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
that something is the secret of the ever new beginnings of the successive Adams of history ... Not meaning - Mystery! Life treasures the mind, the mind treasures life, as Thomas Mann said in one of his letters. This is the essence of our relationships and the nature of our attractions and repulsions. It is Lucifer who needs this story, not Adam. Just as life is content with life, by the same token the spirit cannot exist without life, this is the paradox of its quality. The Tree of Knowledge in Scene Two (Eden), is a parable in point. This paradox describes the relationship between Lucifer and Adam, and is also copied unto the relationship between Adam and Eve, in which Adam makes his approaches always — in the pose of the mind espousing an ideal, and Eve is throughout „life”, remaining throughout what she is - as much as she can be. Adam is moralistic throughout that is the reason for the tragedy of the character — and the monotony of the part. Thus, I repeat, the only possible production is to create the rite of Lucifer-Madách, and any other question of authority and credibility should be subordinate to that. To be clarified anew is the basic situation, the image of the world and finally the question of who is who. When the Lord, when Lucifer and when Adam? The existence of the Lord inevitably presupposes a religious world outlook, which is problematic enough with reference to the basic dilemma of existence the dramatic sense. Moreover, the Lord is also indispensable because he is dramaturgically present in Scene One (Heaven), where the question is formulated: „What is the sense of your creation?” If the world simply „is”, there is no basic dramatic conflict. If the world has been „created”, Negation evolves into the basic conflict of the drama. Later on, the Lord no longer exists ... In Egypt perhaps the Pharaoh himself is the deity, in Athens Greek mythology is divine, and so on. And in the Paris scene Adam says in so many words: „I don’t believe in life beyond the grave.” ... Kepler is obviously a materialist. Whatever appears in opposition to Lucifer, the devil, 70
