The honorable whore
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| Title: | The honorable whore |
| Original title: | La putain respectueuse |
| Genus: | Piece in one act and two pictures |
| Original language: | French |
| Author: | Jean-Paul Sartre |
| Publishing year: | 1946 |
| Premiere: | November 8, 1946 |
| Place of premiere: | Théâtre Antoine in Paris |
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The honorable whore or the respectful whore (French original title: La putain respectueuse ) is a play in two pictures by the French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre from 1946.
action
prehistory
Lizzie , a New York prostitute, moves from the metropolis to an unnamed city in the US southern states. On the train she is sitting in the compartment with two blacks when four drunken whites arrive and become intrusive towards her. There is a fight between black and white men, in the course of which one of the whites shoots one of the blacks. The other black escapes while the white, a nephew of the wealthy Senator Clark, is arrested and faces jail time. The Clarks spread a rumor in the city that the blacks wanted to rape the white woman in the compartment and the whites defended her, which is why the other black went into hiding.
First picture
The negro, who is on the run, visits Lizzie in her room that morning and implores her to tell the truth in court for the sake of his life. Lizzie agrees and shows him out, as her suitor from last night is still in her bathroom. This suitor soon turns out to be Fred, son of the senator, and directs the conversation to the incidents on the train. Lizzie declares that she doesn't want to go to the police and that if questioned anyway, she'll tell the truth. Fred, who shows a mixture of immaturity, arrogance, lust, tightness and racism in the course of the scene, cannot convince her with promises of money either. Now John and James appear, two policemen who are friends with Fred, and insult and threaten Lizzie to sign a prepared statement about the alleged rape. Lizzie indignantly rejects this. Finally, Senator Clark also appears in the room, an experienced politician who tries a different approach: with courtesy, flattery, appeals to your sympathy and national feeling - admittedly interspersed with racism, anti-Semitism and class hatred - he succeeds in getting her hand to sign respectively; he immediately disappears with the paper before Lizzie thinks of something better.
Second picture
That evening, the Senator visits Lizzie to keep her testimony after his nephew's release and gives her a rather meager reward of one hundred dollars. There is now a raid on the negro who was seen on Lizzie's street. The white lynch mob has cordoned off the street and is searching all houses. The negro who fled to Lizzie's apartment asks Lizzie to hide him. Lizzie thrusts a revolver into his hand, but he declares that he cannot shoot whites. The detectors come to ransack her apartment, but Lizzie is able to denounce her identity as an alleged rape victim. When Fred comes by shortly afterwards, the negro gives himself away with a noise, escapes through the hallway and escapes for the time being. Now Lizzie wants to shoot Fred, who is boasting as the lynch killer of another black man, and points the revolver at him, but cannot bring herself to pull the trigger. With good persuasion, Fred succeeds in disarming her.
background
In 1945 Sartre stayed in the USA for a long time , where he published several articles on the situation of the white lower classes and blacks in American society. The play can be read as a literary processing of these experiences.
The plot shows parallels to the real events around the Scottsboro Boys (1931, legal review until 2013), which could have served as inspiration for the material.
The translation of the original title La putain respectueuse into German is not entirely clear. Respectueux in German most likely means “respectful” (showing respect), but can also be translated as “respectable” or “honorable” (deserving of respect). The French putain is a much harder expression than the German “dirne” and literally corresponds more closely to “whore” or “hooker”, which at the time of publication could hardly have been conveyed on a book title. Sartre's choice of words in the title represented a provocation, the book editions until the 1960s as well as theater posters and public mentions shortened the title to La p… respectueuse .
Criticism and Effect
The immediate reactions in France included the rejection of the vulgar title by the bourgeois public and the suspicion of anti-Americanism, which was seen as ingratitude given the liberation of France a few years earlier, including by American soldiers. Even if the play can be viewed as critical of the American capitalist system, communist critics were bothered by the fact that it offered neither a positive, uplifting message nor a class-struggle hero, a deficiency that in the Soviet version had a happy ending " corrected ".
Performance, text editions and filming
The play was premiered on November 8, 1946 (according to other sources on November 8, 1948) in the Théatre Antoine in Paris . The Hamburg Kammerspiele gave the German premiere on April 16, 1949.
The text was published by Gallimard in 1947 . In German, it was initially only published in an anthology Jean-Paul Sartre: Dramen , together with The Flies , With Closed Doors , Dead Without Burial and The Dirty Hands (1949 by Rowohlt Verlag). A single edition was published in 1971 by Reclam Verlag.
The Hungarian composer Kamilló Lendvay adapted the material in 1978 for an opera which was shown on Hungarian television in 1979 and staged in Paris in 1983.
Film adaptations:
- In 1952 Charles Brabant and Marcello Pagliero filmed the play under the title La p… respectueuse with Barbara Laage and Ivan Desny in the leading roles. Georges Auric's film music received a prize at the 1952 Venice International Film Festival .
- In 1965 the ZDF broadcast the piece as a television play by Theodor Grädler with Ingrid van Bergen in the title role.
- In 1974 the piece was produced by André Flédérick as a French television film under the title La P… respectueuse .
Text output
Pléiade
- Michel Contat (Ed.): Jean-Paul Sartre: Théâtre complet. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade , Volume 512. Gallimard, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-07-011528-3 .
- La Putain respectueuse. Pp. 205-235
- Autour de "La Putain respectueuse". Pp. 237-243
- Notices, notes et variants. Pp. 1355-1372
Translations
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The honorable whore. Translation by Ettore Cella . Afterword by Charlotte Bennecke. Reclam, Stuttgart, ISBN 978-3-15-009325-2 .
- The honorable whore. Translation by Ettore Cella . Afterword by Dieter Tauchmann. Reclam, Leipzig 1964
- The respectful whore: piece in one act and two pictures. New translation by Andrea Spingler . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-499-15838-8 . In the appendix, among other things: (Jean-Paul Sartre :) Foreword to the American edition. P. 49f .; Bibliography, pp. 54-58
literature
- Elena Galtsova: La Putain respectueuse. In: François Noudelmann (Ed.): Dictionnaire Sartre. Champion, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-7453-1083-6 , pp. 402-404
- Klaus Bahners: Explanations on Jean-Paul Sartre, The honorable whore, The game is over, In the gears. König's Explanations and Materials , Volume 342.Bange, Hollfeld 1995, ISBN 978-3-8044-1611-6 .
- Steve Martinot: Skin For Sale: Race and The Respectful Prostitute. In: Jonathan Judaken (ed.): Race after Sartre: Antiracism, Africana Existentialism, Postcolonialism. State University of New York Press, New York 2008, pp. 55-76
Individual evidence
- ↑ Both the Rowohlt translation of 1949 by Ettore Cella and that of Andrea Spingler in 1987 translate Le Nègre of the original as "Neger".
- ↑ Charlotte Bennecke: Afterword. In: J.-P. Sartre: The honorable whore. Reclam 1971-2017
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↑ A tisztességtudó utcalány , on the website of Kamilló Lendvay (en) Kamilló Lendvay on operone.de, accessed on June 20, 2018
- ↑ The Honorable Whore. Classic of the German television game, accessed on May 20, 2018