Friedrich Dürrenmatt
“ Der
Besuch der alten Dame ”
“
The Visit
”
1956
θεατρικό έργο
The Visit: A
Tragicomedy
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
The Visit 1956
"The Visit" του Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Στα ελληνικά: "Η επίσκεψη"
Η ιστορία μιας πλούσιας γηραιάς γυναίκας,
της Claire Zachanassian, που επιστρέφει στη γενέτειρά της και προσφέρει τεράστιο
ποσό για την επαναφορά της πλούσιας ζωής στην απόμακρη κοινότητά της. Ωστόσο,
κάνει αυτήν την προσφορά με μια απαίτηση συγκεκριμένη - να δολοφονηθεί ο πρώην
συμμαθητής της, o Αlfred III, που την εγκατέλειψε.
Η πρώτη παράσταση του
θεατρικού “The Visit”
Η πρώτη παράσταση του
θεατρικού "The Visit" του Friedrich Dürrenmatt έγινε στις 29
Ιανουαρίου 1956 στο θέατρο Schauspielhaus της Ζυρίχης στην Ελβετία, στην
πρωτότυπη γερμανική γλώσσα.
Οι ρόλοι στο θεατρικό «The Visit”
Το θεατρικό "The Visit" του Friedrich Dürrenmatt
είναι ένα θεατρικό έργο που πρωτοπαρουσιάστηκε το 1956. Η πλοκή επικεντρώνεται στην ιστορία μιας γυναίκας, της Claire
Zachanassian, που επιστρέφει στην πατρίδα της και απαιτεί εκδίκηση από τον
άνδρα που την εγκατέλειψε όταν ήταν νέα και φτωχή.
Ρόλοι/χαρακτήρες του θεατρικού "The
Visit" είναι οι εξής:
/ - Claire Zachanassian:
Η κεντρική πρωταγωνίστρια του θεατρικού.
Είναι μια γυναίκα πλούσια και επιτυχημένη που έρχεται στην πατρίδα της για να
απαιτήσει εκδίκηση.
/ - Alfred Ill:
Ο πρώην εραστής της Claire και ο πρώτος
στόχος της εκδίκησής της. Είναι ο δημοφιλής και επιτυχημένος παντοπώλης της
πόλης.
/ - Ο Δήμαρχος:
Είναι ο δήμαρχος της πόλης.
/ - Ο Εκπρόσωπος της
Δικαιοσύνης:
Προσπαθεί να πείσει
την Claire να μην προχωρήσει στην εκδίκησή της.
Εκτός από αυτούς
τους χαρακτήρες, υπάρχουν και άλλοι δευτερεύοντες ρόλοι, όπως οι κάτοικοι της
πόλης και άλλοι αξιωματούχοι.
Στα αγγλικά το θεατρικό μεταφράστηκε στα
1957 με τίτλο “The
Visit”
και το σκηνοθέτησε ο Peter
Brook
με
πρωταγωνιστές τον Alfred
Lunt
και
την Lynny
Fontanne.
Στα 1964 το θεατρικό έργο διασκευάστηκε και
γυρίστηκε ταινία με τίτλο “The
Visit”
σε σκηνοθεσία του Bernhard
Wicki
με
πρωταγωνίστρια την Ingid
Bergman
και
συμπρωταγωνιστή τον Anthony
Quinn.
Στην ταινία όμως δόθηκε ‘happy
end”.
Στα ελληνικά ο τίτλος αποδόθηκε ως «Η
εκδίκησις της κυρίας».
Στην ταινία έπαιξαν επίσης οι:
/ - Irina Demick,
/ - Paolo Stoppa,
/ - Hans Christian Blech,
/ - Romolo Valli,
/ - Valentina Cortese,
/ - Claude Dauphin,
/ - Eduardo Cianelli,
/ - Leonard Steckel,
/ - Ernst Schroeder,
/ - Jacques Dulfiho,
/ - Fausto Tozzi,
/ - Ricardo Munch, (Richard Munch)
/ - Renzo Palmer,
/ - Dante Maggio, κ.α.
προωθητική
αφίσσα της ταινίας
Ingrid Bergman in the 1964 film “The Visit”
φωτογραφία
από την ταινία
Στα
1971 το θεατρικό έργο μεταγράφηκε σε λιμπρέττο όπερας από τον ίδιο το συγγραφέα
σε μουσική του Gottfried
von
Einem,
υπό τον τίτλο «Der
Besuch
der
alent
Dame”
και μεταφράστηκε στα αγγλικά ως «The
Visit
of
the
Old
Lady”.
Παραστάθηκε εκείνη τη χρονιά.
Από το άρθρο:
The global impact of Dürrenmatt’s “The
Visit”
The universal plot of “The Visit” is
relatively simple: the widowed billionaire Claire Zachanassian, returns to her
home village of Güllen – a synonym for liquid manure, or slurry.
She makes the villagers an
offer: She will give them a huge sum of money in return for the death of Alfred
Ill, who got her pregnant in her youth and then used trickery to deny his
paternity and plunged her into misery.
In the days after the arrival
of the old lady, all resistance to her immoral offer crumbles – the prospect of
wealth is too tempting.
At the end the villagers kill Alfred
Ill in front of the woman who ordered the murder.
The drama is the tension between
her offer and the murder: how selfish needs are prioritised, moral positions
evaporate and scruples vanish.
The global impact of Dürrenmatt's 'The Visit' - SWI
swissinfo.ch
από το άρθρο:
Ambiguities of justice in the works of Friedrich Dürrenmatt
The theatrical comedy “The Visit” presents various
approaches to justice. It tells the story of billionaire Claire Zachanassian,
who returns to the now destitute town of her youth willing to donate the sum of
one billion to the inhabitants if they kill the man who once betrayed her.
The
townspeople reject the offer, experience how their greed takes over, and
finally kill the man.
While
the different ideas of justice clash (traditional morality, the retaliator’s
justice, entitlement etc.), the comic elements of the play make it impossible
to take anyone’s side. Some positions are more wrong than others, but each one
leads to another injustice, and finally, the audience must wonder whether a
clear definition of justice is possible at all.
πηγή:
Ambiguities
of justice in the works of Friedrich Dürrenmatt
από το βιβλίο:
Friedrich Dürrenmatt, “Der Besuch der alten Dame”
published by Diogenes, 1998
H υπόθεση του θεατρικού:
When the
billionaire Claire Zachanassian returns to her old home town, the city of
Güllen, after many years of absence, everything changes from one moment to the
next.
She offers
financial help to the citizens of Güllen, but only if they agree to kill their
fellow citizen Alfred Ill.
When Claire
was young, Alfred denied to be the father of her child and thus ruined her
life.
Ostracised by
everyone, she had to leave Güllen and became a prostitute. After marrying the
owner of an oil spring, and eight more marriages, she could accumulate enough
wealth to slowly buy enough property in Güllen to be able to blackmail the
town.
Now she
demands justice. The townspeople now have to face a difficult decision. And
even though Claire’s offer seems deeply immoral at first, they still begin to
adapt a completely new life style in expectation of their imminent wealth.
H κριτική:
The
tragicomedy “The Visit” is one of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s most well-known plays
and it has been staged countless times after its world premiere in Zurich in
1956. It was internationally successful and it has offered a greatly intriguing
female part, especially to older actresses for more than 60 years.
With Claire
Zachanassian, Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990) created a character that draws
on ancient Greek revenge motifs but also has grotesque and abstruse elements.
Claire for instance always travels with her husbands XII-IX, a butler, two
former inmates as servants, two lisping and blind eunuchs and a black panther.
Her entire body consists of prostheses and she is a generally eerie character.
Dürrenmatt’s
drama depicts a situation that challenges the reader’s moral understanding.
Because although Claire seems completely mad, one cannot deny that she has
suffered injustice. But how should the town decide when they are facing
financial ruin because of Claire’s extortion? Are these circumstances enough to
justify sacrificing a person, who has burdened himself with guilt on the one
hand but has also been regretting it for the last 45 years?
In this
parabolic story, Dürrenmatt tackles two social deficits at once. He addresses
greed and the dangers of materialist thinking. The drama constitutes a biting
criticism of capitalism in the form of a tragicomic story. But it also hints at
the centuries-old problem of sacrificing one person for the well-being of an
entire community. Both aspects have gained importance in the last decades.
Although
“The Visit” is a true comedy in many instances, it is also tragic and terrible
and it mercilessly forces the reader to decide between right and wrong. In a
world, where capitalism has ultimately won and the decisions of only a small
group of rich people influence thousands of others, questions like those in the
play have to be revisited. In the end, everyone has to decide for themselves,
to what extent money can have an effect on our moral actions.
Christina Schlögl
Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Der Besuch der alten Dame
από το άρθρο:
Love and Justice in Friedrich Dürrenmatt‘s
Der Besuch der alten Dame
Authors
Lutfi Saksono,
Ajeng Dianing Kartika
Corresponding Author
Lutfi Saksono
Available Online July 2018.
Keywords
/ - amour
passion;
/ - romantic
love;
/ - violence;
/ - adversity quotient
Abstract
Dürrenmatt's drama “Der Besuch der alten Dame”
illustrates the struggle of love, violence and injustice experienced by a
woman, Claire. She suffered physical and mental for a long time because of
love. But she was able to rise up. She did not give her life to destiny.
In adversity quotient theory,
Claire can be categorized as climber, the figure who never give up until
reaching the top.
Stoltz
divides human into three types, quitter, camper, and climber. Quitter stops in the middle of climbing process. A camper never reaches the top but he is satisfied with what
has been achieved and not trying to reach the top. Climber is the core of Adversity Quotient (AQ). Climber is
always optimistic in looking at opportunities, and hopes behind the
impossibility and always trying to go ahead and reach the top. Claire is a
climber, because she can reach the top by finding the justice.
Copyright
©
2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
Open Access
This is an open access article distributed under the
CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
πηγή:
Love
and Justice in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Der Besuch der ...
από το
άρθρο:
THE VISIT (PLAY)
The
Visit
(German: Der Besuch der alten Dame,
English: The Visit of the Old Lady)
is a 1956 tragicomic play
by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt.
Ingrid
Bergman and Anthony Quinn starred in a much-altered film adaptation,
also called The Visit, directed by Bernhard Wicki, in 1964.
PLOT
Claire
Zachanassian, the world famous billionaire, is returning to her small hometown
of Güllen after 45 years away. The town was once a thriving, prosperous area,
but has since fallen on hard times. The impoverished Güllenites look to Claire
as their only hope to save them from ruin. Her offer, though, comes with a
price: justice. Claire will donate one billion dollars to the town if – and
only if – they kill Alfred Ill, Claire’s former lover who abandoned and
betrayed her all those years ago. The Visit is a piercing, darkly
comic story of a scorned woman’s ultimate revenge, exploring what dark deeds a
desperate man can be pushed to.
πηγή:
1956 stage play by Friedrich Durrenmatt - Wordplays.com
Εξώφυλλα του
εκδοθέντος θεατρικού
1st
edition
“Der Besuch der alten
Dame”
P.K. Ackermann, 1961
Φρειδερίκος Ντύρρενματ
«Η επίσκεψη της γηραιάς κυρίας»
μετάφραση:
Ηώ Αμανάκη
Δωδώνη,
Αθήνα
από το
άρθρο:
The Visit
“The Visit” is the title of various English translations
of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 1956 play “Der Besuch der alten Dame” (literally,
"The Visit of the Old Lady").
It
is probably the most well-known of his works, at least in the English-speaking
world. The play deals with the themes of punishment, greed, revenge, and moral
strength.
Plot summary
The play centers on the fictional German town of Güllen, which was once
a vibrant center of culture but has in the past few decades decayed into
near-bankruptcy. When the play opens, the town is preparing a celebration of
the arrival of Claire Zachanassian, a former resident who had since attained a
great fortune and is coming back to visit.
She arrives
with her fiancé (throughout the play, she has several husbands—often played by
the same actor—and it is mentioned repeatedly that she has had many more), and
after some general festivities on the part of the townspeople she announces the
true reason she has visited: when she was young she was impregnated by her
lover Alfred Ill, who, at the paternity suit, denied the harges, bribing two
drunks to testify that they were the fathers, and she was shamed out of the
town.
Now that she has become rich, she will give the town one billion pounds
if they kill Alfred Ill, who over the years became one of Güllen's most popular
persons. Even though Güllen is said to be situated in Central Europe, Claire
Zachanassian presents her reward in pounds, so that the town is kept as an anonymous
location in Europe that is detached from the real world.
The
townspeople unanimously refuse to do so – but soon they start to buy things on
credit – expensive things, even from Ill's own store – as if they expect some
new source of income in the future. Alfred Ill notices this and becomes
troubled. The townspeoples' rhetoric of support behind Alfred Ill slowly begins
to change.
Residents
of the town begin to realize that they cannot continue to spend this way as
long as Alfred Ill is alive, and they begin to hope he dies of causes more
natural than murder.
But
Claire Zachanassian continues to believe that someone can be persuaded by
money, and eventually she is proven correct. The town’s schoolteacher gives in,
commits the crime, is put on trial and sentenced to death.
Claire Zachanassian gives the mayor the check for the billion pounds,
who proclaims justice was served. The dark tone suddenly gives way to a
prosperous, cheerful ending on behalf of the townspeople, which underscores the
main themes of the play.
Ironically,
the only person who truly grieves Ill's passing is not Ill's wife and children,
but Claire Zachanassian herself. The revenge she sought for years was finally
fulfilled, but she is left unsatisfied.
The
play is written in a kind of resigned, slow manner that reflects the state of
the town after their gradual ruin (which is revealed around the middle of the
play to have been intentionally brought on by Claire Zachanassian).
It
is generally seen as a treatise on corrupting influence of money, but there is
a lot of potential in the play for varying interpretations, both in meaning and
in production. It remains after its writing a mainstay of Western theater.
Main themes
The author often emphasized that The Visit is intended
first and foremost as a comedy. However, it is difficult to ignore the serious
and usually dark points being made about human nature throughout the play.
The fundamental underlying point of the play is that money can buy
anything. As the arrival of Claire Zachanassian shows, the promise of money can
lead people to hate and even murder. It can pervert the course of justice, and
even turn the local teacher, who is one of the few who manage to warn Alfred Ill
of his impending doom.
The
teacher is a self-declared humanist and his moral collapse, as well as that of
the priest, demonstrates the power of money to overcome both religious and
secular morality.
For viewers
and readers of this work it is difficult to judge which of the two, Claire Zachanassian
or Alfred Ill, has done more wrong.
από το άρθρο:
Analysis of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit
by Nashrullah Mambrol on Sep 17, 2020
Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s view of the theater
as a vehicle for moral revelation and universal relevance is reflected in “Der
Besuch der alten Dame” (The Visit), a tragicomedy combining
expressionistic devices and elements of Brechtian epic theater with an inspired
sense of the shocking and grotesque.
At its core the play is a serious
exploration of humanity’s dark side in its conviction that economics determines
morality, an idea that is found in drama as early as the 1830s, with the
opening scene of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck.
In “The Visit” the tragedy is that
an entire community is caught in a sweep of events that leads to a murder by
the masses; Dürrenmatt’s genius is to present what is a tragedy of commission
into a work of unsettling humor.
The philosophical, theological, and social
themes that Dürrenmatt explored in his previous plays are highly developed,
straightforward, and sardonically and grotesquely amusing in “The Visit”,
first performed in Zurich in 1956 and from then on a mainstay of Western
theater.
“The Visit” is set in Guellen, a small
town somewhere in German-speaking central Europe. The once-prosperous Guellen,
where “Goethe spent a night” and “Brahms composed a quartet,” has decayed in
recent years to the point where it is almost completely impoverished (the name
in German translates to “liquid manure”).
“The Visit” begins and concludes with a
parody of a chorus like that of a Greek tragedy, which serves to give the play
a classical symmetry, that heightens its sense of irony.
The first act opens at the ramshackle
railroad station, where four unemployed citizens sit on a bench and interest
themselves in “our last remaining pleasure: watching trains go by,” as they
recite a litany of woes:
This chorus of men, together with Guellen’s
mayor, schoolmaster, priest, and shopkeeper, gather to meet a train and greet
its famous passenger, Claire Zachanassian (née Wascher), daughter of Guellen’s
builder, who is visiting her hometown after 45 years. Now 63, she is the
richest woman in the world, the widow of the world’s richest man, and the owner
of nearly everything, including the railways. She has founded hospitals, soup
kitchens, and kindergartens, and the Guelleners plan to ask her to invest in
their town:
The mayor appeals to the shopkeeper, Alfred
Ill (sometimes translated as Anton Schill), who was once Claire’s lover, to
charm her into generosity. For his part Alfred Ill knows that if she were to
make the expected financial gift, he will be victorious in the next mayoral
contest.
Madame
Zachanassian arrives. She is a grande dame, graceful, refined, with
a casual, ironic manner. She is accompanied by an unusual retinue: a butler,
two gum-chewing thugs who carry her about on a sedan chair, a pair of blind
eunuchs (who, as Dürrenmatt states in his postscript to the play, can either
repeat each other’s lines or speak their dialogue together), her seventh
husband, a black panther, and an empty coffin.
When Claire and Alfred Ill greet each other,
Ill calls her, as he used to, “my little wildcat” and “my little sorceress.”
This sets her, as Dürrenmatt’s stage notes indicate, purring “like an old cat.”
Eventually, the two leave the fulsome (and
transparently false) cordiality of the town behind to meet in their old
trysting places. In Konrad’s Village Woods, the four citizens from the first
scene play trees, plants, wildlife, the wind, and “bygone dreams,” as Alfred Ill
tries to win Claire over.
When he kisses her hand, he learns that it is
made of ivory; most of her body is made of artificial parts. Nevertheless, he
is convinced that he has beguiled her into making the bequest.
At a banquet in her honor that evening
Claire sarcastically contradicts the overly flattering testimonial offered by
the mayor of her unselfish behavior as a child, but declares that, “as my
contribution to this joy of yours,” she proposes to give 1 million pounds to
the town. There is, however, one condition: Someone must kill Alfred Ill. For
her 1 million, Claire maintains, she is buying justice:
Forty-five years earlier she brought a
paternity suit against Alfred Ill, who bribed two witnesses to testify against
her. As a result she was forced to leave Guellen in shame and to become a
prostitute in Hamburg. The child, a girl, died.
The two witnesses are the eunuchs, whom
Claire tracked down, blinded, castrated, and added to her entourage. The butler
was the magistrate in the case.
The mayor indignantly rejects the offer “in
the name of humanity. We would rather have poverty than blood on our hands.”
Claire’s response: “I’ll wait.”
The second and third acts chronicle the
decline of Guellen into temptation, moral ambiguity and complicity.
In the weeks that follow the banquet, Madame
Zachanassian, who, it is revealed, intentionally caused Guellen’s financial
ruin, watches with grim satisfaction as the insidiousness of her proposal
manifests itself in the town’s behavior.
She also marries three more times; husband
number eight is a famous film star, played by the same actor as husband number
seven.
At first gratified by the town’s loyalty to
him, Alfred Ill becomes increasingly uneasy when the Guelleners, including his
family, begin to buy expensive items on credit, even from his own store, and
there comes into being the kind of night life and social activities found in a
more prosperous town. Guelleners are clearly expecting their financial
positions to change, and with this expectation comes a withdrawing of support
for Alfred Ill and collective outrage for his crime of long ago.
Claire’s black panther, who symbolizes Alfred Ill,
is shot and killed in front of Ill’s store. Fearing for his life Alfred Ill
tries to leave town on the next train but is surrounded on all sides by
Guelleners. The citizens insist they are just there to wish him luck on his
journey, but a terrified Alfred Ill is convinced they will kill him if he tries
to board the train. He faints as the train leaves without him.
The play reaches a crescendo, with the finale
becoming a grand media event, when reporters and broadcasters arrive.
Alfred Ill faces up to his guilt and
publicly—and heroically—accepts responsibility for his crime and the judgment
of the town, despite the support of the schoolmaster, the only citizen who
attempts to question Guellen’s willingness to abdicate its responsibility as “a
just community.”
Alfred
Ill is murdered by the crowd. The death is ruled a heart attack; the mayor
claims Alfred Ill “died of joy,” a sentiment echoed by reporters.
The mayor receives the check for 1 million,
and Claire Zachanassian leaves with Alfred Ill’s body; the coffin now has its
corpse.
A citizen chorus descries “the plight” of
poverty and praises God that “kindly fate” has intervened to provide them with
such advantages as better cars, frocks, cigarettes, and commuter trains. All
pray to God to “Protect all our sacred possessions, / Protect our peace and our
freedom, / Ward off the night, nevermore / Let it darken our glorious town /
Grown out of the ashes anew. / Let us go and enjoy our good fortune.”
In his postscript Dürrenmatt makes clear
that “Claire Zachanassian represents neither justice . . . nor the Apocalypse;
let her be only what she is: the richest woman in the world, whose fortune has
put her in a position to act like the heroine of a Greek tragedy: absolute,
cruel, something like Medea.”
Guellen is the main character and Alfred Ill
its scapegoat, ritually murdered so that the community can, at the same time,
purge itself and justifiably accept a portion of Claire Zachanassian’s bounty.
They are not wicked, claims Dürrenmatt, but,
tragically, “people like the rest of us,” concerned with sin, suffering, guilt,
and the pursuit of justice and redemption in an ostensibly alien and
indifferent universe.
Source:
Daniel S.
Burt The Drama 100 A Ranking of the Greatest Plays of All Time
Analysis of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Visit
από το άρθρο:
Dürrenmatt’s
Drama
Introduction
By
Kenneth J. Northcott
In Dürrenmatt’s work, then, we do find elements
of the theater of the absurd, of German classical tragedy, of Greek classical
tragedy, and of high comedy, and these may all appear in a single work (notably
so in The Visit). That the themes that recur in his dramas are
familiar from other aspects of his work is of course apparent. Justice and
freedom, evasion of responsibility, guilt by passivity, greed and political
decay, the contrast between the small state and the large state are all
prominent aspects of what Dürrenmatt calls the dramaturgy of life. His abiding
conviction that justice and freedom cannot exist side by side in any human
society informs much of what he writes. This is the ground bass of his view of
the world during the cold war, and we can still see the truth of it even in the
post-cold war era that Dürrenmatt never really got to know. Communism offers
justice without freedom; Western plutocratic "democracy" offers
freedom without justice. In none of his plays is this more clearly developed
than in “The Visit” and “The Marriage of Mr.
Mississippi”.
Central also to Dürrenmatt's dramaturgical
views is the idea that the theater cannot exist without exaggeration. There is
no place for realism and naturalism in his treatment of dramatic situations,
neither in the staging nor in the vocabulary of the piece.
If we think of the settings of Hercules;
or of the names Loby, Roby, and Toby and the continuing play upon them in The
Visit; or the sum of artificial limbs that make up Claire's body in the
same play; we begin to get some idea of what Dürrenmatt is trying to achieve
dramatically and what his sense of exaggeration and the effect of exaggeration
is.
However, within this exaggeration the
dramatist must choose his subject with great care. In the area of staging and
decor in general we are made aware of the impact of Dürrenmatt's concern with
the visual arts. His stage directions are long and precise, especially in their
directions as to the minimalist scenery, which Dürrenmatt saw as essential to
his productions; with few exceptions, however, they are not disquisitions on or
suggestions about the characters or the dramatic situation, as they are, for
instance, in Shaw's work.
Dürrenmatt's best-known play in the
English-speaking world is without doubt “The Visit”.
There is also a 1964 film version of the
work, but this has been radically changed in best Hollywood style by giving it
a happy ending. This change was made after Dürrenmatt had sold the rights, and
when he learned of it he said, "I cannot be forced to go and see
it"—and he did not.
The play was first produced in 1956 and has
remained in the repertory ever since. As mentioned above, this is the one of
his plays that Dürrenmatt calls a "tragicomedy," which suggests that
he views Ill, the leading male protagonist—one hesitates to call him "the
hero"—as a tragic figure who is killed by fate, but a fate constructed by
fatal human flaws—especially greed—and not a divine "classical" fate.
The action of the play takes place in the
small fictitious Swiss cathedral town of Güllen – the name means "liquid
manure" in the Swiss dialect.
When the play opens we face a town in the
midst of a deep economic depression, with rampant unemployment and with all of
its industry shut down.
The opening scene takes place at the railway
station, where a group of the local unemployed watch the famous express trains
flash through the station at which in happier days they used to stop.
They await the visit of Claire Zachanassian
(the names Zaharoff, the famous arms dealer of the early part of the
century; Onassis, the ship owner; and Gulbenkian, the oil
magnate, all resonate in this one name), who was driven from the town many
years before with her unborn child, which was fathered by Alfred Ill.
She is the fateful figure – the wealthiest
person in the world – who has come to revenge herself upon her faithless
seducer, a small shopkeeper and would-be mayor of the town.
The actual plot itself is relatively simple,
but Dürrenmatt rapidly establishes certain dramatic themes that are recurrent
in his works—first and foremost the idea of justice.
Claire has returned to buy justice, to bribe
the town into giving her what she sees as the justice that is owing to her. Thus,
what is in effect a sordid tale of seduction and self-interest on the part of Alfred
Ill is magnified into a theatrical reality of unmanageable proportions.
But while this exaggeration is growing and we
are witnessing the moral collapse of society, we are forced to share in the
individual's disgrace, which along with her exile from the town led her into a
life of prostitution in Hamburg, a life from which she was "rescued"
by a series of extremely wealthy husbands.
It is
Claire who has ruined the town, but only in order to ruin Alfred Ill, for she
has cynically gauged the greed of the inhabitants, whose thin veneer of
morality is quickly stripped away in the face of material, consumerist
temptations. The particular has become the general, for we are forced to face
our own consciences and are left to wonder what our reactions would be in the
same circumstances. The answer is left open: Alfred Ill's death is not a
"closure" but rather an invitation to question our own selves.
The threat that hangs over Alfred Ill hangs
over us all, and this communal fatal guilt makes up the "tragi" part
of the tragicomedy. Thus, simple though the plot is, the play itself becomes
highly complex in the variety of themes with which it deals.
Claire
herself is a compilation of prostheses, the result of accidents that have
befallen her, so that she is scarcely more than an artificially constructed or
reconstructed human being.
Fawned upon by her entourage of
murderers—purchased from death row in Sing Sing—perjurers, and a dishonest
judge, she dismisses one husband after another because she has always nursed
the wish to be married in the cathedral of Güllen.
Her pet is a panther, in memory of her pet
name for Alfred Ill in their youth.
The whole entourage is a grim comedy, far
removed from human reality but tightly woven into the theatrical reality of the
piece, which, as Dürrenmatt insists, must not be played with heavy-handed
realism, for the comedic values—for example, the linguistic games mentioned above—must
be heightened in order to make the final "tragic" ending the more
powerful.
Indeed, the exaggeratedly grotesque nature of
the whole play, with its reiteration of implied threats—the appearance of the
coffin and the wreaths, the escape of the panther, the sinister appearance of
the eunuchs and the gangsters—calls forth in the audience the sort of angst
with which we are familiar from the works of Beckett and Pinter.
The ultimate irony of the piece is, of
course, that the original petty reason for Alfred Ill's desertion of Claire – his
decision to marry the shopkeeper's daughter for a small material gain – is now
mirrored in the unanimous rejection of Alfred Ill by the whole population of
the town.
Finally, then, revenge is visited upon Alfred
Ill, but although in a sense Claire can be said to be victorious, on the road
to that victory she too has lost all her humanity and has become a physical,
moral, and spiritual wreck.
Λόγος Έμφρων
[ ανάρτηση 31 Μαϊου 2023 :
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
“ Der Besuch der alten Dame ”
“
The
Visit
”
(1956)
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