The Immortal Bernhardt

The most enduring mark left by a performing artist on the history of the last hundred years was imposed by Sarah Bernhardt. Her name has become synonymous with histrionic grandeur. Every actress today yearns to be what the fabled Sarah was.

“A player’s name is writ in water, ” David Garrick, the great actor of 18^th century England, once gloomily complained. The actor’s art, true enough, vanishes with him, but the legend of certain players – Garrick among them – survives.

The animated image of Bernhardt may be seen in the flickering faded visions of the cinema’s infancy. Her voice may still be faintly heard in her recitations recorded in her twilight zone. But such remains offer feeble evidence of her powers in her prime.

Her note of pathos touched Queen Victoria and later Lenin. Victor Hugo knelt before her in gratitude for her playing of Dona Sol in “Hernani”.

New biographies continue to appear, together with volumes of photographs, portraits and posters. Plays about her abound on stage and television. A dozen movie actresses have threatened to impersonate her on the screen. As yet only one has ever dared: Greta Garbo in “The Divine Woman”, a silent and apparently lost film based vaguely on incidents of Bernhardt’s early career.

She was born in Paris, the illegitimate daughter of a Dutch-Jewish mother and a Belgian. Her mother was a courtesan of the Second Empire, and it was one of her mother’s lovers, the Duc de Morny, half-brother of Napoleon III, who advised that she be taken from a Versailles convent and entered as a pupil in the Paris Conservatoire. She made her debut at the Comedie-Francaise in 1862, playing a small role in Racine’s “Iphigenie”. Her initial success came later in 1869 at the Odeon and during the Franco-Prussian War she converted the theatre into a hospital for the wounded and turned nurse.

Established as France’s foremost actress, she formed her own company and toured the five continents, visiting the United States first in 1880 and returning there for return engagements until her farewell tour 1916-1918. No role awed her. In her mid-50s she was the adolescent L’Aiglon of Rostand and came on as Hamlet.

“If there is anything more remarkable than watching Sarah act, it’s watching her live, ” declared the dramatist, Victorien Sardou. “She could enter a convent, discover the North Pole, kill an emperor, or marry a Negro King and it would not surprise me. She is not an individual but a complex of individuals, ” another admirer explained.

She was the pet of royalty and the literati. She kept a menagerie of wild animals in her luxurious apartment. She took to the air not in a captive balloon, but in a free-flying one. She visited Thomas Edison in Melno Park and the light-bringer recorded her voice. Her love affairs were scandalous and unceasing. Her last lover, Lou Telligen, escaped to marry the American opera diva, Geraldine Farrar. She was more than 70, but she reacted to this desertion like a school-girl. At the outset of World War I she was obliged to have her left leg amputated. With a wooden leg she continued to tramp the boards and undertake far-flung tours. She was in the midst of rehearsing for a new play and making a motion picture when death overtook her. She insisted on acting before the camera even when she was confined to bed.

Her talent was not limited to her acting. The creative artist can be detected in her essays in sculpture, painting and dramatic literature. She tossed off a novel and revealed her courage in topical disputes by taking a pro-Dreyfus stand during the notorious case that divided France, estranging her temporarily from her own son.

III. Make up a dialogue with your fellow-student about Sarah Bernhardt. Retell the text.

IV. Speak of your favourite actor or actress.

V. Discuss the following problems. Work out your arguments for and against.

a) Should the actor “live” the part or should he just perform?

b) Should an actor (director) borrow certain “finds” and “scenic decisions” of his predecessors?

c) Should a talented actor (actress) keep on playing if he (she) is getting advanced in years?

d) Should an actor undertake any part he is offered?

e) Stars in the theatre. Do they always ensure success of the play? Does the job of the director and the rest of the actors depend much upon stars?