Abstract
One figure, used by Cocteau throughout his The Infernal Machine, dismantles the binaries that order the play as a whole and informs his interpretation of the Oedipus myth: monster. The monster, whether as a synecdoche or a metaphor, does not appear in Cocteau’s two adaptations of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos that precede The Infernal Machine. Nor is it found in Sophocles’ play, for the simple reason that the term “monster” as we understand it today first emerged during the Middle Ages.2 Instead of “monster,” the Sophoclean text employs the emotionally and ethically charged terms “impious” and “murderer” to describe the unsuspected author of parricide and incest, Oedipus.
It is the custom to call the unusual accord of discordant elements a MONSTER: the Centaur, the Chimera are defined as such for those who do not understand. I call all original, inexhaustible beauty a monster.
—Alfred Jarry, “Les Monstres” (The Monsters)1
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Notes
From the many studies in teratology, see David D. Gilmore, Monsters, Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manners of Imaginary Terrors (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); etymologically, the term may be derived from the Latin monere (to warn, to remind) or monstrare (to point out).
Michel Décaudin dates Cocteau’s first attempt to adapt Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos in 1921. See Michel Décaudin, “Chronologie,” in Jean Cocteau, Oeuvres poétiques complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), xxxvii. However, critics are at variance about the date.
See Derek F. Connon, “Folded Eternity: Time and the Mythic Dimension in Cocteau’s La Machine Infernale,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 29, no. 1 (January 1993): 31;
Paul Bauschatz, “Oedipus: Stravinsky and Cocteau Recompose Sophocles,” Comparative Literature 43, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 150–170.
The play was published in 1928 together with Cocteau’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and was first performed in 1937. On Cocteau’s adaptations of Sophocles, see Carol A. Cujec, “Modernizing Antiquity: Jean Cocteau’s Early Greek Adaptations,” Classical and Modern Literature 17, no. 1 (Fall 1996): 45–56.
Contemporary press reports show that the dress rehearsal, in the presence of the press, took place at the Comédie des Champs Elysées on April 10, 1934, a day ahead of the first night (Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection théâtrale, Collection Louis Jouvet, Rt. 3767). Oedipus was played by JeanPierre Aumont, Jocasta by Marthe Régnier, the Sphinx by Lucienne Bogaert, Tirésias by Pierre Renoir, the Shepherd by Louis Jouvet, the Corinthian messenger by Marcel Khill, and the Voice by Jean Cocteau. Jouvet was the producer and director, while Christian Bérard designed the sets and the costumes. Although the play was a big success at the box office and the great majority of the press reviews were excellent, it had to close after two and a half months and sixty-four performances because the lease for the theatre building came to an end and could not be renewed. See also Henry Gidel, Jean Cocteau (Paris: Flammarion, 1997), 173–180.
For a discussion of similar framing techniques, see Bruce Wilshire, Role Playing and Identity: The Limits of Theatre as Metaphor (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 117.
For a detailed comparison between Sophocles’ play and The Infernal Machine, see Dwight H. Page, “The Resurrection of the Sophoclean Phoenix: Jean Cocteau’s La Machine Infernale.” Classical and Modern Literature 18, no. 4 (Summer 1998): 329–343.
Years later, in an entry from October 31, 1952 in his memoirs, Cocteau acknowledged that his Jocasta bore some of Isadora’s traits. See Cocteau, Passé défini I (1951–1952) (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), 367.
Henri Peyre, “What Greece Means to Modern France,” Yale French Studies 6 (1950): 61–62.
Bernard Valette, “Modernité du mythe chez Jean Cocteau,” Revue de l’Université de Bruxelles, no. 1–2 (1989): 19.
Eric Gould, Mythical Intentions in Modern Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 188–189.
For an anthropological approach, see Lowell Edmunds, The Sphinx in the Oedipus Legend (Königstein: Hain, 1981) and Oedipus: The Ancient Legend and Its Later Analogues (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985);
Eva Figes, Tragedy and Social Evolution (New York: Persea Books, 1990). For a study of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos within its historical and cultural context,
see Frederick Ahl, Sophocles’ Oedipus: Evidence and Self-conviction (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991).
See for example, Bernard Combeaud, La Machine Infernale de Cocteau: Etude de l’oeuvre (Paris, Hachette, 1998);
Charles Delattre, La Machine Infernale: Connaissance d’une oeuvre (Paris, Bréal, 1998);
Philippe Grandjean, La Machine Infernale: Jean Cocteau. (Paris: Hatier, 2000);
Dominique Morineau, Cocteau. La Machine Infernale: 40 questions, 40 réponses, 4 études (Paris: Ellipses, 1998);
Dominique Odier, Etude sur La Machine Infernale (Paris: Ellipses, 1997);
Thanh-Vân Ton-That, La Machine Infernale: Dossier pédagogique (Paris: Petits Classiques Larousse, 1998).
On the dialectics between the word and the objects or settings in the play, see André Helbo, “La ‘théâtralité’ chez Jean Cocteau,” Revue de l’Université de Bruxelles, no. 1–2 (1989): 79–84.
Kathryn Hume, Fantasy and Mimesis: Responses to Reality in Western Literature (London: Methuen, 1984), 21.
See also Tzvetan Todorov, Introduction à la littérature fantastique (Paris: Seuil, 1970);
Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny (New York: Routledge, 2003);
Sigmund Freud, “The ‘Uncanny’” (1919), in his On Creativity and the Unconscious. Papers on the Psychology of Art, Literature, Love, Religion, ed. Benjamin Nelson, trans. Alix Strachey (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), 122–161.
For the manifestation of Shelley’s monster on the stage, see Steven Earl Forry, “The Hideous Progenies of Richard Brinsley Peake: Frankenstein on the Stage, 1823–1826,” Theatre Research International 11, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 13–31.
Milorad [pseud.], “Les ‘Potomak,’” Cahiers Jean Cocteau, no. 8 (1979): 9–26.
Serge Linares. “Préface à une préface,” in Le Potomak (Paris: Passage du Marais, 2000), 14.
Alfredo Bonadeo, Mark of the Beast: Death and Degradation in the Literature of the Great War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989).
Monic Robillard, “L’Ange et le nom divin de Cocteau,” Romanic Review 81, no. 2 (March 1990): 224–235.
Danielle Chaperon, Jean Cocteau. La Chute des Angles (Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1990), 120–121.
Marielle Wyns, Jean Cocteau, l’Empreinte de l’ange (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005), 56, 58, 229.
Pierre Macris, “L’Ange et Cocteau,” La Revue des Lettres Modernes, no. 298–303 (1972/3): 71–90;
Serge Dieudonné, “Cocteau entre soi-même et Radiguet,” Cahiers Jean Cocteau 8 (1979): 193–206.
Michel Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1974–1975, ed. Valerio Marchetti and Antonella Salomoni, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Picador, 2003), 65.
Robert M. Hammond, ed. Beauty and the Beast. Scenario and Dialogs by Jean Cocteau (New York: New York University Press, 1970), 108, 132, 149, 193, 251, 253, 255, 275, 283, 347, 355, 373.
Chris Baldick, In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 45.
Olivier Biaggini, “Montrer par les monstres: polymorphisme d’un exemplum médiéval.” Des Monstres. Actes du Colloque de Mai 1993 à Fontenay-aux-Roses (Fontenay-St. Cloud: ENS, 1994), 48.
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© 2008 Irene Eynat-Confino
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Eynat-Confino, I. (2008). The Infernal Machine. In: On the Uses of the Fantastic in Modern Theatre. Palgrave Studies Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616967_2
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