The parasite or the art of making one's fortune

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The Parasite or The Art of Making Your Happiness (originally Médiocre et rampant, ou le Moyen de parvenir ) is a French comedy from 1797 by Louis-Benoît Picard , retouched in 1803 by Friedrich von Schiller . In the German-speaking world, only Schiller's adaptation is printed and played, often without naming the first author.

It is a piece of intrigue based on the model of Molière 's Tartuffe from 1664.

Original version

Louis-Benoît Picard

Louis-Benoît Picard (1769–1828) was, according to Joseph-Marie Quérard , the most zealous and enjoyable comedy writer of his time. Quérard uses the adjectives le plus fecond et le plus gai .

The piece, in the tradition of type or character comedies, is a classic pièce bien faite , a comedy with excellent craftsmanship, as it did not occur in the German-speaking area. It has five acts, is quite socially critical and was premiered on July 19, 1797 in the Théâtre Français on rue Feydeau in Paris. It was Picard's first work to be recognized by the critics, although a number of his works had previously been performed, at least nine since 1789. It was also one of the first post-revolutionary works to deal with the greed and unscrupulousness of the country's boom. As usual in 18th century theater, the text attempts to practice bourgeois morality. There are also doctrines in the text, quoted here from Schiller's adaptation: "If I am really not up to my position, the boss is to be blamed for entrusting it to me and so often showing his satisfaction with my weak talent. " The literary historian Jörg Schönert : "It's about the experiment of how far you can get by following civic virtues such as righteousness, humility, restraint and dignity. It's not just about comic situations."

Strictly speaking, the title of the piece comes from Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais , a somewhat more famous colleague of Picard. "Médiocre et rampant, et l'on arrive à tout," exclaimed Figaro in dialogue with Count Almaviva. Le Mariage de Figaro , 3rd act, fifth scene, written in 1778, first performed in 1784. Shortened to Médiocre et rampant on arrive à tout , it became one of Beaumarchais' most famous quotations:

"You can achieve anything with mediocrity and subservience."

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948), who propagated a theater of want and crisis, a theater of cruelty , dealt with Picard's theatrical text. The oscillating image of truth surprised him, reminding him of "the spectacle of the customs of an unknown people". While Picard's original has largely fallen into oblivion in France, Schiller's adaptation is enjoying lively reception in the German-speaking world.

Re-seal

Friedrich von Schiller

Schiller, who valued comedy as a genre, but did not write a single comedy himself, was staying at the court of Carl August von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach when it was composed . In spring 1803 he wanted his theater to have French comedies . Schiller complied with the Duke's request and translated two pieces by Picard within a few weeks, Encore des Ménechmes (1791, presented by Schiller as The Neffe as Uncle ) and Médiocre et rampant (1797).

“Which society does she not know, the upstart, who always looked to their advantage. The parasites. You pull the strings in the background, use everything and everyone to put yourself in the right light. They lie and cheat. [The] comedy [has] lost none of its explosiveness and topicality [...]. Because post-cheating and corruption are still the order of the day. "

- Petra Weichhart : "Lying and stealing must come to an end" , Mein Bezirk (St. Pölten), September 17, 2019

“The parasite is also indifferent to simply changing its attitude over the years like a dirty shirt. He is the person who is always on top, selfish, a hypocrite par excellence. He adorns himself with strange feathers and plunges others into misery in order to climb higher and higher himself. [...] So in the piece by Picard / Schiller almost everything is contained that the psychology of the blender resp. Parasites, no matter whether you name them in detail as a courtier, favorite, kipper or saliva licker. "

- Television of the GDR

Schiller did not change anything essential in the comedy. Personnel and plot were copied one to one from the original. Some text passages were added, and Picard's somewhat bulky Alexandrians were dissolved in favor of conversational prose that was far removed from his own stylized monologue and dialogue language. The "copying" was finished on May 5, 1803. A few days later, on May 18, 1803, the nephew was the first to appear as an uncle at the Weimar court. The parasite, on the other hand, was only staged on October 12, 1803, the name Picard was not mentioned. The performance was repeated on October 26, 1803. Iffland showed interest in playing the two adaptations in Berlin, started the parasite , but omitting Schiller's main title, only as The Art of Making His Happiness, and cast himself as Selicour.

people

Announcement of the Burgtheater in 1841
  • Narbonne, Minister
  • Madame Belmont, his mother
  • Charlotte, his daughter
  • Selicour, subaltern of the minister
  • La Roche, Subaltern to the Minister
  • Firmin, subaltern of the minister
  • Karl Firmin, the latter's son, Lieutenant
  • Michel, the minister's valet
  • Robineau, a young farmer, Selicour's cousin

action

The scene is at Paris in the Minister's antechamber

After the revolution, a minister has just been overthrown. A hypocrite (Selicour) had carefully supported its mismanagement, but was able to survive as an official with skill. He sees his hour has come, sneaks into the favor of his honest successor (Narbonne) and promises to put a stop to the abuses that were broken down with his own participation. With intrigue and cunning, he quickly earned his merit for the new minister - in order to gain a coveted ambassadorial post and the hand of the minister's beautiful daughter (Charlotte). Unscrupulous and excellent, he knows how to use the talent and work of his subordinates for his own success and to position himself as the ideal son-in-law. He is just short of the goal, but the means he uses are ultimately turned against himself. The parasite gets caught in the web of its own deceit, the noble and the justice prevail. Schiller formulates the moral of the story as follows:

"The web of lies entwines the best, the honest cannot penetrate, the creeping mediocrity goes further than the winged talent: appearances rule the world - and justice is only on the stage."

Analysis, reception

While the subtitle was translated quite accurately by Schiller - the literal translation would be The Means or The Way to Make It To Something - the main title was rewritten. Médiocre stands for the mediocre and Rampant for the creeper, the slimy . In Schiller's short form of the title, the aspect of mediocrity is lost and the exploitation of the title character is placed in the foreground. Both versions, Picard's as well as Schiller's, are pejorative, revealing and denouncing.

None of Schiller's dramas achieve such high performance numbers as Lessing's Nathan the Wise , Goethe's Faust or The Broken Krug von Kleist, which is largely due to the fact that most of Schiller's works require elaborate casts and sets, and are often rather brittle. Since 1945, the number of Schiller productions on German-speaking stages has steadily decreased. The settings of his central works by Donizetti ( Maria Stuarda ), Rossini ( Guillaume Tell ) and Verdi ( I masnadieri , Luisa Miller , Don Carlos et al.) Are performed much more frequently . In this panorama, the parasite held up well and appears regularly at central, but also at more regional stages, on the one hand because it is the only comedy from the pen of the Weimar classic that was able to prevail, on the other hand because it - with more manageable Cast and without too high demands on the outfitters - can also be implemented for small theaters. The work was able to prevail, although the New Rheinische Conversations-Lexikon of 1835 passed a harsh judgment: "The two comedies, The Nephew as Uncle , and The Parasit , according to the French, are insignificant."

The critic Ulrich Weinzierl referred to a historical "punch line". Since entertainment was in demand during the Third Reich and especially during the war years, but dramas originating in France were not to be scheduled, the parasite was also used at the state theater of the Reich capital . With this play, the State Theater closed before the theater was closed in 1944, and with this play, Weinzierl says, "the Berlin German Theater resumed operations in 1945."

After 1945 two prominent theater makers were particularly committed to this comedy: Boleslaw Barlog and Matthias Hartmann . The former put the play on the Berlin schedule twice, in 1953 as general director of the State Drama Theaters , in 1967 as director of the Schlosspark Theater and as a director. Hartmann staged the play three times - in Bochum, Zurich and Vienna. His third production of the parasite , the New Year's Eve premiere of 2010 at the Burgtheater , was well cast - with Udo Samel as Narbonne, with Kirsten Dene and Yohanna Schwertfeger as his mother and daughter, with Michael Maertens (Selicour), Oliver Stokowski (La Roche) and Johann Adam Oest (Firmin) as a trio of subalterns as well as with Gerrit Jansen , André Meyer and Dirk Nocker . The staging evoked laughter, an enthusiastic audience and press. Based on Schiller's dictum that "justice only reigns on the stage", the director and director put two realistic variants for the end of the comedy up for discussion: "In one, the justice fanatic turns into a profiteer and in the last, the triumphant slimy opportunist Selicour on all lines. "

Quote

"Appearances rule the world and justice is only on the stage."

Important productions

Radio plays, television productions

Radio play versions
Television productions

Prints

  • Louis-Benoit Picard, Œuvres de LB Picard, t. 1, Paris, Jean Nicolas Barba, 1821, 510 p., 10 vol.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joseph-Marie Quérard : La France littéraire ou dictionnaire bibliographique des savants, historiens et gens de lettres de la France, ainsi que les litterateurs étrangers qui ont écrit en français, plus particulièrement pendant les XVIIIè et XIXè siècles , Firmin Didot père et fils, 1835, p. 133
  2. ↑ Monika Nellissen: Parasite by Schiller or Schiller as a Parasite , Die Welt (Berlin), August 6, 2005
  3. ^ The Foreign Review, Volume 5, London 1830, p. 327
  4. ↑ LE GALLICANAUTE DES NAINES BRUNES ET NOIRES: L'écolier en vacances, comédie en 1 acte et en prose, mêlée d'ariettes (1794) - Louis-Benoît Picard , written by Jérôme Nodenot, April 25, 2014
  5. ↑ Schiller's works , Vol. 5: Macbeth. Turandot. The parpsit. The nephew as an uncle. Phaedra. History of the defection of the united Netherlands from the Spanish government, G. Grote 1897, pp. Xvii f
  6. ↑ Lesley Sharpe: A National Repertoire: Schiller, Iffland and the German Stage , British and Irish Studies on the German Language, BI 42, Peter Lang 2007, p. 241 (footnote)
  7. ↑ Matthias Luserke-Jaqui (ed.): Schiller's Guide: Life - Work - effect , Springer-Verlag 2011, p 593
  8. ^ New Rheinisches Conversations-Lexikon, or, Encyclopedic Concise Dictionary for educated classes ,: Keyword Schiller (Friedrich von) , B. 10, p. 525
  9. ↑ a b Die Welt (Berlin): Morality doesn't matter , criticism by Ulrich Weinzierl , January 3, 2011
  10. ↑ Stage worlds: Burgtheater in top form: Schiller's “The Parasite” in a production by Matthias Hartmann. , accessed on May 26, 2020
  11. ↑ Wiener Zeitung : cleverness into the new decade , criticism of Hilde Haider-Pregler , January 3, 2011
  12. ↑ Landesarchiv Thüringen : Theater flyer Der Parasit , accessed on May 26, 2020
  13. ↑ Achim Klünder: Lexikon der Fernsehspiele / Encyclopedia of television plays in German speaking Europe. 1978/87. Volume II , de Gruyter 2011, p. 73
  14. ↑ [ https://www.nzz.ch/articleD9V80-1.180265 Whoever laughs last]
  15. ↑ Stage worlds: Burgtheater in top form: Schiller's “The Parasite” in a production by Matthias Hartmann. , accessed on May 26, 2020
  16. ↑ THE PARASITE at the Schauspielhaus (Gustaf TV) , September 16, 2013
  17. ↑ Not power games but waste? - The play "The Parasite or The Art of Making Your Happiness" at the Vorarlberger Landestheater , accessed on May 26, 2020
  18. ↑ Trailer Landestheater Niederösterreich , accessed on May 26, 2020
  19. ↑ ORF : The Parasite , accessed on May 25, 2020
  20. ^ ARD radio play database: Der Parasit , accessed on May 25, 2020
  21. ↑ Audible: The Parasite, or The Art of Getting Lucky , accessed May 25, 2020
  22. ↑ ARD radio play database: The Parasite or The Art of Making His Fortune , accessed on May 25, 2020
  23. ↑ ORF : DER PARASIT , accessed on May 25, 2020
  24. ↑ GDR Television : PARASITE, THE (1955) , accessed on May 25, 2020
  25. ↑ IMDb : Der Parasit (1957 TV Movie) , accessed on May 26, 2020
  26. ↑ IMDb : Der Parasit (I) (1963 TV Movie) , accessed on May 26, 2020
  27. ↑ IMDb : Der Parasit (II) (1963 TV Movie) , accessed on May 26, 2020