Background
Michel was born on April 3, 1898 in Ixelles, Belgium. Ghelderode was the son of Flemish parents who favoured bilingualism.
(Hitherto unavailable in English, Spells, by the Belgian d...)
Hitherto unavailable in English, Spells, by the Belgian dramatist Michel de Ghelderode, ranks among the 20th century’s most noteworthy collections of fantastic tales. Like Ghelderode’s plays, the stories are marked by a powerful imagination and a keen sense of the grotesque, but in these, the author speaks to us still more directly. Written at a time of illness and isolation, and conceived as a fresh start, Spells was Ghelderode’s last major creative work, and he claimed it as his most personal and deeply felt one: a set of written spells through which his fears, paranoia, and nostalgia found concrete form. By turns mystical, macabre and whimsically humorous, and set in the unsettled atmosphere of Brussels, Ostend, Bruges, and London, Spells conjures up an uncanny realm of angels, demons, masks, effigies and apparitions, a twilit, oppressed world of diseased gardens, dusty wax mannequins and sinister relics.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1939663202/?tag=2022091-20
2017
Michel was born on April 3, 1898 in Ixelles, Belgium. Ghelderode was the son of Flemish parents who favoured bilingualism.
His early education was cut short by illness, which enabled him to read widely. By the time he was able to return to school, he had embraced a life of writing; all told, he would write some 80 plays.
At the start of his career Michel de Ghelderode wrote a collection of comic anecdotes on the life of Charles V that inspired five puppet plays. Then came La Mort du Docteur Faust (1926; The Death of Doctor Faust, 1964), Don Juan (1928), Christophe Columb (1928; "Christopher Columbus"), Barabbas (1932; Eng. tr. , 1960), and Pantagleize (1934; Eng. tr. , 1957). Escurial (1928; Eng. tr. , 1957), inspired by the Spanish Golden Age, became his most popular play. But it was not until Hop Signor! (1938; Eng. tr. , 1964), Le Menage de Caroline (1940; "Caroline's Household"), and Fastes d'enfer (1943; Chronicles of Hell, 1960) were staged in France in 1947, 1949, and 1952--the last creating a public scandal - that Ghelderode began to acquire a worldwide reputation.
Because Ghelderode appealed to the popular Belgian taste, he went unrecognized as a master of the avant-garde theatre—even in France—until after World War II.
Michel de Ghelderode was one of the first dramatists to exploit the idea of total theatre—that is, drama in which every sort of appeal is made to the eye, the ear, and the emotions in order to stir the intellect. As a pioneer of total theatre, at a time when the vast dramas of Paul Claudel had yet to be performed in Paris, Ghelderode exerted a powerful influence on the history of the French theatre. Although many of his plays have since been translated into English, his works are infrequently performed in English-speaking countries.
(Hitherto unavailable in English, Spells, by the Belgian d...)
2017In 1924 Michel married to Jeanne-Françoise Gérard (d. 1980).
