Merlin or The Deserted Land

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Merlin or Das wüsten Land is a play by Tankred Dorst , which was created between 1978 and 1980 based on models from Arthurian epic and was premiered on October 24, 1981 under the direction of Jaroslav Chundela in the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus .

Tankred Dorst writes: “ Merlin is a story from our world: the failure of utopias.” At the end of the monumental drama, the pagan deities return to the crumbling kingdom of King Arthur . "The desert land" around Camelot is littered with "cadavers". The later born know-it-all viewer sees the fall of this empire near the Thames coming at the beginning of the play. The despondent king had been launched onto the throne by three powerful helpers. First, Christ had driven those pagan gods out of southern England. Second, Merlin , the devil's son, had supported Arthur with magic and had blown utopias into the ruler - for example those from the round table . Thirdly, the Frenchman Sir Lancelot - the greatest knight in the world and, like Jesus Christ, a foreigner - had rendered Anglo-Saxon knights harmless on the battlefield. In his anti-war play, Tankred Dorst basically shows the viewer a triangular relationship as a decisive cause of the downfall of the Arthurian empire: Queen Ginevra cheats on Arthur with her “loyal” friend Lancelot.

Merlin (Illustration of the book edition from 1903: Howard Pyle : King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table .)

content

Shortly after his birth, Merlin foresees his end. Caught in a hawthorn hedge, he would be sitting. But first the magician goes to work. On behalf of his devilish father, he encourages the young Arthur of little faith. As the son of King Uther Pendragon and the Duchess Igraine of Gorlois, Arthur is to become ruler. King becomes whoever draws the Excalibur sword from a stone. Angels and spirits help Arthur "a long world second". Then became king at the age of 14, Arthur still acts like a stupid schoolboy. For example, when he orders the round table, he tells the Celtic carpenter that Merlin sent him.

Ginevra and Arthur are presented as a loving royal couple. Mordred , the son of Arthur and Queen Morgause , says his father hates him. When Ginevra later loved Lancelot with all her heart, the faithful wife, aware of her own weakness, sent the French away as a precaution. Even when far from Camelot, Lancelot cannot help it. From an exchange of letters with Isolde , Ginevra learns of a rumor of a liaison between Lancelot and Elaine. When Lancelot returns to Camelot, the knight is welcomed by Ginevra with open arms. The queen - also encouraged by Isolde's letters - gives up all restraint and becomes unfaithful to the king.

Elaine appears on Camelot with Sir Galahad in the pillow. The young mother thinks that their child will bring her young father Lancelot back. Nothing. As much as Elaine pulls one womanly register after the other - the knight no longer loves his son's mother. However, Lancelot goes mad in the scene that his two bedfellows Ginevra and Elaine make him.

From now on the knight wanders around in the forest. Once again he is saved by an Elaine - this time she is called Elaine von Astolat - and then loved dearly. When Lancelot is with consolation, he leaves the beautiful. Elaine for her part now loses her mind and kills herself brutally. Lancelot - back on Camelot - finds his way back straight to Ginevra's bed.

Sir Galahad, now grown up, brusquely rejects Mordred's provocations at court. Mordred had alluded to Lancelot, the raven father. Sir Mordred and his brothers Sir Gaheris and Sir Agrawain prove to be merciless butchers. In the lottery bed of the now 70-year-old mother Morgause, they kill her and her beau Sir Lamorak red-handed.

When the Knights of the Round Table set off to search for the Grail , Arthur stays with Ginevra on Camelot. Ginevra believes Lancelot will never find the Grail. Indeed, Lancelot meets Galahad on the way, is defeated by the boy in the fight and only recognizes the son after the defeat. During the subsequent joint prayer in a nearby chapel, only Galahad sees the Grail. Lancelot returns to Camelot depressed.

Lancelot sleeps with Ginevra. Mordred and his brothers catch the lovers. Lancelot escapes after killing Sir Agrawain. Arthur orders Ginevra to be burned. When the executioner lights the pyre, Lancelot jumps up, kills Sir Gaheris and Sir Gareth and kidnaps the convict to the French castle Joyeuse Garde. Later in a foreign country, Ginevra longs for Arthur. Lancelot brings the mistress back to Camelot. Arthur forgives the lovers. Mordred cannot forgive his three dead brothers Agrawain, Gaheris and Gareth because of them. Lancelot goes to France unarmed. Arthur reluctantly goes to war in France and first places Mordred on the throne. In Arthur's retinue, Sir Gawain seeks revenge for the death of his little brother Gareth. Lancelot splits Gawain's head after several days of fighting. Arthur is called back to England. He has to fight the son for his kingdom. Mordred had invented Arthur's death, proclaimed himself ruler and in vain sought Ginevra as a wife. Arthur and Mordred's armies of knights slaughter themselves. Arthur kills Mordred. Lancelot rushes to Arthur's aid, but is too late. Ginevra - in cloister - no longer hears her returned French and dies.

Arthur, mortally wounded, hands Excalibur over to Sir Kay . The latter is supposed to throw the sword into the sea. After several attempts, Sir Kay reluctantly does so and does not allow his dying master to send him away. Three queens - Morgane le Fay , Morgause and Ginevra - escort Arthur to Avalon in a boat .

Merlin is trapped in the above-mentioned hawthorn hedge as the prisoner of the fairy Viviane .

shape

Tankred Dorst has divided his play into the Prologue , Merlin's Birth , The Round Table , The Grail and Downfall .

Actually, the play with its approximately fifteen hours of playing time - a "manifesto for the drama" of the 1980s - cannot be performed. Jaroslav Chundela and Dieter Dorn , the directors of the first two productions in 1981 in Düsseldorf and 1982 in Munich, at least staged excerpts of seven hours each. The piece is well-formed and complete in the sense that the expectations of the Arthurian-educated viewer are all fulfilled. For example, there is the chair at the round table on which an unelected person burns as soon as he sits on it (Sir Galahad sits on it without damage). Or in the tower in the middle of the swamp, Arthur speaks statesmanlike with his half-sister Morgane le Fay.

There are quite a few stories not listed above in the 96-scene piece. Tankred Dorst repeated Parzival's broad-based search for the Grail and God six years later in the play of the same name . That shouldn't have been difficult, because the Parzival Passages run parallel to the Artus-Ginevra-Lancelot triangle in the Merlin .

The narrated time spans a couple of decades. For example, Sir Galahad is conceived, born and then almost an adult on stage. Or King Arthur appears initially at the age of 14 and ends up killing his son Sir Mordred.

In some places the viewer or even the reader of the textbook becomes insecure with passages that come from a strange pen. Tangible irritations are not uncommon. Morgause appears as black in the murder scene.

There is a lot going on in the piece. For example, the clown - that is the brother of the giantess Hanne (that is the mother of Merlin) - gives a “viewer a huge slap in the face” ordered by the theater management. Hanne gives birth to Merlin on stage as a finished adult with a beard and glasses. Fun is a top priority at first. So the devil gives the mother of his son a kick in the ass. The clown admonishes the devil: Do that only after the wedding.

To the amusement of the audience - as is common in Tankred Dorst's history paintings - the ages are mixed up. The piece takes place around the beginning of the early Middle Ages . Shortly before the conception of Arthur, King Uther got "the voice of a film hero" through Merlin's magical powers at his mother-to-be.

Testimonials

  • Tankred Dorst structures his lecture “To practice in the earthly. Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen ” (see under secondary literature , entry anno 2008) in four sections. In the second - Merlins Zauber - he makes it clear that the piece is just as much about a utopia as his Toller and explains the motif: Merlin, the devil's son, wants to “lead people to evil” and thus redeem them in a new way. The piece circulates around four circles. First of all, Merlin fights his father in vain throughout the entire play. Second, the round table symbolizes the utopian aspect mentioned above, the desperate search of the knights sitting at the table for “a peaceful society”. Black and white painting: Thirdly, Tankred Dorst added the good to the brave, unimaginative Arthur and the bad to Merlin, who looked far into the future. And fourthly, three father-son stories (Teufel / Merlin, Artus / Mordred, Lancelot / Galahad) revolved around the generation conflict .
  • Wolfgang Hirsch interviewed Tankred Dorst on January 29, 2012 about the Weimar production.

Further productions

radio play

reception

  • Von Becker presents the play with its culmination and ending point, the Battle of Camlann (the play speaks of the “Battle of Salisbury ”) between Arthur and Mordred, as a reference or, so to speak, as an analogue to the failed utopian foundations of the 20th century . The editor in Barner's literary history quotes - presumably based on Rüdiger Krohn and Peter Bekes - from the little doomsday documentary, which Tankred Dorst seamlessly follows on from the scene of Queen Ginevra's death, and means the looming madness in the third quarter of the 20th century atomic "self-destruction" of humanity.
  • In the head of the article, causes for the fall of the Arthurian Empire were listed. Frenzel cites two other causes. What is meant are the irreconcilable generation conflict between Arthur and Mordred and a utopian intention of the round table: the "improvement of humanity". Frenzel mentions the latter cause in connection with Tankred Dorst's supporting character Mark Twain , the author of A Yankee at the court of King Arthur . When it comes to the post-apocalyptic warning utopia, Bekes addresses individuality as the cause of the downfall of the empire . The search of the knights for the Grail turned out to be a wandering in this world.
  • Birkhan is said to have called the work "conglomerate".
  • Günther Erken names works by Walter Haug (1983), Rüdiger Krohn (1984 and Göttingen 1987), Jürgen Kühnel (Cologne 1987), Gerhard P. Knapp (Amsterdam 1988), Friedhelm Rickert (Göppingen 1992), Markus Huber ( Pécs 1993) and Heinz Juergen Schueler (Frankfurt am Main 1996).

interpretation

The viewer perceives the title-giving magician Merlin as a triumphant at first, but then increasingly fading secondary character. The fight against his fatherly devil seems artificial. Merlin usually intervenes when Arthur urgently needs advice, magic or simply a dialogue partner, or he fools the Grail seekers with absurd magic. However, Merlin helps the viewer with a glimpse into the future; more precisely with a look at the end of the piece. Already in the 43rd scene (in the middle of the play) he trumpeted the name of the destroyer of the Arthurian Empire: Mordred.

literature

Text output:

  • Tankred Dorst: Merlin or Das wüsten Land. Collaboration with Ursula Ehler . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981. ISBN 3-518-02647-X , 375 pages (first edition).
  • Tankred Dorst. Merlin or The Deserted Land. Collaboration with Ursula Ehler. With an afterword by Peter von Becker . Work edition 2. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1985 (1st edition), without ISBN, 312 pages (edition used).

Secondary literature:

Remarks

  1. ↑ The subtitle refers to the desert land of the Anglo-American TS Eliot (von Becker in the afterword of the edition used, p. 311, 5th Zvu).
  2. ↑ Tankred Dorst has Sir Ironside (Red Knight) mock that there are no bad seats at the round table (edition used, p. 131 below).
  3. ↑ At Tankred Dorst, Lancelot is based in Gannes in northeastern France.
  4. ↑ In this modern fairy tale, a number of angels run and float across the stage. Even Lucifer , so Merlin's father is known to be a fallen angel.
  5. ↑ The cards are revealed in the "Notes, Supplements, Variants" from p. 286 of the edition used. Tankred Dorst has quoted William Rowley (English William Rowley), Lorenzo Masini (Italian Lorenzo da Firenze), Brentano , from the volume Die Sagen von Merlin ( Halle 1853), Conon de Béthune , Tennyson and from Hölderlin's Hyperion .
  6. ↑ Rüdiger Krohn and Peter Bekes (both quoted in Barner, p. 865, 7th and 8th Zvo and there on p. 973, penultimate and last entry) name the play "pessimistic humanity drama" (Krohn), in which the gruesome war scenes in it "as a warning sign of the present time" (Bekes) would be painted on the wall.
  7. ↑ Peter Bekes has included six photos of performances of the play in his book (Bekes, pp. 59–62 and pp. 64–65).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ von Becker in the afterword of the edition used, p. 305, 6th Zvu
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 14
  3. ↑ Tankred Dorst, quoted in Bekes, p. 59, 4th Zvu
  4. ↑ Frenzel, p. 83, 17. Zvo
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 284, 6th Zvu
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 205, 11. Zvo
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 219
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 150, 3. Zvo
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 17.
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 242, 12. Zvo
  11. ↑ see for example the edition used, p. 223, 20. Zvo
  12. ↑ Barner, p. 865, 6. Zvo
  13. ↑ Barner, p. 865, 9. Zvo
  14. ↑ Bekes, p. 61 below
  15. ↑ Edition used, p. 158, 19. Zvo
  16. ↑ Edition used, p. 22, 7th Zvu
  17. ↑ Weimar production. on tlz.de
  18. ↑ Bekes, p. 60 in the caption and p. 61, 6. Zvu
  19. ↑ Bekes, p. 61, caption
  20. ↑ CM Meier: Back to the archaic?
  21. ↑ Premiere Thalia Theater
  22. ↑ Michael Laages : The clowns are above all loud
  23. ↑ September 4, 2011, online focus: Thalia Theater starts new season with "Merlin"
  24. ↑ September 4, 2011, Hannoversche Allgemeine : Thalia Theater starts the season with “Merlin”
  25. ↑ Review at livekritik.de
  26. ↑ Michael Laages: Who stole the coconut?
  27. ^ Bettina Schulte on November 29, 2011: Dorst in Zurich: Ritterspiele in the jungle
  28. ↑ artCore on the Zurich production
  29. ^ National Theater Weimar on YouTube
  30. ↑ Merlin on schauspielhaus-graz.com
  31. ↑ radio play in the HörDat
  32. ↑ von Becker in the afterword of the edition used, p. 309, 14. Zvo
  33. ↑ Edition used, p. 280, 4. Zvo
  34. ↑ Barner, p. 864 below
  35. ↑ Edition used, p. 283
  36. ↑ Frenzel, p. 83, 22. Zvo
  37. ↑ Frenzel, p. 82 above
  38. ↑ Bekes, p. 64 above
  39. ^ Erken in Arnold, p. 95 right column to p. 96 left column