Bereczky Erzsébet (szerk.): Imre Madách: The Tragedy of Man. Essays about the ideas and the directing of the Drama (Budapest, 1985)
Tamás Major: An Up-to-Date Tragedy of Man
puts the frightening dramatic question that occupies Madách adn derives from the infernal basic experience of the defeat of the War of Independence: Freedom and Fate are chasing one another Yet falling short of harmony and sense. An interesting piece of evidence is a letter by Madách in which he admits that the characters in Heaven and in Eden speak in terms that have an anachronistic effect. Madách readily accepted this anachronism, and said that he had learned it from Lessing and Milton and used it because this was the only way to say what he had to say. Thus, the motto I told you, man Struggle and trust!... Be always confident! is not only the closing sentence of the play but runs through the entire drama, and Adam and Lucifer are the central characters throughout. This Adam does not set out in every scene to carry to triumph the ideal he has espoused, but tries to rest, wearily to withdraw from struggle through entire scenes - only to champion then with reviving flame always essentially the same cause - the freedom of Athens, or for the aim of Early Christianity as interestingly interpreted by Madách: ..............let every man be free To realize each longing of his heart -He must obey but one commandment: Love! But the „to be or not to be” thesis of struggle or retreat is best expressed in the Prague scene, where one virtually sees Imre Madách himself at Sztregova as he suddenly realizes with a shock that there is no withdrawing from struggle: I longed for such an age which has no strife, That age has come. But everything’s in vain 53
