|
|
| The Sacrament and Other Plays of Forbidden Love | ||||||
by: HUGO CLAUS Edited and with and Introduction by David Willinger Translated from the Dutch by David Willinger, Luc Deneulin, and Luk Truyts |
||||||
 |
||||||
Hugo Claus, generally recognized as the greatest living writer in the Dutch language, became famous in the theater for several early works of particular force and daring. This volume includes three of those remarkable early plays: Bride in the Morning, Sugar, and The Sacrament. All three plays boast unforgettable characters trapped in a world of oppressive social mores. The central figures are all subject to sexual and creative impulses towards objects of forbidden love that bring disapproval and censure crashing in on them, subsequently bringing about their own ruin. |
||||||
Bride in the Morning follows an endgame contest between a young heroine enamored of her own mentally challenged brother pitted against her grasping and dictatorial mother, hell- bent on separating the two. Sugar, set in the sugar beet country of northern France, reminiscent of the itinerant workers of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, follows the infatuation of a luckless worker, hopelessly enamored of a self- destructive local prostitute. |
||||||
And The Sacrament offers the desperate quest for approbation of a young homosexual man, who had been seduced early on by a village priest and who now futilely seeks that priest’s understanding. The introduction incorporates lengthy, detailed analyses of the plays, sets them in their historical and stylistic context, provides carefully researched descriptions of the original productions as well as mention of subsequent ones and goes into great depth charting the initial critical and public response to the plays as well as their later reception, as they came to be considered modem classics. |
||||||
 |
||||||
It is shown in detail how, despite overwhelming positive reaction from the general public, the Dutch and Belgian press at the time displayed a gamut of reactions from raves to pans, with every gradation of nuance in between; it is clear, in parallel with the initial American critical response to Samuel Beckett’s plays, for example, that many critics proved incapable of appreciating the stature and originality of this theatrical giant, curiously underrating him on the basis of prejudiced moral and narrow aesthetic judgments. History has since proven him to be the modem Dutch-language playwright with the most durable and unimpeachable reputation of all, a reputation whose bedrock is comprised largely of these plays in this volume. |
||||||
Claus who has experimented with a dizzying variety of styles and genres over the course of a long, distinguished but controversial career, here concentrates on the form with which he achieved his greatest success: taut, well-constructed realistic dramas, rich in local color, engineered with brilliant complexity of incident, and riddled with caustic wit Whether it is the mentally impaired brother and driven sister or domineering mother from Bride in the Morning; the aged, comic twin sugar workers or the raging prostitute from Sugar; or the elusive, charismatic priest, his Sancho Panza of an obese housekeeper, or the young man he had seduced in The Sacrament these plays are first and foremost poignant, sardonic portraits of fascinating characters. Hugo Claus is both a great portraitist of human angst and absurdity, as well as a towering social critic. |
||||||
ISBN -13: 978-1-57591-110-6 Price: $50.00 |
||||||
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
|||
 |
Last Reviewed by Nabin Mulepati | SU Press (570)372-4175/fax (570)372-4021 or
email: supress@susqu.edu Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA 17870 |
||
