Blue Balls of Fire and the Ethics of Spectatorship: Verlaine, Yeats, Beckett
This paper looks at three short dramatic scenes by Paul Verlaine, W. B. Yeats and Samuel Beckett which all pick up that most conventional of theatrical themes, thwarted love, only in a disturbing way, by shifting the focus from the torments of the soul to the painful embodied experience of sexual fr...
Tallennettuna:
| Julkaisussa: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles, |
|---|---|
| Päätekijä: | |
| Aineistotyyppi: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Kieli: | Anglais |
| Julkaistu: |
Angles
2020
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| Aiheet: | |
| Linkit: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| id |
openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_2432 |
|---|---|
| record_format |
openedition |
| collection |
OpenEdition Journal |
| language |
Anglais |
| format |
Article ou chapitre numérique |
| building |
0/Bibliothèque numérique/ 1/Bibliothèque numérique/OpenEdition Journals/ |
| topic |
théâtre empathie Verlaine Paul Yeats William Butler Beckett Samuel Lévinas Emmanuel tournant éthique spectateur Rau Milo theatre empathy Verlaine Paul Yeats William Butler Beckett Samuel Levinas Emmanuel spectatorship ethical criticism Rau Milo |
| spellingShingle |
théâtre empathie Verlaine Paul Yeats William Butler Beckett Samuel Lévinas Emmanuel tournant éthique spectateur Rau Milo theatre empathy Verlaine Paul Yeats William Butler Beckett Samuel Levinas Emmanuel spectatorship ethical criticism Rau Milo Poulain, Alexandra Blue Balls of Fire and the Ethics of Spectatorship: Verlaine, Yeats, Beckett |
| description |
This paper looks at three short dramatic scenes by Paul Verlaine, W. B. Yeats and Samuel Beckett which all pick up that most conventional of theatrical themes, thwarted love, only in a disturbing way, by shifting the focus from the torments of the soul to the painful embodied experience of sexual frustration, and by having it performed not by youthful “star-crossed lovers”, but by ambiguously incarnated revenants, or by decrepit, nearly dead old people. I first suggest that a certain filiation, conscious or not, runs from one of Verlaine’s most famous poems, “Colloque sentimental”, through the dance of the ghosts in Yeats’s “play for dancers” The Dreaming of the Bones, to the “love scene” played out by Nagg and Nell out of their respective dustbins in Beckett’s Endgame. More importantly, I argue that the three pieces ask uncomfortable questions about the ethics of spectatorship and invite us to think critically about the conceptualising of theatre as a “face-to-face encounter with the Other”, a notion inspired by Levinas which has gained currency since the “ethical turn” hit theatre studies in the mid-2000s. This paradigm, I further suggest, is applied inaccurately to the theatrical encounter, especially in such contemporary productions as Milo Rau’s 2019 show Orestes in Mosul, which rather rests on a problematic ethics of empathy, a notion foreign to Levinas. The three scenes by Verlaine, Yeats and Beckett, on the other hand, offer an alternative model of unempathetic spectatorship which, paradoxically, may go further towards allowing the presence of radical Others on the stage. |
| author |
Poulain, Alexandra |
| author_facet |
Poulain, Alexandra |
| author_sort |
Poulain, Alexandra |
| title |
Blue Balls of Fire and the Ethics of Spectatorship: Verlaine, Yeats, Beckett |
| title_short |
Blue Balls of Fire and the Ethics of Spectatorship: Verlaine, Yeats, Beckett |
| title_full |
Blue Balls of Fire and the Ethics of Spectatorship: Verlaine, Yeats, Beckett |
| title_fullStr |
Blue Balls of Fire and the Ethics of Spectatorship: Verlaine, Yeats, Beckett |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Blue Balls of Fire and the Ethics of Spectatorship: Verlaine, Yeats, Beckett |
| title_sort |
blue balls of fire and the ethics of spectatorship: verlaine, yeats, beckett |
| publisher |
Angles |
| publishDate |
2020 |
| container_title |
URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles |
| url |
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.2432 https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/angles/2432 |
| _version_ |
1877293836229672960 |
| spelling |
openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_2432 https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.2432 urn:doi:10.4000/angles.2432 en https://journals.openedition.org/angles/2432 2020-11-11T01:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/9n11 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Blue Balls of Fire and the Ethics of Spectatorship: Verlaine, Yeats, Beckett Angles Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2274-2042 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles Poulain, Alexandra théâtre empathie Verlaine Paul Yeats William Butler Beckett Samuel Lévinas Emmanuel tournant éthique spectateur Rau Milo theatre empathy Verlaine Paul Yeats William Butler Beckett Samuel Levinas Emmanuel spectatorship ethical criticism Rau Milo This paper looks at three short dramatic scenes by Paul Verlaine, W. B. Yeats and Samuel Beckett which all pick up that most conventional of theatrical themes, thwarted love, only in a disturbing way, by shifting the focus from the torments of the soul to the painful embodied experience of sexual frustration, and by having it performed not by youthful “star-crossed lovers”, but by ambiguously incarnated revenants, or by decrepit, nearly dead old people. I first suggest that a certain filiation, conscious or not, runs from one of Verlaine’s most famous poems, “Colloque sentimental”, through the dance of the ghosts in Yeats’s “play for dancers” The Dreaming of the Bones, to the “love scene” played out by Nagg and Nell out of their respective dustbins in Beckett’s Endgame. More importantly, I argue that the three pieces ask uncomfortable questions about the ethics of spectatorship and invite us to think critically about the conceptualising of theatre as a “face-to-face encounter with the Other”, a notion inspired by Levinas which has gained currency since the “ethical turn” hit theatre studies in the mid-2000s. This paradigm, I further suggest, is applied inaccurately to the theatrical encounter, especially in such contemporary productions as Milo Rau’s 2019 show Orestes in Mosul, which rather rests on a problematic ethics of empathy, a notion foreign to Levinas. The three scenes by Verlaine, Yeats and Beckett, on the other hand, offer an alternative model of unempathetic spectatorship which, paradoxically, may go further towards allowing the presence of radical Others on the stage. Cet article lit en parallèle trois extraits dramatiques d’œuvres de Paul Verlaine, W. B. Yeats et Samuel Beckett qui sollicitent l’éternel trope théâtral de l’amour impossible, mais de manière insolite, en insistant moins sur les tourments de l’âme que sur l’expérience douloureusement corporelle de la frustration sexuelle, et en mettant en scène non l’habituel couple de jeunes premiers, mais des spectres ambigus ou des personnages vieux, décrépits et déjà à moitié morts. Je montre d’abord qu’une filiation, consciente ou non, relie le dialogue du « Colloque sentimental » de Verlaine, la dance des spectres dans The Dreaming of the Bones de Yeats et la « scène d’amour » qui se joue d’une poubelle à l’autre entre Nagg et Nell dans Fin de Partie (Endgame) de Beckett. Mon hypothèse est que les trois passages, qui mettent tous en scène un spectateur involontaire, interrogent le rôle éthique du spectateur de théâtre. Depuis le « tournant éthique » des études théâtrales dans les années 2000, il est devenu courant de concevoir la représentation théâtrale comme le lieu d’une rencontre avec le Visage de l’autre, au sens où l’entend Lévinas ; toutefois, cette lecture est contestable, et recouvre trop souvent la notion, étrangère à Lévinas, d’empathie. Prenant pour exemple le spectacle de Milo Rau, Orestes à Mossoul (2019), je montre en quoi un théâtre qui en appelle à l’empathie du spectateur est potentiellement problématique. Les trois scènes évoquées plus haut de Verlaine, Yeats et Beckett proposent un contre-modèle de spectateur résolument dénué d’empathie, qui permet peut-être paradoxalement de faire sur scène une place à l’Autre dans toute son irréductible étrangeté. |