|
Pierrot ((:pjɛʁo)) is a stock character of pantomime and Commedia dell'Arte whose origins are in the late seventeenth-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne; the name is a hypocorism of ''Pierre'' (Peter), via the suffix ''-ot.'' His character in contemporary popular culture—in poetry, fiction, the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall—is that of the sad clown, pining for love of Columbine, who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin. Performing unmasked, with a whitened face, he wears a loose white blouse with large buttons and wide white pantaloons. Sometimes he appears with a frilled collaret and a hat, usually with a close-fitting crown and wide round brim, more rarely with a conical shape like a dunce's cap. But most frequently, since his reincarnation under Jean-Gaspard Deburau, he wears neither collar nor hat, only a black skullcap. The defining characteristic of Pierrot is his naïveté: he is seen as a fool, often the butt of pranks, yet nonetheless trusting. It was a generally buffoonish Pierrot that held the European stage for the first two centuries of his history. And yet early signs of a respectful, even sympathetic attitude toward the character appeared in the plays of Jean-François Regnard and in the paintings of Antoine Watteau, an attitude that would deepen in the nineteenth century, after the Romantics claimed the figure as their own. For Jules Janin and Théophile Gautier, Pierrot was not a fool but an avatar of the post-Revolutionary People, struggling, sometimes tragically, to secure a place in the bourgeois world.〔Janin called Deburau's Pierrot "the people among the people" ((pp. 156-57 )); Gautier identified him as "the modern proletarian, the pariah, the passive and disinherited being" (V, 24).〕 And subsequent artistic/cultural movements found him equally amenable to their cause: the Decadents turned him, like themselves, into a disillusioned disciple of Schopenhauer, a foe of Woman and of callow idealism; the Symbolists saw him as a lonely fellow-sufferer, crucified upon the rood of soulful sensitivity, his only friend the distant moon; the Modernists converted him into a Whistlerian subject for canvases devoted to form and color and line.〔On Pierrot in the art of the Decadents and Symbolists, see Pantomime and late nineteenth-century art; for his image in the art of the Modernists, see, for example, the Juan Gris canvases reproduced in Works on canvas, paper, and board.〕 In short, Pierrot became an alter-ego of the artist, specifically of the famously alienated artist of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.〔For studies of the relationship between modern artists and clowns in general, see Régnier, Ritter, and Starobinski. On the modern artist specifically as a Pierrot, see Storey, ''Pierrot: a critical history'', pp. 93–193, and all of his ''Pierrots on the stage''; also Green and Swan, Kellein, Palacio, Sensibar.〕 His physical insularity; his poignant lapses into mutism, the legacy of the great mime Deburau; his white face and costume, suggesting not only innocence but the pallor of the dead; his often frustrated pursuit of Columbine, coupled with his never-to-be-vanquished unworldly naïveté—all conspired to lift him out of the circumscribed world of the Commedia dell'Arte and into the larger realm of myth. Much of that mythic quality still adheres to the "sad clown" of the postmodern era. ==Origins: seventeenth century== He is sometimes said to be a French variant of the sixteenth-century Italian Pedrolino,〔Sand, Duchartre, and Oreglia see a close family resemblance between—if not an interchangeability of—both characters. Mic claims that an historical connection between Pedrolino and "the celebrated Pierrots of () Willette" is "absolutely evident" (p. 211). Nicoll writes that Pedrolino is the "Italian equivalent" of Pierrot (''World'', p. 88). As late as 1994, Rudlin (pp. 137-38) renames Pierrot "Pedrolino" in a translation of a scene from Nolant de Fatouville's ''Harlequin, Emperor of the Moon'' (1684): see Gherardi, (I, 179 ).〕 but the two types have little but their names ("Little Pete") and social stations in common.〔There is no documentation from the seventeenth century that links the two figures. In fact, what documentation does exist links Pierrot, not with Pedrolino, but with Pulcinella. "Dominique" Biancolelli, Harlequin of the first Comédie-Italienne in which Pierrot appeared by name, noted that "The nature of the ''rôle'' is that of a Neapolitan Pulcinella a little altered. In point of fact, the Neapolitan scenarii, in place of Arlecchino and Scapino, admit two Pulcinellas, the one an intriguing rogue and the other a stupid fool. The latter is Pierot's ''rôle'': MS 13736, Bibliothèque de l'Opéra, Paris, I, 113; cited and tr. Nicoll, ''Masks'', p. 294.〕 Both are comic servants, but Pedrolino, as a so-called first ''zanni'', often acts with cunning and daring,〔In one of the few extant contemporary illustrations involving Pedrolino—i.e., the frontispiece of Giulio Cesare Croce's ''Pedrolino's Great Victory against the Doctor Gratiano Scatolone, for Love of the Beautiful Franceschina'' (1621)—the ''zanni'' is shown thrashing the Doctor rather savagely (and, as the title indicates, victoriously). Such aggressive ferocity is nowhere to be seen, early or late, in the behavioral repertoire of Pierrot. Pierrot can be murderous (see "Shakespeare at the Funambules" and aftermath below), but he is never pugnacious.〕 an engine of the plot in the scenarios where he appears.〔He appears in forty-nine of the fifty scenarios in Flaminio Scala's ''Il teatro delle favole rappresentative'' (1611) and in three of the scenarios in the unpublished "Corsini" collection. Salerno has translated the Scala scenarios; Pandolfi (V, 252–276) has summarized the plots of the "Corsini" pieces.〕 Pierrot, on the other hand, as a "second" ''zanni'', is a static character in his earliest incarnations, "standing on the periphery of the action",〔"Indeed, Pierrot appears in comparative isolation from his fellow masks, with few exceptions, in all the plays of ''Le Théâtre Italien'', standing on the periphery of the action, commenting, advising, chiding, but rarely taking part in the movement around him": Storey, ''Pierrot: a critical history'', pp. 27-28.〕 dispensing advice that seems to him sage, and courting—unsuccessfully—his master's young daughter, Columbine, with bashfulness and indecision.〔See the discussion in Storey, ''Pierrot: a critical history'', pp. 22–28.〕 His origins among the Italian players in France are most unambiguously traced to Molière's character, the lovelorn peasant Pierrot, in ''Don Juan, or The Stone Guest'' (1665).〔Fournier, (p. 113 ), provides the information for this paragraph. "If, as (Fournier points out ), Molière gave (Pierrot ) 'the white blouse of a French peasant', then I doubt very much that we have to look for traces of his origins (of the origins of the Italians' Pierrot ) in the ''commedia dell'arte'' at all": Storey, ''Pierrot: a critical history'', p. 20.〕 In 1673, probably inspired by Molière's success, the Comédie-Italienne made its own contribution to the Don Juan legend with an ''Addendum to "The Stone Guest''", which included Molière's Pierrot.〔Harlequin Biancolelli's manuscript-scenario of the play offers no insight into Pierrot's character. Pierrot's name appears only once: "This scene takes place in the country. I drop the hunting horn at Spezzafer's feet; he blows it; then, on the run, I trip up Pierrot; then I find a blind man ...." MS of the Opéra (Paris), II, 177; cited in Klingler, p. 154.〕 Thereafter the character—sometimes a peasant,〔See, e.g., (Act III, scene iii ) of Eustache le Noble's ''Harlequin-Aesop'' (1691) in the Gherardi collection. A translated excerpt from the scene appears in Storey, ''Pierrot: a critical history'', p. 20.〕 but more often now an Italianate "second" ''zanni''—appeared fairly regularly in the Italians’ offerings, his role always taken by one Giuseppe Giaratone (or Geratoni), until the troupe was banished by royal decree in 1697. Among the French dramatists who wrote for the Italians and who gave Pierrot life on their stage were Jean Palaprat, Claude-Ignace Brugière de Barante, Antoine Houdar de la Motte, and the most sensitive of his early interpreters, Jean-François Regnard.〔See especially Regnard's (''Happy-Go-Lucky Harlequin'' ) (1690), (''The Wayward Girls'' ) (1690), and (''The Coquette, or The Ladies' Academy'' ) (1691); Palaprat's (''The Level-headed Girl'' ) (1692); Houdar de la Motte's (''The Eccentrics, or The Italian'' (Les Originaux, ou l'Italien, 1693) ) ; and Brugière de Barante's (''The False Coquette'' ) (1694). All appear in the Gherardi collection.〕 He acquires there a very distinctive personality. He seems an anomaly among the busy social creatures that surround him; he is isolated, out of touch.〔See, e.g., the (Scene des remontrances ) of Regnard's ''Wayward Girls'' in the Gherardi collection. A translated excerpt from this scene appears in Storey, ''Pierrot: a critical history'', p. 23.〕 Columbine laughs at his advances;〔See (Act I, scene v ) of Regnard's ''La Coquette'' and (Act III, scene i ) of Houdar de la Motte's ''The Eccentrics'' (''Les Originaux''), both in the Gherardi collection. Translations of these scenes appear in Storey, ''Pierrot: a critical history'', pp. 26-27.〕 his masters who are in pursuit of pretty young wives brush off his warnings to act their age.〔See, e.g., (Act I, scene ii ) of Palaprat's ''Level-Headed Girl'' in the Gherardi collection. A translated excerpt from this scene appears in Storey, ''Pierrot: a critical history'', pp. 24-25.〕 His is a solitary voice, and his estrangement, however comic, bears the pathos of the portraits—Watteau's chief among them—that we will encounter in the centuries to come. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「pierrot」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|