The Sentence

By Charlotte Delbo

The Sentence (red ink)

Play in Three Acts

“La Sentence” was first performed in Paris after the author’ s death as an oratorio created and directed by master n flutist Francois Veilhan, protégé, devotee and close friend of the author. This is what he tells us:

"A few sentences to tell you why “The Sentence” by Charlotte Delbo is a marvelous theatrical moment for me, why I wished for years on end to work the text . ..There is something within it resembling an item of clothing that remained in the shadow of a closet after the death of a beloved friend, something immuvable and colored, solemn and shared.

Acquaintance with a precise event,…birthes in the author the necessity for a “theatrical space.” Not exactly a play, as we know them, with contradictions, confrontations, unity, alterity, characters and action. No, more a theatrical space…”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669811138

Charlotte Delbo

n/a

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 by Charlotte Delbo.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 03/09/2022

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

839276

Contents

CAST

ACT I

ACT II

ACT III

au%20photo_GS.jpg

LAST PICTURE WINTER 1985

The Sentence

A play in Three Acts

Translated from the French La sentence,

Honfleur, J P Oswald, 1972.

by Cynthia J. Haft

THE SENTENCE

A PLAY IN 3 ACTS

Plays by the same Author available in English:

Who Will Carry the Word, in Theater of the Holocaust, Vol. I, Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1982. Trans. by C. Haft.

A Scene Played On The Stage of Memory, The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 59, no. 1. Trans. by C Haft.

All queries should be addressed to [e-mail]

See also: www.cherecindy

The two portraits of the author were gifted to the translator by the former to be used for publicity purposes in the USA: open access.

CAST

The Wives

Ines

Concha

Mercedes

The Sisters

Augusta

The young girl

The Mothers

Aurora

The Old Lady

The Accused

The President

The Attorney General

ACT I

On a square in front of the closed doors of the tribunal: 2 or 3 stone steps.

Three groups of women, all dressed alike in black: long full skirts, large black shawls with fringes on their heads covering them like capes.

THE FIRST GROUP OF WOMEN: THE WIVES

INES

We are not nuns

do not be deceived by our garb

the women of our province

are always ready to mourn

always ready to mourn their husbands

and ready to immure their mourning in an austere retreat.

We are not yet the widows

we are still the wives.

CONCHA

We are not nuns of sterile womb

who never gave in to the throbbing of desire

the desire of the man in his oneness with ours,

we are the companions of those men

we are the wives of those combatants

we are still the wives of the combatants.

MERCEDES

We are not nuns

fevered by an incarnate lover

those who have never felt more against their flank

than the friction of the cross hanging from their belts

the cross of their tortured lover

enflaming their useless desire.

We are the wives of those men

we are the wives of those who combat for freedom

of those who combat for justice

men of flesh and blood

whom we love with our flesh

with our blood

the men who made us women

of flesh and blood

those men whose children we carried.

We are not nuns

we are the lovers and the wives

the companions of those men

real and living men

because the true man

is he who combats for freedom

he who combats for justice.

INES

Do not clamor so loudly your satiated flesh

your satisfied desire

do not clamor so loudly