Seite 154 [154]
DÁNIEL TIBOR HEGYI
picture. Ihe oratorio introduces the Maid of Orléans in different forms: once as
a saint, a sacral icon, then in the role of the French historical, demotic-national
heroine. Besides all this, the play, written in 1934, and its final musical version,
premiered in 1935, took into account contemporary politics, and used the fig¬
ure of Saint Joan to forewarn Europe of the ever-menacing, looming spectre
of World War IL! It also depicted the solidary power that, with the help of
devotion and selflessness, could create a unity from the diverging ideological
battlegrounds present in the first half of the twentieth century. This intention
of the two authors is greatly supported by the fact that during the German
occupation of France, Claudel added a prologue to the play, titled “Darkness,
darkness, darkness”, that “sings the complaints of France with the words of
The Book of Genesis.”!?
Attila Vidnyänszky, the director of the Hungarian National Theater, used
the bases of Claudel’s updates for his 2013 staging of Joan of Arc at the Stake,
which also drew parallels between the 100 years’ war and the German occupa¬
tion of France during World War II, like Claudel’s drama. The opening scene
uses Honegger’s retrospective music, which starts with the psalm “De profun¬
dis,” then on the dark-toned stage appears Joan, saying goodbyes to the world
and life, meanwhile “around her scraps of paper float in the air like ashes [...]
from giant metal bars, covered in sheets.'* Rampaging, amorphous masses tear,
rip, and burn the European cultural heritage, holding onto the enormous wall
of books, looming above the stage.”'* Vidnyänszky uses devices of the poetical
theater and numerous spatial metaphors to picture the many different layers
of meaning of Saint Joan: the iron traverse, filled with torn and burning pages,
represents the stake. As the symbol of innocence and of France, the doom of
Joan represents the dying of European culture itself."
The director put emphasis on the intention of Claudel and Honegger to
express the correlation of the figure of the Maid of Orléans and the oratorio’s
demotic-national and sacral projections in general. While doing so, Vidnyän¬
szky also wanted to present a different Joan character to the capital’s audi¬
ence than the one portrayed by the National Iheaters former director Róbert
Alfoldi a few months earlier in his adaptation of G. B. Shaw’s Saint Joan. One
of the reviews written of Joan of Arc at the Stake compared Shaw’s and Clau¬
del’s pieces — and, unfortunately, the two performances as well, “While G.
1 $zollésy: Ibid., 259.
2 Ibid., 259.
Tibor Pethő: Nemzeti: Johanna, a szent és törékeny áldozat [National: Joan, the saint and
fragile victim], https://magyarnemzet.hu/archivum/kulturgrund/nemzeti-johanna-a-szent¬
es-torekeny-aldozat-4068229/, accessed 28 August 2020.
Rechtenwald: Johanna újra a máglyán.
Attila Vidnyánszky: Látomások lánca [Ihe Chain of Visions], in Nemzeti [National Theater
Magazine], October 2013, 8-9. The issue can be read (in Hungarian) on the internet: https://
nemzetiszinhaz.hu/uploads/files/folyoirat/nm_I_2.pdf, accessed 28 August 2020.