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Giraudoux and the Impossible Couple
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
If indeed noteworthy progress toward maturation in Giraudoux studies has been registered over the past ten or fifteen years, the deeper significance of much of his work remains to be fully appreciated. All too often, critics call Giraudoux précieux without having understood the special meaning he associated with this term; we are still influenced by the opinions of two generations who treated Giraudoux variously as a “chevalier de l'illusion,” or a “magicien optimiste,” while others spoke of the “jardins de Giraudoux” and his “éternel printemps.”Not until 1950 or thereabouts, when Antoine Adam wrote of the “Dureté de Giraudoux,” was criticism beginning noticeably to orient itself toward Giraudoux's pessimism and to find that therein lay one of the deepest currents of his life and art.
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References
1 See especially Suzanne et le Pacifique in Œuvre romanesque, 2 vols. (Paris: Grasset, 1955), i, 332. Ail citations from Giraudoux's novels in my text, unless otherwise noted, are to the above edition, designated O. R.
2 Pierre Bertin, Les Chevaliers de l'illusion (Paris, 1947); Benjamin Crémieux, “Jean Giraudoux, ou le magicien optimiste,” Revue Hebdomadaire, ii (1923), 84–97; Charles H. Heymann, “Dans les jardins de Giraudoux,” French Quarterly, iv (1922), 100–107; André Rousseaux, Le Paradis perdu (Paris, 1936).
3 In La Creuse littéraire, No. 32 (August 1950), p. 1. Despite his misleading title, Henri Lemaître's “L'Art de Giraudoux ou les jeux de l'humour et de la vie,” Confluences, No. 16 (Jan. 1943), pp. 81–85, shows many impressive signs of the new trend in evaluating Giraudoux.
4 “Le monde était merveilleux, tout frais, mais il y était un peu seul.” Ecoles des indifférents (O. R., i, 155).
5 Les cinq tentations de La Fontaine in Œuvres littéraires diverses (Paris: Grasset, 1958), p. 395. This edition is hereafter designated as O. L. D.
6 “Giraudoux and the Split Personality,” PMLA, Llxxiii (Dec. 1958), 573–584.
7 Marc and Jean-Marc Aucuy, La jeunesse de Giraudoux (Paris, 1948), p. 41. Also Camille Martin, “Souvenirs de ‘Khâgne,‘ à Lakanal, en 1902,” Le Figaro Littéraire, 11 Feb. 1950, p. 3.
8 A case in point is to be found in the MS of Simon le pathétique in the Fonds Jacques Doucet (Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève), p. 16; the entire passage quoted below is crossed out in the MS but is still quite legible: “Ma solitude me pesait. J'avais l'impression d'un pèlerin isolé qui rattrape la croisade. Que ceux qui vont dans la même ville devraient s'attendre jusqu'à cent. Partir seul, c'est déserter Sinon je désertais, avec des complices, je désertais” [punctuation sic]. For other examples of similar deletions from other MSS see my “Un mutilé de Giraudoux: Simon le pathétique,” FR, xxxi (Dec. 1957), 99–108; “Sang de l'exégète,” FR, xxxii (Dec. 1958), 178–179.
9 The following passages from Phillippe's letter throw light on young Giraudoux's anxieties: “Moi aussi, j'ai eu des études, des classes; des pions et des professeurs, et pendant huit ans de ma vie. Il y a des choses que j'ai détestées si fort que leur souvenir m'est encore amer … Aujourd'hui je les comprends, je ne les hais plus, je les plains et je les aime. Je voudrais embrasser quelques-uns des pions qui m'ont persécuté. Je vous raconte toutes ces choses, mon cher Monsieur … pour vous montrer comment il faut que nos malheurs profitent à notre esprit et à notre cœur.” Letter dated 30 Nov. 1898, published in Aucuy, pp. 116–119.
10 Maurice Bourdet, in one of the first books devoted entirely to the study of Giraudoux, Jean Giraudoux: Son Œuvre (Paris, 1927), felt that the creator of Juliette and Suzanne had denied women any part in grandeur and heroism, misled as he was by their calm program of happiness. He could not, of course, have foreseen the examples of Judith, Electre, or Lucile.
11 Intermezzo, in Théâtre complet (Neuchâtel: Ideset Calendes, 1945–51), iii.iv (p. 131). All citations from Giraudoux's plays in my text are to the above edition designated as T. C.
12 Indeed the overly enthusiastic editors of La Grande Revue, no doubt with an eye toward whetting their readers' appetites, went so far as to insert the following note between the title and body of the text of “Don Manuel le paresseux” (La Grande Revue, 25 Oct. 1910, p. 714): “Nous avions demandé un article sur le flirt aux Etats-Unis à M. Giraudoux qui fit un long séjour en Amérique et fut étudiant à l'Université Harvard. Notre collaborateur nous envoie la nouvelle suivante, où, sans exclure le moins du monde la fantaisie permise aux romanciers, il nous présente des mœurs, des scènes et des types réels. (N. D. L. D.).” In my copy of this article the foregoing insert is deleted in blue pencil (the word flirt is heavily marked) and underneath, in the same blue pencil, these words appear in Giraudoux's handwriting: “Stupide! (N. de l'Auteur).”
13 These lectures, published in Conferencia, No. 3 (15 Jan. 1935); No. 14 (1 July 1935); and No. 23 (15 Nov. 1935), were grouped by Giraudoux in view of publication in book form. They finally appeared under the title La Française et la France (Paris: Gallimard, 1951).
14 A brief comment concerning Amphitryon 38 is in order. Rather than being an exception to this trend, Alcmène, despite her married state, is in our opinion a very close relative of the vierge giralducienne. Indeed, ordinary concepts of marriage and virginity in these contexts are otiose.
15 According to Paul Morand, who-has insisted not only that Giraudoux “désirait de plus en plus vivre seul, comme ce personnage mystérieux qui s'appelle Jérôme Bardini,” but also that this novel is the key to the last fifteen years of Giraudoux's life. Morand, Giraudoux: Souvenirs de notre jeunesse (Genève, 1948), p. 150.
16 “Stéphy” was first published in 1929 in Revue de Paris, iii, 23–50, 313–340.
17 Such is the basic subject of the discussion which takes place between Ruth and Lia at the beginning of Sodome et Gomorrhe.
18 Reminiscent of Lake Asquam which Giraudoux visited as a soldier during a World War I mission to Harvard University. See “Repos au Lac Asquam,” Les Ecrits Nouveaux, i (1 Dec. 1917), 19–27; reprinted in Amica America (Paris: Emile-Paul, 1918), pp. 55–68.
19 “Chez Racine les êtres faibles ou malheureux n'inspirent pas de pitié, les êtres doux n'éprouvent pas de pitié.” “Racine,” in Littérature (O. L. D.), p. 475.
20 See n. 6 above.
21 Le Sport (Paris: Hachette, 1928), p. 27.
22 Montherlant's “Poèmes,” in Les Olympiques (1924) are lyrical counterparts to Giraudoux's fervent but overly intellectual “notes et maximes.” Montherlant's preface (1938) to his Olympiques, as reprinted in the Pléiade edition of his Romans et œuvres de fiction non théâtrales (Paris, 1962), pp. 221–230, is a reaffirmation of many of the ideas he and Giraudoux shared in regard to sports.
23 Probably an allusion to a crime an account of which Giraudoux could easily have read at the time he was composing his novel. A certain Lily May Curtis did shoot and kill six of her children in a farmhouse near Center, Texas, in April 1938.
24 “Suzanne à M. Daragnès,” Preface to Suzanne et le Pacifique (Cercle Lyonnais du Livre, 1928), with color illustrations by Daragnès, limited to 154 copies. A single sentence from this preface will suffice to reveal the tone: “Je comprends que les bibliophiles désirent trouver en chaque humain un Dieu tiré à un exemplaire; mais vraiment le mien n'a de particulier, au contraire, que d'être sans date et sans limitation.”
25 During a matinée théâtrale held in the courtyard of the lycée at Bellac on the occasion of the unveiling of the Giraudoux memorial fountain, 1 July 1951. After a memorable banquet in the local inn, a dapper Jouvet, with a raspberry for a boutonnière, was assisted in this and other scenes from Giraudoux's plays by numerous artists who had interpreted leading roles in the original productions, among them Gabrielle Dorziat, Renée Devillers, Valentine Tessier, and Pierre Renoir. See Le Limousin Littéraire, No. 43 (July 1951), p. 1.
26 Giraudoux had successfully adapted The Constant Nymph, by Margaret Kennedy and Basil Dean, for the French stage under the title Tessa (La Nymphe au cœur fidèls) in 1934.
27 Film de la Duchesse de Langeais (Paris, 1942), pp. 90–91.
28 Armand in Pour Lucrèce (posthumous) will be the last.
29 There are numerous MSS both typed and handwritten described summarily by Jean-Louis Barrault in his Nouvelles Réflexions sur le théâtre (Paris: Flammarion, 1959), pp. 142–145.
30 The italics are mine. I am indebted to M. Jean-Pierre Giraudoux who graciously allowed me to read and quote this typed MS for which I have no more specific designation.
31 Cf. the final lines of Simon le pathétique: “demain tout recommence”; the last lines of Juliette au pays des hommes, in which the heroine beckons to Gérard, inviting him to kiss her, and thereupon dives into the brook; the finale of Electre: “Comment cela s'appelle-t-il, quand le jour se lève, comme aujourd'hui, et que tout est gâché, que tout est saccagé, et que l'air pourtant se respire, et qu'on a tout perdu, que la ville brÛle … mais que les coupables agonisent, dans un coin de jour qui se lève? … Cela a un très beau nom … Cela s'appelle l'aurore”; cf. also the end of Intermezzo: “L‘épisode Isabelle est clos. L‘épisode Luce ne surviendra que dans trois ou quatre ans”; the closing lines of Sodome et Gomorrhe: “La mort n'a pas suffi. La scène continue.”