Jean Anouilh 1910-1987
Born in Bordeaux. His father was a tailor and his mother a violinist (at a nearby resort). The family moves to Paris when he is 8. Begins Law at the Sorbonne but quits to become a dramatist. He was quite influenced by the work of Pirandello, which surfaced in Paris in the 1920s. Marries the actress Monelle Valentin when he is 22. Prisoner of war (briefly) in 1940. Antigone begins her 1st run (500 performances) in 1944, with Monelle Valentin in the lead role. Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh perform in Antigone at the London Old Vic in 1949. Lives near Lausanne for the last 30 years of his life. Anouilh increasingly disillusioned by French society, and has a particular antipathy to De Gaulle but also the far left militants.
Anouilh describes to Paul Vandromme what the theatre meant to him "Thanks to those spring evenings [at the theatre] in 1928 I was able to escape a little from the long night of my existence."
The Methuen edition describes some differences between Anouilh's Antigone and Sophocles'. Anouilh omits Tiresias, the blind seer. In Anouilh's version, Creon (Antigone's uncle and now King of Thebes due to the deaths of both her brothers, Oedipus' sons) does not experience the growth and change we saw in Sophocles' version. In the original, Creon has a conversation with both Tiresias and with his own son Haemon and both these men urge him not to carry out the death penalty Antigone received when she disobeyed Creon's edict and buried her brother Polyneices. Creon spurns their advice initially, determined to be a strong impartial ruler but he eventually repents and realizes that by holding to his decision, he is dishonouring the gods. In Anouilh's version, Creon is a more sympathetic man who has given up the life he enjoyed in order to become King of Thebes when both of Oedipus' sons kill each other. His growth seems to have taken place prior to the events of the play. Anouilh also omits much of the power and reason of Haemon's speeches.
It's interesting reading this Antigone after having read Elizabeth Smart's "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept." (I've been reading a bit out of sync over the break). Both are young passionate women who are very judgmental and intolerant (as is Werther) of age and its apparent compromises. All three are very idealistic and uncompromising.
It's not an original observation that passion and youth go together but the 3 books I've just read in the last week have really pummelled me with this dogmatic pairing. All 3 texts, 2 fictional, one poetically autobiographical, have main characters that are young, subsumed by passion and intolerant of age, reason, compromise, survival. All 3 see age or even maturity as, literally, a fate worth than death. I'm still coming to grips with this uncompromising view of passion and with the prospect that passion, real passion, is - possibly, likely, sadly - only attainable in the young. I'm not quite ready to give up on the possibility of passion but I also don't see life in such uncompromising, black and white, all-or-nothing, terms.
Laura was speaking the other day about having watched Baz Luhrman's "Romeo & Juliet" in another class. She'd 1st seen the film as a teen or young adult and had found it very moving and enthralling, very powerful. She said watching it in class made her realize the generational difference between herself and some younger classmates - who found the film dated and laughable. I saw the film as an adult, probably in my 30s and I wasn't emotionally affected by it but thought it was a worthy update of the famous play. It's interesting how age so affects perception. I'm finding that about books I'm re-reading that I read as a teen or young adult. I may get more context, more perspective, more substance out of them now but I don't know if they will affect me emotionally or chromatically the same way certain books did when I was young.
I enjoyed reading a different version of Antigone - for the same reason I enjoy (usually) seeing repeated versions of various of Shakespeare's plays - you get something different out each time. I did very firmly have in my head, the whole time I was reading it, the fact that it was written in Paris during the 2nd world war. Images from Casablanca and other WWII films and books would flit around in my head as I read through the play.
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