Bereczky Erzsébet (szerk.): Imre Madách: The Tragedy of Man. Essays about the ideas and the directing of the Drama (Budapest, 1985)

Sándor Hevesi: The New Tragedy of Man

When in the Celestial Prologue the Lord presents Lucifer the two forbidden apple trees of the Garden of Eden, the two trees are bathed in an ethereal light. When Eve wants to pick the forbidden fruit, the Heaven darkes and the Lord’s voice is heard sad and sonorous from the thunder of the clouds, and when Peter consoles Adam (Sergiolus) saying that the Lord has heard his prayer, the Heaven breaks open and a beam of light powns down and inscribes a cross over the dark horizon. The Lord is ever present in the new Tragedy of Man, and hence Madách’s poetic ideal is also present.

Of course, the new framework poses new requirements in regard to the acting as well. As the breaks are much shorter between the individual pictures and thus the scenes closely integrated in sense are not allowed to become detached from one another, the protagonists have to play their roles with still greater force and zeal. The parts of Adam, Eve and Lucifer are unlike the other roles which are liberally punctuated with pauses for rest. Each of these roles are a succession of peaks on the crest, one has to reach upward and glow all the time.

Fortunately such tasks spell life for the National Theatre. For us, plays like this are ever-recurrent premieres which remain bright with newness for ever and always make us glow within the fever of premieres.

(1926)

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