Adamov

Summary

Dominique Pagani speaks of Arthur Adamov as a friend and presents him as the third name of the theatre of the absurd, a major playwright forgotten because he joined the Communist Party in 19561. He returns above all to M. le Modéré, whose title plays on "M le Maudit": the play shows the obsession with moderation and targets what he calls the "extreme centre", a golden mean that causes millions of deaths23. He also cites Sainte Europe, which he would like to see back on theatre programmes and which portrays European construction as a new Holy Alliance; in 2020, he takes up its title to speak of Europe facing the epidemic4. He reads La Politique des restes, in which an Afrikaner obsessed with leftovers is unknowingly haunted by the Black workers who are his own substance5. He also shares personal memories: he used to read Les Filles du feu to Adamov to calm him, he read him an aphorism by Hölderlin that Adamov then took up in his anthology of violent poetry, and Adamov is his source for the account of the meeting between Heidegger and Husserl.

1. 1M. Clouscard's reply to C. Morilhat (1987)23 Aug 2019 · 1:37:40
2. 2Cynicism of the extreme centre or epistemic heroism? The dialectic of the middle20 May 2021 · 21:12
3. 3After the vote: entering a zone of turbulence11 Jul 2024 · 35:09
4. 4Hölderlin, poetry and politics19 Mar 2022 · 16:11
5. 5Michel Clouscard, the paths of praxis (2/2)8 Dec 2015 · 38:32

Summary produced automatically from 15 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.