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The Scene of Writing: The Representation of Poetic Identity in Cixous's Recent Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Julia Dobson
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Extract

Much critical engagement with the work of Hélène Cixous has tended to foreground her early writings and the discourses of écriture féminine, whilst overlooking the importance of theatre to the development of her aesthetics. This continued focus has contributed to a perception of her work as divided into distinct, chronologically or generically defined sets and has consequently hampered the exploration of common threads and evolving representations of issues central to her work. This study aims to identify a consistent concern behind Cixous's strategic use of the theatrical form: the desire to construct and project representations of poetic identity, a theme which I will argue has become increasingly explicit in her work in the theatre, and which is essential to a reading of Cixous's writings as a coherent body of work. After a brief contextualization of the representation of the poet figure in her early theatre, I will focus on her most recent plays: Voile noire voile blanche (Black sail white sail, 1988), La Ville par jure ou le réveil des Erinyes (The Perjured City or the Awakening of the Erinyes) and L'Histoire (qu'on ne connaîtra jamais) (The Story (which we will never know)), both published in 1994. This play constitutes an explicit staging of the scène de l'écriture.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1998 , pp. 255 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1998

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References

Notes

1. A clear exception to this pattern is Shiach's work on Cixous in which she expresses the need for a more holistic approach to Cixous's œuvre. See Shiach, Morag, Hélène Cixous: A Politics of Writing (London and New York: Routledge, 1991).Google Scholar

2. Cixous, Hélène, ‘Voile Noire Voile Blanche: Black sail white sail’Google Scholar trans. Gillivray, Catherine A. F. Macs, New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation 25 (1994), pp. 219–354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The play has not yet been produced in France, but was performed by the Actors' Touring Company in the UK in 1994. Cixous, Hélène, La Ville parjure ou le réveil des Erinyes (Paris: Théâtre du Soleil, 1994).Google Scholar It was directed by Ariane Mnouchkine at the Théâtre du Soleil in 1994. Cixous, Hélène, L'Histoire (qu'on ne connaîtra jamais) (Paris: des femmes, 1994).Google Scholar It was directed by Daniel Mesguich at the Théâtre de l'Odèon in 1994. All translations from these last two plays are mine.

3. The most polemic of the pieces which articulate this view is her essay ‘Aller à la mer’ which appeared in Le Monde, 28 April 1977, p. 19.

4. Cixous, Hélène, Portrait de Dora (Paris: des femmes, 1976).Google Scholar

5. Cixous, Hélène, Le Nom d'Œdipe. Chant du corps interdit (Paris: des femmes, 1978).Google Scholar

6. Simone Benmussa's production of Portrait de Dora divided the stage into different spaces in which dream time and space was represented simultaneously alongside Freud's analysis. Film and choreography were employed to disturb the narrative progression and the frequent simultaneous appearance of characters on stage and on screen undermined the spectator's processes of identification. For further discussion of the productions of these plays see: Benmussa, Simone, Benmussa Directs (London: John Calder Press, 1979)Google Scholar, Pavlides, Merope, ‘Restructuring the traditional: An Examination of Cixous’ ‘Le Nom d'Œdipe” in Within the Dramatic Spectrum, Hartigan, K. V., ed., (New York: University Presses of America, 1986, pp. 151–9Google Scholar, Savona, Jeanette Laillou, ‘In Search of Feminist Theater: Portrait of Dora’ in Feminine Focus: The New Women Playwrights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

7. ‘Writing? … That's not my business.’ Cixous, Hélèene, Portrait de Dora, p. 102.Google Scholar

8. Cixous, Hélène, Le Nom d'Œdipe, p. 76.Google Scholar

9. Cixous, Hélène and Clément, Catherine, La Jeune Née (Paris: Union Générale des Editions, 1975).Google ScholarThe Newly Born Woman, translated by Wing, Betsy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

10. Cixous, Hélène and Clément, Catherine, La Jeune Née, p. 140Google Scholar

11. Ibid., p. 144. In the context of A Portrait of Dora, this phrase also evokes the possible interpretation of the figure of the hysteric as inherently dramatic through their projecting and mimicking of others' desires.

12. See Cixous, Hélène, ‘De la scène de l'Inconscient à la scène de l'Histoire’, in van Rossum-Guyon, Françoise and Diaz-Diocaretz, Miriam, Hélène Cixous, chemins d'une écriture (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 1990), pp. 15–34.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., p. 29.

14. ‘not the hero of the scene, but the scene itself, the place, the opportunity of the other’, ibid., p. 25. The French word ‘scène’ means both scene and stage. My translation

15. These essays accompany La prise de l'école de Madhubaï (Paris: des femmes, 1986), L'Histoire terrible mais inachevée de Norodom Sihanouk, roi du Cambodge (Paris: Théâtre du Soleil, 1985) and L'Indiade ou l'Inde de leurs rêves (Paris: Théâtre du Soleil, 1987).

16. These events are the struggle for control of Cambodia which involved both internal political groups and the intervention of other countries with economic and military interests in the area, and the partition of India

17. Her seminar programme is an interesting example of this as Cixous has a canon of adopted writers such as Clarice Lispector, Marina Tsvetaeva, Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernard whose texts are regularly studied. The insertion of her own texts amongst these encourages an association of her with these writers, many of whom exhibit Cixousian tropes of poetic identity, for example experience of exile, a different language associated with the mother. The construction of Cixous' own poetic persona has gradually become more explicitly linked with her writing on poetic identity as is shown in her recent collaborative text with Calle-Gruber, Mireille, Hélène Cixous, photos de racines (Paris: des femmes, 1994).Google Scholar

18. For a more detailed discussion of these aspects see Dobson, Julia, ‘The Theatre of the Self: The Representation of Poetic Identity in the Theatre of Hélène Cixous and Marina Tsvetaeva’. Unpublished D. Phil. Thesis, University of Nottingham, 1996.Google Scholar

19. ‘I will write the history/story of my country. Episode one: Paradise Lost.’ L'Histoire terrible mais inachevée …, p. 384.

20. See Birkett, Jennifer, ‘The Limits of Language: the Theatre of Hélène Cixous’, in Voices in the Air: French Dramatists and the Resources of Language Dunkley, and Kirton, , eds., (Glasgow: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1992), pp. 171–86Google Scholar, and Picard, Anne-Marie, ‘L'Indiade: Ariane's and Hélène's Conjugate Dreams’, Modern Drama, 32 (1988), pp. 24–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Indeed the very different concepts of History held by Mnouchkine and Cixous can be seen to hamper the success of these two plays on many different levels. I am grateful to the audience for this paper at the Women Give Voice to Women conference held in London in February 1997.

22. The spaces and identities of India and Cambodia are not asserted in their difference but rather framed and appropriated as an extension of ourselves as subjects and audience of an orientalist spectacle. I discuss this aspect of the plays in more detail in ‘The Staging of the Self: The Theatre and Hélène Cixous’, New Readings, 2 (1996), pp. 21–36.

23. The political implications of such tropes are articulated clearly in Spivak, Gayatri, ‘Problems of Multiculturalism’, in Broe, Mary and Ingram, Angela, eds., Women's Writing in Exile (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), pp. 412–20, p. 420.Google Scholar

24. See Heidegger, Martin, ‘What are poets for?’ in Poetry, Language, Thought trans. Hofstadter, Albert (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), pp. 91–142.Google Scholar Cixous presents herself in this role of revealer of truths in Jours de 1'an (Paris: des femmes, 1991), pp. 255–7.

25. Akhmatova and Nadezhda Mandel'shtam argue over which of them was the closest the greatest inspiration to the poet.

26. There is not scope in this paper for detailed discussion of the function of female characters in Cixous' recent theatre, yet they often perform the role of victims or catalysts, paradigms which she had strongly criticized in ‘Aller à la mer’.

27. The Erinyes (also known as the Eumenides) were subject only to their own laws which even Zeus had to obey. Their main function was to avenge crimes committed against the family.

28. The clear reference to the recent scandal in France over the sale of infected blood and the consequent HIV infection of many haemophiliacs is thus elevated, through the juxtaposition with the Erinyes and Aeschylus, to the status of classical tragedy.

29. ‘All poets have tarried on the banks on the red river… powerless to hold back the life which is slipping away… Listen to them moan their hymn of outrage, Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Balzac, Hugo, horribly fascinated by the carnage caused by humankind and the city.’ p. 5.

30. Cixous, Hélène, L'Histoire (qu'on ne connaîtra jamais) (Paris: Théâtre du Soleil, 1994).Google Scholar Cixous plays upon the double meaning of histoire as both history and narrative throughout the play.

31. ‘What the poet wants is to rediscover the truth. But in looking for it he finds himself caught up in the web which he was watching being spun.’ Hélène Cixous, programme notes to L'Histoire (qu'on ne connaîtra jamais), 1994.

32. Mesguich's production employed piles of enormous books to represent the ambition yet ultimate futility of his aims.

33. The use of a rabbi figure clearly evokes the trope of exile and cultural other. His Jewishness also links him to Cixous' own poetic persona.

34. ‘The past which was his object of desire yields to the present.’ Hélène Cixous, programme notes to L'Histoire (qu'on ne connaîtra jamais) 1994.

35. ‘The ability to exist in the absolute present is the charm and the necessity of the theatre. Writing the absolute present in the poetic text is an acrobatic feat.’ Françoise van Rossum-Guyon, ‘A propos de 'Marine’: Entretien avec Hélène Cixous’, in Hélène Cixous, chemins d'une écriture, pp. 213–234, p. 227.

36. ‘And tell me, you who are living later, do you know who Mandelstam really was? Akhmatova? And Pasternak? Gumilev? Tabidtse? Tsvetaeva? Do you know who was loyal, who was betrayed, who was a traitor… Will this be visible later in our poems? Has the History of truth begun?’ Hélène Cixous, ‘Voile noire voile blanche: Black sail white sail’, translated by MacGillivray, Catherine A. F., New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation, 25 (1994), pp. 219'354. p. 350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. ‘The Mother. Make a temple with silence. A courtroom with silence. A theatre with silence … Our play is finished. But may yours now start. In your turn persist until justice is justly done. As a souvenir, I leave you my story with its taste of tears and milk.’ La Ville parjure, p. 219.

38. ‘Snorri. NO one will ever tell our story.’ L'Histoire (qu'on ne connaîtra jamais), p. 184.