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Clare Finburgh
Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies
University of Essex
LT 356 Politics and Performance
BERNARD-MARIE KOLTÈS (1948-1989), RETURN TO THE DESERT (1988). First staged in
1988, directed by Patrice Chéreau, at Théâtre du Rond-Point, Paris.
The following notes provide background information to our seminar session. They are
intended as a starting point from which you can conduct further and more detailed
research. They include questions (in BLUE) that encourage you to explore themes and
issues in greater detail. If you refer to the notes in essays or examinations, please ensure
that you quote your source clearly.
SET TEXT: Bernard-Marie Koltès, Return to the Desert, in Plays: 1, trans. by David Bradby
(London: Methuen, 1997).
INTRODUCTION
 Like with Black Battles with Dogs, K. creates a play that obliquely comments on the politics of
interculturalism, but refuses to make any didactic political declarations.
PROVINCIAL FRENCH LIFE: A METAPHOR FOR BIGOTRY
 RD depicts French provincial bourgeois family. It almost resembles a plays from the French
théâtre de boulevard (plays mainly conceived for pure entertainment and played in Paris’s big
theatres. They treat light-hearted themes of family intrigues or affairs. They’re very commercial,
and star big names. They’re generally naturalistic and have psychologically rounded characters
and a coherent plot, filled with suspense).
 But in RD, French provincial life becomes a caricatured metaphor for the general conservatism
and bigotry of France, Europe, and the North of the world in general.
 K. says provincial France ignores the laws of Galileo: the world doesn’t revolve around the
Earth. In other words, French people from the provinces (people with a small-town mentality) think
the world revolves around their opinions, interests, beliefs. K. says the laws of Galileo should be
the first thing children learn at school (“Entretien avec Michel Genson”, in Une part de ma vie :
Entretiens (1983-1989) (Paris: Minuit, 1999), p. 118).
 In what ways are the members of the family in RD arrogant and small-minded?
 What do you think is the significance of the fact that so many of their names begin with
“M”?
 What are the petty concerns of the family?
 What are the major international problems that the family fails to face up to?
 K. uses the family’s provincial isolationalism, individualism and introspection as a metaphor for
the selfishness of the North of the world and its exploitation of the South. He says:
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Yes, I’m very angry, at the moment, with the French in general, and with the average
French person in particular. … Europeans in general, Westerners, are real monsters
(“Entretien avec Klaus Gronau et Sabine Seifert”, in Une part de ma vie, p. 140).
BARRIERS BETWEEN THE SELF AND THE OTHER
 In Black Battles with Dogs, the white European neo-colonial male space of the building site
that Cal and Horn construct for themselves is penetrated by external foreign Others, namely Leonie
and Alboury. Likewise in RD, bourgeois family constructs all-French provincial identity, that’s
penetrated by outside, foreign or immigrant cultures.
 The battle for inheritance and property in the play becomes a metaphor for cultural
territorialism: one culture attempts to protect its identity from modification by another cultural
influence.
 K. stages situations of conflict, where individuals feel their identity is threatened by the identity
of others. This conflict is shown in RD most notably through language. Battles between people take
place verbally. There are fewer monologues here than in Black Battles with Dogs. In RD, there are
violent dialogues, verbal jousts.
 Conflict in K. appears to echo Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Theatre of situations”. For Sartre, the
concrete circumstances that put constraints on one’s personal freedom, make up a “situation”. K.
says:
My characters … want to live and they’re prevented from doing so; they are beings who
come up against brick walls. Fights enable us to see the limits that we come up against,
the obstacles that limit our lives. We’re confronted with obstacles – this is what theatre
shows (“Entretien avec Véronique Hotte”, in Une part de ma vie, p. 135).
In Sartre and in K., the freedom of the Self is attenuated, compromised by the freedom of the
Other. In RD this is true at the level of individuals (conflict between the interests of Adrien and
Mathilde), cultures (conflict between French, and Arab immigrants), countries (conflict between the
interests of the colonial power France and the oppressed colony Algeria).
 Adrien tries to construct boundaries around his own culture and nation, to stop penetration by
other cultures. This echoes the threat that’s sensed in Black Battles with dogs, from the forest that
surrounds building site.
 Examine the use of scenography in this play, and how it symbolises the barriers that are
erected, and how they are penetrated.
 K. uses recurring metaphors and lexical sets (groups of words that evoke one theme) to create
a sense of the threat of the outside, foreign unknown beyond the bourgeois family sphere.
 There are many references to animals, notably wild animals, and to the night. Find these
allusions.
 Adrien and his family attempt to isolate themselves from the influences of foreign cultures. For
K., the future of Western culture lies in the influx of influences and experiences from outside. He
writes:
New blood is born from this presence of Blacks and Arabs; it isn’t born from deepest
France, which is the desert; there, nothing lives, and if anything happens, it’s always
because of the immigrants (“Entretien avec Véronique Hotte”, in Une part de ma vie, p.
127).
 So what, according to you, does the “desert” in the play’s title signify? Is it literal or
metaphorical? External or internal?
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MULTICULTURALISM AND MISGIVINGS
 The play avoids a celebratory ending, where cultures blend could in a global melting pot. The
play provides potential for the reader/spectator to draw conclusions on the celebration of diversity,
but this ending isn’t prescribed.
 There’s a sense in the play that multiculturalism might lead to anxiety about the loss of identity.
 Which characters feel that they no longer have roots, and why?
 K. himself isn’t particularly optimistic about racial, cultural and national mixity in the future.
 What does the future hold at the end of the play? Why is it significant that the baby
twins are half black, and that they are called Romulus and Remus?
REALISM AND MYTH
 It’s possible to read RD as a discussion of tensions between cultures and peoples. But K.
ensures that his play doesn’t make explicit social or political comments. He prefers to create
mythical stories that can lend themselves to varied situations whether society, politics or the
individual.
 K. is very wary of overtly representing political issues in his theatre. The main reason is that he
finds the world of politics incredibly complicated, and any representation in theatre would inevitably
simplify the complexities, and thereby betray them.
 For K., to represent politics in theatre would be to try and reduce something illogical and
irrational, to logic and reason. He describes how he was in Guatemala and Nicaragua during their
civil wars and that political allegiances on ground were so confused, complicated and irrational,
that it’d be impossible to write about them from a political angle (“Entretien avec Hervé Guibert”, in
Une part de ma vie, p. 20).
 K.’s attitude to the place of politics in theatre differs greatly from that of Brecht or Sartre. For
Brecht and Sartre, historical details must be discussed in theatre, whether directly or through
metaphor, because by understanding history, one can understand how the injustices of today are
products of history. But K. doesn’t see history and its development in these rational terms. He sees
events around him as inexplicable.
 He also differs radically from Brecht and Sartre in his view of the individual’s position in history.
For Brecht and Sartre, if individuals understand history and society around them, they can have an
impact on the world. K. sees people far more in terms of victims of greater forces:
History is thus: it gets on with its own business, on its own. Man is in it, like a cork floating
on the water, and lets himself be carried along because he has to. History never turns out
in Man’s favour. It advances, it rules, it gives orders, in jolts, in judders. ‘History, the great
dozy cow; when it finishes chewing, it stamps its hoof impatiently.’ And it leaves behind it
nostalgias that aren’t always the ones one might have expected. (“Entretien avec Bertrand
de Saint-Vincent”, in Une part de ma vie, p. 100).
 K. also differs from Brecht and Sartre, who are optimistic, and feel that once individuals
understand mistakes and bigotry, they can take action to eradicate it. K. has a view of humanity as
far more entrenched and reactionary:
It’s true that my characters don’t change, or only very little, like the rest of humanity
(“Entretien avec Matthias Mutussek et Nikolaus Von Festenberg”, in Une part de ma vie, p.
106).
 K.’s theatre treats serious social and political themes, but refuses to reduce them to
didacticism. In this respect he resembles Jean Genet, whom he quotes as the only contemporary
playwright who interests him (“Entretien avec Véronique Hotte”, in Une part de ma vie, p. 126).
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 Therefore, K. finds everyday situations and turns them into metaphors that might or might not
be interpreted as political by the reader/spectator.
 K. speaks of his plays being “realist hypotheses”: they’re realistic stories, not fantasies
(“Entretien avec Jean-Pierre Han”, in Une part de ma vie, p. 14). But these realist tales become
metaphors for other situations. K. says:
The stone doesn’t fall to the ground out of sympathy, out of solidarity, or from sexual
attraction; it falls without any sense of morality. A posteriori, and while it falls, it can find
itself nice reasons for falling (“Troisième entretien avec Alain Prique”, in Une part de ma
vie, p. 60).
He means that he wants to create stories like stones, that are independent from ethical, social,
political connotation. These connotations must be attributed after, by the spectator.
ELIZABETHAN FORM
 K.’s previous plays had adhered quite strictly to French neo-classical theatrical unities of time,
place, action. E.g. Black Battles with Dogs. But for RD, K. uses a far freer, more episodic structure,
reminiscent of epic theatre.
 K. had recently translated Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale from English to French, and was
inspired by Shakespeare’s very liberated attitude towards theatre. E.g. if Shakespeare wants the
plot to move forward 15 years, he need only get one of characters to announce this.
 K.’s also influenced by cinema, with its far freer movement between moments in time and
places in space (“Entretien avec Michel Merschmeier”, in Une part de ma vie, p. 32).
 Explore K.’s use of diffuse or “epic” time and space in RD.
 What might this looser form signify?
 K. also draws from Shakespeare, and Chekhov, by combining the genres of tragedy and
comedy. This provokes both laughter, and a sense of unease. Which characters in the play
are farcical, and what effect do they produce?
THEATRE, EXISTENCE, OPTIMISM
 K. states that the main focus of his theatre isn’t political, social, philosophical statement. It’s
beauty. For K., beauty is what makes life worth living.
 K. appears to subscribe to the Schopenhauerian pessimist philosophy where life has no
meaning and merely leads to death. Any attempt to attribute meaning to life is illusory, false and
deceptive. But K.’s answer to this concept of life isn’t pessimistic. It’s optimistic. He feels that life
must be dedicated towards creating beauty. He says:
I think the only morality left to us, is the morality of beauty. … Without beauty, life wouldn’t
be worth living (“Entretien avec Matthias Mutussek et Nikolaus Von Festenberg”, in Une
part de ma vie, p. 113).
 He feels theatre in particular is ideal for creating this beauty. Theatrical performance, like life, is
ephemeral. It leaves no trace. Once the curtain falls, it disappears, unlike a film or novel or poem or
painting, that remain in concrete form whether in books, on video, etc.. He says:
What I like about my job, is its gratuitousness. Making theatre the most superficial thing
you can do, the most useless thing in the world, and therefore you want to do it to
perfection. … Let’s take the most futile thing there is, falsity, fiction, and let’s make it
perfect. … The problem is that most of the people who do jobs like mine take it very
seriously, they think it’s decisive in the history of the world, and that’s terrible (“Entretien
avec Michel Genson”, in Une part de ma vie, p. 119).
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 Therefore, K. refuses direct political or social didacticism. But he makes beauty, theatre,
myths, that can be applied to a multitude of different situations in life. So the actual form of K.’s
theatre, and its beauty, are of primary importance.
 Do you agree, that the form that art takes can be of great significance?
 Do you agree that form is important in political theatre?
FURTHER READING
For English-language secondary reading on Koltès, please consult Literature Online.
Alternatives théâtrales [journal in French], Special Issue on Koltès, no. 35-36, Brussels, 1990.
Contains bibliography on Koltès.
Bernard Desportes, Koltès: la nuit, le nègre et le néant (?: La Bartavelle, 1993). A rather “musing”
essay, but one that raises many themes central to Koltès’s works, for example spatial,
social and philosophical concepts of marginality.
Europe [journal in French], Special Issue on Koltès, no. 823-824, Nov.-Dec. 1997.
Bernard-Marie Koltès, “Carnet”, in Combat de nègre et de chiens (Paris: Minuit, 1989).
Monologues by Alboury, Leonie, Horn and Cal, that give additional insights into their
motivations.
*“Epigraph”, In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields (London: Methuen, 1997)
Une part de ma vie: Entretiens (1983-1989) (Paris: Minuit, 1999). An excellent collection of
interviews, where Koltès speaks about his works.
François Regnault, “Passage de Koltès”, in Nanterre Amandiers / les Années Chéreau (Paris:
Imprimerie nationale, 1990). Chapter on Patrice Chéreau’s staging of Koltès’s plays.
Anne Ubersfeld, Bernard-Marie Koltès (Arles: Actes Sud, 1999). An excellent study, that covers all
Koltès’s works, and that analyses his theatre from perspectives of theme, production,
language.
Robert Young, “Colonialism”; “Neocolonialism”; “Postcolonialism”, in Postcolonialism: An Historical
Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).
* In English.
When looking for materials in the university library, think laterally: search not only under
the author’s and text’s names, but also under key words related to the text. E.g. for Bertolt
Brecht, you could search under “German drama”; “twentieth-century German theatre”; “art
and war in Nazi Germany”; “political theatre”, etc. You can also conduct online searches for
materials using Literature Online and Jstor (available via the university library website –
click “Databases”). Again, think laterally if you don’t immediately find relevant resources.
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