Georges de Porto-Riche
Georges de Porto-Riche (born May 20, 1849 in Bordeaux , † September 5, 1930 in Paris ) was a French playwright and novelist. He is considered the initiator of the modern Théâtre d'amour , a thematically specific direction of French theater plays before the First World War , in which love was always the focus. Other representatives of the Théâtre d'amour were Henry Bataille and Henry Bernstein .
life and work
Youth and early attempts at writing
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Porto-Riche was born into an assimilated Jewish family originally from Italy , the son of an exchange trader . During his childhood, he lived with his family in Valparaíso for seven years , from where his father returned to France, ruined. However, until the end of the Second Empire , the father acquired some fortunes as administrator of the Bouffes-Parisiennes and with other businesses. In France, Georges de Porto-Riche first lived in a boarding school near Paris. In 1865 he began an apprenticeship at a bank, which he interrupted in order to take his Abitur in 1867. At his father's request, he then began to study law, but soon neglected this in favor of literature. As a supporter of the Commune he was imprisoned for a few weeks in May 1871.
Encouraged by Théophile Gautier and obviously influenced by Victor Hugo , Porto-Riche published his first volume of poetry in 1872. With the help of his father, he achieved the first performance of a one-act play in 1873. In 1875 he achieved a respectable success with his verse drama about Philip II with incidental music by Jules Massenet . But after two of his dramas were performed again in 1878, but received no response, he did not publish anything until 1888. He later stopped reprints of his early work.
The "Théâtre d'amour"
Porto-Riche fell out with his family in 1879 when they married a cousin who was ten years his junior, but they developed a close friendship with Guy de Maupassant . He led a bohemian life and offered his manuscripts to various theaters for performance, mostly in vain. His breakthrough came in 1888 with La Chance de Françoise at the Théâtre Libre by André Antoine, which had been written five years earlier . This piece contradicted both traditional and naturalistic ideas in its conception. Porto-Riche dispensed with a plot in the conventional sense as well as a characterization of the characters. Instead, the only theme was love, the nature of which was psychologized in particular by the main female character. The dialogues, broken by long periods of silence, resembled the symbolist drama.
Especially in the 1890s, Porto-Riche celebrated great stage successes. His pieces L'Infidèle (1890) and above all Amoureuse (1891), with their naturalistic and psychological representation of triangular relationships (“ ménage à trois ”) between husband, wife and their lover and their comparatively clear theming of sexuality, were considered pioneering and found by many Imitators. His later dramas took abstraction back in favor of conventional dramatic means. Porto-Riche's big theme has always been love. As the Théátre d'amour collection (1928), his pieces fill four volumes and repeatedly deal with couple relationships and their problems.
The Porto-Riches ran a salon in which personalities like Maupassant, Eleonora Duse , Gabriele D'Annunzio and Paul Hervieu frequented. Porto-Riche shared a political friendship with Léon Blum and a shared commitment to Alfred Dreyfus . Through the mediation of Blum and Jean Jaurès , Porto-Riche was appointed director of the Bibliothèque Mazarine in 1906 . He was Grand Officier de la Légion d'honneur and was elected to the Académie française in 1923 . Since he was not ready to give the prescribed eulogy for his predecessor Ernest Lavisse , he was never officially accepted.
Porto-Riche is buried with his son Marcel in the marine cemetery of Varengeville-sur-Mer .
reception
Porto-Riche's “Théâtre d'amour” initially irritated the audience and criticism because of the lack of action and the topic. The critic Francisque Sarcey, for example, spoke of "insanité". Henri de Bornier suggested “Hystérique” as the new title for Amoureuse . The great public success of Amoureuse , for example , which was probably due not least to the performance of the actress Réjane (Gabrielle Charlotte Réjus) in the female lead, the criticism was increasingly friendly. The literary historical significance of the piece was also recognized. On the other hand, Porto-Riche drew sharp criticism from conservative circles due to his concept of love and his involvement in the Dreyfus affair , which in the case of the Action française was also decidedly anti-Semitic .
What was provocative about the Porto-Riches theater was, on the one hand, the blunt theming of sexuality for the time, and, on the other hand, the attack on marriage as a central institution of bourgeois society. Leon Blum, for example, referred explicitly to the “Théâtre d'amour” in his controversial essay Du Mariage (1907), in which he called for the separation of marriage and love.
The reception was also mixed in Germany. When Amoureuse , which Theodor Wolff had translated under the title Verliebt , was performed at the Deutsches Volkstheater on October 10, 1903 , Hermann Bahr wrote : “Wonderful, because hardly anyone else has the mood of this generation, a skeptical yet passionate at the same time Demanding, incredulous and longing, nihilistically disappointed and romantically blurred, so sadly beautifully expressed. (...) Technically, the author comes from the first Théâtre Libre and from Henry Becque . No action, no tension, no 'preparations', no ficelles, as they scornfully said at the time, no scène à faire, nothing more of this unbearable and despicable profession of good Uncle Sarcey. But people, everyday as we are, presented in their everyday feelings and their everyday appearance. ” Arthur Eloesser, on the other hand, remarked:“ He only sings about the tragedies of the hearts that are sacrificed, that repeatedly offer themselves to be victims and deal with the wounds To adorn her passion as if with bloody roses, he seems to say that only women in a plant-like naturalness that has not been destroyed by any culture are able to surrender themselves, that only they can still receive the gift of the highest happiness and the deepest misfortune. With them love is the highest, the only matter in life, while with men it has become an episode. ”“ Because of that, ”the Socialist Monthly Bulletin 1930 summarized in their obituary,“ because Porto-Riche has more of the dreamed of when the realistic woman wrote poetry, it has been almost forgotten in our time and only used by actresses when they were embarrassed about a bombshell role. "
Until the 1930s, Porto-Riche's works were still performed quite often. After the Second World War , however, they were regarded more as historical documents of the time. In terms of literary history, the “Théâtre d'amour” occupies a mediating position between the conventional drama of the 19th century and the avant-garde plays that were performed after the First World War. The influence of Porto-Riches can be felt above all in Paul Géraldy , Henry Bataille , Tristan Bernard , Édouard Bourdet and Sacha Guitry , but also in contemporary tabloid theater .
Works (selection)
- Poetry
- Primo Verba. Poems, 1872
- Tout n'est pas rose. Poems, 1877
- prose
- French fries d'ève. 1874
- Bonheur manqué, carnet d'un amoureux. 1889
- Quelques vers d'autrefois. 1915
- Anatomy sentimentale, pages préférées. 1920
- Veux-tu que je sois ta femme? Novel 1923
- Sous mes yeux. 1927
- Plays
- Le Vertige. 1873
- Un drame sous Philippe II. 1875
- Les Deux Fautes. 1878
- Vanina. 1878
- La Chance de Françoise. 1888
- L'Infidèle. 1890
- Amoureuse. 1891
- Le Passé. 1897
- Les Malefilâtre. 1904
- Le Vieil homme. 1911
- Zubiri. 1912
- Le Marchand d'estampes. 1918
- Les Vrais Dieux. 1929
- Work edition
- Théâtre d'amour. 4 volumes, Paris 1926–1928.
literature
- Wolfgang Asholt: Socio-critical theater in France during the Belle epoque (1887-1914) (Studia Romanica; 59). Verlag, Winter, Heidelberg 1984. ISBN 3-533-03548-4 (plus habilitation thesis, University of Münster 1983).
- Hermann Bahr : Glossaries on the Vienna Theater (1903–1906) . S. Fischer, Berlin 1907.
- Hendrik Brugmans : Georges de Porto-Riche. Sa vie, son oeuvre . Droz, Paris 1934.
- Arthur Eloesser: Literary Portraits from Modern France . S. Fischer, Berlin 1904.
- Henry Marx: Georges de Porto-Riche. Son œuvre . NRC, Paris 1924.
- W. Müller: Georges de Porto-Riche . Vrin Paris 1934.
Web links
- Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
- Literature by and about Georges de Porto-Riche in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
- Information on Georges de Porto-Riche in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wolfgang Asholt: Socio-critical theater in France during the Belle epoque (1887-1914) , pp. 118–123.
- ^ Wolfgang Asholt: Theater in France of the Belle Epoque (1887–1914) , pp. 123–128.
- ^ Hermann Bahr: Glossaries on the Vienna Theater (1903-1906) , p. 163.
- ↑ Arthur Eloesser: Literary Portraits from Modern France , p. 99.
- ^ Socialist monthly books 1930: p. 1183.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Porto-Riche, Georges de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French playwright and novelist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 20, 1849 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bordeaux |
| DATE OF DEATH | 5th September 1930 |
| Place of death | Paris |