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University Microfilms International 300 North Zeeb Hoad Ann Arbor. Michigan 48106 USA St John's Hoad. Tyler's Green High Wycombe. Bucks, England HP10 8HR 7612321 BICKNEIL# CATHEHXNE THE FOET*Y OF PAlN| NEUROSIS IN THE WORKS OF ADAMOV. THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, PM,0,r 1976

University M icro film s International JOO N Z K flftO A lJ ANN AHBOH Mi 4BIOf>

© Copyright

by

Catherine Blcknell

1978 THE POETRY OF PAIN:

NEUROSIS IN THE WORKS OF ADAMOV

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

By

Catherine Bicknell, B.A., M.A.

« * * * n

The Ohio State University

1978

Reading Committee: Approved By

Professor Charles Carlut

Professor Charles G. S. Williams "> Professor Pidrre Astier ^ .

Advisor Department of Romance Languages ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Dr. Sanford Ames for originally introducing me to the works of Adamov, and my Advisor, Professor Pierre Astier, for his helpful criticisms, as well as for several years of inspiration in the study of twentieth century French literature. I am most in­ debted to Sally Carrel for reading and discussing the manuscript in its early stages, to Mary Elizabeth Bicknell for tracking down and copying articles at the New York Public Library, and to Dr. Donald

Spinelli for his support and encouragement while this work was in progress*

ii VITA

May 12, 1943...... Bom, Alexandria, Virginia

1963 ...... French Summer Course L'Universite de Grenoble France

1965 ...... B.A., Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass.

1968 ...... M.A., The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio

1971-72 ...... University Dissertation Year Fellowship The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio

1967-74 ...... Graduate Assistant, Department of Romance Languages, The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio

ill TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 11

VITA...... ill

INTRODUCTION...... 1

Chapter

I. "L'Enllsement:11 Images of Neurosis*...... 33

II. L*Aveu: Rationalization of Neurosis...... 39

III. The Plays: Acting out of Neurosis...... 84

Pieces d ’exorcisme...... 86

Pieces d 'engagement ...... 127

Pieces d'evasion...... 150

IV. Si l*ete revenalt: Piece d'integration...... 183

V. Ilg: Fantasies of Neurosis...... 228

CONCLUSION...... 252

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 279

iv INTRODUCTION

Arthur Adamov was b o m in Kislovatak In the Caucasus on August

23, 1908, into a family of wealthy Armenians whose fortune had been made in oil wells. Although, as in the cases of Beckett, Ionesco and

Arrabal, French was not his native language, it was typical of the class in which he was raised for children to be brought up under the super­ vision of a French governess. As a result, Adamov was fluent in French from childhood.

In a more tranquil period of history, Adamov might have passed an uneventful life as part of the Russian "grande bourgeoisie," exper­ iencing nothing more destructive than the vices inherent to his class, such as the gambling to which he describes his father and uncles as being prone in his autobiography: L*Homme et 1*enfant.-*- His life was to be disrupted, however, and its shape to a great extent deter­ mined, by the political events of the years to come. Adamov and his family were travelling in the Black Forest when the First World War broke out, In 1914. From that year began a period of emigration and rootlessness which was to mark Adamov*s temperament and his writing.

The family never returned to Russia; from Germany, they moved to Geneva, where with the already celebrated PitoEffs, they formed part of the white Russian emigrant community. In 1918, the family's oil wells were nationalized by the Bolsheviks, leaving them with little more than the jewels they had brought from Russia. They moved back to Germany, in 1922, where Arthur attended school, his older sister Armlk worked in an office and his father, separated from his roots and discour­ aged, gambled in the casinos. In 1924, the family emigrated once more, this time to Paris.

Although the historical situation of the first fourteen years of his life had been unpropitious, Adamov’s arrival in Paris at this moment was certainly not. The period immediately following the First World War was one of intense literary and artistic activity, dominated by the be­ ginnings of the Surrealist movement. Adamov was introduced to the

Surrealists in 1927 through Eluard: "J'ecris des poemes surrealistes tr@s quelconques que j'envoie S Eluard, qul les alme ou fait semblant.

En tout cas, 11 m'aime bien et m'invite dans le cafe ou se reunit le groupe, place Blanche.He failed Breton's "examen du petit surrSal- iste" by preferring Baudelaire to Lautreamont and Eluard and Tzara to

Breton,3 but was enough of a disciple to compose a wordless surrealist play, five minutes long, called Mains blanches: "Une fille, montee sur une chaise, prend la main d ’un gar^on egalement monte sur une chaise, la lache, la reprend. Le theatre de la separation deja."^ Adamov shared certain literary preoccupations with the Surrealists, the themes of dreams, neurosis, and love. An examination and comparison of the texts contained in Andre Breton's Manifestes du surrealisme^ (texts dated 1924 to 1953) and Adamov’s autobiographical L ’Aveu (texts dated

1938 to 1943) show the extent to which his thought parallels Breton's and the points at which they diverge.

Adamov's first writings reveal a desire similar to that of the

Surrealists to arrive at levels of psychic reality beyond the restrictions of conventional morality and the traditional subjects of literature. In 3 his early poems he experimented with automatic writing,^ but it was particularly in L 1Aveu that he probed into psychic regions which were traditionally considered taboo; namely his own sexual masochism.

Adamov also shared the Surrealists’ Interest In dreams and In neu­ rotic, or abnormal, states of mind. For the Surrealists, dreams and images produced in sessions of automatic writing were the raw material of the imagination, uncensored by the workings of the ego or superego.® 9 In L ’Aveu, Adamov describes two of his dreams, and from his interpreta­ tions, it is evident that they interested him primarily as allegorical symbols. In one dream, he is walking down a wide road surrounded by beautiful young people dressed In white. As he continues to walk, the people become progressively smaller and more unhealthy, until he finally finds himself surrounded by bands of snickering dwarfs and drunk­ en soldiers singing vulgar songs. His attention focuses on an ugly little girl, her skinny legs wrapped In heavy wool stockings, who kicks a ball, stops and coughs, kicks the ball, stops and coughs, etc. His interpretation of the dream is as follows:

Je m'Sveille en sursaut, et aussltot le sens de non reve se revele A mon esprit. Paralyse par l'effroi j'ai assiste au deroulement de l’histolre du monde, cette suite lugubre de d€sastres, cette degradation sans fin; 1 *esprit, de metamorphose en metamorphose, de chute en chute, s ’engluant de plus en plus bas dans la nuit. J'ai vu defiler sous mes yeux en un raccour- ci synthetique le long drame de l'humanite, depuls see premiers jours radieux de perfection premiere, jusqu'A 1 'heure sombre du chaos oQ tout ce qui etait pur s ’est abatardl.^O

By 1950, with Le Professeur Taranne, Adamov*s attitude toward dreams had changed and he was no longer seeking metaphysical interpretations:

"Le Professeur Taranne, transcription presque littSrale d ’un reve que j ’ai A

fait... La coutumiSre, stupide allegorie, ici, par bonheur, evitee.'1^-*-

Unlike the picturesque imagery in the dream fantasies of early Surreal­

ists such as Antonin Artaud and Robert Desnos, Adamov*s two plays based

on dreams, Le Professeur Taranne and La Grande et la petite manoeuvre. ^

are basically objectifications of his psychological fears and anxieties.

He did not cultivate bizarre dream images for their own sake, as the

Surrealists were no doubt tempted to do in their exploration of new

psychic and artistic frontiers, but sought by the transposition of his

dream into theatrical reality to communicate the state of mind which

the dream represented.

One of the major differences between the Surrealists and Adamov was their relationship to the material they uncovered in exploring

abnormal states of mind. Breton wanted to liberate the imagination in

order to discover new areas of creativity in human expression. He and

other Surrealists recorded their dreams and collected the data from

sessions of automatic speaking and writing. His scientific bent led

him to an interest in the relationship between neurosis or madness

and artistic creativity.^ Unlike Breton, Adamov did not have to

resort to artificial means in order to provoke abnormal states of mind

in himself. They were a condition from which he suffered and which he

described in L*Aveu, in an effort to relieve his pain by expressing it.

His intentions went beyond those of the Surrealists in his metaphysical

interpretations of his dreams and obsessions, but the Surrealists would

have considered such interpretations retrograde, as Adamov himself did

later: explaining his dreams in metaphysical terms was returning to the

realm of Intellectual abstractions against which the Surrealists had

revolted. Breton was interested in the freudian concept of the uncon- scious, as well as In manifestations of abnormal psychology. His atti­

tude toward the liberation of the unconscious was pragmatic: "Si les

profondeurs de notre esprit recelent d'etranges forces capables d'augmen

ter celles de la surface, ou de lutter victorieuseraent contre elles, il

y a tout intSret 3 les capter, & les capter d'abord, pour les soumettre

ensuite, s*il y a lieu, au controle de notre raison.Another

essential difference between the orientations of Breton and Adamov is

that the former is Interested in the subconscious of healthy, as well as

neurotic, individuals. Adamov, on the other hand, tends to justify his

neurosis by glorifying it as a superior means of insight into the

truth: "La nevrose m'a permis d'entrevoir en un Sclair, lucide, un peu

des grandes lois auxquelles tout est soumis." ^ Unable to overcome

his obsessions, he rationalizes them by endowing them with general

significance: "La nevrose Stant, par nature, grossissement et exagera­

tion d'une tare universelle qui exlste 3 l*etat embryonnaire en tout

etre humain, mais dont elle multiplle et renforce les effets, non mal,

de par son caractdre propre, devient exenrplaire.Adamov*s goals in

studying the subconscious were at the same time more ambitious and more modest than those of the Surrealists: on the one hand, he thought that

an understanding of his neurosis could teach him something about the

laws of the universe; on the other hand, the literary expression of his

sickness functioned as a form of psychotherapy: "En exprlmant non mal,

je m'en liberS.

Breton and Adamov shared a common interest in the theme of Woman.

For Breton, love, like dreams, unlocks the gates of the subconscious and

unleashes the energy of the imagination: "pourvu que cet amour reponde

en tous points 3 sa qualification passlonnelle, c'est-3-dire suppose 6

1 *election dans toute la rigueur du terme, 11 ouvre les portes d ’un monde ou, par definition, 11 ne sauralt plus etre question de mal, de chute ou de peche."^-® Adamov*s conception of woman in L*Aveu Is closer to an earlier opinion expressed by Breton in which he speaks of "l'amour en quoi se confondent, pour la supreme Edification de l'homme, les obse- dantes idees de salut et de perdition de I'esprit."^ Woman, for Adamov, is the means of achieving humiliation, *'la prostituee eternelle,M^ and the agent of salvation. He addresses his beloved in terms which suggest the role of saints or the mother of God:

Comment faire intervenir l1amour sans t'invoquer? Toi dont le rSle est sauveur, tol la grande medlatrlce.

La femme regne au coeur de ma damnation. Hals & toi seule tu combats et valncs les prestiges mauvais des autres femmes.21

The difference in the approaches to women of the two authors is that for Breton, love, like dream states, opens up productive sources of psychic energy. For Adamov, in L tAveu, woman plays a more traditional, literary role. She Is the devil who tempts to acts of masochism and the saint whose love can save the poet from his own self-destructive ten­ dencies. The roles of temptress and saint are perhaps not as polarized as they seem at first glance. Like other aspects of Adamov*s thought, his attitude toward woman is affected by reminders of the Catholic relig­ ion, in which humiliation and degradation are time-honored means to sal­ vation.

Adamov differed radically from the Surrealist doctrine of revolt toward literature and society expressed by Breton:

... on conqolt que le surreallsme n'ait pas cralnt de se faire un dogme de la rivolte absolue, de l'in- soumission totale, du sabotage en r&gle, et qu*il n ’attende encore rien que de la violence. L'acte surrealiste le plus simple consiste, revolvers aux poings, ft descendre dans la rue et k tirer au hasard... " In literature, Breton placed Surrealism in the tradition of revolt by his admiration for S a d e , ^ 3 Rimbaud ("le long, immense, raisonnS deregle- ment de tous les sens"),^ and Lautreamont.^5 Adamov, on the other hand, was inspired by authors such as Chekhov, Flaubert, Gogol and

Strindberg, and, from 1954 on, by Brecht. Rather than revolt, his concern, like that of his literary predecessors, was to communicate the drama of non-heroes and misfits, the out-of-touch and the dispossessed.

With the influence of Brecht and the concept of political theater as a tool for education, Adamov's dramatic treatment of the underdog became more political and less subjective.

Similarities between Adamov and the Surrealists are basically attributable to the Influence of the historical period in which they lived. The disillusionment among intellectuals which followed the

First World War led to a tendency among writers to want to destroy the old values and start over with a clean slate. As writers, the Surreal­ ists and Adamov were essentially interested in the renovation of language in order to communicate new concepts to replace the old devalued content of traditional literature. Breton, like Adamov, felt that the matter of language was of primary importance: "Le probleme de l'action sociale n'est, je tiens a y revenir et j*y insiste, qu'une des formes d'un probleme plus gSnSral que le surrealisme s*est mis en devoir de soulever et qui est celui de 1*expression humaine sous toutes ses formes. Qui dit expression dit, pour commencer, langage."^ In L'Aveu. Adamov says that the writer's dual function is to arrive at the truth and to denounce falsehood:

La mission essentielle de tout poSte est de devoiler 1'esprit cachS dans les apparences en nommant chaque chose par son nom; de sltuer toutes choses les unes par rapport aux autres de telle sorte que leur sens veritable jusqu'alors enseveli, Smerge a Xa surface.

Mats un autre labeur encore s'impose au poete moderne: celui de denoncer, de mettre hors du nom hors la loi, les concepts degeneres, les abstractions videes de toute seve qui ont usurp£ pour s'en revetir les depoullles funebres des vleux noms s a c r e s . ^ 7

In her study on Adamov's theater, Margaret Quinn Dletemann

characterizes his relationship to the Surrealists as "dissident,"^

but argues that even in this marginal capacity, his association with

the group lasted for at least thirty years, from the middle twenties

to the middle fifties, and can be inferred from his choice of

collaborators on projects such as L'Heure Nouvelle, ^ £n 1 9 4 5 f which he

edited with Prevert, Ribemont Dessaignes, and Rene Char.30

His relationships with three Surrealists who likewise functioned

outside the realm of Breton's inner circle serve as landmarks on Adamov*

literary itinerary from the late twenties to the fifties. Throughout

his life, Adamov found a spiritual home in the bohemian intellectual atmosphere of the caf£s of St. Germain and Montparnasse. It was here,

particularly at the "Dome" in Montparnasse, that he met Roger Gllbert-

Lecomte, Antonin Artaud and Roger Blin. Gilbert-Lecomte was essentially

a dadaist. With his friend Ren€ Daumal, he had written plays for the

"Collige de Pataphysique" and published the review: Le Grand Jeu.

Antonin Artaud's formal relationship with Surrealism ended in 1930 with

the appearance of the Second manifeste du surrealisme, in which Breton

attacked him for having solicited payment from the Swedish Embassy for his staging of Strindberg's Le Songe and for having summoned the police

to quell the disturbance which the Surrealists created during the per­

formance.^ Adamov met Roger Blin in the late twenties when Blin was working with Artaud, whose ideas on the nature of theater he shared. 9

Blin later acted the part of Le Mutile in Adamov's first play to be per­ formed, La Grande et la petite manoeuvre (1950), and directed La Parodie

(1952), in which he also played L'Employe. After the death of Gilbert-

Lecomte, Adamov organized and edited his manuscripts and published a collection of his poetry. With the help of his friends Paulhan and

Marthe Robert, he succeeded in having Artaud released from the mental hospital at Rodez where he had been held against his will during the w a r . Adamov was drawn to Gilbert-Lecomte and to Artaud both as a writer and as a man who recognized in them the self-destructive behavior he shared; he understood their neuroses as an integral part of their creative geniuses.

Considering his later theatrical development, it is significant that even in the twenties Adamov was involved not only in the literary avant-garde, but in political causes. In 1928, he directed a literary

Journal called Discontinuity, participated in the Sacco and Vanzetti demonstrations and published an anarchist brochure, "Mise ou point."

Only a telephone call from Malraux saved him from deportation.33

Malraux's intervention indicates that despite his rejection by the

Surrealists, Adamov had established himself as a figure with a certain credibility on the literary scene by the time he was twenty.

His personal life during this period also showed signs of strife.

In 1928, overcome with jealousy at the sight of the woman he loved with another man, Adamov attempted suicide by throwing himself in front of a t a x i . 34 Several years later, his father killed himself in the next room with an overdose of gardenal, an event which foreshadowed the author's own death from an overdose of barbiturates, In 1970. 10

Throughout his life, Adamov used his knowledge of Russian and Ger­

man to do translations, which enriched his personal literary background

while providing a means of support. In 1 9 3 8 , he translated Jung's Le

Moi et l'inconscient.35 His interest in Jung and his close friendship

with Roger Gilbert-Lecomte had an influence on the metaphysical turn of

mind which was reflected in the four chapters of L'Aveu: "Ce qu'il y a"

( 1 9 3 8 ) , " L ’Humiliation sans fin" ( 1 9 3 9 ) , "Le Temps de 1 'ignominie"

(1939-1940), and the "Journal terrible" (November, 1 9 3 9 , to December,

1 9 4 3 ) , in which he describes his experience of the war.

With the German occupation in 1 9 4 0 , Adamov was once again uprooted

and homeless. He moved to the unoccupied zone in the south of France,

where jobless and penniless, he sold newspapers on the streets of

Marseilles, attempting to find solace in what became his lifetime

vice, alcohol.36 in 1 9 4 1 , having been overheard making hostile obser­

vations against the Vichy g o v e r n m e n t ,37 he was imprisoned in the concen­

tration camp at Argeles, where his experience provided him with living

models for the brutal guards and soldiers who contribute to the atmos­

phere of terror and oppression in his early theater. Through the

Quakers, he was freed from the camp in November of 1 9 4 1 , 3 8 hut once

back in Paris, he suffered a series of personal losses: his mother's

death, alone in a hospital in 1 9 4 2 ; that of Roger Gilbert-Lecomte the

following year, who died of tetanus contracted from the needles used to maintain his opium addiction; and, finally, the suicide of Artaud, who had been suffering from terminal cancer, in 1 9 4 8 . Adamov's guilt and

despair over his mother's death mark his writing till the end of his

career, when his mother appears in her last literary incarnation as

Madame Petersen, in SI l'Ste revenait.^ 11

At the end of World War II, Adamov published a revue called L'Heure

Nouvelle together with his friend and collaborator, Marthe Robert. The publication’s two issues, 1945 and 1946, contain some of Adamov’s crit­ ical and theoretical thought of this period which, characteristically, he later denigrated as "Textes theoriques confus, nuls. Poemes tres beaux.Publication of L'Aveu, in 1946, with its explicit descrip­ tions of sexual masochism gave the author an immediate notoriety^ and a reputation for "singularity," which he retained for the rest of his life, and which were reinforced by the republication of the book in

1969, under the title: Je...Ils. Je was a reprinting of L ’Aveu and

IIs were passages of transposed autobiography where the theme of sexual masochism was again dominant.

Adamov expressed his anguish in the confessional context of L 1Aveu, but in the medium of theater, he saw the possibility of objectifying his fears and obsessions in concrete symbols. Influenced by Artaud's Le

Theatre et son double^ and his admiration for the expressionist plays of Strindberg, he wrote his first original play, La Parodie, which he submitted to Jean Vilar upon the occasion of the performance of Buchner's

La Mort de Dan ton*'^ at the Festival d'Avignon, in 1948. Because of the difficulty of raising money for the production^ it was not staged until

1952, under the direction of Roger Blin, and was the third of Adamov's plays to be performed, after L 1Invasion, directed by Vilar, and La

Grande et la petite manoeuvre, directed by Jean-Marie Serreau, both produced in 1950.

Adamov attained literary prominence in the early fifties as part of the dramatic movement which became known by Martin Esslin's term: the "Theatre of the Absurd."^5 His importance in the avant-garde 12 theater of this period is evident in the active support and collabora­ tion given him from the beginning by some of the most important and inno­ vative "metteurs en scSne:'1 Roger Blin,^ Jean VilarJean-Marie

Serreau^® and Jacques Mauclair.^

Although Adamov was associated with Beckett and Ionesco as part of the Theatre of the Absurd, his work never attained the acceptance or popularity which their plays enjoyed: he never had a success of the dimensions of Beckett's En Attendant Godot or Ionesco's La Legon, or La Cantatrice chauve. As an illustration of how radically their literary fates have differed, in 1970, the year of Adamov's death,

Ionesco was elected to the Acaderaie Frangaise and the previous year,

Beckett had received the Nobel Prize for literature. Ionesco's first plays: La Cantatrice chauve (1950), La Leeon (1951), Les Chaises (1952) and Beckett's En Attendant Godot (1953), share similar characteristics with Adamov's plays: the abandonment of traditional ideas of plot and character, and a circular, rather than linear, construction. All of these plays present a pessimistic vision of the human condition in a world where man is unable to understand or control his own destiny.

Other people, as well as the world itself, are presented as incompre­ hensible and generally malevolent.

From the early fifties, Ionesco and Beckett continued thematically in much the same direction for at least the next fifteen years, but

Adamov as early as 1954, began to change his orientation after attending the performance of Mother Courage by Bertold Brecht's Berliner Ensemble.

For Adamov, as for Bernard Dort, Roger Planchon, and others, Brecht presented an inspiring model for a more politically-oriented theater.^0

Part of Brecht's appeal for Adamov was that his evolution as a dramatist 13 paralleled Adamov's own. After participating in the German Expression­ ist theater of the early twenties, Brecht’s political preoccupations and his membership in the Communist party, in 1922, radically changed the direction of his theater. Like Brecht, Adamov continued to use the expressionist techniques of his early theater to convey the political messages of his later theater.

From Le Ping-Pong (1955) on, Adamov directed his attention away from the "human condition," which was the focus of the existentialists and the avant-garde theater, to social problems seen in the context of a Marxist view of history. Rather than placing his characters in a vague "no man's land"^^- over which they had no control and which seemed to be ruled to a great extent by a malevolent fatality, Adamov laid his settings in a familiar modern capitalist society whose atmosphere was as oppressive as that of his early theater, but no longer fatally so. In

La Farodie, the clock without hands symbolized not only L'Employe’s psy­ chological disorientation, but the timelessness of the human drama in which he was taking part. Le Ping-Pong, on the other hand, is about the relationship of the characters to a pinball machine and the economic possibilities which it represents for each of them. The pinball machine and the cafe in which the play begins immediately tell the audience that the play is taking place in contemporary Western society.

Paolo Paoli (1957) and Le Printemps 71 (1962) show an increasing effort to denounce the evils of capitalist society, in general, and the political regime De Gaulle, specifically. In an interview with Adamov in 1958, Bernard Dort said: "Paolo Paoli marque un changement dans

1 ’avant-garde: sa politlsation.

In his politically-committed theater, as in his avant-garde theater, 14

Adamov was supported by Innovative directors, particularly Roger

Planchon,^ who staged Le Professeur Taranne and Le Sens de la marche

(1953), Paolo Paoli (1957) and Adamov's adaptation of Les Ames mortes

(1960). Adamov also found support in the publications of the Left:

Guy Leclerc and Andre Gisselbrecht, in L'Humanlte, Maurice Regnaut and

Bernard Dort in Les Lettres Franqaises, Theatre Populalre and Les

Temps Modernes, Morvan Lebesque in Carrefour and Georges Lerminier in

Le Farisien libera , all applauded Adamov's efforts to create a theater in harmony with the times. Like Adamov, they saw the possibility of theater as a social force, as an instrument of change in a decadent society. Typical of the reviews which supported Adamov's efforts are these excerpts from Liberation, L'Humanlte and Les Lettres Franqaises, respectively. Max-Pol Fouchet wrote of the performance of Paolo Paoli

(1958): *'No u s croyons, nous, qu'il a deplu aux bien-pensants parce qu'il a ecrit pour le peuple, avec l'idee de faire plus que distraire."^

Guy Leclerc's opinion of Le Frintemps 71 (1963) was:

Ce qui frappe le plus dans la representation, c'est que cette epopie de trois mois, cette anticipation de la revolution socialiste... cette equipee, au-del3 des livres, redevient ce qu'elle fut, un elan populalre, genereux, exuberant, bon enfant (trop sans doute) qui fit battre tr5s fort et trfes vite, le temps d'un prin­ temps, le coeur de Paris et du monde e n t i e r . ^ 5

Maurice Regnaut offered his reaction to a reading of Sainte Europe

(1966):

Ce qui nous est montre, c'est que Sainte Europe n'a pas d*autre avenir que celul de la classe pour laquelle elle aglt, pas d'autre destin que la mort... La cru- aut£ est si pure icl, le jugement si clair, si 'com- pr£hensif,' le monde juge, fantastique et r£el 3 la fois, si total, que c'est la scSne elle-meme qui s'ef- fondre 3 nos yeux, que 1 'evidence eclate: avec ce monde dlsparait, sacrifice triomphal, le theatre meme de la cruautfi.^o 15

But it was inevitable that Adamov's change of direction was to cost him supporters, as well as gain him new ones. There were two facets to this problem: on the one hand, he lost the support of those critics or men of the theater who were committed to the concept of the "absurd," and for whom the very idea of a politically-oriented theater was aesthet­ ically repugnant;57 on the other, he displeased those to whom the radical content of the plays was politically unacceptable. By aligning himself with the Marxists, Adamov opened himself to the hostility of the theatrical reviewers of the Establishment press whose articles determin­ ed in large part which plays were successful and which failed. Robert

Kemp, of Le Monde, Jean-Jacques Gautier of Le Figaro, Gabriel Marcel of Les Nouvelles litteralres, and Robert Ranters of L'Express, all published unfavorable reviews of Adamov's plays from Paolo Paoli on.^®

In 1 9 5 8 , Adamov made his ideological position even clearer by collaboration on a series of satirical sketches with Guy Demoy and

Maurice Regnaut, entitled: Theatre de Societe,59 against French policy in North Africa. Les Apolitlques,a short play denouncing the apathet­ ic attitude of those who chose to ignore the racist treatment of Arabs in France, appeared that same year. As a consequence of siding with the

Marxists against the Gaullist regime through the duration of that regime,

Adamov received a certain amount of official harrassment. In 1 9 6 0 , with

Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and other well-known writers, he signed the*Manifeste des 121*against the war in Algeria. For this action, he was denied the right to have his work broadcast over the

O.R.T.F., the national French communications system.®^

Adamov's rejection by the bourgeois press inevitably affected audience attendance among the readers of reviews in Le Monde, Le Figaro and L*Express. In the traditional commercial theaters, such as Le Vieux

Colombier, where Paolo Paoli was performed, where financial survival

requires capacity audiences, non-attendance meant that the plays sim­ ply could not continue to be performed. Since theater, unlike other

genres of literature, must be performed to exist, the loss of the

bourgeois audience could very well have meant the extinction of Adamov's

theater. Another movement was in force, however, which had been in the

making for the previous twenty years and which now gave its support to

Adamov's efforts. This was the concept of a popular theater in France,

which had been developing since the inauguration of the Festival

d'Avignon, in 1947, and Vilar's direction of the Theatre National

Populalre, which began in 1951. In the sixties, the conception of a

popular theater movement became more precise in the minds of some, such

as Bernard Dort and other contributors to the magazine Theatre Populalre.

Popular theater was inextricably connected with the idea of a new

audience made up of workers. The theater experience would become a means

of raising their political consciousness. According to this basically

Marxist idea of the function of theater, plays would do more than pro­

vide an after-dinner diversion for the bourgeoisie and would become the

intellectual catalyst for political action. Georges Michel articulated

this concept as follows: "Le theatre d'aujourd'hui doit demonter les mecanismes complexes d 'alienation... ne doit pas r.e contenter d'une

participation pendant le spectacle. Cette participation doit se contin­

uer apres."6^ The dramatist Armand Gatti wrote: "II s'y [dans le

theatre} debat, dans une incessante revolution de la forme, le problftme

de l'homme... Et ce dolt etre 13. notre but, de donner 3 l'homme, par la

culture, une arrne contre 1 *injustice."63 Much of the movement toward a popular theater took place at the level of theory and discussions. Adamov took part in these discussions and wrote articles defending the idea of a theater for the people. In

1958, in a round table discussion which included Roland Barthes,

Bernard Dort, and Maurice Regnaut, Adamov said of the hostile critical reception which Paolo Paoli received and the subsequent difficulty of having it performed successfully in Paris:

A mon avis, 11 n'y a qu'une issue: constituer un repertoire de pieces progressistes et se H e r de faqon permanente aux organisations syndicales, cecl pour permettre que des trois quarts de salles soient assures pour au moins quarante-cinq representations (solt un mois et demi). L'autre quart seralt rempli en depit des ereintages de la 'critique.1^

Despite the part he played in the development of a popular theater

Adamov was frustrated in his desire to see his plays performed, al­ though he himself may have contributed to the neglect of his early theater by denouncing It as "reactionary."^ Because of their Marxist content, his political theater played more often outside the country than In France.®** Critical reaction in France was particularly hostile to the production of Off limits, as the play involved criticism of

American Involvement in Viet Nam and had as its dramatic form a series of happenings complete with drugs and nudity.For a man who desired more than anything else to "belong" and for whom theater was a means of communicating with others, this inability to find a receptive audience in France, his adopted country, was a crippling defeat. During the late sixties, Adamov suffered from alcoholism, for which he was hospi­ talized, and his weak physical condition was worsened by pleurisy and tuberculosis. There is no doubt, from his own writings and in the opinion of those who knew him, that his deteriorating mental and 18 physical conditions were due, in part, to his disappointment at the re­ jection of his theater in France. Gabriel Garran, who directed Off limits, wrote after Adamov's death:

Adamov, partout joue, ne l'Stait guere dans son propre pays. Cet homme blesse etait profondement meurtri par la situation de 'marginal1 et de 'mal accuelll' auquel le reduisait le milieu th€atral franqais. Alors que la 'commercialisation' de 1'avant-garde a pousse qui l'on salt jusqu'd l'Academie franqaise (tant mieux pour l'institutionnalisation) et 1 'im­ mense ecrlvain qu'est Beckett jusqu'au Nobel, Adamov a subi reellement la malediction de la societe bour- geolse.^®

Adamov's originality is perhaps easier to appreciate now that almost ten years have given us a more critical perspective on his works.

His innovative use of "happenings” in Off limits served both the psychological and social purposes of his play. In these sequences, the characters confront each other with unpleasant truths about themselves and their society, and generate action (sometimes violence) in a way which links the happenings with other marginal forms of popular theater:

"manifestations," "guerrilla theater” and "theater of the streets."

But, unlike radical troups, such as the Living Theater, whose concern was chiefly political and who strove for audience participation, Adamov used such scenes primarily as a means of revealing the psychology of his characters.

Si l'Ste revenait marks the culmination of Adamov's return to an interest in the mind, which had begun to manifest itseLf in the plays which appeared after Le Printemps 71: La Politique des restes (1966),

Sainte Europe (1966), M. le Modere (1968) and Off limits (1969). In these plays, Adamov combined his Interest in neurosis with social and political criticism. Pierre Meldse, who had access to the author's last 19

unpublished journals, records how the Idea of the play developed from a

focus on the relationship of individuals to government (socialism In

Sweden) to a concern with their Individual psychologies and personal

relationships as suggested In their dreams.^ In his "Notes prelim-

inaires" on SI l'ete revenait, Adamov himself stresses his renewed

interest in psychology: "... j'etais bien leger 3 l'epoque ou je vou-

lais 'bannir' la psychologie du theatre. Mals tout ou presque tout est

psychologie, le corps lui-meme est un objet quasintent psychique,

alors?"^ In a recent article, Emmanuel Jacquart describes the renew­

al of interest in Adamov,and attributes it specifically to the

psychological interest of his works, particularly his confessions,

which he believes to be his best writings.^

Several books in French and English have appeared on Adamov since

his death in 1970, as well as a comparative study of his early plays

and those of Ionesco and Beckett. Rene Gaudy's work intersperses a

discussion of the author's life and works with testimonials from

"metteurs en scSne," actors and critics. He also includes some hard-

to-find poems and documents: the "Poemes pour Meret" published in

Les Cahiers du Sud (1933), "Reponses au questionnaire Marcel Proust"

(20 May 1969), a "Fragment de la derniire piece inachevee d'Adamov,"

and published articles on Adamov by Bernard Dort, Jean Duvignaud, Rene

Alllo, Edith Scob and himself, the latter entitled; "Un exemple de la

mSthode de travail d'Adamov: Off Limits et ses sources." Through

Adamov's widow, Jacqueline, he had access to Adamov's copy of Au Carre-

four de la Drogue, by James Mills, a source for Off limits. (The work was originally published in the United States under the title: The

Panic in Needle Park.) 7 3 From Adamov's marginal notes and from 20 descriptions of his two trips to the U.S., in 1959 and 1964, Gaudy presents a study of the author’s method of work, showing how in Off limits, as in several of his other plays, Adamov combined careful documentation with the inspiration of his own experience and psychology.

Although Gaudy's study lacks a critical distance because its materials were gathered too shortly after j v 's death, it is full of incisive perceptions from a man close to him and his theater, and underlines two important points: Adamov's permanent position in the avant-garde,^ and his ultimate integration of his interest in psychology and politics into a controlled art form.^

In Pierre MelSse's Adamov (1973), the treatment is more scholarly than Gaudy's, but follows the same format: biography, discussion of theater, radio plays and texts of literary criticism. Jacqueline

Adamov provided MelSse with some of the author's unpublished texts: the end of his diary, whose last entry was on February 15, 1970, a month before his deathand two fragments: Les Deux Marie, which studies the psychological results on the victim of sadism by agents modelled on the Gestapo, and dialogue from the uncompleted Ferdinand de Lessens. Like Gaudy, he included "temoignages," by Roger Blin, Ber­ nard Dort and Georges Lerminier, and he also collated some helpful information: a "Dossier de Presse," with excerpts from the critics on each of Adamov's performed plays; a chronological chart entitled

"Arthur Adamov et son temps," which presents landmarks in Adamov's life and works, as well as in contemporary literary and political history; a list of the plays and their first performances; and a list of the adaptations and original plays written for French radio.

Although Melese recognizes the fact that Adamov's plays never achieved the popular success of Beckett's or Ionesco's plays, he considers him worthy of serious study:

Adamov, au seln de ses f ant a sines, torture par sa nev- rose, n'a jamais cesse de s'interesser au monde dans lequel 11 vivait, et c'est ce monde qu'il s'est ef- forcS de faire vivre sur scSne, dans une oeuvre re- marquable par sa singularity, la subtilite de ses analyses psychologiques, la precision de son lan- gage exactement adapte 1 chacun de ses personnages, la noblesse de ses aspirations et, pour tout dire, son intensity dramatique.77

In 1974, the first book-length study on Adamov appeared in English

Arthur Adamov,78 by John H, Reilly. He begins with a chapter entitled

"The Writer and his Life" and discusses Adamov's published theater and prose works in chronological order, dividing his discussion of the theater Into three parts: "The Incurable Evil," "The Curable Evil," and "The Synthesis: Neurosis and Marxism." The terms "Incurable" and "curable" evil are Adamov's own: "The theater must show, simul­ taneously but well differentiated, both the curable and the incurable aspect of things. The incurable aspect, we all know, is that of the inevitability of death. The curable aspect Is the social one."79

Reilly puts into the "mal incurable" category the plays characteristic of the Theatre of the Absurd, those preoccupied with the human condi­ tion and man's lack of control over any aspect of his destiny: La

Parodie, L'Invasion, Le Desordre, La Grande et la petite manoeuvre,

Le Sens de la marche, Le Professeur Taranne, Tous contre tous, Comme nous avons ete and Les Retrouvailles. In the plays characterized by the "mal curable," Adamov broadens his interests to Include social, political and economic aspects of life and suggests that man is at least partially responsible for his fate in that he can make choices:

Le Ping-Pong, Paolo Paoli, Theatre de Societe and Le Printemps 71. 22

In the "synthesis" plays, Adatnov returns to a preoccupation with neuroses and dream states, but this time against a background of polit­ ical commentary and satire: La Politique des restes, Sainte Europe,

M. le Modere, Off limits and Si I'ete revenait. In the last plays,

"The playwright attempted to show that the individual neurosis is closely linked to the collective neurosis, that the sickness of the individual leads to collective injustice."®® Reilly's final judgement of Adamov's plays is that they are "often too hermetic to be appreciated, too secretive to be understood," 81 and he consequently relegates him to the ranks of secondary French authors. In his opinion, L'Aveu may well outlast Adamov's theater in popularity. 82c

In his study of Beckett, Ionesco and Adamov, entitled Le Theatre de derision,®® Emmanuel Jacquart examines the plays of these three authors in the fifties, when they had the most in common. Considering the theatrical techniques, or structures, used to convey their various perceptions of the absurdity of the human condition, Jacquart chose to designate their works by "Le Theatre de Derision" because it is their attitude and its materialization on stage which distinguishes them from other dramatists:

Ne croyant nl 3 Dieu, nl 3 l'homme, se sentant prisonnier d'une condition humaine inexplicable et depourvue de sens, ne voulant pas sombrer dans la ’folie' ou perdre le masque qui lui permet de conserver un soupqon de dignlte, le dramaturge se trouve amene a ironiser a ses propres depens, a s'abandonner 3 un rire grln9 ant, 3 la fois comique et tragique.®*1

According to Jacquart, what distinguishes these three playwrights from other modern literary pessimists, is the attitude which is both tragic and comic. "Enfin, et c'est 13 surtout que reside 1'originalite du

Theatre de Derision, le tragique n'est jamais pur mals associe au 23 comique de derision."®^ Jacquart organizes his study in the following way: he first places the authors in the context of avant-garde theater from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. He then examines and compares their works from the point of view of themes and attitudes, characters, composition and techniques, dialogue, style and language, and structures. In the section on composition and techniques, Jacquart quotes Ionesco's formula: "Falre un theatre de violence: violemment comique, violemment dramatique,"®® and applying it to Adamov, he says:

"Cette forraule est absolument indispensable, et c'est faute de 1 'avoir compris qu*Adamov a en partle echoue. D'une part, ses personnages n'atteignent jamais au traglque, d'autre part, le comique n ’est ni suffisamment frequent, ni sufflsamment accuse. L'ensemble manque 87 done de relief." Like Reilly, Jacquart does not place Adamov's work on the same plane of success as that of Ionesco and Beckett:

Quant a Adamov premiere manlere, en depit de sa tenacite, de sa probite artistlque, et de son extreme minutle, il n'a jamais connu la c§lfibrite. Son the­ atre 'rend' moins que celui de Beckett et d 1Ionesco. II fait la part trop belle 3 des hantlses personnelles (masochisme, phobie de la persecution). D'autre part, l'emploi frequent du *sous-dialogue' et d'un humour tchekhovien reste quelque peu etranger 3 la sensibi- lit@ frangaise.®®

Jacquart's work is important because it is the first critical study to consider Adamov's works In the light of their structures. His criticism of Adamov’s theater as too subtle and too concerned with personal neurosis appears to be the result of a personal preference for the works of Ionesco and Beckett.

Two American dissertations were written on Adamov just before his death. The Theatre of Arthur Adamov,®9 by John J. McCann, is a stylistic study written under the direction of Carlos Lynes, who wrote an important 24 early article on Adamov: "Adamov or ’le sens litteral' in the thea­ tre"^® (1954). McCann’s work is limited by the fact that it was written before the publication of Adamov's last play, Si 1’ete revenait, which sheds new light on his works as a whole. In 1975, his disserta- tion was revised, expanded, and published in book form. 91 Like Reilly, he divides the plays into groups, as follows: the "interior hell" plays: L*Invasion, Le Frofesseur Taranne, Comme nous avons ete, Les

Retrouvailles; the "police state" plays: La Parodle, La Grande et la petite manoeuvre, Le Sens de la marche, Tous contre tous; a period of

"synthesis:" Le Ping-Pong, Paolo Faoll; the "political" plays:

Intimite, Je ne suis pas Frangais, La Complainte du ridicule, Les Ames mortes, Le Printemps 71; and the "social" plays: M. le Modere, Off limits, Si l ’ete revenait.

The second dissertation, also entitled The Theatre of Arthur Adamov, by Marguerite Quinn Dietemann, is interesting because the author was

Adamov's student at Cornell University, in 1964. She also interviewed him in France, in 1969. Her dissertation has good biographical and bibliographical information, particularly on his earlier, less well- known work.

An excellent bibliography, compiled by David Bradby, appeared in

1975, which consolidates all the information available on primary sources, 92 and books and articles published on Adamov through 1974.

Adamov is probably best-known to the general public in this country as a result of the thirty-three pages devoted to him in Martin Esslin’s

The Theatre of the Absurd. Esslin’s critical discussion of Adamov's work up to 1968 is excellent, particularly as he discusses it in terms of

Adamov's temperament and ideas as portrayed in L'Aveu and his critical 25 writings. The book appeared before Adamov's death, however, so the

credibility of his discussion is marred by his assertion that Adamov had cured his neuroses by exorcising them in his early theater.

Because of the importance of his contribution to the Theatre of

the Absurd and to the more recent political theater, there are chapters

devoted to Adamov in several of the books on modern French theater:

Wallace Fowlie's Dionysus in Faris^ (1964, revised in 1971), GeneviSve

Serreau's Histoire du "nouveau theatre"^ (1966), Bernard Dort's

Theatre Public^ (1967), and Richard E. Sherrell's The Human Image:

avant-garde and Christian^ (1969).

My own study is based on the belief that Adamov's neurosis is the

key to understanding his works. In his theater and autobiography, there

are certain ideas which reoccur constantly: humiliation, superstition,

fear, impotence, paralysis, dependency. Because his emotional conflicts

accounted for so much of the energy behind his creative works, as well

as certain of their limitations, it is important that this area be

studied and understood.

I begin by illustrating the nature of Adamov's neurosis in a

study of the images in an early poem, "L'Enlisement," followed by a

chapter devoted to L'Aveu, the confession in which the author himself

documents his fears and obsessions. Like Reilly and McCann, I divide

the plays into categories, but my purpose is to focus exclusively on the

author's neurosis, its causes as described in his autobiographies, and

its bearing on his works of fiction. Ils and Si l'ete revenait are

presented as free-floating, dreamlike fantasies which reveal the author's

preoccupations. In the Conclusion, I will consider the value of

literary works in which abnormal psychology predominates. 26

In general> my study differs from those that precede it in that I have not concentrated on gleaning from an experience of Adamov's works, conclusions which can be applied to men in general, or to the "human condition," but have limited myself to what is specifically individual in his temperament and how that uniqueness is translated into his works.

Unlike Emmanuel Jacquart, however, who observes that Adamov's writings

"parlent la langue d'un public qui a vu Hair et Emmanuelle, qui a lu

L'Histolre d'O, Sade et Sacher Masoch,.., I do not believe that the success of Adamov's work will depend on the appeal of his

"singularite" to jaded tastes. Adamov's thought, as expressed in his writings, shows a consistent pattern: the need to feel his experience profoundly, to analyze it and to communicate it lucidly. It is the intellectual value of all his works, as well as their psycholog­ ical interest, which will guarantee their posterity. Notes - Introduction

■'"Arthur Adamov, L'Homme et 1'enfant (Paris; Gallimard, 1968) pp. 16, 21-22; hereafter referred to as HE.

2HE, p. 28.

%£, pp. 28-29.

4 HE, p. 29.

^Andre Breton, Manlfestes du surrealisme. Collections Idees (Paris: Gallimard, 1963).

^Arthur Adamov, L'Aveu (Paris: Editions du Sagittaire, 1946). All references to L'Aveu are taken from its reprinting in Je...Ils... (Paris: Gallimard, 1969); hereafter referred to as JI.

7 HE, p. 50. In 1933, Adamov publishedfive short Surrealist poems in the Cahiers du Sud, dedicated to Meret Oppenheim, the Surrealist sculptress with whom he had had a brief sexual encounter.

®Breton, pp. 20-24 passim.

^JI, pp. 36, 106-107.

iOjI, p. 107.

1 1 HE, p. 100.

1 2 HE, pp. 95-96.

l®Breton, ft., pp. 118-119.

^Breton, p. 19.

1 5 JI, p. 8 8 .

1 6 JI, p. 19.

1 7 JI, p. 58.

l®Breton, p. 185.

^Breton, ft., p. 141. 27 28

2 0 JI, p. 65.

2 1 JI, p. 99.

2 2 Breton, p. 78.

2 3 Breton, pp. 148-149.

2 4 Breton, p. 135.

2 3 Breton, p. 80.

2 ^Breton, pp. 108-109.

2 7 JI, pp. 105-106.

2®Margaret Quinn Dietemann, The Theater of Arthur Adamov, Ph.D. Dissertation, Cornell University, 1970 (Ann Arbor: University Micro­ films, 1972), p. 17.

^ L'Heure Nouvelle, eds. Arthur Adamov, Marthe Robert, Rene Char, Ribemont Dessaignes, Jacques Prevert, No. 1 (1945), No. 2 (1946).

3 ®Dieteman, p. 16.

^Breton, p. 85.

3 2 Ren£ Gaudy, Arthur Adamov: essai et document, Theatre ouvert (Paris: Stock, 1971). Vilar wrote of Adamov's friendship for Artaud: "Adamov etait tres lie A Artaud, je n'ai jamais vu un ecrivain lie de cette faqon & un autre ecrivain, il a et6 d'un devouement considerable A son Sgard." p. 33. Roger Blin wrote: "Artaud aimait beaucoup Adamov qui avait beaucoup contribue a le faire sortir de son intemement de Rodez. Adamov aimait Artaud comme po§te et comme homme." p.52.

^ E , pp. 41-42.

3 4 HE, p. 38.

33Carl Jung, Le Moi et 1'inconscient, trans. Arthur Adamov, (Paris: Gallimard, 1938).

3 6 HE, p. 64.

37HE, p. 66.

3 8 HE, p. 72.

3^Arthur Adamov, Si l'ete revenait, Le Manteau d'Arlequin (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), pp. 37, 53-54.

4 0 HE, p. 80. 29

^Pierre Melese, Adamov, Theatre de tous les temps (Paris: Seghers, 1972) Bernard Dort wrote: "C'est sur la fin de 1952 que j'ai connu Arthur Adamov. J'avais lu L*Aveu qui faisait alors figure de livre maudit... Mais je ne connaissais d'Adamov que sa silhouette, que sa legende, qui m'interessait sans m'attirer. Or 1*Adamov que i'ai rencon­ tre etait tout autre que celui que J'avais imagine: au lieu de l'in- tellectuel pathetique, du romantique torture et tardif, qulqu'un de tres cordial... " p. 158.

^^Antonin Artaud, Le Theatre et son double (Paris: Gallimard, 1938).

^Georg Buchner, Theatre complet (Paris: L'Arche, 1953), pp. 15-76. Jean Vilar wrote of this translation: "La Mort de Danton de Buchner, jouee au second Festival d'Avignon en 1948: un remarquable travail. Buchner est pourtant un auteur tres difficile a tradulre. II y a pour moi deux traductions qui sont des chefs-d'oeuvre dans les pieces que nous avons presentees au TNP: La Mort de Danton par Adamov et Meurtre dans la Cathedrale par Fluchere et Eliot. Gaudy, p. 34.

^Gaudy, p. 50.

^^Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1961, revised In 1969).

^Roger Blin staged Beckett's plays: En Attendant Godot (1953), Fin de partie (1957), La Dernigre bande (1960), Ohl Les beaux jours (1963), and Genet's Les Nggres (1959) and Les Faravents (1966).

^^In 1947, Jean Vilar was appointed head of the summer Festival at Avignon and in 1951, director of the Theatre National Populaire.

^®Jean-Marie Serreau staged Brecht, Beckett, Ionesco and Genet.

^ J a c q u e s Mauclair directed Ionesco's first major success, Les Chaises, in 1956.

^Adamov, Ici et maintenant, Pratique du ThSatre (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), p. 208; hereafter referred to as 1M; and Gaudy, Adamov, p. 102.

5 1 IM, pp. 128, 149.

~^IM, p. 75.

-^Alfred Simon, Dictlonnaire du theatre franqais contemporaln (Paris: Larousse, 1970) p. 212. Simon describes Planchon as "l'animateur considere comme le plus grand homme de thSatre depuis Jean Vilar."

^MSlese, p. 165. 30

^^Melese, pp. 165-166.

■^Melese, pp. 166-167.

^Gaudy, p. 53. Roger Blln wrote: "Je n'ai pas pu m'empecher de marquer une certalne deception apres Paolo Paoli. Je ne peux pas encore juger vraiment ces pieces. II faudrait une relecture, une red@couverte. Pour mol elles correspondent a une espSce d'abandon de ce qui etait lui-meme. La peur d'un deracinee dans une ville hostile, en butte a la police, la conservation d'une espece d'enfance, faisaient l'interet des pieces d'Adamov. Subitement me sont apparus un cote volontarlste d*engagement politique et la perte d'une substance qui faisait sa rarete, son humour." Jean-Marie Serreau wrote: "Adamov est un poete, profondement, mals je ne suis pas convaincu qu'a un moment de sa vie la decouverte du theatre politique ne 1'ait pas un peu limite." p. 48.

^®Melese, p. 164. The following excerpts from reviews of Paolo Paoli typify the sort of partisan criticism which Adamov's political theater inspired: Robert Kemp wrote: "Paolo Paoli est une pi£ce parti- sane qui se plait a tout fausser," The theater critic of La Croix wrote: "Le pesant ennui de cette morne farce est a peine moins navrant que 1*esprit fonciSrement anti-clSrical qui l ’anime." Gabriel Marcel wrote: Dans son ouvrage, j'aperqois £ chaque instant ce que j'appellerai le rictus de l'apatride." p. 165.

^Arthur Adamov, Theatre de Societi (IntlmitS, Je ne suis pas Frangals, La Complainte du Ridicule) Petite Bibliotheque republicaine (Paris: Les Editeurs Fran^ais reunis, 1958).

^Arthur Adamov, Les Apolitiques, La Nouvelle Critique, no. 101 (December, 1958).

6 1 HE, p. 136.

^Georges Michel, "Quel public? Quelle participation?" La Nef (1967), p. 69.

^Armand Gatti, "Un th&atre pour la citS," La Nef (1967), pp. 72-73.

6 AIM, p. 91.

6 5 HE, p. 99. ' 'La Grande et la petite manoeuvre, pifice reactionnaire. Si un metteur en sc£ne voulait la reprendre aujourd’hui a Paris, je refuserais." 66 Le Ping-Pong was performed in Berlin, New York, and Stockholm; Paolo Paoli in Leipzig, Hanover, Edlnborough, and Milan; Le Printemps 71 in London and Bratislava; La Politique des restes in London, Leipzig and Genoa; Off limits in Milan and Dusseldorf. 31

67Melese, p. 168. Pierre Marcabru wrote the following commentary on the play in France-Soir: "Off limits est le type meme de la piece decadente, decomposee de l'interieur comme un fruit trop mur, et reser- vee au strict usage d'intellectuels masochistes et bohemes, fascines par leur propre deroute."

88Gabriel Garran, Les Lettres Franqaises (25 mars 1970), p. 6 .

^Melese, pp, 108-117.

^ Si l'ete revenait, p. 1 1 .

^Emmanuel Jacquart, "Un Celebre inconnu: Arthur Adamov." The French Review, LI, no. 1 (Oct. 1977), pp. 45-46.

2 2 Jacquart, "Adamov," p. 46.

^James Mills, The Panic in Needle Park, (New fork: American Library, Signet Books, 1967).

^Gaudy, p. 116. "D5s 1 ’adolescence, benSficiant de son exil a Paris, il a su rejoindre et ne plus quitter I'avant-garde artistique et scientifique: le surrealisme, le Grand Jeu, la psychanalyse, '1'absurde,' le 'theatre populaire.' Plus tard - mais seulement sept ans apres sa premiere piece - il a rejoint I'avant-garde politique.

^Gaudy, p. 107. "Adamov salt que le socialisme est un regime plus juste que le capltalisme. II salt aussi plus que jamais, la force de '11inconscient archaTque.' Et il le dit dans une forme, une structure, un langage entiSrement domines, integrant les grandes dScouvertes du Professeur Taranne et de Paolo Paoli."

28The published diary, at the end of L'Homme et 1 'enfant, ends on August 25, 1967.

2 2 MelSse, p. 131.

28John H. Reilly, Arthur Adamov, Twayne's World Authors Series (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974).

28,,Qui etes-vous Arthur Adamov?" Cite Panorama (Program Bulletin of Planchon's Theatre de la Cit6 ) , Villeurbanne, no. 9, 1960. In Reilly, p. 83, cited Esslin, p. 94 (Esslln's translation).

8 0 Reilly, p. 121.

8 1 Reilly, p. 159.

8 2 Reilly, p. 160.

Jacquart, Le ThSatre de derision. Collection Idees (Paris: Gallimard, 1974). 32

^Jacquart, Derision, p. 40,

®^Jacquart, Derision, p. 92,

®6 jacquart, Derision, pp. 182-183.

®?Jacquart, Derision, p. 183.

®®Jacquart, Derision, p. 25.

®9john Joseph McCann, Jr., The theater of Arthur Adamov, Ph.D., Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1971 (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1971).

90carlos Lynes, Jr., "Adamov or *le sens litteral* in the theatre," Yale French Studies," (Winter 1954-55), pp. 48-56.

^*John J. McCann, Jr., The Theater of Arthur Adamov, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, Essays 13 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975).

^David Bradby, Adamov, Research Bibliographies, Checklist, 10 (London: Grant and Cutler, 1975).

^^Wallace Fowlie, Dionysus in Paris: a Guide to Contemporary French Theatre (New York: Meridian, 1960: London: Gollancz, 1961), pp. 223-228.

OA George Wellwarth, The Theatre of Protest and Paradox (New York University Press, 1964, revised in 1971), pp. 29-40.

®^Genevieve Serreau, Histoire du"nouveau theatre," Collection Idees (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), pp. 66-82.

^Bernard Dort, Theatre Publique (1953-1966) (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1967), pp. 255-262.

®^Richard E. Sherrell, The Human Image: avant-garde and Christian (Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1969), pp. 110-129.

9®Jacquart, "Adamov," p. 46. CHAPTER I

"L *ENLISEMENT:" IMAGES OF NEUROSIS

"L'Enlisement"^ Is an early expression of the psychological

themes which are elaborated in L'Aveu and in Adamov's later works.

It is instructive as an introduction to the desolation and despair

of the poet's world, and the images which translated his inner

suffering. '

Je n'en puis plus Delivrez-moi Je sals que je m'enfonce dans la boue Elle gagne mes mains mon oeil mes cheveux Elle me defigure (5) Je ne puis plus rester ainsi immobile crispe et pourtant je ne puis point bouger Car a chaque mouvement j'enfonce davantage Je perds pied Mes jambes tltubent comme si la peur m'avalt saisi Elies tremblent comme si j'Stais ivre d'effroi (10) Je ne les reconnais plus Elies me sont etrangeres Un Stranger s'enlise dans la marne devant mol La consternation me recouvre manteau de splendeur

La boue me prend jusqu'I la ceinture Je me suis blesse le flanc (15) Peut-etre ainsl le poison de mon sang se melera su leur Et que je pourral respirer ne seralt-ce qu'une seconde Que Je pourral crier avant que ttia gorge ne se desseche entierement Avant la transmutation de mes velnes en boue et de mes os en pierre

Mais v o i d que ma poitrine s'embourbe 3 son tour (20) Ma blessure n'etait done point assez profonde Mes mains ont balotte puis elles se eont tues La boue a envahi ma bouche

33 34

J'al crache de la boue comme on crache du sang

Quant ce fut le tour de mon front 3 disparattre (25) Naif, je croyals encore pouvoir m'agripper A l'herbe sSche et morte que je voyats si distinctement

Or mes mains Staient petrifiees.

In "L'Enllsement," the poet expresses his Incapacity for action

and his sole ability which is to witness and record the progressive

stages of his physical annihilation. The "outside" world barely exists

for him: it is represented only by "l'herbe seche et morte" which

his paralysed limbs prevent him from reaching. His helplessness is

demonstrated in his inability to control his body and in his vulner­

ability to destructive external forces. His attempts to propitiate

these forces borrow from Christianity and from primitive religion.

In the first line, he makes a supplication to God: "Je n'en puls plus

Delivrez-moi." In order to allay his deep, irrational fears, the

poet turns to magic as well as to religion and makes a primitive appeal

through blood sacrifice, (line 14). The image of mud as the agent of

destruction symbolizes the poet's sense of his worthlessness and guilt.

The powers of life and death are unwilling to spare him because he does

not deserve to be saved. His fate Is to become mud: contemptible

and soulless. Passive and unable to resist, he is pulled as if by

gravity into becoming one with the lowest form of matter. Thus,

"L'Enllsement" Is an expression of the poet's psychological paralysis

and fear of death. He feels that he can no longer control his physical

movements (lines 8-9), and that the final betrayal of his body is fatal,

(lines 24-27). The key image In the poem is "la boue" (lines 2-4, 13);

the poet fears that his body is beginning to metamorphose into the mud

into which he feels himself drawn (lines 17-18, 19, 22-23), a mud which 35 sucks him In and threatens to suffocate him, like quicksand, but poses a double threat in that It is the agent of his destruction as well as the sinister replacement of his identity: after death, his body will become part of the mud.

The poet becomes alienated from his physical body, particularly his legs - "Je ne les reconnais plus Elies me sont etrangeres:"

(line 10) The image of losing his equilibrium Illustrates his fear of falling, an Integral part of Adamov's neurosis, which appears in

L'Aveu in the form of a dream: "Je reve que je tombe. Endormi sous le polds des t€n&bres, Je pressens un grand trou nolr ou je m'enfonce, disparais. Je tombe."^ The fear of falling is connected in the poem to a fear of failure; his failure to control his body in order to avoid the physical destruction which will ensue if he allows himself to succomb to the attraction of the mud.

There is a line in this poem which suggests the poet's ambivalence toward his suffering: "La consternation me recouvre manteau de splendeur." (line 12) In this instance, he attempts to modify his fate by changing his attitude. If his suffering and destruction are

Inevitable, then he will overcome his fate by seeing it as a positive, rather than negative, experience. The model for spiritual salvation through suffering is, of course, Christ, and in L'Aveu, Adamov makes this identification explicit when he defines man's experience; "Je dis que l'homme mis en croix, geartele, dont les membres sont etir€s vers les quatre horizons, centre dechire, est le coeur meme de la crSatlon."-* In this early poem, It is fear and the struggle with physical destruction which are In the forefront of the poet's inspira­ tion. Adamov's later rationalization of suffering as an experience to 36

be sought, rather than avoided, is only suggested in line 1 2 , by the

poet's morbid fascination with his physical destruction. In Ils, pub­

lished with L'Aveu in 1969, the author's attitude toward mud and filth

changes from aversion to desire: "II reva d'une piaule si sale, si

couverte d'innnondices qu'Ils ne distingueraient meme pas leurs propres

corps, qu'Ils seraient tous les deux recouverts, submerges."^ It

is interesting to note, in this respect, that in La Politique des

restes^ (1966), the protagonist, Johnnie Brown, is overcome by the

fear that he will be forced to ingest all the refuse In the world.

Like the poet in "L’Enllsement," who fears that he will ultimately be­

come mud himself, Johnnie Brown senses he will become one with the filth

he fears and detests by being forced to ingest it.

Having failed to release himself from the mud by his own physical

efforts, the poet seeks to enlist the help of supernatural powers

through a superstitious act of propitiation (lines 14-16, 19-20), and

again expresses the hope that through suffering it is possible to find

redemption. The motivation here is more primitive than the concept of

Christian salvation, however: the poet inflicts pain upon himself In a magic ritual whose purpose is to move the gods to accept his suffering

in return for his life. When his wish is not granted, he does not refute

the power or existence of transcendent powers, but blames his own

failure to suffer deeply enough to move them: "Ma blessure n'etait done point assex profonde." (line 20). Unable to free himself either

through his own efforts, or by enlisting the help of greater powers, the poet turns to external reality: "Naif, je croyais encore pouvolr m'agripper / A l'herbe s&che et morte que je voyais si distlnctement f

Or mes mains etaient petrifiees." (lines 25-27) The only possibility 37

of salvation which he sees in his physical surroundings is "l'herbe

sSche et morte" (line 26), which is obviously insufficient to allow him

to pull himself out of the mire, even if he were able to make his body

cooperate.

"L’Enlisement" is thus the author's first expression of his pro­

found sense of helplessness before the world and his own self-destructive

tendencies. This physical and psychological impotence toward life is

depicted in concrete imagery: mud, trembling, self-mutilation, suffo­

cation, paralysis. A fantasy in L'Aveu will portray his association

of mud with both excrement and sexuality: "Je me vois nu, effondre

dans la boue d'une ruelle obscure. Au-dessus de mol un defile de prostituees dont les unes, indifferentes, enjambent mon corps affaisse,

tandis que d'autres, saluees par les rlres complices de 1 'ombre,

suspendent un instant leur marche pour s'accroupir sur moi.In the

theater and other later works, the image of mud will become associated with the theme of sexual masochism and the author's attitude toward

It will be one of simultaneous attraction and repulsion. He loathes the mud just as he feels contempt for that part of himself which forces him to submit to sexual humiliation, but both elements satisfy his deep need to punish himself. Notes - "L'Enllsement"

^Arthur Adamov (signed Ern Adamov), "L'Enllsement," Les Cahlers du Sud (1930), p. 108.

2JI, p. 35.

3 JI, p. 31.

4 JI, p. 171.

^Adamov, Theatre III (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), pp. 143-185.

6JI, p. 155. CHAPTER II

L'AVEU: RATIONALIZATION OF NEUROSIS

A discussion of L'Aveu (1946) is another essential introduction

to an understanding of the part that neurosis played in Adamov's

theater, criticism, and subsequent autobiographical writings. His

neurosis, as described in the Introduction to L'Aveu, took the form

of two obsessions: humiliation by women and the compulsive practice

of superstitious rituals to ward off evil spirits. Descriptions of his masochistic and superstitious practices constitute much of the book

and his desire to analyze his thoughts and behavior and communicate his

pain motivated his choice of the confessional genre.

Adamov states that besides these two obsessions at the core of his

psychological problems, he will develop three corollary themes. First, he wants his writing to serve as a testimonial of love for the woman

from whom he has been separated by the events of the war.l Second, he feels it to be the duty of any serious writer to comment on the

insanity of the contemporary world. 2 And third, he wants to study the

deterioration of language and the emptiness of concepts which have

•a lost their meaning In modern times.

The first statements reveal a philosophical position which

ranges between pessimism and a mystical optimism grounded in despair.

His pessimistic attitude is reflected in his belief, illustrated in

39 AO his first plays, that no matter what men do, whether they are active or passive, optimistic or pessimistic, their actions are doomed to failure:

"quoi qu'il tente, l'homme se heurte a 1 *impossible,'1^ "il n'y a - j'en suis convaincu maintenant - de remedes a rien sinon a des vetilles."->

Despairing of finding solutions to life's problems, he finds hope in a mystical new consciousness which men can achieve by throwing off the dead weight of empty traditional concepts: "La justification des temps modernes c'est qu'a la faveur de la dechSance du langage l'homme peut saisir le caractere precaire et ambigu de tout langage et, par la meme, tendre a s'en liberer."® The metaphysical nature of the truth which he is seeking is apparent in his abstract vocabulary: "Mais precisement parce que ce monde est innommable... parce que tout est con­ somme dans les tenSbres, peut-etre l'appel de l'ineffable, 1 'au-dela de tout nom n*a-t-il jamais Ste plus imminent."^ Here is a mysticism typical of the Russian writers whom Adamov translated, such as

Dostoievsky and Chekhov. Compare the endings of Chekhov's Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya: the individual lives of the characters have all ended in unhappiness and the frustration of their personal goals, but they place their hope in the possibility that if they continue to work and struggle, someday those who come after them will understand and find joy and purpose in their lives. Adamov did not see any end to the suffering in his life; he could only hope that by arriving at basic truths concerning the nature of man, he could pass his insights on to others. His philosophy here, as elsewhere in L'Aveu, is essentially a stoic one: that life is contingent because of death, but that the quality of reason lifts man above the realm of uncertainty and endows him with intellectual freedom. 41

The title of the first chapter of L *Aveu, "Ce qu'il y a," is meaningful in terms of the author's philosophical orientation. Like

Descartes, in his Discours de la methode, Adamov wants to base his be­ liefs and conduct on an irrefutable, simple truth. Descartes based his philosophy on the proof of his existence as a thinking being: "je pense, done je suis." Adamov defines his existence in terms of his suffering:

"Ce qu'il y a? Je sals d'abord qu'il y a mol. Mais qui est moi? Mals qu'est-ce que moi? Tout ce que je sals de moi, c'est que je souffre.

Et si je souffre c'est qu'A l'origine de moi-meme il y a mutilation, separation."® From a definition of himself in terms of suffering, Adamov generalizes to a definition of man: "Je dis que l'homme est un ecartele.

Et pas seulement un ecartele, un crucifie.”^ Upon this definition of man as a being who suffers, Adamov constructs an ethic in which the supreme value is the consciousness which one attains through the exper­ ience of pain:

L'homme ne peut atteindre au centre immobile de lui-meme que s '1 1 prend conscience dans tout son etre du dechirement. Et cette conscience, il ne peut l'incarner qu'en souffrant dans tous les mem- bres de son corps, dans tous les €tats de son esprit. La plqure de la pointe algu@ de la souffrance seule tient eveille. Si l'homme n'Stait pas supplicie, 11 dormlrait d'un sommeil sans espoir. Et rien ne pourrait transpercer l'epaisseur de sommeil de la mati&re.

An ambivalent attitude toward suffering is at the heart of Adamov's work and gives it its particular individuality. On the one hand, suffering is bad, in the general sense that unhappiness/pain is bad and happiness/pleasure is good. On the other, by defining man as a

"cruclfle," he is again comparing man's destiny to Christ's, which suggests that the only road to salvation lies in suffering. In this identification of his destiny with Christ's, we can also see a 42 rationalization of his masochism.

At the core of Adamov’s suffering lies a double dilemma: his feelings of separateness from others and of passivity in relation to his own actions. He has tried love, meditation, and prayer, in order to find communion with another being, human or divine, but always with- out success. Added to the pain of his isolation is his fear that he is not in control of his destiny. In a passage whose imagery is reminiscent of Spinoza’s perception of the oneness of all creation, but in which the latter’s rational attitude is replaced by his own neurotic anxiety,

Adamov says that he feels he is controlled by a greater being of which he is simply an infinitesimal extension:

Tout se passe comme si d'un grand etre incomprehen­ sible et central, je n ’etais qu'une des existences particulieres, superficielles, aux frontiSres de lui-meme, l'extremite d ’un de ses membres, le bout de ses doigts, ou vlent mourlr en un dernier sursaut le grand rythme lnterieur soumls 3 de vastes lois cosmiques que je n'entrevols meme pas, mais qui suf- flsent a me faire sauter comme une marionette sans savoir pourquoi.H

To overcome his feelings of separateness and passivity, Adamov finds recourse in writing, which gives him the opportunity to act and to communicate with others who are also suffering and separate:

Gcrire, je dois ecrlre, coute que coute, en depit de tous et de tout. Car si je cessals d*ecrlre tout s'ecroulerait. Que le verbe m ’abandonne et aussi- tot je ne tlens plus debout, je tombe, je degringole et tout s'en va a vau-l’eau, tout se decompose, tout se desagrege, et je m ’affale 3 terre degonfle comme une baudrauche.^

This feeling that he exists only insofar as he communicates verbally is reminiscent of Beckett's characters, particularly in his novels, who talk compulsively, as though they knew that they exist only in words.

But Adamov does not speak through his writing merely to give himself the A3

impression that he exists; he writes because words are the only element

in his life over which he has some degree of control. On the level of abstract thought, he is guided by his reason and able to move in a logical progression from observations to conclusions. He does not have

the same ability to control his life, however: intellect cannot restrain his irrational impulses, and he is compelled to self-destructive actions by his obsessions.

From the perception that he is but an extension of a greater being, he concludes that his actions are controlled by the same laws that govern the rest of the universe: "La succession d'etats qui constitue notre etre, cette succession est faite de mouvements qui se suivent et se con-

trarient, mouvements d'expansion, de retraction, d'exaltation, d'abatte-

1 1 ment, rythmes etemels de la nature et du coeur. He experiences the positive aspects of these laws, expansion and exaltation, less frequent­ ly than the negative aspects, retraction and deflation. Besides writing, his pleasurable moments are limited to certain quasi-mystlcal states which he experiences in dreams and in nature. He also feels expansion in love, but only in that platonic form of love mixed with pity by which he does not feel threatened. The experience of retraction and deflation, or more generally, of falling, is the one which he most often feels and which he associates with the primordial fear of death:

"Est-ce par hasard que l'homme cralnt tout ce qui decrolt et decline, le silence, la nuit, la maladie, la vieillesse, la mort? N'est-ce pas plutSt que la conscience ne retient de toutes ces choses que leur ame commune: ce mouvement vertlgineux de haut en bas que l'on appelle la chute. 44

Even during the period in which Adamov's thinking was most full of metaphysical abstractions, he believed that one can only bear witness to those experiences which have taken place on a physical,rather than purely intellectual, level:

Celui qui en moi voit la demence de la diversite et dont tout le role sur terre est de rendre temoignage, d'appeler au secours.

Rendre temoignage. Rendre, c'est restituer.

On ne peut rendre que ce dont on a pris possession. Pris, c'est-3-dire touchee, goute, senti, vu.*5

This taste for concrete experience is reflected in the abuse which he inflicted on his body. If the essence of human nature is suffering, then he must experience pain in his own body in order to understand what it means to be human.

Having concluded that man is alone and helpless, Adamov is fascinated by the differences in behavior that individuals exhibit in the face of the same destiny. He symbolizes this difference in a scene in the subway where he watches two hands, belonging to different men, as they hold onto the baggage rail: "Et de ces deux mains, l'une s'agite, court, va et vient au long du porte-bagage, sans doute en quete d'une position confortable, tandis que 1 'autre, immobile, crispee, demeure figee dans l'inertie de la pierre.This image of two approaches to life, active and passive, both equally futile, is char­ acteristic of the bipolar characterization in Adamov's early plays.

The couples: L'Employe and N. in La Farodie, Le Militant and Le

Mutll€, in La Grande et le petite manoeuvre, and Victor and Arthur in

Le Ping-Pong, represent active and passive modes of behavior. Some individual characters, such as Ema, in La Grande et la petite manoeuvre. 45

and Jean Rist in Tous centre tous, vacillate between passivity and

aggression.

A tendency to perceive in terms of duality is also evident in the

significance which Adamov attached to a childhood scene during the

family's period of emigration in Germany. Here it is not man's atti­

tude toward life which is dual, but destiny which metes out pain and

pleasure on the basis of caprice:

Aout 1914. La guerre nous surprend dans un hotel de la Foret-Noire. Une de ses pensionnaires, une jeune Americaine (18 ans), rousse aux jambes minces, prend plaisir a torturer un chat. Une autre, une An- glaise (17 ans), blonde, le prend entre ses bras, le cajole, le console. L'Americaine le reprend en main, lui tord les oreilles, l'Anglaise l'arrache a l'Ame- ricaine, le couvre de baisers...

Je m'identifiais au chat*.^

The symbols of the hands in the subway and the fondled and tortured cat

represent the author's belief that fate is stronger than man's will to determine the course of his destiny. Because of death, change and the

interference of evil powers, men are incapable of finding any lasting happiness in their lives. His identification with the cat symbolizes his experience of the war, an "act of God" which disrupted his family's

life and increased his precocious feeling of powerlessness.

His propensity to experience reality in terms of opposites and his need to attach a symbolic significance to all aspects of life are

reflected in his interest in the etymology of words. He describes the star of David as the ancient

hiSroglyphe tout-pulssant ou 1 'initiS llsait la reve­ lation de 1*unite. Cette etoile, signe magique d'amour des deux triangles qui s'unissent en s'entrecroisant, e'est la cle du grand arcane de la rSverslbilite uni- verselle des etres, e'est la rSponse de la terre au ciel et du d e l 3 la terre. C'est la base horizontale 46

des eaux d'en bas, appelees par le feu du zenith, e'est 1 'horizontallte du ciel d'en haut appele par le feu du centre, e'est l'ardeur male comblant l'amblme de toute feminitS, e'est l ’afflux qui joint la haute mai- son de lumiere du pere a la caveme des mondes creusee dans la nuit mdre, la grande matrice obscure.

He discovers that when the origin of a word is investigated, it often

has two opposite, but reconcilable, meanings. For instance, "sacre"

comes from the Latin word sacer. "Ce mot intraduisible en nos langues

ramassait en lul les deux aspects fondamentaux et contradictoires

d'intouchable parce qu'd la fois hautement sacre et abominablement

souille."-^^ In the meaning of castration, he also sees the subtle

interplay of different concepts: "La castration est le chatiment

par excellence. Chatier, chatrer, double aspect d'un meme sens

originel. La peur du chatiment peut se reduire d la castration.

Mais, et e'est Id l ’essentiel, au fond de toute peur d l'approche du

chatiment, il y a la mort, castration supreme."^

In his later works, Adamov continued to see and present reality

as multifaceted. He no longer employed the structure of dualism so

consistently; Instead, he began to see three or more possibilities in

the experience of reality. In an interview, Adamov discusses the

different reactions of the characters in Le Printemps 71 to the Commune:

Enfin, j'ai surtout essaye de montrer comment, a la faveur des Svenements collectifs, tel ou telle prend conscience, alors que tel ou telle autre, au con- tralre, perd le peu de conscience qu'll (ou elle) avait. Les uns s 'aper^oivent de leur erreur trop tard, lors de la Semaine sanglante, les autres jamais* Les troisidmes avaient deja, le 18 mars, le pressen- tlinent de certalnes verites thdoriques et pratiques.

About his unfinished play, La Chanson des Malheureux, he writes:

Le probldme de la diversion. Les uns parleront de la mort et estimeront que tout ce qui n'est pas le souci de la mort est une diversion; les autres 47

arriveront, eux assi, a la mort, mals par le biais du masochisme... et ceux-ci comme ceux-la trouve- ront que tout ce qui n'appelle pas a la destruction de la personae est une fausse construction de 1 *es­ prit. D'autres encore accepteront la diversion, et ce seront ceux qui supporteront le mieux leur con­ dition, mais ils ne la supporteront que peu de temps, le temps se retrecissant toujours et la menace nazie grandissant toujours. Et quelque ideal que chacun ait voulu s'attribuer, un destin commun les rassem~ blera: le camp, la destruction physique.

Pierre Melese quotes Adamov's unpublished Journal (March 19, 1969) on

Si l'ete revenait:

Les uns verront des le depart 1'impossibllite de vivre dans un monde ou tout est fait cependant pour qu'il soit possible d ’y vivre. Les autres s'aper- cevront de cet etat de choses peu il peu, au cours de l'action. Des troislemes ne s'en apercevront Jamais, continueront de se croire heureux, alors qu’ils ne le sont pas. Face au bonheur propose, une diversite de reactions s' impose.^3

As these examples illustrate, Adamov was interested in the different degrees of awareness and different behaviors exhibited by individuals faced with the same situation. The psychological characterizations of his theater progress from the active and passive characters of the early plays to those whose motivation is more complicated andinfluenced by their social environment, as well as by their psychology.

In discussing prayer, Adamov makes a characteristic insistence on the duality of the act: "Je dois me couper en deux et prostemer, aplatir la partie pourrissante de moi-meme devant l1intangible purete de l'dtemelle."24 He is unable to pray, however, because God is one of the traditional concepts which he feels no longer have any meaning:

Prier, oui. Mais prier qui? Quel nom invoquer?

Le nom de Dieu ne devrait plus Jallllr de la bouche de l'homme. Ce mot degrade par l 1usage, depuls si 48

longtempts, ne slgni£le plus rlen. 1 1 est vide de tout sens, de tout sang.

Recognizing the futility of prayer, he tries to attain mystical intel­ lectual clarity and through the accumulation of suchmoments of truth, change the course of his destiny:

Si je parviens 3 me vouer tout entier a cette recherche unique, alors une grande metamorphose se dessinera dans ma duree interieure, d ’abord timidement, puis s'enhardissant jusqu'a effacer les lignes anciennes des habitudes lnutiles et nulsibles, jusqu'3 imposer un dessin victorieux qui, reprenant les vieux traits et les melant dans un entrelac nouveau, changera le signe de mon destin.26

The long chapter entitled "L’Humiliation sans fin," in which

Adamov describes his sexual and superstitious obsessions in greater de­ tail, helps us to understand the relationship of neurosis to his works.

As usual, it is in terms of dualism that he expresses his under­ standing of neurosis and his purpose in writing: "La nevrose, dans la mesure oil elle est conscience de la separation, joint a son aspect nefaste un aspect salutaire. Je veux en ces pages, falre 3 la fois le proces et l'apologie de la nSvrose."^ He anticipates that the reaction of the reader to his confessions will be negative: "Pour ce que je veux ecrire maintenant je n*attends pas une comprehension bienvelllante.

Je sais qu'ici la plupart m'abandonneront, paralyses par un Invincible 28 degout," This concern with the reader at the beginning of a work occupying itself with sexual obsession, recalls Baudelaire's words at the beginning of Les Fleurs du mal: "Hypocrite lecteur, - mon semblable,

- mon frere!”29 goth Adamov and Baudelaire knew that they were exploring areas of experience that most people pretend to ignore out of a fear of the opinion of others. Adamov suggests that he, like Baudelaire, considers this refusal to face one's sexuality hypocritical when he says 49 of himself, as author: "En tout cas, a sa decharge, il aura toujours l'avantage de la sincerite."^®

Baudelaire’s poems suggest a willful course toward self-destruction, without the sense of powerlessness which characterized Adamov's own experience of humiliation. But the difference in Adamov*s and

Baudelaire's approaches to the subject of sexual obsession was deter­ mined as much by the historical periods in which they lived as by temperament. Baudelaire lived in a period when satanism and decadence were fashionable poses for many artists and writers; his poetry was rooted in an elitist view which placed the poet above the mass of men and relegated woman to the role of temptress and object of sexual gratification. Adamov wrote during a period when the old aesthetic traditions were losing ground in literature to the more scientific influence of modern psychology and political concern for the powerless in society. Baudelaire’s attitudes could not survive in an intellectual period which was beginning to feel the influence of Marxism, with its emphasis on equality among men and women and the leveling of social classes; Freudian psychology’s demystifying of sexual desires; and the existentialists' anti-elitist call to human solidarity. It is sig­ nificant in this regard that Adamov's reservations about Baudelaire were basically criticisms of his social attitudes: "Un poete qui ecrit: 'II n'existe que trois etres respectables: le pretre, le guerrier, le poSte. Savoir tuer et creer. Les autres hommes sont

* talllables et corveables, fait pour l'Scurie... ’ n ’est pas, pour reprendre 1 'expression de Baudelaire lui-meme, un poete selon notre 50

Adamov demonstrates the influence of Freud on his thinking when he suggests that neurosis is the result of repressed subconscious desires:

La nevrose demontre, etant elle-meme l ’objet de la demonstration, toute l'horreur d'un temps ou 1 1inconscient ne trouve plus de mode commun d'ex­ pression qui le delivre. La suppression des rites, la mort de toute fete, de toute ceremonie s'accomplis- sant suivant le rite des mondes, signifie bien que l'ere est consommee de l'equilibre souverain entre l'exterieur et l'interieur,.. ^ 2

Although he was thirty-eight years old when L'Aveu appeared in

1946, Adamov was not yet willing or able to accept personal responsi­ bility for his neurosis. Typical of this desire to escape the burden of his guilty existence is his nostalgia for medieval ceremonies of penitence where sinners were absolved en masse: "Je serais all§ par une voie sure, vers le seul but que je cherche; non 1 *indulgence ou la comprehension mais 1 'absolution.' In this desire for a cleansing ritual of absolution, we can see the need which drove him to the acts of masochism by means of which he tried to atone for his sense of sexual guilt: "II me faut ineluctablement expler une faute qui semble incomber a la chair.By defining the concept of sin ("faute") in terms of the two aspects presented by Its etymology, he returns to the idea of separation, the condition which makes man a suffering being:

"Dans le mot faute, 11 y a d'une part, faille, absence (faute de), et, d'autre part, l'id€e de toniber (le fall germanique) . Faute, e'est done absence et chute. Mais precisement absence et chute e'est

1C 1 'aspect terrible de la separation."

Adamov*s intellectual orientation was determinedly metaphysical during the period of L 'Aveu. An explanation of his neurosis which did not take into consideration the laws of the universe would have been of little interest to him. For this reason, he was not satisfied with a

Freudian interpretation of neurosis: MJe ne nie pas la valeur doctrinale de la psychanalyse... Son message est vrai, mais il s'arrete aux portes du veritable probl3me... Le sexe est bien le centre de l'homme mais non le centre supreme.His attitude toward psychotherapy was ambivalent, because of the limitations he found in it and because he associated neurosis with literary creativity:

Apologie de la nevrose qui donne a sa victime une lucidite suraigui? - inaccessible a l'homme dit nor­ mal - et qui la porte precisement sur les chemins de la liberation qu'elle semble lui interdire d ’au­ tre part - vision en tout cas de 1 'issue, de la sor­ tie par ou s'accomplit le sort meme de chacun.

La nevrose touche 3 la fois la saintete et la folie par leur point cotnmun: l'idee fixe... la contem­ plation fixe qui lui permet d'acceder, a travers la singularite de son mal, aux grandes lois generales ou s'inscrit la plus haute comprehension du monde."^

By describing neurosis in terms of Mla saintete," "la folie," "une lucidite suralgu3 - Inaccessible a l'homme dit normal," Adamov puts himself in the romantic tradition of the poet as inspired madman. If the poet's powers of creativity are due in part to his madness, then it is in his best interest to cultivate his neurosis rather than to regain his sanity at the price of his art. Adamov later recognized this romantic tendency in L'Invasion, in which the unstable protagonist,

Pierre, ultimately commits suicide: "si Agnes, la M@re, Tradel, etc., ne partagent pas le destin de Pierre - le dSpositaire du Message! - e'est que Pierre a un destin exceptionnel, celul du heros. L'Invasion, malgre le depouillement, l'absence complete d'emphase, reste une plSce romantique, moins Sloignee de Chatterton qu'on ne pourrait le croire."38 52

Twenty years later, in 1966, Adamov continued to be skeptical of psychotherapy, even as he underwent it:

Je ne veux pas abolir ce qu'un ami m€decin nommait 'mon systSme de protection.* Je sais bien que ce n'est pas a mon age qu'on peut se degager d'un appareil aussl bien implante.

Mais la psychotherapie precisement ...... va-t-elle porter atteinte a cet appareil?^’

His fear at this point in his life was not that psychotherapy would interfere with his creativity, but that having structured his behavior throughout his life to accommodate his neurosis, he would not be able to survive a treatment designed to rid him of the symptoms which had become part of his personality.

In "L'Humiliation sans fin," Adamov traces his neurosis back to the fears of his childhood and adolescence. Even as a child, Adamov felt the need to suffer: "Depuis le plus lointain passe ou se perd mon souvenir, je retrouve toujours la merne tentation, le meme besoin cruel de souffrir, de tomber au bas de tout."^® He describes two ex­ amples of his masochism: the pleasure he took in long rides on his bicycle when the metal pedals drew blood from his bare feet, and his exhibitionism: "Je me revois par un crepuscule pluvieux sur le trottoir d'un faubourg desert oil je m'Stais couche aprSs m'etre totale- ment devetu, tremblant 3 la fois de terreur et du desir mauvais d'etre decouvert dans cette attitude degradante.In his autobiography,

L rHomme et 1 *enfant, he documents similar experiences, in one instance remembering the feeling he experienced after falling off his motorized 43 bicycle and cutting his knees: "Ma honte et un drole de plaislr." * As an adolescent in Paris, even as Adamov's literary talent grew, with his article "Vive l'anarchie!" and his first Surrealist poems, his masochistic and exhibitionistic tendencies also continued to develop:

"Je descends dans le metro, le pantalon dechire au genou. II me plait qu'il soit dechire, j'en elargis encore les dechirures."44 Before the age of twenty, he began to experience a subtle form of sexual masochism occasioned by his impotence: "Je voudrais monter avec Clarisse et une fille. 'Non, pas avec une fille aujourd'hui.' Et pourtant, je sais que Clarisse aime les femmes. Elle voudrait que je fasse 1 'amour.

Je n'y parviens pas, elle pleure."4-*

He describes this aspect of his suffering in L'Aveu:

Apres tant d'experiences avortees et d'espoirs dequs, je comprends enfin que si j'eprouve, au fond de moi, le besoin d'etre humilie par la femme, e'est que la femme m'humiliera, mais d'une autre maniAre, d'une maniere que je n'avais pas prevue. A mon inaptitude A posseder elle repondra par 1 'absence. Je suis condamne A la solitude.48

His sexual impotence and masochism were exacerbated by the guilt he felt as a result of his parents' early admonitions against masturbation

"Mon pSre venu specialement me voir pour m'annoncer que mon sexe etait une pierre noire, que cela voulait dire que je me masturbais. Si je continuais, je deviendrais fou."4^ From his mother, he remembers the threatening words: " - Si tu mets encore ta main 111, on te le cou- pera."48

Adamov1s exhibitionism seems to have been one of the inspirations for his interest in theater.4® In describing his masochistic fantasies and activities, he uses terms such as "thSatre" and "tnise en scene."

As students, he and his friend Victor acted out a sexual fantasy at the

Luxembourg Gardens, even attracting an audience for their performance:

"Nous obligeons une adolescente A marcher pleds nus jusqu'au bassin, 54 puls a y tremper ses pleds que nous embrassons. Deux collegiennes nous regardent, se moquent.

Of his need to give his fantasies a concrete form, Adamov said:

"J'ai donne corps 3 ma folie, J'ai chercht a travers la realitt le rappel invincible du decor etrange et miserable cher a mes reves... 11 An im­ promptu audience was an early part of Adamov's masochistic practices.

He acted out his fantasies of wretchedness and guiltiness on the streets, in subways and in bars, as well as in parks. The idea of performing his drama on stage, with actors, before a theater audience, was merely an extension of this basic scene in which he and the accomplices whom he drew in (or paid, in the case of prostitutes) created a theater of humiliation. By giving his fantasies dramatic form, he was realiz­ ing his dream of overcoming his separation from others. In the theater, he was able to reach the people in the audience by communicating to them in a very direct way his thoughts and feelings. Except for the middle, political plays, all of Adamov's theater can be seen as a form of exhibitionistic self-gratification, insofar as his characters continue to act out his own self-destructive behavior.

Certain situations reoccur consistently in Adamov's sexual fantasies. There are two general types of women to whom he is attracted.

One is the poor, down-at-the-heels prostitute who seems to have as little control over her destiny as he has over his. She appears in various forms as La Prostitute in La Parodie, Mathilde in Le Sens de la marche, La Pauvre Fille in Le Printemps 71, and Holly in Off limits.

The second is "la prostitute etemelle"^ who derives pleasure from taunting and humiliating men as she excites them, and whose supreme characterization in Adamov's theater is Ema, in La Grande et la petite 55 manoeuvre. In fantasies involving the first type of women, Adamov sees himself "ou bien accroupi devant une pauvresse dans la poussiere d'un cachot, ou bien, au cours d'un voyage insense, dans un sordide wagon populaire en plein etc, et la, une fille en haillons, affalee sur une banquette, donne ses pieds 5 baiser S une foule anonyme d'hommes...

In a fantasy which revolves around the sadistic prostitute, he sees him­ self again in a crowd of men, naked in a public square, mesmerized by the spectacle of a prostitute on a platform who raises her skirt to the

E O waist and masturbates, oblivious to all of them. Adamov's first love,

Irene, was a model for the taunting, provocative woman who was the cen­ ter of his sexual fantasies:

Irene masochiste, exhibitionniste. Elle est toujours coupable, se complatt dans sa culpabilite. Elle ne me cache pas qu'elle a eu des amants depuls que nous vivons ensemble. Elle donne leurs noms (que du reste je devinais), raconte ce que chacun voulait d'elle, ce qu'elle voulait d'eux. Elle s'attarde sur son 'vice,' se raasturber devant des hommes, le regard fixe sur eux.^4

Another of Adamov's love relationships also served as a model for the domineering woman before whom men submit. At twenty-two, he fell in love with Huguette, who eventually went mad and died of "dementia praecox." Adamov's attraction to her was typical of his abnormal and self-destructive love relationships. Unable to have a normal sexual relationship, he sought the companionship of women who fulfilled his masochistic needs:

Huguette, le haut du front degage, rase, le teint exagerement pale, les yeux charbonnes, la voix lente, couverte de dentelles, m'intlmide, m'effraie, m'attire.

Je suis, devant elle, l'ecolier pris en faute... 56

Je demande a Huguette ce que je n'aurais jamais ose ni meme pense demander 3 Irene, de plsser sur mol. Elle acepte.^5

Throughout his life, the strongest feminine influence on Adamov’s psyche was that of his mother. He describes the unconscious childhood ruse by means of which he attained his mother's bed. "Cheque nuit un etre de petite taille, une sorte de nain, s'approche de moi pour me terrasser, je pousse un cri, me reveille." His nurse Macha then carries him through the labyrinth of rooms of their apartment to his mother's room. "J'aboutissais dans le lit de ma mSre. Le nain prenait son sens, le but etait atteint."^ Behind her dignified facade, his mother was a prey to anxieties which she may have transmitted to her son:

Ma mere, je la revois c o m e je l'ai vue encore dernierement sur une photo, les cheveux noirs trSs ' lisses, le nez grec, le maintien digne. Mais je me la rappelle aussi, courant comme une demente d'un bout a 1 'autre du wagon-restaurant pour bien s'assurer aupres des garqons qu'll m'apporteraient uniquement de la puree de pommes de terre sans beurre ni sel. Elle m'attribuait une maladle d ’esto- mac, la meme bien sur qu'elle s'etait dejS attribute.

In Germany, between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, he would go every other night at his mother's request to bring his father home from the casino, a situation which instilled in his mind an indelible contempt for his father. At nineteen, when he lived with

Irene against his father's wishes, his mother complied in his disobe­ dience by preparing food for them. His inability to break away from his family, particularly his mother, is reflected in the stifling family situations of his early theater.

His close attachment to his mother is implied in the experience of separation which haunts him in L'Aveu: "il m'apparalt que toutes mes peines, je les souffre au nom du bannissement premier qu'elles ne font que repeter, celui de l'homme jete hors du centre de l'etre, le seul lieu situe dans 1 *existence humaine, dans la grande et horrible banlieue de 1'existence humaine."^® At another point, he describes a dream in which he looks up into the sky and sees a boat sailing by.

The vision gives him an inexplicable feeling of happiness, which he in­ terprets as follows: "Et le navire, e'est toujours le premier asile, le sein de la mere. Or, dans mon reve, mon bateau a retrouve son ocean natal, le ciel... "59 This nostalgia for an experience of oneness with his mother is reflected in his desire to end his separateness through physical union with a woman: "l'homme dans son rSgne, o'est en verite un etre qu'a demi, amputS de la part feminine etemelle de lui-meme qu'il cherche en vain 3 combler par 1 'etreinte d'un corps de femme."®® The psychological explanation for Adamov's feeling of separation was his inability to wean himself from his mother's in­ fluence and to achieve sexual union with a woman. Faced with his misery, Adamov had two choices: to rid himself of his obsessions or to give in to them. Unable to analyse his sexual obsessions out of existence, he tried to satisfy them instead: "Tout ce que j'ai pu ten­ ter pour assoupir la passion partlculiere qui me ronge, je l'ai tente."®-*-

He describes the acting out of one of his fantasies of humiliation, an experience which was later reflected in the characterization of N. in

La Parodle. At a bar in the old prostitute section of Les Hailes, he found two women at the counter and a group of men who seemed to be pimps playing cards at a back table. They all took him for a homosexual and the more attractive prostitute accordingly made up his face with red and black makeup, while the others laughed and made obscene comments and 58 gestures. He bought rounds of drinks for everyone until his money ran out. Then, knowing he would not be able to pay, he nevertheless in­ vited them all to accompany him into the back room where he knelt in front of the prostitute and kissed her bare feet. He kissed her knees and started to go higher, but was stopped with a demand for money in return for special favors. Going through his pockets, she found no money. At that moment, feeling her contempt and mounting hostility toward him, Adamov felt an irresistible impulse to say: "Frappe-moi

& la face,The prostitute slapped him with her hand and then hit him in the face with her high heel, to the accompaniment of the other's laughter. Following this paroxysm of masochism, his desire died:

Puis comme toujours, e'est la mort du desir, le feu s'eteint, cede la place au degofit. Lugubrement, se desagrSge, s'effondre l'atroce mise en scene qui empruntalt ses prestiges aux flammes du desir atti- sees par les images halluclnantes de cauchemars anclens. Et je n'ai plus devant moi qu'une pauvre fille saoule et des hommes comme les autres, des hommes qui sont en fait les plus faibles et les plus veules de tous les etres, et que je meprise, et que je hais de toute la noblesse qui reste au fond de moi.®^

*n La Farodie, N. says to Lili: "Frappe-moi au visage.

Frostituee, he says: "Marches sur moi, tuez-moi, que cela finisse,"®^ and "Frappe-moi... Pi€tine-moi."®® At one point, L'Employe makes a motion to strike N. and with a robot-like motion of his arm, N. strikes himself, a dissociation from his own arm and hand which recalls another experience remembered from Adamov’s childhood nightmares: "Et la terreur me glaqait, me paralysalt, et mes mains se faisaient lourdes et moites.

Dans mon reve, de cette main, je frappals mon visage, et je sentais alors qu'elle ne m'appartenalt plus. C'etait un corps mort, quelque chose d ’Stranger qui venait heurter ma Joue."®® 59

In L'Aveu, he writes: "Le seul sentiment capable de me faire ou- blier la femme, e'est la peur. 5 His superstitious rituals were a way

of dealing with his irrational fears. The rituals have their origin in

the belief that things happen as they are destined to happen, a determi­ nistic view he adopted as a defense against his fear of an uncertain

future; "J'ai peur de l'avenir, et parce que j'en ai peur, je m'epuise

I interpreter le present en signes fastes et nefastes."^® "Je suis

incapable de penser le hasard. Ou que j'aille, quoi que je subisse, entende, voie, quoi que je fasse, tout pour moi n'est que signe, tout me repond par signes."^ From his earliest childhood, Adamov felt

the presence of supernatural forces around him, ruling his life, which had to be propitiated so that he would not be destroyed. Roger Blin describes Adamov's superstitious gestures during a visit they made to­ gether to the Commission of Arts and Letters:

II ne s'etait jamais defait de ses superstitions et des rites qui les accompagnaient, Lorsqu'll se rendlt a la Commission des Arts et Lettres pour y deposer le manuscrit de La Parodie pour lequel nous sollicitions l'aide I la premiere piece - ce que d'ailleurs il n'obtint pas - , je le vis deposer son manuscrit & terre dans le vestibule, puis se frapper trois fois la tete et les epaules avant de le reprendre et de le remettre au secretariat.?2

He saw supernatural forces as good and evil: the powers of evil would destroy him if he did not make sacrifices to the powers of goodness to insure their protection. Good forces were identified with living and life-sustaining substances, such as earth, light and wood. For this reason, his rituals consisted of touching the earth, kissing the wood on his cane, and lighting matches, cigarettes and llghtbulbs in the dark.

He concludes that men knock on wood when they hear of a misfortune to ward off death: "C'est qu’en reponse aux sollicitations de malheur qui 60 toujours iwpliquent terme de mort, l ’homme cherche a se mettre en rapports avec un symbole efficace de la perpetuite, du devenir unanime qui meut les metamorphoses et ne laisse pas place a la m o r t . " 7 3 The wood, earth, fire which he Included In his rituals each represented a different life-sustaining force: "Le bols vivant, s'11 n'ecarte pas 1 / definitivement le malheur, je sals qu'il le diffSre toujours;" " 1 1 faut que je touche le sol pour m'assurer de sa s t a b i l l t e . in the ritual of fire, he struggled not only against his fear of death, but against the death-oriented psychological impulses which contributed to his sexual impotence:

11 y a entre la flamme et la puissance virile une parente profonde, alors que l’obscurite humide et creuse que la flamme combat symbolise le mystere sombre du sexe de la femme, 6 teignoir de la flamme. La survie de la lueur signifie la turgescence vic- torieuse du sexe de l'homme penetrant la femme, et 1 'importance particuliere que j'attache a ce rite re­ flate trop Svidemment ma crainte de 1 'impuissance.

In another ritual, Involving the touching of wood, he identifies the life force of wood with male desire: "Bois de l'arbre de vie, en te tou- chant je touche le temoignage solidifie de la grande coulee verticale du ddsir, le signe stratifie au long du temps de l'ascenslon d'amour du sang candide de I'abime vers la lumiSre."^ For Adamov, sexual impotence was a concrete example of the interference of the forces of death in his life. Unable to engender life, he could not mitigate the fact of his own death by surviving in the lives of his children.

The desire to put himself on the side of the forces of life against the forces of death is significant for Adamov in the subsequent shape of his life and in his works. In his theater, the characters place themselves on the side of life versus death in indirect ways. Those 61 who represent Adamov in his early theater: N. in La Parodie, Pierre in L rInvasion, Le Mutile in La Grande et la petite manoeuvre, Le

Professeur Taranne, Henri in Le Sens de la roarche, Jean Rist in Tous contre tous, and Edgar in Les Retrouvailles, all try to give their lives meaning and escape from their anxiety by one or both of two means: love and achievement of a goal in their work. In the political plays, the workers, Marpeaux in Paolo Paoli, and the Communards in Le Printemps

71, align themselves with life forces in their struggle for justice and humanity. The Internationalists, Polia and Sofia, commit themselves to the ideals of the French Commune in the same manner as Adamov in his lifelong search for just causes to defend. His alignment in the late fifties and sixties with the forces of life represented by the workers* struggle was fetishistic in the same way as his early attachment to the women he worshipped. By dedicating his energies to a cause which he idealized, he hoped to transform his anxious, self-destructive existence into one of serenity and purpose. In championing the workers* cause in his writings, he was seeking the protective anonymity of a greater cause with which he could merge his identity. The constant mental activity which carried him always further forward contained an element of desperation, as though death were always at his back. Nevertheless, in Joining with the forces of struggle, rather than stagnation, he placed himself in the tradition of other eminent Intellectuals, such as

Jean-Paul Sartre, who believe that life is characterized by a constant state of revolution and change.

It is a measure of the depth of Adamov*s neurosis that he was able to recognize his irrational reactions without being able to control them.

He describes the intense feeling of anxiety aroused by the presence of 62 an inquisitive schoolboy who watched him perform his superstitious rituals: "Je sais que e'est mon mal intSrieur que je projette hors de moi sur la premiere image qui offre prise au delire d*interpretation.

Male ce jugement de mon esprit reste impuissant devant la peur."^®

Of the castration fear which resulted from his mother1s admonition not to masturbate, he says:

Cette allusion precise £ une sanction atroce retentit en moi comme le decret du destin. Mais si l'echo des paroles matemelles a resonne ainsi, se heurtant in- definiment aux parols souterraines de 1 *inconscience, e'est qu'il a trouve en moi la caveme propice ou pouvaient vibrer les ondes porteuses du sombre message.

Adamov recognizes that the degree of his anxiety is unwarranted by the situations which provoke it. The fear which he carries within himself merely focuses on the stare of the child, or his mother’s words. His fears are triggered by these outside events, but their source is in his own neurosis.

Adamov describes his different attempts to overcome his obsessions.

Believing that "les desirs refrenes engendrent la pestilence interieure," he tries to relieve his sexual obsessions by satisfying them. The approach proves fruitless, as he discovers that after having satisfied one obsession, he soon finds himself consumed with another:

Maintenant que je l'ai vecue dans les faits, je suls a jamais delivr€ de 1 'obsession des livres gercees et pales, des chevilles Spaisses et des talons tres hauts. Mais de nouvelles hantlses surgissent la oQ les anciennes sont tombees, et devant leurs at- taques, sans cesse renouvelees, Je reste aussi desarme que jadls. Maintenant, je veux sentir des espadrllles boueuses s'ecraser sur ma face* Quand ce ne sera plus le couteau, ce sera le fer rouge. ^

He tries to curb his ritual practices by the opposite method, which is to stop them all at once, with disastrous results. His fear of the imminence of death and destruction is too strong to resist. Overcome 63 by anxiety, which takes the form of visions of himself as an old man, diseased and alone, he returns to his rituals.82

Having concluded that he cannot overcome his sexual and super­ stitious obsessions either by giving in to them or by repressing them, he seeks the help of a force greater than either of them. In the language of his rituals, he evokes the power of his love for a pure woman to save him from the temptation of prostitutes: "Le pur contact de ton corps Sloigne de moi l'angoisse. Tu rends vaines desormais les conjurations par le bois et la flamme. Seule, tu es pour moi plus que le feu, plus que le bois. C'est toi, la haute flamme blanche au grand jour. Toi aussi, la foret profonde et secrete... By associating her with the life-sustaining forces of wood and fire, he reveals that her love is a fetish, a means of warding off evil spirits.

This belief in the magic power of love explains the nature of the relationships between Lili and L*Employe and N, in La Farodie, and

Erna and Le Mutile in La Grande et la petite manoeuvre. For the male characters in these plays, woman is the means by which life can be transformed and each may attain his goal: For L'Employe, happiness; for

N., death; for Le Mutile, respite from his own self-destructive tenden­ cies. The words with which Adamov expresses his love are equivocal, however; "Parfois, & tes cotes, il me semble revivre le temps d'avant la faute... J'ai pense parfois que partager ta vie m'eut gueri 1 jamais.

La longue intimite des jours aurait vaincu 1'obstacle."®^ It is obvious from his choice of words and tenses: "parfois," "il me semble," "eut gueri," "aurait vaincu," that he is not totally convinced of the power of his love to deliver him from his obsessions. He experiences the same doubts in regard to prayer, by which he also seeks to enlist a 64 greater power against the strength of his obsessions: "Et ce que j'appelle priere, trop souvent, se separe mal de mes conjurations mag- iques."85

There is a relationship between Adamov's rituals, in which every gesture has a precise meaning and function, and his early theater, where his neuroses are acted out in concrete gestures, such as N.'s permanent tendency to a prone position in La Parodle, and Le Mutile's progressive loss of limbs in La Grande et la petite manoeuvre. His choice of words in describing acts of sexual humiliation and fantasies of destruction demonstrate that as he wrote L'Aveu, he was already thinking of these

QC experiences in theatrical terms: "l'atroce mise en scene, " 00 "le theatre des visions terrifiques,"8^ "ce theatre - toute la fantasmagorie AO dramatique des pressentiments, des craintes, des angoisses.,. In his early theater, as in his magic rituals, invisible forces are repre­ sented symbolically by concrete gestures. He defines theater as: "le lieu ou le monde visible et le monde invisible se touchent et se heurtent, autrement dit la mise en Evidence, la manifestation du con- QQ tenu cache, latent, qui recSle les germes du drame. In the plays, the psychological element becomes apparent as one of the Invisible forces which are threatening to destroy the protagonist.

A relationship between theater and ritual is also present in the works of two of Adamov's contemporaries, Jean Genet and Fernando Arrabal.

Les Bonnes, from beginning to end, is a ceremony played out between two sisters who symbolically kill their mistress every night in order to vent their anger against her oppression. In Les N6 gres, the black actors act out their rage against their white masters and the colonial system. Le

Balcon is a series of ceremonies where the customers in a bordello act 65 out different power fantasies. All of Arrabal's plays are ritualistic in his obsessive use of irrational themes: hostility toward the mother and her identity with the forces of despotism, and characters who exist in a childhood state of innocence, obdurately unable to attain adulthood.

It is significant that one of the plays in which these themes are acted out is called La Grande ceremonial. Adamov's early theater has this same quality of an obsessive psychic drama acted out on stage.

The fear of the inevitable degeneration of all things into death is one of Adamov's basic anxieties. The action in his plays reflects this preoccupation, as it consistently demonstrates a downward movement toward disaster. The characters die violently, lose their faculties with age, or fail in some way which leaves them helpless. Emmanuel Jacquart sees this steady deterioration of a situation as a dramatic technique which replaces more traditional inodes of dramatic progression:

Si nous faisons maintenant le point, nous constatons que La Parodle possede une progression dramatique se caractSrlsant par le triomphe du destin et la degradation des etres: les malheurs se multiplient, la dereliction s'Intensifie, la decrepitude triomphe. La destinSe des personnages tout comme celle des h£ros tragiques d'autrefois, se traduit par un de­ crescendo pervers et emouvant. Adamov se rapproche done du scheme 'aristot£licien' traditionnel.^O

Adamov criticizes the culture of modern times which has lost all sense of religious hierarchy: "L'epoque moderne merite d'etre definie: le temps de l'ignominie." 91 He compares modern times to ancient to demonstrate how sordid the goals of modern men are: today the caste system represents those who have reached the top by usurping money and power. In ancient times, the hierarchy on which society was based had religious sanctions; there was a sacred reversibility from the poor to the king who once a year knelt before the poor to wash their feet, 66

Q 9 symbolizing the sacrificial God who gave himself for mankind. But in

the chaos and degradation of the times, he again sees the possibility

of a change for the better:

Si tout ce qui a ete fait se defait, si tout edifice s'ecroule, e'est peut-etre qu'un sourd travail de mine aspire 1 'existence vers l'abtme, et que dans cet abime comme dans un creuset se refond lentement la neuve merveille qui nattra des ruines.®^

Mais il n ’est pas donne a l'homme d ’acceder au mys- tere insondable de I'amour selon lequel tout ce qui fut plonge dans les profondeurs de l'abtme, doit remonter, le dernier jour, au coeur de la lumiere.^

Qui sait si l'innommable, ce qui est trop bas pour etre nomine, n'appelle pas de toute la force de la succion du vide ce qui est au-dela de tous les noms humains?^^

Again, he expresses his belief that man's only hope is to cut through

intellectual and philosophical deadweight and arrive at living convic­

tions: "Aujourd'hui il ne reste plus S l'homme que cette tache: arrach- er toutes les peaux mortes, se depouiller jusqu'a se trouver lui-meme a l'heure de la grande nudite."^

The "Journal terrible" section of L'Aveu was written during the war and German Occupation, from November, 1939, to December, 1943, and reflects the pessimism and stoicism of Adamov's outlook during this period. Recognizing the disparity between his intellectual lucidity and his inability to overcome his obsessions, he says: "Mais ce que je pretends connattre se reduit toujours 3 la vanite d'un scheme abstrait...

Ainsi, l'abtme se creuse sans cesse entre mes actes et mes intentions.

Je vis exactement de la meme faqon que si je ne pensals pas ce que je pense."^ In addition to his self-doubts, he is also pessimistic about the possibility of finding outside help or support. Thrown back upon his own resources, he adopts an attitude of stoicism: "II s'aglt de ne jamais 67 prendre l ’attitude de l'attente et de desesperer a l'avance de tout problematique recours qui viendrait du dehors. Ainsi, la conscience echappe au pouvoir du temps qui se traduit fatalement par angoisse et desir du futur. Ne rien attendre jamais."^®

In an axiom which reinforces his paranoid view of things, he restates the thought of Paracelsus: "Tout ce qui est reve existe, se qo projette sur un certain plan. ” If every idea has an objective correlative in reality, then fears and the unfavorable opinions of others become dangerous entities: "Chaque homme est etouffe d'autant de reflets de lui-meme, de fantomes, qu*il existe de lui d'images divers engendrees par 1 'opinion des autres."100 The only hope he sees for himself is to devote himself to writing and to the woman he loves:

Avant tout Je dois achever ces pages, dire ma torture, cela qui crie au fond de moi et peut-etre, un Jour, qui sait, ce temoignage apportera A un inconnu, A un homme ecrase comme moi par 1'hor- reur de vivre, l'alde profonde que m'apporterent moi-meme d*autres hommes qui ont naguere laisse, comme je le fais aujourd'hui, temoignage de leur tourment.

Out, d'abord finir ce livre... Aussi ne pas laisser ton image s'affaiblir dans mon esprit. 1

Adamov returns to the idea that man has no control over his destiny: "Chaque homme est soumis A une llgne de vie tracee des sa naissance... L'homme n'attelnt jamais la liberte au-dehors, en cherchant

A divaguer a droite ou a gauche de la ligne de sa destinee."^®^ The problem of existence becomes one of the philosophical attitude which one is to adopt; if everything is predetermined, then it is futile to feel anxiety over one's shortcomings, or the state of the world: the most reasonable attitude is one of passive acceptance, neither elated by good fortune, or thrown into despair by bad. 68

Adamov's attention remained focused on psychological and meta­ physical questions, despite the fact that he lived through the Occupation and was incarcerated for a number of months in a concentration camp.

During this period, he showed little interest in the government in power, or the political events which were taking place, but continued to con­ centrate on the existential problems of mortality, the inability to communicate with others, and the recognition that there are no tran­ scendent, eternal values. Involved with his own preoccupations, he did not choose direct action against the German oppression during this period. Unlike the Communards in Le Frintemps 71, he did not lay his life on the line to fight against injustice. During the war years, he was still too much of a political anarchist to take part in an organ­ ized effort against the Germans: "1945. Paris. Nous apprenons 1'ex­ istence des camps d'extermination, des fours crematoires. Honteux, quel- que temps, de ne pas avoir fait de la resistance, Mais quoi, anti-alle- mand, aux cfctes de Mauriac, Aron, Saint-Exupery? Le rapprochement etait abusif, bien sur, nous voulions nous justifier.'^O^ While others were striving for freedom and justice, his mind continued to be occupied by the search for an elusive truth. Typical of his philosoph­ ical orientation during this period was that in the same way that he believed that all men ultimately meet the same fate, he believed that the Ideals of all governments deteriorate in time and every government finally becomes repressive.

To illustrate the nature of his preoccupations, he describes how one day while riding the subways, he becomes absorbed in observing the man sitting across from him. He begins to think of the problem of the 69

"Other," and admits that he cannot imagine that this man has the same degree of existence that he has; he cannot comprehend any existence out­ side of his own. As he contemplates this problem, he notices that the man he is watching is fixedly looking at the man sitting next to

Adamov, and he realizes that the same thoughts are going through his head: "Je crois comprendre que je ne suis pas seul 3 me sentir seul, et alors se confirme mon sentiment que la peur est au fond de tout...

Et chaque existence est un mur. Et il y a autant de murs au monde qu'il y a d'existences humaines, d'entites souffrantes et separees."104

In a passage which reads like a poetic description of most of the love relationships in his theater, he speaks of the lifelines of lovers and their predetermined inability to join their destinies:

Et quels etranges et terribles dessins naissent des lignes de vie des araants. Deux lignes s'approchent, confondent leurs courbes, puis se quittent. Pendant un instant elles semblent poursuivre l ’une pres de 1 'autre une voie parallele, mais bientot, in^luctable- ment, elles s'eloignent a jamais, attirees par un pSle oppose du ciel, par l'etoile inconnue de leur propre destinee.**-^

When he talks about war, Adamov's tendency is to go back to origins.

If everything is a sign, then the evil of war is only the sign of a more absolute evil:

Cette epoque peut se resumer en un seul mot: degrada­ tion. Degradation du langage qui perd son sens, des ceremonies ou s'exaltait 1 'ideal des temps anciens, de cet ideal lui-meme qui se ridlculise en se vidant.

Ce n'est pas par hasard que depuis environ un slecle toute experience authentique se traduit toujours par un appel desespere, un cri d'horreur.106

Having criticized modern times for its corruption of language and values, he sees a possibility of rebirth in man's spiritual Isolation.

Deprived of cultural and religious support, man is forced to succeed on 70 his own, to test his strengths without help from the outside: "Le fait pour l'horaiue d ’etre prive de tout secours exterieur, de ne plus pouvoir, imperceptiblement, par degres, d'analogie en analogie, attein- dre au coeur de l'univers, peut le paralyser a jamais, Mais il peut aussi lui permettre de se trouver seul devant lui-meme, anonytne, entierement nu."107 Adaraov finds cause for optimism in the stripping away of old, dead values. Like Gide, he sees the possibility of a vital rediscovery of one's own self beneath learned attitudes and modes of behavior: the dead layers of culture, religion and conventional morality. The literal fact of nudity is one toward which he is char­ acteristically ambivalent, however, as it represents both the possibil­ ities of rediscovery of self and shame before others.

Adamov makes a revealing comment about the significance of writing to him and its relationship to his neurosis, on the occasion of losing the papers on which he has been working: ” 11 est terrible de perdre ce que l’on a ecrit lorsque, comme moi, on s'efforce de n'ecrire que

1 'essentiel de peur de l'oubller. C'est alors perdre I ’illusion de la continuite psychique, seul garante de la personnalite devant le

1 f\Q chaos et la folie. Involved in a constant struggle against his obsessions and their non-productive expense of his energies, writing was the activity in which he was most in control, where he could examine his experience and consider its significance. By describing his neuroses and their causes and consequences, he was able to escape temporarily from the hold which they had on his life.

His unhappiness over the absence of the woman he loves leads him back to a discussion of the nature of suffering: "Je souffre, ton absence m'angoisse. Mais ce sentiment n ’est pas pur, 11 s'y mele peu 71 a peu le desir de savoir ce qu'est en verite la souffrance."^® The idea of suffering leads him to think about death and he wonders why sui­ cide so infrequently puts an end to the innumerable cases ofhuman des­ pair, concluding that it is not the instinct of self-preservation that prevents most men from committing the ultimate act of self-destruction, but the apathy of depression:

Dans ces circonstances extremes, 1'instinct de conservation ne joue plus le moindre role. Seule la torpeur du desespoir peut ecarter la fatale €cheance. II suffit de songer aux heures d ’acca- blement quand le seul acte de lever le bras ou de changer de place reclame 1 ’effort gigantesque et derisoire de l ’enterre vivant succombant sous des montagnes de terre.HO

Adamov's imagery here recalls Baudelaire’s "La Cloche felee," in which he describes the voice of his soul as:

... le rale epais d'un blesse au'on oublie Au bord d'un lac de sang, sous un grand tas de morts, Et qui meurt, sans bouger.Jll

The section of "Journal terrible" dated "Marseille, november 1941," describes Adamov's six months in the concentration camp at Argeles.

Consistent with his apolitical orientation, his interest is in psychological explanations and the metaphysical significance of what is happening. He has as yet no curiosity about the political and economic circumstances which brought about the creation of such camps. Ironically, his experience of incarceration had the effect of temporarily freeing him from his neurotic obsessions:

Ces pages ont ete redigees apr§s ma liberation du camp d'Argeles. Au camp, je n ’aurais jamais eu le courage de lea ecrire; 1 1 ne m'est meme pas venu la-bas l'idee de jeter sur le papier la moindre note, pas plus d ’ail- leurs qu’il ne m'est venu £l l'idee de rien, ni craintes superstitieuses, ni deslrs d ’amour, nl meme le besoin de prier.H^ 72

Further on, he says:

Jamais la vie reelle n*eut moins de prise sur moi. Et cependant, j ’etais tout entier possede par le sentiment - contradictoire, mais le propre de l'univers du reve n'est-il pas d'unir et de subir a la fois les contraires? - que man existence meticuleuse de prisonnier, dans son horrible simplicite, constituait la seule vraie vie, alors que la vie errante du dehors, celle des hommes libres ne m'apparaissait plus qu'irreelle, se mouvant dans la vacuite d'une vague fantaisie abstraite.

Adamov's imagination had always obsessed him with images of

humiliation; in the concentration camp, these fantasies were given a

concrete form. Caught in the middle of the worst that could happen,

there was no need to try to propitiate the forces of good to protect

him; with nothing left to fear, he was relieved of his anxiety and

apprehension. Whereas the exterior world had always seemed alien to

him, because it did not correspond to his neurotic fears, the concen­

tration camp in its horror was exactly what he had always expected from

life and finally conformed to his idea of reality.

In his book on suicide, The Savage God, A. Alvarez comments on

the apparently contradictory fact that some neurotics behave well in

adversity:

The most extreme example of this is described by a psychiatrist who observed that many people with neurotic or psychotic complaints fared remarkably well in the concentration camps: 'As regards patients suffering from anxiety, one might think that anxiety had become canalized through the actual causes of terror, which of course were abundant. Realistic anxiety in these cases took the place of neurotic anxiety. The improvement of patients with depressive symptoms might be explained by the fact that their need for punishment had been grati­ fied through the frightful circumstances, just as a de­ pressive state may often Improve when an organic disease develops.

In The Informed Heart, Bruno Bettelheim makes a similar observation based on his own experiences in the camps at Dachau and Buchenwald: 73

According to psychoanalytic convictions then current, the test of the well functioning, well integrated per­ sonality, the goal of psychoanalysis, was the ability to form freely intimate relations, 'to love,' to be in ready contact with the forces of the unconscious, and to sublimate in 'work*' Aloofness from other persons and emotional distance from the world were viewed as weakness of character. My comments in Chapter 5 on the admirable way in which a group of what I call 'anointed persons' behaved in the concentration camps suggest how struck I was with these very aloof persons. They were very much out of contact with their unconscious but nevertheless retained their old personality structure, stuck to their values in the face of extreme hardships, -[le and as persons were hardly touched by the camp experience,

Adamov's internment in a concentration camp was probably the one instance in which being out of touch with his emotions served him well in dealing with adversity. His metaphysical focus also provided him with a means of maintaining his identity in a situation whose purpose was to break the prisoners down, Bruno Bettelheim describes his comparable experience in which by interpreting events in the camps from a psychoanalytic point of view, he was able to make sense of what appeared to be senseless, and preserve his self-respect by giving value to ob­ servations based on his life's work.^^

The brutality of the guards gave Adamov the occasion to re-examine his ideas on the subject of humiliation. As a masochlst, he was unable to understand the motivation behind the mass production of misery in the camp: "Qu'un homme puisse humilier et torturer un autre homme, simplement pour simuler 1 'autorite, sans que rien ne le lie 3 sa vietime, ni l'ivresse des sens, ni meme la halne: face inverse mais reconnaissable encore de 1 'amour - cela stupefie 1 'esprit. At

Argeles, he clung to the conviction which justified his masochism; that suffering was a good thing Insofar as it was a means of arriving at knowledge. Of the other prisoners, he wrote: "(Juand Je vois mes 74 compagnons souffrir et mourir a mes cotes, j'ai le coeur serre par l'affreuse certitude qu'ils souffrent et meurent en vain, que pas un instant la moindre lueur de la grande science amere de la souffrance ne les a eclaires. "H ®

In summing up his reaction to his own personal experience of injustice, Adamov adopts a stance of philosophical revolt:

Je ne peux pas me resigner au monde, dire oui a ce qui est, louer la justice de tout. Je ne le peux ni ne le veux.

Parfois, il me semble que je dois tendre vers ce but mais plus souvent et plus clairement, je vois la seule dignite de l'homme dans 1 'insoumlssion de son esprit aux lois du monde.

His tone here shows how far he was from the inspiration of his political theater: there is no mention of a specific oppressor; the existence of the camps is treated as a natural disaster, although in all fairness to

Adamov, most of the victims probably experienced them in the same way.

In the aftermath of his camp experience, Adamov once again turns his focus inward and broods over the poverty which has afflicted his life:

Je connals pour en avoir ete abreuve jusqu'a la lie l'odieuse misere. Je ne sais que trop la demarche trerablante, 1 *allure ivre et hagarde que peuvent donner d un homme des chaussures dont les semelles ne tiennent plus, butant & chaque obstacle au risque de le faire tomber... l'homme qui tnarche alnsi ne pense plus comme un homme mais comme une bete blessee.’^ O

With the image of a man who stumbles over the detached soles of his shoes,

Adamov returns to the symbol of his fear of death: falling. Incidences of stumbling and falling, expressing helplessness and death, occur in

Adamov's theater: in Tous contre tous, the "Rgfugies," or Jews, are distinguished by their limp; persecuted both as a matter of government 75

policy and by the local citizens, they are marked for extermination.

When Arthur and Victor in Le Ping-Pong begin to make their fortune in

the Consortium, their first act is to go out and buy new shoes, which

symbolize their victory over poverty and the attendant spectres of de­

terioration and death,

Adamov rationalizes his poverty, as he rationalizes his other suffering, by saying that poverty is necessary to attain consciousness and knowledge; "Celui qui n'a pas connu la misere ignorera toujours une forme necessaire de la connaissance, celle nee de la privation," 121

Such statements exemplify his basic ambivalence toward the pain and privation in his life. Acutely aware of the suffering involved in being poor: "L*excSs de misere donne de l runivers une vision deformante, inhumaine fatalement,"!^ he still justifies his distress in two ways: first by saying that it is a means of attaining knowledge and second, that there is no reason to rebel against fate because: "Ce qui fut devait etre tel qufil fut."^^

In the final section of "Journal terrible," Adamov sums up his life.

His tone is depressed, as he is still preoccupied with death, his superstitious obsessions, and his impotence: "J'ai vieilli. Mais le temps n'a pas entame 1 'horrible bloc de peurs et de hantises qui, 191± depuls toujours, pese sur ma vie." Before going to bed, he must enact the following ritual:

Je ne trouverai pas le repos avant d'avoir effleure le bois de mon lit, baisS 1 'image de celle que j'aime, froisse entre mes doigts un papier ou je suis parvenu 3 fixer ma pensSe. Je dois toucher de la main tout ce qui me touche, m'dmeut, - ce toucher reel ayant le don d'eviter 3 tout ce qui me touche, m'emeut, d'etre, a son tour, touche, atteint par le m a l h e u r . ^ 5

In order to escape from his almost constant anxiety, he has recourse to 76 a thought process resembling meditation. Suffering from contact with others in a crowd ("souffrant dans tous mes nerfs a vif des blessants et inevitables contacts qu’impose la promiscuite ?touffante des hommes, 1 ? fi de 1 'aspect monstrueusement ferme de leur face"), he depersonalizes the people in his imagination by transforming the crowd into leaves 127 1 falling from the trees or a flock of birds in the sky. These visions bring him peace by illustrating his belief that men do not possess free will, but are influenced by universal law in the same way as leaves or birds. This conviction takes the problem of his destiny out of his hands, for if, like the leaves and birds, he is subject to universal law, then all he has to do is to be passive and let himself flow with the universal rhythms.

The end of the book continues to be characterized by an ambivalent ebb and flow of feeling. Each time he expresses his anxiety, he tries to put a better face on it. Reviewing his reasons for despair, he says:

J'ai trente-trois ans, et les ans qui s'ecoulent ne laissent derriere moi que le vide, Qu‘ai-je dit ou fait qui valait d ’etre dit et fait?

J'ai vecu dans l'angoisse, toujours depays?...

Je n ’ai pas su inserer mon existence particuliere dans la vie universelle. La femme, je ne l ’ai ja­ mais possedee. Je n ’ai pas d'enfant. ^

He then reaffirms the two interests which justify his existence: his love for a woman, and his writing:1 ^ 0 »xi me faut ne jamaisperdre pled, ne pas fuir, aussl bien dans le sens de s’Sloigner du danger que dans celui de laisser perdre, s’epandre le plus prdcieux de mol comme un liquide. Je dois serrer ma pensee, l'etreindre si fort contre mon coeur qu'un cri jaillisse, et ce cri, ce sera, irrevocable, pur, le 77

temoignage, 131 From his choice of words, it is clear here that verbal

expression is a substitute for the sexual act: writing is a sublimation

of his sexual desires. Unable to experience the act of love and thereby

to engender a new life, he puts his desires and energies into expressing himself in literature: his works will be his children. But his desire

to shape his own destiny is short-lived and the book ends on a note of

stoic pessimism: "Je dois des maintenant m'efforcer de vivre - le

coeur immobile - pour plus tard eviter les terreurs du coeur affole

qu*immobllisera l'etreinte de la mort."

Throughout L'Aveu, certain elements are constant. One is Adamov's

anxiety, which is rooted in his fear of death. To alleviate this

fear and anxiety, he resorts to two activities which only serve to in­

crease them: superstitious ritual and sexual masochism. Frustrated by his enslavement to these obsessions, he tries to give his existence meaning through love and writing. His ability to love is limited by his sexual impotence, so it is in the expression of his torment in words

that he finds meaning in life. In this first book, Adamov has already

found a forceful means of expression, conveying the very ambivalence of his thought in a direct manner. Regardless of whether the reader is able to identify with his specific problems, the experience of reading

this confession is a moving one, and the more remarkable for being

expressed in clear, cool prose without self-dramatization or a plea for

the reader's sympathy. The author is bearing witness to his most per­

sonal experience and what we see is the spectacle of a man struggling to

continue to exist and to expand the confines of his private hell. Notes - Chapter XI

^JI, p. 22. "J'ai tente vainement de dire l'amour qui me lie a la femme que j'aime." 2 JI, p. 22. "j'ai voulu enfin denoncer l'horreur du temps present."

JI, p. 23. "Je me suis applique 3 creuser sans relache, dans la chair profonde du langage perdu."

4JI, p. 17.

5JI, p. 24.

6 Ibid.

7JI, p. 22.

g JI, p. 27. Beckett also expresses the human condition in cartesian terms: Clov indicates Nagg in his garage can: "II pleure," to which Hamm replies: "Done il vit." Samuel Beckett, Fin de partie (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1957), p. 84.

P- 31.

1 0 Ibid.

^JI, P- 32.

12JI, P- 33.

13JI, P* 34.

1 4 ji, P- 35.

l5ii. PP . 40

16ji, P- 46.

17he, P- 16.

78 79

18JI, p. 112.

19JI, p. 20. ft.

2 0 1T „ JI, p. 75.

2 1 IM, pp. 122-123.

2 2 IH, p. 182.

23Melese, p. 109

24JI, p. 48.

2 5 JI, p. 49

2 6 JI, p. 53.

27JI, p. 60.

28 JI,tt p. „ 5 7, 29 , K Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal (Paris: Garnier Freres, 1961), p. 6 .

30JI, p. 57.

Adamov, "Encore et toujours Baudelaire,'* Les Lettres Frangaises (5 decembre 1957),

32JI, ft. pp. 58-59.

33JI, p. 59.

34JI, p. 60.

3 5 Ibid., ft.

36JI, p. 59.

37JI, p. 61.

38JI, p. 19

39HE, p. 193

4 0 JJ, p. 63.

4 1 Ibid.,

4 2 JI, pp. 63-64.

4 3 HE, p. 21. 80

4 4 HE, p , 28.

45 HE, pp. 31-32.

4 6 JI, p. 76.

4 7 HE, p. 14.

4 8 JX, p. 75.

4 9 JI, p. 6 6 .

5 0 HE, p. 31.

51JI» p. 65.

5 2 Ibid.

5 3 Ibid.

5 4 HE, p . 39.

5 5 HE, pp. 43-44.

56m;, p. 15.

^7HE, pp. 15-16.

58JI» p. 73.

59 JI, p. 36.

8 0 JI, p. 77

6 1 JI, p. 6 6 .

62 Ji, p. 70.

6 3 Ibid.

84Theatre I (Paris: Gallitnard, 1953), p. 18.

8 3 Parodie, p. 43.

6 6 parodie, p. 44.

87Parodic, p. 30.

6 8 JI., p. 64.

69JI, p. 78. 81

7 1 JI, pp. 78-79.

?2Melese, p. 157

73JI_, p. 85.

7*JI, p. 81.

75JI, pp. 81-82.

76jx, p . 91.

7 7 JI, p . 85

78JIt pp . 83-84.

7 9 JI, P- 75.

SOji^ p . 94.

8 lJI, p. 95.

8 ^JIt p. 96.

8 3 JI, p. 100.

8 4 lbid.

8 5 J1, p. 101.

8 6 JI, p. 70.

87J1, p. 97.

88 JI, p. 99.

8 9 IH, p. 14.

9®Jacquart, Derision, p. 157.

9 1 JI, p. 105.

9 2 JI, pp. 108-109.

9 3 JI, p. 109.

9 ^ U , p. 1 1 2 .

9 5 .U, p. 113.

9 6 JI, P- 115.

9 7 JI, pp. 119-120. 82

98JI, p. 119.

"J_L> P- 120. lOOibid.

lOljI, p. 1 2 1 .

102JI, p. 1 2 2 .

103HE, p. 79.

1 0 4jl, p. 126.

1 0 5 JI, p. 131.

1 0 6 JI, p. 132.

107j i , pp. 132-133.

1 0 8 JI, p. 134. 109ji, p. 136.

HOJI, p. 138.

Hljlaudelaire, no. 74, "Spleen et Ideal," Les Fleurs du mal, p. 78

U 2JI, ft. 1., p. 141.

li3JI, P- 142.

Alvarez, The Savage God: A Study of Suicide (New York: Random House, 1972), p. 101, quotes J, Tas, "Psychical Disorders Among Inmates of Concentration Camps and Repatriates," Psychiatric Quarterly, Vol. 25 (1951), pp. 683-84, 687.

■^"*Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart (New York: Avon Books, 1971), pp. 27-28.

Bettelheim, p. 1 1 2 .

117JI, p. 144.

U 8 JI, pp. 145-146.

119 JI, r p. 146. 1/ft

1 2 0 JI, p. 150.

1 2 1 Ibid.

122jbld. 83

1 2 3 JI, p. 151.

1 2 4 JI, p. 154.

1 2 5 JI, p. 155.

1 2 6 JI, p. 156.

I2 7 Ibld.

1 2 8 JI, p. 157.

1 2 9 JI, pp. 157-158.

1 3 0 JI, p. 158.

1 3 1 Ibid.

132il. P- 159. CHAPTER III

THE PLAYS

ACTING OUT OF NEUROSIS

"L'Enlisement" and L'Aveu show the nature of the neurotic dis­ tortion which gives Adamov's works their individuality. Besides being an expression of his own psychology, his works also demonstrate a consistent interest in history, and particularly in social injustices.

The theatrical symbols and characterizations by means of which Adamov expresses his feelings and beliefs, and their transformation over the years, are the subject of the present chapter.

In discussing the plays, I have found it practical to divide them into four major categories, which I have designated in terms of the author's intentions in writing. The first group are the ''pieces d'exor- cisme," which include: La Parodie, L'Invasion, La Grande et la petite manoeuvre, Le Frofesseur Taranne, Le Sens de la marche, Tous contre tous,

Comme nous avons ete, and Les Retrouvailles. Le Ping-Pong is a transi­

tional play between the early plays and the "pieces d’engagement:"

Paolo Faoli, Theatre de Societe, Les Apolitiques and Le Frintemps 71.

La Politique des restes and the radio play, En Fiacre, are transitional plays which lead to the "pieces d* evasion:'1 Saintc Europe, M. le Mode re and Off limits. The final play, Si l’ete revenait, is a "piece d'inte­ gration."

84 85

In the following pages, I will study the plays in detail, examin­ ing certain themes which occur throughout Adamov's theater. The theme of primary interest here is, of course, neurosis. For the protagonists in the early "exorcism" plays, neurosis is like a straitjacket which inhibits them from realizing their goals. In the middle "politically- committed" plays, neurosis is merely an idiosyncratic aspect of the protagonist's personality which is sometimes in conflict with his political Judgement. In the later "escape" plays, the characters try to deaden their neurotic pain with alcohol, drugs, or violent masochistic experiences. In Si l'ete revenait, they confront their own and each others' neuroses in their dreams.

A consistent trait of Adamov's protagonists is their tendency to obey orders and their inability to successfully defy authority. In both the early and later plays, their emotional passivity is also evident in their susceptibility to self-destructive impulses. In­ extricably related to the character who is easily dominated is his oppressor. The most fear-inspiring character in all of Adamov's plays is the mother. Except for the sinister characterizations of Le Pere and

Berne in Le Sens de la marche, who are also parental figures, male authority figures are presented in terms of their fears and weaknesses.

The examples of physical disability and death in Adamov's theater reveal his masochistic orientation. It is characteristic for his characters to tremble or stand paralyzed under stress. They fear blindness and, in fact, begin to lose their sight. There are frequent references to Illness, particularly consumption, and an unusually high number of deaths, in the form of violent accidental deaths, executions and suicides. All of these events illustrate the fragile nature of life 86 and are related to the author's own fear of disability and death.

Another situation which occurs consistently in the plays is the love relationship. In the early plays, the protagonist hopes that love will rid him of his fears and enable him to lead a normal life.

In the middle plays, love is satirized in Paolo Paoli and idealized in Le Printemps 71, but in both cases it is secondary to economic and historical necessity. In the later plays, the characters are often drawn together and held together by their weaknesses. In Si l'ete revenalt, love is guilty or insecure, depending on its object. On the other hand, the couples in Salnte Europe, Off limits and Si l'ete revenalt love each other mutually, which is a step forward from the unrequited love of the early plays.

Pieces d'exorcisme

In the "pieces d'exorcisme," the characters are controlled by forces stronger than their own will. In the beginning scene of La

Farodie, they respond to bells and whistles:

On entend une sonnerie, puis des coups de sifflet. Le couple et le commlssionnaire vont s'asseoir sur les chaises. Presque aussitot un autre couple et et un autre cotnmissionnaire absolument semblables aux precedents entrent et prennent leurs places... On entend de nouveau une sonnerie. Le premier cou­ ple et le premier commlssionnaire se levent et sortent. Le second couple et le second comitiissionnaire pren­ nent leurs places.^

There are at least three levels of meaning to this image of the control of behavior through bells and whistles. The situation is, first of all, a commentary on modern urban life which reflects the industrialism and technology on which its economics are based. Men have come to resemble the machines they operate and whose schedules determine their own: their actions are no longer spontaneous and determined from the inside, but automatic and dictated by signals from the outside. On another level,

the bells and whistles represent the arbitrary nature of birth and

death and the meaninglessness of the concept of individual destiny. At

the second signal, the first couple and first police officer are replac­

ed by a second couple and second police officer who are "absolument

semblables." As they disappear, or die, the characters are replaced by

others in a progression which goes on forever in the inexorable process

of life and death. Finally, the automatic reaction of these couples

and officers to the bells and whistles anticipates the behavior of

the two main characters, L'Employe and N,, who are locked respectively

into their optimism and pessimism. Rather than adapt to the demands

of reality, they rationalize in order to maintain their attitudes intact.

When Lili does not appear at the appointed hour, L'Employe says that

the date must have been for another time and place because he will not

believe that she could choose not to meet him. N. blames himself

when Lili does not appear, saying that he is "impardonnable."'* In

this way, both characters are able to preserve the appearances that

suit them: L'Employe believes that Lili will ultimately meet him,

which fits in with his attitude of desperate optimism and N. believes

that he is guilty of having made unreasonable demands on her for which

she is punishing him, which is consistent with his feelings of guilt,

masochism and pessimism. Like the couples and police officers who

automatically respond to the bells and whistles, L'Employe and N.

automatically respond to the commands of their own inflexible natures

Like the characters in the chapter of the same name in Ils N.

is presented in La Farodie as one of life's "orphelins;" "Sous l'horloge, etendu par terre, N. II porte un complet noir trop court: pantalons jusgu'a mi-mollet, les manches s'arretant blen au-dessus des poignets.

Like an orphan, he has no one to "mother'1 or take care of him and he is at a loss to take care of himself. N.*s attitudes are close to those of Adamov in L'Aveu. He reminds Lili of the night when she first promised to kill him, evoking his fears of homelessness, poverty and death:

Le soir ou nous nous sommes promenes aux abords de la gare. Vous vous souvenez, il y avait autour de nous, sous la pluie, tout un peuple sans domicile qui ne bougeait pas. Je suis une fois retourne dans ces parages. Plus personne, les rues etaient desertes. (Pause.) Je ne veux pas disparattre comme ces gens- 13, pousses dans le dos."^

N.'s desire to be killed by Lili is a reaction to his feelings of passivity and helplessness. Unable to control his life, he decides instead to choose his own death at the hand of the woman he loves.

L ’Employe's reaction to the spectre of death, on the other hand, is to deny it. At the end of the play, when he is weak and nearly blind, he tries to assure Le Journaliste that he will soon be back at work.^

In La Parodie, all the male characters perceive Lili as a fetish against misfortune: when she is around, their lives seem to improve.

L*EmployS feels that she puts him in touch with the forces of life, saying: "Comme j'aime que vous aimiez ce que j'aime: le jour, la vie le feu, l'amour. J'ai, du reste, tout de suite pressenti en vous la santc, garante de l'avenir."® She gives Le Directeur de 1'Avenir the energy to work. He says to Le Journaliste: "Des qu'elle me quitte, raes forces m'abandonnent, elles s'en vont avec elle et, comme elle, 89 je ne sais ou. La tete me tourne, je n'ai plus de gout a rien. Aussi yrai que Je dirige "L’Avenir" et que vous y collaborez, je n'ai d'idees qu'en sa presence.1'® Like L'Employe and Le Directeur, N, draws strength from the presence of Lili: "Je me sens si bien depuis que vous etes IS, Votre seule presence a rappele mes forces. Je pourrais me lever, marcher, je pourrais meme mourir."^-® When he is away from her, he feels lost. He says to Le Dlrecteur: "Ou est Lili? Je ne devrais pas avoir a vous le demander. Mais je suis si vide, si perdu.Le Journaliste observes that N.'s physical state is affected when he is separated from Lili: "quand vous etes separe d'elle depuis un certain temps, votre etat physique change, n'est-ce pas, vous etes

1 7 nerveux, agite sans raison, couvert de sueurs... Le Journaliste's description resembles the symptoms of withdrawal from alcohol or drugs, a comparison which is meaningful when one considers that the characters* attachments to Lili resemble addictions. When they are separated from her, they suffer from an emotional state resembling withdrawal: their anxiety increases and they feel listless and unable to act.

The characters often seem to have no feeling of their own individual importance in La Parodie: N. is "drowned: in sheets of paper from Le Directeur's desk and L*Employefs voice is covered by the noise of typewriters in his business office. Both L'Employe and N. are lost and submerged in an impersonal, bureaucratic world, typified by the company for which L'Employe works, L'Agence d*Isolation Thermique.

The characters age in the course of the action. L'Employe en­ counters the two women from the couples in the beginning of the play; 90

' 'Passe tres vite la femme du premier couple, vieillie, les cheveux

1 ^ blancs... "Passe tres Vite la femme du second couple, egalement vieillle. Elle porte un enfant dans les bras."*^ They are threatened by the indifference of the city and by the natural processes of age and death, but their greatest threat comes from within, from their ovm masochism and inflexibility. In words which recall "LrEnlisement,"

N, says: "La nuit derniere, J'ai reve de boue, d'une boue qui avait mal, Elle se tordait de souffrance. Je suis cette boue."^^ He dies apparently crushed by an automobile, a reference to the author's own attempted suicide before the age of twenty."^ In the last tableau,

Lili is also older and almost infirm. She says: " - J'ai mal partout.

Je suis toute courbatue, toute brisee. On ne m'a pas laisse me reposer un seul instant. Comme je suis malheureuse!" 17 Her frantic existence has taken its toll on her physically and, unable to slow down, she has lost control of a life devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. Like the characters who respond automatically to the whistles and bells, she runs to the voices offstage which call "Lili! Lili!"^® Rather than spend an evening with Le Journaliste, whom she perhaps loves, she is compelled by old habits to run off to those who expect her. The fatigue and despair to which her life have brought her are indicated in the stage directions: "Lili enleve son chapeau, s'assied sur le rebord du trottoir et prend sa tete entre les mains.■■ Elle s'affaisse, baisse la tete. Ses cheveux lul tombent dans les yeux.

The theme of blindness runs throughout La Parodie, a reminder of the incident which inspired the play. In the Introduction to Theatre II,

Adamov describes a street scene which he witnessed: two young girls emerged from the metro and bumped into a blind man without noticing him. 91

They were singing a popular song: "J'ai ferine les yeux, c'etait merveil-

leux... "^0 This scene Inspired him to use similar concrete situations

in the theater to demonstrate man's essential isolation. The instances of poor sight which are presented in the play have less to do with

lack of communication, however, than they do with the character's in­ ability to cope with life because of his own constitutional weakness.

The loss of sight is a concrete symbol of other infirmities, such as

the failure to perceive life realistically, rather than in terms of one's hopes and fears, and to motivate oneself to accomplish self- determined goals, rather than to merely respond to cues from the out­

side. Blindness leaves people helpless and dependent on others.

Because it is so disabling it is an effective expression of the fear of physical deterioration and death.

The first voices heard in the play are those of an optometrist

or ophthalmologist and his patient offstage:

UNE VOIX. - Un metre quatre-vingt-cinq. Oul, vous etes grand. (Pause.) Mettez-vous la. N'appuyez pas. Sans appuyer. Qu'est-ce que vous voyez IS?

UNE SECONDE VOIX. - Je ne vois rien.

PREMIERE VOIX. - L'autre oeil. Sans appuyez...

21 SECONDE VOIX. - Je ne vois rien. C'est justement... "

Shortly thereafter, the voices are again heard offstage:

PREMIERE VOIX. - De pres, vous voyez bien?

SECONDE VOIX. - Oui, oui.

PREMIERE VOIX. - Mettez-vous dans le fond, tout au fond... ^

The Insertion of these interchanges between doctor and patient into the

play suggests a preoccupation with physical affliction which is one of 92 the constant themes in Adamov's works.

In a passage where the physical inability to see is played off against psychic blindness* La Prostituee says to N.j

LA PROSTITUEE. - ...Avez-vous de bons yeux? Pou- vez-vous les apercevoir? Moi, je ne vois pas de loin.

N. regardant dans le vide* d'une voix absente. - Je ne vois rien.^

At another point, L ’Employe says: "On ne voit plus tres bien, ce n'est tout de meme pas la nuit, je m'en serais aper^u.^^ L'Employe suffers from both a physical and mental inability to see clearly.

When he is in jail and Le Journaliste has metamorphosed into his lawyer* the following interchange takes place:

LE JOURNALISTE. - ...Mais, au fait, etes-vous sur de bien voir? (II fait quelques pas a reculons en di­ rection du public.) La, vous me voyez?

L'EMPLOYE, se levant* le dos toujours au Journaliste et au public. -Non, je ne vois pas.

LE JOURNALISTE, se rapprochant d'un pas de 1'Employe. - La* vous me voyez mieux?

L'EMPLOYE. - Non, je ne vois pas.^

In this passage, it is clear that L'Employe's blindness has more to do with his point of view than with the condition of his eyes. He cannot see Le Journaliste because he has his back turned to him. He is not blind* but looking in the wrong direction. This inability to focus on what is relevant to him, in this case the presence of Le Journaliste, is symbolic of L'Employe's way of thinking and presents a literal image of Adamov's view of neurosis as a handicap. If one is unable to face reality because of personality conflicts, then the resulting distorted view of the world is as severe and disabling as actual physical blindness. 93

The relationship between the composite character which is L'Employe-

N. and Le Journaliste was perhaps inspired by the friendship between

Uncle Vanya and Astrov in Chekhov's play, which Adamov translated.^ Le

Journaliste's life, unlike those of the other characters, is not ruled by love. He says of Lili: "Je suis peut-etre le seul a pouvoir me passer d'elle." 27 Like Astrov in Uncle Vanya, he feels that he is working for humanity and that no one appreciates his efforts: "Ma tache m'ecrase parfois, mais personne ne semble s'en rendre compte...

On me croit curieux, meticuleux, parce que je note tout ce que je vois et entends. Mais les gens ne comprennent pas que si je le fais, c'est pour eux, pas pour moi."^® Unlike L'Employe, N. and Lili, the goals of Le Journaliste go beyond his immediate emotional needs. Like

Astrov, he has subordinated the satisfaction of these needs to the improvement of life and the future of all men. Le Journaliste has the sense of reality that both L'Employe and N. lack, but he is detached and has apparently achieved intellectual objectivity at the expense of passion.

In La Farodie, the elevator is used as a symbol to suggest sexual Inadequacies and anxieties. Le Directeur says to N.: "Je sals, l'ascenseur est tres difficile a mettre en marche. C'est un appareil prehistorique. Moi-meme, qui suis... plutot robuste, comme vous voyez, je n'y arrive pas sans m'essouffler beaucoup."^

When Le Directeur tells N. that he gets out of breath trying to get the elevator to work because it is an old model, the reference to the effort which sexual activity costs him at his age is direct and humorous. In another instance, L'Employe says to Lili: 94

Je ne suis inquiet, en ce qui vous concerne, que sur la question logement. II semble que l'on ne trouve d'appartements qu'a des etages tres... eleves. Je crains que vous ne souffriez des trop frequents se- jours dans les ascenseurs, d'autant plus qu'3 maintes reprises, j'ai remarque leur fa^on un peu brutale d'interrompre aux etages leur ascension.

L'Employe always tries to project an optimistic attitude into what he says, but in indirect ways he expresses his fears. The rigidity of his personality is caused by the effort of constantly denying his real fears and disappointments. When he talks about the problems that he foresees Lili will encounter in her lodgings, it is easy to discern his anxieties. The fear of heights has many meanings, suggesting, first of all, a fear of falling, or death. The fear of death involves a

fear of loss of control and this is where the fear of heights is related to fear of the sexual act. When L'Employe uses the word

"brutale" to describe the way the elevators stop at floors, he is also suggesting that he fears violence in life and at the hands of others.

In Adamov's next play, L*Invasion, the theme of blindness reoccurs.

Although it is morning when the play opens, Pierre has to ask his wife, Agnes, to open the curtains and turn on the light in order to see. La Mere says to her: "Agnes, veillez done 3 ce que Pierre se

fatigue moins. Vous savez bien qu'il a les yeux fragiles. A travailler

comme il le fait depuis deux ans, il risque de perdre la vue." 31 His difficulty in seeing represents Pierre's inability to perceive what he should do. He has conflicts in several areas: his friend Jean's memoirs which he is editing are not clear to him and he is ambivalent toward the

idea of publishing them; he has devoted himself singlemindedly to the 95 task of editing and has neglected his relationship with his wife; and he and his wife are living in a household dominated by his mother.

Pierre is a man who is constricted emotionally and at the source of his problems in his work and his marriage is his dependence on his mother. His inability to make editing decisions reflects his in­ ability to decide to separate himself from his mother, Like Pierre,

Agnes does not have a sense of her own autonomy because she is still trapped within the family. Pierre blames Agnes because she does not help him enough with his work and his mother criticizes her as a housekeeper; in the eyes of La Mere, Pierre can do no wrong and Agnes can do no right. Agnes is a rival for Pierre's attention and out of vindictiveness, La Mere makes her into the family scapegoat. Agnes accepts their criticism without revolting. She has a dependent person­ ality: when La Mere points out that the broom she is looking for is behind her, she says: "Je ne l'aurais pas trouve toute seule.'°

There is some indication that Agnes' relationship to her dead brother,

Jean, was incestuous ("On ne s'est jamais quittes. Quand il est parti de la maison, je l'ai suivi."^), and that her dependency on Pierre is an extension of this neurotic attachment.

Pierre's task is to organize and edit his friend Jean's papers.

In do doing, he projects much of his anguish onto Jean's works: "Car, enfin, qu'est-ce qui nous prouve que les soi-disant negligences, les oublis, les omissions, les erreurs, ne sont pas dus a une intention inconnue, a un scrupule... Ou meme a une peur? Rien ne la prouve, bien sur. Et meme s'il n*y avait dans tout 5a qu'une immense fatigue!

At another point, he makes a statement reminiscent of L'Aveu, the idea 96

of suffering as an inspiration in writing: "Bien sur, il parlait de

detruire ses papiers, souvent meme. Mais c'etait aux moments terribles,

quand tout lui apparaissait d'avance inutile. S'il n'avait pas connu T c ces moments-la, je me demande s'il aurait jamais Scrit."'-’-’ Pierre’s

perception of his task is essentially romantic. He says of his work:

"On ne publiera pas. Du moins, tant qu'il n'y aura pas, ici ou ailleurs,

un homme prepare a recevoir cette oeuvre dont je suis responsable.

The irony is that Pierre sees himself as in touch with the truth

through his art, whereas in face he is so emotionally conflicted that

he is barely able to function. Speaking of his work at another point,

he says: "On s’enlise dans ses propres procedes... On s'embrouille

dans ses propres trouvailles... On ne voit plus clair.

The tragedy in L 'Invasion is one which concerns timing. Pierre

retreats to the seclusion of the back room to try to see things more

clearly. When he emerges, he tells his mother that he has decided to

live a normal life with Agnes, and he tears up the manuscript on which

he has been working. He has found the "truth" for himself, which is

that his relationship with his wife is more valuable to him than a

literary achievement. By choosing to devote himself to their

marriage rather than to the editing of his dead friend's papers, he

is choosing life over death. Unfortunately, by the time he has made

this decision, Agnes has despaired of ever having a real marriage

with him and has run off with Le Premier Venu. The sinister agent in

the tragedy of his subsequent suicide is La Mere. When Agnes comes

back, to see him, La Mere pushes her out the door and back into the arms of Le Premier Venu. Pierre's death is the indirect result of his mother’s possessiveness. 97

La Grande et la petite manoeuvre is concerned with the question of what controls people's actions. Le Militant, Le Mutile, the revolution­ ary partisans, and the government guards are all following orders; the irony is that each accuses the other of being under someone else's control. The tendency to blind obedience of the characters in Adamov's early plays reaches its culmination in the character of Le Mutile, who is controlled by Les Voix des Moniteurs, disembodied voices which instruct him to do physical harm to himself. Les Voix des Moniteurs are audible only to Le Mutile and are externalizations of the self­ destructive Impulses which he is incapable of controlling. He imagines them to be controlling him from the outside in order to avoid respon­ sibility for his acts of self-mutilation: "Ils vont m'appeler, je le sens, et il faudra que j'y aille, comme toujours. 1 1 s sont maltres de moi... According to him, the orders which control his behavior

(which originate in his subconscious) are imperative, whereas those which govern men in society can be disobeyed. He admonishes the government guards who are beating Le Militant: "11 y a des ordres qui vous forcent a obelr, ce ne sont pas ceux-la!"^

Le Militant, like Le Mutile, is controlled by orders which he believes are of a higher order than those which others follow. In his delirium, he says to the government guards: "Vous croyez nous frapper avec vos mains, mais vos mains ne vous appartiennent pas. Ce sont eux qui les dirigent. Eux qui vous trompent depuis toujours."**®

By "eux" he means the oppressive political forces which will be swept away by the Revolution. He encourages the citizens to revolt against the tyranny of their rulers: "Secouez-vous! Desobeissez aux ordres! 98

Rejoignez nos rangs!"^ and says to his wife when she complains that he

is abandonning their sick child: ” 11 faut que je parte. II y a des

ordres qu'on ne discute pas."^ When she suggests that the Revolution

is premature, he says: ”J'ai accepte d'obeir une fois pour toutes...

Mon avis, c'est le leur. S'ils disent qu'il ne faut pas attendre,

ils ont raison,”^

Le Mutile has superstitious faith in the power of woman's love.

He tells his sister that if he could have a child by a woman, everything

would be different: "Car, alors, tout changerait. (Chuchotant,) Ils

ne pourraient plus rien contre moi,"^ He seeks protection from his own

self-destructive impulses in Erna's love, and says to his sister, refer­ ring to Erna's power over Les Voix des Moniteurs: "Depuis que je l'aime,

je vis, je respire, ils me laissent en paix... J'avais depuis toujours

le pressentiment que seul 1 'amour pouvait me delivrer, mais je croyais

qu'il m'etait refuse... Elle s'est mise entre eux et moi, elle est

le mur qui me protege.Erna willingly accepts the role of protector.

When she asks Le Mutile if he was thinking about a woman when his hands

got caught in the machinery at the factory, he says: "Je ne pensais

pas a une femme. S'il y avait eu une femme a laquelle j'aurais pu

penser, ce ne serait peut-etre pas arrive... She replies: "Alors,

pensez a moi... et il ne vous arrivera jamais rien."^ Erna is a

sadist who takes advantage of Le Mutile*s dependence on the love of a

woman for his personal salvation. She says: "J'aime qu'on ait besoin

de moi... / ft Despite his love for Erna, however, Le Mutile's body

begins to tremble as he enters his sister's apartment, and once again

he hears the orders of Les Voix des Moniteurs. He seeks reassurance 99

from his love: "Erna, dis-moi que nous vivrions ensemble? J'ai

besoin que tu me rassures, que tu me le redises encore." 49 And "Erna!

(II se leve et veut embrasser Erna, mais il tremble de la tete aux

pieds. 11 dolt y renoncer.) Tu me proteges? Dis-moi que tu me

proteges.,, "^0 But despite the desperate hope which he places in

his love, Le Mutile loses his hands and than a leg by obeying the

instructions of Les Voix des Moniteurs, When Erna comes to see him in

the hospital, the following interchange takes place, in which it is

clear that Le Mutile and Erna are both deriving gratification from

their masochistic and sadistic roles:

LE MUTILE. - C'est vrai? Tu m'aimes encore un peu... bien que je ne sols plus qu'un... debris...

ERNA. - Que tu es sot! (Elle embrasse le Mutile.) Je les aime, moi, les debris^tu sais.^l

Le Mutile tries to explain to Erna that he depends on her love to

save him from himself: "Erna, c'est de ma vie qu'il s'agit. II faut

que tu comprennes. II me suffit de douter de toi un seul instant pour

que je sois oblige d'aller de nouveau chez eux!"52 But the voices

start again and Erna, who does not understand, or does not choose to

understand the forces which are overwhelming Le Mutile, attacks him out of jealousy for his attachment to his sister: "(Le Mutile essaye

toujours d'atteindre la porte, mais son corps est maintenant tout

secoue de tremblements. II arrive a la porte, mais Erna lui arrache ses bequilles. II tombe. Erna, au Mutile, qui essaye de se relever: Aliens,

un petit effort!

Like N. in La Parodie, Le Mutile is run over by an automobile which

leaves him legless, armless and sexless (the latter mutilation suggested 100 by the fact that Erna says that his voice has changed)."*^ At the end,

Erna pushes Le Mutile's cart out into the street and the last words heard are those of Les Voix des Moniteurs which announce: "A meme le sol."-*-*

In the final analysis, Le Mutile's own self-destructive impulses cooper­

ate with Erna's sadism; he is propelled to the door by his voices and

she pushes him out into the street, presumably to his death.

In La Grande et la petite manoeuvre, as in La Farodie and L 1Invasion,

the characters are not free. By virtue of the fact that he is the only

one who hears them, it is clear that the instructions which Le Mutile

is receiving come from his own subconscious. Like the other neurotic

protagonists in Adamov's plays, he is unable to "see" the nature of

his conflicts. Despite his fear of death, Le Mutile is bent on a

course of self-destruction. Les Voix des Moniteurs are a delusion

invented by him to cause himself pain and thereby relieve his feelings

of guilt and anxiety. He believes that he can be saved by a woman's

love, but the woman he chooses is a sadist who participates in des­

troying him. His desire to have a wife and child are merely wishful

thinking. What he really desires is a return to the arms of a mother

who will protect him from the threats of both the inner and outer

worlds.

La Grande et la petite manoeuvre illustrates the existential

philosophy of L'Aveu, that whether one Is active or passive, cheerful

or despairing, all human endeavors are equally futile in the face of

death. Like Le Mutile, Le Militant Is a rigid, all-or-nothing kind of

character, who is ultimately incapable of surviving the success of the

Revolution and his own ascension to leadership. In choosing to use 101 repressive measures to consolidate the gains of the Revolution, he is condemned to repeat the mistakes of those who preceded him. Like

Pierre in L'Invasion, he puts all his energy into his work and has none left for his wife and child, who finally dies of a suffocating disease.

The child's illness is exacerbated by the presence of Le Militant and his choking symbolized the constrained, obsessive life which his father leads. In the same way as the sickness and death which occur in L'Invasion (the death of the neighbor across the hall, the mysterious illness of Le Premier Venu), the child's disease suggests that something is unhealthy in the lives of the characters. Like the mushrooms and the corpse that grow in Ionesco's Amadee, ou comment s'en debarrasser, the sickness and death which occur in the background of Adamov's plays re­ flect the death-oriented activities of the protagonists.

The secondary characters in the play also suffer from dependency and weakness. Neglected by her husband, Le Militant, La Soeur turns to her brother for emotional support: "caline. - Si tu avais voulu garder ta soeur, tu aurais reussl. (Etreignant le Mutile.) Tu as toujours compte pour moi plus que les autres, tu le sals bien."-*^ As in L'Invasion, where there is the suggestion that the relationship be­ tween Agnes and Jean was abnormally close, La Soeur seems to be trying to keep her brother bound by family ties. She has despaired of her relationship with her husband and is Jealous of Le Mutile1s love for

Erna, Like the mothers in the early plays, she regards the woman her brother loves as an intruder into the family circle.

Erna's lover, Neffer, the examining officer who brutally extracts

Information from political prisoners, feels oppressed by the bureaucracy which will not give him a free rein in torturing. Like N. In La Parodie, 102 and the characters in L * Invasion, he feels submerged and suffocated beneath paperwork: ’’Ils revent de m'etouffer sous leurs fiches pour m'enlever toute... combativite. Neffer is sadistic and associates violence with virility; when he is no longer able to beat his prisoners and is limited to filling out forms, he feels it as a loss of potency.

At the end of the play, only Erna has managed to place herself in a surviving position: ''Moi, Je ne crains rien. Je n'ai pas perdu de temps, je me suis fait des relations." 58 Of all the characters,

Erna is the most adaptive to the changing situation, but this quality is overshadowed by her cruelty, and Adamov's sympathy is clearly with

Le Mutile, who represents graphically his masochism as it was portrayed in L'Aveu.

Le Professeur Taranne expresses the feelings of guilt and in­ adequacy which the author experienced in a dream. Taranne, who in the dream was Adamov, has been accused by the police of undressing on the beach in front of children. From the beginning, he exhibits signs of paranoia, suspecting that people are watching him; "Je sals trop bien qu'on m'observe, qu'on me fouille du regard, que tout le roonde a les yeux fixes sur mol,"-^ an(j feeling that he is persecuted. When he describes the children who have accused him of undressing on the beach, he says: "Ils etaient la, tout pres, ils m'encerclaient... Et il en sortait d'autres, de partout en meme temps. Tous venaient sur moi.

Alors, Je me suis mis 3 courir."^ His bad conscience causes him to contradict himself in his attempts to prove his innocence to the police.

He says: "Et puis, d'une maniere generale, je n'aime pas marcher. Je 103 ne peux pas travailler en marchant."^ Shortly thereafter, he says:

"Quand on ecrit tres vite, en marchant, par exemple, - et je travaille souvent en marchant, - il arrive qu'on ne puisse pas se relire.

His Insecurity suggests that he is not who he purports to be, a well- known university professor, and reality contradicts his claims to honor and respectability: in the police station, he is ignored by people who he hopes will recognize him, and from the Rector of the

University in Belgium where he has recently given a series of lectures, he receives a letter telling him not to return because his courses were too long, the students were bored, and he did not give credit to

Professor Menard, the conclusions of whose research he presented as his own. The rigidity of Taranne's personality is presented in the be­ ginning stage directions: "Debout devant la table, le professeur

Taranne, tres raide."^^ Because of his inflexible nature, he is not able to withstand the breakdown of his self-image caused by the accusations of the police and the criticisms of his peers. At the end of the play, he turns his back to the audience and undresses, a gesture which represents the crime of which he has been accused and which sym­ bolizes his loss of illusions about his achievements and importance.

Martin Esslin suggests that in creating Taranne, Adamov freed him­ self from the limitation of one-dimensional characters.

Thus, in Le Professeur Taranne, the hero is both an active scholar and a fraud, a respectable cit­ izen and an exhibitionist, an optimistic hard­ working paragon and a self-destructive, slothful pessimist. This opened a way for Adamov toward the creation of ambivolent, three-dimensional characters to take the place of schematic expres­ sions of clearly defined psychological forces. 104

In Le Professeur Taranne, as in La Farodie, the psychological disequilibrium of the protagonist is expressed by the shifting nature of reality. In both plays, there are characters who metamorphose into other characters, and locations which become other locations. People wander off when the main characters (L'Employe and Taranne) are in the middle of conversations with them, causing them to further doubt their reality. Taranne's fear that he has attained neither academic distinction nor reknown is represented by his notebook with empty pages, and the blank seating chart which is supposed to show him seated at the table of honor. In the early plays, the shifting nature of exterior reality gives a concrete image of the confusion reigning in the minds of the main characters. Like Taranne, they are dreamers and objects appear to them as symbols and signs which reflect their fears and obsessions.

In Le Sens de la marche, Henri lives in an oppressive atmosphere of family conflict with his father, his father's masseur, Berne, and his sister, Mathilde. Like the mothers in the other early plays, Henri's father and Berne are politically conservative and their conservatism is related to a personal despotism in the management of their household.

Henri's father says of the forces of law and order: "Ils n'ont qu'a faire comme mol, tous comme moi! Est—ce qu'il y a du remue-menage dans ma maison? Est-ce qu’il y a des mecontents?"^

Henri is pulled away from his family in two conflicting directions: he is in love with Lucile and wants to rescue her from her own tyrannical father, and he has pledged his support to the revolutionary forces, represented by Albert and Georges, which are now mobilizing to 105 stage a coup. Henri is Insecure and unsure of Lucile, even though she has pledged her love to him. He is Jealous of her former attachment to

Georges, who unlike Henri, has already proved himself as a revolution­ ary. When he tells Mathilde that he loves Lucile, her reply reinforces his doubts; "Et elle, tu crois qu'elle t'aime? Elle est si belle,

Lucile!"66

Henri's father tries to keep him at home by means of emotional blackmail. He appeals to his guilt feelings by suggesting that Henri's birth was responsible for his mother's death and by concluding that as he is now confined to his bed, his son must also live as though he were paralyzed:

LE PERE, se dressant sur son lit. - Tu ne partiras pas. Ta mere est morte ici en te mettant au monde, tu res- tera ici. (D'une voix sure et egale.) Tu ne vas pas t'en aller, Henri. Dis: je ne vais pas m'en aller.

HENRI, avec effort, d'une voix changee. - Je ne vais pas m'en aller.

LE PERE. - Tu vois, je suis la sur ce lit, les mus­ cles tressaillent a peine quand je parle, je ne bouge pas. Eh bien, toi non plus tu ne bougeras pas. Tu feras comme mol. Dis: je ferai comme toi.

HENRI. - Je ferai comme toi.

BERNE. - Te voila enfin raisonnable.6^

Like Le Mutile, who is compelled to obey Les Voix des Moniteurs, Henri must follow his father's orders. His father's psychological control over him is so great that he repeats his commands as though hypnotized.

Like the other early protagonists, he acts out of compulsion rather than free will.

Henri's father wants him to become a teacher and has solicited a job for him. Henri wants to make his own decision, but he is confused 106 by his conflicting emotions. He is afraid to abandon Lucile by going

off with the revolutionaries, but he is afraid to stay with her

because she will have contempt for him if he breaks his word to Georges

and Albert. Finally, he fears that in staying at home he will come to

resemble his sister, Mathilde, who has submitted entirely to the will

of her father and Berne: "Si je reste, je serai comme toi. (Criant

presque.) Je ne veux pas etres comme toi, je ne veux pas to ressembler,

Mathilde, tu comprends?"^® Henri resents the fact that he has been

restricted by his family: "Vous m'avez relegue dans un coin, tous.

Mais je nfy resterai pas."^ He wants to rebel, but his different

attempts to break out of the family circle occur as in a dream in which there is a fatal repetition, Henri moves from one activity

to another in search of his independence, but in each he is forced

into submission which recreates his original submission to his father.

Having missed his appointment with the revolutionaries, Henri

is conscripted into the military for a year, Mathilde visits and

tells him that their father has died and she feels guilt over his

death: "Je sais, je suis coupable. Quand papa est mort, j'etais dans

la chambre voisine."^® Her words reflect Adamovrs guilt over his own

father's death:

Mon pere - une dette de jeu, la peur de l'avenir ferme? - s'empoisonne au gardenal. Je dormais cette nuit-la dans ma chambre, tout pres de la sienne, et ne me doutais de rien.

Je detestais mon pere, c'est done moi qui l'ai tue. Pendant au moins une annee, j'en etais sur, Je ne suis pas jusqu'a present sur du contraire.

Les Sifflets in Le Sens de la marche have the same function as the

bells and the whistles in La Parodie and Les Voix des Moniteurs in La Grande et la petite manoeuvre: they rule the lives of the men in the barracks. Le Commandant, played by the same actor who plays Le Pere, enters, complaining about the disorder. His actions betray a secret weakness in his character, belying his position of authority:

On veut m ’enterrer dans la poussiere, en finir avec le Commandant, mais il est toujours 13, le Commandant. (Repoussant 1’Adjoint.) Toujours sur ses jambes!

II chancelle, 1'Adjoint le soutient. ^2

Like Le Directeur de 1'Avenir in La Parodie, Le Commandant seems to be merely the imposing shell of an authority figure. His power consists of the exterior trappings of authority - his uniform and his position in the military hierarchy - but on the inside, he does not have the strength to maintain his facade.

Henri describes to Albert how he was dragged unwillingly into the army: ”11 m'ont tra^ne... comme un objet."^ Like other protagonists who represent aspects of Adamov's problems, Henri is treated like an object because he is passive and allows other people to control and manipulate him. He wants to escape from the military and his success is important to him because, as he tells Lucile, it is a decision he has made himself: "J'ai tout arrange, tout prepare, sans demander aucune aide, seul... Ce n'etait pas commode, mais j'y suis arrive...

Pour la premiere fois, j'ai agi... He wants to be able to act independently so that Lucile will respect him: "Et tu m'estimeras,

Lucile. Je voudrais tantl"^ His efforts are lost on Lucile, however, as her attitude toward him continues to be one of patronizing affection

"Hon deraisonnable petit Henrit"^ she has other plans for Henri and has arranged for him to be released from the service to work for her 108 father, Le Predicateur, at his Protestant mission. In Lucile's eyes, her father is all-powerful: ” 11 n'a qu'un mot a dire, une main a lever, et tout le raonde lui obeit, tout le monde s'ecarte... But her father is possessively attached to her in the same way as Henri and

Mathilde's father is attached to them. Henri says to Mathilde: "Tu sals comme elle a peur de lull II ne la quitte jamais. II s'accroche a elle, il ne peut pas faire un pas sans elle." 7ft At the mission,

Lucile*s father's incestuous feelings toward her become apparent. He says to Henri: "II suffit de la regarder et on ne voit plus ce qui se passe autour de sol..., on oublie tout. Je le sais (tres bas) mieux que personne." 79 He insidiously casts doubt on Lucile's affection for

Henri, by saying: "Je pourrais bien te chasser un jour, mon petit, et ce soir-la, Lucile (Henri s'arrete) aura beau sangloter: 'Pere, pere, je t'en supplie, ce n'est pas pour moi que je dis $a, mais il est trop 80 malheureux,' tu auras deja roule dans 1 'escaller."

After his confrontation with Le Predicateur, Henri trembles and

Lucile comforts him: "Tu trembles, mon petit. Qu'est-ce qu'il y a encore? Raconte, Lucile est la, elle t'ecoute."®^ Lucile is willing to take care of him, but Henri wants more than protection from a woman; he wants her respect as well. Unfortunately, Lucile seems to know instinctively that Henri is not yet free of the constraint of parental authority and treats him accordingly: when he asks her why she did not run away with him, she says: "Parce que tu n'as pas su me convaincre, mon petit.

Henri insults Lucile's father and leaves the mission to become a teacher, so that he will have an income and be in a position to ask

Lucile to marry him. As a teacher, he tries to avoid the dogmatic 109 statements and behavior which he has been forced to endure from figures of authority. He is honest with the children, but they respond by distrusting him because his method of teaching is untraditional: they have been taught to learn by rote and to respond to threats of punish­ ment and his method is to reason with them. Henri realizes that he had failed in this last endeavor and despairs: "Tenter la chance, c'est bien, mais encore faut-il qu'il y en ait une. (Criant.) Et il n'y en a pas!"®®

The Revolution is no longer an option for him because he has lost his faith in it: "Seulement, je suis brise (criant) et je n'y crois plusl"®^

When Lucile writes Henri that her father is dying and she needs him, he puts his hopes once again in the power of love: "Elle a besoin de moi.

Besoin de moi pour la premiere fois! Et je 1'abandonnerais pour garder un poste! Mais j 'en trouverai un autre, aussitot, n ’importe ou. Main- Q r tenant, j'ai toutes les forces." But when Lucile arrives, their reconciliation is interrupted by Albert who enters and attacks Henri, blaming him for the death of Georges, whom he pushed out into the street and into the hands of the police. Lucile offers to forgive

Henri for this incident and to protect him with her love: "(Maternelle.)

Je sais tout, Henri. (Pause.) Mon petit Henri, je suis tout pres, je

te protege!" This time, however, Henri rejects her love: "repoussant brutalement Lucile. - Non, je ne veux plus! C'est fini, je n'ai plus

l'age. (Criant a tuetete:) Va-t'en!"®^

Henri returns home to his sister, Mathilde, who offers to intercede on his behalf with Berne, now master of the house. Berne implies to

Henri that he has taken his father's place in the household and has become his sister’s lover: "Berne prend le bras de Mathilde et le pose 110 sur son epaule. Mathilde se lalsse falre. Henri se leve brusquement; mais il titube. II reste un long moment immobile, comme petrifie.n 88

Henri's loss of emotional control in this situation is expressed con­ cretely in his stumbling and paralysis. When he recovers, he kills

Berne for usurping his home and sister.

Like Pierre in L'Invasion, Henri arrives at his truths after an examination in solitude of his own thoughts: "Je me suis attarde longtemps, plus longtemps que les autres, mais j'ai accompli un travail sur moi-meme, et dans des conditions particulierement difficiles.

It is this psychological evolution that raises Henri above the stage of development of the characters in the other early plays, such as

L'Employe and Le Mutile. The presence of a woman to protect him from the world and from his own self-destructive impulses is no longer sufficient for him; he is trying to escape the oppression of father and father surrogates, and he consequently has no intention of being "mothered" by Lucile. Throughout the play, Henri finds himself in the same contradictory situation: he wants to be independent, while those around him - Le Pere, Lucile, Mathilde - encourage him to lean on them. When Henri kills Berne at the end of the play, it is an optimistic sign that the author may finally be ready to move out of the family circle and self-defeating ritual into a theater which looks to the outer, as well as the inner, world.

In Tous contre tous, it is not merely the psychology of the protag­ onist which is the subject. The social situation moves into the fore­ ground and Adamov concentrates on the interplay between personal neuroses and social ills, one of which is racism. In the plays which precede Ill

Tous contre tous, political concerns are present, but they are in the background. In La Parodie, there is a curfew to control civil distur­ bances and sirens can be heard in the background; in L 1Invasion, La

Mere and L'Amie discuss the problem of the emigres who are coming

into France and causing unemployment; in La Grande et la petite manoeuvre and Le Sens de la marche, there are revolutions in progress.

Adamov writes that in Tous contre tous, Les Refugies, who are dis- tinguished by the fact that they limp, represent the Jews. 9 0 In a broader sense, they represent any group of people who are irrationally persecuted. Jean Rist, the protagonist who becomes a persecutor of the refugees, is from the beginning full of self-hatred because of his inability to make enough money to provide for his wife, Marie, and his mother. Like the other protagonists in Adamov's early theater, he is living a marginal existence, socially, working as a delivery boy, with­ out the strength or the endurance to make a success of it. He feels ostracized by both men and women, finding that he is a loser in a man's world and expecting contempt from women because he is not success­

ful. He tells Marie that he is always passed over for work: "Ils ne voudront pas de moi. Oh! je les connais! J'attendrais des heures, tout le monde passera, mais moi, on me poussera en arriere. Moi, on ne me verra pas. Les autres, on les voit, on les ecoute, pas moi."^ When he rebels by striking out and hitting one of the men who has been ig­ noring him, his situation becomes worse, as his unemployment money is subsequently cut off.

Marie loves Jean, but his self-hatred is so deep that he does not

trust her and fears she will leave him. When she goes to deliver a blouse to a customer, he stops her: "tremblant. - Tu ne vas pas t’en 112 92 aller, Marie." Like Agnes, in L 1Invasion, Marie is driven away and she seeks solace with another man, Zenno. Like Agnes, she goes because

Jean is unable to love her. She says to Zenno: ,"Je me sens toute seule... Dis, tu as besoin de moi? Tu m'aimes bien?"^^ The political leader, Darbon, tells Zenno that Marie may have(left Jean because of his sexual impotence: "A vrai dire, je devine les raisons qui ont pousse

Marie. Jean Rist est un peu, disons, vehement, et la vehemence vient assez souvent, paralt-il, d'une... difficult** a accomplir certains actes... tres ordinaires... vous me comprenez, je pense?"^ Jean's sexual Impotence symbolizes a more general failure to cope in any aspect of his life.

La Mere comes to beg Zenno for a job for Jean, trying to enlist his sympathy by telling him that Jean is sickly: "C'est la sante.

Quand on n'a pas de sante... J'en sais quelque chose, mon bon

Monsieur." 95 Jean’s physical weakness, and La Mere's and Zennors limps, are physical symptoms of character weakness: all three are cowards and arouse antipathy in others.

In Tous contre tous, the psychology of the characters has become more complicated, combining contradictory attitudes in the same person­ ality. Unlike La Mere in L 1Invasion, who is consistently strong and domineering, La Mere in Tous contre tous is alternately cringing and over­ bearing. Like La Mere in L*Invasion, she is jealous and possessive, seeing her son's wife as a rival, but at the same time, she demeans him and castrates him psychologically. Jean feels hostility toward his mother: at one point he pushes her and knocks her down,®^ but his rage is Impotent, because psychologically she is stronger. In a battle of wills, she is capable of breaking down her son's resistance to her commands: 113

(Jean qui s'etait eloigne revlent vers sa mere, presque menaqant. La Mere crolse les bras et le re- garde dans les yeux; il s'arrete, tremblant.)

Jean, qui tremble de plus en plus, se lalsse tomber sur une chaise.97

Jean Rist's political behavior follows the curve of his emotions.

After his wife moves in with a refugee, Zenno, he is led by his feelings

of insecurity and jealousy to commit violent acts of reprisal, ordering

a refugee imprisoned in one of the camps because he has been accused of

seducing someone's wife, and a young woman executed for having helped

her refugee lover escape. He becomes known as a political agitator

for the racist feeling which he stirs up against the refugees. He and

Marie are reconciled when she returns to him from Zenno, but when as

last favor she tries to help Zenno flee across the border, she is shot.

At the end of the play, Jean Rist's character is briefly transformed

through the power of love. When he realizes that Noemi, a refugee who

has become his lover, has decided to stay with him rather than flee the

dangerous political situation, he becomes strong enough to stand up to

his mother and face death. His conversion is not entirely convincing,

however, because his death prevents its ever being put to the test.

His future with Noemi is cut short when they are both executed as refugees.

At the end of the play, Jean Rist expresses the desire to live productive­

ly rather than self-destructively, but the author is still unwilling to

explore how this might work out in reality.

Like the other plays, Tous contre tous is about men and women who

are not free. The characters are persecuted both in their personal and

in their social lives. The political world, represented by the cynical

opportunist, Darbon, impinges on the characters' lives and freedom in

the form of racist persecutions: Noemi is not free because she is a 114

refugee. Jean Rist Is not free because of his emotional problems;

he is unable to liberate himself from his love-hate relationship with

his mother, who both depends on him and bullies him. The philosophical

position of Tous contre tous, like the plays that precede it, is that

life is a no-win situation, because all men meet the same fate: whether one is propelled by one's own self-destructive tendencies, or becomes the victim of political oppression, death and physical destruc­

tion are every man’s destiny.

In Comme nous avons ete and Les Retrouvailles, Adamov continues to

explore the theme of parental oppression. Comme nous avons ete takes

place in a dreamlike atmosphere in which the protagonist’s identity is

in question. As the play opens, A. is taking a nap, which suggests that

the events which follow may take place in his dream. La Mere enters

the room, followed shortly thereafter by La Tante, looking for a little

boy named Andre, whom they eventually perceive to be A. Their behavior

toward A. is maternal and castrating. A. is to be married that day,

but they prevent him from becoming a man and taking a wife by insisting

that he is a child and forcing this identity upon him. It is clear,

however, that A. Is already ambivalent toward the idea of marriage

(he has sought refuge in his bed on his wedding day) and his personal

identity is not well-established (he is designated only as A. and is

easily led by the women's conversation into assuming the role of Andre).

He is diverted from his marriage and forced to regress to an infantile

state of dependence on La Mere by her superior strength of will,

passively submitting to the past which the women suggest is his own

and which bears similarities to Adamov’s own life: his mother's concern 115 for his health, his father's gambling and suicide. The short play is a rumination on the problems of will and identity, in which the author demonstrates that the certainty of his past still holds more attraction for him than an uncertain and threatening future.

After writing Les Retrouvailles, Adamov finally made a break with the preoccupations of his first plays. He describes the place of Les

Retrouvailles in the evolution of his theater as follows:

Les Retrouvaillcs ont cependant eu pour moi une grande importance car, les ayant terminees, relues, bien examinees, J'ai compris qu'il etait temps d'en finir avec 1 'exploitation du demi-reve et du vieux conflit familial. D'une maniere plus generale, je crois avoir, grace aux Retrouvailles, liquide tout ce qui, apres m'avoir permis d'ecrire, finissait par m'en empecher.^9

Edgar, in Les Retrouvailles, is another stiff, inflexible person­ ality who finds it impossible to adapt to the demands of adult life. As in the preceding plays, his problems revolve around his conflict with a parent, in this case his mother. Like Henri's father in Le Sens de la marche, Edgar’s mother has already decided on his future: she wants him to be an accountant and has arranged for a job for him in their village in the north of France. He rebels against her authority by continuing his law studies in Montpellier, going there not only to escape his mother's interference in his life, but because he feels pressured to marry his fiancee, who is living with his mother, and to assume the responsibilities of a husband and father. His mother is ill, or believes she is, and uses her illness to control her son. Edgar has also been sick, which prevented him from taking his law examinations, and his ill health represents his inability to cope with responsibilities. 116

It is clear that Edgar has been dependent on his mother and his fiancee, Lina, for money: "Et elles parlent d'argent; mais je ne leur en demande pas... ou si peu! (Pause.) £a m'est egal, je me debrouil- lerai tout seul."99 In the same vein, he says: "Et puis, je ne demande d'aide a personne, ce n'est pas mon genre.Like most of the pro­ tagonists in Adamov's theater, Edgar is determined, but unable, to be independent. In his attempt to free himself of the influence of his mother and his fiancee, he merely repeats the pattern of his dependency:

La Plus Heureuse des Femmes takes the place of his mother and Louise takes the place of Lina.

Edgar has been egotistical in his love for his fiancee: he criti­ cizes her for her interest in the piano, the sound of which he and his mother find annoying, and he finds fault with her for wanting him to give up law school to live with her. He wants her to understand and accommodate his ambitions, but he is unable to comprehend that like him, she wants to develop independently. He says to Louise;

EDGAR. - Par exemple, elle est persuadee que tout le monde se ligue contre elle pour l'empecher de faire ce qu'elle veut (riant), de se realiser, comme elle dit.

LOUISE. - Qu'est-ce qu'elle entend par la?

EDGAR. - Mais rien, precisement, rien.101

Shortly afterwards, he unconsciously contradicts himself by expressing the same need to "realize" himself by acting independently. Speaking of his mother and Lina, he says: "Et puis j’en ai assez. Qu'est-ce qu'elles me veulent, 3 la fin? Un homme de mon age est libre d’agir a sa guise, il me semble. 117

Edgar moves in with La Plus Heureuse des Femmes and tries to pre­ pare for his law examinations, but he is unable to make any progress.

At one point, he Justifies his not working by saying that he has spent two days sorting his papers because it is impossible to work in a state of disorder, projecting his own mental confusion onto La Plus

Heureuse des Femmes and Louise: "Cette manie qu'ont les femmes de toujours vouloir faire de 1'ordre! Farce qu'elles n'en ont pas dans la tete!"103 His criticism is an unconscious admission of his own state of mind. Unable to focus on his work and achieve his goal of earning a law degree ("11 fait quelques pas, puis s'agenouillant devant ses papers. Je... je ne m'y retrouve plus! "-*-04) he unwillingly admits that he lacks the power of concentration to succeed in law school:

Comment peut-on retenir quoi que ce soit... quand on n'a meme pas le temps de... prendre des notes. On lit une phrase au tableau noir, on veut la copier, deja elle n'y est plus, q'en est une autre! Je sais bien qu'on peut trouver un moyen... de noter tres vite... un systeme d ’abreviations... mais ensuite, comment se relire? II faut une memoire extraordinaire, et de la memoire, j'en ai, mais pas assez sans doute, puisque... Je dois bien reconnaltre que... que je n'y arrive pas!"^-*

His words reveal that he has no control over reality, which seems to him to shift and change in such a way that he cannot grasp it. Despite his admissions of failure, however, he never faces his inadequacy squarely in order to embark on a more realistic course of action.

Like other parent figures in Adamov's theater, La Plus Heureuse des

Femmes is alternately passive and aggressive in her behavior toward

Edgar. When he yells at her, she hides her face: "(La Plus Heureuse des Femmes se protege le visage comme un enfant qui craint d'etre battu.)"106 118

However, when she needs paper to wrap a blouse which she is delivering to a customer, she intimidates Edgar into letting her use his law papers for this purpose.-*-®^ She tightens her bond with him by becoming ill, and out of guilt and passivity, he is compelled to care for her and to help with her sewing and deliveries. La Plus Heureuse des

Femmes deliberately undermines his faith in Louise, whom he loves, by suggesting that she has not been helpful to him, but has thought only of her own work. 1 wOfi Louise wants to live with Edgar: she buys a tablecloth for their apartment in anticipation of this event and finds him a job as a part-time delivery boy. But by finding work for Edgar, she is repeating the pattern of mother and father figures who emasculate their sons by making decisions for them. When she kisses his hand and he falls off his bicycle, there is the suggestion that he is not capable of having a sexual relationship with her, a possibility which makes sense given his infantile dependency on others. Edgar gives vent to his hostility toward his mother and women in general and suggests that sexual impotence is a result of unresolved maternal conflicts, when he states that children should not be raised by their mothers: "La presence perpetuelle de la mere provoque chez l'enfant un... amollisse- ment desastreux. Rien de tel pour entraver son evolution, pour l'empecher de devenir un homme parmi les hommes.^-®^ It is his own dependency on his mother which has resulted in his inability to attain emotional adulthood and become "a man among men."

The following stage directions demonstrate in concrete terms the competition between Louise and La Plus Heureuse des Femmes for Edgar's affections. The scene recreates in a crude, almost burlesque way the 119 eternal rivalry in Adamov's theater between the mother and lover for the son's affections:

Louise, qui s'impatiente, s'approche d ’Edgar et veut lui poser la main sur l'epaule.

LA PLUS HEUREUSE DES FEMMES. - Non. Pas vous! Moi!

Elle pousse brutalement Louise qui tombe, puis, se penchant sur Edgar.) Petit Edgar! Des visites!

Edgar bouge. Louise, qui s'est relevee, s'approche une fols de plus malgre la plus Heureuse des Femmes qui aglte ses bras pour la chasser.im

This scene recalls an episode from Adamov's youth when he was ill and his mother literally chased his friend Huguette from his room, because she was frightening him with her strange behavior,m

Louise makes Edgar feel guilty by telling him that she has been fired from her job, partly because she recommended him for a job as delivery boy and he never went to work. She tells him that she is going to visit her friends Andree and Pierre and their baby, who are a fine example of a young couple who have successfully broken away from parental authority in order to lead lives of their own: "Ils ont ete si courageux. Se mettre en menage quand on n'a pas de situation... Ils ne voient plus leurs parents, ni I'un, ni l'autre. (Pause.) Andree est devenue tres belle.In confronting Edgar with this example and choosing to leave him to spend time with these friends, Louise is trying to communicate to him that she wants an adult relationship in which they will be independent of parental restrictions and able to become parents themselves rather than remain in the role of children.

On her way to visit Andree and Pierre, Louise dies in a train wreck. After her death, Edgar leaves Monpellier to return to his mother 120 and fiancee. La Plus Heureuse des Femmes accompanies him on the

train ride back home to Vevey, bringing out some chicken which she has prepared for the trip. She gives Edgar a wing and throws a bone on

the floor which he picks up and sucks. When she tosses down a second bone, he moves to the floor and continues sucking. When the train nears his destination, Edgar realizes that he has lost his train ticket and has no money, and La Plus Heureuse des Femmes gives him some for another ticket. His sucking and his need to be taken care of demonstrate his regression to an infantile state of dependence on the mother figure.

When he arrives home, he finds a nightmarish re-creation of the situation which he has just left. Lina has been killed beneath a train on her bicycle. Before her death, she had shown a great deal of pleasure in

taking care of his cousin Jeannine's baby. Edgar is overwhelmed by

this information: "Edgar, aneanti, titubant, s’appuie des deux mains

1 1 1 a la voiture d*enfant.11 At this point, he is forced into a final

regression by his mother who shoves him into the baby carriage and gives

it a push with her foot. The carriage goes across the stage and disappears into the wings.As in La Grande et la petite manoeuvre, where Erna pushes Le Mutile into the street in his cart, there is the

sinister suggestion that Edgar will meet with destruction.

The evolution of Adamov's theater front introspective, psychological preoccupations to social criticism gained momentum through his exposure

to the theater of Berthold Brecht, in 1954. That same year, he con­

ceived the idea of Le Ping-Pong, a play which anticipates Lite historical plays which follow. During this period, the author began to break out of the solipsistic universe he had created with his early theater. He

describes the change in attitude which marks his break with his early 121 plays as follows; "je voyais deja dans '1 'avant-garde' une echappatoire facile, une diversion aux problemes reels, le mot 'theatre absurde' deja m'irritait. La vie n'etait pas absurde, difficile, tres difficile seulement.

In Le Ping-Pong, Adamov continues to draw on the symbolism of his early theater in his portrayal of modern Western capitalism with the images of the pinball machine and the Consortium which produces it, and in the use of caricature and the schematic way in which the outside world is presented. In the early plays, however, the protagonists were the victims of their own neurotic compulsions and of the control which they allowed others to exert over them. In Le Ping-Pong, they have more options and make freer choices.

Adamov studies the relationships of the different characters to the pinball machine itself, and to each other through their associations with the machine. The constellation of characters is somewhat the same as in the early plays: Madame Duranty is a mother figure who constantly complains about her health, particularly her legs; she is alternately bullying and cringing in her behavior, and politically conservative and nationalistic. In keeping with the tenor of the times, her political scapegoats are the North Africans: "Encore un coup des

Nord-Africains! Ces gens-la, des qu'ils peuvent egorger quelqu' uni

Le Vieux is a figure of paternal authority. Like Le Directeur de

1'Avenir in L£ Parodie, his power is represented by his position as head of an enterprise, the Consortium. Like Berne in Le Sens de la marche and other older male authority figures, he has a sexual weakness for young girls. Sutter resembles Le Premier Venu in L*Invasion, a 122 caricature of machismo. Arthur and Victor are a couple, like the

couples L'Employe-N. in La Parodie, and Le Militant-Le Mutile in

La Grande et la petite manoeuvre, with the difference that the latter

couples seem to be different aspects of the same personality: the

optimistic self which seeks fulfillment through productive activity

and the destructive self which longs only to cease to exist. The couple

Arthur-Victor is based on Adamov's lifelong friendship with Victor,

and the characterization of Victor is consequently not simply another

aspect of Adamov's personality. Unlike the early protagonists, who

are unable to succeed in their endeavors, Victor prepares for his

medical examinations, passes them, and becomes a doctor. He resembles

Le Journaliste in La Parodie in the sense that he is a character who

is self-motivated and who stands at a certain emotional distance from

the action, a distance of which the characters who represent the

author are incapable. Arthur's and Victor's attitudes differ toward

the future and toward making money: Victor is willing to make sacri­

fices in the present to achieve his goals; Arthur has no clear

objectives and refuses to sacrifice the pleasures of the moment. For

Arthur, who is lazy, the pinball machine offers the possibility of easy

money, but he depends on the moral support of Victor to help him sell

his ideas to the Consortium and Victor does not share his enthusiasm

for the machine. Victor, the practical one, is able to resist the

attractions of both love and money in the pursuit of his professional

goal: "Eh bien, mol, Je n'ai aucunc envie dc m'attendrir... Mes cxamens

approchent, je les prepare, un point c'est tout,"!-^ Arthur is dependent

on his friend for direction; "... sans toi, je J'ai pas l'entrain, la 123 desinvolture, enfin... la liberte d'esprit qu'il faut pour aller la-bas...

Annette represents a development In the characterization of women

In Adamov’s theater. Like Lili In La Parodie, she is the center around which the romantic interest of the male characters focuses. The men experience a kind of impotence in regard to Annette, however. She is in love with Roger, but he is incapable of loving her, and Arthur,

Victor and Sutter are incapable of finding employment for her at the

Consortium. Unlike Lili, she is not the first concern of her admirers: their main interest is in making their fortune in the Consortium.

Annette is a three-dimensional characterization and does not function in the play merely as the object of the other's affections or interests.

Adamov suggested that the creation of Lili in La Parodie had given him the chance to settle a score with a woman with whom he had had an unhappy affair.This woman was his first love, Irene, whom he admits he was incapable of seeing as anything but an extension of his own ego at the time of their relationship. By the time Adamov wrote Le Ping-Pong, in

1954, his experience of women had broadened and he was able to see them as individuals with their own problems and preoccupations. The portray­ al of Annette is a measure of this new understanding. Like Brit in

Adamov's last play, Si l’ete revenait, Annette's pragmatism forms a counterpoint to the more ambiguous motivations of her lovers. When she says to M. Roger: "Mnis nc grnvitez done pas tonjours dans le monde ideal, e'est fatigant et dangereux, a la fin," Le Vieux replies:

"La voix de la raison."120

Le Vieux is presented in Le Ping-Pong as a classic capitalist boss, out of the same mold as Le Directeur de 1'Avenir in La Parodie, but his 124 anxiety is a redeeming quality which humanizes the caricature somewhat;

”... Le Vieux, clnquante ans peut-etre, sorte de monstre, caricature du

121 ’gros patron. 1 Une Inquietude l’agite, pourtant. When Le Vieux', says to Madame Duranty: "Car nous sommes coupables, oui, coupables, vous et moi,"^^^ he is appealing to her guilt feelings to pressure her into doing what he wants, which in this case is to sign a petition protesting the government’s proposed nationalization of the pinball industry,

Madame Duranty is overwhelmed by Le Vieux’s authority as head of the

Consortium and submits to his demand: "Dites done, Monsieur Constantin, e ’est tout de meme une pauvre vieille qui vous l’a signee, votre peti­ tion, "123 in his presence, she sees herself as a "pauvre petite chose,"124 eager to comply with his wishes and identify herself with his power.

Sutter is the promoter of the machine and it is his business to use words to manipulate people. With the symbol of the pinball machine,

Adamov criticizes the creation of false needs in a capitalist society.

The prostitution of words, concepts, and values in the advertising and sale of worthless commodities like pinball machines contributes to the alienation of modern man from a knowledge of his real needs.

Like Chekhov, Adamov uses the technique of indirect dialogue to reveal his characters’ deeper feelings. He describes this technique as follows: "J’eus alors recours a un stratageme: oui, ils parleront, chacun entendrn ce que dira l’autre, mals l’autre ne dira pas ce qu’il aura a dire. Afin de reussir la gagcure, je cherchai desesperement des phrases-clefs qui, apparemment, se rapporteraient a la vie quotidienne, mais, au fond, signifierait ’tout autre chose.’"125 The use of the pinball machine as the focus of the play presents an excellent 125 opportunity for this kind of indirect dialogue. The characters are able to express how they feel, while ostensibly discussing the machine.

Sutter, who is attracted to Annette, makes erotic allusions in talking about the pinball game. Commenting on Annette’s occupation as usher in a movie theater, he says:

Vous m'etonnez, Mademoiselle. Je n'aurais pas cru, de prime abord, que vous fussiez une adepte aussi fervente des salles obscures. Le plaisir passif, ce n'est pas un plaisir. (Montrant l'appareil.) Voyez- vous, si deja diverissement il y a, mes preferences iraient plutot a cet instrument. Avec lui, on agit, on lutte, on participe."126

Annette vents her frustrations toward M. Roger who does not respond adequately to her love, saying: "A present, il y a les stands! Excel­ lent pour les novices qui veulent s'exercer! Et puis on a le choix!

Si5 a ne marche pas avec l'un, on peut toujours en essayer un autre."127

When M. Roger goes to inspect a new installation of pinball machines, she attacks him for his passive personality and his voyeurism: "Ah! il ne vous suffit pas qu'on en parle... Vous voulez voir de pres, admirer le fonctionnement des flippers... Les actionner soi-meme, bien sur, c'est fatigant, mals si les autres le font pour vous... On peut toujours re- garder, c'est permis... "128

Le Vieux's thoughts turn to eroticism when he is approaching death.

When Arthur mentions the side chutes on the pinball machines, Le Vieux says: "riant, obscene. - Ah, les couloirs! C'est qu'ils ne sont pas larges! 11 tripote Annette."1^9 Speaking of the pinball game, he says: "Mais si la partie est plus longue, quelle importance? On la fait payer plus cher, et voila... Et tout le monde sera d'accord.

(Dans un gros rire qui ne le quittera plus.) Tout le monde sait bien que plus c'est long, plus c'est bon,., "130 126

As in the earlier plays, there is a degeneration of events at the end of the play. M. Roger's physical state deteriorates after the death of Le Vieux: "M. Roger, tres pale, a pose pres de lui une canne. La boutonniere ne s'orne plus de la fleur habituelle, mais d'un crepe de deuil. De plus, il porte, a l'un de ses pleds, un gros pansement et une pantoufle."131 Annette is killed by a car in front of one of the pin­ ball stands, possibly a suicide. Madame Duranty complains about her old age and ill health to Victor, who has become her doctor, and Sutter's prosperity declines: "Entre a gauche Sutter, presque en haillons. II a du mal a tenlr debout, et se sert de ses deux bras comme un funambule d'un balancier. Plus agite que .jamais, mais cette fois la machine tourne absolument a vide.'1^^ His loss of control is so complete that he does not even notice when he knocks Annette's corpse off the chairs on which it is resting.^ 3

Arthur and Victor continue to have different styles into their old age, but as Arthur had predicted,they have made a habit of a weekly game of ping-pong together. During the course of the last game,

Arthur crawls around on the floor looking for a lost ball: "En tout cas, c'est clair, je ne vois rien." Victor, also crawling, replies:

"Tu verrais peut-etre quelque chose, et notamment la balle, si tu portals des lunettes, comme tout le monde."-*-35 The interchange recalls the scene in La Parodie in which Le Journaliste points out L*Employe's poor sight. In the two plays, Le Journaliste and Victor are the foils against which L'Employe's and Arthur's unreasonableness and blindness can be measured. In his dependence on others, Arthur reveals a kinship with

Adamov's earlier protagonists, a connection which is inevitable as he, like them, reveals an aspect of the author's personality. 127

The characters in L£ Ping-Pong still continue to express the author's preoccupations. At one point, Arthur articulates Adamov's superstitious belief that events happen in series: "Notez bien que je crois aux series, comme tout le monde, plus encore, peut-etre, que tout le monde, Je suis absolument convaincu, par exemple, qu'un bonheur entralne un autre."136 another, Annette expresses the existential theme of man's isolation: "II sais que personne ne peut rien pour personne, Roger!"137 But the atmosphere of Le Ping-Pong no longer has the neurotic intensity of the early plays. It is not Arthur's dream which is represented on stage, but a study, psychological and social, of a certain society at a certain time, based on Adamov's own observations.

Le Ping-Pong focuses on an aspect of contemporary social reality: the manipulation of people's lives through the false values of capitalism.

The background of the play is no longer vague, but specifically suggests

Paris and the cafes with which the author was familiar.

Pieces d'engagement

Paolo Paoli is the first of Adamov's "pieces d'engagement" and is the major play in which the author was least concerned with the expres­ sion of his neuroses. It is basically a symbolic representation in dramatic terms of the economic causes which led to the First World War, and the characters represent a microcosm of French society of the Belle

Epoque, including the voice of the emerging militant working class. The author's desire for objectivity in this play led him to treat love in terms of economic cause and effect, but his predilection for neurotic characterizations may be seen in his treatment of Paolo Paoli's wife,

Stella. 128

Paolo Paoli, Stella, and the industrialist, Hulot-Vasseur, are involved in a sexual triangle motivated by desire for economic advan­ tage rather than by romantic feelings. Paolo and Hulot control Stella by flattering her into the central, but powerless, position of the beautiful and desired woman. Unaware until too late of how little influence she actually has, Stella uses her beauty to cajole Paolo and

Hulot into granting her favors. She plays the traditional role of the scatterbrained female to her husband Paolo's strong, controlling, successful male. To Hulot-Vasseur, she remarks: "Vous voyez, pour lui, je reste toujours une pauvre ecervelee qui n'entend rien aux choses du monde."138 Explaining her love for feathers to Hulot-Vasseur, she re­ veals the basic ambivalence which will prevent her from forming a lasting attachment to either Paolo or Hulot and which will lead to her later vacillation in her loyalties to France and Germany:

Notez que j'ai horreur de tous les realismes, mais la plume, j'entends la plume sur un chapeau, est 3 la fois vraie et pas vraie du tout, Elle ruse, elle suggere, elle simule, et j'aime, j'aime - peut-etre parce que je suis femme, mais pas seulement pour cela, pour d'autres raisons aussi, j'en suis sure - ce qui a la fois vous rappelle et vous detourne."139

Paolo and Hulot-Vasseur encourage and reinforce the role of the exquisite woman which Stella has chosen for herself. Paolo says:

"Car pour madame, je suis une brute," And Hulot-Vasseur replies: "Oh! elle nous prend certainement, nous autres hommes, pour autant de brutes, et, mon Dieu, je dols dire que je me sens un peu, devant elle, une de ces brutes... "1^0

From the beginning, there is a complicity between Paolo and Hulot-

Vasseur in maintaining Stella in a spoiled, but dependent, position and 129 between Stella and Paolo in seducing Hulot-Vasseur into taking Stella as his mistress, in order to obtain on credit the feathers which Stella needs for her hat business. Indirectly steering him toward the idea of a liaison, Stella tells Hulot-Vasseur that she observed his face during

the performance of a play, and confesses: "Cette expression m'a...

litteralement conquise."^^ Paolo adds to the atmosphere of sexual

innuendo by indicating Stella and saying: "Mais, monsieur Hulot-Vasseur, je ne sais pas si je puis vous confier aussi legerement votre future associee, pardon, cliente... Votre reputation de ravisseur,., "142

Later in the play, when Hulot-Vasseur will not give Stella's maid,

Rose, a new supply of feathers because Paolo's payments are in arrears,

Paolo taunts Stella: "Quoi, ton pouvoir se serait ereint? Tes grands yeux auraient fait faillite?"'*'^ Referring to the breakdown of

financial arrangements between himself and Hulot-Vasseur, Paolo says

to L'Abbe Saulnier: "car je les paye comptant, maintenant, les plumes sur lesquelles Hulot-Vasseur consent a coucher mon epouse. " ^ * 1

Like many of Adamov's neurotic characters, Stella imagines that everyone is in league against her: "Mais tous, tous, n'ont qu'un desir: me faire du mal."^-’ Her character develops in a circular pattern, because her neurotic nature causes her to continue to make the

same mistakes. The other characters, particularly Marpeaux, Rose and

Paolo, develop in a linear fashion. By the end of the play, they have

learned from events and are able to change their ideas and behavior.

Stella continues to use their sexual relationship to try to manipulate

Hulot-Vasseur, but it is he who controls her through his possession of

capital. Her only defense is sarcasm, which further alienates her from

those whom she needs. She says to Hulot: "C'est top facile! Stella, 130

Stella!' et l'effet devrait etre hypnotique. Seulement tu n ’es pas un hypnotiseur, mon cher... "146

While Stella tries unsuccessfully to dominate Paolo and Hulot-

Vasseur, the older Cecile de Saint-Sauveur willingly adopts an attitude of submission toward male authority figures in hopes of receiving protection from them. Entering the room, she says to Paolo and L'Abbe

Saulnier: "C'est moi, rien que moi, rien que la pauvre Cecile, a bout de forces, et qui renonce... "147 Later, she says to Paolo: "Je suis devant vous comme une pauvre petite chose. "148 L'Abbe Saulnier and

Cecile de Saint-Sauveur represent the most conservative forces in society: the Church, the aristocracy and the military. Like the parent figures in Adamov's early plays, they believe in a social hier­ archy, in nationalism and in strictly enforced law and order. Their acts often disagree with their high moral pretensions, however: L'Abbe

Saulnier is not above breaking his word to his friend, Paolo, and selling his brother's butterflies to Hulot-Vasseur for a better price, and his militarism contradicts his Christian ethics; and Cecile de Saint-

Sauveur tries to cheat Rose out of the salary she owes her.

The author establishes a relationship between Stella’s neurosis and the historical situation. When she decides to return to Germany, where her mother was born, her conflicted feelings represent the consternation of many Europeans before the outbreak of the war: "j'ai un ideal: je suis une cosmopolite, une Europeenne, oh! d'autant plus Europeenne que plus ecartelee au-dedans de moi-meme!^^ She tries to seduce Hulot-Vasseur into giving her some feathers to open up a hat business in Germany, but he refuses. When he says that peace may well continue in Europe, she expresses her dissatisfaction with her life by 131 bursting out: "La palx! Mais c'est la vie mediocre, l'adultere, les places d'Edmond Rostand... "150 when she takes leave of Paolo and

Hulot-Vasseur, she speaks in exalted language which shows how unhappy

she has been In the role of merchandising her favors and how out of

touch she is with reality: "Oh, je vous lalsse tous les deux a vos

petites affaires, petites gens! Je retourne chez moi, en Allemagne, car en Allemagne, au moins l'honneur... (Paroxystique.) Oh! j'aime encore mieux le bruit des bottes sur... sur le pave, que celui des pieces

d'un sou sur... sur... sur... "151 Stella is trapped by bourgeois

society in a situation where she is treated by both her lover and husband as a commodity. Unable to control the men in her life by means

of sexual favors, arrogance, or the threat of leaving, she welcomes the

idea of cataclysm which would literally stamp out the oppressive society

in which she lives. Her position is analogous to that of Henri in Le

Sens de la marche, who wants to participate in the Revolution, not out

of political conviction, but because it will destroy the patriarchal

system which is stifling his life.

As a collector and dealer in butterflies, Paolo sees himself as a

scientist, and as a manufacturer of butterfly-objects, he sees himself

as an artist. By refusing to sell his rarest butterfly to Hulot-Vasseur,

he redeems his loss of honor in having prostituted his wife to him:

"Mais ce n'est pas a vous que j'irai l'offrir! Un pauvre petit fabricant,

vietime des douanes ct des greves, ne peut pas... Allons, vous connaissez

assez 1'animal pour savoir qu'il n'est pas dans vos cordes. Ma femelle, 152 vous!" By identifying with the beauty and rarity of his butterflies,

he seeks to rise above the venality of his existence and his reprehensible

actions, such as the exploitation of Marpeaux, who risks his life to 132 procure butterflies for him in Guyane and Morocco.

Stella's servant, Rose, who becomes Paolo's mistress, is able to see through the bartering of favors and privileges in which Paolo would like to involve her; "Bien sur, tu m'as rendu des services, mais ce n'est pas parce que tu m'as rendu des services et que l'abbe t'a ren­ du, 3 toi, des services, que je dois rendre des services £ l'abbe!

Cette petie cuisine-lS! Et puis, je ne suis qu'une employee; ce qui n'est pas le travail, qa ne me regarde pas,"!-^ Like other women in

Adamov's plays, Rose is flexible when it comes to relationships and her own survival. She leaves Marpeaux, whom she loves, but whose revolu­ tionary ideas she does not understand, and lives with Paolo, who provides for her both materially and emotionally. She says to her husband; "La guerre, la guerre! Mais elle a toujours existe, la guerre!,.. Ecoute,

Robert, je suis trop fatiguee pour m'occuper de... generalites.

Finally, she begins to understand her own relationship with the working class, and the logic of her husband's involvement in the organized labor and anti-war movements, realizing that they are directly related to her immediate and future welfare. Marpeaux believes that the workers are at the beginning of a long struggle and that their efforts will help future generations; "Et puis notre greve servira peut-etre, pas a nous, mais & d'autres, plus tard... "155

Rose defends herself when Paolo suggests that she has taken money from him, but she betrays her anxiety and guilt in her movements:

"C'est qa, traite-moi de voleuse! (Elle fait un faux pas, trcbuche.)"156

Later, when she decides to leave Paolo, she steals his most valuable butterfly. Her thefts are portrayed sympathetically in the context of a political system which drives those who are exploited to commit illegal 133 acts.

When Stella returns to France from Germany, she finds that her favors are no longer marketable. Paolo refuses to let her return to live

in his house and Hulot-Vasseur refuses her request for employment. She has apparently had another unhappy love affair in Germany and as a result of its ending has returned to France: "Et J'avais besoin, aussi, de retrouver un peu... un peu de sante quelque part. Oh, ce n'est pas parce que Sanders... II s'agit si peu de Sanders, si peu!... "157

Throughout the play, Stella remains the vistim of her own exalted

illusions, somewhat in the same manner as Flaubert's Madame Bovary. As a member of the bourgeoisie, she is arrogant, but within that class it­ self, she is considered the property of her husband and has few rights of her own. Unlike Rose, whose opinions evolve and become more

realistic under the tutelage of her worker husband, Stella maintains her

exalted attitudes to the end, even after they have ceased to do her any good in terms of survival.

L ’Abbe Saulnier reminds Paolo, whose butterfly articles are being

copied in Germany and sold at a lower price, that a butterfly button agreement with Hulot-Vasseur could have saved his business. Paolo tells him: "Je me suis toujours debrouille tout seul, alors si je me casse

la gueule, ce sera aussi tout seul, et si je m'en sors, ce sera encore 1 Sft tout seul. Et je m'en sortirai!" Like Edgar in Les Retrouvailles,

Paolo insists that he is totally self-sufficient, but whereas the irony

in the former play underlines the psychological point that Edgar is actually dependent on his mother and mother substitutes to take care of him, in Paolo Paoli, Adamov's lesson is that in a capitalist society, 134 no man is an island: Paolo is unable to survive economically without the help of others. As Hulot-Vasseur points out: "Tout se tient."'*'^^

At the end, Paolo undergoes a kind of conversion. He sells his rarest butterfly to Hulot-Vasseur through the intermediary of L'Abbe

Saulnier and has him give the money to Rose, saying: "De I1argent, on vous en doit, a vous deux, Hulot-Vasseur, moi, les autres; on vous en 1 Afl doit meme plus que qa, pour toutes les heures qu'on vous a volees."

The play is meant to end on an optimistic note, leaving the audience with

the impression that the truth will set men free, and justice will prevail.

Paolo's change of heart, like Jean Rist's in Tous contre tous, is not entirely convincing, however. One wonders what place he can realistically occupy in the imminent conflict between the forces of socialism and

imperialism. The answer is perhaps in Le Printemps 71, in which workers and members of the bourgeoisie join together in the struggle of the

Commune of Paris.

Unlike Paolo Paoli, the dramatic sketches contained in Theatre de

Societe (Intimite, Je ne suis pas Franqais, La Complainte du Ridicule),

and Les Apolltiques, make no attempt at establishing a relationship between the neuroses of the protagonists and the historical situation.

Adamov conceded that in them he had not yet found the formula for social

satire: "La caricature oscille entre la charge realiste et l'alle-

gorie, r'16J-

In Intimite, as in Paolo Paoli, the characters represent a microcosm

of French society. The action takes place at the dinner table, where

Monsieur Uves Borges de Fonteville and his friend, Monsieur Royal, are

entertaining La Cause Incarnee (a caricature of De Gaulle). The hosts'

names suggest that they represent French capital and aristocracy, whereas 135

"La Cause Incarnee" satirizes the self-importance of the head of State.

These three characters resemble the parental figures of the early plays:

conservative representatives of the Establishment whose goal is to maintain law and order. The other characters include M, le Pupille,

the lackey of M. Uves Borges de Ponteville, who represents French

Socialism, which has been co-opted by the leaders of the Government;

L'Elite, the nephew of de Ponteville, who has just returned from Algeria and represents French colonial interests; L'Homme qui voit les Causes

et ressent les Effets, a worker; and Les Effets de la Cause, the guards

and police who maintain political tranquillity in the interest of the

government. As in the early plays, there is friction between the older

generation who are interested in maintaining the status quo and the young­

er generation of both the Right and Left, who want to change it.

Je ne suis pas Francals is a realistic sketch demonstrating the bad

faith of the French toward the Algerians whom they coerced into a

display of solidarity on the occassion of De Gaulle's visit, in 1958.

In La Complainte du Ridicule, Le Ridicule is personified and com­

plains that whereas he was historically able to "kill" those whose

actions and gestures were absurd, he has currently been rendered impotent

by an overabundance of irrationality in politics. Le Ridicule is: "un

personnage de tres haute taille, tordu, mal proportionne, couvert de

dentelles, de miroirs et de decorations fantaisistes." He hides his

face in his hands as his friends offstage tease him, and delivers his monologue with a great deal of histrionics. At the end, worn out by his

efforts, he staggers and is saved from falling by his friends who appear

from the sidelines. It is characteristic of Adamov that in seeking to 136 give an extra dimension of interest to the political remarks of Le

Ridicule, he makes him a character with idiosyncrasies and psychological weaknesses.

Les Apolitiques is another realistic sketch which teaches a politi­ cal lesson. During a gathering of the habitues of a certain cafe, a student prides himself on his non-involvement in politics. There follow two incidents which lead him, and the audience, to question this attitude: first, an Algerian enters and is refused service at the bar, an obvious example of the abusive practices of racism; next, a

Communist student, peacefully reading L ’Humanite at the counter, is attacked by fascist youth who enter from the street. The typically

Adamovian protagonist, Camille, is a rather passive young man, as yet uncommitted politically, and the piece attempts to point out the course of action which he should follow once he has recognized the social injustices taking place around him. In this play, the social evils are well-delineated, as are the options for doing something about them. Unlike the early plays of exorcism, or the later plays of es­ cape, the plays of political commitment offer their protagonists the possibility of salvation through meaningful action.

In the preface to Le Printemps 71, Adamov describes his evolution from a theater which centered around psychological conflicts to a theater which instructs from the point of view of Marxist ideology.

Inspired by the history of the Commune, he writes: ”11 s'est d'abord agi pour moi presque d*un devoir envers le premier gouvernemcnt de la classe ouvriSre dans le monde.” A historical drama in which the protagonists play heroic parts gave the author an opportunity to pre­ sent his concept of what life might be when the urgency of events 137 forces neurotic conflicts into the background:

Qu'est-ce que j'ai voulu montrer, en somme? Qu'au cours de ces trois pauvres mois de joie, de travail, d'erreurs, de ces trois mois d'une verite nee avant terme, des homines, des femmes, des enfants ont connu tous les sentiments possibles, ont ete hisses au-dela d 'eux-memes, et cela, bien sur, sans pouvoir toujours eviter les tristesses, les faiblesses, les lachetes.

The portrayal of the lives of the Communards filled the author's own need to get outside of himself. He writes that the men and women of the

Commune "vivaient au grand jour, ils vivaient dans la rue, dans cette rue ou j'avais si follement envie de descendre. Unlike the early plays, the existences of the characters do not weigh heavily on them in Le

Printemps 71: the crisis atmosphere of the Commune gives them a kind of moral vacation, and the holiday mood which prevails is due in part to the lack of moral ambiguity. The characters are able to make the right decisions because here the choices are clear: the Communards are on the side of good and the Versaillais are on the side of evil. During the events of the Commune, the characters find an escape from guilt and anxiety in action. The struggle of the Commune eliminates several problems for the adamovian protagonist: he is spared the anguish of choice and relieved of doubt; the burden of his isolation is removed by the camaraderie which is the natural concomitant of group struggle; finally, the passionate idealism of suffering and perhaps dying for the right satisfies the self-destructive urges which he had previously in­ vested in his ill-fated Jove affaLrs, and other self-destructive obsessions.

Adamov's sympathy for the Communards is based on their moral superiority, as well as on the historical necessity of the triumph of t the proletariat. Although the Communards suffer from human frailty: 138 physical and emotional weakness, cowardice in the face of death, etc,, the Versaillais are morally odious: cynical, hypocritical, ruthless and vindictive. Two of the Versaillais in particular bear a resemblance to the parental authority figures in the early plays. In the "Guignols,"

L'Assemblee is a grumbling old woman whose behavior in getting what she wants is alternately domineering and supplicating. She demands law and order at any price and pushes M. Thiers to send armed troops into Paris:

"Ta, ta, ta! Dites-moi plutot quand est-ce qu'on y va, dans ce Paris?

(Designant la Commune:) Lui fernter le bee, lui casser les cotes! "166

The life of L'Abbe Villedieu, a Versaillais, is spared by the generosity of a Communard, Robert Oudet, but in the end, Villedieu refuses to inter­ vene with the invading'troops to save the life of a doctor, and allows his parish priest, who sympathized with the Commune, to be beaten and executed.

Le Frlntemps 71 is concerned with subjective feelings, public actions, and their integration in human life. Both aspects have varying degrees of importance in different characters. The two strongest, Jeanne-

Marie and Sofia, subordinate their private lives to what they perceive as their public duty. Robert Oudet and Pierre Fournier, on the other hand, are more conflicted in the feelings which motivate their actions:

Robert Is attached to Polia, and Pierre is in love with Sofia. Before his execution, Pierre's final gesture demonstrates that he has reconciled his private feelings and public obligations: when he Is pushed against the wall to be executed by the Versaillais guards, he says softly to himself: "Sofia!" and then loudly to the soldiers who are preparing to shoot him; "Ce que je viens de dire ne regarde que moi. Mais voilS ce que j'ai h dire, et qui regarde la terre entiere: Vive 1'Emancipation 139 des travailleurs! Vive 1' Internationale!

The family composed of Memere, Henriette and Riri, who run the

"Cochon Fidele," the cafe where much of the action takes place, are caught up in the enthusiasm of the Commune and initially respond generously, but all three are cowards when their lives are threatened and when the fortunes of the Commune are low. Riri flees his post at the fort and Henriette says to her revolutionary beau, Le Garibaldien:

"Je me suis mise avec un employe de la Banque de France, figure-toi.

Comme 5 a au mo ins j ’ai une chance d'y couper."^-^® Unlike the others, who are willing to die for their convictions, her own life is her main concern and she sides with those who will protect it.

Anatole de Courmont is the character on whom Adamov heaps his

contempt for the protagonists of his early theater who were so wrapped

up in their own suffering that they were unaware of the situation

outside of themselves and unable to act. He is a painter who has not

painted since the death of his brother, his only model. His character

is passive and weak and he depends on L ’Abbe Villedieu for protection.

He says to L'Abbe: "Ah! ces journees semblent etre arrivees a plaisir

pour montrer le neant de 1*experience humaine."^®^ Fearful of the harm

which may come to his villa in Auteuil during the seige, he says:

Ah! pourquoi le destin a-t-il voulu que ma villa se trouve justement... dans un secteur qui pourrait bien, demain... J'ai la-bas, vous le savez, tous les portraits de mon frere, toutes mes faiences, tous mes bibelots, tout mon passe enfin... Mais moi, les demenagements... sans meme parler du peril qu' il y a forcement... dans des rues ou un garde national peut, a chaque seconde, surgir... Moi, un objet qui... qui change de place!170

As in his early theater, Adamov uses blindness in Le Printemps 71

to represent the psychological inability to see beyond the barriers of 140 one's own neuroses, Anatole says to a Versaillais officer: "HelasI commandant, je crains bien de ne plus m'y adonner jamais fa la peinture] . 171 Ma vue baisse tous les jours... Later, he says: "Decidement, je ne vois plus rien."^^^ In Anatole de Courmont, Adamov creates a secondary character who is utterly paralyzed by fear and suffering. He is unable to paint because he is fixated on the past and his family (he refuses to draw anyone except his brother), and he is unable to sympathize with the Communards, or for that matter the Versaillais, because he is intolerant of any kind of change and unable to care about anything be­ yond his memories and possessions.

The most interesting character in the play, from a psychological point of view, is Polia. In the workers' struggle, she, like Adamov, is an outsider by virtue of class, as well as nationality. Her first gesture of respect towards Jeanne-Marie, wife of Robert Oudet, puts her at odds with this most proletarian of the revolutionaries:

POLIA:,..Vous etes belle, tout a fait comme J'ima- ginais, chez nous, les ouvrieres parisiennes.

Elle lui baise la main. 1 JEANNE-MARIE: Qu'est-ce que vous faites, citoyenne?^3

Robert Oudet is attracted to Polia because both have complex person­ alities and weaknesses which hinder them, more than the others, from acting decisively. Robert's weakness has to do with his conscience, a

trait which he inherited from his father, Leon Oudet, who with him

represents the conscience of the Commune. When two well-known Versaillais are killed in the early days of the struggle, Leon Oudet says: "Quoi

qu'il en soit, nous avons du sang sur les mains. Later, he says:

"Nous n*avons pas & nous soucier de 1'opinion de nos adversaires, ni 141 meme de celle de nos amis; mais seu lenient de ce que nous dlt not re propre conscience."175 Robert Oudet admits to his wife, Jeanne-Marie:

"Car menacer les gens, donner des noms, cela me repugne, je n'y

peux r i e n . "^76 Polia wants to believe that the struggle will serve, even if the battle is lost: "Et si je travaille, c'est parce que je suis sure que tout servira, tout, t o u t ! "-*-77 She is ready to make personal sacrifices for the long-term goals of the Revolution, but her fears complicate her attitude. She says to Sofia: "Crois-moi, Je suis prete a mourir, avec... avec nos amis pour la Commune, mais

(pleurant presque:) ce serait si beau, si beau, Sofia, de pouvoir 178 vivre avec eux... pour Elle!"

Edith Scob, the actress who played the part of Polia in Claude

Martin's 1963 production at the Theatre Gerard Philipe, at Saint-

Denis, said: "C'est un tres beau personnage et que je crois sur certains plans tres proche de celui d*Adamov. Adamov lui-meme a ete emigre revolutionnaire, admirant et souhaitant participer aux luttes politiques et perdu aussi dans des problemes affectifs et contradictoires."179

She quotes a passage in which Adamov describes his struggle in deciding whether or not to leave his friend Agathe, to fight in the Spanish Civil

War:

La mauvaise sante psychique d*Agathe me retient. A peine a-t-elle les yeux fermes qu'elle voit des civieres, des lazarets, des blesses. Est-ce vrai- ment le moment de l'emmener la-bas ou il y a de vrais blesses, de vraies civieres? Je me demnnde aussi ce que nous a lions fa Ire en Espngnc, comment nous pour- rons nous rendre utiles, Je nous vois desoeuvres, perdus.180

When emotional exhaustion makes Polia physically weak, Robert Oudet*s words to Pierre Fournier echo the images in the passage quoted above: 142

"Tu vols bien que Polia n'en peut plus, et il faut comprendre. A son

1 81 age, voir defiler des civieres, comme 5 a, du matin au soir... "

Robert Oudet's lack of decisiveness and inability to act, like

Polia*s, have a complicated motivation. His intellectual background makes hand-to-hand fighting repugnant to him, but in deciding to stay with Polia rather than fight, there is also a possibility that his scruples may mask cowardice. He says to Pierre Fournier: "Pierrot, je devrais y aller, moi aussi, mais vois-tu, j'ai peur... de laisser

Polia. Elle est fatiguee, brisee, alors lui demander de suivre... "192

In choosing not to fight, Robert Oudet (like Adamov during the periods of the Spanish Civil War and the French Resistance), runs the risk of losing the trust of those who are willing to die for a cause.

Robert Oudet leads the people with noble and optimistic words:

"Oui, le moment est proche ou la justice et la liberte, s'appuyant sur

la force, annonceront au monde 1 'avenement du peuple,"!®^ but wounded and dying on the barricade, he confesses to his wife: "Jeannette, je n*ai jamais ete qu*un beau parleur."!®^ Jeanne-Marie realizes that

this will be their last barricade, but maintains her hope in the future of their struggle: "Mais d'autres verront, et comprendront, et nous

vengeront... On gagnera, Robert, on gagnera, et il n'y aura plus de

crimes sur la terre... je te le jure!" 1 ft 5 Robert Oudet and Jeanne-

Marie support each other as a couple: she admires his ability to articulate the goals of the Commune and inspire with words; and lie. In

turn, relies on the strength of her refusal to be paralyzed by specLrcs

of death and defeat.

Although Adamov admired those who were capable of decisive action, his sympathy went to those who, like himself, participated with 143 reservations. Robert Oudet represents a further evolution in Adamov's theater in the level of his self-awareness. Unlike Le Militant of the earlier play, who was also a "beau parleur," Robert Oudet’s personality is not so rigid that he is unable to learn from events, and at the end, he can confront his own behavior and judge it without flinching.

Adamov's apprehensions prevented him from leaving for Spain, but

Le Frintemps 71 provided him with the experience of participating in a just cause. Literary expression provided him with a means of action in the continuing struggle as he saw it against imperialist capitalist oppression.

In Le Frintemps 71, Adamov focuses on a theme which has both psychological and historical relevance, the function of time in human events: "Ce qui m'a peut-etre interesse avant tout, c'est de faire en sorte que les personnages ne solent jamais au point ou en sont les evenements, mais toujours en deqa ou au-dela." 186 Because of the rapidity with which events occurred during the Commune and the slowness of communication, the actions of the Communards were often based on their perceptions of situations which had changed. Like this theme, which was also important in La Parodie and L'Invasion, Le Frintemps 71 has certain other legacies from Adamov's early theater. The "Guignols" borrow from expressionism in the designation of the characters as La

Banque de France, L'Assemblee, Le Conciliateur, etc., and in the caricatural dialogue. The fatigue and discouragement of the Communards are conveyed in a manner which recalls the schematic technique of

Adamov's early theater: 144

BALACHIN: Je n'en peux plus. SI on se couchait la?

SECOND GARDE: SI on se couche, on ne pourra plus se relever.

BALACHIN: Si on marche encore, on tombera. 187

But here the situation of the characters does not symbolize man's fate.

The sparse, repetitive language is instead a poetic and economical means of describing the physical exhaustion which was overcoming the soldiers at the end of the Commune,

There are two instances where the author's penchant for humiliation before women manifests itself incidentally through his characters. At a celebration during the early stages of the Commune, Henriette throws her shoes into the air and they are retrieved by Le Caribaldien:

LE GAR1BALDIEN, les rattrapant: Si vous permettez...

HENRIETTE: Je permets tout!

LE CARIBALDIEN: Dans ce cas... II lui remet ses sou- liers et lui embrasse les chevllles.”188

When Pierre Fournier and Sofia have disagreed upon a political maneuver, he admits that she was right, in the following manner: "Tu avals raison. (Pause.) Sofia, dis-moi que tu ne m'en veux plus! Il_ 1 oq g'agenouille devant elle et lui embrasse les mains." The self- abasement of his gesture is Inappropriate to their discussion of politi­ cal errors in humiliating himself before her, Pierre is revealing to

Sofia the masochistic intensity of his unrequited love.

As in Le Ping-Pong, where the interest centers on the pinball machine, or Paolo Paoli, which focuses on the exchange of feathers and butterflies, the action of Le Printemps 71 is centered around the Commune, and the psychological interest resides in the different characters' 145 reactions to this event and to the values it represents. From Paolo

Paoll to Le Printemps 71, there Is a progressive evolution of political commitment to the workers' struggle. In both plays* the author brings the techniques of his early theater, as well as his psychological subtlety and perception, to bear on the dramatization of a historical lesson.

In La Politique des restes, the author points out the injustice in­ herent in a racist society and the irrational behavior which injustice fosters. He was inspired to write the play by a psychiatric case his­ tory in which the patient is afraid he will someday be forced to ingest all the refuse and excrement on earth. The patient has character traits similar to Adamov’s own feelings of guilt and paranoia: "Le malade manifeste des idees de ruine et de culpabilite. Etant d'origine etrangere, il se reproche de ne pas avoir opte Jadis pour la France: il y voit un crime sans pareil; il pretend aussi ne pas avoir paye ses impots et ne plus avoir le sou. Un chatiment atroce 1 'attend pour IQf) ses crimes. In the play, the author adds a social dimension to his protagonist Johnnie Brown's paranoia: his fear focuses on a black man because he lives in a society which uses the black man as a scape­ goat.

The drama takes the form of a trial in which Johnnie Brown is accused of murdering a black man, Tom Guinness, whom he suspected of dumping refuse in front of his door. The author makes it clear that there is also a level at which Johnnie Brown's fears are noL paranoid, but the expression of a realistic apprehension in regard to those who mean him harm: his wife and brother have joined forces and want to have him committed to a mental institution, so that they can merge his company with a cartel against his wishes. As in Paolo Paoli, the motive for the couple's adulterous intimacy is grounded in economics, and the rationale behind their economics is racist: a desire to consolidate white capital investments against the blacks. In words which echo those of Hulot-

Vasseur in Paolo Paoli, James Brown says: "Le seul moyen que nous ayons aujourd'hui, Johnnie, nous autres blancs, de n'etre pas devores, c'est de nous unir, d'abord financierement. Tout se tient."'^*'

The two strains in Adamov’s theater: the neurotic, or absurd, and the social, or brechtian, coexist in this play. The characterizations of

Johnnie's wife, Joan, and his brother, James, are created to be under­ stood in economic and social terms. Johnnie, on the other hand, is an anarchistic individualist with minimal contact with any but his own reality. Like Adamov's earlier protagonists, his behavior is not motivated by political or economic forces, but by his own neurosis*

The difference between him and the earlier characters is that he is not primarily a projection of the author: his neurosis is sufficiently differentiated from Adamov's so that we see him from the outside. In creating Johnnie Brown, however, Adamov has added certain of his own preoccupations to the symptoms described in the textbook. In court,

Johnnie describes his relationship with Tom Guinness as follows:

Pourquoi lui aurais-je en effet ordonne de lecher sur le sol ses propres dejections, si je ne lui manifes- tais pas les sentiments violents que je dis lui avoir manifestes7... Ce negre avait deja depose des mon- cenux el des monccnux d'ordures dcvant ma portc, et maintenant ces memos ordures, cos memos monccnux de pelures, de sciure, 11 voulait que Je les mastique, que je les mange, et qu'il me regarde, lui, les mastiquant et les mangeant.I92

In his testimony, Johnnie creates a scene in which a sado-masochistic 147 bond exists between the characters, within which the persecutor derives pleasure from "watching'1 his victim perform humiliating actions. In this passage, we are reminded of scenes in Adamov's later work, Ils, where "il," blindfolded, licks urine from the floor under the gaze of prostitutes and "elle". This sense of complicity between persecutors and persecuted is characteristic of Adamov's perspective and distinguish­ es Johnnie Brown's relationship with Tom Guinness.

A technique of Adamov's early theater reappears in this play: illness used symbolically to show the suffocating effects of oppression.

The wives of the two men who are most persecuted, Tom Guinness and

Mr. Galao, the Portuguese barber, both suffer from tuberculosis, or pulmonary congestion, which causes them to cough and strangle.193

Mr, Galao is a foreigner with a menial job: his poverty and foreign background cause him to be excluded by the whites and his own racism separates him from the blacks.

In La Politique des restes, a new characterization appears in Adamov's theater: the disillusioned liberal, Le Docteur Perkins, a character who was sketched in the Guignols of Le Printemps 71 as Le Conciliateur, and who represents the voice of reason in an unjust society. It is he who makes the connection between Johnnie's particular paranoia and that of white men in general in a racist society.

Joan Brown's perception of blacks demonstrates her sexual ambiva­ lence toward them. She describes a scene in which her car was surround­ ed by black men after it had broken down. As she recalls it, they wagged their pink tongues at her, put their hands over their genitals, 195 and stared at her with eyes that seemed to bug out of their heads, 7 148

Joan Brown, like Johnnie, projects her feelings of guilt into a fear of punishment from blacks, which in a later passage takes the form of being spit on: "On dechire leurs laissez-passer, bien sur, mais ils s'en passent, de leurs laissez-passer, et ils continuent de passer, et de crier, et de cracher, de cracher sans arret, n'importe ou, sur n'importe quol... en attendant de cracher sur nous!"^® As in Tous contre tous, where the people hated the Refugies because they feared they would take their jobs and wives, in La Politique des restes, each character projects his own fears onto the blacks; Johnnie Brown be­ lieves that they are the agents who will carry out his worst fear, that of being forced to ingest refuse; Joan Brown fears they will humiliate her sexually; James Brown fears they will compete with him and other whites for economic power. As Le Docteur Perkins says of the anxiety and hostility produced by these projected fears: "Oui, il faudrait tuer la peur, la tuer pour qu'elle ne nous tue pas."^^

Of the relationship between neurosis and society and their repre­ sentation in theatrical terms, Adamov says:

Brecht montre des personnages alienes, mais debarras- ses du coefficient le plus lourd de 1 'alienation: la nevrose. Or, si 1'homme est dur pour l'homme ainsi que le montre Brecht, c'est souvent a travers une nevrose nee de la condition qui lui est faite par la societe. N'y auralt-il pas moyen de re­ presenter cette nevrose, tout en ne la prenant pas, bien entendu, comme un phenomene fatal, mais en decrivant ses c a u s e s . -*-98

■*n La Politique des restes. Adamov makes a direct connection between individual neurosis and the fear which undermines a racist society. One of the conclusions which he suggests is that social Injustice exacerbates individual neurosis until it explodes in a crime, such as Johnnie's murder of Tom Guinness. In a society in which people's actions are motivated 149 by Irrational fears, the concepts of justice and injustice lose their meaning: the white court of law does everything in its power to minimize

Johnnie's crime of murdering a black man, but when he expresses hostility and aggressiveness toward white men who might harm him, the court de­ cides that he is dangerously psychotic and agree to have him incarcer­ ated.^^

In one passage, Johnnie's delusions remind the reader of the fates of N. and Le Mutile, in La Parodie and La Grande et la petite manoeuvre, respectively. Johnnie fears that he will become a passive object to his persecutors, who will treat him as less than human and ultimately cause him to destroy himself:

Et quand je gigoterai a terre, ne pouvant plus me re­ lever, quand je serais affale, alors ils s'ameneront tous, munis de leurs pelles, de centaines de pelles, et ils me pousseront avec leurs pelles jusqu'a je ne sais quelle poubelle ou devant eux, sur-le-champ, je devrai avaler... tout... jusqu'a la derniere coquille d'oeuf!"200

In La Politique des restes, Adamov was able to integrate his interest in characters with abnormal psychological traits with his purpose of teaching a historical and political lesson. The play succeeds both as a condemnation of racism and as the intense experience of a man at odds with his inner self and the society in which he lives.

Like La Politique des restes, the radio dramatization, En Fiacre, was inspired by a case history from a psychiatric work. In the early

1900's, two sisters were arrested for not paying their carriage driver and it was subsequently discovered that they had thrown a third sister out of the carriage to her death. The somewhat chekhovian background of the sisters may have struck the author as similar to his own:

"pere fantasque, mauvais homme d'affaires, mort quasi-ruine, mere 150 vertueuse et devouee qui leur evite tout soucl et toute Initiative et lea laisse, en mourant, totalement lnaptea a une vie sociale."^^

At the police station, the women give an impressionistic account of their recent past to the officer. They inherited a small income, but for several months have been living by their own choice out of carriages, like vagabonds. As a consequence, they are regarded as parlas by other people because of their ragged, dirty appearance. The older sisters were jealous of the youngest, Clothilde, who was killed, because she had been closest to their father, and had stolen her older sister Jeanne's fiance. The incident which precipitated their attack on her was the flirtation which they suspected her of carrying on with the driver, who resembled Jeanne's fiance. The sisters are bitter because when they were growing up, they lived in hotels in which they suspected there was prostitution. Unable to live productively because of their lack of skills, they spend their old age homeless and wandering, unable to free themselves from the ghosts of the past.

As in La Politique des restes, Adamov's intention in this sketch is to treat an actual situation with objectivity, but his interest is clearly in the neurosis of the characters. In the next three plays:

Sainte Europe, M. le Modere and Off limits, his purpose continues to be social satire and criticism, but the works are dominated more and more by the abnormal behavior of the characters for whom he had a predilection.

Pieces d*Evasion

Unlike the "pieces d'engagement," or the transitional plays which follow, the "pieces d'evasion" are marked by the increasing despair of 151 the author. Although these plays contain elements of political and social satire, they are all basically concerned with the subject of diversion. At the same time that Adamov was writing Sainte Europe, he was working on a play which was never completed, La Chanson des mal- heureux, in which he intended to portray three aspects of life: the everyday life of the period (pre-Nazi Germany), various means of escape from reality, and political action.The play was to be "le drame de ceux qui, n'en pouvant plus, cherchent, chacun 3 sa maniere, la porte de sortie et trouvent encore pourtant des forces pour denoncer ce

qu'ils croient, a tort ou a raison, etre de fausses portes."2G3

The characters who most represent Adamov in Sainte Europe and Off limits combine the desires to flee from a painful reality and to denounce stupidity and political injustice.

The political point of SainteEurope is to show the hypocrisy of the Common Market by comparing the "crusade" of Western European nations against the Communist East with the medieval Crusades, suggesting that both have the same goals of economic and political conquest. Within this framework of criticism, the author explores the psychology of the characters by means of dream consequences and fantasies inspired by a masquerade. He describes the play as "une immense et lugubre mascarade medlevale,” in which the leaders of Europe take part. In this unreal atmosphere and in the dream sequences, the characters act out

their fears and desires. As in Genet's Le Balcon, they are cut off from

reality and their political power struggles become merely another mode

in which they play out their erotic fantasies.

In the beginning of Sainte Europe, the reasons for the diversions of the most Important characters are suggested. Karl, who represents 152

De Gaulle Is described thus: "Empereur du Pays Franc et de l'Alemanie et de la Castille et de quelques autres territoires... Ridicule et pourtant parfois touchant: 11 a peur de la roort.1'^^^ Karl dreams of emmortal grandeur and compares himself to Charlemagne in order to escape the fear of death which haunts him. Moeller Van der See is "d'abord

Due de Cobourg, de Magdebourg et de Brandebourg, par la suite depos- sede de ses territoires. Beau, un peu trop infatue de lui-meme, mais 206 pas plus que Francesca, ni vendu ni idiot. Les deux exceptions,"

Moeller and Francesca are separated from the others by the fact that they belong to the same class as those in power, but have no political influence themselves. This impotence in shaping events has driven them to sexual narcissism and masochism: "Tout en parlant et 'fllrtant, 1

Francesca - par la meme occasion - se fait les yeux devant un miroir ou elle s'admire de la tete aux pieds, et Moeller Van Der See s'y admire aussl lui-meme, tout en admirant Francesca. II rit et se cure les ongles a maintes reprises."207

In Sainte Europe, the characters are afflicted with the vices, or neurotic symptoms, with which the author was most familiar: alcoholism, impotence, and masochism. L'Agha, one of the secondary characters, is constantly drunk, except when he is talking about money. Crepin, Le Roi de Brabant, who is the main power behind the Common Market, has no corresponding power in his personal life: he is sexually impotent and

for that reason unable to engender a child and successor. 208 For Crepin, political activity is the area into which he "escapes" from the problems of his personal life.

Karl's character, as portrayed in his dream, shows the mixture of aggression and dependency characteristic of many adamovian authority 153

figures. In a dream of wish fulfillment, he sees his rival, Crepin, stripped of his power: "Entre a guatre pattes. lamentable, Crepin - meme costume que dans la realite: mais sail, depareille: la vengeance d u _ r e v e u r . "209 Karl tries to put a muzzle over the mouth of his

persecutor, Moeller Van Der See, but he fails and Moeller pushes him to

the ground, from which he is unable to rise. 210 In his dream, his daughter, Grethe-France-Laure, becomes his wife, 211 just as in his waking hours, she is his chief support:

GRETHE-FRANCE-LAURE: Pere, non, ne parlez pas, ne parlez plus, car si vous parliez encore, vous vous echaufferiez, et si vous vous echauffiez, alors vous tomberlez. (Soudaln grave et meme presque emouvante.) Et si vuus tomblez, comtne Je serais la seule, la seule a vous relever,,.

Elle releve Karl, qui, entretemps, est bel et bien tombe, et l'entralne. Karl, comme un enfant fatigue, se laisse faire.^l^

Teresa's dream, like Karl's, is one in which her enemies are humiliated and her erotic fantasies fulfilled. Her religious fervor

is a result of sexual frustration in her marriage to Crepin. In her dream, she is united with Jesus Christ, who sings to her:

Si tu brules desormais, Teresa, Ce sera, je te le dis, dans mes bras.213

After this vision of herself as a kind of "Saint Teresa in Ecstasy," she

dreams that she is chosen by the Pope to establish holy places, for

which she receives money from the Pope, her father, and her husband.

In accepting the money, she dreams out a fantasy of prostitution: "Inno­

cent XXV tend des billets de banque a Teresa qui, imitant les putains 9 1 / du temps de Toulouse-Lautrec, les enfile, promptement, dans ses bas." 154

Teresa's dream of vengeance focuses on her sister, Francesca, whom she views as a rival, and becomes a kind of sado-masochistic ballet between Francesca, Moeller and Le Jeune Ephebe Arabe. Moeller follows

Francesca, who is wearing a bracelet on her ankle, on his knees, and kisses her bare feet. When Le Jeune Ephebe Arabe enters, his ankles also

adorned with bracelets, Moeller abandons Francesca to kiss his feet.215

Le Jeune Ephebe Arabe expresses a desire to get rid of Francesca and

Moeller complies: "Le '.jeune ephebe arabe* pousse Francesca comme un

paquet du cote des coulisses. Moeller met son pied (botte) sur la poitrine de Francesca, pied que rejoint le pied (nu) de son ami."216

When Francesca reappears, she is followed by Crepin, brandishing a whip, who kicks her to the floor.21? These scenes of sado-masochism

express Teresa's desire to punish Francesca, and are also consistent with Francesca's own desire to be humiliated and Moeller's sexual am­

bivalence. At the end of her dream, Teresa humiliates her husband by

abandonning him for Jesus Christ with a gesture which recalls one of

Adamov’s earliest fantasies of prostitutes stepping over his prostrate body: "Teresa se dirige vers 1'arri.ere-scene pour rejoindre Jesus-Christ

et, pour ce faire, enjambe, relevant sa robe, et riant a gorge deployee,

Crepin toujours agenouille."21®

The medieval trappings of the play evoke images from the Christian

tradition of humiliation associated with sainthood. When a "bal masque"

is proposed as an nmusenient, L'Agha envisions himself as Jesus Christ:

"Moi, moi... ce que je veux, e'est.,, e'est la Couronne d'cplnes. Et

que ceux qui souhaitent me cracher a la face... qu'ils,., qu'lls le

fassentl219 In Honore de Rubens' dream, when Teresa is offered the

television role of Saint Catherine of Sienna, her concern echoes Johnnie 155

Brown's obsessive fear in La Politique des restes: "Mais alors, je devrais... avaler... tous... tous les crachats?... "

The love relationship between Francesca and Moeller provides a counterpoint to the broad political satire. The author wants us to believe in their tenderness for each other: "Francesca et Moeller rlent de nouveau. Leur complicity s'accrott, ridicule, mais cepen- dant reelle."221 Francesca and Moeller long for death and the situation of political turmoil in Sainte Europe furnishes them with an easy means of self-destruction. When the castle in which the masquerade party is held is attacked by revolutionaries, the others escape, but Moeller and

Francesca stay behind, lulling themselves into a sleep of death with the tale of Tristan and Iseut, in imitation of whom they drink together from a goblet. Francesca describes a fantasy which recalls the associa­ tion in Adamov's works between the longings for death and a return to the security of the womb:

Me trouver subitement transportee dans le bar d'une large piscine d'hiver, mais en territoire europeen. En des regions ou l'hiver, tout de meme, ressemble, tant soit peu, a l’hiver, et surtout qu'en cette piscine il fasse chaud, mais si chaud que l'on y transpirerait jusqu'a mourir. (Tres grave.) Alors que dehors, eux, les autres, trembleraient, grelot- teraient jusqu'a en mourir, comme n o u s . 222

The fantasy brings to mind an image from Adamov's adolescent sexuality, when he would take very hot baths and then masturbate in front of the mirror.Immediately after Francesca describes her vision, a bullet strikes a glass window which shatters and cu l s her bare foot. Her pain inspires tenderness in Moeller who kneels and kisses her wound. He understands that dying in a political holocaust will spare them the pain and shame of suicide. When Francesca tells him that she was happy once 156 when she saw a television program which presented a vision of the decimation of Europe by an atomic bomb, he replies: "Et vous vous etes

dit: 'Ils vont y passer tous, alors je n'aurai plus besoin, moi, d'en

finir, furtivement, toute seule dans mon petit coin,’"

In Sainte Europe, Adamov criticizes the sordid power struggle and economic machinations which are behind modern history, but the obsessions which haunt the sleep and creep into the waking hours of his characters

are often his own. Those who represent the author most, Moeller Van Der

See and Francesca, reveal a mellowing in their masochism and suicidal

tendencies; they put an elegant distance between themselves and their

experience which is closer to the attitude of the author in his late

fifties than the mixture of hope and despair which characterized the

attitude of Le Mutile twenty years before. Moeller's and Francesca's

psychological conflicts do not prevent them from seeing the social

reality around them for what it is and denouncing it. In this respect,

too, they represent their author's own experience in his middle years.

Of Adamov's three "pieces d'evasion," M. le Modere is the one

which most resembles his early "pieces d’exorcisme." He wrote it while

in the hospital being treated for alcoholism and pleurisy, in 1967, and

offers the following explanation of his motivation: "M. le Modere est

une clownerie. Je l’ai voulue telle." In a footnote to that statement,

he says: "Cerne par le malheur, il fallait que j'eclate de rire ou me

suicide."225 The piay expresses the author's anguish over his physical

and mental deterioration, and M.'s vices and sexual fantasies have

their origins in Adamov's own. Like the protagonists of the early plays,

M. is not a whole man, but a kind of cartoon representing the author's

weaknesses. The political events merely form a background for his 157 personal adventures, and his actions are Influenced by his obsessions and compulsions more than by the forces of history or economics.

While Adamov was writing M. le Modere, he was simultaneously keeping a journal, published at the end of L*Homme et I 1enfant. The identification between author and protagonist is suggested at the beginning of the play when we see M. sitting on the edge of the stage, writing in his journal. At this point in his life, he has become introspective: he looks up from his writing and says to his wife, Clo:

"Mon malheur, vois-tu, e'est le doute."^^ The personality of M. which is revealed during the course of the play is an older version of

Adamov's early protagonists; like them, his main failing is his passivity, which makes him unable to resist temptation, particularly the temptation of self-destructive acts. He recognizes his acts as undesirable, but is powerless to restrain himself. Unlike earlier characters, such as Le Mutile and Henri, he has no hope: love and success are no longer able to ward off his fear of death, and through- i out the play, he is the helpless witness of his own self-destruction.

M. has no control over the exterior or the interior events of his existence: most of his decisions are made by others. Bending to the will of his wife, Clo, and daughter, Mado, he opens a hotel in Paris.

Chosen for his moderation by M. Havas, who represents American and

Common Market interests, he is appointed Chief of State of Le Jura, where he is eventually deposed in a coup d'etat by his Chief of Police, Ernest.

At the suggestion of Mado, the family moves to London and political exile. In his sexual life, M. also succombs to the suggestions of others. It is his daughter, Mado, who in the early part of the play tempts him into erotic adventures. Adamov describes his conception of 158

Mado as follows: "Mado, dite Mady, est l'ecoliere vicieuse telle qu'on

1*imagine, la reve."^^ The author is speaking here of the ’'dream" of an old man, himself, fascinated by the mixture of innocence and prurience which he imagines in young girls who present no sexual threat to his passive nature. Mado represents a wish-fulfillment having to do with several of the author's fantasies. She describes her attraction for subways, for instance, in much the same manner as Adamov, in L'Aveu, where he recalls that in his youth:

ma hantise me poussa a rechercher la promiscuite des metros bondes aux heures d'affluence. J'essayai ob- stinement de provoquer un drame muet, selon une mise en scene dont le theme se repetait sans cesse. II me fallait dans la cohue, non seulement serrer de pres une femme qui se pretait a mon etreinte, mais encore je voulais que ma tentative ne demeurat pas secrete. Je guettais parmi la foule une autre femme qui fut te- moin de la scene, et dont le regard curieux et le sourire complice devaient apporter une part determi- nante a mon obscur plaisir.228

Mado says: "Moi, je l'aime bien, le metro. II y a des messieurs qui se frottent a vous, et puis d'autres qui ne vous font rien du tout, alors on se frotte H eux, forcement, e'est tres amusant. Et puis il y en a qui vous font de ces yeux, mais de ces yeux... "229 When M. and Clo decide to buy a hotel in Paris, she asks if she may be the chambermaid sometimes so that she can examine the guests' sheets, their bureaus, their correspondence, etc.230 in t^e language of prostitutes, she asks M.: "Oh, papa, on fera des passes, dis?"23-^ At another point, she provokes her father by suggesting that she may not be Ills daughter:

"Et puis, rien non plus ne te prouve que moi, je suis ta Lille.

(Emouvante:) Pauvre Clo, elle n'aurait pas eu le droit, une seule petite

fois?... ” 232 159

In Mado's friend Guddy's room at the hotel, M, seats himself on

the bed and allows his daughter and her friend to undress him. When

his wife rebukes him for his behavior, he tries to explain to her how he was unable to resist the temptation which the girls presented:

Mais comment t'expliquer, Clo, ce qui s’est... a ce moment-la... passe... en moi... Je me suis senti, vois-tu, brutalement, mechamment, emporte par un mouvement... irreversible. J'ai voulu - je te le Jure, Clo, je te le Jure sur la tete de notre Mado - , j'ai voulu... alors... aller... a contre courant, ne pas me laisser entralner, en un mot... par ce mouvement... litteralement effrayant. Mais je n'al pas pu (baissant la tete:) ou su... ^33

He suggests to his wife that he should have gone to a prostitute section

to satisfy his unnatural desires. But rather than presenting such women in this play, Adamov has Clo and Mado evoke experiences with

prostitutes in their behavior. M. asks his wife, Clo, to dress up in a

Directoire costume and recite the names of the generals of the Empire

in order to excite him. When he apologizes for making such unusual

demands on her, Clo replies: "Mais ne t'excuse done pas comme 9a, mon

chou! Tous les gouts sont dans la nature."234 ^ado tells her father

that she wants to play a game which will involve blindfolding her and

gives as her reason: "Pour ne plus savoir ou je suis,"235 an allusion

to the author's attempts to escape from his problems In similar scenes

in bars and bordellos. Part of the author's attraction to the character

of Mado is his fascination with the idea of women making love to other women. On the subject of girls' boarding schools, M. says: "Le

dortoir? Mais e'est la promiscuite, e'est, en un seul lieu, conjugues,

assembles, debrides, tous les exces de la feminite!"^^ Teasingly, Mado

tells her father that her suitor, M. William, likes to watch women making love together.^37 In London, Mado marries Jerry, played by the 160

same actor as M. William* who in his new transformation has become homosexual. Languishing somewhat because he is not sexually interested

in her, Mado reminisces about her school days: "On s'enfermait dans

les cabinets, on se tripotait, on riait, on s'amusait, quoil^®

The manipulative, sadistic side of Mado's nature reveals itself

when she and her mother play "William Tell." After having hit the

apple several times, she misses and hits her mother. Her predilection

for cat and mouse kinds of games and her penchant for interchanging

the roles of strength and weakness in relationships is obvious in her

choice of lovers, who are either brutal (Ernest) or effeminate

(M. William-Freddy.)

The character which M. le Modere wishes to exemplify, moderate

in all things, forms a humorous counterpoint to his words and actions,

which are often abnormal and extreme. His subconscious urges reveal

themselves through slips of the tongue, and he sometimes cannot utter

a word or make a gesture without betraying the fantasies which are pre­ occupying his imaginetion. The following interchange between M. and

Clo is an example of the way in which such thoughts invade his conscious mind:

CLO: ...Bien sur, si la justice etait de ce monde...

M. LE MODERE: Elle en sera, de ce monde, ou alors... alors, toi.., on te lechera...

CLO: On me?... Qu'est-ce que tu dis?

M. LE MODERE, mettant son chapeau, djune voIs grave : Qui te dit que j'ai dit quelque chose?239

At another point, M. le Modere is introduced to his subjects in Le

Jura as a man who has climbed La Dent du Midi. Rather than addressing

them in a rational way, in terms of national interests, or of his plans 161 as Head of State, M. free associates around the image of the mountain until he is once again expressing the tragic vision of his life's experience:

Oui, je l'ai escaladee, je l'ai... enjarabee, je dirais meme, pour tout dire, que je l'ai... (avec un gros rire:) chevauchee la garce! Mais qui veut s'elever doit aussi, comme... comme on l'a du reste deja dit... doit aussi... s’abaisser. (Grave:) Et je me suis abaisse. Aussi n'ai-je pas honte, mes amis, de vous declarer qu'au cours de mon escalade, j'ai ete preci- pite dans... dans un precipice, precipice dont, 3 vrai dire, j'ai ete, encore assez rapidement, retire. Ce qui ne veut pas toutefois dire que je n'aie pas ete serieusement, immoderemment, eprouve, et je dirais meme endommage. (Bas:) Oui, e n d o m m a g e .240

The theme of knowledge through suffering which was first expressed in

L'Aveu reappears here, but it is undercut by M.’s suggestion that the damage sustained in his sufferings is perhaps irreparable.

M.'s physical condition deteriorates, until like Le Mutile, who used a cart, he must rely on a wheelchair to carry him: "Mado... pousse la voiture de son pore, une voiture de malade, qui ressemble beaucoup a une voiture d'enfant.11^^ As in Les Retrouvailles, the symbol of a baby carriage suggests M.'s regression to a state of in­ fantile dependence. As Mado pushes his wheelchair down the street, M. expresses his anguish and feeling that life has destroyed him. He begins to dictate an important thought to Mado and then his mind goes blank and he says despairingly: "Ah, Mady, ton pauvre pere a ete trop

Sprouve."^^ M.'s self-destructive desires have now reached a point where they are beyond his ability Lo control. Sheepishly, he asks his daughter if she could find him a pretty girl, preferably younger than herself.His drinking remains his worst vice, and his years of alcoholism are obviously the reason for his frequent, uncontrollable 162 2 LL weeping. He says to Clo:

Tu as raison. XI faut absolument que je me controle. (II redresse son bar, se remet sur son tabouret,. bolt deux verres l'un sur 1 *autre, puis rebattent bar et tabouret, disparatt dans sa voiture:) Oui, oui, que je me controle, et que je ne prenne pas a jeun plus de dix a douze bieres allemandes, danoises, neerlandaises, 'importe; et deux a... quatre gins, et e'est tout.

M. communicates a desperate sense of impending physical and mental annihilation. Many of the details are simple and concrete, as when he looks at his hands and says: "Ce que j'ai vieilli, ces derniers temps."246

Adamov's concern over his own drinking began as early as 1960. In des­ cribing this period, he says: "Je prends 1'habitude de boire de la biere des le matin... Mon angoisse neanmoins augmente, jc bois de

Je vais de plus en plus mal, bois de plus en

The question of responsibility for one's actions arises indirectly in M. le Modere without being resolved. M. and the other protagonists are obviously controlled by their unconscious fears and desires, but to what extent does the author think that they are responsible for their choices? Like Adamov, M. is an outsider, but his social situation does not explain the essential passivity of his personality, anymore than

Adamov's earliest irrational fears and obsessions can be adequately ex­ plained by the circumstances of his childhood. The theme of destiny is one which is familiar from L'Aveu and when M. says to Clo: "Je ne suis plus aujourd 'hui qu’un objet entre les mains... du destin... ("2A9 we recognize the author's fatalistic attitude toward human life. It is perhaps this deterministic view of things which explains Adamov's lack of interest in the existential question of man's responsibility for his 163 acts.

The atmosphere of M. le Modere is dreamlike, and as in the early plays, the other characters seem to exist to a large extent merely to tempt or torment the protagonist. M. and the others seek diversion in pastimes such as homosexuality, alcohol, brutality and power, overeating, sexual prurience and voyeurism. It is not only the fear of death which they are trying to escape by such means, but their marginality in society, or as Clo says, their "mal du pays." 2 SO In London, they are emigres and pass their time in games and vices because they have no way of spending it productively. The author presents a caricature of his own predicament in this play, but despite the despair that is implicit in his portrayal of the steady and fatal course of destruction which M. is following, he is a different man from the one who wrote La Grande et la petite manoeuvre. The difference is in his ability to see his situation objectively and laugh at it, even if the humor is tinged with bitterness and a sense of defeat.

Off limits most resembles the unfinished La Chanson des malheureux.

Although the latter play was to take place during the rise of nazism in Weimar Germany, and the former takes place in America in the sixties,

Adamov's desire to relate the characters to their times is similar and his description of the historical period of La Chanson des malheureux might apply as well to that of Off limits;

La vie de tous ces jours-la, sous tous ses aspects et notamment (dans le milieu que je veux mettre en scene) de celui qui l'a beaucoup marquee: la per­ version sexuelle, comme on dit. Sadisme, masochisrae, fetishisme, etc, Qu'il y ait dans mon insistance a vou- loir accentuer cet aspect un parti pris et un gout, sans doute. Mais la veracite historique, en 1'occur­ rence, n'en souffrira pas,^51 164

The play has strong elements of social criticism* but It differs from the "pieces d'engagement" in that the main focus is on the masochism of the characters.

The form of Off limits, like that of Sainte Europe, which was a masquerade, is a type of diversion in itself: a series of parties characterized as "happenings," The author’s purpose is to treat the subject of vices in society with objectivity: "Ce que J'ai voulu entreprendre? En somme, utiliser les happenings, le "Living Theater," pour pouvoir les regarder et les critiquer. La confusion de la pensee des personnages ne doit pas entralner la confusion dans la pensee du spectateur."252 sets t^e scene in an atmosphere that he knew from two sources: the New York drug cult from James Mills’ The Panic in

Needle Park, and the affluent society of media people and intellectuals from acquaintances he made during his two trips to New York, in 1959 and 1964,. As in La Politique des restes, he chooses a subject which is close to his own neurotic preoccupations, but by using outside sources of material, he is able to separate his own neuroses from the moral and social degeneration which is the central issue of the play. Despite his intention of keeping the audience at a brechtian distance from the drama, however, Off limits resembles the early plays in the unrelieved atmosphere of oppression which it generates, where the protagonists project their miseries into the happenings in which they take part. The author has come a long way, however, from the "pieces d’exorcisme," in which there is little explanation, either psychological or sociological, for the characters’ conflicts, or for the political situation which is oppressing them. In the early plays, as in Strindberg's expressionist plays, the origins of the protagonists' nightmares and obsessions lie in 165 the mind of the author. Unlike the schematic characterizations in the other "pieces d'evasion," Sainte Europe and M. le Modere, the characters in Off limits are given a good deal of individual develop­ ment and their psychological portrayals are related to a specific reality which is established in broad, partisan, but also rather realistic strokes.

Having dealt with historical reality in dramatic form in Paolo

Paoli and Le Printemps 71, the author was better able in Off limits to suggest a connection between a specific period and the neurotic behavior which he observed to be characteristic of it. The vague guilt of the protagonists in the early theater finds a focus in the

Viet Nam War, in Off limits, as well as in an awareness of New York's particular social problems: a black man arrives at Jim's and

Sally's loft who has been shot by whites; Jim and Sally are addicted to heroin; and Sally has turned to prostitution to support their habits.

Adamov presents a society threatened from outside by the war in Viet

Nam, and from inside by drugs and alcohol. Unlike the characters in

Le Printemps 71, who had a noble alternative for action in the struggle of the Commune, New York in the sixties presents no such choice for the protagonists of Off limits. Unable to influence the forces of capital or government, which have found that it is in their best interest to continue the war, the characters turn in on themselves in self-destructive ways. Adamov presents a sado-masochistic society in which men and women are mutually dependent on each other to punish and be punished, and in which the economically powerful, such as

Humphrey O'Douglas, dominate the penniless, such as Sally and Jim. But

the self-destructiveness of the characters is not a function of their 166

powerlessness: the rich are as full of self-hatred as the poor, and they

account for one of the suicides in the play, that of Luce Herz.

There are six deaths in the play, four of which are suicides.

Besides Luce Herz, the arrogant and hostile sister-in-law of Humphrey

O'Douglas, a friend of George Watkins also kills himself. Jim and Sally's black friend dies of his wounds; Humphrey O'Douglas dies of a stroke apparently brought on by his years of excessive drinking; and Jim and

Sally are shot by the guards at the Mexican border when they refuse

to stop and show their passports. The ambiguous nature of the responsibility for their deaths is suggested by George. When Dorothy says: "II y en a qui veulent mourir, mais pas Sally. Elle voulait vivre, et ils lui ont enleve ce droit," George replies: "Qui ils?

Les sentinelles? C'est quelqu'un en elle qui a ajuste l'arme... Elle ne voulait ni de toi, ni de moi, ni de rien. Elle n'en pouvait plus de jouer la comedie." 253 The difference between Jim and Sally's suicides and the masochism of the others is that Jim and Sally are true

to their impetuous, youthful natures. Rather than dying little by

little, they choose to depart in a burst of violence.

George and Dorothy are fascinated by death and drawn to it.

When their friend Milton commits suicide, George says to Dorothy:

"11 a fait ce qui je n'ai pas fait, ce qui ni toi, ni moi, n'avons ose

a C A faire!" Dorothy responds: "II ne pensait qu'a qa, il ne voulait

que qa. II a eu ce qu'il voulait, apres tout." In Dorothy's mind, the subjects of sex and death are connected. She says to George:

"Tu aurais voulu que nous nous zigouillions ensemble, peut-etre. Oh,

pas seuls, bien surt Avec une partenaire que tu aurais degottee au

passage. Pour ’la fin du jeu,'"^-*^ After Luce Herz's suicide, Dorothy 167

goes to see her body in the morgue: "Parce que depuis longtemps,

j'avals envie d’y aller."^*^ Her attraction to death is one aspect of

her masochistic behavior; another is her choice of George Watkins,

a husband who constantly degrades her. She asks him to kiss her,

and he answers: "Ce seralt volontiers, mais j'ai vomi tout a

l'heure, et je crains que mon haleine ne soit repugnante."258 when

she remarks: "Tu ne vas pas, Georges, me reprocher d'avoir demande

a Humphrey un appui, et de gagner comme cela de 1'argent pour toi

et les filles que tu payes?" he replies: "dont tu etais hier

encore." 259 At the core of George's self-destructive and sadistic behavior is a sense of helplessness. When he loses his glasses, he 2 fifl despairs: "Je ne vois plus rien, j'ai peur." At that moment,

Dorothy puts her hands over his eyes and says: "N'aie pas peur."261

As in the other plays, Adamov continues to be fascinated by the

various possibilities of the theme of submission to the will of

another. t

It is significant that the most masochistic character in the play,

Dorothy Watkins, is also the one who is most vitriolic about the res­

ponsibility of the United States in an unjust war. In a "recitatif,"

she explodes:

Et que New York soit paraysee Enfin Enfin Eboueurs e'est de vous que viendra le salut Refusez le travail... New York Hue a son tour Pleurs de joie Mais civilisation productrlce de dechets je sais bien que tu t'en tireras e n c o r e , 262

The violence of Dorothy's language shows her nihilistic desire to take

everyone with her in her dream of self-destruction. When she refers to

America as a "civilisation productrlce de dechets," she is referring not 168 only to a society of wasteful consumption which pollutes the atmosphere, but to a ruthless, competitive economy which has no respect for human life or dignity and turns people like her into "dechets," by over­ whelming them with guilt and self-contempt and driving them to self-destructive vices. In a period of social injustice, masochistic liberals such as Dorothy and George Watkins, and their friends, Jim and Sally, assume their nation's guilt and punish themselves.

Off limits poses the problem of what determines neurosis: heredity, early family situations, or social environment. On February 5, 1966,

Adamov wrote in his Journal: "Les nevroses viennent-elles forcement de la premiere enfance ou bien peuvent-elles naltre dans l'adolescence ou meme beaucoup plus tard, creees alors par le context social? Pose la question a L, [son psychiatrej , Pas de reponse. La predisposition?"^-*

The characters in Off limits have been drawn together by an apparent predisposition for sadistic and masochistic behavior. As in Paolo

Paoli, their lives are connected by economic ties: most of them are employed in one capacity or another by Humphrey O'Douglas, but the economic relationships are less important than the psychological bonds of sado-masochism. The way in which the characters relate to each other is an outgrowth of the family atmosphere of the early plays. The older authority figures: Humphrey O'Douglas, Doris Roan, Reynold Day, etc. stand for law and order and obedience to authority at all costs, while the younger, financially dependent, people chafe at the restrictions imposed upon them, but are unwilling and unable to shake them off. In

Le Sens de la marche and Les Retrouvailles, the protagonists, Henri and

Edgar, escape their homes only to recreate their problems with father and mother substitutes in other circumstances. In Off limits, the 169 masochistic characters are likewise drawn to situations, In this case the happenings, in which they will be abused and humiliated. The difference between them and the early protagonists in that they have lost all hope and have settled into a life of masochistic ritual from which the only escape is death,

Adamov makes a criticism of Jean Genet's theater which could aptly be applied to his own;

Genet n'en demeure pas moins un grand ecrivain de theatre, quand il ne cherche pas a faire d'une ob­ session personnelle 1'expression d'une verite poli­ tique... Un certain etat de choses revoltant le re­ volts... II a, avec courage, denonce l'oppression colonialiste (Les Negres, Les Faravents), mais il n'a pas su - Jje ne dis pas supprimer ses nevroses, car enfin, sur quel autre terrain pouvons-nous batir? - mais les transformer au point de les rendre meconnais- sables pour le spectateur. Les negres sont des hom­ ines deguises en femmes, des travestis...

It could be argued that in the same way that all Genet's characters are homosexuals, disguised as maids, blacks, or Algerians, Adamov's characters, excluding the purely functional historical characters in

Paolo Paoli, Theatre de Societe and Le Printemps 71, are masochists.

In Off limits, Adamov has created a new, positive character, James

Andrews, based on James Mills, author of The Panic in Needle Park. Un­

like the others, James Andrews does not use drugs of any kind and does

not seek escape from anxiety in masochistic acts. When Dorothy

remarks to him; "Tout est trop, trop difficile... Dites-moi comment

vous vous en tirez pour avoir tuutes les apparences de la vie?" he

replies: "En chauffant la machine sans arret, en avan?ant sans arret,

les yeux fermes au besoin,"^^^ This desire to hold on, and not to

dissipate oneself in diversions, is reflected in Adamov's Journal: 170

Tenir, volla le mot de ceux qul marchent sur le sentier etroit. Mals 9l l'on allalt jusqu'au bout, si l'on parvenait a destination, si l'on trlomphait du vertlge?

Marcher les yeux fermes, marcher toujours. Tenlr.

The last words in the published Journal (August 25, 1967), are: "Le defi ferme, raesure."^? James Andrews remains a secondary character in this play, but in creating a sympathetic role which offers an alternative form of behavior to masochism, Adamov has given a concrete expression to his hopes for psychological strength and health.

To sum up, the "pieces d'exorcisme" were Adamov's mostsubjective plays, in which he pursued the goal described in L'Aveu ofdriving out the demons of neurosis through the means of literary self-expression:

'je m'exorcise... En exprimant raon mal, je m'en libere."^^® Le

Ping-Pong shows the beginning of a shift to a greater interest in society and its problems, and the "pieces d'engagement" reflect the author's purpose of gaining strength and hope by putting his writing abilities at the service of the revolutionary proletariat:

Je ne crois plus a cette avant-garde trompeuse qui utilise sans doute des techniques neuves mais oublie que ces techniques neuves sont nulles et non avenues si 1'auteur ne se met pas au service d'une ideologic; et naturellement pas de n'importe quelle ideologie, mais, par exemple, du marxisme-leninisme, pour nommer les choses par leur nora,269

Like the early plays, the politically-committed plays were a means of breaking out of his solitude by communicating his feelings and ideas to an audience.

The Theatre de Soclete and Les Apolltlques are ephemeral plays, in that their purpose is political propaganda rather than artistic merit, but by means of these plays, Adamov was able to realize his ambition of political action. 171

In the "pieces d'evasion," as in the "pieces d ’exorcisme," the characters' anxieties are based on a fear of death, but while the characters in the early plays fetishistically search for the woman or accomplishment which will rescue them from futility, the characters in the later plays deaden their pain with the vices which are available to them in modern, alienated society. For the author, the writing of the later plays was a means of escape from his preoccupation with the deterioration of his mind and body, the legacy of years of self­ destructive behavior.

In La Politique des restes, Adamov continued to base his drama on documented reality, as he had in Faolo Paoli and Le Printemps 71, but whereas for the latter plays his research led him to a variety of publications, representing all shades of the political spectrum, he found his inspiration for the former, and for the radio play En Fiacre, in psychiatric textbooks. The fact that he sought out these case his­ tories in abnormal psychology shows that his interest during this period was returning to neurosis; his focus had simply shifted from the exposure of his own neurosis to that of others. In this manoeuver, one senses the tendency of self-justification which is consistent in his works.

In unearthing and dramatizing the lives of characters who are at least as neurotic as he is, Adamov Indirectly demonstrates that he is not unique in his shortcomings.

In his "piece d ’integration," Si l'ete revenait, Adamov relegates politics to the background. In this last play, the subjecL of the next chapter, he regains a balance, not between neurosis and history, but between neurosis and art. Notes - Chapter III

^La Parodie, in Theatre I, pp. 11-12.

^Parodie, p. 20.

3Ibid.

^In "Orphelins,” "il" is described as follows: ”11 pleurait, la tSte entre ses mains. Ses manches exagerement courtes decouvraient son poignet, son avant-bras, presque jusqu’au coude." J_I» p. 207.

^Parodie, p . 13.

^Parodie, p. 17.

^Parodie, p. 48.

^Parodie, p. 14.

^Parodie, pp. 22-23.

^ Parodie, p. 16 .

^^Parodie, p. 33.

■^Parodie, p . 32.

l^parodie, p. 40.

J-^Parodie, p . 41.

^ Parodie, p. 43.

16HE, p. 38.

3^Parodie, p. 51.

ISparodlc, p. 53.

1 9 Ibid.

2®Arthur Adamov, Theatre II (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), p. 8.

172 ^IParodie, p. 11.

22Parodie, p. 12.

2-*Parodie, p. 44,

2^Parodie, p. 37.

^Parodie, p. 47.

28Tchekhov, Anton, trad. Arthur Adamov, Theatre (Lausanne: Editions Rencontre, 1963).

^Parodie, p. 52.

28Ibid.

29parodie, p. 15.

^Parodie, p. 15.

31l *Invasion, in Theatre I, p. 62.

•^Invasion, p. 71. '1‘S J^Invasion, p. 65.

■^Invasion, pp.. 62-63.

^invasion, p.. 65.

^Invasion, p . 79

-^Invasion, p p . 76-77.

•^^La Grande et la petite manoeuvre, in Theatre I, p. 107.

^Manoeuvres, p. 103.

^^Manoeuvres, p. 105.

^ Manoeuvres, p. 105.

^ Manoeuvres, p. 116.

^^Manoeuvre s, p. 117.

^Sianoeuvre 9 , p. 107.

** ^Manoeuvres, p. 119

^^Manoeuvres, p. 112 174

^Manoeuvres, P- 113.

^^Manoeuvres, P* 112. 49 Manoeuvres, P- 121.

^Manoeuvres, P- 122.

^^Manoeuvres, P- 127.

■* ^Manoeuvres, P- 130.

33Manoeuvres, P- 131.

^Manoeuvres, P- 139.

3^Manoeuvres, P* 141.

^Manoeuvres, P* 106.

^Manoeuvres, P- 115.

3®Manoeuvres, P- 140. Professeur Taranne, in Theatre I, p. 219

^Taranne, p. 218.

^ Taranne, p. 228.

^^Taranne, p. 229.

^^Taranne, p. 217.

^^Esslin, p. 83.

^ Le Sens de la marche, in Theatre II, pp. 23-24, k^Marche, p. 29.

^^Marche, p. 27.

^^Marche, p. 31.

^ Marche, p. 26.

70Marche, p. 34.

71HE, p. 45.

7^Marche, p. 37.

73Ibid. 175

^Storche, p. 39.

7^Marche, p. 40.

76Ibld.

77Ibld.

7^Marche, p. 30.

^Marche, p. 43.

80Ibid.

81Ibid.

8^Marche, p. 45.

8-^Marche, p. 55.

8*Ibid.

8^Marche, p. 56.

8^Marchet p. 58.

87Ibid.

88Marche, p. 62.

8®Marche, p. 51.

^®Note prelim., Theatre II, pp. 13-14.

9^To u s contre tous, in Theatre I. p. 151.

92t o u s , p. 155.

^^Tous, p. 157.

^ Tous, p. 181.

^^Tous, p. 158.

^8Tous, p. 191.

^ 7 T o u s , p p . 174-175.

^^ote prelim*, Theatre II, p, 15.

^ L e a Retrouvailles, in Theatre II, p. 75.

^•00Les Retrouvailles, p. 77. 176

^ ^ •Les Retrouvallles> p. 74.

1 0 2 Ibid.

^•^Retrouvailles, p. 90.

10AIbid.

trouvailles, p. 90.

106Refcrouvallles, p. 77.

107Retrouvailles, pp. 78-79.

108Retrouvallles, p. 84.

^ ^Retrouvallles, p. 85.

^Retrouvailles, p. 87.

U 1 HE, p. 44.

trouvailles, p. 89.

^•*Retrouvailles, p. 94.

U A lbid.

1 1 5 HE, p. 1 1 1 .

^•^L e Ping-Pong, in Theatre II, p. 103.

^Ping-Pong, p. 146.

^Ping-Pong, p. 157.

^■■^Notes prelim., Theatre II, p. 9.

^2®Ping-Pong, p. 162,

121Ping-Pong, p. 114.

*-22Ping-Fong, p. 151.

^ ^ Ping-Pong, p. 155.

^2^Ping-Pong, p. 151.

^•25Note prelim., Theatre II, p. 9.

126ping-Pong, p. 105.

127Plng-Pong, p. 133. 177

12®Ping-Pong, p. 171.

^•^Ping-Pong, p. 167.

130Ping-Pong, p. 169.

131Ibld.

33^Ping-Pong, p. 174.

133Ping-Pong, p. 176.

13 APing-Pong, p. Ill*

135Ping-Pong, p. 179.

136pjng-Pong, p. 130.

137p^ng_pong, p. 144.

138Paolo Paoli, in Theatre III, p* 25.

33^Paolo, p. 26.

140Ibid.

l^lpaolo, p. 27.

1^2paoio> p. 27.

^ 3Paolo, p. 34.

l^Paolo, p. 54.

^ 3Paolo, p. 34.

^ ^Faolo, p. 46.

^^Paolo, p. 55.

l^8Paolo, p. 91.

l^paoio, p. 66.

150paoio, p. 68.

333Paolo, p. 77.

152paol£> p. 87.

3^3Paolo, p- 94.

^•54paoiot p. 121. 178

^-*^Paolo, p. 122.

156?aolo, p. 95.

■^^Paolo, p. 130.

^®Paolo, p. 110.

■'■^Paolo, p. 68.

^^Faolo, p. 140.

^■^^■Theatre de Soclete, p. 9.

^•^Societe, p. 49.

163prgf. to Le Frintemps 71, in Theatre IV, p. 87,

^•^P r In temps, p. 88.

^^Printemps, p. 89.

166printempst p. 163.

^ ^Prlntemps, p. 262.

168pr^ntemps, p. 241.

169prjnt:einps, p. 134.

170printemps, p. 171.

171printemps, p. 268. i 77 Prlntemps, p. 270.

^^^Printemps, p. 107. 1 7 & Prlntemps, p. 109. 175printempS> p. 191.

176pr^ntemps, p. 114.

177printemps, p. 232. 178 Prlntemps, p. 182.

^^Gaudy, p. 143. 180 Gaudy, quotes HE, p. 58.

18lprintempS( p . 176, 182printemps, p. 248.

183printempS ( p. 183.

^■®4Printemps, p. 260. 185printempS ^ p t 261.

186printenipsJ p. 88.

187printemps, p. 176.

188pr temps, p. 140.

189prIntemps, p. 213.

190IM, p. 153.

293La Politique des restes, in Theatre III, p. 169.

•*~92Politique, p. 151.

^9^Politique, pp. 151, 162.

394Politique, p. 155.

•'■^Politique, p. 169.

^98Politique, p. 171.

^Politique, p. 158.

198ttl, pp. 162-163.

^-"Politiques, p. 185.

^QQpolitiques, p. 172. ?ni Arthur Adamov, En Fiacre (Paris: L'Avant-Scene, 1 sept. 1963) 39.

202IM, p. 181.

2031M, p. 182.

204IM, p. 177.

2Q5sainte Europe, in Theatre III, p. 188,

206lbid.

2®2Sainte, p. 193. 180

208Sainte, p. 250. 2^ Saint&, p % 213.

2^ Saiute, p. 225.

211Salnte, p. 218.

2^2Sainte, p. 236.

^^Salnte, p. 239.

2^Sainte, p. 240.

22^Sainte, p. 241.

2~^Sainte, p. 243.

^•^Sainte, p. 245.

^ ^Sainte, p. 246.

2^J>ainte, p. 274.

22Qsalnte. p. 281.

222Sainte. p. 210.

222Sainte. p. 287.

22%E , p. 24.

22^Sainte, p. 288. 22^Note prelim, to M. le Moderet in Theatre IV, p. 11.

^2^Modere, p. 20.

2 2 2Modere. p. 12.

228JI, p. 66.

22^Modere. p. 37.

2^®Modere_, p. 20.

2 2 ^Modere, p. 2 1 .

282Modere. p. 31.

28^Modere. p. 32. ^Stodere, p. 35.

233Modere, p. 26.

23^Modi|re, p. 50.

237Ibid.

23®Modere, p. 82.

23^Modere, pp. 38-39.

2^®Modere, pp. 45-46.

^^Hodere, p. 65.

^ ^Modere, p. 66.

2^t3Modere, p. 67. 244 Modere, p. 78.

2^3Modere, p. 77.

2^6lbid.

2A7HE, p. 136.

248iti?HE, p. ii7137.

2^*^Modere, p. 34.

23^Modere, p. 76.

251IM, pp. 181-182.

232Arthur Adamov, Off limits (Paris: Gallimard, "Le Manteau d'Arlequin," 1969), p. 10.

2 5 3 Limits, pp. 143-44.

2 3 ^Limlts, P- 67.

2 3 ^Limits, P- 6 8 .

2 3 ^Limits, P* 67.

2 5 7 LitDlts, P- 154.

258Limits, P* 25.

23^Limits, P* 48. ^ ^ Limits, p. 152

261Ibid.

262Llmlts, p. 171

263HE, p. 178.

264M , p. 156.

2^3Limlts, p. 58.

266HE, p. 235.

2&7h e , p. 244. CHAPTER IV

SI L*ETE REVENAIT

PIECE D*INTEGRATION

In the beginning of Si l'ete revenait, as in the beginning of

La Parodie, Adamov indicates his ironic attitude toward his own optimistic attitudes. One of the stage props that is visible through­ out La Parodie is a sign which reads: "L'Amour vainqueur," expressing his superstitious faith in the power of love. At the beginning of

Si l*ete revenait. a billboard with a girl in a bathing suit descends

from the top of the stage to proclaim the joys of a socialist society.^

In both instances, Adamov is presenting his own illusions in an ironic

light. In La Parodie, "L'Amour vainqueur" creates a counterpoint to a

tale which demonstrates that love for N. and L*Employe is no more than a cruel Illusion. In Si l’ete revenait, he follows the advertisement

for the best-of-all-possible-worlds with a play in which it is clear

that the behavior of the characters is influenced not by the values of

their society, but by their own obsessions, compulsions and feelings of

guilt. La Parodie and SI l'ete revenait, Adamov*s first and last plays, are in part Ironic commentaries on the optimistic belief that man can

resolve his neurotic problems either through romantic love or progressive

politics.

In the "pieces d'exorcisme," the neuroses which drove the characters

to self-destructive acts were as unclear to the audience as they were to

183 184 the protagonists themselves, but in Si l'ete revenait, the characters are constantly evaluating their own and each other's behavior. Like

Janies Andrews in Off limits, they do not use alcohol or drugs to ease the pain of awareness, but their masochism is expressed in the way they torture themselves and each other with their feelings of guilt and doubt.

Adamov wrote that at one time he considered the title, "Variations sur un meme theme.It is appropriate to look at the play as "varia­ tions on a theme," because it is entirely composed of the dreams of the four protagonists, each of whom perceives events from his own point of view: "Si l'on peut y retrouver les memes situations, il n'en demeure pas moins que les perspectives varient, ce qui est tres normal, chacun voyant le monde et les autres a sa fa^on, chacun etant pour les autres et pour lui-meme un monde.The play is also a set of variations on the recurrent psychological themes in Adamov's works: masochism, impotence, exhibitionism, incest and homosexuality. But, whereas N. in La Parodie and Le Mutile in La Grande et la petite manoeuvre represent only the author's anguish, Lars, in Si l'ete revenait, is a more fully developed characterization, psychologically. All four of the protagonists have distinct character traits: they are not merely different aspects of their author's personality, as in the early plays,

In Si l'ete revenait, there are also several variations on the theme of the couple which, as Emmanuel Jacquart says, is a fundamental element in Adamov's theater: "On constate done la place centrale qu'occupe le couple. En effet, 1 'amour constitue la clef de voute de la vie intime, aussl bien dans les pieces d'Adamov que dans sa vie privee... Most of the male characters in Adamov's theater look for 185 women to complete themselves, and In SI l’ete revenait, all possible

combinations of the couple are present: son-mother, son-father (In

the character of Le Recteur), brother-sister, man-wife, man-man lovers/

friends, woman-woman lovers/frlends, man-woman lovers/frlends.

Lars Is the character who embodies Adamov's neurotic conflicts.

At the beginning of Lars' dreams, all the characters are engaged in

some form of activity: his sister Thea weeps and plays the'violin,

Alma writes, and his friend, Viktor, tries to saw through pieces of barbed wire. His mother, Madame Petersen, is described as "somnolente,

les mains jointes."’’ Soon after the play begins, she rubs her eyes and wakes up, ready to participate in Lars’ dream, Alma asks her to put

up the swing and her first words give us an indication of her political

conservatism. Calling into the wings for some of the workers to come and help her, she cries: "Mes amis!... Evidemment, ces ouvriers ne

sont jamais la! En train de se souler dans la rue, Je ne sais ou."^

In her distrust of the workers, Madame Petersen resembles the other mothers in Adamov's plays: La Mere, in L ’Invasion, who is suspicious

of the emigres who are coming into France and threatening the employment

situation, La Mere in Tous contre tous, who rails against the Refugies

for the same reason, and Madame Duranty in Le Ping-Pong, a mother figure

who fears and distrusts the Algerians. These women represent the class

consciousness of Adamov's own mother and also serve as a commentary on

the narrow thinking of the petite bourgeoisie which contributes to racial

persecution in France, as in other countries. Adamov's own leftist stance was certainly at least in part attributable to his revolt against his mother’s conservatism: she represented the Establishment and he took

up the banner of those who lived outside it and even of those committed 186

to destroy It.

Lars seats himself between Thea and Alma and Madame Petersen pushes the swing. From the beginning, there is an atmosphere of free-

floating sensuality. Alma leans across Lars and kisses Thea on the mouth. Lars says: "Thea, Alma, posez vos mains sur mes yeux...

Que Je ne vole plus rien, que vos mains et vos levres s'etendent sur mol,words which recall Mado’s request that her father blindfold her

in M. le Modere. Thea takes Alma’s hair and covers Lars' face with

it saying: "Mange ces cheveux, ta soeur le permet,"® This desire to be treated like an object by others, to relinquish all responsibility

for the acts which one commits, is an aspect of Adamov's masochism.

In SI l'ete revenait, it is also a way of escaping parental displeasure:

if one is not responsible for one’s actions, then one cannot be blamed.

The desire for anonymity represents more than a retreat from adult

responsibility, however: it expresses a deeper urge to withdraw from adult life altogether and return to the womb. Because of these feelings,

Lars is ambivalent toward his mother. On the one hand, he wants to break away from her domination and become an adult; on the other, he

feels drawn to states which recreate a sensual, secure state resembling

pre-consciousness.

When Lars says that he wants the girls to put their hands over his

eyes, Madame Petersen interjects: "il dit qa parce qu'il a peur. Quand

11 sera perche tout en l'air, grace a mes bons solns, il n'aura plus ce Q beau ton de cuimnnndcmcnt. Jc la connals bicn, ma progeniture. There

is a certain sadism in Madame Petersen’s statement that her son is afraid

and in her desire to frighten him further by pushing the swing higher.

It is a more subtle form of the mocking, aggressive behavior of the 187 mother at the end of Les Retrouvailles when she pushes Edgar into a baby carriage and laughs at him. The representation of the mother as a brutal and mocking figure in his theater suggests that Adamov never progressed psychologically beyond childhood in his relationship with his mother. His perception of the mother as possessive and ridiculing

is a reaction to his inability to become independent of her.

Madame Petersen reacts to the sensuality of the conversation

taking place between Lars, Thea and Alma on the swing by saying: "Tu oublies que tu paries devant ta mere."'*'® When Alma offers to flagellate

Lars, Madame Petersen returns from the kitchen and says: "Toi, Alma, avec un fouet, chez mol! Je ne suis pas prude, mais ces choses-la, autant que je sache, ne se font pas en famille,"^ The presence of the mother, who witnesses Lars’ erotic fantasies, may represent the inhibit­

ing effect of his mother's memory on Adamov’s sex life. The mother is actually present in the couple’s household in two of the plays, L 'Inva­ sion and Tous contre tous, and in Les Retrouvailles, Edgar’s fiancee

Lina lives with his mother while he attends law school in another town

and lives with a mother substitute, La Plus Heureuse des Femmes. In

all three cases, the mother is unsympathetic toward her daughter-in-law

and overprotective toward her son. In the first two instances, the

mother is also responsible for driving the woman out of the house and

into the arms of another man.

Like Madame Petersen, the Rector of the University represents par­

ental authority which manifests itself partially in sexual restrictions.

When Lars strikes him, the Rector says: "Et ce n'est pas les quelques

propos que j'al tenus sur 1 'augmentation chez nous des maladies 1 9 veneriennes, qui peuvent, je le repute, justifier... ' Venereal 188 disease Is the threatened punishment for sexual promiscuity In the same way as the threat of castration was used by Adamov's mother to stop his practice of masturbation. Adamov also had the more immediate example of the connection between sexuality and disease in the case of his uncle who contracted syphilis from the English dancer who was his mistress.^

Lars strikes the Rector, for which he is expelled from medical school. This attack on authority is also a blow to his mother: "Mine

1 I Petersen, eberluee, s'appuie a un mur. He then exacerbates the situation by placing a dunce's cap on the Rector's head, thereby chasing his mother away: "Mme Petersen se voile la face, epouvantee, et sort."^-^

As in Tous contre tous, where Jean Rist dies rather than admit who he is, or Le Sens de la marche, where Henri kills Berne, Lars' gesture of revolt and independence against his mother is more illusory than real, as his life's pattern continues to be one of unwilling submission. His gesture of revolt is also self-destructive, because by striking out at authority in the person of the Rector, he eliminates one of his options: he can no longer become a doctor, as he cannot return to medical school.

Unlike her son, Madame Petersen is settled: she owns houses and collects rent,*^ Lars, on the other hand, like Edgar in Les Retrouvailles, cannot even finish his education. He goes from one discipline to another without choosing a profession. He says to Thea: "Je sals bien,

J'ai rate mes examens d'archltecte, et puis j'ai essayc en vain de falre de la botanique, et puis J'ai etc radio de la Faculto do Modecine, et puis, et puis... His mother is able to manage for herself finan­ cially, but Lars remains dependent. Although he is unable to support himself or anyone else, it is obvious that he desires to be independent 189 and to provide security and protection for the woman he loves. He says to Thea: "Je peux parfaitement assurer la securlte et la vie d'une femme, meme de plusieurs au besoin. Je ne suis pas un miser­ able."18

Lars confides his sense of guilt to Brit over his mother’s and sister's deaths: 'c’est a cause de moi que mere est morte, et que

Thea a eu tellement de remords qu'elle a voulu mourir... De toute fa^on, on ne laisse pas mourir seuls les mourants,’1^ telling her that on a certain Tuesday, Thea did not accompany her mother to visit the sick: "Que ce mardi-la, elle preferait le passer avec moi, et que j'etais bien d'accord, que je serrais sa main tres fort, que je baisais ses cheveux."^8 While Lars and Thea stayed together at home, Madame

Petersen was killed in a train wreck, and Thea Later killed herself out of remorse at the place where her mother had died. Lars sees his mother's death as a punishment for his incestuous relationship with his sister. It is probable that Adamov felt guilty over his inability to accept responsibility for his mother and sister after his father's death in 1933. When his mother died, he may have felt that he had not only neglected her when she was dying, but also in the years preceding her death when she was alone.

Madame Petersen's attitude toward Brit is one of patronizing contempt. Like the mother in L 1 Invasion, she treats her son’s wife disparagingly: instructing her to set the table, she adds: "Je vais tout de meme 1'aider. Elle n'y arrivera pas toute seule."^1

When Lars dresses up like a little girl and bounces a ball, his mother says: 190

En tout cas, mon petit Lars, je te suis bien reconnaissante d'avoir revetu, pour feter ma venue, ton beau costume du dimanche. Et aussi de prendre ta soeur en charge, comme cela, de temps en temps. Et si les choses par hasard, tournaient mal, tu n'y serais vraiment pour rien. Comme tu ressembles au petit gar^on que j'aimais, et serrais sur ma poitrine. C'etait deja toi, toi tout e n t i e r . ^ 2

In his dream, It is obvious that Lars is sexually ambivalent. Like

Adamov, he fears growing up and in this instance he retreats from his role as an adult male to the point of dressing up as a little girl.

By denying that he is a man in this way, he is also alleviating the

castration anxiety which the prospect of sexual relations with Alma

causes in him.

"Mine Petersen s ’assied a gauche, revassant, puis soudain culbute,

sa chaise tombe, elle roule. " ^ Lard’, hostility toward his mother is

indicated when he dreams that she falls off her chair to the ground, but he is torn between conflicting feelings: he wants to break the hold which his mother has on him which prevents him from becoming a man, but

his hostile, aggressive feelings cause him to feel guilty when she dies.

As he walks arm in arm with Thea, Lars wears a straw hat like his

mother's: he still feels safest when he identifies with her. After her

death, Madame Petersen rises like a ghost: "colffee d'un bandeau qui a t doit vaguement lul donner un air de spectre.1 She says to Thea:

"Mais tu es toute pardonnee, ma petite fille, cela va de soi. Qui n'a

pas de mauvais penchants? Et puis toi, au moins, tu as eu le courage 25 de penser un peu a ta mere." At this moment, Lars kicks' Madame

Petersen offstage, denying that he was guilty of her death, in words which betray his guilt and bad faith: "Ce n ’est pas moi qui l'al poussee,

nl meme qui ai ouvert la portiere, Je n ’etais pas la, du reste.

J 1etais chez les Arne, non dejS au restaurant, Je crols bien." 26 191 The relationship between Lars and his mother remains unresolved.

Madame Petersen is the only one of the female characters who does not dream, perhaps because Adamov did not perceive her as a three-dimen­ sional character in the same way as he did Lars and his three female contemporaries. His own mother had been dead since 1942 and the memory of her became a symbol of oppression and guilt in his theater. As in the preceding plays, there is no meaningful dialogue with the mother, only action and reaction. Her influence, even from beyond the grave, is felt by those who survive her and her image becomes a reminder of

Lars' failures toward her and the other women.

Lars' perceptions of the other three women in his dream recall similar relationships between men and women in Adamov's theater. Thea,

Lars' sister, is presented as being in many ways his female double: like him, she keeps a diary, is very much under the influence of their mother, and feels guilt over her death. Brother and sister also share a sense of guilt over their incestuous relationship. Lars' passion for his sister seems to be the only real passion of which he is capable.

In the beginning of his dream, he muses: "Parental, parental. Qu'est- ce que ce mot signifie pour mol? Pour moi, Lars Petersen, dont la fievre mange le visage, quand il est pris entre les mains... " and

Thea finishes his sentence: "Entre mes mains."^ Lars' unnatural relationship with Thea is a concrete expression of Adamov's sexual guilt.

He chose incest as a symbol because it is a passion which is outside behavioral norms and therefore produces guilt, and because incest

Illustrates Lars' inability to break out of the family circle.

Lars takes down a notebook hanging on the wall and reads: "Vols, 28 salsies et contestations... " When he asks his friend Viktor what 192

"vols" means, Viktor replies: "Cela veut dire qu'un certain Lars Peter- sen a viole, vole l'ame de sa soeur, une certaine Thea... " 29 Besides expressing Lars' guilt over his lustful feelings for his sister, the words in the notebook are also an allusion to Strindberg's theater, which had an influence on all Adamov's "psychological" plays. In a chapter entitled "Doit et avoir," Adamov points out that Strindberg's theater is characterized by a kind of legal accountability between the characters in consequence of which they are always presenting their grievances to each other. Their feelings of indebtedness inevitably lead to bitterness: "ce n'est pas seulement le creancier qui halt son debiteur, c'est aussi et surtout le debiteur, l’etre a qui on a tout donne, qui veut se debarrasser de son creancier pour n*avoir pas & lui rendre de c o m p t e s . ^ in Adamov's theater, the characters also blame each other (particularly the sons and their mothers, or fathers), but more indirectly than in Strindberg's theater. They try to make each other feel guilty through a display of their own suffering.

In Lars' dream, Thea acts out a fantasy of humiliation: "relevant le bas de sa robe de chambre jusqu'aux genoux: "Oui, je jeflnerai en public, et l'on rira de moi, Les femmes surtout. Les hommes me

q -I jetteront des pieces de monnale avec des gestes obscenes." Lars wants Thea to know that he can take care of her: "Alors je viendrai, je te releverai, je crierai: c'est ma soeur, je la prends a ma charge!

Dispersez-vous, bonnes g e n s . "32 To bolster his courage, he fantasizes about his fame as a botanist; "Je fais un pcu de botanique a present.

J'etudie, Je classifie, et ce n'est pas commode, vois-tu, de se retrouver dans tous ces noms latins que l'on donne aux plantes,UJJ At this point in his dream, two young men walk on stage and the first says: "II va 193 falloir se tenlr tres correctement. C'est M. Lars Petersen qui accompagne cette Jeune femme... 11 est sur tous les calendriers. C'est un botanlste eminent."^4 The sudden appearance of strangers onstage, who confirm or contradict the protagonist's image of himself, is reminiscent of the author's technique in Le Professeur Taranne, another play which takes place entirely in a dream atmosphere.

After the two young men walk offstage Lars cries: "Thea, J'ai perdu mes yeux!"^ As in similar instances in La Parodie, L 'Invasion, and Off limits. Lars' loss of sight symbolizes a loss of his faculties and his inability to cope with life. Blindness may also be interpreted as punishment for his dreams of fame, in the same way that it was a penalty incurred by L'Employe for his optimism.

Lars runs offstage and when he reappears, he takes some papers and arranges them on the floor. Alma accuses him of looking through his sister's diary and indirectly suggests that he may be guilty of a much greater infraction with his sister: "Qu*est-ce qu'elle y raconte, dans ce journal? Que c'est bien ennuyeux, ces lois sur l'inceste...

It is an indication of the love and trust which exists between Lars and Thea that Lars is able to speak to her as though he were speaking to himself. He is less guarded in discussing his inadequacies with her than he is with Brit or Alma. Reviewing his failures: architecture, botany, medicine, he says: "Tu te souviens, Thea, je recensais, il n'y a pas si longtempa, les arbres de la region. Pourquoi ne m'a-t'on pas encore paye? Que l'on me rende ce qui m'est du. (Dcsignant a Thea des personnages Invisibles.) Xls sont la, face a face, et ils parlent.

Mais si tu crois qu'ils parlent de mol!"*^ This feeling of being ignored recalls the scene in Le Professeur Taranne, where Le Journaliste and 194 the first and second Messieurs all turn their backs on Taranne as he is

trying to get them to recognize him.38 Similarly, when he is trying to

prove his respectability before the people assembled at the police

station, the directions read: "Le professeur Taranne a parle dans le

vide, personne ne l'a ecoute."39

Alma and Thea kiss and stand with their arms around each other.

L'Officier de Police enters and asks Lars what has transpired between

him and the two girls, to which he replies: "II se passe que j'ai

tire en l’air pour effaroucher un peu ces jeunespersonnes."^0 Viktor

enters and defends Lars, saying that he was attacked by Alma and Thea,

and Lars explains: "Mile Linner pretendait que j'avais brise le coeur

de ma soeur, et ma Thea bien-aimee surencherlssait, en ajoutant bien

sur que la premiere victime avait ete elle."^ Lars takes his guilt

very seriously: "Viktor, Viktor! Tu sais bien que je les ai tuees, / o sans meme qu'elles aient Jete un cri, une injure." When Viktor

accuses him of having gotten him punished for something he himself did,

Lars responds: "Oh, le coupable, c'est toujours moi, je le sais

bien,"^3 and speaking of Thea's death, he says: "Oh, j'ai honte!"^

When Lars dresses up as a little girl and despairs: "II faut croire

que j'ai bien peu et bien mal grandi,"^ Thea comes to his rescue:

"prenant le visage de Lars entre ses mains: Non, cela veut dire que

tu n'es pas aliene comme les autres."^ Thea understands and loves Lars,

but she and Madame Petersen encourage him in his weakness and reinforce

his family attachments, His wife, Brit, on the other hands, wants him

to be an adult.^

Like Lars' guilt, Thea's sadness is made slightly ridiculous by the

exaggeration of her constant weeping and violin playing. It is an indi­ 195 cation of Adaroov's artistic maturity that he was able to separate him­ self from the characters of Lars and Thea enough to view them with a certain irony. Lars' ghosts are often Adamov's own, but in creating him, the author was able to view his neuroses objectively, even if he was still unable to rid himself of them.

Thea puts on an outfit which looks like an English school teacher's and writes the following words on a blackboard as she speaks them:

"Lars n'a pas tue sa soeur. C'est sa soeur qui s'est tuee, parce qu'elle

i Q en avalt assez de vivre. Lars n'est pour rien dans 1'affaire," and turning to Lars: "Ils veulent que tu t'agenouilles devant ton carnet de cheques. Mais moi, je ne veux pas de pareilles betises. Et c'est a moi d'etre obeie, a present. On m'a assez coupe la parole quand j'etais petite, j'ai bien le droit de la prendre aujourd'hui."^

The last word that Lars speaks in his dream is "Thea!"^® Lars' closest relationship, then, is with his sister. It is to her that he goes for comfort and she whom he desires. He shares his guilt over the death of their mother with her and confides in her about his progress in his diary and his failure in his other ventures. He does not fear her criticism, as he does Alma's, and with her he does not have to pretend to be stronger than he is, as he does with Brit.

There are sexual undercurrents in Lars' first encounter with Alma in his dream. Alma teases Lars by not letting him read her diary. He offers to buy it, saying: "Mais dis done, tu retrousses drolement ta jupe, en vendant la marchandise," to which Alma replies: "Je fais ce que je veux."'**- From the beginning, Lars stands in a certain awe of

Alma, She is the one who'Hoes what she wants," and unlike Lars and Thea, her actions are not controlled by guilt or fear, Alma introduces Brit 196 to Lars In the following manner: "Brit, ma copine. Lars, mon copain, et ton futur patron et marl.,. It Is Alma, the manipulative older friend (she is 23, Thea is 22, Lars and Brit are 21), who has understood

Lars* need for someone to put his diary manuscript in order and who has found him a woman to serve as both wife and secretary.

There is an attraction between Alma and Thea, just as there is between Lars and Alma and Lars and Thea, but there is also animosity.

When the three of them are on the swing, Alma leans across Lars and kisses Thea on the mouth, but later, the stage directions read: "Elies se battent, se tirent les cheveux, se griffent, There is a rivalry between the two girls in which Alma usually wins: "Alma veut s'emparer du violon de Thea. Thea resiste, mais c'est Alma qui gagne.11^^

Viktor has apparently had sexual relations with Alma: he says to

Lars, holding up a woman’s bicycle: "Et voila la bicyclette d'Alma, dont, une nuit, j'ai ronge la barre. (Ja n'a pas ete commode, crois-moi, de l’eliminer, cette sacree barre, J*y suis parvenu cependant."-^ By gnawing off the bar on Alma's bicycle and thus transforming it from a man's to a woman's bicycle, Viktor is suggesting that he has made a woman of Alma, There is some similarity between the relationship of Lars and

Viktor here, and that of Arthur and Victor in Le Ping-Pong, where both young men are infatuated with Annette, but it is Victor who finally lives with her.^ In this case, it is Lars who desires Alma and Viktor who succeeds sexually with her.

When Lars wants to punish himself for striking the Rector, he strips to the waist, picks up a whip and threatens to flagellate himself, Alma says; "Tu ne vas pas te corriger toi-meme! Ca fait Moyen Age, et tout le bataclan, Donne-moi plutot ce fouet. Je sais tres blen les manier, 197 les fouets." Lars gives the whip to Alma and says; "J'attends,"

to which Alma replies: "L'attente fait partie du programme.This

interchange puts Alma in the tradition of the other sadistic women in

Adamov's theater. She resembles Lili, in La Farodle, who unconsciously

torments L ’Employe and N. by keeping them waiting; Erna, in La Grande et la petite manoeuvre, who extends, then withdraws her love from Le

Mutile; and La Plus Heureuse des Femmes, in Les Retrouvailles, who shelters Edgar and then makes him crawl around after chicken bones on

the floor of the train on which they are travelling.

When Lars puts a dunce's cap on the Rector's head, Alma congratu­

lates him: "Toi, au moins, tu as de 1'imagination, Et le materiel qu'il

faut, a portee de la main."-*® It is Alma who is most "au courant" and seems to have adjusted most comfortably to adult life. She is the only one who communicates with the Rector on an equal basis.She is also the only one of the young people who is employed: she directs a

service which offers comfort and counseling to those who are alone and unhappy and on the brink of suicide, a significant allusion to Adamov's own state of mind at the time he wrote this play, the year before he himself committed suicide. Alma's desire to comfort suicides recalls

Erna's ministrations to the maimed in La Grande et la petite manoeuvre and Mado's desire to visit prisoners detained in camps in M. le Moderc.

Her concern illustrates the need of the sadistic woman for helplessness

in others. When her volunteers no longer have the strength to handle

the calls, Alma Instructs them to put on a recording saying that the caller has not been abandonned, that friends are thinking of him, etc.^

Her recommendation that a recording be used to comfort potential suicides demonstrates her basic inability to understand another's distress. As 198 in his early theater, Adatnov is suggesting here that "personne n'entend personne, and he does it by means of the concrete and contemporary image of one human being reaching out to another for help and being answered by a recorded message,

Alma is an equestrian and in this, as in the suicide service,

Brit is her student. Alma has more insight into the personalities of the others than Lars and Thea, enmeshed as they are in their own fears and guilt, and more curiosity than Brit, whose mission seems to be to love and serve. Because she does what she wants, she is also less frus­ trated than the others. Of Thea, she says; "Elle ne parle pas de moi, qui lui egratigne tous les jours le visage pour qu'elle pleure, qu'elle pleure enfin, puisqu'elle creve du desir de pleurer!" 62 Lars is intimi­ dated by Alma, who knows more and accomplishes more than he: "Alma va a gauche et se fait les ongles. Lars voudrait bien l*appeler mais n ’ose pas, s * immobilise. Like the others, Alma makes Lars feel guilty: she accuses him of reading Thea's diary in her absence: "Tu n'as pas honte, Lars?"^ There is an interchange between Alma and Lars in which it is evident that he has desired her, but the desire was not consummated.

Characteristically, Lars begins his declaration with a statement of the shame that he feels: "Oh, J'ai honte! Honte a cause de toi, Alma, egalement. Parce que si je n'avais pas accepte de vivre avec Brit, et de t'oublier quelquefois, tu ne serais pas, peut-etre... Je me suis deja jete sur toi, les mains perdues dans tes cheveux, pour te retenir.

Je suis tombe. (II Lojiibe.) Unlike Viktor, Lars was unable to com­ plete the sexual act with Alma. This Impression, based on the fact that he "fell," or failed, is reinforced in the stage directions which follow.

As Alma takes her head in her hands and walks off sobbing, "Lars, apres 199 g'etre assure qu'Alma est bien sortie, enleve sa veste et son pantalon, s Thabille en flllette et se met 3 jouer a la balle." He says: "Je suis une petite fille, et c'est par sa faute, par sa fautel"^ While

Lars Is still cavorting dressed as a little girl, Alma changes her tone from one of castrating aggression to submission: "Et puis j'ai conflance en toi, Lars. Je m'lmagine pauvre mendiante, je ne sais ou, dans une Calcutta quelconque, Tu ne passerais pas devant moi indifferent.

Tu me releverais, et puis tu me couvrirais de sole," f*7

Alma paints a portrait of Lars: "Je fais ton portrait, Lars, tel Aft que tu es aujourd'hui et tel que tu resteras. She sees him as he is and she understands that he Is not going to change, that he will never break out of the circle of family ties and guilt, and that he will never attain adulthood.

Like Thea, Alma acts out a fantasy of humiliation: "Alma, de l'extremlte gauche de la scene, tantot a genoux tantot rampant, arrive a son extremite droite. C'est maintenent une pauvre mendiante. Accroupie par terre, elle tend la main."69 Lars drops a few coins on the ground and Alma picks them up; then, in a quick reversal of her role as a beggar, she attacks him in a fit of jealousy: "soudain brutale, se levant d'un bond: Non, tu ne vas pas reprendre le bras de Thea, je ne veux pas."^®

Lars punishes Alma in his dream by responding to her with cruelty:

"Mais quel droit as-tu a la parole?and by imagining her as crushed by his coldness toward her: "Alma reste debout mais tete basse, hcsltante.

At the end of Lars' dream, Alma is once again doing her nails, self- contained and aloof. In his eyes, she is the worldly woman whom he de­ sires but cannot possess, whose qualities of leadership and action he admires because he lacks them. Lars cannot make Alma happy because he cannot make love to her. For this reason, he blames himself for her death in the Third World where she has gone to find fulfillment in fighting for the cause of Justice. Alma’s political activism relates her to the characters of Polia and Sofia in Le Prlntemps 71. who leave their countries to join the international workers' struggle in France. They represent the positive side of this character, however. In Si l ’ete revenait, Adamov's attitude toward the struggle of Third World nations has become more cynical: Lars says of Alma's activities: "Toi, frele creature, avancee par des organisations fantomes, pour mettre fin a tous ces crimes, allons! In Si l ’ete revenait. Adamov focuses on Alma's personal life - her relationship to Lars, to Thea, to Brit and to Viktor - rather than on her political convictions; he is interested in what is murky rather than what is clear in her personality: her sexual ambivalence, her tendency to manipulate others, and her alternately sadistic and masochistic behavior.

When Brit enters Lars' dream, she is carrying the typewriter with which she will type his diary. From the beginning, Lars perceives Brit almost as a servant: she cooks, irons, and sets the table, and does not take part in his sensual games with Thea and Alma. Her attitude toward these entangled relationships is, in fact, disapproving: "Lars, Thea et Alma se preclpitent pour s ’asseoir sur la balangoire. Entre les deux fllles, Lars... Mmc Petersen retrousse ses manches et pousse la balanfrolre. Brit, qui a surveille, horrifiee. le debut de la scene, sort 5 droite,"^ Viktor sees Brit’s and Lars’ relationship as a mockery every time Brit enters, he bursts out laughing.^ Viktor knows that a normal marital relationship between Lars and Brit will be impossible, 201 because Lars Is unable to become independent of his mother and sister and, therefore, cannot make another woman happy. Unlike Thea, Brit sees Lars as he is and does not inflate his illusions about his capabil­ ities. When Lars says that he has finished medicine and become an expert on plants, she says: "Tu ne devrais pas, alors, inscrire sur tes cartes de visite, 'Monsieur Lars Petersen, de l'ordre des architectes.*"76 interchange illustrates Brit’s desire for an adult relationship and Lars* weakness. When he blames himself for the deaths of his mother and Thea,

Brit says:

BRIT: De grace, ne ressuscite pas ce passe, mauvais, mort. Nous serons grands tous les deux. Je t'aiderai alors, et tu m'aideras aussi.

LARS: Oh oui, nous allons etre grands, et adultes enfin, tous les deux.

BRIT: allant a gauche, tenant un fer a repasser et s'ap- puyant au mur: Je compte sur toi, Lars, de toutes mes forces.

Lars fait quelques pas, puis se laisse tomber sur une chaise. ^

Lars' desire to lead a normal life and his fear of failure reflect the author's own conflicted feelings. In his Journal, he writes from the hospital (August 10, 1967): "Je veux que nous vivions ensemble, enfin, normalement, comroe un couple ordinaire et rare: deux etres intelligents, unis, la tete haute quand ils regardent le monde, l'ennemi; la tete basse quand ils la posent sur l'epaule de 1 ’autre, l'ami. 7 A The dream of a happy, normal relationship with his wife was one of the hopes to which

Adamov clung, along with the political Ideal of socialism. Unlike Paolo

Paoli, Le Printemps 71 and La Politique des restes, Si l'ete revenait does not present an easy political solution, Lars lives in a well-ordered socialist country and yet his personal existence is totally self-centered 202 and socially unproductive.

The characterizations present certain discrepancies in the author’s portrayal of a socialist country as the background against which the dreams are played. Madame Petersen, for instance, is a middle-class character: a property-owner. She says: "Ah, vous parlez d'Alma Llnner, qui sousloue un de mes pavilions?,.. Elle est bien contente d ’avoir, dans ce pays 'heureux' et 'socialiste, 1 trouve un logement a si bon c o m p t e . " ^ She is also involved in charitable works, an activity in which she tries to engage her daughter, Thea. The image of the "dame patronesse" is typical of a class, rather than a classless, society, based as it is on the concept of "noblesse oblige," and Alma's crisis telephone service is an updated version of the others' good works.

Brit’s is the voice of reason in the play. When Thea and Alma express their affection for Lars in enthusiastic terms, deluding him and themselves about his accomplishments and generosity, Brit exclaims with exasperation: "Et quoi encore!"®® Unlike Thea and Alma, Brit does not involve Lars in her own masochistic fantasies, nor does she humiliate him. Her dream is for Lars to achieve manhood so that they can become an adult couple. When Viktor congratulates Lars on having had the cour­ age to strike the Rector, Brit says: "11 aura tous les courages, et la societe finira bien par le reconnaltre,"81

In Thea’s dream, it is immediately obvious that she is jealous of both Alma and Brit and suspects them of trying to replace her in the affections of her brother, Lars; "Alma et Brit se battent. Elies veulent ft? toutes les deux tomber dans les bras de Lars agenouille. When Thea first encounters them, she is suspicious: "Mais regardez-vous! Vous etes trentpees, et tremblantes de la tete aux pieds. Comme des 203

voleuses!" 83 Lars tells Thea that he will marry Brit, but reassures

her that his marriage will not interfere with his relationship with her, 84 as he and Brit will live at home. 85 In Thea's dream, Alma says: "Que je rie enfin!" Alma, like

Thea, desires emotional release. Both women are frustrated in their

relationship with Lars. This explains the occasional sadism in the

way they treat him. They are both bound to him by ties of affection

(Thea's attachment also represents her inability to break away from

the family) and yet he does not provide a satisfactory sexual relation­

ship for either of them. It is Lars who is afraid of swinging too high

on the swing. 86

Thea's relationship with Lars is complicated by his relationship to

Viktor. Viktor dominates Lars and Thea; he tells Thea that Lars is in

love with him: "... ton freluquet de frere, qui a le beguin pour moi?

Fardi, 11 a bien le beguin pour toi. Et moi, de plus, je suis son pere."®^

Viktor Is a father substitute for Lars who has no father and needs a man

stronger than himself to look up to, Viktor and Thea share Lars' love:

"Ton frerot pensait bien a toi, et en meme temps rampait devant Viktor."®®

Viktor tells Thea to admit that she has always seen him as a boxer, or

he will spank her, and she says to Lars: "Je ne sals pas ce que je dois 89 faire. (Designant Viktor:) J'ai si peur de lui!" Lars shares Thea's

apprehensions concerning Viktor: "II a certes une faqon de faire clique-

ter sa petite monnaie dans sa poche, qui, ma foi, n'est pas rassurante.

Et il n'est pas rassuranL non plus quand il rajuste son p a n t a l o n . "90 The

uneasiness that Thea and Lars feel toward him has to do with their per­

ception of Viktor as a male. Part of Adamov's own neurosis stemmed from his ambivalence toward the traditional male role and his aversion to the 204 signs of masculinity as they are displayed in society. In L 'Aveu, he says:

Enfant, deja, les signes de la virilite me faisaient instinctivement horreur, D'entendre dire: 'c'est un homme,' avec ce ton bien connu d ’arrogance obscene, de vanite aveugle qui dedaigne tout ce qui n'est pas elle-meme, suffisait a m'emplir du plus Insurmontable degout.

Cette nausee, je ne saurais mieux la depeindre qu'en rappelant le geste de 1 *homme aux urinoirs, qui, apres avoir satisfait son besoin, jambes ecartees, flechit puis cambre les jarrets en adjustant la ceinture de son pantalon, et cela a deux ou trois reprises avec sur sa face epanouie une expression vague de satisfaction idiote.

’Sois un homme!' Le seul rappel de ces mots rallume la vieille haine pour tous mes ennemis de race, tous ceux que je meprise et qui me meprisent, les males satisfaits a l'air vainqueur.

His distaste for fatuous demonstrations of virility was reflected

in Adamov's conventional male characters, such as Le Premier Venu, in

L*Invasion: "Entre le Premier Venu en costume de sport, une serviette

a la main. II a quelque chose du trafiquant aise, du professeur de

culture physique et du danseur mondain. " ^ Like Viktor in Thea's

dream, Le Premier Venu intimidates Agnes into submission: "Le Premier

Venu s'accoude sur une marche de l'escabeau, l'air conquerant, et regarde

Agnes. Agnes fait quelques pas hesitants, puis revient a la fenetre et

appuie son front contre la vitre. Le Premier Venu bombe le torse."^3

Adamov felt a bond with women like Agnes and Thea who were bullied into

submission by virile men. The character of Viktor symbolizes Lars' need

to be dominated by another man.

Adamov writes of Victor, his friend on whom the couples Arthur-

Victor in Le Ping-Pong and Lars-Viktor in Si l'ete revenait are based: 205

II se sent a la fols mon inferieur et mon superieur. Mon superieur parce que... mais au fait, parce que quoi? J'y suisl Parce qu’il est Victor, et qu'a ce seul titre Je lui dois de la consideration.

La sorte de privaute bizarre qu'il avait, a encore sur moi.

Importance de Victor dans ma vie. 94

Dressed in hospital pajamas, which symbolize his incarceration in an institution, Viktor was inspired as much by Adamov’s early filial devo­ tion to Artaud, who was interned for psychiatric disorders, as by his relationship to his lifelong friend, Victor.

Lars asks Thea if she mentions him often in her diary and she replies: "A toutes les pages.She also betrays her love in her actions:

se faufilant sur la scene et se collant a Lars: Je ne sals pas ou est Brit. Mais je sais ou est Thea, et ses pauvres petits cheveux aplatis. Oui, pres de toi, tout pres de toi. C'est elle qui peut t'aider, mais d'abord, aide-la un peu. Donne-lui la force de t’aimer.^6

One is reminded of La Soeur's love for Le Mutile in La Grande et la petite manoeuvre, when she says to him: "callne. - Si tu avals voulu garder ta soeur, tu aurais reussi. (Etreignant le Mutile).

Tu as toujours compte pour moi plus que les autres, tu le sais bien."9?

La Soeur and Thea, as well as Mathilde, in Le Sens de la marche, are examples of women who are unwilling to move outside of the family circle to establish love relationships with men. Crippled by their fears, they turn to their brothers in hopes of finding comfort and protection.

In Thea's dream, she and her mother defend Lars when he strikes the

Rector:

THEA; Vous savez, monsieur le Recteur, 11 a comme ;a des Slans brusques mais tout bien vlte rentre 206 dans l ’ordre.

MADAME PETERSEN: pretant serment, la main tendue: Je mets ma main au feu que Lars n'est pas un violent, C'est,,. c'est par hasard que soudain il s'en prend a un tel ou a un tel. Ne voyez dans le geste qu'il a accompli qu'une gaminerie,”®

The hesitation signified by three dots is often incriminating in

Adamov's theater, as it is here. In Le Frofesseur Taranne, Taranne appears increasingly suspect as he talks, and inevitably brings the guilt which he seeks to avoid down upon himself by what he says. When he defends himself to the police against the accusation of undressing on the beach: "Qu'est-ce qui prouve que la fillette qui est venue ici pour tout vous raconter ait reellement assiste... a la scene,"^ the hesitation implied by the three dots betrays his guilty conscience.

Attempting to make the group of people assembled at the police station recognize him as the reknowned professeur he claims to be, he says:

"balbutiant. - Je... suis le professeur Taranne... Vous devez... cer-

tainement connaitre les travaux."^®^ In the same way as Taranne, Madame

Petersen aggravates her son's case in attempting to defend him.

Adamov suggests doubts about Socialism, or any political system which assures law and order at the price of individual freedom, when

Viktor says:

Viktor a avale tout le feu qu'il a trouve dans le coin. II a mis ainsi a execution un tres vieux project 3 lui: se venger de l’Etat en 1'aplatissant, en lui enlevant tout ce qui peut le mettre en danger, bien sur, mais en meme temps, tout ce qui peut le faire scintiller, briller, aimer.101

Genius is traditionally associated with madness and it is this exacerbated

individuality that gives poetry to life. By suppressing individualism, socialism makes life safe, but dull. The author sympathizes with Viktor's madness more than with the conformity represented by the authority 207 figures: La MAre and Le Recteur.

In Thea's dream, Madame Petersen becomes a clergyman by putting on his robes.In Adamov's theater, one figure of authority often melts into another. This changing of roles is particularly character­ istic of the early, psychological theater, where one actor often plays more than one part. The technique is effective in emphasizing a partic­ ular behavior pattern of Adamov's neurotic characters: the tendency to submit to powerful mother and father figures. In La Farodie, Le Directeur de 1 'Avenir becomes Le Chef de Reception and then Le Gerant, and the

Premier and Second Commissionnaires become the Premier and Second Ouv- riers du Service d'Assainissement who finally sweep N. off the stage.

In Le Professeur Taranne, the Premier and Second Messieurs become the

Premier and Second Policiers. In Le Sens de la marche, Le Pere, Le

Commandant, Le Predicateur and Le Directeur d'ecole are all played by the same actor and Les Premier, Deuzieme and Troisieme Aspirants, Adeptes and Eleves are all played by the same three actors. In Les Retrouvailles,

La Plus Heureuse des Femmes and La Mere are played by the same actress, and in M. le Modere, one actor plays M. William and Le Prince de Galles, and another the parts of Pado and Ernest. In all these plays, the pro­ tagonist continues to recreate the same situation by forming the same kinds of relationships, particularly ones in which he submits to parental or authority figures, a pattern strikingly conveyed when the figures who intimidate the protagonist are portrayed by the same actor,

Thea and her mother go to the iron mines at Klruna to read to the miners from the Bible. The choice of text shows Thea’s exalted concep­ tion of life:

THEA; ... 'Et il me montra la Ville sainte, Jerusalem, qui descendait du ciel. La murallle etait construite en jaspe, et la ville d’or pur, semblable A du verre pur.' 208 MADAME PETERSEN: ... 'Les fondements de la muraille etalent ornes de plerres precieuses de toutes especee. Le premier fondement etait de jaspe, le second de saphlr, le troisieme de calcedoine, le quatrieme d'emeraude,'^03

Later, she refers to "la belle couronne d'emeraudes et de saphlrs qu'on nous avalt donnee a Kiruna,"10^ Through her Imagination, Thea tries to transform the oppressive and inhibited reality which is her life into a rich and splendid vision.

Thea says to her mother: "Monte sur mes epaules, et n'aie pas peur de me faire mal. Serre mon visage coupable de tes bottes, de tes cuisses."105 Thea wants to be punished for her incestuous rela­ tionship with Lars and her neglect of her mother, and like the author, she interprets her guilt as arising from a sexual crime and seeks sexual humiliation as punishment. She torments Lars by making him feel guilty:

LARS, qui trebuche et va tomber, apres une longue pause: Pardonne-moi, Thea, voila que j'allais tomber, betement, de nouveau. Je t'ecoutais, et puis j'ai glisse...

THEA;*.. vers le mal, voulant m'entralner dans ta chute. Avoue que tu as honte.

LARS: J'avoue.106

Having made Lars admit his guilt, Thea literally brings him to his knees, and orders: "Baise le bas de la robe de ta grande soeur qui a raison." Lars obeys, saying: "Je baise le bas de la robe de ma

grande soeur qui a raison."10^

Thea's sexual fears are expressed in her Jealousy and hostility

toward Alma, who is the most liberated of the three girls. In the same way that Johnnie Brown's paranoia took the form of a fear of blacks in La Politique des restes, Thea's sexual anxieties focus on the stereotype of the black man as rapist of white girls. Referring to Alma, 209 she says: "Oh, je la deteste, cette grande blondasse a destination des Africainsl Tu sais, elle a signe le manifeste contre la radiation 108 de ce professeur noir dont l'eleve a ete violee."

Like Lars, Thea is dependent on Alma, as well as their mother, for money, Alma says to them: "Voyons, ne faites pas tant d'histoires.

Si qa m'amuse de vous donner de l'argent, a tous les deux, (A Thea, designant Lars:) Sais-tu que Je lui en ai deja donne? II a fait, bien sur, quelques simagrees, mais tres vite il a trouve qa tout naturel."1®®

In Thea's mind, as in the author's, there is a definite connection be­ tween guilt and financial dependence:

LARS, reparalssant: Et voila, si j'ai bien entendu, que l'on reparle de honte! Je peux rentrer a n'importe quelle heure, il s'agit de honte. Vous veniez de parler d'argent, sans doute.

THEA: Oui, je disais que maman subvient a tous nos besoins.H ®

In her dream, Thea perceives Brit as the one who does not suffer from guilt. When she asks her: "Tu n'as pas honte," Brit responds:

"Non."H^ Thea sees herself as ugly and oppressed by her mother, who she says shaved her head and sold her hair in town: "Et moi j'etais * 1 1 ? encore plus laide, encore plus triste qu’avant. The characteriza­ tion of Lars' sister resembles Adamov's description of his own sister during their childhood:

J'ai passe les premieres annees de ma vie, entoure d ’un peuple de servantes: ma gouvernante armenienne, ma 'demoiselle' franqaisc, ma nourrice Mncha, dont un noil etait vert, 1 'autre bleu, ma soeur enfin quo Je range parmL les servantes, sans doute parce que ma mere me preferalt a elle,

In Thea's dream, as in Lars' own, Alma is the one whom Lars involves in his masochistic episodes: 210 LARS, une fois Brit eloignee, s ’agenoulllant: Alma, donne-moi un ordre.

THEA, insolente: Quel ordre?

LARS: N ’importe quel ordre.

ALMA: Je te donne 1’ordre, Lars, d'apporter ta canne entre les dents. Elle est dans le vestibule. Je t ’attends dans la salle de bains. (Sortant, a Thea) II est grand, pour un enfant de six ans, tu ne trouves pas?"H^

This incident demonstrates once again Thea's Jealousy of Alma, whom she suspects of trying to lure her brother into sexual activity which she perceives as dirty and secretive (Alma invites Lars to meet her in the bathroom).

Like Lars, Thea flagellates herself. She falls to the ground and chastises herself for not having accompanied her mother on her mission of mercy the day she was killed in the train wreck, saying: "Je ne peux plus, Lars, j'ai trop honte... Maman devait payer pour la sale fille que je suis, II y a une logique fatale."H5

Thea's dream, like the others, functions in part as a means of wish fulfillment, in which her love for her brother is realized:

THEA, ... Lars, aide-moi, fals quelque chose, dis quel- que chose. Que vienne la parole magiquel

Thea prend la main de Lars.

LARS: Thea, je t'aime."116

Brit threatens to destroy the relationship between Thea and Lars by excluding Thea: "Seulement ne compte plus sur moi pour taper, discrete, le Journal de Thea. Finis, les sales travnux. La dactylo leve les bras... Alma, Lars, moi, nous seuls, ce serait trop beau!"^^

At the end of her dream, Thea feels rejected by her mother, who is dead, and by Lars, Alma, and Brit. Her dream ends in despair, reminding the 211

reader that In Lars' dream she commits suicide.

Brit's dream expresses the rebellion and dependence which she feels

toward Alma in terms which demonstrate a basic conflict of Adamov's

characters: the revolt against being treated as an object, and the desire to let someone else take charge:

Tu entends, Alma? Je ne veux pas que tu me portes comme un paquet, et que sur ce paquet arrive a destination tu aies tous les droits. Ce que Lars et moi allons dire ou faire nous regarde, nous, Mais pas toi. (Pause.) Que veut Lars, en soirane?"^

Brit tries to bring order to the tangled relationships between Lars,

Thea, Alma, and Madame Petersen. She confronts Thea's incestuous desire for her brother: "Tu sais aussi bien que moi, Thea, qu'un frere et une soeur ne peuvent vivre ensemble,.. Je veux dire, comme des epoux."H9

When Madame Petersen tries unsuccessfully to replace Thea on theswing with Lars, Brit takes down the swing, saying: "Termine, le petit jeuf'^O

Brit offers her love to Lars in an image of innocence and purity, which contrasts her love with the incestuous love of Thea, the oppressive love of the mother, and the manipulative love of Alma:

Brit trempe ses mains dans un baquet, et en sort de 1'eau... Lars, je t'ai apporte de l'eau dans mes mains. Bois, cela te fera du bien. Tu te fais trop de mauvais sang. Te mettre pour rien dans des etats pareils!... Bois encore, et puis tu t'allongeras a cote de moi. Ta tete me viendra a la taille. Tu veux bien? J'ai decide. Lars, de faire que les choses te soleAt faciles.

Unlike Thea, Brit does not encourage Lars to feel guilty. She tells him

that tie is innocent of the deaths of Then and his mother, to which he replies: "Tu ne peux pas savoir combien Je t'aime, pour ne pas m'avoir laisse rouler sur ma pente naturelle," Brit replies with simple wisdom:

"Quelle pente naturelle? (Designant sa propre tete.) L'ablme n'existe que la-dedans, 212 In Brit’s dream, Lars says to Viktor:

Regarde Brit la vaillante, celle sans qui je ne serais qu'un mechant recriminateur, comme toi, qu’un coupable, comme toi. Car avoue que malgre tout tu te sens coupa­ ble, toi, Avoue que tu as fait quelque chose, je ne sals pas quoi, mais quelque chose, pour etre ainsi pourchasse jour apres jour. (Criant:) Rein n ’est gratuit! Si je suis heureux, c'est parce que Je me sens innocent. (Designant Brit:) Innocente par elle!”123

Lars' mother rebukes him for striking the Rector of the medical school: "Le fils du docteur Petersen, initiateur et constructeur de tout un reseau de navigation fluviale, faire un scandale pareil."^^ Her reference to his father's achievements reminds Lars of his own lack of success. It is because of parental expectations that he has tried so many professions and that his sense of failure weighs so heavily on him.

Unlike Lars and Thea, Brit has no anxiety about the future or death:

"Mais ou est le drame? Si tu apprends qu’on a mis de la terre sur ma tete, ne pleure pas non plus. Nous somraes deux vivant associes, et c'est tout,"^^^ When Madame Petersen tells Brit that she suffered when her son struck Le Recteur and was expelled from medical school, Brit asserts her own relationship to Lars, which supercedes that of his mother:

"... figure-toi, l'honneur de ton fils me touche autant que toi, je dirais meme davantage."126 When Lars tries to explain away his assault on Le Recteur with sophistry, Brit says: "Oh, mon jeune et gracieux poulain, qui s'en sort toujours pas des phrases!"127

In her dream, llriu revolts against Lars, who treats her as a servant.

When he asks her to make the preparations for a party celebrating the anniversary of Thea's death, she replies: "Et si je n'en avals pas envie?

Et si Je m'en foutais?"128 gut like Lars and Thea, Brit occasionally 213 submits to the will of another, in her case to Alma, her mentor. When

Alma rises from the dead to see her one last time, Brit holds her in her arms and tells Lars that she will stay with him: "Lars, j'obeirai a Alma, nous resterons ensemble, tous les deux, puis nous partirons dans le Nord, Je ne sais ou, quelque p a r t , "^9 Reflecting the tone of resignation in this passage, when Brit sees Lars crowned by the mayor of

Kiruna, it is with a crown of iron. The last words in Brit’s dream are the eulogy offered by the mayor to Lars:

un architecte qui, travaillant en £troite accointance avec les chefs psychiatres de la ville-clinique future, lui donna sa forme, tenant compte de ses besoins. Honneur a Lars Petersen, qui sut parsemer la ville de preaux et de fleurs, et rationnellement, humainement, meler au personnel hospitaller les pauvres malades mentaux, leur faisant ainsi franchir un pas vers 1 'in­ tegration necessaire."130

In Brit's dream, Lars is able to use his neurosis productively to help design a psychiatric clinic of the future where the mentally ill will not live segregated from those who are healthy. She transforms his emotional conflicts into an advantage by making him an authority on mental illness, Lars, through his work, will be integrated into a productive role in society. This goal of integration represents that of the author, who throughout his career aspired to transform his neurosis into literature and into social action.

The reader’s first impression of Alma in her dream is that she feels stifled by the others, When Thea and Brit mimic her revolutionary activities, she responds with exasperation: "Qu'est-ce que vous avez

3 redire, vous autres? Je n'ai pas le droit de parler, non?"131 Her explosion resembles that of Thea against her mother: "Quoi, je ne suis plus une enfant! Et j ’ai bien le droit a un minimum d'existence personnelle, Meme si je fais a peu pres ce que te fais: alder les 214 malheureux qui nous entourent,"^^^

In Alma's dream, as in the others, Brit Is the most reasonable: when a student enters with a red flag, saying that they are going to occupy the university, the following Interchange takes place:

BRIT; Mais toutes vos revendications ont ete satis- faites, alors?

L'ETUDIANT: Reactionnaire!

BRIT: Pas de grands mots. Disons 'realiste,'"133

Adamov's own ambivalence toward the realistic attitude which Brit repre­ sents can be inferred from Alma's reaction: "riant a tue-tete: Ce que nous pouvons etre realistes, realistes!m134 ^lma chastises Lars for not joining in the struggle for change and for concentrating only on his own

problems: "Quand je pense que tu n ’as meme pas occupe 1 'Universite!"135

In Alma's dream, Lars places the blame for the neuroses which are payalyzing his sex life on his mother: MJe voudrais tant, tant sortir de ce vestiaire ou tu m'as relegue!"^^^ Having said this, he pushes his mother over and she picks herself up painfully,1^7 Like all Lars'

gestures of revolt toward his mother, this one is futile, doing nothing

to lessen his dependence on her.

When Thea asks Lars: "Que voulais-tu dire, tout a l'heure? Que

seules les pierres connaissent la remission?"138 reader recognizes a theme from L ’Aveu, that life is defined by suffering and that only by

refusing to feel or by dying can one find release from the pain that is

inherent in being human.

In Alma's mind, Lars shows the same aversion to demonstrations of

affection as Thea: "Entre Viktor en pyjama. II s'approche d'Alma et

1 39 l'6 treint, Lars se cache les yeux." Viktor torments Lars and Thea 2X5 with homosexual innuendoes directed toward Lars:

Evidemment je pourrais, pour rire... (il lui prend le menton) te demander de faire le trottoir, et de me verser chaque apres-midi, a l'heure des visites, le montant des passes de ta nuit. Thea, si Lars, par amour de moi, se prostituait, couchait avec tous les hommes qui voudraient bien de lui, et cela, fermant les yeux, pensant a Viktor et non a Thea. Ni meme a. Alma ni meme a Brit. (Alma rit.) A Viktor, uniquement, Fameuse idee!"-^0

Alma laughs because she appreciates Viktor's words* She and Viktor

dominate Lars and Thea because they know how to manipulate their anxiety

and passivity*

Alma is more analytical toward Lars, and toward life in general,

than Thea or Brit. When Lars asks her what she thinks motivates him,

she answers; "La mauvaise conscience!she points out the absurd­

ity of Lars' reasoning in believing that he is guilty of her death, as

well as those of his sister and mother: "Pendant que tu y es, dis que

par amour de moi Viktor a voulu se tuer. Et bien sur que c'est moi qui,

te faisant connaltre Brit, ai tue Thea. On peut dire toutes les

absurdites que l'on veut, dans ces cas-la.’’^^^ Consistent with her

occasionally sadistic attitude toward Lars, she refuses in her dream to

comply with his masochistic desires. When Lars says: "Alma, fais-moi

roal,»143 ignores him,

A stranger appears and burns Alma's finger with his cigarette, but

she refuses to react and offers him another finger, saying: "J'aime qu'on

me fasse mal, et que j'arrive a n'avoir pas mal. Ou du moins a faire

comme si j'y arrivals. C'est un test, figurcz-vous. Almn admits

to Brit that she is a masochist: "Tu sals, Brit, j'ai toujours aime

qu'on me fasse roal."^^ Like other women who are sado-masochists in

Adamov's theater, Alma is not motivated by the complicated feelings of 216 fear and guilt which paralyze Thea and Lars, Her Insistence on tolerat­ ing physical pain without flinching is apparently another aspect of her need to manipulate others.

In Alma’s dream, Viktor replies to Thea when she says that he is no longer in control of himself ("Viktor n'est plus son propre maltre"):

"criant: Moi, je pense qu’on ne peut vivre qu'a condition d'etre son propre mattre!"^^^ The question of control over one's life takes us back to the author's own inability to control his feelings of anxiety or his self-destructive behavior. Adamov wrote in his Journal

(December 7, 1965):

Je ne sais pas toujours ce que je pense de la psycho- therapie mais je constate que quand J'interromps raes seances la panique, la vraie, celle d'il y a un an, revient. Coinci’dence?

J'ai eu trop d'accidents aussi. La congestion pulmo- naire, la cote cassee, le front fracture... J'ai de- passe la dose."-^^

The fact that Viktor is being kept in the hospital may be a reference to Adamov's own intermittent hospitalization from 1966 on for alcohol­ ism and respiratory ailments.

Alma forces Lars to crawl at her feet by dropping money on the ground for him to pick up;

ALMA, laissant tomber des billets de banque: Que tu te couches a mes pleds, et que tu attrapes ces billets, comme tu peux, avec les mains, avec les dents,,. Je ne t'alderai pas, je resterai impassible, la richissime statue verra se demener le pauvre petit etudiant rate, affole, agite...

LARS, se couchant par tcrre et tentant d'embrasser les chevilles d'Almn: Je ne veux pas de ton argent, je n'en ai aucun besoin, Je suis un fils de famille.

ALMA* d'une voix resolue; ferine les yeux, Je te dis de fermer les yeux.

LARS, obeissant; qa y est. 217 In this passage, Alma’s version of her relationship to Lars is acted out

in her dream; while she remains impassive and strong, he crawls at her

feet: "rate, affole, agite,,, " Like N. in La Parodie, Le Mutile in

La Grande et la petite manoeuvre, and Edgar in Les Retrouvailles (the

scene in which he crawls after chicken bones at the feet of La Plus

Heureuse des Femmes is similar to Alma's fantasy), Lars' feelings of

guilt and anxiety are relieved when he submits totally to orders from

a woman.

In a sequence in Alma's dream which recalls the scene in Les

Retrouvai11es where Edgar loses his ticket on the train and La Plus

Heureuse des Femmes gives him money to buy a new one,^^ Lars loses his

ticket and must depend on Alma to get him out of his predicament:

Lars vide ses poches, cherche visiblement quelque chose, tres nerveux.

LARS: Je n'y comprends rien. II aurait du etre...

ALMA: Qu*est-ce que tu cherches? Ton billet de chemin de fer? Inutile, tu l'as perdu. Tout a l'heure, en passant devant le Grand Hotel, j'ai vu le portier. Cela a beaucoup arrange les choses."150

This inability to cope at the practical level of money and tickets, etc.,

is a reflection of Adamov's own experience and the anxiety which his

consistent misfortune caused him;

Ete 1949. Nos premieres 'vacances!* Voyage affreux. Je perds non portefeuille sur une route de Bourgogne. D., qui nous a prls avec lui en voiture, revient en vain sur ses pas, braque en vain ses phares sur la route,151

Je perds ma ceinture sur la plage, je la cherche, je ne la trouve pas, j'ai peur, Les differents etablisse- ments de bains se confondent dans ma tete,"!-*^

His incompetence in taking care of practical matters led Adamov to borrow

money from his family and friends. This tendency to "forget" or "lose" t 218

Important things Is another form of masochism In which one unconsciously punishes oneself out of feelings of guilt.

In Alma’s dream, there Is a suggestion of lesbianism: Alma tells

Lars that she put Brit between his arms, but only after "trying" her herself,153 this news, Lars1 reaction is to stumble and fall, Alma asks if he has hurt himself;

LARS: Oui, je me suis pris les mains dans 1*embrasure de la porte, comme un idiot, et elles saignent,

ALMA; II faut les entourer de papier journal, elles ne saigneront plus. (Elle enldve les chaussettes de Lars, et entoure ses pieds,nus de papier journal.) Cela va mieux, a present "15'4

It is consistent with the dreamlike atmosphere of this play that when

Lars tells Alma that his hands are bleeding, she takes off his shoes and socks and wraps his feet in newspaper. This incident illustrates another aspect of Lars' masochism, the tendency to be exhibitionistic in order to provoke feelings of pity and compassion. It is also a means of punishing the woman who controls his existence, by making her feel guilty for the fact that he is suffering because of her.

Like Lars and Thea, Alma reveals her preoccupations in her dream.

Thea says that Alma is incapable of having children, 1-*^ Le Recteur strikes her, 1 ^ and Thea and Lars accuse her of promiscuity:

LE RECTEUR: Vous voudriez que je sois traduit en jus­ tice pour avoir gifle une trainee?

THEA: Qui s'affichait partout, avec des Noirs. C'et- ait a en vomir!

LE RECTEUR: Oui, je 1'ai vue, s'exhibant ainsi, vue de mes yeux bleus et tranquilles.

LARS; Ah, si le recteur l'a vue,., il n ’a pas d'imagination... (A Alma:) C'est done que tu couchais avec des Noirs, en

pleine r u e .

As this is Alma's dream, the accusations which are directed at her re- .219 fleet her own feelings of guilt and persecution. The focus of her guilt is sexual; she feels that the others suspect her of having sexual relations with the Third World people she is trying to help.

At the end of Alma's dream, Brit, Thea and Lars get on the swing and Alma pushes. Thea falls off and Alma loses her balance and lands on the ground, leaving Brit and Lars alone on the swing.

The last words of the play are those of Lars: "Enfin, tout est regiet" 158

In Si l'ete revenait, Adamov continues to write about the conflicts which are closest to his heart - the dilemma of characters whose neuroses bind them in emotional straitjackets - but with a degree of artistic range and control unmatched in his preceding theater. The play is a minor, rather than a major, masterpiece in the sense that it is not in the classic tradition: the protagonist, Lars, does not represent

Everyman. His particular neuroses make him an interesting, but marginal, character. The reader will probably not see himself in Lars, but will see a distinct personality presented consistently who is interesting in the context of his relationships. Most importantly, Si l'ete revenait gives us a final insight into Adamov's universe and his particular way of perceiving reality.

Adamov describes Ils as "les restes... d'une enfance et d'une adolescence malades."159 Si l'ete revenait could be described the same way, entangled as the characters are in childhood and adolescent con­ flicts, Despite Brit's and Lars* intention to lead a normal life, one can expect Lars' behavior to continue to be Influenced by his fears and obsessions; his guilt over the death of his mother, his Incestuous feelings toward his sister, his compulsion to fail in every activity 220 which he undertakes, his infantilism and dependence, and his sexual masochism,

Ils precedes Adaraov’s last play, chronologically, and demonstrates

a similar synthesis of neurosis and art. As in Si I’etg revenait, the

neurotic content of Ils is familiar, but like the play, it is transposed

into a form of art which transcends it. Notes - Chapter

^Ete, p. 15.

^Note prelim., Ete, p. 9.

3 Ibid.

^Jacquart, Derision, pp. 109-110.

3 Ete, p. 17.

6 Ete, p. 19.

7 Ete, pp. 19-20.

8 Ibid.

9 Ete, p. 19

1 0 Ete, p. 20.

U Ete, p. 23.

3 ^Ete, p. 2 2 .

13HE, p. 21.

1 4 Etg, p. 23.

^ E t e , p. 28.

1 7 Ibid. l^Ete, p. 26.

1 9 Et£, p. 29. 2 7 Ete, p. 17.

2 8 Et£, p. 20.

2 9 Et£, p. 21.

30Arthur Adamov, August Strindberg, "les grands dramaturges, 6 (Paris: L'Arche, 1955), p. 27.

3 1 Ete, p. 26.

3 2 Ibid.

3 3 Ete, pp. 26-27.

34 Ete, p. 27.

3 5 lbid.

3 6 Ibid.

3 7 Ete, p. 28.

38 Taranne, pp. 221-223 passim .

39Taranne, p. 224.

4 0 Ete, p. 30.

4 1 Ete, p. 31. 42 Ibid*

4 3Ete, p. 32.

4 4 Ibid. 223

A9 Ete, pp. 36-37.

3 °Ete, p. 37.

3 ^Ete, p. 18,

5 2 lbld.

5 3 Ete. p. 20.

3 AEte, p. 22.

3 ^Ete, p. 2 1 .

3 ^Ping-Pong, p. 173.

3 7 Ete, p. 23.

5 8 Ibld.

59£te, pp. 23-25 (passim).

8 ®Ete, p . 26.

^Note prelim., Theatre II, p. 9.

8 2 Ete, p. 27.

^Ete, pp. 27-28.

6 AEte, p. 27.

6 5 Et€. pp. 32-33.

6 6 Et£, p. 33.

6 7 Etg, p. 34.

6 8 Ibid.

6 9 Ete, p. 35.

7 0 lbid.

7 ~*~Ete, p. 36.

73Ete, p. 32.

7AEte, p. 19.

7 5 Ete. pp. 18, 24. 224 ".S i. P. 24.

77Ete, pp. 29-30,

78HE, p. 241.

79Ete, p. 28.

^Ete, p. 3 4 .

8 lIbid. 82 Ete, p. 38,

8 3 Etg. p. 39.

8 4 Ibid.

8 5 Ete, p. 40.

8 6 Ibld.

8 7Ete. p. 41.

8 8 Ibid.

8 9 Et|, p. 42.

9 °Ibld.

91JI, p. 71. 92 Invasion, pp. 72-73. 93 Invasion p. 82. 94 HE, p. 204. 95^,.- Ete, p. 43. 96_ .. Ete. p. 45. 97 Manoeuvres, p. 106.

9 8 Etg. p. 46. 99 Taranne. p. 220. 1 0 0 „ Taranne. p. 224.

1 0 1 Etg. p. 47.

102Ibld. 225

^ 3Ete, p. 48.

3®^Ete, p* 52. l05Ete, p. 50. l06Ibid.

107Ibid.

10fW , P. 51.

109Ibid.

110Ete, p. 52.

111Ete, p. 51.

112Et§, p. 52.

113HE, p. 15.

U 4 H £ . p . 52. ^^Ete, pp . 53-54.

H^Et£, p. 54.

117Ibid.

ll8Etg, p. 56.

119Etg, p. 57.

120Et6, p. 59.

121tbid.

322Ete, p . 61.

123Ibid.

l24Ibid.

32~*Ete, pp>. 60-61.

^-2^Ete, ppp. 62-63.

l2?Ete, p. 63.

128Ete, p. 64. 226

^3^Ete. p. 67.

p. 68.

132Ete, p. 46.

^33Ete, pp. 68-69.

^ E t e , p. 69.

135Ibld.

136Ibid.

137Ibid.

138 Ibid.

139lbid.

U 0 _Ete> p. 71.

141Ete, p. 72.

1A2Ibid.

143Ete, p. 73.

144Ibid.

145Ete( p. 74.

l^ E t e , p. 71.

147_H_E, p. 168.

148Etg, p. 75.

^^Retrouvailles, pp. 92-93.

•^3^Ete, p. 76.

15SiE, p. 89.

13^HE, p. 91.

^33Ete, p. 76.

^~^E t e , pp. 77-78. 155„^ 77 Ete, p. 77. 227

~ ^ 8 Ete, p . 78.

1 5 7 Ibid.

1 5 8 Ete. p. 79.

1 5 9 JI, p. 163. CHAPTER V

ILS

FANTASIES OF NEUROSIS

"Toutes ces histoires sont la meme, reprise a 1'infini dans un jeu de miroirs, ou la peur et la tristesse se regardent dans les yeux."l

In his last two works, Ils (1969) and Si l'ete revenait (1970), Adamov returns again and again to the neurotic themes which preoccupied him throughout his life. These impressionistic works draw on his memories and obsessive fantasies; sadistic women, sexual masochism, the bare knees and feet of young girls, and the romantic desire which led him on hopeless quests.

The speaker in Ils and the protagonists in Si I'ete revenait are very different from their counterparts in the earlier works, L'Aveu and

La Parodie. The title, Ils, which indicates other people, suggests that Adamov has come a long way from the narcissism of his early works.

The "I" - dominated L'Aveu becomes Je when it is published with Ils as Je... Ils... By broadening his focus from ,rje" to "ils", which includes both the masculine and feminine, Adamov suggests that he has learned from the men and women whom he has known over the years and is now able to write from their point of view, as well as his own. There is a psychological evolution in his portrayal of female characters from the one-dimensional Lili of Ld Parodie to the characters of Thea, Brit and Alma in Si l1ete revenait, who have as much psychological complex- 228 229 lty as the male protagonist, Lars.^ In L ’Homme et I 1enfant, Adamov makes a revealing observation concerning the egocentric nature of his first love affair, in 1928: MA aucun moment je ne pense a Irene comme a une personne, un etre objectif qui doit faire face a ses problemes, elle n'existe qu'en fonction de moi. Egoisme total,In Ils, on the contrary, there is a sense of complicity, to use one of Adamov's favorite terms, between "il" and "elle," who are equal partners in their erotic maneuvers.

The work is divided into five sections: "Fin Aout," "Cela n'en finira jamais," "Orphelins," "Nord-Ouest" and "La Photo," Throughout the passages in these "chapters," the central character is portrayed as

"il" rather than "je," He remains the same throughout Ils, but "elle" is portrayed in various characterizations drawn from a lifetime of memories and fantasies. Adamov's representations of women in Ils, as well as in his theater, tend to alternate between two types, represented in his autobiography by Huguette (or Irene) and Agathe, Huguette is the type of dominating woman before whom he wants to prostrate himself.

The attraction which he expresses for her bare feet represents one of his basic fantasies: "Huguette, toujours pieds nus sous la pluie. Ma bouche contre ses pieds mouilles... Agathe inspires in him the de­ sire to protect rather than to submit:

Parmi un groupe de peintres, j'apergois une jeune femme, triste, silencieuse, les cheveux legers, pSles, Elle a autour des yeux une multitude de petites rides. C'est pourtant presque une enfant encore... Agathe si belle, ne le sachant pas, absolument desarmee.*

Agathe suffers from anxieties similar to Adamov's own. Through the power of his love for her, he hopes to be able to curb his self-destruc­ tive tendencies; 230

Je ne veux ni etre humilie par toi ni t’humilier, Parfois, a tes cotes, il me semble revivre le temps d'avant la faute. Plus rien des tourments de la sex- ualite. Plus de victime, plus de bourreau. Ni sacri- ficateur ni sacrifie. Deux etres qui s'aiment, com- munient dans 1 'unique sacrifice de 1 ’amour,®

The female characters inspired by Huguette in Adamov!s works (the most striking example of whom is Erna in La Grande et la petite manoeuvre) generally destroy the men whom they attract, while the women inspired by Agathe (such as Agnes in L 1Invasion) try to help their men, but are usually too weak to do them much good.

"Fin Aout" follows the dreamlike coinings and goings of the women

"he" desires. His behavior has a masochistic pattern, as he repeatedly submits to quests after elusive love relationships which are doomed to failure. In the beginning of the passage, he initiates his girlfriend, a German student, into the vices of the prostitute section of Paris.

They are attracted by the promiscuity and anonymity of the sexual en­ counters to be found there:

Ils allSrent au Vert-Galant ou ils s'etendirent tout pres d'autres jeunes couples vautres, sails, et se ca- ressant. II baisa les pieds d’une inconnue qui le frap- pa. Elle rit. Puis un homme, inconnu aussi, vint et releva sa jupe a elle. Tous appartenaient a toutes et toutes a tous.7

She eventually tires of their erotic explorations with prostitutesand leaves him, saying, like Alma in Si l'ete revenait: "Je fais ce que

Q Je veux." He tries to prevent her from leaving and fails, character­ istically slipping and falling; "II voulut la poursuivre, glissa dans l'escalier, se fit mal."^ As in his early theater, in Ils and in Si

I'etS revenait, the author objectifies his characters’ fears and weak­ nesses in concrete gestures, such as their stumbling and falling. In

"Fin Aout," he falls trying to attain the object of his desire: "Une 231 flllette toute jeune, quinze ans peut-etre, passait, II pleuvalt, les jambes de la flllette etaient nues. II regarda ses genoux, voulut les atteindre, glissa, trebucha.”^®

He and she participate together in scenes of sexual exhibitionism.

The first incident takes place in front of a group of children; the others in a park and in the subway.H Such fantasies and memories ob­ viously contributed to the author's feelings of guilt, judging from Le

Professeur Taranne. a play in which the protagonist defends himself against the accusation of undressing on the beach in front of a group of children. The characters in Ils derive psychological gains from

their exhibitionism: their behavior elicits disapproval and hostility

from others, and is thus a way of relieving their vague feelings of guilt

through punishment. By shocking the bourgeoisie, they are also gratify­

ing certain sadistic impulses in themselves. And for the speaker, the

sense of doing something forbidden is a means of attaining the sexual excitement which he is unable to experience in normal sexual relations.

The eight vignettes collected under the title: "Cela n'eti finira jamais," contain a great deal of sexual cruelty. In them, "elle" and

"elles" become his elected tormentors, rather than his companions:

Elies ecraserent son sexe de leurs pieds aux ongles laques, alguises. Le jeu se prolongeait, s'etemisait.

Elles le pousserent quasi nu en bas, vers le blstrot, la rue.-^

"L'Ete encore" is a violent scene in which drunken men attack her and she

defends herself by biting the penis of one of them. He witnesses the

scene, but instead of joining her, joins the group of men. In this vig­

nette and in the next, he is alienated from her; she is the stronger and

stands alone, while he becomes part of the group of abject men who tor- 232 ment and serve her. In "elle et eux qui etaient la," she reappears as the image of "la prostituee eternelle", the woman who haunted his early fantasies: cruel, indifferent, and self-contained. Surrounded by men who desire her, she has intercourse with each and then Insults them by demanding that the next to the last repeat his defective performance.

Then, forbidding them to touch her, she masturbates before them. The passage ends with a gesture of sexual humiliation when he takes her hand and thrusts it into his mouth.

In "La Pauvresse," he performs homosexual acts to satisfy her:

"II dut s'humilier aux hommes qui lui plaisaient. II ouvrit la bouche, servile." 13 In the same passage, she strikes him and throws him to the ground and he submits completely to her will, saying: " - Fais de moi ce que tu veux."^ By putting his life completely into her hands, "il" accomplishes the communion with another which the speaker sought in

L'Aveu. The experience of the bond of humiliation is temporary, however, and the physical brutality involved damages both mind and body. In a conversation concerning a particularly miserable prostitute to whom he has subjected himself, "he" says to "her:"

- Qu'en dis-tu? Les pauvresses m ’aiment bien,

- Oui, elles t'aiment au point que tu seras un dechet, toi, plus tard.1^

The speaker's drama, as well as the author's, is that it is precisely in the loss of self-identify, in the experience of becoming a thing through sexual humiliation, that he finds a momentary surcease from the pain of his constant anxiety. As with other aspects of his masochism, however, the abuse he endures contributes to his deterioration.

In "Madame Andree," he encounters a prostitute who shares his 233 masochism. Her lover beats her: " - Et pourtant, je ne le quitteral pas, peut-etre parce que J'aime les coups.' 1 fk He asks the prostitutes at the bar to spit on him while the "patronne" watches, and as he leaves, he has a sudden insight into the inescapable pattern of his life:

Et il voulait ainsi s'en aller sous la pluie qui tom- bait de plus belle, mais en sachant bien aussi qu'il reviendrait, que le jeu recommencerait. Sur son visage deja les crachats ruisselaient. Et ses pieds nus, c'e- taient elles deja qui les ecrasaient de leurs talons,^

In "Les uns les autres," he and she provoke the shock and disapprov­ al of a bourgeois family in a restaurant by undressing and touching each other. Their exhibitionism is inspired by a sadistic desire to disrupt the complacent, well-ordered lives of these people, a wish which becomes more reprehensible when it involves the children: "Les deux gamines, elles, semblaient interessees. La plus jeune des deux, douze ans peut- etre, vint, et, rougissante, passa sa pauvre petite main entre leurs 1 A jambes. Ils lui firent mal, a cette main innocente. The next day, as though as punishment, she falls down in the subway and cuts her hands; he licks the blood from her hands and watches her. The subway crowds come and go, as well as a young couple who are begging, but people cease to notice them and they become indifferent to what is going on around them. Misery for them becomes a state of grace in which they share a communion of pain and pity: "Des gens affluaient de nouveau, faces lasses, yeux vides:.,. Ils etaient devenus aussi invisibles a tous, sinon 3 leur propre misere. Ils baignaient en elle."-*-® Pain, then, is capable of forming two kinds of intimate bonds: the pain of sexual humiliation, which unites the tormented to the tormentor, and pain shared, which further joins those who love each other.

The theme of "Rhetorique" is eroticism in literature, as well as in 234 life. Understandably, the author's concept of eroticism in both areas was inseparably connected with the ideas of pain and death.20 The stories which the speaker invents place him In the tradition of courtly literature in which the suitor must suffer through an ordeal before he is deemed worthy of his lady's love, "Rhetorique" begins:

"Pardonne, II devait l'etreindre, mais pour cela, d'abord se jeter dans les orties d'un champ miserable,"21 In the stories which he

Invents, as well as the medieval tales to which he alludes, pain gives a religious dimension to eroticism. The men prostrate themselves before their women and seek forgiveness from them for the vague sins which haunt their minds. Inspired by their love, the heroes hope to transform their characters into soiqething noble.

He invents another story, involving sickness and compassion: "II ne savait plus que dire. Alors il inventa des histoires d'enfants atteints de la malaria, d'une nurse aux yeux trop bleus, presque blancs, et qui les soignait quelque part en A s i e . " 2 2 His stories and his bruised and bloody body hold his lady enthralled: "Elle aimait ce corps sanguinolent, elle baisait ses plaies... C'etait si bon de baiser sa chair friable, endolorie, et de 1 'entendre dire des choses, des choses qu'elle comprenait a peine,,. "23

In the character of Queen Guenivere who stands laughing at her window while Lancelot suffers for her in the icy lake, there is another evocation of " la prostituee eternelle" the sadistic woman who feeds on the suffering and abasement of her male admirers. In contrast, "elle," the friend, does not ridicule his suffering with her laughter, but pities and caresses him. She does not prey on his weakness, but supports him with her admiration of his art, his ability to tell stories. 235

"L'Amie" reappears in "Soucis menagers," Standing on a chair, she cuts herself on a can of salmon which she is trying to open. His perception of the mishap is characteristically superstitious: "Le sang

degoulinait du doigt de la main gauche, de la main inexperiment^e,

ty i fautive, As in the two previous vignettes, blood, pain and pity renew

a bond of intimacy between the couple. He cares for her and at the same

time makes an allusion to masochistic practices in which they have per­

haps participated together:

II lui apporta un linge qui devint tres vite rouge. II porta le linge 3 ses levres, la regardant, la nar- guant.

- Tu vois, je suis au moins capable de boire le dechet de ton sang, ne me retire pas tout.

At the end of the vignette, the speaker reacts in a way that would have

been impossible for the author of L'Aveu. When the straw seat of the

chair gives way beneath her, he cannot control the impulse to laugh

at all the misfortunes which are happening at o n c e . 26

In "La Grande vie," the usual adamovian scenario of the man who

masochistically obeys the commands of the strong woman is reversed: it

is he who gives the orders:

II lui demanda de relever sa Jupe aux yeux de tous, et de poser son pied sur la table ou ils buvaient.

- Renverse le verre. Elle obeit, le renversa.

Le verre se brisa. Blessee,2?

In a pharmacy, the couple once again find erotic pleasure in tending to

one another's wounds:

II s'agenouilla a cote d'elle, lui parla, et, comme ne voulant plus entendre ce qu'il disait, se blessa les lSvres. 236

Elle but le sang qui degoulinait de son cou. Cg qu'elle devalt 1 'aimer, pour avoir obel, et eu pitie ensuitc!

Another passage In "La Grand vie" represents the continuing quest for

the eternal feminine in which he desires and loses a women. He stops at a country cafe, attracted by the waitress, but the situation soon changes to exclude him: "Des hommes vinrent, des amis a elle sans doute,

Elle s'en alia avec eux. 11 n ’y avalt plus dans le cafe qu'une horrible vieille au coraptoir, qui parlait toute seule." 29 This passage is rem­ iniscent of "Fin Aout," where after losing his love, things go from bad to worse for him, symbolized by the old women in a bar he enters:

"Dans une pauvre cahute des vieillesvenaient, buvaient leur tasse de

the et s’assoupissaient, loques humaines. The lovely young women he desires and the ugly old women who take their places represent

the author's yearning for love and his overpowering fear of death.

These passages where women who are full of youth and health are replaced by women who are old, abandonned, and near death reiterate the pessimis­ tic view of life expressed in L'Aveu: that all things deteriorate in­ exorably. Throughout his life, the author was drawn to young women.

He clung to their youth in the same superstitious way that he incorpo­

rated the powers of wood and fire into his rituals, in order to be on the side of change and life, far from reminders of sclerosis and death. In his relationships, young women were sources of consolation to

Adamov, particularly when their pain and helplessness were reminiscent of his own. At the end of "La Grande vie," there is an example of

this kind of empathy when the speaker is hospitalized, suffering from

tuberculosis;

L ’infirmiere, une pauvre fille de salle, s'eprit de lui, le soigna. La piqure fut mal falte, la chair gonfla. 237

- Je suis martiniquaise, dit-elle, les yeux brouilles par les larmes. Je n'al pas mon diplome, pas les galons reglementaires, tu vols bien.

Ils se regarderent. Leurs mains se rejoignirent,"^^

The section entitled "Orphelins" contains five vignettes des­ cribing chance encounters with young women, the first three of whom are students. The student cafes* like the prostitute bars* were the natural habitat of a man who sought humiliation, the appropriate back­ ground against which to act out his fantasies. The speaker meets "La

Nietzcheenne" in a bohemian left bank cafe, a nineteen-sixties edition of the places where the author had sought prostitutes in his youth:

"... ce cafe mal eclaire, malpropre, au milieu des sacs de couchage, et de beatniks dormant hebetes, la tete jetee sur des tables de hasard...

They discuss Nietzche and go somewhere else to meet her friend, a girl whom he finds less attractive but more interesting than the first student. In yet another cafe, he uses a common interest in Tenderis the Night to start a conversation with a girl. She invites him togo up to a room with her, using the language of prostitutes, which pleases him: "J'ai envie de monter avec vous."^^ They go to the prostitute section of Les Hailes and he suggests that they go up with a prostitute, but she Insists that they go alone, which saddens him because he knows he will not be able to make love to her: "II lui embrassa les pieds, mais quand il fallut faire I 1amour il s'en montra Incapable, s'assit, ne dit plus rien."'^

He seeks out women who share his own masochistic tendencies in that they are also attracted to the broken and diseased rather than to the whole and healthy. The girl in "Gentillesse" says of her best friend, who is Jewish: "II est triste et son visage est ravage, tout brule, comme 238 s'il avait eu la malaria.In "Nord-Ouest,11 the woman tells him to put on her jacket: " - Tu vas mettre ma petite veste, Oul, oul, la belle, la toute trouee,"^^ On one level, this predilection for people and objects which are unsound in some way reflects the speaker's own self-image: he is attracted to the infirm because he feels himself to be weak. On another level, it is consistent with his contempt for the bourgeoisie, who revel in their solidity and health, that he would choose to associate himself with that which is dirty, broken and un­ healthy.

He meets "La Fille aux bagues" in another sordid cafe. His en­ counter with her is by chance, brief and inconclusive. He engages her in conversation and she tells him that he frightens and inhibits her.

When he reaches for her hands to kiss them and she withdraws abruptly, he accidentally knocks over a bottle of Coca Cola. Adopting a serious and courtly demeanor, he orders the table to be wiped off, replaces

the drinks, and kisses her hand in leaving. Because he is not attracted

to the girl, the event does not move him: "Si l'abordage de cette fille

I'eut reellement concerne, il aurait ete heureux, je croix. Faire peur, n'est-ce pas dejS ouvrir quelque chose?'1^ The repetition which

characterizes his quest after romantic love can be explained in part by

his sexual impotence: unable to complete the act of love, he is not

able to have a "linear" relationship with a woman involving the normal

chain of events; courtship, marriage, children. Because he cannot

satisfy a woman sexually, or procreate children, he is condemned to

return forever to the beginnings of love, the flirtations which ulti­

mately only confirm his fear of solitude.

In "Oblige," he is drawn to a young mother sitting across from in the

third class compartment of a train. When her children and husband fall 239 asleep, he touches her bare foot and face In the dark. In fantasy, he subjugates himself totally to her will: "II se vit par terre, sous

* 1 0 elle, loque informe." After the emotion of the encounter, he weeps,

feeling abject and alone.

In "Fin Aout," after engaging in group sexual activities with the woman he loves, he also breaks down: "Mais il ne comprenait plus bien.

II alia s'asseoir dans le square voisin et soudain pleura tres fort." 39

In the same early passage is an image of desolation when he falls and

hurts himself: "En fuyant, il se blessa, tomba. II se trouvait tout

seul a present, abandonne. Ses pieds nus saignaient. Such images

of isolation, confusion and pain give us insights into a passionate and

tender sensibility helplessly constricted by neurotic conflicts.

"Villegiature" describes another brief encounter colored by a

fascination with death. Once again, the passage reflects the author's

predilection for young people, particularly those whose self-destructive

pursuits - revolution, drugs, or masochism - gave their lives dimensions

of drama and tragedy which moved him. He and the girl, whom he has met

on the Atlantic coast, go to see a "champion de jeune11 who is making

a tour. She wants to touch the body of the man who has the strength

to refuse life. Later, she kills herself by drowning in a stream. His

friend, who had loved her, marries a young blind girl several years

later. In this vignette, all attention is turned toward death. The

girl is fascinated by the man who is flirting with death by fasting;

he and his friend are fascinated by the woman who eventually commits

suicide; and the friend finally consoles himself by marrying a woman

who is blind, again demonstrating his attraction to death by falling

in love with a woman who is helpless; her blindness is the objective 240 correlative of the first woman’s death wish. As in the plays, blind­ ness symbolizes the emotional straitjacket of neurosis which causes one to habitually act in an unrealistic and self-destructive manner. By marrying the blind woman, the friend is also punishing himself out of guilt caused by his lover's suicide. The tone of the vignette provides a counterpoint to its pessimism: it is objective and almost playful, but leaves the reader with the strong impression that death is working in these people who are attracted to destruction like moths to flame.

"Nord-Ouest" contains seven vignettes which have in common an increasing sense of debilitation in the speaker and loss of control over his life. In MColin-Mai11ard," he and she play a familiar erotic game, in which she torments him and he allows himself to be humiliated by the men she orders him to obey while she observes. The title is significant because "Blind Man's Buff" is played with a blindfold, an allusion to the blindness which he associated with his rituals of sexual humiliation, "Colin-Maillard" leads directly into a fantasy entitled

"En Famille," in which the themes of cruelty, humiliation, love and death are interwoven. The imagery recalls the poem, "L'Enlisement:" he finds himself covered with mud, symbolizing the misery and hopeless­ ness of his existence, as well as the experience of humiliation which attracts him. In this passage, there is no struggle against the mud; rather, he is attracted to it as a way of losing his painful identity:

Enlises dans la vase, ils essayercnt, firent ce qu'ils purent. La boue se plaquait sur eux, contre eux.

- Si elle pouvait me couvrir tout entler, dit-il.

- Elle peut, repondit-elle,

Elle le renversa de nouveau, devant la flllette. Leur enfant?

Elle avait hesite un instant, puis, d'un geste, l 1avalt 241

pousse comme un objet. L'envie lui etait venue, trop grande, trop forte, de ce geste."^!

In "En FamiHe," he does not see the woman symbolically as his tormen­ tor; he understands her very human motivation in knocking him down: the temptation to abuse a man who seeks humiliation is simply too great. As in Adamov's early writings, such as "L’Enlisement" and L'Aveu, the speaker in "En Famille" suecombs to the impulse to destroy his own self-identity by covering himself with mud and allowing the woman to treat him like an object. Left alone with the girl, who isperhaps their daughter, his wish for love and death become fused in a fantasy in which the girl is increasingly depersonalized. Carrying her on his shoulders, he becomes aware through his contact with her body that he desires her.

It is he who has pulled her out of the water and perhaps saved her life and now he is ashamed because although she is scarcely breathing, his thoughts are all on his sexual longing. From this point on in his fantasy, his attraction becomes increasingly ethereal, mixed with a longing for unconsciousness;

La mort, Cette mort combattue dont il ne voulait pas pour elle, il la voulait pour lui, ou plutot il ne vou­ lait plus rien, II ne savait plus rien.^2

... il ne voulait qu'elle, etendue a ses cotes. II embrassa ses pieds, ils etaient froids, si froids qu'il eut peur... II voulut appeler a l’aide, aucun bruit ne sortit de sa bouche. Muet, a present! Et elle toujours a ses cotes, incomprehensible.

II s'etendit de tout son long, et posa sur ses yeux les pieds de I'inconnue. Comme cela il ne verrait plus rlen, ne saurait plus rien.^

Ce qu'il aurait volontlers bu de l'alcool, Ce n'Stait meme pas vrai. II aurait fallu pour cela rouvrir les yeux, et il voulait les refermer, qu'elle les tnaintienne fermSs.^

It is characteristic that in his physical contact with the woman, he 242 symbolically blindfolds himself by placing her feet over his eyes. In his union with her, he is seeking oblivion, a love-in-death like the last scene in Tristan et Iseut, in which the lovers die in each others' arms. The conscious world of reality is symbolized for him by the cold, barren beach on which they struggle through the mud. His desire is for unconsciousness with a desirable woman by his side, dispelling his solitude. It is this sensual, womblike state between sleeping and waking, and between life and death, where he is conscious only of his contact with the woman, that replaces even his desire for the oblivion of drunkenness.

The images of nature reflect the speaker's weak state of mind and body; "Ete malade,"^ "Le soleil n'etait plus la boule rouge qu'il avait ete dans le ciel, II etait devenu tout pale, anemique."^? During the course of the passage, the speaker's sensations become increasingly rarified. In the beginning, he is aware of the details of his surround­ ings: carts pass and splash mud on him, his wife knocks him down in the mud, the girl's name is Henrike and she is apparently his daughter. As the passage develops, the woman leaves and the daughter becomes "la fillette,"^® "la jeune noyee,"^ "l'inconnue,"^® and "elle.D u r i n g the course of these transformations, she becomes more and more anonymous, until at the end she represents woman in general.

"Sommeil" is another image of fear and helplessness, in which he

Imagines that women, his tormentors, tiptoe by his sleeping, naked body on the beach. In sleep, his body is apprehensive in anticipation of physical abuse; "II dormait toujours les bras leves, et les pieds nus serres l'un A 1*autre tres fort. Comme s ’ils avaient eu tres peur, eux aussi, 243

In "Luna-Park," he meets a prostitute in an amusement park and agrees to go up with her and her friend, a hotelkeeper who wants to take part in their sexual activities. When the women laugh at him, he suddenly becomes frightened: "Puls elles le regard&rent, et il eut peur, de cette peur folle qui vous prend, et contre laquelle on ne peut rien."53

At the end, he finds himself alone and notices that his chest hurts, but he cannot remember what the women did to him. His hysterical fear and subsequent lapse of memory suggest loss of control over his mental powers.

The sequence of scenes in "Trapeze" also has a dreamlike quality and communicates a preoccupation with death and masochism and a feeling of apprehension. Watching the trapeze artists, he senses that the boy is trembling and the girl is afraid that her left wrist will not bear her weight. When he meets the girl on the street, she admits that she was afraid because her partner's brother, whom she had loved and who is now dead, had hurt her left writst. A man approaches her on the street and she tells him to go away. The scene changes to the train station where she and another man are seeing her partner off. In the last line, the scene changes again, this time to a cafe where the speaker is drinking: "Ses mains n'arrivaient pas 3 tenir le verre qu'il avait commande.These words offer a clue to his memory lapses and the disoriented sense of time and place in the vignettes in "Nord-Ouest:" drinking is interfering with his perception of events.

The speaker's relationship with the woman in "Trapeze" Is consistent with the way Adamov usually depicts women. He encounters her on the street; they establish a bond by speaking openly of their masochism; then she drifts away from him to continue her chain of involvements with other men. The most frequent sexual situation in Adamov's works involves 244 pain and inconstancy. The couples inflict pain on each other and then separate, leaving the men endlessly finding themselves abandonned and alone,

"La Quete" is the description of a man who is very ill. Again, he sees himself as an object in the hands of destiny: " 1 1 tenait mal debout, n 1etait qu’une pauvre chose chancelante."^ In his misery, he goes to a prostitute, who turns him away. He follows her through the city, encountering images which reflect his own afflicted physical and mental states:

Des enfants malades etaient couches par terre dans les couloirs. On avait jete sur eux des couvertures a la hate.

Au doin d'une rue, une fille l'accrocha, decoiffee, une plaque rouge sur les l e v r e s . ^ 6

He follows the prostitute for a day and a night until he finds the house where she has gone to meet another man. No one answers his knock, so he spends the night prostrate in front of the door. The next morn­ ing she comes out, recognizes him, and is so moved by his perserverance that she brings him into the house and cares for him. Once again, the theme is of a quest, characterized by suffering aiid despair, which is more important than its object: it is the passion and endurance that the suitor demonstrates which are of value, not the object of his de­ sire, who in this Instance is a prostitute. The vignette reintroduces in concrete fashion one of the early themes of L ’Aveu, that of humanity and self-knowledge achieved through suffering: "Comme la lame du cou- teau ouvre la chair, la douleur ouvre les portes du coeur,"57 In "La

Quete," the speaker's masochistic behavior is rewarded when he moves the woman he desires to a concern for him.

In "Traversee," he has a sudden insight into the mind of the woman 245 he is with. They are travelling on the deck of a ship, in the lowest class, and go below when a storm comes up, A girl is stretched out in front of the door with bruises on her thighs.

Elle, tremblante, lui dit:

- Si Je pouvais avoir des bleus comae cette fllle.

See yeux brillaient. En un instant, 11 comprit que ce qu'll desirait, elle le desirait elle aussi. 58

In 1 1 s, the speaker is more able to share another’s feelings than was

the author in L ’Aveu. His observation that she has the same masochistic desires as he does not relieve his fear of death or physical deterior­ ation, but it enables him to communicate with another and thus break out of his solitude.

In "Edinburgh," his desperate behavior is made worse by his alcoholism: "11 ne savalt plus ou 11 logeait, elle le ramenalt chez lui, ivre, fou... Et lui, pendant ce temps, essayait d'atteindre de sa bouche ses genoux."59 In the middle of the night he wakes everyone up, crying for help. Superstitiously, he believes that if he could only have touched her, he would not have cried out in fear. The last scene is a typical image of abandonment: she steps over him, as

though he were an object, and disappears with the others, leaving him alone:

Elle passa. II se jeta par terre pour l'empecher de passer. Mais elle l'enjamba, tranqullle.

D'autres baigneurs 1'attendaient, elle les rejoignit, s'eloigna.60

The last section is composed of a single vignette; "La Photo,"

the final image of his search for the eternal feminine. He sees her photograph in a store window, immediately desires her, and wishes to 246 be humiliated by her: "II se disait qu'il aimerait qu'elle lui fit mal.

II l'imaginait le fouettant, et le regardant se tordre dans la torture, le regardant longuement, les yeux graves."®-*- He searches for her throughout the city, dreams of her, and makes the prostitutes he fre­ quents take positions which remind him of her. His search once again takes on the importance of a quest, one without romantic illusions, how­ ever. The speaker observes his obsessive behavior from a distance, rec­ ognizing simultaneously its futility and necessity to his life; "II continualt de la chercher a travers la ville, sans espoir d'aucune sorte, il la cherchait parce que c ’etait seulement au moment ou il la cherchait qu*il vivait."®^ He goes to other countries to look for her and finally to London where he thinks he sees her in the subway; "De toutes manieres, le portillon metallique se ferma a ce moment-13.

II voulut l'enjamber, essaya, tombe. Des inconnus le ramasserent, charitables,"®^ Once again, he falls, or fails, in his grasp for the woman he seeks and it is with this final image of failure that Ils ends.

Ils is the most erotic of Adaraov's works. In it he is sorting out the memories and fantasies of a lifetime which have been dominated by women. He wrote of these pieces: "Je ne sals pas si les textes qui composent Ils sont des textes erotiques, ou de pauvres simples images de desolation. Les deux, sans doute."®^

The texts appear to be arranged in chronological order. The first piece, "Fin Aout," contains references to the period before the

Second World War when he divided most of his time between the literary cafes of Montparnasse and Saint Germain and the prostitute section of

Les Hailes. It ends after the war, during the period when he met his wife, because the last sentence is an apparent reference to her: 247

"Depuis ce jour, ils s'etaient suivis. Qui suivait l'autre?"^

The vignettes collected under the title "Cela n ’en finira jamais" explore the subject of masochism. The passages which describe his behavior with prostitutes give the impression of a man who is striving to reach bottom: it is the "humiliation sans fin" of L'Aveu. He describes a scene where he is pushed downstairs, half naked, by the prostitutes whom he has paid to humiliate him: "La patronne avait bien ri, le voyant. Elle nettoya son visage d'un coup de torchon et rit encore. Et toutes de rire a leur tour. Pour ce rire, pour qu'il contlnuat, sans faille, sans fin, qu'est-ce qu'il n'aurait pas donnfe?"^

This desire to wallow in his humiliation echoes a scene described twenty years earlier in L'Aveu, in which he solicits brutal mistreatment from the prostitutes and pimps in a bar and achieves gratification from the contempt which they heap on him, symbolized by their mocking laughter:

"Un grand eclat de rire accueille ma proposition, et je me vautre dans ce rire public comme dans un torrent de boue, je m*y noie, Et ce rire de boue me roule corrane une epave."^ The two scenes demonstrate the consistency of the author's experience of his masochism throughout his creative life.

The last four vignettes in "Cela n'en finira jamais" reflect a mellowing of the author's attitude as his love relationship with his wife deepens. Although there are still scenes characterized by masochism and exhibitionism, the experiences are now shared rather than solitary vices, and there is a tone of tenderness toward "her," For the first time in his experience and depiction of sexual humiliation, another's pain is as real to him as his own.

At the end of "Cela n ’en finira jamais," there is the first 248 suggestion of sickness, when the speaker Is hospitalized with tuberculosis.

The speaker in "Nord-Ouest" reflects the author's own mental and physical deterioration, the result of years of heroin addiction, alco­ holism, and other abuses of his body. "La Photo" ends on a note of failure, when a subway door closes in his face and he falls down, but there is no sense of finality. This is only one in the series of quests which characterize his erotic life and he will soon find another woman who represents his ideal. It is the search itself, not the woman, which gives his life meaning. The book ends with a sense that the speaker has attained psychic self-knowledge, even if that knowledge does not allow him to break out of the circular pattern of his obsessions and compulsions. Notes - Chapter V

1J I t p. 163. 2 But there is no question that Lars remains the most important character in the eyes of the author: his dream is considerably longer than those of the three girls. 3 HE, P* 41.

4 HE, P- 43.

5 HE, P- 55.

P- 1 0 0 .

7il. pp. 169-170.

8JI, P* 171.

9 Ibid.

1 0 JI, P- 175.

U«. P- 176. pp. 179-180.

P- 183.

14« . P- 184.

1 5 JI, P- 183.

16JI, P- 186.

1 7 JI, pp. 186-187.

1 8 JI, P- 188.

«JI, P- 189. 20ln this regard. Van Der See and Francesca, die quoting Tristan et Iseut in Sainte Europe. 249 250

21JI, p. 190. 22 Ibid.

23JI, pp. 190-191.

24JI, p. 192.

25 JI, pp. 192-193.

26 JI, p. 193.

27JI, p. 194.

28JI, p. 195.

29 Ibid.

30 JI, p. 174.

31JI, p. 196. 32 J"JI, p. 199.

33JI, p. 201.

34JI_, p. 203.

35JI, p. 202.

36JI, p. 213.

37:H, pp. 204-205.

38JI, p. 206.

39JI, p. 170.

40 JI_, p. 174.

41JI, p. 215.

42JI, p. 216.

43JI, p. 217.

4 4 Ibid.

A5 Ibid.

A6JI, p. 216.

47JI, p. 217. 251

48JI. p- 216. A9Ibid.

50 JIIT » nP • 217. 51Ibid.

52JI, p. 219.

53JI, p. 221.

5*TTJI * p n * 224. 55 TT „ JI » p* 225. 56Ibid.

57JI, P- 43.

58JI, p. 228.

59JI, p. 229.

60JI. P* 230. 61jl, p. 233.

62JI. P- 234. 63Ibid.

64,t JI i P * 163. 65 ,, J1. P * 176.

66J1, p. 180.

67JI. P- 69. CONCLUSION

There are certain terms which belong uniquely to Adamov and which elucidate his conception of neurosis: "le mal incurable," "le mal curable," and the notion of masochism as "mithridatisation." In the

Introduction to L'Aveu, he writes: "Aujourd'hui seulement 11 m'est permis de reconnaltre la veritable nature du tragique, 1 le cote incur­ able des choses.1"^ By incurable, he means those things about which man can do nothing: death, decline and the anxiety which results from an awareness that the passage of time only brings men closer to des­ truction. Later in the same work, he speaks of the Second World War in terms of the curable and Incurable aspects of life: "L'horreur episod- ique propre a ce temps ne suffit pas a masquer la grande horreur primitive, celle d ’etre homme."^ John J. McCann describes the two concepts as follows:

The Adamovian hero Is tragically alone, a prisoner of the state and of self. He can alleviate to a certain degree the anguish of his social condition, but is power­ less to satisfy an inner, transcendental longing. In a world without God, he seeks a spiritual dimension and is incapable of finding 'le chemin qui le mene au but.' Life is a nightmarish hell punctuated only by the small advances man occasionally makes in the sociopolitical sphere. The existential anguish of being persists, intensified by repetition. There are no remedies.-*

Adamov was always more deeply touched by his own existential situation. In which he perceived himself to be helpless and isolated from others by his fears and obsessions, than by the historical horrors

252 253 through which he lived: the two World Wars, internment in a concentra­ tion camp, etc. Describing the anxiety which haunted his life, he writes:

"Far instants, il m'arrive bien d'echapper 3 la hantise du temps, ce mal incurable. Mais la peur aussitot me reprend... This fear was simply the fear of death and accompanying physical and mental decline.

It is from this fear that all his other anxieties originate.

In his political plays, such as Le Printemps 71, Adamov concen­ trated on the denunciation of social ills: "Dans cette piece, j *ai mis

X'accent sur un mal curable, le mal social, plutot que sur un autre mal, incurable, celui-la."^ Injustices between men, unlike injustices per­ petrated on man by fate, can sometimes be rectified. The belief that human institutions can be changed for the better motivated his efforts on behalf of a popular theater whose function was to educate men con­ cerning historical truth and social justice.

Adamov's own "mal incurable” was his neurosis, which had its origin in his childhood: "Alnsi, je puis vieilllr, les memes reves reviennent, les memes hantises me poursuivent qui plongent dans les profondeurs de l'enfance."® As a very small child, he was already obsessed by two irrational fears: the fear of poverty and the fear of growing up.^ His anxiety took the form of a dwarf which appeared to him every night and paralyzed him with dread.® As he grew older, the nightmare dwarf metamorphosed into the form around which his later rituals of humiliation were centered: woman.® His insecurity was aggravated by the difficult circumstances of his family and by the behavior of his father. During the years of emigration in Germany,

Switzerland and France, Adamov witnessed the dissipation of his family's fortune; but in terms of his later emotional development, the most sig­ 254 nificant factor during this period was the model of conduct set for him by his father. In response to the difficult situation in which he and his family found themselves, his father turned to alcohol and gambling and finally killed himself.

Like the characters in his theater, Adamov had a tendency to re­ create in his own life the situations which he dreaded most. As an adult, he developed a neurotic pattern of behavior which caused him to remain poor, dependent and persecuted. His relationship to the Estab­ lishment (the bourgeoisie and governmental bureaucracy) was one in which he assumed the role of victim, inviting harrassment by his con­ sistent inability to register forms on time or pay his taxes. In

1964, this ineptitude cost him most of his income.In terms of his audience, Adamov*s attitude was implicitly one of provocation toward the bourgeoisie which represented the values of his parents. In the direct and indirect ways in which throughout his life he engineered his rejection by those who represented authority, Adamov was re-enacting an unresolved childhood conflict which became a contributing factor to all of his subsequent masochistic behavior: the fear of castration which his mother inspired in him by her prohibitions against masturbation.

Much of the paralyzing guilt which he felt throughout his life seems to have resulted from the fear of terrible punishment and withdrawal of love which were sure to follow his continued Indulgence in forbidden sexual practices. These fears had the effect of inhibiting his sexual development and contributed to the formation of an obsessive pattern of behavior characterized by acts of sexual masochism and exhibitionism.

He knew that such acts would be disapproved, but he simultaneously hoped for the forgiveness which would prove his mother's love for him. The 255 acting out of this original scene of parent-child discord continues in

Adamov*s writings right up to his last play, Si l'ete revenait, in which Lars, his sister, Thea, and Alma engage in erotic maneuvers under the disapproving eye of the mother, Madame Petersen. The conflict which he built up around his mother explains why throughout his life

Adamov acted in a way which he knew was socially unacceptable while at the same time he continually sought the approbation and acceptance of those whose values he knew he was violating. It also explains his otherwise naive surprise and distress when his early neurotic and later radical plays were not well-received by conservative audiences. The dichotomy between the two types of women, brutal and comforting, who dominate his works, represents his continued conflict with Woman as he perceived her in the image of his mother, both as the one who chastises and the one who forgives. He expresses this ambivalent attitude as follows in the early poem, "Le Rayon noir:"

Get amour dont je ne puis me passer sans cris sans crises et sans armes L*amour qui tue et 1*amour qui sauve 11

His sexual activities and the writings in which he alluded to them were both ways of continually acting out the drama of maternal conflict

in which, driven by guilt, he sought both punishment and absolution.

Masochism was the author's behavioral response to "le mal incurable."

He refers to his masochistic practices as "mithridatisation de la mort"^ and as "mithridatisation du ratage social.From adolescence, the self-inflicted abuse of his body was a means of accustoming himself to pain in order to better withstand misfortune when it fell upon him. It was also a kind of superstitious offering made to the supernatural powers to avert further harm, as though he were saying: "Haven't I 256 suffered enough?" And, finally, in torturing himself, he was acting in accord with what he sensed was the natural order: since fate seemed to continually mete out adversity to him, he perhaps deserved it; he would therefore follow suite by punishing himself for the unconscious crimes which plagued him with guilt.

In his masochistic practices, Adamov sought distraction from his psychological sufferings in physical pain. The type of abuse which he sought as an antidote to his fears and rejection was usually humiliation by prostitutes: "Au fond, je n'ai ete le bon client, le 'miche,' que dans le malheur. C'est quand je sentis que tout me craquait entre les mains que je voulais voir mon corps craquer a son tour."l^ Commenting on his profound disappointment that his theater was not appreciated and his plays rarely performed in France in the early sixties, he writes:

"Je ne suis pas reconnu, eh bien alors que l*on ne me reconnaisse plus du tout. Que mon visage et mon corps soient alors rendus meconnaiss- ables."^

It must be remembered that the author practiced masochism, or

"mithridatisation," because suffering provided him with certain psychological gains which he regarded as real. By subjecting himself to the more intense sensations of physical pain and humiliation, he escaped, if only temporarily, from the fears of death and rejection which habitually preoccupied and paralyzed him. And by choosing his own pain, he was able to feel that he had some small degree of control over his fate. Finally, he regarded suffering as a means of attaining knowledge. In pain he found two of the experiences which he prized most highly: intensity and psychological truth. Like Meursault, in

L'Etranger, he wanted to be sure of his existence and his experience. 257

Meursault gained control over his life by accepting as true only what he

could perceive with his own senses, not what others handed down to him

in traditional values. Adamov found reality in the intensity of suffer­

ing which quieted his anxieties and allowed him to discover himself.

The ambivalence which Adamov felt toward his masochistic practices was the result of the intellectual lucidity which competed in his mind

with his neurosis, and which recognized that if life were indeed a

process of slow dying, masochism was a process of slow suicide. The

alcoholism and heroin addiction of his later years demonstrate vividly

the destructive effects of masochism. Like the physical brutality

which he sought in the company of prostitutes, both vices were means

which he chose to dull his psychological pain and escape from his

anxieties. Like his masochistic sexual and superstitious rituals, too,

both activities became compulsions in themselves over which he ultimate­

ly lost control. Although he eventually cured his heroin addiction, the

physical and mental deterioration caused by his chronic alcoholism was

probably the major factor which precipitated his suicide.

Adamov's neurosis clearly motivated his creative work, in the

same way that it inspired the episodes of humiliation which he describes

in his autobiographical writings. In his works, as in his life,

masochistic and exhibltionlstic gestures were meant to draw an affective

response from others, a reaction of pity, fear, or disgust. Such

attention-seeking behavior proclaimed that no one loved him and that he

needed help. His literary exhibitionism was always tempered, however,

by a sincere belief in the uniqueness of his experience. He meant his

works to be taken seriously, as is apparent in his commentary on Roger

Blin's interpretation of the role of Le Mutile, in La Grande et la petite 258 manoeuvre: "Roger Blin, admirable dans le role du Mutile, coupant net les rires 5 chacune de ses entrees, inspirant la peur, imposant le respect.

Certain elements linked to Adamov's neurosis are present in all the plays and give them a thematic unity sometimes at odds with his express­ ed purposes in writing. Even in the political plays, for instance, the protagonists seem to be trapped in situations which will never allow of a happy outcome. In Roger Planchon's words: "Chez Adamov, le passe revient toujours... Les personnages d'Adamov vont de l'avant vers le desastre, et l'auteur n'intervient pas. Telle Jocaste, il est IS, muet, la peur lui ferme la bouche."^ In the early plays, they are paralyzed by their anxieties from taking any action which would benefit them, and they are too passive and dependent to break out of the family circle.

In the middle plays, they are trapped by history: in Paolo Faoli, the little circle which represents society of the Belle Epoque moves inex­ orably toward the cataclysm of the First World War, and in Le Printemps

71, the workers are doomed to suffer the defeat of the Commune. In the later plays, and in Si l'ete revenalt, the characters have become cyn­ ical in their conscious or unconscious realization that the "real" world of politics and business is an extension of the oppressive family situation.

In society, as in the family, relationships are characterized by possessiveness (which in society becomes greed) and victimization. Be­ cause of their conviction that modern life offers no options for con­ structive action (which is also a rationalization for their inaction), they settle in to the round of ritualized, sado-masochistic behavior in

Sainte Europe, M. le Modere and Off limits, and escape into the wish fulfillment of dreams in Si l'ete revenait.

The situations which burden men in Adamov's theater are both psychic 259 and historical. He expresses his view of this double dilemma in a com­ ment on Le Ping-Pong! "Les personnages vieillissent chacun a sa maniere, et chacun se tue, les uns mourant pour de bon, les autres sur- vivant mats sans se liberer jamais du polds personnel, individuel, ni surtout du peril commun, en l'occurence le Consortium des appareils 5

sous."^® Adamov's theater is further unified by the constant presence

in varying degrees of "le mal incurable" and "le mal curable." The

incurable nature of things is reflected in the protagonists' neurotic patterns of behavior. One of the forms which their neurosis takes Is

the inability to love and their tendency to victimize others. In the preface to his translation of Georg Buchner's works (1953), Adamov describes neurosis as a condition which separates men from each other:

Tous les personnages de Woyzeck sont des malades. Woyzeck delire, le Docteur est un maniaque et le Capi- taine est melancolique. Mais ce fonds commun de maladie ne fait que les separer plus irremediablement, chacun etant prisonnier de son mal particulier, et de ce seul fait, contraint a devenir vietime et bourreau."l9

This statement expresses the tragedy of neurosis which is consistently played out between the characters in Adamov*s plays: isolated within rigid patterns of compulsive behavior by their fears and obsessions,

they are unable to reach out and make contact with others; allthey can

do is to send signs to each other, signaling their distress. Or their

relationships become rituals of sado-masochism in which they play on each others' desperate dependency by holding out and then withdrawing

their love, like Erna and Le Mutile in La Grande et la petite manoeuvre, or George and Dorothy Watkins in Off limits. John J. McCann writes of

this tendency of neurosis to corrupt relationships: "Each individual exists as an isolated Island, suffering alone, Incapable of resolving the 260 destructive interior conflict of his condition. A victim of himself, he becomes a victim of others, as well as a persecutor of others.The

conflict between the passive male protagonists and their aggressiven l .s mothers leads to the paralysis of the son's will and his subsequent in­ ability to make decisions or form relationships.

A consistent quality of Adamov's characterizations is his inability to conceive of the oppressor as human. Unlike the sons and lovers

(particularly from Le Ping-Pong on), parental figures are not presented in terms of their neurosis, but as the figures of oppression which they appear to be to their sons. Through the end of his theater (Si l'ete revenait), Adamov's dramatic conceptualization of the mother is psychologically closed. The mothers (and father in Le Sens de la marche) are presented as greedy, cowardly, authoritarian and prone to using emotional blackmail on their children.

In his later theater of escape, the characters who represent authority share in the author's own weaknesses and vices: impotence, exhibitionism, fetishism, alcoholism and suicide. But rather than humanize them, these moral shortcomings merely symbolize their spiritual bankruptcy and that of the society which they represent. In the early plays, the non-parental oppressors are presented as susceptible to the

Incurable nature of things (death and decline) in the same way as the protagonist-victims. Le Directeur de 1'Avenir, in La Parodie, depends for his strength on the fickle attentions of Lili, and Lili herself ages and deteriorates over the course of the play; Neffer in La Grande et la petite manoeuvre and Zenno in Tous contre tous are alternately persecutors and persecuted on the political scene; and Le Fere in

Le Sens de la marche and Le Vieux in Le Ping-Pong succomb to disease.

L'Abbe Saulnier and Hulot-Vasseur in Paolo Paoll, the Versaillais in 261

Le Prlntemps 71, and the characters who represent different factions of power in Intimite and Je ne suis pas frangais (Theatre de Societe), are not presented in terms of their human weaknesses: their function is to illustrate Adamov's political message - that the forces of capital, including the Church, cooperate in perpetrating their imperialist designs and exploiting the working classes.

In Off limits, there are two categories of oppressors: those - like the TV producer, Humphrey O'Douglas - who fall prey to "le mal incurable" (death) and who are presented without sympathy or any attempt to portray the underlying psychological motivation beneath their greed and drive for power, and those - like George and Dorothy, and Jim and

Sally - whose neuroses lead them into sado-masochistic relationships and behavior, the only escape from which is death. The characters in

Si l'ete revenalt, particularly Lars and Alma, alternately play the roles of victim and executioner.

All of the later plays show an evolution from the early theater in terms of psychological development. Whereas N., Pierre, Le Mutile,

Jean Rlst, Henri, Taranne and Edgar dominate the plays in which they are the protagonists, and their psychological conflicts are basically variants of the author's neuroses, in Off limits and Si l'ete revenalt, no one character is the center around which all the interest centers, and the characters, while nearly all motivated by masochism, demonstrate a variety of reactions to the basic human situations of isolation and mortality. In the last two plays, particularly, Off limits and Si l'ete revenalt. the characterizations become more subtle. Adamov made a remark about Strindberg which applies as well to his own later theater: "Mais 262 Strindberg est plus lucide qu'il n'y parait; peu a peu il decouvre

que les autres, de leur cote, sont bien obliges d'agir comme ils agis-

sent. Et les comptes se compliquent.

Because of the neurosis which paralyzes their wills, the behavior

of Adamov's protagonists is characterized more by inaction than by

action. The gestures of defiance which they manage to execute char­ acteristically combine elements of masochism with the attempt to

achieve a more heroic self-definition. It becomes obvious in examining

the plays that the act to which most adamovian protagonists resort to break out of their obsessive patterns and away from the oppression of

others, is suicide. N's guilt and anxiety drive him to choose death

over life in La Parodie, and Pierre, in L*Invasion, rebels against an

existence characterized by frustration and isolation by ending his life.

In Tous contre tous, Jean Rist's love-inspired suicidal gesture of

refusing to reveal his identity to the fascist police, anticipates sim­

ilar scenes in Le Frintemps 71, where, for instance, with words of

defiance, Pierre Fournier, Polia and Henri Lagarde provoke the Versaillais

guards into shooting them. Jean Rist's gesture is more despairing than

those of the Communards, for while the latter give their deaths a polit­

ical dimension by dying in the name of a cause, he Is basically seeking

to escape from the round of degradation and futility which has been his

life. When Le Professeur Taranne takes his clothes off at the end of

the play, the act symbolizes the death of his ego, which has been strip­

ped of all the attributes on which he prided himself. The gesture is one

of both rebellion and acquiescence in regard to a hostile world which has

divested him of his dignity. Like N., who anticipates the hand of fate

by destroying himself, Taranne gives back to society the reflection of 263 an exhibitionist with which they have branded him. Henri's murder of

Berne at the end of Le Sens de la marche, culminates his revolt against the psychological oppression of others, but is futile because there is no indication that he will not submit to subsequent authority figures;

Les Retrouvailles begins with Edgar's gesture of defiance against his mother and fiancee in choosing a different career and a different city from the ones which they have chosen for him, but like Henri in

Le Sens de la marche, who flees from his father only to subject himself to the authority of other father-figures, Edgar recreates the same relationship of dependency with La Plus Heureuse des Femmes and Louise.

In Paolo Paoli, Stella tries to escape her victimization by Paolo and

Hulot-Vasseur by moving to Germany, but returns to France after having recreated the same unsatisfactory, sado-masochistic relationship with another man. Paolo's own gesture at the end of the play, when he attempts to stop the fatal round of exchange between capitalists by giving his money to the workers, Rose and Marpeaux, is more a symbolic than real act of rebellion against the system; like the defiant deaths of the Communards, the gesture serves more as an example to others than as an action which has real social significance. Memere's generosity, in Le Printemps 71, provides an interesting contrast to the actions of the more neurotic characters. In the exuberant early days of the

Commune, she donates her silver to pay the soldiers. Later on, she denounces Polia as a means of ingratiating herself and her family with the invading Versaillais. Unlike Adamov's more effete, intellectual heroes, who have no talent for survival, M@m€re represents the energy and pragmatism of the French peasantry.

Adamov's publication of the anti-Gaullist Theatre de Societe (1958) 264 and his signing of the "Manifeste des 121" (1960) against the war in

Algeria were his own gestures of revolt against a political system which he considered unjust. Like the actions of his protagonists, his pol­

itical acts cast him in a more politically active role than he usually merited. Rather than the logical outcome of a life dedicated to social change, such acts were a means of identifying himself with the causes of progress and justice.

Johnnie Brown's murder of Tom Guinness in La Politique des restes

is an example of a gesture of revolt against the incurable aspect of life (neurosis) which results in repercussions in the realm of the curable (society). Like other adamovian protagonists, Johnnie Brown's neurosis preoccupies him to the point where he is unable to perceive reality in any terms except those of his obsession. In a violent attempt to escape from his chronic paranoid delusions, he kills a black man whom he suspects of dumping refuse in front of his door. In­ stead of freeing him, however, the act merely aggravates his emotional condition and touches off more delirium. The two sisters in En Fiacre

try to "stop time" in a similar fashion by throwing the third sister

out of the carriage in which they live to her death. The act does not

end in their breaking out of their obsessive beliefs and behavior, but merely adds confusion to their mental alienation. Needless to say, all

the violent gestures ending in crime have the effect of putting the

protagonists helplessly in the hands of the punishing authorities,

another means of quelling their anxiety by depriving themselves of their

freedom.

In Sainte Europe, the greatest gestures of defiance, such as

Theresa's cuckolding of her husband, Crepln, with Jesus Christ, take 265 place In dreams. The suicidal deaths of Moeller Van Der See and

Francesca, who choose to remain and die rather than flee the attack of

the revolutionaries, are gestures of revolt against a natural order which condemns them to neurotic, self-destructive pastimes, and a social order which dooms them to ineffectiveness. Like N., in La Parodle, death for them is a means of putting a stop to the process of slow dying. The main characters in Off limits, Jim and Sally, also provoke a violent end to their lives in order to escape from a life character­

ized by empty diversions. Their deaths are political gestures of resistance against American society which is supporting an unjust war

in Viet Nam, but like Sainte Europe, Off limits is basically a negative

play, politically: the true revolutionaries who constituted most of

the cast in Le Printerops 71 are reduced to voices offstage in Sainte

Europe, and are only present in Off limits in the form of Peter Lerkins, who burns his draft card at the end of the play. Like other somewhat

enigmatic figures of revolutionary zeal in Adamov's theater - Marpeaux

in Paolo Faoli, and Jeanne-Marie in Le Prlntemps 71 - Peter Lerkins

is a "positive” character without being sympathetic. It is obvious that

the author had little understanding of characters whose behavior was

not motivated, or at least modified, by neurosis. In Si l'ete revenalt,

the revolutionary voices are absent, and Thea and Alma kill themselves

out of disgust and despair with their lives, in which they have degraded

themselves and been unable, through either love or work, to find ful­

fillment. In this last play, Adamov makes his strongest statement yet

about the incurable nature of neurosis. Unlike the other plays, whose

actions take place against a background of political tumult, St l'ete

revenalt occurs in a country where social and political injustices have 266 been eliminated. They are Invoked only In the far away Third World, where Alma goes to join In the struggle of the oppressed.

From the preceding summary, It Is apparent that suicide Is the way in which most of Adamov's protagonists choose to express their dis­ satisfaction with both the incurable and the curable aspects of life.

Their gestures of suicide, like their other masochistic acts, are an attempt to shock and arouse pity In those who witness them. As an ex­ planation of Genet's masochism, Kate Millett writes: "The answer appears to be an Intensity of humiliation which constitutes identity for those who despise themselves.Underlying the self-destructive behavior of Adamov's characters is their belief in their own worthless­ ness. Their search for love takes on life or death dimensions because it is only through the power of another's love that they can accept their own worth. When N. tells Lili that he wants to die by her hand, he is trying to move her to pity and love with the intensity of his suffering. Because the characters who commit suicide are also the ones who most represent the preoccupations of the author, their deaths are gestures of self-pity on his part, by means of which, as in L'Aveu. he communicates his despair.

Suicide is an appropriate act for adamovian protagonists, particu­ larly those making a political gesture, because it is an action which does not have to be sustained. For Jean Rist, in Tous contre tous, heroic death is a way of defining himself as he would like to be - courageous and defiant - rather than as he is: hopeless and dependent on his mother. Polia's death, like her life, sets an example of noble self-sacrifice to the Communards. Constitutionally weak, physically and I emotionally, she is unable to take a strenuous part in the revolution. Her suicidal gesture of defiance permits her to create an energetic final image of herself. Jim and Sally, in Off limits, are perhaps the best example of characters who wish to take an active stand against in­ justice, but whose dependency on drugs and self-destructive pattern of living makes them unable to make anything but suicidal gestures. By dying violently, they succeed in defining themselves as victims of an oppressive American political system, rather than as the helpless victims of their own masochistic tendencies. Suicide is, finally, an act of rebellion against the natural order of things, a means of robbing fate of one's own death. Perhaps more importantly for Adamov's protag­ onists, it is the ultimate act of revolt against the one who gave birth, the mother. Suicide is the only means of escape from the neurosis which stems from parental oppression in the early plays and from the authority which is a projection of that oppression in the later plays. Frustrated and discouraged, Adamov's characters seek respite in death from the unrelieved pain of living.

The categories into which I have suggested that Adamov's theater be divided: "pieces d'exorcisme," "pieces d 'engagement," " pieces d'evasion," and a "piece d'integration," are reflected in his non- dramatic works as well. L'Aveu is the first major work in which the author attempts to free himself from the psychological demons which possess him by externalizing them in literature. The articles of literary criticism collected and published in Ici et malntenant document the author's relationship to the concept of a political theater. In them, he takes a committed, but lucid, look at his own works and at literature in general, in the same manner that he appraises the facts of his life in L*Homme et I 1enfant. The Journal, at the end of i 'Homme 268

et 1*enfant, and Ils, suggest in prose the same mental universe of

constant anxiety and temporary diversions as the plays of escape and

Si l'ete revenalt.

In both the theater and the other writings, there is a tendency

toward more concreteness of detail and less explanation as time goes

on. The early plays, the articles in L'Heure Nouvelle, and L'Aveu,

all represent reality in an abstract, schematic way and are reducible to

a number of pessimistic, philosophical formulations, such as: "personne

n'entend personne."23 xn his "pieces d'engagement," and in the

articles and interviews which appear throughout his career, the emphasis

is on reality, in the form of specific historical documentation and the

inclusion of relevant social, political, and economic factors. In the

Journal, Ils, the later plays, and Si l'ete revenalt, the method of

expression is impressionistic and Adamov allows political facts and

neurotic behavior to speak for themselves, without introducing them

merely as elements of a "message."

One of the marks of Adamov's excellence as a writer is his ability

to view and express his neurosis from different distances. In L 1Avcu

and his early plays, he is "close" to his neurosis. In his literary

criticism, he views neurosis from the point of view of its contribution

to literature, in the same way that he appraises political content in

literature. In the Journal and In the later plays, the desperate

narcissism of the early plays has been softened by the passage of time,

by the repetition of experiences, and by the tenderness, maturity, and

humor which he brings to his later works from his own life's experience.

Although Ils and Si l'ete revenalt are for the most part autobiographical

and concerned with the same problems of dependency and masochism as the 269

early plays,the distance Is much greater between the author and his work.

In these last two works, the metamorphosis of life Into art Is almost

complete.

The Journal and M. le Mod§re are both close to the author's exper­

ience during a particularly painful period of his life, when he was

hospitalized for alcoholism. As he himself suggested, the writing of

each served a therapeutic function, in the case of M. le Modere,

that of diverting him from suicide.^ In the vignettes of Ils and in

Si l ’ete revenalt, he regains control of his medium and is able to

expose his preoccupations while at the same time avoiding confession.

Both of these works are inspired by the uninhibited freedom of the

dream state: Si l'ete revenalt, literally, by being presented in the

form of four dreams, and Ils because of the atmosphere, in which the

connections between characters and events often seem to be based on free association. The dream form has the advantage of simultaneously reveal­

ing and poeticizing the author's neurosis. His description of Strind­ berg's dream plays reflects an early interest in the dramatic possibil­

ities of dreams:

N'importe quel evenement peut se produire, tout est possible et vraisemblable. Le temps et l'espace n'ex­ istent absolument pas; sur un fond insignifiant de realite, 1 'imagination se deploie et dessine de nouveaux motifs; c'est un melange de souvenirs, d 'experiences vecues, de libres inventions, de details saugrenus et d 'improvisations.^

In his own "dream play," Si l ’ete revenalt, Adamov found the ultimate means of expressing his own particular vision.

In evaluating Adamov's works, I would like to make a general obser­ vation, which is that there are countless examples of artists who have used their neuroses for creative purposes and who, like Adamov, were 270 able to achieve and maintain a certain equilibrium through the satis­

faction which their art brought them. An example is Vincent Van Gogh, and there Is a certain poignancy In the comparison, as Van Gogh also ended his life by suicide.

In Vincent Van Gogh, A Psychological Study, the psychiatrist,

Humberto Nagera, discusses the relationship between the painter's neuroses and his creativity. Van Gogh shared certain traits of char­ acter with Adamov: his dependency on his family, guilt feelings, masochism, and the sublimation of his sexual conflicts into art. Unable to succeed as an art dealer, Van Gogh was financially dependent on his family. From late adolescence on, his behavior was distinctly anti­ social: he dressed in rough, dirty clothes and the only women he knew

Intimately were prostitutes. When he was about thirty, he lived with a prostitute named Sien, in The Hague, a situation which predictably upset and alienated his family, centered around his father, a Protestant minister. Nagera discusses Vincent's need to provoke disapproval in others as the result of unconscious guilt feelings:

Psychoanalysis has long since discovered that such a need for punishment is usually the result of great un­ conscious guilt for 'crimes' which individuals believe they have committed and of which they have not the slightest awareness... The only thing that betrays the existence of the guilt is their constant provocation of punishment and rejection by others in their everyday behavior.^

Like Van Gogh, Adamov suffered from undefined feelings of guilt which resulted in antisocial behavior. Such self-defeating conduct is some­ times understood as the principle of lesser evil, a concept not far removed from the idea of "mithrldatisatlon." According to the former principle, a masochist chooses a punishment In order to avoid the 271 supposed threat of an even greater punishment:

Wilhilm Reich was the first theorist to propose that masochism was a defensive maneuver or adaptation. He saw masochism as a way of seeking a lesser Injury when a greater one was anticipated; he cited the case of a boy who felt relieved when he was spanked by his father, since the child believed it forestalled his castration, the punishment he really feared. 57 '

For Adamov, as for Van Gogh, writing provided a means of sub- liminating the energy which he was inhibited from expressing in com­ pleted sexual intercourse. For both, art was also the occasion of a more subtle form of sublimation. Prevented by his impotence from ever procreating a child, Van Gogh could take pride in his paintings as his surrogate children:

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, ill as I am, do without some­ thing which is greater than I, which is my life - the power to create. And if, frustrated in the physical power, a man tries to create thoughts instead of children, he is still part of humanity.28

Van Gogh's words illustrate the nobility to which the expression of a man's neurosis can attain when his art, like his progeny, becomes the focus of his life, the supremely serious activity in which he places all hopes for immortality.

In his critical works, Adamov consistently returns to the theme of neurosis as one of the prime movers behind the creation of art. In judging his success in integrating his neurosis into his own art, it is relevant to take into consideration what the author himself believed art to be and in what ways his attitudes toward neurosis changed and remained constant throughout his career. A remark from an article published in 1950 on a play by Kafka expresses his early belief that modern theater should concern itself with the workings of the human 272 mind; "Le Gardlen de tombeau est le type meme de la piece moderne qui va droit aux regions les plus souterraines et les plus essentielles de l'inconscient,"^ in his excellent work on Strindberg (1955), Adamov wrote of the play, Creanciers: "Ainsl la piece doit son ambigufte, done sa force dramatique, a la maladie dont souffre son a u t e u r . "^0 By

1961, he had transferred his literary allegiance from the obsessive, psychological model of Strindberg to the coolly detached, historical model of Brecht, and stated with characteristic emphasis: "Brecht... est de beaucoup le plus grand auteur de theatre du XXe siecle."^^

In the creation of his political theater, the problem was to find a balance of focus between psychology and history:

Dans quelle mesure, par exemple, faut-il, sur les traces de Tch6khov, retrouver de vraies 'personnes* et les regarder vivre, et indiquer leurs occupations les plus ordinaires - celles-ci ne traduisent-elles pas toujours les obsessions les plus profondes? Dans quelle mesure, au contraire, faut-il marquer un point et, sinon ne plus montrer ces vraies 'personnes,* du mo ins ne les montrer que de temps d autre et, entre ces deux temps, faire intervenir un tout autre monde ou la psychologie, meme la plus subtile, se taira, et que seule la logique de l'Histoire regira et eclairera.^2

His preoccupation with neurosis determined that Adamov's own works ultimately returned to a psychological rather than political orientation.

His point of view is obvious in the following statement that "meme dans les pieces politiques, la seule base certaine est presque toujours la nevrose... Marxiste ou non-marxiste, le seul probleme est de savoir comment utiliser ses nevroses. " ^ In time, he transferred his admiration from Brecht to authors who were more sympathetic to his own understanding of the complexity of life. Of Gogol, whose Dead Souls he adapted into dramatic form (1958), he said: "11 s'agit en effet de trouver un theatre absolument oriente et absolument ouvert, qui montrerait la 273 connexion reelle entre le monde dit onirique et le monde objectif. Ces deux mondes sont reunis dans le livre de Gogol.His goal from Le

Ping-Pong on was to create a theater in which neurosis would contribute

to political drama by making it richer and less shematic: "il doit etre possible de montrer sans equivoque la lutte des classes tout en preser­ vant la complexite des etres."^^ He found this synthesis of psycholog­

ical and historical concerns in an author who became one of his favor­

ites, Sean O'Casey, in whose works he found "une union beaucoup plus etroite entre la vie publique et la vie privee."36

One of the author's most revealing comments in terms of his own orientation is an appraisal of Gorki, many of whose works he trans­

lated: "Que si Gorki nous touche a ce point, c'est parce que, ouvert

lui-meme 4 l'emotion la plus immediate, la plus fruste, il sut - au prix d'un terrible effort sur lui-meme - maltriser cette emotion en jetant sur elle un regard critique."3? These words sum up the tension which gives Adamov's works their distinctive character, that between neurosis and lucidity, or passion and control. Adamov was an excep­

tionally well-trained, rational thinker and this mental discipline

gives even his most exhibitionlstic confessions a form and style which makes them works of literature rather than therapeutic exercises.

Adamov's artistic merit seems to me to lie in the two virtues

suggested in his comment on Gorki: sincere emotion and artistic control.

He wrote best about what he knew best, which was his own neurosis. Con­ versely, his least compelling works are on the subjects about which he knew least, namely the intricate economic and political dynamics behind modern history. Adamov's least successful play, in my opinion, is

Sainte Europe. The political message - that twentieth-century anti- 274 communism, like the medieval Crusades, is merely another way of masking the designs of western imperialism - does not justify the long, maso­ chistic masquerade which constitutes the action. John J. McCann ex­ plains the decadence in Adamov's later plays by his theory that Adamov attributes his own vices to the protagonists in order to create a met­ aphor for the moral decay of modern society: "M. le Modere is a man of the times, the time of personal and collective ignominy.I believe that Adamov's works are most compelling, however, not when he is suggest­ ing that modern society reflects his own neuroses, but when he is re­ vealing his own preoccupations, tastes and obsessions, in passages infused with his clarity, sense of irony and humanity. The works which most demonstrate these qualities: L'Aveu and Ils, L*Homme et

1 'enfant and the Journal, the early plays, and Si l'ete revenait seem destined to survive the longest.

The "pieces d'engagement," Paolo Faoll and Le Printemps 71, are excellent plays which succeed in combining psychological interest and political lessons. The author's neurosis contributes to the psycho­ logical complexity of the characters and their inter-relationships with­ out distorting history into the shape of his own obsessions. These two plays represent the direction which Adamov's theater might have taken if his physical as well as mental health had not been destroyed by alcoholism, thus preventing him from pursuing the careful documentation which gives these plays their historical clarity and interest. His illness and deterioration had the unfortunate effect on his works of causing him to become more myopic precisely when the scope of the subject which he had chosen to treat - history - demanded far-sightedness*

For this reason, 1 believe it was a wise decision for him to return to 275 his own subjective universe in Ils and Si l'ete revenait, the works in which his vision is most consistent and his style most assured.

Neurosis was both the moving force behind Adamov's works and the obstacle which prevented him from obtaining his artistic goals. Had he been able to analyze his own neurosis* or understand the nature of neurosis in general, he might have been able to release himself from the masochistic pattern of his life. As it is, his discussions of neurosis leave the reader with many unresolved questions. Is there a predisposition toward neurosis? Are neuroses all formed in childhood?

Is individual neurosis a result of social injustice, or are society's evils reflections of the sicknesses of individuals? Adamov was never able to answer these questions to his own satisfaction, although in the early plays there is a tendency to blame the impotence of the protagonists on the castrating mother, and in the later plays a tendency to blame masochistic behavior on the oppression of capitalism and im­ perialism. One acceptable conclusion seems to be that a child who begins his life neurotic, for whatever reasons, will necessarily find his behavior reinforced and aggravated in an unjust society. Like the nightmare dwarf of his childhood, the villains in Adamov's literary works are primarily products of his neurotic imagination. The parents in the early plays owe their dramatic force to this circumstance, but in the later plays, the grotesques who parade as heads of government lose their political point because of the excess of subjectivity with which they are portrayed.

In his depiction of his heroes as paralyzed in their own lives and

separated from others by their neuroses, Adamov is de-romanticlzing

the concept of the Byronic hero obsessed by death and driven to excessive behavior. His works demonstrate eloquently and consistently that pain can provide an artist with compassion and depth of insight, but that illness without remission or mending wears down a person's capacity to receive either truth or pleasure, and finally leads the way only to death. Notes - Conclusion

LJI, pp. 17-18.

2JI, p. 125.

3 The Theater of Arthur Adamov (University of North Carolina Press* 1975), p. 33. 4 JI, pp. 79-80.

5 IM, p. 129.

6JI, p. 44.

7HE, p. 13.

8HE, p. 15.

^J1, p. 64.

10HE, p. 147.

^Arthur Adamov, "Le Rayon noir," Ca hiers du Sud (1930), p. 110.

1 2 IM, p. 182.

13HE, p. 144.

14HE, p. 112.

15HE, p. 144.

1 6 HE, p. 99.

Gaudy, p. 64.

1 8 IM, p. 174.

10 K Arthur Adamov, Marthe Robert, Theatre Complet de Georg Uuchner (Paris: L'Arche, 1953), p. 10. 20 McCann, Op. Cit.» pp. 51-52.

21Arthur Adamov, "Strindberg le comptable," Les Lettres Nouvelles, III, 25 (March, 1955), p. 350. 2?? 278

22Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1970), p. 18.

23Note prelim., Theatre II, p. 9.

2Slote prelim., Theatre IV, p. 11.

2 3 Strindberg, p. 52.

^Humberto Nagera, Vincent Van Gogh, A Psychological Study (New York: International Universities Press, 1967), p. 160. 27 Irving Bieber, "Sadism and Masochism: Phenomenology and Psychodynamics," Chapter 15, in American Handbook of Psychiatry, vol. 3, Adult Clinical Psychiatry, Silvano Arieti and Eugene Brody, ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1974), p. 323.

^®Nagera, p. 147.

^Arthur Adamov, "Le Th£Stre vivant face 3 1 'incomprehension," 84, 14 (Sept., 1950), p. 94. 30 Strindberg,

3 1 im, P- 118.

3 2 im, P* 171.

3 3 im, P. 131.

3Aim, P* 117.

3 5 im, P- 163.

3 6 im, P- 131.

3 7 im, P- 193.

38McCann , Op. SELECTED

BIBLIOGRAPHY

279 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adamov’s Plays and Major Works

L'Aveu. Paris: Editions du Sagittaire, 1946.

La Parodie, L'Invasion [precedees d'une lettre d'Andre Gide, et de temoignages de Rene Chair, Jacques Prevert, Henri Thomas, Jacques Lemarchand, Jean Vilar, Roger BlinJ. Paris: Chariot, 1950.

Theatre I. Paris: Gallimard, 1953. Contains: La Parodie, L*Invasion, La Grande et la petite manoeuvre, Le Frofesseur Taranne. Tous contre tous.

Theatre II. Paris: Gallimard, 1955. Contains: Le Sens de la marche, Les Retrouvailles. Le Ping-Pong.

August Strindberg [with Maurice GravierJ. Paris: L'Arche, "les grands dramaturges," No. 6 , 1955.

Theatre de Societe (Scenes d'Actualite) [with Guy Demoy, Maurice Regnaut], Paris: Editeurs Fran£ais Reunis, "petite biblio- theque republicaine," 1958, Contains: Intimite, Je ne suis pas Frangais, La Complainte du ridicule.

Les Apolitlques. La Nouvelle Critique, 101 (dec. 1958), pp. 124-31.

La Commune de Paris, 18 mars - 28 mai 1871. Anthologie. Paris: Editions Soclales, 1959.

Les Ames mortes. Paris: Gallimard, "le manteau d'Arlequin," 1960.

En Fiacre. L'Avant-Scene, 294 (1 sept. 63), pp. 39-46.

Ici et maintenant. Paris: Gallimard, "pratique du theatre," 1964.

Theatre III. Paris: Gallimard, 1966. Contains: Paolo Paoll, La Politique des restes, Sainte Europe.

L 1Homme et l 1enfant. Paris: Gallimard, 1968.

Theatre IV. Paris: Gallimard, 1968. Contains: M. le Modere, Le Printemps 71.

Off limits. Paris: Gallimard, "le manteau d'Arlequin," 1969. 280 281

Je.. .Us... Paris: Gallimard, 1969.

SI I'ete revenait. Paris: Gallimard, "le manteau d'Arlequin," 1970.

Articles and Poems

"L’Enlisement," "Le Rayon noir," ’[signed Ern Adamov]. Cahiers du Sud (1930), pp. 108-12.

"Poemes pour Meret." Cahiers du Sud, 20 (aout 1933), pp. 438-39.

L'Heure Nouvelle. Eds. Arthur Adamov, Rene Char, Ribemont Dessaignes, Jacques Prevert. No. 1 (1945), No. 2 (1946).

"Introduction a Antonin Artaud." Paru (Monaco), 29 (avril 1947), pp. 7-12.

L'Oeuvre indefinissable d'Antonin Artaud," K, (juin 1948), pp. 8-10.

"Le Theatre vivant face a 1'incomp rehens ion,11 84^, 14 (sept. 1950), pp. 93-96.

Relache." 84, 15 (oct. 1950), p. 77.

"Une monde qui s'en va," Combat (22 fev. 51).

"Rimbaud et M. Prudhomme," Arts Lettres Spectacles, 346 (15 fev. 1952).

"Une Peinture obsessionnelle: 1'oeuvre d'Atlan." Les Lettres Nouvelles, Vol. 2, 22 (dec. 1954), pp. 932-34.

"Preface," Testament Roger Gilbert-Lecomte . Ed. Adamov, Paris: Gallimard, "collection metamorphoses," 50, 1955.

"Strindberg le comptable," Les Lettres Nouvelles, Vol 3, 25 (mars 1955), pp. 347-66.

"Encore et toujours Baudelaire," Les Lettres Frangaises (5 dec. 57).

"Que pensez-vous de Planchon au theatre de villeurbanne?" In "Enquete sur le theatre en province, Theatre d'aujourd'hul, 5 (janv./ fev. 1958), pp. 8-9.

"Parce que je l’ai beaucoup aime." Cahiers Renaud-Barrault, 22-23 (mai 1958), pp. 128-29.

"Entretien sur 1 'Avant-Garde en art et Le Monument d'Elsa Triolet," La Nouvelle Critique, 96 (mai 1958), pp. 123-25. In a debate including other writers, pp. 112-40.

"An Interview with Adamov," Plays and Players, Vol 7, 6 (March 1960), p. 9. Interview by Peter Lennon. 282

"En 1960, selon vous, a quol servez-vous7" La Nouvelle Critique, 120 (nov. 1960), pp. 5-6. "Enquete" containing the replies of 75 personalities, pp. 5-127.

"Presentation de En Fiacre," Cahiers Litteralres de l'O.R.T.F., Vol 1, 9 (28 Jan. 63), pp. 28-30.

"Le Mur des federes encore, toujours," France Nouvelle (22 mai 63).

"De la nevrose personnelle a la nevrose collective." Cahiers Litteraires de l'O.R.T.F., vol V, 14 (16 avril 1967), pp. 29-31.

"Television: Dramaturgic nouvelle." Cahiers Renaud-Barrault, 47-48 (nov. 1964), pp. 47-52.

"Presque - le theatre et le reve," Les Lettres Franqaises 1320 (4 fev. 70), p. 11.

Translations

Jung, Carl. Le Moi et l'inconscient. Paris: Gallimard, 1938.

Rilke, Rainer Maria. Le Livre de la Pauvrete et de la Mort. Alger: Chariot, 1941.

Btlchner, Georg. Theatre complet. (Trad, with Marthe Robert) Paris: L'Arche, 1953.

Kleist, Heinrich von. La Cruche cassee. Theatre Fopulaire, 6 (mars/ avril 1954).

Strindbert, August. Le Pelican. Theatre Populaire, 17 (1 mars 1956).

Gorki, Maxime. Les Ennemis. Theatre Populaire, 27-28 (nov. 1957, janv. 1958).

______. La Mere. Paris: Club Franqais du Livre, 1958.

Tchekhov, Anton. Theatre. Lausanne: Editions Rencontre, 1965.

Gontcharov, Ivan. Oblomov. Paris: Club Franqais du Livre, 1959.

Piscator, Erwin. Le Theatre politique. Paris, L'Arche, 1962.

DostXevsky, Fedor. Crime et Chatiment. Lausanne: Editions Rencontre, 1967.

Frisch, Max. La Grande Muraille. (Trad, with Jacqueline Autrusseau.) Paris: Gallimard, 1969. 283

Books and Theses on Adamov

Bradby, David. Adamov. Research Bibliographies & Checklists, 10. London: Grant & Cutler, 1975.

Dietemann, Margaret Quinn. The Theatre of Arthur Adamov. Diss. * Cornell University, 1970 (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1970)

Gaudy, Rene. Arthur Adamov: essai et document. Paris: Stock, "theatre ouvert," 1971.

Jacquart, Emmanuel. Le Theatre de Derision. Paris: Gallimard, "collection idees," 1974.

McCann, John Joseph. The Theatre of Arthur Adamov. Diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1971 (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1971)

______. The Theater of Arthur Adamov. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975.

Melese, Pierre. Adamov. Paris: Seghers, "theatre de tous les temps," 20, 1972.

Reilly, John H. Arthur Adamov. Twayne's World Authors Series, 318. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974.

Articles

Adamov, Jacqueline. "Censure et representation dan6 le theatre d'A.A." Discretlo (1974), pp. 222-30.

Artaud, Antonin. "Lettre a Arthur Adamov." L'Arche, Vol. 3, 16 (juin 1946), pp. 38-40.

Autrusseau, Jacqueline. "L'Avant-garde avance-t-elle?" La Nouvelle Critique, 115 (avril 1960), pp. 138-39.

Barthes, Roland. "Adamov et le langage." In Mythologies. Paris: Seuil, 1957, pp. 99-102.

Bermel, Albert. "Adamov in New York... and out again." Tulane Drama Review, Vol 4, 1 (Sept. 1959), pp. 104-7.

Church, D.H. "Si l'ete revenait." French Review, Vol. 45, 1 (Oct. 1971), pp. 180-81.

Corvin, Michel. "Approche semiologlque d'un texte dramatique, La Farodie d'Arthur Adamov." Litterature. 9 (Feb. 1973), pp. 86-100. 284

Delarue, Maurice. "Adamov ou les chemins de la lucidite." L*Human!te (31 mai 71).

Demorest, Jean-Jacques. "When Adamov Came to America." American Society of Legion of Honor Magazine, 3 (1974), pp. 149-64,

Desne, Roland. "Les Aveux d'Arthur Adamov." Arts, Lettres, Spectacles, 6 (15 juillet 1969).

Dietemann, Margaret Quinn. "Departure from the Absurd: Adamov's last Plays." Yale French Studies, 46 (1971), pp. 48-59.

Dort, Bernard. "Sur une avant-garde: Adamov et quelques autres." Theatre d'aujourd'hui, 3 (sept./oct. 1957), pp. 13-16.

______. Theatre Publique (1953-1966). Paris: Editions du seuil, 1967, pp. 255-262.

Esslin, Martin. "Arthur Adamov: the Curable and the Incurable." In The Theatre of the Absurd. New York: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1961, rev. 1969, pp. 66-99.

Fowlie, Wallace. "Adamov." In Dionysus in Paris. New York: Meridian, 1960. London: Gollancz, 1961, pp. 223-28.

Grossvogel, David. Twentieth Century French Drama. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 318-24.

Guicharnaud, Jacques. "Adamov." In Modern French Theatre. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967, pp. 196-206.

Jacquart, Emmanuel. "Adamov etait le roi des trois points." French Review, Vol 48, no. 6 (May 1975), pp. 996-1004. Interview with Roger Blin.

______. "Un celebre inconnu: Arthur Adamov." French Review, Vol 51, No. 1 (oct. 1977), pp. 45-52.

Knowles, Dorothy. "New Drama for New Audiences in France." Theatre Research., Vol. 11, 3 (1966), pp. 146-51.

Lynes, Carlos, "Adamov or 'le sens litteral' in the theatre" Yale French Studies, 14 (Winter 1954-55), pp. 48-56.

Ozenne, Michel. "Arthur Adamov: 1'engagement du reve." Combat (19 mars 1970).

Pierrot, Jean. "Nevrose et reve dans I'univers dramatique d'Adamov." Travaux de Linguistique et de Literature, Vol. 10. 2 (1972), pp. 257-73. 285

Prince, Gerald. "Le couple dans Le Ping-Pong." RomanceNotes, Vol 12, 1 (Autumn 1970), pp. 5-10.

Rombaut, Marc. "Arthur Adamov 1908-70." French Review, Vol. 45, 1 (Oct. 1971), pp. 3-8.

______. "L'ltineraire theatrale d ’A.A." Presence Africaine, 8 (printemps 1974), pp. 3-8.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. "J.-P. Sartre nous parle de theatre." Theatre Populaire, 15 (sept. oct. 1955), pp. 1-9.

Serreau, Genevieve. "Arthur Adamov." In Histolre du "nouveau theatre." Paris: Gallimard, "collection idees," No. 104, 1966, pp. 66-82.

Sherrell, Richard E. "Arthur Adamov." In The Human Image: Avant- garde and Christian. Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1969, pp. 110-29.

Simon, Alfred. Dictionnaire du theatre frangais contemporain. Paris: Larousse, 1970, pp. 63-65.

Sion, Georges. "Adamov ou la conscience separee." Revue Generale, 4 (avril 1970), pp. 117-18.

Ubersfeld, Anne. "A.A. ou le lieu du fantasme." Travail Theatral, 20 (juillet-oct. 1975), pp. 99-104.

Other Works Consulted

Arieti, Silvano and Eugene B. Brody, eds. Adult Clinical Psychiatry. Vol, 3 of American Handbook of Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books, 1974.

Artaud, Antonin. Le Theatre et son double. Paris: Gallimard, 1938.

Baudelaire, Charles. Les Fleurs du mai. Paris: Garnier Freres, 1961.

Alvarez, A. The Savage God: A Study of Suicide. New York: Random House, 1972.

Beckett, Samuel. Fin de partie. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1957.

Breton, Andre. Manifestes du surrealisme. Paris: Gallimard, "collection idees," 1963.

Fenichel, Otto. The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis. New York: W. W. Norton, 1945.

Gatti, Armand. "Un theatre pour la citfi." La Nef (1967), pp. 72-73. 286

Michel, Georges. "Quelle public? Quelle participation?" La Nef (1967), p. 69.

Millett, Kate. Sexual Politics. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1970.

Mills, Janes. The Panic in Needle Park. New York: Signet, New American Library, 1967.

Nagera, Humberto. Vincent Van Gogh, A Psychological Study. New York: International Universities Press, 1967.