Eugène Brieux

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eugène Brieux 1885

Eugène Brieux ( [bʁjø] ; born January 19, 1858 in Paris , † December 6, 1932 in Nice ) was a French playwright . He was considered one of the leading exponents of naturalistic theses and dealt critically with social problems of his time.

Life

Eugène Brieux (1923)

Brieux grew up as the son of a carpenter in modest circumstances in the Temple district of Paris . His schooling was limited to attending the "École communale" and "École primaire supéricure" ("École Turgot"), which he completed at the age of 13. Nevertheless, he was very interested in literature, read a lot and wrote his first play at the age of 15. During the long years in which he offered his manuscripts to various theaters in vain, he earned his living as a bank clerk. In 1879 one of his plays, Bernard Palissy , was performed at the Cluny Theater for the first time , but only once.

Due to the moderate success, Brieux decided to try his hand at being a journalist for the time being. After a few years as a reporter in Dieppe , he became editor-in-chief at Le Nouvelliste in Rouen . In Rouen he also staged a few less significant pieces without losing sight of a career in Paris. He found encouragement in the fact that in 1890 his play Ménage des Artistes was performed at the Théâtre Libre . But it wasn't until two years later that his final breakthrough came with the play Blanchette , which was performed over a hundred times by the theater manager and actor André Antoine and which was also sent on tour to the provinces.

Brieux then returned to Paris, where he wrote articles for Patrie , Gaulois and Le Figaro . Between 1893 and 1899 he also worked as a theater and music critic for La Vie Contemporaine . But above all, he was now writing piece by piece. While his works initially emphasized the comic element, the piece Les Trois Filles by M. Dupont in 1897 began his so-called 'Sturm und Drang period'. In plays such as Le Berceau (1898), La Robe Rouge (1900), Les Avariés (1901) and Maternité (1903), he critically dealt with social problems such as poverty, political corruption, divorce, venereal diseases, the death penalty and parenthood. Later dramas like Les Hannetons (1906) or Simone (1908) were again more optimistic.

Eugène Brieux, drawn by Aristide Delannoy (1909)

By the outbreak of World War I , Brieux wrote over forty plays and reached the height of his fame. His drama Les Avariés (German: Die Schiffbrüchigen , 1903), which dealt with syphilis and its consequences and was censored in various countries because of the medical details, was considered the most discussed play of the decade and the theater's greatest contribution to the welfare of mankind . Sex-reforming groups in particular propagated the educational piece, in Germany for example the German Society for Combating Venereal Diseases . It was seen by an audience of millions in Germany alone between 1910 and 1920. In the United States , Upton Sinclair wrote a novel version in 1913 . In 1918 Jacob and Luise Fleck filmed the play under the title " The Scourge of Mankind "; Edgar G. Ulmer adapted it in 1933 under the title " Damaged Lives ."

Brieux increasingly withdrew to the country. His villa in Agay , near Cannes , became a local tourist attraction, so he moved to an even more remote region in the Loire department , where he passed the time fishing and farming. He was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor and ran for the Académie française in 1908 to succeed Ludovic Halévy . In 1909 his wish came true with the admission. He prevailed against Alfred Capus and Georges de Porto-Riche .

Cover picture of an illustrated novel version of Eugène Brieux's drama "L'Avaries" (1903)
Advance notice of the drama Die Schiffwüchigen in Vorwärts of June 24, 1913

Brieux was the best known and most popular French playwright of the time. George Bernard Shaw called him "incomparably the greatest writer France has produced since Molière ." and claimed that after the death of Henrik Ibsen there was no more important playwright west of Russia . For others he was "the Tolstoy of Fabour du Temple." He saw himself as a mediator who wanted to bring the great ideas of great thinkers closer to the general public After the First World War, however, interest in his pieces, whose didactic impetus was no longer considered to be up-to-date, declined sharply.

Works

  • Bernard Palissy , 1879
  • Le bureau des divorces , 1881
  • Ménages d'artistes , 1890
  • Corneille à Petit-Couronne , 1890
  • Blanchette , 1892
  • Monsieur de Réboval , 1892
  • Fifine , 1894
  • Chacun chez soi , 1894
  • L'Engrenage , 1894
  • Chez la mère Octave , 1894
  • Le soldat Graindor , 1895
  • La rose bleue , 1895
  • Les Bienfaiteurs , 1896
  • L'Évasion , 1896
  • Résultat des courses , 1898
  • Le Berceau , 1898
  • Les trois filles de M. Dupont , 1899
  • La robe rouge , 1900
  • Les Remplaçantes , 1901
  • Les Avariés , 1901
  • La petite amie , 1902
  • Maternity , 1903
  • La Déserteuse , 1904
  • La Couvée , 1904
  • L'Armature , 1905
  • Les Hannetons , 1906
  • La Française , 1907
  • Simone , 1908
  • Suzette , 1909
  • Voyage aux Indes et en Indochine , 1910
  • Tunisie , 1910
  • La Foi , 1912
  • La femme seule , 1912
  • Algérie , 1912
  • Au Japon , 1914
  • Le bourgeois aux champs , 1914
  • Les Américains chez nous , 1920
  • L'Avocat , 1922
  • L'Enfant , 1923
  • La famille Lavolette , 1926

literature

  • Penrhy Vaughan Thomas: The plays of Eugène Brieux . London 1913.
  • William H Scheifley: Brieux and Contemporary French Society . Ph. D. thesis Univ. of Pennsylvania 1917.
  • J. Lazardzig: Staging of Scientific Facts in Syphilis Education . “The Shipwrecked” in the Deutsches Theater in Berlin (1913) . In: Der Hautarzt 53 (2002), pp. 268–276.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anja Schonlau: Syphilis in literature: about aesthetics, morality, genius and medicine (1880-2000) . Würzburg 2005, pp. 343-360; Katie N. Johnson: Damaged Goods. Sex Hysteria and the Prostitute Fatale . In: Theater Survey 44 (2003), pp. 43-67.
  2. ^ Henry L. Mencken : Preface . In: Blanchette and the Escape . Two Plays by Brieux. Boston 1913, pp. I, xxxiv, xxxv.
personal data
SURNAME Brieux, Eugène
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH January 19, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1932
Place of death Nice