#michel de ghelderode

[petermot]

In Tenebris 1: De Gentse fantastiek

Bespreking: Peter Motte, 545 woorden In Tenebris is een tijdschrift voor fantastiek. Het wordt uitgegeven door de kleine Gentse uitgeverij Poespa Producties, die zich al verdienstelijk maakte met de biografie over Jean Ray door Geert van Damme, en de nieuwe vertaling van de roman Malpertuis geschreven door Jean Ray.De uitgeverij heeft dus wel al het een en ander op dat gebied…

[revuetraversees]

Michel De Ghelderode, Sortilèges, L’imaginaire, Gallimard, 224 pages, 2008.

Une chronique de Lieven Callant Michel De Ghelderode, Sortilèges, L’imaginaire, Gallimard, 224 pages, 2008. 12 contes curieux et sombres Les contes réunis pour une première publication en 1947 aux Éditions A. Maréchal ont probablement été écrits entre 1919 et 1939. Chaque conte est une mécanique parfaitement ajustée, une mise en relation de mots savamment sélectionnés pour répondre à une…

[oneminutereviews]

Willem Elsschot: Cheese — Translated by Sander Berg

The Flemish author Willem Elsschot (1882–1960) went to school at a time when secondary education was in French instead of Dutch and started writing at a time when the Flemings were still fighting for greater recognition of the Dutch language. Flemish authors such as Nobel Prize laureate Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949), Émile Verhaeren (1855–1916), Jean Ray (also known as John Flanders) (1887– 1964) and, among a somewhat younger generation, Michel de Ghelderode (1898–1962) and Suzanne Lilar (1901–1992) wrote in French instead of Dutch. Admittedly, not all of them did this because they though the Dutch language was not a suitable language for literature; some of them were simply members of the French-speaking bourgeosie in Flanders. However, between the creation of the Constitution of Belgium in 1831 and the Coremans-De Vriendt law of 1898, Dutch was not even an official language in Belgium and had the status of a patois.

Elsschot wrote eleven short novels (or ten if Het been is counted as the second part of Lijmen), totalling around 702 pages of prose in the collected edition published in 1957. Cheese ( Kaas) was published in 1933, after a gap of nine years in Elsschot’s literary production. The poor reception of his first works, especially Lijmen (1924), had discouraged him. After a visit by the Dutch author Jan Gresshof, who expressed his amazement about the fact that he hadn’t written anything in ten years, Elsschot wrote Cheese in just two weeks. The story had probably started germinating before Greshoff’s visit.

Elsschot uses a concise and laconic style as a vehicle for ironic observations. That doesn’t mean that a translator doesn’t face any challenges. Elsschot’s main character Laarmans regularly uses French loanwords when he wants to sound posh, and this is difficult to convey in English, in spite of the many words that English borrowed from French. For example, at the start of chapter VI, Laarmans says, “Because henceforth, I no longer eat, but partake of breakfast, luncheon and dinner”, the reader misses the French derivatives in the Dutch text: “Want vanaf nu eet ik niet meer, maar dejeuneer, dineer of soupeer”. The translator compensates for this by using the formal-sounding verb partake. (Partake is a calque from Latin, but I assume only linguists would know this.) Similarly, pedestal desk doesn’t have quite the same ring as the French term bureau ministre that Laarmans uses. And “customs officer” (chapter X) sounds flat compared to commies in Elsschot’s text.

Certain subtleties of the Dutch language are also lost. The word “kerel” is translated as “old chap” among Van Schoonbeke’s acquaintances (chapter III) and as “my friend” in the rest of the novel. “Kerel” is an informal word that would be interpreted as derogatory when addressing someone you don’t know very well, and I doubt the English translations capture the same nuance. Elsewhere, at the end of chapter VI, Laarmans describes a comment by his wife as “Now that’s what I call stating the patently obvious”. The Dutch text says, “Dat noem ik een waarheid als een koe”, which is shorter (especially when counting syllables) and literally means “That’ what I call a truth like a cow.” The Dutch expression is more colourful and, since the Edam cheese in the novel is made from cow’s milk, particularly apposite.

None of the above should discourage anyone from reading Sander Berg’s translation. There is more than enough irony, absurdism and satire of the business world to put a smile on your face. The novel is a classic in the Netherlands and Flanders, where it still appears on reading lists for schools.

Willem Elsschot: Cheese. Translated by Sander Berg. London: Alma Books, 2017. (Original title: Kaas, published in 1933.)

Review submitted by Tsundoku.

[castellidisabili]

stavo cercando Sortilegi di Michel de Ghelderode che avevo letto durante la pandemia e di cui volevo fare la riduzione teatrale di uno dei racconti ma naturalmente il libro è sparito

[titina-pitriqli]

"El Rey y el Bufón" (2012), con Fernando Aguado y Diego Morales en la obra teatral basada en los textos de Michel de Ghelderode "Escorial".

[thinkingimages]

Spells | World Food Books

[majestativa]

I live outside the world in a universe I myself have created, like a madman or a holy visionary.

Michel de Ghelderode, Spells

[animus-inviolabilis]

Ghelderode is the black diamond that closes the necklace of poets that Belgium wears around her neck. This black diamond casts a cruel and noble fire. It wounds only those with small souls. It dazzles others.

Jean Cocteau on Michel de Ghelderode

[sunkentreasurecove]

Si je crois au diable ? parbleu ! et de manière plus permanente qu'à Dieu et à ses saints ! N'a-t-il pas toujours parlé à mon imagination ? n'occupe-t-il pas depuis toujours ma cervelle ? ne me galvanisa-t-il pas au même titre qu'un héros du théâtre ou du conte ? Il me « brûlait » maintenant de le voir et l'entendre, à supposer qu'il fût disponible et que je n'eusse pas affaire à un imposteur. Et déjà ma main cherchait la sonnette : mais de sonnette, point, pas plus que de serrure. Le diable seul pouvait ainsi s'offrir une porte impraticable, et cette porte noire n'était pas peu faite pour me mettre en confiance : je me trouvais véritablement au seuil d'une annexe ou d'un consulat de l'Enfer !

Michel de Ghelderode, Sortilèges

[jozefsquare]

Theatre poster with surreal illustration by Jiří Barta.

title: Hop Signor! | Hop, signore – Michel de Ghelderode

author: prof. MgA. Karel Makonj / Vedené Divadlo, Salon Reduta, Prague

poster design: Jiří Barta, Czechoslovakia, 1970

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[catboyrightsdefender]

not to sound like of one those Deep Thinkers but perhaps this entertainment culture that we live in (and that has truly begun in the 19th century and has brought a love for spectacular installations like panoramas dioramas aquariums and total/global vision/sight that still exists today with virtual reality etc thank u art of the new medias class) has turned everything into a show/spectacle making us (talking bout our occidental culture at least) devoid of empathy like ppl will joke about dramatic circumstances that will never affect them, will talk about famous/relatively well known/strangers on the internet with a certain aura as if they werent real ppl. maybe everything and everyone has become a product to b consumed through idk social media and the like. feel free to bully me for posting this

[mybeingthere]

Felix Labisse (1905 - 1982), French painter, illustrator and stage designer. He was of Flemish and Polish descent and worked in both France and Belgium.

On a visit to Ostend in 1922 he met James Ensor, whose lifelong friendship he later commemorated in Bonjour M. Ensor (1964; Ostend, Mus. S. Kst.). In 1927 he set up his studio in Ostend, where he was associated not only with Ensor but also with Constant Permeke and Léon Spilliaert, and with the poets Henri Van de Putte, Jean Teugels and Michel de Ghelderode, and the film maker Henri Storck. He was self-taught and strongly influenced at first by Ensor. He sought to render both his own poetic reveries and the preoccupations of modern life through a technique of smoothly painted and strongly outlined violent colours. He specialized in images of a particular type of woman, at once strangely sensual and cold, whom he painted in blue and other exaggerated hues and who haunted his pictures like a mythical goddess, as in On the Other Side of the Grape-harvest Month (1980; Ghent, priv. col.). In 1928 he and Storck founded the Ciné Club in Ostend, which disseminated avant-garde films by Man Ray, Carl Dreyer and Fritz Lang, and he made a film of his own, La Mort de Vénus. In 1930 he founded the literary review Tribord, which ran to eight issues; collaborators included Max Jacob, Franz Hellens and Jean Teugels.

http://www.all-art.org/art_20th_century/labisse1.html

[arrogant-hair]

Stories I have told: Jan Švankmajer

The marionette was then my favourite toy, even my passion - other toys gave me no pleasure. But even then I believed - and this strange belief is not yet dead in me - that objects were sensitive, living.

Michel de Ghelderode.

The subversive quality of my work comes from the fact that the audience see ordinary objects which behave very strangely, so their relationship to them is called into question. That is the difference between Surrealism and the art of the fantastic.

Jan Švankmajer

The Czech Surrealist animator Jan Svankmajer delves into the realm of the uncanny with his remarkable blend of puppetry, model making, animation, trompe l'oeil and live action. A blend that both invites the audience into, and alienates them from, the world of objects. For Svankmajer objects are not inanimate, docile 'things', but have a materiality that transcends 'thingness' and endows objects with their own personality. Svankmajer does not simply anthropomorphise objects, giving them human characteristics, but attempts to reveal their nature as connected to their materiality. Although he often allows objects some human characteristics (for example the Arcimboldoesque heads in Dimensions of Dialogue or the child's suit in Jabberwocky) he also creates grotesque and fantastic devices that move beyond the human to a unique fusion of the objects 'innate' properties (for example the doll knife in Jabberwocky or the sock caterpillar of Alice).

Svankmajer's aesthetics come from the merging of the long tradition of the Marionette theatre in Eastern Europe, the grotesque high mannerism of Arcimboldo, and of course the Bretonian influenced Czech Surrealist movement. Michael O'Pray explains:

His work shows the influence of two major trends - Surrealism, which has survived in Czechoslovakia since the early 30s, and the overwrought and technically exuberant Mannerism which found one of its greatest expressions in the bizarre paintings of Arcimboldo, who was resident at the court of the eccentric Hapsburg emperor Rudolf II in Prague in the late sixteenth century. 1

Further than these influences I would argue that Svankmajer's use of Freudian psychoanalysis adds to the meaning and integrality of his films. Surrealist theory has long included a discourse with psychoanalysis, this discourse is illuminated by Švankmajer’s manipulation of psychoanalytic theory to include not only elements of infantile sexuality but also the uncanny.

According to Freud the uncanny (Unheimliche) often shares meaning with its opposite, canny (Heimliche). Inasmuch the uncanny is the known or familiar (canny) that has 'become alienated from it only through a process of repression'. 2

For this uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien but something familiar and old established in the mind which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression. . . the uncanny is something that ought to have remained hidden but has come to light. 3

This repression is necessary to the integrated subjectivity of the individual, in effect sharing the role of the primary repression of the id state, and the repression of the feminine. The strongest feelings of the uncanny come from a 'regression to a time when the ego had not yet marked itself off sharply from the external world and from other people.'4In Svankmajer's films one can see that these propositions of repression are indeed linked. In Alice it is Alice's childlike (id) gaze that enables the uncanny fantasy realm to unfold before the adult viewer. An uncanny moment of memory (of childhood, of Carroll's familiar book) is made unfamiliar by Svankmajer's additions (and subtractions) to the Wonderland mythos. These processes of alienation in Svankmajer's work point to an essential tenet of the uncanny. In as much as the uncanny is somehow familiar, it is also that which is simultaneously other. Freud wrote:

Uncanny effect is often and easily produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced...when a symbol takes over from the thing it symbolises...a feature closely allied to the belief in the omnipotence of thoughts. 5

Freud also posits that the uncanny is something familiar that has become estranged to the subject not only through the process of repression, but also through additions to the canny that add a dimension of the alien. Svankmajer's films are populated with such additions and also with substitutions. These substitutions are present when objects - often familiar household objects - become fantastic avatars for the uncanny and grotesque. By virtue of these exchanges, Wonderland in Alice becomes an extension of her home, writing desks are magic gateways and children's building blocks become inhabitable spaces. These transformations through Alice's eyes are produced through her childhood belief in the omnipotence of her thoughts. Far from placing Svankmajer's work into the fairytale tradition that is immune to uncanny effects, these metamorphoses actually heighten the uncanny experience by extending the natural world and making it alien - in effect adding the fantastic to the mundane and revealing their hidden or repressed meanings.

These effects of alienating addition can also be attributes to the influence of the grotesque. Wolfgang Kayser writes 'the grotesque is the estranged world' and further:

The alienation of familiar forms creates a mysterious and terrifying connection between the fantastic and the real world which is so essential to the grotesque. 6

Michael O'Pray argues that Svankmajer's use of the grotesque situates his work as an exploration of the materiality of objects.

The grotesque qualities of Svankmajer's work and his use of effigies are both intimately connected with the materiality of his filmic universe. If any one process or any one kind of image dominates here, it is the animation of objects themselves - the magical transformation of things which gives an overwhelming sense of their textures and 'thingness'. 7

Further his argument defining the grotesque includes a reference to it that places the grotesque well within the Surrealist revolution: 'The grotesque is a sign of resistance, a symbolic destruction of official culture. . . Surrealism, as his films admirably display, is not simply a matter of 'irrational' fantasy: it also involves a particular relationship to the real and its properties'. 8

The circuitous path that Svankmajer takes to Surrealist revolution involves the use of puppetry to question the nature of self and other. His puppets are often styled using traditional puppetry methods (like the marionettes in Faust) but more often he uses a grotesque array of skeletons, dolls, clay and bodily fluids. Svankmajer's puppetry can be termed as abject; as it is precisely the left over, expelled parts of the human or animalian subject that he exploits to create his uncanny effects. In Alice the creatures of Wonderland vacillate between cardboard cut-outs (made by his partner Eva) and corporeal creations that are reanimated remnants of past life. Svankmajer creates visceral 'exquisite corpses' - creatures of marvellous vicissitudes that problematise the distinction between animate and inanimate, life and death.

Svankmajer's use of more traditional puppetry methods is not without excursions into the uncanny. The swapping of the Alice character between the live girl and the animated doll is a self-conscious attempt to question the nature of the human subject. Svankmajer uses these interchanges in a somewhat obvious way - the doll is dressed and styled to represent Alice, and although she appears a simulacra, she is also a decisive, divisive other.

And when the object does take human form, sometimes reproducing anatomical features quite extraneous to its integrity as a puppet, it often does so self consciously, as if the attempt to camouflage its otherness were in fact a subterfuge for displaying it. 9

This interchange between self and other that is present in the puppet both attacks and reassures our position as subjects. It is an uneasy interchange for the gaze of the audience doubling the function of the screen as mirror.

Sharing in the trickery of the automaton is merely another way to define ourselves as human, that is, as both being and nothingness, presence and absence: the automaton is, in a way, our mirror . . . or our evil eye.10

Svankmajer's use of the uncanny effects of puppetry is done with the Surrealist sentiment to disrupt and disturb the paradigmatic order. He calls into question not only our position as subjects but disturbs our notions of the 'identity of things' by making our world simultaneously familiar and alien, our selves individuated and fragmented, and always reminds us of the doppelgängers of our existence.

1 Michael O'Pray. 'Between Slapstick and Horror'. Sight and Sound vol. 4, no. 9. September, 1994. p. 20

2 Sigmund Freud, 'The Uncanny' in Collected Papers, v.4, (Hogarth Press, London, 1959) p. 363

3 ibid., p. 364

4 ibid. p. 358

5 ibid. p. 367.

6 Wolfgang Kayser. The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Peter Smith, London, 1968. pp. 184 and122.

7 Michael O'Pray. 'Surrealism, Fantasy and the Grotesque: The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer'. in Donald (ed.) Fantasy and the Cinema: A Reader. bfi, London, 1989.

8 ibid. pp. 2 and 6

9 Roman Paska. 'The Inanimate Incarnate' in Feher (ed.) Zone 3. Zone Books, New York, 1989. p. 412.

10 J. C. Beaune. 'The Classical Age of Automata'. in Zone 3. op.cit. p. 437.

[rudyroth79]

Știri: Programul Teatrului Național de Televiziune, TVR 3, 15–18 mai 2020

Știri: Programul Teatrului Național de Televiziune, TVR 3, 15–18 mai 2020

Vineri, 15 mai – seară de comedie

Ora 14.00 – reluare „Căsuța cu povești” – Crăiasa zăpezii, partea a doua

Ora 14.05 – reluare Ce zi frumoasă! de Michel de Ghelderode. Regia și adaptarea: Dinu Cernescu. Spectacolul a fost primul câștigător al Premiului UNITER pentru „Cel mai bun spectacol de televiziune” în anul 1991 – la prima ediție a decernării premiilor

Ora 20.00 – „Căsuța cu povești” – Crăia…

[statesofexception]

György Ligeti — ‘Le Grand Macabre’ (1977)

La Fura dels Baus production

[r-tierno]

“El teatro es tracción a sangre”: Entrevista con Lía Jelín sobre TOC TOC

Cuando Lía Jelín quiso montar Toc Toc en Argentina, ningún productor le abrió las puertas, no les gustaba la obra. Entonces llamó a Morris Gilbert, y a las dos semanas estaba en la escena de México esta historia que ya tiene ocho años de éxito. El texto es del francés Laurent Baffie, quién la escribió a partir de su propia experiencia, como  forma de catarsis.

“Cuando la leí no podía creer, primero el tema, completamente nuevo, hablar de gente que tiene trastorno obsesivo compulsivo era difícil, no sé si el autor se dio cuenta, pero yo en la obra encontré A puerta cerrada de Sartre, Esperando a Godot, de Beckett y descubrí que tenía un zig-zag muy especial, no se instalaba nunca, si entraba en una zona de dolor se salía con un chiste, y cuando la cosa era muy chistosa, se entraba en una zona de dolor”, expresó la directora en entrevista para Cartelera de Teatro.

La obra fue traducida por Jorge Schussheim, y como si el éxito fuera poco, fue vista por Carlos Rottemberg, empresario teatral argentino, en un teatro de Santa Fe de CDMX y enseguida se comunicó con Lía para montarla en Argentina. Hoy se considera una de las comedias más vistas en la calle Corrientes de Buenos Aires.

Toc Toc narra el encuentro de cinco pacientes en la sala de espera del psiquiatra, que quedó demorado en un vuelo. Los protagonistas sufren un trastorno obsesivo compulsivo (toc), que será un problema a la hora de relacionarse en la espera, y esto nos dará una construcción de situaciones graciosas, tragicómicas, que hacen estallar de risa al público, pero también logra hacernos reflexionar sobre la enfermedad, sus causas y consecuencias, algo que se verá reflejado hacia el final. Es muy probable que salgamos del teatro reconociendo nuestros propios toc.

“Esta obra está apoyada en la angustia, no la trabajé como algo chistoso, lo que hace reír es la angustia, no la broma”, explica Jelín.

Luego del estreno en 2011, la directora nos platicó que la obra no siguió sus lineamientos durante tres años, y por eso ahora reestrenaron ya con su presencia y la de Mauricio Galaz como director residente.

El elenco del montaje que se presenta de viernes a domingos en el Nuevo Teatro Libanés, lo conforman alternando funciones Lola Cortés, Faisy, Silvia Mariscal, Ricardo Fastlicht, Omar Medina, Mario Alberto Monroy, Dari Romo, Pedro Prieto y Sandra Quiróz.

“En México son muy disciplinados, y tienen mucha movilidad, no se quedan en una obra, estrenan, se quedan dos meses, se van. Tienen muchísimo humor, un humor distinto, allá no se pueden decir malas palabras. Ellos tienen albures, el doble sentido, un albur es algo que se dice con doble sentido, son especialistas en eso”, comenta la directora que también tiene en cartel Confesiones de Mujeres de 30 en el Teatro Fernando Soler.

Una vez Sofía Gala (actriz argentina) dijo que teatro era lo mejor que sabías hacer, ¿es lo que más te gusta?

Yo te puedo contar que mi mamá me llevaba al Colón al aire libre cuando tenía 6 años, que quedaba en el Parque Centenario, todo lo que se daba en el Colón se daba al aire libre, todas las óperas, los ballet. A los 9 años decidí que quería ser bailarina, hacía teatro en la terraza de mi casa, ponía la colcha de la cama de mi mamá, yo vivía en Av. Warnes y Honorio Pueyrredón, jugábamos en la calle. El teatro siempre ha sido mi destino, primero como bailarina, y luego (después de muchos años de psicoanálisis), pude acceder a los textos. Mi primera dirección integral fue en el año 73, El gran soñador, danza teatro, y desde ahí no paré más, fracasos, fracasos, fracasos… éxitos.

¿Te queda algo por hacer? ¿Qué obra aún no te has dado el lujo de dirigir?

Varias cosas, La escuela de los bufones, de Michel de Ghelderode, un texto extraordinario. Después tengo una versión libre de Shakespeare, que en el último Festival Shakespeare lo hice como lectura, es una obra de 5 horas, y lo achiqué en una hora y media. Después la quise hacer en algún teatro y no me permitieron, Shakespeare es Shakespeare, no sé qué está pasando, hay mucho prejuicio con el teatro comercial, yo he hecho de todo.

Hay una crisis de público, en Argentina y en México, ¿qué crees que está pasando con el teatro?

El teatro no puede morir, nunca. Es tracción a sangre, no es celuloide, no es un beso a través de un vidrio como la televisión, es sangre, sudor y lágrimas, y la identificación que hay con el actor es fundamental, es un imponderable, igual que la lectura. La gente joven no lee y no sabe lo que se pierde, esa cosa imponderable que hay entre el autor y al lector, donde se describe una situación y debe ser imaginada, eso acelera y hacer crecer las neuronas. “Y así… abrió la puerta, y en ese preciso momento se oyó un ruido”… hay que imaginarlo, eso hace que uno se vuelva más inteligente, como escuchar Mozart. El único pecado del teatro es aburrir, es lo peor. Puede hacer llorar, hacer reír… pero aburrir no.

¿Cuándo fue la última vez que te sorprendiste en un teatro?

Cuando vi Los vecinos de arriba, en México, dirigida por un gran director, me quedé sorprendida de la lectura que tuvo, porque yo la vi acá (Argentina) y me pareció una comedieta infecta, y allá estaba puesta que los vecinos de arriba eran la fantasía de la pareja de abajo, no existían, ellos creían escuchar que hacían el amor todo el día, que la pasaban genial y no había nadie arriba. No es una gran obra, pero es una obra inteligente, donde ellos a través de esa fantasía logran separarse y vivir un poco mejor. Eso me encantó, hay muchos textos que me sorprenden.

Creo que no entendí lo que significaba que ‘el teatro esté vivo’ hasta que conocí a Lía Jelín. Con sus 80 años, la directora de Toc Toc es una mujer muy delgada, bajita, de ojos claros, piel muy blanca y cabello rojizo, con una alegría corporal y sonora que hacía mucho no veía ni escuchaba, ni siquiera de alguien joven. Esa noche vi la obra de Baffie y me reí mucho. Al finalizar la función los actores hablaron al público, presentaron a Morris Gilbert que se encontraba allí y saludaron a Lía Jelín. La gente aplaudía y se paraba, todos y todas éramos parte de ese encuentro, y había felicidad en la sala, que estaba repleta, la gente la había pasado bien y se sentía viva. Como diría Lía, a menos que te aburra (que siempre podemos levantarnos e irnos), el teatro siempre nos dará un momento especial.