Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)

STUDIES - Péter Egri: From the British Grotesque To the American Absurd: the Dramatist's Dilemma

Albee's dramatic practice often cuts across and goes beyond the scope of this witty paradox. Unlike Beckett, who in Waiting for Godothas created an openly absurd universe in which the dramatic principle is ingeniously saved by referring the plight of inaction to the need of action, and unlike Pinter, who in plays like The Birthday Party has brought about a pseudonaturalistic world where behind the seemingly solid crust of external reality absurdly irrational violence proves human action senseless and futile, in several of Albee's plays including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Everything in the Garden a cross-breeding of realistic and absurd drama is achieved in a characteristically American fusion. In these cases, however, realistic drama is not a well-made Broadway farce, melodrama or musical, but serious drama with a critical intent and cathartic action. In twentiethcentury American drama it has been a well-established procedure and a long-standing practice to modernize traditional realism by cross-breeding it with aspects of other trends. Thus O'Neill in The Hairy Ape fuses realism and grotesque expressionism; Miller in Death of a Salesman uses modern simultaneity and expressionistic-surrealistic treatment of time; and Williams in A Streetcar Named Desire combines realistic characterization with symbolistic effects. In uniting realistic and absurdist aspects, Albee continues this achievement of modern American drama, and places his dramatic art in the mainstream of the dramatic movement. In this fusion the traditional realism of Cooper's Everything in the Garden proved a reliable factor. At first, when Albee simply set out to retouch Cooper's play as a routine venture for the commercial stage, he no doubt cherished the idea of starting his task in terms of his parodistic paradox. Later, when he saw that Cooper was a more serious, original and innovative playwright challenging the spectators' complacency by treating prostitution as a status symbol, Albee's imagination was captured, and the process of adaptation

—external Americanization

—also became a more serious matter. "If you find something congenial to your own point of view," Albee observed, "then your adaptation of it becomes far closer to what you would have done";

4

2 and what he would have done was certainly increasing the grotesque elements 4

2 Ibid., p. 17. 40