Henry Bataille

• Born: April 4, 1872
• Birthplace: Nîmes, France
• Died: March 2, 1922
• Place of death: Rueil-Malmasion, France

Other Literary Forms

Henry Bataille is known mostly for his theatrical works, but he wrote and published lyric poetry before establishing himself in the theater.

Achievements

Although Henry Bataille won no formal awards for his work, he remains one of the handful of playwrights of the Theater of the Boulevard to leave a mark on French theatrical history. His career was rich, and for quite a few years, especially immediately before World War I, he distinguished himself by both amusing and moving a popular audience.

Biography

Henry Bataille (he is also known as “Félix-Henry” or “Henri” Bataille) was born in Nîmes, in southern France, in 1872. However, when his father, a magistrate, was named to a judicial post in Paris in 1876, the family moved there. The young Bataille studied at secondary schools in Paris and Versailles. He developed an interest in painting, especially portraiture, and in 1890, he enrolled in the Académie Julian and later at the École des Beaux-Arts, both in Paris. In 1901, Bataille published a book of lithographed portraits of well-known people of the day. Meanwhile, he continued writing poetry, something he had begun doing at the age of fifteen.

Bataille’s playwriting was stimulated by friends, who speculated on his producing a fairy-tale piece. Bataille’s first play was a version of “Sleeping Beauty,” written in collaboration with Robert d’Humières and presented in Paris in 1894. The play was not a success, and Bataille returned, for the time being, to his painting and his poetry, publishing in 1895 a collection of poems called La Chambre blanche (the white room). However, influential critics and friends persuaded Bataille to try his skills in the theater once again.

His early plays were in the Symbolist vein, but he soon found his niche, with L’Enchantement and Le Masque, in the théâtre du boulevard. Bataille’s popularity was short-lived; some observers accused him, in his later work, of writing formula plays in order to make money. His health had always been fragile, and by the time he died, in 1922, he had passed his peak as a dramatist.

Analysis

Félix-Henry Bataille’s work resembles, in subject matter and setting, the work of his contemporary and fellow playwright of the Paris Theater of the Boulevard, Henry Bernstein. Naturally enough, the plays of both writers appealed to the same audience—a bourgeois public looking for titillating entertainment and, perhaps, some intellectual stimulation as well. However, Bernstein’s career lasted much longer than that of Bataille, who died relatively young. Even so, by some accounts, he outlived his reputation, as the French say.

Bataille called his plays comédies, but he used the term in its traditional French sense, inherited from seventeenth century French theater. In this tradition, a comédie, unlike a tragedy, has a happy ending, a positive resolution of some kind. Therefore, Bataille’s plays were not necessarily lighthearted but had resolutions that were basically positive although sometimes somewhat heavy-handed or ambiguous.

Bataille’s most interesting characters are women, who are his protagonists for the most part, even if they are unstable, selfish, and even cruel. His women are the catalysts of the plays’ action; in some cases (in L’Enchantement, and La Femme nue, for example), the plot features a struggle between two strongly motivated women. Moreover, Bataille’s plays have to do with love or passion—and focus very often on the extent to which people cannot control their feelings and the fragility of human relationships. The fundamental impact of Bataille’s drama is bittersweet.

L’Enchantement

Bataille’s L’Enchantement sets the tone for much of his early work and presents the first two of his unconventional—even unbalanced—female characters. The “enchantment” to which the play’s title refers is the strange hold that young Jeannine exerts over her doting older sister. As the play begins, Isabelle Dessandes has just married Georges, an old friend. She makes it clear to Georges and her circle of friends that this marriage simply seals a friendship—neither love nor passion has any role in the union. In fact, Isabelle confides in a close friend that she finds conjugal sex demeaning, shameful, and debasing. Her primary goal in life is the upbringing of her younger sister, something she had promised her late mother she would take care of. In contrast, Georges loves and lusts after Isabelle. However, his amorous caresses and even their nighttime lovemaking are inhibited and interrupted by Jeannine—because she has conceived a consuming passion for Georges.

Eventually, even Isabelle has had enough of her sister, whom she now rightly sees as her rival. After Jeannine succeeds in breaking Georges’s resistance, luring him into a love-anger embrace—which is witnessed by Isabelle’s former suitor, Pierre—the family begins to collapse. Georges is immediately crushed by his own shame and threatens to leave the home—and Isabelle, after Pierre tells her what he saw, pulls a pistol from a desk drawer. It is unclear whether she plans to shoot Georges, herself or both. Meanwhile, Jeannine threatens to kill herself.

Georges finally asserts himself in order to put an end to this madness, as he calls it. He suggests that all three of the family members—he, Isabelle, and Jeannine—separate for a time, until they can be reasonable about the relationships among them. With the help of Pierre, who seemed treacherous only moments before, Jeannine agrees to a year of travel. Georges delivers the play’s final words of reason. He attributes the chaos that he, Isabelle, and Jeannine have experienced to Isabelle’s expecting too much drama from life—in effect, taking life too seriously. Georges is happy with what good things come, without overanalyzing emotions and relationships.

Unfortunately, the resolution of L’Enchantement seems forced. The turmoil that has driven Isabelle and Jeannine dissolves too easily with the prompting of Georges and Pierre—the latter of whom was seen early in the play not to be a real friend of Georges and Isabelle. As the play closes, however, he becomes the experienced sage.

Maman Colibri

The main character of this play, the Baronne Irène de Rysbergue, constitutes a major problem for most of the other characters. Bataille presents Irène early in the play as a very sympathetic wife and mother, respected by her husband and friends and adored by her children. Her sons, Richard and Paulot, have given their mother an affectionate nickname—Maman Colibri, “Mama Hummingbird.” When Paulot explains his mother’s nickname to a friend by reading a description of a hummingbird, he reads that the bird is aggressive and destructive, using its beak as a dagger with which to attack flowers. The boys do not, however, understand the multiple meanings possible in the word colibri.

Irène does deserve some sympathy. She was an orphan who was married off to the older Baron de Rysbergue. He was a fine match for her: a wealthy, decent man who has been a good father. However, there has never been any question about Irène’s truly loving her husband. Irène, now thirty-nine, had never known real passion until she was in effect seduced by twenty-one-year-old Georges de Chambry, an old friend of her sons. Indeed, Irène’s justification of what she does is poignant: She knows she has missed something in her life and can see her youth passing quickly. She realizes that what she feels for Georges is maternal to some extent, but it is clear that she is also attracted to Georges physically. Georges is Irène’s last chance at genuine romance, and she seizes the opportunity.

Although the moral hypocrisy of the social class to which the Rysbergues belong is apparent, flagrant flouting of convention will not be tolerated. Once her adultery is discovered, Irène is scorned by Richard and is almost literally thrown out of the house by her husband. Irène and Georges go to live in Algeria. However, Georges soon becomes jaded; he develops an affair with an American neighbor, and the heartbroken Irène sees that her great love has ended. She goes home.

Irène’s contrition is not very convincing, but Richard, who is now married and the father of a son, forgives his mother and welcomes her home. Her husband, who has never divorced her, cannot, however, close his eyes to the past. In the play’s strange last scene, Irène physically ages before us—and takes on her new role: She sees herself now as a beloved grandmother. However, this last image of Irène makes us uneasy instead of reassuring us; she is a very ambiguous figure.

Poliche

In Poliche, Bataille lightens his touch. Poliche is farce, social satire, and comedy of morality—featuring sexual escapades and double-entendres—and, of course, a love story. Poliche, the nickname of Didier Meireuil, is the leader of a circle of pleasure-seekers who seem to have nothing to do but have a good time. As the play begins, Poliche and his group of several men and women, some of whom are married and in some cases, married to each other, arrive at a hotel in Saint-Cloud, on the outskirts of Paris. It is autumn, and unfortunately for the group, the hotel is shutting down for the winter so there is little in the way of food and drink for the unexpected guests. A man named Saint-Vast was invited to join the group when the others met him at a party. It would appear that he is socially superior to Poliche and his friends—although he is not superior to the others morally.

No sooner has the group arrived at the hotel than Saint-Vast begins chasing the women in the party. He connects finally with Rosine de Rinck, who is also immediately attracted to Saint-Vast. What is awkward is that she and Poliche have been lovers for some time. The point of the rest of the play is that Rosine does not or cannot determine whom she really loves.

After she is abandoned—temporarily—by Saint-Vast, she and Poliche make up. In order to win back Rosine, however, Poliche thinks that he has to quit his lighthearted role and be a serious and responsible man. He soon realizes that he now bores Rosine, and what is worse, he sees that she still is drawn to Saint-Vast. In a grand gesture, Poliche sends Rosine back to Saint-Vast, claiming that his true self is the boring, narrow-minded Didier. As the curtain falls, we see Poliche in tears—again—without his beloved Rosine.

La Femme nue

The first act of this play is a pleasure, expressing the joy of artistic success and the effervescence of true love between simple people. Unfortunately for the characters involved, the play’s mood darkens quickly. Bataille clearly finds a good deal of La Femme nue’s inspiration in the history and politics of Impressionist painting. References are made to paintings by Pierre-Auguste Benoir, and one character even alludes to something he heard Edgar Degas say. Within this nicely presented historical context is Bataille’s hero of sorts, Pierre Bernier. Pierre is the classic hard-working but poor painter who struggles for recognition. In act 1 of La Femme nue, he finally achieves it: He wins the major prize at the French Salon exhibition. He and his model-mistress, Lolette Cassagne, seem to have gained everything of which they had dreamed.

Time passes between act 1 and act 2, and things have changed. Pierre has fallen out of love with Lolette and in love with the very wealthy but arrogant Princesse Paule de Chabran. Lolette is devastated. She even goes to see the Princesse’s aged husband in order to effect a kind of alliance against the divorce that Pierre and Paule want. Later, Lolette furiously confronts Pierre and Paule, collapses in despair—and attempts suicide.

In a change of heart that is abrupt and therefore barely credible, the previously hard-hearted Princesse repents of alienating Pierre’s affections. She visits Lolette in the hospital and declares that she will not marry Pierre even if Lolette were to agree to a divorce. Similarly, Pierre arrives at the hospital to express his regret with what has happened. He vows to do his duty and honor his marriage to Lolette—but he does not apologize for no longer loving her. Love, says Pierre (in a speech reminiscent of Georges’s analysis in L’Enchantement), is not something people can control: Pierre cannot, he insists, will to love Lolette and will to no longer love Paule. He promises nevertheless to return to Lolette and help create as happy a life as possible.

La Femme nue ends in true melodrama fashion. Lolette’s former lover, the unpolished and unsuccessful painter Rouchard (who was introduced in act 1), appears in Lolette’s hospital room. Bataille quickly draws matters to a close as Rouchard clumsily but touchingly expresses his enduring love for Lolette. As the curtain falls, one imagines Lolette finding some semblance of happiness with Rouchard—in the milieu from which she came. The spirit and humor of act 1 of La Femme nue are very enjoyable, but it is the deus ex machina arrival of Rouchard that weakens La Femme nue and ultimately makes it the least successful of Bataille’s early plays.

Biliography

Blanchart, Paul. Henry Bataille: Son œuvre. Paris: Éditions du Carnet-Critique, 1922. A largely adulatory study, but Blanchart does recognize Bataille’s excess in plots and style, especially in his later works. Blanchart suggests that Bataille may have been led astray by desire for financial success. In French.

Catalogne, Gérard de. Henry Bataille: Ou, Le Romantisme de l’Instinct. Paris: Éditions de la Pensée Latine, 1925. Focusing in detail on La Femme nue and Maman Colibri, Catalogne sees Bataille as the playwright who best represents his era in taste, subject matter, and dramatic flair. In French.

Knowles, Dorothy. French Drama of the Inter-War Years. London: Harrap, 1967. Knowles provides what is still perhaps the best concise history of the théâtre du boulevard. Moreover, the book contains indispensable information about plots, chronology, and the milieu in which French theater developed during the period.

Pillement, Georges. “Henry Bataille.” In Anthologie du théâtre français contemporain: Le Théâtre du Boulevard. Paris: Éditions du Bélier, 1946. A detailed but harsh judgment of Bataille’s work. Pillement believes that Bataille’s best plays were written between 1914 and 1919 but that even before his death, his work was badly dated. In French.