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Three Pre-Surrealist Plays
The landmark plays from the French theatre included in this edition embody the transition from the old to the modern in dramatic experimentation: precursors of surrealism, they are innovative, outrageous and highly enjoyable. Consisting of Maeterlinck's The Blind, Jarry's Ubu the King, and Apollinaire's The Mammaries of Tiresias, this edition provides new translations sensitive to crucial linguistic features such as rhyme and pun and contains the only editions of Maeterlinck and Apollinaire's plays in print. These three plays written between 1890 and 1917 surprised and shocked their first audiences and still continue to do so today.
272 pages, Paperback
First published October 23, 1997
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About the author
Maurice Maeterlinck
1,260 books297 followersMaurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (also called Count Maeterlinck from 1932) was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was a Fleming, but wrote in French.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations".
The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. His plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations".
The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. His plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 26, 2025
I picked this book up in a charity shop in Aberystwyth a month or so ago. The three plays included are THE BLIND by Maurice Maeterlinck, UBU ROI by Alfred Jarry, and THE BREASTS OF TIRESIAS by Guillaume Apollinaire. I was familiar with the Jarry play but knew almost nothing about the other two.
The Maeterlinck play turned out to be rather remarkable, like Samuel Beckett fifty years before Beckett (early Beckett, I mean). Maeterlinck was someone I was only vaguely aware of, but now I know (if this play is typical of his work) that he was a writer of harrowing philosophical excellence, not untouched with dark humour. Occasionally I find precursors of paradigm-shifting writers and I wonder if those writers could have shifted the paradigms if the precursors had never existed. I am not saying that Beckett couldn't have existed without Maeterlinck. There may or may not have been a direct influence, but the spirit and tone of Maeterlinck's work perhaps smoothed the way for the later absurdists.
The Jarry play is well-known to me. I even once attended an opera based on this work. I read it many years ago, together with its two sequels, in a translation by Cyril Connolly. This new translation by Maya Slater struck me as perhaps a little less eccentric than Connolly's but there's not too much difference. The play is farcical, brutal, very strange, and thanks to the current geopolitical situation it seems more appropriate than ever.
As for the Apollinaire play: this was the first work to consciously call itself Surrealist. It's very amusing but politically it's a bizarre fusion of the reactionary and the radical. I can't quite approve of its philosophy. On the other hand I understand that it was created during the First World War and thus is wholly a product of its environment. It begins as an anti-feminist tract, ostensibly for patriotic reasons. France is losing so many men because of the war that it's the "duty" of women to forget about independence and careers and return to being housewives, devoting themselves to creating babies. Everything else can be sorted out later. The prime concern of the country is rapid repopulation.
But this message isn't sustained for long. One suspects that (like Cendrars) Apollinaire has too much fun as a writer to persist with didacticism. The comedic and absurdist elements take over, the social satire becomes pure farce, the play even mocks itself before the final scene. And the constant gender switching comes across as astoundingly modern and progressive. I think that this play would be hilarious to watch live if produced well with the appropriate sets and props.
All in all, a marvellous and important collection of plays.
The Maeterlinck play turned out to be rather remarkable, like Samuel Beckett fifty years before Beckett (early Beckett, I mean). Maeterlinck was someone I was only vaguely aware of, but now I know (if this play is typical of his work) that he was a writer of harrowing philosophical excellence, not untouched with dark humour. Occasionally I find precursors of paradigm-shifting writers and I wonder if those writers could have shifted the paradigms if the precursors had never existed. I am not saying that Beckett couldn't have existed without Maeterlinck. There may or may not have been a direct influence, but the spirit and tone of Maeterlinck's work perhaps smoothed the way for the later absurdists.
The Jarry play is well-known to me. I even once attended an opera based on this work. I read it many years ago, together with its two sequels, in a translation by Cyril Connolly. This new translation by Maya Slater struck me as perhaps a little less eccentric than Connolly's but there's not too much difference. The play is farcical, brutal, very strange, and thanks to the current geopolitical situation it seems more appropriate than ever.
As for the Apollinaire play: this was the first work to consciously call itself Surrealist. It's very amusing but politically it's a bizarre fusion of the reactionary and the radical. I can't quite approve of its philosophy. On the other hand I understand that it was created during the First World War and thus is wholly a product of its environment. It begins as an anti-feminist tract, ostensibly for patriotic reasons. France is losing so many men because of the war that it's the "duty" of women to forget about independence and careers and return to being housewives, devoting themselves to creating babies. Everything else can be sorted out later. The prime concern of the country is rapid repopulation.
But this message isn't sustained for long. One suspects that (like Cendrars) Apollinaire has too much fun as a writer to persist with didacticism. The comedic and absurdist elements take over, the social satire becomes pure farce, the play even mocks itself before the final scene. And the constant gender switching comes across as astoundingly modern and progressive. I think that this play would be hilarious to watch live if produced well with the appropriate sets and props.
All in all, a marvellous and important collection of plays.
June 9, 2009
Three really interesting plays decently translated.
The Blind: I need to look into if Beckett read much of Maeterlinck, because the more of him I read the more of a correlation I see. Ignoring that, there is too much in this play to go into here. Just read it.
Ubu the King: I have been a fan of Jarry for a while now, and this is the forth translation of this play I've read. Slater does a good job finding English takes on Jarry's word-play, and much of translation is quite good.
The Mammaries of Tiresias: This play is a bit all-over-the-place but there is much to admire. Even now one can still feel Apollinaire working hard to experiment and to create the new (though apparently it rips off quite a bit of Jean Cocteau's Parade).
The Blind: I need to look into if Beckett read much of Maeterlinck, because the more of him I read the more of a correlation I see. Ignoring that, there is too much in this play to go into here. Just read it.
Ubu the King: I have been a fan of Jarry for a while now, and this is the forth translation of this play I've read. Slater does a good job finding English takes on Jarry's word-play, and much of translation is quite good.
The Mammaries of Tiresias: This play is a bit all-over-the-place but there is much to admire. Even now one can still feel Apollinaire working hard to experiment and to create the new (though apparently it rips off quite a bit of Jean Cocteau's Parade).
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