Bereczky Erzsébet (szerk.): Imre Madách: The Tragedy of Man. Essays about the ideas and the directing of the Drama (Budapest, 1985)
György Lengyel: Two Tragedy Production
embody the poet’s wavering, struggling self. Both Peer and Adam are afraid of loosing their individual identity or accepting a challengibly harmonious solution at the end. As to the second approach — the world of ceremonies, the motives of the mystery play - it can look back on great traditions in the representation of the Tragedy. When I directed the play in 1981 I tried to bring the background of ideas in the poem and the form of expression to a common denominator. I think that this first version of my production was burdened by the multiplicity of approaches I had in mind. A second problem lay in surmounting the already mentioned difficulties of style, and in the tormenting search for means and gestures able to express the new conception with which I approached the work. The premiere in January 1981 seemed to me a mixture of good and dubious intentions and of our problems with the development of style. Yet, I would like to mention a few points where I was able to express my own conception. I succeeded in personifying the dramatic conflict between the Lord and Lucifer, and in reducing it to human scale. In my personification of God I was guided by the pictures found in early Christian catacombs: I portrayed him as an Apollo-like youth who „has virtually family ties with Adam, Cain and Noah”. Let me say here that if I were to direct the play today, I would make this personified God apprear in every scene. Sometimes He would be simply present, sometimes He would play the role concieved by the poet. His rhapsodic presence renders the understanding of our interpretation somewhat difficult. It was Lucifer’s figure that has been the most controversial and consequently the most frequently re-interpreted during the past hundred years. In our production we saw him as the Bringer of the Light but at the same time as a representative of excessive intellectualism, too. Adam and Lucifer complete each other as do Cain and Abel. Basically Lucifer is reason and mind rather thank a carrier of devilish principles. The tempo was based on our endeavour to show the drama as a unit, to stress correlations and correspondences. Our conception 65
