Guy Dumur

Born with Bordeaux the November 17th 1921, Guy Dumur is impassioned as of its childhood by the Théâtre. It starts on the boards but, as of the release the trade of dramatic Critique prefers. Thus he is engaged with Combat in 1946.

Its novels like the model Little girls (1952) or the Morning of the day (1954) are thus to undervalue in a career before very dedicated to the dramatic movement. It follows with enthusiasm the beginnings of the Festival of Avignon, supporting with enthusiasm the action of its founder Jean Vilar. In 1953, it takes part in the foundation of the Popular Théâtre review with Bernard Dort, Roland Barthes, Jean Duvignaud and Morvan Lebesque. The following year, it is also interested by the launching of a new review (Values) with people like Albert Camus and Jean Daniel but the project will not be born. It then publishes its first novel, the morning of their days (Gallimard, 1954), before being essential like the specialist in the playwright Luigi Pirandello (the Arch, 1955).

In 1957, it starts its collaboration with France Observer where his/her friend Bernard Dort works. It then is essential like a pillar of its literary service, if marked by the refusal of least compromising with what does not raise of the intellectual field or “intellectualizing”, with what does not concern the essayism, the innovation, the avant-garde, art for art - in opposition to the ideological design of the utility or the functionality of the culture. Attached to the political line of the newspaper, he addresses himself in his literary pages “to a public restricted, informed, critical, jointly avid of classicism and again theater, attache so that theatrical creation represents, on the political plan and/or esthetics, a form of non-alignment which is neither “mystical” exaltation (realistic socialist art), nor pure “object of consumption””.

Covering the theatrical topicality, of Jouvet and Dullin with Planchon and Bob Wilson, he considers Marcel Maréchal, Roger Planchon and Patrice Chéreau like “the head of file of the directors of a generation new, able really to renew our vision and our comprehension of traditional”. Its “nonconformism of left” is also found in its admiration for the antidogmatism of a Brecht whose theatricalness with the service of the policy and rooting in social contemporaneity answer its desire of popularization of the political theater. In the same way, it expresses an lively interest for the heralds of the radical experiment who can be Beckett, Ionesco or Adamov. He then assumes the deeply subjective character of criticism, considering that “Our taste precedes and dominates always our ways of thinking and to act”.

In 1964, it passes from Obs France to the Nouvel Observateur without losing the direction of the literary column. But it must admit in its service the omnipresence of Jean Daniel, this last keeping the upper hand on all that relates to literary criticism, a little less on that dramatic or cinematographic.

In 1965, the direction of the History of the Spectacle which it ensures for the Encyclopedia of the Pleiad devotes its intellectual theatrical matter authority. Parallel to the writing, it sometimes happens to him to put in scene parts, in particular resulting from an English theater of which it appreciates the rigor of the actors and the authors. It thus adapts British parts like the comedy of William Congreve, Amour by love , or of works of Tom Stoppard like Parodies (1978) or Night and day (1980). In the same way, he assumes a passion for painting, like illustrates it his works on Delacroix, romantic French (Mercure de France, 1973), Nicolas de Staël (Flammarion, 1975) or on Delacroix and Morocco (Herscher, 1988).

With the newspaper, it is made assist by Nicole Boulanger until the arrival of Jean-François Josselin (1969) discharges it from part of work. But it is with the arrival of Pierre Ajame in June 1978 that it loses the effective direction of the literary service.

Intervening regularly in the emission of France Inter, “the Mask and the feather " , it chairs the National union of dramatic and musical criticism of 1985 to 1989. “Man of field crop”, “of an extreme distinction of spirit”, and with the talent of undeniable writer, it dies drowned on July 30th, 1991.

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