Bereczky Erzsébet (szerk.): Imre Madách: The Tragedy of Man. Essays about the ideas and the directing of the Drama (Budapest, 1985)
György Lengyel: Foreword
FOREWORD If we, Hungarians were asked to choose the literary work that we consider to be the closest to us, the most expressive of our history, the most modem classic which talks about our past and present with the same power and which, I believe, will also have a message for the future; well, this work would be The Tragedy of Man. The strange thing about it is that the play does not take place in Hungary. It is a powerful vision of the poetplaywright about mankind, beginning with the creation up to an imaginary future through episodes of the history of the world in the form of the main characters’ dreams. If asked, I would not hesitate to say that no other play reveals so much about us to the world. For theatres and audiences throughout the world, the most easily approachable and receptible Hungarian drama would be The Tragedy of Man. Up to now, it has been translated into 29 languages; there have been 9 different translations into English only. It has been put on the stage several times in different countries but I think the real breakthrough is going to come now. This present volume is being published to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the first performance of the play and also to make it more widely and better known all over the world. The book contains the thoughts and notes of the directors of the most interesting performances in the past one hundred years as well as an essay on the history of The Tragedy of Man on the stage written by eminent Madách-scholar Dr. Ferenc Kerényi. There are a lot of photographs and also a bibliography to make the book complete. The Tragedy is about the basic questions of our life today: it presents a whole series of dramatic problems. It is a dream, a vision 7
