Introduction

Undertaking this final intervention of the study day on Tzara and centering it on La Fuite, I simply wanted to respond to Aragon's injunction in "L'aventure terrestre de Tzara" (LF n° 1010): the necessity of rescuing his theatre from oblivion.

La Fuite was written essentially in the South of France in 1940 and published only in 1947 by Gallimard (with a pre-original of Act IV in 1946 in Europe) 1. This "dramatic poem in 4 acts," according to Tzara himself, was performed only twice: first on January 21, 1946 at the Vieux-Colombier in a reading-performance with staging by Marcel Lupovici and music by Max Deutsch, later broadcast, and a second time in 1964 at the Théâtre Gramont in Paris in a staging by Jacques Gaulme and Claude-Pierre Quémy, directors of the Compagnie de L'Anacelle. Yet this play, which constitutes the very roots of the theatre of the absurd, is characterized by the avant-garde boldness of a mixing of genres at the very heart of its writing.

La Fuite is indeed – as was also Mouchoir de nuages in 1922 – both poetry and theatre, and Tzara himself, presenting his text before the performance in Les Lettres françaises n° 91 of January 18, 1946, adds the comparison with a symphony 2. I would willingly add for my part the dialogical functioning of the novel, which pushes me to want to study this "theatre/novel" of Tzara, borrowing from his old friend Aragon this very concept of "theatre/novel," which will allow us to show the proximity of these two writings and to place once again my approach to Tzara's theatrical work under Aragon's patronage 3, as I had done a first time at Henri Béhar's request for the "Breton/Tzara: chassé-croisé" colloquium (Mélusine n° XVVI, 1997). A loop is thus closed...

I. From the real to the imaginary: the poem

1. Continuity with the previous major collections

La Fuite first presents itself as an extraordinary poetic text in immediate continuity with Grains et Issues, Où boivent les loups or Midis gagnés when Tzara pursues his poetic advance after the exhaustion of the Dada adventure.

All the sung poems that punctuate this play of an unusual genre thus belong to poetic writing. For example, the poem sung by the daughter in Scene IV of Act I on the theme of memory and forgetting and the practice of inversion so characteristic of Dada Tzara: thus where the manuscript of this poem gives "j'ai bu à la fontaine de la clémence" the final version makes the sister, already shaken by the son's imminent departure, hold a clearly more pessimistic discourse ("j'ai fui les yeux de la clémence").

Just as melancholic is the song intoned in Act III by the First Narrator to the Mother and Daughter, now alone in the room deserted by the Son: "Le vent s'est brisé s'est brisé / contre la porte d'amande". This short poem was published as a pre-original in Centres (Literary notebooks directed by Georges-Emmanuel Clancier, René Margerit and René Rougerie, Limoges, n° 3, February 28, 1946) under the title "Berceuse". Similarly, in Act IV in the station where no train passes anymore as a metaphor for war, a young girl then a soldier sing the song of lovers separated by the "misanthrope time" of the Occupation.

2. The weight of the real: the circumstances of war

This poetry is indeed a poetry of circumstance, as Philippe Soupault said in his presentation ("Une pièce de circonstance") 4. Written in the South of France 5, in Sanary, this play carries echoes of it in the text: for example, the mistral of the manuscript which will be erased from the final version ("La guerre éclate de partout. Les pays s'entremêlent comme sous l'action désespérée du vent [mistral], p. 466), or again in Act IV, which is that of war, the evocation of the beach under the pines: the First narrator gives us to imagine the departed Son ("Je le vois parcourir la longue langue de plage abandonnée", "Le voilà maintenant à l'ombre de tes pins […] et taciturne dans le monde merveilleux du vent", p. 499.) The mistral ("Le monde merveilleux du vent") and the cicadas constitute the wonder of the sensitive experience of the South discovered however in the context of the painful circumstances of war: "Puis ce fut la maison le rocher caressé la lointaine étendue de cigales / donnant un corps sensible à l'espace à la lumière" (p. 499) and "quelqu'un l'a pris par la main et l'a conduit vers cette douce demeure sur la plage devant les pins" (p. 508).

Like "le temps misanthrope" of Aragon to designate the Occupation in Les Yeux d'Elsa, the concrete time of war gives rise in this play to the deployment of a whole poetic and metaphorical writing. For example, there is talk of "le plomb du temps" (p. 498) or again of a "ligoté" time (p. 499) and even of a bloody time (the house on the beach "d'où le temps s'était mis à saigner", p. 508). Not to mention the enigmatic metaphor of "l'homme à la moustache" (p. 508).

But it is especially the diegesis of Act IV which is entirely metaphorical: we see the Vichy police in a station itself metaphorical hunting refugees. A soldier thus comments on the brutalities committed by the gendarmes: "Et vous pensez que ça c'est l'ordre ? Ils ne sont forts que parce que nous sommes lâches. Partons. Je vous montrerai le chemin." (p. 506). For if the flight of the poet son also resonates as a metaphor of the exodus, the soldier's surge also metaphorizes the poet's engagement in the struggle: "Il est celui qui vient et qui repart / et qui serre un cœur de pierre sous la mousse / il est parti pour mettre l'homme en marche / celui qui vient et qui repart au cœur de gros pavés de routes" (p. 508). Thus the flight and the anticipated return of the Son become the metaphor of the poet's own itinerary, having broken ties with his origins and with humanity to find it again in the time "qui saigne" with renewed hope. This is what the First Narrator affirms to the sister in Act III in a sort of poetic summary of the poet's itinerary:

Puis c'est l'hiver. Ce long hiver dans lequel on s'engouffre ne sachant plus si jamais on en sortira. […] Douloureux, tout ce qui de ce monde est étranger à sa torture, le blesse et l'écorche vivant. Il ne hurle pas encore, mais dans sa tête la ville entière hurle et se débat. […] Malgré sa bonne volonté, il ne peut rien contre le fer rougi qui le transperce et brûle en lui. Mais la souffrance le grandit, brûle tout en lui, le purifie. Il se croit prêt à disparaître, mais une voix cachée en lui lui dit, bien faiblement, bien clairement, que ce n'est pas possible ainsi, qu'il y a toujours, ne serait-ce qu'à travers la poussière d'un espoir, un lendemain, qu'après l'hiver il y a le printemps et que la mort ne peut venir que lorsque chaque part d'espoir est morte en soi et qu'il n'en est pas encore là. (p. 486-487).

3. The power of poetic imagination

In his presentation of La Fuite often reproduced and finally taken up in Brisées (Mercure de France, 1966), Michel Leiris insists much on the power of poetry, also noted by Pol Gaillard in his article in Les Lettres françaises of February 2, 1946: "In this poem that he wrote on the theme of La Fuite and of which the terrifying experience of the exodus – occurring as a sign of the times – was the crystallizing principle, we find, playing on the human plane, this sense of vital pulsations that makes the foundation of all Tzara's poetry." 6

This power of poetic imagination especially transpires in the metaphorical writing we just spoke of with the metaphors of time and of which we will give a final example: the "Je suis le temps" of the Narrator (p. 464)... For it is also in the phenomenon of the superposition of times, directly linked to the experience of memory, that this power of poetry expresses itself most strongly, in the same way that later it will express itself in De mémoire d'homme 1950. Thus in Act III the poetic discourse of the Narrator superposes for the reunited family all the stages of the life of the son who has fled: "Il se voit partir enfant pleurant le monde perdu / Il se voit dessinant les plans minutieux du souvenir / Vacances de tant d'attente le jour lui semble irréel / qu'il soit venu du fond du monde revenu / […] il s'étonne que les maisons soient si petites qu'il avait quittées bien hautes / il lui semble qu'il pourrait sauter par-dessus elles lui dit sa joie et la mémoire le grandit / aux yeux de tous les gens qui le regardent" (p. 501-502)

Finally, it is especially in the lyrical meditation on life and the feeling of love that this power of poetry expresses itself best, as we will see.

II. From the general to the autobiographical: the novel (the stories told)

I was already speaking about Mouchoir de nuages in my first article on Tzara already mentioned of the novelistic manner in which Tzara "delivers himself from moribund Dada" (H. Béhar). Perhaps I could say the same thing for this transitional work, this work of limits that is La Fuite.

1. The story of a family (and/or of a son)

For it is indeed the novel of a son who has fled and returned that this play tells us, as the presentation of Leiris already mentioned gives a summary:

The main theme is the tearing apart, this constant divorce, this separation that responds to the very movement of life. Flight of the child who to live his life must tear himself away from his parents. Divorce of lovers who cannot remain with each other without alienating their freedom and who must deny their love if they do not want to deny themselves. Death of a generation from which gradually detaches, to rise in turn, a new generation. Flight of each living being, who separates from others, suffers himself and makes suffer, but cannot do otherwise because to realize himself he needs a certain solitude. Flight of men. Flight of seasons. Flight of time. Implacable course of things, which pursues its wheel movement. Historical flight finally: exodus, rout, dispersion of all and all through the anonymity of roads and in the hubbub of stations where civilians and military rub shoulders. Bankruptcy, collapse, confusion, because this total disarray is necessary for another society to be reborn implying other relations between men, between women, between women and men. 7

I have quoted Michel Leiris a bit at length, because he gives there a marvelous definition of Tzara's play whose starting point is indeed the universal given of the flight of sons as he explains in the long interview granted to Charles Dubreuil in Les Lettres françaises of January 21, 1946:

La Fuite precisely strives to bring out the dramatic meaning of the departure of sons, of the nostalgic will of parents to retain them. But it is in this instinct of flight of sons, in this will of parents that the conflict is born. […] It overflows the individual, for this process of flights and tearings apart, of births and deaths, engages all human lives, and not only individuals but also collectivities. It is through these crises that societies or individuals are gradually born to consciousness. […] The essential always happens outside the intellectual mechanism. Only poetry finds access to these domains. It belongs to each one to let himself be carried away by it... 8

This analysis of the family conflict in very Hegelian terms that brings out the intersection point of individual dialectic and historical dialectic is rooted in Tzara's most intimate personal experience.

2. The story of a couple

For this play is also the painful story of a couple where despair and joy meet, as Michel Leiris emphasizes once again, echoing moreover Grains et Issues where Tzara gives a "very Freudian" exposition (Henri Béhar) of "the ambivalence of feelings" 9. Thus in the great scene of Act III between the poet and the beloved woman this amorous dialectic at the heart of life and Tzara's work clearly expresses itself: "tu m'as rendue esclave et double, car je te hais tout en aimant" lucidly analyzes the one who is going to leave the beloved man.

This pain of loving, very close to Aragon's formulations in Le Fou d'Elsa moreover, emphasizes the positive role of suffering in any human relationship, whether that of the woman with her lover (p. 483) or that of the mother with her child (p. 489).

And it is this dark dialectic of love that makes all the beauty of the couple in the poetic epilogue that exalts both anguish and joy: "Je dis qu'il soit pardonné à ceux qui ont refusé le cœur de leur pardon entier / leur souffrance en dépasse le jugement / […] Le monde aussi par son sens renouvelé / les jardins partagés l'air ouvert les routes muettes de la joie" (p. 510).

3. Autobiographical echoes

We see that the diegesis of this play is very deeply rooted in Tzara's history: the autobiographical echoes are numerous with childhood in Romania (Act IV), the sister (Act I), the mother's suffering and hope (Act IV 10) and especially the beloved woman: the tall blonde woman (who leaves and keeps the son). But I don't have time to dwell longer on this demonstration and this listing of autobiographical echoes.

III. The theatre/novel of writing: a theatre against conventions

What makes this play very precious to me is especially that it sets up a theatre against conventions, as Tzara himself emphasizes speaking of a "constantly transposed action" (p. 621) in the Prière d'insérer to introduce the publication of Act IV in Europe, but also Henri Béhar in his notes 11.

1. The cutting and theatrical space: mental scenes

The originality of La Fuite lies first in the cutting and organization of theatrical space which transform the theatre stage into mental scenes. As in Mouchoir de nuages, we witness the alternation of two spaces (the stage space defined by the stage directions – the family home with the table in the middle for the first three acts and the waiting room of a station in Act IV – and the off-stage from which emerge the Narrators who end up integrating into the stage itself). And this alternation which makes the limits of theatre explode allows the superposition of times already mentioned.

Moreover, the set very quickly assumes a symbolic dimension: thus the table of the first three acts (kitchen or dining room, the stage directions do not specify, leaving a margin of freedom to the director) becomes, as in Brecht's play La Noce chez les petits bourgeois, the very emblem of the home. Just as the station hall of Act IV summarizes the anguishing void of the occupied country in a sort of anticipation of the theatre of the absurd. Taking up Tzara's own words, Francis Crémieux in his Europe article (March 1, 1946) analyzes this theatre as "the expression of a stylized realism. There is no absolute realism. The language of theatre, the succession of events, the construction of a play, the framing by acts, the scene, the footlights, are so many conventions accepted by the public and by the author." 12

2. The function of the "Narrators"

As with the "Commentaires" in Mouchoir de nuages, the originality of La Fuite also lies in the function of the "Narrators" 13 thus explained by Tzara in his Prière d'insérer:

The main characters are: the Mother, the Father, the Daughter and the Son. To the latter, who from Act I no longer enters the stage, a Narrator substitutes himself. The latter, speaking in the third person, accounts for the Son's activity and represents him on occasion. Two Female Narrators personify respectively two women: one who is abandoned by the Son, the other, who leaves him giving to the instinct of flight of which the son is possessed its imperious justification. Under the influence of a violent emotion, several times, during passionate dialogues, the Narrator and the Female Narrators transform into the characters they embody and speak as if they were themselves the Son and the respective Women. But once the crisis is resolved, they resume their roles as Narrators. (p. 621.)

It is thus that the role of the Narrators allows the passage from "I" to "he" and transforms theatrical enunciation into properly novelistic enunciation with the distancing that this implies. The Narrator endowed with a sort of double vision writes ": je le vois qui..." and is charged with giving the family remaining in the kitchen to see the son who has fled in the vast world 14.

Then the role of the Narrators also allows the passage from "he" to "I": the Narrator and the Second Female Narrator play the role of the son and the beloved woman under the spectators' eyes then become narrators again on the margins of the stage. And this subtlety of enunciations is clearly emphasized by stage directions added in the final version compared to the manuscript. For example: "resuming his role as narrator, while the lighting, gradually, restores to the stage its first aspect." (p. 470). Or again the two enlightening stage directions added for the Second Female Narrator: "in the grip of a violent tension, transforms into the character she embodies, while the lighting has finished changing, giving a new aspect to the stage and the set. The Daughter silent in the shadow." and for the Narrator: "undergoing the same change, plays the Son's character. The lighting and some summary costume transformations finally give him the aspect of the character he embodies." (p. 481). And the most astonishing example is perhaps the capital inversion of the stage direction concerning the Narrator at the beginning of Act IV: the "est un peu à l'écart" (p. 492) has been substituted for the "est mêlé aux autres" of the manuscript...

All these enunciative devices constitute as many ruptures of theatrical conventions that introduce distancing effects close to the famous V effect of Brecht. We see that this is a subtle game that supposes a special dramaturgy and scenographic artifices (spotlights, blackout, video today, etc. not to mention "quelques sommaires transformations vestimentaires" indicated by the stage direction added by Tzara.)

3. Metatextual function

We will conclude this rapid analysis of Tzara's dramaturgy by insisting on the metatextual function of all these devices that give all its force to the reflexive dimension of this theatre: it is a theatre of double vision under the direct influence of surrealism...

Thus the characters are conscious of being such, and this produces real effects on the spectator (as with the Brechtian V effect once again or as with the theatre within theatre Shakespearean taken up in Mouchoir de nuages). We witness there the production of realism in art, but of a certain realism, close to that of Brecht or Aragon... and which has nothing of an "absolute realism" as Francis Crémieux said...

Finally, to emphasize the surrealist – and/or Dadaist – filiation of this play, we will remark that this double vision is also the child's gaze on which the text insists ("il est avec des yeux nouveaux / avec les yeux de l'enfant" p. 500). Thus is established the obvious link between realism and poetry in this theatre of the aging writer of the post-war period entirely occupied with accounting for the power of memory, as the old Aragon will also do in Blanche ou l'Oubli...

Conclusion

This reflection on La Fuite will therefore have been conducted "in the light of Aragon"... Perhaps also to mark how much Aragon's friendly benevolence in literary criticism had opposed in 1947 the mitigated reception of the play 15... But especially to highlight, once again, the proximity between the two writers...

Both for their parallel itineraries, on the human as well as on the literary plane. As for their fraternity of combat in the Resistance (of which we have an echo in this play) and for their same hope in the future (that very one of the poet of the play who makes the Narrator say: "il a ouvert la porte où devait luire ce long soleil / qui sur les routes l'a conduit" 16, p. 507).

Of this fraternity testifies the publication of Act IV of La Fuite as a pre-original in Europe and Aragon's laudatory article (on Act IV) in Les Lettres françaises n° 1011 at Tzara's death in 1964, "L'Homme Tzara". In his notes, Henri Béhar vividly recalls this: "Taking the opposite view of common opinion, Aragon alleges the end of the last scene of the fourth act of La Fuite to illustrate the image of the 'moralist' that Tzara has always been since Dada, and to repair the injustice that makes it 'a cursed poetry'" (p. 625).

Far from being "a regression" as Serge Fauchereau regretted, La Fuite, whose modernity appears even more clearly today, rather appears as a major advance in the art of theatre, without ceasing to be in the continuity of all Dadaist or surrealist writing, constantly emphasized here and not seen by the mitigated reception of the post-war period, already bound by the ideological shackles of the cold war... Perhaps now the time has finally come when everything must be, and can be re-examined... Always keeping in mind this "chervil of humor," according to the beautiful expression used by Aragon about Tzara in his obituary article in LF and which will also be my last word...

Université Paris III
Sorbonne Nouvelle