Bereczky Erzsébet (szerk.): Imre Madách: The Tragedy of Man. Essays about the ideas and the directing of the Drama (Budapest, 1985)
dr. Ferenc Kerényi: A Dramatic Poem from Hungary to the Theaters of the World
the Lord but in the historical scenes to Adam as well. The adversaries fought with each other to prove the soundness of their ideals or to prove the futility of the other’s with increasing diversity and on an ever-higher level. New approaches in directing the play enhanced the role of the masses in shaping history and the ideas of the historical eras assumed the characteristics of the class struggle. The directors (Béla Both in 1947* Endre Gellért, Tamás Major and Endre Marton in 1955) adopted Konstantin Stanislavsky’s method and, working with excellent actors, they introduced many new elements to the Tragedy. Two such aspects were the stressing of the realism of the historical scenes and the psychological elucidation of the interrelation between the leading actors. However, at the same time as so many advancements were being made, the too narrow interpretation of the „realism of style” increased the gap between the level of scenery design in Hungary and on the world stage. Characteristic for that period was the fact that in 1955 Gusztáv Oláh used the same designs he himself had made in 1923 and 1926. The year 1957 began a new are in the stage history of The Tragedy of Man. And in 1964 when the World Peace Council declared the one hundredth anniversary of the death of Madách an international event, theatres throughout the world turned with renewed interest to this masterpiece. Between 1957 and 1965 almost all Hungarian theatres staged the drama and for the most part hey strove to present the text in its pure, correct form, and exploited the wide range of possibilities the spectacle-laden play offers. Since 1960 the open-air theatresin Szeged’s Dorn Square has also included the dramatic poem in its repertoire, offering a true „play for the people” in the best sense of the expression. Between 1966 and 1975 Hungarian language theatres in Roumania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia have also contributed to the popularity of the Tragedy. In the last decade, the interpretation of the Tragedy has again gained a new aspect. First in 1971, Epp Kaidu, director of the Vanemuine theatre in Tartu, Estonia viewed Madách’s poem as the drama of the eternally young, groping for new paths. This interpretation disregards Madách’s stage direction in which he describes 31
