Brian Stableford, The New Faust at the Tragicomique (Black Coat Press, 2007)
The time and place is fin-de-siècle Paris and Stephane Moineaux, actor-manager of the Theatre Tragicomique, is trying to save his theatre from bankruptcy. After a career spanning forty years, fashions are changing faster than Moineaux can adapt, and the competition is tough, for since Oscar Metenier's Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol opened up around the corner, theatergoers are more interested in its graphic horror shows than the old-fashioned melodramas produced at the Tragicomique. Meanwhile, the players of the Tragicomique seem to have allowed themselves to become defined by the roles they play: Moineaux, the father figure; Paul Damas, the leading man; Lillette Fevret, the ingénue; and Marianne Jonquille, the aging leading lady who appears on her way to becoming an alcoholic. It says something about Stableford's abilities that he conveys this idea without ever reducing his characters to clichés.
"What Metenier does is simply undignified," the actress went on, after taking another gulp of Moineaux's brandy. "There's no art in it at all. What will become of the true genius of our profession if all that audiences want to see is gouts of fake blood, vampire traps and all his other silly special effects? Marianne had begun to care a great deal about dignity now that she was of an age that made it extremely difficult to maintain a loyal circle of devoted and generous admirers. There was a time when she had only ever dropped into Moineaux's office after a performance to show off her latest cavalier, to demand that some upstart ingénue or clumsy scene-shifter be fired, or to proclaim her entitlement to an increase in salary. Nowadays, she only came because she knew that he kept a bottle of brandy in his desk (p. 10).
Moineaux, however, is determined to save both the theatre and the players in his company, even if he has to manipulate every one of the other players into sticking it out with him. And he is a master manipulator, capable of changing attitudes and poses faster than an actor in a one-man show and not hesitating to exploit his own role of the father figure, as in this speech intended to persuade Marianne to not abandon the Tragicomique:
"I know; it's only nostalgic sentiment that keeps you here. The Tragicomique isn't about to slide into the pit of oblivion, though. The mood of fin- de- siecle Paris is one of anticipated renewal, and I must take advantage of that. Everyone expects the old order to crumble away with the last 18 months of the old century, to be replaced by something more youthful, more zestful and more sensational. We must find a way to ride that wave of optimism. I must find us a play that strikes a perfect medium between the traditional and the surreal, the futuristic and the decadent, the classic and the innovative" (p. 14)
Moineaux discovers that play in "Le Nouveau Faust," a new version of the Faust story written by the mysterious Simon de Keramour. From his strange pallor to his sensitivity to light, de Keramour invites suspicion, even before the opening night of the play, when things begin to go very wrong indeed. Is the Faust story true? And, if so, in a play where every player plays many parts, who can be trusted? The writing style of this novel reminded me of Delia Sherman's novella "La Fée Verte," anthologized in the 2006 Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling anthology, Salon Fantastique, a style which combines the realism of Flaubert with elements of fantasy. Indeed, Stableford intentionally models the form of the novel upon Flaubert's La Tentation de Saint Antoine (1874), which was written in the form of a play script. Stableford's novel about a play is written in prose, but, like a play, is divided into three "acts." There are other echoes of Flaubert's novel, however, which was itself inspired by a Brueghel painting, and catching the many other artistic and literary references to the temptation theme contributes immensely to the enjoyment of Stableford's story. In part, Stableford's version provides an overview or a retrospective of the numerous Faust legends, including contextualizing our own modern fascination with the story.
The legend of Faust had undergone a great many literary metamorphoses since its first publication in Germany in the late 16th century and its first dramatization in England by Christopher Marlowe. The original moral of the tale had been the contention that the desire for worldly knowledge would lead inexorably to damnation. The assumption underlying that contention was that any man who focused his intelligence on material matters rather than spiritual ones was committing a deadly sin, yielding to one of the Devil's subtlest temptations-but that moral had been formed before the revelations wrought by Galileo, Kepler and Newton, let alone those achieved in the present century by the followers of Lavoisier in the field of chemistry, the followers of Lamarck and Buffon in the field of biology, and the followers of Pasteur in the field of medicine. In 1899, Moineaux thought, the quest for secular knowledge could no longer seem in the least futile or inglorious, even to the kind of audience that reveled in the Grand Guignol's horrors and theatrical effects. Many of the traditional horrors of the Gothic imagination had now become so clichéd and so ridiculous that they could only be staged as black comedy-to the extent that it made perfect sense, in fin-de-siecle Paris to have a Theatre Tragicomique (pp. 69-70).
One does not need to catch all the many stylistic, artistic, and literary references in order to enjoy this book, however, for the dialogue, both internal and between characters, draws one on at a rollicking pace. The pacing is further accelerated by the focus on preparing for and performing within the play, a strategy which pulls the reader into the action. Indeed the theme of plays and actors assuming roles adds to the enjoyment of the story while further confusing our ability to tell who is playing what part in the play within a play. Moineaux, like Shakespeare, exploits this doubling for all it is worth. One even begins to wonder if Moineaux himself might possess some infernal double for, although he possesses a very subtle wit which he is often either too kind or too politic to give vent to, when he decides upon his final course of action, he assumes an almost swashbuckling attitude toward his disregard for danger, mingled with witty turns of phrase:
". . . .Is there any melodrama in Hell, do you suppose? Or is there nothing else?" ". . . .Of course there's melodrama in Hell, and it is all tragicomic in its composition. . . ." "And what of Paradise?" "Oh, there's no melodrama in Heaven," Moineaux said, scornfully. "That's why no one ever goes there."
Stableford's The New Faust provides a complex and textured portrayal of the end of the eighteenth century, with its promise of science and rationalism -- Pasteur, positivism, gaslight -- and also of its own forms of obsession and irrationality -- rigid class systems, laudanum, and the Grand Guignol. More than that, The New Faust -- as subtly as one of Moineaux's gentle pushes -- contextualizes these contradictions within the tensions of our own century, illustrating how stories take on lives of their own, no matter what the medium. It is intriguing to consider that by the time the story is set in, the Lumiere brothers had already demonstrated their invention, the Cinimatographe, and Georges Melies, considered to be The first film producer to deal in the fantastic and the horrific, was already experimenting with film. Melies would release his own Faust story, "The Damnation of Faust / La damnation de Faust," in 1903. From our current standpoint in the twenty-first century, Stableford's story, with its concerns regarding the genre of melodrama and the Grand Guignol, seems as relevant a commentary on the subject of twenty-first century screen horror as it is on the subject of eighteenth century stage horror.
The Faust Tradition page of legends, texts, and commentary is here, and the Grand Guignol History is over this way.
