Bereczky Erzsébet (szerk.): Imre Madách: The Tragedy of Man. Essays about the ideas and the directing of the Drama (Budapest, 1985)
József Ruszt: Notes on Putting on the Tragedy
Analysis of Effect and the Riddle of the Work Madách forces apart the framework of all the known genres because in The Tragedy he has really asked what he wanted to and to which he himself does not know the answer either. In this way he himself fell prey to the captivation of a riddle, a game; he channels the flow of his ideas into a framework, one of the systems accepted for a work of art, and this form finally defines the whole, or at least our approach to it. The diabolical trick of playing with the devil is, I think, the fundamental conception of the drama — as Goethe also toyed with the figure of Mephistopheles. In this, the two great verse dramas are similar ... But Lucifer is me and you ... And Mephistopheles is someone you and me sometimes encounter, Mephistopheles is the other one ... Lucifer is me. Lucifer makes discoveries and definitions in the course of the play. Lucifer has no concrete program, only a position. The famous „I swore their doom, and so their doom must come”, is no more than any other cliché in the work. It a necessary evil, just like the Forbidden Tress. For why are they there „in the Heart of Eden” when the Lord does not even know about Lucifer — how paradoxical! — whether he will keep silent or rebel. As a matter of fact, Lucifer himself explains to the Lord - how perfect, and how paradoxical again! - that He has created something about which he knows virtually nothing! By what right does Lucifer do this? Perhaps by the dubious right of „We both, together, have created”. Well, here we have the drama, here we have the split personality of Man. The ready-made life situation as an idyll: the Lord and me myself - Lucifer who, like matter awakened to consciousness, analyses himself and asks the question „What is the sense of Your creation? ” If there is no Lord God, The Tragedy of Man is genuine tragedy. The existence of God makes for the possibility of choice. The final paradox of the work is that it is the tragedy of a materialist human being, the more so a tragedy. But as we know that we ourselves are God, we flee awareness of tragedy, of materialist tragedy, and seek god if you will in the same foolish theses through which the Lord Himself comforts Adam in the last 68
