The ignorant and the madman

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Data
Title: The ignorant and the madman
Original language: German
Author: Thomas Bernhard
Publishing year: 1972
Premiere: July 29, 1972
Place of premiere: Salzburg
people
  • Queen of the Night
  • father
  • doctor
  • Mrs. Vargo
  • Waiter winter

The Ignorant and the Mad (premiered at the Salzburg Festival on July 29, 1972, directed by Claus Peymann ) is a drama by Thomas Bernhard from 1972. The focus of the action is the appearance of a coloratura singer as "Queen of the Night" from Mozart's opera The magic flute . Before the performance, the singer's father and a mutual acquaintance - the doctor - are together. While waiting together, the doctor celebrates a monologue about art, artists and life, combined with a detailed description of the dissection of a corpse.

content

The beginning of the play shows the father and doctor in the queen's dressing room. The doctor lectures newspaper reviews, then he gives a lecture on the dissection of a corpse. He talks about the almost blind father's alcoholism , his relationship with his daughter, her career and art in general. Father and daughter live in a tense relationship of mutual dependence, with the doctor standing between them. On the one hand the father, who feels that he is being treated inconsiderately by his daughter, on the other hand the daughter, who suffers from her rigid and artificial existence. The doctor repeatedly falls back on the topic of dissecting a human corpse, formulating generalizations based on natural law about everything and everyone. While the father initially only repeats individual words of the doctor, he increasingly intervenes and complains of his suffering. The queen appears shortly before her performance and practices her coloratura again. After the performance, the three of them dine at the Three Hussars . The doctor continues his mortification and predicts the queen a bad end because of her cough. Finally she cancels all her further appearances.

Most important people

Doctor: The madman. It seems as if he is only speaking to himself. He is giving a monologue on the dissection of a corpse, life and art.

Father: The ignoramus. The alcoholic, almost blind father does not seem to understand anything the doctor said, he only picks up individual medical terms and repeats them. He is devoted to his daughter in his whole being and fell into alcoholism for the first time when his daughter appeared in public. He also feels extremely inconsiderate from her.

Queen: The diva has wanted to stop singing for a long time in order to recover from the inhumane theater. She is the most disciplined "coloratura machine", but is on the verge of a nervous breakdown due to her own artistic standards and her drunkard father. Finally she cancels all further appearances.

shape

The Ignorant and the Mad is a two-act play: the first plays “In der Oper ”, the second “At the Three Hussars”, a restaurant. The ensemble of characters is taken from the bourgeois area - doctor, father, singer, cloakroom, waiter - the location of the action is limited to two interiors located in the same city, the time frame extends only over a few hours. However, an action is missing, because the actual happening of the piece takes place in its language, not in external action. It is noteworthy that in the first part of the drama up to the first appearance of the Queen, 842 lines spoken by the doctor are compared to only 33 lines by the father, a large part of which is only a repetition of what the doctor uttered. In Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige (The Ignorant and the Insane) the typical relationship between the monologizing person and the mute counterpart is evident for Bernhard.

Stage scandal

In the course of the world premiere of Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige at the Salzburg Festival in 1972, director Claus Peymann ordered that there should be complete darkness at the end of the play. The emergency lighting in the theater should also be extinguished for this purpose. Despite fire police concerns, Peymann was initially granted this: At the dress rehearsal it was pitch black on the stage and in the hall, but at the premiere one day later, contrary to all agreements, the emergency lights were on again. A second performance, scheduled for August 4, 1972, was canceled at short notice. The actors had initially refused to perform, but gave in, and Peymann would have been amenable to a compromise ( dash ) offered by Bernhard . However, Bernhard, whose greatest wish was to see the performance again in Salzburg, regardless of whether it was completely dark or not , made (by telegram ) the President of the Festival, Josef Kaut (1904-1983), responsible for the situation that has arisen. The rejection of a recapitulation was subsequently based on administrative and financial considerations.

The matter finally landed before the stage court, and years later Bernhard ironically comes back to it in his play Der Theatermacher when he lets his hero Bruscon speak: “As I said, in my comedy it has to be completely dark in the end, including the emergency light must be extinguished, completely dark, absolutely dark. If it's not absolutely dark at the end of my comedy, my wheel of history is destroyed ... "Bernhard himself wrote after the premiere of The Ignorant and the Mad :" A society that cannot stand two minutes of darkness can do without my acting. "

literature

  • Thomas Bernhard: The roses of the desert. The mountain. A feast for Boris. The ignorant and the madman. The hunting party. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 978-3-518-41515-3 (= works in 22 volumes , volume 15, dramas I).
  • Bettina Hartz: "The fairy tale is very musical". Thomas Bernhard's play The Ignorant and the Insane . Teiresias, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-934305-26-1 .
  • Dirk Jürgens: The Thomas Bernhard Theater . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-631-34516-X .
  • Christian Klug: Thomas Bernhard's plays . Metzler, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-476-00780-4 .
  • Manfred Mittermayer: Thomas Bernhard . Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1995, ISBN 3-476-10291-2 (= Metzler Collection , Volume 291: Realien zur Literatur ).
  • Bernhard Sorg: Thomas Bernhard . Beck, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-406-35053-4 (= Beck series , volume 627: authors' books )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ hhh (d. I. Hans Heinz Hahnl ): Finsteres from Salzburg . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna August 9, 1972, p. 8 , Mitte ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  2. ↑ Bernhard would like to see his piece in Salzburg: Whether it's dark or not . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna August 8, 1972, p. 8 , middle left ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  3. ↑ Verbalization of the festival directorate . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna August 9, 1972, p. 8 , middle left ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  4. ↑ Fritz Walden: Epilogue to the Salzburg Small World Theater (...): What do the house staff say about it? In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna August 11, 1972, p. 12 , middle left ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).

Remarks

  1. ↑ The aim of the complete darkening should be to make the person responsible for the breakage of the tableware unrecognizable. - See: FW (i.e. Fritz Walden ): prompted. (...) An emergency light made transparent . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna August 4th 1972, p. 12 , top right ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  2. ↑ As a strategist , Ernst Haeusserman (Directorate of the Festival) suggested that any emergency lamp should be manually covered by a housekeeper at the chosen moment, as the law expressly forbids switching off the light source, but not covering it. This suggestion was not followed, not least (as widely because of Gaudium designed) fear that the high Langen of staff could be considered appearance of the Hitler salute are understood.