Maeterlinck’s Model of Modern Drama. Symbolist Dramatic Techniques

Abstract

The main purpose of symbolist dramatic techniques is to send messages which are accessible above all to intuitive perception; these messages are mostly endangered by materiality. And what can be more material than the stage and staging? To be more precise: according to symbolist doctrine, the most destructive element of the theatrical machine is the actor, because of his or her accidental subjectivity. This was already well known to the ancient Greeks, who therefore introduced masks, and with them tried to bring the arbitrary effect of a live person on stage under control. In the Elizabethan theatre, the ceremonial and ritual conventions of stage speech, like monotonous litanies, had a comparable function. With the advent of naturalism, such stylization of the human figure disappeared, and as the living human being is liberated in the theatre, drama is supposed to be dying. In symbolist doctrine, three defensive measures arise from this: the “static theatre” (Maeterlinck), the “reading drama” (Mallarmé) and the “über-marionette” (E. G. Craig). The primary characteristic of “static theatre” is the reduction of character: the character is to be passive, meditative, fragile, confused and afraid, absent in spirit, even bodiless and marionette-like. In this way, Maeterlinck annulled the doctrine of conflict which had controlled dramatic writing since Aristotle; the dramatic action becomes static or even disappears, replaced by an atmosphere of fatalism. Mallarmé’s striving for a reading drama, which was already known in antiquity, is the most radical solution to the problem, since it completely abandons the theatrical machine in the act of reception and recognizes only an individual’s reading, which produces the “theatre of the spirit”. Craig, on the other hand, maintains the connection between drama and staging, but wishes to replace the actor with an “über-marionette” to provoke associations with the divine through its glorious lack of expressiveness. Ivan Cankar followed Maeterlinck’s model in his narrative prose, and Ibsen’s model in his dramatic works, since he believed drama had a role in social reform, which could not be realized in the “static theatre”. His only symbolist play is probably Beautiful Vida (Lepa Vida). Slavko Grum wrote two symbolist plays, Pierrot and Pierrette (Pierrot in Pierrette) and The Tired Curlains (Trudni zastori). Among others, Pregelj’s The Beggars (Berači), Majcen’s The Heirs to the Kingdom of God (Dediči nebeškega kraljestva) and The Channel (Prekop), Leskovec’s Princess Haris (Kraljična Haris), Jarc’s The Expulsion from Paradise (Izgon iz raja) and perhaps Župančič’s Veronika of Desenice (Veronika Deseniška) should be mentioned.