LENORMAND, Henri-René 1882-1951

PERSONAL:

Born 1882; died 1951; son of René Lenormand (a composer); married Marie Kalff (an actor), 1911.

CAREER:

Playwright and author.

WRITINGS:

Les paysages d'ame (poems and prose), Stock (Paris, France), 1905.

La folie blanche (play), Stock (Paris, France), 1906.

Fear, translation by Jean d'Augzan, 1913.

Trois dramaes: Les possédés, Terres chaudes, Les ratés, Crès (Zurich, Switzerland), 1918, translated by Doris Libetta Orna as Three Plays (includes The Dream Doctor, Man and His Phantoms, and The Coward), Payson and Clarke (New York, NY), 1928.

Les temps est un songe, Éditions de Paris-magazine (Paris, France), 1919.

Le penseur et la cretine, Crès (Paris, France), 1920.

Theatre complete (collected plays), four volumes, Crès (Paris, France), 1921-1925.

Le simoun (play), Crès (Paris, France), 1921.

Les ratés (play), Crès (Paris, France), 1921.

Le mangeur de rêves (play), Crès (Paris, France), 1922.

Failures: A Play in Fourteen Scenes, translation by Winifred Katzin, Knopf (New York, NY), 1923.

Crépuscule de théâtre (play) L'Illustration (Paris, France), 1924.

La dent rouge, Crès (Paris, France), 1924.

Une vie secrète, Crès (Paris, France), 1924.

L'armée secrète, Nouvelle Revue Française (Paris, France), 1925.

L'homee et ses fantômes, Crès (Paris, France), 1925.

Images, Connaissance (Paris, France), 1925.

À l'ombre du mal, Crès (Paris, France), 1925.

La lâche (four-act play), L'Illustration (Paris, France), 1926.

A l'écart, suivi de Printemps marocain, Flammarion (Paris, France), 1926.

L'innocente (play), L'Illustration (Paris, France), 1928.

L'amour magicien, Crès (Paris, France), 1931.

Asie (three-act play), Librarie Théatrale (Paris, France), 1931.

Un poète au théâtre: Saint-Georges de Bouhélier, Fasquelle (Paris, France), 1935.

In Theatre Street, translation by Ashley Dukes, Samuel French (New York, NY), 1937.

Les Pitoëff: souvenirs, O. Lieutier (Paris, France), 1943.

Déserts, nouvelles exotiques, Albin Michel (Paris, France), 1944.

Les coeurs anxieux, L'Elan (Paris, France), 1947.

Les confessions d'un auteur dramatique, Albin Michel (Paris, France), 1949.

Une fille est une fille (fiction), Flammarion (Paris, France), 1949, translation published as Renée, Creative Age Press (New York, NY), 1951.

L'enfant des sables (fiction), La Couronne Littéraire (Paris, France), 1949.

Marguerite Jamois, Calmann-Levy (Paris, France), 1950.

Troubles (novel), Flammarion (Paris, France), 1951.

(With others) Portrait dans un miroir, Stock, Delamain et Boutelleau (Paris, France), 1952.

The Rising (novel), translation by Lothian Small, Thames and Hudson (New York, NY), 1952.

Also author of several plays produced in Europe, including Le reveil de l'instinct 1908; Le minoun; Mixture, 1927; Le temps est un songe; Pacifique; and Terre de Satan.

SIDELIGHTS:

In Nottingham French Studies Robert Posen assessed the career and influence of French dramatist Henri-Rene Lenormand. Lenormand completed the bulk of his work between the two world wars; his Theatre Complete, which contains eighteen of his most important plays, covers the years 1919 through 1942. At the same time, Lenormand was an accomplished short-story writer and novelist. "He was also the author of memoirs of certain of his contemporaries," Posen wrote, adding that the dramatist's 1943 work Les Pitoëff: souvenirs "is a revealing study of the great actor-manager Georges Pitoëff and his wife, Ludmilla, and of their relationship with the author." As Posen related, Lenormand was the son of composer René Lenormand and grew up in an environment of creativity. In 1908 Lenormand produced a controversial play, Le reveil de l'instinct, which explores the theme of incest and is based on the true story of a French officer whose experiences Lenormand had heard about in 1904.

Lenormand's early career was interrupted by World War I; after serving in the army he moved with his wife to Switzerland in 1915 to recuperate from illness. Those early years saw Lenormand producing what Posen called his "finest plays," Les ratés and Le simoun. The plays were produced in Geneva, giving Lenormand much-needed exposure and his wife, Marie Kalff, a career as an actor. "It was, therefore, as a mature dramatist that Lenormand returned to Paris in 1919," the essayist said. Some dramatic elements from Reveil de l'instinct anticipate Lenormand's later plays, including Mixture, a 1927 work in which a woman is abandoned by her lover and tries to earn a living as a singer to avoid prostitution. "Then there are Willem's notions, which he express when attacking religion, about the freedom which should be enjoyed by the creative," said Posen. "This freedom, so often claimed for 'artists,' is the theme of a number of Lenormand's works in which the relationship between the artist and the rest of society is examined." The playwright's universe, added Posen, is often completed by the addition of "minor characters, such as native servants or a half-witted child." An element of terror also enters the picture, as a Grand Guignol-type sensibility pervades some of Lenormand's drama.

Les ratés is "a play about players," Posen continued. "Lenormand's life was one that was centered on the theatre, as was that of his wife. The piece reflects [the author's] experiences of the theatre to a certain extent and in particular his love-affair with his wife, for it recalls the hardships undergone by her when he knew her as a young actress." Les ratés depicts the struggles of young performers from the provincial tours to the atmosphere of failure and desperation as a theatre goes under for lack of financing. The principals are all forced to find other means of revenue; actress Elle turns to prostitution while her lover, Lui, finally kills himself in despair. Despite the grim themes, much of Les ratés is "witty and satirical," Posen wrote. "The troupe of actors is modeled on Lenormand's own acquaintances. There are particularly well-observed scenes in which the manger has to contend with the artistic pride of a 'second ghost' who feels he should be promoted to 'first ghost,' or of the old actor whose chance to shine has come in the ironical closing scene."

Posen pointed out that "in almost all of Lenormand's plays someone commits suicide, that there are no strong characters and that even the apparently strong are hesitant." Posen cited the lead character Nico of Le temps est un songe as an example. Nico's suicide is preceded by the attempts of others "to counteract his morbid preoccupation with the marshy pools around the old Dutch house in which the play is set." But the outsiders' efforts are to no avail; "If a hero in [Lenormand's] plays can make any firm decision," wrote Posen, "it is only to kill himself." The author "does not attempt to suggest that it is metaphysical doubt which causes Nico's death," the essayist continued, "but he does attempt to show that Nico's inability to communicate is due in large part to his upbringing in the East, where he has gained an outlook which differentiates him from his compatriots."

After the successful premieres of Les ratés and Le temps est un songe, Lenormand wrote more than a dozen further plays during the years preceding World War II. Their settings ranged from Africa to Norway; their themes included the familiar—theatrical life—and the controversial. La lâche belongs in the latter camp, dealing "sympathetically with a man's cowardice in his attempt to escape conscription," as Posen related. The essayist also cited a group of "colonial" plays during that period, including À l'ombre du mal, Pacifique, and Terre de satan "in which the oppressiveness of a locality is an important influence on the characters." In such pieces Lenormand's focus remained on the European coping in a foreign environment. Geared toward that perspective, Posen suggested, the playwright's depiction of the "natives" tended to be one-sided. "This is not to say that Lenormand has no sympathy for them," Posen added. Like his contemporary André Gide, the playwright "regarded colonialism as exploitation, although, typically his greatest sympathies are for the just administrators and the self-sacrificing missionaries."

Though he turned to short stories in the 1930s, Lenormand remains best known for his theatrical efforts. The first and foremost theme in the dramatist's overall work was Freudianism. The work and writings of Sigmund Freud had come entered the popular culture during the early decades of the twentieth century, and Leormand was convinced "that Freud had irrevocably altered Man's view of himself," Posen wrote. The play Le mangeur de rêves even "has Freudian psychology as an actual theme. The question of the extent to which Freud's works influence Lenormand has occupied critics of this theatre perhaps more than any other."

In Literature and Psychology Posen elaborated on the Freudian theme, saying that "in any discussion of Lenormand's debt to psychoanalytical thought Le mangeur de rêves has a special place. It is the play which, more than any other, established [the dramatist] as the exponent on the French stage of Freudian concepts. …Paradoxically, it is the work which contains what Lenormand called 'a bitter criticism of Freudian theories.'" The story's central character, Luc, is a Freudian psychoanalyst; when he describes his methods of analysis "we recognise in them a metaphoric approach to the problem of describing creativity," Posen said. But in his search for the truth, Luc is presented as something of a voyeur, which Posen said is expressed "in extreme Freudian terms."

Whether reading a Lenormand play or watching it performed, Posen reported, one "cannot fail to recognize …a writer steeped in the theory and methods of Freudian psychology." However, "he remains a dramatist who finds the idiom of Freudianism useful as a vehicle for many of his ideas." Posen concluded that the playwright's "use of the language of psychology can sometimes give a false impression of a belief that the mind is capable of rigorous analysis and that the dramatist need only reveal and explain scientifically the mysteries of the human soul." In Lenormand's best plays, he said, the dramatist "succeeded in fusing the most ancient and the most modern ideas."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Comparative Literature, summer, 1967, Angela Belli, "Lenormand's Asie and Anderson's The Wingless Victory, " pp. 226-239.

Literature and Psychology, issue 4, 1975, Robert Posen, "A Freudian in the French Theatre," pp. 137-146.

Nottingham French Studies, May, 1967, Robert Posen, "Aspects of the Work of Henri-René Lenormand, Part 1," pp. 30-44; May, 1968, Posen, "Aspects of the Work of Henri-René Lenormand, Part 2," pp. 25-38.*