The Infernal Machine and Other Plays

by Jean Cocteau

  PHONO I, burlesque comedian’s voice. Well well well! And who are you?

  PHONO II. I am a wireless, and like my sister the stork I’ve come from New York.

  PHONO I, voice of a burlesque queen. Ah New York! City of lovers and midday twilights!

  PHONO II. Music, music!

  Dance and exit of the Radiograms.

  PHONO I. Son-in-law, you can thank me for all this. Whose idea was it to come to the Eiffel Tower? Whose idea was it to have the wedding on July Fourteenth?

  PHONO II. The child is stamping again.

  PHONO I. Papa! Papa!

  PHONO II. What is he saying?

  PHONO I. I want to have my picture taken with the General.

  PHONO II. General, you wouldn’t refuse our little Justin, would you?

  PHONO I. As you like.

  PHONO II. Poor Photographer! He’s worried to death, but he loads his camera again.

  PHONO I. The child straddles the General’s saber and pretends to listen to the General, who pretends to read to him out of a book by Jules Verne.

  PHONO II. Now, don’t move. Perfect. A little bird’s going to come out.

  A Lion comes out.

  PHONO I. Heavens, a lion! The Photographer is hiding behind his camera. All the guests are climbing up the cables of the Eiffel Tower. The lion is glaring at the General, for the General is the only one who has not moved. He is speaking. What is he saying?

  PHONO II. No need to be afraid. There can be no lions on the Eiffel Tower. Therefore, this is a mirage, a simple mirage. Mirages are the lies of the desert, so to speak. This lion is really in Africa, just as the bicycle girl was on Chatou road. The lion sees me, and I see the lion; but to each other we are nothing more than projected reflections.

  PHONO I. To confound the unbelievers, the General is approaching the lion. The lion suddenly roars. The General dodges, followed by the lion.

  PHONO II. The General disappears under the table. The lion disappears after him.

  PHONO I. After a minute which seems a year, the lion comes out from under the tablecloth.

  PHONO II. Horror of horrors! Ahhhhhh!

  PHONO I. What is he carrying in his jaws?

  PHONO II. A boot, with a spur. Having eaten the General, the lion goes back into the camera.

  Dirge.

  PHONOS I AND II. Ahhhh! Ahhhh!

  PHONO I. Poor General!

  PHONO II. He was so lighthearted, so eternally youthful! Nothing would have amused him more than this death: he would have been the first to chuckle over it.

  PHONO I. Funeral of the General.

  Funeral march.

  PHONO II. The father-in-law is pronouncing the eulogy. What is he saying?

  PHONO I. Farewell farewell old friend! Since first you girded on the sword, you have given evidence of an intelligence far above your rank. Your end is worthy of your career. We have seen you brave the ferocious beast, careless of danger, nay, unaware of its very existence; and fleeing only when you began to understand at last that it did exist. And so once more Farewell, or, better, Till we meet again: for your kind will be with us as long as there are men upon the earth.

  PHONO II. Three o’clock, and that ostrich isn’t back yet!

  PHONO I. She probably wanted to walk back.

  PHONO II. That is stupid. Nothing is more fragile than ostrich plumes.

  PHONO I. Attention! “The Eiffel Tower Wedding Party,” a quadrille, played by the band of the Garde Républicaine: director, Parès.

  Quadrille.

  PHONOS I AND II. Bravo! Bravo! ’ ray for the Garde Républicaine!

  PHONO II. Oof, what a dance!

  PHONO I. Your arm.

  PHONO II. Mister Photographer, you wouldn’t turn down a cup of champagne?

  PHONO I. You are too kind. I’m overcome.

  PHONO II. “When in Rome …” — But what does my grandson want now?

  PHONO I. I want someone to buy me some bread so I can feed the Eiffel Tower.

  PHONO II. They sell it down below. I am not going down.

  PHONO I. Wanna feed the Eiffel Tower!

  PHONO II. They feed it only at certain hours. That’s why it’s surrounded by wires.

  PHONO I. Wanna feed the Eiffel Tower!

  PHONO II. No, no, I said no!

  PHONO I. The guests are beginning to shout: here comes the ostrich. She was hidden in the elevator all the time. Now she is looking for another place to hide. And here comes the Hunter. The Photographer wishes the ostrich would take advantage of the camera box.

  PHONO II. Suddenly he remembers that to make an ostrich invisible all you have to do is hide its head.

  PHONO I. He hides the ostrich’s head under his hat. Just in time!

  The Ostrich walks about invisible, the hat on its head. Enter the Hunter.

  PHONO II. Have any of you seen the ostrich?

  PHONOS I AND II. No. We have seen nothing.

  PHONO II. Strange! I thought it jumped down onto the platform.

  PHONO I. It may have been a wave, and you took it for an ostrich.

  PHONO II. NO , the sea is calm. Well, I shall hide behind this phonograph cabinet and wait for it.

  PHONO I. No sooner said than done.

  PHONO II. The Photographer is approaching the ostrich on tiptoe. What is he saying?

  PHONO I. Madam, you have not a minute to lose! He has not recognized you in your veil. Make haste: I have called a cab.

  PHONO II. He opens the shutter of the camera. The ostrich disappears.

  PHONO I. Saved, thank God!

  PHONO II. You can imagine the joy of the Photographer. He is shouting for pure delight.

  PHONO I. The guests are asking him why.

  PHONO II. Ladies and Gentlemen, at last I am able to photograph you in peace. My camera was out of order, but it is working now. Now, don’t move!

  PHONO I. But who are these two gentlemen who have come just in time to upset the Photographer again?

  PHONO II. Look, the wedding party and the Photographer have frozen stiff. The guests are immobile. Do you not find it a bit…

  PHONO I. A bit — wedding cake?

  PHONO II. A bit — arty?

  PHONO I. A bit — Mona Lisa?

  PHONO II. A bit — Old Master?

  PHONO I. The Modern Art Dealer and the Collector of Modern Paintings halt before the wedding party. What is the dealer saying?

  PHONO II. I have brought you up here on the Eiffel Tower so that you may be the first to see a unique piece: The Wedding Breakfast.

  PHONO I. And the Collector replies:

  PHONO II. I follow you blindly.

  PHONO I. Well, is it good, or is it not? It looks like a primitive.

  PHONO II. Whose is it?

  PHONO I. What! Whose is it? It’s one of God’s very latest things!

  PHONO II. Is it signed?

  PHONO I. God never signs — But I ask you: is it painted ! And what texture! Observe the style, the nobility, the joie de vivre! It might almost be a funeral.

  PHONO II. I see a wedding party.

  PHONO I. Then you see wrong. It is more than a wedding. It is all weddings. It is more than all weddings. It is a cathedral.

  PHONO II. What do you want for it?

  PHONO I. It is not for sale, except to the Louvre or you. See here: you can have it at cost price.

  PHONO II. The Dealer displays a huge placard.

  The placard reads 10000000000.

  PHONO I. Will the collector let himself be convinced? What is he saying?

  PHONO II. I take The Wedding Breakfast.

  The Dealer turns the placard over. The reverse reads SOLD in huge letters. He places it against the wedding party.

  PHONO I. The Dealer addresses the Photographer.

  PHONO II. Make me a picture of that wedding party, with the placard. I want to have it in all the American magazines.

  PHONO I. The Collector and the Dealer leave the Eiffel Tower.

  PHONO II. The Photographer is getting rea
dy to take the picture, but —what’s this! His camera is speaking to him.

  PHONO I. What is it saying?

  THE CAMERA, in a distant voice. I want.… I want.…

  PHONO II. Speak out, sweet silver swan!

  THE CAMERA. I want to give up the General.

  PHONO II. He is perfectly capable of giving himself up.

  PHONO I. The General reappears. He is pale. One boot is missing. After all, he comes from far away. He will inform them that he is returning from a mission about which he must not speak. The wedding party is motionless. Head lowered, the General crosses the platform and strikes a modest pose among the rest.

  PHONO II. This will be a pleasant surprise for the Collector of masterpieces. In a masterpiece one is never through discovering unexpected details.

  PHONO I. The Photographer turns away. He finds the wedding a bit stiff. If the wedding can reproach the General for being alive, he in his turn can reproach the Wedding for letting itself be sold.

  PHONO II. The Photographer is a man of feeling.

  PHONO I. He speaks. What is he saying?

  PHONO II. Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am going to count up to five. Look straight into the camera. A little bird’s going to come out.

  PHONO I. A dove!

  PHONO II. The machine is working.

  PHONO I. Peace has been declared.

  PHONO II. One.

  The Bride and Bridegroom leave the group, cross the stage, and exit into the camera.

  Two.

  Same business for the Father-in-law and Mother-in-law.

  Three.

  Same business for the First Usher and Bridesmaid.

  Four.

  Same business for the Second Usher and Bridesmaid.

  Five.

  Same business for the General, alone, head hanging; and for the Child, who leads him by the hand.

  PHONO I. Enter the Manager of the Eiffel Tower. He is waving a megaphone.

  PHONO II. Closing time! Closing time!

  PHONO I. He goes out.

  PHONO II. Enter the Hunter. He is in a hurry. He rushes up to the camera. What is the Photographer saying?

  PHONO I. Where do you think you’re going?

  PHONO II. I want to make the last train.

  PHONO I. The gate is closed.

  PHONO II. This is disgraceful. I shall complain to the Minister of Railroads.

  PHONO I. No fault of mine. That train of yours — there she goes!

  The camera starts to move to the left, its bellows stretching out after it like railway coaches. Through openings the wedding guests can be seen, waving handkerchiefs; and, underneath, feet in motion.

  CURTAIN

  THE KNIGHTS

  OF THE

  ROUND

  TABLE

  translated by

  W. H. AUDEN

  PREFACE

  So many marvels have happened since Racine wrote his prefaces and thought it necessary to defend great works, so many marvels have been produced and have liberated the theatre from the rules that were limiting it on all sides — or, rather, obliging Racine not to determine his own limits and to make a moralist of himself — that I believe a different sort of preface is useful in 1937.*

  The Calvaries climbed by our masters have not been transformed into a public promenade.

  Calvary has changed its place, that is all. We must still climb it again, a little less lonely now perhaps, but equally attended by emptiness and insults.

  For my drama The Knights of the Round Table, in which I seem to break with a sort of mania for Greece, it would be mad to lean on fable and exactness, the source of a work of this order being precisely inexactness, and exactness no longer winning a place for itself there except under the secret forms of numbers, equilibrium, perspectives, weights and measures, spells, and so on.…

  It seems to me more interesting to say why this work was born. Let no one look for indirect borrowings from fact, to which I do not hold myself accountable. Inspiration does not necessarily come down from some heaven. To explain it one would have to disturb the human darkness and, without doubt, nothing flattering would emerge. The poet’s role is a humble one. He is at the orders of his night.

  In 1934 I was ill. I awoke one morning, unaccustomed to sleeping, and I sat in on this drama from beginning to end; its plot, its period and its people were as unfamiliar to me as possible. I must add that I looked on them as being forbidding.

  It was three years later, when Markevitch affectionately forced my hand, that I came to draw it out of the vagueness to which I had consigned it, as happens to us when we are sick, of a morning, from prolonging our dreams, floundering between dawn and daylight, and inventing an in-between world that keeps us from the shock of reality.

  Once the play was written, I began to do research and found myself face to face with my faults as a fable-maker, and I decided to leave the play alone.

  Except for “the talking flower,” which came to me by way of a newspaper item (a plant grew out of the waves in Florida like a radio aerial), the whole work was given to me, I repeat, by myself. It is not necessary to see any privilege in this gift.

  What strikes me in looking at The Knights from outside is the main character, the invisible Ginifer, the young demon and Merlin’s servant.

  This character appears only in the forms created by the sorcerer. Sometimes the characters are true (Gawain, the Queen, Galahad), sometimes false. It will be seen that if the false characters run the risk of causing evil, they can also assume charms that are far more dangerous, in that these charms offer only a phantom happiness. This is the case with Arthur who is enchanted by the false Gawain, and bored by the true Gawain. But living is not a dream; the play, alas, proves it; and when disenchanted — I was going to write “disintoxicated ” — the castle will be less light for some, more solid for others and, in any case, uninhabitable for those souls who picture the earth as an Eden.

  We entrusted the costumes to Mademoiselle Chanel, for an epoch is perceived most sharply in its fashions, and only a woman who invents fashion could unite the delicate forces of the elegant present and mythological never-present.

  So this is how I was slammed — as in cards* — unexpectedly into the agonies of this dark world’s approaches, where we must live together with works that are destined to live on in our place after eating us.

  NOTE: It is a pure theatrical fluke if, in The Knights, what is conveniently called Good seems to triumph over what is conveniently called Evil. Demonstrations of this sort recall, to my way of thinking, the moralist’s esthetic, and that is the worst one I know.

  * * *

  If I had to tell the story of this play — and the difficulty of the critic’s vocation must make us indulgent toward ourselves — here is how I would try to extricate myself.

  ACT ONE

  Arthur’s castle is intoxicated, drugged. Some blame this on the Grail, the mysterious taboo, relic of the Christ who enchants or disenchants Britain; others delight in the situation or are repelled by it. The arrival of Galahad (Parsifal), the very pure soul who is responsible for the “disintoxication”, leads to disaster and disorder in the crooked party.

  ACT TWO

  At Merlin’s. We now know who has drugged Arthur’s castle and found what he wanted there. It is Merlin the Sorcerer, a negative spirit who uses his young servant, the demon Ginifer, and transforms him into different characters. Galahad’s magic power defeats Merlin’s. Merlin is confounded. For the first time. Unmasked, he defends himself wildly.

  ACT THREE

  Arthur’s castle is “disintoxicated ” and rid of the trickery or — to be more exact — the author shows it to us at the height of the “ disintoxication.” Truth comes to light and is hard to live with.

  The truth bégins with the shaming of the Queen, the double death of the wife and the friend. Arthur hunts Merlin down. And the poet, the very pure soul, leaves them. He cannot remain where he is loved. The sun and the birds are reborn. This real, violent,
forgotten life exhausts Arthur. Will he have the strength for it? Merlin ironically wishes it on him. But the King says:

  “I prefer true deaths to a false life.”

  Let us hope that he is right and that he will keep the Grail at Camelot, that token which is simply the very rare equilibrium with oneself.

  It is important for me that my attentive readers realize the extent to which I remain outside this work.

  The theatre public must decide whether the forces that direct the first and the last act respectively make life more or less pleasant. The final question being to know whether, according to the code of Baudelaire, life should be pleasant. (Letter to Jules Janin.)

  PRODUCTION NOTES

  I

  The character of Ginifer exists only in the characters whose parts and places he takes in the play. The same actor thus interprets Gawain and the false Gawain, the same actress the Queen and the false Queen, and so on.

  The Queen in Act Two is therefore inspired by Gawain’s game in Act One. The false Galahad in Act Three, by the false Queen and by the false Gawain. In this way, the parts add up to an invisible role.

  When Galahad meets the false Galahad in flight, during the last act, and says: “I thought I had smashed a mirror,” it is understood that the same actor runs off, leaves the stage, pretends to fight, and re-enters in order to endure Arthur’s anger.

  II

  The whole supernatural element of the drama must be staged with absolute care, so as to give the impression of realism. I recommend the director to put the movements of the chess game into the hands of a specialist in stage tricks. The chess pieces must move and re-align themselves, visibly and violently.

  The chair that slides and falls, the serving table that comes out of the wall, the doors that open and close on their own are all equally problems that cannot be resolved at the last minute and must be given long and serious study in advance.

  I recommend the actors playing the double roles of the Queen and Blandine, Lancelot and Segramor — at the end of Act Three — to make sure that the substitution does not lead to the least misunderstanding. Mere physical resemblance is not enough. Costumes, stances, hair styles and colors must all conspire to make this substitution clear.