FRENCH STOWAWAYS ON AN AMERICAN MILK TRAIN: WILLIAMS, COCTEAU AND PEYREFITTE

To Jacques Guicharnaud

Gilbert Debusscher

Reprintedfrom

MODERN DRAMA Vol. XXV, No. 3, pp. 399-408 September, 1982

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PRINTED IN CANADA French Stowaways on an American Milk Train: Williams, Cocteau and Peyrefitte

To Jacques Guichamaud

GILBERT DEBUSSCHER

The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore occupies a spécial place in Tennessee Williams's career. It was the last of his full-length plays to be produced on Broadway before acute personal problems forced the playwright into a prolonged artistic éclipse. Moreover, it was the only one of his plays to follow such a complex path of development. Based as usual on a short story - "Man Bring This Up Road," published in 1959 - but apparently conceived earlier, it evolved quickly from a first dramatization presented at the Spoleto Festival on July 11, 1962 through at least two further versions opening on Broadway in rapid succession on January 16, 1963 and January i, 1964, the second closing after only four performances. During the course of thèse rewritings, Williams attempted to make his sardonic taie of mortality and sex resonate with universal overtones. The kabuki-like stage assistants that provide whatever unifying frame the play has were presumably added to evoke the new philosophy of acceptance that Williams encountered in his first trip to the Far East. Flora Goforth's "friend" Vera Ridgeway-Condotti, whose name is meant to cover the Anglo-Saxon and Mediterranean components of the contemporary Western world, was re- baptized "the Witch," probably in order to capture for her the aura of Europe's time-honored tradition of legends and folk taies. ' In addition, as critics quickly perceived, Williams had fashioned his taie into a contemporary version of Everyman, the archetypal play about dying.^ His version therefore cornes close to that of Hugo von Hofmannsthal in Jedermann: das Spiel vom Sterben des reichen Mannes. The story of Christopher Flanders and Flora Goforth is, as critics promptly reproved, Williams's umpteenth version of the confrontation between a young muscular maie and an aging sensual woman, the battle of wills between "Adonis and the Gargoyle."^ But though the material is familiar enough from previous plays, it must have proved intractable, perhaps owing to personal 400 GILBERT DEBUSSCHER circumstances, in this new guise. The quick succession of rewritings testifies to the artist's dogged efforts to force the work into shape. Among the devices Williams relied upon to give his drama a semblance of direction, I would suggest, is one that has thus far escaped notice: the imposition of a preexisting pattem borrowed from a successful French play, 's L'Aigle à deux têtes. Opening in 1946, Cocteau's romantic drama had taken postwar Paris by surprise: Edwige Feuillière and in the leading rôles tumed it into a triumph. It was translated into English and further adapted for the stage by Ronald Duncan, opening on Broadway on March 19, 1947 as The Eagle Has Two Heads, with Tallulah Bankhead as the Queen. It seems likely that Williams would have seen this version,** since at this time he was in and out of town for preliminary work on the production of A Streetcar Named Désire which Cocteau was to adapt for the French stage. His attendance is the more probable because he was a great admirer of Bankhead; earlier he had described himself as experiencing an "intense infatuation" with the actress.^ The parallels between the two play s, extending from sets to characters, plot, and even symbols, are too numerous to be coincidental. The décor of the plays is similar. Williams's stylized setting, besides helping to remove the play from the realm of conventional realistic drama, may also have prevented an all-too-ready identification of its model. In Milk Train, the three différent sets that appear in the successive acts of L'Aigle are juxtaposed in a single set which encompasses bedroom, library and terrace. Act I of the French play confronts us with the twin of Flora's bedroom: "Le décor représente une des chambres de la Reine, au château Krantz. ... Cette chambre est assez vaste. Un lit à baldaquin occupe le milieu" (p. 18). In Act II we find the correspondent of Flora's library: "La bibliothèque de la Reine, à Krantz. C'est une grande pièce pleine de livres sur des rayons et sur des tables" (p. 70). Finally, the third act of L'Aigle introduces the idea of a terrace, which complètes Williams's set: "Même décor qu'au deuxième acte.... La fenêtre de la bibliothèque est grande ouverte sur le parc" (p. 132).^ Beyond this similarity of settings, many features of the French characters are reproduced minutely in Williams's play. The action of L'Aigle à deux têtes centers on the relationship between the Queen, for many years a widow, and Stanislas, a much younger poet and anarchist. Flora's long widowhood and Christopher's social anarchy and poetic activity parallel closely the situation of Cocteau's protagonists. Although Mrs. Goforth is not actually the sovereign of an identifiable country, an elaborate pattem of références surrounds her with an impérial aura. Thus, the mountain over which she rules like a despot becomes her monumental tomb; she prétends it has been "systematically pillaged" (p. 98); and in the last scène Christopher refers to her jewels "Under her pillow like apharaoh'sbreakfastwaitingforthepharaohtowakeuphungry. ..."(p. 118). Together with Flora's earlier mention of her trip to Egypt, thèse various allusions tend to présent her as the modem version of an Egyptian ruler. Williams, Cocteau and Peyrefitte 401

Yet another pattem of allusions evokes the figure of Tiberius, the Roman emperor who retired to southem Italy and went on goveming from there by letters to the senate. Both Tacitus and Suetonius report Tiberius's condemna- tion of Sejanus, head of the Roman guard, and his subséquent sickly mistrust of everyone around him. Both historians also stress Tiberius's obsession with economy and his careful administration, and Suetonius notes as well the sexual excesses of the emperor while on Capri. Thèse traits can be traced in Flora's character as well. She too retires to southem Italy but goes on "goveming" through her broker via the téléphone (p. 9), keeping herself informed of the State of the world through an array of newspapers: "the Paris Herald Tribune, the Rome Daily American, the Wall Street Journal, the London Times and Express ... " (p. 31). Like Tiberius, Rora mistmsts everybody; only dogs, poodles excepted (p. 97), are declared worthy of her confidence. Moreover, the whole play testifies to the gingerly fashion in which she uses her enormous wealth. Finally, her entire life, recalled in the memoirs that she dictâtes throughout the play, seems to have revolved around sexual satisfaction. Her sensual greed now that she is reaching seventy brings to mind the insatiable appetite of the old emperor. Analogies extend farther, however, than thèse gênerai resemblances. Flora is referred to as "a Roman Empress saluting the populace" (p. 32), and toward the end of the play she is seen in "a majestic ermine-trimmed robe to which she has pinned her 'most important jewels,' ... rings blaz[ing] on her fingers ..." (p. 103), so that she has the appearance of an aging monarch. Later, describing her deathbed, Christopher exclaims: "Yes, it looks like a catafalque of an Empress" (p. 116). Flora herself seems to appreciate her impérial rôle:

MRS. GOFORTH Look: a coin has two sides. On one side is an eagle, but on the other side is - something else. ... CHRIS Yes, something else, usually some elderly potentate's profile, (p. 82)

The image of the eagle recalls Flora's own emblem, the griffin, perhaps hinting cryptically at the title of Cocteau's play. Flora alludes here not only to her own greed and désire for power, but to the other facet of her personality, her need for tendemess or love. In his reply, however, Christopher chooses to emphasize her âge and impérial figure. That Tiberius is a dominant model for this impérial présence is definitively established by an épisode recalling the unfortunate destiny of Sejanus, who had plotted to secure the succession for himself. When Sejanus's machinations were exposed, Tiberius had him thrown from a high cliff into the sea, an event referred to even now in Italy as the "salto di Timberio" ("the jump of Tiberius"). A striking reenactment of this incident occurs in the first scène of the play. Flora contends that her daughter "wants to hang black crêpe on [her]" (p. 10) and has therefore hired a "Rome quack" (notice the précise origin) to help her "go forth" more quickly. The doctor in tum has sent an X-ray machine "to take a new set of 402 GILBERT DEBUSSCHER pictures to show what progress there is in the healing of the lésion, the lung abscess ..." (p. lo). But to Flora the machine is a symbol of those who want her in her grave so that they may dispose of her money. The X-ray machine therefore goes the way of Sejanus:

- Look, watch this! Here we go, perambulator from Mars. Out, down, go! [She thrusts it violently onto the forestage. ... After a couple of moments, we hear a muted crash that signifies its destruction on the rocky beach under the mountain. ... ] (pp. lO-Il)

Flora is associated also with another impérial figure, perhaps announced in the référence to ermine-trimmed robes and blazing jewels. For she sleeps in what "was the bed of Countess Walewska, Napoleon's Polish mistress. It's a famous old bed, for a famous old body. ..." (p. ii6). Constantly, then, Williams reminds us that although emperors are a political and social impossibility in the contemporary Western world, Flora should be viewed as the present-day version of Cocteau's Queen. The two women have much in common. The différence in âge that séparâtes the Queen from Stanislas is reflected in the disparity between Flora's advanced years and Christopher's youth. For both women, too, the past has evolved in similar fashion. Cocteau's Queen has secluded herself in her castles since the death of her husband on their wedding day. To a large extent, her voluntary solitude has caused her to lose touch with reality: "je rêve de devenir une tragédie. Ce qui n'est pas commode, avouez-le. J'y travaille - je me rature, je me déchire, je me recommence ... je m'enferme dans mes châteaux" (p. 59).^ Flora's memoirs, written on a secluded mountaintop, also tend to establish her as the heroine of her own fiction, and the Queen's allusion to successive drafts describes exactly Flora's literary attempts. In addition, both women suffered great losses when their husbands died, and both forsook society as a conséquence. The Queen's lament, "Depuis la mort du roi, je suis morte" (p. 59),* is paralleled in Flora's évocation of the death of Alex, a Romanoff prince, another connection with the impérial thème surrounding her: "[He] died that night in my arms in a clinic at Nice: and my heart died with him! Forever! [Her voice breaks.]" (p. 8). It is obvious that both playwrights mean to convey a kind of emotional, even sexual death, a death-in-life such as that described by Blackie, Flora's secretary, who is also a widow: "... l'm not dead but not living!" (p. 33). The figure of Christopher also finds many parallels in Stanislas. Cocteau's young anarchist started out pure, but was corrupted by society: "Je descendais des montagnes. Tout y était pur, de glace et de feu. Dans votre capitale, j'ai trouvé la misère, le mensonge, l'intrigue, la haine, la police, le vol. J'ai traîné de honte en honte" (p. 93).^ Williams's hero, although more ambiguously presented, is first associated with the snow of the Sierra Nevada mountains and Williams, Cocteau and Peyrefitte 403 later brought into the comipt society of the international set where he too finds mendacity, hatred, intrigue and finally misery, both moral and material. Stanislas, however, discovers a way to use his énergies, attempting to bring about justice and peace, to establish a movement in support of the disinherited. He finds his outlet in subversive political action: "Il ne me suffisait plus d'être ravagé par un visage. Il me fallait être ravagé par une cause, m'y perdre, m'y dissoudre, m'y anéantir" (p. 94).'° Although Christopher's commitment is not political, he too reacts to the révélation of a corrupt society by pledging to reform it; his vocation, however, is more clearly of a moral or religious nature. Finally, both characters share the same nickname: Stanislas published his poems under the pseudonym Azraël, whom the Queen identifies as the Angel of Death (p. 52), the same name given to Christopher by the perverted society of Capri as a resuit of his many expériences with dying elderly ladies." Eventually both women expérience the painful realization of the threat implicit in this name. Even Williams's secondary characters bear strong resemblances to Cocteau's. Blackie, Flora's secretary, displays the same cold detachment and practical efficiency as Edith de Berg, the Queen's lady-in-waiting. Blackie secretly hâtes Flora and helps Christopher, the "trespasser," in what is finally an act of treason. Similarly, Edith de Berg is paid by the Queen Mother to spy on the Queen's actions. Williams's Rudy, a "Generalissimo" (p. 19) in half-military dress, combines traits of two of Cocteau's characters: the Comte de Foëhn, head of the guards and the secret police, and the Duke of Willenstein, a "généralissime" (p. 126)'^ who appears in court uniforms. De Foëhn is also in the pay of the Queen Mother and will eventually secure power for himself; similarly, Rudy triumphs by running away with the contents of Flora's safe. Another connection between the two plays appears in the antagonism between Blackie and Rudy, a counterpart to the révulsion of Edith for Félix de Willenstein. In both plays the action develops along similar lines. Stanislas rushes into the Queen's bedroom exhausted and bleeding, tracked by the royal guards under command of de Foëhn: "// est décoiffé, inondé, hagard. Son genou droit est barbouillé de sang" (p. 42).The entrance of Christopher is practically a scenic quotation. He too is panting, bleeding, and shattered as he motions off Rudy's dogs: "[he] stumbles onto the terrace," "He looks blankly out at the audience "his eyes [are] wild, haggard ... " (pp. 13. i7)."^Furthermore, Stanislas arrives just as the Queen is preparing to reminisce about her dead husband during a solitary supper in front of his portrait, precisely as Christopher interrupts Flora's dictation of memories conceming young Alex. Both men remind the women of their deceased husbands not only by striking physical resemblances - Cocteau has one of his characters exclaim, "Cet individu est le sosie du roi" (p. 77)'' - but also by their dress. Milk Train tums into a faithful copy of L'Aigle in this instance. Stanislas appears as "un jeune 404 GILBERT DEBUSSCHER homme, exactement semblable au portrait du roi. Il porte le costume des montagnards" (p. 42). The geographical location of Cocteau's play is Tyrol, and therefore the peasant costume referred to consists of the leather pants customarily wom in that région. Christopher, too, is a faithful replica of his predecessor: Flora reports that, "The first time I saw Alex, in the Bavarian Alps, he had on lederhosen ..." (p. 18), and that it is precisely this garment on Christopher that reminds her now of her former love. In both cases, then, the trespasser or the anarchist, the réincarnation of a lost husband, interrupts a ceremony designed to revive the memory of the departed. Both women treat the younger men in approximately the same ways. Stanislas is subjected to a long cross-examination by the Queen, Christopher to Flora's inquiry via Blackie. In each case, also, the examination reveals previous knowledge of the trespasser. Stanislas is the author of a poem that the Queen knows by heart, whereas Christopher has had a conversation with Flora a few years back at the Waldorf-Astoria. Both women unexpectedly treat the intruder as a guest. The Queen hides Stanislas, takes care of his wounds, and finally sends him out with Tony, a deaf-mute Negro servant; Flora allows Christopher to stay ovemight in the villa and sends Blackie (a facetious pun on the Negro character in Cocteau?) to take care of him. When they reappear, both Stanislas and Christopher wear new clothes that firmly establish their close connections with the ghost in each woman's life: "... Stanislas paraît en haut des marches. ...Il porte un costume de ville, sombre, à petite veste boutonnée haut. Un costume du roi" (p. 83)'^; Christopher reappears in a Japanese robe, "the Samurai warrior's robe that Alex wore at breakfast" (p. 36). It is agreed that Stanislas will stay on at Krantz as the Queen's reader, a position which Christopher would like to occupy in Flora's entourage: "I notice you have trouble reading. l've been told I have a good reading voice" (p. 90). Both play s exhibit the same bitter irony in their development. In each case the arrivai of the young man brings a breath of fresh, revitalizing air. Cocteau's Queen is ready to give up her seclusion, to go back to her capital and assume the responsibilities of govemment: "Moi qui me plaignais qu'il ne se produise rien de neuf! Il y a du neuf à Krantz. Il y a du neuf. Je suis libre. Je peux parler et me montrer. C'est magnifique" (p. 55).'* Flora Goforth's much briefer reaction has the same connotation of rebirth: " - Hmmm, the summer is coming to life! l'm coming back to life with it!" (p. 37). In both women this temporary if in• tense revival is tempered by misgivings. The Queen seems to be aware of the danger inhérent in Stanislas's présence:

Quoi? Vous me demandez qui vous êtes? Mais, cher monsieur, vous êtes ma mort. C'est ma mort que je sauve. C'est ma mort que je cache. C'est ma mort que je réchauffe. C'est ma mort que je soigne, (p. 59)''

Similarly, Flora is afraid of Christopher's réputation and of his cavalier attitude. And in the end, the young man's présence proves fatal in both Williams, Cocteau and Peyrefitte 405 instances: in Cocteau's play a stunning reversai of fortune - indeed, a "coup de théâtre" - leads Stanislas to kill the Queen, whereas in Milk Train, Floradies of an incurable disease. In spite of différences in the ways death cornes, the last scènes are again strikingly parallel. Cocteau's Queen is fascinated by her destiny: "Mon destin me regarde face à face, les yeux dans les yeux. Il m'hypnotise. Et, voyez ... il m'endort" (p. 180).^° Flora, too, is described as "staring at death, and trying to outstare it" (p. 103). Finally, both play s are dominated by a heraldic symbol. The double-headed eagle of Cocteau's title figures prominently in the Queen's coat of arms and thus becomes her symbol. The two heads evoke as well the close association of the Queen and Stanislas, their interdependence in death as in life. The hidden strength of the monstrous animal, however, functions as an ironical comment on the weakness of those it represents. In similar fashion, in Williams's play the griffin, also alluded to in Cocteau's text,^' figures in Flora's coat of arms and flag, representing her and her savage will to live. Fossessed of the same monstrous fascination as Cocteau's eagle, it also provides an ironical comment on Hora's last words about her unwillingness to go forth. Ail in ail, there is a strong probability that Williams took a great deal of his inspiration from Cocteau's L'Aigle à deux têtes. The main différence between the two play s seems to be the geographical location of the action, a dis- crepancy which, paradoxically, makes the borrowing even more plausible. Although Stanislas's lederhosen could be regarded as providing a touch of realism or local color in Cocteau's otherwise neoromantic melodrama, they are more difficult to account for in Williams's play, set as it is on the Divina Costiera, the coast of southem Italy around Naples and Capri, unless they can be taken as another of the playwright's private hints at his model. Although Williams enjoyed intimate acquaintance with Italy, and particularly with the area around Capri,he may have been reminded of the setting he had selected for the last days of Flora Goforth by one of Roger Peyrefitte's novels whose title, L'Exilé de Capri, perfectly describes Williams's heroine. Peyrefitte's book was published in 1959, the year in which Williams's very first version of the material, the short story "Man Bring This Up Road," appeared in Mademoiselle. An English translation of the French novel was published in 1961, at a time when Williams was writing one of the versions of Milk Train. Admittedly, Williams could have gathered the background information for his allegorical taie from immédiate personal expérience or from travelers' accounts, including an earlier book by Peyrefitte entitled Du Vésuve à l'Etna (1952), which has a section on "Les Distractions de Capri" and which provides gossipy information on (among other figures) Tiberius. But L'Exilé de Capri, concemed as it is with Jacques d'Adelsward-Fersen, the French descendant of the Swedish ambassador who risked his life to save Marie Antoinette, might have suggested the "Northern" physique and sumame of Christopher Flanders. Moreover, the book seems to contain another due; a préface by Cocteau himself in which the writer describes the plight of those who aspire to genius. 4o6 GILBERT DEBUSSCHER but are actually deprived of it: "J'ai toujours aimé les créatures incapables de créer des chefs-d'oeuvre et qui cherchent, faute de mieux à en devenir un elles-mêmes."^^ After this remark, which at once evokes the strivings of Peyrefitte's hero and the frantic but vain efforts of Williams's heroine to transmute her existential expérience into art, Cocteau mentions precisely the play from which, as we have seen, Williams may have taken his inspiration. In L'Aigle à deux têtes, the French writer says, "je montre une de ces reines qui veulent diriger le destin et lui imprimer jusqu'à la catastrophe un lyrisme que leur esprit ne peut produire."^'* The connection of The Milk Train Doesn t Stop H ère Anymore with L'Aigle à deux têtes seems very likely. The influence of L'Exilé de Capri is based on more tenuous évidence: the similarities of locale and historical background; the closeness in time of the appearance of the French novel and Williams's short story, as well as of the English translation and the first version of the play; and the présence of a préface by Cocteau which describes the character of Jacques d'Adelsward-Fersen in terms applicable equally to his own Queen and to Flora Goforth. Hence, the relationship between Peyrefitte and Williams, although plausible, remains conjectural. The numerous versions of The Milk Train Doesn't Stop H ère Anymore testify to the importance Williams attached to this particular play. In it the dramatist seems to have pursued an ambition to deliver a message of universal and metaphysical import. But the play has remained ill integrated, a mosaic of fragmentary expériences that stubbomly refuse to cohere in a meaningful whole. Williams's recourse to one or more French "frames" to shape his material neatly has only added to its gênerai heterogeneity, disorienting the audience and, if anything, further obscuring the ultimate message. The play is not, however, an indiffèrent failure. The fascination it exercises even on the printed page is like that of the eagle with two heads or Flora's griffin: it has both the mesmerizing power and the aura of unreality associated with a heteromor- phous monster.

NOTES

1 In the "Author's Notes" that introduce Milk Train, Williams himself refers to the play as a " 'sophisticated fairy taie' " {The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore [Norfolk, Conn., 1964], p. i). 2 See, for example, Felicia Hardison Londré, Tennessee Williams (New York, 1979), P- 176. 3 See Henry Popkin, "The Plays of Tennessee Williams," Tulane Drama Review, 4 (March i960), 45-64. 4 However, a close comparison of Williams's text with the two versions suggests that he was working with the original French text; many of the détails that appear in Milk Train have been left out of the English adaptation. I shall therefore quote throughout from the French text (L'Aigle à deux têtes [Paris, 1946]), providing Williams, Cocteau and Peyrefitte 407

Duncan's adaptation {The Eagle Has Two Heads [New York, 1947]) in the foot- notes. 5 Tennessee Williams, "T. Williams's View of T. Bankhead," New York Times, 29 Dec. 1963; rpt. Where I Live: Selected Essays, ed. Christine R. Day and Bob Woods (New York, 1978), p. 150. It is my guess that in rewriting the play for the third time with Bankhead in mind for the rôle of Flora Goforth, Williams was reminded of her portrayal of the Queen in The Eagle Has Two Heads and reworked the material accordingly. 6 In thèse three instances Duncan's adaptation reads: "The Queen's bedroom in her castle ...ai Krantz. It is an enormous room with a canopied bed in the center" (p. 15); "The Queen's Library at Krantz. It is a large room, even the tables are loaded with books" (p. 53); and "The same. ... The window is wide open on the park" (p. 102). 7 Duncan's adaptation: "But I dreamed of making ... [my life] into a tragedy. It's not as easy as you might think -1 work hard at it and tear up much which I have written, then start again, but no great tragedy can be written amongst little people, so I shut myself up in my castles" (p. 48). 8 Duncan's adaptation: "When the King died, I died" (p. 48). 9 Duncan's adaptation: "I was fifteen when I left the mountains; / There everything was clean, clean as ice, clean as fire. / But in your capital I found meanness and misery, lies and intrigue. / There I graduated from filth to filth, and covered myself in hate ..." (p. 73). 10 This passage was omitted in the adaptation. ("It was not sufficient for me to be possessed by a face. I had to be possessed by a cause, to lose myself for it, to be dissolved in it, to be annihilated by it.") 11 Robert Brustein has suggested in Seasons of Discontent: Dramatic Opinions 1959-1965 (New York, 1965), p. 129, that Williams might have borrowed the nickname from Edward Albee's short play The Sandbox. However, Cocteau seems a much more plausible source. 12 In his adaptation, Duncan correctly transposes the military rank as "commander in chief ' (p. 99), but the verbal echo of Cocteau's "généralissime" in "Generalissimo" may be not only Williams's rendition of Italian local color, but a private jocular hint at the Cocteau model. 13 Duncan's adaptation: "He is exhausted, terrified and white as a sheet. His right knee is covered with blood" (p. 33). 14 Note the echo of "hagard" in "haggard," a word that does not appear in Duncan's adaptation. 15 Duncan's adaptation: "This poet is the living image of the King" (p. 59). 16 Duncan's adaptation: "a young man. He is the living image of the portrait ofthe King, is also dressed in the same fashion, as a Tyrolean peasant" (pp. 32-33). 17 Duncan's adaptation unexpectedly omits this stage direction. "... Stanislas appears at the top of the stairs. ... He is wearing a dark suit, with a buttoned-up jacket. A suit that belonged to the King." 18 Duncan's adaptation: "I used to complain that nothing new ever happened at Krantz. Now everything has happened. The présent has assassinated the past. Now I am free. Now I can talk and show my face" (p. 43). 19 Duncan's adaptation: W^at? You want to know what you are? You are my death. 408 GILBERT DEBUSSCHER

It is my death whom I have warmed by the fire. It is my death whom I have staunched from bleeding to death. Now I will feed my death. You are my death, make no mistake about it. (p. 47) 20 Duncan's adaptation switches to verse: "My destiny stands before me, /His eyes are looking into my eyes,/He is trying to hypnotize me./ And look, I already sleep" (p. 129). 21 "Vous avez volé à son secours sur un hippogriffe" (p. 157; "You rushed to my rescue on a hippogriffe"). Duncan's adaptation omits this particular line. Note, again, the verbal echo of Cocteau's "hippogriffe" in Williams's "griffin." 22 Williams lived in Italy for long periods of time in the late forties and fifties, and Amalfi, Ischia and Capri are constantly mentioned in his correspondence with Donald Windham (Tennessee Williams' Letters to Donald Windham, IÇ40-1965, ed. Donald Windham [New York, 1977]). (Incidentally, the letterof 25 July 1948 from Paris indicates that Williams had met Cocteau and invited him to a party, and that Cocteau had entertained Williams in retum.) A further study of influence or confluence between the two playwrights should at least analyze their respective treatments of the myth and examine Cocteau's adaptation of A Streetcar Named Désire. 23 Jean Cocteau, Avant-propos, L'Exilé de Capri, by Roger Peyrefitte (Paris, 1959), p. 7; "I have always liked those beings who, incapable of creating masterpieces, try to become one in their own persons" (Foreword, The Exile of Capri, trans. Edward Hyams [London, 1961], p. 5). 24 Cocteau, Avant-propos, pp 7-8; " ... I show one of those Queens who seek to control the motions of destiny and to inform it even unto disaster with a lyricism their minds are unable to produce" (Foreword, p. 5).