The Hamlet machine

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The Hamlet Machine is one of the German playwright Heiner Müller -written play . The nine-page text was created as part of a translation of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet . The play “reflects the situation of the intellectual in the GDR in a free reference to Shakespeare's model .” The word machine can be read as a direct reference to Hamlet II.2, the scene in which Polonius reads his letter to Ophelia to Queen Gertrud . In this, Hamlet uses the word machine as a metaphor for himself or his heart: “Thine evermore most dear lady, whilst / this machine is to him, HAMLET.” At the same time, the title can be understood as an allusion to that of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in her work Anti-Oedipus developed the concept of machines désirantes , which Müller had been grappling with since the early 1970s.

The Hamlet machine was created in 1977 after Müller and Matthias Langhoff had initially written their own translation of the Shakespeare play for the director Benno Besson . The world premiere took place in 1979 at the Théatre Gérard Philipe in Saint Denis near Paris . In the Hamlet machine , of the traditional five acts of the theater, only a rough framework is left, into which individual, cruel and shocking images are inserted, which seem to be devoid of any context and leave a lot of space for interpretations with different approaches. A characteristic of this piece is that Müller allows his Hamlet to step out of his “role” every now and then and to speak as an “actor”.

content

Part 1

In the first section, according to Jean Jourdheuil, “a theater dream” with oedipal and Freudian, grotesque motifs from Shakespeare's Hamlet is told and reflected “in an interplay of distortion and condensation.” A dreaming speaker speaks who was Hamlet or a configuration of subjectivity of the author (first sentence of the text: "I was Hamlet"), full of hatred for himself in particular and the world of the cold war in general from the state funeral of his father, which he attended as an observer and finally as an actor. Hamlet cuts up his father's corpse and distributes it to the starving miserable figures, since his father was a "great giver of alms". "I stopped the funeral procession, pried open the coffin with the sword, the blade broke, with the blunt remainder I succeeded and distributed the dead producer MEAT AND MEAT LOVELY TO JOIN the miserable figures around."

Mother and uncle, the father's murderer, are now a couple. “Hamlet” suggests they unite on the father's coffin. Then the spirit of his father appears, whom he also despises. “Here comes the ghost that made me, the ax still in my head. You can keep your hat on, I know that you have one hole too many. ”He doesn't have a good word for himself either, because he continues with the words:“ I wish my mother had one too few when you were in Meat. I would have been spared myself. The women should be sewn up, a world without mothers. "

When his friend Horatio appears, "Hamlet" briefly leaves the stage of acting and speaks as an actor. He sends his friend away with the words: “YOU'RE TOO LATE, MY FRIEND FOR YOUR GAGE ​​/ NO PLACE FOR YOU IN MY GRADUAL GAME.” Finally, he suggests making his mother a virgin again by tearing her dress and her raped. Because then she could go to her wedding.

Here “Hamlet” turns from an actor, whom mankind hated at the height of the Cold War because of its violent acts, into a violent perpetrator, even if he initially questions his actions in an intellectual discourse with himself.

Section 2

In the second section, THE WOMAN'S EUROPE, Müller lets Ophelia appear, who “has stopped killing herself” and slips from the role of victim to the role of avenger. She smashes the furnishings of the room and tears up the pictures of the men to whom she has given herself, then her dress. Finally she rips her heart out of her chest and takes to the street “dressed in her blood”.

Section 3

In the third section, the “Scherzo”, Hamlet and Ophelia meet in a predominantly pantomime sequence of actions. In the University of the Dead, Hamlet has to face the ballet of the dead and the dead philosophers who throw their knowledge, the books, at him. Ophelia urges him to eat her heart, which Hamlet comments by saying that he wants to be a woman; this is the only dialogical passage in the whole text. This notion is grotesquely exaggerated by putting on women's clothes and having Ophelia put on a “whore's mask”. Finally Horatio appears again as a ghost and dances with Hamlet. Müller described this scene as a "dream in a dream" in his designs.

Section 4

In section 4, “Pest in Buda, Battle for Greenland”, Hamlet finally leaves the even associative level of the character and speaks as an actor and / or author. "Hamlet" takes off the costume and mask and declares that he is not Hamlet. “My drama no longer takes place [...] By people who are not interested in my drama for people who are none of their business. [...] I no longer play along. "The author, who can no longer write Shakespeare's drama, stands in the Budapest uprising of 1956, which is clearly alluded to," on both sides of the front, between the fronts, above "- torn between loyalty to communist utopia and empathy with the anti-Stalinist revolt. Instructions: “Step into armor. Split the heads of Marx Lenin Mao with the ax. ”In the second part,“ Battle for Greenland ”, the character of the Hamlet actor is completely replaced by that of the author and his dream and association spaces.

Section 5

In the fifth section Ophelia conjures the total annihilation of the world, “I am suffocating the world that I gave birth between my thighs”, while she is tied in gauze bandages by men and finally remains on stage again as the oppressed.

expenditure

In 1990 Wolfgang Rindfleisch from the radio of the GDR and Blixa Bargeld from the Einstürzende Neubauten recorded an audio CD of the Hamlet machine together with FM Einheit and the author Heiner Müller . The first broadcast of the radio play was on September 27, 1990 on the radio of the GDR. In 1991, Einstürzende Neubauten bought the rights to produce radio plays.

By Wolfgang Rihm a setting comes Hamlet Machine. Music theater in five parts . The live recording of the world premiere at the Nationaltheater Mannheim in March 1987 under the direction of Peter Schneider was published on two 2 CDs.

Performances (selection) / reception

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Albert Meier: Heiner Müller. The Hamlet machine. 2004.
  2. ^ Lehmann: space-time. The slipping of history into drama. Lehmann, Hans-Thies: Heiner Müller and in French post-structuralism. In: Arnold, Heinz-Ludwig (Ed.): Heiner Müller. 1982, p. 80.
  3. ^ Jean Jourdheuil: The Hamlet Machine. In: Hans-Thies Lehmann / Patrick Primavesi (eds.): Heiner-Müller manual. Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 2003, pp. 223-224.
  4. ↑ Historique . French. Théâtre Gérard Philipe. Online at theatregerardphilipe.com, accessed September 12, 2013.
  5. ^ Mel Gussow: Stage: Hamletmachine in American Premiere . English. New York Times, December 22, 1984. Online at nytimes.com, accessed September 12, 2013.

literature

  • Heiner Müller: The Hamlet machine (PDF, 99 kB). Full text. Online at peter-matussek.de; Archived from the original on March 25, 2016. Retrieved October 6, 2017.
  • Heiner Muller. The Hamlet machine (PDF, 111 kB). Analysis. Online at literaturwissenschaft-online.uni-kiel.de; Archived from the original on June 11, 2007. Retrieved October 6, 2017.
  • Albert Meier: Constructive defeatism: To what extent DIE HAMLETMASCHINE can be understood by Heiner Müller. In: Journal of Germanists in Romania (14) 2. Bucharest 2005, pp. 185–192.