20th Century Practice

Lecture Three:

Symbolism

RECAP: THE CRISIS OF MODERNITY

• Time of incredible change due to the growth of Capitalism and subsequent urbanisation.

• Culturally this led to conservatism by the growing bourgeois because a) their ‘taste’ placed value on tradition, b) ironically the speed of change frightened them - hold on to old values.

• In theatre innovative work was difficult due to the commercial stranglehold.

• However, the seed for change was sown with the Romantic movement which rejected the neoclassical tradition, explored new subject matters and placed themselves outside the mainstream society.They also placed the artist at the centre of the work of art.

• INEVITABLY, the process of modernisation entered into a state of crisis and a new consciousness evolved out of this experience - Modernism became an artistic expression of this mental state.

• Symbolism is the link between Romanticism and Modernism - Originally it began as a Mystical search - before it transformed into truly the first Modernist movement.

THE SYMBOLIST AGENDA

Symbolism was a reaction against the scientific age, against determinism, against realism, and against the bourgeois complacency.

The Symbolists:

•Wanted to look beyond the (scientific) surface of things to find truth - their response to the crisis of Modernity (Darwin, the Industrial and scientific revolutions, sudden changes in lifestyles etc..) was to look back into the far distant past - to the ancient signs and symbols of recently discovered ancient (like Egypt) and beyond and to imagine that they contained a mystical / spiritual truth - that had been lost in the modern godless world.

•However the content of these signs could not just be spelled out. Language is an unfit carrier of meaning for such truths. Therefore, the symbol must be used to activate some deeper knowledge within us.

THE (MYSTICAL) ART: developing from ROMANTICISM

Symbolists aspired “To seize through the relativity of existence the essence of the universe... to transcend the individual poetic act and attain a higher reality.” Guy Michaud

Redon - Mystical Conversation

Helena Petrova Blavatsky, leader of the Theosophists, a mystical religion that was very popular at the time wrote a large volume called, The Secret Doctrine, that spoke of a belief in the existence of ancient truths - “hidden under glyph and symbol, and hitherto left unnoticed because of this veil”

It was the poets task to look for patterns and interrelationships in the external world (called correspondences) that intimated a superior ideal world.

RICHARD WAGNER - and the GESAMTKUNSTWERK

“The highest work of art must put itself in the place of real life, it must dissolve this Reality in an illusion, by means of which Reality itself appears to us to be longer anything but an illusion.”

In the productions of his operas he:

•Created a single steeply raked auditorium (audience closer to action)

•Kept the auditorium in darkness during the performance.

•Placed the orchestra pit and prompt box beneath the stage (so as not to destroy the illusion)

•Used overhead lighting and no footlights

•Promoted the idea an audience of initiates - thought of the operas as a direct communion between the audience and the experience enacted on the stage – to restore the shared ritual of the ancient Greeks

Unfortunately, these truly innovating steps were overshadowed by the unoriginality of his material and the unimaginative staging of the works.

•Tales of chivalry (Knights in shining armour, damsels in distress)

•Fake and tacky sets (grassy banks, swams pulling boats, swords in trees, dragon’s heads...etc...

NIETZSCHE’S THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY

Wagner himself was inspired by Nietzsche's concept of the Dionysian from The Birth of Tragedy.

This short philosophy book sets out an intellectual dichotomy between the Dionysian and Apollonian - (reality undifferentiated by forms versus reality as differentiated by forms.)

Dionysian:

Free

Intoxicated

Connected

Chaotic

Emotional

Irrational

Apollonian:

BoundIndividuatedHarmoniousOrderedNeuroticRational

The external reality / world as we perceive it is subordinate to the inner truths of the soul.

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

In his early plays (published between 1889 and 1894), found a way to express the symbolist agenda in play-text form:

•He created a new style of dialogue, extremely lean and spare, where what is suggested, is more important than what is said.

•The characters have no foresight, and only a limited understanding of themselves or the world around them. (Victims of external forces)

•He downgraded ego and consciousness - opening the way for poetic interpretations from the audience. (characters as puppets)

They were philosophic, poetic, elitist, with many obscure esoteric symbols.

Maeterlinck had written that from a Symbolist point of view:

“The majority of the great poems of humanity are not stageable... The day we see Hamlet die in the theatre, something of him dies for us. He is dethroned by the spectre of an actor, and we shall never be able to keep the usurper out of our dreams. .. Every masterpiece is a symbol and a symbol will not tolerate the active presence of man...”

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

The puppet demonstates that there is no need of outer truth of external appearance in order to convince the spectator of the inner, spiritual truth.

From this, he gradually developed his notion of the "static drama."

•It is the artist's responsibility to create something that does not express human emotions but rather the external forces that compel people.

•The artist, by whatever means, must be able to trigger the spectator’s power of association and imagination - and therefore, the spectator is placed in an active role, whereas in the theatre of illusion, he is no more than a passive recipient.

THE SYMBOLIST THEATRES: Theatre d’Art

“The characters on stage declaimed in melodious verse and at times sang in chorus. They were seperated from the audience by a gauze and moved slowly and rythmically in soft lighting against a backdrop of gleaming gold decorated with the stylised figures of angels and framed with red drapes. On the forestage there was a narrator in a long blue tunic standing on a lecturn, who described in heightened prose the action, the locations, and the inner thoughts of the characters.”

Paul Gaugiun - The Yellow Christ 1889 Paul Gauguin - Jacob Wrestling with an Angel Maurice Denis - Psyches Parents Abandon Her on the Top of a Mountain

THE SYMBOLIST THEATRES: Theatre de L’Oeuvre

“...by distancing himself as far as possible from reality, by lending every line, however banal, an undertone of mystery. These were phantoms moving about the stage (though as little as possible), whilst the real characters were in the wings. Few gestures, a flat and plaintive tone of voice, weak yet impressive.”

Edouard Vuillard (French, 1868-1940), Les coulisses du Théâtre de l'Oeuvre Edouard Vuillard - Program for Theatre de L’Oeuvre

RECAP

• Once symbolism had let go of its mystical pretentions, it became a kind of de-cluttering of the theatrical canvas.

• An invitation to the poet to use the space created for ‘mystical’ elements for his own poetic symbols.

• This had built into it an invitation to the audience to actively participate in the reading and perceiving of the work of art.

• It is in this shift that Symbolism becomes the initiatory Modernist movement.

EDWARD GORDON CRAIG

James Pryde - The Red Bed

Ellen Terry - by Gordon Craig

Gordon Craig as Hamlet - by William NicholsonJames Pryde - The Unknown Corner

EDWARD GORDON CRAIG

“He created an ideal country where everything was possible, even speaking in verse, or speaking to music, or the expression of the whole of life in a dance, and I would like to see Stratford-upon-Avon decorate its Shakespeare with like scenery.”

EDWARD GORDON CRAIG

“When Craig talks about lines, designs, compositions, and even lighting, I feel that this is Craig, but when the question concerns directing, then I don’t trust him: be he absolutely right, he is too uninterested in acting.”