La Sainte Courtisane , livre ebook

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. 'As to my personal attitude towards criticism, I confess in brief the following:- "If my works are good and of any importance whatever for the further development of art, they will maintain their place in spite of all adverse criticism and in spite of all hateful suspicions attached to my artistic intentions. If my works are of no account, the most gratifying success of the moment and the most enthusiastic approval of as augurs cannot make them endure. The waste-paper press can devour them as it has devoured many others, and I will not shed a tear . . . and the world will move on just the same. "'- RICHARD STRAUSS.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819931072
Langue	English

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PREFACE BY ROBERT ROSS
'As to my personal attitude towards criticism, Iconfess in brief the following:- “If my works are good and of anyimportance whatever for the further development of art, they willmaintain their place in spite of all adverse criticism and in spiteof all hateful suspicions attached to my artistic intentions. If myworks are of no account, the most gratifying success of the momentand the most enthusiastic approval of as augurs cannot make themendure. The waste-paper press can devour them as it has devouredmany others, and I will not shed a tear . . . and the world willmove on just the same. ”'— RICHARD STRAUSS.
The contents of this volume require some explanationof an historical nature. It is scarcely realised by the presentgeneration that Wilde's works on their first appearance, with theexception of De Profundis, were met with almost generalcondemnation and ridicule. The plays on their first production weregrudgingly praised because their obvious success could not beignored; but on their subsequent publication in book form they wereviolently assailed. That nearly all of them have held the stage isstill a source of irritation among certain journalists. Salomehowever enjoys a singular career. As every one knows, it wasprohibited by the Censor when in rehearsal by Madame Bernhardt atthe Palace Theatre in 1892. On its publication in 1893 it wasgreeted with greater abuse than any other of Wilde's works, and wasconsigned to the usual irrevocable oblivion. The accuracy of theFrench was freely canvassed, and of course it is obvious that theFrench is not that of a Frenchman. The play was passed for press,however, by no less a writer than Marcel Schwob whose letter to theParis publisher, returning the proofs and mentioning two or threeslight alterations, is still in my possession. Marcel Schwob toldme some years afterwards that he thought it would have spoiled thespontaneity and character of Wilde's style if he had tried toharmonise it with the diction demanded by the French Academy. Itwas never composed with any idea of presentation. Madame Bernhardthappened to say she wished Wilde would write a play for her; hereplied in jest that he had done so. She insisted on seeing themanuscript, and decided on its immediate production, ignorant orforgetful of the English law which prohibits the introduction ofScriptural characters on the stage. With his keen sense of thetheatre Wilde would never have contrived the long speech of Salomeat the end in a drama intended for the stage, even in the days oflong speeches. His threat to change his nationality shortly afterthe Censor's interference called forth a most delightful and good-natured caricature of him by Mr. Bernard Partridge in Punch.
Wilde was still in prison in 1896 when Salome wasproduced by Lugne Poe at the Theatre de L'OEuvre in Paris, butexcept for an account in the Daily Telegraph the incident washardly mentioned in England. I gather that the performance was onlya qualified success, though Lugne Poe's triumph as Herod wasgenerally acknowledged. In 1901, within a year of the author'sdeath, it was produced in Berlin; from that moment it has held theEuropean stage. It has run for a longer consecutive period inGermany than any play by any Englishman, not excepting Shakespeare.Its popularity has extended to all countries where it is notprohibited. It is performed throughout Europe, Asia and America. Itis played even in Yiddish. This is remarkable in view of the manydramas by French and German writers who treat of the same theme. Tonone of them, however, is Wilde indebted. Flaubert, Maeterlinck(some would add Ollendorff) and Scripture, are the obvious sourceson which he has freely drawn for what I do not hesitate to call themost powerful and perfect of all his dramas. But on such a point atrustee and executor may be prejudiced because it is the mostvaluable asset in Wilde's literary estate. Aubrey Beardsley'sillustrations are too well known to need more than a passingreference. In the world of art criticism they excited almost asmuch attention as Wilde's drama has excited in the world ofintellect.
During May 1905 the play was produced in England forthe first time at a private performance by the New Stage Club. Noone present will have forgotten the extraordinary tension of theaudience on that occasion, those who disliked the play and itsauthor being hypnotised by the extraordinary power of Mr. RobertFarquharson's Herod, one of the finest pieces of acting ever seenin this country. My friends the dramatic critics (and many of themare personal friends) fell on Salome with all the vigour of theirpredecessors twelve years before. Unaware of what was taking placein Germany, they spoke of the play as having been 'dragged fromobscurity. ' The Official Receiver in Bankruptcy and myself were,however, better informed. And much pleasure has been derived fromreading those criticisms, all carefully preserved along with thelist of receipts which were simultaneously pouring in from theGerman performances. To do the critics justice they never withdrewany of their printed opinions, which were all trotted out againwhen the play was produced privately for the second time in Englandby the Literary Theatre Society in 1906. In the Speaker of July14th, 1906, however, some of the iterated misrepresentations offact were corrected. No attempt was made to controvert the opinionof an ignorant critic: his veracity only was impugned. The powersof vaticination possessed by such judges of drama can be fairlytested in the career of Salome on the European stage, apart fromthe opera. In an introduction to the English translation publishedby Mr. John Lane it is pointed out that Wilde's confusion of HerodAntipas (Matt. xiv. 1) with Herod the Great (Matt. ii. 1) and HerodAgrippa I. (Acts xii. 23) is intentional, and follows a mediaevalconvention. There is no attempt at historical accuracy orarchaeological exactness. Those who saw the marvellous decor of Mr.Charles Ricketts at the second English production can form acomplete idea of what Wilde intended in that respect; although thestage management was clumsy and amateurish. The great opera ofRichard Strauss does not fall within my province; but the fag endsof its popularity on the Continent have been imported here oddlyenough through the agency of the Palace Theatre, where Salome wasoriginally to have been performed. Of a young lady's dancing, or ofthat of her rivals, I am not qualified to speak. I note merely thatthe critics who objected to the horror of one incident in the dramalost all self-control on seeing that incident repeated in dumb showand accompanied by fescennine corybantics. Except in 'name andborrowed notoriety' the music-hall sensation has no relationwhatever to the drama which so profoundly moved the whole of Europeand the greatest living musician. The adjectives of contumely areeasily transmuted into epithets of adulation, when a prominentecclesiastic succumbs, like King Herod, to the fascination of adancer.
It is not usually known in England that a youngFrench naval officer, unaware that Dr. Strauss was composing anopera on the theme of Salome, wrote another music drama toaccompany Wilde's text. The exclusive musical rights having beenalready secured by Dr. Strauss, Lieutenant Marriotte's work cannotbe performed regularly. One presentation, however, was permitted atLyons, the composer's native town, where I am told it made anextraordinary impression. In order to give English readers somefaint idea of the world-wide effect of Wilde's drama, my friend Mr.Walter Ledger has prepared a short bibliography of certain Englishand Continental translations.
At the time of Wilde's trial the nearly completedMS. of La Sainte Courtisane was entrusted to Mrs. Leverson, thewell-known novelist, who in 1897 went to Paris on purpose torestore it to the author. Wilde immediately left the only copy in acab. A few days later he laughingly informed me of the loss, andadded that a cab was a very proper place for it. I have explainedelsewhere that he looked on his works with disdain in his lastyears, though he was always full of schemes for writing others. Allmy attempts to recover the lost work failed. The passages herereprinted are from some odd leaves of a first draft.