The Theater Season in Paris –3– Requiem for a Nun (Requiem pour une Nonne)

– 3 –

A story by the American writer Faulkner, put into dramatic form and produced in French by the French writer Albert Camus.

We are in the courtroom of one of the Southern cities of the United States of America. The judge's voice rises: "Let the accused stand!" The accused is a Negress of thirty who stands motionless, her face wearing a calm whose depths cannot be sounded... She stands on a high platform where she is seen raised aloft, alone, above the audience hidden from view, whose presence we imagine from the hesitant, stifled whispers... From her platform the accused looks out over the heads of those present — nay, far beyond them, as though she were floating in a private atmosphere cut off from those who have come to hear the trial of the white child's murderess... In the sallowness of her dark skin she seems safe from the clamorous current of hatred around her, as though innocent of the blood of the child whose breath she smothered with her own hand. For she is fortified with impregnable armor — nay, with a halo that stands as a barrier between her and the hands stretched toward her demanding justice, vengeance, and peace of mind.

The judge pronounces his sentence in a few clear words: "Death by hanging for the woman Nancy Manigoe, murderess of the child in her cradle, daughter of Mr. Gowan Stevens and Mrs. his wife..." Nancy's face does not change; her features reflect a quiet serenity and deep, faraway looks, and from her lips escape whispers that reach our souls with the solemnity of prayer and the light of its source: "Yes, my Lord. I thank you, my Lord." And the music of these words strikes a chord whose echo we hear from among the audience hidden from view... the moaning of a wounded, suffering woman...

What connection has this mourning lady with that criminal condemned to death by hanging?.. This elegant, aristocratic lady is Temple Drake, wife of Gowan Stevens, heir of one of the Virginia families of ancient lineage and wealth. She is the mother of the murdered child... Is she then mourning her child?... Yes and no... She mourns her child, but at the same time she hides in the depths of her soul a secret connected with Nancy Manigoe's crime that did not come out at the trial. Nancy kept the secret, and Temple did not dare divulge it; and here she is in a violent struggle with herself that all but tears her apart: shall she leave Nancy to die on the gallows like an expiatory victim, knowing that what Nancy did was done out of love for her mistress? A fierce question looms before her, burning her and robbing her of her rest: "Who is the criminal? Nancy, or I?" She flees from answering this question and flies to California, far from the crime and its victims... Here she is on the merciful shore, far away and safe, and here is her child playing on the sands beside her, contented and happy. She sacrifices everything, even truth and her conscience, to guard this child with the grace of innocence, of peace of mind, and of sweet, guiltless sleep.

But it is this innocent childhood that asks:
— Is tomorrow the day of Nancy's hanging, Mama?
— Yes, my darling.
— And after the hanging, where do we go?
— Where do we go?.. Where do we go?..

Here is Temple before the Governor of the State in Jackson at two o'clock in the morning, confessing. She is like a pent-up volcano that has found an outlet and erupted with the burning, destructive elements in its depths, beautiful and terrifying at once. And here is Temple's soul, so lofty in its pride, transparent and naked before the Governor, the lawyer, and her husband, laying bare the tragedy of their two lives, and naming the evil rooted in the depths of her soul — that evil which drove her, at seventeen years of age, to become entangled in a love adventure, run away from her school, and gratify her unbridled lust for three months in one of the secret houses of the city of Memphis... She returns to life once more; her wealthy father and brothers take her in; she marries the aristocratic young Gowan Stevens and settles with him in her elegant social world in Virginia, bears him two children, and for eight years the family seems to live in the shade of happiness. But...

The husband has not forgiven. He is forever anxious, beset by doubts — even about his fatherhood of his two children... And Temple is still the slave of her first sin. And here she is plunging into a new love adventure and resolving to run away with her lover...

Nancy, the nurse of her children, stands as a barrier between her and her shameful deed. Nancy — the simple, illiterate Negress, formerly a prostitute — grasps what Temple's flight from her husband's house would mean, and sees in it her fall and her ruin. She tries with every means at her disposal to turn her mistress from her decision, but in vain, for the evil in Temple's soul is strong. And here is the man waiting in his car, and his prey offering her neck, submissive and willing... Nancy, at her wits' end, resorts to the last expedient her limited mind suggests to her, and walks to the child's room, saying: "I have tried everything... I have tried everything..." She returns after a few minutes in a fearful daze... The child lies still, her breath extinguished.

The last scene, in the prison: Temple and Nancy face to face. Nancy knows the death sentence will be carried out on the morrow, and knows that Temple has confessed everything. She is calm and serene, offering her neck of her own free will, for she is the expiatory sacrifice that lifts Temple out of the grip of evil. But Temple is still bewildered, grasping no meaning in the sacrifice and no healing benefit in her own confession. Where, then, does it all lead? Can she bear to face tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that?.. She throws herself down before Nancy, imploring:
— Nancy, Nancy, don't leave me alone.
— You are not alone.
— How so?
— Believe.
— In what?
— Believe in Him, for He is the Savior... He is Life, He is the Rock; He will wash our wounds and deliver us from the torment of death.
And Temple cries out in the voice of one reproaching and imploring at once: "He did not save Himself — how shall He save me?"
— Believe...
Nancy disappears from sight, and Temple gazes toward the door — and there is her husband waiting to take her back to the house where her child is...

Every writer or poet worthy of the name has a password which, once we have discovered it and learned to use it well, opens before us the horizons of his thought; what was obscure in them becomes plain, and the truths he wished to drive into the depths of our souls stand revealed. The surest road that leads us to an understanding of Faulkner's difficult art is his own statement, in a preface to a collection of his stories, that he received most of his early culture from his grandfather's Catholic library, among whose volumes he used to drown himself as a boy shortly before the First World War. In this light the title becomes clear, and the colors of the threads with which Faulkner wove his tragedy stand out: boundless Christian love — the struggle between good and evil, the suffering that purifies souls, evil at times an instrument of salvation, and the other secondary strains that recur on the lips of the characters of the play and bind them together in the tangled, shattered web of life.

Faulkner declared his literary creed in a speech he delivered in Stockholm on receiving the Nobel Prize, on the twentieth of December 1950. He said: "Man is immortal because he has an immortal soul capable of compassion and sacrifice and the endurance of pain. The truths of the human heart are love and honor and pity and sacrifice. And the task of the writer or poet is to write of these old truths with the sweat of his brow and the agonies of his spirit, so as to lift up the heart of man."

As for the language he uses to express this modern classical tragedy, it is outwardly a simple language, expressing the modernity of its characters, yet at the same time grand and measured, lifting them to the summit of classical tragedy. Albert Camus faced this problem when he rendered the play into French — and no wonder that he succeeded, being one of the distinguished writers of contemporary France and an admirer of Faulkner's world literature. He preserved the spirit of the English original in a pure French mold, and the play carried off the palm in the current theater season in Paris.

Catherine Sellers took the role of Temple, crystallizing this suffering soul in the immortal world of tragedy; as she poured forth like a raging volcano she reminded us of the confessions of Phèdre, Racine's heroine, and the grandeur of her struggle.

As for Nancy, the actress Tatiana Moukhine took charge of her, and excelled in expressing this puzzling, complicated woman — the believing criminal, limited and great. She reminded us of Dostoevsky's characters and the clashing of the rich elements of their souls.

And we have a right to ask: is this American literature? Or is this American life? We have grown used to seeing in America a face other than this. It is the land of the practical, "pragmatic" bent, the land of optimism, the smile, and sexual laxity. Whence, then, this tragedy, and whence this violence? The answer is that Faulkner is the heir of the ancient literature of tragedy; he is a world classical writer before he is an American. And perhaps the American soul has a classical face we have not yet discovered — and here is the hand of genius drawing back the curtain from it...

Note:

The proper names in English are as follows:

Faulkner
Nancy Manigoe
Temple Drake