Michel de Ghelderode

Michel de Ghelderode (born April 3, 1898 in Ixelles / Elsene , † April 1, 1962 in Schaarbeek ; actually Adémar Adolphe-Louis Martens ) was a Francophone author of Belgian - Flemish descent. His works are assigned to the theater of the absurd .

biography

Born on April 3, 1898 in Ixelles ( Belgium ) to Jeanne-Marie Rans and Henri-Alphonse Martens. Although his family, who came from the Brussels area, was Flemish , he enjoyed an exclusively French-speaking schooling, which promised social advancement. He inherited a love of history from his strict father, who was an archivist . A typhoid fever , which he barely survived at the age of 16, influenced his career choice and should also have consequences for his later work.

He began studying the viola at the Brussels Conservatory , which he quickly gave up. From 1917 he worked as a journalist, from 1918 he used the pseudonym Michel de Ghelderode , which he officially had as a name from 1930. From 1919 to 1921 he did his military service in the Navy. In 1923 he was awarded the prize of the magazine la Renaissance d'Occident for his play Oude Piet (not translated into German) and began an administrative activity in the municipal administration of Schaerbeek. In 1924 he married Jeanne-Françoise Gérard under civil law.

Until 1930 Ghelderode wrote and staged puppet theater pieces again and again, from 1925 he also worked very successfully for drama . Fruitful creative phases alternated with creative crises and years of serious illness. 1926 a. a. the interesting piece la Mort du docteur Faust , in which a lively game is played with identities that anticipates later literary developments. Several major works were created in 1934: Masques ostendais , Sortie de l'acteur , Sire Hallewyn , la Balade du Grand Macabre , Mademoiselle Jaïre .

From 1939 he wrote almost exclusively for the radio and prose. Between 1941 and 1943, Ghelderode performed glosses he had written on the radio of the German occupiers, which he was accused of after the liberation and which contributed to his early retirement. In the 1950s there was a renaissance of his work in France. Nevertheless, Ghelderode died lonely and bitter on April 1, 1962. He did not live to see his planned nomination for the Nobel Prize for Literature .

plant

Although his works do not lag behind those of Arthur Adamov , Samuel Becketts , Jean Genets , Eugène Ionesco and Alfred Jarry in terms of quality and radicalism , they are far less well known. In Ghelderode's work, his love for the historical Middle Ages and the Renaissance often shows through in the choice of his subjects and in the figures, some of which are mysterious plays and the Commedia dell'arte . Motives of death are taken up again and again. The frequent occupation with the game of personalities and identities is related to the work of contemporary Luigi Pirandello .

Only a small part of the oeuvre has been translated into German, even antiquarian editions are difficult to obtain. In addition, the translations are often of insufficient quality. Only Ghelderode's best-known work, The Stroll of the Great Macabre (La Balade du grand Macabre) , which is also the model for György Ligeti's successful modern opera Le Grand Macabre, enjoys a certain popularity on German-speaking stages .

Michel de Ghelderode wrote not only plays , but also puppet plays , poetry , prose and music . A considerable number of radio plays (only partially realized) have also survived.

Works and editions translated into German

• Michel de Ghelderode: Theater. Luchterhand, Neuwied 1963, DNB 451539141 .
  • Spawns of Hell (Fastes d'Enfer). translated by Fritz Montfort. Pp. 85-123.
  • The ballad of the great macabre (La Balade du grand Macabre). translated by Leopold Voelker. Pp. 5-84.
  • Escorial. translated by Fritz Montfort. Pp. 125-138.
  • The old men (Vieillards). translated by Wilfried Schröpfer. Pp. 219-227.
  • Pantagleize. translated by Fritz Montfort. Pp. 139-227.
• Theater of the absurd. dtv, Munich 1966, DNB 364706627 .
• Manfred Nöbel (Ed.): Pieces for puppet theater 1900–1945. Henschelverlag, Berlin 1974, DNB 200067672 .
• Michel de Ghelderode: A dusk . Translated from the French by Andreas Fliedner. In: Fugue. Journal for Religion and Modernity. Volume 5: Transformation. Epiphany I. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2009, ISBN 978-3-506-76865-0 , pp. 111-117. (Translation of the story Un crépuscule from: Michel de Ghelderode: Sortilèges. L'Essor, Paris / Brussels 1941).

Web links

• Belgian Ghelderode Foundation , which undertakes research and dissemination of the work and publishes a detailed list of works.
• Michel de Ghelderode's Theater of Obsessions. Interesting article on Ghelderode by Barbara Damm, but the details are incorrect.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "il ne s'agit pas d'un poème (ballade), mais de la promenade (familièrement, stroll) de la Mort sur la terre" (Michel de Ghelderode: La Balade du Grand Macabre. Édition établie et annotée par Jaqueline Blancart -Cassou. Paris 2002, 214)