Clio - Theatre / Creation / coproduction
‘The poetic breath and depth of Charles Péguy's writing, as well as the flawless match between the man and what he wrote, is what led Clio's directors and actors to offer a theatrical transcription of this inspired meditation to which the Muse of History invites us. A work whose novelty precedes us.
Many untruths have misrepresented Péguy's work. The writer, who fell at the front in 1914, quickly became a hostage to the nationalists of the inter-war period and was co-opted by the clerical propagandists of Vichy, who created the myth of a devout and reactionary Péguy. Yet Péguy's writings, for whom ‘works are acts’, convey a diametrically opposed vision. In fact, this Dreyfusard socialist, this Catholic, viscerally opposed to anti-Semitism and all partisanship, fought all his life for the truth.
Bernanos wrote of Péguy: ‘It is a man who, dead, remains within earshot, who answers each time he is called’, and at the beginning of the 21st century, he continues to answer us with a tone of fraternal confidence, in which there is nonetheless a constant fervour and a relentless desire to shake us out of our lukewarmness and sleepiness, whatever the cost. To do this, he has created an immense ocean of words, not chaotic or confused, but masterfully orchestrated, where the fugal motifs of a style both classical and innovative, which some compare to Bach's compositions, open us up to a totally sincere literature in which, where we expected to see an author, we find a man.’ Samir Siad
Many untruths have misrepresented Péguy's work. The writer, who fell at the front in 1914, quickly became a hostage to the nationalists of the inter-war period and was co-opted by the clerical propagandists of Vichy, who created the myth of a devout and reactionary Péguy. Yet Péguy's writings, for whom ‘works are acts’, convey a diametrically opposed vision. In fact, this Dreyfusard socialist, this Catholic, viscerally opposed to anti-Semitism and all partisanship, fought all his life for the truth.
Bernanos wrote of Péguy: ‘It is a man who, dead, remains within earshot, who answers each time he is called’, and at the beginning of the 21st century, he continues to answer us with a tone of fraternal confidence, in which there is nonetheless a constant fervour and a relentless desire to shake us out of our lukewarmness and sleepiness, whatever the cost. To do this, he has created an immense ocean of words, not chaotic or confused, but masterfully orchestrated, where the fugal motifs of a style both classical and innovative, which some compare to Bach's compositions, open us up to a totally sincere literature in which, where we expected to see an author, we find a man.’ Samir Siad
