ABSTRACT
In his Lettre à Jacques Maritain in 1926, Jean Cocteau tells how a Greek shepherd’s crook, given to him by Picasso, inspired him to adapt classical tragedy to the rythms of the modern era. “I was attempting,” he wrote, “a process of rejuvenation of the masterpieces so as to re-work and re-order them, removing the veneer and the dead wood; in short, to quote Stravinsky when taken to task for a lack of respect for Pergolesi, ‘Where you revere, I love’; I wanted to marry them.” This yearning of one who was a former pupil of the Lyceé Condorcet accords too with the theatrical mores of the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries: from 1894, the year of the publication of Jean Moréas’ Iphigénie and of the dedication of the ancient theatre of Orange as a cultural place of pilgrimage, classical drama was born and began to exert its influence over the literary circles of the time. The plays of Aeschylus, of Sophocles, and of Euripides were continually being translated into French to inspire contemporary authors. Alfred Poizat made use of the myth of Electra; Georges Rivollet took care of the Phoenician Women and of Alcestis, while Jean Giraudoux in 1929 presented Amphitryon 38. With regard to the plays dealing with the tragic story of the offspring of Adrastus, Sophocles’ Antigone was, remarkably, translated three times on to the French stage in the first 25 years of this century, by l’abbé Bousquet in 1901, 1 by Dr. H. Mireur 2 in 1912, and by Eugène Crespel 3 in 1919; it also served as a model for the Antigones of Alfred Poizat, Jean Réboul, and Louis Perroy, published in Paris in 1920, 1921, and 1922, respectively. Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex was the prototype for Aubram and Fabrice’s King Oedipus in 1900, and for Oedipus, King of Thebes, a play in three acts and thirteen scenes by St.-Georges de Bouhélier, which was put on at the Cirque d’Hiver by the Gémier Company on 17 December 1919. One can note also in passing, two adaptations of the play, one by Péladean called Oedipus and the Sphinx, 4 and the other, to which we shall return, by Cocteau. As for Oedipus at Colonus, three arrangements of that occur in the same period, one by Emmanuel des Essarts in 1900, one by Jules Gastambide, which was shown at the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre on 7 June 1904, and one by J. Rivollet rendered by the members of the Comédie Française on 21 July 1924. 5 André de Lille published at Nantes in 1912 a tragic poem after Sophocles entitled, Oedipe à Colone; the same title graces the play by Olivier Bournac and Boyer d’Agen, which is composed of a prologue, one act and two scenes, published in Paris in 1915. 6
