The night: making and staging fantasies in Fernand Crommelynck’s "Le Cocu magnifique"

Abstract

In Crommelynck's Le Cocu magnifique, the night is not merely an external detail as for many pieces whose most important actions are set in a nocturnal setting. Paradoxically, this work, which takes place mainly in daytime settings, gives the night an unexpected importance. We must therefore question the dramatic and aesthetic stakes of this omnipresence. The carnival festival of Saint-Géraud and the strange serenade given by Bruno in disguise to his wife Stella arouse both laughter and concern. But above all, the night invests the speech of the characters and inspires their actions. In addition, sleep, dreams, desire, fantasies, everything relates to the night. In addition, sleep and dreams are the subject of divergent interpretations by the characters. The question of absence and desire, feeding their fantasies, is at the heart of the relationships between the characters. As for Bruno, he feeds his jealousy by his exaltation of Stella's body, by poetry and by the imagination in which he delights to the point of sinking into madness: the night darkens the love relationship to the point of making the two protagonists pass from heaven to hell into a buffoon nightmare.