Jean Anouilh
Encyclopedia
Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh (ʒɑ̃n‿anuj; 23 June 1910 – 3 October 1987) was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1943 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles
' Classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain
's Vichy government
. One of France's most prolific writers after World War II, much of Anouilh's work deals with themes of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromise.
, and had Basque
ancestry. His father, François Anouilh, was a tailor and Anouilh maintained that he inherited from him a pride in conscientious craftmanship. He may owe his artistic bent to his mother, Marie-Magdeleine, a violinist who supplemented the family's meager income by playing summer seasons in the casino orchestra in the nearby seaside resort of Arcachon
. Here Marie-Magdeleine worked the night shifts in the music-hall orchestras and sometimes accompanied stage presentations, affording Anouilh ample opportunity to absorb the dramatic performances from backstage. He often attended rehearsals and solicited the resident authors to let him read scripts until bedtime. He first tried his hand at playwriting here, at the age of 12, though his earliest works do not survive.
The family moved in to Paris in 1918 where the young Anouilh where he received his secondary education at the Lycée Chaptal. Jean-Louis Barrault
, later a major French director, was a pupil there at the same time and recalls Anouilh as an intense, rather dandified figure who hardly noticed a boy some two years younger than himself. He earned acceptance into the law school at the Sorbonne
but, unable to support himself financially, he left after just 18 months to seek work as a copywriter at Publicité Damour. He liked the work and spoke more than once with wry approval of the lessons in the classical virtues of brevity and precision of language he learned while drafting advertising copy.
His financial troubles continued after Anouilh was called up to military service in 1929. Supported by only his meager conscription salary Anouilh married the actress Monelle Valentin in 1931. Though she would go on to star in many of his plays, Anouilh's daughter Caroline (from his second marriage), claims that the marriage was not a happy one. Valentin allegedly had multiple extra-marital affairs, which caused Anouilh much pain and suffering. The infidelity weighed heavily on the dramatist as a result of the uncertainty about his own parentage. According to Caroline, Anouilh had learned his mother had had a lover at the theatre in Arcachon who was actually his biological father. In spite of this, Anouilh and Valentin had a daughter, Catherine, in 1934 who would follow the pair into theatre work at an early age. Anouilh's growing family placed further strain on his already limited finances, and determined to break into writing full time, Anouilh began to write comic scenes for the cinema to supplement their income.
at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées. Though Anouilh's boss had happily lent him some of the set furniture left over from the production of Jean Giraudoux
's play Siegfried to furnish his modest home, the director was not interested in encouraging his assistant's attempts at playwriting. Jouvet had risen to fame in the early 1930s through his collaborations with the playwright Giraudoux, and together the two worked to shift focus from the authorial voice of the director, (which had dominated the French stage since the early twentieth century) back to the playwright and his text.
Giraudoux was an inspiration to Anouilh and, with the encouragement of the acclaimed playwright, he began writing again in 1929, making his theatrical debut in in 1929 with Humulus le muet, a collaborative project with Jean Aurenche
. It was followed by his first solo projects, L’Hermine (The Ermine) in 1932 and Mandarine in 1933, both produced by Aurélien Lugné-Poe
an innovative actor and stage manager who was then head of the Théâtre de l'Œuvre
. Ruled by the philosophy, "the word creates the decor,"Lugné-Poe let Anouilh's lyrical prose shine in front of a backdrop of simple compositions of line and color that created a unity of style and mood.
The plays were not great successes, closing after 37 and 13 performances, respectively, but Anouilh persevered, following it up with a string of productions, most notably Y'avait un prisonnier (1935). These works, most in collaboration with the experimental Russian director Georges Pitoëff, were considered promising despite their lack of commercial profits, and the duo continued to work together until they had their first major success in 1937 with Le Voyageur sans bagage (Traveller Without Baggage). In subsequent years, there was rarely a season in Paris that did not prominently feature a new Anouilh play and many of these were also being exported to England and America. After 1938, however, much of Anouilh's later work was directed by the prominent Paris scenic designer André Barsacq, who had taken over as director of the Théâtre de l'Atelier
, or "Theatre Workshop" after Charles Dullin
's retirement in 1940. Barsacq was a champion for Anouilh and their affiliation was a major factor in the playwright's continued success after the war.
and Albert Camus
. The most famous play of this group is Antigone, which "established Anouilh as a leading dramatist, not only because of the power with which he drew the classic confrontation between the uncompromising Antigone and the politically expedient Creon, but because French theatre-goers under the occupation read the play as a contemporary political parable." His post-war plays dealt with similar concerns and included Roméo et Jeannette, Médée (Medea), and Anouilh's Joan of Arc story L'Alouette (The Lark), which, in its distinct optimism, rivalled the commercial success of Antigone.
Anouilh himself grouped his plays of this period on the basis of their dominant tone, publishing his later works in collected volumes to reflect what he felt "represented the phases of his evolution and loosely resembled the distinction between comedy and tragedy." Pièces noires or "Black plays" were tragedies or realistic dramas and included Antigone, Jézabel, and La Sauvage (The Restless Heart). This category typically featured "young, idealistic, and uncompromising protagonists [who] are able to maintain their integrity only by choosing death." By contrast, in Anouilh's pièces roses or " pink plays" were comedies where fantasy dominated with an atmosphere similar to that of fairy tales. In these plays such as Le Bal des voleurs (Carnival of Thieves), Le Rendez-vous de Senlis (Dinner with the Family) and Léocadia (Time Remembered), the focus is on "the burden of the environment and especially of the past on a protagonist seeking a happier, freer existence."
Most of Anouilh's plays of the late 1940s and into the 1950s become darker and distinctly cruel and, in contrast with his earlier works, begin to feature middle-aged characters who must view life more practically than Anouilh's former idealistic youths. The playwright divided the works of this period into pièces brillantes ("brilliant plays") and pièces grinçantes ("grating plays"). The first group includes works such as L'Invitation au château (Ring Round the Moon) and Colombe, and are typified by aristocratic settings and witty language. The grating plays like La Valse des toréadors (Waltz of the Toreadors) and Le Réactionnaire amoureux (The Fighting Cock) are more bitterly funny, trading clever word play for a darker tone of disillusionment.
Another category Anouilh specifies are his pièces costumées ("costume plays") which include The Lark, La Foire d'Empoigne (Catch as Catch Can), and Becket, an international success, depicting historical martyr, Thomas à Becket, who figures into the conflict between Napoleon and Louis XVIII. So classified because they share not historical "costumed" settings, Anouilh specifies that these plays must also prominently feature an enlightened protagonist seeking "a moral path in a world of corruption and manipulation."
Anouilh's final period begins with La Grotte (The Cavern), in which he comments on his own progress as a writer and a theatre artist. The central character is a playwright suffering from writers' block who is his frustration recalls the foibles of Luigi Pirandello
's Six Characters in Search of an Author
. Anouilh's work had always contained hints of metatheatricality, or commentatry on the business of theatre within the world of the play, but in his late works these structures became more fully developed as he begins to write primarily about character who are dramatists or theatre directors. There is also a pronounced link, during this time, of Anouilh's emphasis of theatre and the family, displaying intimate relationships that are "more profound and more important than the traditional heightened action of 'theatre'". Antoine, the playwright-protagonist of Cher Antoine; ou, L'Amour raté (Dear Antoine; or, The Love That Failed), asserts that the world must take notice of these pièces secrètes (secret dramas) and Anouilh scholars have proposed this name, "pièces secrètes," to classify the collected works of his latest period.
(and later President of the Fifth Republic
), General Charles de Gaulle
. In the 1940s Anouilh and several other intellectuals signed a petition for clemency to save the writer Robert Brasillach
, who was condemned to death for being a Nazi collaborator. Brasillach was executed by firing squad in February 1945, despite the outcry from Anouilh and his peers that the new government had no right to persecute individuals for "intellectual crimes" in the absence of military or political action. Nevertheless, Anouilh refused to comment on his political views, writing in a letter to the Belgian critic Hubert Gignoux in 1946, "I do not have a biography and I am very happy about it. The rest of my life, as long as God wills it, will remain my personal business, and I will withhold the details of it."
Anouilh's plays provides the most important clues about his political point of view, though their reputation for ambiguity further complicates the matter. For instance, Antigone, provides an allegorical
representation of the debate between the idealistic members of the French Resistance
and the pragmatism of the collaborationists. Though many have read the play as having a strong anti-Nazi sentiment, the fact that the Vichy Regime allowed the piece to be performed without censure testifies to the fact that it was potentially seen as supportive of the occupation in its time. Though the playwright romanticizes Antigone's sense of honor and duty to what is morally right, in this case resisting the Nazi forces, what is clear is that Anouilh, like Sophocles before him, makes a convincing argument for Creon’s method of leadership.
.
Anouilh's early works were "naturalistic studies of a sordid and corrupt world," Many of these plays present the reader with the striking and inescapeable dichotomy between pragmatism and a sort of transcendent idealism. There is little to no "middle ground of ambiguity" that exists where this conflict asserts itself. This is evidenced in Le Voyageur Sans Bagage. The main character Gaston, a World War I veteran who suffers from amnesia, cannot remember the moral depravity of his youth (he slept with his brother's wife and severely injured his best friend). This checkered past is invariably at odds with the near-angelic behavior that he now exhibits, and recognition of this truth forces him to leave his former identity behind, unable to reconcile the two sides of himself. In denouncing his past Gaston reclasses his freedom as an illusion, but one of his own making. He finds a young English boy and shows him identifying scar. This gesture allows the boy to descripe Gaston to the authorities, thereby claiming him as kin. With a new life and a new family, Gaston has a fresh start. David I. Grossvogel, describes this situation as the "restoration of a childhood paradise lost," attributing Le Voyageur Sans Bagage as the beginning of Anouilh's search to justify his the unhappiness of his youth. Theatre historian Marvin Carlson agrees, noting that this play epitomizes the "complex tonality and deft dramatic technique" that remained throughout his work, though, he asserts, it was only as the playwright matured that his"dark view of the human condition [reached] its final expression."
Anouilh disagreed with these somber readings of his best works, however, arguing that, like all great French literature, his plays had found ways to laugh at misfortune. "Thanks to Molière," Anouilh said, "the true French theatre is the only one that is not gloomy, in which we laugh like men at war with out misery and our horror. This humor is one of France's messages to the world."
Disclosing his thoughts on French theatre and his personal perspective as a playwright, he said that the perception of his work was often misguided:
In the 1950s Anouilh examined his antagonism with General de Gaulle in L'Hurluberlu, ou Le Reactionnaire amoureux (1958) and La Songe du critique (1960). He began to lose the favor of audiences and critics alike, however, with the emergence of such playwrights as Eugène Ionesco
and Samuel Beckett
. Though he shared with these authors a "similar desperate vision of human existence," these new absurdist theatres' pursuit of alternative dramaturgies made Anouilh's semi-realistic plays seem dull and old-fashioned. In the 1980s Anouilh reinvented himself as a director, staging of his own plays as well as those of other authors. He died of a heart attack in Lausanne, Switzerland on October 3, 1987. Divorced from Monelle Valentin, he was survived by his second wife, Nicole Lançon, and four children.
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
' Classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain
Philippe Pétain
Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...
's Vichy government
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
. One of France's most prolific writers after World War II, much of Anouilh's work deals with themes of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromise.
Early Life
Anouilh was born in Cérisole, a small village on the outskirts of BordeauxBordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
, and had Basque
Basque people
The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...
ancestry. His father, François Anouilh, was a tailor and Anouilh maintained that he inherited from him a pride in conscientious craftmanship. He may owe his artistic bent to his mother, Marie-Magdeleine, a violinist who supplemented the family's meager income by playing summer seasons in the casino orchestra in the nearby seaside resort of Arcachon
Arcachon
Arcachon is a commune in the Gironde department in southwestern France.It is a popular bathing location on the Atlantic coast southwest of Bordeaux in the Landes forest...
. Here Marie-Magdeleine worked the night shifts in the music-hall orchestras and sometimes accompanied stage presentations, affording Anouilh ample opportunity to absorb the dramatic performances from backstage. He often attended rehearsals and solicited the resident authors to let him read scripts until bedtime. He first tried his hand at playwriting here, at the age of 12, though his earliest works do not survive.
The family moved in to Paris in 1918 where the young Anouilh where he received his secondary education at the Lycée Chaptal. Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Barrault was a French actor, director and mime artist, training that served him well when he portrayed the 19th-century mime Jean-Gaspard Deburau in Marcel Carné's 1945 film Les Enfants du Paradis .Jean-Louis Barrault studied with Charles Dullin in whose troupe he acted...
, later a major French director, was a pupil there at the same time and recalls Anouilh as an intense, rather dandified figure who hardly noticed a boy some two years younger than himself. He earned acceptance into the law school at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
but, unable to support himself financially, he left after just 18 months to seek work as a copywriter at Publicité Damour. He liked the work and spoke more than once with wry approval of the lessons in the classical virtues of brevity and precision of language he learned while drafting advertising copy.
His financial troubles continued after Anouilh was called up to military service in 1929. Supported by only his meager conscription salary Anouilh married the actress Monelle Valentin in 1931. Though she would go on to star in many of his plays, Anouilh's daughter Caroline (from his second marriage), claims that the marriage was not a happy one. Valentin allegedly had multiple extra-marital affairs, which caused Anouilh much pain and suffering. The infidelity weighed heavily on the dramatist as a result of the uncertainty about his own parentage. According to Caroline, Anouilh had learned his mother had had a lover at the theatre in Arcachon who was actually his biological father. In spite of this, Anouilh and Valentin had a daughter, Catherine, in 1934 who would follow the pair into theatre work at an early age. Anouilh's growing family placed further strain on his already limited finances, and determined to break into writing full time, Anouilh began to write comic scenes for the cinema to supplement their income.
Theatre Work
At the age of 25, Anouilh found work as a secretary to the French actor and director Louis JouvetLouis Jouvet
Louis Jouvet was a renowned French actor, director, and theatre director.- Life :Overcoming speech impediments and sometimes paralyzing stage fright as a young man, Jouvet's first important association was with Jacques Copeau's Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, beginning in 1913...
at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées. Though Anouilh's boss had happily lent him some of the set furniture left over from the production of Jean Giraudoux
Jean Giraudoux
Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy...
's play Siegfried to furnish his modest home, the director was not interested in encouraging his assistant's attempts at playwriting. Jouvet had risen to fame in the early 1930s through his collaborations with the playwright Giraudoux, and together the two worked to shift focus from the authorial voice of the director, (which had dominated the French stage since the early twentieth century) back to the playwright and his text.
Giraudoux was an inspiration to Anouilh and, with the encouragement of the acclaimed playwright, he began writing again in 1929, making his theatrical debut in in 1929 with Humulus le muet, a collaborative project with Jean Aurenche
Jean Aurenche
Jean Aurenche was a French screenwriter. During his career, he wrote 80 films for directors such as René Clément, Bertrand Tavernier, Marcel Carné, Jean Delannoy, Sidney Lumet or Claude Autant Lara...
. It was followed by his first solo projects, L’Hermine (The Ermine) in 1932 and Mandarine in 1933, both produced by Aurélien Lugné-Poe
Aurélien Lugné-Poe
Aurélien-François Lugné-Poë born Aurélien-François-Marie Lugné was a French actor, theatre director, and scenic designer best known for his work at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre, one of the first theatrical venues in France to provide a home for the artists of the Symbolist Movement at the end of the...
an innovative actor and stage manager who was then head of the Théâtre de l'Œuvre
Théâtre de l'Œuvre
The Théâtre de l'Œuvre is a Paris theatre, located atop cité Monthiers, at 55 rue de Clichy in the 9° arrondissement in Paris, France. It is best known as the theatre where Alfred Jarry’s nihilistic farce Ubu Roi premiered in 1896....
. Ruled by the philosophy, "the word creates the decor,"Lugné-Poe let Anouilh's lyrical prose shine in front of a backdrop of simple compositions of line and color that created a unity of style and mood.
The plays were not great successes, closing after 37 and 13 performances, respectively, but Anouilh persevered, following it up with a string of productions, most notably Y'avait un prisonnier (1935). These works, most in collaboration with the experimental Russian director Georges Pitoëff, were considered promising despite their lack of commercial profits, and the duo continued to work together until they had their first major success in 1937 with Le Voyageur sans bagage (Traveller Without Baggage). In subsequent years, there was rarely a season in Paris that did not prominently feature a new Anouilh play and many of these were also being exported to England and America. After 1938, however, much of Anouilh's later work was directed by the prominent Paris scenic designer André Barsacq, who had taken over as director of the Théâtre de l'Atelier
Théâtre de l'Atelier
The Théâtre de l'Atelier is a theater at 1, place Charles Dullin in the 18th arrondissement of Paris.-History:Opened on November 23, 1822 under the name Théâtre Montmartre this theater was one of the first built by Pierre-Jacques Seveste, who held the license to operate theaters outside the town...
, or "Theatre Workshop" after Charles Dullin
Charles Dullin
Charles Dullin was a French actor, theater manager and director.-Life:Dullin was a student of Jacques Copeau...
's retirement in 1940. Barsacq was a champion for Anouilh and their affiliation was a major factor in the playwright's continued success after the war.
The Playwright
In the 1940s Anouilh turned from contemporary tales to more mythical, classic, and historic subjects. With protagonists who asserted their independence from the fated past, themes during this period are more closely related to the existential concerns of such writers as Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
and Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
. The most famous play of this group is Antigone, which "established Anouilh as a leading dramatist, not only because of the power with which he drew the classic confrontation between the uncompromising Antigone and the politically expedient Creon, but because French theatre-goers under the occupation read the play as a contemporary political parable." His post-war plays dealt with similar concerns and included Roméo et Jeannette, Médée (Medea), and Anouilh's Joan of Arc story L'Alouette (The Lark), which, in its distinct optimism, rivalled the commercial success of Antigone.
Anouilh himself grouped his plays of this period on the basis of their dominant tone, publishing his later works in collected volumes to reflect what he felt "represented the phases of his evolution and loosely resembled the distinction between comedy and tragedy." Pièces noires or "Black plays" were tragedies or realistic dramas and included Antigone, Jézabel, and La Sauvage (The Restless Heart). This category typically featured "young, idealistic, and uncompromising protagonists [who] are able to maintain their integrity only by choosing death." By contrast, in Anouilh's pièces roses or " pink plays" were comedies where fantasy dominated with an atmosphere similar to that of fairy tales. In these plays such as Le Bal des voleurs (Carnival of Thieves), Le Rendez-vous de Senlis (Dinner with the Family) and Léocadia (Time Remembered), the focus is on "the burden of the environment and especially of the past on a protagonist seeking a happier, freer existence."
Most of Anouilh's plays of the late 1940s and into the 1950s become darker and distinctly cruel and, in contrast with his earlier works, begin to feature middle-aged characters who must view life more practically than Anouilh's former idealistic youths. The playwright divided the works of this period into pièces brillantes ("brilliant plays") and pièces grinçantes ("grating plays"). The first group includes works such as L'Invitation au château (Ring Round the Moon) and Colombe, and are typified by aristocratic settings and witty language. The grating plays like La Valse des toréadors (Waltz of the Toreadors) and Le Réactionnaire amoureux (The Fighting Cock) are more bitterly funny, trading clever word play for a darker tone of disillusionment.
Another category Anouilh specifies are his pièces costumées ("costume plays") which include The Lark, La Foire d'Empoigne (Catch as Catch Can), and Becket, an international success, depicting historical martyr, Thomas à Becket, who figures into the conflict between Napoleon and Louis XVIII. So classified because they share not historical "costumed" settings, Anouilh specifies that these plays must also prominently feature an enlightened protagonist seeking "a moral path in a world of corruption and manipulation."
Anouilh's final period begins with La Grotte (The Cavern), in which he comments on his own progress as a writer and a theatre artist. The central character is a playwright suffering from writers' block who is his frustration recalls the foibles of Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...
's Six Characters in Search of an Author
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Six Characters in Search of an Author is a play by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello.The play is a satirical tragicomedy. It was first performed in 1921 at the Teatro Valle in Rome, to a very mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of "Manicomio!" .Subsequently the play enjoyed a much...
. Anouilh's work had always contained hints of metatheatricality, or commentatry on the business of theatre within the world of the play, but in his late works these structures became more fully developed as he begins to write primarily about character who are dramatists or theatre directors. There is also a pronounced link, during this time, of Anouilh's emphasis of theatre and the family, displaying intimate relationships that are "more profound and more important than the traditional heightened action of 'theatre'". Antoine, the playwright-protagonist of Cher Antoine; ou, L'Amour raté (Dear Antoine; or, The Love That Failed), asserts that the world must take notice of these pièces secrètes (secret dramas) and Anouilh scholars have proposed this name, "pièces secrètes," to classify the collected works of his latest period.
Political Controversy
Anouilh remained staunchly apolitical for most of his life and career. He served in the military during at least two periods, having been drafted into the Army in 1931 and 1939. He was a prisoner of war for a short time when the Germans conquered France and willingly lived and worked in Paris during the German occupation of France during World War II. Because he refused to take sides during France's collaboration with the Axis Alliance some critics have branded him as a potential Nazi sympathiser. This controversy escalated as a result of Anouilh's public clashes with leader of the Free French ForcesFree French Forces
The Free French Forces were French partisans in World War II who decided to continue fighting against the forces of the Axis powers after the surrender of France and subsequent German occupation and, in the case of Vichy France, collaboration with the Germans.-Definition:In many sources, Free...
(and later President of the Fifth Republic
Fifth Republic
There have been several Fifth Republics in the course of history, including:* French Fifth Republic * Fifth Republic of the Philippines * Fifth Republic of South Korea...
), General Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
. In the 1940s Anouilh and several other intellectuals signed a petition for clemency to save the writer Robert Brasillach
Robert Brasillach
Robert Brasillach was a French author and journalist. Brasillach is best known as the editor of Je suis partout, a nationalist newspaper which came to advocate various fascist movements and supported Jacques Doriot...
, who was condemned to death for being a Nazi collaborator. Brasillach was executed by firing squad in February 1945, despite the outcry from Anouilh and his peers that the new government had no right to persecute individuals for "intellectual crimes" in the absence of military or political action. Nevertheless, Anouilh refused to comment on his political views, writing in a letter to the Belgian critic Hubert Gignoux in 1946, "I do not have a biography and I am very happy about it. The rest of my life, as long as God wills it, will remain my personal business, and I will withhold the details of it."
Anouilh's plays provides the most important clues about his political point of view, though their reputation for ambiguity further complicates the matter. For instance, Antigone, provides an allegorical
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
representation of the debate between the idealistic members of the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
and the pragmatism of the collaborationists. Though many have read the play as having a strong anti-Nazi sentiment, the fact that the Vichy Regime allowed the piece to be performed without censure testifies to the fact that it was potentially seen as supportive of the occupation in its time. Though the playwright romanticizes Antigone's sense of honor and duty to what is morally right, in this case resisting the Nazi forces, what is clear is that Anouilh, like Sophocles before him, makes a convincing argument for Creon’s method of leadership.
Awards and Recognition
In 1970 his work was recognized with the Prix mondial Cino Del DucaPrix mondial Cino Del Duca
The Prix mondial Cino Del Duca is an international literary award.-Origins and operations:It was established in 1969 in France by Simone Del Duca to continue the work of her husband, publishing magnate Cino Del Duca .Designed to recognize and reward an author whose work constitutes, in a...
.
Critical Discussion
By the end of his career, Anouilh's reputation would outstrip all his contemporaries. Interestingly, though, his repertoire remained unusually confined to theatre and film. Most French dramatists of the 1930s and 1940s, including Anouilh's most significant contemporary influence, Giraudoux , not only wrote for the stage but also composed poetry, novels, or essays. Nevertheless, he remained prolific, consistently producing and publishing performance works for more than 50 years.Anouilh's early works were "naturalistic studies of a sordid and corrupt world," Many of these plays present the reader with the striking and inescapeable dichotomy between pragmatism and a sort of transcendent idealism. There is little to no "middle ground of ambiguity" that exists where this conflict asserts itself. This is evidenced in Le Voyageur Sans Bagage. The main character Gaston, a World War I veteran who suffers from amnesia, cannot remember the moral depravity of his youth (he slept with his brother's wife and severely injured his best friend). This checkered past is invariably at odds with the near-angelic behavior that he now exhibits, and recognition of this truth forces him to leave his former identity behind, unable to reconcile the two sides of himself. In denouncing his past Gaston reclasses his freedom as an illusion, but one of his own making. He finds a young English boy and shows him identifying scar. This gesture allows the boy to descripe Gaston to the authorities, thereby claiming him as kin. With a new life and a new family, Gaston has a fresh start. David I. Grossvogel, describes this situation as the "restoration of a childhood paradise lost," attributing Le Voyageur Sans Bagage as the beginning of Anouilh's search to justify his the unhappiness of his youth. Theatre historian Marvin Carlson agrees, noting that this play epitomizes the "complex tonality and deft dramatic technique" that remained throughout his work, though, he asserts, it was only as the playwright matured that his"dark view of the human condition [reached] its final expression."
Anouilh disagreed with these somber readings of his best works, however, arguing that, like all great French literature, his plays had found ways to laugh at misfortune. "Thanks to Molière," Anouilh said, "the true French theatre is the only one that is not gloomy, in which we laugh like men at war with out misery and our horror. This humor is one of France's messages to the world."
Disclosing his thoughts on French theatre and his personal perspective as a playwright, he said that the perception of his work was often misguided:
In the 1950s Anouilh examined his antagonism with General de Gaulle in L'Hurluberlu, ou Le Reactionnaire amoureux (1958) and La Songe du critique (1960). He began to lose the favor of audiences and critics alike, however, with the emergence of such playwrights as Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
and Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
. Though he shared with these authors a "similar desperate vision of human existence," these new absurdist theatres' pursuit of alternative dramaturgies made Anouilh's semi-realistic plays seem dull and old-fashioned. In the 1980s Anouilh reinvented himself as a director, staging of his own plays as well as those of other authors. He died of a heart attack in Lausanne, Switzerland on October 3, 1987. Divorced from Monelle Valentin, he was survived by his second wife, Nicole Lançon, and four children.
Performances
- L'Hermine, Paris, Théâtre de l'OEuvre, 26 April 1932.
- Y'avait un prisonnier, Paris, Théâtre des Ambassadeurs, 21 March 1935.
- Le Voyageur sans bagage, Paris, Théâtre des Mathurins, 16 February 1937.
- La Sauvage, Paris, Théâtre des Mathurins, 10 January 1938.
- Le Bal de voleurs, Paris, Théâtre des Arts, 17 September 1938.
- Léocadia, Paris, Théâtre de la Michodière, 28 November 1940.
- Le Rendez-vous de Senlis, Paris, Théâtre de l'Atelier, 30 January 1941.
- Eurydice, Paris, Théâtre de l'Atelier, 18 December 1941.
- Antigone, Paris, Théâtre de l'Atelier, 4 February 1944.
- L'Invitation au château, Paris, Théâtre de l'Atelier, 4 November 1947.
- Ardèle, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 3 November 1948.
- La Répétition, Paris, Théâtre Marigny, 25 October 1950.
- Colombe, Paris, Théâtre de l'Atelier, 11 February 1951.
- La Valse des toréadors, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 9 January 1952.
- L'Alouette, Paris, Théâtre Montparnasse-Gaston Baty, 14 October 1952.
- Médée, Paris, Théâtre de l'Atelier, 26 March 1953.
- Cécile, ou L'école des pères, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 29 October 1954.
- Pauvre Bitos, ou Le dîner de têtes, Paris, Théâtre Montparnasse-Gaston Baty, 12 October 1956.
- L'Hurluburlu, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 5 February 1959.
- Becket, ou L'Honneur de Dieu, Paris, Théâtre Montparnasse-Gaston Baty, 1 October 1959.
- Le Songe du critique, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 5 November 1960.
- La Grotte, Paris, Théâtre Montparnasse-Gaston Baty, 6 October 1961.
- L'Orchestre, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 10 February 1962.
- Le Boulanger, la boulangère, et le petit mitron, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 14 November 1968.
- Cher Antoine, ou L'amour raté, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 1 October 1969.
- Les Poissons rouges, ou Mon père, ce héros, Paris, Théâtre de l'OEuvre, 21 January 1970.
- Ne Réveillez pas Madame, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 21 October 1970.
- Tu étais si gentil quand tu étais petit, Paris, Théâtre Antoine, 17 January 1972.
- Le Directeur de l'Opéra, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 27 October 1972.
- Monsieur Barnett, Paris, Café-Théâtre des Halles, 29 October 1974.
- Le Scénario, Paris, Théâtre de l'OEuvre, 1 October 1975.
- Chers zoiseaux, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 3 December 1976.
Published Plays
- Y'avait un prisonnier (Paris: L'Illustration, 1935).
- Le Voyageur sans bagage (Paris: L'Illustration, 1937); translated by John Whiting as Traveler without Luggage (London: Methuen, 1959).
- Les Bal des voleurs (Paris: Fayard, 1938).
- Antigone (Paris: Didier, 1942); translated by Lewis Galantière as Antigone (New York: Random House, 1946).
- Pièces roses (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1942)--comprises "Le Bal des voleurs," "Le Rendez-vous de Senlis," and Léocadia;" Le Bal des voleurs translated by Lucienne Hill as Thieves' Carnival (London: Methuen, 1952); Le Rendez-vous de Senlis translated by Edwin O. Marsh as Dinner with the Family (London: Methuen, 1958); Léocadia translated by Patricia Moyes as Time Remembered (London: S. French, 1954).
- Pièces noires (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1942)--comprises "L'Hermine," "La Sauvage," "Le Voyageur sans bagage," and "Eurydice;" L'Hermine translated by Miriam John as The Ermine, in Jean Anouilh . . . Plays, volume 1 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1958); La Sauvage translated by Hill as Restless Heart (London: Methuen, 1957); Eurydice translated by Kitty Black as Point of Departure (London: S. French, 1951); republished as Legend of Lovers (New York: Coward-McCann, 1952).
- Nouvelles pièces noires (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1946)--comprises "Jézabel," "Antigone," "Roméo et Jeannette," and "Médée;" Roméo et Jeannette translated by John as "Romeo and Jeannette," in Jean Anouilh . . . Plays, volume 1 (New York : Hill & Wang, 1958); "Médée" translated in The Modern Theatre, volume 5, edited by Eric Bentley (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957).
- Pièces brillantes (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1951)--comprises "L'Invitation au château," "Colombe," "La Répétition, ou L'Amour puni," and "Cécile, ou L'Ecole des pères;" L'Invitation au château translated by Christopher Fry as Ring round the Moon (London: Methuen, 1950); Colombe translated by Louis Kronenberger as Mademoiselle Colombe (New York: Coward-McCann, 1954).
- L'Alouette (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1953); translated by Fry as The Lark (London: Methuen, 1955).
- Pièces grinçantes (Paris: La Table ronde, 1956)--comprises "Ardèle, ou La Marguerite," "La Valse des Toréadors," "Ornifle, ou Le Courant d'air," and "Pauvre Bitos, ou Le Dîner de têtes;" Ardèle, ou La Marguerite translated by Hill as Ardèle (London: Methuen, 1951); La Valse des Toréadors translated by Hill as Waltz of the Toreadors (London: Elek, 1953; New York: Coward-McCann, 1953); Ornifle, ou Le Courant d'air translated by Hill as It's Later Than You Think (Chicago: Dramatic, 1970); Pauvre Bitos, ou Le dîner de têtes translated by Hill as Poor Bitos (London: Methuen, 1956).
- Humulus le muet, with Jean Aurenche (Grenoble: Françaises Nouvelles, 1958).
- Becket, ou L'Honneur de Dieu (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1959); translated by Hill as Becket, or The Honor of God (New York: Coward-McCann, 1960).
- La Petite Molière (Paris: L'Avant-Scène, 1959).
- L'Hurluberlu, ou Le Réactionnaire amoureux (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1959); translated by Hill as The Fighting Cock (London: Methuen, 1967).
- Madame de . . ., translated by Whiting (London: S. French, 1959).
- Le Songe du critique, edited by Richard Fenzl, (Dortmund: Lensing, 1960).
- La Foire d'empoigne (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1960); translated by Anouilh and Roland Piétri as "Catch as Catch Can," in Jean Anouilh . . . Plays, volume 3 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1967).
- La Grotte (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1961); translated by Hill as The Cavern (New York: Hill & Wang, 1966).
- Fables (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1962).
- Le Boulanger, la boulangère, et le petit mitron (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1969).
- Cher Antoine, ou L'Amour rate (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1969); translated by Hill as Dear Antoine, or The Love That Failed (New York: Hill & Wang, 1971; London: Eyre Methuen, 1971).
- Les Poissons rouges, ou Mon Père, ce héros (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1970).
- Ne Réveillez pas Madame (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1970).
- Nouvelles Pièces grinçantes (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1970)--includes "L'Hurluberlu, ou Le Réactionnaire amoureux," "La Grotte," "L'Orchestre," "Le Boulanger, la boulangère, et le petit mitron," and "Les Poissons rouges, ou Mon Père, ce héros;" "L'Orchestre" translated by John as "The Orchestra," in Jean Anouilh . . . Plays, volume 3 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1967).
- Tu étais si gentil quand tu étais petit (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1972).
- Le Directeur de l'opéra (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1972); translated by Hill as The Director of the Opera (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973).
- L'Arrestation (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1975); translated by Hill as The Arrest (New York: S. French, 1978).
- Le Scénario (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1976).
- Chers Zoiseaux (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1977).
- La Culotte (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1978).
- La Belle vie suivi de Episode de la vie d'un auteur (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1980).
- Le Nombril (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1981); translated by Michael Frayn as Number One (London & New York: S. French, 1985).
- Oedipe, ou Le Roi boiteux: d'après Sophocle (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1986).
- La Vicomtesse d'Eristal n'a pas reçu son balai mécanique: Souvenirs d'un jeune homme (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1987).
English Language Anthologies of Plays
- Jean Anouilh . . . Plays, translated by Lewis Galantière et al, 3 volumes (New York: Hill & Wang, 1958-1967).
- Collected Plays, 2 volumes translated by Lucienne Hill et al (London: Methuen, 1966, 1967).
- Five Plays by Jean Anouilh, introduction by Ned ChailletNed ChailletEdward William "Ned" Chaillet, III is a radio drama producer and director, writer and journalist.Ned Chaillet, American by birth, was born in Boston, Mass. but is a "native of Washington" according to the New York Times. He has lived in Britain since 1973.His newspaper career began at the...
translated by Timberlake WertenbakerTimberlake Wertenbaker- Biography :Wertenbaker grew up in the Basque Country of France near Saint-Jean-de-Luz. She attended schools in Europe and the US before settling permanently in London...
et al, (London: Methuen, 1987).
Theory & Criticism
- En marge du théâtre, edited by Efrin Knight, (Paris: La Table Ronde, 2000).
- Le Dossier Molière,with Léon Thoorens et al, (Verviers: Gerard, 1964).
Translations
- William Shakespeare, Trois comédies: Comme il vous plaira, La Nuit des rois, Le Conte d'hiver, [Three Comedies: As You like It, Twelfth Night, and The Winter's Tale] translated by Anouilh and Claude Vincent (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1952).
- Graham Greene, L'Amant complaisant, translated by Anouilh and Nicole Anouilh (Paris: Laffont, 1962).
- Oscar Wilde, Il est important d'être aimé, [The Importance of Being Earnest] translated by Anouilh and Nicole Anouilh (Paris: Papiers, 1985).
Other Publications
- Michel-Marie Poulain, by Anouilh, Pierre Imbourg, and André Warnod, preface by Michel Mourre (Paris: Braun, 1953).
- Le Loup, ballet scenario by Anouilh and Georges Neveux, music by Henri Dutilleux (Paris: Ricordi, 1953).
Films
- Les Dégourdis de la onzième, by Jean Anouilh et al. 1936.
- Vous n'avez rien à déclarer? by Jean Anouilh et al. 1937.
- La Citadelle du silence, by Jean Anouilh et al. Impérial Film, 1937.
- Les Otages, by Jean Anouilh et al.Nero-Film AG, 1938.
- Calvacade d'amour, by Jean Anouilh and Jean Aurenche. Pressburger Films, 1940.
- Marie-Martine, by Jean Anouilh (uncredited) and Jacques Viot. Eclair-Journal, 1943.
- Le Voyageur sans bagages, by Jean Anouilh and Jean Aurenche. Eclair-Journal, 1944.
- Monsieur Vincent, by Jean Anouilh, Jean Bernard-Luc, and Maurice Cloche. EDIC/Union Générale Cinématographique, 1947.
- Anna Karenina, by Jean Anouilh, Guy Morgan, and Julien Duvivier. London Film Productions, 1948.
- Pattes blanches, by Jean Anouilh and Bernard-Luc. Majestic Films, 1949.
- Caroline chérie, by Jean Anouilh and Michel Audiard (uncredited). Cinéphonic/ Gaumont, 1950.
- Deux sous de violettes, by Jean Anouilh (uncredited) and Monelle Valentin (uncredited). Gaumont, 1951.
- Le Rideau rouge, by Jean Anouilh and André Barsacq. Gaumont, 1952.
- Monsoon, by Jean Anouilh et al. CFG Productions/Film Group Judd, 1952.
- Un caprice de Caroline chérie, by Jean Anouilh and Cécil Saint-Laurent. Cinéphonic, 1953.
- Le Chevalier de la nuit, Telenet Film, 1954.
- La Mort de Belle, Cinéphonic/Odeon, 1961.
- La Ronde, Interopa Film/Paris Film Productions/Société Nouvelle Pathé Cinéma, 1964.
- A Time for Loving, London Screenplays, 1971.
Television
- Piége pour Cendrillon, by Jean Anouilh et al. Gaumont International/Jolly Film, 1965.
- Le Jeune Homme et le lion, 1976.
- Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, Hungarian TV/ Télécip, 1978.
- La Belle vie,, 1979.
- Le Diable amoureux, by Jean Anouilh et al. Bayerischer Rundfunk/France2/ Radiotelevisão Portuguesa/Telmondis/Westdeutscher Rundfunk, 1991.