Santa Cruz (drama)

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Santa Cruz. A romance is a drama by the Swiss writer Max Frisch . It was written in August and September 1944 as Max Frisch's first play, but was only premiered after his second play Now They Sing again on March 7, 1946 at the Zurich Schauspielhaus under the direction of Heinz Hilpert .

In Santa Cruz, Max Frisch takes up one of the core themes of his early work, the contrast between bourgeois and artistic existence , which is personalized in the two main male characters of the piece, a cavalryman and a vagabond . Between them stands the main female character Elvira, the Rittmeister's wife. All three characters are ambivalent between their longings and the demands of life. The Vagant once seduced Elvira, but the thirst for adventure drove him back into the distance. Elvira has been dreaming of him every night since then, but she found a secure existence at the Rittmeister's side. The Rittmeister married Elvira out of decency and has longed for the unrestricted life of the vagabond ever since. With his return, the repressed longings break out again.

content

foreplay

The Rittmeister and Elvira live in a castle and lease the surrounding land to farmers. The Vagant is the captain of a gang of adventurers who ended up with their hijacked ship in the port of the castle, where they are now stuck because it has been snowing continuously for a week.

In a pint , the vagabond tells Pelegrin about a woman he loved 17 years ago in Santa Cruz. Her name was Elvira, like the wife of the Rittmeister, of whom it is rumored that his daughter was not really his. When the vagante hears this, he sets off for the lock. A doctor reports that the vagabond only has a week to live, yet he envies his life.

first act

The Rittmeister dismisses his loyal stable boy who has stolen small pinches of his tobacco from him for years. Although it only causes himself inconvenience, it is necessary to maintain order. He tells his wife Elvira about a pirate in Santa Cruz who once invited him to leave for Hawaii with him. He turned this down in order to stay by Elvira's side. Since then, he has longed for the other every day; he wants to get to know him again to see what life has escaped him.

Elvira comes up with the idea of ​​inviting the vagabond, who has been waiting for an audience in the castle for a week. She hopes his poor and criminal living conditions could drive out her husband's longing. But when the vagabond enters, she recognizes him as her former lover, Pelegrin. She rushed out of the room. The Rittmeister also recognizes that pirate from Santa Cruz in the Vaganten. The name of the ship with which the Rittmeister wanted to go at that time was Viola. Then the 17-year-old daughter of the Rittmeister enters. Her name is also Viola.

Second act

The sailors are talking on the vagante's ship. Pedro, the poet among them, should tell them a story. But whenever he tells something that you don't see as immediate reality, they overwhelm and captivate him. Elvira and Pelegrin come on the ship. In their encounter, the past seventeen years ago and the dream that Elvira has been dreaming of that night ever since become blurred. Every night Pelegrin seduces the young girl with his tender words, although she is engaged to the Rittmeister. In the end, Pelegrin carries her to the cabin every time.

Third act

After a long evening with the vagabond, the Rittmeister hitched up the sleigh in the middle of the night and set off for Hawaii. He leaves his wife a farewell letter in which he justifies his departure. In conversation with the vagabond, he understood that he was mortal. He would like to live again, to experience everything all over again and not know in advance what the next day will bring him. The vagant stays behind and waits for Elvira. He doesn't want to go to sleep because he feels that he doesn't have much longer to live.

Fourth act

Seventeen years ago in Santa Cruz the Vagant and the young Elvira split up. He would like to take her on his trips, but she wants a sedentary life. While he is drawn into the distance, she wants to get married and plans for a child. The vagante desperately appeals to God that every decision in their situation is a debt. When a negro who wants to sell oysters appears, the vagabond fights him. Then he flees to his ship for fear of the gendarmes.

The Rittmeister meets the vagabond, who describes Hawaii to him in dazzling colors. Since the Rittmeister, abandoned by Elvira, can no longer hold anything, he wants to go with the vagabond. But at the last moment a gendarme shows up with the negro. He holds Elvira as a pledge for the destroyed oysters. The Rittmeister triggers them. He still wants to go with the vagabond, but he stays with her out of concern for Elvira. When the vagrant's ship pulls out, they both watch him.

Fifth act

Pelegrin and Elvira talk to each other. She believes Pelegrin revealed their night together to the Rittmeister. But he just raved about Hawai. When she asked urgently about the reasons for his visit, Pelegrin only knows how to say that he wanted to say hello to her. In the castle, even the vagabond begins to long for a life he has never led, for books he has never read, for instruments he does not understand how to play. Viola meets Pelegrin, who explains to her when the Rittmeister returns at the same moment that he has only turned back for her sake.

The Rittmeister is talking to Elvira. They wish they were more honest with each other. In their marriage, they thought they had to bury their longings in order not to disappoint the other. Their love is greater and their loyalty deeper than that they have to fear dreams. They discover that Pelegrin died sitting by the clavichord . He had also told the Rittmeister that he did not curse anything that he had experienced and wanted nothing in return. Nine voices enter talking to Pelegrin. They are people from his life or people like his mother whom he never met. The penultimate is death. The last is Viola, his child, who starts everything all over again.

Position in the factory

According to Volker Hage , Santa Cruz “remained the most lively” of Frisch's early pieces. Frisch had transferred private problems to a model case that already anticipated the later successful pieces Biedermann and the Arsonists and Andorra . Taking up the subjects of the early prose work again, Hage saw the play particularly close to the story Bin or Die Reise nach Peking . The longing destination - Beijing at that time - is now called Hawai, the two sides of a personality - then I and Am - are now embodied in the Rittmeister and Vaganten. For Hage, the two works created in 1944 were "the actual overture to Max Frisch's literary work: if not yet masterpieces, they are more than just journeyman's pieces."

History of origin

Max Frisch rehearsing Biedermann and the arsonists in 1958

In response to his novel J'adore ce qui me brûle or Die Schwierigen , Frisch also received a few lines from Kurt Hirschfeld , the dramaturge at the Zurich Schauspielhaus , encouraging him to write a play. Hirschfeld invited Frisch to rehearsals. The theater, in his words “the only living stage in the German language at that time”, was home to an elite of emigrated theater artists at that time. Frisch, the more than thirty-year-old architect who had long since ceased to believe in a career in theater, came into contact with contemporary drama. He personally met Thornton Wilder and Bertolt Brecht , who had a strong influence on him.

In August and September 1944 Max Frisch wrote his first play Santa Cruz "in five weeks, as entertainment for me". During the day he worked as an architect, in the evening he wrote: “I don't want to be caught doing something else in the office; There is only a slip of paper under my drawing board for urgent ideas. ”When the piece was handed in, Frisch referred to plans for his next piece, which was more topical and dealt with the war.

In fact, the current version of Now Sing them , which was written in January 1945 and is more topical in terms of politics, was brought forward again and performed on March 29, 1945 as the first of Frisch's dramas at the Zurich Schauspielhaus. The world premiere of Santa Cruz followed almost a year later on March 7, 1946. Directed by Heinz Hilpert , the set was by Teo Otto , and Brigitte Horney took over the role of Elvira . The book edition was published the following year by the Basler Verlag Benno Schwabe . It was illustrated by Eugen Früh. The motto was emblazoned on the title page: "Our opponent, the unlived self, as a poetic figure"

Frisch included some explanations in the program booklet for the premiere. In it he described that he was not trying to present a chronicle , but a synchronicity, the permeability of the present for memories. The piece plays simultaneously in one night while it is snowing, like seventeen years ago in a completely different place by the summer sea. "Santa Cruz", a strange and apparently Spanish name, does not stand for a specific place, but for one's own experience. “Cruz”, the cross, is one's own fate , which every human being has to bear without being able to live another life: “The eternal other dies in us.”

reception

Even before the premiere, Frisch received the Welti Prize endowed with 3,000 Swiss francs for Santa Cruz in 1945 . The reactions to the premiere were very positive. The poetic tone and the interplay between reality and dream were praised. Eduard Korrodi spoke of a “fascinating dream game”, for him “the experience of this evening was not easy, but incredibly beautiful. A poet's work! ” Elisabeth Brock-Sulzer stated in the Swiss monthly booklet :“ This is essentially Swiss drama! ”In relation to the subject of the play, Carl Seelig classified Max Frisch in the Basler Nachrichten as follows:“ More important than the order of peoples appears for him the order and cleanliness of the domestic stove. "

However, the reactions to a performance in the Munich Residenztheater in 1951, in which a “dream-lost look” and “pustules of immaturity” were spoken of, in order to judge: “The longing did not fall into the parquet” and “That even Courths-Mahler would be too much ”. Georg Hensel called the piece “lyrically overgrown and penetratingly symbolic”. Frisch's biographer Urs Bicher also saw Santa Cruz simply as a "trivial story borrowed from wanderlust hits" and "literary models."

For Volker Weidermann the play showed a certain dramatic talent, but about the historical simultaneity of the decisive battles of the Second World War and Frisch's longing to leave for Hawaii, he judged: "That is - with all knowledge of the Swiss island situation - absurd."

Frisch's drama has been adapted several times as a radio play. After Santa Cruz, Wolfgang Kleber composed a previously unperformed opera in 2006.

literature

Text output

  • Max Frisch: Santa Cruz. A romance . Schwabe, Basel 1947. With 10 drawings by Eugen Früh (first edition)
  • Max Frisch: Santa Cruz. A romance in: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-518-06533-5 , pp. 5-75.

Secondary literature

  • Manfred Durzak: Dürrenmatt, Frisch, Weiss. German drama of the present between criticism and utopia . Reclam, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-15-010201-4 , pp. 156-165.
  • Manfred Jurgensen : Max Frisch. The dramas . Francke, Bern 1976, ISBN 3-7720-1160-8 , pp. 25-30.
  • Hellmuth Karasek : Max Frisch. Friedrich's playwright of the world theater volume 17 . Friedrich Verlag, Velber 1974, pp. 16-22.
  • Heide-Lore Schaefer: Max Frisch: Santa Cruz . In: Walter Schmitz (Ed.): About Max Frisch II . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-518-10852-2 , pp. 183-206.
  • Walter Schmitz : Max Frisch: The Work (1931–1961) . Studies on tradition and processing traditions. Peter Lang, Bern 1985, ISBN 3-261-05049-7 , pp. 123-143.
  • Peter Spycher: Life not lived and lived in Max Frisch's "Bin or Die Reise nach Peking" and "Santa Cruz": A literary-psychological consideration . In: Gerhard P. Knapp (Ed.): Max Frisch. Aspects of the stage work . Peter Lang, Bern 1979, ISBN 3-261-03071-2 , pp. 141-155.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Volker Hage: Max Frisch . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1997, ISBN 3-499-50616-5 , p. 38.
  2. ↑ a b c Max Frisch: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume. P. 759.
  3. ↑ Urs Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955 . Limmat, Zurich 1997, ISBN 3-85791-286-3 , pp. 129-130.
  4. ^ Heinz Ludwig Arnold : Conversations with writers . Beck, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-406-04934-6 , p. 23.
  5. ↑ Max Frisch: Montauk . In: Collected works in chronological order. Sixth Volume , p. 706.
  6. ↑ a b Volker Weidermann : Max Frisch. His life, his books . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-462-04227-6 , p. 105.
  7. ↑ Luis Bolliger (Ed.): Now: max fresh . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-518-39734-6 , p. 24.
  8. ↑ Max Frisch: To Santa Cruz . In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume. Pp. 76-77.
  9. ↑ Urs Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955 , p. 137.
  10. ↑ a b Urs Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955 , p. 136.
  11. ^ Eduard Korrodi : Santa Cruz . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of March 9, 1946. Reprinted in: Hans Bänziger: Frisch and Dürrenmatt . Francke, Bern 1976, ISBN 3-7720-1212-4 , p. 243.
  12. ↑ Quotations from: Urs Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955 , p. 137.
  13. ↑ Quotations from: Hans Bänziger: Frisch and Dürrenmatt , p. 264.
  14. ↑ Volker Weidermann: Max Frisch. His life, his books , p. 104.
  15. ↑ Santa Cruz in the HörDat audio game database .
  16. ↑ Laudation for Wolfgang Kleber on the occasion of the Darmstadt Music Prize 2010 (PDF file; 84 kB)