EMMA DARWIN
Emma Darwin and Charles Darwin
In 1839, Darwin married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, settled with her first in London and then to Down, one hour from London, where he bought a property.
In the silence and the greenery,
he led a regular and quiet life, which left him the time of the reflection,
to contemplate the nature, to visit its greenhouses and his fields of experiences.
In this peaceful living environment, interrupted only by his problems
of health and his insomnias, he elaborated, with an infinite patience, one of the most considerable works which is due to a natural scientist.
Emma and Charles Darwin share their life with mutual respect and love.
Emma is a religious woman, with strong religious convictions
« The state of mind that I wish to preserve with respect to you, is to feel that while you are acting conscientiously and sincerely wishing and trying to learn the truth, you cannot be wrong, but there are some reasons that force themselves upon me, and prevent myself from being always able to give myself this comfort. I daresay you have often thought of them before, but I will write down what has been in my head, knowing that my own dearest will indulge me.
Your mind and time are full of the most interesting subjects and thoughts of the most absorbing kind, viz. following up your own discoveries—but which make it very difficult for you to avoid casting out as interruptions other sorts of thoughts which have no relation to what you are pursuing, or to be able to give your whole attention to both sides of the question.
There is another reason which would have a great effect on a woman, but I don't know whether it wd. so much on a man. I mean whose understanding you have such a very high opinion of and whom you have so much affection for, having gone before you—is it not likely to have made it easier to you and to have taken off some of that dread fear which the feeling of doubting first gives and which I do not think an unreasonable or superstitious feeling. It seems to me also that the line of your pursuits may have led you to view chiefly the difficulties on one side, and that you have not had time to consider and study the chain of difficulties on the other, but I believe you do not consider your opinion as formed.
May not the habit in scientific pursuits of believing nothing till it is proved, influence your mind too much in other things which cannot be proved in the same way, and which if true are likely to be above our comprehension. I should say also there is a danger in giving up revelation which does not exist on the other side, that is the fear of ingratitude in casting off what has been done for your benefit as well as for that of all the world and which ought to make you still more careful, perhaps even fearful lest you should not have taken all the pains you could to judge truly. I do not know whether this is arguing as if one side were true and the other false, which I meant to avoid, but I think not. I do not quite agree with you in what you once said that luckily there were no doubts as to how one ought to act. I think prayer is an instance to the contrary, in one case it is a positive duty and perhaps not in the other. But I daresay you meant in actions which concern others and then I agree with you almost if not quite. I do not wish for any answer to all this—it is a satisfaction to me to write it, and when I talk to you about it I cannot say exactly what I wish to say, and I know you will have patience with your own dear wife. Don't think that it is not my affair and that it does not much signify to me. Everything that concerns you concerns me and I should be most unhappy if I thought we did not belong to each other for ever. I am rather afraid my own dear Nigger will think I have forgotten my promise not to bother him, but I am sure he loves me, and I cannot tell him how happy he makes me and how dearly I love him and thank him for all his affection which makes the happiness of my life more and more every day. »
"Letter of Emma Darwin to Charles Darwin"
in Vol.II de John Murray, 1915
The question of God
Charles Darwin following, on this matter,
the son of its thoughts and reflections
tells in its autobiography :
« During these two years, I was led to think much about religion. Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. (…)
But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign (…) was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. (…)
Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. »
In : "The Life and Letters" of Charles Darwin
Despite her deep religious divergences which sometimes make her feel anxious, Emma, loving woman, understands her husband; she writes him, very little time after their marriage, a frank letter that Darwin carefully kept all his life :
Museum of the end of the world
« These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, their gestures violent and without dignity. Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself believe they are fellow-creatures, and inhabitants of the same world. It is a common subject of conjecture what pleasure in life some of the less gifted animals can enjoy: how much more reasonably the same question may be asked with respect to these barbarians. »
In "Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle" by Charles Darwin
Vol. III. / Chapter XI
The gap that separated Darwin of this " miserable stunted race " will be filled by the corpses of the Indians.
In less than a century, people, cultures, a thousand years old languages will have been annihilated by the arrival of the hunters of seals or whales, gold-diggers, missionaries, industrialists …
On the traces of Darwin, we shall go backwards in the course of time, to try to understand this odyssey of the species and of our evolution.
A crossing which will lead us towards the Patagonia, in search of these recently disappeared peoples : Yaman and Selk' nam.
A work of "naturalist" of gesture and word
A search on the actor-puppet
A work on the image and video projections
Since its foundation, in 1989, Teatro del Silencio pursues its researches of a total theater, a theater which realizes the fusion of performing arts, with the determination to create a theatrical language that is accessible to all, allied to a reflection about our time.
The creation of Emma Darwin which will be in the continuity of this search will be the occasion to introduce new researches on :
the actor puppet,
as well as a work on the image and video projections.
About the scenic space
Tower of Babel of our evolution
Although it’s conceived
as a fixed stage
with the public
in front,
Emma Darwin's scenic space
will reflect
this universe of evolution,
transformation, mutation.
Trans-mutant towers
of two metres by three metres,
five metres height,
are put into different
configurations, evolve in the space.
They are protagonists of the story.
Ropes, pulleys,
counterweights
to hoist and unfurl the sails
to put in movement,
suspend, bring up and
manipulate the actors
"Cabins", "ships holds"
as chrysalises,
metamorphoses rooms,
from where the actors
appear and disappear.
Tower of Babel of our evolution,
botanical greenhouse,
gallery of human zoology,
tree of life, Tierra del Fuego,
paths leading to the sky,
observatory of our memories,
museum of the end of the world.
