Notes on the Plays of Michel de Ghelderode

Perhaps the most immediately striking quality of the plays of Michel de Ghelderode is their size—not their physical length, but their dramatic dimension. Like Strindberg, this author has written very short plays and extremely long ones. The lengths may vary, but the theme is constant, and this theme is Man, essential Man, who is revealed as both fascinating and terrifying in all his potentialities. Ghelderode represents’ men in a fashion that derives from the painters he loves so much, especially Bosch and Breughel, and from the expressionist theatre. Fundamentally, he is a romantic, and at best he creates works of powerful feeling and remarkable organic form. At worst he becomes possessed, and his work is then the prey of mounting hysteria. The authenticity of feeling in all that he writes is unquestionable. It is when this feeling so grips him that he loses aesthetic perspective that his work deteriorates.