"The Crime Scene", in Miscellany offered to Alain van Crugten, Lausanne, L'Age d'Homme, 2001, pp. 89-103.
I met Alain van Crugten in Poland, at a time when, without his ease in speaking Polish and his immediate contact with the population, we would have starved to death and lacked vodka. Besides his linguistic faculties, which made him a full professor at the Free University of Brussels, his passion for theater (he had then translated the complete works of Witkiewicz) meant that we immediately became friends. It was through him that I met V. Dimitijevic, the founder of L'Age d'Homme editions, in Lausanne. The latter was then coming to meet his authors in Paris, Place Saint-Sulpice, where we shook hands to found the journal Mélusine. This is to say that when Claude Frochaux, who had been the publisher's right-hand man, proposed to offer miscellany on the occasion of Alain's retirement, I had only to comply. Having read his novels and his own dramatic works, it seemed to me that he should appreciate this study on the crime scene in surrealist theater.
Back cover "Alain van Crugten learned his craft as a writer by translating his great Flemish, Polish or Czech elders and it is perhaps the best school of writing. [...] Witkiewicz, Claus, Rózewicz or even Capek carried him to the baptismal fonts. The baptized one has grown up and without renouncing anything of his own experience as a translator but also as a professor, Alain van Crugten has reached that literary maturity which allows us to say today that he is perfectly autonomous, recognizable: quite simply a major author of contemporary Belgian and French letters." Claude Frochaux
L'Age d'Homme Editions, with which Alain van Crugten has been collaborating for more than thirty years, wanted to show him their sympathy by offering him this volume of Miscellany to which his friends from the world of university, literature and entertainment have contributed. Miscellany offered to Alain Van Crugten, Paris, L'Age d'Homme ed., 213 p.: ill., color ill. cover; 23 cm.
Work accessible on Google Books
Text appearing in: H. Béhar, Shock Waves, New Essays on the Avant-garde, L'Age d'Homme, 2010, pp. 103-116.
