The Misanthrope

Having kissed and made up, The Philosopher and I went to see the new production of Martin Crimp's The Misanthrope on Monday eve. I should be up front and say that Crimp's popularity is a complete mystery to me. His much lauded The City (on earlier this year at the Royal Court) was possibly the worst play I've ever seen. I mean walk out bad and I NEVER walk out of the theatre. I tried to forget that Moli�re's play had been translated by Crimp and just sit back and enjoy the show. But, yep, you guessed it: I just couldn't do it.

It should also be said, in case you're as yet unaware, that this production marks the stage debut of none other than Keira Knightley and also stars Damian Lewis. I gather Damian Lewis is rather famous for being someone or other in Band of Brothers, but I've only ever seen him reading Auden at the Josephine Hart poetry event, of which I am a regular attendee. Thankfully, for me at least, I'm rather a fan of Keira Knightley so at least I didn't start off on the wrong foot with her at least.



So why didn't I like the play. There were solid performances from everyone, a nice tightly knit ensemble cast, and considering we saw the show on it's opening night, that's no small feat. And while the translation wasn't an abomination, it wasn't great either. First of all, French 17th-century verse poetry does not translate very well into English so why bother, especially when a director is going to let the actors run all over the rhyming couplets anyway. Secondly, there's too much wink-wink-nod-nod meta-theatricality stuffed into the play for one to get a sense of anything other than how damn clever Mr Crimp appears to think he is. Plus he takes a swipe at Stoppard, which in my mind, is completely unsupportable especially as Stoppard is twice the playwright Crimp will EVER be. Ugh. Annoying. So maybe the blame here really lies with Moli�re. The Misanthrope just isn't that great of a play - or maybe it was in the 17th century when it was truly provocative and satirical - but it isn't now. Sure it has the minor moral point to make that the middle ground is the ideal place to inhabit when it comes to frankness versus insincerity but Alceste, the pseudo-hero, is tedious and Jennifer (i.e. love interest Celimene) is vain and ridiculous.



Like the whole beauty in art thing which seems to have kicked off anew recently, the application of the concept of truth in real life is far more complicated than Alceste and Jennifer and Crimp and Moli�re would have us believe. I can't think of anyone who practices a kind of absolute truth in their dealings in everyday life and most of us know that a white lie here or there can go a long way to lubricate social situations. In revivals of older theatrical productions, the first question everyone asks is whether the themes still strike a chord: I don't think in this case they do. There are plenty of other plays which expose the hypocrisy of human behaviour far more powerfully and beautifully than Moli�re's ridiculous play (there, I said it) and Crimp's reliance on self-indulgent meta-theatrical references is not enough to make this play anything other than a fairly enjoyable way to pass a few hours.

To all the Frenchmen that I've loved before

Like all other PhD's, mine is obscure. It has something to do with a poet, long dead, who wrote in a dead language, about the glory days of the Roman republic, dead before he even started writing. You get the point.

So my brilliant plan was to look at the nachleben of this poet and his poem (Lucan and The Pharsalia) in seventeenth and eighteenth century France. The 18th century translation is in prose and is really quite lovely - very civilised. The 17th century translation is a pain in the ass, to put it mildly. Even the translator's contemporaries thought he was smoking crack - one calls his verse translation "obscure gobledygook".

So I put it to you, native French speakers and Francophiles, what in the world is he on about in the following passage? I've tried to translate it literally - it makes no sense. I've tried to translate it with a little poetic license - it still makes no sense. And just to make things difficult, I can't even consult the Latin for a hint because our lovable French translator has gone off on a poetic tangent and there ain't nothing in the Latin which roughly corresponds. Typical...

And before you tell me my French is all wrong and strange and completely bizzare, I say to you that's the 17th century!

Sur tous ceux que le Ciel abandonne aux Tyrans, / Sa disgrace est cuisante, et sa travaux sont grands: / Rome que tant de Rois voyoiens comme leur Reinne. / Ne peut qu�avec horreur se former a la chairne, / La honte de ses fers en augmente le poids / et cette Reine enfin ne peut souffrir les Rois. / A qui Dieux tout-puissants, qui gouvernex le terre.