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Giraudoux and the Split Personality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Will L. McLendon
Will L. McLendon*
Affiliation:
University of Houston, Texas
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Extract

Jean Giraudoux, if we are to believe certain of his friends, liked to claim he had never read Les fleurs du mal. Was this because of his scorn for a poet who had a conception of literary art too clearly opposed to that which Giraudoux proclaimed in his Prière sur la Tour Eiffel? The very fact that he expressed so strong a revulsion suggests rather that he had contemplated a sufficient number of the fleurs maladives to realize that Baudelaire's immodest genius offered only too many parallels to what his own was in danger of becoming. However unwonted such a comparison may at first appear, Giraudoux's early struggles with his conscience indicate a preoccupation with introspection strikingly similar to that of Baudelaire. Indeed we find in any careful examination of Baudelaire's works and character a young man who is hypersensitive about his uniqueness, a young man who so delights in finding himself different from other people that he does everything possible to further develop his narcissistic tendencies.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 73 , Issue 5-part1 , December 1958 , pp. 573 - 584
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1958

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References

Note 1 in page 573 L'école des indifférents, in Œuvre romanesque, 2 vols. (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1955), i, 113. Citations from Giraudoux's novels in my text are to the above edition.

Note 2 in page 573 Unlike the definitive version, the first edition of Simon le pathétique (Paris, 1918), was subdivided into four sections: “L'école du sublime,” “Promenade avec Gabrielle,” “Veritable histoire d'Hélène,” and “Triomphe du pathétique.”

Note 3 in page 573 Aventures de Jérôme Bardini, ii, 339.

Note 4 in page 574 First published under the pseudonym “Jean Cordelier” in Le Matin, 11 Oct. 1908, p. 4; now collected in Les contes d'un matin (Paris, 1952), pp. 33-44.

Note 5 in page 574 Paul Morand, Giraudoux: Souvenirs de notre jeunesse (Genève, 1948), p. 41.

Note 6 in page 574 Signed “Jean Cordelier” in Le Matin, 14 Dec. 1908 (Les contes d'un matin, pp. 73-83).

Note 7 in page 574 Signed “Jean Giraudoux” in Paris-Journal, 9 Dec. 1910 (Les contes d'un matin, pp. 133-144).

Note 8 in page 574 A. de Luppé, “Interview de Jean Giraudoux,” Le Correspondant, 25 May 1928, p. 517.

Note 9 in page 575 MS of Simon (p. 45) in collection of Mme S. M. Allard. This passage was originally intended to follow par. 2, Ch. vi, of Simon le pathétique (1926 ed.).

Note 10 in page 575 Cf. Paul Valéry, “La jeune Parque,” Poésies (Paris, 1953), p. 54: “Je me voyais me voir.”

Note 11 in page 576 See Morand, p. 34.

Note 12 in page 576 See Bernard Grasset, “La jeunesse de Giraudoux,” Opéra, 4 July 1951, p. 1.

Note 131 in page 576 am indebted to MM. de Péréra, Jean Blanzat, and the late Bernard Grasset for their reminiscences.

Giraudoux's friends were not the only ones to observe this elusiveness, since he noted in L'école des indifférents (i, 116): “Il est étonnant comme je suis, malgré moi, différent pour chacun de mes amis.”

Note 14 in page 577 Marc Aucuy and Jean-Marc Aucuy. La jeunesse de Giraudoux (Paris, 1948), p. 65. 15 “Bellac et la Tragédie,” Littérature (Paris, 1941), p. 285. 16 Lectures pour une ombre (Paris, 1946), p. 65.

Note 17 in page 578 Arnica America (Paris, 1918), p. 112.

Note 18 in page 578 Maurice Bourdet, in Jean Giraudoux: Son œuvre (Paris, 1927), p. 16, has suggested parallels between this incident in Giraudoux's life and the fate of Joan of Arc.

Note 19 in page 578 “Tombeau de Emile Clermont,” Littérature, p. 128.

Note 20 in page 578 MS belonging to Mme S. M. Allard, p. 8.

Note 21 in page 579 “La création littéraire chez Giraudoux,” Monde Nouveau, No. 107 (Jan. 1957), p. 15. 22 Suzanne et le pacifique, i, 331.

Note 23 in page 579 Cercle Lyonnais du Livre, with color illustrations by Daragnès, limited to 152 copies, 1928.

Note 24 in page 579 Ch. viii of MS of Suzanne et le pacifique, 239 pp. in-4 bound in 1 vol.; formerly in collection of Léon Comar, sold at Hôtel Drouot, 18 Dec. 1951.

Note 25 in page 581 Judith, Théâtre Complet (Neuchâtel: Ides & Calendes, 1945), i.viii (p. 51).

Note 26 in page 581 A gesture which would seem to indicate that Judith instinctively recognizes that Suzanne is the embodiment of one facet of her own personality; and how like Giraudoux to make Suzanne, the prostitute, both here and at the end of the play, the symbol of freshness and unselfish love. Says the Guard to Judith (iii.vii): “L'amour en effet a passé sur ce drame. Mais pas par toi. Par Suzanne.”

Note 27 in page 581 Georges Charensol, Comment Us écrivent (Paris, 1932), p. 104.

Note 28 in page 581 Giraudoux visited this region for the last time in the summer of 1939 just before assuming his new duties as Com-raissaire Général à l'Information.

Note 29 in page 582 Pour Lucrèce, Théâtre Complet, i.vii (p. 44).

Note 30 in page 583 Cf. the final lines of Simon le pathétique: “demain tout recommence”; the end of Intermezzo: “L‘épisode Isabelle est clos. L‘épisode Luce ne surviendra que dans trois ou quatre ans”; the end of Choix des élues: “Voilà … il commençait avec Claudie”; the closing lines of Sodome et Gomorrhe: “La mort n'a pas suffi. La scène continue.”

Note 31 in page 584 Cf. the voices in the first act of Ondine; the Ghost's severe criticism of Isabelle's final choice; Maléna's conversation with “le Dieu de Chantilly” in Combat avec l'ange;-the apparitions in Electra's dream. AU these personages who tease and mock the hero or heroine are just so many voices which one side of Giraudoux's personality uses to express its jealousy of the other which has momentarily liberated itself.

Note 32 in page 584 See special connotation which Giraudoux gives this term in Les cinq tentations de La Fontaine.

Note 33 in page 584 “Choderlos de Laclos,” Littérature, pp. 62-63.