The Performance of the Comic in Arabic Theatre

Cultural Heritage, Western Models and Postcolonial Hybridity

by

Mieke KOLK (editor) and Freddy DECREUS (co-editor) Proceedings of the International Conference on: THE COMIC CONDITION AS A PLAY WITH INCONGRUITIES Cultural Varieties in Arabic and Western Theatre Tetouan, Morocco, April 27-30, 2005 Organized by: Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Research Groups DPS &AS, Tetouan Morocco, University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Theatre Studies, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

With the gracious support of: Morocco: The President of Abdelmalek Essaadi University: Mustapha Bennouna The Dean of the Faculty of Human Sciences: Abdelaziz El-Allati The Region of Tanger-Tetouan The Council of the City of Tetouan The Council of the City of Martil RANIMOB The Netherlands: The President of the University of Amsterdam Faculty of Humanities, Arts- and Cultural Studies Department of Theatre Studies Prince Claus Foundation, The Hague, The Netherlands

Organizing Committee: Morocco, Abdelmalik Essaadi University: Khalid Amine Hassan Benzian Abdellatif Akbib Ahmed Mars Younes Assad Ryani Mohamed Ourahou Fathi Abderahman The Netherlands, University of Amsterdam Mieke Kolk

This publication is sponsored by: Prince Claus Foundation, The Netherlands Royal Dutch Embassy, Cairo, Egypt

Copy - editing: Miriam Notenboom Colleen Scot Bram van Oostveldt Michiel Leezenberg [email protected] [email protected] 149

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction The Performance of Comedy in ‘East’ and ‘West’: Cultural Boundaries and the Art of Cunning Introduction by Mieke KOLK...... 151

I. Comicality per se and cultural differences Said NAJI ( Ecole Normale Supérieure, Fez): Comedy in the Arabic Cultural System: A Preliminary Critique...... 163 Lenin EL-RAMLY (Playwright, Egypt): Comedy in the East and The Art of Cunning: A Testimony...... 166 Karel BOULLART (Ghent University): Laughing Matters Revisited: The Universality and Relativity of Comicality...... 181 Michiel LEEZENBERG (Amsterdam University): Comedy Between Performativity and Polyphony: The Politics of Non-Serious Language ...... 195

II. Arabic Comic Literary Heritage and Western Modeling Richard van LEEUWEN (Amsterdam University): Lies, Illusions and Authority: The Thousand and One Nights and Arabic Comic Theatre...... 210 Marvin CARLSON (Cuny University, New York): The Contribution of Yusuf Idris to Egyptian and World Comedy...... 225 Hassan MNIAI (Dhar El-Mahras, Fez): The Grotesque in Tawfiq Al-Hakim’s The Sultan’s Dilemma...... 231 Marina KOTZAMANI (University of the Peloponnesos): Performing Aristophanes’ Lysistrata on the Arabic Stage...... 235 Eman KARMOETY (Alexandria University): Between Tragedy and Farce: Retelling the Story of two Devilish Sisters...... 244 Mieke KOLK (Amsterdam University) : Topographies of Desire. Recent Egyptian Drama and the Strategies of the Absurd...... 253 150

III. Pre-theatrical Heritage in Arabic and Persian Culture Khalid AMINE ( Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Tetouan) : Performing Comicality in Moroccan Theatre: The postcolonial condition of hybridity and the third space...... 262 Farah YEGANEH TABRIZI (University of Qom, Iran) and Mehrdad RAYANI ( University of Theran, Iran) : Performing Siyah Bazi / Playing the Black: Satire and Social Relief in Historical Iran...... 275 Shams EL DIN YOUNIS (University of Sudan, Department of Music and Drama): The Genesis of Comedy and the Comic Conditions in Sudanese Theatre: A Short History ...... 285

IV. Western Heritage and Reconsiderations of Early/ Modern Orientalism Freddy DECREUS (Ghent University) : Traditional Western Interpretations of the Comic Hero vs. the Lacanian Challenge: The Case of Amphitruo...... 291 Lorna HARDWICK (Open University, UK): The Comic in the Tragic: Parody and Critique in Modern Productions of Euripides’ Hecuba...... 306 Stijn BUSSELS (University of Groningen/ The Netherlands): Splendid Cruelty: The Turk in Early Modern Court Entertainment in The Netherlands and France...... 316 Bram VAN OOSTVELDT (Ghent University): Orientalism, Despotism and ‘Governmentality’: Rereading the Harem as a Domestic Space in the French Opéra Comique Soliman II ou les trois Sultanes (1761)...... 331 151

THE PERFORMANCE OF COMEDY IN EAST AND WEST Culturel Buonbaries and the Art of Cunning

Mieke KOLK

“And let me say many laughable things and many serious things, too” (Aristophanes, The Frogs, 393-4)

“Whereas perhaps it can be doubted whether the concept of the tragic, in the Classical Greek sense of the term, has existed in the Arabic cultural and literary tradition, no one will contest that the comic is an integral part of the Arabic literary heritage. From the 9th century onwards, comic genres were part of the common repertoire of both high and popular literature, in the form of jocular tales, comic anecdotes, poetry, scabrous jokes, and popular romances.” And it was this heritage, writes Arabist Richard van Leeuwen (The Netherlands), that deeply influenced the modern tradition of Arabic drama and theatre, which developed within the frames of the artistic models from Europe, introduced in the middle of the 19th century. It was this same literary heritage of comical motifs, themes and strategies that facilitated the acceptance of the Western dramatic forms in its range of serious comedy, melodrama, farce etc. As in the West, in addition to being entertaining, a main function of the comic literature was to express social and political critique. Arabic playwrights could use critical moments in the existing examples of poetry and anecdotes, in handbooks for the cultural elites, in entertainment literature as tales of wonder and love romances. Old medieval genres like the Maqama (an oral rhymed narration) and the Karagoz -scripts written by Ibn Danyal, were recycled as narrative material in modern times. One of the main sources are the tales of Thousand and One Nights, framed by the story of the brave Shahrazâd and her frustrated king Shariyâr. Van Leeuwen traces the inspirational use of this Book in the comical structure of both the narrative and in critical, political motifs of two plays from the 1960s, by famous Egyptian playwrights Alfred Farag and Fârûq Khûrshîd.

It are not only literary sources from Arabic culture that frequently appear in Arabic drama and theatre. More and more the long line of comic heritage in what is now called the pre-theatrical performative tradition comes to the foreground in public events like shows with ‘actors’, in shadowplays and the puppet-theatre. Next to the performers, the place and the occasion are of crucial importance: the marketplace, the village festival, the teahouses and even the palaces of the sultan. 152

Central in nearly all these shows is the figure of the Ibn al-Balad, the common man, of his sorrow, joy, intelligence, wisdom and stupidity, represented in an overwhelming series of different names for different countries. Most famous seems the puppet play and its hero Karagoz. All these shows about the Ibn al Balad can be traced back till the Middle Ages and, thriving on stock-types and improvisation, they seem composed very much like the Italian Commedia dell’arte theatre.

Molièrization

Arabic pre-theatrical heritage was presented from different perspectives, most extensively from the Moroccan side. Seemingly ‘gone underground’ or consciously re-activated within an Arabic aesthetic frame, these cultural roots played an important role in the re-framing of a Western heritage, which was imported in the Arabic countries in the periods of their colonisation and/or studied in the West itself.

Drama and theatre came first to Lebanon, then to Syria and Egypt in 19th century. For the countries of the Magreb this cultural colonisation started much later. For a long period it was taken for granted, by Eastern and Western scholars, that this meant an introduction of theatre itself in these countries. The first theatre productions in the East were mostly adaptations of comedies from the West, most frequently of Molière, and some Shakespeare. Especially in the French occupied territories it was possible to speak of a “Molièrization’ of the theatre, which not only meant the development of theatre in the French tradition but, in the case of the Magreb, also of the de-politization of the theatrical discourse. Nevertheless a rich history of drama was created, particularly in Egypt and Syria. During the 20th century drama writers used the theatre as a platform to discuss the national policy and identity with or against Western dramatic developments. This Arabic ‘drama about drama’, both before and after national independence, offers an exciting new perspective on European drama history and the political choices those authors made.

In the decades following the Second World War and the success of the revolutionary movements in different countries questioning of the Western forms of theatre began as a form of de-colonisation of the cultural apparatus. History, heritage, background, roots and identity became topics of discussion within the intellectual and theatrical worlds. In 1965 Egyptian writer Yusuf Idris (1927- 1991) publicized a series of articles in which he declared the combination of national identity and foreign art forms to be both invalid and impossible. Only authentic local art forms could represent universal values, or attain universality. 153

For inspiration he did refer to more primitive indigenous folk art.

The search for identity, roots and universality was also present in Western theatre. In a surprising a/similarity between the two theatre-reformers, a couple of years later English director Peter Brook went intercultural, and travelled to Persepolis in Iran to discover the roots of the whole of mankind in his production Orghast (1971). Both interventions were important: they broke the dominance of traditional forms of drama and performance into hybrid combinations of old and new, western influences and eastern traditional forms, theatrical forms into the dramatic texts. Postmodernist and post-colonial theory and philosophy invaded the theatrical space and slowly globalized theatrical experimental thinking.

The conference on the Comic (The Comic Condition as a Play with Incongruities; Cultural Varieties in Arabic and Western Theatre) last spring at the Abdelmalek Essaadi University in Tetouan (Morocco) was part of the diptych of the 2003 meeting in Belgium /Ghent, focussing on the concept of the Tragic. Its proceedings were published in 2004, under the title: Rereading Classics in East and West; Postcolonial perspectives on the Tragic. With old and new participants, the general outline of the papers reminded that of the first conference, but was, due to the topic, also quite different.

1. The philosophers in the group mostly spoke about The Comic per se, its cultural boundaries, the possible cultural differences between European and Arabic traditions, and their possible forms of interaction and cross-fertilization. 2. Arabists explored the diversity of The literary comic heritage in Arabic culture, while a whole range of theatre scholars from East and West concentrated on Egyptian classic and new drama texts, their strategies of the comic, the grotesque and the absurd with a comparison with western models. 3. The Arabic pre-theatrical heritage and its influence on Arabic theatre was presented, from both an Egyptian and Moroccan perspective. Pre-theatrical performativity was also a central theme in the story about Siyah Bazi / a blackface-show, by two young scholars from Iran. 4. The Western heritage of comedy and its interventions of satire and parody in the tragic was explored by an European classicist, while two theatre-historians offered a remarkable development of the image of the Ottoman sultan between the 16th and the18th century in Flanders and France: how the cruel tyrant was transformed into a benevolent patriarch. Orientalism revisited? 5. An extra topic developed itself during the conference and later. The presence of comedy-writer Lenin El-Ramly from Egypt led to a lively exchange of 154

views with several scholars presenting papers dealing with his work. His own reflection on the writing of comedy presents us with the only voice right from theatre-practice and is as such very valuable. Last October Lenin El-Ramly received the Prince Claus Award in the field of Humour and Satire.

1. What can be laughed at? The quest for Comicality

Sharing the quest of comicality in a more philosophical way, cultural differences were explored in a rather confrontational manner: comedy works more political than tragedy, a comic performance serves through the ages as a social relief, is not easily forbidden by authorities and seems to be ungraspable for censorship in its‑sudden improvisations. Comic language uses symbols and metaphors, which hide and show reality at the same time. Comicality and the comic are culturally dependent in ways different from the dramatic expression of the tragic, which remains bound by the ancient Greek form. The Comic is universal.

In the Arabic presentations often a combination of two perspectives could be pointed at. This combination, Michiel Leezenberg (The Netherlands) explains, is based on Mohamed Abed Al-Jabri’s vision on Arabic Culture from the Revelation of Islam or even before that, as a unifying cultural and discursive system on the one hand, and a Marxist inspired critique on economical dominance and cultural hegemony of the liberal, capitalistic West on the other.

It is clear that Said Naji (Morocco) represents the first perspective. In 10 short statements he explains how culture as a system is organized as a controlling system that turns all material and symbolic activities into a set of texts and signs, produced by the same hidden norms and values. Then he makes the following points: that those norms and values of the Islamic-Arabic culture were formulated in the era of ad-tadween (the codification of the Quran). That those deeply rooted structures of the Islamic system conflate the religious, the political and the domain of language, within a theocratic society. That this connection makes it impossible to violate or criticize the sacred, which includes every position of power in the social hierarchy even that of the family. And since, as he states, comedy exists in this violation of objects, persons and classes from the point of view of the marginal, he must conclude that in Arabic culture “comedy is under siege, fenced by a barbed wire”. This argument about the topic of comedy will return in another way in the article of Alaa Hadi, where the author discusses the absence of serious comedy in recent Egyptian theatre and the prominence of farce (physical activity and visual effects). 155

In his testimony on the situation of comedy in the East, playwright Lenin El- Ramly (Egypt) remarks that the cultural gap between East and West, instead of narrowing gradually, is getting bigger and bigger. Adaptations of Western serious comedy become increasingly difficult to present since alternative and intimate relationships are forbidden, as are religious and new scientific topics. An Arab Hamlet could exist soliloquising: “ To be or not to be”, not as a character who would ask himself if he should go to war, or not. The essence of drama: inner conflict within an individual and conflicts where a society should openly speak about are not permitted on stage. “Be these limits and constraints as they may”, writes El-Ramly, “I have always found through them avenues of voicing my opinion, even if only in part. Sometimes comedy has proven a great tool in this regard, given the Egyptians’ proverbial love for humour and comedy. Comedy transcends reality only to catch it red-handed with the truth. It pretends to speak in jest while being the height of serious thinking. A joke is a lie that reveals part of the truth or at least suggests it”.

But Western scholars also put the question on the table. Karel Boullart (Belgium) asks himself: “What can we laugh at?” He opens his argument like this: “Banqueting Olympians aside, gods are no laughing matter. Indeed, how could a perfect being have any sense of humour and what could it be humorous about? It could not even have a hearty laugh at itself “. The comicality of things and a sense of humour must pertain to the episodes of life, not to life in its totality; they must pertain to the accidents of life, not to its essential and inexorable and uniform necessity. However, further specifications are questions of opinion, i.e. of cultural choice; they depend on what is thought to be essential and substantial. This makes the domain of laughter vast and diffuse, defying definition: one man’s laughing stock is another’s wailing wall. Considering the disparity between thinking and being as an universal phenomenon, he describes the process of naturally and or/culturally and finally self-induced debunking of cultural pretence, as the defining feature of the comicality of things and of the sense of humor. From that same disparity between thinking and being some comic procedures may be deduced: irrelevance, ambiguity, incongruity, absurdity etc.

Turning to the comedy In Plain Arabic of Egyptian playwright Lenin El- Ramly, Boullart points to a interesting convergence of form and content where the frame of the-play-in-the-play reflects the authorial lighthearted but substantial cultural debunking of all pretences of, for instance, the unity of the ‘Arab Nation’ as total fiction. Michiel Leezenberg also addresses his attention to this comedy. His focus is directed to the public function of the comic in a society but he questions the famous concept of the comedy as carnival of Michael Bakhtin in the generally applied meaning of a temporal reversal of the social order (in 156 which for example women or slaves briefly become masters). He reminds us of Bakhtin’s attention to the positive potential of a true culture of laughter. Instead of adopting Bakhtin’s opposition between high state culture and low culture as the humour of the lower strata of the population, Leezenberg proposes his terms of the dialogical or the polyphonic as characteristic of the comic language itself when representing different voices and points of view within the text and out of reach of the author himself. He proposes the politics of non-serious performative language, and emphasizes the differences in the conception of both the comical and the political in Aristophanes and Ramly In his comparison between Aristophanes’ The Frogs and the Egyptian comedy, Leezenberg starts with the notion of parrhesia which means free speech (literally ‘saying everything’) as a relation between the speaker and what he says. This amounts to an act of speaking the truth, often with risks for oneself. It is specially this ‘speaking the truth’ that is the theme in El-Ramly’s play. The group of students from 13 Arabic countries living in London are quite willing to speak the truth about the Arab Unity and Solidarity with the Palestinian cause, but they are unwilling to vent their criticism in public for fear of losing face or playing into the hands of the enemy. In this way, every sensitive topic is censored by the potential speaker, whether the topics under discussion are religion, sexuality or even soccer.

2. arabic literary sources and Western models: heritage of what?

The absence of comedy as a drama-form is for Richard van Leeuwen no reason to dismiss the comic from Arabic literature. Starting with the famous cycle of tales in the Thousand and one nights, he follows the use of the comic as a narrative strategy in the framing story of the Nights and then jumps some 1000 years ahead, to two Egyptian comedies from the 1960s based on stories from the cycle: Alî Janâh and his servant Quffa by Alfred Farag and The wines of Babylon by Fârûq Khûrshîd. But first he deals with the Arabic heritage of comic literature from three genres (a. the anecdotes in the adab literature, b. the offshoot of adab in the rogue stories and the shadow plays and c. the plays written for the shadowtheatre) and one theme: power relations. All genres criticize power by, respectively, relativizing, challenging, satirizing and vilifying authority. In Alfred Farag’s play, van Leeuwen sees the function of the tales as a reservoir of ‘archetypes’ of Arabic comic theatre, because they combine the elements of farce, stereotyped characters and socio-political function. Considering the abundant presence of these same stereotypes in the early performative shows in the whole of the Middle East, including Iran, one is inclined to ask what has influenced what. This is a problem that cannot be solved. 157

Van Leeuwen leads us to another important fact and that is the inherent political character of all drama since the 1960s in Egypt; since the hopeful days, the heyday of Nasserism till after the defeat of 1967, when a traumatic social depression set in which lingers on. Gamal Abd al Nasir incorporated the Arabic revolution and the end of political and cultural colonization. Like the artistic experiments during the first years of the Russian revolution, Egypt’s artists and intellectuals were re-inventing themselves. In their search for identity, one of the first self-imposed problems was the real Arabic heritage, now formulated against the Western earlier dominating influences. It was author Yusuf Idris, already widely know for his short stories, who devoted years to formulating a theory of new Egyptian drama. As Marvin Carlson (USA) observes about this new drama as “one that could be truly Egyptian in both subject matter and techniques instead of the work based on Western dramatic models,” which had until then dominated drama in the Middle East”.

In his series of articles Our Egyptian Theatre Yusuf Idris proposed what a post-Suez Egypt wanted to hear about the existence of folk art and popular forms of entertainment, that represented a rich national cultural heritage. As a medieval Arabic rhymed form of oral narration, the maqama was put forward, as was the shadow play tradition and its remarkable scripts created by Ibn Daniyal in the 13th century and published in Cairo, in 1963. Returning to the people and their festivities, Idris adopted for the new theater forms of the village samir, a gathering of artists and public in an improvised entertainment-event. Many of his theoretical discoveries were supplanted in his comedy Al Farafir, which also offered distinct influences of the French so-called Theatre of the Absurd, a combination Carlson is eager to trace in his comparison between Al Farafir, which he calls ”one of the most powerful and darkest of the dark comedies of the 20th century”, and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

Somewhere between comedy and tragedy is the drama of another Egyptian author, even more famous than Idris, Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898-1987). Hassan El- Mniai (Morocco) discusses the generic character of The Sultan’s Dilemma, as a necessary development of the tragedy into a tragic-comedy, due to the emphasis on the contradiction that lies at the heart of the human existence. As a tragic- comedy the play is also influenced by other dramatic modalities as the absurd and the grotesque. The anecdote of the play is intriguing: the Sultan has to undergo a public auction and is bought by a beautiful (and therefore suspect) woman: “… selling the sultan is already considered the most absurd spectacle in the world”. As a choice between the law, the idea of justice for all, and corruption, the sultan has to bow for the ‘nobleness of the simple people’ and the woman who decided to do the right thing and therefore does not want to be thanked. 158

Gender politics

Women doing the right thing… Gender politics are being discussed by Marina Kotzemani of Greece, when she writes about the Lysistrata project of 2003, a public reading of the play on occasion of the impending war in Iraq, and the different versions/adaptations of the Aristophanes comedy in the Arabic countries. Eman Karmoety (Egypt, Alexandria) explores two highly dramatic versions about a real event: the serial killing of a couple of women by two sisters, assisted by their husbands, in the Alexandria of the thirties. Mieke Kolk (The Netherlands) investigates two recent Egyptian texts, both using the image of a voyage at sea as a metaphor for crossing the boundaries of the unknown and the unsayable realities of sexual desire and violence.

What is most significant in the Arabic versions of the Lysistrata – women refusing to have sex with their husbands if they go on making war- is the reframing of the play. The global context is portrayed with an international community that is connected through the media, and threatened by autocratic Arabic governments, US controlled imperialism and Western ‘civilizing’ missions. Rather than creating the potential for greater democracy, this increasingly interconnected world creates greater danger of monitoring and controlling the people. Aristophanes’ utopian ending becomes a darkly chaotic and nihilistic space where activism is either totally ineffective or of limited benefit. Gender and sexuality is of little importance; male-domination is transformed into Western domination, which is characterized by intellect and ability. New in the Arabic adaptations is, as Kotzemani remarks, a ‘postmodern sensibility’ where artistic liberty opens an exploration of power dynamics, preventing the underprivileged from expressing themselves freely and or of having any political influence.

In the genre of the horror story Eman Karmoety traces the adventures of two sisters who kill a series of innocent but well to do women. Poor and depraved, the two sisters are turned into monsters by the pre-war press and in the movie made about their lives. A second version of the story of Rahya and Sikeena, written and staged for the theatre, tried to find different motifs for the evil sisters who had a terrible life, and also developed a narrative strategy to offer the public a different point of view in mixing the comic and the tragic moments and highlighting farce in the middle of the horror. In this way, the dramatist stopped the evocation of pathos and melodrama. Karmoety concludes that where the text ends in melodrama the director seemed quite able to shift between tragedy, dark comedy and farce.

In The Boatman (1998) by Sameh Mahran and the Boatpeople (1980) 159 by Nahed Naquib both an actual and an eternal metaphor is explored, when people leave the safe land to go at sea and have to endure the adventures that wait for them in this limitless space full of dangers. German philosopher Hans Blumenberg wrote an essay about the history of the Western actualizations of the metaphor of life as a sea voyage which encompasses a series of possible events: the voyage out, storm and calm, distress at sea, shipwreck, the foreign shore and the harbor. Mieke Kolk explores the choices the authors made from this scale of possible events and describes the topographies of desire that motivate the voyagers to go at sea. At the center of the metaphoric space lies sexual violence, at the moment the onlookers have disappeared and a reaction of the public is expected. Within the texts an overwhelming silence is created by the wordless and violated young people. They have no language for what happened to them. Existing social discourse excludes their reality.

3. arabic pre-theatrical heritage and its influence on theatre now: postmodern hybridity

Khalid Amine (Morocco) extends the list of Arabic pre-theatrical forms. His story is comparable with that of other Arabic colleague’s, but because the history of theatre in Mjorocco is different, the perpective of this author differs too. Amine looks back to a short rise and fall of Western theatre, imported by the French colonists after the Second World War. He then examines the period of the mixing of indigenous, western and universal theatre influences since the 1960s with authors/directors like Tayeb Sadikki et al. Moroccan theatre is now a theatre with a clear self-awareness, constructed, in his words, in a liminal third space outside indigenous and western modeling, and an intentional aesthetic hybridity in mixing the theatrical paradigms into new combinations. This theatre shows an ironic double consciousness, informed by the Western tradition and the moment of rupture with this tradition. It is a place of negotiation between Self and Other, East and West, tradition and modernity and orality and literacy. As such, theatrical practice in Morocco is highly political and functions in the dynamics of modernizing the country. Under the ‘retrieval of a lost tradition’ Amin describes the performance genres as al-halqa, a public gathering in a circle around one or more persons offering a rich combination of all sorts of stories, and l-bsa:t , a performance event on stage with archetypal characters, genres which are incorporated in the new plays. As a new genre he presents the Al-Murtajal, a Moroccan version of the French Impromptu, devised by Mohamed El-Kaghat and functioning as a selfreflective improvised comic event. It is based on an unfinished dramatic script, full of holes, which should be filled by the actors. 160

Often the discussions about what theatre should reflect, still move between an Arabo-centrism, which preaches a return to the roots and the view of Western theatre as the supreme model.

A comparable form of improvised event-ness is offered by the Siyah Bazi Show, the Play of the Black in Iran. Recently rediscovered and carefully studied, Farah Yeganeh from Iran (Qom) and Mehrdad Rayani from Teheran, offer an exciting account of characteristics, strategies and the history of the show about the black servant and his master. In this blackface show - the face of Siyah is blackened with make-up - the origin of the figure goes probably back to the black slaves working in Iran under Arabic and Portuguese masters. A famous Siyah actor at the end of the 19th century is quoted in a story about how he went to those black servants and watched how they talked, made fun and quarreled. Since they did not speak Persian well, their speech sounded funny. Both the slaves and the audiences liked his imitations very much. As a character Siyah was well tempered and ‘sweet’, he was also quick and alert, a vehicle for revolt, challenging oppression and evil. Together with the other fixed characters the performers told their usual stories, while singing and dancing and improvising on the actual situations of day and place. This aspect of playing with reality was banned in the Pahlavi Era (1925) In that period the social-critical aspect of the show faded and the moral aspect increased. The import of Western theatre seems to make the Siyah Bazi loose its place in the social discourse and turning the show into a performance, fit only for the museum.

Shams El Din Younis (Sudan) writes a short history of theatre in Sudan. Probably like the other Arabic countries Sudan knows an indigenous heritage as one can see in the paintings at the old temple walls. Drama in its Western forms came to Sudan through Egypt and the English colonizers. Comedy developed out of the comic monologues presented as intervals within a serious performance. Famous actors created new character-stereotypes modeled on daily life experiences.

4. Western Heritage and Orientalism reconsidered.

Freddy Decreus (Belgium) offers a history of poetic interpretations of the Amphitruo comedy by Plautus over a period of 22 Ages. Concentrating on three themes : the god/men relationship and the descent of Jupiter from heaven, a man’s, Amphitruo’s, 161 anxiety about his wife and his ability to understand her and the question about the doubles : two masters, two slaves, two father and two sons. Describing the different perspectives and motivations in versions of Shakespeare, Molière, Dryden, Kleist and Giraudoux, Decreus ends with the adaptation of the German writer Peter Hacks where Jupiter is confronted with love as a sublimated form of human understanding. In a critical move away from the romantic longing for oneness, the author concentrates on the Lacanian vision on the impossible creation of love; “what is missing in one is not hidden in the other but is a part of a particular vision and construction that creates the other”. Lovers are bound to never meet.

Lorna Hardwick (Open University, UK) reflects on the intermingling of the comic and the tragic genres and introduces the concept of the para-tragic, often interchangeable with the notion of parody. Concentrating on three recent productions in the UK of Euripides’ tragedy Hecuba she investigates the parody of institutions and social conventions of the play. The Donmar production exposed the perversion of Xenia/ the tradition of hospitality/when a discussion between Polymester and Hecuba about murder and theft was set in the social rituals of a beach picnic, complete with tea and sandwiches. A second parodic critique was offered by the RSC foregrounding the democratic debate and decision making. The mock trial by Agamemnon at the end of the tragedy showed a democracy corrupted by the very people who proclaimed its values. Critics reacted violent on both interventions.

Two young theatre-historians from Belgium discuss in their articles a very intriguing development in the history of the representation of the Muslim people in Western-Europe, more precise in France and the Spanish Netherlands between the 16th and 18th century. Following the traces of stereotyped images and texts about the Ottoman/Turk, a changing model of oppositions between East and West becomes visible. In Early Modern times the focus is not that much any more on religious differences: like Muslim people are pitiless bullies threatening the Christian believe. Instead we see a secularization of the representation of the Turks under the influence of the new discourses in Western Europe about power and its relation to the subject.

The Courts in France and in Spain are both impressed and intimidated by the glitter and glamour of the Turkish Sultan. In the 18th century this “Orient” is represented as a despotic space where the harem functions as a negative example for the still going European discussions about good government and just kings. These discussions are even reflected in the popular genre of the French Opéra 162

Comique. In Soliman II ou les trois Sultanes, the Sultan is taken to task by French Sultane Roxelane who refuses to disappear in the harem. In her crusade against the despotic state, thriving on the laws of tyranny and slavery, she convinces the Sultan in the end to accept a government where power-relations are based on mutual agreement, dialogue and respect. Van Oostveldt describes and analyses carefully the system of counterstrategies the women in the harem develop and the images and paintings by artists from the West that represent them. p.s. During a one-day late summer seminar in Aarhus (Denmark) on Egyptian comedy, playwright Sameh Mahran spoke about a creative cultural interaction between people, an interaction containing the necessary diversity and reaching out for the borders of our common existence. Interaction is the keyword. It means also: transparency, balance, credibility, equivalence. He then referred to the cultural base that we all share, be it in East or West: the Greek civilization. In the famous myth of Narcissus, the character is looking at his image reflected in the water and speaks to it lovingly: let me kiss you. In doing so he misses a second character Echo who is very much in love with him. Condemned by Hera to repeat the last part of every sentence she hears, her beloved thinks that what he hears is his own voice.

The myth ends, Mahran said, with the collapse of both Narcissus and Echo. The idea of this myth is that self-enclosure leads to death and dissolution into the other does that too. It is the same with cultures. And so it is. 163

COMEDY IN THE ARABIC CULTURAL SYSTEM A Preliminary Critique

Said NAJI

1. No human community can exist without a cultural system that unifies its collective identity and structures its material, spiritual and symbolic activities. A cultural system is a set of interrelated values and principles that constructs a hidden map of the community’s most vital exchanges: it orders its daily life and its worldly and spiritual times. Therefore, the collective daily activities (i.e., producing, consuming, communicating and thinking) are based on a tacit set of principles and values which controls its production and allows community members to recognize the outcome of these activities, given that these productions are related to the community members as they themselves are related to them.

2. The cultural system consists of different structures: some are dogmatic and spiritual, some are linguistic and communicational, some are socio-political, and some are material and productive. These foundational structures constitute the settings of both material and symbolic exchanges in society.

3. At the level of the material exchange, we may include all the productive and consumptive exchanges, as well as all forms of exchange related to human activity and its material and intellectual production, while at the level of the symbolic exchange, we often think of cultural, communicational, spiritual and artistic exchanges. The overlap between these two kinds of exchanges is essential to any communal life, since the materialistic and symbolic levels are so persistently and constantly shifting that on occasion, it becomes difficult to distinguish between the two.

4. On the basis of this preliminary argument, we can say that culture is not that much a collection of ‘texts’ produced by a certain human community; rather, it is a set of values that controls the production of such ‘texts’. As a whole, culture is a system, both hidden and explicit, that controls the production of linguistic and non-linguistic signs. In fact, it is a system that turns all the material and symbolic activities into a set of symbols and signs produced in the same manner. Accordingly, such apparently different cultural products or artefacts, such as cookery dishes, the architecture of cities and the performing arts, can be analysed in the same manner as signs produced by a cultural system. 164

5. We can say that the era of at-tadwîn (the codification of the Quran) is the first time when an Arabo-Islamic cultural system came into being. Islam as a religious practice was consolidated, the Arabic language was codified in accordance with specific political and religious ends, and the reproduction of the Quran was regulated when the caliph Uthman ordered the compilation of the authentic verses of the holy Quran and the burning of all diverging copies. Consequently, a new political reality was created based on the khilâfa (governance) that drew its power from religious authority. Therefore, it was in the tadwîn era - an era that was established by a political decision – that the deeply rooted structures of the Arabo-Islamic cultural system were established that are still effective in our lives to these day. Likewise, systematic interconnections were established between, first, the religious text –which now had become unified and codified - and its interpretation (at-tafsîr) through “al-fiqh” and “al-hadîth”; second, the mechanisms of interpretation and subsequently of expression (at-tabîr), i.e. language compiling; and finally, the means of organizing a society in terms of production and consumption through a theocratic political system that relies on the principle of transcendence and on a form of governance far removed from principles of participation, consultation or opposition.

6. This system has evolved through several successive historical stages, in which some structures were deleted; others were changed or added, particularly during the period of colonial intervention and the great openness toward European modernism that it initially entailed. Nonetheless, we can say that since the era of tadwîn, Arabs have been living according to broadly the same productive and consumptive mechanisms, and according to the same material and symbolic exchanges which were consonant with this cultural system.

7. The Arabic-Islamic cultural system rests on sacredness, and on the prohibition of either violating or criticizing it; hence, the religious text, the language and the political system are all held to be sacred. Outside this sacred trajectory, other levels of sacredness are organised in a similarly hierarchical way: the sacredness of the mother and father, the sacredness of the “wali salih” (the divine master), the sacredness of the governor or the ruler, and the sacredness of words. Thus, the view of Arabic as sacred, unchanging, and identical to the language of Adam in Eden, is still widespread.

8. Ever since the establishment of this cultural system, the comic imaginary in Arabic culture has been thwarted. Consequently, comedy and the comical – according to all phenomenological, psychological, or anthropological interpretations – rely on paradox, and on the violation of the cultural system 165 and the dismantling of its linear codification by means of lateral yet subversive agencies and marginal interferences. Hence, comedy is the violation of the sacredness of objects, persons and classes, and the unveiling of their deeply rooted paradoxes. That is why the church banned Aristotle’s work on comedy. Therefore, comedy is a violation of the self-complacent system, and a rupture of the linearity of things. Comic agency triumphs when one utters a word and its opposite is understood, when the tyrant and powerful ruler becomes a fool and yet not a fool, when the father ceases to be a father figure and becomes an object of ridicule in the eyes of his son… Thus, comedy is the intervention of the poor, marginal and effaced characters to say their word on an actual stage or a stage of words.

9. Comedy is a challenge to authority. It is an empowerment of the weak and underpriviledged who triumphs only for one hour, to the marginalized who is re- located at the centre at least for a short while. Comedy is the intervention of an unusual power that breaks things but builds others, even if only for a short time. If this is so, how could a comic imagination ever be erected within a cultural system that annihilates it and exalts sacredness, in addition to its shielding it with destructive weapons such as takfîr or excommunication, prohibition and censorship, and charges of atheism or debauchery, etc?

10. Comedy in the Arabic culture is under siege: fenced in by barbed wire, it is not allowed to invest in fields other than sociological, linguistic, and experiences of everyday life. If it attempts to cross the red lines of religion, the sultan and the sacred, it will be hindered and thwarted. As a result, part of the low level of comedy in our Moroccan and Arabic theatre is due to the fact that it is crippled by a rigid cultural system.

Translated from Arabic by Samira Tarjisti 166

COMEDY IN THE EAST AND THE ART OF CUNNING A testimony

Lenin EL-RAMLY

Discussing the French Expedition to Egypt of which he was a witness,1 Egyptian chronicler Abdel-Rahman al-Jabarti wrote that the French had constructed at the al- Azbakiyya quarter special buildings where men and women would gather to engage in unrestricted entertainment and acts of licentiousness. It was theatre that he was describing. As we got to know later, Egyptian natives would go out of their way to steal a look at what took place inside.

Another important description of the theatre came from the pen of Rifa’a Rafi’ al-Tahtawi, a pioneer of the Egyptian enlightenment who served as the Imam (religious leader) of the Egyptian educational mission sent by Muhammad Ali to France. Encountering the theatre for the first time in his life, al-Tahtawi famously described it as serious acts presented in a playful form, a refreshing departure from the moralistic censure of al-Jabarti.2

It is worth remarking in this connection that the first Western play adapted into Arabic happened to be a comedy. In 1847, the rich Lebanese merchant Marun Naqqash presented a play called Al-Bakhil, a freely adapted version of Molière’s The Miser. Presenting the play at his own home to an invited audience consisting of his friends and acquaintances from the upper class, he introduced the play to them in the following words: “Here am I stepping forward all alone, scarifying myself for your sake lest this act should incur blame.” Just how precarious he must have felt at the time is clear from the very Arabic word he used to describe his initiative: fedaa, Arabic for sacrifice. His word choice instantly recalls its derivative Feda’ee, the freedom fighter who puts his life to risk for the sake of the larger community. Perhaps in instilling theatre into this part of the world Naqqash saw himself as such.

Naqqash’s second play was adapted from Arabic literature.3 Here, hairless men played the roles of women (who were not, at any rate, present among the audience, which again included the elite and the dignitaries of the city). The performance presented the story of a woman cheating on her husband. As it happened, however, the audience on that night included the Mufti, the highest religious authority in the community. Enraged at the boldness of the wife and 167 the foolishness of her husband, he started shouting angry comments while the performance was in progress, scolding her and warning the cuckold of her stratagems. In effect, he was acting as the first censor in our theatre history. Many would gladly take upon themselves the same role from then onwards.

Western classics

In the period that followed, Egypt became a regular destination for numerous itinerant troupes of entertainers, whose improvised comic scenes were often vulgar and even obscene, as a contemporary Western observer once remarked. 4 A comic formula of more or less the same caliber still thrives to this day in what is known in Egypt as the “commercial” (read: sleazy) theatre.

The year 1896 marks the opening of Suez Canal as well as the opening of the first opera house in Africa at the behest of the Khedive Ismail, Egypt’s Europeanizing viceroy under ottoman suzerainty. Not unexpectedly, the program of the new opera was confined to Western classics. In the next year, however, in the same neighborhood but on a far smaller stage, the first Egyptian troupe treaded the boards to present the first Egyptian play, attempting as it did to imitate the European model but still adapting it into the indigenous idiom and atmosphere. The man behind this initiative was Yacub Sannu, who presented only comedy since he saw in Molière a role model and a source of inspiration. Initially, the Khedive admired Sannu’s work and even called him the Molière of the East. Sannu’s plays, however, ventured on a critique of social and political problems, albeit disguised in symbols and tacit references. The time was yet too early for such tactics and all the cunning of Arabia could not save Sannu from the inevitable wrath of Ismail. His theatre was closed down and he had to flee to Paris.

Adaptations from Western comedy remained a regular fare in the East, with the gamut running from French vaudeville to Ionesco and his successors. It was through the new art of cinema, however, that people could get their intake of Western comedy directly from Western artists. Charlie Chaplin presented a significant case in point. I recall as a child that I often saw downtrodden and barefooted children sitting on dusty floors, laughing and clapping to his every move on the screen. What was it that drove them to identify with him more than any other Western star? First, Chaplin was silent, speaking no language foreign to them. He did not even have a distinct name, to start with. Like the East and its people, he was poor thus giving the sense of being one of the common people.

Like people in the East, too, he was sentimental, and he was always the target 168 of some cruel chase, thus echoing a predicament that people here see as theirs too. He was continually being beaten and defeated by far stronger beings; the East is also weak and consistently vanquished. Chaplin, however, always achieves some victory in the end, thanks to his cunning in getting around difficult situations. This may be far from the reality of the East, but it is its ultimate dream. Using the cunning of images rather than that of words, Chaplin could help our people realize their victory, even if only in their imagination. With Chaplin, there was no cultural difference: his Eastern audience could be counted on to intuitively sense, if not always understand, what he wished to communicate.

Yet, ultimately, cunning did not serve Chaplin any better than it did Sannu. The McCarthyism of his day could soon read into his works certain meanings that he may not have intended. Like Sannu, then, Chaplin had to flee, in his case to Switzerland. Perhaps it was too early in America, too.

Two cultural time zones

Theatres of the East continue to adapt Western works, but usually two or three generations after the fact. Everything that ends and becomes past in the West, finds a new lease on life in the East and becomes part of its active present. This is what I call the difference between two cultural time zones. Indeed, there was a time when many predicted that the cultural gap would narrow gradually, especially with Eastern societies having embarked on their own development. Yet the ultimate paradox is that the gap became even more gaping as the world set out to become a small village. In the societies of the East many voices could be heard calling for a rupture with Western culture and a return to our own heritage. A form of thinking that belongs to the dark Middle Ages reared back with its ugly head; the space for freedom and democracy started to shrink by the day, while the cultural gap between the East and the West continues to grow wider.

Since the 1970s onwards, then, it became increasingly difficult to adapt contemporary Western comedy. This could be the result of a personal discomfort on the part of the adapting writer or for fear of censorship and the public opinion. Not so long ago it was possible to draw inspiration from the story of Romeo and Juliet. Today, however, it would be completely unthinkable to adapt a contemporary play in which Romeo marries another Romeo, or in which Juliet leaves her Romeo for another Juliet. No less unthinkable is an Othello who would not kill Desdemona to avenge his honor but forgives her instead, or a play with a third-sex hero, or one that deals critically with a religious topic (be it Muslim or 169

Christian), or a comedy in which scientists succeed in creating a human being, or one that deals with mercy killing, and so on. Life in the West becomes remarkably different from ours. An intimate relationship between a man and woman is still forbidden outside marriage. In our latter-day “clean” cinema, kisses have all but disappeared.

You can not hope to adapt a play that satirizes Bush or Blair by putting an Arab ruler in their place (although, of course, you are welcome to put on the original lampoon as it is). In our part of the world, historical dramas are produced for the sole purpose of glorifying the historical figures they are depicting. Comedy thus arises when it is least intended in an Egyptian feature film that has the late President Nasser confiding his dream of touring the world after he reaches the age of compulsory retirement. In the East, rulers rule for life, only to circumscribe the present long after their death. What is past is forever sacrosanct.

Arab Hamlet

Was it by sheer coincidence that the art of theater should be born in close connection with Athenian democracy? The essence of all drama is inner conflict, democracy being the recognition of this conflict within the one society. Thanks to a deeply rooted legacy, the societies of the East are unable to grasp the full meaning of democracy and thus find it difficult to recognize a drama based on the inner conflict within the individual. When this conflict erupts – in the teeth of all the incessant attempts to deny its very existence – our rulers are quick to picture opponents as the enemy, thus conveniently and manipulatively turning the conflict into an external one of national dimension. In the East, then, we welcome a Danish Hamlet soliloquizing “To be or not to be”; when, however, an Arab Hamlet asks whether, say, he should go to war or not, he is instantly branded a traitor by the overwhelming majority, including those who would never take part in any war.

Devoid of all inner conflict, our comedy is mass-produced in a form as safe and stomach-friendly as cholesterol-free food. At its best, it is a half-skimmed drama. What we are left with, then, are tired stories repackaged in the form of disconnected and irrelevant gags and jokes innocent of all meaning and, indeed, of all comedy. These are told by an entertainer – rather than a comic actor in the true sense of the word – whose job it is to represent neither a character nor a type but only himself, his very own star persona that emboldens him to usurp the functions of both the writer and the director. This setup is only a natural reflection 170 of a society in which officials “run the show” in whatever way they please, turning an essentially objective and systematic process into a never-ending ego trip.

It is true that the Egyptian government has recently allowed a more democratic atmosphere in which it tolerates criticism of itself and its officials. But this newfound freedom took place only after the field had been left open too long for the forces of obscurantism and religious authoritarianism. In the new climate they have brought about, an author suffers more tribulations at the hands of the thought-terrorism of the society, thanks to the abject state of education and culture. An author attempting to present his own perspective on the main intellectual concerns finds his mission all the more difficult today. Hordes of writers and journalist would readily brand him as an atheist or as being morally loose. The result is a type of art that rehashes the same old ideas without ever daring to critique them. Departing from the path of the tribe is a most unsafe adventure.

The situation tends to become somewhat better if you are a poet or a prose writer of novels or short stories, because it is always possible for you then to publish your work outside your country (on the Internet, for instance). Writing plays is a totally different game, since a play is never complete unless it is put on stage, a condition that requires the approval of the authorities, of the society at large, and of the very artists doing the staging. The author of plays is by definition a man who cannot function except through the help of the others.

Most of the writers in the 1960s worked under the wing of the State. The State returned the favor by extending its support to them and producing their own works inasmuch as they tended not to contradict the cause of the State, even upholding it at times. After the defeat of 1967, however, the censorship rejected almost all such works. If anything, this should show the precariousness of the position of an independent writer like myself who has never been affiliated with the government in any sense. Such being the situation, cunning presented itself as the only solution in my case.

Cunning is the norm in the East because its rulers are in the habit of resorting to it when they need to abuse the law. The society, by extension, tends to follow the example of its rulers. The conventional wisdom here is: Woe betides him who uses no cunning (!)

Cunning 171

But cunning is to be found more often in works dealing with sexual taboos rather than those delving into intellectual, political, or religious topics. This disparity may be due to the writer’s fear of entering any confrontation with the powers- that-be, a fear that turns all creative work into a mere job done to earn one’s living. It could also be blamed on the fact that he or she does not have enough talent or intellectual depth.

Be these limits and constraints as they may, I have always found through them avenues of voicing my opinion, even if only in part sometimes. Comedy has proven a great tool in this regard, given the Egyptians’ proverbial love for humour and comedy. Comedy transcends reality only to catch it red-handed with the truth. It pretends to speak in jest while being the height of serious thinking. A‑joke is a lie that reveals part of the truth or at least suggests it.

In what follows, then, I would like to dwell for a while on my own experience as a writer of drama in Egypt. By using examples from my own works I hope to show the extent to which I had to resort to cunning in a variety of forms and guises.

Scene One: My Cunning Strategies with the Conditions of Artistic Production:

When I first entered the scene, the state-run theatres were floundering under the control of a number of self-serving bureaucrats whom writers (often lesser ones) needed to supplicate to have their plays produced. Commercial theatres, on the other hand, were searching frantically for good scripts – but not for good playwrights. The offerings of these theatres consisted mainly of brainless farces: the formula they had concocted was a mixture of whatever was left of indigenous performance forms (such as the Karagoz, Khayal al-Zil [Shadow plays], and folk humour) along with some song and dance thrown into the mix. In other words, it was a hastily cooked meal combining folk entertainment with the ingredients of a bourgeois nightclub soirée. This formula enjoyed enormous appeal among Egyptians and Gulf Arab tourists alike, but it could not be any further from the reality of either group. It was my ultimate challenge, then, to find my way through this setup.

In the beginning, I tried to make use of the same folkloric spirit while also 172 drawing on my hands-on experience with various theatrical forms in world theatre. My aim was to express social and intellectual concerns, while hoping to transcend these local issues towards a more humanistic vision. My guiding assumption was that Western styles of writing are not incompatible with the taste and sensibility of our audiences. It was the actors, however, who found the greatest difficulty in understanding this new mode of writing. Whenever they encountered a script of mine, they ended up presenting it by means of their own clichés and tried-and-true bag of tricks. The result was productions that enjoyed considerable commercial success but which, for me, left a lot to be desired artistically.

I had to devise a strategy out of this morass: I joined forces with a colleague of mine (who studied acting at the same Theatre Institute, where I obtained my degree in dramatic criticism and playwriting). Still fledgling and obscure at the time, he seemed pliable enough to adapt to the new style in which I wrote my plays. After only our first two productions as a duo, he was already a recognized star in his own right, so I prevailed on him in 1981 to form our own troupe. The six plays that we mounted together sent a clear message that some space for change is still possible. The audience were totally in tune, and the critics followed suit, if somewhat later. For my part, I always took more pride in the loyalty of my audience. A mutual trust had developed between us since that time onwards.

Scene Two: My Cunning Strategies with the Censorship:

One of my earliest works in 1972 was a screenplay endorsed by the guru director Salah Abu-Seif but vehemently rejected by the censorship of the day. It was Abu- Seif’s idea that we call the film Madrasset El-Gens (The School for Sex). This was his first mistake: To this very day, the word Gens (“sex”) is sure to cause great offence if it were to be thus flashed on street billboards. The film, I hasten to add, depicted a dysfunctional sexual relationship between a man and his wife due to the conflicting conceptions of sex inculcated into men and women by the society. Still, the film included no sexually explicit scenes, since the director was keen on appealing to the viewers’ intellect rather than their lower instincts. His aim was to tackle the problem openly.

This, as it turned out, was his second big mistake. Whenever a new head of the censorship took office, Abu-Seif would re-submit the controversial screenplay for official approval. Successive censors remained adamant, though. At long last, the screenplay was approved – after 25 years of continuing rejections during 173 which Abu-Seif himself died. The film finally appeared in 2002, with direction by Mohamed Abu-Seif, the late director’s son. During the film’s long struggle to come into being, Egyptian cinema churned out numerous other films with far raunchier content. That the censor gladly allowed these films to appear was because they resorted to cunning in suggesting their taboo material rather than presenting it explicitly. This was the lesson that I had to learn the hard way over the years, with many of my earlier scripts also having been rejected by Egyptian TV censors.

In my play Weghet Nazar (A Point of View), a blind man named Arafa Al- Shawaf joins an institution for the blind, only to discover that the administration is making use of the inmates’ handicap to steal their benefits and financial dues. The play concludes with the visit of some Mrs. Box, a UN official on a mission to assess the volume of Foreign Aid to be given to the Institution. Under the leadership of the assertive and insightful Arafa, the blind inmates expose the administration by unveiling the truth to the visiting foreign observer.

The play had originally been written as a screenplay that, once again, director Salah Abu-Seif was enthusiastic to turn into a movie. By way of doing our homework, we went together to some of these institutions for the blind. Those visits left him with the impression that the abuses depicted in my script had no equivalent in reality. It was not “real” life that I was keen to depict, though, but rather a form of a higher truth.

For me, the blind inmates stood for any (Arab) people “blinded” to their country’s scandalous reality. The administration, by extension, echoes the very dictatorial regime controlling the lives of such a people through manipulation and deceit. In one scene in the play, Arafa brags about having a visual impairment rate of 99%, thanks to his being the “leader of the blind”: a dig on the time-honoured practice of Arab heads of state to “win” their referendums with a 99% of the votes.

Following the final rehearsal, my wife approached the head of the censorship and asked her whether she, the censor, had any reservations. Seemingly baffled, the lady confided in my wife that I certainly knew how to say whatever I wanted without making the work censorable. In eventually approving the play, then, this censor knew full well she had nothing to fear: After all, there were no direct references to Egypt as such with its people and rulers, nor did the play present any foreign power intervening to demand internal reform. It was only a play: Cunning is the art of telling the truth in broad daylight while leaving behind no traces of 174 the crime. In the end, you are acquitted for lack of proof – but then you remain a suspect ever after!

Scene Three: My Cunning Strategies with the Public Opinion:

I understand public opinion here as the modern expression of the mores of the tribe. As a rule of thumb, I have never entertained any dream of winning all the membersof this tribe to my side, but neither did I wish to lose them completely. I thus figured out that cunning could help me expose the thinking of the tribe without risking my total banishment from it. After all, no theatre and culture is likely to flourish amidst the desert.

In 1970, I wrote three scenes of a play that would later be known as Bel Arabi al-Faseeh (In Plain Arabic). The play attempted a critique of the Arabs’ modes of thinking and their relationship with the West. In it, we see a group of 14 students coming from all over the Arab world and now living at a London hotel. When their Palestinian colleague disappears mysteriously, the others assume that he has been kidnapped while the British police uphold a theory that he is a terrorist who fled after setting fire to a bookstore. So daring was this line of thinking that I, safe in the knowledge that no censor would ever allow it to see the light, eventually stopped short of finishing the text, leaving it to gather dust in one of my drawers. Also, given I had in mind a cast of Arab students living in Cairo, I resigned to the fact that no member of this community would endorse the play’s line of thinking, much less take part in it.

Many years later, I returned to the script, and put it on stage with an all- Egyptian cast of amateurs. The play’s biting self-criticism soon attracted the attention of foreign correspondents in Egypt, who produced some 40 reviews of the plays in their respective papers. Many of them were surprised then to see Egyptians and Arabs laughing at their own abject predicament: at their own self- deception, internal defeat, and backward mindset. Indeed, one of our homespun ideologue critics accused the play of being a sadistic “act of self-flagellation.” For my part, however, I derived no small pleasure from seeing audience members on many nights laughing out loud with tears pouring from their eyes. One female spectator, coming out of the performance fully exhausted from laughing and crying simultaneously, thanked me wholeheartedly for such an entertaining night yet in the same breath blamed me for being so cruel to my Arab characters. It then dawned on me that comedy is the act of fending off the causes of tears, so numerous as these causes are in our world.

Many of the foreign correspondents covering the play asked me at the time 175 whether it stood a chance of being presented in Arab countries other than Egypt. I told them to wait and see. As it happened, the Egyptian Ministry of Culture nominated the play to represent Egypt at Carthage Festival in Tunisia. Even more so, the President of the Festival saw it himself while in Cairo and assured me that it was heading to win the Festival’s top award. The Tunisian cultural attaché, however, sent a report to his government complaining about my depiction of the character of the Tunisian student. I was then bombarded with requests to omit the offending character from the play so that it might become acceptable. I rejected the request, and the play was never shown in Tunisia. In another instance, the president of the Jordanian Festival of Jerash, after having signed a contract with me for the play to be performed at the festival, called me to request the omission of the character representing his country. Once again, I held fast to my rejection. Although the play continues to be popular with amateur and college theatres in Egypt to this very day, the Censor at the Egyptian State-run Television saw fit to reject its broadcasting. Such a position is likely to leave a Western observer in some confusion as to what constitutes the official reaction to the play: that of the Ministry of Culture, whose affiliate censorship permitted the play to be presented and which went as far as nominating it to represent Egypt internationally, or the one endorsed by the Ministry of Information, which runs the Egyptian TV? Perhaps this is the Egyptian version of political pluralism!

My 2004 adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, titled Salam El-Nisaa (A Peace of Women),5 presented another case in point. When Dr. Marina Kotzamani (then of Columbia University) invited me to her PAJ Lysistrata on the Arab Stage Project, requesting me to write an essay on how Aristophanes’ Lysistrata could be presented in today’s Arab world, I ended up writing a whole play instead, initially for no other purpose except to see how the censor would react to it and thus make my answers to Kotzamani’s questions more grounded in reality. The play’s action takes place in Baghdad, shortly before the American-led invasion, with the Chorus of Old Men in Aristophanes replaced here with a Chorus of Iraqi Anti-Riot Police. In her efforts to stop the impending war, my Iraqi Lysistrata allies with American and other Western women activists. Unlike Aristophanes’ play, however, the Iraqi and American officials do not agree on the terms of peace but rather ally against the insurgent women from both sides. For their part, and despite their consensus on peace and their willingness to go beyond any political differences, the women from the East and the West end up becoming more bitterly divided by their two radically different cultural (read: moral) value systems.

When Kotzamani asked me whether the Censor would tolerate Aristophanes’ use of sexual puns and jokes, my answer was both yes and no. This is probably 176 one important aspect of cultural difference, since our Arab audiences are not accustomed to hearing such biological facts thrown right in their faces. On consulting the existing Arabic translation of Aristophanes’ play, I realized that the translator had already bowdlerized some of the raunchier passages and jokes in the original text. I then decided to use these translation choices as form of self- chosen moral check.

In so doing, I resorted to writing in Fus’ha (Modern Standard) Arabic for the first time in my life. In essence, Fus’ha is characterized by a certain abstract quality that allows it to suggest the most shocking meanings without explicitly stating them. My choice of this language form was thus due to the internal cultural distance it was bound to create in the spectator’s mind. Although it is the language of education, media, and official discourse, few people are actually fluent in it, even among the educated classes. The spectators were thus likely to translate Fus’ha utterances in their mind to their everyday Ammeya (Egyptian Colloquial Arabic), a process that would mitigate, in the course of its execution, any strong effect produced by the sexual jokes I opted to borrow from Aristophanes.

Conceiving of the play as such, I was aware that it fit the requirements of neither the commercial theatre nor, of course, the State-run ones. This left me with the sole option of directing the play myself with a cast of amateurs, in a production that the Greek Community in Egypt stepped in to finance. It was during the casting process that I knew firsthand the answer to one of Kotzamani’s central questions: Are there any Egyptian actresses willing to undertake the sexually suggestive roles that Aristophanes’ text included?

As I knew at the time, few Egyptian amateur actresses were indeed ready to flash many parts their bodies on stage, especially as demanded by the roles of the Western women. It then occurred to me to get around the problem by re-invoking one of the oldest traditions of ancient Greek theatre: to cast men in some of the female roles.

Emboldened by this solution, I declined to omit some of the raunchy speeches over which the censorship had seen red. In one of these speeches, the German activist announces that “modern technology has given women many alternatives to men.” Some of the audience members were unable to understand the reference; Sex Shops are not part of our reality – at least not yet!

Upon watching the play on stage, some critics and intellectuals complained that in showing the Western female activists in such a burlesque manner and clad in semi-nude dresses I was, in effect, confirming the stereotype of the licentious 177

West already strong in the Egyptian spectator’s imagination.6 While I knew that this stereotype was far from reality, I was keen to give the spectator his familiar image of the Western women by way of setting him up to better accept these women’s scathing criticism of the East and its abject reality regarding the status of its distaff, a criticism mounted at times in opposition to arguments parroted by the Iraqi women themselves.

The reception of the audience was particularly positive – against many odds, I must add. As a comment on the most recent Gulf War, the play appeared at a time when the public opinion could not be more opposed – rightly, I think – to the US-led invasion of Iraq. Where these angry free voices seem to me pathetically contradictory is in their long and dubious silence regarding the dictatorial practices of Saddam’s regime, ones that the play sets to expose and lampoon. Hardly anyone bothered in the past to oppose this most barbarous regime with the same fervour with which the US and its war are currently being attacked. Far from it, in the best tradition of protecting the interests of the Pan-Arab tribe, one of our homespun ideologue critics called my critique of Saddam’s Iraq “an inappropriate interference in the internal affairs of a sister Arab state” (!)

Such being the climate, it is hardly surprising that any call for peace in today’s Arab world risks being branded as an act of treason. In this vein, one Western reaction to the play is equally alarming: The doyen of foreign correspondents in Egypt, a German journalist who has been living in Egypt since 1054, told me after watching the performance: “This time you have not left anyone unscathed: The East and the West alike” Is this annoyed reaction a form of Western Chauvinism? Or has his long stay in Egypt gotten into him?

Scene Four: My Cunning strategies with the Audience:

I see the audience as the less vociferous section of the public opinion. When I set out to write a new script, it is the total attention of this audience, rather than their admiration, that I care about most. I devote the major part of my energy to using my chosen form in a way that best communicates my ideas, but all with the defining aim of keeping my audience glued to their seats, to have them hold their breath, crack a laugh, and shed a tear. Once all this is accomplished, it matters less to me whether they support my opinion or not. Prominent Egyptian writer Anis Mansour once described this comic strategy of mine as “tickling the spectator with a knife.”

In my film Al-Irhabi (The Terrorist), a Muslim extremist in disguise goes to 178 live with a modern Egyptian family without them knowing his identity. In one scene, he plays the cards with the younger daughter of the family, then dressed in hot shorts. Taking her appearance as an invitation for sex, he tries to touch her body, only to receive a slap in the face that leaves him dumbfounded. In writing this scene, I could anticipate the rather uneasy reactions of some viewers, who held that the young lady only had herself to blame for dressing that suggestively. Yet I was confident that, long after they have forgotten all about the film, the memory of this scene will persist in some hidden corner of their minds, warning them against any facile or quick moral judgements based on the appearance of women dressed in the same manner. The film was a commercial success, but also a much-needed warning against the rising wave of Islamist terrorism. In this regard, it was doubly ironical that some of the fiercest criticism of the film came from the pen of some members of the liberal left, accusing me of writing the film upon directives from the State to support its official line. Cultural idiosyncrasies? Perhaps not, or so one surmises from the case of the American critic who wrote about the film in a magazine issued by the American University in Cairo, effectively repeating the same tired accusations of the left-wing chorus. More ironical still, for all these attacks against the writer of the film, the film became a huge success for Adel Imam, the superstar actor who played the title role. His wage doubled, while, critically, he won the best actor award for the first time in his life!

Scene Five: My Cunning Strategies with Myself:

At that point, my actor artistic partner and I came to a parting of ways. When the media started to confuse between my words and the performer uttering them, he ended up buying into this mismatch himself; like all stars, he wanted to play the author as well. Our partnership ended in 1993. Since that time onwards, I continued to produce my plays all on my own, presenting a number of risky theatrical experiments, some of which were performed with free admission. The financial loss was often big. Why the trouble? Perhaps because I wanted remain true to myself, to maintain self-respect and internal satisfaction, even if this demanded that I be cunning with myself at times. I had long known that the best way to achieve this end is never to see playwriting as a profession, but as a vocation by means of which I write “real” plays whenever the urge came. It is not a means of earning my living but a means of bearing with the price of staying alive. I became aware that genuine writing is the one resulting from anxious questions and not from settled convictions, with my anxiety pushing me in turn to embody these questions theatrically, in a form and manner as palatable as possible to the audience. I have never entertained any hope of winning this audience to any particular cause, dogma, or party line; the very act of raising questions is enough 179 for me. I decided long ago never to consider changing the world.

By way of an Exit

In 1987, my film Al-Bidaya (The Beginning) received “Charlie Chaplin’s Golden Stick”, which is the Audience Award at Vevey International Festival for comic films in Switzerland. It occurred to me then that, even in its French subtitles, the comedy in the film could transcend any cultural differences and reach out to the foreign viewers who chose it for this honour. If anything, this happy occurrence is only one proof that, be their different cultures and values as they may, all human beings are essentially same – to the extent that you appeal to them as just that: as human beings. Comedy presents itself as an exemplary way of transcending all differences. Its domain is not the presentation of cultural or ideological specifics, nor the propagation of any set of values no matter how noble. Rather, laughter arises out of the sincere depiction of truth, albeit through the use of the imagined and the improbable. Comedy incites laugher as well as a sense of sorrow. In its depiction of the Human Being, it inspires us, moves us, and leaves us with numerous questions as to the nature of this admirable creature who also incites in us a mixture of pity and fear. This is the selfsame catharsis that Aristotle mentioned in his famous definition of tragedy. After all, tragedy is but the dark canvas against which the entire colours of comedy shine and disperse.

Translated from the Arabic with notes by Hazem Azmy

Notes 1 See: Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle of the First Seven Months of the French Occupation of Egypt. Edited and Translated by S. Moreh. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1975. 2 al-Tahtawi’s experiences in Paris are recorded in his 1834 magnum opus, Takhlis al- ibriz fi talkhis Bariz, available in English as The Extraction of Gold, or an Overview of Paris, translated from the Arabic by Ihsan Abbas, in Ra’if Khuri, ed. Modern Arab Thought. (Princeton, N. J.: Kingston Press, 1983). 3 The play was called Abu al-Hasan al-Mughafal (Abu al-Hasan, the Gullible), loosely based on a story from The Thousand and One Nights known as al-Na’im wa al-Yaqzan (the Sleeping and the Wakeful). Scholars date the performance to either the end of 1849 or the beginning of 1850. 4 The reference here is apparently to the folk jesters known as al-Muabbizun (with the indigenous performance form itself known as Tahbeez). British Orientalist E. W. Lane who lived in Egypt during the 1820s and 1830s tells about a farce he watched in an Egyptian village. He has this to say about the performance:

“The Egyptians are often amused by players of low and ridiculous farces which are called al-Muhabbizun. They are frequently performed in the festivals prior 180

to weddings and circumcision, at the houses of the great and sometimes attract auditors and spectators in the public places in Cairo. Their performances are scarcely worthy of description; it is chiefly by vulgar jests and indecent actions that they may amuse, and obtain applause, (An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, London: 1890, p. 384).

5 Hazem Azmy’s English translation of the play as A Peace of Women is currently in progress, under the editorial supervision of Professor Marvin Carlson. Select extracts from the English translation are forthcoming on the website of the US-based Words Without Borders (http://www.wordswithoutborders.org). 6 For a better understanding of this point, see, for instance, Hazem Azmy, “Salam El- Nisaa le-Lenin El-Ramly: Men El-Nass Al-Moqtabass ila al-Waqeh El-Moltabes” (Lenin El-Ramly’s Peace of Women: From the Adapted Text to the Confused Reality). Al-Moheet Al-Thaqafi. Also available online at (http://www.almasrah.com/ arabic/modules.php?name= News&file=article&sid=779) 181

LAUGHING MATTERS REVISITED The Universality and Relativity of Comicality1

Karel BOULLART

1.

Banqueting Olympians aside, gods are no laughing matter. Indeed, how could a perfect being have any sense of humour and what could it be humorous about? It couldn’t even have a hearty laugh at itself. Self-irony seems to be the core of humour: after all finite beings definitely are inferior to themselves. Therefore, if humour is eminently an almost universal human affair, it may be supposed to be intrinsically bound up with our human condition, with our radical finiteness and with our limited powers of self-organisation, with our consciousness and its modicum of self-reference. The sharp consciousness of our finiteness and the magic of our self-referential alacrity could very well be the source, the foundation and even the necessary condition of all comicality and all sense of humour. In other words, some essential conditions of humour and comicality possibly can be ‘derived’ from our human predicament that we too often tend to forget and are nevertheless continuously reminded of.

2.

What must a finite, self-conscious and self-organising entity, for short, a cultural animal such as man, think about himself? For one thing, he must be convinced that he is on the face of it irretrievably futile. For whatever he intends to realise, to think, to feel or to do, whatever indeed he does is inexorably swept away by the irreversibility of time. And if he is no more, for all practical purposes it is as if he had never been. And this is so, precisely because one must do something in order to be: to be is to be on the way to nothingness. Hence, to be alive is to be perfectly heterotelic. Life is -a priori as it were- ‘much ado about nothing’. Such a state of affairs neatly fits in with the definition that seems to be most promising: the theory that comicality is to be found in the surprise induced by the sudden deflation into nothingness of what was thought to be substantial. Otherwise said, the theory of incongruity. For what can be more important than the expectations of life itself? And what can be more deflating than the sudden realisation of their evident nullity? And yet, no one is seriously 182 or even humorously inclined, one may presume, to consider our predicament as such as being comical, let alone to see it as a hoax. On the contrary, as there is no viable alternative to being alive, such a move seems to be incongruous by itself. Life as such could be comical exclusively for a man completely indifferent to himself or convinced that he could feel quite cosily at home even in the absence of himself. The first hypothesis is an impossibility and the second is a pragmatic contradiction. For short, to conceive of human existence in this way is to have a fictitious sense of humour. Comicality therefore and humour must be finite, limited and well-defined, just like everything else. For us human beings, being alive, some things cannot correctly be laughed at, however generous our sense of humour. And certainly, life and death themselves are such things. What’s more: they are the only things of this sort. As long as life is safe or is thought to be so and as long as a modicum of self-referential vitality is preserved, almost everything may turn out to be comical and the sense of humour may be almost universal.2 Otherwise said, in order not to be trivial and consequently insipid, the comicality of things and the sense of humour must pertain to the episodes of life, not to life in its totality. And they must be specific: they must pertain to the accidents of life, not to its essentials and their inexorable and uniform necessity.

However, limitations in space and time and specifications of essentiality and accidentality are questions of opinion, i.e. of cultural choice. They depend on what is thought to be essential and substantial. And indeed, what consciousness makes of what is ‘given’ is notoriously diverse, even fantastical, intrinsically fallible and more often than not wrong. This seems to be the reason why the sense of humour and the comicality of things are so unevenly distributed in the world and why the domain of laughter seems to be so vast and diffuse as to defy definition. One man’s laughing stock is another’s wailing wall. Certainly, there are limits: for some things thought essential for the preservation of life are not relative or accidental at all. But these apart, specifically cultural or culturally interpreted natural phenomena can become comical in one way or another and can delight our sense of humour if we are not or not too much inhibited by idiosyncrasy, convention, prejudice or if we, generally speaking, are not taken in by what one might call ‘cultural enchantment’ and its many paraphernalia. The reason seems to be that, although culture as such is a human necessity, cultural variety and even contradiction, to say nothing of self-contradiction, is widespread. Otherwise said, cultural choices, it appears, are mostly made in the air, if not in the mist, and if they are not as frivolous as fashions, to justify them against alternatives is almost as difficult as to find sharp edges on a circle or to put a sphere right side upwards. And yet, we all spend and sometimes waste our life betting on ways of living which even if they are -generally by definition- more right 183 than others, are often more wrong than they ought to be, even according to their own standards. Indeed, our finiteness, which makes for the necessity of all-round orientation in the world, at the same time makes for an orientation that is inadequate and incomplete, even contradictory in principle. Alternatives therefore cannot, in the last instance at least, be argued out of existence: they merely can be laughed away. And if we are not somehow and subreptitiously a bit naive, the best we can do is to have from time to time a good laugh at ourselves, that is, at our own cultural pretentiousness, hoping not to be caught in the rear by the tragical features that are at the core of all cultural choice and justification. To be culturally justified in a really satisfactory way is like asking how to throw a double six. As far as mathematics is concerned -and mathematics is the paradigm of proof- it can’t be done, unless the dice are loaded, as all well-advanced cultures and some others perfectly know. To laugh seems to be as necessary as it is dangerous: it might show us the dice are loaded indeed. In this sense to expose the fraud of philistinism, the arbitrariness, the emptiness and even the intrinsic heterotely of self-invented absolutes, may be the essence of all comicality and humour. 3.

It is possible to show3 that all finite beings that need theories about or interpretations of themselves and their natural and cultural environment in order to think, feel and act appropriately, necessarily produce views of the world and themselves that are more or less inadequate and incomplete. This isn’t a very remarkable observation. Some exceptions, however, may be noted: perfection and fatality are cases in point. But these have to do with events, situations and things in domains that are closed, i.e. isolated from the environment, naturally or artificially, and that are transparent. In such cases expectations are, as it were, automatically confirmed and unexpected events and therefore contrasts are excluded. But these exceptional -formal and abstract- cases of guaranteed systematic efficiency aside, all real life situations are characterised by openness, chance, vagueness, confusion, fusion, and even contradiction. In these cases description, representation and interpretation of the domain are more or less beside the point, unclear, confused, awkward or even simply wrong and accordingly expectations formed on this essentially contestable basis can easily be thwarted, even to the point of complete frustration. This can happen most plausibly for cultural options and their implementations, because these are conceived, organised, interpreted and implemented symbolically. And symbols are queer and volatile entities and can play most ludicrous tricks, ideally and in fact, in the first place on those who really and naively believe that they are, after all, adequate and complete. Even nature, as it is culturally, i.e. symbolically described and interpreted, has an essential part to play in this game of hide and 184 seek, between what is thought to be the case and what in fact nature and culture prove to be. What is thought is never exactly and exclusively what it is thought to be: up to a point it is always something more and less and something different from what, according to theory, it ought to or is expected to be. Consequently, the almost universal, though always partial, disparity between thinking and being gives all that effectively ‘is the case’ an almost inexhaustible and unforeseeable debunking power. Moreover, cultural options, being incomplete and inadequate in principle, have as such their own debunking potential: what is thought is not only not necessarily what really is the case -‘ita est sicut significat’- but even what one thinks one is thinking is often not exactly what really has been thought. One safely can say therefore that naturally and/or culturally induced and finally self-induced debunking of cultural pretence at large and its ideal of systematically efficient, hence perfect orientation in the world, is the defining feature of the comicality of things and of the sense of humour.

However, as cultural seriousness is unavoidable, the sense of humour cannot be effectual and things cannot be comical in all circumstances without becoming nihilistic. And nihilism is no laughing matter. To see clearly, to sharply see the essential inefficiency and defectiveness of human nature and culture, requires -in order to avoid indifference pure and simple or even sheer malignity- the neutralisation of its dire effects. The futility of our endeavours, the nothingness of their results must be seen to be futile themselves. Otherwise said, the futile itself must be nullified, defectiveness and inefficiency must prove to be innoxious or, at least, they must be considered so: they must be anaesthetised. This can be done in a whole series of ways, but the most prominent and most widespread ‘neutralisation-device’ is without doubt the playground.

Under conditions of play humour can fully develop and effectively exercise its debunking potential. The feast, the celebration of and at the same time the holiday from culture is therefore the proper place for humorous quips. One must be in a festive mood to stand without loss of vitality the miseries of being: jokes about coffins comfortably designed and luxuriously fitted out can properly be told only by and to people who are, one way or another, convinced of their booming health. The theatre therefore, the outgrow of this festive mood, the place of enthusiasm and contemplation alike, is the privileged milieu of comicality. Comedy is play, more or less, always and everywhere. To see the comicality of things and to have a hearty laugh, one must be, up to a certain point, detached. Aloofness is a prerequisite to stand the debunking of what, otherwise, is most of the time the pain of our devotion to the seriousness of life. The sense of humour therefore shows a marked tendency to become the “fine art” of aesthetic distancing. For 185 it can be highly dangerous and disruptive to speak truly of reality in its very presence. The play’s the thing to catch with impunity the futility of pretence. At least, up to a certain point. It is almost impossible to convince people of their cultural and therefore selfmade contradictions: these are, after all, vices in fashion and therefore the virtues they live by. One can hardly expect people to be prepared, let alone to be able to change the cultural options they have lived by simply because they finally prove to be contradictory. Certainly not, when it turns out -as it evidently does- that such change, for better or for worse, is not immune to debunking all over again. Progress and its dubious absolutes aside, cultural options are, all things considered, ontologically inadequate and incomplete, and therefore, if one looks them squarely in the face, the matrix of all ridicule. We cannot be freed from our defectiveness and consequently the best we can do is to be somewhat generous to ourselves and others without being deluded by the cultural illusions we have would like to see endorsed.

4.

The subject of neutralised debunking is so vast and the complexity of our cultural options and their possible defectiveness and insufficiency is so enormous, that it is quite impossible in a short space even succinctly to give a fair account of the procedures to implement the sudden deflation of cultural pretence. However, from the general principle of the almost universal disparity between thinking and being, between the context of reality and the context of expectation, some procedures can be ‘deduced’ which in their ramification and implementation play an important role in the ‘construction’ of comicality. These procedures can be ordered in a series evincing, from low to high, their comical potentialities. They are: irrelevance, ambiguity and ambivalence, context-contamination proper, incongruity, absurdity and finally heterotely. Each of these principles of construction can take different forms, depending on the subjectmatter and the medium they are applied to, and different principles can be combined in a variety of ways. The general scheme however can be surveyed without great difficulty because it is rather abstract and formal. Moreover, it is necessary to point out that the disparity between being and thinking, between initial expectations and results, makes by itself for highly important principles of comicality, that must be combined with the other principles mentioned. Indeed, disparity has a variable degree of depth -i.e. of semantic weight- and a variable degree of extension -i.e. or repetitivity and systematicity- that directly lead to such comical features as contrast and surprise.

These can explain why the suddenness of deflation is an important element 186 in the efficacy of comicality. To expose the nullity of things, thoughts, events, situations and actions in a flash is a procedure of composition that heightens contrast and surprise. It may be sophistical, but it need not be: it may simply evince a logical jump that could be filled out. It is wellknown that the flawless perfection of full proof presupposes a closed domain that in itself, as formal determinism, rebuts all comicality. Moreover, by taking us by surprise, the procedure makes it difficult to find some form of defense. We are, so to speak, damned in ‘l’esprit d’escalier’: defeated formally, at least for the time being. Lastly, even if no sophistry is in place, it allows us to laugh away the revelation of futility as merely said or pretended, which is quite impossible if adequate proof is provided painstakingly and step by step. The jump provides a formal escape and has in this sense an auto-immunising effect: it is not to be taken seriously after all. Its mere brilliance, for the time being, neutralises its dire effect. In an analogous way the required neutralisation is effectuated by the absurdity being explicitly confined to the stage or being isolated artificially by the set-up of the joke. To be convicted of cultural absurdity in matters of importance, to be convicted of one’s own idiocy by inexorable proof, may be the utmost in philosophical criticism, but it is, all things considered, a way of arguing that would simply make us miserable, if not aggressive. Comicality and the sense of humour, on the contrary, have a redeeming power we all are urgently in need of from time to time. 5.

We have already alluded to the fact that in all real life situations openness is unavoidable. Taking risks is the only really interesting -and possible- thing to do. The first and foremost consequence of this state of affairs is that the possibility of unforeseen factors intruding and interfering with the business at hand cannot be excluded. Only death cannot be interfered with. The mildest form of this general phenomenon of implementing disparity within the domain, the mildest form of context-contamination therefore, is the intrusion and interference of irrelevant factors. Elements pop up that have -at least in principle- nothing to do with the matter, but they frustrate the expectations our endeavours imply. All sorts of nuisance are typical for this form of comicality. It simply evinces that it is impossible in practice to have adequate and complete isolation of domain, even if the domain is in itself efficiently closed. It is clear that even in this rather simple case -a mild form of comicality indeed- a great many varieties and modalities are possible, depending on the semantic weight of the subject, the importance attributed to it and the degree of futility and systematicity of the interference. The greater the weight of the matter, the greater the futility of the intruding factor, the greater the contrast; the greater the systematicity of the interference, the greater the surprise; and the greater contrast and surprise, the 187 greater the nuisance and the greater the final debunking of the initial enterprise. However, that this well-known phenomenon is a very simple case is illustrated by the fact that it can easily make an artificial impression, as if the set-up were somewhat undeserving of belief. In fact, the plausibility of systematic irrelevance and deep contrast is not great, because the context-contamination in question is, on the face of it, external and arbitrary. The implausibility however is gradually reduced when the complexity of the context one is working in, is great enough to necessitate a certain measure of vagueness, internally and externally, i.e. a certain ambiguity and ambivalence, so that the handling of the domain in question loses its overall guranteed systematic efficiency. In this case boundaries become somewhat unclear or diffuse -a measure of ambivalence- and there’s a degree of internal uncertainty -a measure of ambiguity- concerning the efficient handling of the domain. In such a case context-contamination is, as it were, internally and externally almost self-induced: one is indeed losing one’s grip on the matter and the domain itself starts fusing with its environment. In such situations, the more or less exaggerated cultural pretence of systematic efficiency, precision of delimitation and flawless or at least appropriate orientation and action, can easily be interfered with, internally and externally, and consequently can be frustrated and nullified in various ways and in different degrees.

Misunderstanding and the taking of one person for another are examples of this kind of comicality. In this way, more or less systematically a certain degree of fictitiousness is introduced. If the semantic weight of the matter is poor, its consequences are negligible and the systematicity of the errors made is low, comicality has a tendency to be rather mild in character: the resulting frustration is slight and the final debunking may be amusing. But, contrarywise, disorientation may become so systematic and full of contrast and the inefficiency may be so counter-productive that the result can verge on delusion. If this is the case context-contamination proper has been realised. To misrepresent and misinterpret matters in a systematic way, so that one context in its totality is taken for another, is to make a system of being deluded. It verges on closed fictitiousness and consequently can hardly be called simple ambiguity and ambivalence, even if the delusion is in fact most heavily based upon and effectuated by them. This procedure of comicality can, as all others, easily be combined with the more or less systematic intrusion of irrelevant elements that may help to induce the delusion and moreover explain the continuous surprise comedy often evinces. However, if the comedy is to be a story, the sequence of events must have a certain logic, i.e. the seeming arbitrariness of the intruding elements must not be arbitrary after all, however baffling they may seem to the comic character itself. The more therefore context-contamination is internally induced, the more plausible it becomes and the more the impression of artificiality -pertaining not 188 only to irrelevancy but to ambiguity and ambivalence as well- disappears. And the more plausibility is reached, the higher the comical possibilities, the greater the contrast, the more baffling it becomes and consequently the greater the effect of the debunking and the nullity of the enterprise. Maybe it is interesting and important to remark that the comicality of systematic delusion, that context- contamination proper and its resulting deflation are, as it were, the exact reverse of what generally is called ‘metaphorisation’. Indeed, whereas in metaphorisation the contamination results in a kind of fusion between different domains and is interpreted as being semantically appropriate and informative -if the metaphors are thought to be pertinent- in comical context-contamination, on the contrary, there seems to be a clash between the domains: the fusion does not come off and the attempted metaphor is inhibited and frustrated: in the comic universe metaphorisation seems to be a blatant mistake.

Comicality is metaphorisation gone broke. The reason seems to be connected with the fact that metaphor or poetry aren’t supposed to be and need not be taken literally, whereas cultural requirements of systematic efficiency evidently imply that one ought to be able to apply in a literal sense the metaphors cultural orientation is replete with. Indeed, the metaphorical character of consciousness and thought is the mark of our finiteness. Inadequate and incomplete as our thinking is, it must provide us with an all-round orientation and consequently it must bring order and clarity in a domain, the domain of all domains that cannot, by any means, be surveyed literally. Therefore, to make sense of the world one must cast a web of metaphors over all that is or can be, in order to give our finiteness its proper place in a world that is too large for our thoughts and too deep for our imagination. But to act and to be one must act and be literally. And this literaliness is nevertheless in most cases beyond our ken. To act effectively, the suggestive character of our cultural orientation must be transformed in a set of prescriptions that have enough precision and definiteness to result precisely in this deed here and now and in no other. And this transformation is of necessity a jump that leaves us more or less in the dark, for the simple reason that more often than not there is disparity between thinking and doing. Hence, however vaguely and metaphorically we may be thinking, we always act literally. We are exactly what we do -no more, no less- but what we thought we were going to do and what we are pleased to think we have done, is but loosely connected with what is the case: the relation between thinking and being therefore is metaphorical by nature. It is an interface of domains that cannot be bridged systematically in a satisfactory way, because the required ‘adaequatio rei et intellectus’ cannot be reached for any finite entity. And, as we have seen, precisely this disparity is at the origin of the possible comicality of things and of our sense of humour. Consequently, if there 189 were such disparity, there would be no metaphorisation, but no comicality either. Both are intrinsically linked.

Comical persons therefore, such as context-contamination proper produces, seem to be cultural fools -or heroes- that naively suppose that cultural options are or can be integrally and systematically efficient, and consequently they are doomed to be subject to delusion and end up in a world of fiction. Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme after all does poetry in order to talk once and for all prose, that is, in his case, cash. It can’t be done without becoming ridiculous, but that’s no fault of him: it simply means that he took cultural pretence too seriously, as he dutifully learned to do. Just as morality is most of the time not so much a question of being moral oneself as of taking advantage of the morals of others. Context-contamination however can lose its artificiality completely by becoming eminently and exclusively internal. In this case we enter the realm of incongruity and contradictoriness proper: comicality then is exemplified as the logical or at least unavoidable consequence of the cultural options taken. Such cases are twofold. In the first place it can be formal in character and then it has to do with the phenomenon of self-reference alluded to. Here it is shown that cultural options are by themselves internally contradictory: context-contamination is intensified by self-reference, taken literally and absolutely, and becomes, so to speak, context-implosion. Or the domain proves to be no domain at all: the pretence of absolute order boils down to chaos and the domain explodes into nothingness. That may be, by the way, the reason why philosophy and its crux, the quasi dispute between dogmatism and scepticism, verges on the ridicule. It may, indeed, be said that philosophy, even great philosophy -just like great tragedy- can be from a certain angle comical: in any case absolutes of all kinds definitely are. And that’s the exact moment jokes become dangerously close to tragedy, and accordingly censureship normally sets in. Heterotely or counter-purposiveness is the last and highest form of comicality, bound up by its theoretical core with logical inconsistency and practically intrinsically connected with the inescapable ontological deficiency of all consciousness. This counter- purposiveness is the trading mark of tragedy as well. In such a state of affairs, it seems hard to look steadily at the bright side of things, as comicality requires. Certainly, comicality is lost -as it is in philosophy proper- if everything is at stake, i.e. if life really is in danger and self-reference may be ousted. However, the subtlety, even the sublime character of nature, if not the grace of chance, can be such that in circumstances that pertain to the episodes of life the constitutional heterotely of culture, culturally revealed, can nevertheless lead to positive results or at least to neutral ones. The dangers we are confronted with are debunked and futilised. Heterotely itself proves to be futile or even efficient by a quib of nature 190 or by the unforeseen course of events. As if inefficiency could be, in some cases, the most efficient way to realise the goals one has in mind; as if the vices we live by, strange to say, promote the virtues that ought to be. For short, as if heterotely could be efficiency regained. However exceptional and surprising, such things do happen sometimes. Precisely the disparity between thinking and being can make room for efficiency beyond our expectations. To slip on bananaskins is one of the most surprising tactics to win the race, but it is not impossible. However, such cases are rare, at least as far as culturally important matters are concerned: as if history could neutralise its criminals easily. Most cases of this kind therefore are limited to the domain of fiction itself. They are most easily construed, accepted and endorsed on the playground, when we are holiday-minded and have taken leave of reality.

Perhaps Le Misanthrope is a case in point. If causality is the cement of the universe, honesty undoubtedly is the cement of society. But Alceste, being one out of ten thousand, doesn’t realise that -as far as convenience and social efficiency are concerned- hypocrisy is more successful in the short run than honesty ever can be, even in eternity. Being absolute, he’s heterotelic in the extreme. This extremism would boil down to tragedy but for the important fact that the play is and remains undecided and leaves open the possibility of reform. Yet, such reform is not really to be relied upon in this case. For honesty seems to be too essential to be tampered with, as Hamlet knew quite well. With a heterotely of such semantic weight and centrality as Le Misanthrope implements, the limits of comicality seem to have been reached. King Lear’s fool seems to peep around the corner. Distancing, disinterestedness, play and neutralisation seem to have their limits: beyond them nothing remains but identification. Fiction, whatever its powers of redemption, at last makes way for reality, and reality -as Hamlet knew well- is the graveyard of poor Yorick. It is no easy matter to nullify the effects of heterotely and it becomes highly implausible that it could, in the end, be put upside down for the benefit of all or even for some. If life effectively is in danger and consequently self-reference cannot be guaranteed any more, if our very cultural identity is at stake, tragedy seems to take the place of comedy. There is a marked asymmetry between them: tragedy has the last word. In this case our sense of humour, however large and generous, must forsake us, simply because it is beside the point: its object becomes all embracing and gets lost, its point of support fails us. Our flexibility is taken away and the fatality of being weights upon us. Fools and players as well as dandies and philosophers have their inexorable limits: to be mortal is to be serious after all.

6.

If neutralised debunking is the core of comicality and the sense of humour, 191 and if it can be shown that debunking can be grounded in and is an outgrow of the intrinsic inadequacy and incompleteness of all possible orientation in the world, the way seems free for an integrated theory of comicality and humour. Incongruity apart - that has been integrated in our notion of culture as the necessary possibility of disparity between thinking and being- the most conspicuous theories are those of superiority, Bergson’s idea of mechanic rigidity and release of restraint4. We’ll not expatiate on this subject here. More to our purpose in the context of this publication is the succinct illustration thereof provided by the hilarious play – in our opinion a Molière-like farce- of Lenin El-Ramly: ‘In Plain Arabic’5. Generally speaking, the theory outlined above implies that the ‘rupture’ between thinking and being, in all its variations is culturally universal: this means that the same procedures seem to be required for comicality in all cultural sets: as far as form is concerned comicality is universal. What appears to be specific, even necessarily so, are the cultural semantics upon which these procedures can and are allowed to be applied: their breath and their depth, their scope of application and their degree of importance -their centrality- in the culture under consideration. As these parameters are variable, culturally, socially and even individually, the sense of humour accordingly will be diverse. Now the play in question is an excellent implementation of the procedures of comicality mentioned above. Moreover, although cultural relativity certainly plays a role, the core theme of the piece, namely ‘truth’ is clearly universal: the consequence is that for outsiders some semantics and hence some comical effects may get lost, but it is nevertheless easy to ‘identify’ with this core. Moreover it is a fine example of the convergence of form and content. Its comicality is a natural outgrow of the contradiction and consequent all-round heterotely inherent in the pretence of all the speakers of Plain Arabic, obsessionally proclaiming the unity of the ‘Arab Nation’, ‘determined’ to realise this idea, whereas in fact, from the beginning and almost a priori, they notoriously fail to do so: this apparently most important idea proves to be a fiction that given the ‘real’ facts quasi automatically and continuously generates its own demise. Indeed, their obsession with ‘honour’ etcetera -specifically ‘Arab’ virtues, so it seems- brings it about that in the end all of them even turn out suspects themselves. We cannot go into details in this context. But some observations may be illuminating. The theme of the play is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, for ‘Arab culture’ as such, whereas the reality turns out to be almost universal hypocricy.

To make this stark contradiction acceptable -high comedy is not far away- a series of ‘fictitious’ realities are set up: a play in a play in a broadcast about truth, etcetera or vice versa, set in a London hotel on an important Islamic festive day. 192

The author continuously plays with this structure in a way that makes of the piece almost a whirlwind of make-belief, misunderstanding and hypocrisy. In this way substantial cultural debunking is realised in a light-hearted, in an almost weightless manner. This structure moreover allows for a very direct, explicit and even brutal kind of debunking which gives the play its overall farcical character. Last but not least, the dramatis personae are so obsessed with and bewildered by their pretending, that they are in danger of loosing whatever is left of their sense of reality. This is reflected also in the ‘mythos’ told, which is rather chaotic. And so here too, form and content converge. This almost pre-programmed loss of common sense makes the play, its classical aspects aside, somewhat postmodern as well. These remarks may suffice. Suffice it they indicate that a full analysis would, we suppose, confirm the truth and the universality of the principles of comicality proposed.

7.

It may be clear by now, not only why philistinism is a laughing stock, why philistines have poor sense of humour and why the normality of philistines makes for madness. For it is precisely the result of the endeavour -comprehensible, misplaced and dangerous- to deny the essentials of the human predicament. Kitschy people are continuously trying to convince themselves that they have found an orientation that can do away with the disparity between thinking and being. They think the gap has been or can be closed definitely or that it never did exist in the first place. They tend to believe that dogmatism has a solution, the final solution even, for everything. It is clear that such an attitude simply denies all possibility of humour. Consequently for philistines the sense of humour and the comicality of things are excluded. However, the weird idea of a perfect orientation is simply fake. Hence, instead of closing the gap between thinking and being, it makes it permanent, universal and unsurpassable. By denying its existence philistinism promotes an attitude that is in principle wrong to the point of being incorrigible. Consequently philistines are laughing stock par excellence, simply because according to them there’s nothing to be laughed at. Culturally interpreted: they take their gods literally. And unhappily for them, these gods do not exist. For they, if they did exist, without doubt would be the most pretentious entities in the world, and therefore comical in the extreme. In other words, philistines think they can throw the double six. But by their own premisses the dice are so loaded, they can’t even be thrown anymore: hence, they’re in for madness.

It may be clear by now why the sense of humour and the comicality of things are culturally determined and therefore relative to a certain degree. Indeed, however clearly and intensely we are convinced of the inadequacy and incompleteness of our thinking, in fact, our acting, our being is always absolute. And precisely 193 because we are limited, we must choose our cultural sets in a non-trivial way, and therefore our being, our life always exemplifies and illustrates some cultural absolutes, which, because we continuously have betted upon them, we cannot in all honesty laugh away. However generous our thinking, we are always dogmatic up to a certain point. And accordingly, our sense of humour is limited. We can easily laugh at the gods we don’t believe in; we can perhaps smile at those we live by, if we realise that our beliefs are, after all, inadequate, because even our own gods are really beyond our ken. But it seems quite out of the question to debunk them without more ado. The things we live by cannot seriously be cast away without risking a breath-taking vacuum that may suffocate us. Nihilism pure and simple is the burial-ground of all humour and all comicality.

It has already been suggested that the sense of humour in its more aggressive forms is the most sharp and disruptive way to criticise cultural pretence and inefficiency. And, for sure, playful nihilism is a way of looking at things no form of dogmatism and therefore philistinism can tolerate. There is indeed nothing that can bring cultural and especially political dogmatism more efficiently to the brink of nervous breakdown than the playful and seemingly unconcerned but pertinent jocularity that evinces the total nullity of the cultural and political frame-up. Nothing can be more infuriating for authority than the brilliance of the sudden revelation of it irresistibly crashing down into nothingness by the sheer weight of its own pretence. It is like proving that the problem-solving vitality of pretence is nothing but an intricate and laborious way of committing suicide. To make clear in a flash that the self-styled ‘saviours’ of humanity are really but suicidal anomalies, must be murderous indeed, and therefore infuriating in the extreme. But philistine fury can be more profitably directed at itself. If the sense of humour proves to be socially dangerous and disruptive, the reason may be that cultural debunking is -certainly in its more aggressive forms- in the first place a revelation of cultural stupidity. And stupidity is generally more heterotelic in fact than humour ever can be. Humour, even sarcasm and cynicism, but kill to resurrect. And certainly, it is not in the power of stupidity and its real effects to guarantee this grace. The dangers of humour, however biting, are innocent after all. Comedy is indicative not only of high intelligence and vital mental agility but also of moral generosity: it makes us laugh, if only to make despair manageable. Lenin El-Ramly’s play attests to this.

8.

We tried to show that the sense of humour and the comicality of things are, all thing considered, no laughing matter. We hopefully made it plausible that comicality is at the heart of our human predicament, of our cultural precariousness 194 and of our essential instability. We tried to make clear that on this basis a theory can be outlined that is anthropologically general yet, at the same time, specifiable culturally. And we indicated that the play we took as example seems to confirm the universality of the characteristics of comicality, however specific the semantics turns out to be. Moreover, we have given some idea of its possible integrative force. We have, however, been obliged to skip not only argument but even proof. We had to make jumps all the time, if not ‘unlawful matches of things’. We hope they were not really that unlawful and that our suggestions can nevertheless point the way. Articles after all are, if not simply laughing matter, in any case bad intellectual poetry. And, indeed, philosophy most of the time is no more, no less. Consequently, there is, especially concerning theories of humour and comicality, reason for cautiousness, but, as far as humour goes, none for despair. And if, on the contrary, there are such reasons, we hope to have shown they can be laughed away.

Bibliography : Bergson, Henri, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, translated by Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell, New York, 1911 Freud, Sigmund, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconcious, Translated and edited by James Strachey, revised by Angela Richards, Harmondsworth, England, 1976 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Judgment, Translated by J.H. Bernard, London, 1892 Monro, D.H., Argument of Laughter, Melbourne, 1951 Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World as Will and Idea, 6th ed. 3 vols, Translated by R.B. Haldane and J. Kemp, London, 1907-1909

Notes 1 This article is a summary and an extension of “Laughing Matters or Comoedia Naturalis”, published in: Philosophica, 38 (1986), nr. 2, pp. 5-26. 2 Italicizations by the editor 3 Cf. Karel Boullart, Vanuit Andromeda gezien. Het bereikbare en het ontoegankelijke. Een wijsgerig Essay, VUB-Press, Universiteit Gent, Werken uitgegeven door de faculteit van de letteren en wijsbegeerte, Brussel, 1999, 586 pp. 4 Cf. Laughing Matters or Comoedia Naturalis, op.cit. 5 Lenin El-Ramly, In Plain Arabic, a play in two acts, translated by Esmat Allouba, Cairo, The American University in Cairo Press, 1994. 195

COMEDY BETWEEN PERFORMATIVITY AND POLYPHONY The Politics of Non-Serious Language

Michiel LEEZENBERG

Everybody knows that Aristotle characterizes tragedy as an (serious?) imitation of a serious (spoudaios) action, which achieves a catharsis through pity and fear. It is not at all clear, however, what an Aristotelian theory of comedy would look like. He does characterize comedy as an (non-serious?) imitation of a non-serious or laughable (geloios) and ugly action; but through which emotions, and with what ultimate effect? To begin with, he explicitly states that the ridiculous is painless and has no harmful effects; by implication, comedy can hardly function through pity and fear as tragedy does (Poetics :1449a35). Leon Golden has argued that on an Aristotelian approach, comedy functions through indignation (nemesan) rather than pity and fear.1 This leaves the question of what comic catharsis amounts to: it may be a quasi-medical purgation; or a kind of pleasure; or a more intellectual clarification, as Golden argues. Moreover, it is equally possible to write a comedy about the lofty people typical for tragedy as it is to write a tragedy about the base characters from comedy: it seems we still have to distinguish serious and non-serious imitations. In the absence of the second book of the Poetics, then, and in the wake of the god-fearing monks in Umberto’s Name of the Rose, we can only speculate; but in any case, as I have argued elsewhere, Aristotle’s understanding of fifth-century Greek drama is already very different from what we can reconstruct of that period’s self-understanding.2

In the wake of the September 11 assaults, there is new room for alternatives to the still widespread humanist, depoliticized readings of literature for which Aristotle provides an antecedent or prototype. These humanist approaches treat literature as a quasi-religious sacred sphere in which everything can be said, and which should be protected from social and political interference (witness the attitude of contemporary novelists like Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk). The price for this protected status would seem to be a status of l’ art pour l’ art, or as mere entertainment for private pleasure rather than public education: literature, in other words, is not taken seriously in politics. This liberal-humanist view of literature is to a large extent mirrored in the prima facie plausible theoretical notion of fiction as non-serious, pretended language usage.3 The liberal and 196 humanist talk of depoliticized artistic freedom is oblivious, however, of the colonial background against which modern humanist conceptions of literature and liberal conceptions of politics were first formulated, and introduced to the Arab world and elsewhere. Marxist-inspired approaches, by contrast, do thematize this liberal-humanist hegemony in terms of class conflict and more recently of colonial and imperial domination, but they risk reducing third-world literature, in particular comedy, too mechanically to either a reproduction of this hegemony, or an expression of subaltern or oppositional voices.

1. Speech Act Theory and Bakhtinian Poetics on (Comical) Fictitious Language

Here, I use as an alternative approach the discourse-critical work of authors like Michel Foucault and Mohammed Âbid al-Jabri, combined with Speech Act Theory as developed by J.L. Austin and John Searle. This approach does not presume concepts like culture (thaqâfa), tradition (turâth), and civilization (madaniyya) as given or neutral; instead, it looks at how discourse (khitâb) may be constitutive of those concepts and indeed of the very (social) realities they are about, and at how statements may performatively constitute or change the world they seem to merely describe or represent. For example, someone saying “I baptize this ship the Fairouz” is not describing a fact; he is creating one. In recent years, the concept of performativity has gained ground as a key notion in the human sciences, but some intriguing questions remain when it comes to comedy. According to Austin, pretended speech such as that recited on a stage is parasitic or secondary with respect to ordinary, serious language usage.4 A quoted or recited sentence, that is, is pretended or fictional; according to this approach, it can by definition never be true, or more generally felicitous: one cannot perform any genuine action by uttering it. But this leaves it a mystery how non-serious speech acts can have serious effects at all. In other words, the problem is: if a speaker does not mean what he says, how can his words have any effect outside of literature? Significantly, Searle, who gives an extended analysis of fiction as involving pretended speech acts, explicitly concludes: “there is as yet no general theory of [how] serious illocutionary intentions are conveyed by pretended illocutions”.5

Deconstructivist writings on speech acts call attention to the phenomenon of iterability, the possibility of using or quoting an expression out of its original or literal context, and liberated from the original and serious intentions of earlier speakers.6 In this perspective, non-serious language usage such as ridicule and 197 parody becomes the very condition of possibility of serious and literal language usage. Judith Butler famously takes up Derrida’s undermining of the serious- non-serious opposition in her analysis of gender identity as performatively, and possibly parodically, constituted, and – more directly relevant here – in her more recent discussion of hate speech as words actually capable of hurting or wounding human beings by calling them names, and thus performatively constituting them as specific kinds of subject.7 It is not clear, however, in how far this deconstructivist problematization of all oppositions, like those between serious language and parody, between use and mention or quotation, between literal and figurative, and between conventional illocutionary act and actual perlocutionary effect, helps in the actual analysis of dramatic texts from historically quite distinct traditions. At the very least, it needs to be supplemented by an account of how the language usage of, say, comedy, fits in with other contemporary discursive and non-discursive practices, and with historically variable institutions like its setting in specific rituals, in theaters or at courts, etc. At first blush at least, hate speech is serious business, whereas comedy is not; the relation between the two therefore remains to be elaborated more explicitly.

Generally, these questions concern the politics of fictional language usage; the political use of non-serious language usage turns out to be rather more widespread, and has more radical implications, than is often acknowledged. Thus, even John Searle acknowledges that the American Declaration of Independence (1776) was uttered by speakers who did not strictly have the right to do so, but who pretended they did. The most powerful nation on earth, that is, was founded on a fictional or pretended speech act. Pretended speech acts, that is, may have serious effects after all: linguistic fictions may well become political realities.

At first blush, Marxist or Marxist-inspired approaches appear more promising, with, for example, Gramsci’s distinction between hegemonic ideology and subaltern culture or Bourdieu’s between dominant and subordinated forms of cultural expression. Both would tend to analyze comic utterances, and perhaps more generally the non-serious language usage of fiction, in terms of counter hegemonic folk culture, or of dialect and slang as subordinate, dominated forms of language. In this context, the fact that Athenian old comedy largely employs coarse registers rather different from the lofty language of tragedy, and that modern Arabic comedies tend to be written in dialect (‘âmi) rather than Modern Standard Arabic or fusha would seem to confirm this suspicion. A problem for such analyses, however, is the fact that Aristophanes’ language, as vulgar and obscene as it often is, is as literary and artificial as that of tragedy, and that Aristophanes himself often appears to belong to the ruling elites rather than the common people. 198

Mikhail Bakhtin’s famous analysis of comedy as carnival appears better equipped for the analysis of comedy, humor, and drama in general. This approach is widely seen as taking comical literature to involve a temporal, carnivalesque reversal of the social order (in which, for example, women or slaves briefly become the masters), after which everything returns to normal; this would make the effect of comedy merely negative, and wholly utopian or indeed impossible.8 In fact, this is not what Bakhtin himself argues in his book on Rabelais9; rather, he calls attention to the positive (and indeed revolutionary) potential of a true culture of laughter, which he sees as ambivalent and not merely negative. However, Bakhtin’s ideal-typical (if not essentialist) opposition between serious high culture sanctioned by the state and the church and the carnivalesque and oppositional culture of humor of the lower strata of the population faces serious problems when trying to account for Athenian old comedy. In fact, Bakhtin is remarkably – not to say astonishingly – silent on Aristophanic comedy, which cannot easily be classified as either the ideological self-congratulation of a state or ruling class or as the subversive oppositional counterculture of the masses. Classical Athens knew neither church nor state as distinct from society; and the often wildly obscene if not sacrilegious old comedy formed an integral part of the official Athenian city Dionysia, at which also tragedies were performed.

Von Möllendorff is aware of such difficulties, and consequently proposes to treat Aristophanic comedy in a Bakhtinian vein as dialogical or polyphonic, that is, as not based on acts of an individual consciousness or intentionality.10 This analysis would reduce the need for discussing in how far the author, or any one of the speaking characters of his play, actually meant what they said; but it leaves unanswered the question of precisely when and how a specific comedy, or part of a comedy, is or is not taken seriously. Von Möllendorff also makes much of the allegedly unrealistic or utopian character of Aristophanes’ political comedies: the fantasies and proposals offered there, he argues, present the audience with a radically Other world, and should be seen as impossibilities or utopias rather than as serious proposals for policy change. Remarkably, however, the political advice Aristophanes gave in the parabasis or intermezzo of the Frogs (404 BCE), at the end of the Peloponnesian war, was far from utopian; in fact, it was taken seriously by the contemporary Athenians: the playwright was even richly rewarded for the political council he gave in a non-serious comedy. Even the most outrageous of Aristophanes’ fantasies, like that of the women assuming power in Women in Parliament (Ekklesiazousai), do not simply express utterly unreal and non-serious utopias. Just a few decades later, a similar utopia was sketched by a supremely serious author, who had a great dislike for the comic and other poets: 199 none other than Plato suggested in his Politeia that women should take part in public life, and should have broadly the same opportunities and privileges as men.

In the end, then, Marxist views like Bakhtin’s are no better equipped to account for the possibly serious effects of comedies like Aristophanes’ Frogs, which were performed, like the tragedies of his time, at the city Dionysia, - a yearly carnival in celebration of the might of Athens. The least we need in light of this fact, it would seem, is a further subdivision between the serious non-serious language of tragedy and the non-serious non-serious language of comedy.

2. Parrhèsia – Poetic Licence or Performative Truth-Constitution?

Another Marxist, if not romantic, survival in Bakhtin’s view of the revolutionary potential of the carnival is his belief that carnivalesque humor unmasks the unvarnished truth: it reveals an objective and unadorned truth, which, he argues, can also be reached through (Socratic and other) critical dialogue rather than by the monological discourse of any one authoritative voice. This way of putting things overlooks the fact that the ‘truths’ of comedy, or the subversive utterances of the lower classes, are as much historically, socially and indeed discursively constituted as the dominant ideology of the ruling elites. This discursive and non-discursive constitution of truths, norms, and concepts, takes center stage in discourse-critical or genealogical approaches like Michel Foucault’s.11 I have no time to elaborate this approach in detail here; suffice it to call attention to one aspect of Foucault’s analysis that is of particular relevance in this context. In a series of lectures discussing, among others, several tragedies by Euripides, Foucault takes the ancient Greek notion of parrhèsia or free speech (literally, ‘saying everything’) as a relation between a speaker and what he says: it amounts to an act of speaking the truth, often with risks for oneself.12 He further distinguishes monarchic and democratic parrhèsia, which amount to, respectively, the ability to speak freely towards a king who has the power to decide over the speaker’s very life; and the rather different free speech of a free citizen in a democratic assembly like that in Athens, where speaking did not generally carry such extreme risks.

Next to these, however, we should distinguish a specifically comic parrhèsia: Foucault does not discuss any comedies, but they might well lead to a modification of his argument; for whatever restrictions there were on free speech in classical Athens were given up in the context of comic performances. As Halliwell makes clear, the rare occasions that are suggestive of legal proceedings initiated 200 against individual comical playwrights do not point to any institutionalized legal constraints on, or threats against, comical free speech.13 Yet, ancient comedy was far from a playful diversion from more serious everyday concern; on the contrary, as Henderson argues, the often savage ridicule of existing persons was an integral feature of the agonistic sovereignty of the Athenian dêmos or citizen population.14 By calling important persons names, the comic poet could hope to performatively affect their standing among the Athenian citizens. Ancient comedy may not have been serious, but it certainly could have political effects.

3. Varieties of the Comical, Varieties of the Political

In the light of these considerations, a comparative confrontation between ancient Greek and modern Arabic comedy may be of interest, not only in clarifying the radical differences between two visions of the comical and the political, but also in exposing some of our modern-day liberal, humanist or modernist assumptions. I will illustrate my argument with Aristophanes’ Frogs from 404 BCE and Lenin El-Ramly’s In Plain Arabic (Bi’l-‘arabi al-fasîh), first staged in 1991 CE. These two plays share a number of features: both were performed in the face of a humiliating military defeat, and both explicitly involve the themes of the carnival, in which things can be said that cannot normally be said, and of the staging of a dramatic performance which turns out to have all kinds of unforeseen, and uncontrollable, effects and consequences. Another, perhaps more obvious comparison, could be made between Aristophanes’s Lysistrata and Ramly’s recent al-salâm al-nisâ’ (the title of which has been rendered as A Peace of Women), an adaptation of the former set against the background of the 2003 Iraq war; but my main theme here is not war and sexuality but the politics of language, and this theme appears much more explicitly in the plays under discussion.15

Aristophanes’ Frogs (Batrakhoi)

Classical Athenian democracy was not based on a distinction between the state and society or on a notion of ‘the people’ (dèmos) as defined by a shared culture. Even the famous distinction between Greeks and barbarians was hardly politically active. That is, it did not involve any romantic notion of the (sovereign) people as defined by a culture, nor of any irreducible clash of cultures or civilizations. Moreover, the conception of the political presupposed in Aristophanes and his contemporaries is not ‘democratic’ in the sense of being based on orderly debate for all people living in the state; unlike modern liberal nation states, classical Athens was not imagined 201 as being based on a social contract or on a shared culture of agreed upon norms and values. Rather, all of social, cultural, political, and even family life is depicted both in comedy and tragedy as pervaded by internal conflict or stasis. Here, conflict is not so much seen as a temporary and exceptional state of war that is finished by the establishment of civil society; rather, it is seen as the normal (if deplorable) state of affairs. But stasis should not be seen in the Marxist terms of class conflict, either: the sovereign people or dèmos may be distinct from the archaic elites or aristoi, but this distinction should not be identified with that between the people and the rulers, or between the workers and the feudal or proto-capitalist owners of the means of production.16

Instead, it might be argued that Athenian democracy was defined by a near- total parrhèsia or free speech. There was no ‘state’ as the locus or institution of censorship and repression of the population; censorship of political, sexual and religious matters was societal rather than political or legal in nature. That is, it was simply considered unworthy of free male citizens to use obscene expressions or make dirty jokes in public. This is precisely the kind of language, however, one finds in old comedy. We may thus speak of a specifically comic parrhèsia.17 In the Frogs, and elsewhere, it is argued that it is the very licentious character of comical language usage by which the city may be instructed:

“ton hieron khoron dikaion esti khrèsta tèi polei/xumparainein kai didaskein It’s right and proper for the sacred chorus to help give good advice and instruction to the city” (Frogs, 686-7)

In between the laughs, that is, the play argues that it aims at creating both serious and non-serious effects:

“kai polla men geloia m’ eipein, polla de spoudaia And let me say many laughable things, and many serious things, too” (Frogs, 393-4)

The question then becomes which parts of a specific comedy one should take seriously, and how one can know one is entitled to do so. For ancient Athenians, the answer seemed relatively clear: the assumption seems to have been that in the parabasis or intermezzo, the playwright generally spoke his own mind through the mouth of the chorus leader directly addressing the audience. Present- day literary theorists will immediately warn us that we should not confuse the statements made in the play with the opinions of the author; but the Athenian audience apparently had no such qualms. Specifically, it took the parabasis of 202 the Frogs as the sound advice of the playwright himself, rather than as a fictional utterance by a fictional chorus. Thus, the question of who is speaking and what effect those words have is at times decided by the reaction of the audience as much as by the intentions of the speaker.

Moreover, Aristophanes claims a political function for such non-serious, unbecoming language. By their very obscenity, his plays are meant to give advice and instruction to the city: the poet’s task, he claims in the Frogs, is nothing less than to save the city in wartime. The laughter he provokes, one might say, is laughter at the contingency and the non-serious foundation of the political practices that are considered most sacred by the Athenians. Or is it? Importantly, Aristophanes attacks individuals rather than whole groups, let alone the city as such; moreover, he considers it a point of honour not to attack a man when he is lying down. In other words, his comical utterances do not undermine the city or its practices and institutions, but merely raise the general question of who is worthy to take part in them. The comical answer to this question seems to be that no one is. J. Henderson has looked at the dramatic effect of the obscene jokes about leading politicians in Aristophanic comedy18; but their political effect is at least as interesting: they expose these politicians, and more in general the politically active population of free male citizens, as the unmanly slaves of unbecoming appetites and sexual desires. Strictly speaking, nobody is fit to govern, or even has the right to speak up in public. Aristophanes was not a radical or revolutionary author, though: he seems to have been a conservative democrat rather than a subversive activist. By his use of obscenity and ridicule, he appears to reflect a more generally agonistic society, in which individuals were challenged continuously to prove their worth and honour, and in which they could hardly count on the support of the law or the state’s repressive apparatus.

Lenin El-Ramly’s In Plain Arabic (bi’l-‘arabi al-fasîh)

A confrontation of this classical Greek view of the political role and effect of comedy with a modern Arabic comedy reveals interesting differences and convergences. I focus on Lenin El-Ramly’s In Plain Arabic (bi’l-‘arabi al-fasîh) from 1991.19 To begin with, this play presupposes a wholly different kind of politics than does Aristophanes. First, the state is taken as a repressive institute, especially through censorship, the attempt to control or restrict the words spoken in society. Indeed, Arab censorship, or self-censorship, is a main theme of the play.20 Second, it involves a concept of the nation as based on a shared culture, that is, on a consensus of shared norms and values. Third, politics involves a radical opposition between civilizations, whether this is expressed as a clash 203 between imperialism and the third world, between West and East, or between Christianity and Islam. This discourse (khitâb) is common to both the Arab world and the (neo-) liberal West (which are thus ‘divided by a common language’); it distinguishes both from the discourse of classical Athenian democracy.

It should be kept in mind that In Plain Arabic was staged a mere few months after Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent war against Iraq, a series of events that led to unprecedented splits among the Arabs. The fact that most Arab countries, including fierce rivals or enemies like Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, joined in the international coalition against the Iraqi invaders, more than ever before exposed the notion of Arab unity as largely an outdated fiction. The play discusses this fiction, as well as other forms of Arab self-deceit, taboo and shame, in a joking manner. Significantly, it is set at Eid, the end of Ramadan, which can be seen as a carnival of sorts. In a nested fiction, it represents a movie being made about a theatre play staged by a group of Arab students in London. The play is intended to be about an Arab tribal youth (standing for the Palestinian cause) who is abducted by an English imperialist. But when the Palestinian member of the group is actually abducted, fiction becomes inextricably confused with reality (or, more adequately speaking, two levels of fiction becomes hopelessly mixed up). Ramly’s characters are willing to “speak the truth,” as they call it: they denounce the idea of Arab unity as an illusion, and likewise ridicule the emptiness of the rhetoric about Arab solidarity with the Palestinian cause, and about the struggle against Western civilization. They are unwilling, however, to vent these criticisms in public, or on television: “It can be said among ourselves, but not broadcast” (p. 13), for fear of losing face or playing into the hands of the enemy. Moreover, many if not all of their statements are made in a patently non-serious, and indeed fictional way. Early on, one character states that”: “We decided that the best way to express our unity as Arab brothers would be a play” (p. 20)

Much as in Aristophanes’ comedies, a good many of Ramly’s jokes are difficult if not impossible to grasp for an audience not familiar with the cultural and historical context of its first performance. Indeed, by reading the play in translation, one already misses two essential elements: the performance element and the language varieties employed. First, much of the play’s comical and other effects appear from the actual performance: thus, the Iraqi character Antar appears on stage speaking with a thick Iraqi Bedouin accent, and parodying the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s martial body language; likewise, all other characters (which, I am informed, were originally played by an all-Egyptian cast) are distinguished in performance by use of mimicked regional dialects and by other joking references to the stereotypical traits of the different Arabs (thus, the Saudi is rich and rather bigoted, the Lebanese a shrewd and less than entirely 204 honest tradesman, and the Sudanese is drunk throughout the play). Interestingly, Mieke Kolk (p.c.) informs me that a small European theatre group considered staging In Plain Arabic, but eventually decided against it, out of fear that it would only serve to strengthen local racist stereotypes about Arabs.

Thus, the theatrical convention of using dialect for Modern Arabic comedy is here exploited to the full. Indeed, the conventional division of labor between Standard Arabic as a medium for serious literature and dialect as a vehicle for comedy becomes thematized in the very title of the play. Fasîh may mean ‘clear’ or ‘unadorned,’ but also ‘flowery;’ moreover, it is etymologically related to fusha, the term for standard Arabic (which is precisely the language variety not employed in this comedy). Other allusions may be equally difficult for non-Arabs to grasp. On repeated occasions, the comical scenes of the play allude to tragic, or at least sinister, developments in the Arab world, for example in the scene where the Iraqi, Antar, hits Khuzan from the Gulf with a plate. Few Arabs at the time will have failed to recognize the allusion to the incident when Iraqi foreign minister, Tariq Aziz started throwing plates at his Kuwaiti counterpart during Arab League talks just prior to the 1991 Gulf War. One comical argument of the play is that consensus, and the unity of the Arab nation, can only be achieved at the cost of censoring all sensitive topics of debate, which include religion, sexuality, and even soccer (p. 17). Soccer becomes a taboo subject that may be detrimental to Arab unity when the Tunisian and the Egyptian character almost come to blows over a world cup qualifying match, and are restrained by, of all people, Antar, the Iraqi character. It is not too far-fetched, I think, to see in this scene an allusion to events surrounding Egypt’s qualification for the soccer world championships in December 1989: especially in Iraq, celebrations of this qualifications turned ugly when an unknown number of Egyptians were wounded or even killed by local Iraqi thugs, at the obvious instigation of the Iraqi regime.

There is one major difference with Aristophanic comedy, however. Although Ramly’s comedies often treat sexual themes, they cannot be qualified as obscene in anything like Aristophanes’ sense. Ramly’s jokes about the political confrontation between the Arab and the Western world are often articulated in terms of sexual relations, primarily between Arab men and Western women, as in the grandiose plan to attempt a large-scale seduction of foreign women as a way of taking revenge on the West (p. 55). However, they hardly involve ‘foul language’, such as explicit references to sexual acts, defecation, or other bodily functions; nor are existing politicians mentioned by name, nor are insinuations made about their sexual behavior. Sexuality, that is, appears much more strictly regulated and disciplined than in Aristophanes; my impression is that this much more restrictive attitude reflects the strict regulation of gendered national identity that accompanies 205 the modern nation state, but I have no room to argue this point in detail.

Restrictions on free speech, whether on stage or in politics, are not only a main preoccupation, but indeed a major theme of the play. Mighwar, the Moroccan character, suggests that democracy needs a minimum of discipline; and discipline is precisely what the play’s characters lack. It is repeatedly suggested that democracy cannot simply be imported to the Arab world: one attempt at democratic parrhèsia or free speech quickly deteriorates into a comical cacophony, in which no agreement can be reached on either of the topics to be discussed or even the procedures for granting each voice a fair hearing. This scene may be a parody of the unthinking import of western democracy, but it is at least as strongly reminiscent of the chaotic and often violent character of the meetings of the Arab League, especially in the run up to the 1991 Gulf War.

But also, free debate among and with Arabs is depicted as being blocked by misguided motions of taboo, sin, honour, self-esteem and the perceived need to close ranks against a common enemy, Western civilization. Thus, the Arab students try to regulate a debate between a European and an Arab team in advance by excluding politics, religion, sex, history and nationalism from the list of admissible topics (p. 89). Freedom of speech within and between cultures is subordinated to hypocritical, and indeed fictional, sensitivities, such as a preoccupation with national and individual honour: “what is a human being but a good name?” (p. 47). For example, it eventually turns out that all male characters have been to the brothel, the Pleasure Palace, but do not dare to admit it. Mustafa then asks whether they do so out of shame, or out of fear for each other (p. 94). In pleading guilty to crimes they have not committed rather than admitting they have spent the night in a brothel/night club, the male characters of In Plain Arabic show they prefer Western fictions to sordid home truths. In the end, the only Arab unity is one of deceit: “we are all alike in one respect: we all deceive each other” (p. 97). More generally, theatrical fictions become political realities, and convenient lies become uncomfortable truths, - or vice versa. No wonder that at one point, the characters themselves become confused as to what is mere acting and what is serious speech:

Sayf (Saudi): Acting is sinful and discussion always ends in disaster. Antar (Iraqi): You are still arguing? We said no more acting! Announcer: I’m not acting now. I’m speaking my mind! (p.83)

The play falls just short, however, of suggesting that the mere altering of the perception of the Arabs may affect their realities, as it explicitly opposes image and reality (p.97). Ramly, in other words, appears rather less sanguine about the 206 capacity to change social realities by speaking words. In the end, then, In plain Arabic amounts to a fictional critique of the fiction of Arab unity. However, El- Ramly’s play, like Aristophanes’s, does not transcend or radically question the discourse of its time; rather, it exposes the foundations on which the latter rests as itself non-serious, and the people who employ this discourse as laughable.

Although it does not emphasize the performative dimension of language, the play does betray a detailed awareness of language as a form of social action, and of its potential consequences. Virtually every character in the play seems obsessed with controlling the interpretation, or perlocutionary effect, of words, images, and actions. Likewise, in the course of the play, the very use of the word ‘Arab’ comes to be used, and to be taken, as in itself an insult (cf., among others, p. 21). In a sense, the whole play is about how serious language of honour and dignity, solidarity and unity, is but a lie or a fiction, whereas non-serious language usage, like jokes or theatre plays, may succeed in not only conveying the truth but in performatively, if unintentionally, constituting and indeed changing social realities. But Aristophanes’ and Ramly’s means are rather different: where the former revels in uncontrolled obscenity, the latter is confined to much more narrowly circumscribed forms of ridicule.

Conclusion

Every social practice, whether it is politics, literature, or drama, may be seen as a specific game with its own rules. Crucial to each practice is what Pierre Bourdieu calls illusio21, that is, a ‘feel for the game’, the belief that this particular game is serious and worth playing.22 What comedy does is not so much criticize dominant ideas or ideologies, but expose the game-like character of our most serious practices. This should be distinguished from Bakhtinian carnival, or from Brechtian techniques of epic theatre23, which aim at keeping the audience’s revolutionary consciousness awake: it need not lead to a radical, subversive or revolutionary questioning of the social world we live in; but it may well do so.

The distinction between fiction and seriousness is important here, in so far as it allows the comic author more room for saying things that otherwise might cause offence: comedy is no hate speech. Typically, the festive occasion of a comic performance will lead the audience to react with laughter rather than with indignation. Hence, comic ridicule of individuals should not be conflated with smear tactics or attempts at character assassination of political opponents or enemies. After all, as noted, they were performed on special carnivalesque 207 occasions where things could be, and were, said that would not otherwise be tolerated. Yet, as Halliwell notes, the laughter produced by old comedy was ambivalent between the humorous and the insulting.24 In classical Greece, old comedy had its comical effect precisely because of the ambivalence between non-serious ridicule and serious assaults upon other people’s honour, as nobody could control the linguistic, social, or political effects of uncontrolled laughter. Likewise, Ramly is aware of the potentially fateful ambivalence of laughter. As one of his character notes: “it all started as a joke, but it ended in disaster!” (p.‑90). Equally ambiguous is the uptake or reception of his work: what an Arab might see as benign jokes or effective political satire may strike a culturally sensitive European elite audience as racist smears. The comic author, that is, is no more able than his characters to control the effects of his own or others’ words. Speaker’s intentions can no more restrict what effect a comic performance will have than the initially obvious delegation of comedy to the realm of non-serious and fictional language with no effects on the outside world. For political change or subversion, more is usually needed than a playwright’s jokes; but they may well be a starting point.

Notes 1 Leon Golden, “Aristotle on Comedy”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 42 (1984), pp. 283-290. 2 Michiel Leezenberg, “Katharsis, Greek and Arabic Style: On Averroes’s Misunderstanding of Aristotle’s Misunderstanding of Greek Tragedy”, Documenta, 22, (2004), nr. 4, pp. 300-315. 3 John Searle, “The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse”, New Literary History, 6 (1975), pp. 319-332 (Reprinted in Expression & Meaning. Cambridge, 1979). 4 J.L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (2nd ed.), Oxford, 1975 [1962]. 5 John Searle (1975), p. 332. 6 Jacques Derrida, “Signature événement contexte”, in: Marges, Paris 1972. 7 Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, New York, 1997. 8 Jeffrey Henderson, “The dèmos and the Comic Competition”, in: J. Winkler & F. Zeitlin (eds.) Nothing to do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in its Social Context, Princeton, 1991. 9 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World (tr. H. Iswolsky), Indianapolis, 1984 [1965]. 10 Peter von Möllendorff, Grundlagen einer Ästhetik der alten Komödie: Untersuchungen zu Aristophanes und Michail Bachtin. Tübingen, 1995. 11 Genealogical and archaeological approaches that take discursive practices as constitutive of social realities rather than as ideological distortions of an allegedly more objective underlying reality have also appeared in Arabic, or discussing Arabic 208

material: of these, Mohammad Abid al-Jabri’s critique of Arab reason is probably the most famous; in my opinion, though, Aziz al-Azmeh’s highly sophisticated archaeology of the Arab sciences (1986) and of classical discourse about royal power (1997) are rather more successful exercises along the same line. 12 Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, Los Angeles, 2001 [1983]. 13 S. Halliwell, “The Uses of Laughter in Greek Culture”, Classical Quarterly, 41 (1991), pp. 279-296. 14 Jeffrey Henderson (1991). 15 For reasons of space, I have also had to omit a planned discussion of Molière’s Tartuffe here. A confrontation with the courtly concept of the political and the ‘domestication’ of comedy in Molière would have been revealing, particularly in the light of the subsequent French colonial instrumentalization of classical French comedy as a means of replacing, or domesticating, local and potentially oppositional forms of comical theatre like the Bssat tradition in Morocco, in what Khalid Amine (p.c.) has called the “molièrization of Bssat.” 16 Nor, incidentally, should Aristophanic comedy be seen as a form of lower-class entertainment as opposed to the loftier tragedies: both kinds of drama drew substantially the same audience. Aristophanes is not even as unambiguous a source of colloquial Athenian as he has been made out to be: often, his language is highly artificial, involving fantasy words, bizarre onomatopoea, and pastiches of the high- blown language of both tragic poets and philosophers. 17 S. Halliwell (1991). 18 J. Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy, New Haven, 1975. 19 Unfortunately, at the time of writing, the Arabic text of this play was not available to me. I have had to rely on Esmat Allouba’s translation, published by the American University in Cairo Press. 20 In more recent years, censorship in Egypt has increasingly become the prerogative of religious authorities. Thus, reprints of classical literary texts like Ibn ‘Arabi’s Meccan Revelations and the Thousand and One Nights have recently been proscribed by the Azhar University leadership because of, respectively, their allegedly heretic and obscene contents. 21 Pierre Bourdieu, Raisons pratiques, Paris, 1998. 22 Incidentally, here and elsewhere, Bourdieu pays surprisingly little attention to non- serious social action, or more specifically to the subversive or counterhegemonic potential of comedy, parody, ridicule and the like. 23 Bertolt Brecht, Schriften zum Theater: Über eine nicht-aristotelische Dramatik, Frankfurt, 1989. 24 S. Halliwell, “Comic Satire and Freedom of Speech in Classical Athens”, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 111 (1991a), pp. 48-70.

Bibliography: J.L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (2nd ed.), Oxford, 1975 [1962]. Aziz al-Azmeh, Arab Thought and Islamic Societies, London, 1986. Aziz al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship, London, 1997. 209

Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World (tr. H. Iswolsky), Indianapolis, 1984 [1965]. Pierre Bourdieu, Raisons pratiques, Paris, 1998. Bertolt Brecht, Schriften zum Theater: Über eine nicht-aristotelische Dramatik, Frankfurt, 1989. Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, New York, 1997. Jacques Derrida, “Signature événement contexte”, in: Marges, Paris 1972. Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, Los Angeles, 2001 [1983]. Leon Golden, “Aristotle on Comedy”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 42 (1984), pp. 283-290. S. Halliwell, “Comic Satire and Freedom of Speech in Classical Athens”, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 111 (1991a), pp. 48-70. S. Halliwell, “The Uses of Laughter in Greek Culture”, Classical Quarterly, 41 (1991), pp.‑279-296. J. Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy, New Haven, 1975. Jeffrey Henderson, “The dèmos and the Comic Competition”, in: J. Winkler & F. Zeitlin (eds.) Nothing to do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in its Social Context, Princeton, 1991. Michiel Leezenberg, “Greek tragedy as Impolite Conversation: Towards a Practice Approach in Linguistic Theory”, in: S. Marmaridou a.o. (eds.), Reviewing Linguistic Thought: Converging Trends of the 21st Century, Berlin/New York, pp. 191-208. Michiel Leezenberg, “Katharsis, Greek and Arabic Style: On Averroes’s Misunderstanding of Aristotle’s Misunderstanding of Greek Tragedy”, Documenta, 22, (2004), nr. 4, pp. 300-315. Peter von Möllendorff, Grundlagen einer Ästhetik der alten Komödie: Untersuchungen zu Aristophanes und Michail Bachtin. Tübingen, 1995. John Searle, “The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse”, New Literary History, 6 (1975), pp. 319-332 (Reprinted in Expression & Meaning. Cambridge, 1979). 210

LIES, ILLUSIONS AND AUTHORITY The Thousand and One Nights and Arabic Comic Theatre

Richard van LEEUWEN

Whereas perhaps it can be doubted whether the concept of the tragic, in the Classical Greek sense of the term, has existed in the Arabic cultural and literary tradition, no one will contest the observation that the comic is an integral part of the Arabic literary heritage. From the 9th century onwards, comic genres were part of the common repertoire of both high and popular literature, in the form of jocular tales, comic anecdotes, poetry, scabrous jokes, and popular romances. In fact, the anecdote, often based on a comic plot or a pun, represents the quintessential component of the classical genre of adab texts, the most widespread and ambitious form of highbrow prose literature. Of course, one of the main functions of the comic element in fictional and anecdotal literature was to entertain, but it can be argued that, as a concept, it was prompted by more pretentious incentives, too, especially as a means to express social and political critique. It is this latter aspect which makes the comical such an interesting subject of narratological investigation.

In this paper I will discuss the influence of the Thousand and one nights - the famous cycle of tales which emerged in Arabic literature in the 9th century approximately - on the modern tradition of Arabic theatre, with special emphasis on the comic element. First, a brief outline will be given of the use of the comical as a narrative strategy in the framing story of Thousand and one nights; subsequently two plays will be analysed which not only are closely related to the comic genres contained in the Thousand and one nights, but in which the motifs of lies, illusions and authority play a decisive role. The narrative of the plays will be related to the stories from the Thousand and one nights which have served as their model. It will be argued that the various concepts of the comical in the Thousand and one nights provided an important inspiration for the uses of the comical in modern Arabic theatre, and a model for the definition of comedy and its functions. The plays that will be discussed are Alî Janâh and his servant Quffa, by Alfred Farag, and The wines of Babylon, by Fârûq Khûrshîd, both written in Egypt in the 1960s.

It is well-known that the modern tradition of Arabic theatre, which started in the second half of the 19th century, was partly based on the heritage of popular 211 literature, and especially of the living tradition of storytelling, romances and folklore, not only with the aim of fostering the interest of the audience, but also to strengthen the roots of the new art form in the indigenous literary tradition. However, as we will see below, particularly in the case of comedy, models from ‘classical’ literature were adopted, too. For both popular literature and high-brow literature the Thousand and one nights provided material for playwrights in modern times. Therefore, it is useful to proceed first with a brief overview of the comical element in the Arabic literary tradition.

The Arabic heritage of comic literature.

In the Arabic literary tradition comical themes and motifs can be found in both popular literature and artistic genres, in prose and poetry, in written texts and performed texts, in highly stylized anecdotes and light verse. The generic characteristics of these forms of literature are of course not irrelevant for the type and function of comical motifs. Scabrous verse, for instance, has a purpose differing from that of sophisticated poetic puns or exemplary anecdotes, although they may sometimes be written by the same author and for the same audience. On the other hand, the boundaries between the various genres were not always clearly drawn, since poetry was often integrated into prose anecdotes, and elements of popular literature infiltrated into the more stylized forms of entertainment literature. It is therefore not always easy to formulate precise definitions of concepts of the comical and to relate them to specific genres. Humor usually plays on several of its many manifestations, such as linguistic puns, the grotesque, absurdity, the inversion of roles, stereotypal figures, etcetera, without being confined to one aspect only. So as not to be drawn into a broad discussion of comic concepts, we will limit our discussion here to three genres which are relevant to our subject and which are essential for an analysis of the comical in the stories of the Thousand and one nights.1

1. Anecdotes in adab literature; poetry and short anecdotes are an integral part of prose works of the adab-genre, literary handbooks of different sizes containing the standard knowledge of the cultural elite, either incorporated in general surveys, or treated in specialized works. Of course, the anecdotes, exemplary tales, traditional tales about historic figures, illustrative tales, conform to the conventions of the genre, that is, they fulfil the requirements of style, politeness, and cultural and intellectual refinement. The plots of the anecdotes are often based on linguistic puns, the inventiveness of the author or the heroes, and the extraordinary events that are narrated. Comic tales fit 212

into this framework, since they are intended to arouse wonder about bizarre situations and about the skill and originality of the author.

2. Literature for entertainment; the domain of entertainment literature is vast and varied. It consists of works containing light verse and prose, an offshoot of adab, but also tales of wonder and love romances, which are often marked by influences of the colloquial language or dialects, and which served as entertainment for the elite, and popular romances and stories which were transmitted in the oral circuits of storytelling. Comic elements were of pivotal importance in all these genres, as they were meant to evoke amusement and emotions. In tales and romances, the main devices used to achieve comic effects were references to gender roles, magic, the inversion of roles, disguise, tricks, miraculous interventions, the grotesque, the cleverness or stupidity of heroes, and the subversion of the symbols of authority. Although linguistic jokes were still prominent, stylistic refinement and formal artisticity were less pronounced than in the case of adab literature, apart from artful uses of colloquial idioms. A special sub-genre in this domain are the many rogue- stories built around the figures of well-known (historical?) folk heroes, such as Mercury Ali (Alî al-Zaybaq) and Ahmad al-Danaf.

3. Shadow theatre; popular literature originated at the interface of written and oral literature. Romances and tales were in the first instance themselves performed and were part of performances which could include impersonations, interaction with the audience, poetic digressions, music and song. As some scholars have observed, the dividing line between ‘literature’ and ‘theatre’ was not always clear. Narrative material migrated from popular literature to adab, and many romances and tales were originally conceived to be narrated orally, using texts only as a mnemonic support. At the theatrical end of the scale were the well-known shadowplays of Egyptian popular culture in the Mamluk period, especially those by Ibn Danyâl (d.1310). These plays contain the purest form of comic effects divested of their artistic sophistication and are notoriously obscene, invective and subversive, explicitly meant to shock and challenge bourgeois taste, public order and manifestations of authority. As a genre they come closest to the Bakhtinian concept of the grotesque, fulfilling an essential function of popular culture. The shadowplays are usually seen as a constituent element of the Arabic theatrical tradition.2

This brief inventory shows the contours of the genres in which comic narrative techniques were practiced and in which the cultural and social functions of the comic were expressed. It shows a gliding scale from artistic and sophisticated techniques to explicitly rude and confronting forms. Within this 213 scale, elements can be discerned which are common to most genres, in varying degrees, and which can be summarized as follows: first, humorous motifs are often used to evoke a sense of wonder and amazement, unsettling rigid visions of reality; second, a varied reservoir of narrative techniques was used, ranging from linguistic ingenuity to the use of stereotypal characters and events; third, there is often an element of subversion in the usages of the comic. In adab literature this may lead only to a relativizing of the personal authority of the caliph, for instance, while in rogue-stories and romances symbols of authority are challenged without being devastated, and in the shadow theatre authority is uncompromisingly satyrized and vilified. These common characteristics are too general to allow a precise typification of an Arabic concept of the comic, but they can serve as a framework for further inquiry. After all, the genres mentioned above are all included in the various versions of the Thousand and one nights, at least the ones which were extant in the 19th century and which could be drawn upon by modern playwrights. In the following we will concentrate on one element specifically: the relationship between the comic and forms of authority.

Authority and the comic in the ‘Story of Shahriyâr and his brother’.

What we commonly call the Thousand and one nights is in fact a huge corpus of tales and stories of various genres and types which are directly or indirectly linked to a core of stories which bears the title Alf layla wa-layla and which has been expanded, revised and supplemented in many different ways, times and places. The relationship between the stories and the philological status of the various texts is often uncertain, and therefore narratological research cannot lead to any coherent and definitive conclusions regarding the work as a whole. This observation also bears upon the forms of the comic, which appears in many guises throughout the various compilations, but which cannot be reduced to a single coherent concept. As different genres alternate in the work, so does the use of comic techniques and motifs, in accordance with the genres of adab prose literature, farce, scabrous poetry, linguistic puns, jocular tales and satyre, which were well-known in the Arabic literary tradition. We will proceed here with a brief discussion of the framestory and three stories which served as a source of inspiration for the plays that will be examined below and in which the comic element plays a prominent role.3

Although the relationship between the framestory and the chain of stories it encompasses is not always clear, apart perhaps from the most ancient core, it is impossible not to refer to the story of ‘Shahriyâr and his brother’ in a 214 narratological analysis of the Thousand and one nights, since it contains, so to speak, the paradigm of storytelling which pervades the collection as a whole and which recurs as a motif in many separate stories. At another occasion, I have typified the framestory as a parody, that is, as a conscious play with the conventions of a specific genre.4 In Arabic and Persian literature, one of the well-known genres of prose fiction fell under the category of ‘instructive tales for princes’, in which the initiation of a prince is described preparing him for his task as a king. The works of this type share a common form - a framestory containing a series of exemplary tales - and a common ideology, emphasizing order versus chaos, rationality versus emotions, and patriarchal authority versus the frivolity and wiles of women. The framestory of the Thousand and one nights comments on this genre by using its formal aspects, but inverting the main roles, since the prince, Shahriyâr, is not warned against the shrewdness of women by a bright and sensible vizier, but rather taught by an equally bright and sensible young woman to accept the feminine element in his life, restoring a distorted vision of the world. By making use of the inversion of roles, strict patriarchal authority is presented as an aberration, endangering the continuity of society.

The effect of parody, which has proved so hailsome for Shahriyâr, is reached by opposing the rigidity of the patriarchal attitude, upheld by a regime of violence, to the powers of the mind, in the form of storytelling, fantasy, and eroticism. Shahrazâd confronts Shahriyâr with a world of fiction, in which reality is juxtaposed to a metaphorical interpretation of life, redeeming Shahriyâr from his narrow, obsessive outlook of life by showing him the diversity of the world, the ingenuity of men and women, and the unpredictability of events. To achieve this, Shahrazâd follows three main strategies: referring to the complexities of the relations between men and women; evoking a world of strangeness, wonder and coincidences; and exploiting the imaginative force of comedy. Thus, the framestory teaches us that the comic is an integral component of a complex of narrative strategies, used to realise the essential transformative function of storytelling. This complex consists of the opposition of male and female roles, and rationality and irrationality, with the ultimate aim of unravelling the symbols of a formal, rigid and violent authority.

To achieve this aim, Shahrazâd utilizes a world of symbols and metaphors, an imaginary world which serves as an alternative to Shahriyâr’s ‘reality’. She creates an illusion, but it is an illusion which interferes with the course of events. Shahrazâd builds a symbolic system which seems to be detached from reality, but which in fact is an indispensable complement to reality, without which the world would lose its meaning and society would lose its regenerative dynamic. Moreover, this system is a requirement for the exertion of royal authority: without 215 being embedded in a fictional realm, authority will relapse into the practice of violence and death. Thus, Shahrazâd seems to argue, the comical is linked to the interplay between authority and imagination, exploring the connections between formal status and human character, between illusion and reality. It is this triangle - authority, illusion and comedy - which in the framestory completes the transformation of the seemingly fateful tragedy of the empire into a blissful future, from a situation of stagnation and doom into redemption and happiness.

Ma’rûf the cobbler and Alî Janâh al-Tabrîzî.

The powerful strategies of Shahrazâd have not only saved the empire, but also turned her world into the quintessential world of make-believe. Authors from all eras have exploited the imaginative force of the world of the Thousand and one nights to create their own fantasies and juxtapose reality with various fictional realms. In Arabic literature the Thousand and one nights remains connected with the birth of the modern tradition of Arabic theatre which occurred in the second half of the 19th century. Writers such as al-Naqqâsh (1817-1855) and al-Qabbânî (1833-1922) were among the first to use material from the Thousand and one nights in their plays. They were followed by a number of playwrights in the 1920s and 1930s who produced popular comedies and vaudeville entertainment. In the 1950s and 1960s, following the general trend in Arabic theatre, the narrative motifs of the Thousand and one nights were used for more serious projects of psychological exploration and social and political criticism. But here, too, the comical element comes to the fore, as a means to unravel the delusions of authorities and ideologies.5

An important play belonging to the category of social criticism wrapped in the form of comical theatre, which is illustrative of Egyptian trends in the 1960s, is Alî Janâh al-Tabrîzî and his servant Quffa, written by the prominent playwright Alfred Farag. To some extent this play epitomizes the function of the Thousand and one nights as a reservoir of ‘archetypes’ of Arabic comic theatre, combining the elements of farce, stereotypal characters, and a socio-political appeal.6 Alî Janâh al-Tabrîzî is a youth from a wealthy family who has squandered his inheritance and has now become impoverished, since his former friends refuse to help him. He meets Quffa, a poor cobbler, to whom he offers an ‘invisible meal’. Alî and Quffa decide to travel together to the Qâf-mountain to try their luck. On the way, Quffa has to pay all expenses - he has saved some money in a secret pocket - and when they arrive in a rich city, with a lot of beggars, Alî lavishly distributes alms to the poor. In a confrontation with a merchant and the chief-merchant Alî pretends to be a rich trader, and when he meets the princess 216 of the town in the chief-merchant’s shop, he tears the cloths apart to impress her. Quffa tells the beggars that they expect the arrival of an immensely rich caravan. Now the merchants rival for Alî’s friendship and lend him as much money as he wants, which Alî in his turn showers upon the beggars. The merchants complain to the king that the beggars start opening shops for themselves, but the king decides to test Alî instead of punishing him. He shows him a valuable gem, but Alî smashes it and says that it is worthless. The princess falls in love with him and receives permission to marry him. Quffa says that he has more right to marry the princess, since their ‘achievements’ were all the result of his ‘investments’. He contests the division of roles into master and servant, but Alî only replies that their hierarchical relationship is just ‘the nature of things’.

Here a brief intermezzo is inserted concerning a legal case about the contents of a bag. Act two begins in Alî’s home with a row between Alî and Quffa, the latter demanding his share in their properties, the former now claiming that he in fact has a real caravan. Meanwhile the king and the vizier ask the princess to try and find out the truth about the caravan. Quffa decides to try and become king himself and betrays Alî for thirty silver dirhams. However, when Alî is on the verge of being hanged - asking permission to bequeath his ‘caravan’- Quffa dresses up as the chief of a caravan and demands Alî’s release. The merchants, fearing to lose their ‘loans’, set Alî free. Quffa, Alî and the princess leave the town to join the ‘caravan’.

The material for this play is taken from several stories of the Thousand and one nights. The motif of the youth squandering his fortune occurs in several Thousand and one nights stories, for example in the story of ‘Alî Shâr and Zumurrud’.7 Here, too, the hero is forced to go into the world and find salvation, usually in the company of a clever slave-girl. The invisible meal is copied from the ‘Barber’s tale of his sixth brother’,8 in which Ja‘far al-Barmakî treats a beggar on an imaginary banquet. The intermezzo about the bag is modelled after the story of ‘Alî the Persian’9, in which two litigants struggle over the contents of a bag - allegedly full of miraculous objects - which in the end turns out to be almost empty. Finally, the motif of the imaginary caravan is taken from the story of ‘Ma‘rûf the cobbler’10, in which Ma‘rûf is magically transported to a strange town, where he pretends to be a wealthy merchant awaiting a rich caravan. He is welcomed by the merchants and the king and is eventually married to the princess, who finds out his secret, but does not betray him. In the Thousand and one nights story the ending is different: Ma‘rûf finds a magic ring with which he is able to have his imagined caravan materialize. Also absent from the play is the theme of the wicked wife, which sets in motion Ma‘rûf’s adventurous journey. 217

It is clear that the story of the play is tightly interwoven with the Thousand and one nights, especially in its use of comic motifs. First, several stereotypes are used which have a comic connotation, such as the squanderous youth, who is an optimistic lover of life and beauty, seeking after justice, intelligent and a talented actor (according to Farag’s own description in the postscript to the play); and the clever, roguish servant, simple of heart, realistic, a lover of life, and prone to satyre. Both show the characteristics of the trickster, a familiar figure in this type of entertaining stories. Then there are the merchants, the king and the vizier, who are greedy, attached to status and wealth, lacking social sensitiveness and inclined to manipulation and the use of disciplinary measures. Second, among the more farcical motifs are the recurrent references to material things, such as food, drink and money. These motifs are used to stress the contrast between material life and ideals, realism and idealism, and the powerful and the powerless.

The main motif taken from the Thousand and one nights, however, is the motif of lies and illusions, which is nicely introduced with the episode of the invisible meal. This brief passage shows the main theme of the play, which is the way in which a lie relates to reality, or, more precisely, the way in which illusion intervenes to shape reality and influence the course of events. Alî’s lie creates an illusion which is meant to produce a vision which is mistaken for reality. It is meant to shape this reality by producing what is coveted by those who are deluded, even if it does not materialize. In the episode of the invisible meal the illusion takes the place of food. The invisible meal characterizes the different functions of Alî and Quffa, the latter being connected with food and money, the former with the way the couple presents itself to the world outside. Alî is the master of the lie, responsible for turning Quffa’s ‘investment’ into a profitable representation, which not only deludes Quffa, but also the merchants, the vizier and the king. The illusion is traded for money, which is subsequently distributed to the poor. Alî’s play with representations is of course inspired by the observation that in general it is representations which determine the course of events. While the desire for material things are the basic drive of life, it is illusions which determine the structuring of this desire and the distribution of its fulfilment. Thus, the wealth of the merchants and the authority and power of the king are based on illusions, on representations of reality that are presented as the ‘natural’ state of affairs. It requires a counter-representation to break the ‘spell’ and unmask the real character of the powerful and the wealthy. This manipulation of illusions by a deceit is subtly demonstrated by Alî’s sustained lie, which not only unravels the illusionary hierarchy imposed by the king, but also proofs its power in ‘producing’ reality by shaping the relationship between Alî 218 and Quffa. Even if Quffa knows that their ‘representation’ is a lie, in the end he cannot escape from it, since it has turned their imaginary relationship into a real relationship. Alî invested his imagination, Quffa invested his money, but in the end they are not equal partners. However, in the final scene, Quffa’s ‘realism’ is required to save Alî from being executed. It appears that Quffa’s realism needed Alî’s dreaming to achieve something, but Alî’s lie can prove fatal without Quffa’s pragmatic ingenuity. This is only realized by perpetuating the lie, or at least leave the possibility open that the illusion might be true.

Mechanisms of power

Every serious Egyptian play of the 1960s, the heyday of Nasserism, contains an element of social critique, and in this Alî Janâh is no exception. It is quite obvious that the play with illusions is meant to make visible the mechanisms of power and the delusory basis on which power hierarchies and the distribution of wealth are built. The merchants and the king are represented as mere avaricious egoistic and manipulative crooks, exploiting the people for their own benefit. But the play also shows the function of what may be called ‘ideology’, that is, the effect of presenting utopian visions, based on the promise of wealth, disturbing the natural order of society. The hope for the promised bliss unsettles the regular mechanisms of power, albeit only because of greed, and can immediately influence the distribution of material wealth, since this distribution had been determined by an illusionary representation all along. Ideologies can change the state of things just by representing reality in a different way, by giving hope and by speculating on the nature of human beings. Whether the actual promise is fulfilled is not disclosed by the author, who also refuses to judge whether the manipulation of reality by using lies should be condemned or praised. Of course, Farag’s treatment of these issues can be related to the revolutionary message of Gamâl Abd al-Nâsir, who injected a new dynamism into Egyptian society by presenting a new vision of the future.

Before we proceed to discuss the more general aspects of the relationship between Alî Janâh and the Thousand and one nights, we will first turn our attention to another Egyptian play from the 1960s which shows a similar concern for the manipulation of illusions.

The wines of Babylon.

Fârûq Khûrshîd’s play The wines of Babylon was first published in the journal al-Masrah in 1967.11 It relates the ascendancy of the good-for-nothing 219

Habazlambazaza, who is the ‘hero’ of the play but hardly acts himself. He appears in intermittent monologues explaining events and revealing their inner logic. His ascendancy to the position of ‘amîr’ at the court of Caliph Hârûn al-Rashîd is mainly realized by the women around him, his mother, the crafty Dalîla, and the slave-girl Yasmîn. He had bought Yasmîn on the slave-market and describes her as: ‘Yasmin, the belle of Baghdad and its future princess... Yasmin, enchanting dream of the orient: the magic ring which controls the hidden genie who appears before you whenever you rub the ring and - Hey presto, to hear is to obey, and the whole world is yours to command; ask and it shall be granted, for nothing is beyond his power, and in his language the word Impossible does not exist. The eternal Yasmin who lives in every age and in every place. The wondrous Yasmin who hides in every woman, but only reveals herself in a rare few... a remarkable few.’ [p. 466] She is clad in a belly-dancer’s costume and enchants the men with her charms. However, she is not averse of using fraudulous means to achieve her aims: the ascendancy of Habazlambazaza in the palace hierarchy.

Habazlambazaza’s adversaries are Alâ al-Dîn Abû al-Shâmât, the adjudant of Hârûn al-Rashîd, and the famous rogues and chieftains Hasan Shûmân, Ahmad al-Danaf and Alî al-Zaybaq. These knights are the faithful servants of the caliph, but through the machinations of Yasmîn, Dalîla and Habazlambazaza’s mother they fall into disfavour with the caliph and are removed from their positions. Habazlambazaza is aware of the emptiness of his achievement, but he is convinced that in the end he will become the idol of the people.

The second part of the play consists of a dialogue between a modern Dalîla, presumably the chief editor of a newspaper, and Alâ al-Dîn Abû al-Shâmât. Alâ al-Dîn reproaches her for her press campaign against his person and asks for the reason why she initiated it, now that he has already lost all his functions and power. Dalîla answers him that what she needs from him is his support for the new ‘regime’, since ‘we’ have the power and the glory, but ‘you’ have the people’s heart. The new regime needs Alâ al-Dîn’s reputation and respect to prevent the populace from undermining order and standing in the way of progress. If he would lend his reputation to Habazlambazaza, the people will refrain from mutiny against their leaders and the principles. If Alâ al-Dîn is willing to join them, he will have to do nothing and will live a rich and happy life. If he refuses, he wil suffer a fate similar to that of Ahmad al-Danaf (concentration camp), Hasan Shûmân (false rumors), and Alî al-Zaybaq (starvation). Alâ al-Dîn says that their lives may have been destroyed, but that their reputations are still unbroken and their adventures are still recited by the people.

The play ends with a monologue by Habazlambazaza in which he explains that 220 he is the one ‘who taught [mankind] how to be Adam, and Eve, and Cain and the serpent and Christ, all in one. I am the core of man and his reality.’12 He had to exist, so that the people should know the glaring truth that ‘all things belong to the will, and it lies within our power to remove the obstacles in our way, through the ideals and principles which every man must embrace - if not by conviction then by every other means. Yes, the means... our prime weapon. And when the means are everything, man will disappear and they will remain,’ at the expense of ‘good people’.13

The story of this play refers to the Thousand and one nights and more specifically to a cluster of stories from Egyptian folklore about four famous rogues, Alâ al-Dîn Abû al-Shâmât, Ahmad al-Danaf, Hasan Shûmân and Alî al-Zaybaq, and the similarly roguish Crafty Dalîla. These stories are included in some versions of the Nights and contain various adventures of the popular heroes, who try to outsmart others and each other, hoping to win the favour of the caliph. By using all kinds of tricks they succeed in acquiring a function as officer of the guard, challenging the existing power structure to attract the caliph’s attention. The story of Alâ al-Dîn is the story of the rise and fall of a hero, combined with a romantic love story, evoking the vicissitudes of fate, the wiles of women, the evil intentions of rivals, and the courage and inventiveness of the rogue figure. The characters and events are quite stereotypal and their adventures are generally entertaining and as a rule comprise various comic elements, such as the satyrizing of authorities, ingenuous tricks, disguises, inverted roles, practical jokes and farcical plots. Through these humorous episodes, they reflect the attitude of the population towards the powers-that-be and the role of popular culture in expressing the people’s feelings. They do not really represent the Bakhtinian grotesque, as an expression of the people’s contempt for the symbols of power, but they do unravel the false pretensions of the powerful and the mechanisms they use to buttress their position.

It is this complex of generic and thematic characteristics that shapes the paradigmatic framework of Fârûq Khûrshîd’s play. It aspires to analyse the mechanisms of power from the perspective of the population, unmasking corruption and nepotism among the elite, which consists of notables and a caliph who are only interested in the pleasures of life and the preservation of their privileged position. It denounces the manipulative practices of those who exploit corruption to advance their interests, including the press, which can break political careers. The stereotypes of power are transplanted from the folkloric past to the present, thus conveying popular critique of power abuse to the current situation in Egypt, and evoking the traditional distrust of the powerful among the populace. 221

Within the process of Habazlambazaza’s ascendancy to prominency, the motif of lies and illusion plays a crucial role. As in Alî Janâh, power and authority are not based on solid ideological foundations or institutional formalities, but rather on arbitrariness and manipulation. Power is based on betraying others and of constructing reputations and images. The role of Dalîla as the great manipulator of representations is crucial: she shapes events by the way she represents them in her media, knowing full well that the reality that is produced is nothing but an empty image. In her bitter cynism, she holds that ‘ideals’ are not an end, but rather a means to acquire power. They are the illusions that should be manipulated to construct and preserve positions of authority, protecting them against the possible ‘disobedience’ of the people. In her dialogue with Alâ al-Dîn, Dalîla says: ‘Like you, I believe in ideals, I believe in slogans and shining phrases, but unlike you I know they are only a means, not an end.’14 And: ‘Principles and ideals are the means of the daytime hours, out in society, and before the public, and in speeches and newspaper articles.’15

As in Alî Janâh, in The wines of Babylon, too, power is depicted as a form of deceit and the manipulation of ideas. These can be deconstructed by counter- deceit and counter-manipulation, by deconstructing them in the theatre, making use of the vast reservoir of comic techniques, motifs and stereotypes, which contrasts the perspective of the powerless and the powerful. Although The wines of Babylon comprises the components of traditional comic tales and refers to a comic subtext, it can be questioned if the play should be categorized as a comedy, because the bitterness of the political critique diminishes the comical tone. But it is perhaps in this generic hybridity that the power of the message lies. The comical metatext of the Thousand and one nights is contrasted to the bitter reality of the present, in which even comedy has lost its frivolity.

Conclusions

The discussion above shows how material from the Thousand and one nights was reworked to shape the narrative framework and provide various motifs of two modern Egyptian plays. It allows us to draw some general conclusions about the influence of the Thousand and one nights on modern Arabic theatre as a metatext defining not only the texts of the plays themselves, but also their reception. As we have seen, within this process of intertextuality, the comic component plays a predominant role.

First, the stories of the Thousand and one nights lend themselves quite well 222 for theatrical adaptations because they are imbued with a notion of performativity. In the cycle itself the stories are transmitted orally, by a narrator who is not the author, but only a conveyor of the tales. This contributes to the generic instability of the text, resulting in a wide variety of different versions, extensions, reworkings, and imitations. Some of the stories were known from the oral circuits, with their interactive reception and reshaping of the narratives, and thus were already part of a proto-theatrical tradition. The stories were conceived and presented as performances, provoking an immediate response from the listeners/ readers. This was achieved by using various techniques, of which comic effects were among the most important. It is these performative narrative techniques which make the material so suitable for theatrical adaptation.

Second, the world of the Thousand and one nights is intimately associated with forms of exoticism, evoking a glorious past which is part of the collective memory. The appeal of this exoticism cannot only be found in in its aesthetic aspects, such as extravagant settings, colorful, luxurious clothing, hints at eroticism, or precious objects, but also in its familiarity as a shared history. The Thousand and one nights provides an image of a past and an atmosphere which are familiar to the audience, enabling the author to project a literary form and literary themes into a well-known historical setting. In this way links and contrasts between the present and the past can be suggested from which the main narrative suspense is derived: the past as a mirror of the present. It is in this mirroring effect that the comic element can play its role.

Third, the Thousand and one nights provides the playwright with a rich stock of stereotypal settings and characters. The court of Hârûn al-Rashîd, the rich elite, the poor scoundrel, the rogue, the gorgeous slave-girl, the adventurous scion of the wealthy class, merchants and viziers, they can all be taken from the Thousand and one nights with their respective peculiarities and functions, appealing to images that are familiar to the public. They convey a sense of social differentiation, arbitrary power, heroism, good and evil, and gender roles which immediately evoke specific connotations, which in turn can be linked to stereotypal figures and images of the present. Of course, such a vast reservoir of stereotypes is a Fundgrube for comic literature, since the play with prejudices and fixed visions of ‘others’ is one of the main techniques of comedy.

Fourth, the Thousand and one nights provides author and audience with a general discourse of the challenging of the symbols of authority. The Thousand and one nights presents authority in its most pure, unadulterated, arbitrary and violent form, contrasting it to vulnerability, inventiveness and beauty. It thus enables the playwright to convey a message of social justice, not only 223 by juxtaposing images of power and powerlessness, but also by referring to Shahrazâd’s courage and insight, and to the subversive components of popular culture. Projecting this critical message into the past can provide protection against censorship and persecution, but it can also enhance the feeling among the audience that social justice is part of their political and cultural heritage, and not something created ex nihilo or imported from foreign civilizations. The struggle for justice for the people is as old as history itself, and Shahrazâd and her many heroes are its symbol. As has been noted bove, within this struggle, comedy has always had a crucial role to play, for the deconstruction of the mechanisms of power.

Finally, all these aspects converge in the mighty figure of Shahrazâd, who is an exotic stereotype and a cultural icon representing the discourse of liberation. This discourse is of course of primary importance, since it conveys a concept of literature, of narrative and of symbolic structures. It shows a world which interacts with a world of fantasy and which is at least partly governed by the power of the imagination. Shahrazâd confronts Shahriyâr with an imaginary world which shows him how his life is founded on the obsessive belief that the imagination is no more than illusions and disillusions, a belief that has disrupted the balance between reality and imagination in his personality. By re-integrating the two components of Shahriyâr’s personality and vision of life into a coherent symbolic system, represented by the chain of stories, a new regenerative dynamism is installed. As we can see, in the Thousand and one nights and in the two plays discussed above, this play with the relationship between reality and imagination - in the form of lies, illusions or stories - is a very powerful narrative device, revealing the inherent function of storytelling as a means to manipulate reality. It is here, perhaps, that the most essential influence of Shahrazâd must be sought, as a model of the power of the imagination and narrating against forms of repression and deceit. After all, this is what playwrights such as Alfred Farag and Fârûq Khûrshîd seemingly hope to achieve. And for them, as for Shahrazâd, the comic is one of the most effective weapons.

The question that remains to be asked is if the two plays under study should be considered as real ‘comedies’, instead of plays merely making use of comic elements. In both cases, the happy ending is quite doubtful and the message that the play wants to transmit is bitter rather than comforting or optimistic. Still, it is the reference to the Thousand and one nights and its narrative world, its sense of irony, parody and subversiveness which in these two cases save the comic purport of the plays. The narrative context secures the comic nature of the unravelling of the intertwinement of illusions and power. 224

Notes 1 For a general outline of the various genres of the Arabic literary tradition, see: R. Allen, The Arabic literary heritage; the development of its genres and criticism, Cambridge, 1998. 2 See: S. Moreh, Live theatre and dramatic literature in the medieval Arab world, New York, 1992. 3 For a discussion of the textual history of the Thousand and one nights, see: U. Marzolph/ R. van Leeuwen, The Arabian nights encyclopedia, 2 vols, Santa Barbara, 2004; for a summary of the story of ‘Shahriyâr and his brother’ and references concerning the story, see: id., vol. 2, pp. 370 ff., and the index. 4 R. van Leeuwen, ‘The art of interruption: The Thousand and one nights and Jan Potócki,’ Middle Eastern Literatures, vol. 7 (2004), no. 2, pp. 183-198. 5 For the connections between the Thousand and one nights and the emergence of modern Arabic theatre, see: Marzolph/ Van Leeuwen (2004), vol. 2, article ‘Theater’, with references; M.M. Badawi, Modern Arabic drama in Egypt, Cambridge 1987; id., Early Arabic Drama, Cambridge 1988; R. Bencheneb, ‘Les dramaturges arabes et le récit-cadre des Mille et une nuits,’ Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée, vol. 18, (1974), pp.7-18; id., ‘ Les Milles et une nuits et les origines du théâtre arabe, Studia Islamica, vol. 40 (1974), pp.133-160; id., ‘Les Mille et une nuits et le théâtre arabe au Xxsiècle’, Studia Islamica, Vol. 45 (1977), pp.101-137 6 For this essay I have used the English translation by Roger Allen, since the Arabic text was not available to me at the time of writing: S. Kh. Jayyusi/ R. Allen (eds), Modern Arabic Drama; an Anthology, Bloomington/ Indianapolis 1995, pp. 305-351: A. Farag, ‘Ali Janah al-Tabrizi and his servant Quffa.’ 7 See Marzolph/ Van Leeuwen, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 100-101 (in the Bûlâq edition, nights 308-327). 8 Id., op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 120-1 (night 32). 9 Id., op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 99-100 (nights 294-296). 10 Id., op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 291-293 (nights 989-1000). 11 An English translation of the play can be found in M. Manzalaoui, Arabic Writing Today, vol. 3, Drama, Cairo 1977; references are to this translation. 12 Manzalaoui, op. cit., p. 507. 13 Id., op. cit., p. 507. 14 Id., op. cit., p. 496. 15 Id., op. cit., p. 497. 225

THE CONTRIBUTION OF YUSUF IDRIS’ AL-FARAFIR TO EGYPTIAN AND WORLD COMEDY

Marvin CARLSON

Although Yusuf Idris is one of the most widely read short-story writers of the Arab world, he also produced a significant body of drama, among which his 1964 work al-Farafir (The Flipflaps) holds the pre-eminent position, both for the richness and originality of its dramatic themes and construction but also because it is one of the first major attempts to explore the potential of a specificially Egyptian dramatic expression. Idris’ first three plays, written in the mid 1950s, were dramas of social realism, clearly reflecting the interests of the new era and in form and concerns very similar to the work of other contemporary Egyptian dramatists. The first two, both short, dealt with the sufferings of the poor and exploited while the third, Idris’ first full-length play Al-Lahza al-Harija (The Critical Moment, 1957) deals with the effects of the Suez war on a middle-class Egyptian family and a British soldier. During the seven years following this play, Idris wrote nothing more for the theatre, devoting himself instead to short stories and journalism. During this time, however, he later reported thatthe devoted much thought to the problem creation of a new kind of Egyptian drama, one that would be truly Egyptian both in subject matter and technique instead of the work based on Western models, which up until then had dominated both modern Egyptian drama and indeed modern Arabic drama in general. To this end he developed an approach, which he outlined and defended in an influential series of articles entitled Our Egyptian Theatre, published in 1965 in the leading literary periodical, al-Kitab.1

Actually the program Idris proposed in these articles, both in its motivation and its strategies, was not radically different from that suggested by al-Hakim in a preface to his drama Ya Tali al-Shajara/ The treeclimbers three years before, but the far great visibility of the journal al-Kitab brought these arguments to the forefront of Egyptian literary discussion and encouraged the idea, still widely held among writers on the modern Egyptian theatre, that al-Hakim’s drama remained essentially in the tradition of the European avant-garde (and in particular of its most recent manifestation, the Theatre of the Absurd), while Idris opened the way to a distinctly different, Egyptian-based mode of experimental drama.2

Certainly Idris’ rhetoric was perfectly adapted to the new nationalist and 226 populist spirit of post-Suez Egypt. Hitherto neglected folk and popular forms of entertainment not only began to receive unprecedented scholarly attention, they began also to attract the interest of experimental artists. The medieval Arabic oral rhymed narration, the maqama, began to attract the attention of modern poets, as did the shadow play tradition, the Karagoz, that was closely related to it. The remarkably complex and sophisticated thirteenth century shadow plays called babat, created by Ibn Daniyal in Cairo, were published for the first time in 1963. A highly developed performance consciousness was clearly apparent in these early works, indeed the introductory remarks to the first, Tayf al-Khayal/ The Shadow Spirit provide a significant defense of the power of theatrical embodiment, calling performance “a supreme art which by the very fact of substantion, will supersede that which is mere imagination.”3 Suddenly a native and popular performance tradition long predating the modern European-oriented theatre of the Middle East began to come to the attention of scholars and theatre artists of that region, with significant influence in the work of both.

Uniquely Egyptian

Idris’ series of articles in al-Kitab fitted perfectly into this new orientation. He argued that what had been accepted as the Egyptian drama up to the present time, traditional or experimental, successful or not, had been written according to Western models, and that the time had come to develop a drama that was uniquely Egyptian. Like the new government, he advocated a turning away from the traditional European-oriented “high art” to seek inspiration in indigenous local and folk manifestations, such as the maqama, the shadow theatre, or the village samir, a popular festival in which villagers gather to improvise entertainments involving singing, dancing and impersonation. Idris’s campaign to free himself from European traditions led him somewhat paradoxically but not inconsistently, to develop a strategy exactly parallel to that of an important segment of the European avant-garde, seeking a regeneration of the drama by a sophisticated reworking of popular and folk traditions.

In terms of physical staging, the most important source of Idris’ new concept was apparently the village samir, and its most important feature the breaking down of the barrier between performers and audience, so that the drama becomes a truly collective group experience instead of a remote illusory world created for passive spectators. In the prefatory notes to al-Farafir therefore he rejects the traditional fourth-wall proscenium theatre of the West, asking instead for a circle of audience members around the action, with performers emerging from this 227 circle and blending back into it as needed. He also suggested, like Brecht, that actors never lose themselves completely in the parts, but always remain in some measure a part of the surrounding community.

A major early Egyptian comic drama came to the attention of the Egyptian literary world just as Idris was writing al-Farfur, the shadow plays of the Cairo oculist Ibn Daniyal. Although Idris looked to the live performances of village culture for his general approach to staging, the surprisingly sophisticated Ibn Daniyal plays also clearly provided him with suggestive devices. The author who presents al-Farfur introduces the play and its main character just as the Presenter does in Ibn Daniyal’s theatre, and indeed the entrance of the clown figure Farfur seems directly modeled on the shadow clown Tayl al-Khayal, “swirling like a tornado, circling around the stage” and striking out randomly with his loud cracking stick. Of course the crudely physical, irreverent clown is a popular favorite in almost all folk literature. The Western drama has produced examples in every era, from classic Greece and Rome onward, but certainly Idris could also claim the figure as well grounded also in the Egyptian folk tradition. Not only the shadow theatre, as in the work of Ibn Daniyal, but the oral stories of the maqama and more recently, such popular turn-of-the-century folk entertainers like Ali al- Kassar and Najib al-Rihani, also relied strongly on this character type.

Like the Presenter in the traditional shadow play, the Author in al-Farafir remains basically outside the action, appearing only when needed to comment on the action or give it a push forward. Idris takes him in a quite new direction, however, first by suggesting that as the author-creator of this dramatic universe, he serves as a kind of God figure, although a highly impotent one, and secondly, having established this association, by having the author become younger and possessed of even less control and power with each successive appearance until he finally disappears from the universe of the play altogether. This leaves the play to spin on without an author in a manner clearly parallel to the universe spinning on without a controlling God, which the dark vision of the play continually suggests.

Absurd tradition

Al-Farafir, for all of Idris’ concerns to create a distinctly Egyptian work, shows distinct influences of the French so-called Theatre of the Absurd, as do many other plays created in the Arab world, and particularly in Egypt, Syria, and Morocco in the mid-1960s. Tayeb Saddiki pioneered this theatre in the Arab 228 world with his translations in 1957 of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Ionesco’s Amédée, while in the fall of 1962 the Egyptian avant-garde director Sad Ardash presented translations of Beckett’s Endgame and Ionesco’s The Chairs in Cairo. The play usually cited as the first Arabic example of the Theatre of the Absurd, Tawfiq al-Hakim’s Ya Tali ash-Shagara appeared in 1962 and was inspired in part, its author claimed, by Ionesco and Beckett plays al-Hakim had seen in Paris in 1957, but the translations and performances in Cairo and elsewhere in the early 1960s brought the style of these dramatists into general circulation in the Arab theatre world.

When the Author/God figure in al-Farafir departs, like the missing Godot, from his world, he leaves behind The Master and Farfur, who will almost certainly in their cross-talk, their routines, and their desperate and ultimately unsuccessful quest for purpose and meaning suggest to any modern theatre-goer Beckett’s absurdist clowns Vladimir and Estragon. I will return presently to this parallel, but for the moment must remark that both Beckett and Idris are here both drawing upon comic prototypes that go far back in the history of comedic performance. Roman comedy often utilized contrasting servant types, one heavy and dull, the other sharp-witted and mercurial, a comic pairing that was repeated in the Commedia dell’arte, in Molière, and on into the many contrasting clowns of vaudeville and early film comedy such as Laurel and Hardy and Abbot and Costello. Equally basic to the Western dramatic tradition was the pairing of master and servant for comic purposes, the craft and wiliness of one countering the financial and social power of the other.

The parallels between the situations in al-Farafir and Waiting for Godot create a particularly close bond between these two experimental works, but this by no means diminishes Idris’ claim to have drawn upon Egyptian and Arabic source material. The contrasting comic pair, like the subversive clown, is found as widely in the Arabic tradition as they are in the comic repertoire of Europe. The wily Karagoz and overbearing Hacivad of the shadow theatre are found, in many forms throughout the Middle Eastern puppet tradition, and the most popular and familiar characters in the work of Najib al-Rihani, who may be said to have founded modern Egyptian comedy at the opening of the twentieth century are the pompous Kish Kish Bey and his servant and bodyguard Zu’rab.

Idris, perhaps in the spirit of the absurd, suggested that the two acts of al- Farafir could be played in either order, as some readers have also suggested for Waiting for Godot, but I would strongly disagree with this in both cases. Despite the repetitions and sense of stasis generated by both plays, there is a 229 clear progression, a deepening in both plays. This may be clearly seen in the evolution of the Author, who appears in the first act as a fullgrown man, then at half his original size, then as an offstage voice. In the second act other offstage voices inform the Master that the Author, like Godot “left a long time ago” for parts unknown and may return “tomorrow or maybe the day after,” or “maybe in a thousand years” or indeed not at all. In fact, unlike Godot, he does return, later in this act, as what seems to be an infant wrapped in a bundle, but the bundle contains only smaller and smaller bundles until at the last nothing is left, like the famous onion of Peer Gynt.

There is also an important, and distinct progression in the contents of the two acts of al-Farafir. The first act centers on personal and domestic themes. It contains an extended sequence making fun of various possible professions the two protagonists might pursue. Farfur suggests the roles of intellectual, artist, singer, song-writer, lawyer, doctor, accountant, football player, announcer, Western-style beggar, thief, government official, engineer, taxi-driver, bus conductor, and police informer, each proposal sparking some amusing social commentary. Finally the Master settles on the profession of grave-digger. A life role selected, the two turn to the matter of marriage. This also gives rise to a variety of comic discussion and business, including rival feuding wives for the Master and a tall ugly cross- dressed man for Farfur, but at last both settle into domesticity, have children, and feel the need for housekeeping money. To provide business for grave-digging, the Master kills a volunteer from the audience, whom Farfur then refuses to bury, fleeing the stage. Thus ends the first act.

The second act moves to larger concerns, to history and then to the cosmos. When Farfur returns, after fifteen minutes according to him and centuries according to his master, he comes pushing a handcart with the rag and bone detritus of history, bits and pieces of guns, aircraft, and other instruments of oppression and destruction from Europe and America. He and the Master exchange news of their children. The Master boasts of his offspring Alexander, Napoleon, Mussolini and Hitler,who have become model grave-diggers, burying millions, while Farfur has provided the mostly dark-skinned slaves and victims of oppression. Seeking to discover a more positive social order they try reversing roles, both becoming servants, and then both becoming masters, none of which alternatives is found to be natural or satisfying.

A new model? 230

At last they come to the final position of Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot. Faced with a godless, meaningless, and pain-filled universe, they decide to commit suicide, but with very different results. Beckett’s tramps are thwarted in this project, as they are in any action they seek to pursue, and end the play in stasis, each with a bit of the broken rope they hoped to use for hanging themselves. The ending of al-Farafir is surely intended both to recall Godot and to present an alternative to it. Idris’ Master and Farfur also decide to end their suffering and questioning by hanging themselves, and nooses obligingly drop from the flies. They climb onto chairs, put their heads in the nooses, the light go out, and when they come on Farfur and his Master are dead, though still able to speak. They discover that they have become atoms, or even subatomic particles, condemned for all eternity to continue their relationship, the weaker Farfur spinning endlessly around his more powerful master. In vain the whirling and weeping Farfur calls out to the audience to find a solution. The curtain falls with him spinning, apparently forever. The stasis of Waiting for Godot has been replaced here by what seems to me an even darker picture, of a universe that is not without meaning, but one which has an all-too-clear organizing principle, the strong and the weak locked in an eternal and cruel relationship that extends from sub-atomic particles through man and out into the entire universe.

Whether Idris in al-Farafir has created, as he hoped, a model for a new mode of Egyptian comedy, he has surely achieved something else, the creation of one of the most powerful and darkest of the dark comedies of the late twentieth century. The German dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt, writing in 1954, at almost the same moment when Idris was developing his argument for a new drama, suggested that the modern world, anonymous and bureaucratic, no longer offered a dramatist the possibility of tragedy, although the tragic sense was still a central fact of life. This, Dürrenmatt argued, must now be sought in comedy, a dark comedy in which the senselessness and hopelessness of the world finds expression.4 Idris’ al-Farafir, it seems to me, is one of the most successful and powerful plays to fulfill that dark mission of modern comedy.

Notes 1 See Roger Allen, Critical Perspectives on Yusuf Idris, Three Continents Press, 1994. 2 See, for example, M.M. Badawi, Modern Arabic Drama, 74, p. 156. 3 Ibrahim Hamadah, ed., Khayal al-zill, Cairo, 1963, p. 144. 4 Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Writings on Theatre and Drama, (trans. H.M. Waidson) London, 1976, pp. 81-82. 231

BETWEEN COMEDY AND TRAGEDY The Grotesque in Tawfiq Al-Hakim’s ‘The Sultan’s Dilemma’

Hassan EL-MNIAI1

It is not an easy task for Theatre-Studies scholars to list all different genres of comedy from the first pioneers such as Cratinus, Eupolis, and Aristophanes, to the most recent models of twentieth-century comedy. There is no clear-cut definition of comedy. The rich diversity of comedy includes different forms of comicality, such as farce, satire, fabliaux, and parody, as well as forms of popular comedy such as the Commedia dell’arte. Like tragedy, comedy remains a problematic genre that is subject to numerous theoretical disputes. In this context, the tragic poet Friedrich Schiller maintains that comedy contains more noble objectives than tragedy, and that the latter in all its forms would be superficial or even impossible if comedy were to achieve its aims. But is it possible for comedy to do so?

The answer to such a puzzling question remains unattainable, for comedy escapes fixity and overly reductive stereotypes due to its dialectical oscillation between two tendencies: the separation from tragedy on the one hand, and the containment of the tragic on the other. This dialectical nature makes comedy an open genre that escapes finiteness and closure. Moreover, the different forms and names ascribed to modern comedy are integral parts of the new artistic and cultural dynamics of the ‘Serious Comedy’ that Diderot sees as a call for the death of tragedy and its replacement by comedy. The same tendency is also manifested in Surrealist and Absurd drama. In this context, Martin Esslin confirms that the Theatre of the Absurd is a comic theatre even though its subject matter is essentially serious, violent, and bitter. In The Death of Tragedy (1963) however, George Steiner expresses his scepticism towards the continuity of tragedy in the modern epoch, and suggests instead that dark comedy might be the suitable alternative form for contemporary writers. For the same reasons we find Ionesco naming his dramas ‘quasi-drama’ or ‘tragic-comedy’, for he firmly believes that the comic is tragic in its very essence, and the tragedy of modern Man invokes bitter laughter. The same thing can be said about the modern comedy of Samuel Beckett, who classified his English version of Waiting for Godot (1954) as a tragi-comedy, locating himself within an old trajectory that fuses the two genres together. 232

It is known that the concept of tragi-comedy was deployed for the first time by the comic playwright Plautus (184-251 BCE), in the prologue of his Amphitryon, which has mythical proportions and a rhythm that fuses light comedy and psychological elements. Its characters also blend sacred and human attributes. Yet Plautus’ emphasis is on contradictory aspects of life and the reversal of roles with the resulting comic effects such as the transformation of Mercury from the status of a God into a slave who is sold in the marketplace as a commodified object. Such emphasis on the contradictions that lie at the heart of human existence precipitated an artistic tendency that calls for the subversion of the outdated classical rules of tragedy. The result is the birth of tragi-comedy in Italy, England, and France since the sixteenth century. It also flourished in Germany with the advent of the Romantic Movement, before it became established as a contemporary dramatic genre that is criss-crossed by other theatrical sensibilities such as the absurd and the grotesque.

It is evident that the state of uncertainty that overwhelms Western Man, added to his anxiety, loneliness, and the pressure of religious, social, and political problematics, caused the fusion of comedy and tragedy. The Arab subject has always been at the heart of such changes, though from a subaltern position. The familiarity of Arab theatre makers with comic dialectics has been conspicuous since their earliest appropriation of the Western theatrical medium as manifested in its Italian form. Their deployment of European comedy started with the adaptation of The Miser from Molière by the Syrian author Marun Annakach who became the father of modern Arabic drama.

Hybridization

The historical development of Arabic theatre has been a vital source of artistic diversity at the level of dramatic writing, theatre making, and the implementation of theatrical discourse. Egyptian author Tawfiq Al-Hakim, who made use of tragedies as well as moral comedies, is an exemplary first instance of an Arab playwright who mediates between the Arab Self and its Western Other, and who believes that the Arabic heritage is part of our common human heritage. The Bewildered Sultan/The Sultan’s Dilemma 2 is one of Al-Hakim’s plays that can be described as a tragi-comedy due to the co-existence of tragic and satirical elements in its general structure. Such hybridization makes the play a modern drama with grotesque tendencies. And since the function of the grotesque transcends the limits of reality while striving to present a faithful image of the world, Al-Hakim explores grotesque elements through the representation of hierarchical power structures within the parameters of social criteria. 233

Through dramatic situations that subvert traditional power symbols, we observe the king’s being sold in the marketplace since he is declared a white slave who hasn’t been liberated by his owner. Ironically, a beautiful woman buys the enslaved king, while his corrupt minister’s lust for power is presented without limits. As to the judge, he is ready to violate the sanctity of the law when necessary…. Besides these characters, the play also presents other classes of society such as the shoemaker, the drinker, and the Mother-figure. The grotesque aspect of the play is achieved through these dramatic personae who are thrown into a world that masks the frailty of power structures (e.g., the king must be liberated in order to be eligible to perform his duty, and the character of the beautiful woman by the end of the play is found to be that of a noble woman, despite the previous biased attitudes that surrounded her).

If the grotesque is based on some general principles that fuse noble and evil characters together, and privileges the subversion of the centre by the agencies of marginality, part of its objective is also the foregrounding of egocentric bodies who are forced into being open toward the surrounding world. Thus the sultan begins as a closed body who becomes open toward the beautiful woman, for the two of them are victims. Their very presence within the course of the main event is determined by a satirical but tragic rhythm. For all these reasons, I classified this play as a comedy that is metaphorically grotesque, for its reading can be achieved through various intellectual, historical, political, and philosophical levels. In other words, the tragic structure of The Bewildered Sultan is based upon two characters that face their personal destinies. However, this structure is supplemented by a deeply rooted irony that is manifest in various situations such as • the affiliation of the white slaver’s destiny (death penalty) with Athaan al-Fajr; • the hangman’s rudeness because he sees in fulfilling his duty a task that deserves the acknowledgement of his condemned victim. That is why the hangman asks his victim to create the appropriate psychological conditions by not annoying him with tormenting questions, inviting him for a drink, and then singing for him so that he can perform his duty in an accurate way; • the Sultan is sold for a second time by the very same white slaver; • the judge declares that the Sultan is a barren and unprofitable commodity who is not worth even the price of a mule; • selling the Sultan creates ironic situations since he is considered the utmost absurd spectacle in the world. Conversely, the bar owner sees the enslaved Sultan as an opportunity to attract customers, while the shoemaker sees him as a burden since the Sultan does not know how to mend shoes. Moreover, a mother refuses to buy him for her child since he is not suited to be a child’s toy. 234

These are some exemplary scenes that construe the play’s conflictual situations along with its subversive positions and tragic dimensions.

Metaphorical undertaking

All these phenomena prove that Al-Hakim’s theatrical discourse is not concerned with an historical subject per se, but with the human implications of such relationships as that between the beautiful woman and the Sultan, who vainly strives to achieve a heroic position via his awareness of his plight and submission to the law. At the end, he realises that such nobleness exists only in simple people, like the beautiful woman who is tormented by the general opinion but firmly resists all prejudice, unlike the corrupt minister and the judges. And when the Sultan wants to give her back the amount that she paid to purchase him, she not only refuses the money but also the corundum that he presented to her as a gift. As a result, the Sultan is shocked into awareness and before leaving says to her, “I will never ever forget that I was once your slave” (176).

The beautiful woman recognizes the disparity between her distorted image in public opinion and her real image that was unmasked by the Sultan during their brief encounter. For that reason, she firmly defended her right to own the Sultan with his proper consent. But when the Sultan asks her about his duties while residing in her house, her answer is intricately informed by wisdom and tolerance: “As simple as that: You are a Sultan during the day. So, I shall deliver you to the State the whole day. Yet when the night falls, come back to me.” (122). Through this answer that comes right before the Sultan’s statement (I will never ever forget that I was once your slave), and the beautiful woman’s declaration (for the sake of the law, Sir), the two victims reach their proper redemption and transcend their painful tragic predicaments. All these compel us to confirm once again that The Bewildered Sultan is a metaphorical undertaking that is based upon an ancient historical event. But Tawfiq Al-Hakim transposes it to our contemporary scene with a grotesque tendency that aims at reconstructing the Arabic/Egyptian society rather than reproducing a homogeneous image of such a society.

(Translated from Arabic by Khalid Amine)

Notes 1 Dr. Hassan El Mniai, Senior Lecturer of Theatre Studies at the Faculty of Humanities, Dhar El-Mehras, Fez 2 Tawfik Al-Hakim, The bewildered Sultan (Almatbaa An-namoudajiya), Cairo, n.d.. The English translation, 1981, carries the title The Sultan’s Dilemma. 235

PERFORMING ARISTOPHANES’ LYSISTRATA ON THE ARABIC STAGE

By Marina KOTZAMANI

Aristophanes’ Lysistrata is one of the world’s foremost anti-war plays. Written and produced during the Peloponnesian civil war between Athens and Sparta the play expresses strong criticism of the war. Its basic premise is that all the women of Greece, under the leadership of Lysistrata go on a sex strike so as to pressure the men to stop fighting. They also occupy the Acropolis, the symbol of Athenian democracy, transgressing on a traditionally male space, to prevent men from getting money for the war. In Aristophanes’ comic utopia sex and politics are inextricably bound: peace is identified with sex and war with the absence of it. The universal sex strike is successful, as men find it impossible to do without sex and the comedy has a happy, though ironic, ending.

Whatever the meaning of the play in Antiquity, Lysistrata has strongly fascinated modern audiences and has been by far the most frequently performed Aristophanic comedy of the 20th century in the West.1 The comedy has been interpreted in very diverse ways, ranging from interpretations exploring female sexuality to versions in support of political activism, whether feminist or socialist.2 In the contemporary period, the Lysistrata Project 2003 has once again highlighted the significance of the comedy as a classic: an open ended work that can be shaped to respond to cultural concerns across time and geography.

1000 Readings

As part of the Lysistrata Project, over 1.000 readings of the play were organized throughout the world on March 3rd 2003, to protest the war of the US against Iraq that was then imminent.3 This innovative project that would not have been possible without the resources of the internet sustains a strong 20th century tradition of regarding Lysistrata as an activist play and attempts to reformulate its politics on a global scale. While the majority of participations in the Lysistrata Project were from the West, a few readings were held in Arabic countries, particularly in the Mediterranean region. These readings stimulated my curiosity: what does it mean to stage Lysistrata today for Arabic audiences? Performing 236

Lysistrata on the Arabic Stage is an attempt to answer this question, drawing on the views of Arab theater practitioners, playwrights and theorists, whom I invited to write, hypothetically, about how they would stage Lysistrata in their own cultures. The project aims at exploring the social import of the contemporary Arabic theater, using Aristophanes’ Lysistrata as a focal point. The play ideally lends itself to highlighting idiosyncracies of the Arab cultures on important issues such as war and sexual politics, transgressive behavior and the position of women in these cultures.

The majority of the contributions I received come from Egypt, which is perhaps no accident considering that this country is a major cultural center in the Arab world today.4 In spite of my efforts to get women to participate in the project most of the respondents have been men, well established in the theater world in their own countries. A highlight of the project is that it inspired the reputed Egyptian playwright Lenin El-Ramly to write a full length play, entitled Women’s Peace based on Lysistrata, which was produced in Cairo recently and led to heated discussions in the Egyptian press about the ancient comedy, the production and the project. In addition to the essays, I am including in the publication of the project an interview on Lysistrata with the Egyptian born internationally acclaimed visual artist Ghada Amer, whose work relates to the themes of the play.

Reframing

A striking feature of the Arabic versions is that, just like the Lysistrata Project 2003 they are centrally concerned to re-frame the play and its main theme, war, in a global context. The world the essays jointly portray is an international community connected through fast media communications and threatened by autocratic Arab governments, U.S. controlled imperialism, Western civilizing missions, the manipulation of the media as well as breakdowns in understanding between cultures. Indeed, most of the essays adopt a negative view of globalization, underscoring dangers rather than benefits. The increasingly connected world adds to the danger of monitoring and controlling the people; it does not augments the potential for greater democracy. Departing drastically from Aristophanes’ light hearted, rosy colored utopia proposals transform Lysistrata into a dark, chaotic or nihilist comedy in which popular activism is either totally ineffective or of limited benefit in stopping the war and in changing society. In content as well as in form the Arabic Lysistrata’s jointly outline a postmodern approach to the play with a contemporary feel and vibrant political relevance. 237

A common thread of the essays is skepticism over whether the Peloponnesian civil war portrayed in the comedy is adequate to depict the complexities of war in the world today. Participants point out that the Peloponnesian war was a conflict between parties of equal power, who also shared common culture and values. How does one employ Lysistrata’s war to depict war in the age of the media, or war waged by a superpower against tiny nations, guerrilla warfare, situations of occupation and clashes of political, ethnic and religious backgrounds? A strong concern is also whether it would be appropriate to have the weak party in a war taking the peace initiative. The Egyptian playwright, director and actor Khaled El Sawy imagines that the women seeking peace are American rather than Arab, mobilizing to stop the U.S. from waging a war against the rest of the world, in pursuit of economic profit. He reasons: “To preach a message of peace to today’s Arab audiences is tantamount to instructing the victims to accept sheepishly the dictates of their arrogant oppressors.”5 Participants think hard about which war they want to depict through the drama text and about how the kind of war they want to depict, alters the givens of the original play. In the contemporary context they set up, references to globalism are inescapable.

The Palestinian director George Ibrahim concludes he cannot use Lysistrata to portray the war between Israelis and Palestinians, as there are fundamental imbalances between these parties, irrelevant to the ancient play: Israelis have occupied Palestinian territory and tyrannically control the life of Palestinians, who fight a guerilla war of survival against an organized army. Ibrahim’s hesitancy in using Lysistrata is increased by the failure of an experiment he participated in to mount a joint Palestinian and Israeli production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, in an attempt to address contemporary war politics in the region. As he discusses, even though the production had a successful international career, it did not translate well across cultures: it led to a misunderstanding of the Palestinian- Israeli conflict and to “political ridicule.”6

Cultural distortions

Concern that closer contact between cultures that globalism has enhanced can lead to breakdowns in communication and distortion is also present in other accounts. Hazem Azmy, an Egyptian theater scholar and dramaturg imagines that Lysistrata occupies the headquarters of the Arab League, so as to force Arab governments to pursue better collaboration with each other and democratic reforms. At the end of this version the heroine abandons her effort, realizing that she is not at war with governments or with men but with the international media, which make a spectacle of the women’s mobilization and distort its message to 238 suit their various purposes.

Disillusionement with the potential of popular activism to end war in the global era is also strongly apparent in Lenin El-Ramly’s play, Peace of Women. The playwright sets the action in Saddam Husein’s Bagdad, a few days before the 2003 war with the U.S. The women are Iraqis and Westerners and the play explores cultural differences between them on religious, political and social issues. Their alliance is precarious and eventually breaks down. Apart from misunderstanding between culures, another major reason the women’s mobilization does not work is because decisions about war and peace rest with the powerful, the U.S. and Saddam, who closely monitor the women’s movements overtly, through brutal oppression, or covertly, through propaganda and spying. The play’s ending is bitterly ironic, a clever variation of Aristophanes’ utopian finale. An Iraqi and an American civilian drunk at a bar see the first rockets of the war falling and mistake them for the fireworks celebrating peace.

In Khaled El Sawy’s Lysistrata version of a global war between the U.S. and the rest of the world the ending is similarly deeply pessimist but a little more upbeat. Sirens, fierce explosions and immense catastrophes immediately follow the conclusion of peace, announcing the continuation of war. Stepping out of character, actors sing “the anthem of the world front against war and globalization.”7 For Khaled El Sawy the world war he depicts is an outcome of globalization and popular activism has a long way to go beyond the play to effectively resist it.

Gender/identity

In most of the Arabic Lysistrata versions the identity of the characters as activists is more important than their gender identity. Indeed, participants approach the comedy as a people’s rather than as a women’s play. While not directly relevant to gender, these versions are not misogynist either. The failure of the women’s activism is not due to limitations of women but rather, to the impact of non- democratic politics on a larger scale, beyond the individual’s control.

Ghada Amer and Riad Masarwi, a Palestinian playwright and director are the only two contributors interested in linking the pursuit of war and peace in Lysistrata to gender. They are critical of the patriarchal system and of aggressive masculinity for initiating wars and credit women for a more genuine concern for peace. However, the gender sensitive versions insist that patriarchy, even though a major, is not the sole problem the women’s activism must deal with. Patriarchy 239 forms part of a larger framework of institutions working to oppress individual expression. So gender sensitive versions have a similar perspective to the other versions. Another similarity is that they focus on exploring women’s limited power to counter oppression as opposed to their dynamism in achieving peace.

In her version Ghada Amer explores the oppression of the female chorus on many levels. The artist would like the female chorus to be played by men, to underscore that women in patriarchal society do not have self-possession but are what men want them to be. The men playing the female chorus will be wearing hoods, exposing a headless body, in contrast to the male characters whose heads will be uncovered. This choice allows us to appreciate an alternative perspective of male domination over woman as a domination of the mind over the body. However, it also alludes to colonialist perceptions of Western supremacy over the East. Traditionally, the East has been represented in terms of sensual female bodies whereas representations of the West have tended to highlight the higher strength of the intellect, associated with male ability par excellence. On a more literal level, the hood also alludes to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. guards at the Abu Ghraib8 prison. So, Ghada Amer, through her choice to represent the female chorus by hooded men draws attention to oppression in several ways: she emphasizes theatrically, symbolically and quite literally that these characters, whether as Easterners, Iraqis or female, do not even have control over their own bodies.

Sex and power

The activists’ pervasive lack of freedom in the Arabic Lysistratas drastically affects how authors conceive of the sexual strike. Indeed, there is a tendency, in Arabic versions to explore the relation between sex and power in novel and more complex ways than in the original. Participants are intent on showing that higher powers, such as autocratic states, U.S. imperialism, the media and patriarchy control individual desire, annulling the sexual strike’s force and canceling the play’s happy outcome. In modern Arabic versions the withholding of sex does not lead to lighthearted jesting, and glee but rather to dark satire about oppression or painful stories of manipulation and abuse.

In Riad Masarwi’s version, Layla, the Iraqi Lysistrata-character has only known sex through rape at the Abu Ghraib prison, first by Saddam Husein’s guards and then by the U.S. forces of occupation. It is no wonder then that she 240 does not have much interest in sex or in her body. In a reversal he superimposes on the original, Masarwi identifies sex with war and abstention with peace.

In El-Ramly’s play, Peace of Women, the sexual strike unleashes frustration and a sense of powerlessness rather than the life affirming instinct. In the scene between the Iraqi counterparts of Kinesias and Myrrhine, Kamel, an official in Saddam’s government pleads with his wife, Mowafaka, to have sex with him not because he is desperately aroused but because he has to make a show of having broken the strike with the government. Mowafaka succumbs, after seeing the tapping devices on him but he cannot perform. So lack of libido allows Mowafaka to stay faithful to the sexual strike.

Aesthetically, the Arabic proposals present a very rich gamut of styles for staging Lysistrata. A remarkable feature of the essays is that they envision ample use of multi-media, making use of or references to such forms as the reality show, video games and video-conferencing. My overall impression of style is that it is contemporary, exhibiting a postmodern sensibility that serves well the aim of interpreting Lysistrata in a global context. Khaled el Sawy’s proposal perfectly exemplifies this aesthetic approach. He envisions his version, which is set in the United States, as a musical comedy in the style of rock operas of the 70s such as Hair. Appropriating a well-known form of the Western entertainment industry he uses it as a frame to create an exuberant collage of dissonant elements. The lighthearted tone of the musical co-exists and clashes with conventions of the classical Greek theater, serious drama, tragi-comedy, devices of Epic Theater, parody, clowning and the grotesque to create bold political theater. The character of the head of State, a grotesque mixture of the sitting US president, governor Schwarzenegger and Roman Emperors strikes a tragi-comic note against a huge screen at the back projecting documentary images of actual wars in all their horror. A sexy chorus of Hollywood blonds co-exists with a sober chorus, that includes African Americans, a lesbian couple and a war injured marine, expressing the city’s alternative voices and acting, just as the classical chorus as a link to the audience.

Modernism/postmodernism

We can better appreciate the postmodern sensibility of the Arabic Lysistratas 241 if we compare it to classic modernist interpretations of the play.9 The most interesting period in the comedy’s Western production history was the early 20th century, when major stagings of the comedy emerged in the large metropoles of the West such as Max Reinhardt’s 1908 production in Berlin and Nemirovich- Danchenko’s 1923 Soviet staging in Moscow for the Moscow Art Theater’s Musical Studio. Early 20th century performances established interpretative traditions in the staging of the play, which bear central features of modernist culture such as the focus on city life and politics and the idealization of novelty. In political interpretations of Lysistrata in support of feminism or socialism the play is invariably set in the classic locus of modernism, the city and the Acropolis symbolizes the secular and democratic values that have inspired the enlightenment and the modern democracies. The early 20th century in Europe was an era of dynamic mass movements for the extension of franchise and it was also a time when more participatory forms of democracy seemed possible and promising. Following this optimist spirit, modernist political versions of Lysistrata envision triumphs for the activist movements they depict, whether those of women or of the working class.

In sharp contrast to modernist interpretations, the Arab postmodern Lysistratas focus on exploring, in sophisticated ways, the power dynamics preventing the underprivileged to express themselves freely and to have political influence. The Arab adaptations are also very different from modernist versions stylistically. The modernist Lysistratas emphasize classical virtues, such as clarity, simplicity and economy and aim at concealing the artist’s perspective and at giving the illusion of objectivity. By contrast, the Arab proposals create collages of multiple references, which highlight subjectivity, individual choice and character. Authors openly appropriate Lysistrata and feel free to pick and choose anything that suits them to relate the play’s story in their own ways. Of course this approach may not only relate to postmodernism but also to that Arab participants feel less burdened by the play’s weight as a Western classic.

Free press

In a recent op-ed editorial in The New York Times Thomas Friedman celebrated what he perceived as significant signs that democratic changes are underway in Arab countries, pointing to elections in Iraq and the mass demonstrations in Lebanon, which he compares to the falling of the Berlin Wall. He concludes, “the spreading virus that things can change and I can make a difference” is the most important thing happening in the Arab world today.10 Following the perspective 242 of the Bush administration and a current trend in the U.S. mainstream media he is anxious to credit the U.S. and the war against Iraq for having energized the people to stand up against dictatorial Arab governments.11 The Arab Lysistratas tell a different story about popular activism. In the alternative picture they present, dangers to democracy come not just from Arab autocratic governments as the U.S. mainstream would have us believe but also from the U.S. itself as an imperialist superpower with a hypocritical mission to free the Arab people and to democratize Arab nations by force. The Arabic versions emphasize the marginal status of the play’s activist characters and tell their stories in thoughtful, critical ironic and at the same time compassionate ways. In so doing they appropriate Aristophanes as a political author of postcolonial or alternative views, that is, as an author going against the mainstream, or the Western mainstream. The great journalist and free thinker I. F. Stone, had characterized Aristophanes as the free press of antiquity. The Arabic Lysistratas make a strong case for also regarding Aristophanes as the free press of our own times.

Notes 1 See Marina Kotzamani, Lysistrata, Playgirl of the Western World: Aristophanes on the Early Modern Stage, Doctoral Dissertation, The Graduate School of the City University of New York, 1997. 2 For examples of major sexual and political interpretations of Lysistrata, see the following: Maurice Donnay, Lysistrata, Paris, Ollendorff, 1893. This sexual version of Lysistrata premiered in 1892 at the Grand Theatre (french accents) in Paris. It had numerous revivals in France until 1930 and inspired many imitations and variations in the Western European theatre. Laurence Housman, Lysistrata, London, the Woman’s Press, 1911. Housman’s feminist version premiered at the Little Theatre in London, in 1910 and was directed by Gertrude Kingston who also played the title role. For a socialist version of Lysistrata, see Dmitry Smolin, translator, Lysistrata, translated from the Russian into English by George S. and Gilbert Seldes, in: Plays of the Moscow Art Theatre Musical Studio, New York, Brentano’s, 1925, pp. 1-78. Smolin’s version was directed by Nemirovich-Danchenko for the Moscow Art Theater’s Musical Studio and premiered in Moscow in 1923. 3 The Lysistrata Project was initiated and organized by two New York based actors, Kathryn Blume and Sharron Bower. 4 Here is a list of the contributions I received: Lenin El-Ramly (playwright, Egypt) Women’s Peace; Khaled El Sawy (playwright, director and actor, Egypt), How Fares Lysistrata Today?; Hazem Azmy (dramaturg and theater scholar, Egypt) “In the Very Presence of Your Enemies: A Feminine Eye for the Stiff Arab Guy?” and Ali Salem (playwright, Egypt) “Sex, Laughter and Politics”, in: in Rose El Youssef, 13-19, September 2003 and translated into English for the project with the author’s permission by David Wilmsen); Dina Amin (theater scholar and director, Egypt, based in the U.S.) “Lysistrata/Praxa: Dramatic Articulations of (Anti -)War Fantasies and 243

Female Utopias”; George Ibrahim (Producer and General Director, Alkasaba Theatre and Cinematheque, East Jerusalem, Israel, Palestinian) Lysistrata; Riad Masarwi (playwright and director, Palestinian) “The Story of Layla, an Arab Lysistrata”; Riad Ismat (playwright, director and critic, Syria) Lysistrata in an Arabic Version; Joe Kodeih (playwright, director and actor, Lebanon) “Some Considerations on Performing Lysistrata Today”; Tayeb Seddiki (director, Morocco) “Aristophanes and the Moroccan Theater”. Unless otherwise indicated, quotations in the present article come from the contributions I received for «Performing Lysistrata, on the Arabic Stage,» listed in this footnote. 5 See footnote 4. 6 See footnote 4. 7 See footnote 4. 8 For an excellent discussion of stereotypical representations of the East in Western culture see Edward Said, Orientalism, New York, Vintage Books, 1994. 9 For discussion of modernist interpretations of Lysistrata, see Marina Kotzamani, «Lysistrata, Playgirl ...» 10 Thomas Friedman, «The Beirut Tea Party» The New York Times March 10, 2005. 11 For example, see Neil Mac Farquar, “Unexpected Whiff of Freedom Proves Bracing for the Mideast”, The New York Times March 6, 2005; “ Democracy’s Dilemmas”, The New York Times March 28, 2005. 244

BETWEEN TRAGEDY AND FARCE Retelling the Story of two Devilish Sisters

Eman KARMOETY

The realm of comedy extends far beyond the concepts of any imagination; it can enfold any action since it is a world that has no laws, barriers or restrictions. In fact, it encompasses an attack against all rules of society: “Comedy is drawn from the most human of strivings: our continual impulse to rebel against convention and morality …”1. It is therefore, not surprising to find that the subject of comedy evolves about what is taboo and rejected by society, for the festive spirit of comedy celebrates all and sundry, regardless of any inhibition. However, transgressing into forbidden territory has its own peril, as it draws into the circle of tragedy: “Any comic character and any comic situation pressed hard enough can turn a comedy towards tragedy”2. And vice versa, matters can be reversed, moving in the opposite direction from tragedy to comedy: “History repeats itself; first time as a tragedy, second time as a farce” as Karl Marx declared.

Two Egyptians, Bahgat Qamar, a popular comic writer, and Hussein Kamal, a successful cinematic director, selected what was to the law-abiding, pious Egyptian audiences a most horrifying tale: the episode of Rahya and Sikeena, known to all, and chose to present it as a musical tragicomedy, rather than a purely tragic form, as previous attempts had done. Rahya and Sikeena were two names that sent shivers of horror up the spines of Alexandrians, in the early 20th century, and for many years after inspired fear in all of Egypt. Dr. Latifa Al Zayat, the famed Egyptian novelist, a little girl at the time, recalls how her mother told her the bloodcurdling story of the queens of crime, Rahya and Sikeena.

I first discovered evil when … My mother provided all the rituals of the killings in detail, almost enacting them, choosing the victim, luring her to their home, strangling her … the zar3, drums that prevented all calls for help being heard by the police, whose station was just across the street. (72).

But who were Rahya and Sikeena? What is their story? Why were they so notorious? 245

In 1920, in Alexandria, a worker was terrified at finding a human arm in the floor of an old home. Further digging produced the rest of the body and other corpses, adding up to seventeen dead women. The former tenants, two sisters, Rahya and Sikeena, were brought in for questioning and after initially denying all knowledge of the matter finally confessed to killing the women and stealing their jewelry. The incredible fact that two creatures of the weaker sex had managed to kill so many women and dispose of their bodies, in less than a year, shocked the Egyptians, who rose up in fury at the apparent neglect and ineffectuality of the police force at apprehending the criminals earlier and preventing so much sorrow and loss of human lives. Fikri Abaza, later on a distinguished journalist and literary figure, then a young reporter in Al-Ahram, demanded angrily: “Where are the police? Where is the sword of the government that should fall on the necks of bloodthirsty criminals? … The recent murders are a great calamity, the horrors of which have blackened the forehead of the 20th century”.

Truly, the murder of so many women was horrifying and the terrible crimes were seized upon by the newspapers, which found the issue to be a hot item and articles poured out every day, while pictures of the two murderesses and the remaining members of their gang were splashed across the pages of every paper and magazine and sold in the streets and cafes of Egypt. The tragedy was magnified beyond all imaginable proportions; “Women slaughtered in Labban: 12 corpses unearthed!“ (Al-Ahram, nov.). Rahya and Sikeena were blown up into inhuman figures. One rumor claimed that they were held in a zoo cage for public display and people rushed there in masses to catch a glimpse of the bloody pair, safely behind bars. “The rumor itself indicated that the Egyptian people not only wished to strip Rahya and Sikeena of their qualities as women, but also as human beings … in general, even animals do not prey upon their own species as Rahya and Sikeena” (Al-Ahram, dec).

So intense was the interest of the people that it was exploited in other forms of media as well. “The trial of Rahya and Sikeena dominated public interest … making it a rich source for countless films and plays for decades …”4. For years, cinema and theatre presented lurid visions of the hapless sisters; figures that gave rise to hellish nightmares, drawn as they were by directors who wished to draw large audiences. With this in mind, the guilty pair were always depicted as bloody, thieving killers bent solely on robbing their victims of their gold without any qualms or compunctions whatsoever. 246

Figures of evil

Salah Abu Seif, one of Egypt’s leading directors, presented Rahya and Sikeena in a film, in 1953, “depicting them in the same image imprinted in the minds of their contemporaries; purely figures of evil …”5. No attempt was made to provide an explanation for their bloodthirsty actions although Salah Abu Seif was an established advocate of realism, as well as Naguib Mahfouz, who helped write the scenario. “Salah Abu Seif did not care to disclose the tragedy of Rahya and Sikeena or look for the motives behind their terrible, criminal behaviour … but began his plot with the fear and panic caused by the disappearance of women”6. Moreover he casted Rahya as head of the gang, a strong masculine figure, who “upbraids the men for their failings; slapping them and spitting in their faces” (ibid). For the role he chose a prominent Jewish actress, Nigma Ibrahim, possessing stern, hard features and a deep, guttural voice, with which she cynically muttered words that immediately became immortal and were soon jocularly adopted by Egyptians as an adage: “Mahadish b’yakoolha b’sahil” (Life is no joy ride).

Little did people sense the actual pain and bitterness couched within the words; the frustration and disappointment that drove the real Rahya and Sikeena to tread the bloody, danger-infested, fatal path of murder. A tragedy of their own engulfed the lives of the two unhappy sisters, born as they were to a fate that mercilessly offered no escape. Driven from one abode to another, in search of livelihood, they savored the foul taste of hunger and deprivation; inhaled the stench of the backstreets of squalor and poverty. While in her early teens, Rahya was married off to a man twice her age. Fate as yet had not finished taunting her; her husband soon died leaving nothing behind for his widow. She had hardly begun to taste the air of freedom when she was coerced into marrying her brother in law, Hasb’Allah, as she was carrying his brother’s child, who had to be raised by the family, according to tradition.

Sikeena’s share of life’s bitter cup was no less. She was forced to marry a man whom she seemed to find intolerable for they were soon divorced, whereupon she ran off to Alexandria. There she met Abdel Aal, a man from Upper Egypt and several years her junior. They immediately fell in love and became so strongly attached to each other that he had her name tattooed into his arm. Even when his mother forced him to divorce Sikeena and marry a girl of her choice he went back to his sweetheart. When Hasb’Allah stole some objects, he ran away, leaving Rahya to bear the consequences and go to jail in his place. After serving her sentence she decided to join her sister in Alexandria, where their crimes began as a means of supporting themselves and their idle husbands. Although Abdel Aal 247 worked on an almost regular basis when work was to be found, Hasb’Allah was never able or willing to work for long periods and squandered Rahya’s pitiful earnings on his personal pleasures. Sikeena also had to pawn her clothes on many occasions, when she was penniless.

Egypt, a British protectorate at the time, suffered severely from the aftermath of World War I. Poverty, destitution, robbery, prostitution and crimes spread through the land of the Nile. Rahya and Sikeena fared no better than others, ignorant and untrained as they were and married to men that were ineffectual as breadwinners. The glitter of gold bangles on the arms of other women aroused Rahya’s greed and envy. Her original plan was to lure one of these vain creatures, ply her with drink, then strip her of her gold. This failed as the woman, in spite of her intoxication, resisted their attempt to pull off her jewelry. It soon became evident that murder could not be avoided. It would also seem, that most of the plans were masterminded by Rahya and Sikeena, who during the police inquiries revealed sharp wits. However, the actual killings, were never carried out by them but by their husbands and other men, which were recruited for the tasks of pinioning the limbs of the victims and burying them afterwards in the flooring. On one occasion the men fell upon the woman in question so hastily that the sisters were suddenly confronted with the crime, taking place before their very eyes. Horrified, Rahya ran out of the room but Sikeena was paralyzed with fear so that her wine glass fell and crashed to the floor in shatters, as she “started to crawl out, unable to rise to her feet, only realizing –later—that she had urinated involuntarily—out of sheer fear”7.

Dramatic motivation

These were the highlights which writer Bahgat Qamar exploited in his drama Rahya and Sikeena, altering the facts to serve his purposes: providing motivation for the devilish sisters’ crimes, “attempting to arouse our sympathy for the murderesses when we discover that they are the victims of their step-mother (Anuma), who murdered their mother in order to marry their father … they proceed to kill her using the same method she used to kill their mother (using a wet towel to suffocate her)”8.

The play, which ran successfully for three consecutive years, included farcical elements within its structure such as incongruous pairs; Rahya is presented as a blond, attractive woman; hard and calculating, while Sikeena is a brunette, with mysterious, dark eyes; emotional and romantic. They always argue because of 248 their different dispositions and their inability to agree even on the victims they choose to kill. Their husbands make up another incongruous pair; Hasb’Allah is older, shrewd and cynical, whereas Abdel Aal is tall, young, naïve and foolish. They constantly bicker, as each tries to prove himself master of the house: “Like and unlike pairs of characters are so typical of farce: Box and Cox, Flash and Fribble, duplicate lovers, male opposed to female, old versus young, twins and doubles, and so forth. The artificiality of the arrangement signals both a distancing of the characters from the audience and a lessening of their humanity: they lack the flexibility and the individuality of life”9.

This lack of humanity, according to the dramatic critic Amir Salama is used in Rahya and Sikeena to promote humor, through the mechanical actions of the two women, as they go about their bloody business, much as anybody else would go about theirs. To enforce this, director Hussein Kamal employed the Brechtian technique of alienation in some scenes, to allow the audience to realize that the two women on stage are merely actresses. “In one of the comic spectacles, Shadya and Sohair Al Bably (the two actresses) mimic the dialogue used by the early actresses Nigma Ibrahim and Zuzu Hamdi Al Hakim, in their famous film Rahya and Sikeena in burlesque-style, in a further attempt at alienation”10.

The step-mother in Bahgat Qamar’s play is portrayed as the cause of all the misery in the two women’s lives. Not content with killing their mother and marrying their father, she places Rahya in domestic service, where she is raped by one of the aristocracy. She also forces Sikeena into marrying an old man. The two girls run off to Alexandria but when their stepmother follows, they soon rid themselves of her. The stage darkens and to the accompaniment of music and song, Sikeena carries out a pantomime of speech to the stepmother, as Rahya, as in a dream, mechanically wets a towel, which she then uses to suffocate the malicious stepmother, who lets out a piercing scream. Using silence, space, dark and light to provide psychological insight and a revealing of the women’s emotions and reaction after their first murder, director Hussein Kamal places each of the women within a circle of light, their backs to each other: “This state of fear, horror and wariness lasts till it nearly suffocates the spectators, whereupon they are released and ready to move onto an different state”11.

Comic relief 249

This different state is the realm of the comic, relying largely on the husbands of Rahya and Sikeena, drawn as insipid buffoons, manipulated and deluded by their wives. Hasb’Allah, Rahya’s husband, who in real life indirectly left his wife with no other recourse except crime as a means of livelihood, is depicted in the play, as a lazy organ player, in love with Rahya, who marries him only to work him as a stooge, burying the dead women. He is shown to be a weak, spineless creature, whom Rahya despises. Portrayed by one of Egypt’s major comic actors, Abdel Mineim Madbuli, he provides much of the satirical humour and commentary that draw attention to the jarring juxtaposition and incongruity between the laughter taking place and the crimes being committed backstage. In his shabby attire and clownish posture, he repeatedly demands that the corpses buried in the basement be removed, while Rahya angrily waves him offstage. This draws nervous giggles from the audience who are caught in between the joke and the sad fate of the miserable victims. “As the gap narrows so that what remains incongruous is still funny, but too close to the bone to laugh at, then we move swiftly into the realms of the tragic”12.

Abdel Aal, Sikeena’s husband, is transformed in Qamar’s play into a policeman whom Sikeena, in an attempt to seduce him, plies with food and drink, till he marries her, hoping that he might shield them from the interference of the police. Their courtship and honeymoon, derived from the real love story between Sikeena and Abdel-Aal, provides scenes in which the incredible dullness and stupidity of Abdel-Aal, the man of law and order, is exhibited; a reference to the inability of the police force of that day to apprehend the criminals who committed the bloody murders under their very noses. The cosy atmosphere of love and dalliance between Sikeena and Abdel-Aal, during their courtship and before they are married, contrasts sharply with the audience’s awareness that Sikeena is actually a killer. In the play, as in Salah Abu Seif’s film, the murders are supposedly committed to the accompaniment of the zar: loud drums, music and chanting, which were used by the gang to muffle the victims’ cries for help. When the neighbours complain of the noise, Abdel-Aal is sent to the women’s home. Unaware that they themselves are the notorious criminals he proceeds to warn the sisters of the gang of murderous women. As the ironic state of affairs draws laughs and guffaws from the audience, it is immediately connected to a tragic and pathetic situation that leaves the spectators breathless and in shock.

Abdel-Aal, gallantly insists on making a thorough search of the house, to make sure no criminals are hiding about. Flirting nervously with him, Sikeena perches her self atop a box seat into which a struggling victim has just been pushed. 250

“There can be no relaxation in a play that acquits by laughter at one moment and then convicts us the next… the detachment of comedy is not allowed to us, nor the sympathy of tragedy”13. The miserable creature, not quite dead, moaning, pokes out an arm, which Sikeena hastily pushes back in, while the dim-witted policeman, puzzled by the latter’s antics, as she bounces up and down in the slapstick routine of clowns, to keep the box seat shut, amid the audience’s laughter that borders on horror and “increases the degree of awareness and sense of the tragedy about to unfold on stage”14. In this drama, Rahya and Sikeena are domineering and forceful, commanding their menfolk, who meekly obey. Even Abdel Aal, the man from Upper Egypt, who loudly claims that he is the master of the house, is hoodwinked by Sikeena whose wits are far too sharp for his slow understanding.

“I do not think it misogynistic to present women as strong, assertive, successful … even if they are also selfish or villainous … old myths are paraded not to illustrate that the female sex is evil, but rather to induce the audience to question the traditional judgment on these women”15.

Female rebellion

The aim of presenting the legend of Rahya and Sikeena in the comic genre was not purely commercial, but also to heighten the audience’s awareness of the concept of evil, and to think objectively about the women’s role in the tragic events. Latifa Al-Zayat, who had voiced the attitude of most Egyptians during her time, connected the manifestation of evil itself with the two women. According to psychology and cultural studies, woman’s strength and evil tendencies go back in time to ancient civilizations of the East, as that of the Edomites, inhabitants of the rock city of Petra, where mother-goddess cults existed, only to be later transformed into or overruled by a masculine deity. Moreover, lore has it that Adam, the first man, rejected the first woman, Lilith, who “was “replaced by the man-made woman, Eve. With all Eve’s docility, however, she inherited seemingly from Lilith, who was a rebellious and mischievous demon, the curse of badness…”16. In other words, rebellion and dissatisfaction on the part of woman was regarded as evil, while a display of power and strength was discouraged. “… of this force in woman, man always was and still is afraid” (ibid).

Farce exhibits rebellion against convention and morality and so the play had to transcend to a more serious level to deliver the moral lesson, which the audience desired and herein lies the paradox.

The intellectual comedy by itself would become tiresome, and in one or 251 two plays, where it is predominant, does become so. The suffering by itself, concentrated on and wept over for its own sake, would become either pathos or melodrama but revealed bit by bit in its fierce struggle against intrusion or misinterpretation, it approaches tragedy17.

The last victim is actually Rahya’s daughter, unbeknown to her. Espied by the two sisters in the marketplace, a handsome prospect, they lure her back to their home. Sikeena suggests that they should not kill her as she is too young and that they have spilt enough blood. She pleads with Rahya, who, ironically refuses to show any mercy, recounting her own pain and misery. The girl’s worried father arrives and a painful recognition between him and Rahya takes place, as well as a bitter reproach on her part. When she discovers that the girl being murdered by her sister in the basement is none than her own daughter, believed dead all these years, she calls upon Sikeena to hold her hand only to discover that it is too late; the girl is already dead. As the two women’s screams rise through the air and Rahya falls in a faint to the floor, realizing that she has killed her own daughter, the curtain falls.

According to Aristotle, the main character in a tragedy must recognize his error, anagnorisis, and then suffer the consequences, catastrophe, either with his own death or that of his loved ones. However, the two sisters do not qualify as tragic heroines since their dark nature prevents that categorization. Thus, the play shifts into melodrama, as the punishment fits the crime. Amir Salama, finds the combination of farce and melodrama concocted by Bahgat Qamar delightful, but applauds Hussein Kamal’s amazing ability to shift from tragedy and dark comedy in the first act then revert back again in the final act to tragedy, which has the final call in the rather melodramatic end of the play. Thus the wheel of horror, tragedy and farce rotates full circle to return to the initial point of tragedy.

Bibliography

Abaza, Fikri. Al-Ahram, (1920, 25 nov.); Al-Ahram. (1920, 18 nov.); Al-Ahram. (1920, dec.) Al Kadi, Khaled Mohamed, Rawae Al-Adab Al-Kadaey [The Best of Court Literature], 2001, Cairo: Egyptian Book Organization Al-Mojam-Al Waseet, Al-Waseet Dictionary, Vol I,1960, Cairo: Matbaet Misr. Al-Zayat, Latifa, Al Bab al-Maftooh /The Open Door, Cairo: Egyptian Book Organization. Aristotle, Poetics, Longings & Horace eds.,1975, Penguin Books, Ltd. Davis, Jessica Milner, Farce, 1978, London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. Gascoigne, Bamber, Twentieth-Century Drama, 1967, London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd. 252

Issa, Salah., Rigal Rahya w’Sikeena/Rahya and Sikeena’s Men, 2002, Cairo: Dar Al Ahmadi for Publications. Pomeroy, Sarah, “Images of Women in the Literature of Classical Athens”, in Tragedy, Ed. John Drakakis and Naomi Conn Liebler, New York: Addison Wesley Longman Ltd, reprint from Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity, 1998, New York: Schocken Books. Salama, Amer, Al-Comedia wa’l Masrah Al-Masri Al-M’aser (1975-2000/ Modern Egyptian Comedy & Theatre (1975-2000), 2001, Cairo: Egyptian Book Organization. Styan, J.L, The Dark Comedy: The Development of Modern Comic Tragedy. 1979 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Rank, Otto, Beyond Psychology, (1958), New York: Dover Publications, Inc.

Notes 1 J.M. Davis (1978), p. 22. 2 J.L. Styan (1979), p. 24. 3 A Zar was a ritual dance and chant, “performed to drive out evil spirits and djinns that were supposedly lodged in the bodies of certain persons”(Al-Mojam 1960: 408). Loud drums, singing, chanting and the use of incense, candles, specific costumes were all part of the rites held for the cure. The inflicted person, as well as the therapist and the others of her or his team all moved in a circle around certain grains, cereals and candles placed in the center of the room. As the music and the dancers movements rose to a crescendo, resulting in the patient falling in a faint, the expulsion of the djinn was considered successful. 4 Al Kadi (2001), p. 141. 5 S. Issa (2002), p. 600. 6 S. Issa (2002), p. 605. 7 S. Issa (2002), p. 605. 8 A. Salama (2001), p. 215. 9 J.M. Davis (1978), p. 63. 10 A. Salama (2001), pp. 216-217. 11 A. Salama (2001), p. 215. 12 J.L. Styan (1979), p. 46. 13 J.L. Styan (1979), p. 257. 14 A. Salama (2001), p. 216. 15 S. Pomeroy (1998), p. 227. 16 O. Rank (1958), p. 250. 17 B. Gascoigne (1967), p.104. 253

TOPOGRAPHIES OF DESIRE Recent Egyptian Drama and Strategies of the Absurd

Mieke KOLK

In these last years I have greatly enjoyed the books of Egyptian drama, translated into English and published by the General Egyptian Book Organization. Director of the series is Mohamed Enani, a scholar and playwright himself. He chooses and often introduces each piece. These plays, written in the last decades of the 20th century offer important reflections on a changing society. Their fascinating introductions also give us a picture of the social and artistic debates of recent times. Next to the Western publications of the work of most important authors already canonized (Tawfiq Al-Hakim, Yusuf Idris, Alfred Farag) who often discuss the importance and meaning of their intellectual background and aesthetic influences, these new booklets offer a spontaneous approach to Egyptian drama within the framework of cultural theory. The texts can be read as the product of a culture, as a strategic network of deliberations about norms and values. This approach makes it possible to avoid the usual stress on the East/West oppositions or Western influences on Egyptian drama. The fact that drama models from Western culture were adapted is not important. Instead we focus on how these models were used in different cultural spaces as “re/contextualizations or relocations”, claiming agency and authenticity in its own specific forms of ‘national’ identity (Homi Babha).1

One of the books I brought home was the translation of the Prisoner and the Jailor (1989), three one-act plays by Mohamed Enani. The introduction is very rich. He writes about his youth, his education and his experiences as a scholar and a writer. He also delved into formalistic (Egyptian, Arabic enough / or too foreign?), formal (what style of drama?) and political (right- or left-wing?) discussions, leading to existential questions for an Egyptian writer and his political censors. Together with the Prisoner and the Jailor, I brought by Gamal Maqsoos The Man who ate a Goose, and by Ali Salem The Dogs reached the Airport. Nora Amin gave me two manuscripts: The Vault, and The Box of our Lives.

As with many other Egyptian drama texts of the last thirty years, titles betray the process of metaphorization that is characteristic of forms of Absurd Theatre, where the expression of reality is carried by ‘unreality’ and strategies of irrationality and illogic are used as hiding places for an unwanted truth.2 This 254 poetic Symbolism is not only a common feature in traditional Arabic literature but also offers a political tool, an imagery open for multiple interpretations that can escape censorship. (It would be interesting to compare the strategies of the late 20th Century Arabic drama with the itineraries of the artists in the former German Democratic Republic, for instance in the later works of Heiner Mueller and Peter Hacks).

Male-female conflicts

As crucial as his introductory observations pointing to the unsayable within a culture are Enani’s statements about the unknowable topic: the problematic relationship between men and women in Egypt. Facile male notions of supremacy make it very difficult to express male-female conflicts verbally, as is common in the West. “Man and woman still think in terms of black and white, while at the back of their minds the Arab tradition continues to suggest a dialectic of the master-servant relationship dealt with by Hegel”.3

Rather than following a European tradition, Enani writes that the template for the male/female relationship in modern Arabic drama was influenced by images of love as popularized by American films in the fifties. The problem of conjugal life focus on what is ‘ unreal’ and ‘ unrealistic’. In Egypt infidelity is very rare. More dramatic situations are taboo. To express these taboo situations a writer must withdraw to more symbolic spaces, where names are functions and reality shifts towards the metaphorical level of language. When that level is sustained we speak of an allegorical framing. More usual, authors speak about concepts as dreams, dreamlike structures and dream worlds, which hints at repression and disguise. In a literary domain where philosophical, psychological (Freudian) and linguistic theories meet, we see a conflation of figurations where the mechanisms of condensation and displacement in the psyche are compared with the working of metaphor and metonym in the poetic language. In this way words like prison, the airport, the vault and the box in the play titles are not only nightmarish symbols of enclosure and the desire for liberation but are also carriers of desire in the social and sexual space.

Last autumn I brought two manuscripts to Amsterdam: Sameh Mahran’s The Boatman (1998) and Nahed Nayla Naguib’s The Boat People (1980). Within the realistic and metaphorical space of a perilous sea-voyage, both texts explore spheres of limits and limitations in what I call topographies of desire.

After reading an essay Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm of a Metaphor 255 for Existence of the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg,4 I decided to connect these three texts. Two recent Egyptian plays and an essay on the history of the actualization of the seafaring metaphor in Western culture could possibly offer themes on the existential impact of the image of ‘voyage at sea’. Vous êtes embarqués, writes Pascal, always already at sea; living means: being on high sea with the chance of being saved or of going down.

Thinking metaphor

The use of metaphor has often been philosophically discussed, as by Karel Boullart in his article on Comoedia Naturalis, as a means to make sense of the world at large:

“In the realm of theory and contemplation, one must cast a web of metaphor over all that is or can be – any philosophy, any world-view depends on such a set of root-metaphors, as they have been called, in order to give our finiteness its proper place in a world that is after all too large for our thoughts and too deep for our imagination”.5

Boullarts colleague Hans Blumenberg reflects on the position of the metaphor as a stage in the process of concept formation with a shift towards the metaphor as a specific space of non-conceptuality:

“Metaphor is no longer directed mainly toward the constitution of conceptuality but back towards the connections with the life-world as the constant motivating support (though one which cannot be constantly kept in view) of all theory. In every culture, what escapes the exertion of the concept, - that is the perspective on the whole of reality, the world, life, and history- is handed over to long-term work on images. The imaginative orientation achieved is condensed, transformed en elaborated in great metaphors and comparisons”.6

This long-term work on images is, as Blumenberg describes in its historical development, that of life as a sea- voyage. This metaphor provides an outline of the entire voyage out and is composed of many conditions and possibilities. It also sets limits on what is nearly impossible, and what will, in the best cases, be recounted as sailors’ yarn: impossible stories, endlessly retold. It is in this specific historical and cultural process of condensation, transformation and elaboration of the spaces of this metaphor, I want to explore in the scripts. These texts dealing with the passage out and a shipwreck at the end with a sailors yarn as closing 256 lines will point to the ultimate defeat of the young passengers and their desires for union/ reunion with their beloveds. At the center of the metaphor lies sexual rape and hidden violence between the sexes, leading to images of death and disappearance.

The modeling metaphor of life as a sea-voyage encompasses a whole series of possible events: the voyage out, the voyage home, the harbor, the foreign shore, anchorage, sailing the seas, storm, calm, distress at sea, shipwreck, barely surviving and merely looking on…. From early times the danger of the ocean stretched around the edges of the habitable world and included mythical monsters and the mysteries of the movements of the earth, Poseidon’s realm. Blumenberg mentions two assumptions contained by the metaphors of seafaring and shipwreck: first, that the sea is a natural boundary of the realm of human activities, and second, its demonization as the sphere of that which is unreckonable and lawless and difficult to find one’s bearings.7 Going to sea at all has long been regarded as a foolhardy act, one that invites punishment. I will concentrate on three of the elaborations proposed by Blumenberg: reasons for embarking, distress at sea and the art of survival, and ‘the voyage home’.

Seafaring as a transgression of boundaries

The play The Boatman of Sameh Mahran tells the story of a young couple who have been engaged for eight years, but have not been able to marry, which is to say they can not have sex. The text begins in a sophisticated and ironic way as the couple finds a sexual outlet in language games, hilarious comparisons with other creatures like fish, memories of more physical experiences in the bus and the cinema. In a very touching scene they fantasize about having a cocoon, a house, being together, touching and kissing. At this point all is sublimated poetic technique and as beautiful as time and place wants it. But the real thing is evocative of and made concrete by the images of sexuality on a foreign shore, over the water, where all worldly pleasures are known. This is why they take the risk of going with a boatman, who offers to take them to the sea, where they can be together. The boatman will drink and drug himself: no eyes no ears.

The voyage out is motivated by their longing to explore sexuality as a part of human life. The boy and the girl are in agreement about going on this voyage. Their mutual fantasies are exciting, and they are both frustrated by official and common law as represented by the policeman and his wife who also stand for social power and corruption. The ‘brother’ of the policeman, boatman Bhuddah, represents, nomen est omen, in opposition, a darker side of an amorphous, 257 oceanic space, driven by a sexuality Freud would have marked as polymorphous and perverse, that is not directed to any specific object. The boatman threatens the couple with monstrosities and horrors like the magnetic mountain, the long distance to the shore and worst of all his own desires: “You either swim or I take part in your pleasure, enjoy you and you and you”. (34)

The little boat, rocking on the waves, is a symbol of the escape from the earth and from the land. As it lies rolling in the water it is also a symbol of embracing arms and a bed, rocking the couple in its wooden frame. When the boy and girl fall for a moment asleep, they lie separate from each other: The young woman moans and rolls in her sleep. The young man does exactly the same thing. In their fantasy as ever the same, in their dreams also. The boatman however interprets the moment for us. Boatman looks closely at them in turn: “ I must I have grown two horns on my head just now.” (28) It is as far as the lovers and the onlookers come in the desired union of the bodies.

The Boatpeople of Nahed Naguib step on the boat for a very simple reason. They have hopes for a better future and want to escape their country after the War. Naguib gives the people Vietnamese names and the utopian future is located in America. But the voyage out is a universal embarking and the trip to the foreign shores long and dangerous. As in Mahran’s play, the passengers represent functions, in this case a social mapping of classes, sexes and generations: a journalist, a photographer, a baker and his wife, an old man and his mother (who turns out to be a goat), a young woman, and the boatman.

As with Mahran the boatman is all powerful and interested only in what he needs: money. After he has stripped nearly everything from each of the passengers, the voyage begins. It will last some days, some weeks, no one can tell. Because she is made individual rather than representative, the young girl Sayyum Nadjuk stands out. She has lost her father in an earlier flight and travels to the foreign country in the hope of finding him. It is Sayyum who creates a topography of desire by remembering her father and her youth. Sayyum:

- “No I am not afraid. I do not feel anything. Since I separated from my father, I have been like that. I don’t know where I am going, but I feel I have to keep going. If I stop I shall not find him. - I shall certainly find him when I go ashore. - I used to swim when we had our summer holidays. My father would stand on the seashore and I’d swim far out to the sea, even when 258

the sea was rough. I used to love high waves and I was not afraid of whirlpools. I would swim out to the buoy and go further. I could swim to the nearby island easily. When I came out of the sea I would see my father standing on the shore waiting for me”.

Here the sea is not a dangerous space. Instead it symbolizes self realization and becoming independent. The watcher from the shore represents the ultimate love of a caring father who validates her search for identity. It is this image she must rediscover. The arguments of the other passengers are more pragmatic: more freedom and physical survival for some and hope for more prosperity for others.

Distress at sea

As the second and fourth theme of his exploration German philosopher Blumenberg suggests: What the shipwrecked person is left with and the Art of Survival. Rather than offering sea monsters, Nahed Naguibs text provides another form of the demonization of seafaring, the absence of Law and the unreckonable sphere. Both conditions are represented in the vicissitudes of Sayyum. Her distress is predictable. When she declares that her mother is long dead, and yes, she is on her own, rape is in the air. It is only a question of time. When the baker’s wife gives birth to a baby-boy and the celebrations are over, the moment has arrived. Another boat, maybe Thai-pirates, approaches. In the dark, during the commotion around a possible attack, Sayyum is raped by the photographer and no one hears, or acts, on her cries for help.

There is a nauseating summary of reactions:

- “She brought it upon herself - He should marry her - You should not have traveled alone - Tell me sweetie, what happened”

The rapist himself says: “I could not help myself. I am only human. You all wanted her”. Her situation deteriorates when all the men, starting with the boatman, begin to discuss how to have her, posses her and sell her; after all, she is fallen woman now. Sayyum is full of shame: “I can’t look in their eyes. I feel naked.” And as if talking to herself:

“Something inside me hurts. I feel like crying. I am regretting the days that 259

will never come back and the dreams that never came true. (…) My father, where are you? Speak to me. Listen. Help me. I can’t go on without you. And if you come back, will you be able to face this big world? How did you manage before? You were braving the world and we did not know. Was it a heavy burden? What did you do in this big sea? I can’t keep going…. Hopes are always lies. They swing us left and right and then turn out to be lies”.

The art of survival is closely connected with a curious phenomenon of denial. The girl is raped and cries for her father. But she has no words and therefore no word left for her real experiences. It is a remarkable silence as a gap in the theatrical discourse, where the rape itself can be shown but the reflection and reaction on this bodily humiliation cannot be spoken. Only from the sideline, in the shift in perspective from the position of herself, the I, to that of her father, a psychological displacement, she admits in the discourse about his life- experience a notion of violence in the world: we did not know what you had to keep up with. For herself she cannot speak. In the social domain no language is available. The male world has already made her a prostitute only her father can rescue her from such an existence. Hopefully.

The distress at sea, in which the young couple of The Boatman is involved, seems much more complicated, although the power-mechanisms are comparable. The boatman threatens the young lovers in a way that goes far beyond their dependence on his steering capabilities in the middle of the ocean. The power- metaphor nestles everywhere. He reigns not only over their social future but also over their bodies, their bodily integrity and their sexualities, representing the castrating law in all its aspects: physical, social and in the end also sexual. Hanging over their sleeping bodies he wakes them with all the social threats available:

“You, neither one of you have pure intentions (…) I said wake-up. Rise it is now working time, Wake up, your father has come. Wake up stupid, the creditors have arrived, It is prayer time, Your mother has died”. (8)

But most disturbing are the conditioning of mistrust and a sense of betrayal that falls over both the boy and the girl. To the young woman, awakening, the Boatman sings: “She who her trust to a man gives (2x) is she who stores water in sieves.” 260

The boy is pestered by the story of the blind Pharao who discovered that his wife was betraying him, an authorial hint toward a comparable short story of Naquib Mafhoez. It is very important within this text that mute, mutual distrust already existed between the young couple, just under the skin, although covered over by layers of intellectual companionship, the ethical domain they live in has already passed verdicts on equality and self consciousness that comes from education and middleclass instincts. Mahran seems very critical with the couple on account of their general lack of social sensibility and survivor’s energy. But the male- female opposition is most powerful in the construction of subjectivity and self- awareness, within the limits of a society forbidding the exploration of sexuality. A society, as Foucault would say, that refuses expression and exploration of the (discourses) about intimate practices which nevertheless dominates fully, human life and social identity.

The voyage home….?

Under Blumenberg’s rubric of ‘ Shipbuilding out of shipwreck’ the historical spectator is involved as “the type who, culture-critically or even aesthetically, takes note of his distance (…) coming from the ancient suspicion that there is a frivolous if not blasphemous, moment inherent in all human seafaring (…)”.8

For the moment, I want to combine this notion with the possible endings of the drama-text in its teleology of the action and the movement towards closure as a debate about norms and values included in every text. The text of Sameh Mahran works toward an open ending in a double sense: the story is not finished and only concluded in an artificial jump into another time and space. What we see in the last image of the story is the boatman with wine and glasses, toasting the rambling boy who just saw his girlfriend disappear into the water among the little fish: “My love this is the last call. We’ll set sail now. You have no gills. We are at a very close proximity from tomorrow. I fear you will become a smoked- herring.”(37) It is the last stage of a disconcerting total destruction of the young man by the boatman. What we see, if the play is performed, is the young lover, half naked without trousers and shoes. Intimidated by the stories of the boatman about the magnetic mountain, the boy has put his clothes overboard. Superstition took over. His intellectual ruin is accompanied by his physical undoing: sickness, vomiting, shivering, peeing leads to corporeal dependency on the boatman. Literally and mentally undressed, he gives in and goes with the boatman’s suggestion that his girlfriend has betrayed him. The girl has no answer for either of the two men. She slips away in the water and disappears. The couple’s brave 261 adventure has left them nothing whatsoever. Not even a forbidden experience.

The end of the Boatpeople is just as black. After the boat is discovered by the police, the ‘sailors’ start to quarrel and fight. There is gunfire. The journalist frames the story, in an epilogue:

“We followed them until they lost hope. And then how should it end: What do people after they lost hope and their illusions are shattered and there is no food left. What do they eat? Their brothers, daughters or wives? We now know why the sea laughs….”

Elaborations

Every voyage has a beginning and must find its end. Generally the seafarer will enter the harbor, where he/she can recover and maybe discover the ultimate end of this journey. When the story/ journey does not end, we as onlookers are confronted with a problem and must retrace our experiences during the journey itself. What sticks in my mind is the malicious destruction of the bodily integrity of the youngsters on the one hand and the creation of an atmosphere of too naïve innocence for these same youngsters on the other. A very difficult world to live in.

Notes 1 Homi K Bhabha, The Location of Culture, Routledge 1994. 2 Marvin Carlson, “Avant-garde Drama in the Middle East”, unpublished. 3 Mohamed Erani, The Prisoner and the Jailor, 1989, p. 34. 4 Hans Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator, Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence, Cambridge, Mass., 1997. 5 Karel Boullart, ‘Comoedia Naturalis’, Philosophica, 38 (1986), nr. 2, pp.‑5-26. 6 Hans Blumenberg, o.c., pp. 2-4. 7 Id., ib., p. 8. 8 Id., ib., p. 10. 262

PERFORMING COMICALITY IN MOROCCAN THEATRE The postcolonial condition of hybridity and the third space

Khalid AMINE

“Some texts are born literary, some achieve literariness, and some have literariness thrust upon them” (T. Eagleton)1 “Some performances are comic, some achieve comicality, and some have comicality thrust upon them” (Khalid Amine)

The current critical emphasis on self-referentiality brings to the fore an important component in modern theatre practice, namely its engagement in privileging representation and simulacra. Baudrillard’s critique of representation articulates such celebration as, “no more mirror and appearances of the real and its concept... In fact, since [the real] is no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all. It is a hyper real, the product of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyper space without atmosphere.”2 The celebration of theatricality and performativity has become dominant not only in the Western tradition, but in the Arab theatrical scene as well. Such phenomenon has become a generalized feature of the so called postmodern epoch of writing -as well as the postcolonial- since our Global Village now is not only a hyper space of ‘mobile objects’ but also one of ‘reflexive subjects’; not only one of global hyper comodification but of opportunities for enhanced social intelligence and cooperation. The degree of the ability to reflect upon the social conditions of existence is linked to the process of globalization and of accelerated de-traditionalisation of modern societies including developing ones like Morocco.3 Hence, reflexivity becomes a characteristic feature of our age embedded in our cultural processes; and theater is, indeed, part of these cultural processes.4

When the subject matter of a given drama happens to have a theatrical property that discloses theatrical semiosis, then this performance is theatricalized in the process, effecting a self-reflexivity by referring the medium (theatrical representation) back to itself as subject matter. Here the mirror of representation is held inside out to reflect art upon itself rather than reflecting an empirical presence from without. Nothing seems to escape representation since representation itself is represented. Such theatre practice is inherently informed by a sharp comicality that sometimes subverts the apparatuses of mise en scène and reception.

Liminal space 263

Moroccan theatre tends to privilege this kind of self-reflexive performances, since it is a theatre that is construed within a liminal third space5 and is informed by an intentional esthetic hybridity that juxtaposes different heterogeneous elements belonging to opposed performing traditions. The effects of this hybridity are manifested in its ironic double consciousness (a consciousness that is informed by the Western tradition -particularly the French Comedy- at the very moment of attempting a sort of rupture), as well as its location between Self and Other, East and West, tradition and modernity, orality and literacy. These negotiations are also informed by the postcolonial Moroccan condition of hybridity, a condition that is, itself, situated across diaspora and diaglossia. Such theatrical practice emerges at the cross-roads as a continuum of intersections and negotiations; the result of these is a complex palimpsest that highlights the powers of the hybrid and the impure rather than a logocentric quest for presence and purity. In other words, theatrical practice in Morocco is part of the dynamics of modernizing the country, and as such it is trapped within the old and new paradigms.

The comic is indeed one of the main venues to cope with such a predicament. It is both a redemptive comicality that tends to mystify social tension and conflict, and a subversive one that forces the spectator not only to laugh at that which is unhappy (the mirthless laugh in Samuel Beckett’s terms) but also to prompt him to act (a comicality with a Lehrstück quality in Brechtian terms). The redemptive tendency is manifestly present in popular comedies that deploy conflictual situations in order to simulate contradictions by way of laughing at them (the productions of the national theater company exemplify such tendency). However, the subversive tendency highlights conflict in order to force the spectator to take a decision, and not only to laugh at his miserable conditions. Nabil Lahlou’s Ophelia is not Dead, and Abdelkrim Berrchid’s Othello and Gun Powder are examples out of many.

In order to rehabilitate an underground performance tradition, Moroccan theatre becomes more and more improvisational and self-reflexive, for such retrieval is still negotiated within the paradoxical parameters of appropriating and dis-appropriating the Western tradition though it strives to construct its proper difference. This theatre deploys a twofold strategy of retrieval. The first one focuses on retrieving pre-theatrical performance behavior as a means of rehabilitating an underground performance tradition that lurks in the deeply rooted ritualistic formulae, ceremonies, masquerades… The main objective behind such retrieval is part of the quest for a lost tradition as part of a dynamic that started with the call for an original/autochthonous Egyptian/Arabic theater by Youssef Idriss, and later on disseminated all over the Arab World. In Morocco 264 the movement started in the late 1960s with Tayeb Sadikki’s al-Majdoub (a masterpiece with an exceptional aura of authority that is still regarded as a refence text, or even a telos).

As to the second strategy, the focus is on establishing a dialogue with the current theatrical scene in Morocco and elsewhere. Such dialogue amounts to an auto-reflection whereby the mirror of theatrical representation is no longer reflecting an outside presence, but is rather reflecting its proper body, a fragmented and over-hyphenated body that is as much contested as Moroccan identity today. Comicality happens to be a common ground that brings the two tendencies together, yet, with slight differences at the level of functionality and reception. The first tradition sometimes tends to absorb conflict through a compromising and yet redemptive comicality designated to mystify the general public’s inherent anger, whereas the second tradition that is more fragmentary and self-reflexive highlights conflict through a subversive comicality that uses comic effects as means of dismantling the complacent passivity of the audience.

Retrieval of a Lost Tradition

Such comicality is in itself a hybrid product that is informed by the rich repertoire of Moroccan orality as well as the implementation of the French comedy by the colonial administration through a Molièrization of Moroccan popular Theatre. In 1950, the colonial administration decided to render theatrical activity in Morocco more docile (or rather a-political, for Moroccan theater during the colonial period was generally a theater of resistance) so as to produce a perfect copy of the Western master model. Two professional theater makers were called from France in order to orient Moroccan theater toward the direction designated for it by the colonial administration. Thus, André Voisin and Charles Nugue assisted by two Moroccans, Abdessamad Kenfaoui and Tahar Ouaziz supervised theatrical workshops in the Mamora Center (Rabat). As a result of such theatrical training, the first professional Moroccan theater company was created bringing together Tayeb Saddiki, Ahmed Tayeb Laalej, Fatima Regragi, Mohamed Afifi and others…

The Mamora theatrical circle was created in 1956, yet still under the influence of the French colonial policy of containment and assimilation. The aim of such Francophone policy was to absorb the nationalist subversive actions that were manifested in the early theater of resistance, and to establish, instead, a mystifying theatrical apparatus that would smooth conflict and resolve social tension through the implementation of a Moroccan version of the French 265

Comedy. Thus the Mamora was established as an official theatrical company. Upon the independence of Morocco in 1956, the National Theater Mohammed the Fifth was created in Rabat, along with the Moroccan Theater Research Center under government auspices. From 1956 until 1974, a period covering postcolonial administration, the Mamora group (under the supervision of the ministry of Youth and Sport with the playwright Driss Tadili as artistic director) performed a series of adaptations from the Western repertoire, mainly from Molière as a landmark of French theatre. Shakespeare occupied a secondary position. In brief, the Mamora theater company that occupied a hegemonic space within the Moroccan theatrical map since 1956 exemplifies the collaboration that was effected between the State and the Stage, for theatre was utilized as a means of indoctrinating people and depoliticizing them.

Transpositions

The transposition of indigenous performance genres such as al-halqa6 and l-bsa:t into the theater building as a Western esthetic/cultural space has become a dominant feature in Moroccan postcolonial theater since the late 1960s. This transposition is not simply a transfer of a performance behavior from Jema’ el- Fna7 into modern Westernized theater spaces, rather it is a cultural, social, and esthetic negotiation between two different performance traditions/locations. The result of such negotiation is the production of a third theatrical space that is liminal and hybrid through and through. That is to say, Moroccan theater fuses classical, modern and postmodern épistemes; and in doing so, it becomes a hybrid theater in its form as well as its content.

Tayeb Saddiki’s theater is an exemplary first instance of festive hybridity. After consuming numerous adaptations from the Western theater, he inaugurated a new approach to theater making in Morocco. The play entitled diwan sidi abderrahman al-majdub8 / The Collection of Master Abderrahman al-majdub (to be abbreviated as al-majdub hereafter) represents the emerging festive theatrical enterprise in postcolonial Morocco; it is spaced on the borderline between Western theater and Moroccan ‘pre-theatrical forms’. For the first time in the brief history of Moroccan theater Saddiki transposed al-halqa, as an esthetic, cultural, and geographical space, into a theater building as the space of the Western Other (transplanted in Morocco as a subsidiary colonial institution). Al-majdub is a play conceived in an open public place. Its opening refers us to its hybridized formation through its persistent self reflexivity, as a device of projecting the mirror to the performance itself almost in the same way as the 266

Comedia dell’arte. The play’s structure is circular rather than linear. It is situated in jema’el-fna as an open site of orature and a space of hybridity itself. The first scenes of the al-majdub production attract our attention to the making of al-halqa and its circular architecture. On-stage actors transcribe the circular form of al-halqa through a series of comic acrobatic games and mimetic body language. They play audience to each other as the narrator (the story teller) gives space to his little halqa. The halqa of al-majdub represents the Moroccan popular poet like a Shakespearean fool, giving voice to wisdom in a corrupt social order. The effects of such an absurd situation are comic, yet redemptive leading to a collective catharsis.

Saddiki’s Al-fi:l was sarawi:l / The Elephant and the Trousers 9 is also a play that is conceived within the parameters of the ‘Peoples’ Theater’, which is a moving theater in search of its audiences. In fact, Saddiki’s appeal to the ‘universal theater’ at the outset of the play is part of the strategy of the writing- back-in of writing and the confirmation of Moroccan theater’s differ(a)nce. In Al-fi:l was-sarawi:l Saddiki makes space for a new theatrical tradition in Morocco that retrieves l’bsa: t, as an old Moroccan performance behavior that incorporates much of the halqa’s performative techniques, and transposes it not only into the present but also to the stage building. Lbsa:t is a performance event that is close to contemporary theater. It is based on a managed scenography, a stage, and most importantly it has archetypal characters, namely: L-mssiyah, L- bouhou, and Neshat. The origin of the spectacle of l-bsa:t is disputed between two traditional cities: Fes and Marrakech. Hassan Mniai writes: “l-bsa:t started in the era of king Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah (1757-1790) who used to see its spectacles and through them could observe the corruption of the state”10. The meaning of the word l-bsa:t is itself disputed. It means “a large plaid” or “carpet” and at the same time “entertainment” or “laughter”. In the form of a social satire, l-bsa:t enacts a neurosis whose narrative symptoms are profoundly metaphorical. Its themes are politically sensitive and aim at touching the hierarchical power structure. Corruption and power abuse are major themes of lbsa:t that are ironically performed inside houses of al-makhzen (government). This very enactment constructs an “Other” in the very heart of the political establishment, as a fictitious self, made up of the confluence of the imaginary and the symbolic. It allows power holders to see their distorted images through the mirror of lbsa: t’s representation which is fueled by comic aspects. It is in this sense that lbsa:t emerges as a melting of the conscious and the unconscious realms of Moroccan traditional society with all its hierarchical power structures.

Saddiki’s negotiation of l’bsa:t is genuinely hybridized with other universal 267 theatrical traditions. He invokes international theatrical traditions and figures bringing to the fore a universal theatrical genealogy wherein he incorporates his present practice of l’bsa:t that is based on dramatic action and epic narration:

“Offering our obedience Offering our obedience to those who precede us Offering our obedience to those who taught us Hamadani’s Maqamas, and the wise Majdoub The ears attended to their melodious asset Sophocles and Shakespeare Gogole and Molière From famous to renowned They cleared up the pathway we’re following their footsteps Partaking of their water The brothers in charge of Peoples’ Theater The brothers in charge of l’bsa:t Theater”. (Al-fi:l wa s-sarawi:l : 9)

Here, Saddiki acknowledges the contributions of international figures who marked theatrical history; yet at the same time, he foregrounds l’bsa:t ‘s tradition as a legitimate performance behavior that has been practiced by Moroccans since the seventeenth century. Of course, the hybrid formation of the play resists any claim of originality and authenticity even from the part of Saddiki himself, for the play is a hybrid fusion of Western theatrical methods and local techniques of l-bsa:t. The presence of archetypal comic characters such as L-mssiyah (who is very much similar to Arlecchino of the Commedia dell’arte) becomes a great source of entertainment, as they are transposed from popular culture to theatrical space. Such transhistoricality is fueled with sharp comicality. But, Saddiki’s claim of originality, authenticity and the return to tradition sometimes runs the risk of falling into the trap of purity and essentialism.

Mise en abîme

El-Meskini Sghir’s bu-jma’ l-faru:j11(Bu-Jma’ the Rooster) is another play that makes use of the space of al-halqa. In this drama, we live with a group of hlayqiya (professional comic entertainers) in a square, or a medina gate, or any other imaginary place that is not specified by the writer. The whole halqa is orchestrated by the famous hlayqi, lmqadum bou-jma’ l-faru:j , who narrates along with the other hlayqiya the story of the multifaceted Ghu:l (an evil spirit 268 that changes its form) and the story of the people of the village... the story of ‘Azri d-duwar... the resisting hero ... The play’s structure displays a quick development of the events in accordance with the rhythms of music and dancing that attract the audiences’ attention to reflect upon different and differing contradictions that constitute the core of Bu-jma’’s story. El-Meskini makes use of a very simple story, yet within an intricate plot and a rather non-linear structure. It is the story of a village people who have been exploited, terrified, and robbed by a multi- faced Ghu:l. Their major weaknesses are hypocrisy, fear and lack of team spirit. Yet, all these nuances are tuned in a comic way that ironically reflects the true vices of such a small community.

Bu-jma’ l-faru:j is a play that is informed by a self-reflexive network that amounts to what is often termed as mise en abîme. Such mistrust of the very means of theatrical representation is manifested at the level of the play’s structure, theme, and character delineation. It is also thematised through the deployment of a series of meta-theatrical devices such as: the play-within-a play, role-playing within the role, ceremony within the play, and literary and real life referents. The play’s stage directions insist on playing different roles by the same actor. As a result, Bu-Jma’ plays the role of the leader of the halqa, the main narrator of the story, and the policeman; Moulay Bi:h plays Zineb, one of the village people, a policeman, and the son of the buried; Al-hrash plays al-Ghu:l, the butcher, the respectful man, Abass, the judge, and the outsider; Mimoun plays ‘azri Duwar (Ahmed Bou Shama), the disguised girl, the immigrant, and the tourist; as to Al-’aydi, he seems to play only one role, yet he is transformed and transposed to different settings as the story goes. All these devices draw attention to the mechanisms of playwrighting, acting, and directing in a self-reflexive, yet comic way. El-Meskini’s play, then, insists on representing representation itself through foregrounding theatrical semiosis to the extent that the audience becomes implicated in the making of the representational act in a conscious way.

The play also manifests a subversion of conventional hierarchical structures in the theatrical mode of representation through the contrary effects of double distancing that is created between stage/auditorium, actor/character, illusion/ reality, and dramatic/epic. Thus, the play as a whole strikes the receiver with a sharp self-referentiality that is informed by black humor. Throughout the text and the performance, fragmentary little dramas, clusters of images, and snatches of actions function as metaphors for a theatrical reality, access to which can only be granted subjectively. The most significant features of the play are its subjection of theatrical representation to scrutiny: the use of theatrical space as an experimental body, and the disturbance of certain boundaries, namely those 269 between artist and spectator, actor and character, spectator and performance, art object and artistic creation. The play becomes a festive event that demands a collective participation. Dramatic language in Bu-jma’ lfaru:j is also permeated by a subtle obscenity and colloquial jargon of Darb Sultan (an over-populated poor neighborhood of Karyan Central at Casablanca). Such verbal wit constitutes a major comic element. However, the use of ‘slang words’ and ‘jargon’ is part of El-Meskini’s strategy, to emancipate language and free it from everyday life’s restrictions. This ‘third language’ (‘Arbadajiya) that is constructed between the formal and informal variations, operates both as the most extreme notion of verbal abuse and also as the furthest reach of a desire to voice out an inner cultural violence against the language of the halqa performance. It is precisely because of this combination between abuse and desire that these words are irreplaceable, and any attempt at eliminating them from the text will not only restrict linguistic import but also emotions. Through the deployment of an in-between language, El-Meskini negotiates a new space for dramatic writing that strives to retrieve all that was used to be seen as inferior and low, exalting it into the realm of the sublime. It is another way of reconciling Moroccan public with theater practice, by means of rehabilitating popular comic performances.

Subversive desire

Zobeir Ben Bouchta’s Lalla J’mila12 is another play that deploys the folk heritage of the north of Morocco. It departs from a revealing preamble by the distinguished Moroccan feminist Fatima Mernissi that manifests the subversive desire of Moroccan women to reach beyond the inside-in inscribed upon them by the patriarchal mindset. Her Aunt’s ingenious stories, and particularly that of ‘the woman with wings’, represent moments of rapture wherein the male-dominated space is temporarily transgressed. Zoubeir Ben Bouchta’s play is all about this fleeting, yet subversive moments of flying over and beyond male domains and hegemony. The journey that the play chronicles reveals the stories of two sisters, Itto and Lalla J’mila, which they constantly trace/dramatise in the various pieces of experience, painfully recalled as they take stock of the suffocating situations in their present statuses as oppressed women. Their recollections are punctuated by extremely powerful moments of comic relief, a fact that incites black humor. Their narratives become a means of empowerment when other forms of power are denied or beyond reach, for stories are “ the method colonized people use to assert their own identity and the existence of their own history”. The play also shows how struggles of national liberation and private battles of self-assertion are linked in a variety of ways. 270

Male presence is painfully incorporated in the two sisters’ narratives. The character of Ould L’gllassa is an exemplary first instance; he epitomizes a pathetic trauma in Itto’s continuous movement in her mental journey across the terrain of her past, for he is “her brother, son of her father, who run away with her bird and cut her wings off’. Bahadou, in his turn, is omnipresent in Lalla J’mila’s narrative. He represents the authoritarian step-father who forced her to annihilate her feminity and adapt a phallocratic identity as a runaway woman, so as to survive within the arena of men. Disguise becomes another source of comicality, as Lalla Jmila presents herself to the society as a man annihilating partially her womanhood. This narrativization of patriachal violence and desire is not without its subversive comic moments, for it is permeated by black humor... And this is because Ben Bouchta has subordinated didactic simplicity to aesthetic complexity. Due to its strong effects at the level of reception, the play is mostly viewed as a tragi-comedy. In retrieving a lost or vanishing tradition, the above- mentioned theatrical experiments have succeeded in attracting a large number of audiences through the deployment of al-halqa techniques such as the criss- crossing of telling and showing, epic narrativity and dramatic representation, improvisation and memorised script13...

Al-Murtajala and the tremulous theatrical Body

Improvised theatrical projects have chosen to temporarily revert the actual theatrical apparatus in Morocco, taking it sometimes to absurd extremes and refusing to compromise when it comes to the politics of reception. Mohamed El-kaghat remains the best representative of the subversive Moroccan murtajala (L’impromptu théâtrale/the improvised play). He is an academic, playwright, director, and actor who is well acquainted with the Western Impromptu and its comic yet ironic representation of theatre problematics since Molière’s L’Impromptu de Versailles (1663), and Critique de L’école des Femmes, Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search for an Author (1921) and Tonight We Improvise (1929), Eugene Eunesco’s L’Impromptu d’Alma (1956), or Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe (1982). El-Kaghat realized the intricate ability of such a theatrical genre to communicate the Moroccan tremulous performance body through self-reflexive comicality and performativity. In his prologue to Murtajalat Fes14 /The Improvisation of Fes, El-kaghat not only legitimatizes his practice of the Impromptu, but also our need for such a theater practice:

“Because our theatre suffers from all kinds of problems, I have adapted the Impromptu in order to expose them to the audience after I realized that discussing problems is not as effective as performing them on stage… 271

Through Irony and Comicality and the exaggeration of comic situations I desire to create a dark comedy”.15

Thus, the improvised play becomes a legitimate theater practice that is based on an unfinished dramatic script, full of holes which should be filled in the process of the performance event through the actors’ improvisation. And this very fact enlarges the freedom of actors who contribute a great deal in the re-writing of the dramatic script every performance.

The murtajala is comic through and through, due to its hilarious witty dialogues, comic situations, and dramatis personae, formulating a sharp critique of theater practice within its social milieu. It is also considered a dark comedy as it foregrounds the old Moroccan saying “more sadness makes you laugh”. In The Improvisation of Fes, for example, and through an ironic representation of the corrupt and ruthless judge al-kadi Yazref, El-kaghat reminds us of one of the most painful moments in Moroccan theater’s brief history, namely the Fakih Ahmed Ben Saddik’s fatwa against the practice of theater and acting at large:

“Ah… Ah… You don’t know that acting is forbiden by divine law? Haven’t you read the book of “Ikamatu dàlili àla hurmati at-tamtili”? You don’t know that the imitation of non-believers is forbidden…”16

Such statement sums up a whole mindset that still regards theater as an evil practice which should be eradicated from our deeply rooted Arabo-Islamic culture. El-kaghat’s ironic reflection on the subject illustrates the true problems that hinder artistic expression in Morocco. Yet, in murtajalat Chmisa Lalla17, the general public’s incessant search for trivialities and non-substantial laughter change all of a sudden into a state of deep sorrow. Lalla Chmisa, daughter of the sultan can no longer laugh or enjoy the beauty of life because of such sadness. So the sultan asks all actors and entertainers of the country to restore her smile and discover the causes behind her deep sorrow. The play critiques the reification of theater practice under government auspices (especially the highly disturbing amateur theater of the 1970s), and reveals the impotence of most of the selected juries in the National Festival of Amateur Theater. In Lajnat al-hukàm al- hukamaa al-muhanàkin/ the Committee of wise and fat Jury is supposed to be the savior of Lalla Chmisa. But what happens in the play is quite the opposite, they deepen her sadness. This fact illustrates their incompetence and inability to appreciate substantial art. The representation of the committee’s debates and suggestions reveal their theatrical illiteracy, a fact that creates ironic situations. 272

The Improvised of Casablanca (Arabic Version 2003/French Version 2005) by Masrah Adifa al-ukhra (The Other Bank Theatre Company) also stages the predicament of theatre practice in Morocco during the present period which is often called the period of change (with Mohamed El-Achàri as Minister of Culture since 1998). Through an intricate deployment of black humor, the play dismantles the hegemonic discursive structures that control theater practice in Morocco. Such predicament is manifestly related to the status of the Arts and Artists in a country that still regards Artistic expression as a luxury rather than being functional in the construction of cultural identity. The play’s comicality invokes a bitter laugh, a laugh that laughs at the absurd situation wherein these trained young actors of the High Institute of Theatre (ISADAC) found themselves thrown into a social structure that in fact hinders art as a profession. More than that, through an ironic representation of the National Theater’s previous director and his naïve understanding of the needs and demands of professionals, the play sharply critiques government policies regarding theater and calls for an urgent change. These young professionals have chosen the improvised form as a means to make a statement. Their message was underwritten within comic situations that are brought to absurd extremes invoking what I called before ‘the bitter laugh’. Because their situation (and that of all other Moroccan artists in general) is so critical at all levels, they have chosen to laugh at it.

Implications

The transposition of traditional performance behavior to a theater building spells out a state of indecision. Such indecision is part of the predicament of the Moroccan postcolonial subject, a subject who found himself construed on the borderlines of different narratives: The Western and the Local. Postcolonial theater has boldly come to terms with the hybrid condition of the Moroccan subject who cannot exist otherwise due to the traumatic wounds that were inflected upon him by the colonial enterprise. The transfer of al-halqa to the stage constitutes a positive oscillation between opposites insofar as it bridges the gap of bipolar opposites by marrying them. Saddiki’s or El-Meskini’s theatremethods exemplify this marriage between East and West, past and present, traditional and modern. In a related context, Edwad Said openly discredits all kinds of essentialism that surrounds discourses of national cultures: “Far from being unitary or monolitic or autonomous things, cultures actually assume more foreign elements, alterities, differences, than they consciously exclude”.18 And since culture is inherently hybrid, adaptive, and changing, performance itself is receptive to foreign elements. Tayeb Saddiki is perhaps the first Moroccan to 273 be “ suddenly transformed into a proponent of a Moroccan/Arabic theater that would benefit from the potentialities of Western theater, on the one hand, and construct its own form through an appeal to patrimony be it history or a theatrical form, on the other hand.” Moroccan theater today is construed within a liminal space, on the borderlines between different tropes. It cannot exist otherwise, for it juxtaposes different heterogeneous entities only to emerge as a hybrid drama that is spaced between East and West. It is a fusion of Western theatrical traditions and the local Arabic performance traditions. The hybrid nature of Moroccan theater is manifested in the very transposition of the halqa (as an important paradigm of moroccan performativity) from jema-elfna to modern theater buildings like The National Theater Mohammed the Fifth, a theater similar to Western theater buildings. Thus, the postcolonial condition of Moroccan theater today is characterized by hybridity as a dominant feature. Hybridity is not simply a fusion of two pure moments, but the persistent emergence of liminal third spaces that transform, renew, and recreate different kinds of writing out of previous models. And this what constitutes our theatrical difference.

Notes 1 Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory. An Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, pp.‑8-9. 2 Jean Baudrillard, “The Procession of Simulacra”, Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, Paul Foss and Paul Patton (Trans.), Brian Wallis (ed.), New York: New York Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984, p.‑254. 3 For more details on ‘Reflexivity Theory’, see Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, London: Polity Press, 1994. 4 In this context, Richard Hornby writes in Drama, Metadrama and Perception: “Metadrama can be defined as drama about drama; it occurs whenever the subject of a play turns out to be, in some sense, a drama itself. There are many ways in which this can occur[...] 1- The play within the play, 2- The ceremony within the play. 3- Role playing within the play. 4- Literary and real-life reference. 5- Self-reference.” (London & Toronto: Associated University Press, 1986, pp.‑31- 32). 5 By way of recovering a ‘native voice’, Homi Bhabha produces for scrutiny a discursive situation making for recurrent instances of transgression performed by the previously colonized Other from within and against colonial discourse. So the ‘third space’, according to Bhabha, “which constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensures that the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized 274

and read anew.” (Bhabha, “The Commitment to Theory”, in The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, 1994, p.37. 6 Al-halqa is a public gathering in the form of a circle around a person or a number of persons (hlayqi/hlayqia) in a public space (be it a marketplace, a medina gate, or a newly devised downtown square). It is a space of popular culture that is open to all the people from different walks of life. Al-halqa hovers between high culture and low mass culture, sacred and profane, literacy and orality... Its repertoire combines fantastic, mythical, and historical narratives from Thousand and One Nights and Sirat bani hilal, as well as stories from the holy Quran and the Sunna of the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) along with local witty narrative and performative forms. The medium of the halqa also varies from storytelling to acrobatic acting and dancing. 7 Jema’ el-Fna is one of the famous sites of popular culture in Morocco. It is a huge and open square in Marrakech wherein story telling and other performance behavior, which belongs to Moroccan popular culture, are practiced as licensed and free oral expression. In brief, the square is a site of popular Orality and ritualistic formulae. 8 Tayeb Saddiki, Sidi Abderrahman Al-majdoub (unpublished script, no date). 9 Tayeb Saddiki, Al-fi:l wa-ssara:wi:l, Kenitra: Editions Boukili, 1997. 10 Hassan El-Mniai, Al-masrah al-maghrebi mina a-ttaassisi ila sinaat al-furan (Moroccan Theater from Construction to the Making of Spectacle) Fes: Faculty of Letters, Dhar el-mehraz Publications, 1994, p.‑7. 11 El-Meskini Sghir’s bu:-jma’ l-faru:j (Bu-Jma’ the Rooster), Casablanca: The Center of Third Theater Publications, 2000. 12 Zobeir Ben Bouchta, Lalla Jmila, Tanger: Ibn Khaldoun Publications, 2004. 13 For more details on the Moroccan halqa, see Khalid Amine, “Crossing Borders: Al- halqa Performance in Morocco from the Open Space to the Theatre Building”, TDR (The Drama Review. The Journal of Performance Studies), Summer 2001, T170, pp.‑55-69. 14 Mohamed El-kaghat, al-murtajala al-jadida & murtajalt Fes (The New Improvised Play & The Improvised of Fes) (Unfinished Theatrical Projects), Casablanca: Sabou Publications, 1991. 15 Ibid., p.‑7. 16 Mohamed El-kaghat, murtajalat Fes, pp.‑83-84. 17 Mohamed El-kaghat, Chmisa Lalla (unpublished script). 18 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, New York: Alfred A. Knopff, 1994, p.‑15. 275

PERFORMING SIYAH BAZI / PLAYING THE BLACK Satire and Social Relief in Historical Iran

Farah YEGANEH and Mehrdad RAYANI

There has been an increase of attention in Iranian society towards indigenous folk art and an increase in the number of theatre students and scholars in recent years. Both developments have also led to a growth in the number of Siyah Bazi’ performances, the emergence of dramatic texts for the black-face shows based on contemporary social issues, and an accompanying scholarly research.

This article will introduce and explore the specific comicality of this very popular type of traditional Iranian performance Siyah Bazi - Siyah meaning ‘black’ and bazi meaning ‘play’. The name Siyah applies to the main character, which has blackened his face because supposedly he is a black servant. After a general introduction to the genre, we will explore first the theatrical characteristics of the main figure Siyah and the themes of the performances. After that we will trace the discussion about the historical roots of the Shiyah plays and offer an outline of the history of the performances, from the Middle Ages up to the 21st century.

Siyah Bazi is a comic performance with a remarkable evolution process. Its fundamental principle is improvisation. It uses dance and singing for flavoring the show; thence, the actors especially Siyah should enjoy proper vocal abilities for chanting. The play starts and ends with a dance. A happy ending and a suitable, moral message are essential parts of the performance. Though there is no director to direct the play, there is an elder who has been a member of the troupe since its formation. He answers the players’ questions and guides them, yet he avoids to define a philosophy for the performance or fix a direction or form for it. At this point, the reader has certainly perceived obvious similarities between Siyah Bazi and the Italian Commedia dell’arte and will continue to discover more, as the article expands.

Comical strategies

Siyah Bazi is deeply influenced by an Oriental fictional narrative-model, which is based on flight: escape from one tale to another.1 The story is framed and cyclic like Thousand and One Nights, with sub-plots interwoven together, defining and 276 modifying each other. However, the dramatic text is not an important element of this theatrical genre. Movement and encounters are essential, not the literary value of the work. The dramatic structuring of the play does not depend on a pre-written text. Lack of a written text liberates the performance from limitations and restrictions that literature would impose. There is a basic scenario around which actors would develop the details in consultation with each other. Then, each adds other immediate improvisations during the show as well. Therefore, the performance shortens or lengthens according to the enthusiasm and reception of the audience. The play actually never repeats itself exactly the same way it was performed before. This is how the real theatrical event takes place. Actors use their performative skills and talents to theatricalize their show, which can go on up to four hours. Siyah and other characters use many comical strategies and techniques to bring out laughter during the performance.

Within the linguistic category these strategies include: Socratic irony, pun, verbal incongruity, mugging, overstatement and understatement, mistakes in speech and in identities, inversions, pretension of ignorance, over-reacting and under-reacting, deceit, timidity, humorous repetitions, mocking pomposity and eloquence, solecism including malapropism, paradox, chiasmus, forgetfulness, regional accents, meddling, hypocrisy, verbal irony (but also dramatic, situational and/or structural) and ambiguity.

Behavioral practices include behavioral incongruity as physical mugging, inverted actions, humorous manifestations of grief including crying, loudness, importunity and pushiness, slapstick and collisions. Bodily characteristics include physical incongruity, physical jokes, abnormalities like excessive tallness, shortness (including dwarfs), fatness, shortness, humorous and/or grotesque make-up.

Performative features on which the comicality of the genre depends are: a. jocularity as a power to bring laughter b. musicality and rhythm, marking the passage of time and a change of place, creating a happy atmosphere needed to help the imagination of the audience. c. improvisation skills in speech, in humor, in developing the characters and in developing the plot d. professional acting: actors learn their art through the experience of years. Their acting styles are named after the famous skillful masters. An apprentice works under the auspices of a master for years till he becomes a master himself. The process of teaching and learning is accomplished in the group, and not through individual guidance 277 e. As a kind of poor theatre: props and scenery are minimal. Often it is an empty stage with only actors on it, and the audience around on three or four sides. The performative skills of actors and the theatrical imagination of the spectators make the show.

The Art of Cunning

The strong satirical aspects of Siyah Bazi made the show into a specimen of the art of cunning within the Iranian community. Locals loved the performances as a social relief because they could share the sharp criticisms of the aristocracy and the rich. The bites were sudden and improvised - sometimes made even sharper inspired by the audiences’ warm reception - and occasionally developing into a vulgar give-and-take. Police could not prevent these sharp satirical patches. The performances were loved by vast audiences and banning them would cause more dissatisfaction on the side of people. Moreover -as a clever and sensible point- these patches were improvised on the stage and could not be detected in any pre-written texts. Possibly they could not even be repeated in the same exact manner again. Some scholars believe that the lack of written texts is due to this very same reason of reducing the risk of being caught by censors, though still the police occasionally bothered the troupes. They also assert that one of the main reasons for the emergence of this genre, besides its entertaining aspect, was because it created the opportunity for political satire: thence, an art of cunning. The originators were certainly aware of the power situated in the unpredictability of its improvisational character.2 On the whole, the shows were moralistic and satiric in the way they criticized the decadent morality, ridiculed the current normal ethics, and searched for sincerity and honesty.

Though the performances were very popular, they were banned and limited largely ever since the 16th century as a result of religious restrictions on sexual issues. These restrictions created even a new kind of performativity, i.e. transvestitism, male actors started to play the role of female characters by dressing like them and imitating feminine behavior.

Social and Theatrical Construction

The character of Siyah serves as vehicle for revolt, that challenges oppression and stands up against every evil. Siyah is alert and quick-minded and never leaves questions unanswered. Besides, he enjoys having a sweet face, sweet speech, 278 talent, and a flexible body professional performing his unique stylized dance. In past times, Siyah-actors used burnt cork mixed with vaseline. Today they use ordinary theatre make-up to blacken their faces.

A usual name for Siyah could be Mobarak (Good Omen), Yaghoot (Ruby), or Ghanbar (an ordinary male name, yet rather coarse and cacophonous). Other characters in the play are defined in concordance with the story. Haji is a pseudo- moralistic fifty-year-old merchant with a rosary in his hand. Deepdown, he is greedy and moneyloving. Haji’s wife is a nag whose complaints – which would lessen or increase as suits the play – can madden Haji. Haji’s son (usually named Sholy, meaning limp, saggy and insipid) is insipid and spoiled; and the maid who is a kind creature and a parallel to Siyah, usually is in love with him and finally marries him. Apart from these fixed characters in the play, others would enter the performance as they fit in, yet all are types. As mentioned before, this group of stereotype characters were usually roughly led by an elder who would narrate the main line of the story, and the actors would improvise the details and develop the whole plot.

With the entrance of Siyah into Iranian comic theatre, the physical, mental and linguistic features of his real social type were recorded as his theatrical characteristics; e.g. his crudeness in talking Persian brought his humorous language and remained there as a convention and a feature of his character. He is humorous, timid, free-willed, helpless and degraded in the society. What comes to his mind, he expresses out of sincerity mixed with fear and/or hope, in a humorous manner. He subjects himself to the offences of his master, and imagines himself as an unwanted, unneeded member of a society of white rich people. He is nagging, demanding, soft-hearted, meddling, sweet-tongued, secret- revealer, naïve yet smart, commanding, quick-talking, digresser, timid when he is needed to be courageous, talkative when he should be quiet, and silent when he must talk.3 He is the main character in the play, giving life to all the performance, and has the most improvisation. Compared to others in the play, he is a more round character. Despite his foolish, humorous appearance, he may offer painful utterances, changing the audience sweet laughter to sarcastic smiles.

He is a clever, yet moron-showing servant satirizing everything and everybody. At the same time that he loves his master, he is also angry with him. The social-class difference between him and others, e.g. the master, compels him unconsciously to be upset. On the other hand, because he is good-hearted, he objects to the master’s immoral deeds. He always attempts to end the dispute, but the master would like to keep his distance from the quarrel. This is how the dramatic conflict takes shape in the whole structure of the play. It transforms 279

Siyah into the representative of the masses. His utterances are biting. What people wish to express but cannot, he does. At the same time that the audience laughs at Siyah, they sympathize with him. He is a social-political critic, another reason why people love him.

He knows dancing, singing and music well, and makes use of these capacities throughout the show in a double way. Acting wrongly for instance, or singing wrongly or dancing in an incorrect way, he makes others sing and dance, to show him, Siyah, the correct way of doing it. Thus, it is discovered that these pseudo- moralistic people act, in fact, different in public and private spheres. And so the main theme of the play, the incongruity of appearance and truth emerges. In the same way is Siyah not able to talk distinctly. He articulates words wrongly, thus confusing others and making them translate or pronounce the words correctly. This serves again to remove the mistake or resolve the misunderstanding. During these notorious conversations, many secrets are revealed and false appearances are betrayed.

Thematics

The subject matter of Siyah Bazi has evolved and varied throughout time and can be divided into following categories:

1. Historical-mythological subjects: characters and the story come from history and well-known myths, especially love-stories. Time and place of the stories can be changed, and many idiomatic expressions, proverbs, and props belonging to contemporary times may be used. The character of Siyah himself in the play is one of these time-mingling collage innovations. Even serious historical characters can be modified to comic ones enhancing the satirical value of the performance. 2. Contemporary social subjects: a comic theatricalization of real-life situations takes place. Characters are types such as the run-away bride-groom, and Haji (literally meaning one who has been a pilgrim to Mecca, actually a pseudo-religious merchant). Contemporary society is portrayed and satirized without being explicitly mentioned. Because the plot is rudimentary - there is a general scenario and no director is involved- the actors are responsible for all that goes on stage. Their performative capital is their every-day contact with social circumstances, situations and people: their theatrical ethical commitment is to uncover and reveal the apparently unusual and unaccepted issues having become usual or routine, as an not admitted result of repetition. Flaws and deficiencies are also overstated in a humorous manner. 280

3. Fantastic subjects: although most characters are realistic, the play has an atmosphere of fantasy making use of a demon, jinni or dragon. The satire is poetically delicate and sophisticated, not committed to criticize the dominant materialism of the society. The actors are hyperactive and mobile using a vivid coloring of emotions. Though the objective of the show is the same as the other kinds, these plays are more a vehicle for abstract dramatic artistry, at the same time that the performing group is certain that their art can create the ‘flow’ in the audience.

A Russian tourist has been quoted to describe a comic performance around 1838 as follows:

“In this kind of performance, many vulgar speeches and actions can be seen. Because the purpose is to make the spectators laugh, the show is bereft of any seriousness. Actors paint their faces with flour, soot or egg yolk. Subject matter can come from rural life as well. Performances are improvised; therefore, there is no record of them. I will try to explain one of them: It is summer. Two gardeners appear in a garden. They have worn costumes made of pieces of lamb’s skin, which covers their torsos. The older one, Bagher, is rich and has a beautiful daughter. The younger one, Najaf, is poor but hardworking and clever. The two neighbours engage in talking about the yearly product and fruits. Gradually, the conversation develops into an argument, and they start a quarrel beating each other with fist and spade. This way, they take laughter from the audience. Finally, Bagher, the older one admits that Najaf is right and they make peace and become friends again. They think about having some drinks. Najaf goes to fetch some when Bagher calls on him asking to also bring some kebab. Again when he wants to leave, he is called to bring some sweets as well. Again, as he starts off parting, he is called to bring something else, and on and on, till the exhausted Najaf would not listen to his callings anymore, and this time really sets off to fetch the things – another comic element which brings laughter. Bagher, who is alone now, prepares himself to eat, and does it in a very humourous and mocking manner. His scene ends with the re-entering of Najaf. They eat and drink, and Najaf plays his musical instrument. Finally, Bagher falls asleep, and Najaf picks up his musical instrument and goes toward his beloved, Bagher’s daughter”.4

This quotation is one of the most important documents as far as Siyah Bazi is concerned, describing the content and space of a typical rural comic performance 281 in the beginnings of the 19th century, especially because Najaf can be considered as a prototype of Siyah who developed other typical characteristics throughout time. However, the basic show still continued to be performed and is still performed in rural areas.

Historical roots

Scholars have expressed various convictions as to the origin of Siyah Bazi. The most pervading ideas are that the show may have originated from folk tales, history and myth, popular dances, dumb shows, or has even been created by Siyah Bazi players themselves. Actors used various sources as suited the conditions and circumstances of their society. Fools, dancers and players who did different kinds of comic-popular entertainments were attracted to Siyah Bazi gradually. The date of the first recorded show having all the formal characteristics of Siyah Bazi goes back to 1899 though certainly the evolution to this complete form took a few centuries, since late medieval period.

It is possible that in the times of the Islamic Empire when merchants started trading in Africa, some slave traders were bringing black slaves to Persian Gulf. In addition, Portuguese did use their black slaves to build fortresses in the south of Iran in the 17th century, when they took over those areas. There are still some people of black origins living in the Gulf area. A famous Siyah of the end of 19th century is quoted to have told that he would go to black servants (traded in the south of Iran, through the Persian Gulf) and watch how they talked, made fun, and quarreled. They could not talk Persian well; thus, their speech sounded funny. He would imitate them in their presence, and they liked it. He admits that he learned the art of the Siyah in this way. At night, he went to the teahouse and performed his show, and people just laughed.5

But the oldest and the most important immigration comes from the nomad gypsy Asians, especially Indians, before and after the Islamicization of Iran (ca. 700 CE) who moved toward Iran and further to the West, in small and big groups in different phases. However, Mahdi Forough, the veteran Iranian scholar, believes that Siyah is the development and contemporary form of old-time clowns and fools of rulers and kings.6

It is believed that its roots can be traced back to late medieval times when wandering entertainers tried to make shows in different towns and villages by 282 imitating accents and characteristics of the people of various parts of the country – thus creating the feeling of ‘communitas’. They would visualize encounters between people of variable demographics: a short greeting would soon develop into a quarrel - because of their differences -, the dialog would change into an argument, and the argument into a mocking of ‘the other’, his linguistic accent and regional features. The performance would end like in slapstick: physical quarrel, a chase or/and flight. In the beginnings of 18th century (the last years of the Safavid epoch) these troupes found more stable performing sites in teahouses, especially in big cities like Isfahan – the capital – and Shiraz (a major city in south-west of Iran, most famous because of being near Persepolis).

They would also be invited to ordinary people’s homes to do shows for their feasts and celebrations such as weddings, naming days, or circumcision-parties for the boys. Thus, the theatrical event would transform into a super-performance or meta-event. One scholar, Khosro Shahriari, believes that in the settlement of gypsy entertaining dance groups, who were in a constant move from India to the West — lies the origin of Siyah Bazi.

Other forms of performances, included in the playing culture of the community; i.e. dance, music and singing, contributed extensively to the evolution of Siyah Bazi’s communicative act. One version for its evolution is as follows: four dancers in costumes of different colors (red, blue, yellow and violet) hid in four boxes. They were brought to the stage and popped out of the boxes one by one amidst the excitement of the spectators while music was being played. They danced in a group first, then each of them were taking turns, and finally as a group again. The show went on all through the evening. This popular form acquired the title of Four Boxes little by little, but a black-faced figure took the place of one of the performers and brought along satire to the performance. The four players mocked each other’s color of costumes, accents and characteristics, a quarrel followed, and the yellow always won. At the end, there was a peacemaking, dancing and singing. Then they returned to their boxes and were carried away.7

Performance history

With the beginning of Qajar era (1792-1925), these troupes turned to the new capital, Tehran, and found performing sites for their professional objectives in the teahouses of this city.8 These comic performing entertainments were greatly nourished in this period - i.e. 18th and 19th centuries - as site-specific shows. Because of the support of the court, they attracted the attention of the entire Iranian 283 community despite the existence of various sub-cultures and sub-communities, and developed their specific rules and conventions as theatrical events.

The staging of the performances took place in close relationship with the cultural context of the society. In teahouses, a few thick wooden boards were laid on the ground to form a stage. In rich homes, a rug would be spread in one corner of a big hall to do the same job. In commoners’ houses, they would cover the pool in the courtyard with a big wooden board to create a raised stage; hence, the existence of other names for Siyah Bazi like Takhte-Hozi (Board- On-The-Pool) or Ru-Hozi (On-The-Pool). It was then, when Siyah Bazi went to the common people that the show started to evolve. The evolution process continued until the beginnings of the Constitutional Movement around 1906 in the shift from an autocratic monarchy to a constitutional one. The Movement influenced social-cultural issues to a great extent. The autocracy of the Qajar rulers, and the consequent defiance of it filled the society with political nuancing discussions, decreasing the importance of entertainment. The presence and work of the first famous officially acknowledged Siyahs (the most well-known being Karim Shireyi, meaning Karim the Sweet) in the period of Naseredin Shah (King Naseredin, 1848-1896, a patron of arts) had a great impact in Siyahs’ gaining importance and attention, and their subsequent entrance to the houses of the rich and their patronization.

In the beginnings of Pahlavi Era (1925), regulations were established to issue permits for performances. Troupes were forced to write down their scenario’s, which was against the spirit of Siyah Bazi, whose basis was creativity in the moment and on stage, and not through pre-written texts. Writers could only write the raw frameworks of the stories and no more, since no one was able to predict or record the delicacies or day-by-day modifications of speech or action. This banning issue brought changes to Siyah Bazi: the critical aspect faded, and the moral aspect increased, and consequently, creativity was lost to a great extent. However, the necessity to write down texts was the first step toward the formation of modern theatre in Iran. This move toward modernity, in particular, the import of Western theatre, made Siyah Bazi lose its social discourse and become a traditional, museum-fit form.

Notes 1 Yari, Manoochehr, “The Original and the Fake in Traditional Theatre”, The Book of 5th Traditional-Ritualistic Festival. Tehran: Namayesh Publications, 1993. pp. 15-16. 2 Nassirian, Ali, ‘What Is Takht-e Hozi’, Theatre Quarterly, no. 13, Namayesh 284

Publications, spring 1991, p.‑95. 3 ibid. 4 Beizayi, Bahram. Theatre in Iran. Tehran: Kavian Publications, 1965. pp. 169-170. 5 Kasbian, Hossein. “Siyah Bazi Is the Heritage of Fools”, in a collection of interviews: The Book of the Sixth Festival of Traditional-Ritualistic Theatre. Tehrna: Namayesh Publications, Oct. 1994. pp. 54-55. 6 Forough, Mahdi. “Theatre in Iran”. In The Book of Iran Shahr. Tehran: University Publications, 1963, p. 914. 7 Beizayi, Bahram. Theatre in Iran. Tehran. pp. 169-170. Also see The Origins of Theatre in Iran by Abolghasem Jannati Atayi. Tehran: Safialishah Press, 1977. 8 Shahriari, Khosro. The Book of Theatre, vol. 1. Tehran: Amir Kabir Publications, 1986. p. 80. 285

THE GENESIS OF COMEDY AND THE COMIC CONDITIONS IN SUDANESE THEATRE A short history

Shams EL DIN YOUNIS

The history of modern Arabic theatre shows that there are close connections between theatre-forms in East and West. It is clear that when we look at the comic condition and cultural varieties in Arabic and Western theatre, we study in fact the Arabic comic theatre and the impact of Western theatre on it. Out of this connection a number of questions arise. This paper handles Sudanese comic theatre as a case study because it represents Arabic comic theatre with all its inconsistencies. Does this theatre represent the comic condition? Does it argue with social issues? Does it reflect issues with the help of comical techniques within a cultural, social and political context? All these questions lead us to a confrontation with the crisis in Arabic comic theatre resulting from socio-cultural changes in our countries during the last decades. The Arab dialogue with Western culture in general and theatre in particular, depends on the coercion of theatre in its Western version of all the different theatrical means of expression. This has proven to be the case with leading group of playwrights in Sudan.

For my argument, the paper proposes to investigate the genesis of comedy, the sources of laughing, its purpose, and the general principles that form the comic condition of the play, all leading to diversity and difference between Arabic and Western performance. I will conclude with an historical overview of the development of comic texts and characters in Sudan.

The genesis of comedy

I will not deal with the origin of the word comedy. It seems more adequate to describe the laboratory in which the comic situation is formulated: its verbal expression and acting strategies, the situation that creates misunderstanding and paradox and triggers the chemical process, which produces the laughter. But where does this process begin? Does it start in the mind of the receiver or with the playwright? Does it come out of the actors mind and the body and bursts out into theatrical signs as gestures, facial expressions, sounds etc.? What is important is 286 that comedy is borne out of a process of rotation, of alternation. Before there is laughing there is expectation and a beginning of understanding on the audience side about the implications and the assumed end, as a part of a shared intellectual process that reaches further than the theatrical place and time. Let us suppose that on stage a burglar strikes into a room of a small-time thief, who keeps his treasury keys inside his sock, touching this leg with every move he makes while sleeping. Noticing this, the burglar puts a sock on an artificial leg and gives this leg to the sleeping man. Then he takes the keys.

If this story can be taken as an example for a comic situation, the scene will stimulate the experience of comicality in the mind of the audience. Assuming the stinginess of the man and his fear of loosing his money they will study his reactions: a. Does he consider the artificial leg as his real leg? b. Does he cry for loosing his leg or look for the key first? c. Is he in total distress?

What are the sources of comedy? Is it the stereotype, the character, the situation, the expression or the expectations of comic behavior? Could one say that the source of comedy is a ritual, performed collectively at specific moments? Could one compare the communication pattern with the picture of a triangle whose tip is pointed to the stage, whereas the baseline widens in the auditorium while the two main sides represent approaches and diverge the angles of the triangle’s base? This alternation of the movement of the sides towards the tip creates the source of the comical movement, starting sometimes from the audience, sometimes from the stage.

Purpose of comedy

The purpose of comedy is always governed by culture leading the communication- process. Indeed, to answer the question why man laughs, one has to specify as well what the purpose of comedy is. And then, when laughing and fun were born from religious festivals, its correlation with the rousing of religious and magical functions, made the phenomenon of laughing a form of social ritual. This collective background stimulates a weeping man, when put into a group of laughers, to laugh also. Though the purpose of laughing seems clear, it is always connected with astonishment. In my opinion there is no laughing without astonishment as a cause or purpose (with the exception maybe in the case of hysteria where it should get an psychological explanation). 287

Laughing is a notion prior to social conduct or instinctive behavior; it is first of all an emotional condition in a negative or positive sense. Preparing for the comical moment, we can investigate this condition in its cultural variety as an effect of the conscious understanding and unconscious memory, which trigger a laugh. And it is an effect of time. The celebrated comedies of Aristophanes that released storms of laughter out if his images in language in their own time, have become history in Athens today. Culture has been moving onwards and developed different patterns.

In the communication between audience and stage, what governs the collective mind and the consciousness are the signs that embody ethical values, which enable these signs to be firmly established, fixed and potentially indicative of the alteration between the interpretation of the text by the audience both on the level of the written text and the text in performance. In general this indicates that there are no specific cultural conditions to the comical situation. But of course in order to perceive a Western comedy for an Arab audience (and vice versa) preparation data should be offered. These data exist in cultural constituents, which can be mastered by the historical and local context of the audience. Imagine putting a traffic light in the desert. No Bedouin would stop for it because they do not know the conditions of roads, cars, city life etc..

The comic condition and Sudanese theatre

To understand the comic condition and its relation to the cultural context we have to discuss methods, style and the way laughing is prepared in the Sudanese theatre. The main trend in our comic theatre is a situation-comedy that is based on stereotyping and a context where the situation and the verbal expression appear to stand in a paradoxical situation with each other. The paradox lays in the phenomenon of comic theatre as a monologue, a solo art form presented by one actor/character in a suitable dressing up. These monologues were usually presented at the occasion of a wedding party inside the house.

This situation lasted until these monologues were offered in the interval between the acts of a play that was performed. One year after the other these monologues were performed and used to tackle social issues such as drinking alcohol or gambling. Only later the monologues developed in sketches of simple nature, that criticized one special topic and depended on stereotyping. These sketches paved the way for longer comedy plays, representing the stereotype of the simple and naive man of the rural areas who is not familiar with the complicated relations within city-life and is shocked by people’s behavior. The plays develop the theme of the distance between the retarded and underdeveloped 288 rural areas and the developed life in the city. It is a cultural gap which generates uncounted stereo/types and motivate laughter.

It seems that at this time the Sudanese theatre-makers are in need to absorb the socio-cultural dimensions of comedy inside the Sudanese cultural belt and start to distinguish the modern varieties in the existing comic experiments. The important questions of course are the following: Do they see these varieties as autonomous or integrated? Do they concentrate on specific groups inside the Arabic/Sudanese cultural space or do they reach out for global inspiration. Is there, in short, any need for cross-cultural comedy through which one could criticize the coercive version of theatre from two viewpoints: the “ interior credibility” and the “exterior credibility”. By the first term we mean the credibility of perception and methods of the theatre inside the Arabic/Sudanese socio-cultural belt, that produced it, whereas by the second one we speak about the credibility of theatre/ comedy brought from the Western socio-cultural context and implemented in the other social-cultural domain as happened in Sudan.

Origins of the comic

Sudanese theatre critics dispute the question of origins of its comic traditions. Some say that comic theatre was in Sudan from ancient times, as one can see in the paintings on old temple walls.1 Some believe that it is an imported drama-genre, which came to Sudan from Egypt more recently, when the Egyptian comedian Bulbul visited the country to present his monologues. Others think that this form of theatre was influenced by the plays performed at the foreign community clubs during the period of colonization by the English (1905-1919).2 After this period we see the rise of Sudanese comic theatre where traditional folkloric poems are used as texts like Ikhwaniyat (Brotherhood).3 The subject matter of these poems is the relationship between the poet and his colleagues or sometimes a situation that has happened to one of the poet’s relatives. For instance, the poet depicts one of his relatives running after the cat, which steals meat and milk everyday:

“Why cat, do you steal night and day, Are birds and mice too expensive for you? Look, Medina is setting a trap for you She swears on the grave of her grandfather To pull your claws out And she swears to Mr. Al Jack too She will throw you away in a sack So, when you go in and out of Medina’s house, beware 289

She has killed a lot of cats before”.

History

Historical investigations have shown that there is a lot of comicality in Sudanese heritage before Colonialism. These forms however never reached maturity on stage except in modern times. In particular in the 1930s and 40s they were presented as interludes, having been theatricalized by pioneers of Sudanese theatre. As a whole theatre in Sudan emerged in 1909 with the first play text Al Murshed Al Sudany (The Sudanese Guidance) written by the governor of Al Getina province by Abed Al Gader Mukhtar, an Egyptian officer. The theme of this play dealt with encouraging people for education. It depicts two boys, one well-educated and speaking classic Arabic, the other illiterate and speaking slang, spelling badly and disrespecting his family. Yet, in a way, an idea of this theatre had been already introduced into Sudan by the Egyptian influence during the time of the Anglo-Egyptian occupation in 1898. From that date onwards many Arab and European companies visited Sudan and performed plays either in English or Arabic. In 1910 the Sudanese education-mission to Egypt helped to create the formation of a group of people, capable of understanding and practicing the function and techniques of the theatre arts. This interaction between Sudan and Egypt in the educational missions enabled Sudanese students to study not only literature and religion but also to become acquainted with Egyptian theatre. This led Sudanese theatre pioneer Khalid Abu Alruth to the statement that his play was written according to the methods of Ahmed Shawgi. This same Abu Alruth wrote the first Sudanese version of an Egyptian comic monologue. The writer studied religion studies in Omdurman/Khartoum but was expelled from his studies because he asked a man to play the role of a woman. But women were not allowed to join theatre groups or even appear on stage.

Crucial in the development of Sudanese theatre was the Institute of Bakatt AlRuda, established in 1943 for the training of teachers. Not only did it perform Shakespeare and Shawgi in Sudanese language, it also sent Sudanese to England to study theatre in the 1950s and 60s. They came back to lead theatre activities and to train teachers to organize theatre activities in schools. Comedies of Shakespeare (Midsummernightsdream) and Molière (Tartuffe) were translated and performed.

In that same period a very famous comic actor, director and playwright emerged, Al Fadil Saeed, who began to perform the monologues of Abu Elruth, but quickly developed more elaborate sketches at the end of the 1950s. 290

This marked a turning point in the history of comic theatre in Sudan. Fadil Saeed asserted that these comic performances were unique, maybe even more convincing than the former comic interludes, and pleaded for comic theatre as a structural part of Sudanese arts. His opinion was strongly presented during his touring in the country. The well-composed sketches he performed played an important role in the developing comic theatre, although the sketches were about character-stereotypes rather than social issues. His success was due to the charming style of his acting, presenting some of the most famous characters Kartoob and Bitgudaim in Sudan. Many pioneers followed him like Osman Ahmed Hamid with Tor Aljar and Mahmoud Sirag with Abu Dal’aiba. They took their models from everyday practice. Fadil Saeeds influence both in acting, directing and playwriting was very strong on a new generation of comedy-groups whose members studied at the Institute of Music and Drama in Karthoum. At this moment however the character-stereotypes are discouraged. The Institute tries to establish new forms of comic theatre based on social issues.

Comedy theatre in Sudan has more profited from Arabic comic drama such as the writings of Almagott, Faroug Korshid and Mahfouz Abdelraman etc. than from Sudanese playwriting. As a consequence, present comic plays are not about specific Sudanese issues although both the texts and the typical characters are adapted like Almuharig the clown (Almagott) and Habazlam Bazaza (Abdelraman). These adaptations were made during recent graduation projects of the directors-course of the Institute of Music and Theatre and later transferred to public performances. It becomes clear that influences from Arabic theatre in general and Egyptian theatre in particular has been very strong and that the tradition of Fadil Saeed’s stereotyping is still very much alive.

Notes 1 Shams El Din Younis, Sudanese Rituals throughout History, Arabic text, Khartoum, Sudan, 2004. 2 Osman El Nasari, Foreign Community Theatre 1905-1919, Arabic text, Khartoum, Sudan, 1979. 3 Al Hamid Mohammed, Sudanese Comic Poetry, Arabic text, Khartoum, Sudan, 1999. 291

TRADITIONAL WESTERN INTERPRETATIONS OF THE COMIC HERO VS. THE LACANIAN CHALLENGE The Case of Amphitruo

Freddy DECREUS

Amphitruo, deluded hero and cheated husband, great Theban warrior and king, has figured as the victim of randy and almighty Jupiter in a long series of Western comedies. In the hands of Plautus, the greatest comedy writer of Roman Republican times, this poor king was manipulated by the father of the gods himself, so that Jupiter could assume the complete identity of Amphitruo and seduce his wife, the decent Roman domina Alcumena. The father of the gods temporarily but totally deprived him of his human appearance, and in pursuance of his love-making, stretched the length of the night into three (the nox longa- motive). When the real Amphitruo arrived the next morning and wanted to tell his wife of his military successes, he could not understand why her reception was so cool and why she already seemed to know what had happened on the battlefield. On top of that, Amphitruo’s slave, Sosia, was reduplicated by Mercurius, a situation which resulted in the farcical scene of two couples facing each other, a human general and his slave, and a divine ‘copy-paste version’ of Jupiter and Mercurius. The story ended in an even more incredible way, with the double accouchement by Alcumena, a double birth which revealed that Jupiter was the father of Heracles, and Amphitruo the father of Iphicles. And do not precisely the adventures of Heracles, prototype of the fallible hero, and son of an ever amorous father, illustrate, ad nauseam, the painful limitation of the human race that never can cope with its lustful nature?

Reading a story like this, one must admit that its topics really are something special, outstanding in fact. Let us focus just on three themes, all of which illustrate primal human problems and which keep on returning in later Western interpretations. First, there is the god/men relationship in Jupiter’s descent from heaven and his amazing experiences in a human world, an elaboration of the sacred marriage between heaven and earth. Secondly, there is a man’s anxiety about his wife and his inability to understand her as the radically other, she who is able to bear children and who succeeds in puzzling him so profoundly. And finally, this ‘comedy’ continually asks questions about doubles: two gods (Jupiter; Mercurius) doubling two humans (Amphitruo; Sosia), two fathers generating two sons (Jupiter/ Heracles and Amphitruo / Iphicles) and fighting 292 them in different ways (esp. Amphitruo has to face the divine son, Heracles). Indeed, the mingling of these three thematic lines provides enough material to illustrate a special edition of Freud’s primary family triangle. As a matter of fact, these topics really belong to a tragedy, not a comedy, and in his opening lines, Plautus repeatedly draws attention to the way he has revived older tragic material in a new comic context. As has been shown1, the more serious aspects treated in this comedy did indeed originate from Greek tragedy. But in Plautus’s hands, a god decided that he could turn a tragedy into a comedy, as can still be read in vs. 65, tragicocomoedia (HSS), a mixed form halfway between the two.

A history of de-sacralization

For about 2500 years, the West has staged Amphitruo in all possible comic and farcical tones, in a never ending series of adaptations and transpositions, questioning both the vulgar and the grotesque (cf. the beating of Sosia by Mercurius and the rape of Alcumena by Jupiter), allured by the lurking doom of regression which threatens both gods and humans. Giraudoux, in his Amphitryon 38 (published in 1929) calculated that up to that point, the Western tradition knew exactly 38 new versions of this story. However, he did not rely upon the most accurate accounts and missed some of them. Today we know of more than 100 adaptations, making this comedy the most popular and most imitated of all Plautus’ plays.

Even in Antiquity, the way Plautus treated the Amphitruo-theme revealed a very provocative mixture of mythical, tragic and comic elements. Nevertheless, in his hands, the play still was a farce, which functioned so well because of the technical perfection of the reduplicated scenes. However, as Otto Rank has shown in Une étude sur le double (1932), one of the most threatening aspects of our human existence, the apparent loss of identity, an experience which might lead to madness and the triumph of the absurd, was touched upon here. Apparently, the principle of pleasure (Charles Mauron) wins out in this case over the principle of reality, but is softened by a religious and moral context. As a matter of fact, the theme of Jupiter making fun of human piety was handled by Plautus with extreme care and needed to be overlaid with a great number of precautions. But in his hands, the continuous loss of human identity and the unceasing appearance of doubles, two main problems in becoming and maintaining our status as human individuals, were handled in such a fresh and captivating way that all later productions were conditioned by it.

The Comedy of Errors was Shakespeare’s first comedy (staged sometime between 1589 and 1594), often dismissed as pure farce, and based upon both 293

Plautus’ Menaechmi and Amphitruo. The play focused especially on the theme of the doubles and the wanderings of twins separated from each other in a distant past and having servants who were also twin brothers. At the same time, he also gave greater voice to problems of gender and the overall relationship between men and women. Much later, from the middle of the twentieth century, this comedy would fascinate large audiences, as witnessed in a famous Broadway production, the Rodgers and Hart musical The Boys from Syracuse (1938), the Cole Porter version in the musical comedy Out of this World (1950) and the rap version (called the “ad-rap-tation” of Shakespeare) by New York University students in The Bomb-itty of Errors (2000). Fantastic shows no doubt, thriving on the tension between illusion and reality, always sailing close to the wind of the city’s restrictive “blue laws”.

Four years after the creation of Le Tartuffe ou l’Imposteur (1664), a comedy in which Molière hilariously attacked ‘le parti dévot’ and which, in the eyes of the church, turned him into the very devil (leading to an official banning from the public stage by Louis XIV and an act of excommunication by the archbishop of Paris on all actors, readers and members of the public), he wrote his Amphitryon (1668), ‘une comédie-ballet’, an unedited combination of text, ballet, songs and machineries, conceived in free verse. These new techniques seemed the best possible way to render this wonderful world in which everything seemed possible and which could be considered a defence of pleasure and liberty. In this play a truly ridiculous Jupiter intensified the artifices of seduction and deceit that characterize both Don Juan and Tartuffe, a technique that allowed the playwright to articulate a socio-moral complaint against those who disrupted the functioning of society. For French audiences, the ancient gods functioned only as characters in a fictional context and therefore the Plautinian tragic-comical seriousness could easily be staged in a purely comical atmosphere (without mention of the birth of Heracles). At the same time, the vague romanticism prevailing in the Salons allowed an emphasis upon newly discovered aspects of the freedom of the woman. This entrance into ‘modern times’ profoundly disturbed the traditional distribution of the themes of gods/doubles/female; the religious dimension definitely lost its primary importance, new issues concerning the position of both the king and the social classes were engaged with and the intriguing powers of lust and desire were finally allowed to be fully acknowledged.

In his Amphitryon, or The Two Sosias (1690), John Dryden added new sub- plots and introduced some minor characters, such as the greedy, horny Phaedra flirting with both Sosias. In the wake of Molière, Dryden explicitly made fun of the gods, especially Jupiter. To enhance the frivolous nature of his version, 294

Dryden accorded great importance to the music (the composer was Henry Purcell) and created a play with incidental music, singing and dancing, close to the seventeenth century idea of an opera. The process of de-sacralisation, which Molière had started - by turning the tragicomedy into a comedy, was thus taken further by Dryden, who never tired of poking fun at the gods.

Heinrich von Kleist (Amphitryon, 1807) was the first modern playwright who made Jupiter see that even a god had to face his limits. Jupiter had to recognize that he could be loved as Amphitryon, but never in his capacity as a god. Descending from heaven and assuming human passions and emotions meant for him to be touched by human fragility and to experience in a very physical way the inner conflicts which so easily tear humans apart. At the same time, Alkmene was torn between a strong feeling of guilt and the memory of that splendid divine moment she had been able to share with the master of all gods. At the end of the play she utters this meaningful cry of deep regret: “Ach…”.

For Jean Giraudoux (Amphitryon 38, 1929) this story contained a theme ideally suited to illustrating his ‘critical humanism’. Indeed, as his comical theatre concealed a philosophy, which was aiming at purifying the human being and delivering it from all its phantoms, his humanism staged both a human being able to chose its own dignity and a human couple that really could function as a central link in society. The feelings of Alcmène were those of a modern woman, fully in control of herself, for whom the presence of Jupiter was felt as a burden. Just as Molière had dispensed with the religious elements, so Giraudoux dispensed with the farcical background (Sosie being beaten up by Mercure) and the playful tossing around with doubles. At the end of the play, Alcmène was a happily married woman, from whose mind, by divine grace, all traces of infidelity had been erased.

Contrary to the general trend of Western interpretation, Peter Hacks, that fellow-traveller of Heiner Müller, in his Amphitryon (1968), took Jupiter seriously. In his eyes, this god had to be seen as the embodiment of all human capacities, an illustration of what love is able to achieve in human life. From the very start, Alkmene felt very akin to Jupiter, and these feelings led her to a higher degree of self-knowledge, but also to a thorough-going analysis of her husband, who suddenly looked very tiny. Considering all the worldly obligations that one has to fulfil in this society, only a god can fully be a man (III. Es ist von solchem Ernst die Welt beschaffen, / dass nur ein Gott vermag, ein Mensch zu sein) and therefore Hacks’s reworking of the old theme finally focused on utopia and its possible integration and fulfilment in reality, a process of an ever growing 295 tendency towards perfection. Hence Jupiter’s final appeal: ‘Du bist begrenzt. Doch seine Grenzen sehn, / heisst schon sie überschreiten. Mann, Mann, Mann / Nimm deine Mängel nicht als selbstverständlich’ (III). Thus was the old religious paradigm turned into a newer social and political message, sexual love into a sublimated form of understanding humanity.

Parody

This short summary, which has highlighted the most significant aspects of some important adaptations, reveals that both the intrusion of Jupiter into the human world and the mysterious creation of doubles was originally cast in a mythic context, enhancing an initial fear of the phantoms of the primitive mind, as analysed by Otto Rank. Plautus was the first to parody the theme, Rhinton, in a series of South-Italian phluakes (see also the numerous vase-paintings), the first to make a burlesque of it. Molière ridiculed the social setting, Giraudoux insisted on the value of the human relations, Hacks on their utopian meaning. Laughing at human finiteness remained a central issue, but there was a continuous change of the type of laughter, illustrating a small history of what laughter has been about throughout Western civilisation. Clearly, not all historical moments were open to the same kind of comic and grotesque situations, and often enough, religious, political and moralizing sub-themes emerged, calling for extreme care. Christians did not fancy the intrusion of a divine character (ultimately, a specification of the hieros gamos , the marriage between the sky and the earth) nor the disruption of the stable ego. Even Plautus himself was aware of the risks he took in poking fun at traditional religion and in destabilizing the strictly codified place of the Roman domina. And sometimes, religion even counterattacked and religious minds staged newly written spiritual interpretations, like the Christian mystery play Sacri Mater Virgo (1621) conceived by Johannes Burmeister, a baroque play which cast Alcmene as Maria, Jupiter as the Holy Spirit, Mercury as the angel Gabriel, adding also Asmodes as the devil.

In general, an overview of the interpretations of this play through history shows how the old religious context was de-sacralized (the gods being frozen in their anthropomorphic characters), the existential anxiety for doubles reduced (reshaped in psychological theories) and the situation of women reconsidered (victimized women repositioned in feminism and Goddess Movements). Being an important part of the de-construction of the traditional and patriarchal world-view that lent itself to comedies of this type, Lacanian theory has been questioning a lot of the presuppositions that led to the construction of this type 296 of male and female identity and hence to the kind of rapist society that Greece and Rome often established. In the next section we will investigate some of the assumptions and intuitions that have governed the constitution of the ego and hence the functioning of its major (mythic) narratives.

An archetypal approach

Only gods dispose of the truth and nothing but the truth, and these beings of infinite beauty and wisdom do not need to smile at traces of imperfection. In the words of Karel Boullart: “Banqueting Olympians aside, gods are no laughing matter, certainly not when they are almighty, know everything and consequently cannot be surprised. Indeed, how could a being of infinite perfection have any sense of humour and what could such an entity be humourous about?’2 In contrast, humans are by definition finite beings, and therefore imperfect, subject to all kinds of laughter, always inferior to the gods and to themselves. Comic theatre, that ongoing process of an artistic and far reaching reflection on human nature, always presupposes the human condition in its bare state of existential finiteness. Referring to Henry Bergson’s book ‘Le Rire’ (1900), one could say that the real object of humour always has to do with the human being as such (animals only interfere when compared with or related to humans) and that, by virtue of that fact, laughing is bound to be a social activity which is always in need for people who are similarly disposed to laugh. In a general way, laughter arises when man cannot really cope with his mortal condition and discovers that he has to see himself as the limited character he actually is. Having a good laugh often presupposes the necessity of respecting some distance, or the will to shatter illusions and to tear up cultural pretences. Therefore, comedy, no less than tragedy, asks for a global interpretation of life, not of life as as a biological process, but of life as a series of cultural choices and of specific and local interpretations, always a provisional synthesis of personal and collective opinions conceived in terms of a specific world-view.

Analyzed in its deep structure, the Amphitruo reflects both a particular and a more general cultural pattern, expressing both a specific Western answer and a more universal quest. First of all, it represents the ‘romantic tragicomedy’ type of drama that happens to have one of the most common plots one can find across different traditions: it tells the story of the union, separation, and ultimate reunion‑of lovers.3 As a ‘romantic comedy’ it seems to share some ‘universal’ characteristics, but on the other hand, it is clear that not all cultures felt the need to stage this particular version of it. Surely, this type of ‘romantic tragicomedy’ forms part of ‘our’ social and collective process of interpreting reality in terms of 297 our own Western finiteness and this Theban story deals with a number of episodes in the life of a Greek hero which reflect our own search for stability and identity. The radical finiteness that turned Amphitruo and Heracles into lonely seekers after the truth is part of our search for an all-embracing explanation of our human condition. In past and present times, this has been been part of the search for our mythic identity, a longing for answers that constitute the ‘self-interpretation of our inner selves in relation to the outside world, …narrations by which our society is united…and which are essential to the process of keeping our souls alive and bringing us new meaning in a difficult and often meaningless world’4. Like any other form of mythology (and the New Age sensibility is full of them), Greek mythology, in a civilization which did not rely upon a holy book nor any divine revelations dealt with a great number of stories about what it is to be on earth, to experience death and get to know our destiny, the gods, fate, human lust and desire. Amphitruo felt what it was like to lose his identity and to be cheated in a most grotesque way, especially since this was provoked by the gods themselves, those ‘banqueting Olympians’ who normally, incarnating infinite perfection, are not supposed to have any sense of humour.

When we investigate the kind of analysis that Western culture has conducted of the comic hero, it is interesting to note that in the 19th and 20th centuries, myths have most frequently been interpreted in terms of an essentialist and/or archetypal approach. The comparatism of Frazer, the ritualism of van Gennep, the symbolism of Cassirer, the return to primordial times of Eliade, and the process of individuation and the archetypes of Jung all thrive on a number of essentialist suppositions. Many Western theories shared the idea that the mythic subject could be seen as a wholly knowable, accessible and readable essence, open to objectification, able to realise himself in and through the plot of a (mythic) story. From the ‘classical’ Greeks onwards to the times of Descartes, the male individual became the ultimate norm and criterion by which to measure human behaviour. The contemporary post-Jungian heritage, as it has been formulated by Joseph Campbell and his followers, continues to rely upon essentialist interpretations and suggests that human life can be fully known, described and mastered in a series of six or eight phases, the so-called ‘monomyth’5. Surveys such as his, testifying to the enormous appeal of mythic interpretations, clearly reveal that in general the Western subject wanted to be characterized in terms of the wholeness and completion that the other could bestow on him. In a more general way, this is the main idea behind all monotheistic religions and the ontology that supports them. Among many other intuitions about human genesis, it was Plato, who, in his Symposium, launched the idea that, in the beginning of time, humans had the shape of perfect globes but, because of their conspiracy against Zeus, were sliced into two halves, each half desperately longing for its fellow (189d-191d). Ever 298 since, the West has focused its explorations on all aspects of mythical one-ness.

Lacan and the phantasm of the Other

But in the same Symposium, there was also this other intuition, touched upon by Lacan in his Séminaire VIII, concerning the relation between Alcibiades and Socrates, a relation between the erastes and the eromenos, but one which is never completely fulfilled, the ideal example of the ‘torn halves’.6 The drunken Alcibiades, trying to explain his love for Socrates, had to admit that his friend fascinated him simply because of that untouchable agalma, that mysterious treasure deep inside of him, a phantasm of the other that revealed to him that love was not at all a complementary matter and that convinced him of the lack of total correspondence between the two lovers. What is missing in one of them is not hidden in the other, but is part of a particular vision and construction that creates the other.

In the wake of this latest idea, Jacques Lacan, child of the late twentieth century, an age that has been called post-structural, post-essentialist and post- humanist, vigorously attacked the notion of a unified subject, able to know and master itself. Re-interpreting the Freudian legacy, he dismantled the presumptions of a stable ego and a natural(ized) core of identity, claiming that the subject will never be able to fulfil its desire. Creating his own myth of the ‘hommelette’, he compared the birth of all humans to the breaking of an egg, suggesting that you can never break it without losing once and for all the initial state and without introducing the ‘sexual animal’ inside it to the world of mortality. As he cynically remarks, the male lover continues to deceive himself, chasing after romantic ideals and partners who will completely respond to his wishes. Love can never aspire to heal the initial and fundamental rupture by which the two sexes and every individual came into being. Two lovers are bound to never meet, in the sense of becoming One.7 As Elisabeth Grosz argues:

“This demand for One-ness is the demand behind the profession of desire for the woman in romantic love, for a “cure” from the analyst in the therapeutic relation, and for God in religious faith. Lacan makes it clear that this demand for One is a demand for an impossible harmony and complementarity between the sexes. It is impossible, he asserts, because the relation to the other is always mediated by the Other, the linguistic and socio-economic system behind every other. Lacan suggests that men always attempt to put his amorous relations in place of his relation to the 299

Other. God, perhaps man’s most sustained attempt to come to grips with the Other, always intervenes between man and his other, creating a sort of “philosophical ménage-à-trois”…. “The good old God of old times”, as Lacan calls him, is a reification of the Other. Romantic love is not a form of homage to the woman, but to the Other. For the man, the woman is a means to this greater end”.8

Therefore, the symbolic order that Lacan postulates and that predates the coming into being of each concrete historical subject requires a subject irrevocably split, divided by language, governed by the phallus and the Other. The desire for the One is, for Lacan, the desire of the Other, that big Other beyond every concrete other, constituted by language and the symbolic order. Lacan even explicitly denies that the sexual relation is a relation between two subjects, but rather between five beings: the subject, the other, the phantasm of the other desired by the subject, the phantasm of the subject desired by the other, and the big Other.

In terms of the Lacanian dismantlement of the ego, the Amphitruo raises important issues, since it deals with a major attack on the human personality (Amphitruo), a regressive form of castration (Jupiter assuming the shape of a human) and an exploration of female jouissance (Alcmène). This comedy, based upon a play with false identities, pokes fun at doubles and duplicates in a breathtaking manner, stages mirrors and twins, and obliges its characters to pass through a temporary but devastating loss of personality. Leaving Sosia (‘ce brave petit moi de petit bonhomme comme vous et moi dans la vie de tous les jours’89) outside of the picture, there is a difference to be made between three types of heroes who play their various games: two cases of supposedly normal male and heroic behaviour, and one of a female anti-hero, all three facing the fundamental human situation of failure, lack and desire. The male heroes search endlessly for what they lack; demand and desire are haunting them and oblige them to go through various stages of the imaginary process.

A haunting desire

First there is Amphitruo, the great warrior and king of Thebes. He is looking for fame, as it has always been defined as kleos, epic glory, and, after his return from the battlefield, the first things he wants to tell his wife about, in a very 300 boastful and inflated style, are the military successes he has achieved. However, this episode is only one part of his mythic career, which speaks of a long series of revenges and thefts (war against the Paphians, theft of cattle) and a number of killings followed by purification (the killing of Electryon, by accident; murder of Comaetho, as punishment for betraying her father), these being various aspects of a fundamental ‘demand’ which always asks recognition from the others. In death, neither acclamation nor apotheosis (as in Heracles’ case) awaited for him, since it was a stupid accident in a war between two cities, which was fatal to him, a conflict in which Heracles, once again, was more successful than him. Later on, he was honoured as a local Theban hero, but then again, his cult was taken over by that of Heracles. He is a perfect example of the never ending human search for (re)cognition, and also a constant illustration of the insatiable demand resulting from the ego’s continuous longing for aggrandisement. Besides, the great general constantly tasks undertakes that have mostly been imposed upon him by others, members of the family (Pterelas vs. Electryon); he runs after a number of temporary and imaginary illusions which are never able to satisfy his longings and clearly can never escape the realm of rivalry. The whole family feud involves obtaining what the other possesses (ultimately rule over the city of Mycene, more commonly the possession of cattle), a clear illustration of what René Girard called mimetic desire. As a consequence of Alcumena’s double childbirth, he had to accept, for the rest of his life, the scarcely flattering title of the ‘lesser’ father; in terms of rivalry, both the father and the son, Iphicles, are superseded by their divine counterparts. And even worse, Jupiter, in his well calculated plan to snatch away Amphitruo’s identity, obliges him to re-entertain the old doubts concerning the constitution of his “I”dentity, a phase of personal growth in which every subject, through a number of imaginary identifications with the image in the mirror, imagines a self that apparently has no lack. Hence the threatening appearance of doubles and twins which radically question the concept of self.

The second hero is Jupiter, supreme representative of the divine order and therefore of that completely different and mysterious area from which men originally came. In mythic terms, knowing Jupiter means to respect the fundamental gap that keeps men and gods apart. In Lacanian terms it refers to the conflict between the subject and the big Other, that particular place in the symbolic order which is everybody’s goal and where the separation between self and other is annihilated. Lacan, however, considers desire an intrinsic human characteristic, a fundamental lack which can only be satisfied by yet another desire, and therefore , by definition, cannot be fulfilled. It is this position of the (never accessible) centre of the system, of the Real (the lack of lack) that predates every evolution and of the entrance into Language itself, that on a mythic level is 301 assumed by Jupiter. Gods are a way of revealing the Real,10 Lacan writes, and as mortal beings we are obliged to imagine them in the symbolic order, and thus in an ever insufficient way. Since the place of the original unity is all Fullness and Completeness, a place where there is no need that cannot be satisfied (because there is no absence or lack), there is also no language in the Real.

Jupiter’s incredible ‘descent from heaven’ both calls for a human awareness of castration (definite Lack) and a loss of his divine position as the Other. As beholder of the symbolic Phallus, he falls prey to a very physical phallus, exchanging the part of the symbolic representative of the patriarchal order of culture for one that stages a fierce and lustful exemplar of primal sexuality. Ensnared in the web of language, he has to become a speaking subject who is totally subjected to the rules of language and therefore is to the Lack. In Giraudoux’s version, answering Mercure’s question ‘Mais enfin que désirez-vous?’, Jupiter says: ‘Ce que désire un homme, hélas! Mille désirs contraires. Qu’Alcmène reste fidèle à son mari et qu’elle se donne à moi avec ravissement’ (Acte II,3). In the third act (Scène 5), Alcmène puzzles him with words and offers him her friendship, ‘son amitié’, the highest possible category in her appraisal of the god, and a shocking experience for him: ‘Amitié‑! Quel est ce mot‑? Explique-toi. Pour la première fois, je l’entends’. As a divine creature, Jupiter was supposed to encompass the fullness of being, but now he experiences what it means to be obliged to use empty signifiers which take the place of the direct experience. His first lesson in linguistics (Acte III, Scène 5) invites him to consider deeply what definitions are (what is: l’avarice, les lunatiques, les sadiques,…?), an inevitable part of his introduction in the signifying chain where one signifier only has meaning because of the other signifiers, a point of view inevitably leading to the conclusion that ultimately nothing gives stability and hence meaning to the whole system. What a world of difference, when one considers Alcmène, who refuses the privilege of belonging, even for a tiny moment, to the divine sphere of the all-knowing gods. When Jupiter asks her: ‘Alcmène, chère amie, je veux que tu participes, fût-ce une seconde, à notre vie de dieux. Puisque tu vas tout oublier, ne veux-tu pas, en un éclair, voir ce qu’est le monde et le comprendre‑?’, she self-assuredly answers: ‘Non, Jupiter, je ne suis pas curieuse’.

Leaving his place of big Other, the central place that everyone tries to occupy and that stands for the merging of self and other, and forsaking as well the position of the Name of the Father (or the Law of the Father) in order to become submitted to the law itself, this Jupiter can never again be seen as the patriarchal embodiment of the Symbolic Order, only as a human representative of it. But on the other hand, seen from the human perspective, this representative of the Real is always bound to be seen in and through the symbolic order, a complete 302 adynaton indeed, but the only way that humans can imagine the Real. We can certainly grasp the idea that gods do not know death, pain or lack, but this theologia negativa indicates very well the limited nature of our approaches. If we want to know what gods are really like (what the Real is really like), we utterly fail. That is the reason for Lacan’s double affirmation: it is not only philosophy which intends to eliminate the gods (‘tout progrès philosophique tend, de par sa nécessité propre, à les éliminer’), but also Christianity in its interpretation of divine revelation11. As soon as humans want to describe what it is to be a god, their language and mythological imagination hopelessly stutter, hence the enormous pleasure that comedies and tragedies take in describing the sheer enormity of the gap that separate humans from gods. That is why Heinrich von Kleist (Amphitryon, 1808) made Jupiter recognize that divinity conceived in human terms definitely has its limits. The god had to accept that he could only be loved as Amphitryo, never as a god. Jean Giraudoux (Amphitryon 38, 1929) made Jupiter remark: ‘Un dieu aussi peut se plaire à être aimé pour lui-même’, which, unfortunately for him, is immediately contradicted by Mercure, saying: ‘Je crains qu’Alcmène ne vous refuse ce plaisir’, a statement which recalls the Lacanian law that in fact desire desires the desire of an other. What Jupiter discovers here is that, in the symbolic order, every human subject desires the desire of the other as its object.

Jouissance

And finally, there is Alcumena, object of desire of both Amphitruo and Jupiter. What are they searching for in their relation with her? ‘Was will das Weib?’, Freud rather desperately asked, missing the point in nearly all treatments of his female patients. What does female ‘jouissance’ mean, often wondered Lacan, he who has been labelled both seducer of feminists and their radical enemy. In the patriarchal universe, which characterizes the three dominant religions in the Mediterranean (Greek-Roman, Judaism-Christianity, Islam), and which are obviously three different interpretations of the reign of the Phallus or the Father’s Law, the part that Alcumena plays remains the same: she is supposed to assume the passive and subordinated role. In all of the (Western) literary versions, she resists patriarchal attempts at seduction, albeit in a very subtle and delicate way, but what she experiences, no man can tell. For that creature who wants to classify, compare, name and master all differences, and interpret them in his own male way (see even Lacan’s own vacillating definitions of the Phallus), this ‘jouissance’ is ‘other’ because it happens to be non-phallic and not-classifiable under a signifier. What happens to characterize her in the first place is the lack of the phallus. Dazzled by the charms and challenges of the vertiginous presence of Jupiter, at the very end of the play, Heinrich von Kleist’s Alcumena only says: 303

‘Ach…’, a supreme illustration of what remains unspeakable and is always bound to lead to disappointment. Alcumena, just like Lacan’s favourite example of female ‘jouissance’, Bernini’s Theresa of Avilla, represents ‘l’autre jouissance’, a pleasure that challenges all symbolic description. Therefore, in a more general way, this type of ‘autre jouissance’ might be said to evoke the experience felt by any other person which is bound to remain outside of our reach, a very special kind of experience which reminds us of the position of God, this very special ‘other’ that we never can be and who always remains out of our scope. This God is the other ‘par excellence’, for what else does it mean to be a god than to be both yourself and the other?

Laughter within two discourses: the thinkable and the un/sayable

The Western tradition, characterized as it is by its ontological preference for Oneness and Sameness, by the hypothesis that humanism and spirituality must be defined from a masculine perspective and by the idea that the Cartesian subject can be considered a natural and unified individual, for almost 2500 years, developed the Amphitruo-theme along those lines. Both Amphitruo and Sosia temporarily lost themselves but felt reconstituted at the end. They never doubted the ‘natural’ sexual positions they represented and treated Alcumena as a virtually mute sexual character. At no point at all they were astonished at the anthropomorphic escapades of the gods or at the patriarchal structure of religion tout court. In this first type of ‘discourse’, human laughter could only express what was ‘thinkable’ in a Foucauldian sense, along the lines of traditional humanism and religion. When the human condition is cast in a world-view which has not the sharpest possible awareness of its finiteness, or relies upon soteriological and euhemeristic criteria, laughing about human life takes place along protected lines and provokes a mild smile more often than it does bitter irony. The fundamental disparity between being and thinking as well as the heterotelic nature of human life as such are hardly recognized and all elements leading to a revolt against human insignificance carefully covered up.

In the poststructuralist perspective of Lacan, essences are denounced, humanism de-humanized, the self-mastery of the subject ridiculed. The subject, no longer a coherent and rational res cogitans, nor an immediate source or master of discourse, has to admit that he can only be defined in and by language, only by a detour around that impersonal Other. The average citizen, the Sosia puzzled by sudden loss of identity, the Amphitruo always fighting for recognition by others, the Jupiter thinking that he, in his earthy disguise, is still the holder of the Phallus, all fall prey to insatiable desire. He who thought himself to be the central and 304 most secure foundation of the process of getting to know the world appears only as Mr. Ego, inherently alienated, merely the product and function of a concrete socio-symbolic and linguistic system.

This short excursion into the developments in the Amphitryon-theme has shown that the general process of laughing always takes place within boundaries and definite types of culture, especially when it concerns fundamental religious and sociological processes. One may wonder how much laughing can be done by the average western citizen when the functioning of patriarchal power, sexuality and subjectivity are exposed in a Lacanian, denaturalizing way? And although the analytical tools to do this may be contemporary, the stories about speaking and desiring subjects, confronting their death and loss, are much older. The way they have been cast in comic (and tragic) categories differ significantly from one culture to another and therefore are particularly relative, but for the human subject who is at the heart of all comicality, experiencing the kind of humour he is susceptible to, in an active and passive mood, is a major exercise in self- understanding.

Notes 1 E. Lefèvre, in his Maccus Vortit Barbare. Vom tragischen Amphitryon zum tragikomischen Amphitruo (Wiesbaden, 1982), elaborated the idea that the Greek original might have been Euripides’ Alkmene, a play that the contemporary audience could have seen staged in Latin adaptation in the same period. 2 Karel Boullart, Laughing matters or comoedia naturalis, in: Philosophica 38, 1986, 2, p. 5. 3 Patrick Colm Hogan, The Mind and its Stories, 2003, pp.‑94-102 4 Rollo May, The Cry for Myth, New York, 1991, W.W.Norton & Company, p. 20. 5 Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1948), discovered the presence of a so called ‘monomyth’, a narrative parcours in which the hero had to go through a number of fixed stadia in order to be saved or to feel completely realized. The same Joseph Campbell, writing with Bill Moyers The Power of Myth (1987) called us to ‘follow our bliss, as the track that has always been waiting for us, with “hidden hands”. Carol S. Pearson, in The Hero Within. Six Archetypes We Live By (1986), presented an operating manual for the psyche, six ‘imprints of possibility’ which were available for everyone to access. Later on, Carol S. Pearson, in her book Awakenig the Hero Within. Twelve Archetypes to Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World (1991) suggested that ‘ the hero’s journey is first about taking a journey to find the treasure of your true self, and then about returning home to give your gift to help transform the kingdom – and, in the process, your own life’. James Hillman’s book, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling (1996) invited the readers to search for that ‘something’ that drove them on, since persons carry inside them ‘an active kernel of truth, or an image, waiting to be lived’; remember the Greeks who had the word 305

“daimon” and the Romans the word “genius” to describe the invisible guiding force in their lives. David Adams Leeming, in his Mythology. The Voyage of the Hero (1998), developed the eight basic events that reflect the supreme mythic structure of the hero’s life. 6 R. J.C. Young, Torn Halves. Political conflict in literary and cultural theory, Manchester & NY, 1996. 7 J. Lacan, Ecrits, Paris, 1977, pp.‑151-169. 8 Elizabeth Grosz, Jacques Lacan. A Feminist Introduction, London & New York, 1990, Routledge, p. 138-139. 9 J. Lacan, Sosie, in: Le Moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la technique de la psychanalyse (Séminaire II), Paris, 2001 (1955), Seuil, p. 363. In this early article, Lacan, quoting a number of Sosies answers (Sosie 2: ‘Quel est ton sort‑? Dis moi’. Sosie 1: ‘D’être homme, et de parler’) ironically refers to his own seminars: ‘Voilà quelqu’un qui n’avait pas été aux séminaires, mais qui en a la marque de fabrique’ (p.‑365). 10 ‘Les dieux, c’est un mode de révélation du réel‘, cfr. J. Lacan, Séminaire Livre VIII, 2001 (1991), p. 58. 11 J. Lacan, Livre VIII: Le transfert, 2001 (1991):58: ‘Par rapport à la notion du dieu comme summum de révélation de Numen, comme rayonnement et apparition …réels, le mécanisme de la révélation chrétienne se trouve incontestablement sur le chemin qui va à la réduire, et, au dernier terme à l’abolir’. 306

THE COMIC IN THE TRAGIC Parody and Critique in Modern Productions of Euripides’ Hecuba

Lorna HARDWICK

Productions of Euripides’ Hecuba in the autumn of 2004 and spring of 2005 offer a distinctive insight into ways in which the contexts of production and reception and the aesthetic forms of Greek drama performances on the modern stage have become a site for the working out of various kinds of transversibility, that is, the crossing and even dissolution of the porous boundaries of genre, of authorship, and of inter and intra-cultural concepts and categories. Research on translation techniques is a significant part of this investigation, especially the issues involved in the successive processes of translating for the stage (dramatic rewriting) and then transplanting the translation to the stage, which of course involves further reworking and rewriting. The staging itself represents a meeting point for the inter-subjectivities of writers, directors, designers, actors and audiences. This paper is one of a series in which I consider various aspects of these questions and here I shall focus on the relationship between parody and tragedy and its reception by critics.

This discussion will focus on three recent productions of Hecuba in the UK. There have also been significant recent productions in the USA, including one in a translation by the classicist Marianne McDonald, staged by 6th@Penn Theatre in San Diego, California in November and December 2004 and directed by Esther Emery. The front cover of the programme for this production included a quotation from Mahatma Gandhi – ‘If the world keeps on taking an eye for an eye, soon everyone will be blind’.1 It appears that Hecuba has become the play of choice in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by forces of the US-led and UK-supported coalition and there are a variety of instructive reasons for this theatrical trend, including the impact on the choices of producers, directors and audiences. The play deals not only with the suffering of the victims of war and the displaced but also with revenge and with what Nehad Selaiha has called ‘the equally destructive intolerance of the oppressed’.2 In an investigation of this kind I prefer to discuss only those productions that I have personally attended so I will confine the detailed discussion to the three UK productions. These are: 307

1. Autumn 2004: a touring production by Foursight Theatre in a new translation by John Harrison, directed by Naomi Cooke. Foursight is an arts theatre company based in Wolverhampton, a culturally diverse area in the West Midlands of England. The company specialises in new work and built its reputation on workshop creativity and developing feminist perspectives. In 2002 they staged Euripides’ Medea and this sparked the company’s interest in Greek drama.3 In 2004 they staged Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in a community centre in a production that developed the multi-lingualism and ethnic diversity of the Chorus to explore the themes of war and homecoming.4 Hecuba represented the last staging of a Greek play that the company plans for the foreseeable future. John Harrison is a professional classicist and his translation is closely based on the Euripides text. It is to be published by Cambridge University Press in its Translations of Greek Drama Series.

2. Autumn 2004: production of Euripides’ Hecuba at the Donmar Warehouse theatre, London, in a new version by Frank McGuiness. McGuiness is an established dramatist, whose previous translations/ versions for the stage include Sophocles’ Electra ( Donmar, London, and Broadway, New York, 1998) and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Peer Gynt. His best known new plays are Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me (1992) and Observe The Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (1985), as well as Carthaginians (1988). For his version of Hecuba, McGuiness worked from a literal translation by Fionnuala Murphy.5 The director was Jonathan Kent who, like McGuiness, is well-known for previous work on Greek drama. Clare Higgins won a national acting award for her performance as Hecuba.

3. Spring 2005: production of Hecuba at the Albery Theatre, London, for the Royal Shakespeare Company, in a new translation by Tony Harrison, directed by Laurence Boswell and starring Vanessa Redgrave as Hecuba. The production marked the return of Redgrave to the RSC after a gap of many years. It had been planned to start at the company’s main theatre in Stratford- upon –Avon in early 2005 but this part of the run was cancelled, ostensibly because of Redgrave’s illness. The poet and dramatist Tony Harrison is classically trained and works direct from the Greek text. He is well-known for previous classical work, including his translation of the Oresteia (1981) which was directed by Peter Hall in 1981 and 19826 and his film-poem Prometheus (1998).7 Tony Harrison is associated with left-wing views. Redgrave was for many years a leading figure in the Trotskyist Socialist Workers’ Party. This production of Hecuba was savagely criticized by reviewers (on the grounds of Harrison’s translation, Boswell’s direction and Redgrave’s restrained acting) in a manner which is almost unique in recent years for the critical reception 308

of Greek drama. This contrasts with a recent vogue for versions of Greek plays which critique war, oppression and imperialism, for example Katie Mitchell’s direction of Ted Hughes’ version of Aeschylus Oresteia (1999) and of Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis in a translation by Don Taylor (2004). Several modern plays critical of the invasion of Iraq have been well received by critics so there are questions about why the RSC/Tony Harrison production of Hecuba has been singled out for such a degree of abuse.

Key issues in the translation and adaptation of Euripides’ text for the stage and for its reception by critics and audiences revolve round the representations of violence and the parody of established institutions. The representation of violence (on and off the stage) and of responses to it, including revenge and attempts to procure justice, whether retributive or restorative, is crucial to the conceptualisation of pain and suffering and its consequences and central to understanding of the impact of Greek drama on the contemporary stage. Although my focus on this discussion is on parody, the issue of pain and suffering and their consequences is always just under the surface, reminding us how parody brings comedy and tragedy together.

Two aspects of the productions of Hecuba involve parody of established institutions, both Greek and modern. The parody has implications both for the society depicted in the play and for the modern analogue created by the responses of spectators and critics, which is sometimes in tension with the analogue constructed by the writer and actors. The key aspects of parody in Hecuba are:

(i) how the abuse of xenia (hospitality) is handled in the verbal translation and the non-verbal aspects of staging (ii) how the parody of democratic debate and decision making is presented.

In both cases, critique of these institutions is part of the dynamics of Euripides’ play so the manner in which these aspects are transplanted to the modern stage reflects interpretation of the Euripides text as well as revealing assumptions about the cultural horizons of modern audiences.

Paratragedy

The contexts of parody in the 5th century BCE have been discussed by Michael Silk in his essay ‘Aristophanic Paratragedy’.8 He notes that the terms paratragedy and parody are often used interchangeably and that paratragedy has been 309 categorised in a number of aspects (literary genre, locus, scene, formal elements, conventions, motifs), but argues that while all parody is paratragic, not all paratragedy is parodic. The distinguishing feature of parody is that it is satirical and subversive, that it recalls a more or less specific original and subverts it. In his play Acharnians, Aristophanes has lines that profess the seriousness of comedy:

“I talk affairs of state in a comedy. You see, comedy has a sense of duty too” (Acharnians 499 – 500).

Dikaiopolis’ ‘sense of duty’ can be interpreted in many ways and these almost always mark a prolonged, complex and paradoxical engagement with tragedy.9 In Aristophanes’ terms, this involved parody of scenes and lines from tragedy for comic effect. In Euripides’ Hecuba, the dynamics of the engagement are different – the focus of tragedy is realigned through parody of social and political institutions and conventions. In Aristophanes, comedy is explored through the appropriation of tragic language. In Euripides, tragedy is explored through comic variants on situations that should be serious, and are. There is a sudden switch from a social norm to something incompatible with it. In terms of staging, the move may be accomplished verbally or through situation and the physicality of the body. The disruptions to the norm offer a satirical image that moves beyond comedy to align ironically with the reversal mode that is central to tragedy, where the self-referentiality is to the institutions of the polis and its cultural context, rather than primarily to the play itself. This brings the sustained authority associated with the ‘sense of duty’ in Aristophanes.

My discussion here broadens the scope of the concept of parody in that I extend it to parody of institutions and social conventions which are both represented in tragedy and in other texts and institutions central to the ancient Greek experience. I also emphasise the point that parody can occur within tragedy itself. Thus, in Hecuba, the treatment of xenia and the associated values and obligations of reciprocity alludes metatheatrically to the Odyssey and its structuring theme of the use and abuse of hospitality in the context of Odysseus’ return to Ithaca after the Trojan war, when he finds that the suitors for Penelope have abused his household and wealth. Similarly, the treatment of democratic debate and decision- making alludes to the practices of the Athenian democracy as well as to drama. Furthermore, in the fifth century BCE, there was contemporary debate about the role of the xenos or guest-friend in war. Thucydides alludes to the fear of the Athenian leader Pericles that his xenos, the Spartan leader Archidamus, would spare Pericles’ estates in Attica when the countryside was ravaged by the 310

Spartans – Pericles made over his land to the polis in order to avoid accusations of preferential treatment10 (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2.13).

In the cases both of xenia and of demokratia there is a collision between the idealised cultural stereotype and the evidence for its fragility. It is noteworthy that in Aristophanes Frogs (405 BCE), the debate on whether Euripides or Aeschylus should be recalled from the underworld hinges on the value of each dramatist for the citizens. The treatment of Euripides is based on his stylistic characteristics; the treatment of Aeschylus is based on his lessons for the citizens. Aeschylus’ Oresteia had, in 458 BCE, presented a situation in which the endless cycle of revenge could be ended by civic and legal conventions. This was possibly a nostalgic ideal for citizens at the end of the 5th century after the miseries and brutalities of the Peloponnesian war. If a date towards the end of the 420s is accepted for Hecuba (an argument based partly on Aristophanic parody of the play and partly on metrical analysis11), then the atrocities perpetrated by the Athenians in Thyrea and Scione would have been fresh in the public mind, as would the issues concerning the treatment of the defeated that provoked the Mytilene debate (427 BCE), later to be semi-dramatised by the historian Thucydides (Thucydides 3. 36 – 50). Thus there is a certain slipperiness concerning what is the ‘original’ experience, text, institution or convention that is being parodied in the Hecuba. The audience, whether ancient or modern, is an active participant in making decisions about what precisely is being parodied. There is, too, an important distinction between the impact of comedy in reconstructing the audience’s knowledge and the trickier question of how comedy may bring about the reconstruction of attitudes, preconceptions and sympathies.12 These nuances are compounded in the case of parody.

In the productions of Hecuba that are under discussion the examples of parody focus on the debasement of institutions:

Xenia – hospitality

In the Donmar Hecuba, McGuiness’ script was spare. It followed the Euripides closely in outline but eschewed verbal decoration and metaphor and left substantial breathing spaces for the direction and design to engage the audience’s response. This was a vital aspect of the use of parody and depended on the interplay between linguistic aspects of the play-text and the semiotic systems that make up the theatrical event.13 The perversion of xenia was exposed when 311

Hecuba discussed with Polymestor his care of her son, but the setting was the incongruous one of a tea-party on a seaside beach, complete with tartan picnic rug and tea cups. Of course, she knew that the youth had been murdered for the Trojan gold and to appease the Greeks but she discussed him with Polymestor without giving any indication of her awareness. The contrast between her demeanour as social hostess and her ragged clothes and dire situation, exposed on the beach in Thrace, lent a blackly comic dimension to the ritual of the beach picnic, in which the rug was carefully laid out and the social rituals of the pouring of tea and handing round of tea cups and sandwiches were meticulously observed. The contrast with Hecuba’s behaviour at the end of the play could not have been more acute. She ended pawing at the sand with her fingers like the dog that she was fated to become.

The tea-party ritual served two ends. It used a culturally iconic but slightly outdated modern western social ritual to explain the conventions of hospitality to an audience that was probably not aware of the intertextual and metatheatrical allusions in Euripides. It did this in a way that also tricked the audience by implying the triviality of a convention eroded and degraded by misuse and only retaining cultural validity and authority in the ancient text if embedded in religious sanctions. Thus in one sense xenia was domesticated into English tradition, yet because of this the horrific impact of Hecuba’s vengeance was intensified and the scene in which the blood-stained parcels containing the remains of Polymestor’s children were thrown around as if in a party game turned into a variation on sparagmos, in which Hecuba’s role has been partly that of a Bacchic maenad (Euripides Hecuba, line 1077). When she saw her dead son she had begun a Bacchic lament, now she became the initiator in the tearing apart of the children.14 Perhaps, too, the scene in the Donmar production parodied the cultural (mis)understanding by ‘middle England’ that understood neither the Greek nor the Asiatic values in which hospitality and reciprocity were and are embedded, and hence also did not understand the way that abuse begets abuse and the victim becomes the avenger. The anodyne associations of ‘hospitality’ in modern England were exposed but the semiotic and structural force of the scene was also used to develop the audience’s understanding of the abuse of xenia by Polymestor and the reciprocity implicit in Hecuba’s revenge.

Demokratia: the democratic process 312

In the RSC Hecuba the key aspects of parody were parody of democratic debate and decision making. This pointed up the contrast between the acceptance by the Greeks that democracy was absolute and their betrayal of democracy in the decision to sacrifice Polyxena ( recounted by an Odysseus whose quasi-American accent was ridiculed by the critics) and, even more prominently, the mock ‘trial’ by Agamemnon after the grotesque exercise of reciprocity by Hecuba. Here the Chorus stood grouped behind him, a back-drop that ironically suggested an alternative silent and silenced jury. In the Foursight company’s production, which had an all female cast, Agamemnon was played by a Chorus member as were the other main parts. Changes of costume were made on the stage and the singing of the Chorus was in a number of different languages. Thus questions about judgement and of guilt and responsibility were more open-ended whereas in the RSC production, democracy was shown to be perverted and corrupted by the very people who proclaimed its values.

The responses of theatre critics and audiences to the RSC production focussed on surface issues, especially its perceived anti-Americanism rather than on the deep-seated question of the critique of democratic processes. The critics’ attacks on the RSC Hecuba mainly use the language of theatre and aesthetics, yet the focus seems to be partly on the perceived attacks on the ‘use and abuse’ of the ideals and processes of democracy. The production was interpreted by critics as an attack on the US and UK ‘coalition’ in the invasion of Iraq. Tony Harrison’s translation was attacked by critics for ‘thumping down every modern parallel’.15 There also seems to have been a sense of ideological weariness at a time when so many productions of Greek plays turned the text to attack the neo-conservatives in Washington. There was also perhaps some ‘tragedy fatigue’; as Clapp put it ‘the cycle of revenge with its bloody display of children’s bodies, now looks almost routine’. The production was ‘read’ as crudely identifying Greeks with the USA and UK and as identifying the Trojans not merely with Iraqi people but with Islamic tradition. The Chorus was repeatedly spoken of by some critics as though it was represented by the heavily veiled Muslim women depicted exotically in the art photos in the programme.16 These programme photographs were actually in contrast to the costumes in the production itself, which were compatible with any eastern European, Balkan or near-Eastern situation.17. Apart from some textual references to ‘coalition forces’ (which were arguably not inappropriate as a description of the Greek alliance under Agamemnon) and the American accent affected by the actor playing Odysseus, the set, costume and acting styles in London did not suggest a narrowly focused presentist interpretation of the play. Furthermore, although Tony Harrison’s introduction to the published text did refer passionately to the Iraq situation as a stimulus to the production this was contextualised in its performance history and 313 the parallels drawn between the suffering depicted in Euripides’ plays and those of communities ravaged by war at all times and in all places.18

The US tour of the play, for which the initial director Laurence Boswell was in effect replaced by the writer Tony Harrison, appeared to counter-attack the critics by replacing the politically neutral set used in London with one made up of military tents bearing the markings ‘USA’ and ‘UK’. Harrison has stated that he obtained the tents from military suppliers and that they still smelled of chemical weapons.19 In the reception of both the UK and the US stagings, opportunities for discussion of the implication of Harrison’s translation and Euripides’ text for critique of the workings of democracy were lost in the debates about Iraq and anti- Americanism. To some extent, the reception of the play by theatre critics seems to indicate a back-lash against the use of theatre as a platform for protest against the actions of the American and British governments. The theatre critic of the Scotsman, Joyce Macmillan made a telling point in her comments on the impact of anti-Americanism in comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2005 when she said that this detracted from and deflected attention away from British involvement in Iraq and other aspects of American foreign policy.20 There was an analogous situation in the critics’ response to the RSC Hecuba in that the attention paid to the perceived anti-coalition rhetoric of the production deflected attention from the much deeper-seated issue of the parody of the processes of democracy, embedded in the Euripides text and actualised by Harrison in his translation and in the semiotics of the production. It appears that parody of the claims of democracy is thought to be more threatening to modern western senses of cultural identity than is the blander and politically ‘acceptable’ reading of Euripides’ play as an attack on war and on mistreatment of the defeated in general. In addition to the reluctance of critics and audiences to respond to the play’s parodic questioning of the processes of democracy there is a further iconoclastic dimension in that present-day classicists tend to allude to ancient democracy and its inheritance as a justification for the continued study of their subject. Therefore it may be considered threatening to the classical tradition when attacks on the neo-conservative appropriation of the concept of democracy as a justification for attacks on non-democratic states also involve a critical assessment of the operation of ancient democracy and of the implications of ancient critiques.

Taken together, the parodies of xenia and demokratia must have been devastating to Euripides’ audience. According to Herodotus, the Athenian playwright Phrynichus was fined because the contemporary allusions in one of his plays reminded the Athenians of their current troubles (Herodotus, 6.21). Tony Harrison took up this allusion in his play The Labourers of Heracles (first performed 314 in Delphi 1995) in which he himself spoke as The Spirit of Phrynichos:

“The spirit of Phrynichos cries out… Cast aside mythology and turn your fearful gaze To blazing Miletos, yesterday’s today’s”.21

The ‘Phrynichos effect’ on modern western audiences is equally challenging and merits further research. Certainly it seems as though all the 2004/5 productions of Euripides’ Hecuba used parody effectively to reconstruct audience’s knowledge. However, the RSC production at least was less successful in its radical use of Euripidean parody as a means of actually transforming audience’s assumptions about the workings of democracy. The transfer of critical attention to the immediate issues of US/UK policy and actions in respect of Iraq also involved a denial about the deep issues underlying the perceived genealogy of democracy in the tradition running from ancient Athens to modern western society and democracy’s current status as a ‘foundation myth’, the cornerstone of western identity and justification for western foreign and military policy. This issue raises a number of research questions about the cultural and political contexts in which Greek plays were created and those in which they have been received and I shall hope to discuss these in future papers.

Notes

1 Marianne McDonald (2004). 2 Nehad Selaiha (2002), p. 16. 3 John Harrison (1999). 4 Lorna Hardwick (2005), pp. 6-8. 5 Frank McGuiness (2004). 6 Tony Harrison (1985). 7 Tony Harrison (1998). 8 M.S. Silk (1993), pp. 477-504. 9 M.S. Silk (2000), chapter 2. 10 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2, 13. 11 Justina Gregory (1999), pp. xii-xiii. 12 Christopher Pelling (2000), pp. 133-134. 13 Cristina Marinetti (2005), pp. 31-42. 14 For reciprocity, see Richard Seaford,“The Reciprocity of Vengeance” in: Richard Seaford (1994), pp. 25-29. Also Judith Mossman discusses in her study Wild Justice ancient revenge practices described in Herodotus. See Judith Mossman (1995), chapter 6. 15 Susanna Clapp, The Observer, 10 April 2005. 16 On the perceived Islamicisation of the Chorus, see Lorna Hardwick( 2007). 17 Carol Gillespie and Lorna Hardwick (2005). 18 Tony Harrison (2005), p. x. 315

19 Tony Harrison on Cheltenham Literature Festival, 15 October 2005. 20 Joyce Macmillan for BBC Radio 4, ‘Today Programme’, 25 August, 2005. 21 Tony Harrison (1996), p. 145.

Bibliography: Christopher Collard, Euripides’ Hecuba (intr., tr., and comm..), Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1991. Carol Gillespie and Lorna Hardwick, “Theory and Practice in researching Greek drama in modern cultural contexts”, in: Theatre and Theatre Studies in the 21st Century: Conference, Athens, 2005. Justina Gregory, Euripides: Hecuba (intr., tr.,and comm.), Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999. Lorna Hardwick, “Porous Boundaries: the praxis of what is ‘European’ in modern performances of Greek Drama”, Parodos, 6, (2005), pp. 6-8. Lorna Hardwick, “Challenges and Rejections: Staging Greek Drama in Post-Colonial Britain”, in: C.A. Stray and A. Powell (eds.), British Classics in the 19th and 20th centuries, Swansea: University Press of Wales, 2007 (forthcoming). Tony Harrison, Hecuba by Euripides, London: Faber and Faber, 2005. Tony Harrison, Prometheus, London: Faber and Faber, 1998. Tony Harrison, The Labourers of Herakles: Plays 3, London: Faber and Faber, 1996. Tony Harrison, “The Oresteia” in: Theatre Works 1973 – 1985, London: Penguin, 1985. John Harrison, Hecuba (tr.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. John Harrison, Medea (tr.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Cristina Marinetti, “The Limits of the Play Text: Translating Comedy”, New Voices in Translation Studies 1 (2005), pp. 31-42. Philip de May, Agamemnon (tr.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Marianne McDonald, Hecuba (tr.), s.l., s.n., 2004. (I am grateful to Professor McDonald for kindly sending me a copy of her translation in advance of publication) Frank McGuiness, Euripides’ Hecuba: a new version, London: Faber and Faber, 2004. Judith Mossman, Wild Justice: A Study of Euripides’ Hecuba, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Christopher Pelling, Literary Texts and the Greek Historian, London, Routledge, 2000. Richard Seaford, Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City State, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994. Nehad Selaiha, “Antigone in Palestine”, Al Ahram Weekly, 585 (9 – 15 May 2002), p. 16. M.S. Silk, Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. M.S. Silk, “Aristophanic Paratragedy” in: A Sommerstein et al. (eds.), Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis, Bari: Levante Editori, 1993, pp. 477-504. 316

SPLENDID CRUELTY The Turk in Early Modern Court Entertainment in The Netherlands and France

Stijn BUSSELS

In his Orientalism Edward Said often evokes the theatrical metaphor. He sees the Orient as “the stage on which the whole East is confined. On this stage will appear figures whose role it is to represent the larger whole from which they emanate. The Orient then seems to be, not an unlimited extension beyond the familiar European world, but rather a closed field, a theatrical stage affixed to Europe”.1 It is a stage that contains “a prodigious cultural repertoire whose individual items evoke a fabulous rich world (…) of half imagined, half-known monsters, devils, heroes, terrors, pleasures, desires”.2 Said’s use of the theatrical metaphor makes clear that for him the Orient is not in the first place a geographical, nor historical reality. The reference to the fiction of theatre gives evidence how much the Orient is seen as a cultural construction that primary tells us about the European sensitivities, aspirations and fears. In this sense the Orient is a purely Western Orient, performed on the stage of European culture.

The link between Orientalism and theatre however cannot only be situated on the level of the metaphor. Most of the time, the stage itself is a place where the representations of the Orient got their most appealing expressions. This is certainly the case for the performances in Early Modern Time where theatre functioned as a mass medium that staged again and again the images of the Muslim ‘Other’. This retelling and restaging produces again a metaphor, this time used to name theatre itself. For in The Haunted Stage, Marvin Carlson made clear that theatre could be seen as a ‘memory machine’ that activates and re-activates our cultural memory. The memory-machine of theatre time and again subjects, as Carlson puts it, “to continual adjustment and modification as the memory is recalled in new circumstances and contexts”.3 Therefore the need arises to vary and rewrite the same story. Within the contours of the existing image a new image can be sketched out. This new text always bears the memory of the older texts, or, put in the way Inge Boer does in her Disorienting Vision, the new text can be read as a palimpsest.4

This multilayered writing of stereotypes of the Muslim ‘Other’ will be at the centre of our discussion. More specifically, we will concentrate on the representation of the Ottoman in Early Modern court entertainment in France and the Netherlands. 317

The Ottoman Empire was seen at that time as the biggest threat to Western civilisation. Therefore the character of the Turk was prominent on the European stage. In the sixteenth century we see a clear shift in his representation. Differently than in the Middle Ages, the Muslim was not any longer just portrayed within a religious discourse. His image was more and more rewritten starting from a secular perspective.

This secularisation of the Ottoman representation can be situated in the so-called ‘urge for self-assertion’ that characterizes Early Modern European society. The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg uses this term in his The legitimacy of the Modern Age to appoint the typical modern consciousness of the presence of the self, now and here.5 The nominalistic belief that God was unpredictable in his decisions towards the world left Man alone on this world. He was obliged to get a self- reliant grip on it. Therefore interhuman relations became more and more important at the expense of the relation between mankind and God.

So the representation of the Ottoman is no longer fed with theological differences, but far more with socio-political differences. This shift can be linked with the attempts the West made to build a society free from theological arguments. In his essay La Gouvernementalité, Michel Foucault sees this shift translated into two new discourses about power, la Souveraineté and la Gouvernementalité.6 For the first discourse Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513-1532) is exemplary. Machiavelli sees an external relation between the prince and his possession. The prince gets his power by birth or violence. Primary he has to take care that he can keep his possessions the way they are and that he can even increase them if possible. Some philosophers reacted against this discourse by creating a new discourse, namely la gouvernementalité.7 Here, the ruler has to place himself at the service of his subjects and territory and strive for the biggest gain for all. As we will try to make clear, the debates about the ‘Art of Government’ had a direct impact on the comical representation of the Ottoman on the Early Modern European stage.

Danger and Glamour

Let’s begin our story in Lille, an important medieval city of commerce, now in the north of France, but formerly in the Burgundian Netherlands. In 1454, on February 17th, Duke Philip the Good regaled the members of the Order of the Golden Fleece with a legendary banquet called the Feast of the Pheasant because at the end a pheasant was brought forward richly decorated with jewels. In the presence of this bird the duke made a vow to undertake a new crusade after two hundred years and to 318 restore Constantinople to the Christians after the Ottoman siege a year before. In an enthusiastic outbreak, the other knights pronounced in their turn their own oaths to join Philip on his crusade. Despite all enthusiasm, the crusade did never take place. At the end Philip had to master too much opposition in his own provinces.8

In his description of this illustrious feast, Olivier de la Marche, court chronicler and poet, does focus on a performance or ‘entremets’ where a Turkish giant rides a camel. He is the kidnapper of a lady called the ‘Holy Church’. She complains in deep distress that the Turks and other disbelievers are ruining her cruelly and begs the duke for help. The Turk was represented as follows. “Il était vêtu d’une longue robe de soie verte, rayée en plusieurs endroits. De sa tête partait une tresse à la manière des Sarasins de Grenade. Il tenait à la main gauche une grosse et grande hache à deux tranchants d’un modèle ancien, et de la main droite il conduisait un éléphant couvert de soie”.9

In this performance Turks and Saracens are alike since the Turkish giant has the typical hair dress of the Saracens in Granada. So both Muslim people are put in the same category as pitiless bullies who endanger Christian belief. But De la Marche’s description at the same time makes clear that this performance contributed to the glitter and glamour of the feast. The Turk wore not only a rich outfit - a long decorated silk robe - he also drove an impressive camel and even led an elephant dressed in silk. Danger as well as glitter and glamour will be constancies in the representation of the Turk in courtly entertainment. On the one hand the French, Burgundian and later the Habsburg courtiers were frightened by the ferociousness of the Muslim, but on the other hand they were filled with awe by his extraordinary rich and strange emergence.

The Burgundian Feast of the Pheasant is one of the last and most spectacular appeals to join a crusade. The difference between the Turk and the European is still focussed purely on religion here. This religious difference will continue to be an element of separation. In the first half of the sixteenth century, a renowned humanist as Erasmus still saw the Turk as a threat to the Christian world. The triumph in Mohács (Hungary) in 1526 of the huge Ottoman army under Suleiman the Magnificent and the siege of Vienna three years later were for him a clear sign of the decline of Western civilisation.10 In the same writings however Erasmus broadens up the points of difference with the Turks. Not only religion was stressed as dissimilar, also the way of governing was seen as different. It made him see as ferocious not the Turks as a whole, but only their leaders. Suleiman was described as a cruel tyrant who only strived for his own gain. The French or Habsburg princes were put in contrast with him as benevolent fathers for their people in the just described governmental manner.

This new secular comparison between the Turk and the European is clearly 319 put forward in the Antwerp entry of the Habsburg emperor Charles V and his son Philip in 1549 (Ill. 1). In one of the many tableaux vivants that were put alongside the official entry road, the Turkish leaders were represented as bullies whereas the Habsburgs were shown as fair governmental leaders. This secular difference was made clear by putting the Ottoman dynasty and their notorious crack troops of the Janissaries together on stage with Arabs and Moors. The designation ‘Saracen’ had gone, and so did the mentioning of the crusades. The Turks are shown not any longer as a threat for the Holy Church, but as tyrants who terrorize their own people with the burden of slavery. Turks, Janissaries, Arabs, and Moors are undifferentiated now. They are represented as one and the same kind of cruel people. Under their feet were lying the allegories of the regions and cities under Ottoman command, undifferentiated too. Bithynia (between the Bosporus and the Black Sea), the island of Pamphilia in Asia Minor, Greece, Assyria, Palestine, Egypt, Phoenicia, Arabia, Numidia (the eastern part of which is now Algeria), Ethiopia, Jerusalem, Constantinople and Damascus. The places visited by the crusaders are only a part of this long list. The reason to go to all these places has changed from the liberation of religion into the liberation of worldly tyranny. So the allegories, put in irons, beg Charles and Philip to be freed from their cruel leaders. The clearly differentiated Habsburg leaders are running to help with drawn swords. The two governmental heroes are triumphing over the mishmash of bullies only by their noble and brave appearance.

Although we have to be very careful in stating this, we are inclined to see for one of the first times in history that the Ottoman’ political and military position is enfeebled by making the Turk and the other Muslims laughable. When we just have a look at all the pushing and elbowing on the scene, we can imagine that the ferocious tyrants may have made themselves to utter fools in front of the large Antwerp audience, in their flying away head-over-heels into a very small door. They are like a knot of heads and limbs trying to get away as soon as possible. Although they may be laughable, they still keep being ferocious for the text under the scene runs as follows: “Kingdoms, Lands, Cities and Nations suppressed by the Turkish tyranny, hope strongly to be liberated of their cruel slavery. They pray with outstretched hands, “ o thou unbeatable Emperor and thou powerful Prince Philip, for what began in Africa and in Austria by thy help can be completed”.`11 The military campaigns of Charles against Suleiman at the South-eastern borders of the Holy Roman Empire and his seizure of Tunis are mentioned as a good start for the conquest of the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. The tyranny and cruel slavery of the people were put forward as the one and most important motive for the Habsburg campaign. There wasn’t any doubt about the Habsburg future triumph.

In short, the tableau vivant of the Antwerp entry makes clear that the European attention to the Turks shifted from religion to politics. The same shift can be seen 320 in the representation of the French and Habsburg monarchs. Although they are still shown as Christian leaders supported by God, they are more and more legitimated as perfect princes because of their paternal care for their people and are represented as chary, wise, merciful, and affectionate. Those legitimations are all of them secular characteristics towards the citizens.

Suppressor and human being

This Early Modern self-assertion and the attention to human relations, as pointed out in the introduction, led to the western representation of the Ottoman as a cruel suppressor and gave the French and Habsburg princes the chance to profile themselves as the opposite, which means as governmental monarchs. This was the main discourse about the Turks in the sixteenth century. Thanks however to the same urge for self-assertion an opposition came into being. The new western self-conscious position in the world drove some to investigate the way of living in the Ottoman Empire.12

The artist of the picture of the Antwerp tableau vivant, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, joined a political excursion to Constantinople and was impressed by the Turkish people and their lifestyle. He made a series of seven large woodcuts to sketch his impressions. In these pictures Coecke shows an early ‘anthropological’ interest. He doesn’t caricature the Ottomans as was done in the performances at court or in the cities, but depicts them as human beings. The pictures of a burial and of a parade of musicians may prove that he is really interested in their way of living (Ill. 2 and 3). Their leader Suleiman is not shown as a tyrant, but as a solemn and respectable leader going to the weekly prayer in the mosque (Ill. 4). Although the artist departs from his own observations, he is not objective but falls back on his own western frame of references to place and explain his observations. It makes the unfamiliar ‘Other’ linked again with the familiar ‘Self’. The parade of Suleiman to the mosque was wrongly interpreted by Coecke as a solemn entry. A weekly event in Constantinople is shown by Coecke as a far more rare tour in a Western city, for he writes under the picture that the sultan “(…) circonnoyant la ville faict sa demonstration”.13

Although not dominant, this new ‘anthropological’ interest continues in Early Modern France and in the Habsburg territories. Unlike in the court performances and the joyous entries, the different people in the Ottoman Empire are clearly differentiated in the beautiful aquarelles of the Dutch writer and artist Lucas D’Heere. This painter shows a detailed knowledge of the traditional costume of the Turks, Egyptians, Ethiopians, Persians, etc. (Ill. 5).14

A century later the ‘anthropological’ interest arisen in the sixteenth century is 321 appropriated by the official discourse in the civic and court entertainment. A new genre of dance, the court ballets, makes grateful use of the character of the Turk. Just as in the older performances at court the Turk gives an exotic touch to the ballets and makes them more glamorous and spectacular. In contrast with sixteenth-century court entertainment and inspired by the ‘anthropological’ reports and pictures, in the seventeenth century the Turk is clearly differentiated from other Muslim people. So the Moor is most regularly represented as a chivalrous lover, a fierce Othello, whereas the Turk is still shown as a ferocious bully. When in 1598 the Turks and Moors danced for the baptism of the son of Henry IV, the Moors were depicted as passionate, ardent lovers. They say to the audience: “Moors have in their black faces a real proof of the fire that love has caused”. The Turks on the contrary introduce themselves to the audience in a completely different way and underline the long tradition of their Western representation: “We are a troop of infidels, but that is nothing new to say in this court”.15

Although differentiated from other Muslim people, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century court-entertainment in France and in the Habsburg territories, the Turks were still represented by the caricature of a cruel tyrant, but with the emphasis especially on their unrefined and awkward side. In extremely civilised courts such as the French and the Habsburg, the character of the boorish Turk aroused general hilarity. The laughter at the carnavalesque ‘Other’ can here be seen as a phenomenon that for the first time was described by the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin as a way to define and strengthen one’s own values and norms.16 In the subsequent court ballets one could discover this changing attitude: the more the Ottoman Empire lost its military importance, the less the representation of the Turk in court-entertainment remained cruel and tyrannical. In the so-called ‘ballets burlesques’ the Turk was still put on stage as a cruel caricature to laugh at, but as the dance-historian Mark Franko remarks in his Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body, the noble dancer also used the character of the Turk, to define his own position.17 Comparable to the Turks, the once powerful noblemen had lost their power in their being subjected to the power of the French or Habsburg monarchs. In this way, the noble dancer cross-dressed to indicate that his position in court was weakened, and that he had become ‘effeminate’. In spite of this subtle opposition of the noblemen, the grotesque parody still got a large attention. Unfortunately there are no pictures left of Turkish characters in the ballets burlesques, but the picture of a grotesque lady makes clear that these ballets were extremely good at creating ironically bombastic caricatures (Ill. 6). The droll look of the noble dancer was meant as well to make the audience laugh as to underline the painful situation of the courtiers.

Power-discourse 322

Under Louis XIV this kind of opposition became impossible. In his court-ballets the Turks are still dancing, but not as cruel heathens or tyrants anymore, nor as a symbol of weakening power, but as one of the many nations that were subjected to the Sun King. So we may speak of a whole genre of court-ballet, called the ballets des nations, where the whole world, differentiated in many nationalities, show off and pay honour to the most important man in the audience, Louis XIV. With those Ballets des Nations, among others a part of Molières Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme of 1670, the king made his absolutistic aspirations clear to the nobility and the most powerful citizens.

The Spanish Habsburgs fought against the Bourbons with the same propaganda. In 1650 in Brussels, Le Ballet du Monde was performed to celebrate the marriage of Philip IV of Spain and Marie Anna of Austria.18 The four Continents paid their tribute to the representative of the king. Asia was represented both by the legendary female knights, the Amazons, by the Chinese and by the Turks (Ill. 7). In contrast with the Antwerp entry of 1549, the Turks were strictly separated from the Ethiopians and the Egyptians, who appear as inhabitants of the African continent. The pictures of their performances show us that these groups were clearly distinguished from one another by their clothes and their movements.

Although they are still represented as archetypes, the Turks are not laughable anymore. They make a cheerful and calm impression. The different costumes and movements are the only means by which they can be identified as their appearances are highly framed in the same manner. The ballet-groups are formed by about ten dancers and always form the same figures. On the pictures we can clearly see the group-figure of the letter V. Every group is further introduced by a Roman God. The Turks are accompanied by Pomona (the goddess of harvest and of the orchards). This makes it not primarily important to know the characteristics of the foreign people. The only essential thing is their tribute to the Spanish marriage, the fact they subdue to the Spanish king.

Although strong enemies, the French and Spanish king can be clearly linked with the same discourse about power, the just mentioned Souveraineté. For in the ballets des nations performed in France and the Hapsburg territories, the power of both monarchs was shown in representing their property. The subjects of the princes are not represented as members of his family of whom he has to take care, but as a part of his possessions. This makes clear how time and again the image of the Ottoman is rewritten without completely erasing previous images. If one looks carefully, one can see that in Le Ballet du Monde the Turks are not dancing alone. The giant of the Burgundian feast, the fleeing bullies of the Antwerp entry and Suleiman as depicted by Coecke are joining the parade. 323

Notes 1 E.W. Said, Orientalism. Western Concepts of the Orient, London, 1995 (1978), p. 63. 2 Ibidem. 3 M. Carlson, The Haunted Stage. The Theatre as a Memory Machine, Michigan, 2001 (2004), p. 2. 4 I.E. Boer, Disorienting Vision. Rereading Stereotypes in French Orientalist Texts and Images, New York/Amsterdam, 2004, pp. 18-19 5 “Thus ‘self-assertion’ here does not mean the naked biological and economic preservation of the human organism by the means naturally available to it. It means an existential program, according to which man posits his existence in a historical situation and indicates to himself how he is going to deal with the reality surrounding him and what use he will make of the possibilities that are open to him”. H. Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, (trans. R.M. Wallace), Cambridge, 1985, p. 138. 6 M. Foucault, ‘La “gouvernementalité”’, in: Dits et écrits 1954-1988, Paris, 1994, III, pp. 635-657. 7 For example G. De La Perrière, Le Miroir politique, contenant diverses manières de gouverner et policer les républiques, Paris, 1555. 8 R. Vaughan, Philip the Good, London, 1970, pp. 334-372 and J.-M. Cauchies, ‘Le Duc, la politique et les Pays-Bas dans les Etats bourguignons en 1454‑», in: M.-T. Caron, D.‑Clauzel (eds.), Le banquet du Faisan, 1454. L’Occident face au défi de l’Europe Ottoman, Arras, 1997, pp. 29-40. 9 D. Régnier-Bohelr (ed.), Splendeurs de la cour de Bourgogne, Paris, 1995, p. 1145. 10 M. Mout, “Turken in het nieuws. Beeldvorming en publieke opinie in de zestiende- eeuwse Nederlanden”, in: Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 97 (1984), nr. 3 , pp. 368-374. 11 C. Grapheus, De seer wonderlijcke schoone Triumphelijcke Incompst, van den hooghmogenden Prince Philips, Prince van Spaignen, Caroli des vijfden, Keysers sone. Inde stads van Antwerpen, Antwerpen, 1550, f.Ivi verso- f.K verso. 12 M. Mout, o. c., pp. 368-369. 13 P. Coecke Van Aelst, Moeurs et Fachons de faire de Turcs avecq’les Regions y appartenates, ont este au vif contrefaictez par Piere Ceock d’Alost, luy estant en Turquie, l’An de Ieuschirst L.D.33, Lequel aussy de sa main propre a pourtraict ces figures duysantes à l’impression d’ycelles, Antwerpen, 1553, p. VII. 14 L. D’Heere, Théâtre de tous les peuples et nations de la terre avec leurs habits, & ornemens divers, tant anciens que modernes, Library UGent, Hs. 2466. 15 M. Paquot, Les étranges dans les divertissements de la cour de Beaujoyeulx à Molière (1581-1673), Bruxelles, 1932, pp. 44-45. 16 M. Bakhtin, L’Œeuvre de François Rabelais et la culture populaire au Moyen Âge et sous la Renaissance, Paris, 1970. 17 M. Franko, Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 63- 107. 18 G.-B. Balbi, Balet du Monde, accompagnée d’une comedie en musique l’un & l’autre donnez, à la resjouyssance publique sur le sujet de l’heureux mariage de Leurs Majestez, Bruxelles, 1650. 324

Ill. 1: Tableau vivant of the Antwerp entry of 1549. Charles V and Philip drive away the Muslim tyrants. C. Grapheus, De seer wonderlijcke schoone Triumphelijcke Incompst, van den hooghmogenden Prince Philips, Prince van Spaignen, Caroli des vijfden, Keysers sone. Inde stads van Antwerpen (Antwerpen 1550) folio K6 verso, Library Ghent University. 325

Ill. 2: Burial at an Ottoman cemetery. P. Coecke Van Aelst, Moeurs et Fachons de faire de Turcs avecq’les Regions y appartenates, ont este au vif contrefaictez par Piere Ceock d’Alost, luy estant en Turquie, l’An de Ieuschirst L.D.33, Lequel aussy de sa main propre a pourtraict ces figures duysantes à l’impression d’ycelles (Antwerpen 1553) Library Ghent University. 326

Ill. 3: Ottoman musicians. P. Coecke Van Aelst, Moeurs et Fachons de faire de Turcs avecq’les Regions y appartenates, ont este au vif contrefaictez par Piere Ceock d’Alost, luy estant en Turquie, l’An de Ieuschirst L.D.33, Lequel aussy de sa main propre a pourtraict ces figures duysantes à l’impression d’ycelles (Antwerpen 1553) Library Ghent University. 327

Ill. 4: Suleiman enters Constantinopel. P. Coecke Van Aelst, Moeurs et Fachons de faire de Turcs avecq’les Regions y appartenates, ont este au vif contrefaictez par Piere Ceock d’Alost, luy estant en Turquie, l’An de Ieuschirst L.D.33, Lequel aussy de sa main propre a pourtraict ces figures duysantes à l’impression d’ycelles (Antwerpen 1553) Library Ghent University. 328

Ill. 5: A Turkish couple. L. D’Heere, Theatre de tous les peuples et nations de la terre avec leurs habits, & ornemens divers, tant anciens que modernes, Library UGent. 329

Ill. 6: Grotesque lady in a ballet burlesque. M. Franko, Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body (Cambridge 1993) 82. 330

Ill. 7: Entrée of the Amazons, Chinese and the Turks. G.-B. Balbi, Balet du Monde, accompagnée d’une comedie en musique l’un & l’autre donnez, à la resjouyssance publique sur le sujet de l’heureux mariage de Leurs Majestez (Bruxelles 1650), Royal Library Albert I, Brussels. 331

ORIENTALISM, DESPOTISM AND ‘GOVERNMENTALITY’ Rereading the Harem as a Domestic Space in the French Opéra Comique Soliman II ou les trois Sultanes (1761)

Bram VAN OOSTVELDT

In the last decades of the 18th century, the theatrical staging of the Oriental other seems to be the perfect way to discuss the organisation of powerrelations in the West. Since Montesquieu in his influential De l’esprit des lois (1748) so explicitly mapped despotism in the empires of the East, the Oriental other in performing arts reminds the West in one way or another of the dangers and threaths of the despotic organisation of power. In this essay, I will examine how in the 18th century French opera-comique Soliman II ou les trois sultanes (1761) the Orient is constructed as a despotic space. Particular attention is paid here to the harem, which as the stereotyped domestic space of the Oriental other, allows the West to penetrate most deeply in the organisation of powerrelations in the Orient. Characterized as a place of cruel behaviour, tyranny and enslavery, of degenerate mores and of sexual deviation, the harem functions as a negative example of this specific ‘management’ of power. This critique on the harem as ‘mismanaged’ space follows then the concept of governmentality which Foucault saw as an early-modern way of re-organizing the good relation between subject and power according to an economic logic.

Domestic Spaces

In his autobiographical essay Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes (1973) the writer introduces himself with some private pictures. Those pictures are not Family pictures Roland Barthes only meant to give us an idea of his from Roland Barthes par Roland physical appearance and evolution. Still Barthes, 1973. more important is that those pictures refer 332 to certain aspects of his work. On the other hand, his work might be seen as the delicate product of what I think must have been an ‘Art of living’. Two of those pictures represent the same image of a cosy gathering around a teatable. The first picture dates from circa 1900 and shows us Barthes’ grandparents sitting around a table on which there is a teatray with teacups and a hot samovar. They are looking straight into the camera. The second picture dates from the sixties, showing us Barthes himself and his elderly mother. In contrast to the first picture there is no posing here. The picture looks like a snapshot, a proof of every-day life, which always seems to suggest a natural status. In spite of those differences in time and mise-en-scène, the two pictures are linked by the act of tea-drinking itself. Commenting this photographies, Barthes writes: ‘de géneration en génération, le thé: indice bourgeois et charme certain’.1 In the continuity of cosyness and homelyness around the teatable, Barthes sees an eventuality to draw up a genealogy of bourgeoisness.

This genealogy does not need to be limited to tea alone, but can also be extended to coffee. This proves the following painting from 1739 Le Café, by François Boucher. Again the charming image of bourgeois cosyness and domesticity is constructed around a pot of coffee. What interests me is in how far this everyday-life scene is revealing an ideology; that is the ideology of the patriarchally structured and nuclear family, which in its informality, presents itself as a ‘natural’ habitat for mankind.2 This informality is based on the private atmosphere of the scene. The outer world is shut out here in a most effective way. Windows, garnished with heavy curtains, only function François Boucher, Le café, 1739 as a source of light, whereas the mirror, reflecting a closed 333 door, insists on this privacy. With this isolation, the domestic space is opposed here to the public sphere, which is implied to be dangerous, dangerous because the public sphere is a theatrical place. It is the realm of social play, where everybody wears a mask and where nobody can be sure of the identity of the other.3 In this nice livingroom the threatening disorder of the public sphere is eliminated. Here, everybody has his wellfixed and undoubtable place and identity: father, mother and children. This order makes the livingroom a safe space, where all possible tensions of the outer world are resolved in the tenderness and the virtue of the family and by which the family is finally sexually neutralized.

However oppressive and suffocating this isolation is or might become in the 19th century, it still is a splendid isolation. This splendour is constructed by concrete everyday-life objects: a clock, a mirror, candlelights, canns, china, furniture. All those objects have no other meaning than indicating how well managed this household is.

The well-ordered and safe space of the bourgeois family follows an economic logic. According to Jean Jacques Rousseau in his Discours sur l’économie politique this economic logic is not only the basis for a good household, but also for the organisation of the state:

“Economie ou Oeconomie, ce mot vient de oikos – maison, et de nomos – loi, et ne signifie originairement que le sage et légitime gouvernement de la maison, pour le bien commun de toute la famille. Le sens de ce terme a été dans la suite étendue au gouvernement de la grande famille, qui est l’état”.4

In his essay La Gouvernementalité (1978), Michel Foucault sees the introduction of the economic logic into the political discourse as fundamental for the concept of governmentality.5 Governmentality is thus characterized as a way of conduct in which the relation between power and the subject of power is internalised. Internalised because only the well being and wellfare of the subject can legitimate the relation of power. This internalisation, or better, this mutual dependence of power and subject, can be seen as a social contract. Governementality is thus contradictory to sovereignty in which the relation between power and subject is external. The prince, tyrant or despot legitimates his power only on the purpose to maintain this power, without any regard to the situation of his subjects. Summing up, the domestic space of the Boucher painting is more than just a social and moral space eliminating the dangers of the outer world of the Ancien Régime. This domestic space functions, due to its underlying economic logic, also as a political arena suggesting an alternative to French absolutist state organisation. 334

Even drinking a cup of coffee is more than the moment in which the family flocks together in its well-managed domestic space. As a privileged trade-object introduced in Western society in the 1660’s, by the Turkish ambassador in France, Soliman Musa Ferraca, coffee can also be read as a meeting-point between East and West.6

Feminine space

I now may introduce a second picture. In this painting, ordered by Madame de Pompadour, Carle Vanloo depicts a Sultane having a cup of coffee in the private atmosphere of the Harem. Nevertheless by bringing in this second picture, a new problem is raised. In spite of the fact the activity of drinking coffee and the enclosed space are similar to the Boucher painting, it is difficult to

Carle Vanloo, Sultane prenant du café, 1754 read in this harem-scene a morally purified and sexually neutralized space that could function as an example for the whole of bourgeois society. Why is it so 335 difficult? Paradoxically, the reason can be found in the enclosed space itself, which the harem is. In the stereotyped staging of the Islamic Other, the harem is more than just the exemplary domestic space of Islamic society, moreover it always is the final point of focus in the construction of the Orient. Here the western gaze is pretending to penetrate most deeply in the secrets and mysteries of the Orient. In her study Disorienting Vision. Rereading Stereotypes in French Orientalist Texts and Images (2004) the late Inge Boer argues that out of the Western preoccupation with the harem, the Orient as a whole is represented as a feminine space characterized by the mix of sexual decadence and the despotic organisation of society:

“The whole array of exotic figures –eunuchs, deafmutes, old women guarding the harem women, and not in the least the despot himself – appealed to a fascination with questions concerning polygamy and female sexuality seen through the lens of despotism. The harem seems to be the knot that ties together notions about the other”.7

This knot is surely to be found in the Vanloo painting. The enclosure of the domestic space of the harem is not in the first place intended to eliminate the outer world, but is meant to keep women inside the domestic space. In this reversed strategy, the domestic space is no longer a safe place as it is in the Boucherscene, but is becoming a luxury prison where women live more or less like slaves. Here the position of enslavery or subordination to male authority is not underlined by the presence of a eunuch, as is often the case, but is more subtly evoked by the relation between the black servant offering the coffee to the indolent Sultane. The servitude of the black woman can easily be transposed to the servitude of the Sultane towards her Sultan. It confronts us with a chain of slavery, in which only the despotic Sultan has no part.

Normally the presence of the eunuch in harem-scenes implies the threath of violence in case a woman in the harem would try to escape. The absence of the eunuch in the Vanloo painting does not mean that this harem-scene is liberated from this violence/escape logic. Here violence and escaping are internalised in the ‘dangerous’ and ‘unnatural’ passions of lesbianism, which in this painting are even more dangerous because of their interracial nature. The eventuality of lesbianism undermines the Sultan’s power, because of his being excluded from the love act. It is of course to be punished, by the Sultan himself or by the guards. So the suppression of women takes on a form by means of which force and violence become justified methods to maintain the structure of power-relations. This structure which is based on a logic of violence, escape and sexual decadence has its Western pendant in the convent. In his novel La religieuse Diderot points 336 out how this logic of violence, escape and sexual decadence is the natural outcome of the despotic way of ruling the convent, which consequently can only be avoided when despotism is replaced by a form of government in which the wellfare and well-being of the subject is the only legitimation of power.8

Marivaudage

The same plea for governementality is also to be found in the French opéra comique Soliman II ou les trois Sultanes from 1761,9 written by the renowned French librettist Charles Simon Favart. About the middle of the century, Favart reformed the young genre of the opéra-comique and made it into one of the most popular theatrical genres of the eighteenth century.10 In the beginning of the 18th century the opéra comique itself was born out of the Parisian fair theatre after the expulsion of theatre of the Commedia dell’arte. With its jokes and grunts, dances and tumbles, leaps and burlesques, the opéra- comique was a direct descendant of the Commedia dell’arte. In the context of blurring out boundaries in other dramatic and theatrical genres in the mid-eighteenth century, Favart added more respectability to the opéra- comique by focussing more on the literary and dramatic possiblities of the genre. In this sense, ‘comique’, stands more for the presence of dramatic action, than for the comical as such. In making the genre respectable Favart was inspired by the comedies of Marivaux and especially by the so-called ‘marivaudage’.11 In those social comedies the conditions and possibilities of verbal communication are problematized in questions of how to speak, on what grounds to speak, with whom to speak, in what form, etc. In addition to a greater accent on the sentimental, this questioning of speech is the essential characteristic of Marivaux’ comédies. Also in Favart’s dramaturgy sentimentality is to be found combined with the urge to and the problems of speech. The problematics of speech indicate a shift from classic rhetorical style of seventeenth century comedy, to a more natural or realistic style of conversation, which follows social stratification. The pursuit of more realism in Favart’s librettoes is also to be noticed in a visualisation of the drama in more and more detailed stage directions.

Soliman II ou les trois Sultanes, performed for the first time at the French court, was one of Favart’s most succesful opéra-comiques, performed and translated throughout the whole of Europe. The intrigue is built on the great 16th century Ottoman Sultan Soliman the Second and the problems occuring in his harem.12 Like in the Vanloo painting, the Harem is represented by emphasizing its enclosure. In one of the stage directions we read:

“Les appartements intérieurs du serial n’ont point des portes fermantes, 337

mais de riches portières de drap d’or, ou d’autres étoffes précieuses. Des eunuques noirs sont de garde nuit et jour à l’entrée en dehors, prêts à exécuter au moindre signal les ordres du grand seigneur ou du kislar-aga”.13

The mentioning of the rich golden draperies or other fabrics does not only underline the luxurious atmosphere of the harem, but is also meant to describe this domestic space as realistic as possible. At several occasions this is continued by giving an exact description of furniture or objects filling the harem, such as “une petite table d’or carrée, haute de six à huit pouces, et large d’un pied et demi environ” or “une soucoupe d’or garnie de pierreries avec deux tasses de porcelaine et une cuiller faite avec le bec d’un oiseau des Indes, très rare, lequel bec est plus rouge que le corail”.14 Those thoughtless descriptions of fabric, color, hight and largeness having only a self-referring function are nothing less than Barthesian ‘effets de réel’ which have to convince the reader of the realism of the text.15 This strategy of realism however, as Mieke Bal argues in her study ‘Reading’ Rembrandt (1991), makes the reader also susceptible to ideological manipulation while he might see the thoughtless description as an almost empirical proof of reality and not as a pure textual strategy.16 This ideological manipulation by effects of reality takes the luxury and opulence of the harem out of the realm of the fairytale and turns the harem into a real place. By doing so the effects of reality might emphasize Western opinions on the extravagant and wastefull way in which the Islamic domestic space is managed.

From the 500 other women living in Soliman’s harem, only three favorites play a part in this opéra-comique. First there is Délia, who comes from Central Asia. She prefers dancing to talking and when she talks it is to express her complete submission to male authority. In her eyes Soliman is no less than a god, master of thunder and fire, war and peace, women and love. Secondly there is the beautifull but, o so proud and jealous Spanish Elmire. Dissociating herself from the others as the Sultans favorite, she tries hard to keep this position. Using tricks and deception she wants to secure herself of the total and exclusive love of the Sultan. Thirdly there is Roxelane, a French girl, maybe not as beautiful as Elmire but a real coquette, who wears her heart on her sleeve. She has no intention whatsoever to subdue to Soliman’s will, but from the beginning on clearly and loudly questions his power. This has not so much to do with Soliman himself, but in the first place with the despotic power he represents.

Her protests are expressed in leaving the harem without surveilliance, by mocking the eunuch-guards as ridiculous and fat ‘monstres’, deprived from their manhood and left back as deplorable amphibies. Most of all however her protests are heard in the conversations she insists to have with the Sultan himself. Using 338 a language, which, comparable to that of Voltairian heroines, is characterized by a mixture of common sense, played naivity and esprit, she constantly questions the authority of the Sultan and the despotic way he uses his power. In fact this questioning is nothing less than a lecture in governmentality. During her first meeting with Soliman, she sees a point to criticize him about the way he addresses a private word to his servant. He should talk clearly and loudly and address his speech directly to the subject he rules over. Speaking out does not only suggest honesty and integrity, but it recognizes above all the subject’s right to know what is said. Only this way true communication between power and subject is possible, which is the basis for a contract-theory underlying state organisation. The clearly political dimension of this discussion on speech and the conditions of speech, is to be noticed in the fact that Roxelane immediately continues to take up her right to speak and to attack the despotic power-relations by which the domestic space of the harem is organised:

“Commencez, s’il vous plaît, par vous désabuser Que vous avez des droits pour nous tyranniser (…) Pourqoui de cent barreaux vos fenêtres couvertes? C’est de fleurs qu’il faut les garnir; Que dus sérail les portes soient ouvertes, Et que le bonheur seul empêche d’en sortir. Traiter vos esclaves en dames Soyez galant avec toutes les femmes, Tendre avec une seule; et si vous méritez Qu’on ait pour vous quelques bontés, On vous instruira. J’ai dit, je me retire: C’est à vous de vous mieux conduire; Voilà ma première leçon”.17

The political dimension of her speech is further underlined by the remark of Soliman’s servant, the eunuch Osmin, who says “Bon! Elle vous parle en souveraine.”18

Subversive space

But this is not the end of Roxelane’s crusade against despotism. Moreover she wants to incite the other harem-women with her plea for changes. By acting that 339 way, she turns the domestic space of the harem into a subversive space in which possibilities of (female) political resistance may threaten the Islamitic social order.

In another harem-scène by Carle Vanloo, we are again confronted with the clear distinction between inside and outside, as it is referring to the serail as an enclosed space of which physical escape is made impossible by the threath of the black eunuch-guard at the door.

However, as we saw earlier, the blocking of physical escape does not mean escaping completely to be impossible. We already pointed at the internalisation of techniques of‑escaping in the always implicit suggestion of lesbianism in the harem. Attributing the suggestions of lesbianism to the product of the male gaze and to expressions of male sexual desire and/or anxiety, the gathering of women in the harem as presented in the Vanloo picture can also be seen from another point of view. Based on the lecture of Lady Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters (written in 1717-1718, published in 1763)19, Inge Boer rereads the harem from a more female perpective, or from Carle Vanloo, Haremscene, ca. 1750. what she calls ‘a look from within the harem’.20 In this gaze the harem functions not so much as an explicit sexual place, but is rather seen as a place where women gather to talk, or to exchange news. The harem becomes a forum, a place of communication. Lady Montagu even describes it as the “women’s coffee house, where all the news of the town is told, scandal invented”.21 This is of course a direct reference to the institution of the 18th century coffee house where, such as in the famous Café Procope in Paris, men came together to discuss philosophy, politics, social issues or art in a semi-public sphere.22 In this rereading of the harem, Inge Boer relates the femininity of this space not only to the passive presence of the women, but also to a concrete activity which is repeatedly mentioned in the description of the harem and the bath- houses in Lady Montagu’s letters: the activity of braiding hair.23 According to Inge Boer this “activity of braiding hair, embedded in other activities in the 340

‘women’s coffee house’, takes part in the production of knowledge and works as a means of communication. The braiding of hair is something women perform on each other in their own spaces.”24 Boer continues by mentioning that as a means of communication, the activity of braiding hair, is not innocent at all, but is in fact a powerfull instrument in the hands of women that questions the male despotic powerregime.

Associating hair-braiding to a questioning of male authority may look at first sight a bit far fetched, but when we turn again to Roxelane, we can see that the moment she incites the other women with her arguments against the despotic regime of Soliman, is also the moment when they make themselves beautiful before meeting the Sultan, the moment they are braiding each other’s hair. That this seduction is a mix between eroticism and fear is to be seen in Osmin’s description of the women’s make up. He not only explicitly mentions the braiding of hair, but in his telling that the women do it on each other without the help of slaves, he interpretes it literally as a ‘stratagème’25 (a tactic of war), which makes us consider the braiding of hair as a means of communication and possible resistance. Make up and espescially the braiding of hair is a dangerous women’s play of showing and covering up. When a hair-ribbon falls down and is picked up by one of the Sultanes, her robe falls open and one can see a glimpse of her well formed body. Osmin comments:

“On vous laisse le temps de fixer un regard, A travers le tissu d’une gaze assez claire Sur une taille élégante et légère Qui s’arrondit sans le secours de l’art”.26

After the implicit endangering of the Sultan’s power by this make-up-scene, Roxelane starts getting more and more explicit in her political discourse. Time and again, as if it were in a tribunal and Roxelane is a prosecutor, she presses charges against the laws of tyranny and enslavery by which the despotic state is characterized and pleas for a government where power-relations are based on mutual agreement, dialogue and respect. By constantly referring to the law as a social agreement made by man, she expresses a dynamic world-view in which the world is seen as a work in progress, made by man. This secularized argument undermines the absolutist or despotic state-organisation where power and subsequent laws are legitimated as a gift from God. That those laws are, as Soliman argues, inherited certainties and have always been there and, what is more important, form the basis of his throne, does not impress her at all. In return she gives him a description of her own country, France, which might be an example for the Sultan: 341

“Vous faites bien sentir quelle est la différence De ce maudit pays au mien Point d’esclaves chez nous; on ne respire en France Que les plaisirs, la liberté, l’aisance. Tout citoyen est roi, sous un roi citoyen”.27

Each citizen a king

In this cry for a Citizen King under which every citizen is a king, we can evidently hear echoes of Montesquieu’s De l’esprit des lois where he pleas for a moderation of power built on the concept of governmentality or contract-theory and where he warns the French and other European absolutist monarchies not to slide down into the ‘Eastern’ politics of despotism. Foucault’s statement that the discourse of governmentality followed an essentially economic logic is, according to the eminent ‘dix huitièmist’ Jean Starobinski clearly and explicitly to be noticed in Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes:

“Montesquieu likes to measure the cost, the profit or loss, of every situation. The cost of exercising absolute power from afar is that of terrorizing the eunuchs who will in their turn terrorize the women of the harem. Not only is the price heavy, but it still leaves the master in anxiety. What is the value of security acquired at such a price? What is the value of professions of obedience obtained under such circumstances?”28

In Favart’s Soliman II ou les trois Sultanes, this economic logic was not only to be perceived in the detailed description of the harem as a domestic space, but more clearly even and more generally in mentioning the constant problems Soliman was confronted with in managing this space. The costs of this management could be far more reduced if power and responsability of power were divided in a way Roxelane suggests in her cry for a ‘Citizen King under which each citizen is a king.’ This reorganisation of power-relations however would mean the end of the harem as the domestic space of the Islamic Other. And indeed, Soliman, astonished and highly impressed by the eloquent Roxelane, resigns to his despotic power by releasing all the women from the harem and by loving and marrying but one, Roxelane. So Roxelane will, next to her Sultan, be a guarantee for“la tendre humanité qui adoucit la riguer des lois”29. At the same time however, and this is highly problematic, Roxelane also says “reprends tes droits, reprends ma liberté, sois mon Sultan, mon héros et mon maître.”30 By saying so she turns the citizenship, which she was pleading for into a gendered 342 category only appliable to men. Although Roxelane may have reorganised power- relations in the domestic space of the harem, she herself, as she states literally, becomes again “une esclave soumise.”31 In the discourse of governmentality there is no place for women. Reigned by a loving and caring husband, she turns to find again her place in the domestic space of the bourgeois family, where she is made speechless and left alone.

The description of the Harem as the domestic space of the Islamic Other, based upon Western early-modern conceptions of the domestic space, can in this way be considered as what Inge Boer calls a palimpsest. She sees the metaphor as an particularly apt method for rereading a text: “A palimpsest is a parchment or the like from which writing has been partially or completely erased to make room for another text. But even when the writing is completely erased, it is still visible in the traces it leaves behind in the parchment.”32 The traces I tried to uncover here in this Orientalist construction of the harem as a domestic space, are traces that lead to the questioning of power-relations in Western debates on the art of government. A debate in which the concept of governmentality and its economic logic, based on the wellfare and well-being of the subject, functions as an alternative for the the implicit tendency towards despotism in the way power- relations were organised in the Ancien Régime. In its imagined Otherness then, the Orient provided a safe ground, where the art of government could be tested out in an explicit way without risking the wrath of Western tyrants.

Notes

1 Roland Barthes, “Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes” in: Oeuvres complètes, Paris, 1995, III, s.p. 2 For the bourgeois family as a natural habitat for humankind, see André Burguière, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber (eds.), A History of the Family. The impact of Modernity, Cambridge, 1996; Peter Szondi, Die Theorie des bürgerlichen Trauerspiels im 18. Jahrhundert. Der Kaufmann, der Hausvater und der Hofmeister, Frankfurt a. Main, 1973; Richard Helgerson, Adultrous Alliances. Home, State, and History in Early Modern European Drama and Painting, Chicago/London, 2000; Bram Van Oostveldt, Tranen om het alledaagse. Het verlangen naar natuurlijkheid en de enscenering van burgerlijke identiteit in drama en theater in de Oostenrijkse Nederlanden, Gent, 2005. 3 See Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, Neuwied a. Rhein/Berlin, 1962 (1956); Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man, London/Boston, 1974. 4 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discours sur l’économie politique” in: Oeuvres Complètes, Paris, 1823, p. 11. 343

5 Michel Foucault, “La ‘gouvernementalité’”, in: Dits et écrits III, Paris, 1994, pp. 635- 657. 6 See Pierre Martino, L’Orient dans la littérature française au XVII et au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1906, p. 348, cited in: Inge E. Boer (ed. by Mieke Bal), Disorienting Vision. Rereading Stereotypes in French Orientalist Texts and Images, New York/Amsterdam, 2004, p. 81. 7 Inge E. Boer (2004), p. 47. 8 Denis Diderot, La religieuse, in: Oeuvres Complètes – Contes II, Paris, 1994. See also Laurent Versini, “Introduction – La religieuse”, in: Ibid., pp. 271-276. G.A. Chosson, “Hatred, Vengeance and Freedom or the Insurrection of the Passions in Diderot and Laclos: the Case of Suzanne in ‘La Religieuse’ and Marquise de Merteuil in ‘Les Liasons Dangereuses”, Romance Notes, 42 (2002), nr.2, pp. 151-162. 9 Charles Simon Favart, Soliman II ou les trois Sultanes, Paris, 1761. 10 For the history and esthetics of the opéra comique, see Maurice Barthélemy, “ L’Opéra-Comique des origines à la querelle des Buffons” in: Philippe Vendrix (ed.), L’opéra-comique en France au XVIIIe siècle, Liège, 1992, pp. 9-78. Manuel Couvreur, Philippe Vendrix, “Les enjeux théoriques de l’Opéra-Comique” in: Philippe Vendrix (1992), pp. 213-281. For the problematics of 18th century orientalist opera, see Willem Bruls, Ontvoering, verleiding en bevrijding. De Oriënt in de opera, Amsterdam, 2004, pp. 85-98. 11 M. de Rougemont, “FAVART, Charles Simon” in: Michel Corvin (ed.), Dictionnaire encyclopédique du théâtre, Paris, 1998, I, p. 632. 12 The popularity of Suleyman the Great and his wife Roxane or Roxelane on the Western stage is not limited to the 18th century. Already in 1561, the tragedy La Sultane by Gabriel Bounin, the tumultuous love-story between Sumeyman and Roxelane is told. However, during the 17th and especially the 18th century, Roxelane changes from an Asian princess into a European princess that is abducted to the harem of Ottoman sultan. This particular theme of the abduction of Western women to the Orient becomes immensely popular in the 18th century and peaks in Mozarts Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1781). See Willem Bruls (2004). 13 Charles Simon Favart (1761), p. 29. 14 Ibid., p. 26. 15 Roland Barthes; “L’effet de réel” in: Oeuvres Complètes II, Paris, 1994, pp. 478- 494. See also Jürgen Pieters, “De demon van de analogie. Bij het lezen van ‘Het werkelijkheidseffect’”, Feit & Fictie. Tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis van de representatie, 5 (2000), nr. 1, pp. 123-127. 16 I used the Dutch version of Bal’s study, Mieke Bal, Verf en Verderf. Lezen in Rembrandt, Amsterdam, 1990, pp. 115-120. 17 Charles Simon Favart (1761), pp. 23-24. 18 Ibid., p. 24. 19 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (ed. by Robert Halsband), The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu I (1708-1720), Oxford, 1965. 20 Inge E. Boer (2004), pp. 49-74. 21 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1965), p. 314 cited in: Inge E. Boer (2004), p. 62. 22 For the history of the Parisian coffeehouses as a semi-public sphere, see Thomas 344

Brennan, Public Drinking and Popular Culture in Eighteenth Century Paris, Princeton, 1988. In his study The Contested Parterre, Jeffrey S. Ravel links the café also to the theatre itself, functioning as a ‘foyer’ nearby the theatre to discuss the latest play. See Jeffrey S. Ravel, The Contested Parterre: Public Theatre and French Political Culture 1680-1791, Ithaca/London, 1999, pp. 24-25. 23 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1965), p. 327 cited in Inge E. Boer (2004), p. 64. 24 Inge E. Boer (2004), p. 63. 25 Charles Simon Favart (1761), p. 6. 26 Ibidem. 27 Ibid., p. 32. 28 Jean Starobinsky, “Exile, Satire, Tyranny: Montesquieu’s Persian Letters”, in: Blessings in Disguise; or, The Morality of Evil, Oxford, 1993, p. 80. 29 Charles Simon Favart (1761), p. 79. 30 Ibid., p. 81. 31 Ibid., p. 82. 32 Inge E. Boer (2004), pp. 18-19.