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

„universal ideals”, „the eternal Eve” or „Adam, the biblical hero”. We wanted to present the very human, almost stubborn Madách, who sticks to his ideas and does say through Adam:

I see my sacred thoughts develop as They purify themselves in majesty,

Until they slowly saturate the world.

and who has faith, or at least wants to have faith, in the triumph of these ideals:

For truth is horrofic and fatal if It walks among the people of our age.

The time will come, I wish it were today,

When man can freely speak it on the streets,

But then the people will become adults.

In this way we are presenting Madách, indeed, a man who proclaimed the need for continual reenewal in the sturggle for art as well as for ideas:

But let the rule, the pattern always rest - The man in whom God lives, and who is strong Will learn to speak, or carve, or sing,

And though he pioneers he’ll reach the goal.

From his own work abstraction will create A novel rule-perhaps as shackles, but Never as wings—for any pigmy race.

With this kind of humanity we dare then confront the horrible inhumanity that is bent on overcoming and disillusioning mankind.

(1964)

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