Michel de Ghelderode

Michel de Ghelderode
Born Adhémar-Adolphe-Louis Martens
3 April 1898(1898-04-03)
Ixelles, Belgium
Died 1962 (aged 63–64)
Brussels, Belgium
Nationality  Belgium
Other names Philostene Costenoble
Jac Nolan
Babylas
Occupation dramatist
Spouse Jeanne-Françoise Gérard

Michel de Ghelderode (born as Adhémar-Adolphe-Louis Martens, 3 April 1898, Ixelles – 1962, Brussels) was an avant-garde Belgian dramatist, writing in French.

Contents

Career

A prolific writer, he wrote more than sixty plays, a hundred stories, a number of articles on art and folklore and more than 20,000 letters. He is the creator of a fantastic and disturbing, often macabre, grotesque and cruel world filled with mannequins, puppets, devils, masks, skeletons, religious paraphernalia, and mysterious old women. His works create an eerie and unsettling atmosphere although they rarely contain anything openly scary.

Among his influences were puppet theater, commedia dell'arte and the Belgian painter of the macabre, James Ensor. His works often deal with the extremes of human experience, from death and degradation to religious exaltation.

His 1934 play La Balade du grand macabre served as inspiration for György Ligeti's opera Le Grand Macabre.

According to Oscar G. Brockett, the works of Gheledrode resemble those of Alfred Jarry, the surrealists, and the expressionists, and his theories are similar to those of Antonin Artaud. In nearly all of his approximately thirty plays runs his perception of human beings as creatures whose flesh overpowers spirit. "Corruption, death and cruelty are always near the surface, although behind them lurks an implied criticism of degradation and materialism and a call to repentance (Brockett, 443)"[1]

Personal life

De Ghelderode married Jeanne-Françoise Gérard in 1924. He died in 1962 and is buried in the Laeken Cemetery, Brussels.

Works

Poetry

Plays

Prose

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Letters

Pseudonyms

Quotes

"Ghelderode is the black diamond that closes the necklace the poets of Belgium carry around the neck. This black diamond casts a cruel and noble fire. It wounds only the small souled. It dazzles others. "

- Jean Cocteau

"Before Ghelderode, the scene had become a political forum, Professor Sorbonne dialecticians, a showcase for the hands of designers, false laboratory psychiatrists, but the poets had deserted."

- Roger Iglésis

References

  1. ^ Beockett, Oscar Gross, History of the Theatre/ Oscar G. Brockett, Franklin J. Hildy.-9th ed. Copyright 2003 Pearson Education Group, Inc.

Sources

External links