14 The Reception of Greek Drama in Belgium and the Netherlands Thomas Crombez Introduction The history of the reception of Greek drama in the Low Countries is, as elsewhere, a history of variety. Next to each other one may find superficial borrowings, erudite and empathie translations, and brutal adaptations. In her study of French tragedy adaptations from the fin de siècle, Sylvie Humbert-Mougin notes that the intensive examination of Greek drama was first and foremost a symptom of a brooding crisis within the theater itself (2003: 12). This observation will serve as a guideline for my approach. Why did contempo­ rary playwrights and directors need the Greek dramatists? What did Euripides, Sophocles, and (to a much lesser extent) Aeschylus and Aristophanes have to offer that contemporary drama could not provide? How did such peculiar drama texts, written in a language that already to the Athenians sounded archaic and solemn, and were intended for an open-air stage that had almost nothing in common with the modern theater, still kindle the imagination of the moderns? For the purpose of this contribution, a bibliography of Dutch translations of Greek drama was composed, and a theatrography of performances produced in the Netherlands and Flanders.1 Based on these data, a number of general observa­ tions can be formulated, which will form the basis of this chapter. Before the nineteenth century, Dutch translations of Greek drama were pub­ lished only sporadically. By 1800, some 11 translations had appeared, only of trag­ edies. In the course of the next century, six times as many translations would be produced. It was an abrupt development: while initially only a few translations per decade were published, that number suddenly rose to 14 in the 1880s. Since then, the cultural presence of the Greeks became an established fact. By the end of the twentieth century, more than 260 translations and adaptations had become A Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama, First Edition. Edited by Betine van Zyl Smit. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 284 Thomas Crombez 120 110 100 90 70 60 50 40 30 Figure 14.1 Translations per ten-year period. available. To bring Greek tragedy to the Dutch-speaking reader apparently only became relevant and desirable after the age of Romanticism. In Figure 14.1, which presents the publication frequency of translations, three notable peaks stand out. The first one concerns the fin de siècle. Between 1880 and 1910, no fewer than 41 plays were translated (among which, for the first time, a significant number of comedies, with seven plays by Aristophanes). A second peak is situated just after World War II (43 translations between 1945 and 1965). The third, most spectacular peak occurred in the 1980s and 1990s (85 translations). The theatrography confirms these trends. The frequency of the number of stage productions echoes the frequency of published translations. Figure 14.2 traces the frequency with which Greek drama is brought on stage, and shows that the level of interest in ancient drama starts to rise during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Theatrical productions are (obviously) a little slower to foltbw the new trend of anticomanie than the translations. While there are four or more translations com­ ing out per decade from the 1850s onwards, performances are still few and far bet­ ween. The frequency remains low during the fin de siècle and the interwar period. Only after World War II does the level of interest start to rise up to 30 productions and more per decade. A second trend is the huge increase in the number of productions during the 1980s, and especially during the 1990s. To some extent, this has to do with the way in which the data were collected. These decades coincide with the start of the systematic inventorization of theatrical productions by both the Dutch Theatre Institute (TIN) and the Flemish Theatre Institute (VTi). For the previous decades, there is simply less information available.2 285 Figure 14.2 Productions per ten-year period. Nevertheless, the trend is so pronounced that it cannot but correspond to a fac­ tual shift in the field of the performing arts. Actually, the number of productions doubled twice in succession: first, when comparing the 1980s to the 1970s, and the second time when comparing the 1990s to the 1980s. In the following section, I will first sketch the "pre-history” of the reception of Greek drama (from the Renaissance up to the end of the eighteenth century). The second section discusses the nineteenth century, starting from 1779, a time when not only the ancien régime is drawing to a close, but also a new wave of Dutch trans­ lation efforts is taking off. From the third section onwards (which discusses the fin de siècle and interwar period), it has become common practice to stage ancient dramas. The fourth section discusses the postwar period (1945-1970) and the final section focuses on “postdramatic” theater since 1970 (Lehmann 2006). The Eighteenth Century and Earlier By the end of the seventeenth century, nine Dutch translations of Seneca's Latin tragedies had been published in the Low Countries, compared to only seven of Greek dramas. The Nachleben of the Greeks thus, ironically, begins with their imi­ tator from the time of the Roman Empire. As is the case for the humanists in other European countries, the Roman dramatist plays an equally important role in the reception and reworking of ancient drama as the Greek authors themselves. Why Seneca? The knowledge of Latin was simply much more widespread than that of Greek and other ancient languages. The Netherlands had high- quality education in Latin (Worp 1907: 244). Furthermore, the name of Seneca was held in high regard because of his philosophical oeuvres. For educational Thomas Crombez purposes, his works were very useful. There are indications that the tragedies of Seneca (like the comedies of Plautus and Terence) were staged by students in various Dutch cities, from the middle of the sixteenth century onwards (Worp 1892: 48). Scholars were also keen to work on Senecan tragedy. From 1536, both collected and separate editions of his plays were appearing in print. Half a century later, the first critical edition was published by Franciscus Raphelengius, accompanied by notes by Justus Lipsius (1588). Numerous prominent Dutch humanists—including Scaliger, Heinsius, and Vossius—engaged with the text of these plays. Until the middle of the seventeenth century, new editions quickly followed each other (Worp 1892: 43-46). It is therefore evident that Seneca also started to function as a model writer for the modern stage. As in England (The Tragedy of Gorboduc, 1561, by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville), the first drama experiments were constructed on a Senecan template. Initially, the tragedies were written in Latin and dealt with biblical subjects. The best known plays were authored by Hugo Grotius and Daniel Heinsius. Later, starting with Pieter Cornelisz Hooft (Achilles and Polyxena, 1614) and Samuel Coster (ftys,1615), the other poets of the Golden Age—who wrote, not in Latin, but in Dutch—would also be thoroughly influenced by Seneca. Thus, Hierusalem verwoest by Joost van den Vondel (Jerusalem Destroyed, 1620) clearly echoes Troades. Even those who did not read Latin, such as the successful author of spectacular horror dramas, Jan Vos, sought the assistance of a learned humanist to enrich his play Aran en Titus (1641) with influences from Thyestes. What modern dramatists looked for in the works of the Roman playwright was a toolbox full of dramatic structures, stylistic techniques, and new topics. Such technical skills provided writers with an alternative to the clumsy dramatic forms and the static allegorical characters that characterize the medieval mystery plays and the rheto­ ricians' drama. Seneca’s plays, in other words, constituted the laboratory that assisted in the invention of modern drama. From him the humanists learnt to divide their plays into five acts. Abstract and moralizing characters that do not engage in real dialogue were replaced by people of flesh and blood. A chorus was introduced, although the choral passages were not necessarily located at the end of an act. And the spectators' desire for spectacular theatrical effects was met through dream scenes, sorcerers, subterranean spirits, and ghosts (Worp 1892: 63). Typical is the following stage direction from Jan Vos’ Medea (1667): "together with the tree on which the Golden Fleece is hanging, bulls, a dragon, warriors and Jason appear from the ground in smoke and flames” (quoted in Worp 1892: 263). Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the imitation of Seneca gradually decreased. The establishment of the literary society Nil Volentibus Arduum in 1669 symbolized a new direction in Dutch-language drama and theater. Together with that of Seneca's horror tragedies, the impact of pastoral comedy and modern English tragedy gave way to a new model that would come to dominate Western Europe: the classicist tragedy of seventeenth-century France. It is significant that The Reception in Belgium and the Netherlands 287 in the period of more than one hundred years that elapsed between the last seven­ teenth-century translation (Euripides' Hippolytus,1671) and the first late modern translation (Bilderdijk's Edipus, honing van Thebe, an adaptation of Oedipus the King from 1779), no more than a single Dutch translation of a Greek tragedy appeared. Even Seneca would have to wait more than 250 years for a new translator.3 The Nineteenth Century After a century of neglect, Bilderdijk's translations of Sophocles were the harbin­ gers of a new interest in ancient drama. In rhyming verse, the Dutch scholar and poet tried to bring Greek poetry closer to his audience, an audience that he himself did not estimate to be very large. After all, modern theatrical taste was still dictated by French classicism. In the Low Countries, the impact of innovations such as bourgeois drama (which Diderot’s Le Fils naturel had launched in 1757) was not so great. In the preface to De dood van Edipus (The Death of Oedipus, after Oedipus at Colonus), Bilderdijk underlined that these translations were not intended for the stage, but were only composed for his personal pleasure (1789: x). In fact, he even conceded that if ever he were to write a tragedy, it would be the modern French example that he would follow, not that of the Greeks (1779: 31). Why, then, did Bilderdijk translate those anachronistic Greeks? His poetical arguments reveal a surprisingly political tone. Dutch drama appeared to be under the threat from "the intrusion of novelties” (1779: 31). French classicism was seen as nothing less than an epidemic from abroad. Furthermore, the structure of French tragedies was related to the authoritarian form of government that charac­ terized the country. That made the presence of a chorus into a structural impossi­ bility in a French play. On the Greek stage, by contrast (just as in many Dutch imitations, e.g., in Vondel), the continuous presence of the chorus was considered by Bilderdijk to be an echo of Athenian democracy. "The People was thus an inex­ tricable character in all of their Tragedies: a character, in whose presence all events should occur, and therefore a character that should continuously occupy the stage” (Bilderdijk 1779: 6-7). Greek drama had to function as an example, that nevertheless offered very little practical guidance or inspiration. In Bilderdijk's own later historical dramas, such as Floris V (1808) and Kormak (1808), there are no structural elements from Greek drama (such as the chorus). These plays are much closer to the “detested” French example than to the more contemporary, German model of historical tragedy. A similar path was taken by playwright Samuel Iperusz Wiselius and by the Classicist P.A.S. van Limburg Brouwer (Haak 1977:16-17). Their interest in ancient drama remained essentially theoretical. Only Wiselius indeed translated excerpts from Euripides and Seneca in order to insert these in his drama Polydorus (1813). As in other Western European countries, interest in Greek drama was the exception rather than the rule. The formal language of tragedy was at odds with 288 Thomas Crombez all the major genres of nineteenth-century serious drama: French classical tragedy, romantic tragedy and melodrama. Greek comedy had an even smaller presence in Dutch-language culture. At the time when Bilderdijk wrote the remarks quoted above, only three translations of comedy were available in print. An instructive tool for examining the general attitude towards Greek theater is the bibliography of Dutch translations of foreign dramas published during the nineteenth century, which was compiled in 1907 by theater historian J. A. Worp. Indeed, it lists no fewer than 43 translations from the Greek, which undeniably betrays an increasing interest.4 But that figure pales in comparison to the long list of plays translated from the German (526 titles) and from the French (662). Those lists include not only Molière and Racine, or Goethe and Schiller, but especially the authors of the popular melodramas such as Guilbert de Pixerécourt and Eugène Labiche, or August von Kotzebue and August Ifflandt (Worp 1907). It is not surprising, then, that the time was still not ripe for new productions of Greek plays. Goethe himself, not the least grecophile of the nineteenth century, had little confidence in the effect of Sophocles’ Antigone on the stage of Weimar, where he planned to perform the play in 1809. So much so, that the performance was to be followed by an operetta by Ignaz von Seyfried. A similar decision was taken when Antigone was performed in 1837 in Amsterdam. A com­ prehensive adaptation of the play by Alexander François Sifflé was staged in the Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg (municipal theater). Again, the program was com­ plemented by a more contemporary production, namely the “grand Ballet Pantomime” Aladyn, or the Wonder Lamp. And one year later Wiselius’ adaptation of Euripides’ Alcestis suffered the same fate, when it was followed by the ballet Asmodeus (Haak 1977: 32-33). Contemporaries understood very well that the taste of the nineteenth-century metropolis differed profoundly from that of the Athenian polis. One newspaper speaks of a performance that “promises both the friend of classical art and the lover of romantic art, pleasure and satisfaction.” But in the same sentence, the author does not hesitate to emphasize that it is “an outstanding ballet as regards the decorations, costumes and dances” (De Avondbode, Nov. 14, 1837). Not only the music, but also the way in which the text of Sophocles was reworked by Sifflé demonstrates the aim to bring Greek tragedy closer to his own time. Unlike the almost simultaneous performances in Potsdam and Berlin under the impetus of King Friedrich Wilhelm IY historical empathy was of little concern in Amsterdam. In Prussia, the artistic directors (the author Ludwig Tieck and the composer Felix Mendelssohn) received the support and advice of the philologist August Böckh. They used an accurate translation, written by Johann Jakob Donner, and remodeled the Potsdam court theater according to contemporary archeologi­ cal insights about the theater of Dionysus in Athens (Flashar 1991; Geary 2014). In Amsterdam, by contrast, Sifflé resolutely opted for a melodramatic Antigone. The partitioning into episodes and stasima was replaced by acts and scenes. The chorus was eliminated and their lines strongly reworked and placed in the mouth The Reception in Belgium and the Netherlands 289 of two "counsellors,” following the template of the French classicist confidants and confidantes. The meaning of ancient Greek religious practices, especially at the funeral (such as the libation), was further emphasized in the dialogues in order to explain them to a modern audience. But a much more drastic change was the introduction of new characters. In particular, Antigone's spurned lover Lysippus, a pure example of the melodramatic villain, catches the eye. With Sifflé, it is not only Créons authoritarian attitude that leads to Antigone's death. The responsi­ bility lies at least as much with Lysippus, the vengeful head of the guards, who forces his subordinates to reveal the identity of the person they saw burying the corpse of Polyneices. Just a few years earlier, a previous Antigone translator, Petrus Camper, had fiercely opposed modern efforts to romanticize the relationship between Antigone and her cousin Haimon. He saw this as characteristic of "contemporary and espe­ cially foreign plays,” because in the text of Sophocles, no evidence for such romance is to be found.5 Sifflé, by contrast, emphasizes their affair, and makes Haimon con­ fess to Antigone that he plans to take his own life if she were to die. Antigone is thereby given the opportunity to vent a particularly sentimental sort of patriotism. She encourages her lover to take a stance that is more masculine and devoted to the nation: “Man belongs to the State and may only perish for her” (Sifflé 1836:31). Another melodramatic element is the theatrical spectacle and abrupt plot twist, when Créons rejection of the warning by Tiresias is immediately followed by thunder and lightning. He promptly forgives Antigone and Haimon, but to no avail. At the very end, the Messenger Euphorbus has to report the bloody conclusion to the survivors. Antigone has hanged herself, Haimon has slain Lysippus, and wanted to stab his father to death, but missed and, out of remorse, threw himself on his own sword. He dies, “swimming in his own blood,” as Sifflé does not fail to mention (1836: 82). From the Turn of the Century to World War II In Western Europe, the end of the nineteenth century marked the beginning of a new and intense interest in Greek drama. Translations now appear in rapid succession. Between the end of the Franco-Prussian War (1871) and the beginning of World War I (1914), no fewer than 49 Dutch translations were published, of which the majority (nearly 80%) were tragedies. A new phenomenon was the appearance of professional translators, who rendered a significant part of the oeuvre of ancient dramatists into Dutch. Examples include the Classicist Henricus van Herwerden's efforts for Sophocles (three translations) and for the complete Oresteia of Aeschylus; or Shakespeare translator L.A.J. Burgersdijk, who translated almost all the tragedies of Sophocles and half those of Aeschylus. The professors Willem Hecker and Jan van Leeuwen, too, each published several translations of Greek tragedy. 290 Thomas Crombez A second change concerns the heightened sensitivity to historical accuracy. Van Leeuwen was one of the first to distinguish between translations faithful to the original text and freer, modernizing adaptations. Both had a right to exist, though he preferred the first kind. In his translation of Ajax he wanted to retain the Greek meter as much as possible, with the aim of letting something of the play’s original impact “reverberate” with the modern reader. Remarkably, the imagery that Van Leeuwen employed to help explain this conversion was supplied by the latest tech­ nological advances. The reverberation would probably sound "like a weakened, thinned buzz of a telephone” (Van Leeuwen 1882: 134). Such reflections are not remarkable in fin-de-siècle Europe. This was in stark contrast to the situation of a century before. In 1804, the literal and archaic translations of Sophocles into German by Friedrich Hölderlin were a solitary phenomenon, leading to bewilderment and ridicule. ( Now, however, several translations took the very strangeness of the Greek text as their starting point. A striking example is the work of the French poet Leconte de Lisle, who trans­ lated practically the entire tragic corpus into French between 1860 and 1880. He no longer used the Latin transcriptions of Greek names (Aides remains Aides, and is not translated by Pluton as used to be the case). Typical Greek terms, such as paian, daimon and eras were also left untranslated. According to Humbert- Mougin, it was clearly the intention of the translator for the reader to feel dis­ placed by “the intrusion of words equally foreign in their sound and in their spelling” (2003: 34). The strangeness of the Greek text no longer acted as a deterrent, but now evoked fascination, at least for poets and readers. It was only in 1899 that Leconte de Lisle’s version of the Oresteia would be successfully staged in France, since the first performance of 1873 was a total flop (Humbert-Mougin 2003: 14). In the Netherlands and Flanders, too, the poets were the first to be fascinated by tragedy. Among the Dutch Tachtigers (a generation of estheticist poets gain­ ing prominence during the 1880s), especially Albert Verwey and Willem Kloos aimed at using the influence of the Classics in order to escape the moralistic influence of the so-called "pastor poetry” (Van den Berg and Couttenier 2009: 576). Within that project, tragedy played a significant role. Willem Kloos trans­ lated the Antigone of Sophocles in 1898, and stated that in antiquity “something is to be found for the evolving poet, which he would elsewhere look for in vain” (quoted in Koster 1932: 157). Three years later, Antigone was the subject of an essay in De Nieuwe Gids (the movement’s chief periodical) by the Dante trans­ lator, Hendricus Johannes (Hein) Boeken, who gave an interpretation strongly influenced by Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. According to Boeken, not only the intoxication of wine falls under the protection of Dionysus, but also the "intoxicated” moral stubbornness of Antigone. Hers is a passion "that pleases the god, that leads to acceptance of the great struggle, the struggle with unworthy coercion and unbounded violence. And of that passion the tragedy paints the pic­ ture, the tragedy that was the song and rite by which Dionysus was worshiped” 291 (Boeken 1901: 267). This is probably the first occasion on which a ritualistic interpretation of Greek drama was introduced to the Dutch-speaking world. What exactly is it that the "decadent” poet of the fin de siècle found in Greek tragedy “which he would elsewhere look for in vain”? Undoubtedly not merely something Greek, but also something of himself. Often his reading experience was sentimentally informed. With an almost audible sigh, Kloos writes in 1886: "If Sophocles’ Antigone complains while dying that the fame she was promised sounds like scorn to her ears, then the nineteenth-century reader shivers in his chair, so intense is the mood” (1887: 316). The composer Alphons Diepenbrock, a friend of Kloos, would later use the same sentimental sensitivity when he com­ posed the musical scores to accompany performances of Aristophanes’ Birds (1918) and Sophocles’ Electra (1920). Besides the sentimental, there was also undeniably (as elsewhere in Europe) an archaizing trend that became more and more manifest. In Flanders, a number of seminary students—among whom the poet Albrecht Rodenbach, who died at an early age—made a noteworthy translation of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound under the guidance of priest-teacher Hugo Verriest. Rodenbach’s part of the translation, which was published after his death, aimed to transpose the elliptical Greek con­ structions almost literally into Dutch. The results did not always sound very acces­ sible to modern ears.6 A further point of note is that Rodenbach (influenced by Verriest?) was the first Dutch-speaking author in whose writings a trace of ritu­ alism manifests itself. When the students are preparing to recite the translated play during class, he announces that the verses should be sung "almost in the tone of the preface,” meaning the introduction to the eucharistie prayer during Holy Mass (Vanlandschoot 2002: 371). Greek tragedy could therefore serve as a model for a new and sacred kind of theater, which was to be deployed as a weapon against the commercial excesses of melodrama and cheap comedy. Although in Flemish and Dutch theater history, relatively few performances can be discovered (barely ten during the period between 1871 and 1914), those few initiatives may easily be related to similar international developments. And that trend will only continue after World War I. Throughout Europe, anticomanie appeared to be the perfect antidote to the dominant fashion in performing arts that was considered vulgar. From 1881 to 1917, Jean Mounet-Sully triumphed as Oedipus on the stage of the Comédie Française. (In the Roman theater of Orange, the show would continue to attract new audiences up to 1924.) Also Antigone (1893) and the Orestie (1899) succeeded in captivating Parisian audiences. With the Moscow Art Theater, Konstantin Stanislavski produced Antigone in the same year in which he also directed Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (1899). And Max Reinhardt overwhelmed the bourgeois audiences for whom he otherwise presented refined productions of Shakespeare and Richard Strauss, with the "beastly” horror and crowd scenes of his Oedipus Rex (1910), later followed by an impressive Oresteia (1911).7 Thomas Crombez In the Netherlands, however, the first experiments with staging Greek drama took place on the margins rather than in the center of the established theater. These productions demonstrate a conspicuously historicizing tendency. At the Amsterdam gymnasium, a group of students presented Antigone in ancient Greek, in a production directed by teacher and dramatist, M.B. Mendes da Costa (1885). Six years later he directed Utrecht students in Oedipus the King, this time in the relatively modern (yet not metrical and rhymed) translation by Henricus van Herwerden. The style of that production may be labeled contemporary. Although it was emphatically historical (drawing on the advice of archeologists for the set design), Mendes da Costa was also an avid theatergoer, and had care­ fully watched the performances of the Meiningen Court Theater while the company was touring the Netherlands. Just like the Meiningen, he strove to make the scenic picture more dynamic, by emphasizing epsemble acting and by arranging the components of the set design into an asymmetrical whole of diverse heights (Haak 1977: 54-58). The theatergoing audience and the critics, too, slowly started to consider Greek tragedy more and more as an authentic product for the contemporary stage, albeit still to be domesticated. Indeed, horrifying events such as Oedipus' patricide and his incestuous marriage with Jocasta could be difficult to reconcile with bourgeois taste—but did the same not apply equally to the abnormal scenes and pathological figures of naturalistic drama? The remarkable fact that this comparison could be made by a reviewer of the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant demonstrates that the integration of tragedy had become a fact.8 Student productions opened the door to professional performances. The Nederlandsch Toneel gave Mendes da Costa the opportunity to redo Koning Oidipous (1896) and Antigone (1897), but this time with a cast of professional performers, including the charismatic star actor Louis Bouwmeester. After the eruptive pas­ sions and the melodramatic play of Mounet-Sully in Œdipe roi (also to be wit­ nessed in Amsterdam in 1892), however, Mendes da Costa had to be wary of such seasoned players. For him, theatrical effects, such as when Mounet-Sully had vio­ lently thrown the shepherd to the ground in order to force a confession from him (which had also happened in the German and English productions designed by Reinhardt), were totally out of the question. But Bouwmeester's performance was built on such effects. The concluding scene of the production clearly showed that the star actor was not to be denied his theatrical effects, and illustrated that the era of the director’s theater had not yet arrived. Bouwmeester did not want his Oedipus simply to disappear from the stage at the end of the play, as Mendes da Costa had suggested. Instead, he climbed a rock which was part of the set and remained there until the curtain fell, wailing and gesticulating during the final song of the chorus (Haak 1977: 68). In De Gids, J.N. Hall rightly observed that Greek tragedy was thereby given “the allures and tone of a modern melodrama,” and that “it grabs hold of, and shakes, and finally entrances a not too demanding audience” (Hall 1896: 597).