HEDDA GABLER," DRAME EN QUATRE ACTES, D'HENRIK IBSEN
Page 162. — 1. Vaudeville. Le Vaudeville is one of the théâtres of Paris and is situated on the Grands Boulevards. Its name cornes from the plays which were originally represented there, les Vaudevilles. A vaudeville was at first a popular song with words relating to some story of the day ; whence it has corne to signify a play in which dialogue is interspersed with dances and song. It is usually comic. The name of Vaudeville is a corruption of Val de Vire, the name of a valley in Normandy. One Olivier Basselin, a fuller in Vire, composed, about the middle of the fifteenth century, a number of humorous and more or less satirical drinking-songs, which took the name of their native place, Vaux de Vire.
2. Une névrosée. A woman with an unbalanced nervous System, a word very of ten used by our modem writers.
3. L'adoration ... du "moi": the adoration of one* s self, egotism. Page 163. — 1. M. Burani. A contemporary vaudevilist of third
rank and author of the famous popular song Les Pompiers de Nanterre.
Page 164. — 1. Emma Bovary. Name of Madame Bovary, the héroïne of the novel of that name by Flaubert. See article Loti, page 1 10, note 4.
a. Un détraqué : a crazy fellow.
3. Ce . . . lieu: this fréquenter of taverns and disreputable dens.
4. D'égoîsme démentiel : of mad egotism. Démentiel, neologism not to be found in dictionaries. It cornes from démence, madness.
5. Beaucoup de cabotinage : a great deal of affectation. Cabotinage cornes from cabotiner and cabotin. It is a neologism not yet admitted by the Academy. The origin of cabotin is uncertain. " Peut-être dérivé de caboter (to ply in the coasting-trade), par comparaison entre les comédiens qui vont de ville en ville et les bâtiments (ships) qui vont de cap en cap. Famil. comédien, comédienne d'une troupe ambulante ou d'un théâtre de bas étage (of low order)."
Page 165. — 1. Mais . . . livresque : but she has a theatrical conception of that kind of beaufy, a conception such as is to be found in boohs,
(livresque) in navels, Le. there is nothing génial in her ideas of what real beauty ought to be.
2. Elle est outrancière : in her actions and in her thoughts she goes beyond the limits of cornmon sensé and reason. Outrancier, fem. outrancière, neologism not to be found in any dictionary. This term is generally applied to writers who do not know where and when to stop either in their naturalisai or in their symbolism or in any " ism."
Page 166. — i. S'il . . . crapule: if he /ails again into his low debauchery. Crapule, properly speaking, means excess in drinking.
Page 167. — z. Une allasse. A woman of bad réputation.
Page 168. — z. Il . . . sotte : there is wickedness and cruelty in this silly girL Néronisme, from Néron, the famous Roman emperor, whose name has become a synonym for wickedness and cruelty.
Page 169. — z. Elle . . . ventre: she cannot get over that musket-ball in his body, i.e. Hedda finds Eilert's suicide too vulgar; she should hâve liked him to die " en beauté," as she had told him herself when she handed him the pistol.
2. L'assesseur ... un pêcheur en eau trouble: Brack, the assessor, noways averse tofishing in troubled water.
Page 170. — z. Une valse endiablée : a waltz playedwith the deviVs own spirit.
Page 171. — z. Alors, ... je t'aime! Henry Becque, the dramatic writer and the well-known author of Les Corbeaux, who said this to Jules Lemaître after the lecture on Hedda Gabier, meant, " Well ! then 1 Hedda Gabier is nothing but the Gabrielle of Augier I "
" O père de famille, o poète, je t'aime ! "
is the last line of Gabrielle.
a. Et . . . procès : and I don 1 1 deny havingjudged Hedda very severely, or having raised my voice against Hedda.
3. Paul Des jardins. A master in one of the Lycées (high schools) of Paris, a fervent apostle of Neo-Christianity, one of the editors of Le Relèvement, a paper whose title speaks for itself, intended for the moral improvement of French people. He has been for a time a fréquent contributor to the Revue Bleue and to the Débats.
ALLADINE ET PALOMIDES ; INTÉRIEUR; LA MORT DE TENTAGILES, par M. Maurice Maeterlinck.
This pièce of criticism was written for the weekly Feuilleton dramatique of the Journal des Débats, July i, 1894, and has not yet appeared in book form. M. Jules Lemaître has very graciously allowed the editor to publish it in this book.
Maurice Maeterlinck, the famous Belgian dramatist, whose works belong to the school of Symbolism. His best-known dramas are : L'Intruse, Les Aveugles, La Princesse Malène, Les Sept Princesses.
Page 172. — 1. Hydrocéphales: people of weak minds. Un hydrocéphale, properly speaking, means a person who has water on his brain.
Page 173. — 1. Ce . . . Pâme: what is going on in our soûls without our Seing really conscious of it.
2. Ce ... " moi " : the superficial outcomings of our inner self i.e. those things of the inner life which corne very imperceptibly in contact with the outer world through the means of our material being.
3* Schopenhauer. A great German philosopher, the adversary of the doctrines of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and well known for his pessimistic views and his scorn for women. (1 788-1860.) See below, page 214, note 7.
4. Des ..." délocalisés " : little beings who hâve no real habitation, who belong to the land of dreams.
