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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.