Alfonso Sastre's Los Dioses y los Cuernos (1995) as a rewriting of Plautus' Amphitruo Rodrigo Tadeu Gonçalves (UFPR-Brazil) -
[email protected] New Orleans, January 11, 2015, SCS Meeting (i) Literary and metatheatrical stage directions: (1) About the epoch: The action of this work takes place never, that is, always, I mean, in time (i.e. in the space-time) in which everything happens -- yet they don't happen and will never happen! -- the fictions of art, I seem to have made a mess, but I couldn't say it better. (p. 25, before the beginning of the play1) (2) [After lights fading out for Jupiter and Alcmene after their first scene together, aiming at a romantic effect] (...) I very much believe in ellipsis as a great artistic device against the servility of naturalism. Naturally, a stage direction is not a proper place for presenting and discussing these themes. (...) (p. 49) (3) [Beginning of scene seven, right before a speech by Alcmene:] ((...) For the moment, what we hear from Alcmene's lips Plautus wrote literally like this:) [There follow Pl. Amph. 633-635 in Latin] Other relevant passages: on p. 57 he discusses Brecht's theories and stops abruptly for fear of losing sight of Sosia while he walks toward Thebes; pages 24, 39, 41, 46, 51, 53, 58, 90, 120, 132, and 151 present similar cases. (ii) Anachronisms: examples: helicopters (p. 32), pharmacies (p. 38), bikes (p. 41), newspapers (p. 45), the first war between Russia and Chechnya (p. 46), Pterelas as a rebel and his execution by a firing squad (p. 48), public security (p. 55), the demon (p. 58), bullets (p. 59), telephones (p. 66), the Teleboans as separatists (p. 69), ID cards (p. 70), dementia praecox (p. 93), the swastika (p. 96), a double espresso (p. 103), arteriosclerosis (p. 107), military insurrection and subversion (p. 129), the parliament and the chamber of commerce (p. 147). (4) Alcmene: (...) I don't wanna believe in the bad people who say that in the war schoolchildren are killed on the streets, as well as the old ladies selling candies, and that the women are raped in their
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References to Sastre's play will be made only through page numbers. All translations from Spanish into English are my own.
kitchen by strong soldiers. Is it true, my love, that all that is not right? Jupiter: (evasive) Maybe a case or two, but war is beautiful in itself, and, as Mars says, it's one of the fine arts, such as painting and theater, only stronger and more true. Do you understand that, darling? (p. 47) (iii) Intertextuality: passages in Latin and in French directly from Plautus and Molière (e.g. p. 32, 79, 110 - this time also with Jean de Rotrou, 132 for Molière and p. 32, 54, 64, 71, 85, 90, 92, 97, 98, 100, 117, 120 and 122 for Plautus). Other examples: Ruben Darío (p. 30), Sophocles' Antigone, p. 35), Groucho Marx (p. 45), Shakespeare (p. 53), Homer (p. 55), the movies cliché of being hit by an arrow and breaking it with your own hands (p. 59), Descartes (in the scene where Mercury deprives Sosia of his own identity, p. 69), the Bible's Genesis (p. 81) and Hemingway (p. 104). (5) Sosia: This author... Mercury: What author? Sosia: Of this play. Plautus. Mercury: You are really insane. Sosia: This is a comedy. Mercury: And there is a crazy man in it. (Laughs at his own joke) Just as in Plautus. Sosia: (unadvertedly switches to Latin) Timeo, totus torpeo. Non edepol (edepol: "By Pollux!", note by A.S.) nunc ubi terrarum sim scio, siquis roget, neque miser me commovere possum... [Pl. Amph. 335-7] Mercurio: Cut it. You've just switched to Latin. And this is a Spanish translation! Sosia: Of course! I'm sorry! (...) (p. 61-2) (iv) Metatheater: auctor in fabula: (6) Jupiter: (...) I would also like to tell you that, although I am a god, now I'm all entangled in this, which is a comedy. I'd like to take a nap now, but this bastard Titus Macchus Plautus is the one who served me the double espresso that has made me awake as a motorcycle, and here you see me, citizens of Thebes (A loud voice is heard: "Hey, Jupiter!". Jupiter looks at the audience making a screen with his hand) Who is it? Would that be Plautus, the author of this play, or his little friend, that little Sastre? You'd better watch out, because irreverence is a great theological sin, poet as you may
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be, for I can escape your play as soon as you get a little distracted, and then, poor you! I'll see you in hell for all eternity! (...) Jupiter: I'll just put a hemorrhoid in Plautus' asshole so he won't be able to sit and write. Mercury: Don't be so harsh, daddy. Anyway, he can start writing while standing, like Hemingway. (...) Jupiter: If he starts writing while standing, I'll break his leg. 'Cuz now he got me all disturbed here with that subversive imagination of his. (p. 103-4) Other examples: p. 33, 35, 37, 39, 49, 58, 61-2, 81-3, 92, 111, 114, 120, 137, 138, 144, and 151. (7) Sosia: We live, ladies and gentlemen, in the Kingdom of Lies. It is strictly forbidden to see Amphitryon's horns. It is also forbidden to tell the story of the ruse in which the beautiful and innocent Alcmene fell, through the design of a libertine, almighty and tricky god. Nothing's happened here, and you who watched that secret and clandestine revelation written by Plautus and his little friend Sastre, with a serious danger of damnation for your souls, should be parasites, pícaros and pragmatic like a slave, if you want to survive in these calamitous times. Run away from the old romantic idealists who wanted to transform the world, those imbeciles. This is the New Order! Sounds bad at first, but one gets used to it soon enough. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm being told there's a scene left. (Looks at the programme.) It's an Epilogue in Heavens. That must be a structural problem of some sort. (p. 144-5)
References BERTINI, Ferrucio. Sosia e il doppio nel teatro moderno. Genova: il melangolo, 2010. DIEZ, Viviana M. "Divina infidelidad: una vuelta sobre el tema de Anfitrión en el teatro español" In: López, Aurora; Pociña, Andrés; Silva, Maria de Fátima (org.) De ayer a hoy: influencias clásicas en la literatura. Coimbra: Classica Digitalia, 2012. GONÇALVES, R. T. “Guilherme Figueiredo’s Um Deus Dormiu lá em Casa and the tradition of translation and rewriting of Plautus’ Amphitruo”. Speech at the panel “Postcolonial Latin American Adaptations of Greek and Roman Drama”, at the APA Meeting, Philadelphia-PA, 2012. PLAUTUS. Comoediae. Edited by W. M. Lindsay. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904. PLAUTUS. Amphitryon, The Comedy of Asses, The Pot of Gold, The Two Bacchises, The Captives. Vol. 1. Edited and translated by Wolfgang de Melo. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2011. ROMANO, A. “Nuevamente el tema de Anfitrión”, en Pociña, A. – Rabaza, B. (edd.), Estudios sobre Plauto. Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 1998. pp. 261-288. SASTRE, Alfonso. Los dioses y los cuernos. Hondarribia: Argitaletxe, 1995. SLATER, Niall. Plautus in Performance: The Theatre of the Mind. 2nd. ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Important testimonies of Sastre's self-consciousness in the Preface (ex.): Those who come to our comedy, which will be called "Los Dioses y los Cuernos" should be advised, if they know the original, of the amount of liberties and additions we made to the story and perhaps of much of the nonsense we commited, anyway, with the good faith in your well-being and that you leave the theater having seen a play by Plautus, but also, – and at the same time – a play by someone who inscribes himself in the continuation of these words, and who has decided to stage the play (and not for the first time) in these times of great hopelessness. (p. 13, emphasis mine)
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