Review

Author(s): D. Bradby
Review by: D. Bradby
Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Oct., 1983), pp. 937-938
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3729541
Accessed: 18-01-2016 19:51 UTC

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 Reviews 937
Robbe-Grillet in seven pages), the text soon settles down to a thematic and stylistic
description of the novel. Moderatois usefully (though perhaps debatably) linked to
themes of existential freedom and Mr Coward offers a detailed resume of Duras's
early themes. The approach aims to be exhaustive and Mr Coward makes great
endeavours to translate Duras's elliptical prose into a more explicit set of meanings.
Rather than exploring the fundamental ambivalence of the relationship between the
opening murder and the drama enacted by Anne and Chauvin, Mr Coward strives
to saturate the work by assigning a fixed sense to its structure. As a result, though he
rightly stresses how the reader of the novel 'is forced into the role of participant', he
runs the risk of denying the reader much initiative in the matter. Though Mr
Coward argues his case vigorously, the reader is unable to realize the freedom the
text is said to offer. In this respect at least, as in the case ofJ. P. Little, the constraints
inherent in the genre of the monograph would seem to militate against the mobility
of view which the text requires.
LESLIE HILL
UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

L'Avenir du drame. By JEAN-PIERRESARRAZAC.(L'Aire Theatral) Lausanne: Edi-

tionsdel'Aire. 198I. I98pp. 74F.
Ecrits sur le theatre. By MICHELVINAVER. Edited by MICHELLEHENRY. (L'Aire
Theatral) Lausanne: Editions de l'Aire. I982. 330PP. 103 F.
Sarrazac's provocative title indicates his determination to break away from the
established model for books on modern French theatre, beginning with Claudel and
ending with Genet. In his attempt to detect the shape of the future drama, he
analyses mainly the plays of the last twenty years. This gives the book its interest and
its importance: Sarrazac is the first critic to provide, within the covers of a single
volume, analyses of plays by Benedetto, Deutsch, Grumberg, Kalisky, Kraemer,
Michel, Planchon, Pommeret, Rezvani, Vinaver, Wenzel, and many others. His
fundamental thesis is that these authors have been dismissed or underrated because
they have been measured against the wrong critical criteria. He argues that most
critics are still looking for good plots, coherent characters, and organic form,
whereas the Brechtian revolution should have taught them to appreciate disconti-
nuities and disjunctions, to be prepared to forget organicist notions of a play as 'un
bel animal', and to welcome instead the monsters of cross-breeding. The new model
writer he proposes is an 'auteur-rhapsode', capable both of deconstructing the
moribund forms and also of piecing them together again in new configurations.
Rather than devote separate essays to each author, Sarrazac picks aspects of
recent play writing under such headings as 'L'Espacement du texte' or 'Des mots et
leur volume de silence', ranging freely across a dozen or more authors for his
examples. Most of these are drawn from the playwrights of'le theatre du quotidien'
(including the work of non-French authors such as Fassbinder, Kroetz, and
Muller). Because of this, Sarrazac gives a rather exaggerated impression of the
homogeneity of recent French play writing. But this was perhaps a necessary
distortion to make possible his identification of new formal preoccupations among
the writers discussed. His new critical model replaces concern for plot with attention
to the latent possibilities of action contained within each situation of the play. It
replaces concern for consistent characterization with analysis of how the play's
dramatispersonaeinternalize their social alienation. It replaces concern for fine
speeches with an awareness of how man has ceased to be master of his own language.
He shows that many of the authors discussed follow Beckett's lead in presenting men
and women who do not so much speak words as are spoken by them, formed by a
language to which they give utterance but over which they have no control. The

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938 Reviews
most powerful plays to emerge in this new critical perspective are those of Michel
Vinaver, in which different language systems confront one another: 'A l'organicite
du dialogue, les textes theatraux d'aujourd'hui repondent par le choc de blocs de
langage etrangers voire refractairesles uns aux autres. Par la lutte des langages.' He
moves from such general statements to particular examples, showing, for instance,
how many authors have built on Ionesco's display of proverbial, stereotyped
language, going beyond the mere spectacle of reified cliche to show how this
condition is generated by institutions.
This book represents a very considerable achievement and it will be indispensable
for students and teachers of modern French theatre. It appears as the first volume in
a new collection, 'L'Aire Theatral', of which Sarrazac is the general editor. The
second volume is a collection of Vinaver's writings on the theatre. These texts
confirm the impression given by Vinaver's plays, especially Par-dessusbord,Les
Travauxet lesjours,and A la renverse, that his is a major talent. The texts go back (like
his plays) to the early nineteen-fifties, and are divided into three sections: writings
about the theatre in general; notes and commentaries on his own plays; interviews
and autobiography. The first section displays intelligent comment on an enormous
range of plays and playwrights, from the ancient Greeks to the twentieth century
and tending, rather unfashionably, to give more attention to text than to production.
But it is in the sections on his plays and on his own creative processes that the most
impressive material is found.
Vinaver's achievement is the creation of the first truly modernist theatre. The
theatre of the absurd has sometimes been given the label modernist, but it fails to
achieve the multiple viewpoint that we associate with modernism in the works of,
say, Joyce, being too extreme, too all-engulfing in its vision of despair. Vinaver
wanted to find a way of combining the immediacy of everyday experience with a
self-conscious reflectionon the problems of fragmentedvision. He found an example
to follow in the work ofT. S. Eliot: 'Ce qu'il fait (etj'ai pris le relais), c'est mettre en
relation, jusque dans le tissu du langage meme, tres intimement en meme temps
qu'ironiquement, la plenitude d'un passe ou tout se tenait, et la derision d'un
present deshabite parce que desacralise' (p. 3Io).
This 'present deshabite' comes to life with extraordinaryvividness in his plays. In
the comments on his own working processes reprinted in this volume, Vinaver
explains that the centre of his creative life has always been located in an intense
curiosity and that 'cette curiosite alimente une ambition: celle de faire jaillir
quelques elements de connaissance a partir d'un travail de mises en relation.... .Je
m'associe plus naturellement au peintre ou au musicien qu'a l'auteur dramatique,
sans doute parce que j'utilise la parole, non pour exprimer des sentiments ou des
idees, mais pour materialiser des relations de differences et de repetitions, pour
sortir de l'indistinct, pour faire emerger a partir du chaos des choses un "entre-les-
choses"' (p. 315). The last phrase is a referenceto Braque's famous comment that it
was not the objects he painted but the spaces between them.
Such passages are invaluable for understanding Vinaver's plays. At a time when
much that is most interesting in French theatre relies a great deal on the dimension
of performance, it is all the more refreshing to find in Vinaver a playwright who,
without dismissing the importance of performance,nevertheless produces work that
can bear close critical scrutiny and textual analysis. Michelle Henry's collection of
his writings in this volume will be invaluable to students of his theatre. The volume
also contains a full bibliography and list of productions. The one thing missing is an
index.
~~~~~~~~index-~. ~D. BRADBY
UNIVERSITY OF KENT

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