The symbolist aesthetic : one century in European drama

Manuel Pérez Jiménez 1 The Symbolist Aesthetic: One Century in European Drama Manuel Pérez Jiménez University of Alcalá 1. THE SYMBOLIST AESTHETIC Before Freud illuminated the intricate paths to the caverns of personality, an entire sector of western thought had attempted to approximate the interior of man through the aesthetic sectors based on intuition, feeling, and suggestion. At the end of the nineteenth century, in Art this process undergoes a period of great splendour with the appearance of an aesthetic language which uses the symbol as the basic element of expression. That which is inscrutable, undefinable in the authentic reality of the human being, the absolutely inapprehensible range of the nature of the soul, the immaterial and certainly profoundly authentic essence of man and things, implies the impossibility of apprehending those realities by means of scientific objectivity. Access to these realities, which was wielded until then exclusively by positivism, demonstrated in itself the falacy of a supposedly realist procedure; realism was made impossible by the recognition of the more noble and meaningful sectors of reality. It became necessary then, to invert the direction of the search, the means of grasping this profound reality. The indirect processes of analogy, symbol and evocation became the only instruments capable of realizing as much as possible the supreme aspiration of man's knowledge: to suggest reality before describing it, evoke it before defining it, and to insinuate it before offering it as an object of certainty. Artistic Symbolism, the set of manifestations which shaped the Symbolist movement in different realms of Fine Art, gathered the sediments of the intimist tradition of the century, filling with its ethereal presence the transcendental years that formed the turn of the century and the beginnings of the Avant-Garde fervor. Historically, Symbolism proposed the most important condensation and artistic manifestation of the idealistic trends that arose from the complex phenomenon of PreRomanticism. The theoretical Symbolist reflection had initially concentrated on the treatment of the word's musical qualities in poetry. The first Symbolist manifesto was Manuel Pérez Jiménez 2 published by Moréas in 1886. Symbolism expresses artistic language as a system of signals that form suggestions through diverse sensorial perceptions. These suggestions might reveal the true, profound essence of man's soul in the background. In order to avoid directly naming the realities alluded to, the artistic language must suggest and evoke in such a way as to express the state of the soul which is the ungraspable manifestation of the Idea. In this sense, Yeats brings out the poetic value of symbols by dividing them into emotional and intellectual parts. He also expresses the ability of human senses to evoke emotions. To create, according to Baudelaire, was to recall the original secret unity of the soul within which perfumes, colors and sounds communicated like distant echos in a familiar darkness. To achieve this, the artistic language must be based on symbolic values and relations that -as interwoven symbols directed only toward the ineffableare able to capture a state of the soul. In theater, Symbolism offers a notably well determined theory that comes from a praxis of renowned playwrites such as Maeterlinck, Hauptmann, Strindberg, and Ibsen. The Symbolist theatricality has been well codified and this is the basic principle of the Symbolist theatrical creation: to produce a vital show on stage. This show, unlike life but a life in itself, is built from the subject's inner self and by his rules. Beyond this principle, the Symbolist theatricality mainly pursues the expression of the playwrite's inner self, thus achieving a fusion between him and the expression of his external depiction. The dramatic action must emerge from an inner conflict. The dramatic language admits expressive elements from other Arts and from earlier traditional theater. Finally, the actor's function is revised because his physical personality threatens the essence of the character. The model of the marionette proposes the interpretive ideal as far as an objective neutral link between the creator and the receptor's inner selves. The symbolist concepts of staging and dramatic communication are notably similar to the theories developed by the British director, Edward Gordon Craig. He proposes the concept of the super-marionette as a central element through which the play can be "derealized" (undone) and essentialized thus allowing us to approach the soul's hidden secrets. Craig describes the Symbolist aesthetic with the following words: Symbolism is found not only in the roots of Art but also in those of life itself; only through symbols does life become possible. We always use them (...). It's the true essence of theater if we include the art of theater among the greater Arts . 1 Especially fertile in literature and theater, Symbolism became a great movement that maintained a dialectic relationship with Positivist thought, and moreso, with one of its more precise creations, Emile Zola's Naturalism. Engendered by the poetry of the great masters (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé) and French Parnasianists, Symbolism 1 Edward Gordon Craig, The Art of Theater [El Arte del Teatro], Department of Culture, Literature Division, Grupo Editorial Gaceta, S.A. de C.V., UNAM Mexico, 1987, pp. 285. Manuel Pérez Jiménez 3 maintained relations with other forms of Idealism toward the end of the century. It did so to such an extent as to maintain a clearly genetic relationship with Decadentism whose atmosphere or spiritual climate -well suited to turn of the century changehad begun to bloom. In 1885, Jean Moreás published an article which shifted the differentiating criteria from the decadent to the symbolic, thus provoking a symbolist schism in the heart of French Decadentism. Before then, he had created a kind of cultural climate with new sensibilities. In Art these included a self-redeeming aestheticism free of the impurities of contact with life, new tones expressed by nuances, moving and vagrant formulas, the search for melodies that reveal the essence of man's soul, and the fondness for heroes that gladly paid their lives or personal ruin as the luxurious price for having experienced great ideals and passions. Before the budding secession of Symbolism, Decadentism arose as a state of mind that coincided with the appearance, in the spiritual realm, of the turn of the century crisis. We believe Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (drama debuted in Paris at the end of 1897) should be contemplated in this context because the drama's formal aspects and sensibilities correspond in many ways to those of the Decadent spirit. Cyrano's figure becomes a popular representation of the turn of the century during which the most relevent motifs of the idealist cultural tendencies combined. He is reinvested in the Decadentism that is revealed by a love for manners, the permanent contradiction of life, the continuous zeal for acting and the final purification of ruin. 2. POST-MODERNITY AND ARTISTIC CREATION Contemporary criticism has been establishing the concept of Modernity as a global structure in western art that is “a complete, revolutionary cultural process, argumentable and describable, that is borne fundamentally in the second half of the eighteenth century and ends with the Spanish Civil War and World War II in the purely European sense”. 2 This "artistic-cultural European system" borne in the context of Pre-Romanticism experiences an initial moment of crisis with the arrival of positivist thought in the nineteenth century. This crisis determined a kind of dualism later: the configuration of the general Idealist tendencies and Positivism, as longterm parallel processes. The persistence of Romantic elements in Idealism's cultural process appeared in Art through the Impressionist and Symbolist aesthetic movements. These developed around the general complex phenomenon known as the turn of the century crisis. 2 Pedro Aullón de Haro, Poetry in the Twentieth Century (Until 1939) [La poesía en el siglo XX (Hasta 1939)], Madrid, Taurus (Critical History of Hispanic Literature [Historia crítica de la Literatura Hispánica]), n. 20. The following citations refer to the excellent introduction in this essay. Manuel Pérez Jiménez 4 In the dualization produced in the artistic system of Modernity with the appearance of positivisms, the creator is presented with a fork in the road (Idealism/Positivism) by which he might exercise his artistic expression. The explosive arrival of the Avant-Garde must be considered with repect to the idealist creation. This innovation supposes the second great flaw in the system of Modernity which accelerates and becomes violent as an artistic-cultural revolution. As a result, the Avant-Garde adds a necessary component to the search for innovation as an end in itself to the second stage in the process. This pretension was the underlying cause of the exhaustion of the cycle. After the 1970's, signs of the phenomenon that has been recognized now as Post-Modernity began to show. In the last quarter milenium, this term (Post-Modernity) designates a spiritual category more than an artistic movement or tendency. The phenomenon still lacks an indepth study capable of endowing it with a concrete definition. However, a growing number of specialized studies is progressively nearing a definition of its nature and origins. Post-Modernity has experienced an initial level of formulas inspired by concepts from History. These link the phenomenon to the socio-economic events of advanced capitalism and post-capitalism. More than a stylistic option, Post-Modernity is an epistemological-cultural category that apperas in all areas of life and thought in societies and communities that have been through the cycle of productive capitalism and now experience, in this century, the final stages of this cycle's decline. The arrival of the artistic Avant-Garde, the cultural dehumanization and exhaustion of the same cultural AvantGarde, the invention and development of computer and audiovisual technology, the appearance of such impacting social phenomenon as the post-nuclear era, the genetic revolution or the fall of Marxism as a direct form of exercising power, the difficult maintenance of the supply of goods in the face of the demand of potential buyers who, in western societies, have fully entered in the stages of post-consumism, are factors that explain and characterize largely the diffuse profile of the Post-modern phenomenon. On the second level of analysis, the advent of Post-modernity is related to the confirmation of the end of historical modernity. Historical modernity made continuous progressive change which was Art's principal raison d'être. And, in Art, the individual was imposed as an indispensible figure. Without the individual, no other creative activity could aspire to distinguish itself from traditional Art. Originality and novelty became necessary maxims of the modern condition. Any artistic activity had to lead the historical AvantGarde toward the point of exhaustion. Thus, Post-Modernity comes forth as an attempt to synthesize the styles and themes of the previous tradition and to integrate them with the advances of Modernity. These advances are based on one central developmentthat which allows the artist to extract freely the artistic universe and formulas that most agree with his personal sensibilities. The new concept of originality now affects the act of selecting traditional and/or Avant-Garde elements. It frees the artist of his obligation to be either completely Avant-Garde or completely Modernist, and allows him to elect creative paths that are capable of extenuating the adverse, dehumanizing conditions derived from postconsumism and degraded capitalism. Manuel Pérez Jiménez 5 By including elements of the artistic tradition prior to the Avant-Garde, the artist attempts to rehumanize the post-modern creation from his own creative vantage point. As the creator, he finds himself already in a disorganized multiple reality. He exchanges his previous inclination to surpress for an approach that attempts to master the confusion through a method of artistic organization. He achieves an artistic organization of reality through an aesthetic method that integrates different traditions and experiences. The most important trait of this artistic method is the epistemological nucleus which represents the external attributes of the Post-modern creation. These works' untranscendicity and ahistoricality and their ties with the artist's pleasures and personal tastes are, like their textual nature, definitely processes that summarize one common aesthetic factor: the intra-artistic nature of the act of creating. This is the substitution of external references for universes that pertain to the autocomplacency created upon making the same creative activity a theatrical theme. The processes of revision, adaptation, and recreation of motifs and ancient languages multiply, thus converting Post-Modern Art into a reflection on Art, that is, a meta-language. As if the chronological reality of eternity imposed itself elusively over the contemporary mind and creation -ending a voyage that reverts over itselfthe final years of the twentieth century look like a reflection of the last years of the nineteenth century. Some artistic processes began then which seem to be ending now. When Modernity exhausted itself, Post-Modernity gathered its styles and themes along with classical elements that had been somewhat abandoned due to the implacable progressive attitude of the century. Freed of the chains of an undeniable advance, the eternal spirit comes back adorned with a slightly decadent tone recalling the Decadentism one hundred years ago. 3. CYRANO AND POST-CYRANO In his Cyrano de Bergerac, the French playwrite Edmond Rostand reaches beyond the apparent drama of the cape and sword with a romantic flavor and versified form that seem to constitute the generic form of the play. Taking advantage of theatrical experiences of Scribe and Sardous, masters of the pièce bien faite, Rostand demonstrates his knowledge of the intense development that theatrical theory and practice had achieved in France toward the end of the century. The innovations of this period include the appearance of the stage director and with him, the revision of the great actors' roles in the new theatricality. Perhaps for this reason, Rostand writes the greater part of the script and personalities in his plays to suit his friends who include such well-known actors as Sarah Bernhardt and Constant Coquelin. Perhaps as well, the protagonist of his greatest work, inspired by a French poet who had actually lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, appears in the drama endowed with the essential qualities of the turn of the century. Rostand presents the world of literature and Art in general: the character Cyrano, a romantic by his generous idealism, demonstrates by his prodigious capacity to versify Manuel Pérez Jiménez 6 and his marvelous eloquence the forms and attitudes of a Parnisian poet, while his decidedly tragic-comical cirumstances amidst misery approach the taste and aesthetic of French Decadentism. The five acts of Cyrano de Bergerac each have settings as attractive as they are detailed. The scenes are described by the author with such precision and theatrical knowledge that, no doubt, they were learned during the intense development of the Naturalist theater which materialized in France particularly with André Antoine's ThéâtreLibre, the playwrites who practiced Émile Zola's theories, and coincidentally, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the beginning of the new theatricality in western drama. In his plays, Rostand puts into practice a dramatic line that is formally infused by the tradition of theater in verse but equally nourished by the ever-present Decadentist sensibilities and the aesthetic of dramatic and literary Symbolism. The elements borne of this turn of the century spirit and the Symbolist aesthetic can be found in the Cyrano of our days though in distinct forms and with different meanings. This Cyrano, the Cyrano of our days, is Joseph-Angel's post-theatrical version entitled Cyrano Parfumé (Cyrano's perfume). This post-theatrical recreation of Rostand's Cyrano is selectively projected over some intense moments of French drama. Thus, over a total of five acts, Joseph-Angel concentrates on the third one which is composed of thirteen scenes. Within the third act, the post-theatrical author chooses preferably the seventh scene. This way, the posttheatrical Cyrano can be found in the very heart of Rostand's work, the composite heart, the predominant aesthetic element in the verses that refer to the heart. The increasingly intense reiteration of this term (the heart) in the forementioned scene corroborates the symbolic categorization of this receptacle of passion. The heart is the most important element of the sensitivity or interior world that the play attempts to recreate. It constitutes the play's global universe. Similarly, as we shall see, Joseph-Angel will make the heart one of the richest aesthetic elements in his play. 3 In this scene, Rostand's dramatical conflict arises only as subtly as his theatrical aesthetic requires it to: the hero can only enjoy passion when he substitutes for the true lover for which he must adopt a character of deferred love for the rest of his life. Hence, the night becomes a requirement whose alliance permits the game of love to be fullfilled (at least on the spiritual level which is as real in the symbolist reality as the physical level,) "...because with night's shield/I dare to be 'myself'" (Rostand: Act III, scene VII). Joseph-Angel calls his version, Cyrano's Perfume, according to the preferred mode of communication that it indicates. Perfume becomes the textual element of primary 3 This continues until, in a future edition, the heart is reduced to Cyrano's perfume which is presented and commercialized in heart-shaped post-theatrical flasks. Thus doing away with paper, the author projects the creation of a solidrama through a single didascalia -perfumedwhich becomes the autonomous dramatic text. Manuel Pérez Jiménez 7 concern, a didascalia that holds a central position in the play (in the heart of the play, a heart of perfumed paper.) It incites the reader to make use of his sense of smell, the essential sense for carrying out Joseph-Angel's rendition. We find the subtitle of the play imprinted on the book's coversheet (page 1): Duel amoureux entre Cyrano et Roxane. According to the central episode of Rostand's Cyrano (Act III, scene VII) a notable advance toward the essential occurs in the Joseph-Angel's play: Christian, direct recipient of Roxane's love, has disappeared, the love game becomes an intimate battle of verbal fencing between Roxane and Cyrano, and a dialectic exchange whose words convey impassioned exhaltations of live and as fencing sabres embodied, attempt to overcome the opponent's heart. From this moment forward, the post-theatrical drama developes symmetrically in three acts or shifts whose respective titles, intensely loaded and exhausted with beautiful meanings, suppose a condensation in other such moments of amorous conflict. The first act, entitled Au coeur de la nuit...(In the heart of the night...), demonstrates the recurring symbol of the heart. As the French author's central value, the heart joins aesthetic references and the metaphor of fencing. Joseph-Angel gives the word coeur a disemic value, propitiating a metaphorical rupture with that of the literal meaning suggested by its syntax. Nevertheless, the night possesses an equally important value. As we have seen in Rostand's version, it became the fortunate pretext for romantic encounters, an unexcusable context filled with symbolism. In Joseph-Angel's recreation, the night's evocative power is intensely reinforced by the nature of the script or post-theatrical creation. The play must be read with veiled eyes thus appealing to the non-verbal senses. Prepared in a series of nine letters in each of the three odd-numbered pages in the first act, the Braille alphabet imposes a tactile interpretation upon the reader. Through this exercise, the reader submerges himself in the drama of the differed lover. The even-numbered pages (4, 6, and 8) are olfactory counterparts to their corresponding odd-numbered pages (which constitute the principal text, the expression of the conflict.) They also constitute an extension between the olfactory atmosphere (culminating in the central fold/recipient) and the reader's familiar points of reference. In the first version, the post-theatrical Cyrano relied primarily on the variation of real perfumes inserted materially between the pages to express the game of communication. Each perfume corresponded to one of the characters in the drama. The new version presents our cultural ethic which advertises a showcase of accredited brands of perfume including those which interest usinternational cosmeticsto the turn of the century postindustrial reader who dresses with a familiar post-consumist refinement. Thus, Dior, Chanel, Guerlain (Act I), Lancôme, Hermés, and Cacherel (Act III) are inserted into the post-modern reader's subconscious and constitute effective contextualizations for the fusion of the two essential aromas in the play: "Roxane eau de toilette" and "Cyrano eau de toilette" (pages 10 and 11.) These are physically infused with real perfume emanating from the recipient in the central pages. Thus, by endowing words with a functionality (in Manuel Pérez Jiménez 8 the post-theatrical creation,) the compositive procedure emphasizes the alternating game of amorous conflict; when the three-dimensional triangles composed of brands of perfume in the first act (pages 4, 6, and 8) are stood on their bases, they symbolize the receptive surrender of Roxane's heart while in the third act, when they are inverted over the spine, they adopt the innitiative of Cyrano's love. There is a new chain of signs to reinforce the "fencing" conflict between the two lovers which is fused between the central pages (10 and 11, amorous flanks or ventriloquisms from both hearts) amidst the emanation of the only aroma of lovethe perfumed rose that distills the aromatic essence of Cyrano's love. The second act forms a diptych similar in form to those in the visual arts. It represents a crossing of codes on the first semiological level, a constant in the posttheatrical creation which reaches its apex in this particular play. Pages 10 and 11, with their triangle-shaped hearts hinting at the art of perfumery, surround -as we have seenthe aromatic stage direction that the title alludes to, ...Parfumée de jasmin.... Meanwhile, the external pages (9 and 12) present the only printed replies, in the conventional sense, in the whole. 4 These verbal replies make a very representative example of the structural cohesion that animates the dramatic universe of the post-theater. Symmetry presides over the selection and disposition of the replies. There are a total of twelve replies distributed in each of these indicated pagesone each in a series of six. Alternately, half of these belong to Cyrano and the other half to Roxane. The geometry is reinforced as each pair of replies (Cyrano/Roxane) corresponds to a position in the fencing game. The iconographic representations of the game are identical to those shown in the areas of the fencing area represented by the page tabs: greeting-attack-rest. This continues in the inverse in the second series: rest-attack-greeting. The formal logic of the Post-Cyrano text (both verbally and visually complex) appears in alliance with an intense condensation of the levels of meaning in the play. The translation of the verbal replies in the first series (replies 1 and 6, page 9) is as follows: A) Greeting position: CYRANO: Ce soir, je vais vous parler pour la première fois. Laissez un peu que l'on profite... de cette occasion qui s'offre... de pouvoir se parler doucement, sans se voir. ROXANE: (Le crépuscule commence à venir.) Sans se voir? B) Attack position: CYRANO: Mais oui, c'est adorable. On se devine à peine. Vous voyez la noirceur d'un long manteau qui traine. ROXANE: (Elle lui donne un petit sachet.) Tenez! 4 Joseph-Angel has maintained the original French verbs in Cyrano's perfume; hence, the replies on pages 9 and 12 are also in French. References to the replies in the post-theatrical text are indicated by the Arabic numeral that corresponds to the place that each occupies in the set of nine. Manuel Pérez Jiménez 9 C) Rest position: CYRANO: Je crains tant que parmi notre alchimie exquise, le vrai du sentiment ne se volatilise. ROXANE: Ouvrez... (fermant les yeux) et lisez. The second series offers the following replies (7 and 12, page 12): A) Rest position: CYRANO: J'ai senti le tremblement adoré de ta main descendre tout le long des branches du jasmin. (Du lierre, grimpe au mur, du jasmin enguirlande le balcon de Roxane, frissonne et retombe.) ROXANE: Oui, c'est bien de l'amour... B) Attack position: CYRANO: Je ne demande plus qu'une chose... et c'est... ROXANE: C'est? C) Greeting position: CYRANO: Un baiser! (Elle lui envoie un petit baiser de la main.) Un baiser est une communion ayant un goût de fleur, une façon d'un peu se respirer le coeur, un point rose qu'on met sur l'i du verbe aimer! ROXANE: Oui, parlez-moi d'amour. The replies in Cyrano's perfume proceed, as seen, according to Joseph-Angel's selection of a few of the main scenes from Rostand's play. This selection supposes a simplifying process by which Joseph-Angel dispenses with all anecdotal elements that are secondary or external to the intrinsic development of the amorous conflict. Sheltered by the darkness of the friendly night, penetrated by the suggestive perfume of jasmine, Cyrano's passion progresses and he speaks to her of love. Coinciding with the blind man's survival strategy, symbolized by the use of Braille in Act I, the hero commends his achievement of happiness to the impassioned complicity of the night ("... in the shield of the night, I dare to be 'myself'...", Act III, scene VII). He immediately receives a piece of her clothing as a reward after his moderate proposal in the greeting position (reply 1) and the prudently errant persistence in the attack (reply 3). Roxane's gift, a little perfumed bag, is in fact the case to the origami figure that occupies the central position in the play. Its perfume is physically incorporated into the play as an olfactory didascalia which requires an aromatic reading. The person who smells the bag that Roxane extends to Cyrano and the person who holds this play (whose nucleus must be read by smelling) in his hands converges and becomes equal to the other. By luck of the Post-theater's frequent referential unfolding, the play and stage directions coincide, protagonist and receptor overlap, interpretation and reception mutually imbricate. Actually, Roxane offers Cyrano the same Cyrano's perfume that the post-theatrical reader holds in this moment between his hands and his pituitary. Manuel Pérez Jiménez 16 efficiency of the post-theater's textual model. It is capable of replacing the traditional language formed solely by words even in the aesthetic field in which it has reached considerable heights. In Cyrano's perfume, the post-theatrical graphic, the image, equals the word in the process of attaining the greatest aspiration of symbolist communication: the expression of the characters' desires and intimacies. Thus, by virtue of its essence, the Post-theater becomes a sublimating dramatic language of Symbolism. By creating new, not exclusively verbal symbols to establish relationships or correspondences with physical sensations and interior realities, the Post-theater appears as a sublimated symbolism - an effective substitute, after a one-hundred year artistic cycle, for the aesthetic movement that occupied the center of finisecular creative activity in its day. Foreshadowed by the Symbolist experience, Post-theater has captured the central position in the new artistic context of our turn of the century. While primarily a new tool for dramatic creation, the post-theatrical creation, as a revolutionary movement among the theatrical Avant-Garde, profoundly and extensively affects the greater nature of drama. Each post-theatrical creation consists of a play in itself which creates a theatricality that alters the traditional functions of theater. The kind of staging implicit in the post-theatrical creation is most immediately designed to be contemplated by the individual viewer, a single receptor of these modes of dramatic communication which can be called solidramas. Perhaps the mode of reception is among the elements of the act of post-theatrical communication that reveals the greatest difference from the conventional play. In Cyrano's perfume, the complication of the receptive process is a constant implicit in the very aesthetic of the play. The publication is adapted to a small paper theater which has a door that opens when the reader removes the rubberband that covers it, a curtain that opens when the reader/viewer moves the parts of Roxane's heart/balcony, and a function that begins when the reader activates the alternating mechanism that replaces "vous" with "t'." Thus the reader initiates a play in which he himself acts out Cyrano's character in response to Roxane's command, "Ouvrez...et lisez" (reply 6.) Like the hero, the reader/viewer/actor aromatically reads the olfactory annotation inserted in the little origami bag, thus inhaling Cyrano's perfume. And, like Cyrano, he feels the worshipped tremolo of Roxane's passion descend through the essences of jasmine. The same reader/viewer will end the play burning the book/stage according to the instruction on the last page. The profoundly meaningful relationships between the categories of reader/hero and reading/acting form a differed mode of reception. For example, the amorous response that Cyrano obtains, reflects a love that was destined for Christian (because Cyrano lives in a differed reality.) In addition, it deals with an interactive staging in which the receptor (who is director, stage manager, stagehand, actor and viewer simultaneously) can control and intervene in the development of the play. Thus the post-theatrical receptor takes part in the characteristics and attributes of the rest of the human elements on stage. The Post-theater profoundly alters the rhetoric of Manuel Pérez Jiménez 17 drama in one aspect that was rarely permeated by the innovations in the traditional creations. From a formal point of view, Cyrano's perfume is constructed like a framework of elements intensely related due to a complex web of meanings that intertwine in multiple directions. Tending towards signals of a graphic-plastic nature to express the drama, the Post-theater loads these with references that surpass the simple denotative plane. Proceding mainly from the area of the image, the signals in the post-theatrical creation become post-theatrical symbols in the context in which they are inscribed in the play. As these symbols are charged with connotations that sometimes coexist in the same meaning, they, in turn, enrich the object referred to. These intensely connotative signals, the post-theatrical symbols, thus acquire a great suggestive capacity, an enormous power of evocation. An image in the shape of a heart divided appears on the cover of Cyrano's perfume. Its embossed form reproduces the organ of emotion. The graphic immediately becomes a symbol of passion reinvested with a meaning that can often be found in literature. Nevertheless, new meanings overcome it immediately like a cascade of other meanings that overcome the primitive global signal (the heart-shaped drawing plus the concept of a human heart.) By separating the two halves of the heart, the signal signifies Roxane's balcony and the lateral sides that cover it. But at the same time, the heart acquires a new reference in theater that functions like a front curtain splitting the stage in two. When drawn open by the reader/viewer, it presents him to the staging after which the book becomes a paper theater for individual use. Finally, the words written inside the heart/balcony/front curtain ("Je vous aime/Je t'aime") function as a hand device with which the reader/director stage designer/stage manager controls the beginning of the play. Moreover, the heart symbol acquires a second objectual materialization within the little origami bag (the heart of the play and the garment Roxane surrendered.) It acquires a physical connotation when impregnated by Cyrano's perfume and when unfolded like the blossom of a rose. Finally, the connotative capacity increases infinitely if we consider that the heart is the post-theatrical symbol par excellence. It's not surprising that the volumes which form Joseph-Angel's Complete Work have cardiotriangular shapes and the Post-Theater Manifesto has the shape of Hamlet's heart. The signal-become-symbol becomes intensely connotative through the multiple planes and environs of the post-theatrical creation. The heart not the only example. There is also the road. Conceptually comlex between the image and connotative symbolization, it (the road) offers similar levels of effective realization. It obtains these levels of realization from the elements incorporated in the art of fencing; the foils are post-theatrical pencils and fragments of the amorous eloquence with which Cyrano touches Roxane's heart. The fencer's mask refers to the adventurously blind complicity of the night, Cyrano's concealment behind Christian's figure, and the eternal mask of theatrical art. The page tabs are the clues to the contents of the lovers' aromatic dialect and they are also the stairs by which Cyrano procedes toward Roxane's balcony. Manuel Pérez Jiménez 18 The image of the final incensory is loaded with evocations. Its smoke -a product of burning the paper playfunctions as the final draw of the curtain. It completes the complication of the symbolizing connotations through perceptive elements of an aromatic nature. The rubberband around the book that allows the Post-theater to open and the nose that must be worn by the viewer also function as post-theatrical symbols in the incredibly rich context of the play. Many of these symbols are beautiful non-verbal metaphors. Braille is employed in relation to the semantic proximity of the night. However, the process of symbolization also affects the verbal element. This occurs caligraphically with the initials C and E wrapped around the title of the play. Finally, the compositive symmetry becomes in itself one of the most powerful symbols of the post-theatrical creation. Well demonstrated in the structure of Cyrano's perfume, the play is overcome with a quasi magical presence assumed by the number three. Examples include the distribution of the conflict in three acts (one as a diptych and the other two as triptychs,) and the presentation of Braille in three series of nine signs each (three by three.) The very order of things corresponds to the alternance of meanings between the odd and even pages, the inversion of the triangle represented by the even pages (using the symmetrical axis as a mirror), and the insertion of cover sheets in the beginning and end of the book. The ultimate value of this post-theatrical symbolism belongs to the irrefutable capacity to evoke, to refer indirectly to the most hidden intimacies of man's sensibilities. Like the Symbolist aesthetic from the previous century, the Post-theater of today relies heavily on human perception and on the array of sensations. Overcoming the audio-verbal nature of the traditional drama, the Post-theater makes use of the viewer's senses and perceptions. In Cyrano's perfume, this sensorial stimulation ranges from the implication of a lack of sight and the affirmation of the sense of touch (Act I), to the requisite sense of smell (Act II and the whole play in general), to the predominance of the sense of hearing in the special treatment of the verbal element in Act III. However, unlike the Symbolist School of the past century, Post-theatrical Symbolism almost completely dispenses with sentimental symbols in favor of intellectual symbols. Post-theatrical Symbolism does not stimulate the viewer's affective fibers by means of activating his range of emotions which go from laughter to sobs. On the contrary, it attempts to stimulate the receptor's mind whose capacity to reason, discern and identify is constantly engaged by the complex web of associations implied in the process of post-theatrical symbolization. Built upon the image, broadly related to the area of Visual Arts, and greatly concerned with the recreation of great figures and moments of drama, the thematic and compositive universe of Post-theater acquires a markedly textual component. With respect to its intra-artistic references, Post-theater is intensely formal which follows the creative line of post-modernity. The surprised and atypical reader, intoxicated by Cyrano's captivating perfume, holds before him the center page of Joseph-Angel's play. Since the end of the previous Manuel Pérez Jiménez 19 century many creators have attempted to sieze and transmit the most hidden and profound facets of man's soul, and in this instant, the reader witnesses the final realization of their dreams. A subtle fiber weaves together the handywork of many playwrites who had the common undertaking of probing the intimacies of the individual -the most arcane mysteries of the human beingwith their works. Once the cycle ended, which took place after Symbolism in the evolution of Art, the new turn of the century -and of the mileniumoffers us another precious demonstration of the desire that animated the aesthetic creation one hundred years ago. This demonstration is a new kind of Symbolism whose rhetoric feeds more upon visual and verbal meaning and reveals to the reader/viewer the essences of creation through which it is possible to clearly glimpse the enlightenment of the future. One of the Post-theater's defining characteristics is its decided will to place itself indefatigably on the limits of the theatrical future. Loyal to its time, the post-theatrical Avant-Garde fulfills its promise of advancement in dramatical creation and research through the special relationship it holds with Post-Modernity.