Michel de Ghelderode

Born Apr. 3, 1898, in Ixelles; died Apr. 1, 1962, in Brussels. Belgian writer. Wrote in French. Dramatist (Death Looks Through the Window, staged in 1918; Maria the Sufferer, 1952) and story writer (“The Pilgrimage,” 1922, and “Sacrilege,” 1941).

Ghelderode’s outlook was ambivalent: he was horrified by the future, he did not believe in men’s rational efforts to change the course of history, and he had a common man’s hatred of private-ownership society and of the individualistic morality of the powerful of this world (the farce Feast of the Beasts, produced in 1919, and the collection of short stories Man in Uniform, 1923). He was saved from decadent despair by faith in the mission of the theater to be a “mirror of nature,” by a Flemish love of life (the drama Don Juan, 1928), by vital ties with the poetics of farcical shows and pantomime (the farce Feast in Hell, 1929) and by ties with experiments in Flemish folk theater (the tragedies Barabbas, produced in 1929, and Pantagleize, produced in 1930).