Bereczky Erzsébet (szerk.): Imre Madách: The Tragedy of Man. Essays about the ideas and the directing of the Drama (Budapest, 1985)
dr. Ferenc Kerényi: A Dramatic Poem from Hungary to the Theaters of the World
Madách based the substantial collection of thoughts in the Tragedy on philosopher’s, well-known theory, according to which the clash between contradictions leads to the birth of a new, higher quality. Adam, reviewing in his sleep the history of Mankind, is confronted with the new and earthshaking ideas of the verious eras. One by one these ideas turn into their opposites and thus become the starting points of new historical epochs. Yet in the play, this does not sound didactic or tedious as history is not presented with philological accuracy but in the form of visions seen by Adam. The thoughts of the historical ages presented in Adam’s dreams in Scenes IV—XIII, of the Tragedy are worked into the biblical framework of Scenes I—III, and Scene XV. This arc is more than a mere dramatic fiction or a biblical paraphrase: it is a conflict-laden exposition; it is the struggle between God and Lucifer for the most valuable element of the newly-created world: Man. Madách preferred to leave the struggle undecided, as a full-blooded dramatic conflict. Up to Scene XV he interpreted the well-known biblical stories relatively freely, almost as poetic raw material. This interpretation distinguishes Madách’s work from its predecessors, among others from the celestial prologue in Goethe’s Faust. Yet Madách had to go beyond the traditional, romantic confrontation of Good and Evil; he did not want to restrict the manifold conception of his work to ethical problems. Thus, the struggle between God and Lucifer cannot be interpreted purely statically; it is more than a theological conflict, more than the beginning of a clash between „civitas dei” and „civitas diaboli” and more than the philosophical confrontation between idealism and materialism. A brief description of the various scenes will illustrate this point. In the first scene of the Tragedy, the mechanical perfection of the order of the newly created world on the one hand is confronted by its antithesis, eternal intellectual negation, on the other: THE LORD The giant structure is completed, yes! The engine turns, while its Creator rests. It will rotate for many million years Before I must renew its womout gears. 12
