Michel Tremblay

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Studies in Canadian Literature: Michel Tremblay

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From the beginning, [Tremblay] managed to achieve a double synthesis: a synthesis of the major theatrical traditions which, at least potentially, come together in contemporary French Canada, and a synthesis between universality and solid regionalism.

A young playwright working in Montreal in the sixties could not but be aware of three totally distinct theatrical traditions: the local tradition of realistic theatre developed by Gélinas and Dubé; the tradition of the American theatre, too close to home to be ignored; and the classical and modern European tradition, rejected by the more radical groups, but present nonetheless as a matrix and source of archetypes. While other dramatists felt compelled to make a choice between traditions, Tremblay instinctively took the path of synthesis, taking from each what it could contribute towards the aesthetic completeness of his own work.

Within the creative process, of course, the fusion of elements occurs on the level of the unconscious. Nevertheless, Tremblay is very much aware of the importance, to his work, of those he calls his "maîtres à penser." The themes, settings, characters and language of his plays clearly demonstrate his concern for the "regional"—in the sense of a realistic, slice-of-life—representation. He is also very much aware of the close ties between French-Canadian and American culture, stressing that the identity of the French Canadian does not depend upon a rejection of the American element in his life, but rather on a fully conscious acceptance of that fact…. Of American writers, the work of Tennessee Williams has been an especially important factor in Tremblay's artistic growth; one can also detect certain similarities with Edward Albee. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he does not feel compelled to cut himself off from the classical European tradition, or even that of France, in an attempt to flaunt his anticolonialism. On the contrary: as a schoolboy, Michel, who did not attend the cours classique, but had a friend who did, avidly read all the classical works he could borrow. He has always retained an enormous admiration for the formal perfection of Greek tragedy, especially the choral tragedies of Aeschylus. Without this classical background, he would never have been able to achieve the complex musical structures, largely based on choral techniques, which constitute the major artistic merit of his plays. As for the French classics, in one of his early works, La Cité dans l'oeuf, he went so far as to try to emulate Racine by restricting himself to a list of one hundred adjectives in an effort to achieve the simplicity of the neoclassical style. Of the more recent European playwrights, Beckett is his favourite. Although Tremblay's essential naturalism is far from the abstract style of Beckett, one can see in even these naturalistic plays a level where the imagery assumes a symbolic character not unlike that found in absurdist drama.

The second, and more important, synthesis achieved by Tremblay is the blending of universality and "québécitude." He himself feels very strongly that there is no contradiction between these terms; on the contrary, the more a writer is rooted in the realities of his own time and place, the more universal he may become. However, the universality of Tremblay's themes has not always been recognized by Quebec critics, who tend to gauge his work only in terms of the local and contemporary context, and to emphasize its "political" significance. In fact, the multiple levels on which his plays operate can be simplified into three basic categories: the story or anecdotal level (and on this level almost all of his work is regional/naturalistic); the socio-political level (which is present, in varying degrees, in all of his naturalistic plays and is strongly rooted in the problems of contemporary Quebec); and a universal/mythological level. (pp. 15-16)

The settings of Tremblay's plays also reflect this division into threefold levels of meaning. If we survey his opus from a topological point of view, we find a universe consisting of three distinct spheres, at decreasing levels of naturalism, which together form the basis for a mythology in the making.

1. Rue Fabre: daily life, the family

The street on which he grew up, the people on that street and, in particular, the noisy, crowded quarters where he was forced to spend his childhood left an indelible impression on Michel Tremblay. Rue Fabre to him is not just a street: it is a way of life….

Tree-lined rue Fabre, in northeast Montreal, impresses the visitor as a typical lower-middle-class neighbourhood, not without a certain charm, with its outside staircases, balconies and postage-stamp size front lawns. Tremblay, however, focusses on the promiscuity of life along the back alley, with its filth and stench, peopled by colourful, but desperate characters. (p. 17)

As a source of poetic inspiration, the street achieves its ultimate potential in Tremblay's most recent play, Damnée Manon, Sacrée Sandra, in which we find Sandra, the transvestite prostitute, and Manon, the old maid religious fanatic, pursuing their individual obsessions next door to each other. Rue Fabre also provides the background for the cycle of novels starting with La Grosse Femme d'à côté est enceinte (1978). The entire series will be highly autobiographical, with the author himself the child to be born from "la grosse femme."

2. The Main: nightlife, prostitution, homosexuality

This is a world of false glitter and real pathos: the world of La Duchesse de Langeais, of Hosanna, of Berthe, Carlotta and Gloria Star in Trois Petits Tours; a world of no exit where the only escape possible comes through illusion; where illusion is quickly shattered, as in Demain matin, Montréal m'attend, and heroism is stamped out, as in Sainte Carmen de la Main. (p. 18)

It is not impossible to cross over from the world of rue Fabre to that of the Main, and several of Tremblay's characters have made the transition—most notably, Carmen (from the household of Léopold and Marie-Louise in A toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou to the Rodeo café in Sainte Carmen de la Main). Sandra the transvestite takes the opposite route when he/she eventually returns to the street of his/her childhood. For the women who are caught in the emotional and physical trap of frustration that the family constitutes within the limitations of an inbred neighbourhood, the Main stands for glamour, freedom, life itself. However, seen within its own context, the world of the Main turns out to be ultimately as inbred, frustrating and limiting, in its own kinky way, as the petty household world around rue Fabre. The desire to escape towards something better, a greater, more fulfilling type of life, is felt just as strongly by the nightclub artists and male and female prostitutes as it is by the rosary-reciting belles-soeurs. All the glory of the Main is but illusion, its inhabitants eventually are forced to realize, as the author uncovers layer after layer of self-deception…. (p. 19)

While the people of the rue Fabre escape into dreams of the Main, and the people of the Main into dreams of glory and fame, the author of both of these worlds has created a private escape for himself—the third and least realistic sphere of his universe, a world of fantasy and transcendence.

3. The Great Beyond ("Le Grand Ailleurs"): gods, sinners, and fantasies

Tremblay's novel of pure fantasy, La Cité dans l'oeuf, came out in 1968, the same year as Les Belles-Soeurs—a fact that illustrates perfecty the dual aspect of his opus: naturalism and fantasy, materialism and spiritualism, immanence and transcendence. Other works of fantasy include a collection of short stories, Contes pour buveurs attardés, and the plays Les Paons and Les Socles. As opposed to the stark naturalism of the two worlds described earlier, Tremblay's fantasy world is a place of dreams, where the laws of time and space are suspended. It is, nevertheless, a self-contained universe having certain recognizable and recurring features: the mysterious land of Paganka, starting point of the journey towards the Great Beyond; idols who come to life; fallen gods, and men who achieve divine status through the initiation ritual of crime. The underlying theme of the fantasies is a desire to break through the barrier of immanence into a state of transcendence; however, all such attempts end in tragic frustration.

This brief survey clearly illustrates the enormous diversity of the Tremblay opus. In genre, it extends to drama, novel and short story; in theme, to everyday and family life, to the life of the outcasts of society, to dream, fantasy and nightmare; in technique, it ranges from naturalism to the use of every stylization device known to modern theatre, and leans heavily on classical models as well. There is diversity even in language, for in spite of the fact that Tremblay has become known as the pioneer of joual on stage, he has also used pure "classical" French (in all the works based on fantasy). In spite of this wide spectrum, the dramatic opus as a whole shows an underlying unity, with each individual play contributing another facet in a mosaic-like construction.

On the literal level, the three spheres (rue Fabre, the Main, the Great Beyond) have little in common: each one forms a perfect unity in itself. Tremblay has been attacked for using the same characters and settings in the various plays that make up each of his "worlds." The criticism is totally unjustified because it fails to recognize the mythopoeic intention of the author, which is less to create individual, self-contained "plots" than to produce a mosaic or epic of his people. The mythologizing intent is obvious as we follow the same characters, in the same basic setting, through play after play. Numerous other writers have used similar techniques; a familiar example is Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. (pp. 19-21)

If we examine the plays on the "moral" level of socio-political allegory, the overall unity of the work becomes much more apparent. Although primarily concerned with aesthetic considerations, Tremblay is enough of a Brechtian to reject any purely "culinary" type of theatre: … ("I don't want to give people a pleasant evening at the theatre…. I want them to react, to be afraid, to cry, to laugh, to tell themselves 'This has got to change'"). His avowed purpose is to use the theatre as a "sociological instrument." In the rue Fabre cycle of plays, he does this mainly by exposing the ugly realities behind traditional myths and façades and by forcing the audience to recognize the truth of facts and situations which they would prefer to ignore. The shock of recognition produced by such plays as Les Belles-Soeurs should logically lead to a heightening of consciousness (Brecht's "this has got to change") and, possibly, to action. Some of the plays convey a message directly, through the symbolism inherent in the characters or situations. (p. 21)

[All] the basically realistic plays of Tremblay share the same socio-political intent: to destroy the conscious and unconscious taboos of his society and bring about a liberation on the level of the individual as well as the community. We find no such clearly spelled out message in his fantasy world, though the flight into fantasy is, in itself, one more illustration of the awareness, common to all his "realistic" characters, that life, such as it is, is not acceptable. On the universal/mythological level, all of his work comes together in a total unity of spirit.

Tremblay considers himself something of a mystic. This may come as a surprise to the casual reader. However, if we accept Ben-Ami Scharfstein's definition of mysticism as "a name for our infinite appetites," the term can apply equally well to every part of the Tremblay universe. The most general underlying theme of all his works is the universal desire of the human being to transcend his finite condition. It is the same elementary drive of the spirit that animates the archetypal Doctor Faustus. As with Faustus, Tremblay's search for the absolute, for the Ultimate Experience, takes him through realms of sensuality as well as into the world of spirits. (pp. 22-3)

In the face of plays as starkly materialistic as Les Belles-Soeurs or A toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou, such a mystical approach to the works may seem inappropriate. There is, of course, a basic difference in the manner in which the soif d'absolu, the desire for transcendence, manifests itself in the more realistically conceived characters as opposed to the characters of the fantasies. Whereas the realistic characters are only dimly aware of any such need within them—their need is largely unconscious—the characters of the fantasy world are fully conscious of their metaphysical desires and set out methodically to escape from the barriers of finite life.

With the characters of the rue Fabre, the element of the spiritual is so palpably absent that it becomes, in fact, a presence. Watching the fifteen women of Les Belles-Soeurs as they reveal sordid detail upon sordid detail, the pettiness, prejudices and claustrophobic narrowness of their everyday lives, one is tempted to cry out, like Tolstoy's Akim in The Power of Darkness, "You have no soul!"… The rebellion against life that these women feel has nothing to do with poverty—there is, after all, food to be cooked, clothing to be washed, shopping to be done…. By forcing upon the audience an almost unbearably vulgar accumulation of materialistic detail, on the one hand, and by reinforcing the impression with various stylization techniques on the other, Tremblay makes us painfully aware of the missing dimension in the lives of his characters. "Maudite vie plate" does not only mean daily drudgery and a less than affluent lifestyle; first and foremost, it means emotional and spiritual starvation. On a more tangible, physical level, this starvation corresponds to the sexual frustration which is a permanent feature of life in this particular milieu.

Moving to the Main, we find that the characters achieve a somewhat higher level of awareness: they have, after all, broken out of the original prison of family life. Yet in moments of lucidity they realize the tawdriness of their existence; they, too, are filled with a dimly understood need to escape into another world which they suspect must exist somewhere beyond the Main. Instead of rebelling against the maudite vie plate, however, they manifest their dissatisfaction in dreams of glory and greatness; in other words, they take refuge from reality in a fantasy world of daydream and illusion…. Of all the characters of the Main, only one, Carmen, achieves the ultimate in human experience: understanding and love. It is with good reason, therefore, that she becomes "Sainte" Carmen, saint and martyr in every sense of these words, including the Christian. Of Carmen, it could truly be said that she has found her "soul." She understands the needs of others and her duty towards them as an artist. When she tries to put her newly gained understanding into practice, she is instantly put to death by the forces of the Establishment, personified by Maurice, king of the Main. She thus becomes a true Saviour figure, and the play a universal, and desperately pessimistic, parable about art, life and salvation. (pp. 23-5)

For a satisfactory solution to the meaning of mysticism in the work of Michel Tremblay, we must look to the last play of the cycle, Damnée Manon, Sacrée Sandra. It is here that all his themes finally converge. We are shown two possible escape routes from the maudite vie plate, curse of mankind: Sandra the transvestite has chosen the way of sexuality, Manon the prude, that of religious mysticism. However, it soon turns out that Sandra's pursuits are as mystical as those of Manon, while Manon's religious fervours carry heavily sexual overtones. The message comes through loud and clear: sexual and religious experience are both forms of devotion which manifest in slightly different ways the same basic desire for mystical experience and its ultimate achievement, ecstasy.

The surprise ending of the play reinforces this point. Transported to another level of reality, we discover what we should have guessed all along, that both Sandra and Manon have been "invented" by Tremblay. In other words, the two characters are but physical incarnations, exteriorizations, of the two paths towards ecstasy conceived by the author. All along, it has been clear that Sandra and Manon really represent two complementary aspects of one overall personality. On that level, the world they inhabit, face to face, is not a physical reality on the rue Fabre, but the psychological reality of the poet's own mind.

The ultimate escape, then, comes back to the self: there is no other. The final realization that there is not transcendence beyond that which the self can provide constitutes the real tragedy in the work of Michel Tremblay. It is not the tragedy of the frustrated housewife, or the aging cabaret artist, though these may be real enough: it is the universal tragedy of man's passionate desire for an absolute, and the impossibility of satisfying this desire. Expressed in a variety of modes, styles and idioms, this realization remains the basic unifying idea that permeates the entire Tremblay opus. (pp. 25-6)

Renate Usmiani, in his Studies in Canadian Literature: Michel Tremblay (copyright © 1982 by Renate Usmiani), Douglas & Mclntyre, 1982, 177 p.

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