The Theatre
L" THE TIDINGS BROUGHT TO MARY:' BY PAUL CLAUDE[. AT THE ARTS THEATRE CLUB.]
THE name and fame of the present French Ambassador in Washington do not seem to have reached London. So one gathers from last week's fumbling or scornful criticisms of the English version of L'Annonce faite a Marie.
Yet Paul Claude], who has managed to reconcile diplomacy with mysticism, in the manner of mediaeval churchmen, was hailed as a genius of the first order when this miracle play was produced in Paris, nearly twenty years ago. The French critics then declared that the obscurity belonging to his violent, Pindaric, or Aeschylean style utterly vanished in representation. Those few English critics who have condescended to give the Arts Theatre version a few lines of patronizing dismissal, have asserted, on the contrary, that they were completely puzzled by it.
Are we to blame the translator ?
I do not think so. She has done her best with an extra- ordinarily difficult task. But, certainly, obscurity has been imported or increased by a spare, toneless production, which flattens the whole play agamst a uniformly celestial back- ground, " telescopes," separated scenes, and omits much of the original text. It is a pity. For many of us agree with the French that this poem in rhythmical prose is the finest thing of its kind done in France since Rimbaud (who has so much influenced Claudel), or, if you like, since the earliest plays of Maeterlinck; Called in its first version Jeune Fille Violaine, it is, in essence, an illustration of the hard saying that he who loves his life must lose it. It also displays the aged contrast between the saintly and renunciatory nature (Violaine) and the earthly or acquisitive (Mara) ; between a love that must realize itself in sacrifice and a passion that must sacrifice others to itself. Meanwhile, behind the story of the two sisters, thus divided in conflict, lurk strange visions of the transference of joy from saint to sinner, and back, unwillingly, from the sinner to the saint. The leprosy that sweet Violaine " accepts, as the " chosen " joyfully accept the stigmata, is a symbol of that transference. At the beginning, Violaine is too happy. Happiness prompts the kiss of charity, given to the leper. Charity brings ruin, and, through the ruin of the flesh, perfect understanding • while the scar of leprosy reveals the fragility of a desire that depends on mortal beauty. A passage in the life of the great Raymond Lully may have given M. Claudel his symbol. To me, I confess, there are few things more beautiful in French dramatic literature than the scene where Violaine makes herself once more " fair" in the eyes of her earth-bound lover, in order to renounce him, and to show him the fatal flaw which must make him turn from her in loathing. . . .
But what is the use of going on Y M. Claudel's master- piece has undeniably " failed to impress." We must wait— perhaps another twenty years—for a rather more lucid adaptation. RICHARD JENNINGS.
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