Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Egil Törnqvist: 1932-2015
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 B & Co.
- 2 William Shakespeare, King Lear
- 3 August Strindberg, Miss Julie
- 4 August Strindberg, A Dream Play
- 5 William Shakespeare, Hamlet
- 6 Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night
- 7 Yukio Mishima, Madame de Sade
- 8 Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House
- 9 Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt
- 10 William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
- 11 J.B.P. Molière, The Misanthrope
- 12 Euripides, The Bacchae
- 13 August Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata
- 14 Friedrich von Schiller, Mary Stuart
- 15 Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts
- 16 The Serious Game
- Production Data
- Bibliography
- DVD list
- Index
- Also by Egil Törnqvist
7 - Yukio Mishima, Madame de Sade
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Egil Törnqvist: 1932-2015
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 B & Co.
- 2 William Shakespeare, King Lear
- 3 August Strindberg, Miss Julie
- 4 August Strindberg, A Dream Play
- 5 William Shakespeare, Hamlet
- 6 Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night
- 7 Yukio Mishima, Madame de Sade
- 8 Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House
- 9 Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt
- 10 William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
- 11 J.B.P. Molière, The Misanthrope
- 12 Euripides, The Bacchae
- 13 August Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata
- 14 Friedrich von Schiller, Mary Stuart
- 15 Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts
- 16 The Serious Game
- Production Data
- Bibliography
- DVD list
- Index
- Also by Egil Törnqvist
Summary
Those who visited one of B's stage performances of Yukio Mishima's play Madame de Sade, opening at the Small Stage of Dramaten on April 8, 1989, could via the theatre program be informed both about the author, the play, and the life and work of its absent central figure, Marquis Donatien- Alphonse-François de Sade (1740-1814). They could learn that what most people take to be the name of the Japanese writer – characteristically the name of a noble samurai family – is actually a pseudonym for Kimitaké Hiraoka (1925-70).
The theatre program quotes Mishima's post-face to the American translation of the play:
Reading The Life of the Marquis de Sade by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa I was most intrigued as a writer, by the riddle of why the Marquise de Sade, after having demonstrated such absolute fidelity to her husband during his long years in prison, should have left him the moment that he was at last free. This riddle served as the point of departure for my play, which is an attempt to provide a logical solution. I was sure that something highly incomprehensible, yet highly truthful, about human nature lay behind this riddle […].
This play might be described as “Sade seen through women's eyes.” I was obliged therefore to place Madame de Sade at the centre, and to consolidate the theme by assigning all the other parts to women. Madame de Sade stands for wifely devotion; her mother, Madame de Montreuil, for law, society, and morality; Madame de Simiane for religion; Madame de Saint-Fond for carnal desires; Anne, the younger sister of Madame de Sade, for feminine guilelessness and lack of principles; and the servant Charlotte for the common people. I had to involve these characters with Madame de Sade and make them revolve around her, with something like the motion of the planets. I felt obliged to dispense entirely with the usual, trivial stage effects, and to control the action exclusively by the dialogue; collisions of ideas had to create the shape of the drama, and sentiments had to be paraded throughout in the garb of reason. (Mishima, 1967: 107)
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Serious GameIngmar Bergman as Stage Director, pp. 101 - 114Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2015