Theatrical Terror: Attentats and Symbolist Spectacle

Abstract

The 1890s in Paris were a period of intense terrorism. There were more than a dozen bombings in city between 1892 and 1894, attributed to a score of perpetrators, either identified as or assumed to be anarchists. The period of violent activity, known as propaganda by deed, both stoked hysteria about every shady malingerer on city streets and sparked popular support for--even idealizations of--the dynamiters in revolt against a corrupt political and social order. Ravachol (Francois Koenigstein), for instance, first bomb-thrower to meet fate of guillotine, was immortalized in as a martyr, in song and dance as a popular hero: Dansons la Ravachole! Among literary and artistic avant-garde, there was enthusiastic support for anarchism's critique of pere, patron et patrie, not only in spite of anarchism's tactics of terror but because of them. Symbolists and decadents were equated with in period press, not merely because of an analogous rebelliousness, but because symbolist and decadent litterateurs were making destruction of old mold both an artistic and a political principle (Montorgueil 1). In such a climate, Symbolist theater house Theatre de l'OEuvre put on productions of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of People in 1893 and Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi in 1896. Staged during and after apogee of anarchist terror, press characterized both productions as attentats ([bomb] attacks), their authors as anarchists of art who were exercising a veritable terror over public (Fouquier 87). Ibsen's An Enemy of People opened initial season in 1893, and Theatre de l'OEuvre presented it as a sort of anarchist manifesto: poet Laurent Tailhade introduced with a thirty-minute discussion declaring virtues of revolt, which as a result brought theater under police surveillance. As Richard Sonn notes with regard to Jarry's Ubu: the play resembled an anarchist attentat in its violent assault upon sensibilities of audience, upsetting their expectations of theatrical decorum and dramatically involving them in performance (Sonn 77). Some have argued that such characterizations are due more to political climate than to content of works (e.g., Weir 207-210), but I would suggest otherwise. Both Jarry and Ibsen attest to markedly anarchist sympathies, and their plays--while stylistically wildly different--make scathing critiques of corrupt authority and illegitimacy of state power. In addition, part of what Ibsen's play dramatizes is marginalization of intellectual and inefficacy of speech; hero, who wants his words to have power of dynamite, is utterly ignored and ultimately silenced. Jarry's Ubu has given up on speech altogether, bearing a destructive relationship to language, and relies on a theater of action and of violent gesture in a mode of confrontation with public. The trajectory between two plays and their productions at Theatre de l'OEuvre reveals a shift in Symbolist theater from an emphasis on word to a focus on gesture, which I will argue is tied to Symbolist fascination for anarchist theories of action. The attentat became Symbolist spectacle par excellence, an act whose polysemic eclat made it model for a kind of theatrical terror. I IBSEN AND SYMBOLIST THEATER The 1890s saw foundation of earliest examples of avant-garde theater houses in Paris: naturalist Theatre Libre (1887), followed by symbolist Theatre d'Art (1890-1892), which gave way to Theatre de l'OEuvre (1893), most prominent site of symbolist theatrical productions. (1) Symbolist theories of theatrical representation sought to eliminate many aspects of traditional staging in order to let language evoke decor and scene rather than materially executing them, achieving a scenic representation of Idea through voice, stylized gesture, and radically nonnaturalistic set design. …