SOURCE: “Ghelderode's Red Magic: Gold and the Use of the Christian Myth,” in Modern Drama, Vol. 11, No. 4, February 1969, pp. 376-81.

In the following essay, Fraidstern analyzes the ways in which Red Magic differs from Ghelderode's other plays, which draw heavily on ancient themes and legends.

The vision of Michel de Ghelderode derives its theatrical vitality from the playwright's absorption in the anhistorical memories of the folk or the popular imagination, “about what the world was like before the appearance of homo sapiens. Through the primitive legends, poetry, and dream are revealed to us the existence of former human kinds, come from the stars and gone away again, leaving evidences in stone, astronomical, or esoteric symbols.”¹ His dramatic preoccupation with the public manifestations of these archaic, frequently unconscious relics reveals an awareness of continuous human need for sacred objects, the ritual annulments of time, and the ceremonial repetition of...