Abstract
Tennessee Williams’s penultimate full-length play Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981) dramatises the playwright’s first homosexual love affair as well as the events leading up to his first professional theatre production. Many critics have therefore read the play in terms of its author’s life and fail to make the distinction between creator and creation. This article seeks to demonstrate the text foregrounds the mediation involved in telling a story about the past through a work of art by means of two interrelated operations: quoting and translating. Its protagonist quotes a sonnet by John Keats concerned with translation and alludes to Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duineser Elegien, whose speaker seeks to mediate between different realms. Additionally, the characters listen to music by composers interested in building bridges between different styles, religions and cultures. Williams also mediates between writing and music by making use of the musical technique of repetition and variation.
Acknowledgment
I was able to conduct the research for this article thanks to a grant awarded by the Flemish Research Foundation (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen).
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Flying Free from History and Reality: Dramatic Representations of the “Crocodile Dilemma” in the Theatre of Martin McDonagh
- Quoting Poetry, Translating Music (and Vice Versa): Mediation in Tennessee Williams’s Something Cloudy, Something Clear
- Staging Childhood Holocaust Survivor Trauma: Diane Samuels’s Kindertransport
- “Times long contrasts:” o e d I p u s (2014)
- How Diasporic?: Psychogeographies of the New Britain in (Post-)Millennial British Theatre
- The Passive Gaze and Hyper-Immunised Spectators: The Politics of Theatrical Live-Broadcasting
- Reviews
- Jade Rosina McCutcheon and Barbara Sellers-Young, eds. Embodied Consciousness: Performance Technologies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 229 pp., £55. Nicola Shaughnessy, ed. Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being. London: Bloomsbury, 2013, 300 pp., £75.
- Martin Middeke, Peter Paul Schnierer, Christopher Innes, and Matthew C. Roudané, eds. The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights. London: Bloomsbury, 2014, 479 pp., £ 19, 99.
- Birgit Däwes and Marc Maufort, eds. Enacting Nature: Ecocritical Perspectives on Indigenous Performance. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2014, 262 pp., € 50.30 (softcover).
- Christophe Collard. Artist on the Make: David Mamet’s Work across Media and Genres. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 2012, 366 pp., 25 €.
- Vicky Angelaki, ed. Contemporary British Theatre: Breaking New Ground. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, xxxi + 192 pp., € 67.00.
- Dan Rebellato, ed. Modern British Playwrighting 2000–2009. London: Bloomsbury, 2013, ix + 340 pp. (paperback).
- Jürs-Munsby, Karen, Jerome Carroll, and Steve Giles, eds. Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance. London: Bloomsbury, 2013, vii + 324 pp., £65 (hardback), £19.99 (paperback), £19.99 (PDF ebook).
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Flying Free from History and Reality: Dramatic Representations of the “Crocodile Dilemma” in the Theatre of Martin McDonagh
- Quoting Poetry, Translating Music (and Vice Versa): Mediation in Tennessee Williams’s Something Cloudy, Something Clear
- Staging Childhood Holocaust Survivor Trauma: Diane Samuels’s Kindertransport
- “Times long contrasts:” o e d I p u s (2014)
- How Diasporic?: Psychogeographies of the New Britain in (Post-)Millennial British Theatre
- The Passive Gaze and Hyper-Immunised Spectators: The Politics of Theatrical Live-Broadcasting
- Reviews
- Jade Rosina McCutcheon and Barbara Sellers-Young, eds. Embodied Consciousness: Performance Technologies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 229 pp., £55. Nicola Shaughnessy, ed. Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being. London: Bloomsbury, 2013, 300 pp., £75.
- Martin Middeke, Peter Paul Schnierer, Christopher Innes, and Matthew C. Roudané, eds. The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights. London: Bloomsbury, 2014, 479 pp., £ 19, 99.
- Birgit Däwes and Marc Maufort, eds. Enacting Nature: Ecocritical Perspectives on Indigenous Performance. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2014, 262 pp., € 50.30 (softcover).
- Christophe Collard. Artist on the Make: David Mamet’s Work across Media and Genres. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 2012, 366 pp., 25 €.
- Vicky Angelaki, ed. Contemporary British Theatre: Breaking New Ground. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, xxxi + 192 pp., € 67.00.
- Dan Rebellato, ed. Modern British Playwrighting 2000–2009. London: Bloomsbury, 2013, ix + 340 pp. (paperback).
- Jürs-Munsby, Karen, Jerome Carroll, and Steve Giles, eds. Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance. London: Bloomsbury, 2013, vii + 324 pp., £65 (hardback), £19.99 (paperback), £19.99 (PDF ebook).