To break “the Black Wall”. The motif of fear in plays by Henri-René Lenormand

Abstract

Henri-René Lenormand refreshed theatre, defining a new domain for it: the mysteries of the human soul. In all of his plays, he strived to explain the secret of internal life, as well as to solve the mystery that people are to themselves. Therefore, dramaturgy was for the author of La Folle du Ciel not only a means of literary expression, but also a kind of therapy, enabling him to combat his depression. In this article, three plays are discussed: Le Temps est un songe, Les Ratés, and Le Lâche, in which the French playwright diagnosed cases of melancholia by describing the psychotic world from the perspectives of the suffering protagonists. He presented them in closure, isolated from the rest of the world, suffocating in claustrophobic rooms under mansard roofs which symbolised their strained mental conditions. Apart from physical walls, in Lenormand’s works there is also the invisible to the eye yet pervasive “black wall”, in front of which a human being stands completely defenceless and mentally broken, trying to find in it even the slightest crack enabling them to escape the delusional world.