COSTUME
93
designer and the dressmaker ; the sketch should
be
entirely destroyed
on the stage except for some very rare spectacles in which the art of
the fresco is to be deliberately striven for. The sketch or model must
remain an instrument, and not become a style.
Lastly, the third disease of costume is money, the hypertrophy of
sumptuosity or at least its appearance. This is a very frequent disease in
our society, in which the theater
is
always the object of a contract
between the spectator who pays his money and the manager who
returns it to him in the most visible form possible; now it is quite
obvious that in this case, the illusory sumptuosity of the costumes
constitutes a spectacular and reassuring restitution; vulgarly speaking,
costume
pays
better than emotion or intellection, always uncertain
and without manifest relations to their condition as merchandise.
Hence once a theater becomes vulgarized, we see it constantly height–
ening the luxury of its costumes, visited for themselves and soon be–
coming the decisive attraction of the spectacle
(Les I ndes Galantes
at
the Opera ) . Where is the theater in all this? Nowhere, of course: the
horrible cancer of wealth has completely devoured it.
By a diabolic mechanism, the luxurious costume adds mendacity
to what is already base: ours is no longer an age (as Shakespeare's
was, for example) when actors wear rich but authentic costumes from
seigneurial wardrobes; today, wealth costs too much, we content our–
selves with an ersatz-that is, with lies. Thus it is not even luxury,
but fakes that happen to be hypertrophied today. Sombart has sug–
gested the bourgeois origin of the imitation substance; certainly in
France it is particularly the petit-bourgeois theaters (Folies-Bergere,
Comedie-Fran<;aise, Opera-Comique) which indulge in such pseudo–
substances most determinedly. This supposes an infantile condition in
the spectator who is denied simultaneously any critical spirit and any
creative imagination. Naturally we cannot entirely banish
imitation–
wealth
from our costumes; but if we resort to it, we should at least
signify
as much, should refuse to accredit the lie. In the theater, noth–
ing must be hidden. This notion derives from a very simple ethical
principle, which has always produced, I believe, a great theater: one
must have confidence in the spectator, must resolutely grant him the
power of creating wealth himself, of transforming rayon into silk and
lies into illusion.
