SARDOU AND HIS WORK
I
Victorien Sardou was born in Paris on September 7, 1831. His father, a native of the vicinity of Cannes on the Mediterranean, came to Paris in 1819 and followed a variety of scholastic pursuits. His mother was a resident of the ancient city of Troyes. Victorien’s father finally engaged in literary work, edited text books and taught in schools. His interesting personality made for him many friends. He never became well-to-do; on the contrary, he became so entangled in indebtedness that he gave up Paris and returned to his olive groves in the south with the hope of being able to satisfy his creditors. He left behind him Victorien, aged twenty-two, who was struggling to displace with studies in surgery and medicine his dreams of becoming a poet and dramatist. But he could not change his gods. A youth who had read before he was twelve years old the works of Molière, who had enthusiastically studied archæology and important periods of the world’s history and who had delved deeply into all literature, especially into the works of master poets and playwrights, was not made of stuff moldable into something other than his true self. Saddened by the death of two sisters and left alone by his father, Sardou continued his medical studies, meanwhile residing in a garret. His existence would have been extremely miserable had he not been able to see an occasional play by Hugo, and to satisfy infrequently his great passion for the opera. In referring to those days of struggle, he said:
“Ah, don’t talk to me of music; that is one of my passions. I remember a long time ago when I went to the opera—not in a box of stalls, but right up in the gallery—to hear ‘Les Huguenots’ or ‘Le Prophèté’—I delighted in Meyerbeer—the seats were four francs apiece. I had probably pawned my best coat to get there; but there I was, and I never think of those costly evenings without remembering how I enjoyed them, and felt a certain sense of gratification that I have never experienced since.”
Sardou’s inspiration to follow literature began with an incident which has often been related. In a mood of wretchedness caused by poverty and the caging of his ambitious soul in a bleak garret, he stood in a doorway near the College of Medicine to escape the rain and his thoughts turned to suicide. Obsessed with this desire, he walked into the storm. A water-carrier, who instantly took his place of shelter, exclaimed:
“Ah, my friend, you do not know when you are well off.”
An instant later a block of granite fell from the building—which was under construction—and killed the water carrier. Sardou accepted his escape from death as an omen that he was destined to live and to become great. Immediately he began those several years of desperately hard work in which he served apprenticeship for his future career.
Of this period of Sardou’s life a writer who knew him well said:
“Only those who have known the sting of bitter want can fully appreciate the agony of the intellectual student’s career. The eager brain, the famished body, the long night-watches and hideous nightmares, the struggle to make both ends meet, to keep body and soul together, the continual battle with poverty, pride, ambition, hope and despair. Sardou’s young life was such a struggle. He possessed a valiant soul, and he did not give way; the more he had to work against, the harder he worked, and every new trial fell like a pointless dart against the steel armor of his resistance. He determined to become some one, and he realized that the bridge which spans greatness and nothingness is knowledge.”
Desperate but enthusiastic, Sardou toiled with his pen upon articles for a great variety of publications, receiving poor pay, which he supplemented with fees received for tutoring. He was a tireless student. When he wrote upon topics pertaining to history or to literature, he spoke with authority. The Middle Ages, the Reformation and the great events of the past which made and unmade nations and their policies appealed to his poetic temperament. He toiled day and night, and amassed an amount of erudition seldom possessed by any but scholars of renown. In the meantime he was working upon his first plays.
“These were the occasions when I could not afford sardines and dry bread,” said Sardou, “and I had to go to bed supperless.”
On April 1, 1854, the manager of the Odéon Théâtre attempted to produce Sardou’s play Le Taverne des Étudients, which the crowd hissed from the stage without witnessing it, and brought disappointment and sorrow to the young author. With the year 1857 came the earliest rewards for Sardou’s long years of labor: marriage and the route to success. Poverty, lonesomeness, the cramped quarters of a gloomy garret and the accompanying misery and hopelessness of an unrealized ambition were not enough: an illness of typhoid fever must bring despair as a climax. On another floor in the house resided Mlle. de Brécourt, an actress, and her mother. When the young woman heard that the quiet, studious young man whom she had often seen was likely to die, her pity was roused and she became his faithful nurse. In addition to saving Sardou’s life, she was the means of introducing him to Madame Déjazet, who established the Théâtre-Déjazet. In 1858 Sardou and Mlle. de Brécourt were married. Sardou’s plays found favor with Déjazet, whose talents proved adaptable for portraying his characters, and success followed success. In 1861 he was decorated with the Legion of Honor. Nine years after she had married Sardou—during which time she had seen her husband attain fame and wealth—Madame Sardou died. Sardou continued to work and his fame became international. Europe’s greatest theaters were producing his plays. In 1872 he was united in marriage with Mlle. Anna Soulié, daughter of the curator of the museum in Versailles. The marriage was extremely happy and the dramatist’s success continued. In 1877 Sardou was elected a member of the French Academy. Though immensely wealthy, Sardou resided simply at his villa in Marley-le-Roi near Versailles. He also had two country homes near Cannes, where his forefathers lived, and a residence in Paris, which he occupied principally for business purposes. Like Scott, Sardou had a great passion for books upon every subject, and his home at Marley, like Abbotsford, contained thousands of volumes. Honors from literary and art societies throughout Europe came to him. In making appointments to posts in which a knowledge of literature and the fine arts were important qualifications, the French government consulted with Sardou, who was considered an authority. The productive years of his life were serene ones. He was very generous, always ready to encourage the aspirant, and had no jealousies. His was a remarkable personality. The late Edmondo de Amicis thus describes him:
“Sardou looked a little like Napoleon, a little like Voltaire and a little like the smiling portrait of a malicious actress which I had seen in a shop window on the previous day. He wore a large black velvet cap, below which fell long waving gray locks. He had a silk hankerchief round his neck and was wrapped in a wide dark-colored jacket, which looked like a demi-dressing gown. My attention was riveted by his strange face, without beard and colorless, with a long nose and pointed chin and irregular and strongly marked features, lighted up by two keenly sparkling gray eyes, full of thought, the glances of which correspond with the rapid motion of the thin and flexible lips, and the acute yet kindly expression of the whole face, sometimes illumined by a bright, slightly mocking smile, like that of a quite young man. He did not look more than 70 years of age, and when he spoke he seemed still younger. He spoke with the fluency of an actor who abuses that power. It was not necessary to question Sardou. He began to converse with a fluency, an ease and a vivacity of accent and gesture which forestalled all my questions and satisfied my curiosity with such an appearance of intimacy and confidence that I was at first quite stunned, uncertain whether I was in the presence of the most expansive and frankest man I had ever met or of the profoundest and cleverest actor that the human mind can imagine.”
In his seventy-eighth year, at the time when he received the news of the success of his last play, L’Affaire des Poisons, Sardou, who had been convalescing from an illness of pulmonary congestion, became suddenly worse and died in Paris on November 8, 1908. His funeral was held on November 11 in the Church of St. François de Sales. The obsequies were national in character. Like all those who had received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, Sardou was given a military burial. Previous to the removal of the body from the house to the church, eulogies were delivered before Sardou’s intimate friends and members of the Academy. Those present were Frenchmen distinguished in art, literature, science and politics. Thousands of persons representing every class of Parisian life—for Sardou’s name was known alike in mansion and tenement—stood with lifted hats as the funeral procession passed on its way to Marley, and thousands followed the hearse to the family burial place. From all parts of the world telegrams of condolence were received by M. Sardou’s family. From Cairo Madame Sarah Bernhardt, whose fame resulted from her interpretations of the characters in Sardou’s plays, cabled: “France loses one of its glories, Paris a friend, all the unhappy a protector, and we artists our beloved master, Victorien Sardou.”
II
Among those who discuss the drama there is a tendency to depreciate Sardou’s work. Such an attitude is probably only natural during a time when homage is so universally directed to such realists and dissectors of modern social life as Ibsen, Pinero, Brieux, Hervieu and Shaw. The principal complaint brought against Sardou is the charge that he made mechanical plays in which all material was subordinated to the plot, that his characters are like marionettes made vocal and that he “manufactured” theatrical pieces to portray the talents of certain histrionic “stars.” If these qualities alone are the basis for condemnation of Sardou’s plays, something more must be offered to convince the public that he is not fit to stand among the modern master dramatists. If they are requirements necessary for a playwright to attain a world-wide reputation, to become a member of the celebrated Academy and of numerous other societies in which high scholarship is demanded for admission, one questions the consistency of the statements of the critics; if plays containing these qualities, presented by actors and actresses of international fame in the world’s principal centers of culture—where a play by Sardou was an important public event—realized for their creator during several decades the goal of every playrwright: success, fame and the accompanying financial reward, then one not only questions the consistency of the critics but also their qualifications for posing as “authorities” on the drama.
It is popular to depreciate Sardou, but much of this depreciation would become admiration were it not for the fact that for those who do not read French only a few of his plays are available in translations. Students of the drama, therefore, are compelled to accept the opinions of others instead of basing their knowledge upon a first-hand acquaintance with Sardou’s work. His high position among the dramatists of France alone would demand an explanation of the reasons why his productions appealed to cultured and cosmopolitan audiences, which included scholars, diplomats, royalty—persons not likely to waste time in flocking to see the work of a mediocrist.
No one in the world ever understood better the technique of playwriting than did Sardou. Both he and Ibsen recognized Scribe’s genius for technique: Sardou acquired Scribe’s craftsmanship, developed it and improved upon it; Ibsen used of it what he could in his clinical excursions into the whys and wherefores of Life—the one reflected the French spirit, the heritage of the epic and romantic past, the social life preceding the fall of the Second Empire and the national life since then; the other, grimly Teutonic in temperament, mined to the roots of human life and ironically upheld the mirror to all classes revealing the secrets of their souls. Into lighted streets, into halls and mansions, into courts and capitols, into palaces and into throne-rooms, Sardou passed studying minutely the movements of his personages; Ibsen, with the attentive scrutiny of a hospital aide seeking the wounded, turned his flash-light—a flash-light with microscopic power—into dark corners, into alleys, into humanity’s every haunt. The great Frenchman and the great Norwegian both studied medicine and gave it up before becoming playwrights. Their selections of working materials were truly characteristic of their national temperaments. Both have had an inestimable influence upon the drama of all nations.
Sardou was structural in his craftsmanship in the sense that he created his plays with the skill of an artisan working with steel and stone, and eliminated everything unnecessary in making his production symmetrical. He was a realist in the sense that he never hesitated to portray what he thought would convey his idea complete to the audience. If a thrill of horror would effectively drive home a point, he used it. In his satirical plays he was merciless in handling the vanities and vagaries of society. While Sardou aspired to become a playwright, he studied Shakespeare and regarded verse as the best medium for presenting lofty themes, but after he studied the stage he changed this view and wrote his principal plays in prose, though the material is often admirably adapted for metrical expression. Sardou’s historical dramas are lofty in theme. They are true to their times, and appeal universally to those interested in life outcropping from mighty changes of conditions in the past. His deep knowledge of history, art and archæology is evident in historical dramas in which costumes, decorations, interior details, furniture and other properties used for the setting compositely reproduce the atmosphere of the period depicted by the action. None knew better than Sardou the life about him. He studied personalities in their intricate relationship in society. He never preached. He never sacrificed plot in order to prove a thesis, thereby escaping the prolixity of which some of the “realists” are often guilty. His plays have morals, but they are skillfully hidden behind his technique, which supplements a natural gift of analysis and an intuitive power for recognizing and selecting subject matter pleasing to cosmopolitan Parisian audiences. His comedies portraying contemporary life were, with a few exceptions, enthusiastically received, and were the stepping stones by which actors and actresses rose to world-wide celebrity. For impressive compositions Verdi and Offenbach found inspiration in Sardou’s creations.
The result of Sardou’s long years of hard work was a prolific production of comedies and dramas. The principal ones and the dates of their production were as follows:
La Taverne des Étudiants, 1854; Les Premières Armes de Figaro, 1859; Les Pattes de Mouche, 1860; Nos Intimes, 1861; La Papillonne, 1862; Les Vieux Garçons, 1865; Patrie!, 1869; Fernande, 1870; Andréa, 1873; La Haine, 1874; Daniel Rochat, 1880; Divorçons, 1880; Theodora, 1884; La Tosca, 1887; Cléopâtre, 1890; Thermidor, 1891; Madame Sans-Gene, 1893; Gismonda, 1894; Paméla, 1898; Robespierre, 1899; Dante, 1903; La Sorcière, 1903; L’Affaire des Poisons, 1907.
III
Sardou’s marvelous theatrical technique is nowhere better exemplified than in La Sorcière, one of his last tragedies. Bigotry, love, superstition and persecution are the predominating elements of the action, which is laid in Granada immediately after the conquest by the Spaniards. What better material for romance? The principal figures are a Castilian officer and a cultured Moorish woman, who, ignoring an edict of the Inquisition inflicting the death penalty upon alliances between Christians and unconverted Moslems, have the strength to assert their rights as normal human beings—and to suffer the inevitable consequences. It is the depiction of a struggle for individual freedom in which the common truths of the human heart beat hopelessly for expression against the bigotry of the masses and the bigotry of those who not only know better but who also use it as an agency in strengthening their own power. The result is the old struggle between knowledge and ignorance, between love for one’s religion and country and for the satisfaction of the soul’s desire regardless of traditions discarded and of idols knocked down in the accomplishment of that desire. In this process of emerging, of transition, in this sudden seizure by unknown forces upon new combinations of circumstances, in this bidding farewell to the old while hailing with allegiance that of which we are unaware until the clarifying moment arrives, lies the essence of tragedy. “It is possible,” said the late William James, “that Being may be a great sea of consciousness, some of the fag ends of which are human minds.” It is in the interplay, in the constant weaving and raveling of that cosmic pattern which we call life that the dramatist finds the few wisps of experience suitable for interpreting his own understanding of a certain phase of existence. “The representation of a great misfortune alone is essential to tragedy,” declared Schopenhauer. “Characters of ordinary morality, under circumstances such as often occur, are so situated with regard to each other that their position compels them, knowingly and with their eyes open, to do each other the greatest injury without any of them being entirely in the wrong.” Under this definition, La Socrière qualifies exactly as a tragedy.
In creating his plays Sardou did not attempt to conform to any particular definition. He was independent in choice of materials and in method of handling: the purpose justified the treatment. In La Sorcière he showed his hatred of tyranny, and he puts into the mouth of Zoraya, the Moorish woman, in that powerful seventh scene of Act IV, one of the bitterest denunciations of the Inquisition ever made through the drama. Sardou studied historic events with the eyes of a scientist. He was interested in hypnotism and in spiritualism. While studying the Middle Ages he concluded that the so-called sorcery of that time was nothing else but hypnotism, long known to the Orientals and introduced by them among the Moors. It was only natural that an age, so reeking with superstition that it persecuted the man who declared that the earth revolves around the sun, should brand as an agent of the devil any one familiar with hypnotic power. Through a feminine character in whom were combined the best qualities of Mohammedanism and the gift of healing, Sardou was able to throw the strongest light upon superstition in the Middle Ages.
The plot of La Sorcière is the work of a master craftsman. In motivation and in development of situation the play is so well rounded that no part can be removed without spoiling the whole. The action opens with a humorous scene in which a petty officer vested with authority is bullying a crowd of peasants, among whom is supposed to be the culprit who stole the corpse of an executed criminal publicly exposed—the body being that of an unconverted Moor who had loved a Christian girl. In this scene Sardou begins to draw his background of superstition by means of the words of the ignorant natives, who jump at a suggestion of one of their number, and denounce as the thief Zoraya, the “Sorceress.” In a scene poetic with romance and beauty Don Enrique and Zoraya, whom he wishes to arrest, drift into the same relation which resulted in the death of the young Moor, whose body had been stolen. This act is the great corner-stone of the drama. Sardou’s skillful motivation prepares the reader for developments in the coming four acts, but this craftsmanship is so carefully hidden that the relations of incidents are so natural that they come in the form of surprises. The sequence of the events is perfect. The transition from the first to the second act, in which develop Don Enrique’s dangerous secret relationship with Zoraya and his inexplicable reason for discontinuing his visits to her, is perfectly natural, and the last scene of the act, consisting of only a few phrases of explanation, suddenly reveals such an astonishing complication that the effect is nothing short of tremendous. With a climax so effective the entire foundation of the action is laid. We have learned that the Christian girl whom Zoraya has begun to cure with hypnotic power is to become the bride of Don Enrique, a fact which she did not know before the girl was taken away happy with the thought that she should now be more acceptable to her lover.
In the third act Don Enrique’s character is tested in a struggle which he loses with overpowering circumstances. Gossips open the action with a frivolous discussion of the marriage of Don Enrique and the governor’s daughter. They satisfactorily explain that the parents of the couple years before had arranged the marriage. They also gossip about sorcerers and sorceresses. From suggestions we learn that Zoraya is in danger, and that her relations with Enrique are known. Close by the nuptial chamber begins the clash of fateful circumstances, which decide within a short time the destinies of Don Enrique and Zoraya. Near the conclusion of this act we have the purest essence of tragedy, if we accept Aristotle’s statement that tragedy is an imitation of actions which are terrible and piteous. Enrique, after nobly refusing to renounce his country and his religion and to flee with Zoraya to Morocco, is forced to become with her a fugitive after he unintentionally kills an agent of the Inquisition who suddenly detects them and attempts to arrest Zoraya. Flight and pursuit of Don Enrique and Zoraya close the act. This scene is one of gripping intensity.
The merciless execution of power, the intolerance and tyranny of the Holy Inquisition are portrayed in an exemplification of a session of that body in the fourth act. Again the action to be developed is disclosed by the conversation of monks waiting for the council to convene. We learn that Zoraya and Don Enrique have been captured. We know the penalty likely to be pronounced upon them, but we remember that it is Zoraya alone who has the power of restoring to consciousness the daughter of the governor and bride of Enrique, who is deeply sleeping on her nuptial night. The unrelenting cruelty used by the Inquisition in making the captive hag and the unfortunate young girl testify against Zoraya, from whom they wring a confession to sorcery in order to free Don Enrique, rouses pity and indignation, which increase to highest pitch when her lover, who stands at the side unobserved by her until she has told all, is deceived into believing that she is a sorceress and that he has been victimized. But this has not been done without bringing upon the members of the Inquisition Zoraya’s storm of righteous denunciation. There is anguish unutterable when Don Enrique, who does not know that Zoraya has made the greatest sacrifice that a human being can make, accuses her of being false. To this injustice is added the climax of the act which closes with this awful sentence: “We shall burn her after vespers.”
The final act is short and intense. Zoraya has been sentenced to death, but we know that she still holds the possible price of her freedom. The final setting of the play is magnificent: it is characteristic of Sardou. Here is a street scene in front of a great cathedral near which is a pyre ready for burning Zoraya. Into this act are packed all of the color, the pomp and the pageantry of the church and chivalry of the heroic age in Spain. There is a wonderful procession, a stirring mob scene, intensified with the solemn sounds of religious chanting, the roll of organ music and the resonant boom of tower bells. Don Enrique learns of Zoraya’s sacrifice. As we expected, she is given her liberty on condition that she restore to consciousness the governor’s daughter, a performance that causes the mob, already incensed by fanatical monks, to demand her death immediately after receiving the liberty which she deserves. Don Enrique nobly chooses death with her.
The conclusion of the action shows Sardou’s wonderful technique at its best. The sequence of events is natural and the transition from situation to situation is motivated so realistically that the threads of the structure cannot be detected. Wide passages cross and recross until they become intricately involved in mazes which ultimately lead to the foot of an unscalable blind-arcade. Then suddenly there come from an unexpected place a glimmer of light, a swift opening of doors, and all is seen at a flash. This is not ordinary stagecraft—it is the necromancy of stagecraft!
* * * * * * *
The translator has endeavored to follow as closely as possible La Sorcière as Sardou wrote it, remembering that Browning said in the introduction to his translation of the Agememnon of Æschylus: “I should require him [the translator] to be literal at every cost save that of absolute violence of our language.”
Charles A. Weissert.