Le Maître de Santiago
One of 15 copies from the deluxe issue on tinted old Japanese paper, this copy hors commerce (copy D).
“This strange masterpiece, listened to in the deepest silence by an audience that forgot to applaud when the curtain fell, for several seconds, out of sheer astonishment. I was myself stunned. I have heard a great many foolish things said about Montherlant, and about this play in particular. What more do they want? I cannot understand why they cannot at least keep silent before a work of such beauty — a beauty that is perhaps irritating, even exasperating, because the author, with all his genius, touches on very grave matters with a kind of insolence that is frightening.” (Julien Green, Journal, vol. V, 1951).
The whole play turns on the attempt to persuade Alvaro, the “Master of Santiago,” to sail to the Indies to make his fortune, so as to make possible the marriage of his daughter Mariana to Jacinto, the son of Don Bernal. Alvaro, however, has no desire to go to the New World: he wishes only to withdraw from the world.
“Only what happens within the soul is essential, or rather real,” he declares in this “tragedy with no way out.”
Le Maître de Santiago was first performed on 26 January 1948 in Paris at the Théâtre Hébertot, to great success. The play was subsequently revived from 9 to 14 April 1948 in Brussels at the Théâtre royal du Parc, in a staging by Paul Oettly.
A major play by Montherlant, elevated here by a delicate and expressive binding by Marguerite Fray, strictly contemporary with the edition.
A choice copy.