This dissertation has been microfihned exactly as received 69-21,993 TALTON, Andrew Pope, 1933- A SEARCH FOR EXISTENCE: THE EARLY PLAYS OF ARMAND SALACROU. [Portions of Text in French]. The University of Oklahoma, Ph.D., 1969 Language and Literature, modem University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE A SEARCH FOR EXISTENCE THE EARLY PLAYS OF ARMAND SALACROU A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for\the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY ANDREW POPE TALTON Norman, Oklahoma 1969 A SEARCH FOR EXISTENCE THE EARLY PLAYS OF ARMAND SALACROU APPROVED BY l j ) Æ 7//S. JUtf y DISSERTATION COMMITTEE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express my sincerest gratitude to Dr. Willis H. Bowen, who directed this dissertation. It was in his courses that I first became acquainted with the theater of Armand Salacrou, indeed, with the whole literature of France. I have drawn considerably upon his knowledge and vast biblio­ graphical resources in the preparation of this work, but I am even more deeply indebted to him for his warm friendship and intellectual guidance throughout all my studies. I also wish to thank the members of my reading com­ mittee, Professors Besse Clement, Lowell Dunham, Seymour Feiler, Jambes Abbott and Melvin Toison, Jr., for their helpful suggestions and their patience and kindness over too many years. It is impossible to guage my debt to my mother, Marian Pope Talton, who would so much have liked to see this moment, and my wife, Susan, without whose gentle insist­ ence the moment would never have arrived. Ill TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . ................... ü i Chapter I. INTRODUCTION.................... 1 II. A PRECOCIOUS ANXIETY .................. „ . 31 III. ELABORATIONS OF DESPAIR .................. 56 IV. TOUR A TERRE; FLIGHT FROM SELF ....... 140 V. LE PONT DE L 'EUROPE : THE DISCOVERY ..... 204 VI. CONCLUSION . ........ 334 APPENDIX ..................................... 344 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................... 356 XV A SEARCH FOR EXISTENCE THE EARLY PLAYS OF ARMAND SALACROU CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Armand Salacrou is one of the most enigmatic figures in twentieth-century French literature. Almost every aspect of his life has been marked by contrast and contradiction. Praised by some critics as one of France's greatest drama­ tists, he is almost totally rejected by others. His long career encompasses all of the major literary movements of this century, but he has refused to swear allegiance to any of them. In the years since his first short story was pub­ lished in 1916, he has written some thirty plays, several of which have become landmarks in contemporary French drama; La Terre est ronde. Archipel Lenoir, Les Nuits de la colore, Boulevard Durand. His plays have been widely produced in Europe and have appeared in Asia, Africa, Latin America, even Java, but he remains relatively unknown in the 1 English-speaking world. Only in 1967 has a volume of his work been published in English.^ In his private life Armand Salacrou is also a man of contrasts. Manifestly destined for the theater, he founded at a rather early age what soon became one of the largest publicity firms in Europe, rivaling even the immense Havas organization. However, the considerable wealth that this success brought seemed of little importance to him, and has been significant only in that it allowed him financial free­ dom to write. In spite of the apparent ease of his life, and the position he has earned as a cosmopolitan man of letters, world traveler and member of the Concourt Academy, Salacrou has never seemed completely at ease in existence, has never fully taken on the coloration of the self-satisfied bourgeois. Led initially to seek friends through the theater and his early political activities, he also has sought isola­ tion from society, a desire for solitude which attracted him to mountain-climbing. It is as a man uniquely a dramatist that Armand Salacrou's enigma imposes itself most strongly. The purpose Three Plays by Armand Salacrou. ed. and trans. Norman Stokle, (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1967). of this study will be to analyze the critical rôle played by the theater in his life, both as a simple modus vivendi and also as an absolutely essential means of self-perception. It is especially through the early plays that one understands how the theater became the fundamental forc^ in his life, and how Salacrou sought, through his plays, to decipher the meaning of his own, personal universe. The emphasis in the present work will be on these initial essays, coming before Salacrou's first real public and critical acceptance, plays relegated to the position of mere oeuvres de jeunesse, but those in which the playwright most clearly exposes his motives for writing drama. The ultimate goal of this dissertation will be to uncover the roots of Salacrou's major themes and to establish that the one major leitmotif, elaborated in these first plays and linking all those that followed, is perhaps the most universal of all literary themes, the search for image, be it called God, father or self, for all are simply different terms for the same quest. The inevitability of this search, the key to the contrast and conflict of Salacrou's life, will be shown to be predicated on a single question, continually posed by the dramatist, continually studied, re-cast, inter­ preted throughout all his plays, but perhaps best framed by his porte-parole. King Jerome, in Le_ Pont de 1'Europe ; Pourquoi n'ai-je pas compris plus tôt que l'intérêt de la vie et de mon avenir n'est pas dans un choix parmi les objets du magasin d'accessoires de l'expérience des autres, mais dans la manière dont on les mêlait à notre vie. Qu'il est sot de dire Quoil je serais un homme comme les autres; banquier, paysan, amoureux et de faire ainsi à l'avance le bilan de sa vie. Il faut dire et voici le vrai mystère: 2 "Comment serai-je un homme comme les autres?" Armand Salacrou thus thrusts upon his audience the dilemma which has remained at the core of his intellectual existence and which has been the central motivating force in almost the whole of his literary production. It is indeed a question which cannot be avoided by any man genu­ inely aware of himself as a being, existent in an essentially foreign universe. "Comment serai-je un homme comme les autres?" Becoming a man like the other implies a process of coming to terms with life, of reaching a conception of universal order in which one can find his place, can free himself from the anguish of doubt and the fear of impotence inherent in a world which appears unjust and directionless. It is a quest for authenticity in life, for identification in the despair of alienation. To become a man is, at its most fundamental ^Armand Salacrou, Théâtre, I, (Paris; Gallimard, 1943), p. 189. This and all subsequent references to the plays are from Théâtre, 8 vols., (Paris: Gallimard, 1943- 1966) except for plays published hors série and so indicated. level, to conquer death, if only for the moment, to fabricate an existence which, though ephemeral, will be subjectively meaningful and at least seemingly significant. The struggle to exist manifests itself in many ways, and the means employed in the search are as varied as the opportunities which life presents for action, for it is in action that we exist, through action that we gain at least a temporary victory over death. If death is passivity in its purest form, then life is surely action, and whatever man does in life is an attempt to dim the knowledge of the inevitability of this end to all that seems so real and so lasting. This is as true of the shopkeeper or laborer as of the greatest empire builder. But it is the artist, through his heightened sensitivity to man and his situation, who seems to function with the greatest awareness of the true significance of his actions. It might be said thajt the artist is knowingly constructing a life for himself in the simple act of creating his works, much as the bricklayer unconsciously combats inactivity/death by laying bricks. This is the function of art at its most fundamental, least aesthetic, level, and Armand Salacrou has shown a pro­ found awareness of this function of theater in his own life. Few dramatists have written more knowingly and freely about their art than Salacrou. He has spoken not merely about his techniques or his methods of production, but about the abso­ lute and inescapable necessity for doing what he has done. From these writings it is also clear, however, that Salacrou was drawn to the theater for reasons much more complex than the simple need to act in order to exist. It is evident that artist creation is not so entirely ego-centered. The artist, while forging his personal existence through his production, is at the same time aiding others, his audience, in the perpetuation of their own lives. He presents them with something against which to react, a mirror, as it were, both in which to see facets of their own lives and at the same time to stimulate that very existence by the reaction which it brings about. Through the selection of elements from the life around him, ar.ù the molding of them into a new, more striking form, the artist's mental and aesthetic exercise of creation is translated into a physical, perceptual product which influences those to whom it is exposed. The choice of drama as Salacrou's medium of expres­ sion is by no means gratuitous, for the theater is perhaps the ?rt which most successfully demonstrates this life- through -act ion equation.