The persecution and murder of Jean Paul Marat portrayed by the actors from the Charenton hospice under the guidance of Mr de Sade

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Marat / Sade production on the Leslie Cheek stage of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond , 1969 (Director: Keith Fowler)

The persecution and murder of Jean Paul Marat, portrayed by the drama group of the Charenton hospice under the guidance of Mr de Sade - today usually called Marat / Sade for short - is a drama in two acts by Peter Weiss that premiered in 1964 . The internationally successful play was awarded the US theater and musical prize Tony Award for “Best Play” in 1966 .

Work description

Content and figure antithetics

At the center of the drama about the French Revolution are the two central characters Marat and de Sade and their contradicting world views with the accompanying drafts of the state. While Marat, he believes, wants to impose morality and virtue on society for the good of all, represents the people and justifies the revolution - bloody as it has long since become - de Sade gives up in the face of the alleged nature of man, laughs at Marat's socialist ideas and sees salvation in the detachment of the individual from society.

Composition structure

The Hôpital Esquirol (formerly: Asile d'aliénés) in Saint-Maurice (formerly Charenton-Saint-Maurice), where de Sade lived from 1803 to 1814

The plot is alienated and characterized by grotesque and absurd elements. As the title suggests, the murder of Marat is only one piece in a play, which is rehearsed by the drama group of a madhouse under numerous disturbances and performed under the direction of Mr. de Sade, who is housed there. The play encompasses two, actually even three, levels of time and action: on the one hand, the time of the French Revolution, in which on July 13, 1793 Marat spends the last hours of his life in the bathtub to alleviate a skin disease, until he met his murderess Charlotte Corday receives. On the other hand, the last hours of Marat are countered by the plot level of the Napoleonic era, in which de Sade stages the play with his 'crazy' actors in front of a middle-class audience - on this occasion patronizing guests in the madhouse. Finally, the third time level, the presence of the real audience of the play, is also made conscious and made clear by insertions into the plot of the drama. So the plot is constantly changing back and forth between these levels. In this way, the drama as well as the drama in the drama are “exposed” and the audience is to be turned from “sympathizers” to “co-thinkers”.

Verse form

The language of the play is strongly stylized and characterized by blank verses , but also - depending on the speaker and topic - by Knittelverse , which additionally emphasizes the artificiality and the staging character of the drama and thus further moments of absurdity come into play.

Historical background

Regardless of the dramatic imagination with which Weiss goes about his work, the piece is based at least in part on historical facts. In addition to the actual circumstances of Marat's murder, this includes the backdrop of the ' Hospice at Charenton ', today Saint-Maurice (Val-de-Marne) . In the last years of his life (1803-1814) de Sade was imprisoned in the hospice - after many years in prison - because his contemporaries feared he would endanger public morality. Even the theatrical performances of smaller plays by de Sade in front of a bourgeois audience from the Napoleonic period correspond to the reality.

Work biographical classification

Weiss' play contains ambivalences that are particularly reflected in the figure constellation between Marat and de Sade. The dichotomous dramaturgy of the piece reflects Weiss' open political positioning during the time the text was written. On the one hand, the skeptic de Sade, who does not believe in any revolutionary change and sees this skepticism demonstrated in the violent riots after the French Revolution, and on the other hand, the socialist Marat, who wants to use the political unrest for his own purposes and at the same time believes in the power of the fourth estate . After 1965 Weiss found his political answer to the injustice of the present under socialism . This decision is indicated at the end of the piece with a hidden message suggested by Roux: “When will you learn to see / when will you finally understand”.

reception

Marat / Sade staging at the University of California, San Diego , 2005 (Director: Stefan Novinski)

At the meeting of Group 47 in October 1963 in Saulgau , Weiss read and sang for the first time moritats and monologues from the piece and accompanied himself on a drum.

The play was premiered on April 29, 1964 in the West Berlin Schillertheater "to vehement applause and occasional boos". It was directed by Konrad Swinarski , and the stage music was by Hans-Martin Majewski . Since then, Marat / Sade has seen a wealth of productions around the world. "Almost a hundred were registered between 1964 and 1976, from West Berlin to Rostock and Stockholm, from London to Buenos Aires, Tokyo and Sydney, from Castrop-Rauxel to Kingston / Jamaica."

In 1966, Marat / Sade won the US theater and musical prize Tony Award for “Best Play”. It was filmed in 1967 with the Royal Shakespeare Company , directed by Peter Brook . The leading roles starred Patrick Magee as Marquis de Sade, Ian Richardson as Jean-Paul Marat and Glenda Jackson as Charlotte Corday.

In 1969, director Bernhard Rübenach developed a 115-minute radio play version for Bayerischer Rundfunk and Südwestfunk . Theater rehearsals for a production of Marat / Sade were also the subject of Andres Veiel's 1992 ZDF documentary Winter Night's Dream .

expenditure

Text output

  • Peter Weiss: The persecution and murder of Jean Paul Marat. Drama in two acts. With a comment by Arnd Beise . Frankfurt / Main: Suhrkamp 2004 (Suhrkamp Basis Bibliothek, 49). ISBN 3-518-18849-6

Radio plays

  • Peter Weiss: The persecution and murder of Jean Paul Marat, portrayed by the acting group of the Charenton hospice under the guidance of Mr. de Sade . SFB / NDR 1964 (75 min.). Director: Konrad Swinarski (excerpts from the premiere production).
  • Peter Weiss: The persecution and murder of Jean Paul Marat, portrayed by the acting group of the Charenton hospice under the guidance of Mr. de Sade . GDR 1965. Director: Hanns-Anselm Perten .
  • Peter Weiss: The persecution and murder of Jean Paul Marat, portrayed by the acting group of the Charenton hospice under the guidance of Mr. de Sade . BR / SWF 1969 (115 min.). Director: Bernhard Rübenach.

Sound carrier

  • Peter Weiss: The persecution and murder of Jean Paul Marat portrayed by the acting group of the Charenton hospice under the guidance of Mr. de Sade . Performance by the Rostock Theater, director: Hanns Anselm Perten . Edited for the record by Hanns Anselm Perten. Berlin: VEB Deutsche Schallplatten Berlin, around 1966 (LITERA 8 60 100/101) (= Hamburg: Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, Literarisches Archiv , No. 44 026/27, undated).

filming

  • Peter Weiss: Marat / Sade Director: Peter Brook . OO: United Artists 1967.
  • Peter Weiss: The persecution and murder of Jean Paul Marat Director: Peter Schulze-Rohr TV film 1967

Musical theater

literature

Secondary literature

  • Christine Frisch: “Stroke of genius”, “Lehrstück”, “Revolutionsgestammel”: on the reception of the drama “Marat / Sade” by Peter Weiss in literary studies and on the stages of the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic and Sweden . Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell 1992.
  • Thomas Hocke: Artaud and Weiss: Investigation of the theoretical conception of the “Theater of Cruelty” and its practical effectiveness in Peter Weiss' “Marat / Sade” . Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 1977.
  • Materials for Peter Weiss ′ 'Marat / Sade' . Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, ​​1967.
  • Carl Pietzcker: Interpret reading: for the psychoanalytic interpretation of literary texts . Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 1992.
  • Franz Rieping: Reflexive engagement: Studies on literary self- reference with Peter Weiss . Frankfurt am Main u. a .: Lang 1991.
  • Laura Sormani: Semiotics and Hermeneutics in an Intercultural Framework: Interpretations of Works by Peter Weiss, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Thomas Bernhard and Botho Strauss . Frankfurt am Main u. a .: Lang 1998.
  • Josemaria Taberner-Prat: About the “Marat, Sade” by Peter Weiss: artistic creation and receptive misunderstandings . Stuttgart: Heinz 1976.

Non-fiction on the historical background of the dramatic plot

  • Arnd Beise: Charlotte Corday. Career of an assassin. Marburg: Hitzeroth, 1992 (= Marburg Studies on Literature, Volume 5). ISBN 3-89398-099-7
  • Louis R. Gottschalk: The Life of Jean Paul Marat. Kessinger Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1-4286-0012-4
  • Hugues Jallon: DAF Marquis de Sade. An introduction. Düsseldorf: Parerga, 1997. ISBN 3-930450-36-4

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jochen Vogt: Peter Weiss. Reinbek: Rowohlt 1987 (rowohlts monographs, 376). P. 83.
  2. ↑ Jochen Vogt: Peter Weiss. Reinbek: Rowohlt 1987. p. 84. - Christine Frisch sums up the reception of the play in Germany and Sweden: “Stroke of genius”, “Lehrstück”, “Revolutionsgestammel”: on the reception of the drama “Marat / Sade” by Peter Weiss in literary studies and on the stages of the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic and Sweden . Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell 1992.