The surface characteristics of Ghelderode's universe are dazzling. In many of his plays masqueraders, grotesque figures, living corpses, gluttonous and lustful men and women frantically move about in a decor of purple shadows, full of strong smells, and throw violent, foul, or mysterious phrases at each other in highly colored language filled with Belgian idioms, archaisms, and shrieks. Even in the plays where the language is closest to modern French, the dialogue and long speeches are profuse and frenetic. There is no rest in Ghelderode's theatre; the shock is permanent. Everything is pushed toward a paroxysm of language and spectacle—a flamboyant theatre, based on Flemish culture, its legends, its humor, its puppets, and its painters, from Brueghel the elder to James Ensor. But in overstressing Ghelderode's Flemish background, so obvious in itself, one is in danger of losing sight of his works' deeper value and of seeing...