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

Endre Gellért: "I hear, I hear the coming epoch's song"

those scenes, he merely regroups the facts of literary truth according to his own purposes.

When facing the Lord (in Scene I, in Heaven), Lucifer said:

You will find death on every living face;

Sorrow will follow joy and happiness;

Hope comes with doubt, and light with shadow; yes,

Adam who wants to fight always for some cause does not know where to put the Phalanstery. He would like some challenge, something to strive for, and looking around in „this world of ordered system, regularity” does not even find „the joy that peril brings...

But science, too, has disappointed me:

Instead of man’s expected happiness

I only find a dismal school for infants.

Lucifer sweeps him up to space, but Adam longs to be back on the earth.

And am aware I’ll ofen miss my goal,

But never mind! What is life’s goal, indeed?

Goal is the end of all triumphant fights,

Goal is mere death — existence is all strife.

The ambition of man is strife itself.

Ideals I had, they heartened me awhile.

They all were holy, whether in the name

Of knowledge, freedom, Christian faith or fame —

All driving me to fight from place to place...

Each one of them advanced the human race!

Let us go back to earth to fight again.

Adam as an aged man (Lucifer wants to disillusion Adam with life not only through projecting on his mind the history of man, but also by showing him how age drains the strength of the

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