closed room grew long, and behold, they talk, and they come to know the calamity of man — his faith in some absolute, when everything is relative.
one another; the hidden depths of their souls are laid bare, and the truth of each is revealed naked to the other; they suffer and rebel and want to flee — but to where?... At last they understand that hell is within the walls of this quiet, tumultuous room — it is the judgment of the other — man's judgment upon his fellow man...
As for the language Sartre uses to carry his ideas, it is clamorous and rebellious, expressing the bitterness of his revolt against Christianity and the army of believers who belong to it. His sarcasm is wounding and penetrating: when he mocks the Church and the indulgences that used to be sold at the priest's hands, he reminds us of Voltaire and his genius.
He wounds the feelings of the religious, embitters their lives, and provokes the reply of the Catholic press — so the battle is alive and continuing, and literary activity is alive and fruitful...
And if we wish to take in the whole of this theatrical activity in Paris, we must glance at the foreign plays performed there — English, German, American, and Norwegian. Barrault played "Hamlet" in 1950, and many a one preferred Barrault, with his short stature, his dancing steps, and the sharp gleam of his eyes, to Laurence Olivier and his mighty personality in the role of Hamlet. Jean Vilar performed the play "Murder in the Cathedral" by the English writer Eliot, and the plays of Pirandello, Ibsen, and other geniuses among the West's dramatists are performed as well.
And despite the multiplicity of the theater's different currents, there are certain standards and values to which the critics give their attention, and which determine a play's share of success or failure:
skill in composition, which makes of the play a solidly built piece; "the word" that creates a magical atmosphere; the actor's personality and his feeling, and that inner radiance which interacts with the personality of his role, and his gleaming, penetrating glances; the artistic décor of the stage and its measure of harmony with the events of the play and its period; and the music that accompanies it — all these are among the foundations relied upon in the sifting and the criticism, and they
determine the piece's share of success or failure. But whether a play deserves classical immortality or not — time alone has the final word in that; for often a play that met with brilliant success at its first performance has been neglected, and often a piece has been dug out of the wastebasket hundreds of years after its composition to take its place in the rank of the immortal classics...
(In the coming issue we shall return again to the modern French theater.)
Adam
Salt — Pickles — Vinegar
They are the finest in quality
SEL • VINAIGRE • CORNICHON
ADAM
AD-2-56-F-A