Goncourt or The Abolition of Death

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Goncourt or The Abolition of Death is a play by Tankred Dorst and Horst Laube , which was premiered on June 5, 1977 under the direction of Peter Palitzsch at the Schauspiel Frankfurt . Tankred Dorst writes that he used Edmond Goncourt's diary entries “during the siege of Paris and the Paris Commune ” and that he partially quoted them.

Overview

Paris in the spring of 1871: During Communards on the barricade against the rule of the bourgeoisie - more accurately, against troops of Thiers - fight and perish, a group of intellectuals looking idly to: Communards tearing the barricades the literati Edmond Goncourt, Nefftzer , Renan and Hugo in whose regular café Brébant put the chairs under their bum. The gentlemen are forced to stand there, walking, declaiming. The painter Courbet is not much different . Only the actress Sarah Bernhardt makes her theater available to the Communards as a hospital.

However, great truths are also spoken by intellectuals. Victor Hugo thinks that the government did nothing against the Prussian enemy, but did everything against its own people. And at least the writers keep their position in their café close to the barricade, declaiming and smoking throughout the play. As a poet who can only live and write poetry in Paris, one perseveres.

subtitle

When the Communards demonstrate for the abolition of the death penalty, a doctor scoffs: "Get rid of death at the same time."

Tankred Dorst succeeded in “The Abolition of Death” despite the obvious impossibility - at least for one evening on stage. Edmond and Jules Goncourt always appear together until Edmond tersely announces that the brother is dead. At the next rendezvous with their lover Marie, however, Jules is there as a silent actor and finally walks through the wall. At later small appearances, Jules finds the language again: “I'm looking for something.” During the days of the Commune, Jules has already been dead for nine months, Edmont wants to survive the armed conflict in the cellar. Any ricochets should catch a mattress tied on the back. Jules appears with the question: “What are you doing?” Even in the blood-drenched finale of the play, when Edmond, chronicler of his time, hyped the deserter François as a hero on the barricade, this tribune of the Commune, Jules listens - appeared out of nowhere - the utterances of the historian brother and applauds. Incidentally, Victor Hugo asks about Jules a couple of times (although he has condoled) and supports Edmond's communication with the deceased.

content

The above historical material is not quite sufficient for a piece, notes Tankred Dorst in the epilogue to the book edition. So he added the story of the Goncourt brothers and their former lover Marie. Marie's new lover, the deserter François, must not be ignored.

After deserting the National Guard , the wounded François slipped into Marie and fought on the side of the Commune against the Parisian bourgeoisie. On the run from Paris, wealthy people overcome the barricade at the literary café Brébant. Not everyone is successful.

Marie has long since separated from the Goncourts and turned to François. François says to Marie: “We are fighting for the human being to be human.” François, coming from the barricade in Rue Olivier, is standing on the barricade next to the Brébant. During a lull in the fighting, he briefly enters the café and dumps the contents of the only large ashtray into which the poets smoked over Edmond's head.

The ammunition is running out on the barricade. Edmond takes refuge in the cellar. Before that he had instructed the housekeeper Pelagie: Hold the line; Take care of the valuables. When he went underground, the girl asks herself - standing in the gunfire in Edmond's apartment - "why am I staying here?"

A communard next to François calls the fight pointless down to the last bullet because no solution to the social problem for the workers can be found. After François has fired the last bullet, he throws the rifle away, climbs from the barricade, strides towards the enemy and is hit by countless bullets.

shape

Satire is obvious in the first half of the play. Flaubert - according to Edmond's statement, the only completely pure person who writes so-called immoral books - is working on his current manuscript throughout the entire play in besieged Paris. Edmond's friend Zola , who is said to have gotten off the dust in time with a Prussian passport, does less well .

But the play is about the street fighting in Paris. Horrible: a young man dodges before being drafted into the National Guard. He chops off his thumb on the open stage. Nadar rises into the air in the colorful Parisian picture sheet . The aeronaut wants to photograph the Prussian positions in front of Paris. A poet named Saint-Gilles declaims one of his freshly written poems. When the colleagues remain indifferent, he burns it. In general, it is the poets who initially amuse the audience. Victor Hugo is fed spinach by his wife Juliette in his apartment and spits out the greens in a high arc. The old man claims that he can "get it" for a woman every day. Something like a proof follows at once. Odile, a woman who is constantly knitting in Hugo's apartment, is summoned by the patriarch and unbuttons her dress so that the old man can attack her breast. Edmond, the excessively curious chronicler, really notices and notes everything. During a visit to Victor Hugo's apartment, he notes “Spinach on Hugo's wallpaper”. The piece sometimes turns grotesque - for example, when Victor Hugo appears with his dead child in his arms.

If fun and slapstick dominate the first half of the piece, the communards' fatal end in the gruesome finale contrasts with this. But Tankred Dorst even developed that bitter struggle on the barricade in his own way. Two small examples of this. First there is the transvestite Bubu, who takes off his dress, slips into a uniform and encourages the sleepy figures at his side. Second, heroism cannot arise when fighting on the barricade. François - even when he is dying - always has his commentator Edmond with brisk slogans and his observer and applause Jules by his side.

Quotes

  • "It's better in there than on it!"
  • "So that I can press you better, please lie on your back."

reception

  • In Barner's literary history, the intellectual's position on the revolution, as it is demonstrated in the play, is briefly discussed.
  • Hinck would like to see the piece in his contribution “Against the Simplification” as a “literary interpretation of history”.

literature

  • Tankred Dorst, Horst Laube: Goncourt or The Abolition of Death. Program book 50 of the Frankfurt Theater for the premiere on June 5, 1977, pp. 68–156. Paperback, 215 pages with illustrations, 1st ed.

Used edition

  • Goncourt or The Abolition of Death. With Horst Laube. Pp. 345-412 in Tankred Dorst. Political plays. Work edition 4 (content: Toller . Sand . Little man, what now? Ice Age . Goncourt or The Abolition of Death) Suhrkamp Verlag 1987 (1st edition), without ISBN, 432 pages. On pages 367 and 393 there are two photos of the Frankfurt premiere by Mara Eggert .

Secondary literature

Web links

annotation

  1. ↑ Thiers claims that he comes from the people and therefore does not sympathize with the bourgeoisie, but detests the mob and is appointed by the National Assembly as the guardian of order (edition used, p. 371 below to p. 372). The Communards call Thiers their mortal enemy (edition used, p. 377, 3rd Zvu).

Individual evidence

Partly in French

  1. ^ Günther Erken in Arnold, p. 86, right column, above
  2. ↑ French Edmond de Goncourt
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 412, 4th Zvo
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 406, 5th Zvu
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 366, 5th Zvu
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 387, 2nd Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 400, 8. Zvu (see also Hans-Rüdiger Schwab in the afterword of the edition used, p. 430, 12. Zvo)
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 376, 17th Zvu
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 401, 8th Zvu
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 409, 18. Zvu
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 410, 14. Zvo
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 412, 9. Zvo
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 412, below
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 395, 4th Zvu
  15. ↑ French Rue Olivier
  16. ↑ Edition used, p. 397, 9. Zvu
  17. ↑ Edition used, p. 386, 4th Zvo
  18. ↑ Edition used, p. 387, 4th Zvu
  19. ↑ Edition used, p. 354, 17. Zvo
  20. ↑ Edition used, p. 384, 8. Zvo
  21. ↑ Barner, p. 678 middle
  22. ^ Walter Hinck in Arnold, p. 24 above and p. 32 below