Animals Have a Sense of Humour?” ainsi que des très nombreux clips vidéo sur You Tube sur des dauphins qui rient. 17. Voir par exemple sur le site Lovethispic, l’une des images disponibles montrant des dauphins qui rient : http://www.lovethispic.com/uploaded_images/28975-Laughing-Dolphins.jpg 18. Voir François Lenormant « Descente aux enfers de Dionysos », dans Daremberg et Saglio, Le Dictionnaire des Antiquités grecques et romaines (1877), https://www.mediterranees.net/civilisation/ religions/dionysos/bacchus7.html 19. Williams fait référence aux toiles de Van Gogh dans ses œuvres et dans ses carnets, voir par exemple, Notebooks 70, 113, 189 etc. 20. Ah yes, to be passionate like a Bacchante, like a Bacchanal fleeing through the woods, to call on Iacchos, the bright phallos that had no independent personality behind it, but was pure god- servant to the woman! 21. Le rapport de Laura à l’œuvre de Williams est métonymique. Il devient manifeste par le symbolisme de son prénom qui évoque la plante sacrée d’Apollon, celle qui couronne les têtes des poètes « lauréats » aux concours dramatiques de l’antiquité. 22. Voir par exemple, l’entrée du 29 avril 1938 dans les carnets de Williams : « What do I want ? I want love and creative power! – Eh bien! Get it! » (Notebooks 117). 23. Qui par ailleurs évoquent le côté fantastique de la nouvelle puisqu’il est question de doppelgänger (Williams 2000, 582, 583, 588). 24. Qui, en espagnol, signifie « l’hirondelle ». 25. Il faut cependant noter que cette étymologie du flamenco est incertaine. Pour certains, elle s’enracine dans les termes arabes felah-menkoub (« paysan errant »), pour d’autres dans le nom d’un couteau, ou encore dans l’origine flamande des gitans ou leur allure flamboyante. http:// www.flamenco-classical-guitar.com/historique-flamenco.php 26. Ce qui crée aussi des passerelles avec A Streetcar Named Desire par l’évocation de l’hôtel « Flamingo » à Laurel, [cf. « go in flame »] où Blanche commence à se « consumer » (Williams 2000, 530) avant d’évoquer explicitement le feu pour se faire « purifier » – ou renaître – en se débarrassant de Mitch qui tente de lui faire l’amour (548) et se préparant à recevoir le viol de Stanley qui, aussi absurde que cela puisse paraître, marquera sa renaissance.

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27. Ils indiquent aussi le retour vers un passé réculé, avant la Réforme, plus libre ou libertin, recherché par l’auteur, comme il l’annonce dans « The Yellow Bird » par le « saut » accompli par Alma pour retrouver ses racines : « when [Alma] was alone (…) it sometimes seemed as if she weren’t alone, as if someone were with her, a disembodied someone, perhaps a remote ancestor of liberal tendencies who had been displeased by the channel his blood had taken till Alma kicked over the traces and jumped right back to the plumed hat cavaliers » (237). Notons que le sens du prénom d’Alma en grec, άλμα, est « saut ». 28. “We are all in the Gutter but some of us are looking at the stars”. Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, acte 3. 29. Roger de Summer and Smoke a pratiquement la même fonction face à Alma que Mitch face à Blanche dans A Streetcar Named Desire. 30. L’image du papillon se retrouve aussi dans les didascalies au tout début de A Streetcar Named Desire pour décrire Blanche : « There is something about her… that suggests a moth » (Williams 2000, 471). 31. Déjà en mars 1939, lorsqu’il remporte le prix spécial au concours dramatique du Group Theatre, Williams reçoit des propositions d’agents artistiques pour l’accompagner (Leverich 296-299). Lorsqu’il s’engage avec Audrey Wood, il lui écrit régulièrement sur ses projets sous forme de propositions ou de promesses (par ex. voir dans Notebooks 156, note 259). 32. On peut se rappeler que la « crèche » d’Alma/Williams-auteur-en-herbe, se situe rue Bourbon, voie royale (cf. Camino Real) pour devenir dramaturge. La dé-composition phonique du nom de la rue constitue un jeu de mot scatologique qui suit la logique du « pawnshop/porn-shop ». 33. Une ligne plus bas dans ce même passage (voir supra p.6). 34. C’est probablement dans un poème de Gertrude Stein que Tennessee Williams a rencontré le non Bobo. Pour féliciter son protégé Robert (Bob) Haas de son projet de mariage avec Louise Krause, amie de Tennessee Williams, Stein compose un petit poème qui contient un jeu de mots. Elle se sert du nom d’un passereau chanteur appelé bobolink (en Français goglu des prés) qu’elle décompose pour signifier l’union du couple : « Louise and Bob-o-link/They are to be married ». Louise, avait décoré son sapin de Noël avec des copies de ce petit poème qu’elle a également lu devant ses amis – dont Tennessee Williams— le jour de Noël pour leur annoncer son mariage avec Bob. (Notebooks 178, note 295). 35. Sa naissance dans la nouvelle s’associe à différentes déclinaisons du chiffre 666, et par cela à la figure satanique de l’Antéchrist : la transformation d’Alma commence six mois après un épisode mémorable à midi et demi (6+6) : (6+6+6+6+6), lorsque celle-ci a 30 ans (30=6+6+6+6+6) alors que John vient au monde lorsqu’Alma a 36 ans (6+6+6+6+6+6). L’heure de départ du fils pour aller chercher des trésors marins est 6h30, c'est-à-dire 6 : [6+6+6+6+6] etc. (Vernadakis 2013, 56) On se souviendra, par ailleurs, dans A Streetcar Named Desire du rapport de Stanley à la lumière au cours de sa nuit de noces où il casse les ampoules électriques avec le talon d’une pantoufle de Stella (Williams 2000, 505) pour déclarer ainsi son lien à Lucifer, l’ange déchu de lumière. Il se rattache à lui par paronomase, étant systématiquement appelé Stan par ses proches – cf. Satan. Le prénom de Stella, qui signifie « étoile » en italien, rattache aussi cette dernière à Iacchos, « l’astre lumineux » des Mystères selon Aristophane (supra, p. 8). Résidents du quartier « Elysian Fields » - où l’on se rend par changement à la station « Cimetières » (Williams 2000, 471) – Stella et Stanley sont, comme Iacchos, des figures chtoniennes de lumière, qui font rire par dévoilement de ce qui est d’habitude caché, propre à l’univers d’Hadès, dont le nom signifie, l’invisible.

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RÉSUMÉS

Je me propose d’explorer la façon dont le rire se manifeste dans le théâtre de Tennessee Williams entre 1941 et 1948, à partir d’une pièce, Summer and Smoke (1948), et de deux nouvelles rédigées en parallèle, « The Yellow Bird » (1941-1947) et « One Arm » (1942-1948). Il sera aussi question, dans une moindre mesure, de The Glass Menagerie (1945) et de A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). Cette étude nous permettra de considérer que ces pièces, voire l’ensemble du théâtre de Williams, comportent ou suscitent un rire ambivalent mais salvateur. Invisible ou presque, ce rire travaille les intrigues, habite les personnages et vagabonde comme un doppelgänger entre les mots et les phrases pour éclairer ce qui paraît sombre et démystifier ce qui semble poignant. Dans le présent article, je tenterai de montrer que les pièces de Williams ne sont pas ce qu’elles semblent être. Imposant, le rire qui les hante finit par drainer le pathos qui s’en dégage au profit d’une ironie spirituelle et salutaire.

I propose to look at laughter in the theater of Tennessee Williams between 1941 and 1948 through a close study of a single play, Summer and Smoke (1948), and two short stories written in parallel, "The Yellow Bird" (1941-1947) and "One Arm" (1942-1948). To a lesser extent, The Glass Menagerie (1945) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) will also be discussed. The short stories will allow us to consider that these plays, and perhaps Williams’ theater in general, embrace an ambivalent but constructive sense of laughter. Laughter in Williams’ plays is almost invisible; still it sets action in motion, haunts the characters and roams like a doppelgänger between words and phrases to illuminate what is dark and demystify what is poignant. In this essay I contend that Williams’ plays are not what they appear to be: laughter endows the action with a salutary haunting authority stemming from autobiographic and perhaps traumatic material which eventually drains pathos offering wit instead.

INDEX

Keywords : Tennessee Williams, Oscar Wilde, poetics, short story, drama, myth, ritual, homosexuality, haunting, image, rewriting, Greece, Iacchos, Baubô, anasyrma Mots-clés : Tennessee Williams, Oscar Wilde, poétique, nouvelle, théâtre, mythe, rituel, homosexualité, hantise, image, réécriture, Grèce, Iacchos, Baubô, anasyrma

AUTEUR

EMMANUEL VERNADAKIS Professeur CIRPaLL, Université d’Angers [email protected]

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Prospero's Island

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Pushing for Efficiency: Gifford Pinchot and the First National Parks

Jean-Daniel Collomb

1 American environmentalism began to slowly emerge at the end of the 19th century. The concept of the National Park materialized in 1864 with the creation of Yosemite Park (although Yellowstone was the first park to be actually called a National Park in 1872) and, henceforth, a growing number of Americans started to see nature more positively than previous generations had done. Yet, from the outset the US environmental movement proved heterogeneous. Indeed, as the National Park System was growing larger and larger, the so-called conservation movement came into being in large part thanks to Gifford Pinchot who was appointed as the first chief of the Forest Service in 1905. A clear gap existed between the principles that underpinned early conservationist efforts and the intended purposes of the first parks. The rift between utilitarian conservation and preservationism as revealed by the now well-known Hetch Hetchy controversy−in which the former prevailed over the latter−springs to mind (Jones, Righter).

2 In order to better comprehend this dichotomy, it seems worth probing into the attitudes of the first conservationists with regards to the National Parks. There is no question that Gifford Pinchot opposed the development of the National Park System. One may even argue that he found it very difficult to even acknowledge the legitimacy of the concept of the National Park. His strong reservations concerning the parks were the result of the values on which conservation was founded in the first place. Its proponents, who saw it as their mission to master nature through the use of science and technology, had very little time for the warnings and protests voiced by the preservationists.

3 This article is a contribution to the debate over the ideology of early 20th-century utilitarian conservationists. It focuses on Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the US Forest Service and the most influential member of the founding generation of utilitarian conservation in the US. The article looks at how he viewed the National Parks and attempts to explain why his clash with preservationists, which became apparent during the Hetch Hetchy controversy, was inevitable.

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4 According to John M. Meyer, the much-discussed controversy between preservationists and conservationists at the turn of the 20th century was rooted in differing conceptions of political action rather than in two opposed visions of nature. Because Gifford Pinchot viewed guaranteed access to natural resources as the foundation on which the political order hinged, Meyer suggests, he argued that the promotion of such access had to take precedence over all other concerns. Meyer is quick to add, however, that Pinchot was not indifferent to nature’s beauty although his conception of political action prompted him to keep his aesthetic sensitivity private (267-284).

5 Aware that Gifford Pinchot’s standing in contemporary environmental circles pales in comparison to the posthumous prestige enjoyed by John Muir (Frome), Gifford Pinchot’s main biographer, Char Miller, has also tried to rehabilitate Pinchot’s reputation by belying the simplistic portrayal of Pinchot as a monomaniacal utilitarian engineer whose idée fixe was to maximize US timber production. Miller has successfully demonstrated that Pinchot was much more than that: a progressive-minded leader who worried about the fate of industrial workers and supported federally-sponsored relief for the dispossessed during the Great Depression; a strong advocate for world peace; and, even more importantly for the purpose of this article, a nature lover who could also appreciate the spiritual, recreational and aesthetic values of the natural world (Miller 1992, 1-20).

6 Meyer’s and Miller’s efforts to rehabilitate Pinchot’s legacy in environmental memory boil down to arguing that the former chief of the Forest Service did also value some non-economic aspects of the natural world so that his record goes well beyond the single-minded focus of the early Forest Service on timber production. In the end, however, Miller’s and Meyer’s revised portrayal of Pinchot is only successful in making him a more complex character than he is often depicted as but in no way does it invalidate the characterization of his contribution to US conservation as completely focused on a scientifically-informed exploitation of the nation’s natural resources for the material benefit of the American people. If anything, the fact that Pinchot was actually sensitive to the aesthetic dimension of nature but that he would not allow such a predisposition to shape his vision of conservation at all bears witness to the tremendous influence that a sort of Saint-Simonian mindset exerted on early 20th- century conservationists. In short, we can be grateful to Miller and Meyer for providing us with a subtler picture of Pinchot’s personality, but not of his record as a conservationist.

7 The article begins with an analysis of the parallels between Saint-Simonianism and Gifford Pinchot’s brand of conservation. It then turns to Pinchot’s attitude regarding the National Parks and, more broadly, to the rationale that undergirded his rejection of them. In the process, it draws on Jacques Ellul’s reflections on the dynamics of the so- called “technological society”. The article ends with a discussion of the impact of Pinchot’s approach to conservation on the chances of success of his preservationist adversaries during the Hetch Hetchy controversy. In an era when the search for efficiency defined the public policy agenda to a considerable degree, making a case for the spiritual and aesthetic values of Hetch Hetchy Valley was bound to have a limited political impact.

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Saint-Simon in America

8 In order to shed light on the intellectual foundations of conservation, one inevitably has to turn to Gifford Pinchot who, in his autobiography, claimed that he fathered the notion (319-339). Pinchot, an American citizen of French descent who had been raised in a wealthy New York family, was the first full-fledged professional forester on American soil. In 1897 he was appointed as head of the Division of Forestry, then a section of the Department of the Interior. He then went on to manage the national forests1 as head of the Forest Service, from its creation in 1905 to 1911, when President William Howard Taft dismissed him. The first part of this article is aimed at demonstrating that Gifford Pinchot came to embody the ideal of the Saint-Simonian engineer in the United States. Even though Pinchot did not explicitly subscribe to the theories developed by Saint-Simon−and indeed never seems to have mentioned him−he appears to have had a lot in common with Claude-Henri de Rouvroy de Saint- Simon.

9 Saint-Simon developed his ideas from the early 19th century until he died in 1825. His death did not spell the end of his ideas−quite the opposite in fact. His theories outlived him and became influential in some elite circles in and outside France. Put simply Saint-Simon called for the advent of a society organized along rational lines by the implementation of scientific knowledge under the aegis of an enlightened elite. In order to achieve this purpose, he believed that it was crucial to bring about the domination of the so-called productive classes which were composed of industrialists, scholars, and artists. The administration of Saint-Simonian society hinges on two key principles: a desire to do away with democratic politics and a profound mistrust of economic laisser-faire. To Saint-Simon the free market and the parliamentary regime tend to create chaos and foster inefficiency and social disunity. That is why Saint- Simon favored government by a rational and educated elite: “[…] it is monstrous that the teaching of morals and that of scientific knowledge be entrusted to two distinct bodies; because it is monstrous that ignorant people be asked to govern those who are enlightened.” (translation mine) (189) According to Antoine Picon, a leading expert on Saint-Simonianism, the French philosopher intended to usher in “a peaceful organization of labor resting on the rational allocation of land, equipment, machinery and capital” (64) (translation mine). In other words, he argued for the development of large-scale, coordinated networks to organize production. There is undeniably an inherent tension between the interventionist and hierarchical ideals of Saint- Simonianism and its promotion of such networks. This brief description of Saint- Simonianism would be incomplete without mentioning the religious dimension of the movement, apparent in the wish of its early leaders to replace churches by institutions of their own (67).

10 One may wonder about the connection between Saint-Simon’s ideas and those of the conservationists who staffed the US Forest Service during the Progressive Era. At first glance likening a philosophical school whose modest heyday occurred in 1830s France to the intellectual foundations of a federal agency which came into being in early-20th- century America might appear far-fetched. Yet one should bear in mind that Gifford Pinchot had studied in France at the École Nationale Forestière of Nancy in 1889, before joining a German university the following year. The author of this article posits that Pinchot was exposed to the influence of Saint-Simonian thought while in France. A few

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years after returning to the United States, Gifford Pinchot came close to the archetype of the Saint-Simonian engineer. The conservationist policies he implemented while in charge of the Forest Service can be characterized as American-style Saint-Simonianism.

11 In his introduction to the seminal study of conservation during the progressive era, Samuel P. Hays describes conservationism as a movement of a scientific kind, adding that “its essence was rational planning to promote efficient development and use of all natural resources” (2). On further examination, several similarities between Saint- Simonianism and utilitarian conservation emerge. Both schools of thought put a premium on a brand of science emphasizing action. In that regard, early conservationists seemed to have partaken of the spirit of positivism. In their view, science mattered mostly insofar as it could have practical repercussions, namely technical realizations. Pinchot’s temperament and actions symbolize this cult of action. “No man can be happy without a job,” he wrote in his autobiography entitled Breaking New Ground (49).

12 Although he paid lip service to the proverbial American democratic spirit throughout his autobiography and he was elected governor of Pennsylvania twice after 1923, Pinchot often expressed a typically Saint-Simonian desire to by-pass democratic politics. As a high-ranking civil servant in the federal bureaucracy, he did his utmost to ensure that his initiatives would be placed beyond the reach of the democratic process which he viewed as much too volatile and ineffective. In Breaking New Ground he bemoans the harmful consequences of the spoils system2 which gave priority to political hacks over competent civil servants (132). In this book, politics, most markedly at the local level, is portrayed as a source of disorder, wrongdoings and, even worse from a Saint-Simonian perspective, inefficiency. Pinchot is also highly critical of the members of the General Land Office whose job was to manage the forest reserves until 1905, when this function was transferred to the Forest Service (161, 244). Pinchot pinned his hopes on the executive branch of the federal government led by Theodore Roosevelt who foreshadowed the modern presidency, at least in his intentions. In short, Pinchot personified the fascination for experts and engineers that was so typical of the Progressive Era.

13 Furthermore, Pinchot’s brand of conservation was predicated on a questioning of the sacredness of private property−arguably one of the founding values of the American republic. From the very early days of the republic, elected officials had set out to privatize the public domain as quickly and thoroughly as possible (Allin chap. 1). Pinchot was well aware that a land-management policy of this kind would make genuine conservation a dead letter. As a matter of fact it would have been the very negation of the brand of conservation he envisioned. Hence his attempts to draw the attention of his contemporaries on the harmful consequences of making land and resources too easily accessible to private interests. A disengaged federal government, Pinchot argued, fostered destructive exploitation of nature. In order to reverse this trend, he advocated regulation of commodity exploitation by the federal government, which would look after the common good in the long term. Unsurprisingly, he did not feel nostalgic for the unbridled capitalism of the Gilded Age: “It is time for America and the world to move on from a social order in which unregulated profit is the driving force. […] When it comes, I hope and believe the new order will be based on co- operation instead of monopoly, on sharing instead of grasping, and that mutual helpfulness will replace the law of the jungle.” (509) The federal government, in other

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words, ought to act as a regulating force with a view to averting the chaos begotten by laisser-faire.

14 Utilitarian conservation’s chief purpose was to make American society function more efficiently. In that respect, it captured the spirit of the age perfectly. The dedication of Pinchot’s followers to the drive for efficiency is undeniably a by-product of the progressive impulse in American life at the beginning of the 20th century. John W. Chambers has identified two main trends at work during the Progressive Era; trends which sometimes turned out to be contradictory. Firstly, most progressive reformers attempted to seize the moral high ground, hoping to restore the American republic to its original purity. Secondly, many progressives were willing to promote efficiency in fields as diverse as municipal politics, labor law, business regulations, and the management of natural resources (Chambers 169). That is why conservationism can be defined as a Baconian endeavor to master nature through the use of science and technology for the benefit of the American people. Consider, for instance, Pinchot’s interest in what he called the “problem of national efficiency” (349). His definition of forestry leaves little doubt as to the values and objectives of the Forest Service: “Forestry is Tree Farming. Forestry is handling trees so that one crop follows another. To grow trees as a crop is Forestry.” (31) Pinchot pledged that conservation would allow his fellow Americans to take advantage of American forests in the most complete way imaginable. In order to achieve this purpose, he unwittingly upheld the Saint- Simonian plea for government by experts, largely insulated from the influence of elected officials.

15 That is why Pinchot was desperate to figure out a Saint-Simonian way of recruiting Forest Service agents. In order to thwart the political nepotism of the General Land Office which he thoroughly despised, he advocated for recruitment by way of competitive examination. Thus, the competent and enthusiastic recruits who joined the Service under Pinchot’s leadership emerged as the ideal figures of American Saint- Simonianism, thanks to their technical expertise and their desire to serve the common good.

16 The Messianic spirit and optimism consubstantial to progressivism is yet another similarity between the Saint-Simonian and the conservationist traditions. Although they never indulged in the sort of religious frenzy experienced by Saint-Simon’s disciples in the 1830s, it can hardly be denied that the leaders of American conservationism enthusiastically embraced the gospel of progress, as is made evident by the following excerpt from Pinchot’s autobiography: “The rightful use and purpose of our natural resources is to make all the people strong and well, able and wise, well- taught, well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed, full of knowledge and initiative, with equal opportunity for all and special privilege for none.” (509-510) Unwittingly emulating Saint-Simon’s example, Pinchot firmly believed that the implementation of scientific research would pave the way for a better world. He even argued that utilitarian conservation could be used as a means by which to preserve world peace. Although it only focuses on the early decades of the 20th century, Breaking New Ground was published after World War II. Pinchot stated that implementing conservationist principles internationally would ensure better distribution of resources and create bonds between countries that would make armed conflicts less likely (505-506).

17 On this point, Michael B. Smith goes even further: “Pinchot […] was intent on building an institution, a ‘church of conservation’. He was concerned not with the spiritual

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renewal of the individual but with the salvation of the nation, and his crusade was for the common good, organized and directed by experts, the high priests of the Forest Service.” (759) To its most ardent defenders, utilitarian conservation felt like a new form of secular religion. No wonder then that Samuel P. Hays titled his study of early 20th-century conservation Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency.

18 Conservation in its early phase amounted to a reaffirmation of utilitarianism. Interestingly, Pinchot paraphrased the oft-quoted utilitarian motto invented by Jeremy Bentham, modifying it slightly in the process: “[…] the use of the natural resources for the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time.” (326) It is worth remembering that before Gifford Pinchot came into prominence, forestry, namely the rational management of forests as was already being practiced in Western Europe, did not exist in the United States.

19 Although Pinchot differed from the traditional advocates of Saint-Simonianism in that he explicitly supported democracy and did not condemn the market system per se, in practice he often found that democracy and the marketplace, far from enhancing his vision, ended up frustrating it. For instance, he initially hoped to cooperate with the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest in order to promote scientific forestry in the region, but he gradually came to the realization that such an approach failed to produce results and eventually recommended “a stiff dosage of federal regulation” (Ficken 177), which put him at odds with the timber industry. Likewise, there is no reason to doubt that Pinchot and his backers were sincere in their belief that utilitarian conservation was a “struggle on behalf of the people against the depredations of the monopolies” (Clements 1979, 190) but they failed to recognize that their vision of government and public policy was much closer to technocracy than to liberal democracy as conceived at the time.

20 Brian Balogh, who has underlined the progressive conservationists’ suspicion of democratic institutions and legislative maneuvers, has drawn a list of their fundamental principles that is strongly reminiscent of the Saint-Simonian agenda: “Neutral expertise, esprit de corps, solicitude for the general good over the grasping machinations of special interests, a preference for executive action, and centralized control over crucial elements of the economy previously left to the private sector.” (199) This list goes a long way toward accounting for the permanent tension between Pinchot’s vocal dedication to the democratic ideal (couched in utilitarian terms) and his largely technocratic prescriptions (Clements 1980, 282).

21 It seems fair to state therefore, that mutatis mutandis, the early Forest Service did introduce a new, albeit slightly modified, version of Saint-Simonianism in America. This philosophical and scientific background may help us better understand the attitudes of early-20th century conservationists regarding National Parks.

Early conservationists and the National Parks

22 When broaching the first efforts made by Americans to protect nature, historians are wont to pit conservation against preservation. Although the former does form a coherent whole, defining the latter is no easy task since its meaning really depends on the frame of mind and values embraced by its proponents. More often than not preservationists tended to call for the protection of certain landscapes for recreation and for aesthetic and therapeutic purposes. Defending the National Parks was the

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domain of those who are now known as preservationists. In its founding charter, the Sierra Club, which was created in 1892, defined its chief objective in an unequivocal way: preserving the forests and landscapes of the Sierra Nevada (Cohen 8-10). This stated objective−to protect the sanctity of the park−reflects what preservation stood for. John Muir and his editor Robert Underwood Johnson, who first conceived the idea of the Sierra Club, were willing to impose a limit on commodity exploitation by substituting to it the aesthetic and patrimonial uses of the dazzling landscapes of the American West. In the first pages of Breaking New Ground, Pinchot chose to distance himself from the preservationists: “Their eyes were closed to the economic motive behind true Forestry. They hated to see a tree cut down. So do I, and the chances are that you do too. But you cannot practice Forestry without it.” (28) The proponents of utilitarian conservation had little time for aesthetics, at least when it came to the public policies they advocated. John Muir wrote about sublime nature whilst Gifford Pinchot concerned himself with the profitability and productivity of the forests of America.

23 The early conservationists found it difficult to even accept the National Park idea. Pinchot, for instance, blamed preservation for banning commodity exploitation in areas where, he believed, it could have been carried out in a rational way. That is why he campaigned against the amalgamation of land in Wyoming to Yellowstone National Park (Hays 40). Pinchot could see no reason why the natural resources that could be exploited in an enlightened fashion would not be. This also explains why he dismissed the distinction between National Parks and Forest Reserves as misguided. As early as 1904, he tried to have the management of the parks transferred to the Department of Agriculture. Although he never gave up on this plan, his efforts remained in vain until he was dismissed from his position in 1911 (Steen 114). The reason why Pinchot tried so hard to obtain the management of the parks was because he disapproved of the way the Department of the Interior went about doing it. Ultimately, his goal was to ensure that parks would be managed according to the principle of maximum efficiency that already held sway in the Forest Reserves (renamed National Forests in 1907) (Pinchot 242). The historian of the US Forest Service, Harold K. Steen points out that their agents had very little interest in tourism and recreation in the early 20th century (113). Conservation, as they saw it, could not be expected to heed such objectives. Put simply, early conservationists held that aesthetic and recreationist criteria could only apply in places where commodity exploitation was deemed impractical. Such a view is actually consistent with the rationale that had underpinned the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872. It was precisely because the area had not been deemed amenable to commodity exploitation that a park dedicated to tourism had been created, with the active support of railway companies eager to make the most of the tourism business (Runte 50-54).

24 It is worth noting that Pinchot is not the only conservationist to have rejected preservation. This rejection stemmed from the values and attitudes prevalent in the Forest Service as shown by the policy put in place by Henry S. Graves, who took over from Pinchot as chief of the Service in 1911. It did not take long before Graves expressed his wish to be involved in the management of National Parks. Like Pinchot, Graves did not favor the creation of a federal agency devoted to the management of the parks. To him, such an initiative would not be warranted as the Forest Service was already in a position to manage them rationally in accordance with conservationist

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principles. According to Harold K. Steen, Graves reluctantly considered recreation out of necessity but never came close to regarding it as a priority. Thus Graves kept a watchful eye on the potential enlargement of the parks and strove to limit it as much as he could. He argued that only the areas featuring trees with high aesthetic potential should be added to the park system whilst trees with high commercial value should be excluded from it (Steen 114-116).

25 What really mattered to the leadership of the Forest Service was to set in motion a coordinated and large-scale project with a view to controlling the use of natural resources on a national scale. This, they believed, would enhance American prosperity, and the National Parks were to be no exception. Still Henry S. Graves did have to strike some compromises. He went as far as to admit recreation as a secondary use of the National Forests. This move should not be interpreted as an ideological shift. Realizing that the parks were becoming more and more popular, Graves thought that he was about to witness the marginalization of his agency. He did not lose hope however. He continued to hope that sooner or later the parks would be put under the jurisdiction of conservationists like himself (Steen 122). In 1916, when the National Park Service eventually came into being, the Forest Service was dealt a humiliating blow. Not only was the Forest Service not awarded the management of the parks but it also had to contend with a rival whose raison d’être did not align with the conservationist agenda. After 1916 the relations between the two agencies did not always go smoothly. The competition of the National Park Service even prompted the Forest Service to make more room for recreation within the National Forests (Sellars 58). The fact remains, however, that the conservationists were very reluctant to accommodate the preservationist ideal that had shaped the development of the National Park System.

26 The conservationist rejection of the inviolability of parks stemmed from the principles propounded by Gifford Pinchot and his followers. In order to better understand the conceptual reasons for this stance, it may be useful to turn to the work of the French philosopher Jacques Ellul. In the context of modernity, far from applying only to machinery, technology, he writes, morphed into an ethos which elevates the search for efficiency above all other concerns (Ellul 1988, 56).

27 Ellul casts technology as the main determinant of modern life after the scientific and industrial revolutions. To him, the so-called technological society amounts to a rational ordering of all human activities, whether material or psychological, with one single objective−to foster efficiency. In such a context, Ellul claims, technology is set to “algebrize the world” (translation mine) (Ellul 1988, 274). In the technological society, all places, all phenomena, and all activities are liable to be submitted to technology sooner or later. A quote by Henry David Thoreau beautifully foreshadowed Ellul’s thinking: “Men have become the tools of their tools.” (25) Ellul holds that any objective or attitude which does not dovetail with the technological agenda is gradually marginalized or absorbed by it: “Technological progress now stems from the search for efficiency only. […] An individual is allowed to take part only insofar as he or she discards all the concerns which are now regarded as being of minor importance like aesthetics, ethics or imaginativeness.” (Ellul 1954, 69) The process of marginalization of aesthetic and ethical criteria echoes the triumph of practicality analyzed by Leszek Kolakowski in his study of positivism (118).

28 One may argue that the attitudes of the members of the Forest Service regarding the parks provide an illustration of Ellul’s reflections on the technological society. Gifford

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Pinchot’s position is a case in point. In 1885, for instance, the state of New York passed a law to preserve a section of the Adirondack Mountains. In 1892, the area concerned became a park known as the State Forest Preserve. Two years later a provision banning tree cutting was added to the State constitution. It stipulated that the preserved area was to remain “forever wild” (Allin 30), which incensed Gifford Pinchot. In Breaking New Ground, he calls this provision “indefensible” (27). He worked hard to get it repealed−all to no avail. It did not make any sense to him that the nation should do without some of its valuable forest resources. Making this area inviolable precluded its being rationally exploited by conservationist foresters. Pinchot ascribed the “forever wild” provision to irrationality on the part of New York State officials: “[…] I have always regarded the sentimental horror of some good citizens at the idea of utilizing the timber of the Forest Preserve under Forestry as unintelligent, misdirected, and short-sighted.” (182) In other words, technologically speaking, such restraint did not make any sense.

Preservation and the technological society

29 There is no question that the most spectacular illustration of the technological ethos at work in early conservation was the showdown over Hetch Hetchy Valley, which pitted Gifford Pinchot against John Muir toward the end of Muir’s life. Philosophically, a large gap separated the two men. Although he strove to build consensus in order to enlist the support of public opinion for the National Parks, John Muir also developed innovative ideas foreshadowing late 20th-century radical environmentalism. Yet Muir chose to tone down his position, initially supporting utilitarian conservation. In Our National Parks, a book published in 1902, he stated that there were “legitimate demands on the forests” and went on to pay tribute to Pinchot’s brand of conservation (263). Muir regarded it as highly preferable to the kind of laisser-faire which had prevailed throughout the period of westward expansion in the 19th century. To him, conservation was an improvement on the environmentally harmful ways of the past. In reality, however, he felt slightly uncomfortable with it as he feared that the search for efficiency would know no limits if the likes of Pinchot had their way. So much so that, as time went by, Muir began to distance himself from the conservationist creed of the Forest Service. He seems to have been wary of the “algebrization” and invasion of the world by technology, to quote Jacques Ellul. Unlike Pinchot, Muir’s involvement in public affairs was not an attempt to help the nation take complete control of its territory. For all his concessions to the spirit of the age, Muir was much more concerned by the health of nature in and for itself than by human welfare (1916).

30 Thus, the idea of the National Park provided Muir with an attractive opportunity to set limits to the supremacy of utilitarianism and productivism. In a nation developing at an accelerated pace and becoming ever more confident in its ability to control its territory and resources, the National Parks emerged as a pause and an obstacle to the expansion of technology and to the attempt to master nature by means of science and technology. This statement ought to be qualified because early preservationists approved of the construction of roads and hotels within the parks; tourism being a profitable business which railroad companies were quick to cash in on (Louter 250, Gutfreund 19). Be that as it may, the Parks were perceived by their proponents as places where commodity exploitation was to be barred, and where the beauty of landscapes was worth more

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than the commercial value of timber. John Muir subscribed to the notion that the parks had value in and for themselves although this ideal was not shared by all preservationists (Righter 82).

31 To the likes of Gifford Pinchot, Muir’s position did not make any practical sense. The two men, who at first were on the best of terms, gradually moved away from each other. After 1905, the now famous Hetch Hetchy controversy staged the opposition between the two men in spectacular fashion. In the early 1900s, the city of San Francisco launched a dam building project in Hetch Hetchy Valley with a view to increasing the city’s water resources. The problem was that the valley was located inside Yosemite National Park. The upshot of such a project would be to inundate a magnificent place. As a result, the Sierra Club, with the help of a few other organizations, campaigned against it. The combined efforts of the preservationists were successful in putting off the construction of the dam for several years. President Woodrow Wilson’s election, however, dealt a mortal blow to the preservationist campaign: in 1913, the city of San Francisco was granted the permission to have the dam built. Throughout the controversy Gifford Pinchot had been steadfast in his support of the dam and had taken it upon himself to further San Francisco’s interests by lobbying key decision-makers. He did so because he firmly believed that developing California’s economy and infrastructures mattered much more than the aesthetic−let alone intrinsic−value of the valley. In his view, technology, as illustrated by the dam, would allow homo americanus to master his environment and to fully exploit its resources. As far as Pinchot was concerned, thwarting such a plan was irrational.

32 John Muir, who had initially supported utilitarian conservation, did his best to resist the conservationists’ push for efficiency. Remaining true to their core principles, the conservationists abided by the technological impulse to use nature to the full whenever it was possible to do so. In the minds of Gifford Pinchot and his successor Henry S. Graves, the idea that Hetch Hetchy Valley, and more broadly the parks, ought to remain untouched was a conceptual error. Essentially, it would have boiled down to refraining from improving lands that could be exploited in a sustainable manner to serve human practical purposes. With Hetch Hetchy, Muir, who had thought that backing conservationism would put a brake on the excesses of the Frontier, came to the realization that it was Pinchot’s turn to ignore limits.

33 In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered Pinchot to organize the Conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources. This conference was to be a forum to discuss the prospects of conservation in the United States with the main players involved. On drawing the guest list, Pinchot chose to by-pass John Muir (Miller 2001, 143-144). It would be a mistake to interpret this move as the result of any animosity between the two men. Char Miller has convincingly shown that there was no personal discord, despite the differences between Muir and Pinchot (119-144). At no point in Breaking New Ground does Pinchot criticize Muir. In fact, he pays tribute to the founder of the Sierra Club while making disparaging comments on Charles S. Sargent, a prominent Harvard botanist who had supported Muir’s preservationist stance. The crux of the matter is that Pinchot was being consistent with his beliefs when he left Muir out of the conference. By attempting to put a limit on Pinchot’s plan to take over the US territory and its resources−in other words by trying to curb the spiral of efficiency−Muir had excluded himself from the conservationist circle. From Pinchot’s perspective, therefore, his presence would have lacked legitimacy.

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34 The outcome of the Hetch Hetchy controversy highlighted the strength of the technological ethos in a nation whose population, economy, and industrial infrastructure were developing very rapidly. Yet it is also fair to point out, following Roderick Nash’s argument, that the very fact that some organizations had managed to put off the construction of the dam for several years was in and of itself a remarkable achievement. A few decades earlier such a campaign would have been unthinkable (Nash 181). Furthermore, this controversy was instrumental in bringing about the creation of the National Park Service (1916), thus frustrating Pinchot’s ambition to integrate the National Parks into the National Forests system (Righter 191). It should be added that the Hetch Hetchy controversy was a blueprint for other campaigns, most notably after 1945–several of which would turn out to be successful. The example of the dam project on the Echo Park River, located within the Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado, springs to mind. In 1956, the Sierra Club, along with other organizations, managed to kill the project (Turner). This being said, the imbalance between developmental objectives and preservationist concerns has remained self-evident to this day. That is because preservationist arguments are doomed to remain marginal in the technological society portrayed by Jacques Ellul.

35 From the very beginning, the advocates of the Park System set forth a highly heterogeneous set of arguments, which often paled in comparison with the rational consistency propounded by the Forest Service. In order to better grasp the preservationist approach, it seems necessary to take a closer look at the historical context. As the 19th century drew to a close, a growing number of Americans came to an awareness of the fast pace of resource depletion in their country. Thus, members of the urban and educated middle class began to flock into green suburbs as early as in the late 19th century (Schmitt 3). American historian Peter J. Schmitt has shown how nature captured the American imagination during the Progressive Era. This bears witness to the fact that many Americans experienced the side effects of material and industrial progress from which their country had benefited since the 1840s. In that respect the National Parks could give them a chance to take a break from industrial life and to reconnect with nature.

36 This led the preservationists to act in a somewhat ambiguous manner. Most of them endorsed the gospel of progress promoted by Theodore Roosevelt, and often took an active part in American expansion and the effort to take full control of the US territory. Simultaneously they bemoaned the harmful side effects of American progress. Their ambivalence about progress lies at the heart of the reformism of the Progressive Era. The members of the Sierra Club, most of them progressives, did not want the Parks to radically question the path of technologically-driven development that had been taken by their country. Instead, they regarded the Parks as a respite that would benefit the health of the nation and its inhabitants. Jacques Ellul’s reflection on our difficulties in coping with the triumph of rationality sheds light on the function ascribed to the Parks by the preservationists: “[…] the most perfect machine remains purely rational […] Man is not. In addition man is not rational in his feelings, opinions, behaviors but, what is more, he suffers in a purely and exclusively rational environment.” (1988, 315-316) It was precisely because he was desperate to escape the domination of technology in all places that John Muir sought to promote the creation of protected areas beyond the reach of techno-industrial influence.

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37 Muir and his followers were aghast when they realized that the push for efficiency knew no bounds and went on unabated, giving short shrift to the fragile limitations imposed by the Park System. As steadfast proponents of the technological ethos, the conservationists took a stand against the inviolability of Parks. By contrast, the preservationists intended to prevent the Parks from being subjected to an enlightened brand of utilitarianism along the lines of the conservationist policies implemented in the National Forests. They would have preferred the Parks to remain untainted fragments of nature, valued for their beauty. Thanks to their consistent and one-sided approach, the conservationists did not find it very hard to counter the heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory arguments put forward by the preservationists who sounded out of step with the progressive emphasis on efficiency and practicality, as Kendrick A. Clements explains: The opponents of the Hetch Hetchy project never really grasped the crucial function of the experts in the political process. Thus they misunderstood, or worse, ignored the experts’ arguments; they made elementary technical blunders; they seldom sought competent technical advice; and they defended the wilderness with a romantic and aesthetic argument which made them vulnerable to charges of sentimentality and elitism. (Clements 1979, 299)

38 It is worth bearing in mind, for example, that the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 had only been made possible by the recognition by elected officials that the areas concerned had been deemed unfit for commodity exploitation (Allin 28).

39 Such a rationale squares perfectly with the technological project which, according to Jacques Ellul, grants a secondary and minor role to aesthetics. In the framework of the technological society, aesthetics can never be expected to override the search for maximum efficiency. That is why opponents to the dam project were regularly dismissed as impractical sentimentalists, as exemplified in John Muir’s portrayal in the San Francisco press (Righter 90). By contrast, Pinchot had always done his utmost to present scientific forestry as “unsentimental and probusiness” (Ficken 171). If it is commonly accepted that the areas designated as National Parks can only be regions with no commercial value–a shortcoming which tourism can remedy–the idea that Parks should remain inviolate becomes relative rather than absolute. In such circumstances, the integrity of the Parks can be put in the balance every time valuable resources are discovered in them. The inviolability of Parks, in other words, may only be a transitory phase.

Conclusion

40 The conservationist-preservationist dichotomy foreshadowed one of the major fault- lines in contemporary US environmentalism. Although valuable in themselves and still tangible today, the preservationist achievements may always be put into question by the push for efficiency. In a society which aims to make the most of natural resources for the good of human communities, is it realistic to expect its members to abstain from exploiting resources which they are technologically capable of collecting and using? The quest launched by John Muir to preserve and expand the National Parks bears testimony to the limited prospects of preservationism in American life. To be sure, Muir did achieve remarkable success at times and his lasting popularity in contemporary environmental circles is well deserved. Yet, Muir, like his successors,

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also had to compromise on numerous occasions. Ironically enough, he never wavered in his support for automobile access to National Parks, thereby letting the machine in the garden. To him, easier access meant more tourists, which would then make it harder to dismantle the National Park System (Gunsky 202). What he did not anticipate was that this idea was to be so successful that a few decades after his death, the massive presence of motorized tourists would become a threat to the health of ecosystems in the parks. Americans were, as the saying goes, loving the Parks to death. Such a development shows how vulnerable any preservationist effort is bound to be. Allin, Craig W. The Politics of Wilderness Preservation. 1982. Fairbanks: The University of Alaska Press, 2008. Balogh, Brian. “Scientific History and the Roots of the Modern American State: Gifford Pinchot’s Path to Progressive Reform.” Environmental History 7:2 (2002): 198-225. Chambers II, John W. The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920. 1992. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Clements, Kendrick A. “Politics and the Park: San Francisco’s Fight for Hetch Hetchy, 1908-1913.” Pacific Historical Review 48:2 (1979): 185-215. ---. “Engineers and Conservationists in the Progressive Era.” California History 58:4 (1979/1980): 282-303. Cohen, Michael P. The Pathless Way: John Muir and American Wilderness. 1984. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1986. Ellul, Jacques. La Technique ou l’enjeu du siècle. Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1954. ---. Le Bluff technologique. 1988. Paris: Hachette Littératures, 2004. ---. Ellul par lui-même: entretiens avec William H. Vanderburg. 1981. Paris: La Table Ronde, 2008. Farquar, Francis P. History of the Sierra Nevada. 1965. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. Ficken, Robert E. “Gifford Pinchot Men: Pacific Northwest Lumbermen and the Conservation Movement.” Western Historical Quarterly 13:2 (1982): 165-178. Frome, Michael. Battle for the Wilderness. 1974. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1997. Gunsky, Frederick R. South of Yosemite: Selected Writings of John Muir. 1968. Berkeley: Wilderness Press, 1988. Gutfreund, Owen D. Twentieth-Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Hays, Samuel P. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920. 1959. Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999. Jones Holway R. John Muir and the Sierra Club: The Battle for Yosemite. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1965. Kolakowski, Leszek. La Philosophie positiviste. C. Brendel trans. 1966. Paris: Denoël, 1976. Louter, David. “Glaciers and Gasoline: The Making of a Windshield Wilderness 1900-1905.” In Seeing and Being Seen: Tourism in the American West. Ed. David M. Wrobel et al. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. 248-270. Meyer, John M. “Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, and the Boundaries of Politics in American Thought.” Polity 30:2 (1997): 267-284. Miller, Char. “The Greening of Gifford Pinchot.” Environmental History Review 16:3 (1992): 1-20. ---. Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism. Washington DC: Island Press, 2001.

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---. “With Friends Like These: John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and the Drama of Environmental Politics.” In John Muir: Family, Friends, and Adventures. Ed. Sally M. Miller et al. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. 121-146. Muir, John. Our National Parks. 1902. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991. ---. A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf of Mexico. 1916. Boston: Mariner Books, 1998. Nash, Roderick F. Wilderness and the American Mind. 1967. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Picon, Antoine. Les Saint-simoniens: raison, imaginaire et utopie. Paris: Belin, 2002. Pinchot, Gifford. Breaking New Ground. 1947. Washington DC: Island Press, 1987. Righter, Robert W. The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America’s Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Runte, Alfred. National Parks: The American Experience. 1979. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1987. Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de. “Du système industriel.” 1821. In La Pensée politique de Saint-Simon. Textes. Ed. Ghita Ionescu. Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1979. 164-193. Schmitt, Peter J. Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America. 1969. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Sellars, Richard W. Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Smith, Michael B. “The Value of a Tree: Public Debates of John Muir and Gifford Pinchot.” The Historian 60:4 (1998): 557-578. Steen, Harold K. The United States Forest Service: A History. 1976. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004. Thoreau, Henry D. Walden and Resistance to Civil Government. 1854. Ed. William Rossi. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992. Turner, Tom. David Brower: The Making of the Environmental Movement. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015.

NOTES

1. The national forests were known as forest reserves until 1907 when they took their current name. 2. The “spoils system” was a patronage system through which an elected official appointed his political supporters to administrative positions regardless of their being competent. The spoils system came in for much criticism in the late 19th century and during the Progressive Era.

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ABSTRACTS

This article tries to shed light on the ideology of early 20th-century utilitarian conservationists in the United States. It focuses on Gifford Pinchot, who was the first chief of the US Forest Service. After a comparison between Saint-Simonianism and utilitarian conservation, the article looks at Pinchot’s approach to the National Parks, by drawing on Jacques Ellul’s reflections on the ideological underpinnings of the technological society. The article ends with a discussion of the impact of Pinchot’s approach to conservation on the chances of success of his preservationist adversaries during the Hetch Hetchy controversy in the early 20th century. It suggests that the preservationist case, predicated on spiritual and aesthetic concerns, was doomed to be dismissed as impractical and sentimental in an era when the search for efficiency defined the public policy agenda to a considerable degree.

Cet article vise à éclairer l’idéologie des conservationnistes utilitaires américains du début du 20ème siècle. Il se concentre sur la personne de Gifford Pinchot, qui fut le premier directeur du Forest Service. Après une comparaison entre la pensée saint-simonienne et le conservationnisme utilitaire, l’article étudie, en utilisant les réflexions que Jacques Ellul a menées sur le système technicien, la manière dont Pinchot a abordé l’idée de parc national. L’article se conclut par une analyse de l’impact que la démarche de Pinchot a eu sur les chances de succès de ses adversaires préservationnistes lors de la controverse de Hetch Hetchy au début du 20ème siècle. À une époque où la recherche de l’efficacité informait pour une large part les politiques publiques, l’argumentaire préservationniste, fondé sur des préoccupations esthétiques et spirituelles, était voué à être condamné pour son manque d’esprit pratique et son sentimentalisme.

INDEX

Mots-clés: conservation, environnementalisme, ère progressiste, foresterie, forêts nationales, parcs nationaux, préservationnisme, saint-simonisme, système technicien Keywords: conservation, environmentalism, forestry, National Forests, National Parks, preservationism, Progressive Era, Saint-Simonianism, technological society

AUTHORS

JEAN-DANIEL COLLOMB Maître de conférences Université Jean Moulin, Lyon 3 [email protected]

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The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, or the promise of “something further”

Thomas Velasquez

1 In a 2017 interview for The New Yorker, Philip Roth insisted that Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857) was the right book to read today and that it was a “darkly pessimistic, daringly innovative novel.”1 It is true that modern critics have welcomed the text’s originality and praised its flow of vivid descriptions and dialogues sketching the various characters, which differed considerably from the author’s earlier (adventure) novels such as Typee (1846), Omoo (1847) or Moby-Dick (1851).

2 Published purposely on April Fools’ Day, the exact day the narrative starts,2 by Dix, Edwards & Co., the novel did puzzle its contemporary reviewers who perceived it as a sort of practical joke and immediately pointed to its lack of unity3 and deceiving promise that “something further may follow”(251),4 making interpretation and progress through the plot all the more difficult for the reader.

3 Surely the abstract conversations of the disguised confidence-man with a varied crowd of steamboat passengers in a natural Mississippi landscape go beyond the mere test of confidence to exhort them to charity, and thus expose their gullibility and moral flaws. The colourful gallery of grotesque portraits – including characters as varied as a deaf mute, a deformed “negro,” an herb-doctor, the president and transfer-agent of a coal- mining company, a collector for an Indian charitable organization, or a Cosmopolitan philanthropist, to name but a few – as well as the incongruity of a large number of situations and dialogues undeniably contribute to portraying human existence as an absurd puppet-like show, devoid of clear meaning and coherence on the author’s part, and reduce the narrative to a “masquerade,” as the book’s subtitle itself clearly suggests. Such a limited perspective inevitably fails to provide the reader with explicit clues as to the novel’s interpretation and the intent of its creator.

4 However relevant these views on the book may prove, it is important to consider the significance of Herman Melville’s ninth and final novel5 in light of his conception of

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writing and in spite of the poor initial critical reception. Depicting an American society mostly driven by money, The Confidence-Man has baffled reviewers as well as readers because it constantly challenges conventions and established genres – refusing specific categories and definite closure – and manipulated truth through masks and disguise, digressions or irony, therefore compelling the public to engage actively in the very act of reading. In this way, the novel tends to considerably open space for interpretation and fully keeps its promise of “something further” for anyone committed to deciphering textual elements.

5 Twentieth-century critics have come to reconsider this aspect of the novelist’s writing as part of a post-modern writing technique and have reassessed the text accordingly, differentiating Melville from the reputation of simple adventure writer in the early days of his career as well as acknowledging him as one who explores and exploits the full potentiality of words in order to test his audience, just as the confidence-man does with his fellow passengers. Then, if “Time, […] the solver of all riddles”6 cannot help clarify meaning, an active reader will, which fully justifies A. Robert Lee’s reassessment of the book and assertion that The Confidence-Man “could with some justice claim to operate as the exemplary post-modern text.”7

6 This is precisely what the present study intends to determine: if the novel may at first sight be easily reduced to a mere satire of an individual capitalistic society paying little heed to its original residents (Native Americans), it nevertheless displays great complexity, by generating generic instability and borrowing theatrical codes, which tends to involve the reader in the (re)construction of an elusive meaning and make this particular novel a forerunner of the post-modernist narrative with its concern for indeterminate (final) meaning.

“Confidence is the indispensable basis of all sorts of business transactions” (133)

7 If Melville’s contemporary reviewers initially failed to see in the novel any coherent purpose, they still read it as a dark critique of American society. As such, the book tends to offer a rather bleak vision of the United States in the decade preceding the Civil War, and more particularly “the money-getting spirit”8 that pervaded every class of men, whether directly encountered by the confidence-man on board the Fidèle or simply impersonated by him. It appears then that by being able to identify the satirical vein of a narrative fraught with deluded characters whose confidence is being tested to obtain money, readers may feel more confident too in their attempt to search for a meaningful and stable interpretation.

8 The steamboat sailing down the Mississippi becomes a convenient place for all sorts of conmen trying to sell stock in failing companies or miracle herbal medicine that can cure everything (from cancer to an ordinary cold), or raise money for so-called charities such as the Seminole Widows and Orphans Society, or even simply convince people to give money as a token of confidence in their fellow passenger. It is no surprise then if the terms “confidence” and “trust” repeatedly appear over the forty- five chapters of the narrative, like leitmotifs and constant reminders of one of the author’s major concerns: the exploitation of his contemporary America, when the power of capital was transforming the economic landscape and basic social

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relationships by turning everything into a commodity.9 This is why most exchanges in the novel are reduced to “transactions” or “operations” requiring mutual engagement in an attempt to do “business,” perceived as the ultimate expression of confidence between the protagonists. In chapter nine, for example, “two businessmen transact a little business” and discuss shares in the Black Rapids Coal Company as well as the “downward tendency” of the market, concluding on the hypocrisy of the system with the denunciation of the stock-seller: Yes, there was a depression. But how came it? who devised it? The ‘bears,’ sir. […] the most monstrous of all hypocrites are these bears: hypocrites by inversion; hypocrites in the simulation of things dark instead of bright; […] professors of the wicked art of manufacturing depressions […] gloomy philosophers of the stock market. (56)

9 Besides, not only does the term “trust” resurface throughout the text, but it also becomes highly conspicuous. Clearly written in capital letters on the sign of the barber shop in the first chapter, the expression “NO TRUST” conveys the unwillingness of the barber to provide a service for credit and conveniently refers to an absence of confidence, which is precisely what is being reassessed in the novel. The message obviously suggests that a business only operates on a cash-only basis and, by extension, so does the test on confidence. In the pages that follow, the country merchant bestows a half-dollar on Black Guinea, as “some proof of [his] trust” (25) and token of his confidence, implying then that accepting coins might be the only legitimate method of proving trust, therefore reducing the sole expression of confidence to monetary exchange for most protagonists. The term trust also acquires larger significance since its legal meaning10 directly ties it to the profit-driven market that emerged in the 19th century.

10 It is a fact that during Herman Melville’s lifetime, expansion and speculation were fuelled by the prospects of American businesses and railroad companies penetrating into the Western heartlands of Mississippi where indigenous people had been established for centuries. There then appeared an economic necessity to remove Native Americans, which is what the Founding Fathers of the United States, like Thomas Jefferson, had long ago willingly endorsed.11 This explains why Melville’s thoughts on the matter are transcribed and discussed at length in the novel – as the steamboat is sailing down the Mississippi – he who stood quite at odds by defending indigenous rights against the general feeling of hatred towards the Indians and Jefferson’s conception of economic and territorial expansion. Hence, “the metaphysics of Indian- hating”12 is developed in the course of a long discussion extending over four chapters (twenty-five to twenty-nine) between the Cosmopolitan and a passenger who happens to relate the case of Colonel John Moredock, an “Indian-hater of Illinois, [who] did hate Indians, to be sure!” (146). An extensive narrative ensues about the Colonel, the son of a woman killed by Indians belonging to “a band of twenty renegades from various tribes, outlaws even among Indians, and who had formed themselves into a marauding crew,” (158) whom he eventually tracked down and killed, consumed by his hatred. Praised for his bravery and exterminationist skills, he joined the army and became a colonel but, paradoxically, his anti-Indian sentiment became more of an obstacle to his further governmental career promotion since other competences, like the ability to negotiate and discuss with the enemies first rather than directly confront them, were necessary: At one time the colonel was […] pressed to become candidate for governor, but begged to be excused. And, […] he declined to give his reasons for declining […] In

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his official capacity he might be called upon to enter into friendly treaties with Indian tribes, a thing not to be thought of. […] If the governorship offered large honors, from Moredock it demanded larger sacrifices. These were incompatible. In short, he was not unaware that to be a consistent Indian-hater involves the renunciation of ambition, with its objects – the pomps and glories of the world; and since religion, pronouncing such things vanities, accounts it merit to renounce them, therefore, so far as this goes, Indian-hating, whatever may be thought of it in other respects, may be regarded as not wholly without the efficacy of a devout sentiment. (161)

11 Such a perpetual debasing of Indians as well as the cruel treatment inflicted upon them – leading to their removal or extermination along the Mississippi – was quite characteristic of mid-nineteenth-century America. It was further accentuated by the violence of an expansionist and capitalist system which viewed Natives as obstacles to economic and territorial development. Then, by endeavouring to write “a fiction based on fact” (65) and by integrating those aspects into their own narratives, Melville’s characters contribute to establishing a bleak vision of a society centered on a dominating part of the population, primarily driven by profit and the market forces, in which the American dream inevitably loses much of its original appeal: this is why critics such as R. W. B. Lewis have referred to The Confidence-Man in terms of “antiface of the American dream.”13

12 At this point, if readers may have felt reassured by being able to identify the satirical mode the novel imposes with the denunciation of an American capitalistic society – more concerned with business than the fate of its original population – and of the way it excludes Native Americans, they, by contrast, might feel a lot less comfortable when it comes to assess the type of text one is dealing with, especially its close familiarity with the stage. This tends to considerably blur the overall meaning Herman Melville might want us to ascertain and require greater attention from the reader in search of a stable final interpretation.

“Life is a pic-nic en costume; one must take a part, assume a character, stand ready in a sensible way to play the fool” (139)

13 If Herman Melville has made it rather easy for his confident readers to realize how reduced human exchanges have become in a cruel “Wall street spirit”(49) – characteristic of the years that preceded the Civil War – they, on the other hand, may find it much harder to grasp the genre the novel is tied to despite the large degree of reassuring familiarity the satirical elements may have instilled in their reading. It is undeniable that the author constantly plays with conventions and borrows from different traditions which, according to R. W. B. Lewis, tend to “shake the foundations of the reader’s confidence in his world view by depriving him of the safeguards provided by tradition and society.”14 Surely now the only certainty one can reach at the end of the novel is that “the book belong[s] to no particular class”15 and that any attempt to categorise it is doomed to fail.

14 Consequently, the major challenge presented by The Confidence-Man is how to understand the structure of the narrative in the light of its generic instability and the mass of critical debate surrounding it, often more contradictory than complementary,

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resulting in the absence of a definitive reading of the work.16 One characteristic of the book seems then to reside in the multiple references to the stage adding to the confusion of genres the novels presents us with, as well as the endless shifting of identities and masks borrowed by the confidence-man on the steamboat which provides the perfect set for the different entries and exits of the protagonists. This constant role-playing under a multitude of guises partakes in the idea that (human) appearance can prove deceitful, which makes assessing individual character difficult and therefore places ambiguity at the heart of individual existence. This is notably conveyed by the wide range of physical transformations that occur throughout the different encounters on the Fidèle, as well as the Cosmopolitan’s remark to Pitch asserting that “Life is a pic-nic en costume; one must take a part, assume a character, stand ready in a sensible way to play the fool.” (139) From this perspective, the numerous and sometimes singular metamorphoses in the novel tend to question the stability of human nature and contribute to shaking even further the reader’s fragile sense of reality – from Black Guinea who “seemed a dog, so […] like a dog he began to be treated” (18), to the wooden-legged man with a laugh “more like a groan” (38), the miser whose “flesh seemed salted cod-fish” and whose nose looked like a “buzzard” (79), or the Soldier of Fortune’s “unshaven face like an ogre” compared to a “hyaena,” (100-101) most protagonists on board undergo a form of “metamorphosis more surprising than any in Ovid,” to take up chapter thirty-one’s title. Such depictions of the various characters also contribute to establishing a gallery of grotesque portraits – with the physical exaggeration of some of their traits – whose ludicrous aspect deprives them of any form of credibility: they become mere marionettes to be manipulated in a puppet-theatre,17 either by the novelist who created them or by the confidence-man who impersonates them and pulls all the strings in his attempt to test people’s trust. The public’s confidence is therefore being clearly tested now in their reading of the text, which is made all the more open and complex since the narrative adopts the theatrical mode.

15 It seems fairly obvious then that Herman Melville largely exploits the possibilities that drama as a genre offers, not only conceiving his protagonists as puppets, but also as real actors who can multiply disguises and make the most of the stage as they perform in the varied environment the steamboat provides – the cabins, the “decks, […] fine promenades, domed saloons, long galleries, sunny balconies, confidential passages, bridal chambers […] and out-of-the-way retreats like secret drawers” (15). As a result, The Confidence-Man turns into a genuine play with the entrances and exits of the different characters/actors18 and the confidence-man manipulating appearances and truth in the different stories. In this context, it is no surprise to find so many mentions of the stage and of Shakespeare’s works in particular19, the most important ones being those related to Puck or Lysander from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (20), Autolycus from The Winter’s Tale (178) and As You Like It with direct quotes from the play clearly standing out from the core of the text: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players, Who have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts.20 (224)

16 Such references inevitably suggest that the novelist resorts to the same theatrical tricks for his narrative, implying thus that the confidence-man has likewise been playing many parts too. Stage props are consequently to be found everywhere on board

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– ranging from ordinary objects such as a “business card,”(25) the steward’s “ringing […] bell,” (26) the mute’s slate or the "NO TRUST” sign of the barber, to the more elaborate elements of disguise of the confidence-man – and typical (Shakespearean) drama techniques are used including mistaken identities, overhearing of conversations, impersonations of different accents, repetitions of words or situations and endless variations around the same notions (namely “trust” and “confidence”), etc. All those elements contribute to the idea that “all the world act[s]” (40) and that by questioning reality, the novel as a play has become a metaphor for the central notion, confidence, and a genuine test for the audience/reader expected to trust (or not) the text that takes shape on the stage.

17 However, if any attempt at tying the novel to a specific genre might generate meaning for those who read it, some critics on the other hand have regarded this as a destabilizing source of confusion, reinforced by the fact that no real closure is offered despite the promise of a potential sequel, “something further” (251), which is why initial reviewers originally considered the book as a “seemingly insoluble puzzle”21 before the wide range of genres Herman Melville appears to be flirting with. The writer never actually seems to openly engage with one of them and yet he does not hesitate to exploit their codes. In this way, he persists in creating confusion all along, successfully combining theatrical aspects with grotesque elements, interspersed with lengthy metaphysical developments referring to ancient philosophers (Socrates, Aristotle, Plato or Epictetus, to name but a few) or more modern ones (Hume or Bacon), and integrating here and there some historical background context into the narrative (Tacitus’ view on Rome is subtly criticized when “the man with the weed” asked the collegian to drop his book in chapter five, for example, and Colonel Moredock’s story in chapter twenty-six evokes the dark fate of American Indians). In addition, by using different masks, the main protagonist becomes Everyman and the whole narrative turns into a form of allegory as most discussions and encounters can be read as parables (such as the story of the gentleman-madman, chapter thirty-four, or China Aster’s, chapter forty) fraught with biblical overtones and mentions of the Scriptures (including those the deaf mute writes on his slate in chapter one), tracing the progression from the ideal Christian conception of charity to a more selfish and individualistic one – “a charity business” (47) –, reminiscent of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s influential philosophical approach to the world in the mid-1850s. Being read as such, one cannot ignore the continuous metaphysical or philosophical vein that runs through the entire novel, constantly reassessing the concepts of confidence and trust in an unstable world where appearance shifts, most particularly in the course of the confidence-man’s discussions, sometimes in the guise of a “Philosophical Intelligence Office” agent (118) or when addressing Egbert in chapter thirty-seven, for example: you speak of a certain philosophy, and a more or less occult one it may be, and hint of its bearing upon practical life; pray, tell me, if the study of this philosophy tends to the same formation of character with the experiences of the world? (200)

18 Yet, since “we are being left in the dark” (251) at the end of the novel, and that “the reader is left with an uncomfortable sensation of dizziness,” to take up the words of the Literary Gazette in 1857, one is legitimately entitled to wonder if the generic instability created by the writer may not simply echo the uncertainty of human existence itself and the absurdity of a changing world. Such instability is likewise conveyed in the way words constantly alter meaning as they reappear throughout the text in various situations, such as “charity” or “trust”, two key notions introduced early in the novel,

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endlessly reinterpreted in the different contexts and manipulated by the protagonists, therefore pointing to the impossibility to reach a stable meaning.

19 By playing with conventions and masks, Melville chose as a main protagonist a disguised impostor who deceives people by testing their confidence, and the novel may likewise read as a test for its public too. Then, the pervasive sense of absurdity in most situations, as well as the inconsistencies and grotesque aspects of the puppet-like protagonists, added to the lack of access to the characters’ interiority, contribute to creating a universe devoid of credibility and meaning where certainties are difficult to establish. Like a “masquerade,” the novel’s “absurd line” (118) may simply be that the promise of “something further” may not exactly be what is expected from the type of books to which Melville had accustomed his audience. After all, if “the entire ship is a riddle,” (124) and no genre can be ascertained for sure, then the novel might just qualify for the Theatre of the Absurd.22

“No great author has ever come up to the idea of his reader”23

20 If it seems that “the book ends where it begins”24 with its inconclusive closing lines and deceptive promise that “something further may follow of this Masquerade,” (251) there is however little chance that Herman Melville might have deliberately been bent upon obliterating his early successes with the form of his ninth novel. It is true that although he had drawn from his own experience as a sailor for the writing of his adventure novels Typee (1846) or Omoo (1847) – which gained immediate popularity and literary recognition –, he had already turned away from the rather simple and entertaining genre of travel narratives towards a more sophisticated metaphysical and symbolic one with Mardi (1849) and particularly with Moby Dick (1851), probably aimed at a more active type of audience who no longer read novels passively but were on the contrary expected to take part in the interpretation and decoding. The reader would then naturally be associated with the writer and with the narrator of the story if he/she wanted to read beyond words. In this perspective, it is important to note Herman Melville’s own approach to fiction in his essay Hawthorne and His Mosses in which, once again, he refers to Shakespeare: Through the mouths of the dark characters ... he craftily says, or sometimes insinuates the things, which we feel to be so terrifically true, that it were all but madness for any good man, in his own proper character, to utter, or even hint of them. Tormented into desperation, Lear the frantic King tears off the mask, and speaks the sane madness of vital truth… For in this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a sacred white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, – even though it be covertly, and by snatches.25

21 It is clear then that an oblique way of exposing truth seemed central, even if it implied disclosing it through disguise and apparent nonsense (or madness) and in a fragmented way, for which the different seemingly abstract digressions and conversations of a disguised confidence-man should perfectly qualify. As such, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade naturally invites an active public to have confidence in their own reading in order to interpret textual clues and the different parts the protagonist plays, including those of the typical Shakespearean fools conveying truth under a semblance of nonsense. This might simply be the promise of “something further” made at the end of

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the novel, which could be read as a form of meta-textual comment on the necessity to actively engage into the interpretative process. It also suggests that, in Melville’s conception of fiction, truth or meaning can indeed emerge while paradoxically being concealed by means of masks and words. As critic Edgar Dryden26 suggested, sense happens to be encased in what seems to be nonsense and must be remediated by either the voice of the narrator or protagonist, or by the reader him/herself in order to emerge. Yet, relying on the narrator is compromised by the fact that he too speaks like the conmen he describes or tells some unconvincing tales in an attempt to manipulate readers through his interpretation. The public is consequently associated with the very act of interpretation and the whole creative process by adding their own extra layer of meaning to the narrative, which gives Melville’s statement a particular significance when he asserts that “no great author has ever come up to the idea of his reader,”27 suggesting that, in the end, it is the reader who determines the ultimate sense and not just the writer.

22 Seen from this angle, the novel stands as a form of dramatization of the creative process itself, with its multiple references to Shakespeare and its various theatrical aspects, including author, narrator(s) and reader together within a broad interpretative network.28 In chapter fourteen, for example, the narrator makes several meta-textual remarks concerning his own fictive public by questioning the merchant’s inconsistency: He may be thought inconsistent, […] But for this, is the author to be blamed? True, it may be urged that there is nothing a writer of fiction should more carefully see to, as there is nothing a sensible reader will more carefully look for, than that, in the depiction of any character, its consistency should be preserved. (77)

23 Such comments on the nature of fiction inevitably add to the interpretative process by directly addressing and associating the reader with the elaboration of meaning and, in this case, with the way characters should be perceived – between “play of invention” and “fact” but “never […] contradictory.” (77) Similarly, in chapter thirty-three, another major self-reflexive comment is made as the reader's voice is described: How unreal is all this! Who did ever dress or act like your cosmopolitan? […] the people in a fiction, like the people in a play, must dress as nobody exactly dresses, talk as nobody exactly talks, act as nobody exactly acts. (186-187).

24 As a defensive stand, the narrator answers in this passage a potential critique on the book's seeming lack of verisimilitude, and appears to speak for the author too. Together they happen to share an understanding of the audience as being connected to their narrative(s) as the exclamation or rhetorical question clearly suggests. This is why critic H. Bruce Franklin fittingly refers to the confidence-man as “a character [who also] creates his author by creating other characters who speak words formed by both of them,”29 pointing to the multiple voices echoed in the novel through a disguised confidence-man who interacts with the different passengers, or the narrator in charge of the story.

25 In this light, it is not surprising to find several versions of the same events being (re)told by different protagonists. In chapters eleven and thirteen, for example, the confidence-man tells the story of the transfer-man which he has already exposed under another mask. There, the third-person narrative entails a double level of reading, as confirmed by the strange preface to the tale: “as the good merchant could, perhaps, do better justice to the man of the story, we shall venture to tell it in other words than his, though not to any other effect.” (66) Similarly, in the following pages, chapter thirteen

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opens with a warning not to judge the transfer-agent too easily, as he in turn warns the merchant that “one should not be hasty in judging the story of an unfortunate man.” (71) The novel abounds with such examples of embedded narratives, the most intricate one being Colonel Moredock’s, in chapter fourteen, based on the version given by a stranger according to the narrator himself reporting on Judge Hall, the original source of the anecdote. It seems inevitable then that “some parts don’t hang together” (76) due to the different layers of texts and intermediaries. Consequently, the novel necessarily addresses a good reader, constantly on his guards lest he should be manipulated by the (act of) narration, and associates him/her with the making of meaning by weaving through the different (levels of) narratives. If the confidence-man may succeed in conning the passengers he meets with his tales, one is however certainly not entirely his dupe but rather, on the contrary, a witness to his masquerade, and therefore his indirect accomplice. From this perspective, the novel may qualify as the perfect model for an active and thorough readership.

26 Yet, if these elements have been praised for their modernity in regards to Melville’s writing technique and have widely contributed to the novel’s critical reassessment after the mid-twentieth century,30 the novel’s fairly recent rediscovery is mostly due to the reappraisal of the writer’s techniques of representation – away from his previous novels and classical literary canons – and to its particular tendency toward metaphysical speculations on modern preoccupations such as nihilism, existentialism or absurdism which were already in filigree in some of his previous works, like Moby Dick (1851) or Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853).

27 The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade does indeed seem to be concerned with overarching metaphysical questions making its reading much more complex than what it seems. Through its elaborated long narrative(s) about random encounters and its seemingly grotesque and abstract dialogues between a conman and his puppet-like fellow- travellers, the reader as well as the various protagonists are constantly confronted with an uncertain world where meaning is elusive and appearances deceitful, as an echo of a capitalistic society whose frantic development is perceived with dread by the author and some of his contemporaries and in which the individual feels more and more disoriented while seeking to find his way. This might explain why the novel’s end may appear so ambiguous, with the promise of “something further” and paradoxically the absence of any sequel, as the illustration of the void generated by the withdrawal of an author refusing to continue his novel; this is precisely what critics such as G. Van Cromphout have praised as “subversive of and at all times deconstructing [the novel’s] own idiom and imagined world.”31

28 By presenting multiple levels of reading and shifting realities through the disguised narrators who dramatize metaphysical questions, the novel has come to be reconsidered as “modern, […] with [its] questions of epistemology”32 and consequently resonates with today’s critical approaches. With its constant questioning of reality and appearances – the Shakespearean play within the play – and its strong meta-textual dimension, added to the high level of dramatic irony with a reader aware of the confidence-man’s conning and the absence of definite closure, Herman Melville’s novel successfully provides its audience with a clear test of confidence. It seems then that the only way to pass it is to become active and trust one’s reading by being confident as the one who bestows closure upon the text and establishes the final meaning – somehow deciding how to end the novel or at least what to make of it – with personal

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interpretative choices. In the end, it is the Confidence-Man who naturally invites us to redefine our expectations of what the text should be, by confronting our certainties with a multiplicity of genres, deceitful appearances and (sub)narratives with dubious authority.

29 After all, the narrator’s promise of “something further” may simply signify that while the writer’s text is there clearly printed on the page, his narrative is largely left up to the confident reader.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brodtkorb, Paul Jr, “The Confidence-Man: The Con-Man as Hero.” Studies in the Novel (Winter 1969) 421-35.

Bryant, John, “The Confidence-Man: Melville’s Problem Novel” in John Bryant (ed), A Companion to Melville Studies, New York, Greenwood P, 1986. 315-350.

Chase, Richard. Herman Melville: A Critical Study. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1949.

Dryden Edgar. Melville’s Thematics of Form: the Great Art of Telling the Truth. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1968.

Dumm, Thomas, “The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating Revisited” in Frank, Jason (ed), A Political Companion to Herman Melville, Lexington, UP of Kentucky, 2013. 310-332.

Franklin, H. Bruce. The Wake of the Gods: Melville's Mythology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1963.

Gelley, Alexander. “Melville’s Talking Man: Rhetoric in The Confidence-Man.” Rereading Texts/ Rethinking Critical Presuppositions, ed. Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Leona Toker, and Shulo Barzilai. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997.

Greiman, Jennifer, “Theatricality, Strangeness, and the Aesthetics of Plurality in The Confidence- Man”, in Samuel Otter, Geoffrey Sanborn (ed), Melville and Aesthetics. New York, NY, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Hoeller, Hildegard. From Gift to Commodity: Capitalism and Sacrifice in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction. Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2012.

Ludot-Vlasak, Ronan, “ ‘Quite an original genius in his vocation’: Shakespeare, l’Amérique et la comédie des apparences”, in La Réinvention de Shakespeare sur la scène littéraire américaine (1798-1857), Lyon/Grenoble : PUL / ELLUG, 2013. 319-348.

Imbert, Michel, “Cash, Cant and Confidence: Of Paper-Money and Scriptures in The Confidence- Man”, in Viola Sachs (ed), L’Imaginaire-Melville: A French Point of View, Saint-Denis, France, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 1992. 77-93.

Imbert, Michel, « L’heure de vérité dans The Confidence-Man d’Herman Melville », Revue Française d’Etudes Américaines, 133 (2012).

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Jonik, Michael. Melville and The Politics of the Inhuman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Kuhlmann, Susan. Knave, Fool, Genius: The Confidence Man as He Appears in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1973.

Lee, A. Robert. “Voices Off, On, and Without: Ventriloquy in The Confidence-Man.” Herman Melville: Reassessments. Ed. A. Robert Lee. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1984) 157-175.

Lewis, R. W. B. Trials of the Word. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965.

Lindberg, Gary. The Confidence-Man in American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Matterson, Stephen, “Indian-Hater, Wild Man: Melville’s Confidence-Man”, Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, 52 : 2 (1996)

Melville, Herman. Hawthorne and His Mosses. Online Version: Scott Atkins, 1996.

Midan, Marc. Le Démon de l’allusion, Figures miltoniennes dans L’Escroc de Melville. Paris: Editions Rue d’Ulm, 2019.

Milder, Robert. (1988). “Herman Melville.” Columbia Literary History of the United States. Gen. Ed. Emory Elliott. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

Mitchell, David T. and Sharon L. Snyder. “Masquerades of Impairment: Charity as a Confidence Game,” Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 8 no.1 (March 2006)

Mumford, Lewis. Herman Melville. Cabris: Editions Sulliver, 2006.

Newton, Arvin. Herman Melville. New York: The Viking Press, 1957.

Renker, Elizabeth. “‘A ______!’: Unreadability in The Confidence-Man.” The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville, edited by Robert S. Levine, 114-134. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998.

Parker, Hershel. Herman Melville: A Biography, 1819-1851. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. 2002.

Parker, Hershel, “The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating”, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 18: 2 (1963), 165-73.

Sealts, Melton M. Jr. Pursuing Melville 1940-1980. Madison, Wis: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.

Shepherd, Gerard W., “The Confidence Man as Drummond Light”, ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, 28 : 3 (1982) 183-196.

Tanner, Tony, “Melville’s Counterfeit Detector”, introduction to The Confidence-Man. London: The World’s Classics, Oxford UP, 1989. vii-xxxvii.

Van Cromphout, Gustaaf. “The Confidence-Man: Melville and the Problem of Others.” Studies in American Fiction 21 (Spring 1993) 37-50.

NOTES

1. The New Yorker, Philip Roth e-mails on Trump, January 30, 2017. 2. “At sunrise on a first of April, there appeared, suddenly as Manco Capac at the lake Titicaca, a man in cream-colors, at the waterside in the city of St. Louis”, in Herman Melville, The Confidence-

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Man: His Masquerade [1857]. Second edition, Hershel Parker and Mark Niemeyer, eds. New York, London: W. W. Norton Critical Editions, 2006. Chapter 1, 9. 3. The New York Times declared in April 1857 that “the volume ha[d] an end, but […] no conclusion” and the London Illustrated Times that “the book [was] without form and void.” 4. All page references are from the 2006 Norton Edition of Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man (Herman Melville. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade [1857]. Second edition, Hershel Parker and Mark Niemeyer, eds. New York, London: W. W. Norton Critical Editions, 2006) 5. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade is Melville’s final novel, published in 1857 during his lifetime, but Billy Budd, Sailor was published posthumously in 1924. 6. “Time, which is the solver of all riddles, will solve Mardi,” in Hershel Parker’s Herman Melville: A Biography, 1819-1851 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996) vol. 1, 629. 7. A. Robert Lee, “Voices Off, On, and Without: Ventriloquy in The Confidence Man” in Herman Melville: Reassessments. Ed. A. Robert Lee (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1984) 157-175. 8. Quote from the London Saturday Review, May 1857. 9. Monetary transactions as prerequisite to trust and their correlation are discussed by Michel Imbert in “Cash, Cant and Confidence: Of Paper-Money and Scriptures in The Confidence-Man”, in Viola Sachs (ed), L’Imaginaire-Melville: A French Point of View, Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 1992, 77-93. Similarly, in From Gift to Commodity: Capitalism and Sacrifice in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction (Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2012, 144-170), Hildegard Hoeller explores how capitalism has contaminated American fiction. 10. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a trust is a legal arrangement whereby a person (trustee) or organization holds property or controls money for the good of one or more beneficiaries or may refer to a large company that attempts to gain monopolistic control of a market. 11. As David E. Stannard exposed in American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (Toronto: Oxford University Press Canada, 1992) 120, President Thomas Jefferson wanted to show the Indians no mercy: “in 1812, Jefferson again concluded that white Americans were ‘obliged’ to drive the ‘backward Indians’ with the beasts of the forests into the Stony Mountains; and one year later still, he added that the American government had no other choice before it than to ‘pursue [them] to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach.’ Jefferson's writings on Indians are filled with the straightforward assertion that the natives are to be given a simple choice — to be ‘extirpate[d] from the earth' or to remove themselves out of the Americans’ way.” 12. The pervading anti-Indian sentiment of the period reflected by Melville is recurrently noted by contemporary critics, such as Hershel Parker in “ The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating”, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 18: 2 (1963), 165-73 or Thomas Dumm in “The Metaphysics of Indian- Hating Revisited” in Frank, Jason (ed), A Political Companion to Herman Melville, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013, 310-332. 13. R. W. B. Lewis, Trials of the Word (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1965); Paul Brodtkorb, Jr., “The Confidence-Man: The Con-Man as Hero,” Studies in the Novel, I (Winter 1969) 421-35. 14. Ibid, 65. 15. Quote from the London Illustrated Times, April 1857. 16. In “Herman Melville,” Columbia Literary History of the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), Robert Milder wrote that "long mistaken for a flawed novel, the book […] continues to resist interpretative consensus.” 440. 17. In The Grotesque in Art and Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966), Wolfgang Kayser defines the motifs of the grotesque and mentions how 19th-century writers adapted “grotesque features” in their novels: “We find human bodies reduced to puppets, marionettes, and automata, and their faces frozen into masks or disguised.” 84-5.

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18. In chapter 32, the cosmopolitan’s companion admits having himself “once belonged to an amateur play company” (186), suggesting that he too has a knowledge of the actor’s techniques and stage skills. 19. Ronan Ludot-Vlasak analysed the influence of Skakespeare on American novelists and how they extensively integrated some of the playwright’s theatrical tricks as well as clearly referred to his works in “‘Quite an original genius in his vocation’ : Shakespeare, l’Amérique et la comédie des apparences”, in La Réinvention de Shakespeare sur la scène littéraire américaine (1798-1857), Lyon/ Grenoble, PUL / ELLUG, 2013, 319-34. 20. The quote is from Shakespeare’s As You Like It 2. 7. 139-142. 21. William Van O’Connor, The Grotesque: An American Genre and Other Essays, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1962) 194. 22. The Theatre of the Absurd refers to particular plays of absurdist fiction written in the late 1950s which focused on the idea of existentialism and expressed what happens when human existence has no meaning and that all communication breaks down. This leads to illogical speech and nonsense, and often to its ultimate conclusion, silence. Some conversations in Melville’s novel as well as some of his puppet-like characters appear to anticipate in some ways the Absurd by staging men’s reactions to a senseless world, manipulated by outside forces, caught in grotesque situations or forced to do repetitive meaningless actions. This style of writing was later popularized by Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot (1953). 23. The quote is from Herman Melville’s essay, Hawthorne and His Mosses, which originally appeared, without his name on it, in two installments – 17 August and 24 August, 1850 – in the New York magazine The Literary World, edited and published by his friend Evert Duyckinck. 24. The quote is from Ann-Sophia Stephens (1810-1886), American novelist and magazine editor, in the New York Mrs Stephens’ Monthly Magazine of June 1857. 25. See note 23. 26. As developped in Edgar Dryden’s Melville’s Thematics of Form: The Great Art of Telling the Truth (Criticism, Vol. 12, N°1) Winter 1970, 79-82. 27. See note 23. 28. Some of the problems raised by the difficulty to interpret and read the novel are discussed by John Bryant in “The Confidence-Man: Melville’s Problem Novel”, in John Bryant (ed), A Companion to Melville Studies, New York, Greenwood P, 1986, 315-350. 29. H. Bruce Franklin, Introduction, The Confidence-Man (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967) xix. 30. In his critical essay Herman Melville: A Critical Study (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1949), Richard Chase referred to The Confidence-Man as Melville’s “second best book” (125) after Moby Dick, and pointed to its seemingly deconstructive tendencies and interest in the con-man as a particular American trope as well as the potential meanings dramatized through the book’s metafiction, uncertainty being echoed through the text in the voices of its interpreters. 31. Van Cromphout, Gustaaf. “The Confidence-Man: Melville and the Problem of Others.” Studies in American Fiction 21 (Spring 1993) 37-50. 32. Richard Chase's essay on The Confidence-Man (Herman Melville: A Critical Study. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1949) provided an important turning-point for the literary critical treatment of the work. From this point, reviewers were more willing to take it seriously as an important and accomplished work, particularly after the 1980s when Melville criticism sought less-charted imaginative territory beyond the canonical Moby Dick and Billy Budd, and paid more attention to the exploration of modes of representation.

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ABSTRACTS

Initially criticized for its generic confusion and singular narrative choices, Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857) was rehabilitated by twentieth-century critics who praised its modernity. By staging a trip on the Mississippi, the novelist introduces a disguised conman testing the passengers’ confidence in an absurd puppet-like show where appearances are deceitful and meaning is elusive. As an echo to the instability of human existence, the narrative’s ambiguous promise of “something further” is extremely difficult to interpret – all the more since conventions and established genres are constantly challenged by a writer who refuses to tie his work to a specific category and repeatedly manipulates truth through disguise, digressions or irony. By resorting to a large collection of characters in charge of elaborate narratives and seemingly abstract dialogues, the author succeeds in creating multiple narratives, somehow compelling his public to actively engage in the very act of reading if they want to read beyond words. The novel becomes a real test of confidence for anyone committed to deciphering textual clues and establishing the final meaning. In this context, the narrator’s final promise of “something further” may simply signify that while the writer’s text is there on the page, his narrative is largely left up to the confident reader.

Réhabilité au 20e siècle par la critique au regard de sa modernité, le roman d’Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857), fut accueilli avec bien des réserves à sa sortie en raison de sa grande instabilité générique et des choix narratifs singuliers de l’auteur. Imaginant une croisière sur le Mississippi comme prétexte au récit, le romancier mise sur un escroc déguisé pour personnage central, mettant à l’épreuve la confiance de passagers manipulés, tels des marionnettes, dans d’absurdes mises en scène. Ainsi, s’il se joue des apparences et du sens, c’est avant tout pour se faire l’écho de la fragilité de l’existence humaine dans une société en plein bouleversement. La promesse ambiguë faite alors par le narrateur au lecteur («something further») devient équivoque tant l’auteur défie les conventions, se refusant à enfermer son œuvre dans une quelconque catégorie préétablie et manipulant la réalité par le déguisement, la digression et l’ironie. À cette fin, une multitude de personnages variés s’engagent dans de longs discours parfois abstraits, créant différents niveaux de narration et contraignant ainsi le lecteur à s’impliquer activement dans le processus de lecture. Le roman devient une épreuve, un test de confiance, pour toute personne décidée à décrypter le texte et à établir une interprétation finale. C’est en ce sens que l’on peut comprendre la promesse finale («something further») : si les mots du romancier inscrits noir sur blanc sur la page lui appartiennent, son récit est quant à lui confié en grande partie aux soins d’un lecteur assuré.

INDEX

Keywords: confidence, genre, absurd, meaning, reader, post-modern, test, dramatize, grotesque, disguise, truth, digression, narrative, metaphysical, trust, transaction, appearance, manipulate Mots-clés: confiance, genre, absurde, sens, lecteur, post-moderne, épreuve, scène, grotesque, déguisement, réalité, digressions, apparences, récit, métaphysique, transaction, manipulation

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AUTHORS

THOMAS VELASQUEZ Professeur agrégé Université de Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne [email protected]

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Humanités numériques et études anglophones : Comprendre et explorer

Géraldine Castel

Les références des logiciels et projets évoqués sont récapitulées en fin d’article.

1 À l’heure où les « humanités numériques » gagnent en visibilité dans le paysage de la recherche française et internationale, où des manifestes sont rédigés, des pôles et des chaires créés, des équipes rassemblées, des projets financés, faire ses premiers pas sur un terrain dont la définition même est objet de controverse peut s’avérer délicat.

2 Parfois qualifiée d’oxymore (Greetham, 532, 2012), l’association des deux termes, digital humanities en anglais puis « humanités numériques » en français, de même que sa signification font encore l’objet de nombreuses polémiques. Discipline ? Post- discipline ? (Welger-Barboza, 2012) Démarche ? Méthodologie ? Appareillage technique ? Zone de convergence ? Le débat n’est pas tranché même si les chercheurs appartenant à cette nébuleuse tentent régulièrement d’en délimiter les frontières (Nyhan, Terras & Vanhoutte, 2014). Pour les francophones, s’ajoute la question de la pertinence de la traduction littérale généralement adoptée, comme le souligne par exemple Guichard (Guichard, 13, 2014). Humanities en anglais et « humanités » en français ne renvoient notamment pas à des champs disciplinaires identiques.

3 Enfin, la clarté terminologique de l’expression n’est pas facilitée par l’approche délibérément ouverte associée à ce champ d’études, celle du « chapiteau » (Big Tent) choisie notamment comme thématique des rencontres annuelles des humanités numériques organisées en 2011 à l’université Stanford (DH2011). Si cette ouverture est en effet source de flexibilité et de richesse, elle n’est pas sans risque comme le souligne Melissa Terras (Terras, 2012) : The field can only continue to expand, as more and more people engage with the technology that allows them to undertake academic tasks, and who are we to ring fence the academic field that lets people discuss this and learn more? […] But if everyone is a Digital Humanist, then no-one is really a Digital Humanist. The field does not exist if it is all pervasive, too widely spread, or ill defined.

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4 De cette multiplicité d’interprétations et de définitions en évolution constante est ici retenue celle proposée par Marin Dacos et Pierre Mounier dans leur rapport réalisé à la demande de l’Institut Français et publié en 2014 (Dacos et Mounier, 15, 2014) : Au plus haut niveau de généralité, on pourrait dire que les humanités numériques désignent un dialogue interdisciplinaire sur la dimension numérique des recherches en sciences humaines et sociales, au niveau des outils, des méthodes, des objets d'études et des modes de communication.

5 Un tel dialogue a bien sûr connu des précédents comme le rappelle Aurélien Berra (Berra, 2011) qui évoque notamment le travail de Roberto Busa, jésuite italien qui dès les années 40 entreprit d’automatiser l’indexation d’items issus des œuvres de Thomas d’Aquin, ou encore la création en 1963 du Centre for Literary and Linguistic Computing à Cambridge. Hélène Bourdeloie précise néanmoins à propos des humanités numériques contemporaines (Bourdeloie, 15, 2014) : La véritable nouveauté réside dans le fait que le numérique n'est plus seulement un outil au service de la recherche mais aussi un objet de recherche à part entière. Il est à la fois instrument, méthode, terrain et objet de recherche.

6 Au-delà des effets de mode, ce territoire complexe et inégalement défriché peut présenter un potentiel réel pour les chercheurs souhaitant s’y aventurer. Potentiel financier puisque les appels à projets intégrant cette thématique se multiplient. Potentiel professionnel puisque l’intitulé apparaît de manière croissante dans les profils de postes universitaires mis au recrutement. Mais surtout potentiel scientifique, et ce, quelles que soient les disciplines concernées.

7 Dans les études anglophones françaises, des chercheurs ont commencé à investir ce terrain à l’image de Grégoire Lacaze d’Aix-Marseille Université qui a donné en 2018 une présentation intitulée «Du discours rapporté dans les Tweets : reconfiguration des pratiques citationnelles du discours circulant » ou encore de l’équipe de l’université Paris 8 ayant piloté le programme de recherche « Le sujet digital’1, dans le cadre duquel a été organisé le colloque « Posthumain et subjectivités numériques’2 en 2016. Claire Larsonneur, membre de cette équipe et spécialiste de traduction et de littérature, a par ailleurs coordonné en 2018 un numéro de la revue Angles de la SAES intitulé « Digital Subjectivities ». Pour autant, comme en témoigne par exemple le programme du 15e colloque de l’Institut des Amériques consacré aux humanités numériques qui s’est tenu à la Rochelle en 2017, les anglicistes français s’intéressant à ces thématiques sont encore relativement peu nombreux.

8 Le Manifeste des humanités numériques rédigé de manière collaborative suite à la tenue de séminaires dirigés par Todd Presner (UCLA) et Jeffrey Schnapp (Stanford) définissait les objectifs du mouvement de la manière suivante (Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0, 2009) : The revolution is not about transforming literary scholars into engineers or programmers. Rather, it is about: ‐expanding the compass and quality of knowledge in the human sciences ‐expanding the reach and impact of knowledge in the Humanities disciplines ‐direct engagement in design and development processes that give rise to richer, multidirectional models, genres, iterations of scholarly communication and practice.

9 Mais si ces ambitions ne sont pas utopistes (Cf Greenspan, 2016), quelles formes peuvent-elles donc prendre en pratique ? Via quelles applications concrètes ? Dans un champ aussi hétérogène et encore en construction, il n’y a pas de réponse unique à ces

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questions mais une multitude de voies expérimentales ouvertes par des acteurs divers dessinant une mosaïque complexe. L’article ci-dessous vise à en proposer un aperçu.

10 Pour ceux qui ont décidé de se lancer, de multiples ouvrages détaillés peuvent accompagner les chercheurs désireux de pénétrer ce territoire (Crompton & Lane, 2016 / Gardiner & Musto, 2015), utilement complétés par des réflexions à l’échelle des SHS françaises (Barats, 2013 / Clavert et al., 2017). Néanmoins, pour ceux qui ne perçoivent pas l’intérêt scientifique d’ajouter cette corde à leur arc, il semble utile de proposer ici une introduction synthétique des apports potentiels du numérique aux différentes étapes du travail de recherche, illustrée d’exemples tirés des disciplines des études anglophones françaises afin d’informer la réflexion des chercheurs du domaine.

Cycle de recherche et numérique : Les sources

11 En premier lieu, l’adoption des technologies de l’information et de la communication par différents protagonistes institutionnels ou issus de secteurs comme ceux de la documentation, de la presse et de l’édition, a permis de grandement faciliter l’accès aux sources. La bibliothèque nationale d’Écosse propose par exemple une archive appelée The Word on the Street comprenant environ 1800 broadsides, des documents imprimés d’une page destinés à être affichés publiquement, datant de 1650 à 1910, au contenu très varié. Un moteur de recherche et un classement par thématique permettent d’identifier les sources pertinentes qu’il est ensuite possible de télécharger au format PDF.

12 À une échelle plus large, celle de l’Union européenne, a été créée l’infrastructure de recherche CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure) ayant pour vocation de rassembler en une seule plateforme une multitude de jeux de données destinés aux chercheurs en sciences humaines et sociales. Des sources utiles à des anglicistes y sont proposées, d’une archive de tweets en gallois contenant sept millions d’items (The Corpus of Welsh Language Tweets) à un corpus de journaux anglais des 17e et 18e siècles ciblant des linguistes travaillant sur l’histoire de la langue anglaise (Zurich English Newspaper Corpus) en passant par la totalité des romans de Charles Dickens (CLiC).

13 Au-delà des institutions patrimoniales, gouvernementales etc., et parfois en partenariat avec ces institutions se développent des programmes destinés à faciliter l’accès à des sources hétérogènes, comme en témoignent notamment des initiatives pionnières telles que The Valley of the Shadow ou l’archive Rossetti. La première, lancée à la fin des années 90, met à disposition de nombreux documents numérisés tels que lettres, journaux, cartes, discours et rapports statistiques ou de recensement relatifs à deux communautés engagées dans la guerre de Sécession américaine. La seconde, créée en 2000, offre un panel très large de ressources portant sur l’œuvre de Gabriel Dante Rossetti, artiste britannique polyvalent du 19e siècle : manuscrits, correspondance, dessins et peintures mais aussi tout un écosystème de documents relatifs à son travail tels que les textes d’origine de ses traductions, les illustrations accompagnant ses poèmes ou encore les articles publiés sur ses travaux. Des outils sont par ailleurs proposés pour permettre l’exploitation de ces ressources tels que moteur de recherche, application permettant d’élaborer des collections et des expositions en ligne ainsi qu’une plateforme de jeu numérique, aujourd'hui désactivée mais initialement destinée à conduire des exercices d’interprétation critique de documents de façon collaborative.

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14 Les archives de ce type, appuyées sur des bases de données qui gagnent progressivement en richesse et en hétérogénéité, sont de plus en plus nombreuses et réalisées à l’initiative de différents acteurs, privés ou publics. Elles présentent une valeur scientifique évidente pour la communauté de la recherche dans une variété croissante de domaines, qu’il s’agisse de littérature, de civilisation, mais aussi de didactique, de linguistique ou encore de phonétique. Ainsi, le Newcastle Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English par exemple met à disposition des documents relatifs à ce dialecte tels que versions audio numérisées, transcriptions orthographiques ou phonétiques.

15 Certaines archives mènent également une mission de conservation de ressources menacées comme par exemple le réseau DELAMAN (Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archive Network) et son projet Lost & Found destiné à identifier des sources linguistiques risquant la disparition sans un effort de numérisation concerté et à compléter ces sources par des métadonnées pertinentes.

16 À l’origine, ces archives proposaient essentiellement la numérisation ou l’encodage de documents non-numériques. Mais l’activité humaine migrant en ligne dans de nombreux domaines, elles tendent désormais à inclure des documents dits natifs, générés directement en ligne, sans équivalent hors-ligne et dont la préservation devient elle aussi essentielle pour lutter contre le phénomène de détérioration du web (Web Decay) souligné par exemple par Tom Chatfield (Chatfield, 2014).

17 C’est l’objectif notamment de l’archive de l’internet des droits de l’homme de l’université de Columbia (Human Rights’ Web Archive) qui sauvegarde depuis 2008 les pages de centaines de sites liés à cette thématique (ONG, Tribunaux, institutions, individus...) dans une dizaine de langues ou encore de la machine à remonter le temps (Wayback Machine) de l’association à but non lucratif The Internet Archive, basée aux États-Unis et qui effectue des copies de millions de pages web à l’échelle mondiale pour construire une « bibliothèque de l’internet » à transmettre aux générations futures. La fréquence de collecte de ces captures est inégale de même que la qualité des pages mises à disposition mais cet outil peut néanmoins s’avérer précieux pour accéder à des contenus disparus du web contemporain.3

18 Ces documents natifs sont souvent très riches sur le plan quantitatif et qualitatif. Ainsi, l’archive numérique du 11 septembre (September 11 Digital Archive) recense et met à disposition environ 150.000 témoignages de toute personne souhaitant s’exprimer sur cet événement sous différentes formes : emails, photos, vidéos ou encore enregistrements audio. Sur le même principe est proposée la Canterbury Earthquake Digital Archive (CEISMIC) relative aux tremblements de terre de 2010 et 2011 en Nouvelle- Zélande. Ce principe de production participative est également utilisé dans l’archive Scots Words and Places de l’université de Glasgow offrant un glossaire de mots écossais renvoyant à des lieux et proposant leur forme ancienne, leur signification et des exemples d’utilisation.

19 Ces données numériques natives offrent ainsi par exemple la possibilité d’étudier la perception de différentes œuvres littéraires ou télévisées auprès de leurs publics, comme le propose une étudiante de l’université Northeastern de Boston (Operation Critique : The Changing Face of the Literary Conversation) à partir des publications de lecteurs ou téléspectateurs sur la plateforme Tumblr. Les réseaux sociaux font par ailleurs l’objet d’études visant notamment à définir des modèles pour une exploitation pédagogique et didactique de ces supports (Burnett & Merchant, 2011).

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20 Ces archives numériques offrent donc une quantité importante de documents sous de multiples formes comme en témoignent par exemple les ressources proposées par la British Library : images de contenus tombés dans le domaine public mises à disposition sur Flickr, enregistrements audio sur la page Accents and Dialects à visée phonétique mais aussi série d’entretiens avec des auteurs bilingues intitulée Between Two Worlds, Poetry and Translation à vocation littéraire ou encore le projet Observing the 1980s rassemblant des entretiens réalisés auprès de britanniques aux profils très divers sur les thématiques clés de la décennie : grève des mineurs, montée de la contamination au VIH, désindustrialisation du pays… La vidéo est également très présente grâce à des plateformes telles que celle du centre Kennedy (Kennedy center Millennium Stage Performance Archive). Ces archives numériques facilitent ainsi l’accès à des sources dont le caractère hétérogène enrichit indéniablement l’exploitation scientifique, à l’image par exemple des projets réalisés à partir de l’archive Berkeley Revolution mise à disposition par l’université de Californie. L’un d’entre eux suit ainsi le parcours d’une étudiante ayant fui sa famille pour rejoindre le campus à partir d’une lettre écrite à sa mère mais jamais postée saisie par la police et publiée en partie dans la Berkeley Gazette en 1970, puis de son journal intime et enfin, d’un long commentaire rédigé par la même femme quarante ans plus tard sur un blog.

21 Enfin, au-delà des ressources mises à disposition par différents fournisseurs, il devient également possible à chacun de se constituer son propre jeu de données numériques via des outils comme l’API (Interface applicative de programmation permettant l’échange de données) de Twitter ou encore l’extension Save Webpage as Word Document pour le navigateur Chrome.

22 La consultation de sources diverses a donc été facilitée par l’apparition du numérique mais leurs conditions d’accès et de réutilisation sont très variables. Le Guardian britannique a par exemple fait le choix d’ouvrir librement et gratuitement ses archives à des fins non commerciales. Les ressources comme la correspondance d’Abraham Lincoln ou les quelques sept mille affiches publicitaires de l’université Duke tombées dans le domaine public sont également disponibles sans frais. Pour autant, de nombreuses sources numériques ont une accessibilité restreinte, du fait de leur monétisation, de contraintes juridiques relatives aux droits d’auteur, au droit à la vie privée pour les données issues des réseaux sociaux par exemple, ou enfin de problématiques techniques liées à des questions de collecte, de stockage et de traitement de données souvent volumineuses, hétérogènes et interconnectées. Au-delà des questions d’accès, l’exploitation scientifique et le partage de données numériques peuvent également faire l’objet d’une réglementation souvent délicate à appréhender, en évolution constante et divergente d’un pays à un autre. Des initiatives ont cependant vu le jour pour accompagner les chercheurs sur ce volet à l’image par exemple du carnet Éthique et droit ouvert depuis 2011 sur la plateforme Hypothèses par un collectif de chercheurs, de professionnels de la documentation électronique et de juristes sous l’impulsion de Véronique Ginouvès et d’Isabelle Gras de l’université d’Aix- Marseille.

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Cycle de recherche et numérique : Analyse et exploitation

23 Une fois ces sources à disposition, ces objets d’étude numériques peuvent être exploités par le biais de méthodes traditionnelles mais les outils développés au cours des dernières décennies peuvent également intervenir à chaque étape du travail de recherche, de la réalisation d’un état de l’art à la diffusion des résultats d’un projet.4

24 En ce qui concerne ce premier travail, il est désormais courant d’utiliser Google Scholar lors de la phase d’identification de sources secondaires mais ce n’est pas le seul outil dans ce domaine. En effet, il existe aussi des moteurs tels que CORE (COnnecting REpositories), élaboré par le Knowledge Media Institute qui répertorie exclusivement des articles ou ouvrages disponibles en libre accès. En mai 2018, il recensait 131 millions de métadonnées et proposait au téléchargement 11 millions de textes complets (Notay, 2018). Ce moteur se distingue également de son plus célèbre concurrent par la volonté de ses concepteurs de non seulement identifier des articles mais également permettre leur collecte automatique pour ensuite pratiquer de l’exploration de données (Data Mining) sur le corpus ainsi créé. BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) quant à lui propose une fonction permettant de connaître pour chaque document répertorié ses conditions d’accès et de réutilisation.

25 Une fois les documents pertinents à la réalisation d’un état de l’art identifiés, il convient d’en dresser un inventaire avant de les consulter. C’est à ce stade que des outils tels que Zotero ou Mendeley peuvent offrir une aide précieuse. Le principe de fonctionnement est le suivant : lorsque l’utilisateur se rend sur un site compatible (Les moteurs de recherche précédemment évoqués, HAL, Amazon…) pour effectuer une recherche, Zotero reconnaît automatiquement les informations bibliographiques présentes sur la page et propose de les télécharger, voire d’y ajouter le PDF de la ressource choisie s’il est disponible. Ceci est ensuite stocké dans une bibliothèque numérique qu’il est alors possible de classer selon différents critères et thématiques. Les PDF peuvent être annotés directement dans le logiciel et des bibliographies automatiquement générées à partir du contenu de la bibliothèque selon le format choisi (MLA…). Il est enfin possible de partager le contenu de sa bibliothèque ou de le modifier de manière collaborative. Un tutoriel vidéo très complet réalisé par l’Urfist (Unité Régionale de Formation à l’Information Scientifique et Technique) est disponible sur Youtube. La qualité du résultat produit est conditionnée par la fiabilité des métadonnées disponibles en ligne sur les sites utilisés mais même si une relecture reste évidemment indispensable, le gain de temps est généralement considérable.

26 À l’étape suivante, lorsque le travail sur les données à proprement parler s’amorce, d’autres types de logiciels sont employés pour nettoyer si nécessaire puis organiser ces données afin de rendre possible l’analyse ultérieure, de discours ou de réseaux par exemple. OpenRefine en fait partie. Cet outil fonctionne de manière optimale avec des données sous forme tabulaire bien qu’il puisse prendre en charge d’autres formats. Il est particulièrement précieux lorsqu’un fichier comporte des erreurs de saisie, des coquilles, des cellules vides, des répétitions etc. sur un nombre important de données, ce qui rend la correction manuelle extrêmement chronophage. OpenRefine possède notamment une fonction clustering/regroupement qui permet de faciliter le travail de normalisation d’un document. En effet, lorsqu’un même fichier est le fruit d’une saisie collective, il arrive par exemple que des dates soient saisies dans des formats différents

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(9.11.2011 / September 11, 2011…). S’il est demandé ensuite à un logiciel de classer ces dates dans l’ordre, il ne sera en mesure de le faire que si toutes ces dates apparaissent dans un format identique, d’où l’intérêt de ce type de manipulation. OpenRefine suggère ainsi des regroupements sur des données qu’il estime similaires et donne la possibilité d’unifier leur format en quelques clics.

27 D’autre part, OpenRefine permet également d’appliquer des filtres (appelées « facettes ») sur un jeu de données afin d’isoler des éléments recherchés. Sur un fichier comportant les métadonnées relatives à tous les romans du 19e siècle, il sera ainsi par exemple capable d’identifier rapidement tous ceux de plus de 100 pages publiés en Australie par une maison d’édition précise de 1850 à 1900, comprenant le mot « passion » et de créer un sous-jeu selon ces critères. Fait appréciable, OpenRefine conserve un historique complet des modifications apportées à un fichier qu’il est possible d’exporter pour référence ultérieure ou pour application à un autre document.

28 Ce type de requêtes peut également être réalisé via des systèmes de gestion de données (DBMS) qui permettent d’organiser, de classer et de stocker des données lorsque leur volume et leur complexité testent les limites d’un travail plus artisanal. Pour formuler ces requêtes (Ex : Les phrases exclamatives contenant le modal CAN énoncées par un locuteur irlandais entre 2005 et 2012), la plupart de ces systèmes fonctionnent grâce à un langage spécifique appelé SQL (Structured Query Language) mais il existe néanmoins des interfaces utilisateurs dotées d’un assistant qui ne nécessitent pas de compétences en programmation. C’est le cas par exemple de LibreOffice Base. L’utilisation qu’en fait Juliet Boyd est représentative des fonctionnalités d’un tel outil. En effet, selon un phénomène que les chercheurs en littérature notamment reconnaîtront, cet auteur d’une série de huit romans pour adolescents s’est progressivement retrouvée à devoir travailler à partir d’un nombre croissant de notes prises sur des supports divers qu’il devenait de plus en plus difficile de gérer manuellement. Elle a donc utilisé Base pour centraliser les informations relatives à chaque chapitre en recensant les personnages y apparaissant, l’intrigue, les lieux etc.. et contenant des liens vers des tableaux apportant davantage d’informations sur ces catégories selon le principe de la base de données relationnelle. Cet outil lui offre ainsi la possibilité de réconcilier vision synthétique des données et contenus détaillés.

29 Faire des recherches sur un corpus peut également être abordé via l’encodage. Il s’agit alors de poser des balises dans un texte pour identifier des éléments récurrents de contenu, de structure... personnalisables et permettre à terme une analyse automatisée. La plateforme Curious Travellers de l’université de Glasgow met ainsi à disposition des lettres et récits de voyage du 18e siècle essentiellement issus de la correspondance du naturaliste britannique Thomas Pennant. Dans ces textes, les lieux, les noms de personnes, les références à des livres et à des œuvres d’art sont encodées. Grâce à cet encodage, Ffion Mair Jones a ainsi pu étudier l’itinéraire des différents voyages de Pennant mais aussi sa perception de figures historiques telles que l’impératrice Catherine II de Russie.

30 Ce type d’encodage est généralement réalisé grâce au langage XML ou plus récemment, en Json, via un traitement de texte ou un logiciel spécialisé comme OXygen. Pour s’initier à ce type d’exercice, il existe des modèles pour différents types de contenus (Théâtre, linguistique…) sur la plateforme Roma mise à disposition par la TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). Pour faciliter ce type d’exercice, la TEI est un consortium international qui tente d’uniformiser les pratiques autour d’un référentiel de normes

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communes. Si l’encodage peut être un exercice extrêmement chronophage, de nombreuses sources déjà encodées sont disponibles pour utilisation immédiate telles que la collection de textes néo-zélandais proposée par l’université Victoria de Wellington ou la collection de dictionnaires bilingues Freedict. Dans le cas de sources pré-encodées comme celles-ci, les choix opérés par l’équipe responsable de l’encodage ne coïncident pas nécessairement avec la problématique du chercheur qui souhaite les utiliser a posteriori. Elles peuvent néanmoins offrir un point d’entrée utile dans un jeu de données ou encore permettre de se familiariser avec les différentes manipulations rendues possibles par l’encodage.

31 Les logiciels d’annotations (Tagging) recoupent en partie ce type de fonctionnalités. Il n’est plus question de poser des balises XML mais des étiquettes via un logiciel spécialisé. L’objectif est ici de permettre de résoudre la problématique rencontrée par de nombreux chercheurs. En effet, prendre des notes directement sur un document permet de conserver le texte sous les yeux mais devient vite illisible lorsque ces notes se multiplient. À l’inverse, noter des commentaires à part permet de conserver la lisibilité du document d’origine mais nécessite de garder systématiquement les deux en parallèle pour ne pas perdre le lien au texte, ce qui peut poser problème lorsque le nombre de textes travaillés devient important. Avec un logiciel dédié, les annotations apparaissent en parallèle du document de départ et peuvent être aussi longues que souhaitées, mais aussi être classées selon différents critères, grâce à des codes couleurs ou des rassemblements par fichiers. Parmi les logiciels permettant ce type de manipulations se trouvent Pundit, pour annoter des pages web directement depuis le navigateur, mais aussi l’Annotation Studio du MIT qui fonctionne à partir de textes en différents formats (Word, PDF, HTML…) ou encore CATMA (Computer Assisted Textual Markup and Analysis) de l’université d’Hambourg qui présente l’avantage d’être couplé avec un outil d’analyse et un autre de visualisation des résultats obtenus.

32 L’annotation peut être manuelle, mais également automatisée, notamment grâce à la technologie de reconnaissance d’entités nommées (Named Entity Recognition) qui à partir d’un référentiel va être en mesure de reconnaître automatiquement des éléments d’un corpus et de leur attribuer une étiquette adaptée (Tous les adjectifs, les noms de lieux etc.). GATE (General Architecture for Text Engineering) fait partie des logiciels qui possèdent ce type de fonctionnalités. Dans le cadre du projet intitulé Political Futures Tracker relatif aux élections législatives de 2015 en Grande-Bretagne, GATE a ainsi été utilisé pour identifier les thématiques abordées dans un corpus de tweets de candidats. Pour chaque thématique (Education, emploi, environnement…), un référentiel de termes a été élaboré manuellement puis le logiciel a permis d’automatiser le classement de milliers de tweets par sujet. Ceci révèle par exemple que dans la thématique liée à l’imposition, les candidats conservateurs ont davantage évoqué la taxe professionnelle et les possibilités de déduction fiscale tandis que les travaillistes se focalisaient sur des questions liées à l’évasion fiscale et à la TVA.

33 Outre les logiciels d’annotation généralistes précédemment évoqués, il existe également des outils plus spécialisés, comme le UAM Corpus Tool, recommandé pour des travaux linguistiques, ou encore Praat, utilisé en phonétique pour l’annotation de bandes sons. En effet, les outils de ce type peuvent être employés pour le traitement de sources non-textuelles. ANVIL ou Advene permettent par exemple d’annoter des documents vidéo tandis que Ratsnake est destiné au traitement d’images.

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34 En complément de ces outils ou de manière autonome peuvent être utilisés des logiciels d’exploration de données qui vont aider à produire du sens à partir d’un corpus généralement conséquent en rendant plus visibles des motifs (Patterns) ou tendances difficilement perceptibles par des moyens traditionnels. Pour une introduction détaillée au principe d’exploration de données, consulter par exemple l’ouvrage Data Mining, Concepts and Techniques (Han, Kamber & Pei, 2012).

35 Ainsi, le logiciel TXM développé par une équipe de l’ENS de Lyon peut notamment procéder à de l’étiquetage morphosyntaxique mais aussi proposer des informations sur le corpus textuel étudié comme le classement de mots par ordre d’occurrence, des listes de cooccurrences, de collocations ou de spécificités statistiques. Pour aider à l’interprétation de ces résultats, des modules de visualisation sont souvent ajoutés à ces outils, ce qui est le cas pour CATMA, déjà évoqué, mais aussi pour TXM ou encore pour la suite Voyant créée par Stefan Sinclair et Geoffrey Rockwell. Celle-ci fournit en effet la fréquence de mots recherchés, leur contexte d’apparition dans le corpus mais aussi des graphiques, des lignes de bulles, des mandalas générés à partir du corpus. Pour des visualisations plus élaborées, des logiciels comme Tableau Desktop ou Orange de Biolab sont utilisés tandis que des alternatives spécialisées sont également disponibles, telles que Gephi, particulièrement performant en matière de visualisation de réseaux ou VisualEyes combinant visualisations cartographiques et chronologiques.

Cycle de recherche et numérique : Collaboration et diffusion

36 Ces visualisations sont des supports d’analyse mais aussi de diffusion des résultats de ces analyses auprès de collaborateurs proches, de pairs, d’agences de financement ou du grand public. La collaboration et la diffusion sont les deux derniers volets de ce panorama des outils numériques d’aide à la recherche. En effet, des fonctionnalités facilitant un travail à plusieurs sur un support commun sont intégrées à un nombre croissant de logiciels mais certains sont spécifiquement conçus pour ce type d’approche, qu’il s’agisse de partage de documents, de gestion de projets collectifs, ou de crowdsourcing. Ce terme, initialement employé dans le domaine de l’entreprise et aujourd'hui appliqué bien au-delà est composé des mots crowd et outsourcing et désigne le fait de confier des tâches généralement réalisées par des professionnels en interne à un public extérieur, souvent amateur. Ce terme est aujourd'hui appliqué à des initiatives très diverses, de la participation à l’élaboration de contenus en ligne sur le modèle de Wikipedia, à la rédaction d’articles pour des blogs, à l’étiquetage d’images sur Flickr, ou à l’élaboration de logiciels open-source.

37 En matière de recherche, le crowdsourcing se manifeste le plus souvent sous la forme d’appels à participation lancés par des institutions patrimoniales ou des équipes pour la réalisation de tâches chronophages mais ne nécessitant pas de compétences complexes. Ainsi, pour son projet TROVE, la bibliothèque nationale d’Australie a fait appel à des bénévoles suite à un projet ambitieux de numérisation de certaines parties de ses collections afin de relire les documents scannés puis traités par un logiciel de reconnaissance de caractères pour les classer mais aussi corriger les coquilles, apporter commentaires et précisions ou encore télécharger des documents annexes pertinents. Pour faciliter ces pratiques s’inscrivant dans la lignée des sciences participatives, des plateformes dédiées ont vu le jour comme Scripto, Zooniverse ou Crowdcrafting. Cette

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perspective collaborative est également présente dans les sites de témoignages évoqués précédemment ou du type de Storycorps qui depuis 2015, grâce à son application pour téléphone portable offre un support en ligne hébergeant des centaines de récits personnels provenant d’internautes essentiellement nord-américains. Elle se manifeste également en traduction sur la plateforme Zanata par exemple.

38 Cette utilisation croissante du crowdsourcing s’inscrit souvent en matière de recherche dans un mouvement plus large en faveur d’une science dite « ouverte ». Bien que la définition de l’expression ne soit pas consensuelle (Voir Fecher & Friesike, 2014), il apparaît cependant que l’évolution technologique puisse dans certains cas faciliter une interaction de la communauté scientifique avec des interlocuteurs plus nombreux et aux profils plus hétérogènes, qu’il s’agisse de collaboration comme évoquée plus haut mais aussi de diffusion de « délivrables » plus variés qu’auparavant. En effet, il est désormais possible par exemple de partager des contenus alors que le processus de recherche n’a pas atteint son terme, tels que des bibliographies commentées sur WorldCat, la base de données bibliographiques de l’OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), ou encore des jeux de données via des dépôts (Repositories) comme celui du projet Dataverse ou de Figshare. De manière significative, ces dépôts délivrent des identifiants permettant de citer les contenus déposés au même titre que des publications classiques, laissant entrevoir l’éventualité à terme d’une reconnaissance officielle de ce type de résultats.

39 Des plateformes inspirées des carnets de recherche des anthropologues où chaque étape du travail scientifique est documentée ont également vu le jour, à l’image d’Hypothèses, portée par le centre pour l’édition électronique ouverte (CLEO). Résultats intermédiaires, réflexions méthodologiques, diapositives de colloques, demandes de conseils techniques etc. y trouvent un espace de diffusion, espace également propice à réduire l’effet « tiroir » (File Drawer Effect, Rosenthal, 1979), expression désignant la propension à ne publier qu’à propos d’études ayant abouti à un résultat estimé satisfaisant et consignant à l’oubli nombres de travaux dont le cheminement serait néanmoins précieux pour les chercheurs travaillant sur des problématiques identiques.

40 Enfin, des alternatives aux colloques traditionnels se multiplient à l’instar des THATCamps par exemple. Les créateurs de ce concept de manifestation scientifique né en 2008 se sont inspirés des bootcamps pratiqués en informatique et le qualifient de unconference, mettant l’accent sur son caractère délibérément ouvert à tous au-delà de la sphère scientifique, transdisciplinaire et privilégiant les partages d’expérience et de compétences informels. Un camp a ainsi été organisé à l’université Grenoble Alpes en 2018 sur la thématique de l’utilisation des données ouvertes et logiciels libres dans la recherche en SHS. Un THATCamp Shakespeare s’est tenu à l’université de Géorgie en 2017 tandis qu’un autre organisé à l’université de Caroline du Nord en 2016 s’intéressait au militantisme en ligne de mouvements tels qu’Occupy Wall Street ou Black Lives Matter.

Projets numériques en études anglophones

41 Les outils numériques au service de la recherche ont donc connu une croissance exponentielle ces dernières années et gagné en fonctionnalités, ouvrant la voie à des projets cherchant à exploiter les opportunités offertes. Le projet Data Mining with Criminal Intent (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, Bailey Online,

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TAPoR, Digging into Data) illustre cette combinaison d’approches et d’outils mobilisés pour répondre à une problématique de recherche, ici déterminer le mode d’empoisonnement le plus courant au Royaume-Uni à partir d’un corpus d’environ 200.000 descriptifs de procès rédigés entre 1674 et 1913. Voici un résumé simplifié de la démarche adoptée : grâce à un moteur de recherche, les notices relatives aux cas d’empoisonnement ont d’abord été identifiées puis téléchargées via Zotero. Voyant a ensuite été employé pour éliminer des notices les mots ne présentant pas d’intérêt pour l’analyse (stop-words, terminologie légale…) puis pour référencer par collocation les termes associés au mot « poison ». Il ressort de ce travail que les boissons sont le mode d’empoisonnement le plus fréquent sur l’ensemble du corpus étudié.

42 Ian Lancashire, de l’université de Toronto, a quant à lui conduit grâce à des outils de textométrie notamment, une étude longitudinale des évolutions lexicales et syntaxiques de l’œuvre de trois auteurs britanniques afin d’analyser les corrélations entre phénomènes langagiers (Appauvrissement du vocabulaire employé, répétitions, nombre de clauses par énoncés...) et apparition de la maladie d’Alzheimer (Le, 2011).

43 Les outils numériques peuvent ainsi être utilisés de façon combinée ou plus isolée. Dans le cadre du projet intitulé Mapping the Republic of Letters de l’université Stanford initié en 2007, des outils de visualisation cartographique ont été employés pour révéler les caractéristiques de la correspondance de célèbres auteurs du Siècle des Lumières tels que Voltaire ou pour la sphère anglophone, John Locke ou Benjamin Franklin. Les métadonnées de centaines de lettres envoyées et reçues par ces auteurs (date, destinataire, pays…) ont ainsi été saisies afin de produire des cartes illustrant leurs réseaux de correspondance pour tenter d’identifier des tendances qu’il aurait été difficile de percevoir à partir d’un référencement manuel notamment du fait de leur volume. Quels liens Franklin entretenait-il avec ses homologues européens, qui étaient ses interlocuteurs privilégiés, les pays avec lesquels il avait les contacts les plus étroits ? Quel parallèle peut être établi entre ces courriers et les événements de politique internationale de l’époque ?

44 Des chercheurs de l’université de Glasgow ont eux mis au point un outil (Mapping Metaphor) destiné à dresser un inventaire de métaphores employées dans un corpus de plus de 800.000 mots anglais sur une période d’environ 1300 ans tirés de l’Historical Thesaurus of English. Le traitement automatique appliqué au corpus permet ainsi de faire apparaître des liens entre des termes et des conceptions métaphoriques agencées par catégories, présentés sous forme de visualisation circulaire interactive. Ainsi, la notion d’intelligence apparaît comme souvent associée en anglais à des métaphores liées au goût autour de mots tels que salty ou insipid (Bagli, 2016) tandis que celles de la catégorie « Oiseaux » renvoient fréquemment à des émotions comme la fierté, le courage ou la peur (Muller, 2015).

45 Le projet DocuScope conduit par Michael Witmore de la Shakespeare Folger Library et Jonathan Hope de l’université Strathclyde permet lui d’automatiser la comparaison de différentes pièces de l’auteur d’un point de vue linguistique, rhétorique et structurel afin de faire apparaître les éléments de similitudes et de contrastes entre comédies et tragédies par exemple.

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Conclusion

46 Ces projets ambitieux et complexes nécessitent néanmoins l’agrégation de compétences diverses qui renvoient au dialogue interdisciplinaire évoqué par Dacos et Mounier en introduction. Le projet PHEME coordonné par l’université de Sheffield qui vise à construire un outil numérique capable de déterminer la véracité d’une information véhiculée sur les réseaux sociaux repose ainsi sur la collaboration de spécialistes du traitement automatique des langues, de l’exploration de données, de l’analyse de réseaux et de linguistes. Ceci ne signifie cependant pas nécessairement que l’utilisation d’outils numériques ne soit pas envisageable et porteuse scientifiquement à une échelle plus réduite, voire individuelle.

47 Se pose néanmoins la question de l’accessibilité technique de tels outils pour des chercheurs issus de cursus dépourvus d’enseignements dédiés. En 1968, l’historien Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie sous-titrait un article rédigé pour le Nouvel Observateur de la phrase suivante : « l’historien de demain sera programmeur ou ne sera pas ». L’impact de cette affirmation est encore perceptible puisqu’un site lancé en 2012 proposant des tutoriels à destination de la communauté de recherche en SHS dans les sphères francophones, anglophones et hispanophones porte le nom de Programming Historian. Pour autant, ce profil hybride reste relativement rare, notamment en France, non seulement en histoire mais dans l’ensemble des SHS. Paul Bertrand soulignait ainsi lors du THATCamp qui s’est tenu à Paris en 2012 la difficulté de trouver temps et énergie pour acquérir et entretenir ce type de compétences dans une « vie d’historien, déjà bien remplie en soi, une vie de recherche ». Toutefois, comme le rappelle Emilien Ruiz, co-auteur du site ‘La boite à outils des historien(ne)s’, depuis la célèbre citation de Ladurie, des interfaces ont été créées pour se placer entre l’homme et la machine et ainsi réduire drastiquement le besoin de compétences en programmation de la part des chercheurs (Ruiz, 2011). L’ensemble des outils évoqués plus haut est ainsi accessible sans aucune compétence de ce type tout en offrant des fonctionnalités approfondies. Pour les prendre en main et éviter leurs pièges potentiels, une phrase de formation ou d’autoformation reste indispensable. Il n’en demeure pas moins que les prérequis techniques pour leur utilisation ont indéniablement baissé au cours des dernières décennies, permettant aux chercheurs en SHS d’acquérir pour la réalisation de nombreuses tâches une autonomie croissante et ouvrant la voie à des pistes scientifiques prometteuses.

48 Pour autant, cela ne signifie pas que les méthodes et outils antérieurs soient nécessairement rendus obsolètes par ces innovations, comme le suggèrent les travaux de chercheurs tels que Franco Moretti, célèbre et polémique historien de la littérature à l’origine du concept de distant reading pour qui l’analyse informatiquement automatisée d’un volume de textes allant au-delà des capacités humaines de traitement doit remplacer la pratique de lecture rapprochée généralement utilisée par les spécialistes de la discipline. En effet, si le débat en la matière reste vif et si toute conclusion ne peut être que temporaire, le consensus qui se dessine va davantage dans le sens d’une complémentarité des approches (Cabral, Amado Laurel & Schuerewegen, 2014), ce que Moretti lui-même laisse entrevoir dans son étude consacrée à Hamlet et intitulée Network Theory, Plot Analysis (Moretti, 2011).

49 Le positionnement individuel ou institutionnel du chercheur sur ces questions est variable, allant d’une adhésion sans faille à un déterminisme technologique menaçant

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d’obsolescence quiconque n’emprunterait pas cette voie à une volonté parfois farouche de défendre des pratiques antérieures ayant souvent fait leurs preuves contre toute rhétorique associant systématiquement et sans nuance évolution technologique et progrès. Il semble toutefois indéniable que l’irruption du numérique dans la recherche, en études anglophones comme dans la plupart des domaines scientifiques, ne peut plus être cantonnée à un effet de mode temporaire à l’initiative de quelques technophiles évoluant à la marge. Sans nécessairement adopter à titre personnel ces outils ou approches qui n’ont d’ailleurs pas vocation à répondre à toute problématique pour tout public en toute situation, ajouter les productions issues de la sphère des humanités numériques à la veille scientifique conduite par chacun dans sa discipline de spécialité ne peut cependant qu’enrichir la réflexion de tous. Pour citer la célèbre phrase d’introduction à l’ouvrage « A New Guide to Science » publié par Isaac Asimov en 1984, « Almost in the beginning was curiosity ».

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Notay, Balviar. « CORE Becomes the World’s Largest Aggregator ». Jisc Scholarly Communications, 1er juin 2018. https://scholarlycommunications.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2018/06/01/core-becomes- the-worlds-largest-aggregator/.

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Archives, outils et projets référencés

« Accents and Dialects. British Library - Sounds ». https://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects.

« Advene for Video Annotation ». https://www.advene.org/.

« Amérique/Europe : Les humanités numériques en partage ? Enjeux, innovation et perspectives. 15e colloque annuel de l’institut des Amériques », 2017. http://www.institutdesameriques.fr/ sites/default/files/documents_actualites/colloqueidaprogramme_bd.pdf.

« Annotation Studio ». https://www.annotationstudio.org/.

« ANVIL: The Video Annotation Research Tool ». http://www.anvil-software.org/.

« BASE - Bielefeld Academic Search Engine ». https://www.base-search.net/about/fr/index.php?

« Between Two Worlds: Poetry and Translation. British Library - Sounds ». https://sounds.bl.uk/ Arts-literature-and-performance/Between-two-worlds-poetry-and-translation.

« CATMA – For Undogmatic Textual Markup and Analysis ». http://catma.de/.

« CEISMIC (Canterbury Earthquake Digital Archive) ». http://www.ceismic.org.nz/.

« CLARIN - European Research Infrastructure for Language Resources and Technology ». https:// www.clarin.eu/.

« CLiC Dickens ». https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/edacs/departments/englishlanguage/ research/projects/clic/index.aspx.

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« CoRD | Zurich English Newspaper Corpus (ZEN) ». http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/ corpora/ZEN/.

« CORE ». https://core.ac.uk/.

« Corpus of Welsh Language Tweets | ». http://techiaith.cymru/corpora/twitter/?lang=en.

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« Ethique et droit ». Hypothèses (blog). https://ethiquedroit.hypotheses.org/.

« Figshare ». https://figshare.com/.

« FreeDict ». https://freedict.org/.

« GATE (General Architecture for Text Engineering) ». https://gate.ac.uk/.

« Gephi - The Open Graph Viz Platform ». https://gephi.org/.

« Human Rights’ Web Archive ». Center for Human Rights’ Documentation and Research at Columbia University, s. d. https://hrwa.cul.columbia.edu/.

« Internet Archive: Wayback Machine ». https://archive.org/web/.

« Mapping Metaphor: Home ». https://mappingmetaphor.arts.gla.ac.uk/.

« Mapping the Republic of Letters ». http://republicofletters.stanford.edu/.

« Mendeley - Reference Management Software & Researcher Network ». https:// www.mendeley.com/homepage6/?switchedFrom=.

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« Project Lost & Found ». DELAMAN (Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archive Network) (blog). http://www.delaman.org/project-lost-found/.

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« Ratsnake Annotation Tool ». https://is-innovation.eu/ratsnake/.

« The Berkeley Revolution ». http://revolution.berkeley.edu/about/

NOTES

1. Le sujet digital, Labex Arts-H2H, co-piloté par Claire Larsonneur, Arnaud Regnauld, Pierre Cassou-Noguès, 2012-16, http://sujetdigital.labex-arts-h2h.fr/fr

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2. Post-humain et subjectivités numériques, Centre culturel international de Cerisy, 23-30 juin 2016, http://www.ccic-cerisy.asso.fr/posthumain16.html 3. Cf « Wayback Machine General Information », Internet Archive Help Center, Internet Archive. Updated August 2018. Visited 22 February, 2019. 4. Les logiciels évoqués ici le sont à titre d’exemple des fonctionnalités décrites mais leur vitesse de renouvellement étant élevée, d’autres les auront peut-être remplacés d’ici publication. Sauf indication contraire, il s’agit de logiciels disponibles gratuitement.

RÉSUMÉS

Bien que l’utilisation de technologies alors perçues comme novatrices dans la recherche en sciences humaines et sociales ne soit pas un phénomène particulièrement récent, le champ des humanités numériques tel que défini en France par Dacos et Mounier (2014) ou Bourdeloie (2014) est encore en construction. Potentiel, origines, contours, méthodes continuent de faire l’objet de nombreux débats. En parallèle cependant, des projets voient le jour dans un nombre croissant de pays et de disciplines. Pour autant, malgré quelques initiatives notables, les études anglophones françaises restent à la marge de ce mouvement. Les raisons sont multiples, mais l’une d’entre elles réside indéniablement dans une difficulté pour les chercheurs du domaine à percevoir l’apport éventuel de l’introduction du numérique dans des pratiques existantes reposant sur des approches ayant démontré leur valeur scientifique. Cet article se propose donc d’offrir un panorama synthétique des contributions possibles des ressources et outils numériques aux différentes étapes du travail de recherche : état de l’art, préparation et constitution de corpus, manipulation de données, analyse, travail collaboratif et diffusion. Cette introduction sera illustrée d’exemples tirés des disciplines des études anglophones françaises afin d’informer la réflexion des chercheurs du domaine sur l’existant en la matière et d’offrir une première réponse à leurs possibles interrogations sur la pertinence d’intégrer les pistes évoquées ici à leur propre démarche de recherche.

Although the use of technologies previously seen as innovative in humanities and social sciences research is not a particularly recent phenomenon, the field of the digital humanities as defined in France by Dacos and Mounier (2014) or Bourdeloie (2014) is still under construction. Its origins, outline, methods and potential continue to be the subject of much debate. However, alongside those ongoing debates, projects are emerging in an increasing number of countries and disciplines. Nevertheless, despite some promising initiatives, English studies in France remain at the margins of this movement. There are many reasons but one of them is undeniably due to the difficulty for researchers in the field to perceive the possible contribution of digital technology to existing practices generally based on approaches which have demonstrated their scientific value. This article therefore aims at offering a synthetic overview of the potential input of digital resources and tools to the various stages of the research cycle: state of the art, corpus preparation and constitution, data manipulation, analysis, collaborative work and dissemination. This introduction will be illustrated by examples drawn from the disciplines of English studies in

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France in order to help researchers in the field approach the sometimes complex and intimidating area of the digital humanities and try to answer their questions on the relevance of integrating some of the elements mentioned here into their own research.

INDEX

Keywords : Digital Humanities, English Studies, Tools, Resources, Projects, Corpus, Data, Mining, Software, Websites Mots-clés : humanités numériques, études anglophones, outils, ressources, projets, corpus, données, exploration, logiciels, sites

AUTEUR

GÉRALDINE CASTEL Maître de conférences Université Grenoble Alpes [email protected]

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The Shulamite of Sodom: Wilde’s Subversion of the Song of Songs and the Birth of the Monstrous- Feminine

Gerrard Carter

Salomé is a mosaic. Mr Wilde has many masters, and the influence of each master asserts itself in his pages as stripes of different colours assert themselves in stuffs from the East. The reader of Salomé seems to stand in the Island of Voices and to hear around him and about the utterances of friends, the whispering of demigods1.

1 When the reader stands in the “Island of Voices” and hears around him “the whispering of demigods”, he becomes immersed in Wilde’s rich transtextual tapestry of multi-coloured interlocking threads. Just as one would turn over an intricate fabric to discover the hidden tangled workmanship that produced handiwork of such immense depth and beauty, so too, does the Salomé reader once he or she discovers the play’s coded intertextuality. However, deciphering such coding presents a number of challenges due to the fact that the “intertextual history of the Salomé story is so complex as to make any account of Wilde’s precise influences highly problematic” (Tydeman and Price 1996, 12). In the case of Wilde’s Salomé there is more than one hypotext2, as illustrated by the rich mosaic of French literary sources and biblical influences residing in the play. Therefore, when presented with this wealth of influences, the reader is confounded by the ambiguity such transtextual practices initiate. The innate ambiguity of the text engenders a literary response, as the reader engages in an intertextual pas de deux. This metaphorical dance enables the reader to unlock the text’s meaning while enhancing the interpretative experience of Wilde’s obscure play.

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2 The two significant accounts in the Bible that deal with John the Baptist’s beheading at the request of Herod’s stepdaughter are Matthew 14:6-11 and Mark 6:14-29. However, Wilde was not only inspired by the New Testament, but also, by the Old Testament. In his reinterpretation of the Salomé myth, Wilde was influenced by one biblical book in particular, the Song of Songs, and most strikingly by Ernest Renan’s French translation from the original Hebrew, Le Cantique des Cantiques (1860). The rhythm, sound and syntax of the language Wilde used to rewrite the Salomé story, clearly evoke Renan’s translation. Furthermore, there are unequivocal borrowings from the Song of Songs, which are sharply etched into Wilde’s Symbolist language. Wilde’s choice to replicate such an erotically charged poetic style borrowed from one of the most sexual books of the Bible caused quite a caustic backlash at the time. The morning after the Paris opening of Richard Strauss’ opera by the same name, the critic Pierre Lalo mocked Wilde’s literary efforts as a “contrefaçon du Cantique des Cantiques”3. Contrefaçon meaning counterfeit, a forgery or even a pirating work demonstrates that by imitating the incantatory styling of the Song of Songs, Wilde’s transgressed misrepresentation of the biblical text results in an accessible palimpsest (a parchment that has been written on twice).

3 In Salomé, Wilde takes symbols and subverts them: the dove, for instance, a symbol of virtue is demonized at the hands of Wilde. Wilde takes the image of the Shulamite in the biblical book the Song of Songs and subverts it, tailoring it to meet the corrupt and depraved Salomé. Wilde transforms the solar symbol of gold (characteristic of the Shulamite) into a lunar symbol of silver (characteristic of Salomé). As a result, Wilde’s Salomé is perverted and frightening; she loses the warmth of her desire to profit from the chilling lunar indifference of the femme fatale.

4 The Salomé text is a result of bricolage in every sense of the word, an interwoven tapestry creating something new with something old. Transtextuality provides the reader with a methodology to elucidate the literary transformations Wilde engages in when exploring decadent aesthetics, allowing an analysis of how Salomé works as a rewriting of biblical texts. Genette’s theory of transtextuality provides an appropriate analysis to understand how Wilde’s play exists as an extensive hypertextual work. While it is fascinating to study the rich mosaic of French literary sources residing in Wilde’s Salomé, too often scholars have limited their analysis by focusing on fin-de-siècle writers without expanding their investigation to acknowledge the profound impact administered by the Song of Songs. Existing scholarship has certainly signaled the influence of this particular biblical book upon Wilde’s play4. However, an intertextual analysis of the poetics between the texts of Renan and Wilde has yet to be undertaken. Furthermore, critical significance in negotiating the use of abjection with relation to the demonization of the pure and divine Shulamite deserves further critical attention.

5 This study focuses on the biblical impact administered by Renan’s translation of the Song of Songs, not only to mark the deliberate use of linguistic ambiguity Wilde used in order to create the characteristic obscurity that echoes behind the surface reading of the text, but also to illustrate the transformation of motivation in Wilde’s hypertext as it closely resembles the biblical language used in the Old Testament. Furthermore, by employing Julia Kristeva’s conceptualization of the abject as it is elucidated in Pouvoirs de l’horreur: Essai sur l’abjection (1980) [Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjection] to delineate such transformation of motivation, this study will contribute to a greater understanding of the role that intertextuality plays in Wilde’s work.

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From the Shadows: Renan’s Illumination of the Erotic Song

6 Situated in the Old Testament, the Song of Songs is considered to be one of the most poetic books of the Bible comprising exquisite poems from ancient Israel whose poetic principles are untypical of biblical verse (Alter 1985, 185). In The Art of Biblical Poetry (1985), Robert Alter justifiably describes the Song of Songs as “the only surviving instance of purely secular love poetry from ancient Israel” making it “the most consistently secular of all biblical texts” (1985, 185). Renan was clearly attracted to the secular aspect of the Song of Songs, his aim was not to detract from the veneration of the holy image provided, but to shed light on its beauty and sensuality or what he eloquently terms this antique work in all its “chaste nudity”. Renan states: As for me, my aim has not been to detract from the veneration of the image now become holy, but to despoil it for a moment of its wings, in order to show the laymen antique art in its chaste nudity (xxviii)5.

7 The sensuality, beauty and resonance of Renan’s French version of Le Cantique des Cantiques furnished Wilde with a rhythm and resonance in order to “play beautiful music” as he so gracefully affirmed in an interview with the Pall Mall Budget6. In the preface to his French translation of the Song of Songs, Renan states: An attentive study of these different written data, devoted wholly to religion, reveal to us numerous traces of a profane life, which, not being the most brilliant side of the Jewish people, has naturally been cast into the shade (xviii-xix).

8 However, Wilde refused to cast the biblical writings to the shadows and instead illuminated and subsequently transgressed the poetic rendition of the Bien-Aimée (Shulamite) in his creation of Salomé. The French translation of the Song of Songs not only offered Wilde a melodious poetic tone but also afforded the author a unique and alluring world situated in the same geographical region as his biblical drama, far removed from the puritanical reign of Victorian England during his time. This version was a way to verbalize the required sensual nuances and to discover an exotic world, which harboured all the seductive and erotic fantasies of ancient oriental lovers.

9 The Song of Songs has been part of the biblical canon since the Hebraic Bible and as such it exists as a work of erotic love without a single mention of God. When the Synagogue and the Church took the erotic and secular poem and turned it into a religious dialogue between man and an anthropomorphic God, the reader was still, nevertheless, confronted with a striking and sexually suggestive text. Considering the fact that such erotic meaning was unable to evade the eyes of the reader, how were the Synagogue and the Church able to formally explain the sexually charged nature of the biblical text? Furthermore, how did both institutions manage to consecutively justify the sexually nuanced words for a relationship with a higher celestial order? Within a patriarchal domain, the Synagogue and the Church influenced Jews and Gentiles alike to align the male lover with an overriding supremacy to enhance the allegorical totalitarianism.

10 Following Renan’s dismissal of the Christian interpretation, the sensuous writings of the Song of Songs had a significant influence on French art and literature during the nineteenth century. For example, it inspired the title for Balzac’s The Lily of the Valley (1835) and influenced French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau in his depictions of

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biblical and mythological figures7. On December 11, 1891, during Wilde’s Paris sojourn coinciding with the period of time in which the playwright composed Salomé, Lugné- Poe’s Théâtre d’Art presented a programme of symbolist stage experiments by Paul- Napoléon Roinard that included a dramatization based on the melodious Song of Songs (Tydeman and Price 1996, 6).

Illustration 1

Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), Song of Songs (Cantique des Cantiques), 1893 Aquarelle sur papier, 387 mm x 208 mm, Musée Ohara, (Kurashiki, Japon) Copyright : domaine public

11 Besides the possibility of Wilde attending a performance of Roinard’s biblical dramatization, the Irish writer was certainly familiar with Ernest Renan’s 1860 French translation of Song of Songs from the original Hebrew. A passionate and devoted admirer of Renan’s scholarly work, Wilde is known to have purchased works by the great nineteenth-century French intellectual. In particular Renan’s Life of Jesus (1863) in which Christ, as Thomas Wright explains in Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde (2008), “is depicted as an entirely human, but utterly mesmerizing, personality” and quotes Wilde’s description of Renan’s Life of Jesus (1863) as “that gracious fifth Gospel, the Gospel according to Saint Thomas’” (2008, 126). In fact, Renan’s unorthodox Life of Jesus (1863) and his Apostles (1866) were among the titles that Wilde requested while imprisoned at Reading Gaol.

12 If captivated by Renan’s original translation of the Song of Songs as he was with the author’s original and unconventional oeuvre, then Wilde’s rewriting of the biblical book becomes his quintessential fait accompli. The reader may recognize the work’s poetic form but nevertheless is startled by Wilde’s abject and debased refashioning. When Wilde performed such an abject imitation or parody of the biblical love poem in his

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creation of Salomé, he constructed an abject texture of imitations to demonize the Shulamite making her wretched and contemptible. Such a literary transformation acknowledges the underlying eroticism already present in the scriptures.

13 Drawn to the veiled eroticism of the biblical text in a quest to distort the Holy Scriptures, Wilde was presented with a striking element of ambiguity since “Within the limits of its paradoxes the Song is wholly enigmatic. We never know quite what happens or whether anything happens” (Landy 1983, 140). The Song of Songs reads as a theatrical scene where the intensity of ambiguity is superimposed on the poetic language due to the fact that there are no discernible characters. It is essentially a poem in dialogue, that is, one can argue, a theatrical poem. This notion is reinforced by Renan’s interpretation of the Song of Songs: “If we take the term dramatic poetry in its wildest sense to designate a composition in dialogue form with its corresponding action, the Song of Songs is a drama” (56). Renan’s astute description of the biblical text being that of a drama helps to emphasize Wilde’s attraction to the Song of Songs as a significant influence in the composition of Salomé.

14 The theatrical aspect of the poem renders the shift of genre, specifically the transition to a play, easy. Wilde’s Salomé is a drama where the young princess is the central character and takes the principal role. Although she communicates with other individuals within the play’s dialogue, it is the sacred prophet Iokanaan who is the point of convergence of this fatal love story. Wilde transforms the biblical “poem”, which does not indicate the distinction of characters, into a play, thus passing from one genre to another. This transformation shows how Wilde’s hypertext is formed according to the process that Genette calls transposition.

15 According to Genette, transposition is considered to be the most important of all hypertextual practices. Genette’s support of such a claim derives “from the scope and variety of the procedures it calls upon” (1997, 212). While pastiche, caricature, and forgery are “only functional inflexions bearing on a single practice: imitation” (1997, 213), transposition, on the contrary: (c)an give rise to works of vast dimensions […] whose textual amplitude and aesthetic and/or ideological ambition may mask or even completely obfuscate their hypertextual character, and this very productivity is linked to the diversity of the transformational procedures that it brings into play (1997, 213).

16 In this instance, Wilde deliberately sets out to transgress the meaning of his hypotext by enacting thematic changes resulting in a work of profane and sacrilegious dimension.

17 As previously mentioned, in the case of Wilde’s text there is more than one hypotext. When Wilde initiates thematic changes to his hypotext, he engages in the ambiguous practice of what Genette terms transvaluation. Transvaluation is the substitution of values that “can be roughly described as axiologically homogeneous” (1997, 367). Genette’s definition of transvaluation is the rewriting of a text “as a double movement of devaluation and (counter) valuation bearing on the same character” (1997, 367).

18 In Wilde’s Salomé the hypertext unquestionably takes the opposite side of its hypotext and thus the transvaluation of devaluing what was valued. The pure ambrosial love present in the Song of Songs is transvalued into a morbid transgression of the Victorian civilized norms of feminine behavior and ideals. Therefore, there is a clear indication of an inversion of values. Wilde replaces the religious ecstasy that permeates the Song of

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Songs to create a work that allows the reader the freedom to experience a suspension of the safe, the known and the natural.

19 In emulating Genette’s concept of transvaluation, the substitution of values presented in the hypotext (Song of Songs) can be described as “axiologically homogeneous”. Initially Wilde’s Salomé, like the biblical Shulamite, exhibits characteristics “that involve no real value conflicts” (Genette 1997, 367). Both Salomé and the Shulamite profess the same axiological creed: that is professing undying love for the object of their affection. However, when Salomé is inflamed with wrath following her rejection by the prophet, there appears an abrupt conflict of values, allowing us “a glimpse into the ways in which transvaluation may operate” (1997, 367) as “the hypertext takes the opposite side of its hypotext, giving value to what was devalued and vice versa” (1997, 367). In Wilde’s hands, Salomé becomes the Shulamite of Sodom, a paradoxical figure so utterly transgressed that she invites the fascinating and ambiguous desire of abjection.

20 The occasion which best illustrates such erotic transgression occurs in Salomé’s final monologue when the princess takes possession of the prophet’s severed head. The monstrous femme fatale tastes his blood upon her lips in an erotic fetishized kiss: “Ah, I have kissed thy mouth, Iokanaan, I have kissed thy mouth. There was a bitter taste on thy lips. Was it the taste of blood? ... Nay; but perchance it was the taste of love…” (164)8. Salomé exerts her morbid desire for Iokanaan and in doing so, shatters the confines of a Victorian puritanical ideal. By eroticizing necrophilia at the hands of the monstrous-feminine constructed within a patriarchal ideology, Wilde is breaking the boundaries of the taboo, and thus releasing his protagonist to savour in her monstrous display as she abandons herself to the ecstasy of intense erotic feeling. For Salomé, erotic feeling is manifested in an abject manner, thus displaying the embodiment of the monstrous-feminine.

Illustration 2

Salome Opera Australia (2012) by courtesy of Opera Australia Photographer: Jeff Busby

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The Birth of the Monstrous-Feminine

21 The monstrous-feminine is the embodiment of the patriarchal suppression and distortion of the feminine. Barbara Creed originally conceived the term “monstrous- feminine” to describe the terrifying and abject representations of woman, arguing that: When woman is represented as monstrous it is almost always in relation to her mothering and reproductive functions. These faces are: the archaic mother; the monstrous womb; the witch; the vampire; and the possessed woman (1993, 7).

22 For Creed: The term ‘female monster’ implies a simple reversal of ‘male monster’. The reasons why the monstrous-feminine horrifies her audience are quite different from the reasons why the male monster horrifies his audience. A new term is needed to specify these differences. As with all other stereotypes of the feminine, from virgin to whore, she is defined in terms of her sexuality. The phrase ‘monstrous-feminine’ emphasizes the importance of gender in the construction of her monstrosity (1993, 3).

23 Salomé’s literary act of violence represented in her final monologue brings into question Wilde’s motivation for such a sadistic and eroticized take on the biblical myth. Salomé’s calculating seductive power leading to such a transgressive act of desire can be seen in terms of Julia Kristeva’s notion of the abject.

24 Kristeva’s conceptualization of the abject adds further understanding to the multiplicity at work in Wilde’s play. For instance, Wilde takes beauty and transforms it into its opposite inciting a morbid desire with the horror and fascination that certain physical functions such as blood, severed heads or dead bodies inspire. Furthermore, Wilde engages in the abjection of destabilizing traditional masculine and feminine roles by offering a clear oscillation of gender identities. In doing so, Wilde subverts and rewrites the biblical story of Salomé, presenting us with a Judean princess as the monstrous-feminine and situating her in relation to Kristeva’s notion of abjection where she hovers “within abjection, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable” (2000, 542).

25 Why does Wilde journey into the abject? The lure of the abject is that it is both repulsive and attractive. In using the biblical text of the Song of Songs, Wilde interweaves a number of abject themes: beheading, castration, murder, sacrifice and incest to name the most striking. The abject beckons the spectator to its side: “It fascinates desire” (Kristeva 1982, 1). So too, does Salomé in developing “the other facet of religious, moral, and ideological codes on which rest the sleep of individuals and the breathing spells of societies” (1982, 209). We, as spectators, have a contract with the abject and journey with the author into the depths of depravity. In adopting Kristeva’s notion of the subject firmly settled in the superego, the ethical component of the personality, Wilde’s writing of Salomé “is necessarily implicated in the interspace that characterizes perversion; and for that reason, it gives rise in turn to abjection” (1982, 16). Kristeva explains: The abject is perverse because it neither gives up nor assumes a prohibition, a rule, or a law; but turns them aside, misleads, corrupts; uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to deny them. It kills in the name of life (2000, 551).

26 As the reader moves simultaneously along the arc of Salomé’s character, her macabre act of necrophilia is transformed into one of beauty and intrigue, an ambiguous

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abjection of fascinating desire negating the possibility of fear. Toepfer expounds on the aesthetics of such a deceiving display of fear present in Salomé: The basic source of fear is a sense of impurity, which the text “aestheticizes” as ambiguity. It is language which separates speakers from the Other, from death. […] The virgin speaker is “monstrous”, yet she feels the thing, which negates the fear that identifies her as monstrous: a stupefying erotic love (1991, 78).

27 By transforming the biblical Shulamite to embody a monstrous-feminine that “is constantly beset by abjection which fascinates desire but which must be repelled” (Creed 1993, 10), Wilde illuminates the notion that abjection is always ambiguous. Like Kristeva, Wilde “emphasizes the attraction, as well as horror, of the undifferentiated” (1993, 10). This desire to simultaneously attract yet repel is demonstrated throughout Wilde’s transgression of the biblical text.

Wilde’s Song of Sexual Transgression

28 The first line of the Song of Songs not only offers us a glimpse into the sensually nuanced manner in which the Shulamite speaks but when we compare the two texts (French and English translations of the Song of Songs) there is a striking difference. The richness in the sonic quality and cadence resonating in Renan’s French bombards the reader with a series of alliterations. For example the opening line in French reads: “Qu’il me baise d’un baiser de sa bouche!” (15) [Let him kiss me with a kiss of his mouth!]. The acoustic quality provided by the articulated consonant b strikes the reader with a musical element of recurrence, reinforcing its aesthetic quality as a lyrical poem. This fundamental factor reiterates Wilde’s irresistible attraction to the French language as he characterized the composition of Salomé to playing beautiful music. However, Wilde takes possession of the French language and subverts its metonymical tint. When the Shulamite first sensually whispers “Let him kiss me with a kiss of his mouth!” (109), Wilde moulds the Shulamite’s words of love to create the perpetual request Salomé profligates upon the prophet to “kiss thy mouth”: “Laisse-moi baiser ta bouche” (85) [Suffer me to kiss thy mouth]. Salomé repeats this request in an incantatory style, a much-repeated refrain as she pursues the sacred prophet’s affection.

29 Her repeated demands become hypnotic. Salomé amplifies her repetition to reiterate her steadfast tenacity when her words increase her involvement and commitment to danger: “I will kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan, I will kiss thy mouth” (86). As Salomé forecasts her sexual determination in a repeated refrain, transgressing the Shulamite’s opening request, she produces an “oscillation of sensation (to) achieve a ‘hypnotic’ effect’” (Toepfer 1991, 67-8).

30 However, when Iokanaan rejects her, his refusal swiftly transforms Salomé who was once an emblem of virginal purity into a demonic vampire who demands vengeance. Once Salomé engineers the prophet’s execution and holds his severed head in her hands, kissing it passionately and savouring the taste of his blood upon her lips, the transformation into vindictive femme fatale and bloodthirsty vampire is complete. Cradling death in her arms, Salomé not only mocks the prophet’s lifeless head but also relishes in her sacrilegious ways, “Ah! thou wouldst not suffer me to kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan. Well! I will kiss it now. I will bite it with my teeth as one bites a ripe fruit. Yes, I will kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan” (160).

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31 Although Wilde’s depiction of Salomé possesses the same alluring beauty and sensuality as that of the Shulamite, there is a sense of abjection, a diabolical arousal by her words. She is the femme fatale of the Orient. Wilde presents us with a Judean princess taken from the same geographical cadre of the Song of Songs and subverts her to create a princess that is cursed and cruel. Wilde is testing the moral and sexual code of the sacred by transgressing the characteristics of the Shulamite. Wilde commits sacrilege by bringing the profane traits of Salomé into contact with the seraphic qualities of the Shulamite. In doing so, Wilde acquaints himself with the abject to arouse and invert desire. The sensuality of Salomé’s voice is only a seduction until she takes possession of what she wants: Thy hair is like the clusters of grapes, like the clusters of black grapes that hang from the vine-trees of Edom in the land of the Edomites. Thy hair is like cedars of Lebanon, like the great cedars of Lebanon that give their shade to the lions and the robbers who would hide them by day (82-84).

32 Salomé’s alluring words are reflected in the Shulamite’s: “his countenance is as Lebanon, beautiful as the cedars” (118) and “My beloved is to me as a cluster of camphire, from the vineyards of Engedi” (111).

33 In this regard, Salomé’s monstrousness is directly associated to questions of sexual desire. Wilde derives such monstrousness by transgressing the Shulamite’s hunger for her beloved. The Shulamite yearns for her lover when she states: “Let my beloved enter into his garden, and let him taste of its choicest fruits” (116). In Salomé, the concept of demarcation is central to the play for “that which crosses or threatens to cross the ‘border’ is abject” (Creed 1997, 11). The Shulamite invites her Lover to the garden “let him taste of its choicest fruits”. Comparable to the seduction of Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Shulamite shares in an aesthetically cultivated garden. Wilde takes the harmonious eating of fruit in a safe and harmonious location and monstrously associates this action with the biting of the sacred prophet’s bloodied and severed head: “I will bite it with my teeth as one bites a ripe fruit” (160). Salomé embodies the woman as femme castratrice as she brings “about an encounter between the symbolic order and that which threatens its stability” (Creed 1997, 11).

34 Following the Shulamite’s first seductive utterance “Let him kiss me with a kiss of his mouth!” she immediately correlates her lover’s caresses to the sweetness of wine. She declares: “Thy caresses are sweeter than wine, when they are mingled with the fragrance of thy exquisite odours” (109). Falk suggests that wine in the Song of Songs is emphatically associated with lovemaking (1990, 158). Wine is mentioned a number of times to describe the Bien-Aimé(e) [the Lover]: “Thy navel is as a round goblet, full of aromatic wine” (120), “thy mouth like the most exquisite wine” (120) and “I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine, the juice of my pomegranates” (121). The allegorical signification of the pomegranate offers the reader a compelling insight into the poem’s eroticism when we consider that the pomegranate is “recognized as a fertility symbol in ancient culture” and “is mentioned in connection with females several times in the Song” (Falk 1990, 159).

35 Wine becomes intoxicating as evident in Renan’s French translation of the Shulamite’s opening lines: “Tes caresses sont plus douces que le vin, quand elles se mêlent à l’odeur de tes parfums exquis” (15). These lines resonate in Salomé’s discourse when she lavishes the prophet with a series of adoring declarations: “Ta bouche est plus rouge que les pieds de ceux qui foulent le vin dans les pressoirs” (85) [Thy mouth is redder

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than the feat of those who tread the wine in the wine-press]. Wilde takes the same superlative “plus” but shifts and displaces the adjective. “Doux” meaning soft or sweet becomes “rouge”, the colour red. Red not only resembles the colour of wine but also the colour of blood. Blood acquires a prominent role in Wilde’s play. For example, Herod slips in the blood of the slain Syrian officer, “I have slipped in blood! It is an ill omen! It is a very ill omen!” (94) And Salomé savours the taste of blood upon her lips as she kisses the prophet’s severed head.

36 There is a transgression in the sexual association to the blood of the Syrian officer as it was suicidal blood, which flowed as a result of the soldier’s unrequited love for Salomé. Salomé’s transgressed sexuality caused his blood to flow and her morbid and abject declarations are brought to a crescendo towards the end of the play as Salomé associates the taste of blood with the taste of love when she drinks from Iokanaan’s severed head. Nothing is redder than the mouth of Iokanaan as Salomé fetishizes the prophet’s mouth: It is redder than the feet of the doves who inhabit the temples and are fed by the priests. It is redder than the feet of him who cometh from a forest where he hath slain a lion, and seen gilded tigers (84).

37 Wilde’s French reads: Elle est plus rouge que les pieds des colombes qui demeurent dans les temples et sont nourries par les prêtres. Elle est plus rouge que les pieds de celui qui revient d'une forêt où il a tué un lion et vu des tigres dorés” (85).

38 Once again Wilde utilizes the superlative “plus” to an extreme in order to create a sacrilegious subversion of the Biblical text. The repeated use of “plus” is borrowed directly from the mouth of the Shulamite. Salomé’s obsession with the prophet’s mouth is actively heightened within its sexual intensity.

39 Salomé’s attraction to kiss the prophet’s mouth becomes almost enslaving. Imprisoned by her ebullient fascination, Salomé begins to hallucinate as shown by the extravagant profusion of varied images she associates with his mouth to ultimately become crystalized in her obstinate demand to kiss thy mouth: “Je baiserai ta bouche”9. Wilde’s Salomé fetishizes and becomes enthralled with the aesthetics of the prophet’s mouth, as each part of the prophet’s body becomes an object: “It is thy mouth that I desire, Iokanaan. Thy mouth is like a band of scarlet on a tower of ivory. It is like a pomegranate cut in twain with a knife of ivory” (84). This presents the reader with a further degree of abjection as we recognize the element of narcissism as the sole ambition of her desire. Taking Salomé’s narcissism into consideration we notice the profound influence of biblical text as the Shulamite worships her lover, “Thy lips are like a thread of purple, and thy mouth is charming. Thy cheek is like the one side of a pomegranate behind thy veil” (114-5). The Shulamite’s adoring words yield to the horror of the narcissistic femme fatale while “the ‘likes’ proliferate as Salomé plunders the language of erotic psalmody” (Bernheimer 1993, 74).

40 Salomé establishes a border between the divine Shulamite and what Creed refers to as the “abject body, or the body that has lost its form and integrity. The fully symbolic body must bear no indication of its debt to nature” (1997, 11). In this regard, abjection concerns itself with the fascination and horror of the monstrous and moreover menstruous sexuality since blood and the moon are dominant images in Wilde’s play. The lunar element is pushed to the extreme in Salomé, all the more reason that the

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moon is the feminine element/component par excellence. She is the symbol of the woman by her cycles, her curve in the night’s sky.

41 In Salomé, we are reminded that the moon is not only a dominant icon throughout the discourse of the play representing fear, foreboding and death but there is also a sense of vampirism and a correlation to blood which again arises in the numerous descriptions of the moon. For example, the moon evokes terror and dread within the Page of Herodias as illustrated by his opening lines: “Look at the moon. How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from a tomb. She is like a dead woman. One might fancy she was looking for dead things” (44). Wilde brings a predatory element to the seductive characteristics of Salomé. She is like a vampire who feasts on the living and her alluring qualities ensnare those who “look too much” at a moon that appears to be “strange”: “Oh! How strange the moon looks! Like the hand of a dead woman who is seeking to cover herself with a shroud” (72). The perfect time for one of the undead, such as a vampire, to suck blood from the living was on the night of a full moon (Creed 1993, 64). The Greek word for vampire was sarcomens, meaning ‘flesh made by the moon’ (1993, 64). Salomé is indeed looking for dead things as she admires the beauty of the moon: “How good to see the moon” (62). She is a sexual predator who dances on blood: “No, no, she is going to dance on blood!” (138) And as the moon turns red, Salomé’s allegorical identification with the feminine image becomes apparent: “Ah! Look at the moon! She has become red. She has become red as blood” (138).

42 Menstrual blood figures metaphorically in Salomé’s rapid change from ethereal girlhood into demonic destructive womanhood. As a result the entire play can be seen as the metaphoric representation of the menarche, a girl’s first menstruation. According to Kristeva: Blood, indicating the impure, takes on the ‘animal’ seme of the previous opposition and inherits the propensity for murder of which man must cleanse himself. But blood, as a vital element, also refers to women, fertility, and the assurance of fecundation. It thus becomes a fascinating semantic crossroads, the propitious place for abjection, where death and femininity, murder and procreation, cessation of life and vitality all come together” (1982, 96).

43 The reader’s encounter with Salomé’s blood, as “monstrous in relation to her reproductive functions” (Creed 1993, 151), initiates an ideological descent into “the phallocentric notion that female sexuality is abject” (1993, 151).

44 The moon is an omnipresent motif in the drama and she is the unique symbol of Salomé. Salomé watches and admires the moon with whom she identifies: How good to see the moon! She is like a little piece of money, a little silver flower. She is cold and chaste. I am sure she is a virgin. She has the beauty of a virgin. Yes, she is a virgin. She has never defiled herself. She has never abandoned herself to men, like the other goddesses” (62).

45 A peculiar and curious moon, the allegorical references incite the reader’s interest. Identifying the moon as female, cold, chaste, and virginal, veils the moon in seductive ambiguity. The moon as a source of fear is illuminated in Herod’s description: The moon has a strange look tonight. Has she not a strange look? She is like a mad woman, a mad woman who is seeking everywhere for lovers. She is naked too. She is quite naked. The clouds are seeking to clothe her nakedness, but she will not let them. She shows herself naked in the sky. She reels through the clouds like a drunken woman…I am sure she is looking for lovers. Does she not reel like a drunken woman? She is like a mad woman, is she not? (94).

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46 The image of the moon has long been considered symbolic of dangerous pagan ritual worship, specifically within the teachings of a patriarchal Christian church. In Wilde’s transgression of the Song of Songs, we notice that the author dismisses the Christian interpretation of biblical writings that the church “had transformed into allegories of divine and spiritual love” (Kuryluk 1987, 226) and subverts the images used to create “metaphors for sexual topography” (1987, 226).

47 In Wilde’s Salomé, the Young Syrian describes the princess as “thou who art the dove of all doves” (86). The dove is a symbol of immaculateness and is depicted as a symbol for the incarnation of the Holy Spirit in the book of Matthew in the New Testament. The dove is also prevalent in Greek mythology. For instance it is the favorite animal of Aphrodite, Goddess of love. However, Kuryluk explains, in antiquity doves were birds not of the divine but of sensual love and belonged to Aphrodite, whose carriage was drawn by them and by sparrows” (1987, 226). In Salomé, the divine and sacred meaning is reversed as Wilde “changed the dove into a symbol not of purity full of promise but one pregnant with moral threat” (1987, 226).

48 The image of the dove is frequently used in Song of Songs: “Thy eyes are as doves’ eyes” (111), “My dove, nestled in the clefts of the rock, concealed on the summit of the high places, show me thy countenance, make me hear thy voice; for thy voice is sweet, and thy countenance is lovely” (112), “Thy eyes are as doves’ eyes, under the folds of thy veil” (114), “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled” (116), “His eyes are as doves’ eyes reflected in streams of running water, like pigeons bathing themselves in milk, perched on the rim of a full vase” (S117), “But the jewel is my dove, my undefiled; she is the only one of her mother, the chosen one of her who gave her birth” (119). Although the Song of Songs concerns the Shulamite, it is interesting to note that the word “colombe” [dove] is mentioned seven times in the Le Cantique des Cantiques/Song of Songs.

49 Correspondingly to the lovers in the biblical text, Wilde’s characters use the image of the dove: “Her little white hands are fluttering like doves that fly to their dove-cots” (56), “She is like a dove that has strayed. She is like a narcissus trembling in the wind. She is like a silver flower” (60). However, Wilde alludes to the dove for the final time when Salomé holds the bloodied head of John the Baptist in her hands: “Thy body was a column of ivory set upon feet of silver. It was a garden full of doves and lilies of silver. It was a tower of silver decked with shields of ivory” (160-2). The phrase is recaptured in almost identical fashion from the Song of Songs: “His legs are as pillars of marble set upon pedestals of gold” (118). The durable pillar symbolises “the tree of life” and is often associated with the erected phallus (Chevalier & Gheerbrant 1982, 311). Erected upon a fortified pedestal of gold, Wilde transforms the solar symbol of gold (characteristic of the Shulamite) into a lunar symbol of silver (characteristic of Salomé).

50 The lunar indifference is also illustrated by the metallic element of silver. For example, “each repetition consists of an exclusively metaphorical use” (Toepfer 1991, 76). Herod requests that Herodias “fill with wine the great goblets of silver” (120) and he delights at what he perceives to be Salomé’s simple request: “In a silver charger? Surely yes, in a silver charger. She is charming, is she not?” (142) The recurrent use of the word “silver” seems “pervasive in the text (because it is recurrent); yet it rarifies all identities into which speakers transform it” (Toepfer 1991, 76). Toepfer explains: ‘Silver’ ambiguates the categories of enunciated phenomena by attributing to them an unseen quality which (as silverness) makes them precious, beautiful, formed by

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some unnatural (‘artistic’) will, yet ‘cold’ (inorganic), increasingly impenetrable, and softened only by very intense concentrations of heat ‘passion’ (1991, 77).

51 This recurrent use of language that Wilde adopts is richly intensified during Salomé’s final monologue as she lavishes the prophet with romantic blazons reminiscent of the Petrarchan conceit. The princess uses elaborate and exaggerated comparisons to praise Iokanaan’s physical attributes. She describes his body not only as a “column of ivory set upon feet of silver” (162), “a garden full of doves and lilies of silver” (162) but also as “a tower of silver decked with shields of ivory” (162).

52 Wilde’s choice of colour and texture to describe Salomé’s depiction of Iokanaan’s “ivory” body is quite compelling. In the Dictionnaire des Symboles (1969), Chevalier & Gheerbrant characterize the colour ivory by: Its whiteness, symbol of purity. Its use in the making of Solomon’s throne could also associate it to the symbolism of power, in that the hardness of ivory renders it almost unbreakable and incorruptible (1982, 605 my translation)10.

53 However, within the context of Salomé’s final monologue in which the princess holds the severed head, now removed from the soon to be decaying body, the metaphorical description of Iokanaan adopts a sinister and murderous characterization. Wilde employs the notion of the abject by offering the ultimate in abjection, the corpse (Creed 1993, 9). Creed states: Within a biblical context, the corpse is also utterly abject. It signifies one of the most basic forms of pollution – the body without a soul. As a form of waste it represents the opposite of the spiritual, the religious symbolic (1993, 10).

54 At this moment in the play, the sacred prophet is without a soul, murdered; his lifeless body merely a headless corpse awaiting decay.

55 The whiteness of the durable and opaque ivory is mirrored in the paleness of Salomé. In Wilde’s hands she becomes the antithesis of the golden Shulamite. The goodness of the Bien-Aimée becomes monstrous in Salomé, cold and sterile. Salomé is no longer pure but cruel, strange and morbid. She is diseased as Herod states: “I am not ill. It is your daughter who is sick to death. Never have I seen her so pale” (100).

56 On the contrary, the sun inundates the Shulamite as she is black and “scorched” by the sun: I am black, but I am comely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the pavilions of Solomon. Despise me not, because I am a little black, because the sun has scorched me (109-10).

57 In contrast, the moon’s rays illuminate Wilde’s Salomé: “How pale the Princess is! Never have I seen her so pale. She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver” (50). Her beauty is white but this coldness is sterile. She is virgin but her purity is defiled by her diabolical soul. Salomé is as pale as the moon she observes. The Shulamite of Song of Songs is a solar and luminous heroine, “regardée” [watched] or “brûlée” [burnt] by the sun, according to the translations. Wilde diverts the axiology by creating a fatal contra-heroine watched and faded by the moon. Salomé is the perverted and frightening Shulamite as Wilde explores the notion of “female chastity as a deadly trap - a kind of vagina dentata, a lunar wasteland” (Kuryluk 1987, 227). Kuryluk states: Through the constant repetition of “white,” “silver,” and “cold,” Wilde creates in Salomé an inner landscape that is at once moon-like, wintry, and apocalyptic: frost flowers eat away the substance of life, and seven lunar veils sweep the earth clean (1987, 227).

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58 When Wilde transgressed the spiritual and holy sanctuary of the Song of Songs, he remodeled the heavenly and unadulterated Shulamite to ultimately become the Shulamite of Sodom.

59 Ernest Renan’s French translation of the Song of Songs from the original Hebrew, Le Cantique des Cantiques (1860) was the catalyst for Wilde’s exploration into the poetics of desire. By focusing on this one single hypotext, the reader is able to highlight the biblical book’s relationship with Wilde’s Salomé in order to elucidate the author’s choice in generating thematic transformations and ideological reversals. This study has shown that, by transgressing the biblical book of Song of Songs and injecting a vivid reality of sex, murder and death, Wilde created a distinct narrative to indulge in the aesthetics of abjection. In rewriting the sensual poetics of the Song of Songs, Wilde was able to extract the biblical book’s raw sexual themes and expose them with a newfound reality that at the time was extremely challenging for Victorian audiences.

60 Genette’s theory of transtextuality provides the analytical approach when examining the literary transformations Wilde used as inspiration for such a bold rewriting of the biblical myth. Salomé provides the reader with an engaging literary tapestry as one is compelled to explore the play’s foundation. The sensuality, beauty and resonance of Renan’s French translation of the Song of Songs implicitly remains under the surface of Wilde’s text as it highlights Salomé’s sexually carnal and transgressive themes. Kristeva’s conceptualization of the abject also proves very relevant to understand this transformation. A symbolist tragedy highly charged with eroticism and entangled with the horrors of abjection, Wilde’s Salomé continues to inspire countless artists to delve into the depraved universe of the deformed Judean princess. As a result, they essentially become intertwined with the raw sexuality of the Song of Songs.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Poetry. New York: Basic Books Inc, 1985.

Amadieu, Jean-Baptiste. “Salomé de Wilde et le Cantique des cantiques: de l’orientalisme à la subversion”. In Wilde, Waugh, Chesterton, Trois Humeurs Britanniques. Paris: Presses Universitaires de l’ICES, Collection Colloques, 2014.

Balzac, Honoré de. The Lily of the Valley Trans. by Katherine Prescott Wormeley (1835). Auckland: The Floating Press, 2011.

Beckson, Karl, ed. Oscar Wilde: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970.

Bernheimer, Charles. “Fetishism and Decadence: Salome’s Severed Heads”. In Fetishism As Cultural Discourse, ed. Emily Apter and William Pietz, 62-83. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Chevalier, Jean et Gheerbrant, Alain. Dictionnaire Des Symboles : Mythes, Rêves, Coutumes, Gestes, Formes Figures, Couleurs, Nombres, Édition revue et augmentée. Paris : Robert Laffont/Jupiter, 1982.

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Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London, New York: Routledge, 1997.

Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. New York: Vintage Books/Random House, 1988.

Falk, Marcia. Love Lyrics from the Bible The Song of Songs: A New Translation and Interpretation. Illustrated by Barry Moser. New York: Harper Collins, 1990.

Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

--. “Approaching Abjection”. In The Continental Aesthetics Reader ed. Clive Cazeaux, 542-62. London/New York: Routledge, 2000.

Kuryluk, Ewa. Salome and Judas in the Cave of Sex. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1987.

Lalo, Pierre. Le Temps, 15 mai 1907, p. 3. (28.01.19) https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/4880/1/Temps_15mai1907.pdf

Landy, Francis. Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs. Sheffield: The Almond Press, 1983.

Pierobon, Frank. Salomé ou la tragédie du regard: Oscar Wilde, l’auteur, le personnage. Paris : Éditions de la Différence, 2009.

Powell, Kerry. Acting Wilde: Victorian Sexuality, Theatre, and Oscar Wilde. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Renan, Ernest. The Song of Songs Translated from the Hebrew With a Study of the Plan, the Age, and the Character of the Poem: Done into English by William M. Thomson. London: Ludgate Hill, E.C., 1860.

--. Le Cantique des Cantiques, traduit de l’hébreu et commenté par Ernest Renan, 1860. Paris: Arléa, 1995.

Toepfer, Karl. The Voice of Rapture: A Symbolist System of Ecstatic Speech in Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. New York: Peter Lang, 1991.

Tydeman, William and Steven Price. Wilde: Salome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Wilde, Oscar. Salomé. Paris: GF Flammarion, [1894] 2006.

--. Oscar Wilde: Interviews & Recollections. Ed. E. H. Mikhail. Volume 1. London: Macmillan, 1979.

Wright, Thomas. Built of Books: How Reading Defined The Life of Oscar Wilde. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2008.

NOTES

1. Unsigned review, Pall Mall Gazette 27 February 1893 (Quoted in Beckson 1970, 135-6). 2. Genette refers to the hypotext as an earlier text, which another text, the hypertext, is grafted. Genette describes such a relationship as hypertextuality (See Genette 1997, 5). 3. Le Temps, 15 May 1907. 4. See Ellmann (1988), Kuryluk (1987), Powell (2009), Amadieu (2014). 5. « Pour moi, mon but n’a pas été de soustraire à la vénération l’image devenue sainte, mais de la dépouiller un moment de ses voiles pour la montrer aux amateurs de l’art antique dans sa chaste

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nudité » (14). It is interesting to note that Thomson substitutes Renan’s “voiles” for “wings” in his English translation. Subsequent In-Text citations used when referring to the Song of Songs are taken from Thomson’s English translation of Renan’s Le Cantique du Cantiques (1860). Renan’s original text is used when citing from the original French (See References). 6. When asked how he came to write Salomé in French, Wilde responded, “My idea of writing the play was simply this: I have one instrument that I know I can command, and that is the English Language. There was another instrument to which I had listened all my life, and I wanted once to touch this new instrument to see whether I could make any beautiful thing out of it” The Pall Mall Budget (London, 30 June 1892) Quoted in Oscar Wilde: Interviews & Recollections. Ed. E. H. Mikhail. Volume 1. London: Macmillan, 1979. 7. “I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valleys!” (111). Apart from the obvious borrowing from the Song of Songs in the naming of the title, Balzac refers to the Song of Songs in the following passage: “One evening I found her pensively watching a sunset which reddened the summits with so ravishing a glow that it was impossible not to listen to that voice of the eternal Song of Songs by which Nature herself bids all her creatures love” (Prescott Wormeley, Balzac 2011, 63). 8. Subsequent In-Text citations used when referring to Wilde’s Salomé are taken from Flammarion’s bi-lingual edition (2006). See References. 9. See Pierobon (2009, 90). 10. Par sa blancheur, symbole de pureté. Son usage dans la confection du trône de Salomon pourrait en outre l’associer au symbolisme de la puissance, en ce sens que la dureté de l’ivoire le rend quasi incassable et incorruptible.

ABSTRACTS

Oscar Wilde’s symbolist tragedy Salomé (1891) possesses a rich and complex intertextual history incorporating a number of French literary sources and biblical influences. The two significant accounts in the Bible that deal with John the Baptist’s beheading at the request of Herod’s stepdaughter are Matthew 14:6-11 and Mark 6:14-29. However, Wilde was not only inspired by the New Testament, but also, by the Old Testament. In his reinterpretation of the biblical text, Wilde was influenced by one biblical book in particular, the Song of Songs, and most strikingly by Ernest Renan’s French translation from the original Hebrew, Le Cantique des Cantiques (1860). This study demonstrates the importance of the Song of Songs as a biblical hypotext that Wilde inverted to create a daring departure from his success as a renowned Victorian playwright of satirical humour. In rewriting the sensual poetics of the Song of Songs, Wilde was able to extract its raw sexual themes and expose them with a newfound reality. This study explores the subversion of the Song of Songs and the author’s motivating desire to represent the monstrous-feminine.

La tragédie symboliste d’Oscar Wilde, Salomé (1891) bénéfice d’une intertextualité riche et complexe intégrant de nombreuses sources littéraires françaises et d’influences bibliques. Les deux passages bibliques significatifs évoquant importants qui traitent de la décapitation de Jean Baptiste à la demande de la belle-fille d’Hérode sont Matthieu 14: 6-11 et Marc 6: 14-29. Cependant, Wilde n’était pas seulement inspiré par le Nouveau Testament, mais aussi par l’Ancien Testament. Dans sa réinterprétation du texte biblique, Wilde est influencé en particulier par le Cantique des cantiques, et en particulier par la traduction française d’Ernest Renan en 1860. Cette étude démontre l’importance du Cantique des cantiques comme un hypotexte biblique que Wilde a

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inverti pour se départir de sa réputation de dramaturge victorien à l’humour satirique. En réécrivant la poétique sensuelle du Cantique des cantiques, Wilde a pu en extraire les thèmes sexuels et les exposer avec une réalité nouvelle. Cette étude explore la subversion du Cantique des cantiques et le désir de l’auteur de représenter le « monstrueux-féminin ».

INDEX

Keywords: Oscar Wilde, Salomé, Song of Songs, Ernest Renan, the Bible, intertextuality, abjection, subversion Mots-clés: Oscar Wilde, Salomé, le Cantique des cantiques, Ernest Renan, la Bible, intertextualité, abjection, subversion

AUTHORS

GERRARD CARTER PhD, Honorary fellow (Academic Guest) University of Melbourne School of Languages and Linguistics [email protected]

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Ariel's Corner

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Ariel's Corner

Emeline Jouve (dir.) Theater

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The Snapper by Roddy Doyle and Alys, Always by Lucinda Coxon Performance Review

William C. Boles

Factual information about the shows

1 The Snapper by Roddy Doyle (adapted from his novel)--The Gate Theatre (Dublin) June 26, 2019

2 Director: Róisín McBrinn Set & Costume Designer: Paul Wills Lighting Design: Paul Keogan Sound Design: Sinéad Diskin Choreographer: Paula O’Reilly Video Design: Conan McIvor Cast: Niamh Branigan, Hazel Clifford, Simon Delaney, Hilda Fay, Lauren Larkin, Simon O’Gorman, Carmel Stephens, Amilia Stewart, Luke Fitzgerald, David Murray, Lilymai Clancy, Molly McCarthy, Jayna McCloskey, Ellie Mooney, Emer Ryan, and Alannah Prendergast

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Fig. 1

(L-R) Hilda Fay (Veronica), Hazel Clifford (Sharon), and Simon Delaney (Jimmy). Photo credit: Ros Kavanagh

Fig. 2

(L-R) Lauren Larkin (Jackie), Niamh Branigan (Yvonne), Amilia Stewart (Mary), and Hazel Clifford (Sharon). Photo credit: Ros Kavanagh.

3 Alys, Always by Lucinda Coxon (adapted for the stage from Harriet Lane’s novel)--The Bridge Theatre (London) March 5, 2019

4 Director: Nicholas Hytner Production Designer: Bob Crowley Costume Designer: Christina Cunningham Composer: Grant Olding Lighting Designer: Jon Clark

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Sound Designer: Gareth Fry Cast: Joanna Froggatt, Joanna David, Vineeta Rishi, Simon Manyonda, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Danny Ashok, Robert Glenister, Leah Gayer, Sam Woolf, Sue Wallace, Jeff Rawle, and Maddie Cutter

Fig.3

(L-R) Robert Glenister (Laurence), Sam Woolf (Teddy), Joanne Froggatt (Frances), Leah Gayer (Polly), and Joanna David (Charlotte). Photo Credit: Helen Maybanks

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Fig.4

(Foreground L-R) Sylvestra Le Touzel (Mary), Danny Ashok (Sid) and Simon Manyonda (Oliver). Photo Credit: Helen Maybanks

5

REVIEW

6 In doing press for his play Unreachable in 2016, Anthony Neilson summed up his perspective on the current state of the West End theatre, noting “There’s still something very unimaginative about what’s going on in the West End. In mainstream theatre, the model is: take a property based on [something by] someone else that was popular, put a celebrity of some sort into it, package it and send it out there. That’s very stultifying.”1 Three years later Neilson would no doubt find that his description still remains accurate about the plays being produced in London. Just a quick glance over the 2019 theatrical season finds Ivo van Hove directing the stage adaptation of the 1950 film All About Eve, starring Gillian Anderson and Lily James; The Man in the White Suit, adapted from the Ealing Studios’ 1951 film, which stars Stephen Mangan in the Alec Guinness role, continues to play on the West End as I write this piece; and coming in November to the National Theatre is the stage adaptation of Elana Ferrante’s novel My Brilliant Friend (adapted by April De Angelis), which will star Niamh Cusack and Catherine McCormack and is slated to fill the same slot as past, big budget Olivier Theatre holiday offerings, such as War Horse, His Dark Materials, Nation, and Treasure Island. While Neilson referred to the West End, his comment has some applicability to a recent critically and financially successful production at Dublin’s Gate Theatre. My interest here then is applying Neilson’s dictum to two recent productions of previous non-theatrical properties: the Bridge Theatre’s production of Alys, Always, adapted by Lucinda Coxon from the highly successful novel by Harriet Lane, and the Gate Theatre’s production of The Snapper, adapted by Roddy Doyle from his own work.

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7 Of the two productions under consideration here perhaps the most representative of Neilson’s deprecating comment about the West End’s over reliance on adapting properties can be found in the Bridge Theatre’s decision to commission Lucinda Coxon to adapt the popular novel Alys, Always (2012) as the follow-up production to the time- bending, rambunctious, literary history exploding Martin McDonagh play A Very Dark Matter. Harriet Lane’s successful debut novel offered a cagey and subtly unreliable female narrator through Frances, the literary minded main character, who differs sharply from the plethora of unreliable, usually heavy drinking or medicated, introverted, depressed, self-doubting female narrators that would shortly follow, best represented by Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (2015). The premise of Lane’s story is that Frances, by virtue of being first on the scene of a car accident, is the only witness to the death of Alys Kyte, who turns out to be the wife of the famous novelist Laurence Kyte. Frances is drawn into the orbit of the grieving Kyte family when they want to meet the last person to see Alys before she died. Building upon that meeting with the family and her subsequent attendance at the funeral, Frances becomes confidante to Polly, the Kyte daughter, and soon finds herself on the guest list to stay at the Kyte country home, where she catches the eye of Laurence and eventually enters into a romantic relationship with him. By the end of the novel (and the play) through a devious manipulation of an intimate situation between them, Frances ends up marrying him and it is suggested that she will now become a strong directive, editorial voice behind his novels. A contributing motivation to her involvement with the Kyte family stems from the fact that she works for a literary section of a slowly failing newspaper and while bettering herself socially through her relationship with the Kytes, she also betters herself professionally as she ascends up the editorial ladder using her relationship with Laurence as her tool of advancement.

8 As Neilson noted, the production relied heavily not only on the familiarity of the audience with Lane’s novel, but also the prominent display of Joanna Froggatt throughout all of its publicity for the play. As one of the more recognizable stars of Downton Abbey (in real life she looks just like she does on the show, unlike some of the other actresses who are not as easily identifiable outside of their early twentieth- century costumes and wigs), Froggatt was featured prominently in the advertising campaign as she stared out surprised from the theatre poster, aiming to bring in potential punters, who would recognize the Downtown star and be drawn to see her in person on stage. The casting of Froggatt was inspired because Frances is a bit mousy (personality and appearance wise) at the story’s start, but as she rises through work and social circles, she gains self-confidence about her appearance and her interactions with others, which parallels perfectly the character arc of Anna Bates, the character Froggatt played for the seven series (and now a movie).

9 One can understand then why the Bridge was drawn to this project. They choose a successful female written and oriented best seller; the main character, who is onstage almost entirely throughout the play, is a plum female role for an actor and, thus, attractive to a star caliber performer; and Coxon has successfully adapted material for the stage, television and film, including penning the Oscar-winning, Eddie Redmayne vehicle The Danish Girl. Despite all these elements, the production was not a staggering hit, but neither was it a flop. London reviewers found the play to be a moderately successful piece, but not a game changer, not one that needed to transfer to the West End for a longer run, and not a production that was all that memorable once one left

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the theatre. As for me, not being familiar with the novel prior to seeing the show, I found the production and story to be incredibly static, which I later discovered is actually part of the novel’s narrative device, as it incrementally builds up to the shocking action taken by Frances to cement her position with Laurence and eventually ensnare him in marriage. Lane’s novel is also short, only a slight bit over 200 pages, so the incremental movements work within the limited length of the story. However, Lane’s plotting when moved to the stage becomes stagnant. The upward mobility of Frances at work and in the Kyte social circle moves far too slowly, making for a theatrical experience that was far from engaging. Perhaps best representative of the play’s lack of dramatic intensity occurred when Frances’ decision to go to the Kyte home for a long weekend is the culminating action that brings the first act to a close, which really is not a plot point that would excite an audience to return expectantly from the lobby bar to see what happens next.

10 I will admit, though, that my seat for the performance, which was opening night, was in the last row of the entire auditorium, which no doubt may have colored my reaction to the seemingly lack of movement of the play. From my perch it was impossible to connect with the characters and story. No doubt, the subtle interplay between the characters were lost on those of us in the back (and this is a story reliant on small moments, which carry great significance), but they would have been appreciated by those audience members closer to the stage. As I left the theatre that night, it struck me that the play might have worked better in a far more intimate space than the Bridge. I could see it succeeding in spaces the size of the Dorfman Theatre, Trafalgar Studios 1, or the Young Vic, which would allow the entire audience to engage with Frances and her disruptive, self-motivated journey into the domination of a grieving Kyte family, but, of course, such a production, offered in an Off-West End house would run counter to the way theatre in London works, and the Bridge Theatre is definitely interested in star-casting when it comes to their productions (whether an adaptation, new plays, or revival).

11 The Gate Theatre in Dublin would also be a perfect sized space to engage with the domestic and professional journey of Frances, and the intimate size of the theatre’s space is perhaps one of the reasons why The Snapper’s initial theatrical production segued into a tour of Ireland and then a return engagement to the theatre where it all started. My inclusion of Roddy Doyle’s The Snapper in this discussion might not, upon first glance, appear to hew to the description that Neilson laid out above, since in this case the novelist is adapting his own material for the stage and the actors in the production do not have the same international name recognition as the actors who appear in West End adaptations. However, at the same time the Gate commissioning Doyle in 2018 to adapt The Snapper for the stage is a clear echo of Neilson’s view that theatre is “unimaginatively” looking for new product to be produced on the stage by relying on material from other mediums. The decision to have Doyle adapt the second book in his Tarrytown trilogy (The Commitments and The Van round out the other two volumes) would be considered by many to be an incredibly safe commercial bet, since Doyle is a much loved figure in Ireland, his trilogy has been critically lauded, and each novel has been made into a film, each featuring Colm Meaney as the put upon father. Plus, The Commitments had already been adapted by Doyle in 2014 as a West End musical that opened at the Palace Theatre. So, perhaps, in this case applying Neilson’s theory to this production, the star of the production was not a cast member but Doyle himself instead. Testifying to Doyle’s theatrical acclaim, the night that I saw The Snapper at the

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Gate, his latest play Two Pints, drawn from a collection of dialogue pieces he had written on his Facebook page, was having its opening night just a few blocks away at The Abbey Theatre.

12 In comparing The Snapper to Alys, Always, there are automatically some elements in favor of The Snapper that aids in its moving to the stage. The Gate Theatre itself is, in comparison to the Bridge, a far more cozy and intimate space, providing a perfect opportunity for the audience to connect with the Rabbitte clan. Clearly, having the author of the original work do the adaptation provides for a much more fluid experience (especially when it comes to changing the novel to the stage, seen by his changing of the number of children the family has to make it more economical on the stage) as well as the fact this version is the third iteration Doyle has written of the characters. In addition, the Rabbitte family is a comfortable, familiar, enjoyable part of contemporary Irish culture and this fondness became apparent prior to the start of the show because the energy level of the audience was much higher than what I have experienced in West End and Broadway theatres, and the fact that it was a Wednesday night made it even more surprising. From the first minutes of Sharon’s opening monologue realizing that she was pregnant, the audience responded with warmth, laughter and enjoyment as they comfortably returned to the Rabbitte family and their humorous struggles from the twin daughters enrolling in a dance competition (forcing their mother to relentlessly sew sequins on their dresses) to the son’s desire for a bicycle for his birthday and his subsequent crashes to Jimmy trying to find something to watch on television to the family and town drama surrounding Sharon’s pregnancy and her refusal to name the “fella” who got her pregnant. It is worth noting for those not familiar with Dublin, that there was an extra familiarity between the playgoers, the play, and its performance at the Gate Theatre. At the end of the play when Sharon gives birth (and a real baby makes an appearance in this scene much to the fluttering and cooing of the audience as well as a loud ovation when its mother collected her child during the curtain call), it is in the same hospital that abuts the Gate Theatre, the one the audience sees from the lobby bar windows, making the piece feel even more closely connected to the theatre and the community attending it.

13 Based on the success Doyle has had with all of the iterations of the Tarrytown trilogy, it would not be surprising to see Doyle adapting the last novel in the series The Van for the stage, thus completing a trilogy trifecta (novel, film and play versions). Clearly, while Anthony Neilson, who likes to formulate his scripts through rehearsals with his actors, has an issue with the current state of the theatre relying on recycling previous material for the stage, the audiences have not yet had their fill. For theatres and artistic directors, successes like Simon Stephens’ adaptation of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (probably the most successful play adaptation of the 2010s) and Doyle’s The Snapper will encourage them to continue the practice, helping to alleviate the disappointment accompanying adaptations like Alys, Always.

14

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NOTES

1. Tim Auld, “Career suicide, or the role of a lifetime?” The Telegraph 3 July, 2016, https:// www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/career-suicide-or-the-role-of-a-lifetime-matt-smith- on-why-his-n/ (accessed 14 August, 2019).

ABSTRACTS

Theatre reviews of The Snapper by Roddy Doyle (adapted from his novel), directed by Róisín McBrinn (6 June 2019–24 August 2019, The Gate Theatre—Dublin) and Alys, Always by Lucinda Coxon (adapted from Harriet Lane’s novel), directed by Nicholas Hytner (25 February 2019--30 March 2019, The Bridge Theatre–London).

Critiques de la pièce The Snapper de Roddy Doyle (adaptée de son roman), mise en scène de Róisín McBrinn (6 juin 2019 – 24 août 2019, The Gate Theatre – Dublin) et Alys, Always de Lucinda Coxon (adapté du roman d’Harriet Lane), mise en scène de Nicholas Hytner (25 février 2019 – 30 mars 2019, The Bridge Theatre – Londres).

INDEX

Keywords: adaptation, celebrity casting, performance space, British theatre, Irish theatre, Tarrytown trilogy Subjects: Theater Mots-clés: adapation, célébrité, espace de jeu, théâtre britanique, théâtre irlandais, trilogie de Tarrytown

AUTHOR

WILLIAM C. BOLES Professor Rollins College, Florida (USA) [email protected]

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Textures and Layers of Sound: An Interview with Marcus Fischer Interview

Alice Clapie

Biography

1 This interview followed Marcus Fischer’s third performance at the Whitney museum in New York for the 2019 biennial. Marcus Fischer is a musician and multimedia artist from Portland, OR. He creates immersive and intimate soundscapes with tape loops, found objects, field recordings and live instrumentation.

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Fig.1

Poucher, Mark. “Marcus Fischer at The Rauschenberg Residency.” The Whitney Museum. WEB. URL: https://whitney.org/events/marcus-fischer

Interview

Alice Clapie: Marcus Fischer, I’d like to start with a very broad question? What is art for you? Marcus Fischer: Art for me is any kind of creative expression. I mean, I feel like it’s not necessarily bound by discipline or medium.

A.C.: Can you come back on the origins of your art? How did it all start? What are your influences? Marcus Fischer: Yes, I’ve been playing music since I was a teenager, I was playing in bands, making music on my own. I think that my art in its current form comes a lot out of that background from playing and performing music by myself and in group settings. And then, I have just a curiosity about sound: in the way sound is a physical force. It’s not just what you’re hearing, it’s what you’re feeling too, in the way, you know, we can manipulate recorded medium through changing speeds and textures and all that. So, it’s just been an ongoing evolution of a few simple ideas.

A.C.: Your vision of sound is very interesting! I was particularly interested in the elements that you used to produce sound which are not very common of course. So, magnetic tapes, found objects, field recordings all that, how do you come with these associations? How do you find them and how do you come to create something with it? Marcus Fischer: Yes, I think it’s all through experimentation and listening. So, listening is something that’s really important to me as far as when I am working on something new, just trying different things out and trying to find what the soul of that sound can be. In my performance that night that you saw I used a bunch of

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different things that I’ve utilized in the past. It was kind of almost like a distillation of a lot of different things that I’ve been doing. So, there was the guitar and playing the guitar in alternate ways, not just strumming it or picking it, it was like playing the body of instrument and listening to the resonance of that. That comes just through listening and kind of feeling those sounds and thinking about how you can activate one object or an instrument with another. So, I was playing the guitar while tuning forks through the pick-ups of the guitar or using that bamboo brush to create chiming sounds. And then there’s also, like, that little speaker that I had that was vibrating the seed pods. That’s something that came from an installation that I did last March at the Variform Gallery in Portland which was a whole installation of twelve speakers that were all vibrating these types of shells. And, you know, it’s just listening to the texture of that and all of these things. The textures are really important to me, almost more important than melody and rhythm. It’s like… texture!

A.C.: The word that comes to my mind is organic. It’s very organic. The feeling that I had watching the performance was that it was synchronized not with the room per se but with what was happening outside the room and we could see through this glass wall. So, the view of the sun setting on the Hudson River, it seemed, synchronized with your performance and, I don’t want to say that it was natural because I hate that word, but it all came very naturally. Marcus Fischer: Yeah, yeah, so what was interesting was that the night before I performed in this same room. It was a concert for the blind and low-vision members of the community. So, it was a smaller audience and as I started that performance a storm started to blow in. There was thunder and lightning, but that room is so isolated from the outside with these big windows you couldn’t hear the thunder. As I was performing I was looking out the window, at the weather coming in and the change of light and really started performing to the weather on the outside and, as the performance ended, it completely cleared up and you could see New Jersey again. It was just like this beautiful synchronized activity. It was kind of like I was improvising with a force that wasn’t my own. So, my performances are primarily improvised. I have some certain things that I know I’m going to do but how I get from one place to the next is all through improvisation. So, I really enjoyed that feeling of responding to what was on the other side of the window. I was focusing on that a bit at that performance that you saw. So, I was kind of trying to follow the arch of the sun being high and there were kind of brighter sounds. Then as the performance went on there was more this kind of low end, low frequency sounds that were coming in as it was getting darker. And then I was using the tape spindle that was spinning in the center of the room, bringing it up and then lowering it back down, like the sun was setting. So, it was kind of like just playing with the elements that I had brought with me and then the ones that existed in the room already and kind of letting one respond to the other in that way.

A.C.: That is really the feeling that had watching the performance and it was stunning, I really appreciated it! Marcus Fischer: Oh thanks!

A.C.: I had a question about tape loops! How does that work exactly? Because that tape loop going up and down was sort of the centerpiece of your performance and it was hypnotizing in a way! So, where does this idea come from and how does it work exactly? Marcus Fischer: Yeah, so I’ve been using recording tapes in my music since the very beginning. My father had a lot of tape recorders around the house. So, I was always

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experimenting with them recording one tape into another one or several into the same and so as a way of layering sound. I think I got my first reel to reel tape recorder in the mid-1990s and I had read about some of the early music concrete experiments that were going on. So, I started playing with splicing tapes, different recordings. At first I was just mostly using the recordings that were on the tapes, because, you buy a tape at a thrift store and it would have, you know, some Glenn Miller and different recordings on there and I could cut them up and turn it around so it’d be backwards and everything. So, it was just that physical manipulation of that material that was so interesting to me. And then the idea of repetition by making loops was also fascinating. As I started to utilize them more for live performances I realized that, if I engaged the architecture of a space by stretching these loops out longer and longer -- because first I was using them on the floor and I had my microphone stand on one side of the room and had my tape recorder on the other, but you could only get so far -- so then I realized that oh vertical you could get so much more time that you could record. So, what I’m doing primarily is that I have a tape recorder set up so it’s always recording and I can control from my mixing board what sound can be sent to the tape recorder and when they come back around you’ll hear them again as it’s been repeating. So, I can start layering layers and layers of sound by however how many times the same piece of tape passes through the machine. So, I can kind of build up a kind of a dense underbed for what I am playing on top of. And it is a little bit tricky because if I hit a bad note or make a mistake, that piece will come back around again and you’ll hear it again so it won’t let you forget if you’ve made some sort of mistake.

A.C.: But it’s improvisation so there are no mistakes! It’s something that comes along, right? Marcus Fischer: Right, right yeah and then so there are other choices. When I know that sound is coming back around I can either try to put something louder on top of it to try to bury it or I can try to do the same thing again so that it starts a new motif based on that unintended…

A.C.: During the performance you passed along recordings of the voice of a woman for people to listen to individually or I saw some people listening to it together, and it was very intimate. Where did that recording come from? Marcus Fischer: So there was… actually each of these tape recorders that I passed round the room had a different set of sounds on it. So, you might have gotten the one with the voices, somebody else might have gotten sounds of those seed pods very close up just shuffling them in my hands and another one got some very slow down piano. So, it was just three different machines that had different loops but, I don’t know, it was just something that I wanted to do as far as bringing the sounds that I had in the space were all spatialized so I was able to move the sounds around through the different speakers. I could control that through my setup. Depending on where you were your experience was very different. It was almost like you had a private concert that you could hold in your hand. So, that experience was very different. The tapes in the Walkman were anywhere from twenty seconds to three minutes. So, you would get a different set of sounds and the person next to you passed it along so…

A.C.: Do you expect the audience to experience your performance as a group or as individuals? Because often we say that in a theater the audience is conscious of being a group and people look at each other and they know that they’re here together. But now that

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you are talking about the fact that everyone can have a different experience of your performance, what do you expect them to feel? Marcus Fischer: Yeah, I would like it to be something that is experienced as a group but sound has a really interesting quality to it where -- especially when you don’t quite know what you’re hearing -- your brain based on your individual experience will kind of fill in the blanks as far as sounds… So, for example, if I use found sound, a field recording it could just be white noise from an old record player or something but to you it might sound like the ocean which might make you think about the time when you were seven years old and you took a family trip to the coast and it was raining. So, the sounds that I use in the performances, I’m trying to let people see what all the sound sources are as I am creating them. I start with nothing and then I am building up these layers of sound with the things I have in front of me. But then there are certain sounds that I introduce that are disembodied from the sources that you see. That ones are being often field recordings or found sound and I feel like, at that point, it’s up to the individual’s interpretation of what those things might be. So, I think you come and experience it as a group: people sitting on the floor, people sitting in a circle, it’s quite intimate. And then your individual life experience will kind of dictate some of the things that you are imagining if that makes sense? Memory, your senses: all of those things work together in order to create your own sensory experience.

A.C.: That was the third work that you were presenting for the Whitney biennial and this one had no title whereas the two previous ones had one! Why is that? Marcus Fischer: I don’t tend to title my performances. So, often I’ll refer to it on a later date by either the date and place where it took place or sometimes in a description of what was happening at that time. So, if I have put out CDs of live work and sometimes I won’t say like “Live performance at X and X place at Los Angeles” you know, I’ll just say like “the one where the bus drives at the end” or “the one where we all sat in a circle” or something like that.

A.C. Yes, it’s pretty much: “here and there, what’s happening.” Marcus Fischer: Yes. Because I don’t know what’s going to happen before it happens, I wouldn’t give it a name before it’s finished.

A.C.: Right, well initially pieces of music were not titled at all. It’s only recently that musicians started to title their music. Marcus Fischer: Right, right, yeah.

A.C.: And so, you create musical works and performance works, in what ways are these two approaches different and/or complementary for you? Marcus Fischer: I think that they’re similar as far as my musical practice is the same based on the tools that I use but they’re very different when you look at the end result. With my recorded material, it takes much longer for me to get something finished because I record passages and I’ll edit and I’ll edit and I’ll edit and I’ll cut more of it away until what’s left are the things that need to be there. It’s a subtractive process. So, I’m taking away whereas my performance tends to be additive. I’m starting with nothing and I’m building something up. With the recordings it takes an arch: I’m creating and then I’m subtracting. Performance is just additive. Things are happening, I’m introducing more elements. I might take some away but something else takes its place.

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A.C.: Do you feel like you could make something perfect and finished when you’re creating recorded material and this would not be the case with performance if that makes sense? Marcus Fischer: Yeah, I mean, perfection is a word that is a weird one for me because I feel like I don’t ever want something to be perfect. I feel like imperfections are often the most interesting parts of something. I just view them as being two different things. It’s not like I can do one thing in one medium and not the other. I could imitate my recorded material in a live setting, that would be fairly easy but that would maybe be much less interesting for myself and for the viewer. I have released live performances as recorded materials too. So, I feel like there’s a dialogue between the two, but I just prefer to treat them differently.

A.C.: Do you think it is important to go see performances and to perform today? Marcus Fischer: Yeah, I do. I think it’s very important. I feel like there’s a lot of, you know the things that are just kind of lost by people having access to a lot of technology. I have a friend who… I’ll invite him to go to a performance and he’ll wind up looking up that person’s performance on YouTube and then deciding whether or not he wants to go. And you know it’s totally different! Somebody’s cellphone video on YouTube is not going to take the place of experiencing it in person. There’s no substitute I think for experiencing a live performance.

A.C.: What do you think people can get out of experiencing a performance? Why do you think people need to go see a performance? Marcus Fischer: I think there’s the intimacy that you get from being in the same space as somebody creating something. Especially somebody creating something in a spontaneous way. Because, that would never exist the same way again. It would be completely different to the person who saw it the next day or the day before. And that kind of thing [performance]: you can put your phone down and you just experience the thing as it’s happening. That part, I just feel like there’s no substitute for that. And then also to support artists creating work especially now that it’s getting harder and harder for people to find funding for producing their projects. Showing up and supporting people is the best way to allow us to continue and present work that might be coming up.

A.C.: Final question: after the Whitney biennial what’s next? Marcus Fischer: In September I’m doing two nights of performance with Laura Ortman who’s also in the biennial. She’s coming to Portland’s Institute for Comtemporary Arts Time Based Art Festival that happens every September. So, she and I will do some improvised performances in early September. Then right after that I’m leaving to go to Iceland to perform at a music festival there. And then to the UK to perform four or five shows.

A.C.: Great! So many more performances. Hopefully you will come back to New York! Marcus Fischer: Oh I’d love it! I hope I will be invited back some time soon.

A.C.: Thank you very much for answering my questions! Thank you for your time. M.F. Thank you!

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ABSTRACTS

Interview with Marcus Fischer after his performance at the 2019

Interview avec Marcus Fischer après sa performance à la biennale du Whitney Museum à New York en août 2019.

INDEX

Keywords: Marcus Fischer, Whitney Biennial, music, performance Mots-clés: Marcus Fischer, biennale du Whitney, musique, performance Subjects: Theater

AUTHOR

ALICE CLAPIE Ph.D. Student Columbia University in the City of New York [email protected]

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The Scarlet Letter : A comme adaptation Critique

Aliette Ventéjoux

Informations sur la pièce

1 Lieu: Théâtre de la Colline. Représentation du 15 janvier 2019 Mise en scène, texte, scénographie, costumes et jeu : Angélica Liddell Librement inspiré du roman de Nathaniel Hawthorne Comédiens, comédiennes : Joele Ansastasi, Tiago Costa, Julian Isena, Angélica Liddell, Borja López, Tiago Mansilha, Daniel Matos, Eduardo Molina, Nuno Nolasco, Antonio Pauletta, Antonio L. Pedraza, Sindo Puche Et la participation de Mathias Caroff, Thomas Sgarra, Philomène Troullier Assistanat à la mise en scène : Borja Lopez Lumières : Jean Huleu Son : Antonio Navarro Traduction : Christilla Vasserot Production et diffusion : Gumersindo Puche Communication : Génica Montalbano Régie : Frédéric Gourdin Régie vidéo : Igor Minosa Régie lumières : Stéphane Touche Technicien lumières : Pascal Levesque Régie son : Émile Denize Technicien HF : Kévin Cazuguel Machinistes : Farid Aberbour, Nicolas Gérard et Antoine Mary Habilleuse : Sonia Constantin Accessoiriste : Julie Berce Durée 1h40 Spectacle en anglais, espagnol, italien, portugais, surtitré en français.

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Liens

2 La Colline Théâtre National : https://www.colline.fr/

Critique

3 En 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne publie The Scarlet Letter, qui retrace l’histoire d’Hester Prynne dans le Boston puritain du XVIIe siècle . Hester, coupable d’adultère, est marquée du sceau de la lettre A qui rappelle son crime à ses concitoyen-nes. Chez Angélica Liddell, dont la pièce du même nom est très librement adaptée du roman de Hawthorne, la lettre A est davantage le A de l’art, de l’artiste, et, bien évidemment, le A d’Angélica.

4 Le texte de Hawthorne devient prétexte à une représentation, une performance durant laquelle se succèdent de nombreux tableaux. Sur scène, les comédien-nes hurlent, courent, se dénudent, chantent, et les langues se mélangent. Le texte est déclamé en anglais, espagnol, italien, portugais, et surtitré en français, ce qui renforce l’impression d’être submergé par ce qui se passe sur scène. S’y ajoute de la musique, baroque – Lully par exemple – mais également des chants liturgiques, ou encore « I put a spell on you » de Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, et même une chanson bien connue du groupe O-Zone. Sans oublier les cris, ceux des hommes qui se trouvent sur scène, ou d’Angélica, qui relatent la violence et la souffrance dont il est question. Les couleurs et la lumière renforcent également cette impression, car la scène est la plupart du temps d’une couleur rouge plus ou moins écarlate, parfois aussi jaune, ou encore noire, à l’image des costumes que portent les comédiens au début de la pièce.

5 Celle-ci s’ouvre sur Adam et Ève, nus, qui se recueillent sur une tombe portant le nom de Hawthorne. Le péché originel est d’emblée suggéré, et ce « prologue » nous rappelle par ailleurs le début du roman de Hawthorne : « The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. » 1Si Liddell a fait le choix de faire figurer la tombe et donc de rappeler le cimetière, la présence des deux corps nus fait écho au péché d’Hester dans le roman, ainsi qu’à la prison et à sa punition pour avoir fauté.

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Fig. 1

Crédit : Simon Gosselin

6 Les deux acteurs sont ensuite remplacés par Angelica/Hester, qui porte une large robe noire et dont le dos est strié de cicatrices, témoins de sa faute. Puis entrent sur scènes des hommes vêtus de noirs et portants des cagoules pointues qui ne sont pas sans rappeler celles du Ku Klux Klan par exemple. Mais ils ne gardent pas longtemps leur costume, et se retrouvent vite nus. Ils le resteront pendant toute la pièce. Si l’on peut s’interroger sur les raisons de ce choix, on finit rapidement par oublier qu’ils sont nus. Enfin presque, car la mise en scène nous le rappelle de temps à autre, notamment lorsque l’auteure joue sur scène avec leurs sexes. Malgré cette nudité constante, le spectacle ne peut être qualifié d’obscène. Plus que dérangeante, la nudité de ces hommes peut même finir par être lassante.

7 Si les questions de la place de la femme et de l’emprise du patriarcat se posent, les réponses apportées restent provocatrices, à l’image de ces corps nus, et, dans une certaine mesure, un peu contradictoires. En effet, l’un des monologues d’Angélica Liddell semble être une virulente critique du mouvement MeToo, durant laquelle elle s’attaque aux femmes de plus de 40 ans et au dégoût provoqué par leur corps. Ses propos sur « l’odeur de pisse » et les « vagins fanés »2 ne sont pas moins violents, et la question du second degré demeure, difficile à trancher. À ce moment là de la pièce, le malaise est certain et il devient difficile d’adhérer aux propos : « Je n’aime pas ce monde où les femmes ont cessé d’aimer les hommes. Je n’aime pas ce monde où les femmes haïssent les hommes. Je ne l’aime pas. Je n’aime pas être une femme parmi les femmes. Je n’aime pas ça. »3

8 Tout comme Hester Prynne, Angelica Liddell détourne la lettre. Grâce à son savoir- faire, Hester brode et enjolive le A : « À distraire ainsi la lettre, la femme condamnée se soustrait à la loi, à la loi appliquée à la lettre, et l’exhibe comme une forme inavouée de spectacle. Elle met en évidence l’antinomie constitutive du régime théocratique : tandis que la représentation théâtrale est par principe bannie du Nouveau Monde, le pouvoir

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ne peut pas ne pas manifester sa puissance par une forme détournée de mise en scène. Le spectacle du châtiment, les processions religieuses et les défilés militaires sont les seules formes de fêtes tolérées par les puritains qui interdisent les survivances des festivités populaires. »4 La mise en scène de Liddell, qui a elle aussi tour à tour des airs de spectacle du châtiment ou de processions religieuses, souligne le détournement du médium « théâtre ». Pas d’unité, que de la nudité. Ou plutôt si. Une unité subsiste, construite autour de l’art.

9 Et c’est aussi celle-ci qui tisse un lien entre la pièce et le texte, à la manière dont Hester tisse et brode : « On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony. »5 L’art seul permet à Hester et Angélica de s’exprimer, et de se faire entendre. Si Hester tire sur les fils de sa broderie, Angélica Liddell, quant à elle, telle une prêtresse, tire sur les fils qui retiennent les hommes prisonniers, littéralement.

Fig. 2

Crédit : Simon Gosselin

10 Le monologue final, plus puissant nous semble-t-il que le précédent, recentre l’attention sur le A de l’artiste tout en défendant la liberté absolue de la création. L’énumération des noms des artistes, auteurs et penseurs est un moment bouleversant. Les propos de Liddell questionnent le monde d’aujourd’hui, qu’il s’agisse du féminisme ou de la place de l’art et de l’artiste. Sans juge en effet, pas d’art : « Celle qui vous parle tue, vole, pervertit. Sans juge, l’art n’existerait pas. Sans moralisme, l’art n’existerait pas. Sans hypocrisie, l’art n’existerait pas. Bref, sans vous, l’art n’existerait pas. Je vous remercie donc de me mépriser. » Ces mots, énoncés au début de la pièce, annoncent les transgressions et la provocation à venir. Liddell se pose en quelque sorte en sorcière,

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mais une sorcière bien différente de celles dont il est question dans le dernier ouvrage de Mona Chollet6.

11 Le A est donc finalement aussi le A de Artaud, le A de l’artiste auquel on revient dans ce dernier monologue, qui, après les provocations de certains propos et de certaines scènes, rappelle aux spectateurs que l’important reste la liberté absolue de la création. Si cette pièce questionne le monde d’aujourd’hui, pas si différent finalement du monde puritain décrit par Hawthorne, elle est avant tout un plaidoyer en faveur de l’art et de la transgression qu’il permet, de l’absolue nécessité qu’une société a de l’art et de ses artistes.

NOTES

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company. 2005. 36. 2. Angélica Liddel. The Scarlet Letter. 3. Ibid. 4. Michel Imbert. « S.L. : l’esprit de la lettre et les spectres de l’Amérique fantôme. » In Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter. Bruno Monfort (Ed.). Paris : Éditions du Temps. 2005. pp.116-159. 120. 5. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Op. Cit. 40. 6. Mona Chollet. Sorcières. La puissance invaincue des femmes. Paris : Éditions la Découverte. 2018.

RÉSUMÉS

Compte rendu de la pièce d’Angélica Liddell The Scarlet Letter librement inspirée du roman de Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Performance review Angélica Liddell’s play The Scarlet Letter, adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel.

INDEX

Mots-clés : adaptation, Angélica Liddell, art, féminisme, Nathaniel Hawthorne, lettre, monologue, performance, provocation, puritanisme, théâtre, transgression Keywords : adaptation, Angélica Liddell, art, feminism, Nathaniel Hawthorne, letter, monologue, performance, provocation, puritanism, theatre, transgression Thèmes : Theater

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AUTEUR

ALIETTE VENTÉJOUX Docteur Université Paris II – Panthéon Assas [email protected]

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Tennessee Williams in translation : retour sur la première traduction en français de Camino Real Retours d’expérience

Bertrand Augier

Fig 1

Séminaire ACT, 11.02.2019 Crédit : Benoît Colas.

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Fig 2

Séminaire ACT, 11.02.2019, programme Crédit : Benoît Colas.

Préambule

1 Traduire. Que cela implique-t-il en termes de maîtrise des langues concernées, langue de départ et langue d’arrivée ? Une maîtrise parfaite de la langue de départ, si elle est bien sûr un atout, n'est pas un must absolu : ce qu'il faut bien davantage, c'est la connaître, via les études, la pratique ou la lecture, pour savoir comment l’aborder ; la connaître pour savoir comment la faire dialoguer avec le français — car c’est bien de dialogue qu’il s’agit, le dialogue que le traducteur noue entre deux univers linguistiques pour transporter intact et vivant d’une langue à l’autre tout un univers narratif, émotionnel et esthétique : celui de l’auteur.

2 En revanche, s’il y a un must absolu, c’est bien sûr la maîtrise de la langue d’arrivée, la langue française ; et même, avant sa maîtrise, bien plus important, car de là naît la justesse : le goût, l'amour de la langue, la sensibilité à la langue.

3 Si donc la traduction littéraire comporte bien entendu une dimension technique, cela reste — et doit rester — radicalement et avant tout un acte artistique, avec toutes les exigences qui vont avec, et notamment en matière de probité et de sincérité. La dimension à dominante souvent technique de ce qui suit ne doit pas le faire oublier.

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Objectifs de la présentation

4 Le séminaire dans le cadre duquel a été conçue cette présentation s'intitule « Translation : du texte à la scène, d’une langue à l’autre ».

5 Si comme dit Molière, « le théâtre n'est fait que pour être vu » (ou joué), il faut bien commencer par l’écrire. Par cette action en deux temps, le théâtre est comme une gravure à l’eau-forte1, mais réalisée à plusieurs : l’auteur, le dramaturge, prépare la plaque de métal, l’enduit de vernis, grave… mais ne la trempe pas lui-même dans le bain d’acide qui va décider de la profondeur des creux et du tranchant des arrêtes ; plutôt, il remet la plaque ainsi gravée à ceux qui vont jouer la pièce, metteur en scène et comédiens, à qui il revient d’assumer les dernières étapes : s’emparer de la plaque, se l’approprier et la tremper autant que nécessaire dans leur acide à eux, l’acide très particulier de leur sensibilité, d’où elle ressortira sous la forme vivante, colorée et sonore de la pièce jouée.

6 Et ce qui est vrai de l’écriture est également vrai de la traduction.

7 Cette présentation va donc se concentrer sur cette plaque et sur la manière de la préparer et de la travailler, de la graver, pour pouvoir la remettre au metteur en scène et aux comédiens (ou au lecteur — et c'est vrai bien entendu aussi de la prose, tant chaque lecteur est au fond de lui-même le scénographe en chef de tout ce qu’il lit) et leur ouvrir ainsi dans les meilleures conditions les portes du jardin de l'auteur, et quel jardin, s'agissant de Tennessee Williams ! Et quel encore plus extraordinaire jardin s'agissant de Camino Real, ce jardin où la violette peut être plus forte que le rocher !

8 Ce titre, faut-il le prononcer caMIno reAL, « à l’espagnole », ou plutôt, selon les instructions de Williams, dans sa prononciation « à l’anglaise », CAmino REal (où l’en entend rē′əl) ? Doit-on y entendre une évocation de quelque voie « royale », ou plutôt d’un monde où domine et s’impose le « réel » ?

9 La première difficulté de traduction surgit donc dès le titre. Car si en anglais la prononciation requise permet de créer la possibilité d'un premier glissement sémantique, cela est inopérant en français où l'on prononce assez naturellement « à l'espagnole », et où « real » ne signifie en rien « réel ».

10 Ceci est assez emblématique de la difficulté permanente de l'acte de traduction, difficulté qui tient à ce que l'on pourrait appeler la transposition et le dosage de la richesse, avec ici un titre anglais qui est plus riche que le titre français.

11 Et c'est assez emblématique aussi de ce qui arrive parfois : la nécessité de renoncer, car ici, trouver un autre titre aurait certainement été perdre plus que gagner. Mais nous y reviendrons.

12 Pour en venir au fond de cette présentation, abordons maintenant la traduction de Camino Real en évoquant successivement :

13 Dans une première partie assez courte : le travail préparatoire — la plaque, le vernis ;

14 Dans une seconde partie, le travail de traduction proprement dit — la gravure.

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Le travail préparatoire

15 Aucune traduction littéraire n'est facile. Mais certaines le sont plus que d'autres, et d'autres moins. À tel point que d'après certains, il y a même des textes qui seraient impossibles à traduire : typiquement, la poésie.

16 Dans tous les cas de figure, il existe un élément absolument déterminant qui doit être impérativement pris en compte dès le tout début du travail de traduction : l'intention de l'auteur. Si celle-ci est généralement limpide dans un texte didactique ou scientifique, il en va tout autrement dans un texte littéraire.

17 Dans une non-fiction, rien n'existe que ce qui est dit, exprimé. Dans un texte de fiction, c'est presque tout l'inverse… et c'est bien plus compliqué.

18 Dans un texte de non-fiction, mots et phrases n’ont qu'un rôle : encapsuler, pour ainsi dire, un sens, aussi fermement et précisément que possible, pour le transmettre sans déperdition et sans déformation ni altération, semblablement à la gélule qui, dans un médicament, contient le principe actif.

19 Dans un texte de fiction, mots et phrases n’ont qu'un rôle : suggérer quelque chose de bien plus grand qu’eux-mêmes, libérer l’imaginaire et faire naître l'immatériel absolu : l’émotion.

20 Et pour traduire ce « faire naître l'émotion », il faut savoir ce que voulait l'auteur, déchiffrer son intention.

21 Là est la difficulté. Un texte comme Camino Real n'est pas immédiatement, totalement figuratif. Ce n'est pas une nature morte, avec une pomme sur un plateau.

22 Faire face à cette difficulté impose de distinguer deux niveaux d'intention, tout simplement parce qu'il va falloir y associer deux niveaux de préparation : un niveau général, et un niveau particulier.

La préparation de niveau général

23 Le niveau général porte sur l'œuvre prise globalement, sur le texte dans son ensemble. Avec Camino Real, qu'est-ce que Tennessee Williams pouvait bien vouloir faire, vouloir dire ?

24 La première chose à faire, c'est de lever le nez de son livre et de s'enrichir des réponses qu’ont déjà pu élaborer tous ceux — auteur compris — qui se sont déjà posé la question. Internet, naturellement, sous réserve de faire preuve sans relâche d'esprit critique, offre une intéressante source d'informations.

25 Parmi des sources souvent nombreuses et d’intérêt très variable, il pourra arriver que l’on identifie des documents d’une exceptionnelle richesse, comme la thèse sur le théâtre de Tennessee Williams, de Sophie Maruéjouls-Koch, enseignant-chercheur à l’Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès2, parfait exemple de document des plus précieux pour le traducteur.

26 La deuxième chose à faire, et quel que soit ce qui a pu être glané sur internet, c'est de lire tout le texte avant de se lancer. Cela peut paraître une évidence, mais cela peut n’être pas sans risque : n’est-ce pas là contraire à l'esprit même d’une pièce ou d’un roman qui « avance » et se dévoile peu à peu ? Ne faut-il pas rester dans la même logique de découverte de ce qui arrive, logique qui est celle du spectateur ou du lecteur

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lambda, voire de l’auteur ? À trop préparer, analyser, rationaliser, ne prend-on pas le risque de privilégier une approche technique du texte, au détriment de sa composante sensible ? De gommer certaines des intentions de l'auteur, qui souvent dissémine ici et là des leurres, des fausses pistes, des flous que le traducteur doit pleinement respecter et relayer / transposer, sous peine d’affaiblir, affadir et trahir le texte ? Et ce plein respect n’est-il pas en risque dès lors qu’à l’innocente ignorance du premier regard succèdent les fausses spontanéités du raisonnement et de l’analyse ?

27 Ce risque existe certainement. Mais a contrario une telle « pré-lecture » permet au traducteur de prendre la mesure du texte et d'en faire une reconnaissance approfondie, comme un sportif va reconnaître le tracé de sa course du lendemain, soucieux qu’il est d'éviter de prendre de mauvais embranchements, de faire de mauvais choix.

28 Ici, il s’agit de lire non pas en mode analytique — ce sera pour plus tard —, mais en mode « lecteur », juste pour faire naître « comme d'habitude » ses émotions de lecteur, et faire opérer la première cristallisation de ces émotions, d'où va naître à son tour l'idée que vous vous faites de l'intention de l'auteur.

29 Cette première lecture doit permettre notamment de réaliser un premier repérage :

30 D’une part, des relations entre événements et personnages en les inscrivant dans les dimensions temporelle et spatiale du texte et de la scène.

31 Application dans Camino Real — S'agissant d'une pièce très animée, il n’est pas inutile de faire un plan de scène et des déplacements, cela permet de donner une assise concrète à des événements par ailleurs assez décousus.

32 D’autre part, des éventuels stratagèmes de l'auteur : leurres, fausses pistes, flous et sauts spatiaux ou temporels, qui constituent des éléments de structure du schéma narratif ou dramatique.

33 Application dans Camino Real — Dans cette pièce, qui fait la part belle à la spontanéité débridée de personnages souvent décalés et exubérants, Tennessee Williams ne recourt pas à de tels stratagèmes. Une autre pièce de Tennessee Williams, Vieux Carré, permet d’illustrer toutefois ce point, avec l’exemple du personnage très particulier de l’Écrivain, qui cumule un rôle de personnage actif, directement partie prenante à l’action de la pièce, avec un rôle de personnage-narrateur : la bonne compréhension de cette dualité est un élément déterminant pour bien saisir quelles étaient les intentions de l’auteur lorsqu’il écrivit Vieux Carré, et une traduction sensible des passages impliquant cet Écrivain-acteur-narrateur impose que le traducteur ait acquis une certaine intimité avec lui, ce que seule une lecture complète de la pièce peut permettre.

34 Enfin, des répétitions, échos, renvois et autres variations de registres (de l'humoristique au pathétique, du grandiloquent au superficiel), ainsi qu’une validation a posteriori de certaines « options de compréhension » via la rétro-perspective que le traducteur peut dégager à la fin de la lecture.

35 Application dans Camino Real — Plusieurs codes répétitifs accompagnent le lecteur / spectateur tout au long de la pièce : le piping des Nettoyeurs de Rue, le Little white ship to sail the dangerous night in de A. Ratt, et il est impératif de clairement retrouver dans le texte d’arrivée ce type de stratagèmes d'auteur qu’une première lecture complète et d'une traite peut permettre de ressentir et détecter.

36 Cette première lecture doit notamment aussi permettre d’anticiper certains effets de « rétro-action » potentiellement fâcheux.

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37 Il en va ainsi, par exemple, de la répétition d’un terme ou d’une expression, écho qui revient plusieurs fois dans un texte, et dont la traduction se trouve pour ainsi dire « contrainte » par le texte environnant à un certain endroit et pas à d'autres : lorsqu’on arrive à l'endroit concerné du texte de départ, le fait que la traduction se trouve ainsi « contrainte » rétro-agit sur les occurrences précédentes, qu'il faut reprendre bien sûr pour conserver l'homogénéité de la traduction, et cela peut avoir sur le reste du texte des « effets domino » assez pénalisants.

38 Application dans Camino Real — Dans ses premières occurrences, il aurait pu paraître pertinent de traduire Skid Row (le quartier déshérité occupant un côté de la scène, par opposition au côté cossu représenté, de l’autre côté, par l’hôtel Siete Mares) par l’image figurée de « Cour des miracles », mais si cela aurait bien fonctionné tant que l'on était dans le descriptif et les didascalies, il en aurait été différemment au Bloc 14, où mettre dans la bouche de Kilroy une évocation de ces « chambres de la Cour des miracles, où l’on dort pour un dollar » aurait sonné de manière très malheureuse en associant des éléments aux arrière-plans incompatibles (Kilroy et Cour des miracles, Cour des miracles et dollar). Mieux valait donc conserver tel quel « Skid Row », et mieux valait en avoir l’idée dès le démarrage de la traduction, afin d’éviter d’avoir à reprendre toutes les occurrences précédentes, et de devoir s’assurer que cette reprise elle-même ne venait pas bousculer les passages concernés.

39 Plus l’auteur joue de ces répétitions, échos et autres métaphores filées, plus il est nécessaire de procéder avec soin à cette reconnaissance générale.

La préparation de niveau particulier

40 Le niveau particulier porte sur le texte en tant que sous-ensembles : chapitres, paragraphes, phrases.

41 Le point précédemment évoqué est également valide ici : il faut lire « à l'avance » chapitres et paragraphes ; ce n'est que comme cela que l'on peut suffisamment analyser le texte pour y déterminer les éléments de structure — s'il y en a —, les éléments stylistiques et les jeux de mots et de sonorités qu'il est souhaitable, pour ne pas dire impératif, de reprendre.

42 Le message ici est parfaitement clair : il ne faut pas se concentrer que sur le sens, la forme est aussi importante et il faut être d'une vigilance intense et permanente pour ne pas laisser passer l'élément de forme « qui compte » et dont il faut rendre compte.

43 Mais ceci n'est pas toujours possible.

44 Application dans Camino Real — Voici un exemple, ou plutôt un contre-exemple : Bloc 12, la Gitane dit à Kilroy, « No one is gypped at the Gypsie's », que le traducteur a rendu par « Personne ne se fait arnaquer chez la Gitane » ; si le sens est correct, cette traduction échoue à rendre la belle et sonore assonance gypped / Gypsie's pour laquelle aucun équivalent n’a été trouvé malgré d’intenses recherches — il en va ici comme avec le titre : parfois, il n’y a pas d’alternative au renoncement.

45 À l’issue de cette première et rapide partie, deux messages principaux se dégagent qu’il est important de bien garder à l’esprit :

46 D’une part, traduire est un exercice d'humilité : l'intention générale et les intentions particulières de l'auteur doivent passer avant toute ambition personnelle du traducteur,

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et il faut toujours se garder de conclure trop vite et de s’imaginer avoir capté les intentions de l’auteur dans toute leur complexité et leur finesse.

47 Ce qui, d’autre part, impose d’autant plus de faire un véritable leitmotiv, une devise absolue, des questions qui suivent, questions qui doivent sans cesse pousser le traducteur à se remettre en cause : quelles étaient les intentions de l'auteur ? En tant que traducteur, ai-je fait l'effort suffisant pour les identifier ? Y suis-je fidèle ?

La réalisation

48 La plaque de métal et son vernis étant maintenant prêts, il est possible d’entrer un peu plus dans le détail pratique de la traduction de Camino Real : la gravure proprement dite.

49 Les points suivants seront successivement abordés :

50 Les noms propres ; La localisation ; Morphologie des mots, mots déformés et tronqués ; Les mots en langue étrangère ; Jeux sémantiques et jeux de sonorités ; Figures de style et « enrichissement abusif » ; Gestion des « béquilles » (ce qui permet de « faire tenir debout » le texte).

Les noms propres

51 Dans la littérature comme ailleurs (au cinéma par exemple), il est des noms propres que l'on ne traduit pas — Superman, David Copperfield — et d'autres que l'on traduit — les noms de lieux dans Le Seigneur des Anneaux de J. R. R. Tolkien, par exemple, avec ces étonnants « Cul-de-Sac », « Creux-de-Crique » ou « Chateaubouc », qui cohabitent avec d'autres noms qui, eux, demeurent inchangés, tel le sinistre « Mordor ».

52 Camino Real n’échappe pas au questionnement, du moins pour les noms susceptibles de véhiculer un sens en sus de la seule désignation d’un personnage ou d’une chose, ou qui n'ont pas d'existence antérieure propre — bien sûr il est hors de question de traduire Casanova par « Maisonneuve », et bien sûr on ne se posera pas la question de la transposition pour les autres « célébrités » avérées, qu’elles soient réelles ou de fiction (Charlus, Byron, Kilroy et autres).

53 Parmi les autres noms propres, il en est qui peuvent demeurer tels quels car ils sont pour le lecteur / spectateur français suffisamment évocateurs et clairs « en l'état » : Nursie, le Fugitivo.

54 D’autres en revanche s’avèrent plus problématiques : le titre même de la pièce, Camino Real, déjà évoqué, mais pas seulement. Il en va également ainsi de :

55 Loan Shark, le prêteur sur gages : le nom est signifiant, mais intraduisible sans friser le ridicule.

56 Le contournement pour le lecteur se fait via la liste des personnages : ajout d'une mention « [Loan Shark], le prêteur sur gage », et via les didascalies : dans l’exposition du prologue, ajout de la mention, « [Chez Loan Shark], du nom de l'usurier ».

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57 Le contournement pour le spectateur peut se faire, lui, de manière visuelle via le décor — ce n’est plus là l’affaire du traducteur, mais du metteur en scène (quoique la responsabilité soit partagée, nous y reviendrons).

58 Ritz Men Only, l’hôtel miteux de Skid Row : de la même manière, une traduction de type « Ritz Réservé aux Hommes » sonne horriblement mal.

59 Le contournement pour le lecteur se fait via les didascalies : dans l’exposition du prologue, ajout de la mention, « [Le Ritz Men Only, hôtel miteux] réservé aux hommes ».

60 Le contournement pour le spectateur peut là encore se faire de manière visuelle, via le décor.

61 Skid Row : on a vu qu’une traduction recourant à une image telle que « Cour des miracles » n'était pas pertinente.

62 Le contournement pour le lecteur se fait via les didascalies : dans l’exposition du prologue, ajout de la mention, « ce sont les bas-quartiers de [Skid Row] ».

63 Le contournement pour le spectateur — nécessaire car le nom est cité une fois par Kilroy, Bloc 14 : « some dollar-a-night hotel room on Skid » — se fait encore et toujours via le décor, quoique ce soit plus délicat, le spectateur devant comprendre instantanément de quoi Kilroy parle avec ce « on Skid » du Bloc 14.

64 Le choix de l’approche de traduction est — et doit être — tout sauf monolithique : à chaque cas devra correspondre une prise en compte d’un ensemble de considérations mêlant respect du sens et de la musicalité du texte de départ, respect de la langue du texte d’arrivée, compréhension et confort des « utilisateurs » de ce dernier. Ainsi :

65 Parfois on traduira littéralement : Bloc 4, tous les noms des boîtes de nuit portant des noms d'oiseaux sont traduits — Flamant Rose, Pélican Jaune, Héron Bleu, Fauvette Protonotaire —, car à défaut la phrase perd son sens pour le lecteur / spectateur français ;

66 En d’autres occasions on traduira plutôt l’idée ou la tonalité du texte de départ : ainsi, Bloc 4 encore, le nom de l’estaminet sordide situé au rez-de-chaussée du Ritz Men Only, « Bucket of Blood » en anglais, pour lequel aucune traduction littérale pertinente n’existe, et que le traducteur a rendu par le « Bonnie and Clyde », option qui permet de rester dans la couleur américanisante tout en faisant passer le sens d’un endroit peu fréquentable ;

67 Dans tous les cas, comme évoqué ci-dessus, dans le choix de traduire ou de ne pas traduire un nom propre il convient également de prendre en compte le confort des « utilisateurs », c’est-à-dire le confort des lecteurs mais aussi, s’agissant d’une pièce de théâtre, le confort des comédiens. La solution envisagée par le traducteur est-elle de nature à poser une difficulté potentielle pour les comédiens ? Loan Shark et Skid Row coulent assez bien dans une diction française ; Ritz Men Only moins bien peut-être… C’est là au traducteur qu’il revient de bien doser sa prise en compte des différents paramètres.

68 C’est ainsi que l’on a, dans ce Bloc 4, en l’espace de huit lignes, trois options de traduction qui se côtoient — traduction littérale, traduction « en substance » et… non- traduction avec solution de contournement.

69 Sur le fond, cette mosaïque d’approches, ce patchwork pourrait-on dire, sont-ils à un titre ou à un autre gênants ? Non, sera-t-il possible de répondre, ou du moins sans qu’en résulte un quelconque préjudice sensible. Mais c’est là une situation qui illustre

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bien le fait que dès lors que l’on a affaire à du non-dit, du suggéré, de l'immatériel émotionnel ou imaginaire — tous éléments indissociables de l’essence même d’un « texte littéraire » —, le texte d’arrivée ne traduit jamais à 100% l’ensemble des dimensions d’un texte de départ, l’objectif le plus ambitieux ne pouvant viser mieux qu’entre 90 et 99%

La localisation

70 Il s’agit là d’un des aspects les plus délicats à traiter car c’est un de ceux où finalement il y a le moins de règles et où il est le plus question de jugement : entre le texte (et l'intention) d'origine et le lecteur / spectateur de destination, où le traducteur doit-il mettre le curseur pour « optimiser », pourrait-on dire, le point de rencontre ?

71 Parfois c'est extrêmement facile.

72 Application dans Camino Real — Dans l'exposition du prologue, Sancho suit Don Quichotte « a couple of yards behind » : peu d'hésitation avant de traduire ce « yards » par « mètres ».

73 Parfois c'est un peu plus compliqué.

74 Applications dans Camino Real — La fin du Bloc 2 voit l’entrée en scène de Kilroy, qui s'arrête devant un graffiti où est écrit « Kilroy is coming », qu'il transforme en « Kilroy is here »3. Faut-il traduire, ou pas, ces graffitis ?

75 Certains arguments militent en faveur d’une traduction : une version française est bien sûr plus intelligible pour les lecteurs / spectateurs non anglophones, et elle résonne parfaitement avec la reprise « orale » du graffiti, notamment en fin de Bloc 14 lorsque Kilroy apostrophe les Nettoyeurs de Rue en leur lançant un « Kilroy is here » nécessairement traduit par « Kilroy est là » ;

76 D’autres arguments vont dans le sens de la conservation de la version anglaise du texte de départ : d’une part le maintien du côté « historique » du graffiti (s'il est connu des lecteurs / spectateurs, c'est de façon quasi-certaine dans sa version originale, et s’il n’est pas connu, il n'évoque rien de toute façon), et d’autre part le retour au graffiti à la fin du seizième et dernier Bloc, car même si les modifications successives apportées par Kilroy au graffiti n’auraient pas posé de difficultés de scénographie dans une version F0 F0 francisée (« Kilroy arrive » E0 « Kilroy est là » E0 « Kilroy était là »), il a semblé qu’en langue d’origine l’enchaînement était plus fluide et d’une meilleure « sonorité F0 F0 visuelle » pourrait-on dire (« Kilroy is coming » E0 « Kilroy is here » E0 « Kilroy was here ») ;

77 La solution retenue a consisté à… renoncer à la corrélation stricte entre le graffiti écrit et l’expression verbale qu’en fait Kilroy Bloc 14. Conserver la version anglaise du graffiti écrit (« Kilroy is here ») en la découplant de sa version orale (« Kilroy est là ») n’a pas paru amoindrir la version d’origine ni créer avec elle de rupture significative, le caractère bilingue du traitement retenu ne pouvant guère provoquer quelque gêne que ce soit chez le lecteur / spectateur.

78 Bloc 4, Loan Shark évoque « a piece of green paper with Alexander Hamilton's picture on it », c'est-à-dire un billet de 10 dollars. Faut-il transposer cette périphrase, par exemple en « Pascal », ou en « Delacroix », noms alternatifs par lesquels étaient désignés les anciens billets français de 500 et 100 francs ?

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79 Non car cela « localiserait » excessivement, dénaturerait le texte, et au regard des besoins prioritaires de cohérence, si l'on peut dire, poserait plus de problèmes que n'apporterait de bénéfices (du fait par exemple de la précision donnée par Loan Shark quant à la couleur verte du billet, couleur qui n’était pas celle des billets français, mention qui par ailleurs constitue pour le lecteur / spectateur français un indice fort, tant est courant l’emploi de la périphrase « billet vert » pour évoquer génériquement le dollar).

80 On l'a vu pour les noms propres, l'ajout limité d'informations peut permettre aussi de contourner « discrètement » les difficultés de localisation. Que faire, Bloc 4, dans une réplique de Kilroy, de l’évocation de ce qu’il nomme de manière très minimaliste « le Y » ?

81 L’ajout de « YMCA » deux répliques plus loin, lorsque Kilroy explique ce qu'est le « Y » au Baron de Charlus (qui, en bon personnage français, ignore naturellement de quoi il s’agit), permet de mettre le lecteur / spectateur sur la voie et ainsi d’éviter (en partie seulement peut-être) que le texte demeure strictement incompréhensible pour le plus grand nombre.

82 Parfois, il faut savoir « régresser », pourrait-on dire, pour venir à quelque chose de compréhensible. Ainsi Bloc 6, comment traduire « Greyhound depot » et « Greyhound bus depot » ?

83 Si Greyhound est le nom d’un grand opérateur de lignes de cars universellement connu aux États-Unis, il n’en est pas de même en France, et il semble préférable, plutôt que maintenir cette référence précise mais peu pertinente pour le lecteur / spectateur français, d’abandonner le nom propre Greyhound pour glisser vers un plus simple et plus immédiatement parlant « gare routière ».

84 Se pose également la question des références culturelles sans équivalent direct, et pour lesquelles il faut parfois, et selon les cas :

85 Se montrer un peu inventif : ainsi Bloc 12, « Screen Secrets », titre réel d'un magazine de cinéma américain, qu’il n’est pas pertinent de conserver du fait du risque élevé de non-compréhension par le lecteur / spectateur français, et que le traducteur a rendu « en substance » par « Les coulisses du cinéma » ;

86 Savoir renoncer et s’appuyer sur d’autres éléments de scénographie ou de décor, parce que la transposition directe est parfois simplement impossible : il en va ainsi des trois boules de cuivre, enseigne du prêteur sur gages communément reconnue aux États- Unis et dans plusieurs autres pays, mais pas en France, avec pour solutions de contournement possibles, pour le lecteur, des ajouts descriptifs ou de didascalies, et pour le spectateur, des éléments de décor (une mention « Prêteur sur gages » sur la vitrine de Loan Shark, celle-là même que surmonte l’enseigne aux trois boules de cuivre, par exemple) ou de scénographie (une gestuelle appropriée, lorsque c’est par synecdoque (« trois boules de cuivre ») que Kilroy évoque le prêteur sur gages (Bloc 3)).

87 Doivent aussi être traitées les expressions purement idiomatiques, également dépourvues d’équivalent direct :

88 Ainsi Bloc 12, le « Skiddoo ! » de la Gitane, sans équivalent français, et que le traducteur a rendu par « On met les voiles ! »

89 Une autre difficulté tient aux références à des personnalités connues de l'époque et du lieu, sans équivalent dans le référentiel des lecteurs / spectateurs français :

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90 Ainsi Bloc 12, avec l’évocation de « Winchell », nom d'un journaliste américain spécialiste du scooping à la fin des années 50, non transposable dans l’univers français, que l’on a conservé mais agrémenté d’une note pour le lecteur, sachant que demeure pour le spectateur une « petite bulle de mystère » ;

91 De même un peu plus loin dans le même Bloc 12, avec la mention de « Walgreen », chaîne de pharmacies fondée à Chicago en 1901 et présente sur tout le territoire des États-Unis : il paraîtrait inapproprié de traduire « I gotta go down to Walgreen’s » par « il faut que j’aille chez Carrefour », de même que, si comme on l’a vu il est parfois possible d'instiller de-ci de-là une petite information, il a paru, dans le dialogue extrêmement rythmé de ce Bloc 12 où Walgreen est cité, inapproprié d'alourdir et ralentir le texte par l’ajout d’un « [Il faut que j'aille] au magasin du coin de la rue [chez Walgreen faire de la monnaie"].

92 Encore plus délicates à traiter sont les références personnelles de l'auteur — accessoirement parce que l'on n'est pas absolument certain que ces mêmes références aient déjà été très parlantes pour les spectateurs lambda de l'époque :

93 Ainsi, Bloc 12 toujours, « Todd's place », qui évoque semble-t-il un hôtel où Tennessee Williams résida durant son séjour à Acapulco, en septembre 19404, reste impossible à transposer… que l’on traduit donc par un simple « Chez Todd ».

94 Un dernier exemple avec les nombreuses chansons du Clochard qui agrémentent le déroulé du texte : faut-il traduire le texte des paroles proposées par l’auteur, ce qui impose de parvenir en même temps à en conserver le sens et à rester dans la mélodie d’origine, alors même que l'on ne dispose pas, ou peu, de l'arrière-plan culturel correspondant ?

95 Le choix de traduire a paru s’imposer dans cette première version française de Camino Real, afin d’éviter que ces séquences ne soient dans le texte d’arrivée purement « musicales » là où, dans le texte de départ, elles sont elles-mêmes porteuses de sens.

Morphologie des mots, mots déformés et tronqués

96 Il s’agit là d’une zone récurrente de difficulté pour le traducteur, même si Camino Real n’est pas dans ce domaine un titre d’une particulière complexité. C’est un sujet compliqué à gérer parce que, si dans l'écrit en langue anglaise déformer les mots, les tronquer, les noter en mode phonétique, est quelque chose d’admis, de courant et d’assez naturel, il n’en va pas de même dans l'écrit en français où le déclassement du langage — écrire comme on parle — constitue une forme de régression choquante, que l’on a souvent, sous la pression du dogme de la convention d’un écrit « de qualité », beaucoup de scrupules à transgresser.

97 Ainsi, sur des aménagements pourtant assez mineurs, il est parfois nécessaire pour le traducteur de se faire un peu violence.

98 Applications dans Camino Real — Mots déformés : Chez Sancho, dans le Prologue : « Aw, naw », traduit par « Ah, nan », et chez Kilroy, Bloc 4 : « Nah, nah, nah! », « I say nah », « The nahs have it » traduits par « Nan, nan, nan ! », « J’ai dit nan », « Les nan l’emportent ! » ; Chez A. Ratt et Kilroy, Bloc 4 : « Yep » traduit par « Ouaip ».

99 Mots tronqués, élisions : Chez Kilroy, Bloc 3 : « Keep y'r hands off me, y' dirty ole bag », traduit par « Garde tes

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sales pattes loin d' moi, espèce de vieux sac dégueulasse », et « Now le' me think » traduit par « Maint'nant réfléchissons ».

100 Se faire ainsi violence, dépasser la convention et rester fidèle à ces graphies particulières sont un devoir pour le traducteur : en tant que telles elles sont des signes, il faut les respecter.

Les mots en langue étrangère

101 De nombreuses langues sont représentées dans Camino Real : outre l'anglais, on trouve du français, de l'espagnol, et de l'italien. Que faut-il en faire ?

102 Le premier principe est de ne pas traduire ce qui est déjà de l'étranger dans le texte de départ, et qui n'est pas plus étranger au lecteur / spectateur français que ce n'était étranger à l'auteur / lecteur / spectateur de la version d’origine. En conséquence, il n’y a pas lieu de traduire les répliques ou expressions d’origines espagnole ou italienne.

103 Parfois cette position n’appelle pas de traitement particulier, parce que par exemple l’auteur lui-même donne la traduction des termes et expressions concernés :

104 Applications dans Camino Real — Ainsi dans le Prologue, où madrugada est conservé sans difficulté dans la mesure où Don Quichotte explicite lui-même le terme : « madrugada (…) qui lui aussi veut dire lever du jour » ;

105 Ou encore, Bloc 2, où hermano est également conservé en l’état, car traduit par Jacques Casanova peu après : « That's the word for brother ».

106 Mais cette même position parfois ne manque pas de poser problème :

107 Applications dans Camino Real — Ainsi Bloc 2 encore, avec le chant de la Madrecita : « Rojo est el sol… Blanca esta la luna de miedo » ; ici le spectateur risque fort de ne pas percevoir le sens de ces paroles, ce qui est toujours dommageable, mais que faire ? Le contournement pour le lecteur se fait via une note du Traducteur ; Le contournement pour le spectateur est autrement difficile, et peut passer par l’utilisation d’éléments de décor, d’accessoires, ou d’un jeu scénique particulier.

108 Ou encore, Bloc 4, avec ingreso libero (« entrée libre »), seulement traité, pour le lecteur, par un renvoi explicatif, la prise en charge du spectateur étant laissée aux bons soins du metteur en scène et des comédiens.

109 Il n'y a donc pas ici de solution complètement satisfaisante.

110 S’agissant de la question du respect de ce qu’on appelle l’ « étrangéité » des mots, que faire des mots et expressions… en français dans le texte ? Comment reproduire cette étrangéité, qui ne sonne comme telle qu’aux yeux et aux oreilles des lecteurs / spectateurs… non francophones ? Faut-il traduire ces mots et expressions français… en anglais ? Nous avons pris le parti de laisser en français le texte déjà en français dans le TD, d'identifier cela par des italiques et un renvoi, charge étant laissée là encore aux comédiens de faire passer cette subtilité aux spectateurs.

111 Une autre source de difficulté tient aux passages (en anglais) que l’auteur lui-même a traduits (ou transposés) du français et qu'il convient donc de retraduire en français. Bloc 4, le Clochard et le Baron donnent leur version de Padam Padam, la célèbre chanson interprétée par Edith Piaf : leur « Pa dam pa dam pa dam | Echoes the beat of my heart » correspond à une traduction de 1952 de « Il arrive en courant derrière moi » que l’on pourrait ici retraduire en un « C'est l'écho des batt'ments de mon cœur »… très éloigné

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du texte original ! Situation qui n’est pas sans rappeler Mark Twain qui, en 1875, et aux seules fins de démontrer à quel point une traduction pouvait s’éloigner de son texte d’origine — et le trahir —, avait retraduit en anglais, et publié, la première traduction française qui avait été donnée quelques années plus tôt de son conte sur la Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, retraduction qui avait peu à voir avec son texte original.

112 Dans un tel cas, faut-il alors retenir une retraduction en français de la traduction en anglais donnée par l’auteur, ou revenir directement au texte français d’origine ? Toujours par souci de fidélité au texte de départ, nous avons choisi de nous appuyer sur le texte anglais, ce qui revient donc à donner une « nouvelle version » de la chanson en français.

113 Il existe également des mots que l’on choisit finalement de… ne pas traduire :

114 Applications dans Camino Real — Bloc 4, comment aborder le propos de Charlus, « The name of the Camino is not unreal », propos qu’il est difficile de traduire du fait de la nécessité de conserver intacte la résonnance avec le titre de la pièce ?

115 La traduction proposée s'appuie sur une « réinjection » en anglais, permettant non seulement de ne pas perdre le lien avec le titre de la pièce, mais aussi de mettre le spectateur sur la voie du glissement de sens que l’auteur y a inséré, et enfin d’expliciter le jeu de mots de Charlus : « Le nom du Camino c'est Real, pas Unreal ».

116 Bloc 9 se trouve le cas intéressant d’une réplique en français dans le texte, mais immédiatement traduite par l'auteur : « Ici la Douane ! Customs inspection here! » :

117 Le traducteur a donc choisi de laisser telle quelle cette réplique… bilingue d'origine.

118 Enfin, se pose la question des termes, noms et expressions anglais traduits par... un autre terme, nom ou expression anglais : le Funny paper du Bloc 12 (« A section or supplement of a newspaper containing comic strips », d'après thefreedictionary.com) devient ainsi dans la version française... « Comic strip », expression que le traducteur a estimé suffisamment assimilée par la langue parlée française.

119 Derrière tous ces exemples, une leçon se dessine en filigrane : le traducteur doit veiller à ne jamais se laisser enfermer dans des do’s and don'ts, mais à toujours aborder la traduction comme une affaire de circonstance, de jugement, et de rythme.

Jeux sémantiques et jeux de sonorités

120 Les jeux de mots constituent l’un des domaines les plus compliqués de la traduction, en ce qu’il tend à rejoindre d'une certaine manière la poésie, avec des glissements de sens qu'il est souvent extrêmement difficile de reproduire fidèlement en français.

121 Application dans Camino Real — Bloc 6, comment traduire la réplique de Kilroy, « I been in countries where money was not legal tender. I mean it was legal but it wasn’t tender », réplique où Tennessee Williams glisse un jeu de mots entre le tender de « cours légal » et le tender de « tendre » ?

122 Il faut dans un tel cas chercher dans la sphère sémantique de l’expression concernée, en l’espèce legal tender (« cours légal »), un appui sur lequel construire un jeu de mots peu ou prou équivalent ; ce qui a conduit le traducteur à proposer : « J’ai connu des pays où l’argent ce n’était pas la devise légale. Je veux dire, c’était légal, mais on n’en faisait pas pour autant une devise. »

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123 Les jeux de sonorités, assonances, allitérations, présentent également un niveau élevé de difficulté, quoique légèrement moindre peut-être (si l’on met de côté le « contre- exemple » relevé précédemment avec le délicat « No one is gypped at the Gypsie's »). Mais l’exercice reste assez redoutable.

124 Application dans Camino Real — Bloc 4, comment traduire « I used to wonder. Now I simply wander », en respectant la quasi-homophonie de wonder et wander ?

125 Là encore, afin de rester le plus proche possible du texte de départ, il a paru nécessaire au traducteur de ne pas quitter la sphère sémantique d’origine, ce qui l’a conduit à opter pour « J’ai cherché à comprendre, je voulais que ça tourne rond. Maintenant, je me contente de tourner en rond ». Et si l’image n’est pas exactement la même, la hiérarchie des effets — à parts égales, le sens et le jeu de sonorité — est respectée et l’impact sur le lecteur / spectateur correctement traduit.

Les figures de style et l’« enrichissement excessif »

126 Le traducteur peut parfois ressentir la tentation — ou la nécessité s’imposer à lui — d'introduire une figure de style là où le texte de départ n’en comporte pas.

127 Application dans Camino Real — Bloc 8, deux approches peuvent s’envisager pour traduire les propos de Lord Byron, « I can look up at broken columns on the crest of a hill » ; une première option consiste à traduire « à plat », en suivant littéralement le sens de la phrase : « Je pourrai contempler les colonnes brisées sur la crête de la montagne » ; dans une seconde option, il est possible d’animer ce qui dans le texte de départ n’est qu’un élément inanimé, « la montagne » : « Je pourrai élever mon regard vers ces colonnes brisées dont la montagne hérisse sa crête ».

128 Le traducteur doit-il rester littéral ou peut-il s'autoriser à introduire une dimension (animé vs inanimé) et une image (le « hérissement » de la crête), toutes deux inexistantes dans le texte de départ ? C’est là une grande question ; très vraisemblablement, le juge de paix est dans le rythme (comme souvent), qui doit « coller » aux circonstances, c’est-à-dire à la tonalité originale, à la couleur du passage, et aux conditions dans lesquelles se trouve le personnage.

129 Or en l’espèce on observe qu’il existe bel et bien une rythmique dans le texte anglais (deux binaires : bro | ken co | lumns, suivies de deux ternaires : on | the | crest, of | the | hill), qui véhicule une sorte de solennité dont est dépourvue la traduction « à plat », tandis que l’option alternative, substituant à cette rythmique d’origine une image vigoureuse mise en valeur par la double allitération en « r » et en « s », donne au texte d’arrivée une belle force sonore et évocatrice ; dans cette seconde option, l’impact sur le lecteur / spectateur — un mix de sens et de musique — semble correctement traduit.

130 Mais ne risque-t-on pas ici de tomber dans ce défaut grave que l’on peut désigner comme l’« enrichissement abusif », qui revient à trahir le texte en le chargeant de dimensions, images et messages absents de la version d’origine ? Ce ne semble pas être le cas dans notre exemple, tant cet enrichissement reste ici mesuré et discret. Mais il n’empêche : ce défaut doit être combattu avec la dernière vigueur : emporté par son élan, grisé par les phrases qui s'alignent et se déroulent, prenant parfois pour siennes des qualités qui ne sont que de l’auteur, le traducteur se sent pousser des ailes et risque de se laisser entraîner, à moins que ce ne soit pour des raisons peut-être de meilleure accroche commerciale ou autres encore, comme dans les deux exemples suivants (hors

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Camino Real), où le même défaut s’observe sous les jours différents de l’enrichissement abusif, avec « A moveable feast », titre d'Ernest Hemingway, devenu dans sa traduction française, « Paris est une fête »5 et de l’« appauvrissement » excessif, avec « Their Eyes Were Watching God », titre de Zora Neale Hurston, devenu le très (trop) simple, « Une femme noire »6.

Gestion des « béquilles » (ce qui permet de « faire tenir debout » le texte)

131 Les « béquilles » sont tout ce qui permet de faire tenir debout la traduction : il en va ainsi de tout ce que le traducteur fait pour fluidifier, structurer, clarifier le texte… en coupant, en ajoutant, en réorientant.

132 Le risque des « béquilles », c’est qu’elles sont souvent… très visibles ! Elles sont donc à manier avec prudence et modération.

133 Applications dans Camino Real — Dépronominalisation:

134 Bloc 8, échangeant avec Casanova sur la vocation du poète, Byron déclare : « A poet’s vocation, which used to be my vocation, is to influence the heart in a gentler fashion than you have made your mark on that loaf of bread. He ought to purify it and lift it above its ordinary level ». Une traduction littérale, respectant l’emploi d’origine des pronoms, conduit en français à une multiplication de ces derniers qui, conjuguée à l’éloignement entre les pronoms he et it et les noms poet et heart auxquels ils renvoient, nuit à l’immédiateté du sens et rend la phrase ambiguë, phrase dans laquelle le lecteur / spectateur se perd. D’où la tentation — la nécessité, même, ici — de « dépronominaliser » le texte pour rendre sens et clarté à la phrase : « Sa vocation, ce devrait être de le purifier, ce cœur, et de l'élever… » ;

135 Cette technique toutefois peut vite devenir une solution de facilité, qui présente le défaut majeur d’alourdir et de donner un tour quelque peu « scolaire », si l’on peut dire, au texte.

136 Réorientation :

137 Au tout début du Prologue, le lecteur / spectateur apprend que « There is a loud singing of wind », construction existentielle très commune en français parlé, mais assez lourde en français écrit, que le traducteur pourra préférer réorienter en « Un vent puissant se fait entendre » ;

138 Il s’agit là d’une technique sans intérêt particulier, relevant véritablement de la « mécanique de routine » de la langue — même si en d’autres circonstances il peut y avoir là de vrais enjeux de sens et de tonalité.

139 Ponctuation :

140 Il s’agit ici d’une mention « pour mémoire » car… il n'y a pas dans cette traduction de Camino Real d’exemple de telles « béquilles » liées à la ponctuation ; c'est un glissement qu’il faut là encore résolument combattre : l'ossature de la phrase originale doit être respectée, le traducteur n’a pas le droit de remplacer un ligament par un os ni même un cartilage… Les textes de Tennessee Williams sont assez peu sujets à de tels traitements, mais ceux-ci peuvent être très dommageables à des textes d’auteurs tels que Virginia Woolf, dont les immenses, profondes et onduleuses phrases pourraient être mutilées si

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un traducteur indélicat, ou pressé par le temps, se laissait aller à « simplifier » et à remplacer virgules et points-virgules par des points.

Conclusion

141 Trois points de synthèse particulièrement déterminants se dégagent, nourris par l’expérience d’une confrontation avec un texte tel que Camino Real.

142 Le premier tient en deux mots : méfiance et prudence ! Le diable est dans tous les détails, et parfois même dans ce qui semble — à première vue — le plus simple. Ceci doit pousser le traducteur à constamment faire preuve d'humilité devant le texte et son auteur, à ne jamais se précipiter comme si les intentions de ce dernier étaient évidentes, et à toujours soumettre ses certitudes à un doute cartésien sans faille.

143 Le deuxième tient à la part de mystère qui, dans des proportions variables, habite tout texte. Camino Real, à certains égards, est aussi clair que peut l'être un rêve, le rêve de Don Quichotte. Alors pas plus qu’ailleurs, il ne faut nécessairement chercher dans cette pièce la rationalité absolue. Une partie de l’âme de la pièce provient de ce qu’elle possède d’onirique, d’incertain, d’ambigu même, et cette âme, il est important de la faire vivre dans la traduction.

144 Le traducteur ne doit donc pas nécessairement s'en vouloir si le texte qu’il propose demeure comme le texte d'origine : quelque peu incertain par endroits, voire flou parfois. Et il doit avoir le courage de ne pas rationaliser à outrance, le courage de résister à l'envie de « donner du sens » à ce qui semble ne pas en avoir, ou du moins pas suffisamment, par crainte notamment de la mauvaise critique, qui souvent ne repose pas sur la comparaison entre texte de départ et texte d’arrivée, mais seulement sur l'idée qu'elle se fait de ce que « devrait être » le texte d’arrivée.

145 Pour illustrer ce dernier point, il est utile de citer un article de Bruno Corty, dans le Figaro littéraire du 1er janvier 2019, article dédié à Maxime Chattam, célèbre auteur français de polars ; voici ce qu'écrivait Bruno Corty : « on n'imagine pas un instant que le roman puisse être écrit par un Français ! Une ou deux fois, même, quand on tique sur une tournure de phrase, on se prend à maudire le traducteur du livre, c'est dire. » Ou quand l’idée de la réalité tend à supplanter la réalité elle-même…

146 Le troisième point de synthèse, enfin, c'est penser… à Verlaine : « De la musique avant toute chose… De la musique, encore et toujours… » ! Écrire, ce doit être parler à l'oreille — pas aux yeux — du lecteur de l’œuvre traduite. Il faut toujours chercher, dans le texte de départ, sa musique propre, sa rythmique, sa sonorité — autant d’outils au service des intentions de l’auteur —, et il faut s'appliquer à les transporter dans le texte français.

147 Pour cela, le traducteur doit s'astreindre (mais en réalité c'est un plaisir) à toujours dire et redire à haute voix ce qu’il écrit, théâtre bien sûr, poésie bien sûr, mais aussi prose, romancée ou non — le rythme valide le texte. Suivre la musique d'un texte, c'est faire un très grand pas vers la fidélité à l’intention de son auteur.

148 L’analogie avec la musique ne s’arrête pas là : une partition vit beaucoup des rappels, des échos, des répétitions de phrases, d'accords, d'harmonies, et les manquer, ces échos et ces répétitions, c'est affaiblir la partition, et c'est se priver d'une partie de sa beauté. Le traducteur doit être attentif et vigilant pour repérer tout ce qui peut créer ce tissu interne au texte de départ, et qu'il faut recréer dans le texte d’arrivée. C’est à ce prix

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qu’il servira honnêtement et l’œuvre, et son auteur, pour le plus grand profit de la littérature et des lecteurs. Fig 3

Camino Real, Tennessee Williams, Trad. Bertrand Augier Crédit : Antigone14

NOTES

1. Eau-forte : « Une planche de métal (fer ou cuivre) est recouverte sur ses deux faces d'une fine couche de vernis destinée à la protéger de la morsure de l'acide. À l'aide d'une pointe dure, le graveur entaille le vernis selon le tracé du dessin qu'il veut obtenir. Il fait ainsi apparaître, par endroits, le métal débarrassé de sa couche protectrice. Ce sont ces parties du métal dénudé qui seront attaquées, lorsque le graveur plongera la plaque dans son bain d'eau-forte. L'action de celle-ci jugée suffisante, le graveur sort la plaque, la rince à l'eau claire, puis enlève le vernis protecteur, découvrant ainsi toute la surface de la planche, qui présente des creux aux endroits où l'acide a agi. Selon le temps d'immersion, la morsure par acide est plus ou moins profonde et permet d'obtenir un trait plus ou moins marqué lors du tirage. L'opération dans son ensemble peut être renouvelée autant de fois que le graveur le juge nécessaire », extrait de l'ouvrage Larousse « Dictionnaire de la peinture », https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/peinture/eau- forte/152018

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2. Le « théâtre plastique » de Tennessee Williams : du « langage de la vision » à « l’écriture organique », thèse de doctorat en littérature américaine soutenue publiquement le 14 novembre 2014 par Sophie Maruéjouls-Koch, Université de Lorraine. 3. Référence au célèbre graffiti Kilroy was here (« Kilroy était là ») apparu de manière assez mystérieuse durant la bataille de Normandie et que les GI’s américains se sont par la suite ingénié à répéter en de multiples lieux. 4. Lettre à Lawrence Langner, n.d., Yale, citée in The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, vol. 1, 1920-1945, edited by Albert J. Devlin and Nancy M. Tischler, The University of the South, 2000, p. 277. 5. Hemingway, Ernest, Paris est une fête, traduit de l’anglais par Marc Saporta, Paris, Gallimard, 1964. 6. Hurston, Zora Neale, Une femme noire, traduit de l’anglais par Françoise Brodsky, Editions de l’Aube, 1998.

RÉSUMÉS

Ce texte est la retranscription de l’intervention de Bertrand Augier lors du symposium ACT (Anglophone Contemporary Theatre – Laboratoire CAS/Univ. Toulouse Jean Jaurès ; dir. Mariane Drugeon, Emeline Jouve, Sophie Maruejouls) du 11 février à la Cave Poésie (Toulouse). Le traducteur revient sur son travail de traduction de la pièce Camino Real de l’auteur américain Tennessee Williams.

This text is a transcription of Bertrand Augier’s paper at the ACT symposium (Anglophone Contemporary Theatre – Laboratoire CAS/Univ. Toulouse Jean Jaurès ; dir. Mariane Drugeon, Emeline Jouve, Sophie Maruejouls) on February, 11th, 2020 at the Cave Poésie playhouse (Toulouse). The translator comes back on his translation of the play Camino Real by the American playwright Tennessee Williams.

INDEX

Mots-clés : traduction, théâtre, théâtre plastique, Tennessee Williams Keywords : translation, theatre, plastic theatre, Tennessee Williams Thèmes : Theater

AUTEUR

BERTRAND AUGIER Traducteur et éditeur ANTIGONE14 Éditions [email protected]

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Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome: The Emcee and the Master of Metaphors in Bob Fosse’s Cabaret Essay

Gerrard Carter

Excerpt

1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBlB8RAJEEc&t=6s

Essay

There was a dwarf MC, hair parted in the middle, and lacquered down with brilliantine, his mouth made into a bright-red cupid’s bow, who wore heavy false eyelashes and sang, danced, goosed, tickled, and pawed four lumpen Valkyries waving diaphanous butterfly wings1. Hal Prince

2 Director-Producer Hal Prince describes a compelling visual that he encountered when visiting a nightclub near Stuttgart in 1951. This androgynous emblem of decadence served as inspiration for the Master of Ceremonies or MC (Emcee), a character that Prince created to serve as a magnetic force able to engage his audience to enter the glitter and impending doom of Weimar Berlin’s transgressed underworld at the dawn of Nazi Germany.

3 First produced on Broadway in 1966, the musical Cabaret was destined to embark on a journey that sustained a number of stage incarnations over the next five decades both on Broadway and on London’s West End including a slew of international productions around the world. Directed by Hal Prince with music and lyrics by renowned American

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songwriting team, composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, Cabaret was based on John Van Druten’s 1951 play I am a Camera which was adapted from Christopher Isherwood’s semiautobiographical novel Goodbye to Berlin (1939). When Prince successfully gained control of the rights to Van Druten’s play, he enlisted the talents of writer Joe Masteroff to fashion his own version and provide the musical’s book. Cabaret was a massive hit winning both the Tony Award and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical and played a total of 1,165 performances.

4 Prince recalls how the musical was named: Calling it Cabaret was Joe Masteroff’s idea. The life of the cabaret as a metaphor for Germany. In the first draft he and Kander and Ebb experimented with two scores running concurrently, one within the book for the personae, the other, pastiche for the entertainers (Prince 126).

5 To facilitate the notion that the cabaret was indeed a metaphor for Germany, the Kit Kat Klub was created to provide a fictional burlesque theater as a forum to showcase a distinct narrative of Berlin hedonism, sexual expression and confronting social commentary. Presiding over this cabaret of sublime decadence is the Emcee, an omnipresent force that encapsulates the many and varied facets of human nature.

6 When Cabaret opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre on November 20, 1966, Walter Kerr writing for the New York Times described the production as having elected to wrap its arms around all that was troubling and all that was intolerable with a demonic grin, an insidious slink, and the painted-on charm that keeps revelers up until midnight making false faces at the hangman.

7 Nobody quite captures the “demonic grin” and “painted-on charm” of which Kerr speaks quite like American actor Joel Grey who originated the role of the Emcee winning the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical. Kerr describing him as cheerful, charming, soulless and conspiratorially wicked. In a pink vest, with sunburst eyes gleaming out of a cold-cream face, he is the silencer of bad dreams, the gleeful puppet of pretended joy, sin on a string.

8 Despite Grey’s Broadway success, it was the 1972 film adaptation of Cabaret directed by Bob Fosse that Grey’s performance garnered worldwide attention. Grey won both the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, cementing his genius portrayal of the Emcee into the subconscious of contemporary culture.

9 Bob Fosse’s background working in local nightclubs exposed him to the themes of vaudeville and burlesque performance. This unique way of life contributed greatly to the innovative thinking that leads to the film’s decadent aesthetic. Fosse was committed to establishing an elevated level of authenticity in depicting the dark degeneracy of pre-war Berlin. Before filming, Fosse traveled to Germany to scout locations of underground clubs and bars for authenticity. He also searched for the weird and the wonderful, distinct faces that captured the Weimar era. Fosse expressed dissatisfaction with the commonplace Hollywood extra telling the Los Angeles Times that he was tired of “that same lollypop look over and over”. He researched German artists that displayed the burnt out and disillusioned period of the 1920s in order to capture the Weimar demimonde of prostitutes, pimps, transvestites, sex and violence. Among the most intriguing artists was Otto Dix whose famous painting Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926) is directly replicated in the opening minutes of the film. The subject’s masculinized sharp-featured qualities with deep dull shadowed eyes

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sits smoking at a table starring impassively at the stage as she watches the Emcee and his varied assortment of performers.

10 The fact that Fosse chose to insert this painting into the opening sequence of the film as a frame within a frame and as a direct reference to the era, is quite compelling. When Otto Dix first approached his subject expressing his desire to paint her he exclaimed, “I must paint you! I simply must! You are representative of an entire epoch”2. Fosse understood what Dix was trying to say by comparing his subject to an entire epoch as he embraced the era with full force in his choice of the Kit Kat Klub dancers, a group of distorted ballerinas whose fixed gaze is devoid of all emotion. The sick pallor of their skin, their clown-like make-up and eyes perturbingly encircled in dark smoky rings exude a disturbing eroticism as they execute a series of signature Fosse slow-motion seductive moves. The motley crew of disproportionate bodies came in all shapes and sizes with Fosse going so far as to tell each woman to eat a big breakfast each morning before coming to work. He also insisted that the dancers stop shaving under their arms. As a result, the dancers looked spent, down and out, and disturbingly intriguing.

11 Fosse declared, I tried to make the dancers look like the period, not as if they were done by me, Bob Fosse, but by some guy who is down and out. You think, ‘Oh I can’t really have them do that. That’s so embarrassing; it’s so bad, so cheap,’ But you think, ‘But if I were the kind of guy who works with cheap cabarets and clubs, what else would I do? So I worked from that, always trying to keep it lively, entertaining (Grubb, 149).

12 Keeping the Kit Kat Klub lively and entertaining is a cover for the slow rumble of the threatening storm that brews as the world awaits its full force with the death of sexual freedom and liberation. One such example is during a scene that features two overweight female mud-wrestlers. Moving through the audience is a young panhandler, a Sturmabteilung socialist brown-shirt who wears the all too familiar Nazi swastika insignia armband. Meaning Storm Detachment, the Sturmabteilung was the Nazi Party’s original paramilitary who played a significant role in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Throughout the match the Emcee incites the crowd, hysterically laughing as he squirts water at the women. The crush of symbols can be heard as the harsh music accelerates the force of each blow. The crowd cheers and laughs loudly at the spectacle while the camera cuts to close-ups of various audience members hysterically laughing at the absurd situation. The young Sturmabteilung can be seen being quickly escorted from the club by its owner. During which time the Emcee suddenly jumps into the mud and triumphantly announces the winner of the match. He swipes a streak of mud across his upper lip to replicate Hitler’s signature mustache and mimics a Nazi salute.

13 In the carnivalesque heightening the theatre of the absurd, the following example of Fosse following a socio-political narrative of this particular era can be seen during the comic variation on the traditional German folk dance the Schuhplattler. Schuhe meaning shoes, the performers stomp, clap and strike their thighs, knees and soles of their shoes with their hands flat (platt). The Emcee and accompanying Kit Kat Klub dancers are dressed in traditional lederhosen. This dance is contrasted with the same club owner who ejected the Sturmabteilung from the club, being beaten by Nazi youths. The violence is brutal and as the beating is juxtaposed by each comical slap, the scene takes on a sinister tone as it evolves into a motif that acts as a commentary to the disruptive political climate of the time. Bob Fosse’s unique style in interspersing dramatic, and in this case, violent scenes throughout the theatrical performances staged at the Kit Kat

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Klub prompts the spectator to reflect on a painful past in world history when Germany was rife with anti-Semitism and the brutal violence that signified the degradation of humanity.

14 One musical number that was bold and extremely confronting in expressing the theme of anti-Semitism to contemporary audiences was the Emcee’s last number that commented on the relationship between Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz. This is the moment when Fraulein Schneider breaks off the relationship because she fears the consequences of marrying a Jew. The Emcee’s eerie yet comical and very entertaining soft-shoe number entitled “If You Could See Her through My Eyes” sings praises to his utter devotion towards a female gorilla. Dressed in top hat and suit, reminiscent of a carnival clown, the Emcee decorated with cheeks bright with red rouge, sings lovingly towards his girlish gorilla. The scene becomes mawkishly sentimental as the Emcee comically begs for understanding while mocking their ill-fated relationship. The scene is interspersed with the sound of laughter as the audience recognizes the impossibility of such a love. When he looks out towards the audience and sings “If you could see her through my eyes / She wouldn’t look Jewish at all” the ramifications become all too apparent. The sound of laughter morphs into the insidious creep of fear of the Jews and the impending hatred that will in turn justify the atrocities committed towards a doomed population. The various acts performed throughout the night at the Kit Kat Klub become disturbing and act as an ominous prophecy of what was to come.

15 Throughout the 1972 film version of the Broadway musical, Bob Fosse was able to utilize the role of the Emcee to not only preside over the infamous Kit Kat Klub but to also serve as an indisputable force able to entail and depart a message of foreboding doom. Bob Fosse’s Cabaret has already been recognized as an artistic triumph coupled with show-stopping numbers and a vehicle of star power. However, what is more striking is that Cabaret was a film courageous enough to embolden truth in order to provide a socio-political commentary that is still socially confronting in today’s world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grubb, Kevin Boyd. Razzle Dazzle: The Life and Work of Bob Fosse. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.

Jennings, C. Robert. “Divine Decadence Provides the Theme for German ‘Cabaret’”, Los Angles Times, June 27, 1971.

Kerr, Walter. “The Theater: ‘Cabaret’ Opens at the Broadhurst”, New York Times, November 21, 1966.

Michalski, Sergiusz. New Objectivity: Painting, Graphic Art and Photography in Weimar Germany 1919-1933 Big Series Art. Köln: Taschen, 1994.

Prince, Hal. Contradictions: Notes on Twenty-Six Years in the Theatre. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1974.

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NOTES

1. See Prince (1974, 126). 2. See Michalski, (1994, 56).

ABSTRACTS

This essay examines the role of the Emcee in Bob Fosse’s Cabaret and the film’s capacity to provide a socio-political commentary that is still confronting today.

Cet essai examine le rôle de l’Emcee dans Cabaret de Bob Fosse et la capacité du film à fournir un commentaire socio-politique toujours confronté aujourd’hui.

INDEX

Keywords: Broadway, Bob Fosse, Cabaret, theatre, film, Decadence, Weimar Republic Mots-clés: Broadway, Bob Fosse, Cabaret, théâtre, film, décadence, République de Weimar Subjects: Theater

AUTHORS

GERRARD CARTER PhD University of Melbourne, School of Languages and Linguistics [email protected]

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Ariel's Corner

Nathalie Vincent-Arnaud (dir.) Music, dance

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Regard sur Holy de la compagnie Affari Esteri Festival Le Temps d’Aimer la Danse, Biarritz, Le Colisée, 7 septembre 2019

Nathalie Vincent-Arnaud

1 http://letempsdaimer.com/compagnie/affari-esteri/

2 Le lieu est retiré, presque confidentiel, comme surgi au hasard d’une rue à l’écart des scènes centrales emblématiques du Temps d’Aimer la Danse (Gare du Midi, Casino) et de la rumeur de l’océan en cette fin d’après-midi de septembre à l’approche des grandes marées d’équinoxe. Le fond de scène bétonné noir quasi brut de décoffrage de ce petit théâtre en gradins de quelque 200 places s’assortit pour la circonstance d’un décor dépouillé. Comme en écho à ce minimalisme, le danseur Shlomi Tuizer, ex- membre de la Batsheva Dance Company et fondateur avec Edmond Russo de la compagnie Affari Esteri en 2005, est seul en scène, devant relever l’immense défi que représente l’incarnation, en moins d’une heure, du poème-cri de Ginsberg, « Howl », dont le souffle, la charge symbolique et émotionnelle, le caractère de manifeste trans- générationnel ne peuvent se mesurer qu’à ceux d’autres monuments poétiques tels que « The Wasteland » de T.S. Eliot.

3 L’adaptation chorégraphique de « Howl » peut sembler relever de la gageure en raison, précisément, du caractère monumental de l’œuvre et de la myriade d’images qui s’y télescopent en lançant de très nombreux défis à l’interprétation. Néanmoins, en soi, le devenir-danse du poème est évident en raison de la structure même de celui-ci, de sa charpente heurtée et convulsive. Les multiples élans et emballements du texte, ses rebonds et ses résurgences composent une matière hautement corporalisée sous- tendue par le phrasé obstiné de la voix poétique.

4 À cette voix « ensauvagée »,1 qui ne connaît aucune trêve dans son acharnement et l’éternel retour du même, répond un corps ensauvagé qui, au tout début de la pièce, se perd en errances et en tâtonnements à même un sol dont il ne s’affranchit qu’au bout de quelques instants, ne gagnant tout d’abord la verticalité que pour retourner à sa position initiale. En contrepoint de cette longue séquence résonnent en voix off les

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premiers vers du poème, dont le déroulement linéaire est respecté d’un bout à l’autre de la performance. Du murmure initial au cri, les voix qui se succèdent, masculines et féminines, en français et en anglais, parcourent toute une gamme d’intensités et de débits, composant avec les jeux de lumière – de la pénombre aux pleins feux en passant par les éclairs stroboscopiques –, tandis qu’aux paroles emblématiques de « Losing My Religion » de R.E.M., égrenées dans l’accalmie d’un a cappella en fondu-enchaîné aux voix du poème, fait place le déchaînement d’une bande-son rock et post-punk (The Fall, The Pixies). Les traversées de scène dans des costumes divers endossés à la hâte – chapeau, street wear, tee-shirt de hipster, gants noirs et autres éléments de travestissement – s’enchaînent, déambulations, courses et sauts en alternance, comme autant de déclinaisons d’identités successives sur la trame continue des voix et des musiques qui déferlent. Ces variations – tempi et costumes, ces derniers finissant par joncher le sol dans une démarche d’allègement progressif – se trouvent prolongées par l’extrême plasticité d’un corps tour à tour traqué et conquérant dont la grammaire semble poursuivre son exploration à l’infini entre girations, pirouettes, isolations multiples qui n’ont de cesse de déporter corps et regard vers d’autres lieux, d’autres modes d’être, d’autres horizons.

5 L’avant de la scène est occupé par trois livres disposés à intervalles réguliers, ouverts successivement au cours de la pièce, dont on comprend au fur et à mesure qu’il s’agit du texte original du poème ainsi que de ses traductions en français et en hébreu. Le danseur s’immobilise à trois reprises pour devenir lecteur, sa voix prenant alors le relais des voix off accompagnant son évolution sur la scène. Chaque livre reposé, c’est le corps et la danse qui reprennent leurs droits pour exalter toute l’intensité incantatoire délivrée par chaque temps du texte. Textes français, anglais et hébreu sont ainsi distribués comme autant de jalons venant ponctuer les lectures par les voix off et servir de tremplin à de nouveaux élans de l’interprète à travers l’espace scénique.

6 C’est le texte hébreu, celui de la langue sacrée, qui fournit de manière éloquente le point d’orgue d’une performance dont la dernière étape donne corps à l’hymne final, « Holy! », apostille du poème qui donne son titre à l’ensemble. À travers des girations qui marquent un engagement de différentes parties du corps, puis du corps tout entier dans des formes sphériques apaisées, se déploie tout le kaléidoscope d’une appropriation graduelle et mesurée de l’espace sur un mode évoquant la kinésphère chère à Laban. La lenteur dans laquelle s’inscrivent globalement le mouvement et les ondulations du corps donnent à voir autant de parcelles de ce corps « sacré » dans sa prise de possession de l’univers alentour. Libéré de la pesanteur et des entraves de la séquence initiale, recomposant une unité battue en brèche par les lignes brisées, les sauts et les saillances erratiques du « Moloch », le corps semble s’abandonner aux volutes d’une quête et d’un désir infinis.

7 Tel un kaddish pour un ange tombé, le poème ré-affirme, au fil de retours et de soubresauts pleinement incarnés par la chorégraphie et la mise en scène, sa nature de partition d’une solitude et d’un désarroi en recherche d’essor salvateur. En cinquante minutes d’une extrême densité sont livrées aux sens du spectateur, outre la moire/ mémoire d’un texte fondateur, la richesse et la complexité d’une création chorégraphique contemporaine oscillant entre danse et théâtre, cri et murmure, figures du corps entravé et du corps libéré qui invitent, dans la simplicité qui lui sert d’écrin, à un authentique partage de questions, d’émotions, d’illuminations.

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NOTES

1. Référence à la définition que Michel Leiris, dans son ouvrage À cor et à cri, donne du cri comme étant un "ensauvagement de la voix" (Leiris 1988, 23).

INDEX

Mots-clés : adaptation, cri, danse, festival, performance, poème, voix Keywords : adaptation, cry, dance, festival, performance, poem, voice Thèmes : Music, Dance

AUTEURS

NATHALIE VINCENT-ARNAUD Professeur Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès [email protected]

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Singing to the Most High for those below: the construction of gay male identity and the motifs in Josiah Wise’s “cherubim”

Alejandro Gouin

A ravenous gay mainstream seeks control … of the very ways we represent our own identities. The radical potential of queer identity lies in remaining outside – in challenging and seeking to dismantle the sickening culture that surrounds us. Bernstein Sycamore

Introduction

1 This paper takes a look at queer music and at how music has entered a new wave in which LGBTQ+ people can openly create and expose characters and life situations that are their own. In writing, or should I say, composing the many facets of queer identity, it is important to note that queer identity is much more than one’s attraction to a sex or another, even though that is what it is usually summed up as. It has social and political aspects that have led queer folks to create their own subcultures. As with many minorities that have come to develop their own subcultures the LGBT+ community has fostered its people and has created a thriving literary, musical and overall artistic culture. What has drawn me to write this paper is the emergence of queer music (or musical pieces with queer undertones) into the mainstream. With teen movies such as Blue is the Warmest Color (2013) and more recently Love, Simon (2018) and the prevalence of queer representation on screen, gay representation has begun to emerge more and more from the shadows and is starting to share the spotlight within pop culture. For queer music, the progress is apparent, but relatively slow. Some queer

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artists are still struggling to come out of the closet or are generally unsure of what it would do to their image, whereas those who are openly queer may choose not to “politicize” their music or touch on queer topics. Artists have begun surfacing from within the social media pool such as YouTube or Instagram, examples such as Troye Sivan, Sam Smith and Keiynan Lonsdale (part of the Love, Simon cast) comes to mind. Instead of holding straight female pop stars as their idols (what Brett calls a “diva culture”1), queer musical culture is effectively experiencing a turn in the modern era when LGBTQ+ people create their own mainstream narratives, whether it be in art or in the media. In queer music history, the only currently noted instance where openly gay males formed a band was in 1991 with the emergence of a new group that later called themselves the Pansy Division, there were other queer artists at the time but they were usually women or deep into the “glass closet,” where everyone suspected they were gay but it was never confirmed. The glass closet is a troubling concept for queer politics as it on the one hand creates a door for queer people who want to enter the mainstream music scene but at the same time it halts the progression of the queer movement for acceptance. Pansy Division’s group leader Jon Ginoli has stated that one of his reasons for starting the band is that he was tired of knowing that some artists were gay and never had the courage to come out, in a sense he wanted to start a new wave of artists who were openly queer and indeed not afraid to flaunt it, and so he did. The Pansy division is known for its playful, hypersexualized songs that fell into a type of light queercore, a movement that was slowly developing underground at the time. What must have made the band’s fame is their opening for a Green Day concert in 1994, at the time when the band was about to make it big. That day they were exposed to hundreds of Green Day fans who heard the Pansy Division’s songs and were both mystified and shocked by their lyrics. One of the songs they sang, Groovy underwear, starts with “Tight briefs on your sexy butt/White fabric surrounding your nuts/Bike shorts put it on display/ You’re wearing it to the left today”. The lyrics do not hide their homoerotic themes and do so in a very visual and sexualized way, borrowing from the style of their punk predecessors the Sex Pistols; they made tunes that were both catchy and overtly political. From here on, the queer music scene has become more courageous, and modern-day musicians such as Sam Smith, Frank Ocean, Perfume Genius, ROB.B, Bronze Avery and many more have started to construct a musical representation for queer males. The question here is: what does this shift from underground to the mainstream imply and how do queer males represent themselves in music?

2 In this paper I would like to analyse closely a particular artist in contemporary queer music that goes by serpentwithfeet. A more detailed study could have focused on representation in different music genres, such as Pansy Division (queercore), ROB.B (hip-hop/rap), Troye Sivan and Sam Smith (pop), and examined how these identities complement and oppose each other. I have decided, however, to undertake a close analysis of a song that belongs to the experimental gospel genre and show how this opposition between form and content creates rupture and subversion. While doing this I will analyse the emerging motifs and representative schemes to then draw out how exactly queer culture is constructed and defined in this particular song through music composition, lyrics and style, the recurrent themes and characteristics of this mode of expression.

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Case study: “cherubim” by serpentwithfeet

3 Link to the song: “cherubim” by serpentwithfeet

4 The song “cherubim” was released in the album soil in 2018 (no capital letters according to the artist’s choice), and was composed and sung by serpentwithfeet, otherwise known as Josiah Wise, a New Yorker who has a background as a gospel singer and is openly gay. His aesthetic as well as his fashion are quite avant-gardist in nature and experimental in form. He tries to shock, sensitize and bring people to question the values they have established, by dressing in both a feminine and masculine way which could be defined in terms of choosing to polish your nails and wear make-up but also not having any hair and sporting a beard. This is neither drag or redefining gender but actually blurring the lines between what is masculine and feminine to neutralize both these social constructs. This desire to neutralize gender and unapologetically erase the values that restrain and suffocate us is extremely present in this particular song in which the composer, utilizing many semiotic features and symbols, has achieved a degree of lyricism that both shocks and seduces in a rather uncanny way. He is known for mixing the erotic with the spiritual and he merges gospel and electronic music. Working with Bjork in 2017, he was able to reach out to a wider crowd and become much better known.

5 Here are the lyrics of the song: [Intro] I get to be devoted to him I'm like his cherubim Cherubim

[Chorus 1] I get to devote my life to him I get to sing like the cherubim I get to devote my life to him I get to sing like the cherubim

[Verse 1] Boy, every time I worship you My mouth is filled with honey Boy, as I build your throne I feel myself growing Sowing love into you is my job Sowing love into you is my job Anything else is a weak curse, oh2

Between Heaven and Hell, Sin and Salvation

6 One of the notable aesthetics here is linking the religious to something otherwise seen as profane or sacrilegious. One of the other music artists we could have explored more in depth, ROB.B, also utilizes a religious motif to design his CD cover for his rap album Eleven Eleven in 2013, where he poses with a halo over his head, which is customary in classical western Christian paintings to depict saints or angels. Often times, queer artists as a subversive strategy and as retaliation against attacks towards their sexual orientation utilize this junction between the new and the old to combat conservatism

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or arguments against homosexuality routed in the rhetorics of tradition and religion. By mentioning that homoerotic relationship have existed since Ancient Greece under the form of pederasty and other forms of male apprentice/teacher relationships, queer artists use this to their advantage as a counterargument. That being said, using iconography or motifs that directly relates to history or religion acts as a political argument against such a commonly brought up discourse. Aside from the political dimensions, although ever present, the use of the religious motifs embellishes the song, stylizing it not only as a gospel song in its subject matter but linking this passion that is celestial to one of the flesh, to carnal desire.

7 The theme of the flesh is represented in the lyrics, formally through the music and is represented through dance if we were to bring the music video into our analysis. Within the use of the word themselves, in the couplet, he starts “Every time I worship you/ My mouth is filled with honey” mentioning the mouth here adds a degree of sensuality and paired with something sweet such as “honey” “filling” it adds a moving image of a resolved recurrent event within the listener’s mind. The word choice is careful and deliberate, feigning at both candid innocence and ravenous lust, if one would replace “honey” with “you” or “body” the message would be more explicit. Additionally, the vocalist uses a pronouncing vibrato when he sings “honey”, dragging the /i/ sound with a shrill that comes in quivering, needy layers as if the vocalist, through mimesis, was emulating the sweet lightness of honey, the /i/ sound phonetically defined in poetry as a bright vowel becomes a perfect tool to pair this vocal technique that gives texture and colour to the word sung as well as a yearning for the said honey to come to him.

8 Furthermore, the phrase “Everytime I […]” increases the expectation for said honey if a previous condition is fulfilled. The chorus, sung by a myriad of voices, hauntingly chants “I get to[….]/I get to[…]” noting not only the devotion to the addressee but the exceptional importunity being able to love or in this case, adore someone. In terms of homosexual politics, this line is important in the song formally and ideologically. Formally, as it is part of the chorus and thus is meant to be repeated throughout the song so the message is intensified and drilled within our mind.

9 Ideologically it refers to the current status of LGBTQ rights where a man may be able to love another man legally and ethically, that is to say without being seen by many as evil. The chorus of this song, outside of its intra-textual context, takes the form of a celebration of the LGBTQ rights advancement. By drawing the flesh closer to what is spiritual and divine, Josiah Wise attempts to erase the frontier religious has built between carnal desire and “religious” passion, the body and the spiritual form. Another thing worth noting, in the spirit of the analysis of the links between gender politics and the motifs used in the song. “Cherubim” is the word that we use when we want to talk about one or two of these celestial beings according to an online dictionary upheld by Collins Harper 3: noun, plural cher·ubs for 3, 4; cher·u·bim [cher-uh-bim, -yoo-bim] /ˈtʃɛr ə bɪm, -yʊ bɪm/ for 1, 2. 1. a celestial being. Gen. 3:24; Ezek. 1, 10. 2. Theology. a member of the second order of angels, often represented as a beautiful rosy-cheeked child with wings.

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10 Also following this line of thought, one theory by Robert Alter, a professor of Hebrew and a translator, suggests that etymologically the term “cherubim” may be different from how we perceive it: The cherubim, a common feature of ancient Near Eastern mythology, are not to be confused with the round-cheeked darlings of Renaissance iconography. The root of the terms either means "hybrid" or, by an inversion of consonants, "mount," "steed,"4[…]. (Robert Alter, "The Five Books of Moses," 2004, commentary on Genesis iii.24)

11 My argument here is that Josiah Wise used the term “cherubim” to allude to the being’s potential for duality or “hybridity”, as people are able to be both male, female or none. Cherubs, like most celestial beings, are genderless, and as such become an adequate metaphor to both define genderless people and elevate their image to an icon such as the cherubim. This aspect is reinforced by the vocalist’s ability to sing in a high falsetto that would be closer to a feminine attribute and with the tribal, cult-like, deep voices, closer to the male’s, that sing the chorus.

Our voices: daemonic or angelic, passion or lust

12 In our modern times, there still exists a chasm between both the terms passion/ lust; and devotion/obsession that is difficult to breach. To explain the difference between these terms is a matter of great subjective and self-reflexive skill. The song begins with an intro: “I get to be devoted to him/I’m like his cherubim/ Cherubim. [percussions begin, chorus ensues]” then the song starts with what sounds like an introduction or a literary incipit in which the singer prepares us for the otherwise brutal and frontal subject matter of the song. The initial verse is sung with a soft warm melody whose acoustic sounds like the inside of a church, accompanied by a piano. The last word is said flatly as if to the introduce the title of the song, the song plays and we do not hear the piano again. In this part of my analysis I wanted to take proper care to analyse the voices in the chorus that seem to play a central part in the musical dynamics of the piece. When describing the voices in the chorus some writers have settled to label them as “sounding like demons”5, this is not far from the truth as these chanting voices do sound as if they are invoking spirits or supernatural beings. However, the deep, throaty voices, at least at the beginning of the song, do not sound ominous, disturbing or aversive but seem to haunt, seduce and enchant. The harmonies between the different voices (as well as its polyphonic features) paired with the different tones give the song texture and interest. The singer mixes his own high-pitched style to the deep voices in the background, creating a medley of voices that both clashes and intertwines in an elaborate melody.

13 In Brady’s article “Oh, Boy! (Oh, Boy!): Mutual Desirability and Musical Structure in the Buddy Group” she writes about polyphony being a component of the avant-garde in Kristeva’s research on the ‘transgressive’ novel and how this same polyphony can be opposed to the overall rhythm of the song not only enhancing it but creating meaning through the very differences between the rhythm of the music, of the many voices and the lyrics: […] instead of assuming that music gives meaning to words by enhancing the musical features of speech, I start from rhythm in the song as a material semiotic that produces meaning by the differences it sets up from the spoken rhythms of speech. It is as if the musical 'setting' makes explicit the semiotic as an aspect of language separate from the symbolic, foregrounds it, and explores the differences.

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14 Building on this idea, I propose that the polyphony in “cherubim” acts as melodic discourse that adds to the semiotic value of the song but that also plays a part in constructing and disrupting the rhythm, which in turn plays a part in one of the subversive strategies of Wise’s experimental music and its desire to erase heteronormativity. The polyphonic qualities intensify in the last chorus when new voices are added to the already present voices in the chorus. Each sings “Boy” at different intervals and harmonizing in parallel keys, one of the voices singing in a higher key and one lower. This creates a back and forth motion, a yank and pull movement that compels the listener’s attention here, there, and everywhere all at once. This is paired up with the string instruments in the background that hold deep, long notes that, like their strings, seem to pull and entrance us into the movements of the song. Due to this characteristic of the song we are brought to empathize with the character’s attraction towards these voices that seem to be his own, chanting “boy” in his head, as this is all he can think about. The presence of many voices in a piece is also a distinct trait of a gospel choir, in his article Mapping Subversion: Queercore Music's Playful Discourse of Resistance, Dechaine talks about Hebdige’s concept of bricolage6 as a punk subversive tool that “describes a process by which objects and musical forms are appropriated and reconstructed”. Similarly, in this song, Wise appropriates the form of gospel and its content, subverting it by adding another meaning to “Him”, the pronoun formally used to denote God by capitalizing the first letter. Where in form and isolation it sounds like a eulogy to God but it is not, rather it is the idolization of another boy and this where the play on subversion lies.

15 The song “cherubim” achieves varying degrees of semiotic engagement as it vacillates towards discourses on gender politics, homoeroticism, religion and questions of lust, in contrast to passion, it pulls our attention towards questions of losing one’s self into love as being potentially fulfilling but at the same time destructive without proposing any answers to set questions. In terms of the identity it creates for gay males, it proposes a gender-neutral narrative for he who experiences love when falling in love with a male, by blurring the gender of he who loves, he elevates the love above worldly dogma, apart from being overtly sexual and painting an image of vulnerability and slave-like devotion for gay males the song still achieves a degree of mysticism and aesthetic that goes beyond sex.

Conclusion

16 One can assume that modern queer music, or at least male generated queer music, appears to be either hypersexualized or tentative. In this way, portraying one's self in terms of musical sentiment and displaying one's sexuality becomes a leap of faith in which one either talks about it overtly like the Pansy Division or serpentwithfeet or one can attempt to negotiate, creating music that can be interpreted as queer without troubling the tranquil waters of the heteronormative music scene. Evidently, the issue here is: how far one can go? And what exactly needs to be discussed when talking about homosexual identity? Is it the essential element the “sexual” (i.e. homo’sexual’)? That being said, it still is not viable or fair, to characterize an entire community under one identical premise, although this premise is what owed them lives living in secret and fear, can one just summarize queer identity and thus its representation by sexual escapades and unquenchable lust? Only so much can be represented in a single song, it

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is hard to demand a perfect song that tracks all aspects of queerness and such a song would perhaps be too laborious to listen to and would not prove to be effective, rather what is being denounced here is the image of a caricatural, unhinged, and lust-driven queer that is created by such songs. This is not the case for the song “cherubim” but it could be for songs by the Pansy Division for instance, even if it is queercore. Many queer people in the community find themselves having to place themselves apart from a gay culture that is too anchored in excess, debauchery, hypersexuality and drug use.

17 What defines "gayness", down to the very essence of what stems from it and namely its artistry, is all reliant on the homosexual (emphasis on the sexual) part of the experience of living as a gay person. Artists could indeed focus on other parts that forge or influence the community, such as its role models or its day to day struggles, besides just coming out but perhaps staying "out," as it were. This paper sought to draw out the content of queer elements in songs written by queer men for queer men and an area for further investigation would be to examine why the content of these pieces are either so heavily reliant on sexual features (as opposed to just homoromantic desires) or why queer music is being "straight-washed", that is to say where the queer element is almost imperceptible unless one knows the singer and their sexuality. As much as entering the mainstream music scene has proven to be a step forward one can inquire: “at what price?”.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brett, Philip, et al. Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology. Taylor & Francis, 2006.

DeChaine, D. R.. ‘Mappping Subversion: Queercore Music’s Playful Discourse of Resistance.’ Popular Music and Society 21(4): 7-37, 1997.

Hubbs, Nadine. The Queer Composition of America’s Sound: Gay Modernists, American Music, and National Identity. University of California Press, 2004.

Leibetseder, Doris. Queer Tracks: Subversive Strategies in Rock and Pop Music. Routledge, 2016.

Peraino, Judith. Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig. University of California Press, 2006.

Summers, Claude. The Queer Encyclopedia of Music, Dance, and Musical Theater. Cleis Press Start, 2012.

Taylor, Jodie. Playing It Queer: Popular Music, Identity and Queer World-Making. Peter Lang, 2012.

Whiteley, Sheila, and Jennifer Rycenga. Queering the Popular Pitch. Routledge, 2013.

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NOTES

1. Brett, Philip, et al. Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology. Taylor & Francis, 2006. 2. “Cherubim.” Sung by Josiah Wise, YouTube (consulted on the 23rd of May, 2019) 3. Random House Unabridged Dictionary. “Cherubim.” Dictionary.com. 2019. .(consulted on the 23rd of May, 2019) 4. Douglas, Harper. “Cherub (n.).”.2010. 2019. (consulted on the 23rd of May, 2019) 5. Empire, Kitty. “Serpentwithfeet: Soil Review – Raptures of a Former Choirboy.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media. 10 June 2018. (consulted on the 23rd of May, 2019) 6. Hebdige, D. 1991 [1979]. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge

ABSTRACTS

This paper seeks to take a closer look at the construction of queer male images through music. Queer music has been around since queer people have begun making music, taking various shapes and evolving along with the social climate. It has moved from being invisible to the naked “ear”, so to speak, to being more overt and subversive. This paper will take the form of a case study of a particular song by Josiah Wise entitled “cherubim,” that paints a picture of queer identity in quite an interesting way. By utilizing close-listening, thematic and stylistic elements this paper will describe and analyse the motifs hidden beneath the words and the notes to then explore how exactly this song fits into the general discourse of current queer politics.

INDEX

Subjects: Music, Dance Keywords: queer music, queercore, LGBTQ+, gay culture, queer identities Mots-clés: culture gay, identités queer, LGBTQ+, musique queer, queercore

AUTHORS

ALEJANDRO GOUIN Étudiant en Master 2 d'Études Anglophones Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès [email protected]

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Three Ballerinas: A Moving Sketch (Jellybean Dance Collective, 2019) An interview with dancer and choreographer Victoria Niblett

Nathalie Vincent-Arnaud

1 The performance Three Ballerinas: A Moving Sketch given by some members of the Alabamian company Jellybean Dance Collective (https://victorianiblett.com/ jellybeandancecollective; https://vimeo.com/353062954) was one of the highlights of the 15th international F. Scott Fitzgerald Society conference on "Place and Placelessness" that took place at the Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès from 24th to 29th June 2019, organized by Pascal Bardet, a Fitzgerald scholar and member of the Society (https://cas.univ-tlse2.fr/place-and-placelessness-the-15th-international-f-s- fitzgerald-society-conference-600327.kjsp).

2 Victoria Niblett, founder of the company, dancer and choreographer, kindly agreed to answer some questions about her piece which focuses on one of the most fascinating figures in American literature and artistic life, whose pioneering role and legacy were duly emphasized during the conference: Zelda Fitzgerald. Nathalie Vincent-Arnaud: How did you come to be connected with the Fitzgerald Association and the Fitzgerald conference that took place in Toulouse last June? Victoria Niblett: This work, Three Ballerinas: A Moving Sketch is a part of a project called The Sweet Home Storytelling Dance Series that I created in the summer of 2018 in partnership with the ALABAMA 200 organization. This organization’s mission is to commemorate the bicentennial of Alabama’s statehood and inclusion into the United States of America. My role in this celebration is that I take significant historical events, people of interest, and natural heritage in the state of Alabama and translate their importance into movement and dance. The goal is that audiences will be able to connect and engage with these narratives in a unique and interdisciplinary way. In my research for this exciting time in Alabama’s history, I was immediately inspired to dive deeper into the legacy of Alabama native Zelda Fitzgerald and dance her story. I presented this idea for a site-specific performance to the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, and they invited us to debut this performance on December 14, 2018 where Dr. Kirk Curnutt, the Executive Director of the F. Scott

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Fitzgerald Society saw the performance and facilitated positive discussion and inquiry on Zelda’s legacy and how we were translating it through one of her sketches into dance. My dancers and I were able to dance as a ‘moving’ exhibit throughout the Museum and interact with the space and energy of the only museum in the world dedicated to the lives and legacies of the Fitzgeralds. We also found it incredibly inspiring that this museum is also the site of their last extant home as a family and where they wrote portions of their respective novels, Save Me the Waltz and Tender is the Night. Ultimately, after this performance, we were invited to the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society’s 15th International Conference in Toulouse this past June.

NVA: What are your background and main sources of inspiration as a dancer and choreographer? VN: I have been training in dance since the age of two, and continue to dedicate my time to learning more about my craft through classes and intensives. I recently graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Alabama with a degree in dance and public relations and an honors college distinction that allowed me to take classes through the University of Alabama Law School while an undergraduate. During college, I balanced my academic endeavors with performances on UA’s official dance team the Crimson Cabaret, the state’s premiere student-produced concert Dance Alabama!, and the Alabama Repertory Dance Theatre company. While a part of the Alabama Repertory Dance Theatre Company, I was cast in works by Quianping Guo of the Vaganova Ballet Academy, Lawrence Jackson of the Cleo Parker Robinson company, Natosha Washington of The Penguin Lady Dance Collective, and more. In my final semester of undergraduate study, I presented award-winning research in Choreography and United States Copyright Law for the Research and Creative Activity Conference and collaborated with Sarah M. Barry and Andrew Raffo-Dewar on the Sonic Frontier Series concert. After graduating top of my class, I was able to travel to New York to study floor work, partnering, and contemporary movement under Shannon Gillen and her visionary dance theatre company, VIM VIGOR. I was honored to be accepted as a full-time professional student at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in New York and recently performed with the school’s intensive program in “Ritual to the Sun” from Martha Graham's 1981 ballet, Acts of Light. I launched the Jellybean Dance Collective in December of 2018, and am the current director of a budding interdisciplinary moving arts company focused on storytelling and arts integration. I am also a current company dancer for Formations, directed by Whitney Renfroe, and debuted with the company this past September in the multidisciplinary arts show, Permanence. I can also be found at national and international dance conventions, festivals, workshops, and performances. Most recently, I traveled to Hermosillo, Mexico for the Danzética convention where I teach modern and contemporary movement and Montrouis, Haiti to teach tap and creative movement classes. I love to inspire young artists to discover their dreams, and aim to give them the tools and confidence to achieve them. With my choreography and teaching residency at Encore Performance Company in Birmingham, Alabama, my students have won regional and national

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titles in dance and have gained special recognition for technical execution and choreography. I’m currently in my first semester of my master’s degree studies at Johns Hopkins University where I am pursuing a Master of Arts in Cultural Heritage Management and Nonprofit Management. I am focusing on intangible heritage practices and a space of the cultural heritage sector that allows me to be a part of building the bridges that connect our world and place value on participating in the exchange of art, culture, history, and humanity. These aforementioned values serve as my biggest choreographic inspirations, and I like to focus on universal truths and human connectivity in my work. In my creative endeavors, I like to focus on how to expand the specific or personal into the universal because I believe while our experiences are vastly different and our backgrounds transcend continents and time, most often there are points or commonalities of universal wants and needs for expression, connection, and understanding within every story. For example, in my dance of Zelda’s story, I believe there’s something all of us can understand or relate to - whether it’s me choreographing as a third person narrator, or one of my dancers dancing as Zelda’s experience of her own mind, or an audience member watching and experiencing the work, I believe there are universal ideas situated within the specific and biographical account of Zelda’s life that can transcend the lines of her own story and touch our own. Because of this focus, my work often requires an active audience involved in inquiry, discussion, and consideration of the work and its greater significance. In creation of the work, I often use words and literature to generate movement phrases and think about the body as a translator for these words in a universal language. I also long to use the body as a map for big emotional experience that can't quite be translated into words. For example what would exhilaration look like on the body? How would it move? These challenges inspire me to move, and I use these ideas to create most of the works I present.

NVA: Your website mentions that your company, Jellybean Dance Collective, was named after Zelda Fitzgerald, more particularly after the dance group she was involved in at some point. Do you know why Zelda’s dance group was called The Jellybeans in the first place? VN: I’m unclear of Zelda’s motivations, but historically and according to National Geographic, jelly beans had become a very popular penny candy by the late 19th century so they would have been popular enough by Zelda’s childhood to be recognizable. Webster’s dictionary included “jelly bean” by 1905, and by 1915 the word “jelly bean” even became popular slang for a worthless, weak male. In 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, “The Jelly-bean” featured a male character with these uninspiring characteristics. I imagine this pejorative use for the word has something to do with why Zelda’s group was called The Jellybeans though I don’t know for sure. We were of course attracted to being called the Jellybean Dance Collective because of Zelda’s dance group, but beyond that we found inspiration in the variance, diversity, and whimsy of the candy. In my research, I also found that while this is a relatively new candy, it combines candy making practices inspired from 1600s France and all the way back to Middle Eastern biblical times. This idea of time transcendence and tradition was appealing to me. I was also inspired by the idea of the accessibility of the “penny candy” which was an affordable sweet for working class Americans that expanded on the look of a common bean. Beans were things many were growing in

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their own gardens and knew familiarly, but the jelly bean was just making life sweeter!

NVA: On the website you also describe yourself as « a history and literature lover ». Was your interest for Zelda Fitzgerald originally triggered by Zelda the dancer, Zelda the writer, or both? VN: I’d say my interest and passion for Zelda Fitzgerald was triggered by Zelda the woman. I found her enchanting as so many people do because of her vibrancy, no matter her creative endeavor, but beyond this I found connection to her as a strong, Southern woman and interdisciplinary artist first. I remember reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in high school and being enthralled by it, but I had a very unique experience of discovering Zelda because as an Alabama woman myself, I discovered Zelda Fitzgerald separately from her husband in my research on female Southern artists and ‘famous’ people from my state. I think this allowed me a very unique and privileged perspective on both Scott and Zelda because I viewed them separately before I viewed them as entangled in a creative partnership. It truly allowed me to value them both independently before I began to dig into their legendary relationship, and I am very thankful for that perspective.

NVA: Can you see any specific connections between her approach to dance and her approach to literature since she was devoted to both arts? VN: Now this is an excellent discussion that I hope will continue in scholarship on Zelda. In life and in her writing, Zelda was enchanted by the unanswerable questions, the fragment, and the surreal. However, ballet is none of those things. Ballet is fantasy, beauty and symmetry, and in my experience, classical ballet is a world that makes “sense.” There is a right and wrong, and there is always an answer to the question. There are understandable patterns and often, every loose end is tied up. At the F. Scott Fitzgerald conference, there was an incredible panel with Meryl Cates on Zelda’s dance background that was illuminating and inspiring to me. We talked about Zelda’s relationship to ballet and her experience of it perhaps being tied to the pursuit of a world that made sense and a world of comfort that was associated with her youth and memories. Zelda trained in and performed ballet since she was very young, but after her marriage to Scott, she infamously picked back up with her training “late” in life, and to some this obsession with making up lost time in ballet training allegedly 'caused' her mental breakdown. Many associate Zelda's decline mental health with her devotion to ballet, which in my opinion is unwarranted. However, I couldn’t help but wonder if Zelda would have pursued modern dance instead of ballet how her life and experience would have been different. Modern dance was booming and blooming in Zelda’s time, and it is a form more associated with the ‘unanswerable questions’ of Zelda’s fascination. It would also perhaps have been friendlier to her aging body and limitations. I know that Zelda was linked to some of the modern dance community, and particularly Isadora Duncan, whom many call the 'mother' of modern dance. Like Zelda’s beautiful streamers of words, Duncan’s movement followed organic succession of the body's instinct, celebrated freedom, and engaged in the divinely feminine. Duncan’s philosophy was incredibly compatible with Zelda’s. However, Duncan was notoriously unstable financially in her late dance career. Was this significant enough to Zelda to deter her modern dance pursuit? Also, was modern dance just not socially where Zelda wanted to be? Was it not yet the “high brow” or rooted art form in which she wanted to prove herself and gain recognition? Was it not the dance form in which she felt this unexplainable

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attachment to the divine transcendence of time? Was modern dance not associated to the lost youth and innocence that maybe she was trying to internally recreate in an external world that was becoming unsteady and unpredictable for her? Would modern dance just not pay enough to financially support her life and gain her the independence she was seeking? It’s interesting to think about, and perhaps scholars way smarter than me can answer these questions!

NVA: Your latest piece, called Three Ballerinas, was inspired by Zelda’s eponymous sketch (drawn perhaps during one of her stays in mental hospital?). Could you explain how you got to work on this particular sketch, and how important it is, in your opinion, in Zelda’s career? VN: My senior year of college, I went to the Fitzgerald Museum in Montgomery, Alabama for the very first time. I was immediately enchanted by their collection and presentation of two vibrant life stories. Zelda’s letter and art work were particularly resonating to me, but I remember walking in the very back room and seeing Zelda’s “Three Ballerinas” for the very first time. To avoid a cliche, this was truly a life changing moment for me. As a dancer myself, I gazed at the sketch of these three grotesque ballerinas with their swollen arms and legs, proud chests, and unidentifiable faces. Dancers had never been portrayed in a way that understood me as much as that sketch did. I began to dig into her legacy, and like so many others found myself feeling an unexplainable, magnetic connection to Zelda. She understood me without even knowing me. In my work, Three Ballerinas: A Moving Sketch we interpret Zelda Fitzgerald’s sketch, “Three Ballerinas” to illustrate the relationship between the three facets of a singular entity: mind, body, and spirit. Though this narrative focuses on the life and legacy of Zelda Fitzgerald, this is a universal story because each of us understands the journeys between the harmony and discord of our three inner selves. Not only do these journeys have a direct impact on identity expression and the experience of our internal world, these journeys manifest in our external world and relationships. Immediately from the sketch, some things that inspired this dance work were Zelda’s use of proportion. We interpret the shrunken heads to represent a loss of identity. All at once, Zelda sketches for us the sadness of feeling unseen and faceless. She writes about this in her work often, and we all understand in a specific and a universal sense the tragedy in loss of identity. However... I don’t think that’s the period at the end of a sentence. I believe Zelda shows us another layer to this. The heart center, soul, or spirit of these dancers is swollen, and the chests are proud and open. You can almost feel the ballerinas breathing, filling their lungs east to west. Our eyes are drawn to these wide chests - the heart center - before we even notice there are no faces on the figures. When I am dancing, I am not Victoria Niblett, a girl from a small town in Alabama that gets nervous every time she walks into a room because she doesn’t know where she fits or who she is. When I’m dancing, I am spirit forward. You see my heart - not whatever shell of identity has been flimsily constructed. In Zelda’s experience with dance, I believe she understood this. Another significant aspect of this sketch is the absence of grandeur and opulence that usually accompanies the ballet. Ballet is the highest brow of performance, with tutus and jewels and crowns, and pins, and pointe shoes. These dancers are not costumed. They are not adorned. They are represented not as performers, but as human beings - breaking the idea that the dancer and the person cannot be separated. In fact, she might be asserting the more you dance, the more you begin to connect to that ultimate humanity - thinking about the costumes almost dripping and unraveling

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away. Zelda’s experience with dance could very well have been subconsciously motivated by this desire for a connection between mind, body, spirit, and the external world - stripping down to humanity and nature. Finally, I’d like to acknowledge the swollen hands of these dancers. For the purpose of this work, I see the swollen hands as representational of hard work. Zelda acknowledged how hard ballet was, and we all know of her intense dedication and practice rituals. A carpenter, painter, writer, or sculptor works with their hands crafting and making something beautiful that is an extension of themselves. However, dance has no tangible fixation of work. Merce Cunningham, a modern dance pioneer, once said “You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls.” Zelda’s sketch, “Three Ballerinas” with the swollen hands representational of a hard days work perfectly encompasses this idea. In the greater scope of her career, perhaps the sketch itself is not “significant” but I found it an incredibly unifying piece involving her inner world, her public legacy, and her personal experience of a vibrant, too short life.

NVA: You mentioned dance as « innovative storytelling ». How far does dance – or at least your own dance – actually tell stories? How innovative can it be? VN: At each performance, we provide programs and digital programs to our audience. To promote accessibility and context, we include educational materials in each program with the opportunity to “dive deeper” by presenting springboard sources to audience members. We hope these sources make it easier for audiences to expand their engagement with the subject matter. We understand and hope that dance can be used as a vehicle for literature, history, and other ideas. To help our variety of audiences connect to our mission, we include a key to “decoding the dancing.” Most of our audience members are not technically trained dancers or choreographers, and we want to empower them with knowledge on how to engage with dance in a vocabulary that is familiar and digestible. This allows audience members an ownership and confidence in viewing the dance work as an active audience, breaking the fourth wall of performance and including themselves in the production. Just as reading literature through different lenses, dance has this same capacity. For example, some representational elements to look for in dance are similar to things you will already look for in literature: repetition, tone, and metaphor. In dance, there is in addition use of gestures that represent ideas. For example, we wave hello, rock a baby, or say I’m sleepy in our every day lives to represent ideas without using words. It’s a form of ‘body language’ that is representational in nature. In crafting this work, we expand and abstract on this idea. As far as innovation, I don’t think something owned and within us all like movement and dance can ever truly be innovative because it’s universal and natural. However, I believe that dance as a communication tool in telling stories about the specific can inspire innovative understandings of a story that humanize or contextualize it in an entirely new way. The beautiful thing about dance that is also a challenge is telling a story without using words. Dance communicates ideas, emotions, understandings, connections, and context that is often void of a translation to language. That means it

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can touch audience members and inspire their thoughts in an incredibly personal way that can be internalized and experienced without assigning or limiting it to words or categories.

NVA: How was your performance in Toulouse received by the audience mainly composed of Fitzgerald specialists (maybe not quite familiar with dance itself)? Did you get any comments on your work that struck you as particularly relevant or inspiring? VN: Performing at the Fitzgerald Conference in Toulouse, still remains one of the best experiences of my life to date. We performed in a space absent of a proscenium stage divide, so we were on the level of the audience, breathing and moving with the audience in a way that was incredibly resembling interpersonal communication rather than performance. I remember dancing and experiencing the piece, but quite literally feeling the eyes and focus of the audience that broke the ‘fourth wall’ experience many dance/ theatre performances have. Instead of a one-way ‘projection’ After our work, we received a standing ovation, and some of the audience members even had intense emotional reactions or cried. In personal feedback, I was fortunate to receive many positive responses, but one that resonated with me was from a woman that said, ‘I cannot explain it, but I truly felt that.’ It really resonated with me, and was one of the best reactions I have received because it was exactly my goal. I want it to be an experience beyond words that seems so distinctly personal and universal all at the same time. I suppose one of my goals in my career as a whole is proving that dance is not a ‘separate’ experience from humanity. It is not a ‘high brow’ art only available on proscenium stages and to a specific type of audience or ‘correctly’ experienced by a niche group of people. I don’t believe there’s a ‘pure’ or a ‘diluted’ dance experience. Yes, I always avoid commodification and appropriation out of my core values as an artist and human, but my point is that I don’t associate dance itself and the experience of it as an ‘exclusive’ practice. I want people to acknowledge that dance and movement is the ultimate expression of humanity and connection to our universe. We are works of art after all, and dance is in the very makeup of our natural world. I often say that dance is the greatest expression of humanity because we are in a world that is moving. We live in a moving world full of rhythm - our hearts have beats, our oceans have tides, our earth is in orbit, our elements like wind and water move and shape the world around us. Our world is moving, and a way to connect with it is to just join in the dance!

INDEX

Mots-clés: chorégraphie, danse contemporaine, Jellybean Dance Collective, littérature, Zelda Fitzgerald Keywords: choreography, contemporary dance, Jellybean Dance Collective, literature, Zelda Fitzgerald Subjects: Music, Dance

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AUTHORS

NATHALIE VINCENT-ARNAUD Professeur Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès [email protected]

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Breaking Virginia’s Waves (1931): from page to stage

Jean-Rémi Lapaire

1. Introduction: a “tough read”?

1 Literary scholars have long considered Virginia Woolf’s experimental novel, The Waves (1931), to be her boldest and most accomplished attempt at narrative innovation – a work of fiction “most radically experimental and difficult” (Richardson 1973: 692). Educated readers already familiar with Woolf’s method usually delight in the anonymous, depersonalized prose of the “interludes” celebrating the sea, birds and sunlight; the “dramatic soliloquies” of the 6 protagonists; the “self-presentations and self-justifications” of Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis (Flint, 1992: ix- xiii); the integration of thought, perception, and shifting perspectives into a single, continuous flow of subjective experience. [Second interlude: opening sentences] The sun rose higher. Blue waves, green waves swept a quick fan over the beach, circling the spike of sea-holly and leaving shallow pools of light here and there on the sand (…) Sharp stripes of shadow lay on the grass (…) The sun laid broader blades upon the house. (Woolf [1931] 2000: 20).

[Second section: “the last day of the last term” has finally come. All must now part and travel back home] ‘It is the first day of the summer holidays,’ said Rhoda. ‘And now, as the train passes by these red rocks, by this blue sea, the term, done with, forms itself into one shape behind me. I see its colour. June was white. I see the fields white with daisies, and white with dresses; and tennis courts marked with white. Then there was wind and violent thunder. There was a star riding through clouds one night, and I said to the star, “Consume me”. That was at midsummer, after the garden party and my humiliation at the garden party (…) Identity failed me. We are nothing, I said, and fell. I was blown like a feather. I was wafted down tunnels (…) ‘Now we are off,’ said Louis. ‘Now I hang suspended without attachments. We are nowhere. We are passing through England in a train. England slips by the window,

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always changing from hill to wood, from rivers and willows to towns again. And I have no firm ground to which I go (…) I go vaguely, to make money vaguely. Therefore a poignant shadow, a keen accent, falls on these golden bristles, on these poppy-red fields, this flowing corn that never overflows its boundaries; but runs rippling to the edge. This is the first day of a new life, another spoke of the rising wheel. (Woolf [1931] 2000: 47-48).

2 But the common reader – including the average English literature student – may not be so ecstatic when confronted with Woolf’s 230-page volume. The process of interpretation turns out to be quite challenging, for The Waves is novelistic, yet does not read like a novel. It is equally poetic, yet does not read at all like a poem. The Waves is a unique, unclassifiable piece of fiction that defies all attempts at categorization – a protracted narrative, intensely lyrical and deeply metaphysical, which does not belong anywhere. [Seventh section: midlife. The internal perspective has just shifted from the earthly and motherly Susan, reflecting on her rural surroundings and family life, to the promiscuous, London-loving Jinny, who “still excites eagerness” (in males) but is “no longer young” and knows that men already “seek some other face”] ‘Here I stand,’ said Jinny, ‘in the Tube station where everything that is desirable meets – Piccadilly South Side, Piccadilly North Side, Regent Street and the Haymarket. I stand for a moment under the pavement in the heart of London. Innumerable wheels rush and feet press just over my head. The great avenues of civilisation meet here and strike this way and that. But look – there is my body in the looking glass. How solitary, how shrunk, how aged! I am no longer young. I am no longer part of the procession (…) Lifts rise and fall; trains stop, trains start as regularly as the waves of the sea. This is what has my adhesion. I am a native of this world, I follow its banners (…) Therefore I will powder my face and redden my lips. I will rise to the surface, standing erect with the others in Piccadilly Circus. (Woolf [1931] 2000: 148-49)

3 Although The Waves baffles ordinary readers and often puts their patience and resilience to the test, it is a tightly structured narrative, which is neatly divided into nine autonomous sections. Each opens with an italicized poetic prelude – or “interlude” –, which evokes a particular time of day, from dawn to dusk. The “interludes” are arranged in a strict chronological sequence. All contain a sensory evocation of “the progress of the sun through a single day” that has both a symbolic and prefatory function: the positions of the sun and the changing quality of light connect with “phases in the characters’ lives” and “intertwined subjectivities” (Clements 2005: 163-66): playing, squabbling, attending lessons together at the nursery; going to boarding school; exploring the adult world; torturing themselves and eventually finding themselves; meeting up in London then parting again; coping with the accidental death of Percival (their common friend – sensuous, fascinating but thoroughly hollow); grieving; struggling with desire or disillusionment; reaching middle age; experiencing a final sense of separation, incompletion and loss. As the day unfolds, life unfolds; as the sun travels across the sky, Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis metaphorically travel along the path of destiny, from childhood (the rising sun, the early morning light) to maturity and death (the sinking sun, darkness flooding in): [Ninth interlude: nightfall] Now the sun has sunk. Sky and sea were indistinguishable (…) The tree shook its branches and a scattering of leaves fell to the ground (awaiting) dissolution (…) Dark shadows blackened the tunnels between the stalks. The thrush was silent and

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the worm sucked itself back into its narrow hole (…) As if there were waves of darkness in the air, darkness moved on, covering houses, hills, trees, as waves of water wash round the sides of some sunken ship. (Woolf [1931] 2000: 181)

[Ninth section: Bernard’s closing monologue – a lyrical summing up] ‘I said life had been imperfect, an unfinished phrase (…) And now I ask, “Who am I?” I have been talking of Bernard, Neville, Jinny, Susan, Rhoda and Louis. Am I all of them? Am I one and distinct? I do not know. We sat here together. But now Percival is dead, and Rhoda is dead; we are divided; we are not here (…) Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man’s, like Percival’s, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death! The waves broke on the shore.1 (Woolf [1931] 2000: 218-28)

4 The Waves has a simple linear structure, which readers may safely rely upon as they work their way through the characters’ multifocal and loosely connected monologues. Remarkably, a cyclical pattern is superimposed upon the time line: just as the waves “arch their backs” and tirelessly “break on the shore,” only to “rise”, “swell” and form again (Woolf [1931] 2000: 228), the first-person soliloquies “mass themselves” and “spread” (Woolf [1931] 2000: 112), one after the other, over and again. Ultimately, the myriad events reported by characters – material, mental, perceptual, or emotional – are blended into a single “substance” that is “made (up) of (all the) repeated moments run together” (Woolf [1931] 2000: 171). This shared experiential “substance” is not so easy to grasp in the first place, but readers eventually come to an understanding that this very “substance” is the true fabric of the novel, the very stuff that life is made up of, as Bernard himself explains in his final soliloquy: ‘The illusion is upon me that something adheres for a moment, has roundness, weight, depth, is completed. This for the moment seems to be my life. It it were possible, I would hand it you entire. (…) Let us pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers (…) The globe of life, far from being hard and cold to the touch, has walls of thinnest air. If I press them all will burst (...) What I call “my life”, is not one life that I look back upon; I am not one person; I am many people; I do not know altogether who I am – Jinny, Susan, Neville, Rhoda, or Louis: or how to distinguish my life from theirs. (Woolf [1931] 2000: 183-212)

5 The question nonetheless remains as to what makes reading The Waves so daunting, despite the regularity and strict patterning displayed. A likely reason is that language use, not formal structure, is responsible for the difficulty. For the simplest, most elementary rules of ordinary verbal interaction are intentionally flouted by the narrator(s), and this is not without serious consequences for the reader. Although Woolf establishes her protagonists as credible social actors from the outset, she hardly ever shows them talking and responding to each other, face-to-face, even when direct speech is used, and despite the omnipresent single quotation marks. There are few (if any) instances of “conversation or dialogue”: only “reports” and “evidence of something like overhearing” (Miko 1988: 66). It is a striking feature of the novel that some kind of inner/private language - or “language of thought” (Fodor 1975: 56) - generally substitutes for actual speech (or “public language”); that whenever characters are shown talking, they do not really address anyone in particular and mostly seem to be talking to themselves, in a vacuum, or to some generic person –

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abstract, unspecified, and utterly disembodied – or else to the group as an implied “community of consciousness” thinking in unison (Hild 1994: 69): [Fourth section: the six friends are sitting inside a London restaurant, celebrating Percival’s imminent departure to India. They are “about to part”] ‘Do not move, do not go. Hold if for ever’ (said Louis) ‘Let us hold it for one moment,’ said Jinny; ‘love, hatred, by whatever name we call it, this globe whose walls are made of Percival, of youth and beauty, and something so deep sunk within us that we shall perhaps never make this moment out of one man again.’ ‘Forests and far countries on the other side of the world,’ said Rhoda, ‘are in it; seas and jungles; the howlings of jackals and moonlight falling upon some high peal where the eagle soars.’ ‘Happiness is in it,’ said Neville, ‘and the quiet of ordinary things.’ (Woolf [1931] 2000: 109)

6 Direct communicative interaction, regular forms of dialogue and interpersonal manipulation are virtually non-existent, as opposed to what normally happens in ordinary, situated uses of speech. To complicate matters further, variation in delivery style and speaker idiosyncrasy are unmarked: vocabulary and syntax strike the reader not only as stylized but strangely uniform across age, class and gender, even if subtle “distinctions between characters” exist that the perceptive reader “begins to distinguish” after some time (Hild, 1994: 70).

7 Equally disturbing is the “monotony,” unnaturalness and general indeterminacy of utterance acts throughout the novel (Richardson 1973: 693). As ordinary users of the language, readers may legitimately wonder who is actually being spoken to when anyone says anything; why the speech of young children and adolescents is so inauthentic and unidiomatic2; why there is such a profusion of disconnected statements and reflections; how relevant are the random thoughts and sensations to the situation.

8 Freeing oneself from ordinary socio-pragmatic constraints, disregarding conventional expectations is double-edged: powerful stylistic effects are created, narrative technique and literary aesthetics enhanced, yet, at the same time, special demands are made on the reader that may be stressful. For language is a semiotic system that both reflects and enforces social “convention” (Langacker 2008). The willing suspension of conventionality – the adoption of unconventional semiotic rules – is necessarily disturbing and requires extra processing time and effort, even for the most flexible, and open-minded reader.

2. From page to screen or stage

2.1. A lesson from the arts

9 The critical interpretation of a literary work of such complexity as The Waves (1931) is usually left to scholars and literature teachers, using well established forms of analytic or argumentative discourse – typically the formal talk or lesson, the classroom or seminar discussion, the essay or article, and the (close-) reading exercises. All are patterned and ritualized: participants are assigned strict socio-interactional roles – “speaker” vs. “listener”; “teacher” vs. “student”; “literature specialist” vs. “non-expert reader” – and expected to follow the associated behavioural codes, which include spatial, kinetic and vocal requirements. Speakers may stand or sit, while controlling their use of voice and

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gesture. Listeners and readers are expected to restrain their movements and express themselves only when asked to do so. This is the default teaching-and-learning scenario, which is meant to create favorable conditions for studying literature in Higher Education.

10 There are many ways in which this traditional conception may be challenged. As will be shown later, other strategies and configurations exist that make a fuller use of our shared embodied cognitive and semiotic abilities. The “learning body” of literature students may be encouraged to engage in dynamic acts of understanding (Lapaire 2019): this is the “literature in the flesh” scenario that I have been implementing for some time at my home university and at various workshops or Summer schools. I have been rethinking educational space and activities in literature classes so that the sensing, moving and cognizing bodies of teachers and students may produce physical displays of meanings and a coordinated understanding of literary works. When this happens, the process of interpretation (“explaining”, “understanding”) is stretched beyond intellection. Some kind of physical performance is involved, and some kind of translation/adaptation takes place that draws teachers and students beyond the confines of the sacrosanct printed page. Participants are encouraged to enrich and diversify their spoken or written “discussion” of a given piece: essays and term papers are maintained, but script-writing, reflective journaling, recitation, stage direction, etc., are added to the list of activities used for teaching, learning and evaluation.

11 Although this approach to teaching literature may sound unusual (and possibly unsettling) to most college and university educators, the thematic and semiotic appropriation strategy that has just been described is standard practice in the arts. No playwright or scriptwriter, no video or film director, no choreographer or music composer, and of course no student willing to embrace these professions would survive for long without the ability to transform and perform existing material, to change or adapt the original medium used by some author. Transformation is a professional skill that all artists and art teachers share. It allows them to revisit, reprocess, reframe “things” of any kind, and this of course includes cultural objects, concrete and abstract, literary and non-literary.

12 In her 2:13 minute “book trailer” advertising The Waves, the young Russian film director Daria Darinskaya (2015) uses a clever combination of “interlingual” (English-to- Russian) and “intersemiotic” translation (textual-to-pictorial, written-to-spoken, static-to-dynamic).3 Her aim is to introduce Virginia Woolf’s 228-page novel to Russian- speaking readers in little more than 120 seconds, with the highest level of concision and efficiency. She achieves an extraordinary degree of poetic compression and succeeds in choreographing physical displays of meanings – powerful and haunting. Darinskaya’s “trailer” is intense, synthetic and visually explicit, yet remains enigmatic enough to arouse curiosity and avoid distortion or oversimplification. The hypnotic black and white video captures the essence of The Waves – a seemingly impossible task – in just a few shots and a short succession of voice-over comments. The pictures are mainly close-ups of the 6 protagonists and their common friend Percival; dinner scenes; an evocation of Woolf writing at her desk; smart phones lighting up faces in the dark; waves swelling and breaking. Personal identity, strong emotions (loving then mourning Percival), and a fleeting sense of togetherness (when they are reunited in London) are the most salient themes.

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Figure 1

The Waves: a book trailer (Darinskaya 2015) The narrative process (“The idea of some continuous stream”) (voice-over)

Figure 2

The Waves: a book trailer (Darinskaya 2015) – Neville “Percival will forget me” (voice-over commentary in Russian)

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Figure 3

The Waves: a book trailer (Darinskaya 2015) – Bernard “What has happened to my world?” (after Percival’s death) (voice-over)

Figure 4

The Waves: a book trailer (Darinskaya 2015) Dinner scene (muted, stroboscopic)

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Figure 5

The Waves: a book trailer (Darinskaya 2015) – Susan “I have been knotted. I have been torn apart” (Neville’s words) (voice-over)

13 Another instance of resemiotisation that is most relevant to literary studies is Wayne McGregor’s “ballet triptych” – Woolf Works (2015), which was commissioned by the Royal Ballet, and set to music by Max Richter. As explained in a documentary film produced by the Royal Opera House (Nunnely 2017), both movement and music were used to “translate (Mrs Dalloway, Orlando, The Waves) into something for the stage.” The production met with instant public and critical acclaim. McGregor’s inspired choreographic pieces used kinetic action to capture the “essence” of his literary sources, building on the rich imagery and abundant sensory cues that were present in Woolf’s three narratives. Patterned dance movements were successfully used to resemiotise the characters’ interactions, inner monologues and relationships, like “solitude,” “mental confusion”, “restlessness” and “psychological entwinement,” which lend themselves well to choreographic expression.

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Figure 6

Woolf Works (McGregor 2015 – The Royal Ballet): Mrs Dalloway Lucrezia’s attempt to break into Septimus’s tortured world

Figure 7

Woolf Works (McGregor 2015 – © BBC): Mrs Dalloway Septimus and Evans (“that man (…) his officer (…) who was killed”) Psychological entwinement between the living and the dead

14 McGregor’s visual-kinetic “translation” is consistent with the characters’ “energy” and “dynamic” as they explore time and space in the stories. It is powerful enough to “get to the core of what these novels were about.” As one watches the documentary film or listens to the interviews given by McGregor when the production was revived, one acquires the conviction that a choreographic transposition of this kind operates a performative reassignment of meaning which is conducive to a more holistic kind of understanding, integrating thought, action (movement), and perception (sensation).

15 The transposition process forces the directors, editors, dance notators, script-writers, music composers, dancers and actors involved to reflect upon the intentions and

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meanings conveyed by the source text, to make motivated decisions as to what needs to be preserved, altered, deleted or highlighted in the final performance. Most importantly, the “re-creators” have to agree on the new semiotic means that will express content (e.g. a combination of recitation, movement, music, still images and filmed scenes, as in Darinskaya’s 2015 booktrailer; a mix of music and highly patterned moves in McGregor’s 2015 ballet production). The claim made here is that what artists can do – transform and perform, and in the process acquire a more intimate understanding of the source text – students can do as well: they can recreate, explore and experience meanings differently; they can grasp and internalize what might have remained otherwise “distant” or “alien”; they can learn to interpret literary pieces in a joint cognitive, performative and translational sense.

2.2. Trans-semiotic adaptation

16 Instruction and learning both require interpretive skills: texts need to be understood, problems and equations solved, meanings construed, phenomena explained (Lapaire 2019). But in mainstream educational practice, the process of interpretation tends to be narrowed to its cognitive dimension alone (“understanding,” “construing,” “making sense of something”), when other dimensions exist that tend to be marginalized (outside the arts and translation studies):

17 1. engaging in the artistic performance of a piece while displaying one’s own sensitivity (as in “interpreting a role” or “a piano sonata”);

18 2. translating someone’s words into another language (as in “she interpreted for us”).

19 All three dimensions of “interpretation”, retrievable from the standard definition of the term4, may be integrated into a single model for the formation and transmission of knowledge, in whatever social form – ordinary, scholarly, legal, artistic, or other. The union of understanding, performance and translation constitutes the interpretive potential of humans, irrespective of place, time or culture (Lapaire 2019):

Figure 8

The common interpretive potential: an integrated conception

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20 There are 3 potential roles that a student or teacher might choose to play as they decide to “interpret” something: (1) the expert or scholar who works out the meaning or significance of something, (2) the artist performing a piece with his or her own sensitivity, (3) the language specialist who acts as an intermediary between two idioms (or forms of expression). My current working hypothesis is that playing these three roles jointly rather than separately can be empowering in educational settings.

21 An important point needs to be made regarding the translational dimension. In a landmark paper on translation, Jakobson (1959: 233) defines “three ways of interpreting (translating) a verbal sign”: 1) Intralingual translation or rewording – an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language. 2) Interlingual translation or translation proper – an interpretation of verbal signs by some other language. 3) Intersemiotic translation or transmutation – an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of non verbal sign systems.

22

23 It is the third “way” that is most relevant to the present concern: “intersemiotic translation” – or “resemiotisation” (Eco 1979, O’Halloran et al. 2016). This consists in using a different medium to make the source text or message accessible. Semiotic form is more than just “language material” that speakers use to “package information.” It always matters as form and has a definite impact on what cognitive linguists call “construal” (Langacker 2008) – the way the “thing” or “scene” referred to is conceived and presented to others. This means that any change affecting the expressive medium used will have an impact –subtle or manifest– on the reception of meaning. It follows that the process of resemiotisation goes beyond “repackaging” and will inevitably result in the “reframing” of the original input. The focus might shift, effects might gain or lose in intensity.5 For example, McGregor’s resemiotisation of the Septimus-Evans friendship as a pas de deux in Woolf Works brings out the homoerotic element more explicitly than the original narrative. It performs the kinetic highlighting of verbal utterances like “I must tell the whole world”, “No crime, love”, “He drew the attention, indeed the affection of his officer (…) They had to be together, share with each other, fight with each other, quarrel with each other.”

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Figure 9

Woolf Works (McGregor 2015 – © BBC): Mrs Dalloway Septimus and Evans: solider and officer inseparable

24 Writers and artists are experts at “intersemiotic translation,” which they use to reshape and recycle existing cultural material. The novelty and artistry of their “creations” should not conceal the fact that transposition and transformation are far more common than pure invention. Many of the most valued and cherished works of art in our culture are trans-semiotic recreations or adaptations, rather than creations in a strict sense. Illustrations of this process, past and present, are plentiful. For example, in European and Asian cultures, oral myths, legends, and folk tales have traditionally been resemiotised as written poems or narratives (sometimes illustrated), drawings, paintings, tapestries, ceramics, folk dances, (court) ballets, puppet shows, musical pieces or some combination of these (as in an opera production integrating painted sets, a printed score and libretto, staged vocal-kinetic expression, choreographic pieces, live orchestral music, etc.).

25 What might be called intersemiotic circulation across genres and sign systems in the arts is made possible by the innate human ability to absorb, process and express holistically any experiential input, as the French anthropologist Marcel Jousse (1886-1961) remarkably established in his research and teaching. The reason why switching from one semiotic system to another feels so easy and natural, is that human expression is “global” (multimodal). It is based on a process of “play” (Fr. jeu) and “replay” (Fr. rejeu): the things that present themselves to us are perceptually absorbed and work their way into us, i.e. deep into the body-mind compound. This is the impressive phase. What comes to “play” within us becomes available for external “replay” or “re-enactment,” using the vast array of semiotic means available for expression – vocal, gestural, scriptural, or other. Jousse (2005, 2010) rightly claims that there are no internal semiotic boundaries in the human body-mind compound: the system is whole and fluid, so mixing or changing expressive modalities is the rule (Sienaert 2011). In short, the artistic freedom to resemiotise simply reflects our innate capacity, as sensing and moving creatures, to navigate the entire system of embodied semiotic expression that we live and interact by. We are greatly helped in this by the symbolic plasticity of space and the human body, which may potentially stand for anything or anyone, since the space around us, our

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body parts, our entire bodily frame, can refer to something else than themselves: ideas, events, past or future situations (removed from the present circumstances), people, etc. (McNeill 1992, Calbris 2011).

26 If symbolic plasticity and the ability to replay and transpose were not defining characteristics of human cognition, then paintings would not be so easily “dramatized” and turned into “tableaux vivant” (literally “living pictures”) – a genre that was immensely popular in the 19th century, and which recently came to be revived by Ludovica Rambelli Teatro (La Grande Pittura Prende Vita. Tableaux Vivant di Caravaggio e Michelangelo, 2018-19).6 The performers dress up, move around, position themselves in space, and strike a final pose that is iconic of the original painting by Caravaggio (The Raising of Lazarus, c. 1609, Museo Reggionale Messina). The painting itself is a trans- semiotic adaptation of a miraculous scene reported in the Gospel (John 11:1-44). The written account,7 which Caravaggio used rather freely in his adaptation, is also a product of resemiotisation: it is based on oral story-telling –community narratives that early Christians shared and spread.

Figure 10

Resurrezione di Lazzaro © Gennaro Paricelli e Compagna Ludovica Rambelli Teatro (2018)

27 Similarly, if intersemiotic translation was not embedded in our cognitive systems, then the two adaptations of Woolf’s works that we discussed earlier (Darinskaya 2015, McGregor 2015) would not “look right” or “feel right.” As things stand, Darinskaya’s book trailer and McGregor’s ballet delight rather than baffle viewers, who are all equipped with the necessary interpretive potential to make sense of the resemiotised pieces. The fact that some aspects of the video or ballet remain inaccessible is not in itself a problem. Humans learn – often at their own expense – that the process of interpretation has its own failures and limitations: some meanings are bound to remain

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obscure, whatever medium is used to express them. Struggling with the incomprehensible, coping with misinterpretation or misrepresentation, are also part of the business of interpretation. Readers of Woolf know this well: there is always much to struggle with in Woolf’s experimental fiction, and a large element of mystery left – beautiful, unresolved.

3. Literature in the flesh: embodiment and the performative reassignment of meaning

In reality, humans think with their whole bodies; they think with their hands, with their feet, with their ears, as well as with their brains. It is absolutely ridiculous to claim that their thoughts depend on a part of themselves: it is tantamount to saying that our manual ability depends on our fingernails. » (Jousse 2010 [1974-78]: 73)

3.1. Goals and challenges

28 One may safely assume that literature students are no different from ordinary humans: they are interpretive creatures that are mentally and physically equipped to analyze literary works and convey their experience of holistically, in a joint cognitive, performative and translational sense (Figure 8). This is why synergies may be created between reflection, bodily action and trans-semiotic adaptation that empowers subjects and transforms the teaching and learning experience.

29 A striking feature of the “literature in the flesh” workshops is that they are intensely physical: the teaching scenario is built on the idea that “embodiment” is “a powerful force for learning” (Lindgren & Johnson-Glenberg, 2013: 445), and that “physical effort enhances learning performance” by affecting positively “metacognitive judgements” (Skulmoski & Rey, 2017: 3). Students go through all the stages leading from the abridgement, re-elaboration and inter-semiotic adaptation of the source text to the final group performance of the new piece – typically a succession of scenes or tableaux vivants, grouped into acts or arranged into “galleries.”

30 It should be clear that performing texts and meanings together in the literature class is intended to supplement – not replace – existing approaches to literature and critical analysis. Students are presented with a variety of literary pieces that are potentially open to compression and resemiotisation. The works may belong to a variety of genres: drama, poetry, fiction, critical or autobiographical essays.

31 Engaging in interpretive action and orchestrating a performative reassignment of meanings is what the experience is essentially about. As the process unfolds, a shift occurs from “the literary object to the act” (Schewe, 2013:15), from the scriptural to the vocal and gestural. But there are numerous challenges to be met: cognitive (e.g. confusion), kinetic (e.g. stiffness, awkwardness), socio-psychological (e.g. shyness, self- consciousness, embarrassment), to name but a few. All must be overcome for the experience to be successful. The unusual level of “engagement and artistry” required (Piazzoli, 2018: 317) can only be achieved if the transition between the traditional classroom space (or “standard education zone”) and the workshop space (or “temporary kinaesthetic learning zone”) is carefully managed (Lapaire 2019).

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Figure 11

Moving across learning zones (Lapaire 2019)

32 This is why the presence of guest artists from the dance and theatre worlds is extremely helpful. The guests are expected to act as teachers, directors and trans- semiotic mediators between page and stage.

3.2. Dance and theatre workshops with Melissa Blanc and Oliver Borowski

33 Melissa Blanc is a professional French dancer/choreographer who graduated from the Poitiers Conservatory in 2012. She appeared with Compagnie Paul Les Oiseaux in Toutes les filles devraient avoir un poème and Minute Papillon in 2014, and with Compagnie Chatha in Sacré Printemps (2015). Since 2012, she has been a regular guest artist and choreographic advisor at UBM,8 co-delivering lecture-performances on language and gesture,9 and teaching “literature in the flesh” workshops.

34 Oliver Borowski is a professional South African actor, director, and drama teacher. After graduating in media, film and journalism (Rhodes University, Eastern Cape, SA) he studied physical theatre in Berlin (2006-08), and eventually moved to Bordeaux where he co-founded Theatre Thump! (2008) with Carole Deborde. Since 2017, he has been teaching “literature in the flesh” and “pragmatics in the flesh” workshops at UBM. He is currently writing a master’s dissertation on the physicality of speech and drama-based approaches to language teaching.

35 Melissa Blanc and Oliver Borowski both contributed to the previous Woolf project – Performing Mrs Dalloway (Lapaire 2018) – but worked with separate groups of students, belonging to different schools and age groups. This new project – Breaking Virginia’s Waves10 brought them together for the first time in the same place. Favourable conditions were created for them to share insights, pool artistic resources, and ultimately co-direct the trans-semiotic adaptation of The Waves at the University Arts Centre,11 from February to April 2019. Melissa and Oliver were invited to run the extended 3-hour “middle workshop” together. This collaborative “teaching moment” was very special: a single, blended space emerged, integrating the individual strategies for multimodal resemiotisation that they had previously developed with the group, in their own fields of expertise.

36 During the workshops,12 Melissa and Oliver used the warming-up and preliminary exercises to teach students some elementary dance and theatre skills. Melissa Blanc paid special attention to concentration, coordination and group discipline; balance, posture and alignment; gravity and floor-work; walks, runs and falls (forward, backward, to the side), and finally the dialectics of “impression” and “expression.”13

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37 Oliver Borowski insisted on developing the proper attitude in theatre practice – “looking, listening, risk-taking” – as well as “taking the space” and “taking one’s time.” He advised students to strive for “clarity and simplicity” when creating imagery. He reminded participants that they needed to “establish a horizon” and pay special attention to perspective and viewing arrangements in the theatre: whatever one chooses to perform on the stage is always being watched by someone “out there” in the house. The spectator’s presence has to be acknowledged at all times. This has a decisive impact on posture and concentration. Oliver had students also working on articulation and voice projection; “action-and-reaction” sequences; “pushing-and-pulling” configurations. Finally, “quality of motion” was explored in depth. Basic movement patterns were subjected to variations in speed, rhythm, emotion, “element” (fire, earth, wind, water), “colour” (black, blue, green, red, yellow, and white), and “time of day” (dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, night). Students were now ready to give physical expression to meanings initially couched in writing.

Table 1

Structure of the play

38 Below is an illustrated summary of the main stage actions that were designed during the workshops, under the artistic supervision of Melissa and Oliver. The piece opens with a physical evocation of the sea. The students first position themselves around the stage, facing the audience. A soundscape is created: the wind, the sea birds, the distant horn blasts, the swell, the ebb and flow of spent waves. Splashing, hissing, cawing, chirping, wailing, drumming, thudding noises are produced. Bodies stand erect, barely moving.

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Figure 12

Creating a soundscape

39 The performers now split into three groups, and travel across the stage in short successive runs, stopping midway, tipping over, falling to the ground, lying across the floor, picking themselves up, and finally retreating, as the next (human) wave swells, propels itself forward, and eventually rolls onto the beach, only to be sucked back again. This is the main kinetic leitmotiv of the performance that runs through the entire piece. What the actors are now performing with their bodies, Bernard will express verbally later, in the closing lines of the Epilogue: “This is the eternal renewal, the incessant rise and fall and rise again! The waves forever breaking on the shore.”

Figure 13

Waves breaking and receding

40 The actors regroup, bunch up together and perform a series of coordinated arm movements – a metaphor for the early bonding of the 6 friends at nursery school. Bernard suddenly freezes, then steps aside and says – “I am not one person, I am many people – Bernard, Neville, or Louis; Susan, Jinny or Rhoda. I am all of them.” It is now Rhoda’s turn to break away from the group. She looks lost and wild. She erupts: “Who and what are these unknown people? What are stories?” The others grip her and try to hold her back, but she wrenches herself free and struggles to get away, screaming madly, until Jinny steps in and proclaims: “There is always a story. I am a story!”

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41 The students now perform the scenes or tableaux that they have designed and rehearsed at home in small groups of 4 to 6. They are free to choose which moment inspires them most, and make whatever cuts they deem appropriate.

Figure 14

“Percival is dead. His horse stumbled. He was thrown. This is the fact.” (Act 2, scene 2)

42 They must however keep all the “poetic interludes” in place, and preserve the balance between the characters and the chorus. Woolf herself used a tight structural pattern to guide her readers amidst the complexity of mental states and social situations in the novel. In similar fashion, a very tight structure was used in the script to guide viewers through the continuous stream of thoughts, impressions and assertions.

Table 2

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Basic template for a scene (Act 1, scene 2)

43 Another reason for using a stable pattern is that recurrence and predictability are features that also apply to the cyclical movement of the waves, ceaselessly rising, breaking and receding. This movement pattern was used for the presentation of the scenes and tableaux as a continuous flux. The instructions given were the following: “while the first group performs a scene, the next two (in the sequence) watch from the wings. The rest of the students sit in the house, as would ordinary spectators. Once a scene or tableau is over, the tide comes in: the groups that have been waiting in the wings burst onto the stage, closing over the actors. A strong current is created. Within seconds, the tide goes out again. All the actors are driven out, except those scheduled to perform next, who take the stage. The students who are done with their piece leave the wings and take their seats among the audience. Another group rises and gets into position in the wings. And so on.”

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Figure 15

The scene is over: the waves break and “wash away” the actors

44 During the last workshop, a “grand finale” was staged. Students ran through all the scenes again, using the “tidal system” with fluidity. After the Epilogue, they congregated one last time in the middle of the stage, spaced themselves out and re- established the initial soundscape for the ocean. They worked out a decrescendo, and then fell into a brief moment of silence. It was finished, it was done.

3.2. Final performance at Teatro Civico, Vercelli, Italy (TILLIT 2019, June 5-6 2019)

45 15 students, among the 38 who had attended the workshops, travelled to Italy14 and took part in the fifteenth edition of TILLIT (Teatro in Lingua, Lingua in Teatro) – an international student festival hosted by Università del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli (dir. Marco Pustianaz, ass. Michaela Reinhardt). The touring company was named Choreographers of Speech.

Figure 16

TILLIT 2019

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46 The four drama students in the group – Julie Cabaret, Sarah Caillaud, Célestine Fisse, Alexandre Gauzentes – offered to revise the production. Building on Melissa and Oliver’s work, they designed a 34-minute version of the piece that was performed on the historic palco (stage) of Teatro Civico, Vercelli.

Figure 17

Teatro Civico, Vercelli (Piemonte)

47 The Prologue was kept in its original form but the successive scenes and tableaux were considerably refined and improved. A new character was created: the “poet” whose job was to recite the preludes and occasionally mix with the chorus. The centrality of Percival – a hollow but obsessive figure in the novel - was made explicit in the play. In this new production, he was in charge of introducing the acts, using bilingual signs in English and Italian. Percival’s sensuous appeal to both women and men made him eligible for queer aesthetics. Below is a visual testimony of the public performance given in Vercelli on June 5th 2019 – a remarkable achievement and a true “moment of being.”

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Figure 18

Bernard: “I am not one person, I am many people” (Prologue)

Figure 19

Rhoda: “Who and what are these unknown people? What are stories?” (Prologue)

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Figure 20

Jinny: “There is always a story. I am a story!” (Prologue)

Figure 21

Jinny: “I saw you, green as a bush and lying very still. I cried. ‘Is he dead?’“ (Act 1, scene 1)

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Figure 22

Chorus: “Now is the time for Miss Hudson’s lessons. The clock is ticking in the classroom – tick, tick, tick.” (Act 1, scene 1)

Figure 23

The Poet: The sun rises higher. The birds now sing wildly together. (Prelude to Act 1, scene 2)

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Figure 24

Chorus: « Percival’s movements are remarkable. (Act 1, scene 2) He has the kind of beauty that one falls in love with for a lifetime, hopelessly!”

Figure 25

Susan: “I miss my home, I miss my father. I will never send my children to boarding school.” Never! (Act 1, scene 2)

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Figure 26

Neville: “Percival will forget me.” (Act 1, scene 2)

Figure 27

Louis: “This is the real world! I have become an average Englishman. I am an average clerk, poring over commercial documents.” (Act 1, scene 3)

Figure 28

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Jinny: “This is London! This is my calling! This is my world! I glance, I peep, I powder. I open and shut my body at my will.” (Act 1, scene 3)

Figure 29

Percival introduces Act 2: “Noon – Mezzogiorno”

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Figure 30

Neville: “Percival is going. I came here to sit by him. But I shall never have what I want.” (Act 2, scene 1)

Figure 31

Bernard: “My son is born, and Percival is dead!” (Act 2, scene 2)

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Figure 32

Bernard: “How does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously: loveliness returns as one looks.” (Act 2, scene 3)

Figure 33

Louis: “Percival died, Rhoda left me.” (Act 3, scene 1)

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Figure 34

Bernard: “Hampton Court. This is the Inn. This is our last meeting place.” (Act 3, scene 2)

Figure 35

Chorus: “It was different once. They could have been anything!” (Act 3, scene 2)

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Figure 36

Chorus: “We have triumphed”! “No, we have failed!” “Love, love!” “My wasted life!” they say.

Figure 37

Chorus: “Now the waves will spread between them. They will float for a moment - and then they will sink.”

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Figure 38

Louis: “Life is pleasant, life is good” (Epilogue)

Figure 39

Percival: “I am Percival. I will ride my horse and fling myself against death, unvanquished, unyielding!” (Epilogue)

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Figure 40

Chorus: “We float, we are swept on by the torrent of things” (Epilogue)

Figure 41

Recognizing the stage manager and lightening designer at the end of the curtain call

4. Dance and theatre script

48 The script (2684 word, 8 pages) is a 3.4% reduction of Woolf’s novel (77 480 words, 225 pages). The main challenge was to determine what constituted the “bare essentials” of Woolf’s narrative, and compile a script that would “work” for the stage and inspire students. Abridgement and compression force the scriptwriter to make radical interpretive choices, to decide what is essential and what is not, and to produce an inspiring text for artists and intersemiotic mediators.

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49 Although I had planned to involve the students in the creative re-writing process to the very end, I was forced to complete the work myself for want of time. I succeeded in preserving most of the vocabulary and imagery used in The Waves although I did slightly alter the grammar and elaborate syntax at times. Wherever possible, I adopted a direct “cutting out” technique, similar to the one used in postproduction when editing a film or video. I felt it was both the easiest and most honest way to preserve the authenticity of recycled material. Sometimes too, I combined “clipping” with a “reordering of constituents.” I also “stole” lines from the protagonists and reassigned them to the chorus (and in one isolated instance to a dead character – Percival).

Table 3

From novel to script: transformation types

50 As in Performing Mrs Dalloway (Lapaire 2018), the chorus is a central component in the script. Its members report major events and comment on the dramatic action, but also reflect upon the emotions and situations experienced by the 6 protagonists and their common “hero” Percival. To render the multiple perspective technique adopted by Woolf in The Waves, the viewpoints and narrative angles expressed by the chorus are split into fragments and undergo continuous change: they shift between “external” and “internal,” “individual” and “communal,” “empathic” and “sarcastic,” “factual” and “metaphysical.” Yet, unity and stability are achieved by maintaining a kind of ironic distance throughout.

51 The lines spoken by the chorus can be kept short and simple. It is easy to distribute them fairly and evenly among members of a large group. The form is well suited to students with little or no acting experience. Simple declaratives (“Tuesday follows Monday”/“We eat and drink”/“We marry and domesticate”); short verbless utterances (“Toast and butter; coffee and bacon”/“The Times and letters”); exclamations (“We have

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triumphed!”/“No, we have failed!”) or descriptive statements (“Now they all walk down the avenue”) are easy to “recite” or “act out.” Conventional forms of dialogue would more challenging because they are based on face-to-face interaction and require mutual adjustment – a process that is more complex to handle for beginners.

52 BREAKING VIRGINIA’S WAVES

53 PROLOGUE

54 (Take it. This is my life)

55 BERNARD: I am not one person. I am many people. Bernard, Neville or Louis; Susan, Jinny or Rhoda. I am all of them. I can’t distinguish my life from theirs.

56 RHODA (lost, with growing agitation): Who and what are these unknown people? What are stories?

57 JINNY (calm, with a touch of irony): There is always a story. I am a story! Act 1 - Morning (Childhood – Adolescence – Early adulthood) (Scene 1) (The Nursery) Poet: The sun is rising. The light strikes upon the trees in the garden. The wave pauses and draws out again, Sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously. Bernard: In the beginning there was the nursery, with windows opening on to a garden, and beyond that the sea. Chorus: Six friends growing up together. Chorus: “Let us explore!” they said. Chorus: Susan, Jinny, and Rhoda. Chorus: Bernard, Neville, and Louis. Chorus: Skimming the flower-beds with their nets Chorus: Brushing the surface of the world! (All run away. Louis stays behind in the garden, hiding on the other side of the hedge). Louis: Now they have all gone to the house. Now I am alone. They can’t see me. (Standing by the wall among the flowers) My body is a stalk, my hair is made of leaves. My roots go down to the depths of the earth. (Jinny comes back and finds him. She kisses him on the nape of the neck). Jinny: I saw you, green as a bush and lying very still. I cried. ‘Is he dead?’ I cried and I ran; faster and faster. Susan: I saw her kiss him. I saw them, Jinny and Louis kissing! I will not sit next to them anymore! Bernard (drags Susan away): Let us run, let us explore. We shall sink like swimmers through the green air of the leaves. We shall sink as we run. The waves will close over us! (School bell) Chorus: Now they must drop their toys and games. Chorus: Now is the time for Miss Hudson’s lessons! Chorus: Verbs and sums. Chorus: The clock ticking in the classroom – tick-tick-tick. Louis: I will not conjugate my verbs! I will wait and copy Bernard. He is English! Chorus: They are all English except Louis. Chorus: His father is a banker in Australia. Rhoda: Now Miss Hudson has taken a lump of chalk. She draws figures, six, seven, eight, and then a cross and then a line on the blackboard. What is the answer? Chorus: Rhoda cannot write. Chorus: Now the terror is beginning

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Chorus: The figures mean nothing to her now. Meaning has gone. (Scene 2) (Boarding school) Poet: The sun rises higher. The birds now sing wildly together. The waves leave shallow pools of light here and there on the sand. Chorus: The time has come for them to go to boarding school. Chorus: Brothers and sisters separated! Chorus: Eyes swell; eyes prick with tears. Bernard: I mustn’t cry! Neville: The cab is at the door! Louis: We shall all go on waving till we turn the corner! Susan: The guard blows his whistle. The flag is dipped. Jinny: We are passing through England in a train. Rhoda: When we get there, I will be nobody. I will have no face. Chorus: They have arrived. Chorus: Boxes are unpacked in the dormitories. Chorus: This is their first night at school. Chorus: Now they march two by two into chapel. Chorus: Now Dr Crane reads lessons from the Bible. Neville: I hate this sad religion. I like the wine and the taverns of Ancient Rome. I like the naked boys sprawling in the dust. I like Percival’s blue eyes in the school chapel, fixed with pagan indifference upon the pillars. Chorus: Percival’s movements are remarkable. Chorus: He has the kind of beauty that one falls in love with for a lifetime, hopelessly! Chorus: He will coarsen and snore. Chorus: He will marry and there will be scenes of tenderness at breakfast. Neville: But now Percival is young. He will throw off his coat and stand with his legs apart. He will lie naked on his bed. Louis: It is Percival I need; for it is Percival who inspires poetry. Bernard: When Percival talks, a lightness comes over me. It is Percival I need; for it is Percival who inspires poetry. Chorus: Everybody follows Percival on the playground. Chorus: He is thinking of nothing but the cricket match. Chorus: He has the magnificence of some mediaeval commander. Chorus: No, Percival is heavy. He makes foolish comparisons. Chorus: They despise him! They won’t suffer his stupidity! Chorus: No, they envy him! Chorus: Look at them, trooping after him! Chorus: See, they adore him! Susan: I say, school day, hated day! I hate Miss Perry’s lessons. I hate the ugly stairs. I hate the orders to wash, to change, to work, to eat. I miss my home, I miss my father. I will never send my children to boarding school. Never! Jinny: I move, I dance. I do not stand lost, like Susan, with tears in my eyes, remembering home. Rhoda: I look at myself in the mirror but I have no face. Other people have faces; Susan and Jinny have faces. Their world is the real world. They say ‘Yes’, they say ‘No’. They always know what to say! I want to fall. I want to be blown like a feather. Chorus: The time is coming when they shall leave school. Chorus: Some will do this; others will do that. Chorus: They will disperse, and the pressure will be over. Chorus: The final ceremony is over! Chorus: They are dismissed forever! Jinny: Life is just beginning. Now my body can have a life of its own. Who’s that gentleman there, sitting in the train, smiling at my reflection?

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Neville: Percival will forget me. I will send him letters and poems, and he will leave them lying about, unanswered. I will propose a meeting, and he won’t come. (Scene 3) (College and ‘the real World’) Poet: The rising sun comes in at the window. The wind rises. The waves drum on the shore. Neville: This is college, and I am now in love with Latin verbs, dictionaries and notebooks. Bernard: This is college, and very hour something new is unburied. Who am I? I ask. This? No, I’m that! Louis: This is the real world, and I sit in an office. I have become an average Englishman. I am an average clerk, poring over commercial documents. Susan: They sent me to Switzerland to finish my education. I hate the linoleum; I hate the fir trees and the mountains. Chorus: Susan will be like her mother, she will have children. Chorus: She will lock up the cupboards. Chorus: And watch the men on the farm with their pitchforks. Jinny: This is London. This is my calling! This is my world! I glance, I peep, I powder. I open and shut my body at my will. Chorus: Men are attracted to Jinny. They approach her. Chorus: ‘O come’ she says to this one. And he comes towards her. Rhoda: I stand burning in this clumsy, this ill-fitting body. Chorus: Rhoda is like a cork on a rough sea. Chorus: Cast up and down among men and women. Chorus: She is the foam that fills the rocks with whiteness, when the wave breaks. Act 2 – Noon (Adulthood - Percival’s death) (Scene 1) (Celebrating Percival’s departure to India in a London restaurant) Poet: The sun looks straight over the waves. The sun falls on cornfields and woods. Everything is without a shadow. Bernard: Some people go to priests, others to poetry, I to my friends. My friends retrieve me from darkness. Louis: We are all meeting for dinner tonight. We shall say good-bye to Percival, who is going to India. Chorus: How proudly they sit in the restaurant! Chorus: Eating and talking together. Chorus: Bernard, Neville, and Louis. Chorus: Susan, Jinny, and Rhoda. Chorus: Here is Percival at last! Chorus: Smoothing his hair. Chorus: A hero – the God of decency. Bernard (raising his glass): We have come together, at this particular time, in this particular place, because we are drawn by some deep emotion. Shall we call it ‘love’ - ‘love of Percival’? (In a series of asides) Neville: Percival is going. I came here to sit by him, but I shall never have what I want. Louis: Soon we will pay our bill and part again; soon the circle will break again. Susan: I despise the futility of London. I like to walk through the wet fields alone. Jinny: I kissed Louis once in the garden when we were little. Now I say to men ‘Come’. Our hands touch. Our bodies burst into fire. Rhoda: Percival’s youth and beauty will soon be travelling through forests and far countries, wearing a sun helmet. Behold, Percival advances! Percival rides his horse! He is - a God! Neville: Now the cab comes; now Percival goes; now the agony begins.

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(Scene 2) (Percival dies) Poet: The sun has risen to its full height. Now the sun burns, uncompromising. Now the waves fall; withdraw and fall again Like the thud of a great beast stamping. Neville (holding the telegram): He is dead! Percival is dead! He fell. His horse tripped. He was thrown. All is over. The lights of the world have gone out. Chorus: His horse stumbled; he was thrown. This is the fact. Chorus: There was a surge, a drumming in his ears, then the blow. Chorus: They carried him to some pavilion, men in riding-boots, men in sun helmets. Chorus: Among unknown men he died. Bernard: My son is born and Percival is dead! Chorus: Percival sat there in the centre, and now the place is empty! Chorus: He was twenty-five and should have lived to be eighty! Chorus: Percival, a ridiculous name. Chorus: Why hurry to the tube station? Why catch trains? Chorus: Look at the street now that Percival is dead. Chorus: It is strange how the dead leap out on us at street corners. Rhoda: Now I want to be dashed like a stone on the rocks. I want to sink, with no one to save me! (Scene 3) (Settling in life – Grief) Poet: The sun no longer stands in the middle of the sky. Now the light falls obliquely. The waves mass themselves, curve their backs and crash. Bernard: How does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously: loveliness returns as one looks. Louis: Miss Johnson brings me the letters in a tray. I sign them, again and again. Clear, firm, unequivocal. I have become a full-grown man. I love the telephone and the date on the wall, and the engagement book: Mr P. at four, Mrs E. at four-thirty. Not a moment to spare! Chorus: Louis sends ships to the remotest parts of the globe. Chorus: The weight of the world is on his shoulders. Chorus: But he has kept his attic room. Chorus: Rhoda sometimes comes, for they have become lovers. Susan: Summer comes, and winter. The seasons pass. I sit by the fire watching the kettle boil. I stoop; I feed my baby. More will come, more children, more cradles, more baskets in the kitchen and hams ripening, and onions glistening! Jinny: I have lived my life, I must tell you, and I am now past thirty. I do not attach myself to any one. And that man is a judge, and that man is a millionaire, and that man with the drooping moustache lives a life of the utmost debauchery! Life comes; life goes. I cannot tell you if life is this or that. Neville: I revisit my past life, scene by scene. There lies Percival, forever and ever. I am now sitting alone with a man in the fire lit room, clutching his hand. But he is faithless and leaves me. The descent into the Tube is like death. I dream of naked cabin boys, squirting each other with hosepipes on the decks of ships! I feel ugly, dirty and weak. Act 3 – Late afternoon - Evening (Midlife) (Scene 1) (The years) Poet: The afternoon sun has sunk lower in the sky, warming the fields. Birds swoop and circle high up in the air. The sand is pearl white, smoothed and shining. Bernard: My mind goes to an empty place and says: “ I have lost my youth” “I have lost Percival.” I have outlived certain desires: my children… my wife… my house… my dog.

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Susan: I say, “My son”; I say, “My daughter.” I see them casting shadows on the grass. I think sometimes of Percival who loved me. He rode and fell in India. Chorus: At night, Susan hears her husband snore. Chorus: The waves of her life toss and break around her. Chorus: The tears, the violent passions of childhood are gone. Neville: I take a book and read half a page of anything. I read poetry, I read Shakespeare here in Shaftesbury Avenue. I need not speak. Louis: I have become immensely respectable. I hang my coat here, and place my stick there. Percival died, Rhoda left me. I have a little mistress – a vulgar little actress who will never speak English correctly! Jenni: Here I stand in the Tube station. I am in the heart of life. But how solitary, how shrunk, how aged! Percival died. Millions have died! I still move. I still live. But who will come if I signal? Chorus: Jenni is no longer young. Chorus: She is no longer part of the procession. Chorus: But she still powders her face and reddens her lips! Rhoda: Oh life, how I have dreaded you! Oh human beings, how I have hated you! (Scene 2) (Last reunion in London – Walking by the river together) Poet: The sun is now sinking. The shadows broaden on the hills. The waves fall like a wall of grey stone. Bernard: Hampton Court. This is the Inn. This is our last meeting place. Chorus: Bernard, Neville, and Louis. Chorus: Susan, Jinny, and Rhoda. Chorus: Now they have aged. Chorus: Some have turned grey; others gaunt. Chorus: As they talk, time comes back. Chorus: Marriage, death, travel, friendship. Chorus: It was different once… Chorus: They could have been anything! Chorus: But change is no longer possible, now. Chorus: The door will not open; Percival will not come. Chorus: Rhoda says she has no face. Chorus: “Waiter!” says one. “Bread!” says another. Chorus: “It is time to go. The gardens will be shut! Chorus: Now they all walk down the avenue. Chorus: Arm-in-arm; hand-in-hand; leaning upon each other. Chorus: One and indivisible! Chorus: Now they stand by the river. Chorus: “We have triumphed”; “No, we have failed!” Chorus: “Love, love!” “My wasted life!” they say. Chorus: Now they must go. Chorus: Now the waves will spread between them. Chorus: They will float for a moment - and then they will sink. Epilogue (And in me too the wave rises) Louis: Life is pleasant. Life is good. Chorus: Tuesday follows Monday. Chorus: We eat and drink. Chorus: Toast and butter; coffee and bacon! Susan: We marry and domesticate. Chorus: With shirts, socks, and the broken dreams of our unborn selves. Chorus: With goodnights and see you tomorrows; and unfinished sentences! Rhoda (depressed): The universal determination to go… on… living! Percival (proudly and stupidly): I am Percival. I will ride my horse and fling myself against death, unvanquished, unyielding! Death is the enemy!

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Neville (looking at him lovingly): Percival, you are dead. You were thrown, riding in a race. Chorus: There is no plain and logical story. Chorus: There is no past, no future; just the moment in its ring of light, and our bodies. Chorus: Neville, Susan, Louis, Jinny, Rhoda, Bernard, Percival. Jinny: Faces recur, faces and faces. Chorus: We float. We are swept on by the torrent of things. Chorus: We rise, we break, we pound on the shore. Bernard: This is the eternal renewal - the incessant rise and fall, and rise again.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The waves forever breaking on the shore.

Calbris, G. Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2011.

Clements, E. “Transforming Musical Sounds into Words: Narrative Method in Virginia Woolf's The Waves.” Narrative, Vol. 13, No. 2 (May, 2005), 160-181.

Darinskaya, Daria. The Waves: a booktrailer. In Russian, with English subtitles. 2 :13, 2015. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDqNIqA5z-U

Eco, U., A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.

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Jousse, M. The Anthropology of Geste and Rhythm. Second revised edition, edited from the original French [1974-78] by Edgard Sienaert and translated in collaboration with Joan Conolly. Durban, South Africa: Mantis Publishing, 2010.

Jousse, M. The Fundamentals of Human Expression and Communication. Translated and presentd by Edgard Sienaert and Joan Conolly. Durban, South Africa: Mantis Publishing, 2005.

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NOTES

1. Critics usually consider this last italicized sentence to be the tenth and last interlude (Clements 2005: 166). 2. [First section. Opening sentences, supposedly uttered by infants walking through the garden] ‘I see a crimson tassel,’ said Jinny, ‘twisted with gold threads.’ (…) ‘A shadow falls on the path,’ said Louis, ‘like an elbow bent.’ ‘Islands of light are swimming on the grass,’ said Rhoda. (Woolf [1931] 2000: 5) 3. For a definition of “interlingual” and “intersemiotic” translation see Jakobson (1959) or the “trans-semiotic adaptation” section further on. 4.

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Interpret vb. 1. to clarify or explain the meaning of; elucidate. 2. to construe the significance or intention of : to interpret a smile as an invitation. 3. to convey or represent the spirit or meaning of (a poem, a song, etc.) in performance. 4. (intr.) to act as an interpreter; translate orally.[ from Lat. interpretari, from interpres negotiator, one who explains” (Collins English Dictionary, 1979). Senses 1 and 2 clearly highlight the cognitive dimension of interpretation (“explain”, “construe”), while 3 and 4 respectively underscore the performative and trans-semiotic dimensions of the interpretive process. The claim I make here and elsewhere (Lapaire 2019), is that all the three main senses are – cognitive, performative, translational – are fundamentally related and interdependent. The ability to construe, act out and transpose is part of our common human “interpretive potential”. 5. O’Halloran et al. (2016) note that “viewing intersemiotic translation as resemiotisation” raises major issues, such as “how can shifts of meaning be conceptualised across semiotic resources which are fundamentally different in nature?” and “what meanings are retained and changed as a result of resemiotisation?” 6. Ludovica Rambelli Teatro. URL : https://www.ludovicarambelliteatro.it/tableaux-vivants/ 7. Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha (…) Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick (…) Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already (…) Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled. And said, Where have ye laid him? (…) It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it (…) Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me (…) And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.” (John, 11: 1-44) King James Version (1611). 8. Université Bordeaux Montaigne, France. 9. “Langues vivantes en vie: rejeux vocaux et gestuels de l'expérience” (Lapaire, Magnard & Blanc, Université Victor Ségalen, Bordeaux FR, 2013); “Le corps dans la langue: imprimer, exprimer, dérouler / Der Leib in der Sprache – einprägen, ausdrücken, entfalten” (Lapaire, Magnard & Blanc, Goethe Institut, Paris FR, 2014); “Moved by Language” (Lapaire, Magnard & Blanc, Vercelli IT, 2014); “La poétique du geste” (Lapaire, Magnard & Blanc, Univeristé de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris FR, 2015); “Chorégraphie de la parole” (Lapaire & Blanc, Université de Montpellier 3 FR, 2015); Poetic-kinetic intervals” and “Motion Capture” (Lapaire, Magnard & Blanc, Vercelli IT, 2015). 10. The title contains an allusion to Lars Von Trier’s film Breaking the Waves (1996), with Emily Watson (Bess) and Stellan Skarsgard (Jan). 11. The workshops were held at Maison des Arts, Pessac, on the main UBM campus site. 12. Oliver Borowski (4 h) ; Melissa (2h) ; Melissa and Oliver (3h). 13.

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How physical displays may be given of affect, inner states, and the impact of own’s own words upon oneself. 14. Master in English language and literature studies : Sarah Baudouin, Camille Boscher, Apolline Boulesques, Eneko Dufourg, Julien Escaffre, Rozenn Hochard, Daley Ann Pamela King, Monica Minix, Melissa Paulin, Lucas Prunier. Master in Drama and Performance Studies : Julie Cabaret, Sarah Caillaud, Célestine Fisse, Alexandre Gauzentes.

ABSTRACTS

Dance space and theatre space can be used as critical thinking spaces in the language and literature class, with substantial gains in student motivation and engagement. This claim was put to the test with a group of 38 graduate students who co-designed a stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s experimental novel The Waves (1931) using acting and dance-composition techniques. Woolf’s 77 480-word piece (225 pages) was reduced to 3,4% of its original length (2684 words, 7 pages). The experience was creative (reprocessing and essentializing rich textual input, designing scenes, tableaux and movement sequences); heuristic (investigating narrative technique, discovering elements of patterning and consistency below the surface of a complex and confusing narrative); socially cohesive (fostering mutual-support, developing collective forms of understanding, stage directing and acting); and immersive (stimulating all the senses, involving body and mind with few pauses and no opt out). Conditions were thus created for subjects to engage in verbal, visual and kinaesthetic acts of interpretation in all three senses of the word: cognitive (“understanding”), artistic (“performing”) and intersemiotic (“translating” into a different sign system). As this happened, students found themselves cast in the role of moving and speaking cognizers, staging bodily displays of meaning, and reframing Woolf’s written narrative as a series of “acts” and “scenes” to be performed - not just read. A form of semiotic appropriation took place that resulted in a performative reassignment of meaning which not only “made sense” to movers and viewers alike, but struck everyone as being plastic, aesthetic, and compelling. This article provides textual and visual illustrations of the remarkable result achieved by the graduate students involved, under the professional guidance of Oliver Borowski (theatre) and Melissa Blanc (dance). It includes the script and visuals from the workshops held at Université Bordeaux Montaigne (France), and an evocation of the final public performance given at Teatro Civico (Vercelli, Italy) at the international student theatre festival organized by Università del Piemonte Orientale (TILLIT 2019, dir. Marco Pustianaz).

INDEX

Subjects: Music, Dance Keywords: choreography, adapation, intersemiotic translation, resemiotisation, performance, enaction, creativity, embodied learning Mots-clés: chorégraphie, adaptation, traduction intersémiotique, resemiotisation, performance, enaction, créativité, apprentissage par-corps

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AUTHORS

JEAN-RÉMI LAPAIRE Professor EA CLIMAS / Université Bordeaux Montaigne [email protected]

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Ariel's Corner

David Roche (dir.) Film, TV, Video

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Interview with Maria Giese, April 16, 2019

Cristelle Maury and David Roche

1 We interviewed Maria Giese on Tuesday, April 16 via the video conference system RENATER at Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès and NYC. Additional questions were provided by our colleague Hélène Charlery.

2 Maria Giese is an American journalist, screenwriter and director. She holds a Master’s degree from UCLA’s Graduate School of Theatre, Film and Television. She wrote and directed the feature films When Saturday Comes (1996), starring Sean Bean and Pete Postlethwaite, and Hunger (2001). In 2015, after four years of activism in the Directors Guild of America, Giese became the person who instigated the biggest industry-wide Federal investigation for women directors in Hollywood history. In The New York Times, Manohla Dargis referred to her work as “a veritable crusade.” She has an upcoming book, Troublemaker, which describes her work getting the ACLU and EEOC to investigate this issue—the ramifications of which are resonating globally. CM: To begin with, could you tell us how it all started for you. You said in a Ted Talk, “The Battle for Women’s Voice in Entertainment Media,” that you were given $2 million funding to direct When Saturday Comes. Can you tell us more about that? MG: Sure. My love of cinema started at a very young age. I grew up in Puerto Rico, which is a visually magical place, and I had a very lively dream world. My mother is a landscape photographer and my father is an oceanographer—they both encouraged me to write and draw, to be a storyteller. We didn’t have a TV or even a telephone in those early years, but when I first saw a film, I felt like that was very close to dreaming, and I grew fascinated with the idea of putting dreams on film. Then when I was 9 years old, my family moved back to Cape Cod. In Provincetown there was a wonderful art house movie theater, “The Movies”, which played European and international cinema rather than American films. From my early teens I was exposed to German film, French avant-garde, Italian neo-realism. I was inspired by so many filmmakers: Herzog, Antonioni, Kurosawa, De Sica, Fellini and Bunuel. And then when I was about fourteen, I saw the film Swept Away by Lina Wertmüller. I don’t think I had really imagined myself as a film director. I wanted to make films, I

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wanted to be able to do what I saw these extraordinary auteur directors doing, but I don’t think it really hit home that I could do it until I saw Swept Away. I never changed my course after that. That was all I wanted to do. I think Swept Away struck me also because it centered on politics and gender. Looking back, I was very interested in sociopolitical films from early on, and the influence they could have on culture. That would grow in me more and more as time went on and eventually come to define my life wok. There wasn’t really a lot of access at that time to study film, especially when you’re a kid on Cape Cod. Screenplays were not getting published frequently in the late 1970s, but I was able to get hold of three collections of Bergman, Antonioni, and Lina Wertmüller screenplays. So I read those over and over again, and then at age 16 I was accepted to Simon’s Rock of Bard College, which is an early college. They didn’t have a film program, but I ran the film society and became a projectionist. In this way I was able to research and watch a lot of movies. I poured through the thick rental catalogues of 16mm films offered by distribution companies and really learned about the whole history of cinema, who was who and what stories they told.

Studying at Wellesley College and UCLA

Then I went to Wellesley College, one of the first women’s colleges in the United States. Oddly, Wellesley didn’t have a filmmaking program either. I often wonder why women’s colleges didn’t have an emphasis on entertainment media storytelling when it was quickly becoming the most effective method of getting women’s voices into our cultural narrative, and was so incredibly influential. In any case, I continued working as a projectionist, studying film, and writing my own screenplays. After getting my BA in 1988, I finally got the opportunity to apply to film school. I was accepted into UCLA’s five-year graduate film program. I literally felt like I had won the lottery, being able to do what I had dreamed of for so long. It was 1989 and my class was about 50/50 men and women thanks to Title IX, part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title IX was written into law by Richard Nixon in 1972 and provides for equal opportunity for women in education and sports. I felt so at home for five years in this program―some of the happiest days of my life. I made several shorts and won quite a few awards. My third short, “A Dry Heat” won the top award at film school, a “Spotlight Award” and was a finalist for the Student Academy Awards that helped me get an agent by 1991. I worked consistently as a teacher’s assistant, and I also started writing professionally. So, as I was excelling as a student, I also was doing script-doctoring and observing on prime time episodic TV shows, like LA Law and Crime and Punishment.

How When Saturday Comes came about

While all this was going on, the screenplay, When Saturday Comes, began to evolve. It was the story of my ex-husband’s life growing up in Sheffield, England, dreaming of becoming a professional football player. He had actually made it to trials on Huddersfield United, but that was as far as he’d gotten. He was always telling me colorful stories of his childhood growing up in a tough working-class neighborhood

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in Sheffield, England. These stories were like a capsule in time, and so different from my sort of elite New England upbringing. There was a lot of drinking and fighting and poverty, and school beatings and working in factories. I think I really saw his childhood stories through the lens of my love of British Kitchen Sink films, and I thought it would make a great movie. At about this time I got hired to rewrite a screenplay based on a 1956 novel called The North Star for Nils Gaup, the indigenous Norwegian director who had directed the hit film, Pathfinder. The first draft had been written by the iconic Italian screenwriter, Sergio Donati (who had written the Spaghetti Westerns for Clint Eastwood), and his son Lorenzo, but the script was not strong and had not been able to get financed. Christophe Lambert was starring in the film and he hired me to rewrite it. I went back to the Henry Wilson Allen novel for a page one re-write and grew fascinated with the subject matter. It was about the Gold Rush in Nome, Alaska with people streaming in competing for gold strikes. There was a tremendous discrimination against immigrants coming in to compete. So-called “Americans” (who were of course all immigrants anyway) tried to get laws passed to keep them out and prevent them from competing for strikes. Christophe played a Native American who gets caught in the middle of this dramatic action film centered around a chase. It was so much fun to work on this project and my rewrite got US$4 million from 20th Century Fox, as well as the attachments of stars, James Caan and Catherine McCormack. The film was quickly greenlit to start shooting and I was brought out to Oslo to work with the director on the script. Right at the same time Christophe Lambert read When Saturday Comes and wanted to produce it. He put me together with producer Meir Teper, and an executive from New Regency named David Matalon who in turn introduced me to two women producers, Sharon Harel and Jane Barclay, who were making some of the best films in England at that time—their company was called Capitol Films. I met with them and even though I had never directed a feature film, they quickly saw the potential and gave us the green light. It sounds easy, but the truth is before I met with Capitol we had been turned down by about 40 production companies in the US. Many of them had asked me: “Would you be willing to give us the script and we’ll bring on a male director?” My agent had advised me, “Just say no, tell them if you want a different director, get a different script.” And that (laughs) seemed to work really well in terms of people dropping the project and not wanting to do it. So you can imagine I was pretty relieved and excited when Capitol said yes to me as the director. They financed a $2 million budget, and we went very fast-track into production. One of the reasons we got greenlit was because we got Sean Bean attached to star. His mom lived in Sheffield not too far from where my ex-husband’s family lived, and girlfriend of his brother’s lived next door to Sean Bean’s mom. She dropped the script off for Sean. When he saw it was about Sheffield United, he was like “Fuckin’ hell, United!” (laughs). He called (producer) Jimmy Daly and said: “Y’ must be pullin’ me plonker! Let’s do it!” He was really excited to do a screenplay about his beloved football team, Sheffield United, and he brought on Academy Award-nominee Pete Postlethwaite who he’d been starring with on the successful British TV movie, Sharpe’s Rifles (1993). Then, Christophe Lambert brought on Emily Lloyd and the rest

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is history. We started crewing up with some of the best cast and crew out of England and Scotland at the time.

DR: Good! We’ll talk about the movie again later on, but there are two things that you touched on that are actually questions we had for you later. So one was basically had you spent time in Great Britain before making that movie, given that your ex-husband was British? We were obviously very much intrigued by an American director making her first movie such a British movie. And then the second thing you touched on but that we also wanted to ask you later we can talk about now maybe, is you said you were very interested in documentary and films that had a socio-political intent and so forth, do you have any feelings or thoughts on documentary versus fiction? Do you see them as complementary? What are your feelings in terms of the socio-political impact they can have? MG: (laughs) I have thoughts on everything. When you grow up somewhere you don’t necessarily see the extraordinariness of it. Coming from the outside provides objectivity and discovery. I was fascinated with the ancient tribal nature of football culture in Northern England. And I was struck by how difficult it was to move between the classes. So, even though we were very much trying to make a sports success story in the spirit of Rocky, we were also exploring the culture of poverty, failure, and alcoholism. I also had a brother who died of alcoholism in a motorcycle accident in 1986 when I was 23, so I brought the heartbreak of that experience into the film. There were a lot of things that were deeply personal to me about that film.

Documentary and the fiction film

To answer the second part of the question: I think if as filmmakers we care about making a socio-political difference in the world, then the way our fiction narratives blend with documentary truth can be fluid. When we tell stories, our life experiences and understanding of the world are deeply integral to them. I was very inspired by the films of Gillo Pontecorvo, Burn for example. He claimed he made films only when he absolutely had to because the world needed to know something. He mixed a lot of fact and fiction. But there’s often quite a lot of intertwining of documentary and fiction in the films I love—I’m thinking now for example of 400 Blows—Truffaut was telling his own deeply personal story of childhood, lacing fiction and fact. Perhaps that’s why I never really responded that well to Hollywood films—as primarily made-up stories, they often had this singular objective of entertaining people. While from my experience, non-American films— those of Satyajit Ray, or Kurosawa, just as examples—functioned on a deeper, richer basis that seemed more meaningful to me. They opened up new universes of culture and politics and human experience that made them transformative rather than simply entertaining. For me, there’s something fundamentally magical about the nature of cinema. I remember when I used to be a projectionist, and I would be all alone setting up the films on the projectors. There was that big white screen, and then people would come into the theater and sit down, and I’d bring the lights down—and all of a sudden this surprising new universe appeared on the screen that was completely immersive for an hour and a half or two hours. To me there’s just magic in that. It’s like closing your eyes and going to sleep, and suddenly you are conjuring up images from a place in your unconscious that may have a priori knowledge—you may be connected to a collective unconscious from ancient or primeval times that are beyond our ability to

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explain. So I just have an incredible love for that effort filmmakers make to put something meaningful on the screen. To share a dream experience. To share something profound that is perhaps beyond human reckoning.

It’s not easy coming back to LA

CM: Let’s go back to your career and the next film you made. Was it more difficult for you to get funding for Hunger? And what about its release and distribution? Seems like it was difficult. It was made in 2001 and released in 2007. Can you tell us about it? MG: Hunger came out of a very difficult place. After When Saturday Comes I returned to Los Angeles and I was now single because after the shoot my ex-husband stayed behind with Sean Bean’s wife, Melanie Hill. I had also graduated from UCLA film school so I didn’t have the protective mechanisms of an institution behind me. I was represented by a top agent at William Morris Agency, but because When Saturday Comes did not get US distribution, it was as if I had never directed it. And I had done a very female thing of deferring my directing pay on the film pari- pasu with all my multi-millionaire producers when I had no financial support system in place or income. So suddenly I was all alone in a rental apartment in LA, and I slipped very quickly into poverty. I realized things were going very wrong, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I was coming up for directing jobs, and having great meetings, but in the end I was always passed over for a guy—and that meant no paychecks came in. I was doing all this free development work for people, taking lousy screenplays and doctoring them, thinking I was attached as director, and then lo and behold, some guy would direct it. It was almost comical. I was constantly busy in development, coming up with all sorts of interesting ideas, with numerous pots on the fire, yet nothing paid off. Ultimately, I was having to cobble together an existence to be able to eat and pay rent. Still, I was always optimistic—sort of like Voltaire’s Candide. I felt like I was walking through this utterly terrible landscape of horror that was Hollywood. I had all the best intent in the world, like some kind of cheerful, well- meaning fool with bullets coming at me from every direction. In the meantime, I was watching my male classmates and peers who I don’t think were any more talented than me, and maybe even less hard-working than me, and they were making movie after movie, becoming the great masterful auteur directors of our time. I mean, I knew these guys and some of them were pretty mediocre, yet they were becoming acclaimed as the cinematic geniuses of our time.

The making of Hunger

My mother sent me a copy of Knut Hamsum’s Hunger. I guess she thought it was her way of helping me navigate the difficult course my life had become. And it really did resonate with me. This existentialist masterpiece novel is about a writer wandering around Christiania (Norway) around 1890 trying to get work and literally starving to death. I was not literally starving to death, but spiritually I felt like I was. I remember I was in Barnes & Noble bookstore one day going up an escalator and all of a sudden it just hit me suddenly that I should take this book and contemporize it for the screen. I

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should set it in Los Angeles and make it a starving screenwriter wandering around Los Angeles looking for a job. It was the perfect way for me to get back to work, while also exploring the experience I was going through. So I spent the next few months writing the screenplay. I got it out to a few producers and agents, but nobody wanted to do it. Everybody thought it was too depressing. So I gave it to an actor friend of mine named Joseph Culp and he said, “Look, let’s just do this.” It was right at the time that all those brilliant Dogma films were coming out, making us all very optimistic about doing digital no-budget movies and changing cinematic history (laughs). So I said, “Why not, let’s do it.” We had no money, no equipment, nothing. We just decided we were going to do it for absolutely zero budget. A friend of mine lent me a Sony TRV900 camera, which is just like a bad 1990’s home-video camera, it’s not even broadcast quality. And I went ahead and committed my life to shooting this film starting in 1999. We shot the movie in 25 days. And then things got really messy because I was working in the digital realm, and it was very cumbersome. My previous films had all been shot on 16mm or 35mm and cut on Steenbecks or upright Moviolas. Now we needed all these expensive, very heavy 9 Gigabyte drives. I remember driving all over the (San Fernando) Valley picking up five here, ten there—from people’s garages. We had to practically fill a room with these goddamn 9 gigabyte drives that were also failing us and slowing things down. My friend Sam Citron edited the film in this tiny little room we’d begged from a super high-end commercial production company called Cucolorus in Venice, CA. It was right across the street from Dudley Moore and Warren Beatty’s famous restaurant, 72 Market Street. The industry was exploding, and with movie stars walking around in front of our office, and big productions getting made all around us, yet we were so far removed from it on some level. We were tucked away for months in this little closet where we were eventually forgotten. At a certain point I remember feeling like Bartleby the Scrivener. Eventually after many months the execs at Cucolorus noticed we were still there and told us to evacuate, but we didn’t. We just kept staying until the movie was finally done.

Hunger at the Nordkapp Film Festival

Anyway, by 2001 I had completed the film, and it got really great reviews in several festivals. It was called “Pick of the pack” and “Shot on video wonder” and “the Champion”—you’ve seen those reviews. I began to harbor new hopes (laughs), but it didn’t go any further than that. And all the major festivals ignored it. But finally it got noticed in Norway. The director, Knut Erik Jensen was making a documentary about Knut Hamsum for Norwegian TV and read about me and my film during online research. He brought a film crew all the way out to LA for a week and filmed me. It was a terrific boost to my self-esteem as a director, and he really loved the film. He was also head of the Nordkapp Film Festival in Honningsvag way, way up in the north of Norway—almost in the Arctic Circle, and he selected my film to open the festival. So, in this way, Hunger had its splendid world premiere in Norway in 2007. It got a passionate and protracted standing ovation which truly made all the years of effort

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worth it. And Knut Hansum’s own grandson told me that he thought it was better than the 1966 version that won best actor award at Cannes Film Festival. So, that Nordkapp experience gave me a lot of renewed confidence and hope. And I think in a certain sense it was kind of what set me off in my activism for women directors, too. Because I really decided at that point that I probably could have been a good filmmaker and that there was really a lot of sexism at play that had held me back in many ways. Then I started looking around and noticing that my female peers and classmates were nowhere to be seen either. I realized it wasn’t just me, but all women that were losing out on opportunity. So I think the hidden success of Hunger triggered a certain rage inside of me that set me on this explosive last 8 years of activism for women directors. I just want to terrorize Hollywood on behalf of all women. I wanted to blow it up in a thousand ways—and in the end I did. I suppose that has been actually my greatest success.

DR: We’d like to talk some more about the movies before going back to activism. We wanted to ask you a question about the adaptation of the novel, which you explained, but we did have a question. You adapted it to LA, changed the art form, but you did keep the male character instead of a female character. Listening to you now, I was wondering if it was to maintain some distance with your situation which was clearly not positive, so did the decision not to change the gender, did it have something to do with that or was it just because you had the opportunity of working with this actor that you knew well? Why did you not change the gender basically?

Female or male characters

MG: Male or female, the character in my Hunger is me. I could have cast a man or a woman to play the role—it wasn’t important. I didn’t see that character as sexualized. It’s a story about something else. But this brings up a very important point that can be seen from several perspectives: on the one hand, how we see ourselves in relationship to the female or male heroes in films is determined in large part not by sex, but by the treatment of that character. Most of the time, we identify with the hero (or anti-hero) because, whether male or female, the stories are designed that way, so the audience can step into those shoes and have the experience of transference. Whatever our gender, we each have the capability of identifying with a character regardless of sex. And it’s fun to step into the shoes of, say, Clint Eastwood or Idris Elba, or Bradley Cooper and see an adventure through their eyes. It’s fun to step into Greta Garbo’s or Gal Gadot’s or Jennifer Lawrence’s shoes, too. You don’t have to share their sex to do that. On the other hand, of course, because nearly 100% of films over the past 125 years—and literally 100% in the 85 years between 1930 and 1985— have been directed by men, most of our film stories are about men, and that has shaped humanity and how we see ourselves. And it makes us, even as female filmmakers sort of default to male characters. That’s something that’s most certainly changed for me in the past decade since I have woken up— almost all the films I’m trying to develop right now have female leads and are rooted in one way or another in female empowerment. Not that I wouldn’t make a film all about men, it’s just my eyes have been opened to the need for balance and my interest has shifted.

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I was not a strong feminist in the 1980s or 1990s—so many of us women who were children during the women’s lib movement of the 1970’s were complacent, or worse, were part of the backlash. We had to experience the downslope of opportunity in a deeply personal way to wake up. I was among those women—but I sure did wake up with a fury. I was so angry with myself and my generation for allowing the backslide, I was ready for martyrdom to catch us back up and restore the movement—restore progress for ourselves and the next generation. I think where women directors are concerned I came to the very forefront of it. It became a crusade for me I was willing to sacrifice everything for—but I’m jumping ahead.

Career challenges and sex discrimination

In my early years of struggle as a filmmaker, I never said I’m not experiencing success because I’m a woman, I told myself it was because I was not good enough. I think that’s what most of us women were telling ourselves because we had no community and nothing to reflect off except for our male peers who, while facing enormous challenges in this incredibly competitive profession, had it significantly easier. We women were all sitting in our living rooms or wherever trying to compete in a world that didn’t want us, that didn’t care what we thought or said. And there was no community, no internet, no social media for us to change any of that. Later, it was my ability to harness that as an activist, that made it possible for me to create enormous change. Male directors connected in all these different ways: in the Directors Guild, on sets, and socially. Hollywood was a world designed by men and controlled by men for men to succeed, and female director success was just an illusion.

Casting male leads

When I directed Hunger, I wasn’t thinking of the gender identity of that character, I was thinking about what it feels like as an artist to be utterly shut out of the world of success. I identified with the hero (or anti-hero) in the novel, Hunger. Knut Hamsun had captured that universal experience of being prevented from pursuing greatness, of having to battle mediocrity when you know greatness is possible. I think about when Percival gets to meet the Fisher King. He could become a great knight himself, but he’s missing something fundamental—he was not privy to the secrets of that special class. When he had the opportunity for inclusion into that superior realm, he didn’t know what questions to ask. The mysteries were beyond him and he thought it was impolite to intrude—so he wasn’t accepted in to the glorious life. I think that’s sometimes how I feel as a woman living in this patriarchal world. And it makes me want to foment revolution to turn the whole thing upside-down.

Igniting the feminist flame

There’s an element of frustration being female in this patriarchy after all these thousands of years. Because we are female, we feel we can never really come in fully, not really. And being shut out from ever being an “auteur director” in the 20th or 21st

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century is part of that sad continuum of being part of what amounts to a second class. Our world’s storytelling, our cultural narrative, the voice of civilization, is simple not open to us. . . That’s ultimately what I became obsessed with changing. That’s what ignited the fire inside of me to disrupt and explode Hollywood. The secret answer to the future of women rested in this one thing: we had to find a way to demand our equal participation in our storytelling. Because if we could do that, we could share in our cultural narrative, share in the economics of it, and in doing so become equal participants in the power structure of our civilization. After all these thousands of years, it could possibly come down to just one law to make all this happen. And of course that would become my mission. To make Title VII—Equal Employment Opportunity law in US entertainment media become the fulcrum for an immense social transformation.

DR: You kind of broached this topic already when you were explaining why you made When Saturday Comes, but we were wondering if there were any scenes you feel stand out that maybe a straight male director would not have done but that you chose to do or that came to you. MG: I’m not sure. The question of the female gaze comes up all the time these days, and especially that I’m on a lot of panels and speaking in the public forum. Is there such a thing as a “female gaze”? It’s a fascinating and complex question. I do deeply believe in the significance of the discussion, but I question our ability to define such a term universally when women have been so marginalized in our storytelling and employments as filmmakers. This applies not just to cinema in the past 130 years, but to all storytelling arts since the dawn of literature. A term “female gaze” suggests also validating the term, “male gaze”— and then should we have all sorts of other “gazes”? Men have not been constricted by storytelling boxes into which they are supposed to fit, so why should women? It shouldn’t be a mandate that women have to tell female stories. Men tell all sorts of stories across a vast spectrum of genres— a universal “male gaze” is not possible to define, in my view. Women’s voices and visions have been absented from our cultural narrative, and it is critically important to now include them fully— past, present and future, but we must be open to each voice on an individual basis and allow for full freedom of expression. Stamping female storytelling or filmmaking with definitions or standards or expectations is unfair, constraining, and demeaning to us as a sex, and I oppose it. What I favor is strict adherence to equal employment opportunity laws in all our entertainment media industries, globally. And great unity and solidarity among all people who value the democratization of our storytelling in fully realizing that goal. Then, when we are on the road to equality, and especially when we have fully established it, let meritocracy (regardless of sex) determine success. And let our freely expressed voices and visions determine any possible sex-based definitions of “gaze.”

Children’s cinema

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CM: Do you have any projects? MG: I’m always working on lots of projects. I have a beautiful children’s script that I have wanted to direct. It’s set in Friesland in the Netherlands, and it’s about a group of schoolchildren who go on a quest to find a wheel and so restore grace to their bereft little fishing community. And it’s got a ten-year-old girl as its lead, and I’d love to make that film. I have a stockpile of other projects I’d like to make, and now that my profile is rising due to my work for gender equality in entertainment media, I’m getting quite a lot of submissions—scripts for me to direct. Some of them are very exciting projects. My interest in children’s cinema has grown since I had children quite late in life (I was 41 and 42 when I had my son and daughter who are now teenagers). Thanks to them, I became an enormous fan of Hayao Miyazaki. I would say Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli) is among the greatest feminist filmmakers of all time. His films nurtured my own feminism and have totally transformed, largely thanks to John Lasseter, children’s animated cinema in the United States. Miyazaki’s incredible love and celebration of women and girls and sisters, girlfriends, grandmothers and aunties has been truly transformative to the world. So I credit him a lot—

Women directors in Hollywood in the 2010s

DR: We wanted to ask you about the fact that, in the Academy Awards, for instance this year, some very brilliant women directors were forgotten, and there were lots of articles about it, but for instance Debra Granik who directed Leave No Trace, Lynne Ramsay You Were Never Really Here, one of the most beautiful movies I’ve seen in the past three years, Chloé Zhao The Rider, another one of the most beautiful movies I’ve seen in the last couple of years, and none of them were nominated. A couple of years back Ava DuVernay for Selma was not nominated either, which was kind of surprising. This is interesting because, as you said, it points to the fact that there’s a systemic problem. And I’ve read studies that basically show that in independent cinema, in terms of gender, it’s pretty close to 50/50 or 45/55 or something, but in Hollywood, apart from Kathryn Bigelow, there aren’t really any women directors who’ve been given the opportunity to have a career? MG: Yes. I don’t think there is an example of 50% women directors working anywhere in the world except perhaps Sweden, where the brilliant Anna Serner of the Swedish Film Institute was able to mandate 50/50 gender hiring. But let’s talk about Hollywood. When I started going at this in 2012, about 13% of episodic TV shows were directed by women, and about 4% studio features were directed by women. And in commercials which is the most lucrative category of directing, women are almost completely absent—about 1%. It’s all about the money. Women are allowed in if you don’t pay them, so for example about 39% of feature documentaries are directed by women in the US. Today in 2019 things are changing—but only because of legal action, because of the ACLU and federal investigations. Hollywood needs the fear of lawsuits to hand jobs to women because stories are power. If 80% of entertainment media content that is distributed around the world comes out of Hollywood—that’s a lot of influence. Back in 2012, I started parsing out that 4%-- who were the women directors that made up that 4% of studio feature film directors? And I started to see that almost 100% of that 4% were either movie stars, pop stars or the relatives of movie moguls. Angelina Jolie, Barbara Streisand, Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Jodie Foster, even Sofia

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Coppola and Kathryn Bigelow (daughters or wives of movie moguls, a billionaire). Each one of them was either rich or powerful enough to command executives, if not outright finance their own film by themselves. So, if you take them out, almost 0% of studio features are directed by just ordinary women, where does that leave girls, just anybody, and women of color, and little girls of color who might dream of doing this? Statistically, they don’t have a chance. We should not be lying to our daughters, telling them they can become whatever they want. It’s a lie. If we want to tell our daughters they can achieve their dreams, we’d damn well better change the world first so it’s true. It was this sort of thinking that gave me the impetus to battle for women directors in my union, to take it to the ACLU and the EEOC. After battling my union, the Directors Guild of America, I went to the EEOC and ACLU. In 2014 the ACLU launched this massive media campaign putting women directors on the map, successfully got the EEOC to investigate in 2015—that investigation has now been going on for 4 years and six months—and thanks to that we are seeing a little bit of an upswing in terms of female director hires, particularly in television. In 2018 I think women directed 3.7% of studio features and I’m told that by 2020 12% to 14% of studio films will have been directed by women. Episodic TV shows directed by women will have jumped from 13% in 2013 to perhaps 30% in 2020—that’s a 130% increase in six years. That’s the power of legal action. Okay, so to get back to your question: these beautiful films made last year by women directors were totally ignored in the Academy. Well, the fact of the matter is that it’s a tiny hierarchy of power, of elite white liberal men in Hollywood, who occupy the high seats of power in all of the organizations in Hollywood. You take a guy like Steven Spielberg, just as an example: he is not just a famous director who’s made all these massively successful films, but he’s also very powerful in every sector of the industry: unions, studios, networks, talent agencies, the Director’s Guild of America, the Producers Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America, the Academy of Motion Pictures. He also owns a studio—Dreamworks—and he’s a giant force at CAA. And he has powerful ties to Washington DC and the news media. These guys are running the whole show, controlling America’s communications machinery, influencing geopolitics. They know how powerful they are, and they think they are making the world a better place. They think they have the right ethos to spread around the world—but guess what—they don’t value women or female voices. They shut women out. They are fraught with bias. Before 2014 when the ACLU and EEOC pressure came, Spielberg hired just one female director (Mimi Leder) on the many, many feature films he produced. Turns out that is employment discrimination based on sex—it’s not just wrong on a moral basis, it’s also against the law. Check out his IMDB producer credits since 2014, he’s hiring lots of women now (laughs). We women get hit from every direction in a power structure like this. We make a movie, and we get a lower budget, shorter production schedules, worse distribution, low P&A (print and advertising). And it’s the same group of guys that are coming up and getting all the awards. I mean think about it. I’m a member of the Directors Guild of America, and so every year I get this big long list of hundreds and hundreds of films to pick from, and most of the names you don’t recognize or you haven’t even

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seen the films. Who has the time to see hundreds and hundreds of films every year? So people just gravitate to and select the names they know. And 80% of critics are men, they’re inherently biased against female made films, giving men better reviews and better coverage. So it’s going to require revolution. We need to stop thinking about Hollywood as being a bunch of privately owned businesses in which the owners of the means of production have a right to bypass the law and do things their own way. We need to see Hollywood for what it is: the communication center for one of the most powerful nations in the world, the propaganda machine for the United States of America. And it is largely creating our cultural narrative for our entire world, which is helping to guide the trajectory of civilization. You don’t think that this little tiny group of superpower guys in Hollywood know this? It’s like in the battle between the Koch brothers on one side and the one- worlders on the other; where is civilization going to go? It’s largely going to be based on what stories we tell and what ethos people are convinced of. Hollywood leaders want to hang on to that incredible power of influence and of money. I know I’ve made significant waves, but what power have we women got in the face of all of this? I was talking to this guy who had been a very big lobbyist in Washington DC, and he told me, “Those EEOC positions, they’re all bought and paid for.” So we managed to get this federal investigation going for women directors, and they got the EEOC to take on this investigation. But Hollywood pays hundreds of millions of dollars every year into the coffers of lobbyist groups in Washington DC to represent their interests in Hollywood. It is a very difficult battle to fight. In the end, we can win by playing a strategic game in which we convince the world that this is not just a feminist issue, this is a civil rights issue—and it resonates nationally and globally. Also, this is not a partisan issue, it’s not a liberal or conservative issue. If women are shut out of contributing to our cultural narrative, our storytelling by being shut out of Hollywood as directors, so are conservatives.

Beyond #MeToo

In 2017 right after the Weinstein scandal hit the news, I wrote a guest post for The Hollywood Reporter, and I really knew immediately that this shift over to #MeToo from equal employment opportunity law was going to be problematic for the work I was doing. So I counted up all the films that Harvey Weinstein had executive produced and produced, and I found that he had only hired 2.7% women to direct the films he had executive produced or produced—2.7%, less than 3. Then I thought, so where does that put the great Hollywood icons that we all love and who have not sexually harassed and assaulted women—executive producers and producers like Steven Spielberg or George Clooney and Matt Damon. I counted up all the films that Steven Spielberg had produced and executive produced up to 2014 when the ACLU started in on this campaign, and as I mentioned before, he had hired only 1% women to direct the films that he executive produced. And George Clooney

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0%. And Matt Damon 0%. They were actually worse violators of employment discrimination than Weinstein was. I started thinking, oh yes, Hollywood is happy burning Harvey Weinstein on this medieval sacrificial pyre to absolve all Hollywood of its collective sins against women, but really the real pain, where the real injury happens, is in not giving us the jobs. Sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace are just some of many symptoms resulting from employment discrimination. They are the result of power-imbalances founded in employment and pay inequality. It’s all about money. And truly, given a choice, I would take sexual harassment any day over unemployment.

Filmmaking, Film History and (Feminist) Film Theory

CM: Our last question. Getting back to the narrative content of your films. We noted that obviously you make a lot of references to the history of cinema (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, kitchen sink realism, Charlie Chaplin’s little Tramp…), but would you say that film theory has also influenced the narrative, aesthetic, and political content of your films? MG: I don’t think a lot about film theory when I’m writing or directing, but ideas about how film functions, and images from films throughout film history are a part of me, so they are also part of my story-telling. This is I think why it’s so important that 50% of our stories be told by women because we don’t know what is going to come out of that. We don’t know what visuals and what subtexts might come to be included in the great body of our global cinema that other people will take from. I have borrowed and made homages to many different things that I have seen from cinema in all of my years of life watching and studying film, but those come largely from a male body of work and a male perspective on the world. Can you explain a little bit more your question in terms of film theory?

CM: Sure! You went to film school in UCLA where obviously you gained a lot of background knowledge on film history and film theory. Do you feel you’ve been using it in your films? It’s the case with a lot of film directors nowadays who self-consciously quote film theory and feminist film theory. For example, it is the case with some horror movies which integrate feminist scholarship into their narrative material, or with Todd Haynes who responds to feminist film scholars like Pam Cook and Laura Mulvey in Mildred Pierce. I was wondering if you had thought about doing this when you worked on When Saturday Comes. MG: I try to avoid pretension in general in my work, so I try not to be overly conscious about theory. I know the influences really come from the films that have informed the stories I’m trying to tell. So as you say, for example, on When Saturday Comes I was very influenced by This Sporting Life, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

CM: So making references to film history and films rather than referring to film theory per se. What about Hunger, the reference to the Little Tramp is conscious, isn’t it? MG: Of course, I was using the character in Hamsun’s Hunger to illustrate my own plight in Hollywood while referencing iconic figures from cinematic history, Charlie Chaplin on the one hand, and Lawrence of Arabia on the other. Each of them, like myself, is walking a tight-rope in life between sheer, hilarious mediocrity and potentially godlike greatness. The contradiction between what life is like, and what life could be like is so irreconcilable that in the end, what else can we do but laugh? We are just a step from oblivion and that’s all the time we get. Show’s over. So we do

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what we can. We try to tell stories to say, “I was here.” We try to shape the world to be a better place for the next gang coming in. Anyway, that is what directors do: we have a vision, and in attempting to realize that vision we find a thousand problems we need to solve along the way. On my journey I found that women are not fully allowed to direct films, so I had to solve that problem for all of us along the way. And ultimately, that’s the message of my film Hunger— at first Charlie Pontus gets defeated by Hollywood, he has to hitch a ride on a big rig truck out of LA—he’s exiled. But in the end he writes the book. And it’s a masterpiece, right? He triumphs over this industry that is like an existential vortex. That’s his redemption. Well, I do think that Hunger is my favorite piece of work I’ve ever made . . . and yet no one has seen it.

CM: Well, we have!

INDEX

Mots-clés: Maria Giese, réalisatrices, féminisme, militantisme, Hollywood, discrimination, Jimmy, Hunger Keywords: Maria Giese, women directors, feminism, activism, Hollywood, discrimination, When Saturday Comes, Hunger Subjects: Film, TV, Video

AUTHORS

CRISTELLE MAURY Maîtresse de conférence Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès [email protected]

DAVID ROCHE Professeur Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3 [email protected]

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Conference Report: 25th SERCIA Conference: “Trouble on Screen” Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest, France, September 4-6 2019 - Conference organized by Elizabeth Mullen and Nicole Cloarec

Sophie Chadelle and Mikaël Toulza

1 SERCIA (Société d’Etudes et de Recherche sur le Cinéma Anglophone), a society founded in 1993 to gather researchers in the field of English-speaking cinema, held its 25th conference in September 2019 at Université de Bretagne Occidentale in Brest, France. Remarkably organized by Elizabeth Mullen, Associate Professor at Université de Bretagne Occidentale, the conference, which lasted for three days from September 4th to 6th, included 18 panels with 3-4 speakers working on cinema and television and reflected SERCIA’s vast research interests; the works of art studied ranked from mainstream to avant-garde, through silent, classical or contemporary, and came from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and multiple other geographical locations. This conference was punctuated by two impressive keynotes given by Timothy Corrigan (University of Pennsylvania) and Janet Staiger (University of Texas at Austin).

2 This year, the conference revolved around the theme “Trouble on Screen / Trouble(s) à l’écran,” and more generally on the capacity of cinema and television to be, on the one hand, a source of entertainment, comfort and escape from our troublesome daily lives and, on the other, a source of destabilization and trouble, leading us to question our representation of normality. Whether this trouble is narrative, visual and/or aural, or situated on the level of production or reception, it deals with the ability of cinema and television to encapsulate the complexities of human societies. One of the questions addressed by this year’s discussions was that of the notion of trouble on screen as a means to depict a complex reality or to depart from realism. At stake was the question of the reliability of filmic representations. Films could be seen as a way to document the complex realities of the world, the depths of human psychology and the authenticity of human nature. On the contrary, the screen could also become a place of estrangement from everyday realism, film and television being media that cast a distorted and disturbing reflection of the world. The conference was devised to

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investigate to what extent the notion of trouble on screen could question and deconstruct moral lines of conduct, cinematographic and televisual norms, and codes of production and reception and, paradoxically, become a source of creation of new aesthetic norms, thereby inviting viewers to discover the invisible patterns and the subtle power plays at stake in the entertainment industry. The participants were invited to analyze the aesthetics of destabilization through unclear or blurred images, obscurity or unsettling soundtrack, and dwell upon surprising and troubling forms of pleasure and excitement. Focusing on trouble on screen led speakers to address broader perspectives such as the question of audience reception, as well as phenomenological and psychoanalytic perspectives, and thus to reflect upon the evolution of film and television studies and their reception.

3 David Roche (President of SERCIA, Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3) opened the first panel with a discussion of Lynne Ramsay’s four feature films, all of which center on troubled characters. He proposed an in-depth study of the way formal devices are used to express these characters’ subjectivities. To proceed, he particularly focused on narrative disruptions, point of view and texture. Ramsay’s films allow a reconciliation of objective and expressive realism, both traditions aiming at capturing human experiences, even though these two traditions were initially opposed by David Bordwell. Martin Berny (Université Paris-Est) then analyzed The Master (Anderson, 2012). He showed how the movie troubles the status of images. Through its editing and narrative structure, The Master becomes the emanation of Joaquin Phoenix’s character’s psychological process. Céline Murillo (Université Paris 13) focused on the movie Unmade Beds (Poe, 1976), more precisely on spatial and generic troubles. Set between Paris and New York City, Murillo argued that Poe’s movie troubles the separation between reality and fantasy. Finally, Hadrien Fontenaud (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier) talked about The Passionate Friends (Lean, 1949) and Madeleine (Lean, 1950), which both follow in Brief Encounter’s (Lean, 1946) footsteps. Far from only being variations of the theme of thwarted desire, Passionate Friends and Madeleine are based on a more complex melodramatic scheme. In these movies, Lean implemented specific narrative strategies, which are at the core of both an ambiguous poetics and the troubled and troubling subjectivities shown on screen.

4 In panel 3, participants were invited to study the theme of trouble in the representations of detectives and gangsters. Sophie Le Hiress (Université de Bretagne Occidentale) analyzed the detectives’ diagnosed mental troubles in three series: Perception (TNT, 2012-2015), Hannibal (NBC, 2013-2015), and Sherlock (BBC, 2010-2017). Far from being simple elements, the symptoms associated with these detectives’ disabilities have narrative and formal consequences, as they trouble the series’ aesthetics and the spectators’ reception of the series. Xavier Daverat (Université de Bordeaux) studied the femme fatale’s first onscreen appearance in various films noirs, from I Wake Up Screaming (Humberstone, 1941) to The Postman Always Rings Twice (Garnett, 1947) and The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1947). These “micro-ectasies,” a term he used to describe these moments, show the immediate seduction of the male protagonist. They present these women as feminine figures who are ready to be consumed, and trouble the narrative, which pauses in moments of contemplation. Argyrios Keleris (Université Paris 8) then delved into the gangster genre, the specificity of which lies between standardization and differentiation. Because this genre was one of transgressions, it was particularly targeted and troubled by the Hays Code in 1934. This resulted in the emergence of new genres: the hardboiled detective film, the gangster-

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as-cop film, the Cain-and-Abel film, the Syndicate film, the City-exposé film, and film noir. In the end, though, the crime film is imbued with ideological ambivalence, and its trouble lies in its depiction of the American dream. Finally, Dominique Sipière (Université Paris Nanterre) studied the factual, spectatorial and genre troubles in The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (FX, 2016) and O.J: Made in America (ESPN Films, 2016). Twenty years after Simpson’s trial, both series presupposed his guilt even though he was acquitted. They both revolve around what Sipière called “le long calvaire de la crédibilité” which, in turn, induces narrative and genre troubles.

5 Timothy Corrigan’s keynote explored the troubling relation between film and the real to the real through the analysis of two autobiographical documentaries: The Missing Picture (Phan, 2013), a Cambodian-French documentary film on the Khmer Rouge, and Stories We Tell (Polley, 2012), a documentary film exploring Sarah Polley’s family’s secrets. Since 1895, films have attempted to shape reality as a philosophical concept, an aesthetic strategy and a personal vision. All of these dimensions offer different versions of the real. Corrigan focused on the resistance of the real to be represented in the autobiographical documentaries under study. In the digital era, when documentaries, fake news and TV reality shows depict the real as self-evident, the two documentaries at stake attempt to de-create and re-create the real by focusing on its complexity, resistance and multiplicity. The real provides unstable evidence that should be considered as something that is simultaneously there and not there. Corrigan emphasized that films are a way to represent reality as a certain variation of the real, which should be always redefined, debated and considered as unrepresentable, as is the case in both films under study. In The Missing Picture, the theme of the missing image and the use of clay characters become strategies to tackle the erasure of the genocide, the violence of Cambodian massacres and the difficulty to represent a lost reality. The recreation of the real reveals the emptiness of the truth. Hence, Corrigan believes the representation of a lost reality can also be accomplished by gesturing towards it, and the real can only be represented as “cinematic stoppage.” The Missing Picture is both a deconstruction of the biographical adaptation and of cinema itself. Stories We Tell is a mix of personal footage, interviews and reenactments. It reflexively engages and undermines both narratives used to interrogate memory, and the objectivity of any perspective. Thus, it tackles the concept of recreating a real that has values, an ethical real. These kinds of reenactments situate the real as a phantom, the most important task of documentaries today being an educational and political one.

6 Panel 4 opened with Marie-Pierre Burquier (Université Paris Diderot), who focused on the role played by found-footage in the queer rereading of Hollywood’s classical imagery. She analyzed how existing images can be reused, reassembled and reinterpreted in order to bring to light their hidden meaning. Burquier based her presentation on the analysis of three films, Remembrance (Tartaglia, 1990), Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (Rappaport, 1992) and Meeting Two Queens (Barriga, 1991). She underlined the importance of the troubled aesthetics of reassembling in the queer reinterpretation of Hollywood mythical figures such as Bette Davis, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, thus subverting the usual and traditional identification process. She further explained how images from classical Hollywood films were merged with images from home footage movies, thus blurring the line between fiction and reality, and troubling the original, ideological framework of these images. This subversion ultimately leads to a reinvention and a rewriting of Hollywood’s history. Georges-Claude Guilbert (Université Le Havre Normandie) analyzed Steve Antin’s 2010 musical Burlesque and its

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troubled aesthetics. He explained the reasons for the perceived failure of the film, which all have to do with the movie’s handling of taste. He underlined the fact that many elements of the musical belonged to kitsch aesthetics and alluded to gay icons and culture, making it all the more puzzling for people who do not possess these references. Iconic figures of gay culture, including Cher, Madonna or even Kristen Bell, as well as diegetic and nondiegetic songs and musical performances, contribute to the creation of a troubling aesthetics inherent to the musical genre, the burlesque. Finally, Jeremy Cornec (Université Bretagne Occidentale) studied the representation of physical and identity trouble in the portrayal of the Belters in the series The Expanse (SyFy, 2015-). He analyzed how the construction of a collective identity relied on the palimpsest and revealed a form of unbalanced ethnic representation and oppression.

7 In panel 6, the troubles initiated by white masculinity in cinema and the troubles in the representation of that form of masculinity were investigated. Christelle Ringuet (Université Paris 8) analyzed whiteness in Lemon (Bravo, 2017). When the film was first released, Bravo, an African-American woman director, encountered problems in credibility because she was only screening whiteness. She was badly criticized for that movie, which portrays a troubling form of white masculinity, the deranged white male differing from the more traditional white hero. Next, Delphine Letort, (Université du Mans) tackled the representation of the Ku Klux Klan in The Burning Cross (Colmes, 1947). Her analysis focused on the portrayal of the Klan as a criminal organization which manipulates its members and makes the protagonist believe his economic plight was caused by immigrant labor. Unlike its notorious predecessor Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915), The Burning Cross troubles stereotypical images of minorities through its portrayal of social progress in these groups. Finally, Lucas Barrières (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3) examined the generic and formal troubles employed by Refn to evoke Ryan Gosling’s character’s masculinity troubles in Drive (2011) and compared the depiction of forms of manhood to Refn’s next film Only God Forgives (2013). The intertextuality between both films has led Refn to redefine an aesthetic of the notion of trouble in the representation of masculinity.

8 In panel 8, Nicolas Lahaye (Université de Versailles Saint Quentin) worked on the impact of the Z-movie The Room (Wiseau, 2003) and how its aesthetics, production and reception troubled the filmmaking industry and led to the creation of a myth about its maker, Tommy Wiseau. The reception of the film also induced a reassessment of the definition of what a cult movie is, thus demonstrating how this film followed the lead of cult films, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Sharman, 1975), and created a polymorphous entity. Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard (Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès) then tackled the subject of cinema and intoxication in three films, One A.M. (Chaplin, 1916), Wings (Wellman and D’Abbadie D’Arrast, 1927) and Major Dundee (Peckinpah, 1965). She showed how these three films dealt with the conflict between order and disorder brought on screen, the dramatization of disorder and how the screen can represent the body as a site of trouble in the protagonist’s mind. She suggested that these films represent a blurring of our apprehension of the real, which becomes a vehicle for an illusionary escape from our frustrating everyday lives. Finally, Oliver Kenny (Université Lille 1) addressed the impact of Britishness on the censorship of sexually explicit films in the UK. He first tackled the difference between erotica and porn and how this difference played an important role in the reception of films such as The Principles of Lust (Woolcock, 2004) and 9 Songs (Winterbottom, 2004) and their relationships to censorship politics. He then underlined the fact that the concept of

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foreignness could play an important role in the distinction between what could be considered as quality erotic films and porn. Foreign films such as Le Mépris (Godard, 1963), La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960), Les Valseuses (Blier, 1974) or Emmanuelle (Jaeckin, 1974), were praised for their quality and benefitted from a certain flexibility from the censors because of their foreign dimension. The question of the lower number of viewers for a foreign film could also be seen as a form of explanation for this flexibility.

9 In panel 7, Pablo Gómez Muñoz (Universidad de Zaragoza) and Marimar Azcona (Universidad de Zaragoza) offered two complementary discussions of the movie Downsizing (Payne, 2017) from a cosmopolitan perspective. Before analyzing space in the movie, Gómez Muñoz explained the centrality of low-cost staging. Matt Damon’s character’s family has decided to downsize both because of their financial problems and the effects of consumerism on the environment. Leisureland, the downsized metropolis, brings consumption dreams closer to people with a lesser environmental impact, yet it also reproduces inequalities. For instance, the film singles out the Latino neighborhood, which is separated from Leisureland by a wall, while a bus enters a tunnel into Leisureland, thus shedding light on the importance of the notions of border and spatial fixes in this study. Azcona then drew on the ambivalence of Leisureland’s advertised cosmopolitanism, marketed on the basis of capitalism and consumerism. Her approach shed light on how the movie’s politics do not offer any real cosmopolitan transformation of the world whatsoever.

10 The second keynote speaker, Janet Staiger, focused on the link between representation on screen and the practices of film reception. She analyzed the role played by criticism that read Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as a psychedelic film. At a time when violent hate crimes and massacres continue to shake American society to its core, the link between trouble on screen and trouble in the audience is more than ever under scrutiny. Can an audience be under the direct influence of representations of violence on screen? Staiger expressed her disbelief that representations could lead to pure mimicry. This study of the reception of 2001 is revealing of the complexities and sophistication of the link between trouble on screen and trouble in the audience. Staiger underlined the importance of pre-existing knowledge as well as social context, which are possible factors that may influence what audience retains from representations. Early critics of the film may have influenced, the perception that the film was the “ultimate trip”. However, in the late 1960s, many youths would have watched any film stoned without needing prior encouragement. Moreover, the role played by the film’s aesthetics must be taken into account. The soundtrack, the slow pace, the silence and the minimalist dialogues would have reinforced the comparison of the film to a trip, hence the importance of aesthetics in the reception, not so much in the sense that aesthetics create effects, but that audiences might make use of them in a particular way. The early reviews and the psychedelic terminology they used may have played an important role in the reading of the film, although the importance of the influence of reviews can be relative. People advertised 2001 as Rated S, for Stoned Audiences, and the film went on to become a cult film and a smashing success. Several lessons are to be drawn from this story. 2001 became a cult film much in the same way as The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Sharman, 1975) did, with an underground audience who would return to watch the same movie and create trouble in the audience. Finally, Staiger concluded that, beyond social context, aesthetics also mattered since part of

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what produced the psychedelic audience was probably the non-standard, non-classical aesthetics, which was more aligned with European art cinema.

11 Panel 11 revolved around racial issues in the U.S.A. First, Mikaël Toulza (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès) unraveled the intersectional politics of voodoo in Angel Heart (Parker, 1987) in relation to the movie’s troubling racial and generic hybridity. The private eye’s white male gaze, through which the narrative unfolds, perceives voodoo as a diabolical and abject religion. This results in an association between voodoo and Satanism which troubles the film’s aesthetics. Toulza’s study of the black voodoo priestess’s experience—from Angel observing and fetishizing her during the voodoo ceremony to him raping and murdering her—stressed the movie’s destabilization of this untrustworthy white male gaze. Ultimately, Angel Heart’s voodoo troubles racial and generic boundaries, even though it is still used as a sensationalistic means of entertaining the audience. Claire Dutriaux (Université Paris Sorbonne) examined the term “professional southerners,” which has been used by film scholars and historians to refer to several agents in Hollywood who acted as mediators between Hollywood and the South in the Production Code era. Dutriaux contended that their presence was necessary to avoid making movies that would be troubling or troublesome to the South’s audiences. During and after WWII, Hollywood was negotiating what it perceived as the pressures of the civil rights movement. These professional southerners played an important role to help filmmakers navigate between advocating for the South and its identity on the one hand, and condemning this region’s violent past on the other. Yann Roblou (Université Polytechnique Hauts de France) closed the panel with an analysis of the horror movie Us (Peele, 2019) which is, at least structurally, a classical tragedy. The movie’s reliance on the motif of the double is paralleled by the narrative’s symmetry and repetition and the camera’s confrontation of the characters’ stare to the mirror. Us is heavily intertextual and manages to merge the Fantastic with Horror.

12 In Panel 13, Chris Horn (University of Leicester) questioned Friedkin’s goals with films from the 1980s such as Rampage (1987) and Cruising (1980) and whether or not they should be considered as a form of provocation towards Reaganite cinema. According to Horn, the reactions to both films said more about the context and the morality of the time than about the films themselves. Both films, which dealt with controversial themes—homosexuality in Cruising and the death penalty in Rampage—played on the cathartic effects films can have when dealing with troublesome material. Gary Edgerton (Butler University) gave a talk on the series Mad Men (AMC, 2007-2017) and analyzed its politics in a new era of accountability. He underlined the fact that the show tackled a form of violence through its depictions of sex and engagement with politics. According to him, Mad Men could be considered to reflect both the Zeitgeist of the time but also of today. The critical nostalgia that the show displays not only tackles the gendered and political power plays of the 1950s and 1960s, but could also be said to foreshadow current movements like #MeToo, especially if we consider Weiner’s own personal life (he was accused of sexual harassment by one the female writers of the show). Anaïs Le Fevre-Berthelot (Université Rennes 2) focused on two shows, Ally McBeal (Fox, 1997-2002) and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Bloom, The CW, 2015-), in order to analyze the link between the portrayal of female characters and the representation of mental illness on screen and its evolution. The depiction of mental illness on screen is linked to troubling concepts such as representation, norms and identity. For Le Fevre- Berthelot, however, this theme has been underrepresented for a long time in the media. Characters suffering from mental illness were very often secondary characters.

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The post-network era led to a change, and series such as Ally McBeal and Crazy Ex- Girlfriend stand out for several reasons. Their depiction of mental illness is not limited to secondary characters. Furthermore, her analysis of gender bias in such representations demonstrated to what extent the representation of trouble through the portrayal of female characters suffering from mental illness can lead to question unrealistic expectations of liberal feminism.

13 Panel 15 started with Sébastien Lefait’s (Université Paris 8) exploration of intermedial troubles in the series The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu, 2017- ) and House of Cards (Netflix, 2013-2019) as examples. In both series, intermediality relies on blurred areas between media forms, troubling the reception notably in terms of the political and social implications which drew a lot of attention from the audience. Lefait’s talk emphasized the growing importance of popular series in displaying their political content, thus gradually affecting US politics. Julie Assouly (Université d’Artois) then tackled the representations of working-class Pennsylvanians in The Deer Hunter (Cimino, 1978) and Out of the Furnace (Cooper, 2013). Set in “photogenically depressed” industrial landscapes, with a mill serving as multi-faceted signifier of the Rust Belt, Assouly argued that both films explore the troubles associated with working-class WASP masculinity.

14 In one of the final panels (18) Julia Echeverria (Universidad de Zaragoza) put into perspective Orange Is the New Black (Netflix, 2013-2019) and the Spanish women-in- prison series Vis a vis (2015-2019, Antena 3 & Fox Spain). Jenji Kohan, Orange’s showrunner, says the series is a Trojan horse to tell story about black and Latina woman, which also applies to its Spanish counterpart. And indeed, both series create visibility for the experiences of multiple forms of femininity. The difference between them lies, according to Echeverria, in the fact that Orange is set in a highly segregated place while Vis a Vis’s prison acts, ironically enough, as liberating space. Anne Sweet (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3) examined the trouble with female power by analyzing the representation of witchcraft, sexuality and magic in the series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Netflix, 2018-). She explored the link between female power and agency on screen and the depiction of witches on television and its evolution from the 1960s until now. Sophie Chadelle (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès) closed the last panel with a study of the use of slang by female characters in Sex and the City (HBO, 1998-2004) and Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, 2005- ) and its impact on the representation of female empowerment. She then analyzed the translation of both series and demonstrated how the French dubbing and subtitling altered the work on slang and vulgarity thus undermining the feminist discourse of both series and the female characterization process.

15 The 25th SERCIA conference offered a wealth of case studies, theoretical and methodological proposals, and was an opportunity to explore the diverse understandings of the notion of trouble on screen. The multifaceted dimension of the notion of trouble on screen was brilliantly tackled throughout this conference, which also testified to the wide variety of approaches in film and television studies. The creative dimension of the concept of trouble on screen was central. Whether it is conveyed through the aesthetics of films or series, the narrative and characterization strategies or the soundtrack, among others, trouble on screen can often lead to the destabilization and explosion of traditional frameworks and the renewal of our beliefs and expectations. Cinematic and television works could thus be seen as profoundly

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human experiences, as organic and living elements, which grow, die and are reborn in a perpetual, creative and artistic movement that troubles us, forcing us to feel and think at the same time, while stepping out of our comfort zone in order to make sense of our very troubling world.

INDEX

Keywords: trouble, cinema, seriality, serial, series, TV, media, internet, film, television, aesthetic, form, Hollywood, fiction, documentary, production, narrative, narration, transmediality, intermediality, intertextuality, performance, spectatorship, reality, realities Mots-clés: trouble, cinéma, sérialité, feuilleton, séries, télévision, media, internet, film, esthétique, forme, Hollywood, fiction, documentaire, production, narration, récit, transmédialité, intermédialité, performance, audience, réalité Subjects: TV, Film, Video

AUTHORS

SOPHIE CHADELLE Doctorante Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès [email protected]

MIKAËL TOULZA Doctorant Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès [email protected]

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Ariel's Corner

Vanessa Alayrac (dir.) British visual arts

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Elizabethan Treasures, Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver Exhibition review - National Portrait Gallery, London, 21 February - 19 May 2019

Alice Leroy

1 The lives, scandals, and passions of the Tudors have fascinated the general public for a long time and have been the recurring object of exhibitions in Great-Britain and abroad over the past few years.1 Although the National Portrait Gallery’s latest exhibition tackles the Renaissance period, the originality and the appeal of Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver are that it makes the conscious decision to shift the focus from a troubled royal dynasty to the artistic and cultural practices of the late 16th and early 17th centuries – in order to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Hilliard’s death, it sets aside Flemish large-scale portraiture and concentrates on one of the earliest English traditions of painting: the art of limning.

2 Of diplomatic, political or sentimental values, miniatures were a vital means of representation in Elizabeth I’s England. These small portraits, often encased in a jewel setting, have existed at the English court since the reign of Henry VIII,2 but it is only during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods that their production flourished, largely thanks to the incredible body of work produced by Nicholas Hilliard and one of his students, Isaac Oliver. The son of a Protestant goldsmith from Exeter, Hilliard spent some time on the Continent, where he was met with the extraordinary opportunity to become acquainted with different forms of art, including the works of Albrecht Dürer when he was just a young boy.3 As he trained with the Goldsmith’s Company upon his return, it is presumed that he simultaneously started to teach himself how to paint – later describing his talent for portraiture in his Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning (c. 1600) as a divine gift.4 The patronage of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, eased his introduction to the upper strata of the English society, eventually making him one of the most renowned artists in the country and allowing him to develop his studio and take apprentices – among them, Isaac Oliver. We find eerie similarities between the life of the master and that of his student, as both were sons of goldsmiths, who became miniaturists for the court and the royal families, although they each developed their

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own styles. If we mostly remember the royal representations they created, and most famously Hilliard’s depiction of Elizabeth I’s ‘Mask of Youth,’ the exhibition curated by Catharine MacLeod tries to show the wide range of sitters, symbolisms, or even significances that these miniatures could have. By showcasing so many different examples of portrait miniatures – from the royal family to unknown merchants, from a simple physical representation to that of an indecipherable riddle –, it aims at broadening our knowledge of the social and cultural practices of the time.

3 It may seem that the public display of dozens of miniatures goes against the very nature and essence of these objects. The portraits, produced on such a small scale, were most often meant to be hidden from sight, between the folds of clothes or in a cabinet room, the tangible evidence of a relationship between sitter and owner. However, the dark colours and dim lighting of the rooms contribute both to bring out the golden settings and deep blue of the miniatures, as well as to recreate some of the intimacy and secrecy that we associate with them. Moreover, the magnifying glasses provided by the museum offer the viewers the possibility to familiarise themselves with the delicacy of the painters’ brushstrokes and the details of every face and costume depicted, in an attempt to make up for the physical handling normally required to get acquainted with such tiny objects.

4 Today, about two hundred miniatures are attributed to Hilliard, and it is assumed that many more were lost overtime, attesting to the prominence of both the painter and the medium he chose to work on.5 The success of miniatures at that period owed to the mastery of Hilliard and Oliver, as well as to the innovations they thought of, both helped by their training as goldsmiths, and their pioneering techniques are put at the forefront of the exhibition. From the very first room they step in, the visitors are not simply left to gaze at and admire works depicting Hilliard and his family, but they find themselves marvelling at the fastidious craft that is limning. An array of utensils and materials used by the limners are set on a table below a video produced by the Victoria and Albert Museum, which takes its viewers step by step through the painstaking process that goes into the production of miniatures, creating a new layer of admiration for the work of the two men celebrated by the museum. From the use of burnished silver to depict gemstones to the introduction of a red curtain in the background of the miniature, both artists played with the tools of craftsmanship to produce miniatures of a whole new quality.6 The coins and medals, the large-scale portraits as well as the drawings and writings of Hilliard and Oliver exhibited in the following rooms help to complete the portraits of two men, whose rivalry seemed to lead to bursts of creativity, whose talents were not limited to one medium but thrived as they experimented with different techniques.

5 Gathering items from museums as well as from private collections, Elizabethan Treasures displays the numerous facets of England in the late 16th and early 17 th centuries: it showcases a world made up by kings, queens, and their courtiers, but also by members of the gentry and of an increasingly prosperous middle-class.7 Despite their different backgrounds, educations, or wealth, it seems that they shared a visual language and specific cultural practices. Although the representations of the middle-class were simpler in conception, and encased in less lavish settings, their very existence informs us of a process of emulation from one stratum of the English society to another: patronage of limners might have started in the upper strata, with men such as Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who commissioned many portraits of himself and other

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courtiers, but many miniatures produced from the 1580s into the Jacobean period allow the viewers to meet merchants, tradesmen, and other anonymous members of the English society. Many of them were actually immortalised by Isaac Oliver, who only came into contact with the royals in the later years of his career. Oliver’s attention to detail and his mastery of the brush created vivid depictions of adults and children, giving character and dignity to a category of people who were often coming into contact with painted art and portraiture for the first time.

6 Although royal portraiture is not the only focus of Elizabethan Treasures, it does underline the importance both of the figure of the monarch and of the relationship between the sovereign and the painter. In the complicated context of Protestant iconoclasm, secular images and representations of the people governing the English society increasingly gained in meaning and in value. Even though he was never officially appointed Serjeant Painter, Nicholas Hilliard had a privileged position at the court of both Elizabeth I and James I. The examples of miniatures featured at the National Portrait Gallery are pieces of evidence of the numerous sittings that took place over the course of the two monarchs’ reigns. The steps that led to the creation of Hilliard’s famous ‘Mask of Youth’ are charted through a number of small and large- scale representations, showing how the queen was transformed from a plain young woman8 into an ageless icon, whose portrait could be worn as a sign of favour and loyalty. Oliver, on the other hand, did not confine himself to conventions and produced daring portraits, such as Elizabeth I (1589), which shows the lines of the face of an ageing queen, thus going against the myth of the divine and ageless Bess.

7 If Hilliard was a great portraitist, as his miniatures and large-scale works – including a coronation portrait (1600) – show, Oliver, who was familiar with foreign influence, both from growing up in Rouen and Geneva and, later, from his travels, also produced larger cabinet miniatures, whose size allowed for a more elaborate background, as well as histories and allegories, such as Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses (1588), in which he reworked the myth of the Judgement of Paris. Thus, his prominence at the Stuart court probably helps to explain the diversity of images produced under James I. Moreover, as he understood the importance of dynasty and succession, the new king’s family was portrayed on numerous occasions. Thus, the final section of the exhibition, which is dedicated to the Jacobean period, displays more colourful and elaborate works, commemorating the masques played at the court and the intricate costumes that were worn as well as very flattering portraits of the young Prince Henry, that were undoubtedly sent abroad as marriage negotiations were conducted.

8 By focusing solely on the works of two of the first English artists, Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, Elizabethan Treasures manages to paint a broad picture of the English society during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. It presents portraits of different members of the English society – some anonymous and from the middle-class, others more famous and belonging to the elite – while also showing the range of the painters’ abilities, as they were able to adapt their techniques to different media and different commissions. Beyond the aesthetic qualities of the limnings, the pieces showcased and the few section labels available to read provide information on a cultural phenomenon at its peak, and offer an insight into the social, political, and artistic values of Hillard’s and Oliver’s miniatures.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cooper, Tarnya and Jane Eade. Elizabeth I and Her People. London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2013.

Goldring, Elizabeth. Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2019.

Hearn, Karen. Nicholas Hilliard. London: Unicorn Publishing Group, 2005. 160 pp.

MacLeod, Catherine. Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver. London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2019.

Strong, Roy. The Elizabethan Image: An Introduction to English Portraiture, 1588-1603. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2019.

NOTES

1. To name but a few: Elizabeth (1 May-14 September 2003, National Maritime Museum, London), Elizabeth I and her People (10 October 2013-5 January 2014, National Portrait Gallery, London), Les Tudors (18 March-19 July 2015, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris). 2. See Elizabeth Goldring, Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2019) 3. 3. See Goldring 44-50. 4. See Goldring 63. 5. See Catherine MacLeod, Elizabethan Treasures (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2019) 10. 6. See MacLeod 22-26. 7. See MacLeod 125. 8. See Nicholas Hilliard, Elizabeth I (1572, London: National Portrait Gallery) which is the earliest known miniature of the queen painted by Hilliard.

INDEX

Keywords: Nicholas Hilliard, Isaac Oliver, National Portrait Gallery, Elizabeth I, Elizabethan period, Jacobean period, miniature, craftsmanship, portrait painting, politics, cultural studies Subjects: British painting Mots-clés: Nicholas Hilliard, Isaac Oliver, National Portrait Gallery, Élisabeth Ie, période élisabéthaine, période jacobéenne, miniature, artisanat, portrait, politique, études culturelles

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AUTHOR

ALICE LEROY Doctorante en études anglophone, ATER Université de Lille [email protected]

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Isabelle Keller-Privat and Candice Lemaire (dir.) Recensions

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François-René de Chateaubriand, Voyage en Amérique. Édition de Sébastien Baudoin.

Christine Dualé

RÉFÉRENCE

François-René de Chateaubriand, Voyage en Amérique. Édition de Sébastien Baudoin. Paris, Gallimard, Collection Folio classique, 2019. 749 p, ISBN : 978-2-07-046710-5.

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1 Dès la couverture de Voyage en Amérique par François-René de Chateaubriand édité par Sébastien Baudoin, le lecteur est transporté vers les contrées lointaines du Nouveau Monde où les Indiens, présentés ici au premier et second plans semblent pouvoir être déplacés au grès de la destinée manifeste de cette nouvelle nation évoluant inexorablement. Vue des Montagnes Rocheuses (1863) d’Albert Bierstadt, connu pour ses paysages grandioses de l’Ouest américain, est effectivement une entrée en matière très judicieuse lorsque l’on sait que l’artiste créa ce paysage idéal après son expédition pour trouver une route reliant le Mississippi au Pacifique et qu’il n’hésita pas à transformer certains détails afin de sublimer le paysage. Comme Bierstadt, Chateaubriand rêvait de découvrir un autre passage, celui du Nord-Ouest, et entreprit sa narration viatique trente-six ans après sa découverte du Nouveau Monde, « nourrissant sa nostalgie d’un passé revécu par l’écriture » (24) comme nous le précise l’éditeur. Chateaubriand révèle ici une nature grandiose et pittoresque teintée « d’émotion rousseauiste transcend[ant] souvent la réalité pour y voir germer les contours d’un idéal tendant vers l’infini métaphysique » (34). Dans la lignée de H. D. Thoreau et fasciné par la wilderness, c’est-à- dire les grands espaces désertiques et sauvages, Chateaubriand dévoile rétrospectivement un décor sans équivalent dont les tableaux descriptifs contribuèrent à sa renommée de « peintre des paysages » (660). Sainte-Beuve le nomma d’ailleurs « l’Enchanteur » et loua « sa plume enchanteresse » (34).

2 La plume épique de ce « voyageur-poète » (35) est rééditée par Sébastien Baudoin aux Éditions Gallimard pour notre plus grand plaisir. La présente édition est très complète et agrémentée d’une chronologie détaillée (531-540), d’une notice sur l’épopée et la genèse du manuscrit (541-555), d’une bibliographie sélective sur Chateaubriand et la littérature de voyage, d’un répertoire des voyageurs cités par Chateaubriand (562-601) et d’une carte permettant de visualiser les itinéraires de Chateaubriand. La préface (7-51) très érudite et fouillée de Sébastien Baudoin est riche en références et notes explicatives dont les détails précis facilitent l’entrée dans le texte. Voyage en Amérique

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invite les lecteurs du vingt et unième siècle à la poésie, à la communion avec la nature et les grands espaces, alors que la réflexion de Chateaubriand se confond avec les questionnements philosophiques des Lumières. Lire ou relire Voyage en Amérique permet d’appréhender la nature vue par un homme du XVIIIe siècle, de la mettre en perspective avec la nature du XXIe siècle et d’en saisir l’extrême fragilité. Comme le remarque Sébastien Baudouin, la nature décrite par Chateaubriand « est à la démesure de ce qu’il attendait » (41), lui qui s’interrogeait déjà sur le futur de l’Amérique et les découvertes des explorateurs : « Est-il bien que les communications entre les hommes soient devenues aussi faciles ? Les nations ne conserveraient-elles pas mieux leur caractère en s’ignorant les unes les autres, en gardant une fidélité religieuse aux habitudes de leurs pères ? » (111) Il s’interroge aussi rétrospectivement sur la grande hétérogénéité de la population et sa possible homogénéité : « [C]elui-là catholique, paresseux et superbe, celui-là luthérien, laboureur et sans esclaves ; celui-là anglican et planteur avec des nègres ; celui-là puritain et négociant ; combien faudra-t-il de siècles pour rendre ces éléments homogènes ! » (522).

3 Si lors du voyage en Orient (1806-1807) Chateaubriand affirme qu’il était préférable de voir la Grèce avec les yeux d’Homère et de demeurer un voyageur immobile afin d’éviter toutes désillusions, son grand voyage en Amérique l’entraîne toutefois vers des contrées « sources de révélations esthétiques et métaphysiques » (36). Entre déception et illusion, expérience extatique et émotion rousseauiste, Voyage en Amérique « reprend la tradition des grands voyageurs » (21) dont il se réclame et auxquels il s’identifie : « je viens me ranger dans la foule des voyageurs obscurs qui n’ont vu que ce que tout le monde a vu, qui n’ont fait faire aucun progrès aux sciences […], mais je me présente comme le dernier historien des peuples de la terre de Colomb, de ces peuples dont la race ne tardera pas à disparaître ; je viens dire quelques mots sur les destinées futures de l’Amérique, sur ces autres peuples héritiers des infortunés Indiens : je n’ai d’autre prétention que d’exprimer des regrets et des espérances » (111). Chateaubriand veut écrire dans la lignée d’Hérodote, qu’il présente comme le « père de l’histoire » (606). Comme lui, il se veut le « garant » de l’Histoire.

4 Le voyage en lui-même fut pour Chateaubriand un moyen de fuir la tutelle familiale et de donner corps à ses rêves exaltés de « jeune homme désabusé et sans avenir, chassé par les désordres de l’Histoire, réfugié dans la folie de ses rêves d’absolu (9) » ; un jeune homme en proie à « un imaginaire enflammé en quête d’exotisme et d’ailleurs » (9) qui tente de vivre dans ce Nouveau Monde une expérience à la hauteur de son imaginaire et qui va lui fournir l’inspiration de toute son œuvre.

5 Le lecteur retrouve ainsi les grands courants de la littérature française mais aussi américaine dans la description des paysages notamment. Les échos à Thoreau, les recours à Bartram ou encore Gilpin sont fréquents. Le pittoresque, le sublime, le transcendantalisme, la wilderness, l’expérience extatique sont convoqués pour évoquer ce Nouveau Monde, « nous mystifier et nous éblouir » (37). Les références régulières à Mémoire d’outre-tombe, Génie du christianisme, Atala, Essai sur les révolutions, Les Natchez et aux ouvrages de William Bartram (Voyages) ou de H.D. Thoreau (Un Yankee au Canada ; Walden) dans les notes de l’éditeur viennent étayer les descriptions de l’auteur et ajoutent à la précision du vaste et riche panorama historique et littéraire proposé par Sébastien Baudoin. Ainsi, le principe d’écriture de Chateaubriand transparaît à travers les références et les échos de l’éditeur aux autres textes de Chateaubriand, lui qui concevait ses récits comme une mosaïque « [en] recycl[ant] ses propres textes » (542) et

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en empruntant à d’autres auteurs-voyageurs. Voyage en Amérique fonctionne comme un réservoir qui « servira à abreuver la grande œuvre, somme de sa vie, les Mémoires » (547). Chateaubriand prolongea ainsi sa réflexion dans Les Natchez, Atala, le Génie du christianisme, ou encore les Mémoires d’outre-tombe. Dans la partie Notice (541-555), placée après le récit et les notes de Chateaubriand, Sébastien Baudoin propose une synthèse supplémentaire très éclairante sur « L’épopée du manuscrit », sa genèse, sa conception et sa réception.

6 Dans la lignée de la tradition des récits viatiques, Voyage en Amérique est organisé autour d’une structure tripartite (Itinéraire, Histoire naturelle, Mœurs des Sauvages), se clôt sur une réflexion sur les États-Unis puis sur les Républiques espagnoles et la fin du voyage. L’ouvrage suit « un principe de montage », comme l’indique Sébastien Baudoin en référence à Philippe Antoine dans Récits de voyage de Chateaubriand, contribution à l’étude d’un genre (Paris, Honoré Champion 1997, 24). Voyage en Amérique emprunte en définitive à plusieurs modèles de la littérature de voyage car Chateaubriand n’hésite pas à reprendre abondamment le texte de Bartram notamment pour retracer son soi- disant itinéraire en Floride dans « Description de quelques sites dans l’intérieur des Florides » (179-191) alors qu’il ne s’y est jamais rendu. Carver, Charlevoix, Bartram sont des sources inépuisables pour Chateaubriand et les critiques mirent en doute la véracité de ses propos. Chateaubriand est tour à tour historien, géographe, naturaliste, archéologue, ethnologue, et poète. Très inspiré, ses descriptions cherchent à « éblouir le lecteur » (685) et il a recours à « de nombreux effets de théâtralisation » (668) tout en exprimant un « idéal rousseauiste […] celui de retrouver l’homme primitif, vivant selon les lois de la nature, dans sa pureté originelle […] » (669), comme l’explique avec précision Sébastien Baudoin.

7 Le spectacle de la nature hybride avec laquelle Chateaubriand est en contact, entre espaces sauvages (wilderness) et terres détruites par les colons, est loin de le laisser indifférent. Il ne manque d’ailleurs pas de remarquer : « les puissances civilisées se partagent sans façon, en Amérique, des terres qui ne leur appartiennent pas » (133) et d’ajouter plus loin : « les Européens ont remplacé ces bienfaits de la nature par les productions de l’art : les Sauvages ont disparu » (149). Les descriptions de la nature lui permettent aussi de mettre en scène ses émotions et d’évoquer la présence de Dieu, génie créateur et ordonnateur de la nature. Il devient naturaliste dans la partie intitulée Histoire naturelle. Dans Mœurs des Sauvages il rapproche les mœurs des Indiens de celles des Anciens « rêvant d’une origine commune de simplicité de mœurs, de vertu, qui renverrait à l’enfance de l’âge humain, non encore perverti par la société moderne » (699). Après des élans lyriques lorsqu’il évoque les vastes espaces américains, Chateaubriand décrit avec objectivité « les tribus errantes du Nouveau Monde » (324), leurs mœurs et coutumes et « peint ce qui fut beaucoup plus que ce qui est » (324). En faisant état des territoires spoliés des Indiens, il adopte la posture de l’historien, « celle du dernier témoin » (720) qui, comme le remarque Sébastien Baudoin, « confère à son discours un intérêt particulier » (720). Dans la conclusion Chateaubriand souligne le développement effréné et inexorable de l’Amérique, son « esprit mercantile » (348) ainsi que le bien-être matériel des Américains tout en s’interrogeant sur « les prodiges de la liberté » (347). Il oppose les principes de liberté des Amériques espagnoles à ceux des États-Unis et « expose avec franchise les difficultés qui […] entrav[èrent] la liberté des républiques espagnoles » (360). Puis les

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circonstances de l’Histoire et sa fibre royaliste poussent Chateaubriand à revenir en France. Fin du voyage dresse ainsi le bilan de ses « destinées vagabondes » (367).

8 On retiendra le travail remarquable d’érudition et de contextualisation de Sébastien Baudoin tant dans sa préface que dans les notes riches en références et explications qui permettent de replacer ce voyage en Amérique dans le contexte des voyages d’explorateurs et d’identifier les sources de Chateaubriand. Le « Répertoire des voyageurs » constitué par Sébastien Baudoin, qui regroupe les noms d’auteurs- voyageurs cités par l’auteur, est aussi d’une grande précision et vient compléter une préface et Notice très détaillées où les rappels historiques, littéraires et bibliographiques sont nombreux. Les multiples renvois aux autres ouvrages de Chateaubriand sont particulièrement judicieux pour pénétrer l’ensemble de son œuvre et témoignent de la connaissance très pointue de l’écriture de Chateaubriand par Sébastien Baudoin.

9 Lire Voyage en Amérique de Chateaubriand, édité par Sébastien Baudoin, permet de découvrir ou redécouvrir un texte moins connu qu’Atala ou encore Mémoires d’outre- tombe, d’exhumer un monde oublié, l’Amérique de la fin du XVIIIe siècle « désormais bel et bien morte » (51), dont la fascination demeure et de réfléchir à un auteur-voyageur finalement en avance sur son époque, nostalgique d’une grandeur passée et rempli d’espoir en ce Nouveau Monde où certes « le genre humain recommence » (338) mais au prix d’une nature et de nations indiennes spoliées. Comme l’édition de Sébastien Baudoin le démontre, « le voyage en Amérique demeure inscrit en lettres de noblesse dans la littérature française par le récit de Chateaubriand, notamment par le relais des Mémoires d’outre-tombe, qui en ont repris les plus belles pages pour les livrer à la postérité » (554).

INDEX

Mots-clés : Amérique, Destinée Manifeste, explorateurs, littérature/ récit de voyage, Nature, Nouveau Monde, Passage du Nord-Ouest, grands espaces, transcendantalisme, la wilderness Keywords : Travel account/ literature, America, explorers, Manifest Destiny, Nature, the New World, North-West Passage, open spaces, transcendentalism, wilderness

AUTEURS

CHRISTINE DUALÉ Professeur - Culture noire américaine Université Jean Monnet - Saint Etienne [email protected]

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Julien Nègre. L’Arpenteur vagabond. Cartes et cartographies dans l’œuvre de Henry David Thoreau.

Mathieu Duplay

RÉFÉRENCE

Julien Nègre. L’Arpenteur vagabond. Cartes et cartographies dans l’œuvre de Henry David Thoreau. Lyon : ENS Éditions, 2019.

For many years, I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open,

1 écrit Thoreau dans un célèbre passage de Walden. Dans L’Arpenteur vagabond. Cartes et cartographies dans l’œuvre de Henry David Thoreau, Julien Nègre prend au pied de la lettre cette déclaration apparemment modeste (322), profession de foi d’un écrivain- cartographe qui, on le sait, exerça le métier d’arpenteur depuis le milieu des années 1840 jusqu’aux mois qui précédèrent son décès en 1862. Extravagant, le projet d’une « carte de Thoreau » (29) n’est pourtant pas nouveau. L’ouvrage classique de Michel Granger, Narcisse à Walden (1991), souligne déjà que l’écrivain, à l’instar des autres auteurs de la Renaissance américaine, se méfie du « cadastre aux lignes géométriques, à angle droit et à égale distance » ; Granger fait écho sur ce point aux analyses de Pierre- Yves Pétillon (La Grand-route. Espace et écriture en Amérique, 1979). Julien Nègre reprend leurs conclusions, dont il fait le point de départ de sa propre réflexion. Son excellent ouvrage s’inscrit ainsi dans le droit fil d’une longue et riche tradition critique qui, de part et d’autre de l’Atlantique, fait des figures américaines de la spatialité, et plus encore de leurs matérialisations graphiques, la clef d’une interrogation sur les relations entre le langage et le monde sensible. Le travail de Philippe Jaworski sur Melville opposait déjà l’Empire clos, quadrillé, soumis à l’autorité d’un regard scrutateur, et le Désert où les nomades se frayent un chemin imprévisible au fil d’une interminable errance (Melville. Le désert et l’empire, 1986) ; on la retrouve dans les écrits que Gilles

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Deleuze, lecteur de Jaworski, consacra à la littérature américaine dans les dernières années de sa vie (Critique et Clinique, 1993). Plus récemment, l’essor de l’écocritique à la suite de Lawrence Buell (The Environmental Imagination, 1995) et le « tournant spatial » pris au début des années 2000 dans le sillage de Bertrand Westphal ont renouvelé la réflexion sur les rapports entre les mots et le monde, substituant à la traditionnelle opposition entre « nature » et « culture » une vision multipolaire des lieux et des espaces d’écriture : susceptible d’être parcourue en mille directions contraires, la carte permet d’inventer des trajets non linéaires et fait office d’antidote aux grands récits du progrès et de la conquête (25). Le livre de Julien Nègre se présente ainsi, à un certain niveau, comme une élégante synthèse de quarante ans de conversation critique, en même temps qu’il montre à quel point l’œuvre de Thoreau continue de nourrir un débat dont l’urgence n’a fait que s’accroître, tant sous l’effet des dynamiques internes aux disciplines concernées qu’à l’approche d’une crise écologique majeure dont l’ampleur inédite questionne toutes nos catégories de pensée.

2 Cela dit, on ne saurait minimiser l’apport spécifique de Julien Nègre, qui a le grand mérite de renouveler une réflexion dont il situe fort bien les tenants et les aboutissants, mais dont il perçoit aussi quelques-uns des impensés. Dans ses formulations classiques, la question de la cartographie chez Thoreau reste liée à celle de la subjectivité ; la carte est appréhendée soit comme une figure du moi, soit comme l’obstacle auquel le « je » de l’écrivain s’affronte à mesure qu’il tente de reconfigurer le monde à la mesure de ses aspirations. Certains critiques se représentent l’espace comme un miroir où le moi découvre ses propres traits ; de ce mode de pensée, l’extraordinaire illustration que Julien Nègre emprunte à l’édition Princeton des œuvres de Thoreau (1970) offre une excellente métaphore visuelle : le visage de l’auteur s’y superpose à la carte des environs de Concord, comme s’il n’y avait pas de différence réelle entre sa personnalité et le territoire qu’il décrit. D’autres, à l’instar de Pétillon et Granger, décrivent la révolte de Thoreau contre le « cadastre » qui assigne à résidence, et retracent les efforts qu’il déploie afin de lui substituer « une carte nouvelle et subjective » (21). Pour les uns comme pour les autres, le sujet écrivant reste seul maître à bord et le tracé cartographique fait office d’instrument au service de l’exploration de soi, y compris lorsque l’ego passe au second plan et que l’écriture se met en quête de nouvelles manières de dire et d’habiter le monde. Or Julien Nègre fait très justement remarquer que les débats actuels sur l’expérience littéraire de l’espace invitent à s’affranchir de cette dichotomie qui, envers et contre tout, fait le jeu d’un anthropocentrisme dont notre époque perçoit de mieux en mieux les dangers. Surtout, ces deux discours ont en commun de faire de la carte un usage métaphorique et d’y voir la figure d’autre chose, du moi qui s’y dissimule pour mieux s’y dévoiler ou bien, à l’inverse, des différents modes d’arraisonnement autoritaire auxquels la subjectivité s’efforce d’échapper. C’est faire fi de ce que la carte signifie d’abord pour quiconque a longtemps exercé la profession d’arpenteur, à l’instar de Thoreau : il est peut-être temps, suggère Nègre, de littéraliser la métaphore cartographique afin de placer la lettre de l’écriture, et non pas le « je » de l’écrivain, au centre du débat critique. L’heure est venue, dit-il, de chercher « à voir comment la très grande affinité de Thoreau avec la pratique cartographique donne un tour particulier à la langue » (25).

3 On perçoit ici ce qui caractérise le mieux le travail de Julien Nègre, à la fois nourri par une réflexion épistémologique aux sources très diverses et tourné in fine vers l’écriture. C’est bien le Thoreau écrivain qu’il étudie dans son livre, non le penseur avec qui

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Stanley Cavell dialogue en philosophe ; dès lors, on n’est guère surpris de le voir étudier des écrits à visée argumentative tels que Resistance to Civil Government (mieux connu sous l’intitulé de Civil Disobedience) à l’aune d’un travail sur les mots : « Le texte de Thoreau n’est pas le simple réceptacle de sa réflexion politique. Il est le lieu où, à travers le geste d’écriture lui-même, cette pensée se façonne et s’élabore » (201). Ce texte, Julien Nègre l’aborde au fil d’une réflexion marquée par une forte interdisciplinarité, mais pour en revenir toujours, par des voies plus ou moins directes, à une réflexion sur la littérature, qu’il définit (sans le dire) d’une manière tout à fait traditionnelle, tant comme pratique d’expression que comme discipline académique. Julien Nègre a beau déclarer, à très juste titre, que « le travail de l’écrivain n’est pas distinct de celui du penseur politique » (201), c’est bien un « tournant textuel » qu’il opère : « c’est dans et par l’écriture que la réflexion politique a lieu », poursuit-il aussitôt, manière d’affirmer des priorités très claires tout en reconnaissant qu’il s’agit surtout, au bout du compte, de jeter un regard différent sur un objet multiple et multivalent dont il entend mieux saisir les particularités, sans en laisser aucune de côté.

4 Il y a là l’une des principales qualités de ce très beau livre qui propose un parcours de lecture d’une grande richesse au sein d’une œuvre foisonnante, et la nécessité où l’auteur s’est trouvé de citer Thoreau en traduction n’empêche pas son travail d’illustrer de manière éclatante l’extrême utilité d’une réflexion sur la textualité dont la critique américaine a trop tendance à se désintéresser. La leçon porte d’autant mieux que c’est bien la totalité du corpus, de Walden à Wild Fruits sans oublier Cape Cod ou The Maine Woods, que Julien Nègre est amené à parcourir : on peut donc relire tout Thoreau de la manière qu’il propose, ce qui, en soi, confirme la validité de ses hypothèses. L’excellence de ses analyses est telle que cet ouvrage, assurément, fera date, et aucun spécialiste de Thoreau ne pourra désormais faire l’économie de sa lecture. À un autre niveau, et sans le dire, le livre de Julien Nègre se présente comme la défense et l’illustration très convaincantes d’une approche critique « à la française » ; il a, sur ce point, quelque chose d’exemplaire, et l’on peut y trouver de quoi nourrir un débat tout à fait opportun sur la place de la textualité dans les études littéraires, en France et à l’étranger. Enfin, l’élégance avec laquelle Julien Nègre conduit de bout en bout une réflexion subtile et exigeante sans jamais quitter le texte des yeux mérite de servir de modèle à bien des doctorants, quel que soit leur sujet de recherche : ils y trouveront la preuve de ce dont est capable une méthodologie pleinement maîtrisée quand elle est mise au service d’une pensée originale et éclairée par une solide érudition.

5 Bien sûr, comme toute contribution forte à la recherche, le livre de Julien Nègre amène son lecteur à s’interroger à son tour sur les problématiques qu’il aborde ; et si l’on ne saurait mettre en cause la pertinence des choix qu’il opère, parfois de manière implicite – le résultat, on l’a dit, valide pleinement ses hypothèses : by their fruits ye shall know them – il n’en reste pas moins qu’un chercheur équipé d’un outillage théorique différent peut avoir envie d’engager le dialogue avec lui sur un certain nombre de points : dès lors qu’il y a choix, plusieurs éventualités méritent d’être envisagées, et ce n’est pas disqualifier les décisions prises par l’auteur que de se souvenir qu’elles n’étaient pas les seules possibles. Pour le présent lecteur, le principal sujet de débat concerne le statut du littéraire et son devenir en dehors des frontières de ce qui, par convention, relève de la « littérature ».

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6 Tout part d’un problème de définition. « De quoi la carte est-elle le nom ? » demande Julien Nègre dès l’introduction de son livre (25) – question très pertinente à laquelle il apporte une réponse en quatre temps : dotée d’une fonction référentielle, la carte « pointe vers un dehors » de nature spatiale (35) ; elle « donne à voir l’espace » par des moyens graphiques (36) ; elle matérialise un savoir qu’elle projette sur un support (37) ; et elle se présente comme « une étape dans une opération heuristique de constitution d’un savoir sur l’espace » (38). Implicitement, ce discours ébauche une réflexion sur l’écriture, élabore un paradigme cartographique qui permet de saisir en quoi Thoreau écrivain fait œuvre d’arpenteur, de quelle manière son œuvre participe d’un projet analogue (et pourtant subtilement différent, car la carte n’est pas un objet textuel même si elle s’offre, elle aussi, au regard d’un lecteur).

7 Ce qui, en l’occurrence, jette les bases de tout l’édifice argumentatif si patiemment construit par Julien Nègre dans les chapitres qui suivent, c’est la place accordée au hors-texte. Employer le vocabulaire linguistique de la référentialité pour parler du travail cartographique, c’est déjà le traiter comme une modalité de l’expression verbale ; c’est accorder aux mots un privilège d’autant moins susceptible de prêter à débat que cette opération s’effectue dans le silence de l’implicite. Or qui dit référentialité dit référent ; et celui-ci, on le sait depuis Benveniste, est en quelque sorte le parent pauvre de la sémiotique saussurienne, l’hypothèse théorique dont le chercheur a besoin pour compléter ses analyses, mais aussi le point aveugle d’un discours qui finalement ne s’intéresse qu’au signifiant et au signifié, les deux visages du signe. Appliqué au cas particulier de Thoreau, ce raisonnement suggère qu’en fin de compte l’espace extérieur importe peu : seul compte l’espace de l’écriture, et s’il faut admettre l’existence d’un hors-texte spatial, c’est uniquement pour que le vocable de « cartographie » ait un sens, non pour mettre en évidence l’attraction qu’il exerce sur un matériau verbal dont on pressent pourtant qu’il n’est pas tout, si fascinant soit-il.

8 Pour le redire comme Julien Nègre, « c’est dans et par l’écriture […] que la réflexion a lieu » ; et Julien Nègre de citer Thoreau qui note en 1856 dans son journal : « mon travail, c’est d’écrire » (323). Certes ; mais peut-on juger dès lors que le débat est clos ? Pris au pied de la lettre, le mot de Thoreau a quelque chose de provocateur sous la plume d’un arpenteur de profession, que les riverains et la municipalité sollicitaient volontiers pour trancher leurs conflits de voisinage ; mais si l’on peut présumer qu’il entend ainsi distinguer ses activités alimentaires de son « vrai » travail qui, précise Julien Nègre, n’est « pas de faire des cartes » (323), alors il reste à expliquer en quoi l’usage qui est fait de cette citation n’a pas pour effet de renvoyer la cartographie à son statut traditionnel de métaphore, c’est-à-dire précisément à ce dont il s’agissait initialement de se méfier. À cette question, on est tenté de répondre que, stricto sensu, Thoreau ne dit pas toute la vérité : écrivain, il est aussi cartographe, ses ouvrages en témoignent ; la carte de Walden Pond insérée dans Walden n’est ni un paratexte ni un hors-texte, mais une percée ou une échappée qui permet au texte de communiquer avec son dehors graphique ou spatial, et en vertu de laquelle les mots rencontrent une réalité autre qui, à première vue, relève jusqu’à un certain point d’une sémiotique, mais en aucun cas d’une linguistique. Autrement dit, Thoreau ne clôt pas le débat par une déclaration à l’emporte-pièce dont la visée est polémique ; au contraire, il pose une question que Julien Nègre a décidé pour l’heure de ne pas entendre – ses priorités sont ailleurs, il n’y a rien là qu’on soit en droit de lui reprocher – mais qui pourrait, par la suite, retenir son attention ou celle d’autres chercheurs. Que reste-t-il de l’écriture

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quand elle s’aventure au-delà des frontières de son domaine traditionnel, et en quoi la carte continue-t-elle de se présenter comme un objet « littéraire » alors même qu’elle n’est pas littérature, si tant est que celle-ci se reconnaisse à son matériau verbal ? En quoi Thoreau fait-il œuvre d’écrivain – mieux que jamais, peut-être – quand il cartographie, mais que justement il n’écrit pas ? « Écrire, c’est aussi devenir autre chose qu’écrivain. À ceux qui lui demandent en quoi consiste l’écriture, Virginia Woolf répond : qui vous parle d’écrire ? L’écrivain n’en parle pas, soucieux d’autre chose. »1

9 Puisque c’est en l’occurrence la notion de carte qui pose question, on observera que le terme de mapping – employé par Julien Nègre au début de son livre (38) – peut renvoyer en anglais à une autre conceptualité, cette fois de nature mathématique (et non plus linguistique). En topologie, le mot mapping désigne une opération géométrique, la projection d’un espace sur un autre qui peut présenter un nombre de dimensions différent ; ainsi, dans le cas qui occupe Thoreau, la carte résulte de la projection d’un tracé tridimensionnel (voire quadridimensionnel, si l’on tient compte de la temporalité historique ou géologique à laquelle Thoreau se montre très sensible) sur un support en deux dimensions. Si une telle approche peut présenter un intérêt dans ce contexte, c’est notamment parce qu’elle rend superflu le recours aux notions de représentation et de référentialité : ainsi défini, le transfert cartographique ne relève pas d’une appréhension sémiotique de l’espace, mais résulte d’un processus dont l’espace lui- même est le siège, et il n’y a pas de différence de nature entre la carte et son objet, qui ne se laissent penser ni l’un ni l’autre dans les termes d’une opposition entre les « signes » (ou les « mots ») et leur « référent » extra-verbal. On pourrait formuler l’hypothèse que le texte-carte fonctionne ainsi, chez Thoreau, à l’instar d’un diagramme qui procède à la redistribution dynamique des repères spatio-temporels au sein d’un continuum où la frontière entre le langage et son dehors n’a pas de pertinence particulière ; et il y aurait assurément là de quoi permettre de penser les relations entre la carte d’état-major et sa contrepartie textuelle autrement que de manière métaphorique.

10 Encore une fois, il n’est pas question de regretter que Julien Nègre n’aborde pas la question de cette manière : ses choix ne sont pas contestables, et son argumentation parfaitement cohérente s’inscrit de façon tout à fait bienvenue dans un cadre conceptuel dont la solidité n’est pas en doute. Au contraire, ces remarques ont pour but de rendre hommage à un travail qui atteint pleinement son but puisqu’il laisse deviner des prolongements possibles qui, sans lui, seraient sans doute demeurés inaperçus. Il le doit entre autres aux qualités de rédaction et de mise en forme qui font de sa lecture un grand moment de plaisir intellectuel. Julien Nègre sait argumenter, il sait écrire, sans préciosité ni effets de manche, et son raisonnement convainc d’autant mieux que jamais l’auteur ne cède à la tentation de « faire des phrases » : chez lui, l’élégance est synonyme de sobriété. L’excellence du travail éditorial dont son ouvrage a bénéficié doit également être soulignée ; la mise en page est soignée, le texte est totalement exempt de coquilles et les magnifiques illustrations, dont plusieurs sont en couleurs, apportent un complément indispensable à l’analyse en même temps qu’elles font de ce travail critique la digne contrepartie des textes étudiés : ce livre se regarde autant qu’il se lit, tout comme certains ouvrages de Thoreau, et ce discret mimétisme n’est pas le moindre de ses charmes.

11 Intitulé « Thoreau, écrivain-cartographe », le chapitre 1 débute par des considérations historiques. Nègre fait le point sur l’état de la réflexion critique et théorique en matière

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de cartes, mais aussi sur le « moment clé de l’histoire de la cartographie » (41) que furent les années 1840 et 1850, alors que le continent américain faisait pour la première fois l’objet d’explorations systématiques sous l’impulsion des discours idéologiques sur la Destinée Manifeste de la jeune nation : projet politique, l’entreprise cartographique illustre aussi la prégnance d’un désir d’exhaustivité scientifique dont l’origine se situe sans doute chez Humboldt. Arpenteur de métier, Thoreau travaille à une tout autre échelle, puisqu’il s’intéresse surtout à la petite bourgade de Concord, Massachusetts, et à ses environs immédiats. Méfiant vis-à-vis des cartes qu’il sait nécessairement incomplètes et biaisées, il n’y renonce pas pour autant, mais cherche à se les approprier de diverses manières ; il les copie, les annote, les manipule et « fait carte » à son tour, sans jamais cesser de jeter un regard critique sur les réalisations existantes, mais sans renoncer non plus au projet d’exploration et de connaissance qui leur a permis d’exister. Cette même logique se laisse discerner dans son écriture, ennemie des clichés, méfiante à l’égard des idées reçues et d’autant plus attentive au réel dans son infinie multiplicité.

12 Le chapitre 2, « Premiers textes : les plis et les failles de la surface », examine les écrits des années 1840, depuis les premiers essais jusqu’à A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849). À cette époque, écrit Julien Nègre, l’activité cartographique de Thoreau est encore limitée, mais le paradigme de la carte n’en est pas moins présent dans ses ouvrages qui tous, d’une manière ou d’une autre, interrogent la logique en vertu de laquelle un espace cartographié est ipso facto identifié comme un espace connu. Une nouvelle économie de la connaissance se met en place sous la plume d’un auteur qui n’ignore rien du travail mené par les naturalistes, les géologues et les historiens, mais qui s’aperçoit que leur science demeure inopérante quand un observateur dénué de préjugés la confronte à l’étrangeté du monde : « le plus difficile […] est d’arriver à ‘voir’ ce qui est là sous nos yeux et qu’on ne perçoit pas », et l’inconnu se love « au sein même de l’espace arpenté » (71).

13 Le chapitre 3, « Ecrire au bord du monde », aborde trois ouvrages majeurs : Walden, The Maine Woods et Cape Cod. Le paradigme cartographique est particulièrement présent dans ces textes qui chacun s’intéressent à une spatialité particulière ; il s’y trouve mobilisé d’une manière ambiguë, puisque Thoreau tente à la fois de décrire des lieux et de « placer au premier plan les zones et les phénomènes qui résistent à la formalisation » (110). Outil de détection, l’écriture aide à saisir l’insaisissable et met en évidence le rôle décisif du sujet percevant, seul capable d’unifier l’infinie diversité du monde sensible. L’enjeu est particulièrement fort dans le cas de The Maine Woods, où Thoreau explore une région encore mal connue et imparfaitement cartographiée à l’époque où il écrit. Cela dit, il n’est pas moindre dans Cape Cod où le narrateur constate avec satisfaction que les cartes sont exactes tout en prenant plaisir à découvrir ce qu’elles sont incapables de restituer. Aux surprises que réserve l’expérience directe de l’espace dans son étrangeté correspondent les « zones de turbulence » que Thoreau fait naître dans la langue anglaise, comme en témoignent les célèbres passages de Walden où il joue sur des étymologies imaginaires.

14 Le chapitre 4, « Perambulations politiques », s’intéresse aux écrits polémiques de Thoreau et tente de saisir la manière dont ils s’articulent avec ses autres ouvrages. Julien Nègre observe que les questions politiques sont posées à partir d’enjeux spatiaux, par exemple dans Civil Disobedience où l’antithèse entre le Sud esclavagiste et le Nord prétendument « libre », ou bien entre le bourg et la prison, structure le propos de bout

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en bout. De même, Walking prend pour point de départ la pratique juridico-politique de la perambulation, qui consiste à parcourir les limites administratives du village afin de vérifier l’intégrité des bornes qui les matérialisent sur le terrain. C’est ce qui permet à Thoreau de décrire la marche à la fois comme un « positionnement politique » et comme un « geste de dissensus » (238), lorsque le marcheur invente des manières non conventionnelles d’occuper l’espace.

15 Enfin, le chapitre 5, « Hors du village », étudie les textes tardifs où Thoreau se livre, selon des modalités complexes et pour des raisons demeurées en partie mystérieuses, à l’examen attentif de son environnement immédiat. Les données quantifiables s’y mêlent sans cesse aux observations subjectives, à telle enseigne que le texte « devient lui-même une cartographie nouvelle » (267). En quelques pages de conclusion, sobrement intitulées « Lire Thoreau », Julien Nègre observe que ce travail n’est pas sans conséquence pour le lecteur, qui ne peut pas prétendre à une position de neutralité ni se cantonner dans une neutralité détachée : « lire Thoreau avec les cartes », c’est participer à son travail de « redistribution des espaces et des temps » (328) ; le lire « délibérément », c’est « occuper le temps d’une façon différente, et dessiner, pour soi- même, une carte nouvelle » (329). To read deliberately : ces mots résument en effet le projet de lecture de Julien Nègre, en même temps qu’ils soulignent sa pertinence et signalent sa fidélité au propos explicite de Thoreau. Le contrat est parfaitement rempli, constate-t-on en refermant ce beau livre, et il ne reste plus qu’à emboîter le pas à son auteur, « arpenteur vagabond » dont la rigueur et l’exemplaire patience donnent envie de s’adonner avec lui aux joies de la cartographie littéraire.

NOTES

1. Deleuze, Gilles. Critique et Clinique. Paris : Éditions de Minuit, 1993. (17).

INDEX

Keywords : Thoreau, maps, cartography, writing, space Mots-clés : Thoreau, carte, cartographie, écriture, spatialité

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AUTEURS

MATHIEU DUPLAY Professeur de littérature américaine Université Paris Diderot – Paris 7 (Université de Paris) [email protected]

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Édouard Marsoin, Melville et l’usage des plaisirs.

Mark Niemeyer

RÉFÉRENCE

Édouard Marsoin, Melville et l’usage des plaisirs (Paris : Sorbonne Université Presses, 2019), 592 p., ISBN 979-10-231-0618-3.

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1 Avec Melville et l’usage des plaisirs, Édouard Marsoin fait une contribution innovante et importante à la critique d’un des auteurs américains majeurs du dix-neuvième siècle. Innovante parce que le thème du plaisir n’est pas souvent associé à Herman Melville, dont la fiction, pour un grand nombre de lecteurs, comme le rappelle Marsoin, « serait ‘noire’, pessimiste et misanthrope » (12) — même s’il y a depuis longtemps des études qui montrent que cette image est réductrice. Et importante parce que cet ouvrage ambitieux de 592 pages analyse le discours melvillien lié au concept du plaisir de plusieurs points de vue, en utilisant des approches critiques variées (poétiques, esthétiques, psychanalytiques, économiques) dans la quasi-totalité de l’œuvre en prose de l’auteur (tous les romans et plusieurs nouvelles sont étudiés). Il s’agit, en fait, d’un nouveau regard sur Melville qui le montre dans une lumière plus joyeuse (dans certains cas), mais pas moins complexe ni moins ambigu. L’introduction explore les significations multiples de « plaisir » en l’associant au concept de la jouissance, en partie parce que chez Melville le plaisir et la souffrance sont souvent entremêlés. Le sujet du livre, en fait, est le plaisir dans un sens large, qui inclut, mais qui dépasse, bien entendu, le plaisir sexuel, comprenant « tous les types de plaisirs possibles, comme les plaisirs de la sociabilité, de la nourriture, de la boisson, du tabac, c’est-à-dire l’ensemble des plaisirs ‘mondains’, qui peuvent avoir une qualité sensuelle et érotique sans être néanmoins sexuels » (27). Et c’est tout à fait naturel si Édouard Marsoin fait appel à Montaigne, philosophe très apprécié par Melville, quand il aborde plus spécifiquement l’idée de « l’usage » des plaisirs parce qu’à l’instar de Montaigne il constate que « Les plaisirs mondains, sensuels sans être sexuels » sont « toujours corporels, leur ‘usage’ toujours un certain usage des corps » (28). Il faut noter également que si Melville et l’usage des plaisirs est surtout une étude d’un certain discours littéraire sur le plaisir, le contexte biographique et historique d’une œuvre clairement ancrée dans le dix- neuvième siècle américain n’est pas oublié.

2 L’ouvrage est divisé en quatre parties comprenant douze chapitres. « Poétique des plaisirs », la première partie, montre le lien étroit entre les références aux plaisirs dans le texte melvillien et une certaine conception de la littérature. Comme l’écrit Édouard Marsoin, pour cet auteur qui aimait lui-même manger, boire, fumer et discuter avec des amis — surtout avec des amis littéraires (on pense notamment bien entendu à Nathaniel Hawthorne), « plaisirs et discours, mots et matières, sont inséparables » (39). Assez naturellement donc, « Nourriture, boissons et tabac sont des éléments centraux de la poétique melvillienne, car ils y définissent la texture du réel et du symbolique » (41). Pour Marsoin, « Les images et métaphores des plaisirs (en particulier culinaires) sont en effet, en raison de leur récurrence, plus que de simples images, mais aussi des structures signifiantes cohérentes qui combinent fonctions référentielles et fonctions sémiotiques pour construire des mondes fictifs originaux » (43). Ce que Marsoin appelle un « monde-table » est omniprésent dans les écrits de Melville, notamment dans Mardi, son troisième livre, publié en 1849, où, par exemple, « l’aigre-doux constitue un schème récurrent qui s’intègre à la dialectique des plaisirs et de la mort qui informe le roman » (60). Pierre, publié en 1852, est également « une romance de l’aigre-doux, où le sucre se révèle amer, et où l’amertume devient un choix de régime assumé » (63). Dans Billy Budd, œuvre posthume, pour prendre un dernier exemple, un « effet sucrant » « fait partie des représentations genrées qui féminisent Billy tout en lui donnant un effet de domestication sur l’équipage » (65). « La Gourmandise des corps dans Typee » est le deuxième chapitre de la première partie, le seul consacré exclusivement à un seul livre de Melville. Ici, Marsoin souligne avec raison la tendance chez Tommo, le narrateur du

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premier livre de l’auteur, à regarder tous les plaisirs de l’île paradisiaque où il se trouve avec suspicion : « pour lui, ces plaisirs ne peuvent être gratuits, ils doivent cacher quelque chose (probablement une douleur, puisque pour l’Occident tout plaisir est la récompense d’une douleur) » (91). Il y a, en effet, dans Typee, « quelque chose comme une résistance au plaisir qui est une expérience des limites du jouir » (92). Le thème du cannibalisme est notamment exploré dans ce contexte. Et même si ce sujet a déjà été étudié chez Melville, Marsoin ajoute une perspective originale en le plaçant clairement dans le contexte du plaisir. Il souligne, par exemple, que c’est bien Tommo qui semble être obsédé par l’idée que les Taïpis puissent être des cannibales et c’est donc lui qui casse l’image d’un paradis sur Terre. Plus profondément, Marsoin explore le lien entre le caché et le plaisir. Comme il l’explique, par exemple, « Lorsque Tommo donne une robe à Faïaoahé, d’ordinaire dénudée, sa cheville n’en est que plus érotique (‘la plus ravissante cheville du monde’) » (105). Cette observation est sans doute juste, mais l’on pourrait noter également que Melville s’amuse ici (encore une autre forme de plaisir) en faisant cette remarque qui non seulement se moque d’un certain puritanisme qui serait choqué par cette cheville exposée au monde mais qui offre également un clin d’œil taquin à Washington Irving qui note dans « The Legend of Sleepy Hollow » que Katrina Van Tassel, la jeune coquette du village, portait un « jupon court le plus provoquant, afin de mettre en évidence le plus joli pied et cheville qui fussent dans le pays d’alentour ». Le chapitre sur « Plaisirs et discours : les banquets melvilliens » continue l’étude des plaisirs mondains. Marsoin note, par exemple, que dans « The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids » Melville met en scène « les plaisirs coupables des célibataires » (111). « Coupables » ou non, il est clair que les plaisirs décrits dans les œuvres de Melville sont souvent partagés par des hommes éloignés du monde des femmes, ce qui n’est peut-être pas étonnant chez un auteur qui a commencé sa vie de jeune marié en s’établissant dans une maison avec son épouse, sa mère, ses quatre sœurs célibataires ainsi qu’avec son frère Allan et l’épouse de ce dernier. Comme Marsoin le note, dans Mardi « on dénombre au moins neuf scènes de banquet, qui se déclinent en petits déjeuners, déjeuners et dîners » (119), créant un festin, ici encore, masculin, qui semble sans fin. Mais la fête n’est pas sans ambivalence. Le narrateur remarque, en fait, en parlant d’un des repas grandioses de Mardi, que « comme dans la plupart des banquets publics, les convives sont très nombreux et beaucoup quittent cette table débordante avec le ventre creux » (119). Et les mots sont aussi les mets. Marsoin souligne que « Comme les autres banquets melvilliens, le banquet mardien est donc un espace intertextuel, c’est-à-dire un dispositif d’ingestion, digestion et production de discours » (124).

3 La deuxième partie, « Sémiotique, épistémologie et esthétique des plaisirs » se focalise sur la quête de la vérité dans la fiction de Melville. Cette quête est liée au plaisir dans les domaines de la sémiotique, de l’épistémologie et de l’esthétique parce que, comme l’affirme Édouard Marsoin, chez Melville « il ne peut y avoir de vérité que dans un corps et dans une âme. […] c’est toujours un corps qui pense qui recherche la vérité » (141). Les signes et leur interprétation sont centraux dans l’œuvre melvillienne (on pense, par exemple, au chapitre « Le Doublon » dans Moby-Dick). Et comme Marsoin l’explique, « face à l’alphabet du monde, l’impulsion sémiotique offre deux modalités affectives de déchiffrement : entamer un processus douloureux et infini, comme Pierre qui, comme Achab, fait le choix de la souffrance, ou au contraire suivre son bon plaisir et faire le choix du plaisir, comme Israël dans Israel Potter » (145). Mais si le chapitre « Melville et les signes » explore intelligemment la sémiotique melvillienne, notamment dans

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« Benito Cereno » (1855) et Moby-Dick (1851), on s’éloigne parfois du sujet du plaisir. Dans le chapitre 5, « L’Épistémè de la jouissance », on y revient plus clairement, mais parfois plus par l’absence du plaisir que par sa présence. Comme Marsoin le note très justement, Pierre, pour sa part, confond souffrance et vérité : « Cette erreur constitue le cœur du roman : Pierre s’aventure dans les profondeurs de son âme au prix de douleurs immenses et fait de la souffrance le signe de la vérité » (161). Dans Moby-Dick, Ismaël, par contre, trouve du plaisir dans sa quête de la vérité, même si elle ne peut pas aboutir : « Ce qui motive le discours ismaélien », écrit Marsoin, « n’est pas véritablement une volonté de savoir, mais plutôt une volonté de jouer et jouir de l’impossibilité de ce savoir » (167). Enfin, « Jouir d’un objet, nous montre Ismaël, c’est jouir du cheminement vers cet objet, plus que de son atteinte. Le mouvement simultané de construction et déconstruction est au cœur de la jouissance du texte dans Moby- Dick » (177). Le lien entre l’humour et la quête de la vérité est également exploré dans ce chapitre. L’humour, en fait, est une autre façon chez Melville de rapprocher le monde des connaissances et le monde du plaisir. « Physiologie et esthétique de la vérité », le dernier chapitre dans cette partie, se penche sur la question de l’importance relative du plaisir et de la vérité dans la fiction de Melville, écrivain de la période romantique qui n’a jamais embrassé complètement le culte du plaisir que l’on retrouve chez certains auteurs, notamment britanniques, de cette période. Mais pour Marsoin, « Si Melville n’abandonne jamais tout à fait l’objet de la vérité au profit du plaisir, il ne manque pas d’interroger ce qui fait la vérité du plaisir esthétique » (233).

4 « Éthique et diététique des plaisirs », la troisième partie de Melville et l’usage des plaisirs, traite de la question des « mises en forme éthique par lesquelles des sujets fictifs règlent leurs rapports à la vie et au plaisir, et élaborent ainsi des régimes » (257). Marsoin souligne l’importance chez Melville du contraste entre le plaisir et la douleur en déterminant « une posture éthique tenable face à l’instabilité du monde » (259). La notion d’antipéristase est au centre de son analyse dans cette partie, notion d’origine antique et renaissante qui désigne une opposition entre deux qualités contraires qui rend chacune plus forte par comparaison. Comme l’écrit Marsoin, « L’expérience de la vie est chez Melville similaire à celle du plaisir, dont la compréhension ne relève pas simplement de la notation d’une sensation, ou de la description d’un état, mais d’une élaboration formelle qui définit le plaisir (et la vie) par contraste avec la souffrance (et la mort) » (262). Ce principe antipéristatique, d’après Marsoin, « traverse toute la fiction melvillienne » (263). On peut en voir un exemple simple vers le début de Moby- Dick quand Ismaël partage un lit avec Quiqueg et fait la remarque que l’on ne peut pas complètement apprécier le bonheur de la chaleur sous les couvertures si l’on n’a pas au moins une petite partie du corps exposée en même temps à la fraîcheur de la chambre (263). Mais le principe va évidemment beaucoup plus loin. Dans Mardi, par exemple, « L’échappée du narrateur et de Jarl est dès le début marquée par le contraste de la joie et du danger : ‘Ah ! malgré notre terrible situation, avec quelle joie nous voguions !’ » (271). Pour Marsoin, « la composante la plus centrale du tragique melvillien, ce n’est pas la souffrance (la souffrance est bête), mais plutôt la possibilité du plaisir et de la joie, l’expérience antipéristatique d’un monde composite, où terreur et joie, souffrances et plaisirs, se nourrissent mutuellement » (288). Le dernier chapitre de cette partie, « Régimes et régimes de soi : les quatre ascètes » regroupe de façon intéressante et innovante quatre personnages de l’œuvre melvillienne — Achab, Pierre, Bartleby et Franklin — qui sont tous « des contempteurs de corps qui prêchent la séparation du corps et de l’âme » (328). Ici également, il s’agit surtout de l’absence de

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plaisir, mais c’est une absence qui peut apporter néanmoins une autre sorte de plaisir. Par exemple, « Ce que recherche Achab dans son régime ascétique », écrit Marsoin, « c’est le contrôle de soi et des autres » (337). Mais comme il le note aussi, « La délectation d’Achab dans le chapitre ‘The Quarter-Deck’, où ‘peu de temps après l’épisode de la pipe’, il met en place son pacte diabolique avec l’équipage par la distribution d’alcool, est le meilleur exemple d’une jubilation qui naît dans le goût du contrôle » (341).

5 La quatrième et dernière partie s’appelle « Socialité, politique et économie des plaisirs » et se concentre sur le contexte social, dans un sens large, du plaisir. Comme l’explique Marsoin, « le plaisir, dans la fiction de Melville, n’est pas une simple affaire de physiologie individuelle, mais aussi l’effet de mécanismes collectifs qui déterminent ses conditions de possibilité et d’expérimentation » (394). Le premier chapitre de cette partie analyse l’amitié, une valeur pour Melville, comme l’indique Marsoin, « centrale dans sa fiction, comme dans sa vie » (397). Il y a, bien entendu, un certain homoérotisme dans plusieurs de ces amitiés, notamment dans celle entre Ismaël et Quiqueg, mais chez Melville rien n’est jamais uniquement physique. Comme l’écrit Marsoin, « on pourrait dire que l’éros et philia grecs — tous deux principes de cheminement vers le Beau et le Bien chez Platon — trouvent dans la rencontre de Quiqueg et Ismaël une lecture où l’attrait physique est inséparable de son pendant spirituel, la vertu » (432). Dans « Benito Cereno » la question d’amitié devient plus complexe et plus ambiguë avec Amasa Delano, le capitaine américain naïf, perdu devant un jeu de masques de l’amitié où il ne peut jamais être certain de qui a des intentions amicales. Mais c’est dans Billy Budd où l’amitié se transforme en haine. Dans ce roman, presque achevé à la mort de Melville en 1891, comme Marsoin le note, « les rapports entre Billy et ses bourreaux semblent a priori amicaux » (454). Mais Claggart et le capitaine Vere ne sont pas des amis de Billy. Le problème, d’après Marsoin, qui suit les thèses de Eve K. Sedgwick et Barbara Johnson, est qu’à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle ce n’était plus possible pour Melville d’offrir un portrait d’une amitié homoérotique comme innocent et réalisable, même dans une œuvre de fiction, parce que ce moment historique coïncide avec l’émergence d’une identité homosexuel moderne que la société se sentait obligée de rejeter (464). Billy, qui paraît sortir d’un temps peut-être plus innocent, est, comme Marsoin l’écrit, « un archaïsme, une espèce en danger : il meurt de son anachronisme » (469). Le chapitre 11 se focalise sur Redburn et White-Jacket et analyse le monde des navires comme un champ où les plaisirs sont réglementés jusqu’au dernier détail et servent de soupape de décompression, à l’instar, comme l’indique Marsoin, des journées de liberté permises aux esclaves américains entre Noël et le Jour de l’an (484). Le livre se termine avec un chapitre sur « Économie(s) du plaisir et de la douleur » qui explore la question de travail et l’influence de la « civilisation » américaine et européenne sur les Polynésiens, notamment, bien entendu, dans Typee et Omoo. Sans surprise, les plaisirs polynésiens souffrent des efforts de cette mission civilisatrice.

6 Melville et l’usage des plaisirs est un tour de force impressionnant qui offre une analyse du discours melvillien lié au plaisir qui est profonde, intelligente et éclairante. Marsoin montre dans cette étude non seulement une très bonne connaissance de Melville, mais également une grande familiarité avec toute la littérature américaine du dix-neuvième siècle. Ses analyses fines font appel à des approches critiques variées, sans jamais être déformées par une trop grande adhésion aux idées de tel ou tel théoricien invoqué. Ce grand livre, publié dans un format agréable par Sorbonne Université Presse, est un

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remaniement d’une thèse soutenue en 2016 sous la direction de Philippe Jaworski, le doyen des études melvilliennes en France. Si le résultat offre un traitement clair et innovant de son sujet, dans un style soigné (même si parfois un peu dense), il faut dire qu’avec sa structure autour de quatre grands thèmes, qui est tout à fait logique et cohérente, en combinaison avec son traitement de toute l’œuvre de fiction de Melville, ce livre est de plutôt destiné aux lecteurs qui connaissent déjà bien leur Melville (il y a souvent des exemples tirés de trois ou quatre différents romans ou nouvelles sur une seule page). En tout cas, Melville et l’usage des plaisirs fera date dans les études melvilliennes. Une belle étude sur le plaisir chez Herman Melville. Quel beau cadeau pour cet auteur et pour ceux qui l’apprécient en cette année 2019 qui marque le 200ème anniversaire de ce grand auteur américain.

INDEX

Mots-clés : jouissance, Melville, plaisir Keywords : enjoyment, jouissance, Melville, pleasure

AUTEURS

MARK NIEMEYER Professeur Université de Bourgogne [email protected]

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Rick Darke and Piet Oudolf, Gardens of the High Line: Elevating the Nature of Modern Landscapes.

Claire Cazajous-Augé

REFERENCES

Rick Darke and Piet Oudolf, Gardens of the High Line: Elevating the Nature of Modern Landscapes. (Portland: Timber Press, 2017), 320 p, ISBN 978-1-60469-699-8

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1 This richly illustrated and well-informed book is a celebration of New York City’s High Line’s gardens and their revolutionary philosophy. Piet Oudolf and Rick Darke present the history of the gardens, the essence of the project, its influences and its ambitions. With its hundreds of photographs, this book offers an immersive walk along these urban gardens, from the south end–Gansevoort woodland—to the north end—the Rail Yards. In a short preface, the authors write that their book aims at presenting the “design ethos [of the High Line’s gardens], the patterning of their planting and the enlightened stewardship devoted to them” (17). By doing so, they hope to inspire people to create similar urban projects. As the title suggests, the gardens of the High Line are trying to “elevat[e] the nature of modern landscapes,” not because they are located on the top of an abandoned elevated railway, but because their original idea and design rely on a new vision of what gardening should be.

2 In the introduction, Robert Hammond, co-founder and executive director of Friends of the High Line, explains that members of this association work to preserve the hybridity of the place, which is defined by the presence of wildflowers and wild grasses as well as by that of buildings and billboards. They try to make it accessible to New Yorkers by getting rid of toxic painting or by adding new drainage without jeopardizing the wild dimension of the gardens. Pietr Oudolf, who has worked as a plant designer of the gardens, has imagined planting patterns in which dying plants and new growth, winter plants and summer plants, native and introduced plants, coexist all year long. Hammond adds that the original tension of the gardens mirrors the essence of New York, a city that is both defined by its beauty and its decay.

3 The first part presents different examples of wild gardens that have preceded the gardens of the High Line, and that have influenced the landscape gardeners and designers working on this project. In 1870, William Robinson exposed alternatives to the traditional maintenance-intensive model of gardening in his seminal book The Wild

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Garden. He advocated a new approach based on a minimum of care and resources while enhancing the beauty and the durability of gardens. To do so, he looked for plants that did not need much human help or water, such as perennial plants. Garden philosopher Karl Foester also inspired the landscape gardeners to design the High Line’s gardens. In his book Einzug der Gräser und Farne in die Gärten (1957), he explained how to arrange grasses in wild gardens. Instead of seeing them as weeds, he celebrated their unique beauty and encouraged gardeners to integrate them in their designs. The aesthetics of ruins—the gardens are a relic of New York’s industrial landscape and its elevated lines —and the growing interest for urban exploration also influenced Piet Oudolf when he worked on the High Line’s gardens. But the gardens are not the first derelict rail landscapes turned into a garden. There are other examples, such as the Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, and the Promenade Plantée in Paris, but none of them has integrated dynamic living processes in its design quite as much as the High Line’s gardens.

4 The following chapters explore different sections of the gardens—the Northern Spur, 10th Avenue Square, Chelsea Thicket, the Flyover, etc.—and develop their key features. First, the landscapes of the High Line have gone through many changes and are now like a palimpsest: attentive walkers can notice the different architectural and gardening steps which have been made across the years. Then, the majority of plants are North American natives—Pennsylvania sedge, or Carex pensylvanica, Indian physic, or Portheranthus stipulatus, wild stonecrop, or Sedum ternatum, etc. Finally, the efforts made to adapt the gardens to the plants rather than to adapt the plants to the gardens give a sustainable dimension to the High Line, which have become a model of responsible gardening. The way garden designers organize the cutback of herbaceous plants illustrates their ecological ambitions and their wish to intervene as little as possible in the gardens’ ecosystem. By delaying it until March, and thus leaving the garden “sleep” in winter, they allow dry foliage to naturally protect the ground and wildlife from the cold.

5 The book ends with a section on gardening. The High Line’s gardens require non- traditional types of gardening. Rather than maintenance, they need “artful stewardship” (295). Gardeners—members of Friends of the High Line and employees of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation—do not try to turn the gardens into a decorative and fixed park; instead, they have learned to care for the ever- changing nature of the gardens and to adapt to their biological dynamics. The portraits of apprentice and professional gardeners observing, pruning or making subtle adjustments to the gardens which illustrate this chapter also show the democratic dimension of the High Line’s gardens and the sense of community that has emerged from this project.

6 The hundreds of evocative photographs of the High Line give a broad perspective on the wild grasses, lawns, flowers, trees and wildlife of the gardens, even if, in the introduction, the authors warned the readers that it is impossible to represent the totality of the gardens. Some photographs may seem to be lacking an artistic angle: some are slightly blurred, others are underexposed, and framing sometimes seems to be erratic. Yet, this apparent lack of intervention from the photographer can be seen as a means to respect the design ethos of the gardens, which aims at reducing human intervention to a minimum—gardeners prefer self-seeded plants and do not use pesticides, and there is only remote access to support facilities, forcing gardeners to

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work with a limited number of tools. Gardens of the High Line: Elevating the Nature of Modern Landscapes succeeds in inspiring us to rethink the way we see urban gardens and provides an optimistic perspective on the manners in which we can care for nature at the age of the Anthropocene.

INDEX

Mots-clés: New York City, jardins Keywords: High Line, New York City, gardens

AUTHORS

CLAIRE CAZAJOUS-AUGÉ PRAG Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès [email protected]

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Roy McFarlane. The Healing Next Time.

Eric Doumerc

REFERENCES

Roy McFarlane. The Healing Next Time (Rugby: Nine Arches Press, 2018), 79 p, ISBN: 9781911027454

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1 Roy McFarlane is a British poet of Jamaican parentage who was born in Birmingham and has lived most of his life in Wolverhampton, in the West Midlands. In 2009 he was appointed Starbucks' Poet in Residence and in 2010-2011, he was Birmingham's Poet Laureate. Over the years his poems have appeared in various magazines and anthologies like Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe Books, 2012) and Filigree (Peepal Tree, 2018). His first collection of poems, Beginning With Your Last Breath, was published by Nine Arches Press in 2016.

2 The Healing Next Time is his second collection and was published in October 2018. It continues the strong autobiographical strand which was present in Beginning With Your Last Breath and can be seen as an examination of what it means to have grown up black in Britain. The title of the collection is a reference to James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, which was itself based on a quotation from the Bible: after the Flood, a rainbow appeared in the sky, which implied that the next time, God's wrath would take the form of fire instead of water.

3 The collection falls into three sections which constitute a kind of progression from racial division, racial oppression, to the need for forgiveness and healing.

4 The first section, entitled "New Millennium Journal" covers the period from 1999 to 2006 which can be seen as being dominated by the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry and by the setting up of anti-racist police in its wake. Stephen Lawrence was a black teenager who was murdered by five white boys in 1993. The white thugs were arrested, but they were released due to insufficient evidence to convict them. It was later revealed that the police had overlooked crucial evidence that could have led to the conviction of the killers. The young boy's parents campaigned for an investigation into the behaviour of the police and into its handling of the case. John Major's government refused to allow the investigation, but when Tony Blair became Prime Minister he allowed the investigation to proceed.

5 The McPherson Report was finally published in the first week of March 1999 and caused quite a stir in Britain. The report accused the Metropolitan Police Force of being institutionally racist and advocated a number of reforms to improve race relations in Britain, like the extension of the coverage of the Race Relations Acts to the police force and public services including the civil service and the National Health Service. The Report also proposed a new definition of racism which would include unwitting prejudice and racist stereotyping.

6 This first section mixes the personal with the political, with the persona's life being in turmoil during these difficult years when he was employed as a Mental Health Community Development Worker to set up anti-racist police. After seven years, funding was withdrawn, and anti-racism was no longer deemed a priority: A manager thanks him for all the work he's done, but funds are coming to an end. You kidding me, seven years and they're closing us down. Seven years to rewrite centuries of hate. Seven years to plant seeds of hope. Always waiting for riots, or a Stephen Lawrence, don't they ever learn? A table is turned upside down. (34)

7 The second section, entitled "… they killed them", is based on the poet's research at the Institute of Race Relations' Archives and consists in a series of eighteen experimental sonnets which tackle the sensitive issue of the death of people from ethnic minorities in police custody. Each sonnet is devoted to a landmark case, from David Oluwale (1969) to Rashan Charles (2017).

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8 The epigraph to the second section comes Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric: "Won't you write about Duggan? The man wants to know". Mark Duggan was a young person of Afro-Caribbean parentage who was shot by the police in 2011, which led to the summer riots of 2011. A controversial figure (he was known for his association with the criminal underworld on Broadwater Farm Estate), his shooting led to contradictory statements, which is rendered in the sonnet devoted to him by a dual structure. The shape of the poem itself brings to mind an angel, which refers to the poem's epigraph, a quote by a community activist: "He wasn't an angel, but if you're brought up in a place like the Broadwater Farm estate, you better not be an angel because you won't survive" (54). This poem is an example of shaped or concrete poetry and is weirdly reminiscent of the Metaphysical poet George Herbert's "Easter Wings".

9 The third section, entitled "Gospel According to Rasta", looks at the healing process and the figure of the Rastaman appears in several pieces, symbolising ancestral wisdom and a certain take on life. The healing process can be facilitated by ancestral culture, as is implied in "Dancing With Ghosts", but also by a willingness to embrace all cultures and traditions, as in the poem entitled "Gabay of Hope," after the Somali long poem form of the same name: "Let our bodies/be a Hajj, until we become the Hannukah of the night and the Halcyon of days" (72).

10 This second collection finds Roy McFarlane willing to experiment with various poetic forms (like the gabay, a Somali long poem, or shaped poetry) and ready to tackle sensitive issues like the death of people from ethnic minorities in custody. As in his first collection, a great formal elegance and a tough determination to tell his own story are constantly present and make his work immensely accessible.

INDEX

Mots-clés: poésie anglo-antillaise Keywords: Black British poetry

AUTHORS

ERIC DOUMERC Maître de Conférences Université de Toulouse – Jean Jaurès [email protected]

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Jean-Pierre Richard, Shakespeare Pornographe. Un théâtre à double fond

Armelle Sabatier

RÉFÉRENCE

Jean-Pierre Richard, Shakespeare Pornographe. Un théâtre à double fond (Paris, Éditions Rue d’Ulm, 2019), 244 p., ISBN : 978-2-7288-0622-5

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1 Érotique ou pornographique ? Telle est la question abordée, sans détour, par Jean- Pierre Richard, dans son dernier ouvrage consacré à l’un des plus grands monuments de la littérature anglaise : William Shakespeare. Éminent traducteur, lauréat de plusieurs prix de traduction (prix Maurice-Edgar Coindreau en 1983 et Grand Prix Halpérine-Kaminsky en 1992), cet universitaire s’est confronté à des auteurs aussi divers que Peter Gill, Robert Holman, Bill Morrison ou encore le poète Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Il participe, depuis plusieurs années, à la traduction des œuvres théâtrales de Shakespeare pour la prestigieuse édition de la Pléiade. Dès les premières lignes de son livre, Jean-Pierre Richard avoue que les pièces de Shakespeare s’avèrent tout simplement « intraduisibles ». Et pour cause, les textes de Shakespeare, selon lui, reposent sur un double discours, présentent deux théâtres où foisonnent en permanence des sous-entendus salaces et grivois. L’écriture « pornographique » de Shakespeare, que Jean-Pierre Richard étudie au sens étymologique du terme (« du grec gaphein (« écrire ») et pornè (« courtisane ») : il écrit sur la prostituée » p.11), est présente dans tous les genres dramatiques abordés par ce dramaturge et poète dans sa longue carrière. L’auteur de ce volume invite, ainsi, ses lecteurs à « un voyage au pays de l’obscène », et leur propose une « odyssée de la grivoiserie » (p.12).

2 Cet ouvrage tente de faire revivre ce théâtre perdu que nos contemporains, d’après l’auteur, n’entendent pas ou plus. Jean-Pierre Richard signale que les éditeurs ne veulent pas voir ou laisser paraître « ce » Shakespeare, comme si certains voulaient préserver l’image d’un Shakespeare poète de l’« amour romantique », du moins en France. Cette réticence vis-à-vis du double mouvement du texte trouve son origine au XIXème siècle, une période où les textes de Shakespeare ont subi une véritable censure, autant dans l’Angleterre victorienne que dans la France de Victor Hugo. Cependant, parler de l’obscène chez Shakespeare en 2019 n’est pas vraiment un sujet nouveau, comme le rappelle l’auteur lui-même. La critique anglo-saxonne a, depuis longtemps, transgressé cette forme de tabou universitaire et littéraire autour du Shakespeare pornographe, et ce, dès 1945 avec l’ouvrage d’Eric Partridge, Shakespeare’s Bawdy. Pour autant, dans sa thèse consacrée au désir dans la poésie élisabéthaine, en particulier le premier poème narratif de Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis (1593), Laetitia Sansonetti signale que la publication universitaire de Partridge « avait été assimilée [à l’époque] à de la littérature érotique1 ». L’adjectif « bawdy » en anglais n’est pas non plus l’équivalent de pornographique2. Un nombre important de publications sur ce sujet met en avant, encore aujourd’hui, le caractère érotique et non pornographique des textes de Shakespeare. En outre, cette forme de pruderie a longtemps prévalu pour les Sonnets de Shakespeare, comme le rappelle brillamment Katherine Duncan-Jones dans l’introduction de son édition des sonnets3. Le dictionnaire de Frankie Rubinstein, Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns and their Significance, publié en 1984, a battu en brèche ces résistances, en proposant une étude très détaillée et minutieuse des innombrables jeux de mots salaces, des double (voir triple) entendre qui émaillent les textes de Shakespeare. D’ailleurs, les éditions anglo-saxonnes contemporaines des textes de Shakespeare signalent toujours les jeux de mots grivois, et ce grâce, entre autres, au travail colossal de Rubinstein. Néanmoins, Jean-Pierre Richard rappelle qu’aucune étude de cette ampleur consacrée à la nature pornographe du théâtre de Shakespeare n’existe en France. Ainsi, cet ouvrage cherche à remettre en question l’image encore vivace, en France, d’un Shakespeare « fantasmé », d’un Shakespeare qui serait, selon l’expression consacrée, « politiquement et moralement correct ».

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3 Les cinq chapitres qui structurent le livre dévoilent les multiples facettes de cette écriture et de cette esthétique du pornographique, toujours sous une plume brillante. Pour illustrer ses propos, l’auteur s’appuie, à chaque fois, sur des passages précis, présentés d’abord dans le texte original et suivis de la, ou plutôt des traductions. D’ailleurs, l’auteur prévient ses lecteurs, dès l’introduction, du double mouvement de son propre texte entre la langue anglaise et le français, un bilinguisme qui pourrait « gêner la lecture » d’un lectorat peu familier de la langue de Shakespeare. Or, ce passage incessant d’une langue à une autre constitue une des intérêts majeurs de cette étude. La « double » traduction donnée pour un seul passage dans une pièce met en avant les différentes strates de sens sur lesquelles Shakespeare joue en permanence. La polysémie, l’homophonie ainsi que d’autres figures de rhétorique et de style permettent de créer un texte réversible, à la fois sérieux et jovial, grivois et tragique. Cette pornographie sous-jacente, qui reste « de papier », pour reprendre les termes de l’auteur, dévoile l’hypocrisie ou la fausse innocence de certains personnages shakespeariens : par exemple, après le chapitre un, le lecteur ne percevra plus Desdémone comme une jeune femme sage et pieuse. L’auteur poursuit sa réflexion « en joignant le geste à la parole » dans le chapitre deux, consacré à la mise en scène et au jeu des acteurs dans l’espace scénique : la fameuse scène de la fente dans le mur, un élément du décor que l’acteur doit représenter sur scène dans Le Songe d’une nuit d’été, donne lieu, bien entendu, à une analyse des plus savoureuses. Les chapitres suivants abordent des questions liées à la réception, à la parodie et aux débats littéraires de l’époque. Le dernier chapitre propose un portrait des mœurs et de la société élisabéthaines et du monde du théâtre, fort utile pour les non spécialistes de la Renaissance anglaise.

4 Ainsi cet ouvrage ne manquera pas de captiver les lecteurs par son style brillant, sa grande érudition et ses analyses très fines du texte et de la représentation théâtrale. Les lecteurs français découvriront assurément un « autre Shakespeare », comme le qualifie l’auteur ; les lecteurs anglicistes ou anglicisants ne bouderont pas leur plaisir face à la virtuosité du traducteur qu’est Jean-Pierre Richard. La jovialité et la grivoiserie qui se dégagent de ce texte tendent, cependant, à faire oublier les aspects plus sombres de la sexualité que Shakespeare explore dans ses œuvres poétiques, un « autre Shakespeare » qui pourrait faire l’objet d’un prochain livre….

NOTES

1. Je tiens à remercier Laetitia Sansonetti de m’avoir permis de lire sa thèse : « Représentations du désir dans la poésie élisabéthaine (Venus and Adonis, Hero and Leander, The Faerie Queene II et III », Thèse soutenue le 8 novembre 2011, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III, p.211 n.29. 2. Laetitia Sansonetti aborde les différences entre l’érotisme et le pornographique, en particulier dans son analyse pp.210-211. 3. The Arden Shakespeare, Londres, Bloomsbury, 2013.

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INDEX

Mots-clés : William Shakespare, théâtre, traduction, pornographie, censure Keywords : censorship, drama, pornography, William Shakespeare, translation

AUTEURS

ARMELLE SABATIER Maître de Conférences Université Paris II Panthéon – Assas [email protected]

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Julie Neveux. John Donne. Le Sentiment dans la langue.

Claire Guéron

RÉFÉRENCE

Julie Neveux. John Donne. Le Sentiment dans la langue. Paris : éditions Rue d’Ulm, 2013. 208 p. ISBN-10: 2728804974

1 Le livre de Julie Neveux aborde l’expression du sentiment dans la poésie et les sermons de John Donne par le biais de la linguistique et de la stylistique. L’auteur défend la thèse selon laquelle la force évocatrice des œuvres de Donne serait attribuable à l’emploi conjugué de la métaphore et de substantifs en -ness1, qui donnent un caractère concret à la représentation de l’émotion. Le sentiment, défini comme la perception d’une émotion, ne peut être correctement transmis de façon dénotative, car il s’enracine dans

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une expérience particulière et donc non encore répertoriée dans la « langue propre », langue du dictionnaire, qui renvoie toujours à un déjà. L’ouvrage de Julie Neveux se donne pour mission de montrer le fonctionnement de la métaphore et des noms en - ness dans l’œuvre de Donne, c’est à dire d’analyser l’effet de concret dont sont investies ces deux formes. Dans cette optique, l’auteur associe linguistique énonciative, linguistique cognitive et phénoménologie.

2 Dans un premier chapitre, l’auteur s’attache à définir le concret d’un point de vue cognitif, comme ce qui renvoie à une expérience particulière. Le deuxième chapitre s’appuie sur la philosophie pragmatique de William James pour montrer comment, dans les Dévotions2 de Donne, cet effet de concret est obtenu grâce à la nominalisation de l’adjectif par le suffixe -ness, l’effet de singularité passant souvent par le recours à des néologismes comme « beautifulness » ou encore le surprenant « disconsolatedness ». La nominalisation de l’adjectif permet d’ancrer la notion dans une situation particulière et d’évoquer l’émotion incarnée. Le troisième chapitre s’intéresse à la métaphore. L’auteur y démontre que la métaphore est plus concrète que la comparaison, parce qu’elle prend sa source dans l’émotion, plutôt que dans le jugement. La métaphore permet en outre de transmettre le sentiment plus facilement que la comparaison, car la trace de l’énonciateur en est pratiquement effacée, tandis que le « like » de la comparaison implique l’auteur du jugement. Cette idée est illustrée par des exemples tirés de The Bait, The Second Anniversary et Divine Poem 19. Le lyrisme de ces poèmes provient en fait de la fusion de la métaphore et de la comparaison au sein du metaphysical conceit, cette figure de style outrancière que Samuel Johnson, dans The Lives of The Most Eminent English Poets, définissait comme le couplage violent et contre- nature de deux notions disparates3. L’association de la métaphore et de la comparaison permet de souligner l’insuffisance de la pensée rationnelle, le sentiment se situant « entre métaphore et comparaison, affect et intellect » (116). C’est le principe du « lyrisme indirect » (55) qui restitue le sentiment grâce à l’effet de surprise crée par l’image incongrue.

3 Le quatrième chapitre, « De l’amour à l’humain », applique cette idée de « lyrisme indirect » à l’expression du sentiment amoureux dans Elegy 19, To His Mistress Going to Bed, avant d’envisager la métaphore comme un outil philosophique, permettant une approche phénoménologique de la confusion inhérente à l’expérience humaine. En rendant compte du « trouble du vivant » (138), la métaphore prend sa place dans l’élaboration d’une langue concrète. Cette langue concrète, libérée du carcan de la dénotation scientifique, passe par une réappropriation du langage à travers un style particulier, dont la métaphore serait la clé de voûte. Le langage métaphorique est en effet le seul à pouvoir formuler l’expérience de façon précise, car il existe une analogie entre la synthèse effectuée par la métaphore et la réciprocité inscrite dans l’expérience phénoménologique du monde.

4 Le cinquième chapitre s’intéresse plus particulièrement à l’expérience de l’amour de Dieu. Il s’agit de montrer comment la métaphore permet de remédier à l’absence de Dieu en inscrivant la divinité dans la chair du croyant, recréant ainsi le mystère de l’incarnation. La métaphore prend alors une dimension mystique. C’est par le biais de la métaphore que les poèmes ou les Dévotions rejoignent le rituel catholique, en dépit de la conversion de Donne au culte anglican.

5 Le livre de Julie Neveux apporte un éclairage nouveau sur l’œuvre de John Donne, car il ne s’agit pas d’en réaliser une exégèse mais d’exposer le fonctionnement des formes

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linguistiques et stylistiques par lesquelles Donne parvient à communiquer l’émotion ressentie à son lecteur, malgré tout ce que l’émotion comporte d’indicible. Cette approche, qui épouse avec originalité le tournant cognitif et phénoménologique pris par les études élisabéthaines et jacobéennes depuis une vingtaine d’années, est convaincante. Les non-spécialistes trouveront peut-être un peu arides les développements théoriques qui structurent l’ouvrage, mais l’auteur propose ici une nouvelle façon de lire Donne qui méritait d’être approfondie. Plus que des interprétations clé en main des œuvres du poète et prédicateur anglais, c’est en effet une méthode qui nous est livrée, et Julie Neveux a pris le temps de détailler le pourquoi et le comment de cette méthode, en convoquant à propos Merleau-Ponty, Spinoza, Paul Ricœur, George Lakoff, Antonio Damasio et William James. Le chapitre 3, pivot de l’ouvrage, est émaillé de plusieurs schémas explicatifs, d’utilité inégale : la plupart du temps, le style rigoureux de l’auteur suffit, et ces illustrations sont plutôt l’occasion d’une pause réflexive.

6 Dans sa préface, Pierre Cotte souligne la difficulté de l’objectif que s’est fixé Julie Neveux, à savoir établir une « phénoménologie du sens » (9) de l’œuvre de Donne. A l’aide d’une démonstration par étapes et d’une attention permanente à la justesse des termes employés, l’auteur remplit son contrat. Le tour de force de Julie Neveux est d’avoir réussi à rendre compte du lyrisme de Donne dans une langue résolument analytique et dénotative.

NOTES

1. Conçus eux-mêmes comme des « métaphore[s] grammaticale[s)]» (60). 2. Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. 3. « The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together » (95).

INDEX

Keywords : John Donne, sentiment/feeling, emotion, cognitive linguistics, metaphor, conceit, concrete language, phenomenology, lyricism Mots-clés : John Donne, sentiment, émotion, linguistique cognitive, métaphore, conceit , langue concrète, phénoménologie, lyrisme

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AUTEURS

CLAIRE GUÉRON Maître de conférences Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté [email protected]

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Carine Lounissi, Thomas Paine and the French Revolution.

Rachel Rogers

REFERENCES

Carine Lounissi, Thomas Paine and the French Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 321 pp. ISBN 978–3-319-75288-4

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1 Carine Lounissi’s study of the ‘French Paine’ is a highly valuable and necessary contribution to the wealth of scholarly work devoted to the self-styled citizen of the world. The author builds on her more theoretical study of Thomas Paine’s writings, published in 2012, to construct a contextualized portrait of the international revolutionary during the years he spent in France as an observer, commentator and agent of the French Revolution between 1787 and 1802. In doing so, she has addressed a subject which was calling out for further investigation. With the notable exception of Alfred O. Aldridge’s Man of Reason: The Life of Thomas Paine, published over sixty years ago, most of Paine’s political writings have been seen through the lens of the British radical movement and his role as a catalyst of the American Revolution. Paine’s contribution to the French Revolution has been given little substantial attention, perhaps in part due to the gaping holes in the archives, which could preclude a less determined scholar from attempting such an endeavour. Lounissi’s study engages actively with the existing body of literature on her subject, drawing upon the findings of Mark Philp, John Keane, Gary Kates and William Doyle among others, while shedding new light on many of the historiographical debates over the role of this controversial figure in French affairs, with the intention of mapping out the “complexity and multifaceted intellectual personality” of her subject and challenging much of the received wisdom (and signalling oversights) on Paine’s time in France (315). The author refutes the traditional categorisation—fueled by the damning verdict of Paine’s contemporary and associate Manon Roland1—of Paine as more of a revolutionary capable of sparking insurrection than a capable governmental theorist, by stating at the outset that there was a “thread of republican thought in his writings that grew and evolved with the various critical moments of the revolutionary era in which he lived and to which he responded in various forms” (3).

2 The book is divided into three parts which deal with Paine’s contribution to the events in France and commentary on the Revolution chronologically. Beginning with a take on how Paine saw the events of 1789 in part one of Rights of Man, Lounissi goes on, in part two, to study Paine’s involvement in the creation of the first French republic until his arrest and incarceration in December 1793. The final section tackles a period that the author considers “one of the most baffling moments in his career” (217-18), the years after the fall of Robespierre to Paine’s departure from France under the Consulat in 1802.

3 In discussing Paine’s reaction to the events of 1789 in part one, Lounissi revisits the Paine-Burke debate and considers his views on the ‘legitimacy’ of the Revolution in the broader context of the pamphlet exchange that took place after the publication of Reflections on the Revolution in France in November 1790. Lounissi’s reflections lead her to discuss Paine’s ideas in the light of other contemporary thinkers and writers (Barlow, Mackintosh, Priestley and Raynal among others), drawing out the connections and echoes between them. She investigates the sources of and influences on the first part of Rights of Man, which she views “as a nexus where the views of French Americanophiles and American Francophiles met” (48), making the case that Paine was not dwelling on the reformed French political system in this work but had his eye firmly on the political system in Britain. The author defends the argument that Paine saw in the changes underway in France, even from the earliest stages, “a revolution of or for sovereignty and not merely a revolution against monarchy or aristocracy” (81). This would be confirmed by his apparent vindication of popular intervention in the fall of the Bastille

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and, later, in the August Days, and view of popular violence as being due to the failings of the National Assembly rather than an anarchic expression of mob rule. Lounissi argues that Paine strategically kept his criticism of popular excesses in check by restricting its expression to private correspondence.

4 The author attributes the “blanks and blindspots” that Paine shows in his understanding of the Revolution to his attempt to reach a dual audience of both “uneducated and lower-class” readers and a “higher-class intellectual or political circle” (2–3) or “popular” readers and “informed” readers (50). While the observation is valid, the separation of Paine’s intended readership into two distinct groupings is somewhat problematic, given that Paine’s lower-class audience were probably not “readers” in their own right, owing to the poor levels of literacy of the period, but were being read to in collective evening gatherings convened by corresponding and debating societies and presided over by those literate or professional men who were also closely connected to the second group of intellectuals and political influencers she identifies. In other words, how Paine’s texts were read and received also matters and the different sections of Paine’s audience, while divergent, did overlap.

5 Part two of the book contains three essential chapters on Paine’s contribution to the debates animating the French nation from the period prior to the abortive establishment of a constitutional monarchy in 1791 to Paine’s arrest at the end of 1793. The author concludes that Paine’s involvement was substantial not just symbolic and that it is a hazardous undertaking to align Paine’s views with those of a particular group in the National Convention, given the extent to which his views changed over the period. In the first of these chapters Lounissi suggests that Paine held back from overtly affirming his preference for republican government in Rights of Man Part One for strategic rather than ideological reasons and was already committed to a republican solution in France before the king’s flight to Varennes in June 1791 which he saw nevertheless as a “critical moment” in the progress of the Revolution.

6 One of the challenges encountered by the author is in trying to access Paine’s ‘actual’ views which she suggests were not revealed in his writings. She undertakes painstaking investigation to try to read into certain omissions in Rights of Man Part One evidence of views withheld or toned down for pragmatic purposes. The chapter also contains a meticulous enquiry into the extent of Paine’s involvement in the editing and publican of Le Républicain in July 1791 (although reference to Rachel Hammersley’s research in this field would be welcome). What emerges from Lounissi’s study is the crucial role that an anticipated readership played in shaping what writers felt they could or could not say. Paine, she argues, held back from expressing deeply-held republican views in Rights of Man because he was profoundly aware of the complex and changing circumstances in which his writings would appear. This observation is followed by an instructive discussion of the extent of the divergence between Paine and Sièyes and sheds new light on this debate through an exploration of previously unstudied letters. There are some fascinating insights into the disagreements surrounding Paine’s election to the Convention, his probable authorship of an anonymous republican article in the Feuille villageoise and the origins of the dedication to Lafayette in Part Two of Rights of Man.

7 The following chapter deals with Paine’s position during the trial of the king, the timing and significance of his contributions and their reception and influence. Lounissi sweeps aside the view that Paine was a marginal and manipulated figure in the debate

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and provides insight into the nature of and reasoning behind Paine’s voting record, highlighting that Paine believed the monarchical regime, not the king, was on trial and thus that republicanism could only be secured if royal exile—not the death of Louis— were the outcome. Lounissi has traced the surprising number of times Paine’s name is mentioned in the voting procedure (in which, she notes, it was unusual otherwise for individuals to be identified) suggesting that Paine had an “influence and prestige” in the Convention which extended more broadly than has historically been acknowledged (147). The chapter concludes by examining Paine’s role on the constitutional committee, an undertaking severely hampered by gaps in the evidence. Lounissi counsels caution in ascribing the drafting of the ‘Girondin’ constitution of February 1793 to Paine, despite his obvious contribution to the enterprise.

8 The third chapter in this part of the book questions Paine’s political affiliations as a member of the National Convention and takes stock of the accuracy of Paine’s supposed alignment with the ‘Girondin’ faction. This is indeed a relevant debate given that it remains a contested area of enquiry as to whether international participants in the revolutionary scene did firmly side with a particular grouping in the Convention and whether such political affinities neatly intersected with their sociable circles. There is a considerable body of evidence which points to British observers of the Revolution being loathe to commit themselves to a particular bloc given that, with the notable exception of Paine himself, most did not have representative responsibilities. As the author indicates, historians such as Alison Fitzpatrick and William Doyle have also highlighted the problematic nature of attempting to fit Convention members into clear categories when there is so much ongoing debate about what the Girondins stood for and whether they can legitimately be termed a group in their own right, given the heterogeneity of their views and voting patterns. As Lounissi herself contends, the term itself can be seen as anachronistic. The author tries to resolve this dilemma by looking at Paine’s ‘connections’ and ‘collaborations’ with so-called Girondins such as Bonneville, Condorcet and Brissot. Yet, as the author, with a transparency that is a hallmark of her work, admits, “what confuses the issue is the lack of material to confirm or document their connection and relationship further, such as letters or accounts of meetings and testimonies. This lack encourages the drawing of uncertain parallels which mainly rely on a mere comparison of their published writings, an approach which has its limits” (184).

9 Paine’s name was instrumentalised by all parties to the extent that, at times, he appears as a cypher, someone whose views could be manipulated to serve whichever purpose was the order of the day and the priority of the speaker. Paine, in this portrait, becomes more of an idea than a man. As a reader, one is curious to discover how he felt when his words were used out of context and whether he disputed such exploitation of his name to settle partisan scores. It would be interesting to find out about the reactions of a man that associates and contemporaries depicted as a colourful figure. In this portrait of Paine’s time in France, Paine the thinker, the writer and political strategist is privileged over Paine the drinker, the host, the entertainer, the rallying figure of a vibrant international community. While not the object of this book, it would nevertheless be important to read this portrait in tandem with biographies and other studies to gain a picture of the different facets of his personality and his time in Paris.

10 This part concludes with the fascinating unearthing and verdict of what appears to have been a translation of a diary allegedly kept by Paine which would have shown him

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as a member of the Plaine and therefore more reluctant to commit himself in partisan disputes. Lounissi convincingly demonstrates that the contents are at odds with Paine’s probable views and are more likely an attempt at the fabrication of hostile propaganda a posteriori, a forgery aimed at “turning Paine into a counter-revolutionary writer in the context of Charles X’s France” (197).

11 Part three of this study tackles a moment in Paine’s career that sits uncomfortably with his earlier dogged commitment to the forthright avowal of his beliefs, that of his association with the post-Thermidorian regime and his endorsement of the “conservative republican” departures under the Directoire. The new regime and its proponents held that property, not natural right, underpinned the suffrage and therefore justified the restriction of popular participation and a limited franchise as a way of shielding the republic from the scourge of terror. The author shows that Paine disagreed with the premises of the 1795 constitution and refused to accept the view that the Terror had been prompted by democratic experiments. Rather he asserted that emergency government had lasted too long, and that the events of the Terror were the results of the acts of individuals unrestrained by legal safeguards. He reasserted principles he had outlined as early as 1786 such as how to avert abuse of power, and criticised the plan to limit the franchise. Yet he was drawn to revising other ideas (he backtracked on his commitment to unicameralism and was more wary of popular participation and the potential for violence). Louinissi’s fine understanding of the historiography of the republican tradition and its iterations comes to light here, as she concurs with Christopher Hamel that Paine “defended a republicanism of rights” (235).

12 The author shows that Paine’s speech in July 1795 on the necessity of an equal suffrage did not alter the course that was taken in the Convention, and only a few other representatives, including Lanthenas, agreed with his stance. Yet as Lounissi observes, there was concern that his views and more “democratic ethos” (242) could influence the course of the debate and plans were therefore devised to move to a vote on taxation measures more quickly. By 1797 Paine was praising the Constitution (that he had opposed) for ensuring and bringing stability to French institutions and the country at large, a stability that he overstated. He appears, according to the author, to have “put on a propagandist’s suit” under the Directoire, extolling virtues of the Constitution only two years after he had opposed it. As Lounissi explains, “Paine’s main purpose was to defend republicanism in a context in which it was threatened, even if it meant supporting a republican regime which was flawed in some respects” (260). In doing so he “overlooked” the overtly “anti-democratic” nature of the 1795 settlement and appears—perplexingly as the author avows—to have expressed views at odds with his developing thoughts on social justice as outlined in Agrarian Justice, published in 1797 (261).

13 He patently revised his view of the progress (and role of violence) in a Revolution, but continued to adhere to his views on legality and constitutional safeguards and this aspect of his thought “took precedence over participation” in his writings (264), highlighting what the author sees as his gradual movement away from “social republicanism” back to a vision of republicanism as “first and foremost anti-royalism” (265). Lounissi’s thesis that Paine and Benjamin Constant may have had more in common than has hitherto been asserted is a convincing one and merits further scrutiny. She also shows that he was more at odds with Germaine de Staël since the protection of private property was at the core of her vision of republicanism.

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14 After 1795 therefore, Paine acted as a “promoter, if not as a downright propagandist, of the Directoire, both vis-à-vis European countries and the United States” and engaged in “public diplomacy in favour of the French regime” (269). He spent his time writing on foreign policy mostly, and consistently supported the project for a landing on British soil, testimony to what Lounissi considers his unerring Francophilia. Paine’s writings appeared in Bonneville’s Le Bien informé in which he railed against George Washington (against whom he held a personal grudge for his extended jail term), and new president John Adams whose apparent monarchical designs he disparaged. He denounced Jay’s Treaty, helping to further exacerbate tensions between Federalists and Jeffersonians, and what he saw as abandonment in the US of republican principles.

15 Lounissi’s assessment of Paine’s reaction to Napoleon’s seizure of power is tentative, given that Paine refrained from delivering an outright public verdict on the developments and therefore his views are not clearly accessible. The author again shares with the reader the different alternative possibilities, arguing that Bonaparte’s decision to seek Paine’s views on military strategy towards Britain, even though his advice was not heeded, “is evidence that the latter was still considered as a kind of expert on British affairs” (298). After 1804 in his appeal to the people of Louisiana, France was no longer held up as an example to the world and Paine was arguing—as Mary Wollstonecraft did—that the French had initiated revolutionary changes before they were ready for them as a civil body. Paine’s view on Napoleon’s takeover was ambiguous, between admiration of his political and strategic capabilities and unease at the concentration of power in the hands of one man. Lounissi wonders at the pragmatism of Paine after 1795 and concludes that Paine, the unerring Francophile, preferred an imperfect republican regime to hereditary monarchy. His hatred of monarchy, and the English monarchy in particular, allied with his animosity towards Washington and Adams, may have fueled his indefatigable loyalty to the Directoire. He also relished contributing to what the author describes as the “ebbing and flowing” of the French Revolution and, although he was disappointed by the outcome, he never denied its legitimacy.

16 This is a fascinating, well-written and enquiring study which contributes beyond measure to refining the portrait of Thomas Paine’s involvement in the French Revolution. For any scholar interested in Paine’s French experience, the development of his thought and the wider debate on republicanism in the eighteenth century, this is a stimulating and required read. The author’s approach mirrors her counselling of taking into account the complexity of Paine’s own French career. She often shares with her reader the different conclusions that could be reached, the ones she considers most viable, and the ones she has dismissed. The reader is not given definitive conclusions and Lounissi shares the gaps in the archives with the reader who is drawn into the murky world of the revolutionary record and led to understand the difficulties encountered. She also helpfully draws out the centrality of little-known or understudied texts in Paine’s works. On this note, it would be interesting to glean an idea of her views on the desirability or not of a revision of Paine’s collected works given the criticisms that have been levelled at one of her major sources, Eric Foner’s two volumes of Paine’s collected writings.

17 There are some minor editorial revisions to be made. Some odd spelling errors have been overlooked, the most flagrant being that of Aldridge (misspelt twice as Aldrigde). David Williams was Welsh not English, and the validity of the term “communist” to

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describe Babeuf is debatable. The footnotes are substantial and beyond reproach, but in order to fully grasp the nature of the sources used, an alphabetical bibliography feels like a required addition to the volume.

18 On the arguments themselves, very little remains to be said, although I do have one or two comments. As in David V. Erdman’s study of John Oswald’s time in revolutionary Paris, the very exercise of studying an individual’s contribution to the Revolution leads necessarily to a focus on their agency and centrality, which on occasions results in an overstating of their role. Although the author is right to insist on the importance of Paine’s contribution to the debates in the Revolution, it might be questioned, for instance, whether it was Paine who forged the ‘mass reading public’ (Claeys’ term) of the late eighteenth century, as the author suggests. The circulation of Paine’s writings was certainly wide, but as well as being the work of the author, it was also the tireless and painstaking task of members of corresponding and debating societies across the country as well as small itinerant booksellers, publishers and editors who published, printed, selected and circulated his work for a mass audience. Mary Thale’s edited collection of the papers of the London Corresponding Society testifies to the anxiety induced in the authorities at the extent of the circulation of Paine’s Rights of Man Part Two and the reactions it produced.

19 In focusing primarily on the French context and influences on Paine’s work, one wonders whether Lounissi perpetuates in part the compartmentalised view of Paine which she counsels against in her introduction when she says “quite paradoxically, Paine’s several careers in the United States, in Great Britain and in France still tend to be dealt with in separate books or studies, whereas they should be studied not as distinct careers but as an evolutionary trajectory” (4). Paine in France was also a Paine in exile from Britain, pursued for seditious libel and whose effigies and book were burnt across the country at the turn of 1793. Despite his own claim in a letter to Attorney General Archibald Macdonald of November 1792 that he had no time to think about his trial in Britain because he was too preoccupied with the French constitution (“The duty I am now engaged in is of too much importance to permit me to trouble myself about your prosecution.”2), we might wonder to what extent the “French Paine” was still that international citizen, not only multifaceted but multi-facing, that Lounissi depicts at the outset. As the author herself points out in part three, “[Paine’s] hostility towards the government of his native country never abated and was strong during his whole stay in France” (218).

20 Finally, the author rightly acknowledges the plethora of Paine’s French contemporaries from across the revolutionary spectrum who could have influenced or been influenced by Paine or whose ideas were connected to those of the British writer. I would add—and this is not a shortcoming but reflections based on the crossovers between Carine Lounissi’s research and my own—that there is also an argument for fitting Paine’s work on the French Revolution into the cultural setting and political musings of the British emigrant community resident in Paris at this same period, given that the intersections with Paine’s topics of interest are patent. During his early residence in Paris after his arrival in late 1792, Paine initially lodged at Christopher White’s English hotel in the passage des Petits Pères, where a number of other British visitors were also housed for short-term or more lengthy stays. At White’s Hotel, Paine would have come into frequent contact with fellow British observers of the Revolution, many of whom (John Hurford Stone, Robert Merry, Sampson Perry, Mary Wollstonecraft or John Oswald for

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instance), without having a formal representative role like Paine, also petitioned the revolutionary administration during the creation of the republic and expressed their views on the events they witnessed. Perry and Wollstonecraft shared Paine’s views on the mutability of language, and Merry and Oswald were similarly engaged in the debate over the extent of popular participation desirable under the new republican regime. Paine’s views on the misinformation being conveyed by the British press on revolutionary progress dovetailed with those expressed by Hurford Stone in his letters to his brother and Helen Maria Williams in her writings. These and other examples suggest that at least some of Paine’s views, or more broadly his subjects of concern, might have been forged and determined in the numerous gatherings between British and Irish residents at both White’s hotel, and later at Paine’s rented lodgings in rue du faubourg Saint-Denis which he shared with fellow British nationals William Choppin and William Johnson where, as Rickman wrote, he was inundated with French visitors and British acquaintances.

21 The quality of Carine Lounissi’s work is beyond reproach and her searching study into Thomas Paine’s French experience, and the writings which were in part based on that experience, is a new and necessary addition to the already substantial body of writing on this disputed figure of the international revolutionary scene. Her scientific achievement is immense, and her transparency and skill as a historian an example to others.

NOTES

1. Manon Roland, An Appeal to Impartial Posterity: By Citizenness Roland, Wife of the Minister of the Home Department: Or, a Collection of Pieces Written by Her During Her Confinement in the Prisons of the Abbey, and St. Pélagie. Translated from the French (London: Johnson, 1795). 2. Thomas Paine, “To the English Attorney-General, on the Prosecution Against the Second Part of Rights of Man,” in Philip S. Foner. The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine (New York: Citadel, 1945) 2: 511.

INDEX

Mots-clés: Thomas Paine, Révolution américaine, Révolution française, Constitution monarchique, Girondins, républicanisme, journée du 10 août, Convention Nationale française, procès du roi Louis XVI, la Terreur, Thermidor, Directoire, Napoléon, coup du 18 Brumaire Keywords: Thomas Paine, American Revolution, French Revolution, Monarchical Constitution, Girondins, republicanism, August Days, French National Convention, trial of Louis XVI, the Terror, Thermidor, French Directory, Napoleon, Brumaire coup

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AUTHORS

RACHEL ROGERS Maître de Conférences Université de Toulouse – Jean Jaurès [email protected]

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Ophélie Siméon, Robert Owen’s Experiment at New Lanark; From Paternalism to Socialism.

Alexandra Sippel

REFERENCES

Ophélie Siméon, Robert Owen’s Experiment at New Lanark; From Paternalism to Socialism. Cham (Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 173 p, ISBN: 978-3-319-64226-0.

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1 Robert Owen’s Experiment at New Lanark; From Paternalism to Socialism est un ouvrage assez court mais dense qui s’inscrit dans la prestigieuse collection Palgrave Studies in Utopianism pilotée par le Professeur Gregory Claeys, grand spécialiste de l’utopisme et du socialisme. Ophélie Siméon, maîtresse de conférences en civilisation britannique à l’université Sorbonne Nouvelle, y analyse, en une introduction et cinq chapitres, la façon dont Robert Owen, entrepreneur philanthrope d’origine galloise, a, entre 1800 et 1825, racheté puis réorganisé la manufacture de New Lanark en Écosse. Il y a mené grandeur nature une expérience industrielle et philanthropique visant à démontrer qu’améliorer les conditions de vie des ouvriers et de leurs enfants permettrait de faire surgir une société meilleure sans réduire les bénéfices des entrepreneurs. L’auteure insiste à juste raison sur le choix du terme « experiment » dans son titre afin de montrer que Robert Owen, s’il est souvent présenté comme le père du socialisme, envisageait ses projets comme des expériences pratiques, dans la pure veine de l’empirisme britannique, et non comme le fruit de simples réflexions de théorie politique. Chaque chapitre examine une étape de ce processus expérimental, jalonné de difficultés économiques et humaines entre Owen et les autres parties prenantes (ouvriers, partenaires financiers, et même proches). Elle éclaire également la façon dont les traditions écossaises (comme le port du kilt) ont été intégrées par Owen, ou se sont imposées à lui (en particulier le contrôle de l’Église presbytérienne — « Kirk Session ») dans la vie quotidienne et la gestion de New Lanark. Chaque chapitre inclut une bibliographie détaillée, appareil complété d’un index et d’une bibliographie sélective en fin d’ouvrage.

2 L’introduction brosse un panorama de l’histoire du village manufacturier de New Lanark depuis sa fondation et met l’accent sur la dimension philanthropique que le projet avait revêtue avec David Dale, rappelant ainsi qu’Owen s’inscrivait dans une tradition déjà vivace. Si son système social était plus ambitieux, et le devint encore davantage au fil des années, New Lanark visait à rendre mutuellement bénéfiques les

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relations industrielles afin d’améliorer les conditions de vie de la classe ouvrière sans menacer les bénéfices financiers des entrepreneurs. Dès le départ pourtant, Robert Owen se distinguait par son optimisme et sa foi dans la nature humaine, largement héritée du mouvement des lumières et du radicalisme de la fin du XVIIIe siècle dont témoignent ses nombreux échanges avec William Godwin. L’approche ici adoptée au travers de la notion d’empirisme permet à O. Siméon, comme elle l’annonce en introduction, d’emprunter à la fois à une vision macro de l’histoire (la vie du grand homme Robert Owen) et à l’histoire par en bas grâce à l’étude d’archives des pensionnaires du village à l’époque d’Owen. Cela lui permet de dresser un bilan de l’œuvre d’Owen commentée par lui-même, mais aussi de mieux appréhender la façon dont son paternalisme autoritaire fut perçu par ceux qui bénéficiaient de sa philanthropie.

3 Le deuxième chapitre intitulé « Beginnings » s’ouvre sur une courte biographie de Robert Owen illustrant le chemin parcouru depuis son apprentissage jusqu’à l’achat de sa première usine à l’âge de 25 ans. C’est alors qu’il fut coopté dans la Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society qui rassemblait un certain nombre d’entrepreneurs philanthropes qui déjà cherchaient à adoucir les effets de la révolution industrielle sur les ouvriers. O. Siméon s’attache à dessiner le panorama de ces cercles, et détaille en particulier la façon dont David Dale, à qui Owen devait racheter New Lanark en 1800, s’était employé à proposer du travail aux nécessiteux écossais à New Lanark dès 1785 en faisant construire la manufacture et le village au bord de la Clyde. Les deux hommes s’inscrivaient dans la tradition de l’entrepreneur paternaliste veillant sur sa main- d’œuvre en lui garantissant de meilleures conditions de travail et en l’éduquant dès l’enfance. Les partenaires d’Owen ne lui permirent guère de mettre en œuvre les réformes qu’il considérait indispensables avant 1813, et les premières années de son aventure écossaise furent largement consacrées à démontrer dans ses écrits que l’administration bienveillante de villages manufacturiers, et non la quête effrénée du profit, était justifiée par la loi naturelle, ce que l’expérience devait prouver.

4 Malgré tous ces points communs (et malgré la proximité familiale entre les deux hommes puisque Owen devint le gendre de Dale à peu près en même temps qu’il racheta New Lanark), O. Siméon montre dans son troisième chapitre comment Owen tenta de minimiser l’héritage et l’influence de Dale pour promouvoir son action. « The ‘Preparatory Phase’, 1800-1816 » insiste sur les difficultés économiques et sociales de la population écossaise victime des clearances. Owen ne put guère mettre en œuvre les idées exposées dans A New View of Society (1812-3) avant d’avoir racheté les parts de ses associés en 1813 et dut dans les premières années subir l’hostilité de sa main-d’œuvre dont la journée de travail avait été allongée de onze à quatorze heures. Ce n’est qu’au lendemain du rachat du village manufacturier par Owen (grâce aux subsides de sa belle- famille) en 1813 qu’il eut enfin les mains libres pour mettre en œuvre son projet philanthropique. O. Siméon souligne à la fois la réduction de la durée hebdomadaire et quotidienne de travail, mais aussi, et surtout aux yeux d’Owen, l’ouverture en 1816 de l’Institut pour la Formation du Caractère (« Institute for the Formation of Character »), pièce maîtresse de son dispositif de réforme morale. Les « circonstances extérieures » se trouvaient grandement améliorées (éducation, hygiénisme, diminution de la durée quotidienne de travail), ce qui devait aller de pair avec le progrès des « circonstances intérieures » basé sur une surveillance constante du comportement de l’ensemble de la population au travail, mais aussi dans certaines activités privées. Owen avait pour New

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Lanark un projet éducatif qui allait encore au-delà des pratiques mises en œuvre par les mouvements réformistes comme celui de Joseph Lancaster.

5 Le quatrième chapitre de l’ouvrage, « Towards ‘The New Moral World’ : 1816-1825 » examine les succès d’Owen au cours de cette petite décennie où il fut à même d’imposer ses vues. O. Siméon y fait entrer en résonance les écrits du philanthrope avec les quelques rares témoignages de ses ouvriers afin de dresser un bilan nuancé de son action. Sans être aussi miraculeux que ce qu’Owen avait anticipé, les résultats de son action semblent toutefois bien supérieurs à ceux d’autres institutions similaires : les sources primaires des anonymes de l’Histoire tendent à confirmer que la grande pauvreté et la délinquance étaient plus faibles, et la santé meilleure à New Lanark qu’ailleurs. O. Siméon éclaire l’évolution, la ‘radicalisation’ d’Owen dont le paternalisme et le respect des hiérarchies sociales étaient au début de son expérience assez séduisants même pour les Tories, mais dont l’ambition de faire advenir une régénération complète de l’humanité (« complete regeneration of mankind », 87) le porta de plus en plus à défendre un modèle de société égalitaire au sein de villages de coopération. C’est ainsi que le paternaliste devint père du socialisme, et qu’il s’engagea dans l’action politique (en particulier contre le travail des jeunes enfants dans l’industrie textile et en faveur de la création d’atelier nationaux afin d’absorber le flot des soldats démobilisés et réduits à l’indigence après 1815). Le Factory Act de 1819 est encore associé au nom d’Owen, bien que ses propositions aient été largement édulcorées.

6 Dans le cinquième chapitre « Visions of New Lanark », l’auteure revient sur l’ouverture du village manufacturier aux visiteurs. Elle insiste sur le fait que pour Owen, il était essentiel que le village soit ouvert au public puisqu’il fallait que le succès de son expérience puisse être reconnu par le plus grand nombre, en particulier au travers des comptes-rendus publiés par les prestigieux visiteurs qui y venaient, parfois depuis l’étranger. Au début des années 1820, on comptait près de cinquante visiteurs par jour, dont certains étaient guidés par Owen lui-même qui pouvait ainsi leur faire découvrir les merveilles opérées par l’instruction complète donnée dans les écoles. Millénariste séculier, Owen espérait ainsi convertir ses visiteurs à son optimisme afin qu’ils se confrontent eux aussi à la ‘question sociale’ et qu’ils contribuent à faire advenir la société parfaite basée sur les villages coopératifs. O. Siméon nuance toutefois les limites de ce succès touristique : le romantique Southey fut l’un des premiers visiteurs à qualifier Owen d’utopiste, une critique qui ne manqua pas d’être reprise par la suite. Pour les villageois, l’expérience de la vie à New Lanark était positive au sein de manufacture : les quelques écrits disponibles révèlent la satisfaction d’appartenir à une entreprise à part où, par exemple, les châtiments dégradants avaient été interdits. Toutefois, la surveillance exercée par Owen sur la sphère domestique de ses employés ainsi que leur soif accrue d’être davantage entendus dans les instances de l’entreprise ont quelque peu entamé leur adhésion au projet du visionnaire. Le déisme d’Owen constitua enfin une pierre d’achoppement dans ses relations avec toutes les autres parties du projet : ses partenaires (et sa femme), comme ses ouvriers, redoutaient qu’il ternisse leur réputation à tous et qu’il donne au village une réputation d’athéisme et de débauche (« a cradle of atheism and debauchery », 129). C’est d’ailleurs ce qui finit par coûter sa place à Owen au sein de l’équipe de direction du village manufacturier.

7 Finalement, le dernier chapitre « Rethinking New Lanark : The Model and The Myth » dresse un bilan de l’influence d’Owen sur New Lanark, et de son expérimentation sur

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les mouvements sociaux de la suite du XIXe siècle. O. Siméon y voit « le catalyseur de l’émergence du premier mouvement socialiste britannique » (« the catalyst for the emergence of Britain’s first socialist movement », 142). Bien qu’Owen se soit retiré du monde des affaires pour se tourner vers la promotion de ses villages de coopération (jusque dans l’Indiana avec l’expérience de New Harmony en 1825), on recensait quelque trois cents coopératives directement inspirées de son action en 1830. Les Chartistes modérés des années 1840 (Henry Hetherington en particulier) voyaient dans son village d’industrie et son engagement pour l’éducation un modèle de gestion éclairée. Intellectuellement parlant, alors que se développait l’économie politique, Owen proposait une autre voie que celle de la concurrence effrénée par la promotion de la coopération, et ce, en s’appuyant sur la construction de l’idée de la valeur du travail élaborée par Smith et Ricardo. Pour Owen, le travail devait être le mètre étalon de toute valeur dans les villages de coopération, au point que la monnaie qui lui semblait le mieux convenir à ces lieux était un système de bons en heures de travail. À ce titre, O. Siméon conclut que le socialisme fondé et incarné par Robert Owen était un moyen de refuser « l’individualisme triomphant plus que le capitalisme » (« an alternative to rampant individualism rather than to capitalism per se », 159), ce qui explique qu’il ait été assez facilement inclus dans l’héritage de la gauche socialiste modérée depuis l’époque des Fabiens. Finalement, si New Lanark a bien été idéalisé en tant que modèle par les socialistes britanniques, héritiers de certains aspects de la pensée d’Owen, la « vallée heureuse » (« happy valley », comme la nommait Owen, 160) n’a aucune réalité historique et relève bien de l’utopie puisqu’elle n’a finalement existé que sous la plume d’Owen (160).

INDEX

Keywords: socialism, cooperative movement, utopia, philanthropy, empiricism, industrial revolution, working conditions, textile industry, factory villages, Scotland, popular education. Mots-clés: socialisme, mouvement coopératif, utopie, philanthropie, empirisme, révolution industrielle, conditions de travail, industrie textile, villages manufacturiers, Ecosse, éducation populaire

AUTHORS

ALEXANDRA SIPPEL Maître de conférences Université de Toulouse – Jean Jaurès [email protected]

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Xavier Kalck,“We said Objectivist”. Lire les poètes Lorine Niedecker, George Oppen, Carl Rakosi, Charles Reznikoff, Louis Zukofsky.

Fiona McMahon

RÉFÉRENCE

Xavier Kalck,“We said Objectivist”. Lire les poètes Lorine Niedecker, George Oppen, Carl Rakosi, Charles Reznikoff, Louis Zukofsky. Paris : Sorbonne université presses, 2019.

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1 La poésie objectiviste n’a pas fini de marquer de son sceau l’actualité littéraire en France. Son lectorat, sans être vaste est hétéroclite, constitué autant d’artistes, de poètes et de traducteurs que de critiques venus des champs anglicistes, américanistes, des lettres comparées, de l’esthétique ou de l’histoire de l’art. En tant que tradition poétique, son jaillissement sur la création actuelle a été salué encore récemment par les poètes Philippe Blanchon, Éric Giraud et le critique d’art François Coadou1. S’il fallait encore des preuves de la centralité de l’exemple objectiviste, il suffirait d’observer la production encore plus récente de traductions inédites des poètes objectivistes (en 2018, poèmes de Carl Rakosi et de Charles Reznikoff chez les Éditions unes, Éditions Nous ou Éditions La Barque).

2 Si aujourd’hui l’intérêt pour la critique française à l’égard de ces poètes n’est plus à démontrer, l’ensemble des œuvres poétiques que l’historiographie littéraire réunit sous l’étiquette d’« objectiviste » a traversé le vingtième siècle sans grand fracas, les poètes américains George Oppen, Carl Rakosi, Charles Reznikoff et Louis Zukofsky ayant tardé à trouver leur place à l’intérieur du canon poétique américain. Plus radicalement obscures encore sont les quelques figures rattachées à cette filiation par la critique à la fin des années quatre-vingt-dix : la poétesse américaine Lorine Niedecker et l’anglais Basil Bunting.

3 Malgré la relative discrétion de ces œuvres au sein des universités françaises, l’ouvrage de Xavier Kalck,“We said Objectivist”. Lire les poètes Lorine Niedecker, George Oppen, Carl Rakosi, Charles Reznikoff, Louis Zukofsky (Sorbonne université presses, 2019) ne manquera pas de trouver ses lecteurs, férus de poésie américaine, mais aussi ceux, nombreux chez les poètes français contemporains, qui sont sensibles aux traditions poétiques américaines et parfois traducteurs de ces mêmes poètes objectivistes (J. Roubaud, Y. di Manno, J-P Auxeméry, A-M Albiach, entre autres). Kalck recense des traducteurs français des œuvres objectivistes à cette date, proposant une liste exhaustive dans

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l’introduction de son ouvrage2. La traversée remarquablement minutieuse du paysage critique que l’on y découvre rappelle l’imbrication constante de l’écriture objectiviste dans les principales étapes de la poésie américaine du 20e siècle. Kalck retrace cette histoire et celle de la critique américaine, à commencer par les études fondatrices initiant le public et le monde universitaire américains à ces œuvres (l’ouvrage clé de Michael Heller paru en 1985, A Conviction’s Net of Branches : Essays on the Objectivist Poets and Poetry ou les entretiens menés par l’universitaire américain L.S. Dembo en 1972). Il rend hommage également à l’inestimable contribution de Serge Fauchereau (Lecture de la poésie américaine, 1968), auteur d’une étude en langue française qui situe les objectivistes dans le paysage poétique américain du 20e siècle et qui introduit le lectorat français de manière plus large, comme le rappelle Yves di Manno, à une « étrange galaxie poétique3 ».

4 L’ambition de l’ouvrage présent, fruit d’une thèse de doctorat soutenue en 2007 est précisément d’éclairer la place des objectivistes dans cet univers poétique et d’appréhender chemin faisant, à l’aide de micro-lectures, la singularité prosodique de chaque poète sans négliger les circonstances géopolitiques présidant à la composition. La démarche de Kalck enrichit de manière didactique et pertinente la tradition critique monographique en proposant un chapitre distinct pour explorer les caractéristiques individuelles formant la poétique de chaque œuvre. Doté d’une belle érudition, Kalck produit un texte animé par une plume directe et assurée.

5 L’ouvrage se divise en cinq chapitres où sont proposés selon une répartition éditoriale parfaitement équilibrée (une quarantaine de pages à chaque fois) des outils d’analyse des poétiques de Niedecker, Oppen, Rakosi, Reznikoff et Zukofsky. L’ensemble est encadré par une introduction dans laquelle Kalck inventorie les principales études consacrées aux États-Unis et en France aux poètes objectivistes, avant d’enchaîner sur un volet biographique succinct et utile composé de « cinq portraits ». L’ouvrage se termine par une conclusion intitulée, « Ruines du particulier », qui met en regard ce que Zukofsky nommera « les faits historiques et contemporains particuliers4 » et les enjeux d’une poésie du banal ou du quotidien, si souvent assimilée aux œuvres objectivistes.

6 L’ordonnancement de l’ouvrage est à l’image de la clarté critique dont fait preuve l’étude de Kalck. Celle-ci s’ouvre sur la réception de la poésie objectiviste, longtemps balisée par des efforts d’y trouver un projet commun ou d’y consacrer une « tradition », comme s’est employé à le faire l’un de ses premiers lecteurs critiques, l’américain Charles Altieri en 1979. Selon Kalck, ce qui constitue l’un des points d’achoppement dans ce paysage critique est le fait que « The Objectivist Tradition » peine à rendre compte des fortunes diverses de ses différents acteurs à travers une période longue, des années 30 jusqu’aux années 70. En effet, certaines des premières lectures critiques, dont celui d’Altieri, rencontre chez Kalck une force argumentative qui s’attarde sur la nécessité d’affiner des positions théoriques. Remettre à plat ainsi l’historiographique est une stratégie critique efficace, mais le lecteur pourra être frappé par le caractère récurrent de la méthode employée ici qui consiste en une opposition frontale aux propos des auteurs cités, parmi lesquels figurent les poètes qui les premiers ont sensibilisé le lectorat à la poétique des objectivistes (Emmanuel Hocquard en France ou Michael Heller et plus récemment Rachel Blau Duplessis aux États-Unis).

7 Reste que le regard interrogateur que l’auteur pose sur l’objet de ses recherches est fondé sur une grande connaissance des poétiques américaines du 20e siècle. Son étude

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est tournée ainsi vers l’ensemble des œuvres objectivistes américaines mais se garde d’offrir un quelconque discours général dans lequel viendraient se télescoper les spécificités de chaque œuvre. De fait, en s’emparant de la question de l’héritage objectiviste, cet ouvrage se donne pour ambition de mettre à nu des lectures critiques du projet objectiviste. Kalck attend de l’activité critique qu’elle dépasse un certain nombre d’écueils méthodologiques, en s’émancipant des « formules vagues » (13) longtemps arrimées aux termes du programme fondateur énoncés par Louis Zukofsky en 1931 — c’est toutefois une entreprise à laquelle s’attelle la critique de manière régulière — en se délestant d’une partialité théorique trop présente et en demeurant vigilante face à la question de la « cohérence du projet objectiviste » (13).

8 C’est par la méditation attentive sur l’œuvre de Charles Reznikoff et sa réception que Kalck choisit d’inaugurer son étude. Les motifs prosodiques et philosophiques de son écriture, singuliers par leur mesure et leur humilité produiront des échos chez Zukofsky, Oppen, Rakosi et Niedecker. Kalck célèbre les seuils langagiers exhibés par les poèmes de Reznikoff, les difficultés qu’ils posent pour la réception d’une œuvre qui semble refuser le défi de la transcendance pour se réfugier dans une vision de concrétude objective. Les outils d’analyse de Kalck permettent de montrer les limites d’une telle lecture au profit d’une position dialectique. Celle-ci consiste à envisager l’exemplarité du poète du point de vue de l’articulation sous-jacente qui fait se rencontrer le formalisme associé au modernisme poétique et l’héritage culturel juif de Reznikoff. À ce titre, ce premier chapitre comporte une analyse vigoureuse et éclairante de l’analogie à laquelle a recours une certaine critique américaine entre la « textualité juive traditionnelle » (en citant notamment Norman Finkelstein, l’un des critiques les plus productifs de la question de la sécularisation de la culture juive) et « l’expérimentation poétique d’avant-garde » (68). Après Stephen Fredman, Stephen Paul Miller ou Daniel Morris5, Kalck rejoint ainsi un débat de longue date sur l’appropriation en poésie américaine d’un régime liturgique ou d’une démarche midrashique et de manière générale, sur la place du judaïsme dans la littérature américaine.

9 Le deuxième chapitre, qui s’ouvre par le titre évocateur « La disparition de Zukofsky », se lit comme un plaidoyer pour un retour au « travail du texte » (94) face à la récupération du poète à la fois comme « figure tutélaire du modernisme poétique américain » (90) et « caution du postmodernisme triomphant » (91). Selon Kalck, avant d’envisager de nouveaux modèles interprétatifs de “A”, l’œuvre majeure de Zukofsky, il s’agit de mettre à distance les modalités pratiques et théoriques de la critique poundienne tout comme des positionnements théoriques des « Language Poets » dans les années 80 et 90. Pour cerner la spécificité prosodique du projet de Zukofsky, Kalck s’appuie notamment sur une étude de Cid Corman, proposant en conclusion de ce chapitre un retour incisif vers l’anthologie que Zukofsky consacre à l’art poétique, A Test of Poetry (1948).

10 Pour le lectorat français, le troisième chapitre, intitulé « Les échelles de Carl Rakosi » est essentiel, en ce qu’il contribue aux efforts trop rares pour rendre compte de l’œuvre de ce poète. Kalck revient sur une nouvelle « disparition » dans le paysage poétique américain, puisque si Rakosi est présent dans An “Objectivists” Anthology, (1932)6 aux côtés de Zukofsky, Oppen et Reznikoff, il ne fera paraître de nouveaux poèmes qu’en 1967, avec le volume Amulet (aujourd’hui traduit en français par J-P Auxeméry). L’analyse proposée ici fait ressortir autant la « dimension méditative » chez Rakosi

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(173) que ce que Kalck nomme la « minoration » (155) du poème aux prises avec les « capacités expressives et représentatives » (154) du langage.

11 Le chapitre suivant consacré à Lorine Niedecker participe de la démarche à l’œuvre dans l’ensemble de l’ouvrage, celle qui consiste à contester les méthodologies critiques utilisées pour l’analyse des œuvres objectivistes. « Lorine Niedecker : ancrage et abstraction » s’efforce de prendre à rebours l’image d’une œuvre marquée par la simplicité, du fait de son dépouillement et de l’anonymat associé à la trajectoire biographique du poète. Dans le dernier chapitre de son ouvrage, Kalck, qui est déjà l’auteur d’une étude parue chez Peter Lang en 2017 (George Oppen’s Poetics of the Commonplace), propose une analyse synthétique de la poésie d’Oppen à travers la lecture minutieuse d’un seul poème, « The Lighthouses », composé en 1975 et adressé par Oppen à Zukofsky. Ici, à nouveau, Kalck souligne son parti pris : il s’emploie à tenir les dynamiques internes de la composition à distance d’approches théoriques jugées inadaptées, pour mettre au jour les mécanismes de la prosodie.

12 Dans sa conclusion, Kalck ramène l’héritage des objectivistes au contexte contemporain et s’attaque à la problématisation de l’objet et du banal dans la poésie américaine en esquissant un détour par le cinéma américain récent. L’appropriation du motif du prosaïque par Jim Jarmusch dans son film Paterson (2016) est certes caricaturale et Kalck n’a aucune peine à nous le démontrer. De fait, il réussit son pari qui consiste à nous faire nous attarder dans ce parcours du paysage objectiviste non pas sur « l’authenticité du banal » (267) mais sur « L’étrangeté qui perturbe la coïncidence du particulier et du familier » (271). Contempler avec Kalck cette « étrangeté », la distance qui sépare le regard objectiviste de la tradition poétique américaine ou de l’américanité donne également à penser la subtile déchirure de l’expérience qu’ont traversée individuellement ces poètes. Cette invitation est l’un des nombreux points forts qui font de cette étude une contribution importante au champ de recherche faisant avancer la connaissance en France des poétiques américaines.

NOTES

1. Des objectivistes au Black Mountain College. École supérieure d’art de Toulon Provence Méditerranée : La Nerthe, 2014. 2. Nous nous permettons de rappeler la notice bibliographique suivante : Charles Reznikoff, D’abord il y a la nécessité, trad. Jules Henri Julien. L’ours blanc. Genève, Héros-Limite, 2014, 2-16. 3. Objets d’Amérique. Série américaine. Paris : Josi Corti, 2009, 14. 4. Louis Zukofsky, Prepositions + : The Collected Critical Essays. Middleton (Conn.), Wesleyan UP, 2000, 12. Cité par X. Kalck, 275. 5. A Menorah fro Athena : Chalres Reznikoff and the Jewish Dilemmas of Objectivist Poetry, 2001 ; Stephen Paul Miller et Daniel Morris (dir.), Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture, Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 2010. 6. Ed. Louis Zukofsky, Le Beausset, Var, France; New York, PO Box 3 Station F: To, Publishers, 1932.

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INDEX

Mots-clés : poésie américaine, objectivistes, tradition critique, prosodie Keywords : American poetry, objectivists, critical tradition, prosody

AUTEURS

FIONA MCMAHON Maître de conférences HDR Université de Bourgogne [email protected]

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James Gifford. A Modernist Fantasy: Modernism, Anarchism, and the Radical Fantastic.

Béatrice Duchateau

REFERENCES

James Gifford. A Modernist Fantasy: Modernism, Anarchism, and the Radical Fantastic. Victoria: ELS Editions, 2018

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1 James Gifford’s A Modernist Fantasy: Modernism, Anarchism, and the Radical Fantastic (2018) is openly part of the New Modernist Studies as it provides the reader with a journey into a counter-canon of fantasy that challenges the boundaries set between high and popular culture. Gifford’s audacious project is intended at “rethinking modernism” (p. xii), especially late modernism, through the prism of fantasy and anarchism. Through the case studies of nine authors, his book aims at disclosing how the three apparently contradictory fields of modernism, anarchism and fantasy, were in fact overlapping from the 1890s until the 1970s. The other goal of the study is to make an anti-authoritarian trend of fantasy visible, to reveal a lineage of fantasy writing that has been hidden by the overarching influence of J. R. R. Tolkien’s work.

2 The book is divided into four chapters: the first one is devoted to what Gifford calls his “metacritical” project (p. 7), which is a substantial critique of how fantasy was defined and tackled through both structuralist and materialist approaches. The following three chapters offer a chronological overview of how modernism, anarchism and fantasy coincided in the works of late Victorian and high modernist writers first, then in the works of late modernist writers in the 1940s-1960s, and finally in the works of post- modern writers till the end of the 1980s.

3 The first chapter opens with a criticism of the structuralist approach to fantasy that was mostly definition-based but it then quickly turns to an attack on the critical methodology that has prevailed in the scholarly criticism of the genre since the 1970s: the materialist approach which contributed to the creation of a canon of fantasy. Gifford endeavours to provide a very detailed and referenced analysis of the theories developed by Fredric Jameson or Darko Suvin, among others: they have all described fantasy as reactionary or conservative through the study of different common features such as metonymy, the struggle between good and evil, medievalism, and magic, which, according to them, condone and even strengthen gender and class boundaries or

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ethnocentrism. Anarchism was regarded in exactly the same way by those critics. As a result of such considerations, fantasy has often been held inferior to science fiction, whose more open social criticism or utopian projections would seem to weaken class distinctions or cultural hegemonies more overtly. In addition, since fantasy was being reduced to reactionary medievalism, every alternative piece of fantasy work that was not fitting this definition was neglected as not considered worthy of interest. This was compounded by the commercial success of Tolkien and his imitators. Gifford explains that the anarchist or anti-authoritarian stance present in such works could not be analysed properly by Marxist critics (or ones influenced by Marxist paradigms) because their understanding of notions such as subjectivity or authority differed too strongly from an anarchist perspective; their assimilation of anarchism to individualism for example made it impossible for them to acknowledge their potential for political and ontological change. After showing the limitations of fantasy scholars, the author then exposes the short-comings of another field of criticism, that of modernism and late modernism. Another reason for the disregard in which many fantasy writers of the period were held captive is the preference for science fiction that was connected more readily to modernism. The impossibility to consider an alternative set of writers and their other version of subjectivity was amplified as well by the editorial and theoretical dominance of the Auden generation. Science fiction, realism and modernism were studied in smooth relation when it seemed impossible to link fantasy to modernism(s). Finally, the chapter then closes on a presentation of this counter-canon defended enthusiastically by Gifford. He dates back the beginning of this alternative fantasy canon in the New Apocalypse Movement, a post-surrealist movement born in England before the Second World War, a movement influenced by the anarchist writings of Henry Miller and Herbert Read. Before and after the war, a number of writers belonging to the late modernist trend, such as Mervyn Peake or George Woodcock, turned to fantasy while retaining their writing style. They would in turn influence a later generation of writers like Ursula K. Le Guin or Samuel Delany in the late 1960s and 1970s. Gifford highlights the fact that those authors retained a modernist interest in tradition and myth, and stream of consciousness, as a way to interpret and challenge modern society. He contends as well that their works undermine capitalism and Marxist paradigms through reflexions on power and the rejection of determinism. Gifford’s arguments in this lengthy chapter are engaging and multifaceted but sometimes tend to get lost in the number of references he uses to make his point.

4 The second chapter moves on to the analysis of the texts and starts with the study of early fantasy works which helped the genre develop and included antiauthoritarian ideas. Gifford begins with the study of William Morris’s The Wood Beyond the World (1894) with two goals in mind: showing first that Morris sympathised with anarchist ideas and that his use of a secondary world was not reactionary. He celebrated individuality and rejected “the state and concentration of power” (p. 97) in the form of a pre-modern society where kinship does not exist. Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter (1924) is quickly conjured to oppose its conservative forms of social organisation to the modernist Hope Mirlee’s Lud-in-the-Mist (1924), where Gifford studies the function of authority, law, power and death, and their relation. In both Morris’s and Mirlee’s works, the author identifies the desire to criticise the accumulation of authority, of state power, rather than the economic forces and the accumulation of capital. In this rather too brief a chapter, a more profound analysis of the style of the writers, especially that of the modernist Mirlee, would have been welcome as only diegetic

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analyses are provided. If the bridge made between anarchism and fantasy is very convincing, the connection between modernism and fantasy would have gained in strength through a more thorough textual examination.

5 The next chapter then charts the works of four authors who wrote between the 1940s and 1960s in an anarchist vein: Mervyn Peake, Henry Treece, Poul Anderson, the only American writer studied, and John Cowper Powys. In Peake’s Gormenghast series, the antiauthoritarian stance is for example personified by the escape of Titus into the organic natural world; he flees from a castle and its rituals that embody the forces of social determination. The analysis of Anderson’s The Broken Sword (1954) depicts how power is represented as fostering corruption, how heroism is rejected, and how a reforged sword can be a metaphor for the atomic bomb. Through the study of Powys’s Porius (1951), Gifford then shows how the themes of pluralism and individuality can be tackled in an anti-authoritarian fantasy novel, and he explores the symbolism of the confrontation of the mist and the wind, how the former is linked to power and how the latter embodies rebellion. The last works mentioned are Henry Treece’s Legions of the Eagles (1954) and The Golden Strangers (1956) in which the main characters turn to organic nature as well. All the novels considered in this chapter have in common the themes of power and domination, they resist the concepts of heroism and economic determinism, and they promote new forms of selfhood and personal freedom. Their style is more experimental than Tolkien’s but, once again, despite a few considerations on stream of consciousness, the analysis would have gained in demonstrating more openly how, as the author claims, the “liberatory political praxis” of these writers is embodied “in form rather than […] in content” (p. 8).

6 The last chapter successfully shows how the generation tackled in section three influenced the post-1960s generation and focuses first on Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series (1964-2001). Constantly set against Jameson’s views on Le Guin’s work, Gifford’s demonstration weaves through the anarchist themes present in the series: resistance to closure as a form of rebellion against authority, disruption of the good/evil standard dichotomy, or self-possession as the only path to freedom. Self-possession is addressed as well in Michael Moorcock’s Gloriana, or The Unfulfill’d Queen (1978) through the release of the eponymous character in orgasm and rape. Finally, the author demonstrates how Samuel Delany’s political and theoretical perspective evolved in the Nevèrÿon series (1979 to 1987), progressing from the determinism of Marxism to a reflexion on power more like Michel Foucault’s.

7 In this stimulating and energetic study of nine writers, the extensive familiarity of the author with the two fields of criticism conjured, modernism and fantasy, is impressive; Gifford’s work successfully contributes to challenge both the canons of (late) modernism and fantasy, especially when he forces the reader to review his or her standards and to discard his or her preconceptions on fantasy. To that end, the author systematically recourses to a comparison to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. The trilogy is always referred to as a point of reference to establish the differences between the main fantasy canon of the ‘Inklings’ and the counter-canon presented by the author, making the consideration of this alternative stream of fantasy very conclusive. Gifford’s goal was to make us “pick-up some fantasy novels with an open-mind” (p. xii), and in this, he has been very successful.

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INDEX

Keywords: Fantasy, anarchism, modernism, late modernism, materialism, Marxism, New Apocalypse Movement, individualism, determinism Mots-clés: Fantasy, anarchisme, modernisme, late modernism, matérialisme, Marxisme, New Apocalypse Movement, individualisme, déterminisme

AUTHORS

BÉATRICE DUCHATEAU Professeur agrégée des universités Université de Bourgogne [email protected]

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Silvia Pellicer-Ortín, Julia Tofantšuk (eds.), Women on the Move. Body, Memory and Femininity in Present-Day Transnational Diasporic Writing.

Sara Strauss

REFERENCES

Silvia Pellicer-Ortín, Julia Tofantšuk (eds.), Women on the Move. Body, Memory and Femininity in Present-Day Transnational Diasporic Writing (New York: Routledge, 2019), 266 p., ISBN: 978-1-138-32199-1

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1 At a time when political conflict, persecution, environmental and economic factors cause millions of people to migrate from their homeland to seek refuge in other countries, Silvia Pellicer-Ortín’s and Julia Tofantšuk’s edited volume addresses the vast complexity of transnational migration and exile as presented in diasporic writing. It particularly focuses on the situation of female migrants and their experiences during migratory movement and life in the diaspora. Thereby, the collection responds to the urgent demand to include a gender approach in the fields of Migration and Diaspora Studies. Due to intersectional aspects that mark their identities, displaced women often encounter even more difficulties and disadvantages than male migrants. As a result of overlaps in differentiating factors, such as gender, race, class, age, religion etc., migratory females are at a high risk of abuse, exploitation and discrimination in their native countries as well as on their journeys and in the states of their destination. For this reason, the volume aims at problematising the situation of female migrants both during their transnational movements and in the diaspora.

2 Writers and scholars in disciplines such as sociology, cultural studies and postcolonial studies, among others, have adverted to the importance of representation for political participation, equality and empowerment (Adichie, 2009, Hall, 1997). The present collection therefore moves the literary representation of female migratory experience into the centre of attention. In line with Derek Attridge’s argument that literature offers more vivid and emphatic approaches to ethical considerations than philosophy (Attridge, 2004), the book examines the narrative representation of migration in fiction and semi-autobiographical writing. It thus investigates the power of narrative to offer different perspectives on the diaspora and create empathy with characters experiencing suffering, exploitation and displacement.

3 The collection is divided into five thematic sections, which are preceded by a preface and an introduction by the two editors. In her foreword Jill Lewis praises the timeliness

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of the book and points out its importance as regards the necessity of interrogating political hierarchies. She draws attention to the volume’s role as a forerunner beyond the scope of the book itself in inspiring a critical reflection on current attitudes towards refuge seeking and responses to migration. Subsequently, Pellicer-Ortín’s and Tofantšuk’s introduction gives an overview on the complexity of the topic of migration and discusses crucial issues with regard to transnationality, exile and diasporic life. It foregrounds the interrelation between the experiences of displacement and trauma. In this context, the two editors convincingly argue for a feminist perspective when examining mechanisms of discrimination and exploitation throughout processes of migration. They then provide the theoretical basis for the following essays. As such, aspects of female migratory practices are considered against the background of theories of identity, agency, history, memory, trauma, the body and the significance of space.

4 The twelve contributions that form the main part of the volume analyse the literary representation of female migrants as portrayed in the works of diasporic writers of African, Caribbean, European, Latin American and South Asian origin. The selection of narratives discussed offers fruitful insights into a great variety of cultural backgrounds as the individual chapters study literature by authors originating from, among others, Bangladesh, Haiti, Hungary, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Nigeria and Zimbabwe now living in the United States and the UK. Thus, the two essays of the first section address transnational women’s struggles for identity and agency despite feelings of displacement and unbelonging. While skilfully demonstrating the aesthetic and ethical meaningfulness of selected coming-of-age stories by Chris Abani, Chika Unigwe and NoViolet Bulawayo, Cédric Courtois and Merve Sarikaya-Şen problematise the protagonists’ experiences of abuse, migratory trauma and alienation from their home as well as their host country.

5 Section Two deals with mobility as constitutive of personal identity. Beatriz Pérez Zapata’s contribution examines Zadie Smith’s novels with regard to movement and feelings of rootlessness in global and glocal societies. In her analysis of Swing Time, she relates movement, both spatial and temporal, to freedom, autonomy and agency and exemplifies in how far Smith’s characters struggle to find a balance between acknowledging the history of their ancestors for their own sense of self and the limitations that their roots entail for them. The following essay by María Rocío Cobo- Piñero problematises Western notions of cosmopolitanism with regard to second- generation diasporic subjects. It contrasts Taiye Selasi’s concept of Afropolitanism, which is criticised for its elitist focus on privileged middle-class citizens and its neglect of the challenges associated with gender stereotypes and undocumented immigration, to Selasi’s more multidimensional representation of fictional transnational characters in her novel Ghana Must Go (2014).

6 In section Three the essays by Corinne Bigot and by Chiara Battisti and Sidia Fiorato consider the interrelations of gender, identity and the spaces of the home and kitchen. In their analyses of narratives by Edwidge Danticat, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Bigot) as well as Monica Ali (Battisti and Fiorato), they demonstrate how far the cultural practices of preparing and consuming food serve to maintain the indigenous traditions as well as emotional ties with the homeland or with family relations, or to adapt to the new country.

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7 The fourth section, then, focuses on Irish as well as Jewish-Hungarian experiences of in-betweenness as represented in novels by Edna O'Brien, Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright and Charlotte Mendelson. Whereas Maria Amor Barros-del Río’s chapter concentrates on twentieth-century female emigration from Ireland to the United States, Selen Aktari-Sevgi discusses liminality as a constitutive part of Irish women’s experience during the decades around the turn to the twenty-first century. Both contributions show to what extent Irish women were and are challenged by the restrictive ideologies of the Irish nation project and its discourses (Barros-del Río) and the oppressive neoliberal ideologies of the Celtic Tiger period and its aftermath (Aktari-Sevgi). Subsequently, Julia Tofantšuk’s essay complements the preoccupation with the interrelation of memory and identity evident in the preceding sections with a view on the effects of forgetting as a catalyst for conflict. In her precise analysis of Hungarian- British writer Charlotte Mendelson’s novel Almost English, Tofantšuk exemplifies the psychological effects of repressed traumatic memory of the individual and its collision with collective memories within the diaspora. Through cross-references to theories, ideas and arguments presented in further chapters of the volume, the contribution also manages to show interrelations between the different diasporic conditions while enriching the scope of the collection with an example of migration within Europe.

8 Section Five elaborates on the motif of border crossing in literature of diverse cultural backgrounds. In their contribution Paul Rüsse and Maialen Antxustegi-Etxarte Aranaga address a historically and presently much-debated border region: the US-Mexican border. They advert to the triple oppression of Chicanas due to their working-class background, their skin colour and gender. Yet, using the example of Ito Romo’s short stories the authors manage to unveil how this gendered discrimination is subverted in Chicano/a literature. The following essay by Carolina Sánchez-Palencia discusses West Indian labour immigration to Britain during the post-war years as represented in Andrea Levy’s novel Small Island. By means of her careful narrative analysis Sánchez- Palencia demonstrates that Levy’s diasporic fiction “contest[s] the linear and dominant narratives of patriarchal and imperial discourse” (222). The final chapter of the volume authored by Silvia Pellicer-Ortín, then, considers Jewish female identity in Michelene Wandor’s short story collection False Relations and demonstrates that, in the absence of a shared language or country of residence, experiences of migration and cross- culturality are characteristic of Jewishness and Jewish communities. Through her accurate narratological analysis Pellicer-Ortín manages to unveil that the plurality of voices, spaces and time spans as well as the formal aesthetics and complex structure of Wandor’s collection recreate the multidirectionality and transculturality of Jewish memory and identity.

9 In sum, the edited volume must be praised for its bold endeavour to discuss and acknowledge a great variety of visions of transnational diasporic life and include views from multiple cultural backgrounds. Thereby, this collection helps to prevent “the danger of a single story” as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie famously warned against a simplistic, stereotypical depiction of former colonial countries and their people (2009). Especially with regard to the anti-immigration political agenda of Brexit and the presidency of Donald Trump in the United States as well as the resurfacing of nationalist ideological discourses in several European states, the book receives a sad topicality. Consequently, the relevance of the present collection and of literature that

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creates empathy with people experiencing the challenges of migration and displacement cannot be underestimated.

INDEX

Mots-clés: diaspora, migration, exil, études de genre, féminité, mémoire, identité, trauma, littérature, fiction, récit Keywords: diaspora, migration, exile, gender studies, femininity, memory, identity, trauma, literature, fiction, narrative

AUTHORS

SARA STRAUSS Research Assistant University of Paderborn – Germany

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Rachel Bouvet et Rita Olivieri-Godet, Géopoétique des confins

Françoise Besson

RÉFÉRENCE

Rachel Bouvet et Rita Olivieri-Godet, Géopoétique des confins (Rennes : Presses Universitaires de Rennes, coll. "Interférences", 2018), 218p, ISBN 978-2-7535-6529-6

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1 Cet ouvrage collectif dirigé par Rachel Bouvet et Rita Olivieri-Godet se compose de six chapitres, le premier étant un portail théorique étayé par deux autres essais, l'un sur un poème de Kenneth White et l'autre sur "'l'espace évanoui' du continent américain et l'imaginaire des confins", à partir de l'œuvre de l'écrivain-voyageur et géographe Jean Morisset; ("Perspectives théoriques") ; ce chapitre introductif composé de trois essais est suivi de cinq chapitres centrés chacun sur un écosystème particulier : la toundra, la plaine, la forêt, le fleuve et le désert. Chaque chapitre se subdivise en un ou plusieurs essais écrits par des universitaires venus d'horizons divers (études littéraires québécoises, brésiliennes, littérature francophone, anglophone, littérature arabe et sémiotique). Centré sur des littératures de plusieurs aires géographiques, cet ouvrage propose des questions fondamentales qui lient la littérature de voyage, la poésie et la littérature environnementale. Il montre le caractère à la fois philosophique, sociétal et militant de ces textes de l'espace.

2 Après les trois essais qui constituent les "perspectives théoriques", un seul essai compose les chapitres consacrés à la toundra, à la plaine et au fleuve. Tandis que deux essais constituent les chapitres consacrés à la forêt et au désert. Le but de l'ouvrage est défini par ses directrices dès la première phrase de l'introduction : celui-ci "explore la géopoétique des confins au sens géographique du terme, en mettant au premier plan des paysages grandioses, ceux du désert, de la forêt, de la toundra, de la banquise, du fleuve, de la lande, autant d’espaces soumis aux forces vives des éléments et qui mettent le corps et l’esprit à l’épreuve. Là où la végétation prolifère de manière fulgurante, là où le rythme de l’eau anime le paysage, là où le minéral impose ses lois, là où le vent souffle à perdre haleine, là où les phénomènes premiers retiennent toute l’attention, les confins apparaissent", expliquent-elles, et dès cette introduction, apparaît le magnifique style de ce livre, poétique et profond (7). La géopoétique y est bien définie comme inscrivant "au cœur de ses préoccupations, le rapport à la terre au monde, aux choses" (7). L'ouvrage conduit le lecteur dans un voyage au cœur du Sahara, de l'Océan indien, de l'Ecosse, du Canada, de l'Amazonie et du Grand Nord entre autres. Les auteurs étudiés montrent un riche tour d'horizon avec deux écrivains québécois, Francine Ouellette et François Turcot ; un auteur libyen, Ibrahim Al Koni ; les écrivains voyageurs Kenneth White, Jean Morisset et Sylvain Tesson ; deux femmes écrivaines voyageuses au tournant du XXe siècle, Isabelle Eberhardt et Marie Le Franc ; un écrivain voyageur surréaliste, Benjamin Péret ; deux écrivains du voyage "passionnés de déserts et d'océans", Pierre Loti et J.D. Le Clézio ; et l'écrivain sociologue brésilien Joao de Jesus Paes Loureiro ; les écrivains inuit Markoosie Patsauq, Zebedee Nungak et Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk et l'artiste graphique inuk Alootook Ipellie.

3 Dans le premier chapitre sur les "Perspectives théoriques", Rachel Bouvet définit "les paysages des confins : déserts, mers, forêts", et lance la réflexion sur les confins, affirmant que ce qui fait de ces paysages des confins, "c'est leur caractère inhospitalier" (19). Partant de la simple constatation géographique et quantitative que les déserts, mers et forêts "occupent 88% de la surface de la planète", elle glisse à la perception littéraire de ces éléments purement spatiaux qui génèrent depuis toujours "une rêverie de l'immensité et du lointain" (19). C'est "l'évolution des paysages des confins dans l'imaginaire occidental et leur construction au fil du texte" qu'étudie Rachel Bouvet (19). C'est ensuite à travers la pensée de Kenneth White, qui dénonce la coupure cartésienne de l'homme avec la terre, et notamment par l'analyse de son poème, "On Rannoch Moor", que Christophe Roncato-Tounsi montre le caractère militant de

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l'auteur et de ce poème et sa dimension écologique et le rattache aux écrivains environnementaux que sont Thoreau, Emerson, John Muir ou plus près de nous, Gary Snyder. Cette littérature de voyage-là, telle que la conçoit Kenneth White, n'a pas pour but l'évasion mais une "[reprise] de contact avec 'la terre originaire'" (52). Et c'est en cela que la démarche de White s'inscrit dans la philosophie environnementaliste. Avec l'essai de Rita Olivieri-Godet sur "l''espace évanoui' du continent américain", les textes étudiés, singulièrement, les Chants polaires de Jean Morisset (2003), étudient la construction d'un imaginaire "qui se réapproprie les références culturelles des Peuples Premiers et leurs formes de rapport au monde pour bousculer l'imaginaire occidental sur les confins et inaugurer de nouveaux questionnements identitaires" (63). L'auteur souligne "le 'rapport sensible et intelligent à la terre', 'l'appel du dehors' qui conduit à l'exploration physique et à une herméneutique des lieux, l'interrogation sur le rapport au monde sont autant d'éléments caractéristiques de la démarché géopoétique, qui est au centre de la réflexion-poétique de Jean Morisset" (64). En partant de la carte du XVIe siècle de la "Terra Hochelaga", représentation d'un lieu iroquoien constituée originairement d'un texte, de cartes et d'écorces d'arbres, l'étude suggère que "la parole poétique fait corps avec les éléments de la nature" (68) et montre "la grande mémoire orale, les archives de la nature", comme le dit Morisset (68). Cet essai, qui insiste sur "l'acte de remémoration" qui caractérise l'œuvre de Jean Morisset, suggère en quoi cette œuvre montre un auteur "attentif […] à la mémoire orale des peuples, aux signes 'incrustés sur la terre et inscrits dans le visage des êtres'1" (69). Le poète nomade fait de son nomadisme une plongée dans la conscience de la relation à la terre et de la connexion entre les peuples. Ses Chants polaires révèlent, à travers le mélange des langues — français, anglais, inuktitut — "des passages entre les mondes inuit et occidental" (75). A travers de belles analyses des poèmes de Morisset, l'auteur montre comment ces poèmes révèlent "la symphonie de l'univers et nous font faire l'expérience d'une autre façon de l'habiter" (82).

4 Ces paysages des confins qui passent par la lande écossaise vue par Kenneth White et le Grand Nord canadien parcouru par Jean Morisset, vont s'ouvrir sur "Les mots de la toundra : poétique du territoire dans la littérature inuit", analysés par Nelly Duvicq, qui étudie la toundra dans la géographie des Inuit et dans des œuvres littéraires, littérature orale ou romans, où les Inuit écrivent sur leur territoire. L'essai rappelle que ces textes évoquent l'assujettissement de l'homme aux lois de la nature. Se fondant sur des anciens récits et chants, sur le roman groenlandais d'Augo Lynge, écrit en 1930, Trois cents ans après, l'auteur de l'essai évoque le savoir topographique et "la pérennité de l'oralité inuit" (93). L'évocation de la marche dans la toundra donne lieu à l'observation de la végétation et aux sensations qui y sont liées, ce qui n'est pas sans rappeler le rôle de la marche chez Thoreau ou chez l'écrivaine amérindienne Linda Hogan. C'est "le corps de la toundra" qui, dans la poésie de Taqralik Partridge, montre "un univers rempli d'histoires à recevoir, à vivre et à partager'" (94). Dans ce paysage arctique défini par les géographes comme un "désert", "les Inuit voient l'abondance". Cette distinction entre le vide et le plein établie ici par Nelly Duvicq rappelle l'essai du romancier canadien Rudy Wiebe qui dans Playing Dead, parle de "pays nu" pour évoquer le paysage arctique dans la perception des explorateurs de l'expédition Franklin qui ne voient pas toute la vie contenue dans cet espace que leur montrent les Amérindiens. De la même manière, dit Nelly Duvicq, les Inuit montrent l'espace comme un "lieu saturé d'éléments, et d'êtres visibles et invisibles" (96). Est évoqué aussi dans cet essai le texte de John Weetaltuk, Land, écrit "en réaction à la signature de la

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Convention de la Baie James et du Nord québécois", texte qui est "devenu célèbre en tant que discours écologique précurseur" (100) ; le territoire n'est plus simplement un espace "avec lequel les Inuit partagent leur quotidien et avec lequel tantôt ils luttent tantôt ils coopèrent ; c'est aussi celui qu'ils peuvent perdre et dont ils saisissent alors la beauté et l'exception" (100). Poèmes comme textes politiques mettent en valeur une "réalité sensorielle collective" (103) et "l'énergie et la force de vie" (104) contenus dans ce paysage arctique.

5 Le chapitre suivant est consacré à la plaine et composé d'un essai de Licia Soares de Souza, " La géopoétique des confins de Francine Ouellette", romancière québécoise dont les deux romans analysés, Au nom du père et du fils (1984) et Le sorcier (1985), évoquent les conflits entre la culture canadienne blanche et les peuples des Premières Nations. L'analyse est enrichie de comparaisons avec la culture brésilienne dont l'auteur souligne "qu'au Brésil les entrecroisements entre Blancs, Amérindiens et descendants d'Africains sont si prégnants qu'ils sont plus que des représentations littéraires ; ils existent vraiment comme faits anthropologiques […]" (111). En étudiant ce qu'elle nomme les "espaces-gigognes", les "modes d'emboîtements sémiotiques" et les "enchevêtrements de voix narratives" (122-123), Licia Soares de Souza voit "les fondations des identités-résistance" dans la représentation des espaces et dans ces fictions montrant à la fois la vie des Algonquins dans les Laurentides, la colonisation, les rapprochements et les conflits culturels ; elle lit une part importante de l'histoire du Canada, la lutte de Louis Riel pour les minorités, "dans la perspective d'un société multiculturelle basée sur le respect de l'Autre" (123). L'étude de la géopoétique des confins à travers les prairies vues dans des romans québécois souligne ainsi le rapport entre l'espace et l'histoire des peuples.

6 Le chapitre consacré à la forêt se compose de deux essais : le premier, d'Élise Lepage, "Émergence d’une subjectivité des confins : les premiers recueils de François Turcot", après avoir évoqué la notion de paysage, étudie les deux premiers recueils de l'auteur québécois, Miniatures en pays perdu (2006) que l'auteur définit comme "un apprentissage du regard" (141), et Derrière les forêts (2008), dans lequel est révélé le caché, l'invisible. La marche revient encore comme mouvement qui révèle la nature et les marcheurs sont rapprochés de personnages de contes pour enfants dans la mesure où ce recueil, dit l'auteur, réactive l'imaginaire de la forêt à la fois comme "chaosmos" (terme "forgé par Joyce dans Finnegans Wake et par lequel il désigne l'intrication de l'ordre et du désordre", précise l'auteur en note) et comme labyrinthe ; l'auteur se réfère aux Géographies imaginaires de Pierre Jourde pour évoquer "le lieu d'où nous venons", à la fois "origine géographique" et "mémoire ancestrale" (142-143).

7 Dans le second essai, de Leonor Lourenço de Abreu, "D’une forêt à l’autre : déambulations poétiques de Benjamin Péret", la forêt du poète surréaliste, à la fois "espace physique et paysage mental", apparaît comme "un creuset de transfiguration mythique" (162). Partant d'un texte publié dans la revue Minotaure en 1937, "la nature dévore le progrès et le dépasse", texte qui fait référence au fondateur du Service de Protection des Indiens (Candido Rondon), l'auteur évoque deux récits de voyage de Benjamin Péret, écrits après un voyage qu'il avait fait chez plusieurs peuples indigènes du centre du Brésil en 1956, Visite aux Indiens et Dans la zone torride du Brésil2. Une belle analyse du texte de Péret montre "la terre vue du ciel" où s'articulent une image du pays réel et "un pays(age) imaginaire" ( 152). On voit une nature dangereuse avec "la lutte des espèces pour la survie" (152). Dans une belle image prolongeant celle de

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Lévi-Strauss invitant à "jouer à saute-mouton par-dessus les étapes anciennes"3, l'auteur voit l'avion comme "un véritable deus ex machina des temps modernes [qui] permet de condenser les catégories spatiales et temporelles" (154). L'auteur évoque avec la forêt amazonienne la rencontre de deux mondes, la métaphorisation de l'inconscient, la rhétorique de l'altérité. S'appuyant sur "La lumière ou la vie", l'auteur montre que le poète présente la forêt comme un personnage "dévorateur" (156) dans un "climat d'inquiétante étrangeté" (157). La forêt tropicale du Brésil de Benjamin Péret présente "une dialectique de la vie et de la mort" (161). L'auteur de l'essai montre, à l'aide des textes du poète surréaliste français, comment "la forêt demeure l'espace privilégié où la pensée se trouve aux prises avec le magique et le mystérieux qui s'expriment symboliquement dans les constructions mythopoétiques des peuples indigènes".

8 Le chapitre sur le fleuve se compose d'un essai de Brigitte Thiérion, "Expérience poétique du grand fleuve chez João de Jesus Paes Loureiro. Proposition pour une lecture géopoétique". A travers l'analyse de l'ouvrage Au-delà du méandre de ce fleuve (2002), à la fois poème en prose, récit de voyage et fable, du poète, dramaturge et sociologue brésilien João de Jesus Paes Loureiro, l'auteur de cet essai montre le fleuve comme une entité naturelle incarnant la "tension entre mobilité et permanence", et une allégorie peignant une "démarche d'immigration et d'exil" (168). Le voyageur, le rameur et le fleuve sont les trois acteurs du drame. L'interpénétration entre le fleuve et l'homme est analysée à la lumière notamment de la vision bachelardienne de l'eau. Le poème montre la symbiose "qui résulte du contact étroit et prolongé entre l'homme et la nature" (170. Les frontières entre l'humain et le non-humain se diluent. Le langage du fleuve est analysé à la lumière des mythes, des légendes qui sont "portées par la langue des eaux, la langue du fleuve, à mesure que le voyageur progresse dans son voyage" (173). Le fleuve peint ici montre aussi la réalité dramatique de pans de terre érodée emportés par les crues et dans la supplique d'un personnage "mi-homme, mi-dieu", se lit "le drame écologique et humain qui frappe l'Amazonie" (178). L'essai montre aussi comment ce voyage débouche sur une perception esthétique de la nature dans le regard du voyageur, qui "se partage entre l'horreur et le merveilleux" (184). L'essai montre comment dans cette œuvre, l'univers du fleuve apparaît comme "un espace qui ne trouve sa réalité que dans l'imaginaire" (185) et en même temps, la démarche esthétique s'ouvre sur une réflexion écologique.

9 Le dernier chapitre concerne le désert et se compose d'un essai d'Élisabeth Vauthier, "Entre roc et sable, le récit du Sahara comme lecture immémoriale de l’humain dans Le Saignement de la pierre d’Ibrahim Al Koni". Quittant l'Arctique et l'Amazonie, les littératures francophone, anglophone, inuit et brésilienne, ce dernier essai nous conduit au cœur du désert à travers une œuvre de littérature arabophone Le Saignement de pierre (Nazif-al-Hajar), du poète libyen Ibrahim Al Kûnî (Al Koni). Ce roman est analysé en tant que "roman du désert" et il apparaît comme "une réflexion sur l'homme et le sacré" où le désert joue un rôle prépondérant et où sont convoqués les "mythes méditerranéens et la culture africaine" (194). Dans la confrontation entre le personnage principal, nomade touareg qui a toujours vécu dans le désert, "dans le sillage d'un père fasciné par le mouflon, animal sacré, officiellement disparu de la région depuis le XVIIe siècle", et un "chasseur assoiffé de sang" (194) venu dans la région "devenue un sanctuaire pour les animaux" dans le seul but de tuer les mouflons qu'il pourrait trouver, et qui va se terminer par la mort du premier qui refuse de dévoiler le lieu où se cachent les derniers représentants de l'espèce, se lit la lutte entre

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le Bien et le Mal. Mais on y voit aussi un reflet d'une réalité tragique où les défenseurs d'espèces animales menacées paient leur engagement de leur vie (Dian Fossey ou Bruno Manser parmi les plus célèbres et beaucoup d'anonymes aussi). Comme c'était le cas dans les textes peignant le Grand Nord arctique, le désert n'apparaît pas comme un lieu vide mais comme un espace qui "se constitue en élément vivant et signifiant", peuplé de multiples créatures, humaines, non humaines et fantastiques (195). Elizabeth Vauthier montre comment la "relation familiarité/étrangeté" est inversée. C'est le désert qui est familier et "le monde habité par les hommes", le monde des sédentaires "est renvoyé au domaine des confins, territoire de l'Autre, dysphorique, voire traumatisant" (196). Le Sahara génère "une réflexion sur la destinée humaine" qui s'inscrit dans un imaginaire ancien du désert. Il parle à la fois de réalité et d'espace mythique. A la fois ancré dans la réalité du Sahara libyen et dans "un lieu mythique qui retrace les origines", il montre l'un de ses habitants, le mouflon, à la fois comme une espèce menacée et comme un animal sacré d'une force redoutable, "esprit de la montagne" auquel le personnage principal "finit par faire allégeance, sacrifiant sa vie pour le protéger" (199). Le désert y est aussi à la fois un "conservatoire de la mémoire de ce monde" et un "refuge des êtres blessés par la violence des hommes" (201). Le désert saharien, tout en étant le lieu réel d'une vie intense et difficile, est aussi un lieu mythique et "une clef pour la compréhension de l'univers" et pour la relation à l'Autre, humain et non humain.

10 De la lande écossaise au Nunavut et de l'Amazonie au Sahara, ce bel ouvrage collectif conduit le lecteur dans un voyage au cœur de récits de voyages, de poèmes, d'essais, de chants aussi, qui donnent à lire le rapport de l'homme au monde, à la nature, à l'Autre, humain et non humain. Voyage poétique et anthropologique à dimension écologique, cette "Géopoétique des confins" fait de ces espaces réputés inhospitaliers les lieux de notre relation au monde et aussi de nos paysages intérieurs. Voyage poétique, philosophique et politique, l'ouvrage magistralement dirigé par Rachel Bouvet et Rita Olivieri-Godet, nous conduit, dans le fil lumineux qui tisse tous les espaces et toutes les œuvres évoqués, dans les écosystèmes du monde par le prisme des poètes, des romanciers, des voyageurs. C'est un ouvrage fondamental et beau qui passionnera tous ceux et toutes celles qui s'intéressent à la littérature de voyage mais aussi à la poésie, aux textes environnementaux, à l'écologie et au rapport entre texte et paysage. C'est un cheminement magnifique au cœur du monde et des littératures du monde.

NOTES

1. Jean Morisset, Récits de la terre première, Montréal: Lemeac, 2000, 107. 2. "Visites aux Indiens" a été réédité en 2014 sous le titre Dans la zone torride du Brésil, Nolay: Les éditions du chemin de fer, 2014. 3. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes tropiques [1955], Paris: Plon, coll. "Terre humaine", 1995, 126.

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INDEX

Keywords : geopoetics, travel writing, poetry, ecology, environmental literature, human/ nonhuman relationship, landscape, desert, river, forest, tundra, plain; Indigenous peoples, First Nations, Amazonia, Arctic, Sahara, Scotland, Brazil, Canada, Nunavut, language Mots-clés : géopoétique, littérature de voyage, poésie, littérature environnementale, écologie, relation humain/non humain, paysage, désert, fleuve, forêt, toundra, plaine, peuples autochtones, Premières Nations, Amazonie, Arctique, Sahara, Ecosse, Brésil, Canada, Nunavut, langage

AUTEURS

FRANÇOISE BESSON Professeur émérite Université de Toulouse – Jean Jaurès [email protected]

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