The Poetry of Theatre: L'Ete of Romain Weingarten

Abstract

GENERALLY, CRITICS CHARACTERIZE Weingarten's dramaturgy as "poetic" on the basis of the disorienting effect his "ecriture" produces on the reader. Thus, Jacques Guicharnaud speaks of "'new chills'" the theatre of Weingarten has sent "down the spine of French poetic theatre," and Denise Bourdet, of a theatrical space where poetry breathes. From the same point of view, although slightly more thematic, Genevieve Serreau sees its poetic quality in its powerful feast of words, and she adds, "ce que retient Weingarten de la lercon d'Artaud, longuement meditee, c'est 'un effort unique, jamais dementi, contre louie bassesse' et c'est, reduit a l'essentiel, un 'esprit d'aventure' qui est l'autre nom de la poesie. These approaches, however, by-pass an essential question raised by the very nature and originality of Weingarten's ecriture, the dynamic of which resides in its fusion of poetry into drama. 4 By what process can two ontologically different structures-lyric and dramatic-merge into one?' In his essay I propose a reading of L'Ele-the play to which the author owes a great deal of his fame-as a possible method of identifying the ontology of Weingarten's poetry of theatre.'