282 KB42 KB260 KB43 KB201520252024Gantar, Jureštevilka:1letnik:12str. 42-58, 60-75DOI:10.51937/Amfiteater-2024-1/42-75ISSN:1855-4539COBISSID_HOST:200272643URN:URN:NBN:SI:doc-ARVHVRORensl= University of Ljubljana PressAmfiteater (Ljubljana)comedydialecticsdialektikafailurefiaskoGustave FlaubertHenry JameskomedijaOscar Wilderazum in nerazumreason and unreasonslvAnatomija fiaska| The anatomy of failure|When critics discuss the question of the canonisation of comedy, they usually base their arguments on analyses of successful plays. However, it might be just as productive, and perhaps even more interesting, to examine comedies that failed, especially those written by well-respected authors. The author focuses in this paper on three plays from roughly the same historical period that all experienced a calamitous original performance and either never managed to recover fully from this failure or have since not been treated as comedies. The three plays that he explores in more detail are Gustave Flaubert’s The Candidate (Le Candidat, 1874), Henry James’s Guy Domville (1894) and Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull (??´???, 1895). Even though these three plays were written by well-known writers of their own time, who are still considered hugely influential today, the opening-night audiences did not respond to them in the manner that their authors had hoped. This response is particularly surprising since both Flaubert and Chekhov otherwise wrote several very amusing texts. To determine why this happened, the author compares the selected plays to several other works: Carl Sternheim’s adaptation of Flaubert’s comedy, Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance and two of Chekhov’s early farces. The results of these comparisons suggest that the plays most likely failed as comedies because of their flawed relationship between reason and unreason, regularly making them too negative to serve as a source of enjoymentTeatrologi se v svojih razpravah o kanonizaciji komedije navadno zanašajo na analize uspešnih besedil. Toda prav tako produktivno, če ne celo zanimiveje, bi bilo, če bi odgovore na svoja vprašanja iskali pri neuspešnih komedijah, še zlasti pri tistih, ki so jih napisali vrhunski pisatelji. V pričujočem prispevku se zato osredotočam na tri igre iz približno istega zgodovinskega obdobja, ki so ob praizvedbi klavrno propadle in si od poloma bodisi nikoli niso popolnoma opomogle ali pa jih od takrat vsaj ne štejemo več za komedije. Ta tri dramska besedila so: Kandidat ( Le Candidat 1874) Gustava Flauberta, Guy Domville (1894) Henryja Jamesa in Utva ( ??´??? 1895) Antona Pavloviča Čehova. Čeprav so bila ta besedila uprizorjena v času, ko so bili njihovi avtorji že dodobra uveljavljeni, se premiersko občinstvo nanje vendarle ni odzvalo v skladu s pričakovanji. To je še presenetljivejše zato, ker sta tako Flaubert kot Čehov sicer napisala kar nekaj zelo zabavnih besedil. Da bi ugotovil, zakaj se je to zgodilo, sem izbrane igre primerjal z nekaj drugimi: s Sternheimovo priredbo Flaubertove komedije, z Wildovo Nepomembno žensko in z dvema zgodnjima burkama Čehova. Rezultati primerjav nakazujejo, da je najverjetnejši vzrok za polom vseh treh komedij neuravnovešen odnos med razumom in nerazumom, ki jih načeloma dela preveč negativne, da bi v njih lahko zares uživaTEXTznanstveno časopisjejournalsSlovenian National E-content AggregatorNational and University Library of SloveniaSlovenski gledališki inštitut (SLOGI)