![]() ![]() There wasn't a feeling that a quiet thing like contempt, which everyone enjoys, could be the cause of the Somme and Verdun. I think Chlumberg couldn't have said that the purpose of the "mad pestilence" was to get to the quietude of contempt. At the same time contempt as a universal presence is not seen. This play is all about contempt - with the living having contempt for the dead, and the dead for the living. I'm reading this so the cause can be tested. You entered the war after your ships were sunk, and, of course, you didn't care about your war credits, your war profits? Shortly after this exchange we are deeply moved as Vernier explains that the French and German trenches "ran parallel to each other and hardly more than 100 meters apart" and here in a mass grave they "lie side by side." Yes! If we hadn't bled for you, you would have been lost!įRENCH. We won this soil back for you with English and American blood - because you couldn't do it alone. SHARPE These are our battlefields, gentlemen. Who the Devil sent for you? Why don't you stay home and visit your own battlefields, if you don't like ours! MISS GREELEY.there was one cemetery that had twenty thousand graves of unknown German soldiers, and they gave us lunch and dinner. In his writing, we feel he informs and criticizes us. It has an excellent jazz band, golf courses and tennis courts." There is satire here, as Chlumberg deals with opposites in every person: nobility and cheapness, large and small, life and death, the ordinary and the strange. Vernier explains that the area, surrounding the historic cemetery, now has a hotel which "is equipped with the most modern conveniences. Then we see another aspect of contempt - how a war can make for good business prospects. Now last year we were in Flanders and they showed us battlefields where four hundred thousand were killed! Six hundred thousand! In a single year! Or even fifteen thousand, perhaps! But anyway, the losses were very great, sir. Some very bitter fighting took place here, and there were very heavy casualties, especially in 19 The stage directions tell us that MAZAS, the tourist guide, pulls the bell-cord "violently," and calls out "Hello! Hey!" and the tourists "shake the barred gate and pull long and hard at the bell-handle". A group of tourists - French, German, British, and American - have arrived late to view it. It is August, 1934 - 20 years after the beginning of the war. Scene One begins at a war cemetery in the Argonne Forest in France. He gave this brief description of the plot: "Some of the soldiers, both French and German, arise from a mass grave, but their return makes for too much of a disturbance in the world, so they go back to their graves." Siegel said: "I don't know of a play that can make contempt more seeable, more something that has affected people not just some of the time but all of the time." Listening to this play with its courageous descriptions of contempt, I felt even more the necessity of strict self-criticism. What if the soldiers who fell in the War were to rise from their graves and return to the world they had died to redeem? Would that world really want or welcome them: Would they find it any the better for their sacrifice, or the more determined to prevent such a catastrophe in the future? I respect Hans Chlumberg enormously for the questions he was dealing with in this play. Cordell, he placed some of the history of the time, saying: Siegel read a sketch of the author from the book Twentieth Century Plays, edited by Frank W. Siegel commented "didn't take the form that was caused by contempt, but there is enough that you can see it." Contempt, he has defined as "the addition to self through the lessening of something else."īefore Mr. Siegel said, "represents a big feeling in Germany, which gave rise to expressionism it is very much in this play." When The Miracle at Verdun was put on in 1931 by the Theater Guild in New York, it failed, yet in Europe it made a “profound impression.” "The feeling after the First World War that people had," Mr. Hans Chlumberg, who lived from 1897 to 1930, Mr. a sneer of the lips, and then the contempt which is very quiet. ![]() There are two kinds of contempt: (he continued) the kind you can see immediately accompanied with. I think the meaning of contempt-its full meaning-is the most valuable information the world needs to know. The Miracle at Verdun I have come to feel, all in all, is the most valuable play telling about contempt. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |