NIC O LA CHIARE>MONTE
necessarily divided ' and doubt-ridden, and thus open to the
influence of the truth. At the same time the spectators are free
to.: w.elcome the most dis.turbing revelations, .conscious that they
ate .not being made in
ord~r
to wound but rather to awaken their '
most living side. Is this not the sense in which one must under–
stand the Artistotelian catharsis, which instead is usually under–
stood as a kind of drowning of the real in the imaginary?
The path by which Genet attains this point can seem a play
of mirrors; and so it is. But it is a mirror-play on which the
theater is naturally founded, rendered explicit for the purpose
of overcoming
with theatrical means
the inertia of nineteenth–
century convention. In any case, the play never gives an impres–
sion of artifice and the over-all effect is of a simplicity which I
do ' not hesitate to call moving.
To tell the story of
Les Negres
is impossible: the text cannot
be . separated from its' performance, and this is ' just as much
dllelo the stage direction of Roger ,Blin; the costumes and masks
of Andre Acquart, the enchanting brio of 'the actors of the Com–
p'agnie des Gtiots, as to Genet's fantasy and humor. Without
Roger Blin and 'without the extraordinary naturalness ' of the
actors, Genet's ' often .too charged and ' n'eedlessly violent style
would mar the grace ' of the ' invention ' and scenic ' movement.
The 'action, summarized, comes ·down
to
this: a group of black
actors .expresses, before an audience ' of whites, the relationship
between blacks and whites
as
they themselves see it and ' suffer
it. There are ' the blacks below, and above, on a platform, the
Governor; the Bishop, the Judge, the Servant and the Queen-all
whites, or rather, blacks wearing masks. The blacks comment on
their ceremony (pretended), which consists in the ritual sacrifice
of a white woman. Behind this ceremony lies the secret of the
conspiracy. From this intial fact there burst-precisely in the
same way that a jazz orchestra improvises-dances, duets of love
and jealousy, lyrical exaltation, sarcastic rem'U'ks, farcical scenes.
At the end the revolt, ridiculous and ferocious, explodes,
at the: conclusion of which· the "whites" are. one '!iter- ·the
oth~
put to death, ·The.refore the "blacks" have taken' the ·plac.8 of ·the
"whiteso~'
.An impossible conclusion" or, to put it ·more accurately,
