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Friedrich Durrenmatt
(1921-1991) |
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Born January 5, 1921 in Konolfingen, Switzerland, Friedrich Durrenmatt bore an interesting and
telling background: his father, Reinhold, was a Protestant minister, his grandfather Ulrich, was
a behind-the-scenes man in Swiss politics and a well-known satirist. These different threads
would meet in the young playwright and thinker.
In fact, the memory of his grandfather inspired Durrenmatt throughout his career. He would later write, "My grandfather was
once sent to prison for ten days because of a poem he wrote. I haven't been honored in that way
yet. Maybe it's my fault, or maybe the world has gone so far to the dogs that it doesn't even
feel insulted anymore if it's criticized severely."
In fact, the memory of his
grandfather inspired Durrenmatt throughout his career. He would later write, "My grandfather was
once sent to prison for ten days because of a poem he wrote. I haven't been honored in that way
yet. Maybe it's my fault, or maybe the world has gone so far to the dogs that it doesn't even
feel insulted anymore if it's criticized severely."
After transferring briefly to the University of Zurich, Durrenmatt decided to withdraw from
school and try his hand at playwriting. At the age of 22, he set about composing his first play,
a lyrical and apocalyptic comedy which was never produced. Over the course of the next few
years, he struggled to earn a living as a writer and had to turn to the writing of short
stories, mystery novels, and radio plays to make ends meet, but he never gave up writing for the
stage. His breakthrough came in 1952 with the comedy The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi in which he
first began to formulate his own unique style of theatre, a dark, dreamlike world populated by
characters who, though frighteningly real, are often distorted into caricature. The playwright
found that dark comedy was a most effective medium through which to expose the grotesque nature
of the human condition.
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The Visit
"Feeling for humanity, gentlemen, is cut for the purse of an ordinary mlllionaire; with
financial resources like mine you can afford a new world order."
Der Besuch der alten Dame ("The Visit of the Old Lady") premiered in Zurich in 1956, when
Durrenmatt was 35. It was such a success that productions sprang up in England and America over
the next two years.
Durrenmatt called this story "A Tragic Comedy." More than any other of his plays, this story of
an old lady who returns home to wreak an exact and merciless vengeance on her former lover
intimately joins comedy and tragedy to support each other in nearly every scene.
The play really has three major characters: the old lady, Claire Zachanassian; her former lover
and object of her ruthless justice, Alfred lll; and the people of the town of Gullen, who make
up a kind of composite representation of society itself. Through these characters, Durrenmatt is
able to give the audience a darkly comic, breathless, and in the end, unanswerable debate about
the nature of justice, redemption and community.
Claire is a hodgepodge of patched-together artificial limbs, held together only by her hate.
Since her betrayal at the hands of lll and the people of Gullen, she has spent her life in a
single-minded vengeance. Her justice is god-like. Across all of Europe, she pursues the two men
who lied about her in court like a fury; they are castrated and made her slaves. Durrenmatt
compares her to an ancient idol. She is like the statue of Justice - eternal, something out of
myth. When the townspeople first refuse her offer of a billion marks for the life of Alfred
lll, she says quietly, "I'll wait," and you can imagine her waiting centuries.
Amazingly, we find ourselves cheering her on; as the play begins, she is the only character who
speaks the unadorned truth. In The Visit, characters use language to hide their real intentions.
As Durrenmatt writes, "Today man lives in a world which he knows less than we assume. He has
lost his image and has become a victim of images." In The Visit, he puts the preconceptions that
get us through day-to-day life under the microscope.
Although Durrenmatt decried symbolism ("Misunderstandings creep in, because people desperately
search the hen yard of my drama for the egg of explanation which I steadfastly refuse to lay."),
it is hard not to see the poverty of Europe during the Depression and the slow growth of fascism
in-between the lines in The Visit. With the ashes of World War II stilll in their mouths, the
people of Europe in the 1950's faced the growing Cold War and the shadow of the atomic bomb. The
question of how a man can hold on to his ideals in the face of grinding poverty was still a
strong one. Many saw Claire Zachanassian as a symbol of that desperate fear, but Durrenmatt was
steadfast: "Claire Zachanassian represents neither justice nor the Marshall Plan, nor the
apocalypse; let her be just that which she is, namely the richest woman in the world who is
enabled by her money to act like the heroine of a Greek tragedy, absolutely, cruelly, perhaps
like Medea..."
Durrenmatt wrote about the town of Gullen (meaning "excrement" in Swiss), "It is a community
which slowly yields to temptation...yet this yielding must be understandable. The temptation is
too great, the poverty is too bitter. (The Visit) is a malicious play, but just for that reason,
it must be presented without anger and in the most humane way, with sadness yet with humor, for
nothing hurts this comedy that ends tragically than brutal seriousness."
Durrenmatt uses the people of the town to show the weakness of authority, the disorder just
beneath the civilization's order. When the people of Gullen begin to buy expensive items on
credit, lll panics, and goes for help to his Family, the Government (the Mayor), the Law (the
police chief) and the Church (the minister). He is rebuffed at every turn. Even the teacher,
representing Intellectualism, sees what is happening but is too weak to fight it.
In The Visit, Durrenmatt writes a classical tragedy for the 20th century, a modern answer to
ancient questions of honor, loyalty and community. When The Visit was written, the world was on
the brink of disaster, and every town was a Gullen.
By Peter Royston |
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Works
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| Romulus the Great (1949) |
Play Strindberg (1969) |
| The Visit (1956) |
The Deadly Game |
| The
Physicists (1962) |
Meteor |
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