Our Man in the Sixteenth Century: Michel de Ghelderode

Extract

I am of the opinion that exaggerated estimates of an author often work against a continuing interest in him; thus I cannot but be sympathetic to certain of the criticisms M. Auréliu Weiss has made of Michel de Ghelderode. I want people to be interested in Ghelderode and in his plays; and I should like their interest to be lasting. So I shall not dispute M. Weiss's pejorative judgments of some of the dramatist's lesser works: Le Soleil Se Couche, La Mori du Docteur Faust, Don Juan, Sortie de L'Acteur, and Pantagleize, all of which have been overrated by Ghelderode's admirers. It is true to say, as M. Weiss does, that in these plays, as in others by the Belgian playwright, there are precious bits along with “capricious inventions, exaggerations, absurdities … platitudinous meditations, extravagances, esoteric obscurities.”