The Divine Plan Behind the Plays of Friedrich Dürrenmatt

THE DIVINE PLAN BEHIND THE PLAYS .. OF FRIEDRICH DURRENMATT IN 1943, WHILE A STUDENT at the University of Zurich, Diirrenmatt wrote his first play, which was never published. It is referred to as both "The Button" and "The Comedy."l In the final scene the main character, Adam, enters a laboratory containing a man-made machine capable of destroying the world. Adam demands that power be given back to the strongest authority-God. To his astonishment , all present agree to give up the machine, but in the process of agreement someone accidentally sits down on the control button and the world blows up. The significant philosophical features of this first dramatic attempt are the presence of an almighty God, an individual trying to do what is right, and a chaotic world that renders man's struggle absurd. Since 1943 Diirrenmatt has written eight plays2 and has become the major dramatist writing in the German language. Although his style and subject matter vary greatly, the point of view initially revealed in "The Button" has remained the same. All of Diirrenmatt's dramas, from the first unpublished venture to the latest international success, The Physicists~ assume the presence of a divine plan that governs the relationship between an almighty God, a courageous but helpless individual, and a chaotic world. This plan is similar to Kierkegaard's3 law governing the relationship between God and man: "There is an endless yawning qualitative difference between God and man. This signifies, or the expression for it is: a man can do nothing at all, it is God that gives all, it is He that bestows upon man faith, etc. This is grace, and here lies Christianity's first."4 According to Kierkegaard, faith is the only way to salvation, and to have faith means "parting with 1 Peter Wyrsch refers to this first playas "The Button," in "Die DiirrenmattStory ," Schweitzer Illustrierte Zeitung, Zofingen (March 25, 1963); Hans Banziger calls it "The Comedy," in Frisch und Dilrrenmatt (Bern-Munich, 1962), p. 123. 2 In 1962-63 Diirrenmatt adapted for the stage his 1954 radioplay, Herkules. Although the author considers this new version a play in its own right, it is not included in this study because it was conceived as a radioplay eight years prior to its adaptation. S From approximately 1943 to 1946 Diirrenmatt was greatly interested in Kierkegaard, in fact, so much so that he intended to write his dissertation on the subject of "Kierkegaard and the Tragic." Instead, however, he wrote his first play, It is Written. 4 Quoted by Walter Lowrie, Kierkegaard (New York, 1962), I, g. 237 238 MODERN DRAMA· December one's understanding and being crucified upon the paradox."5 For him there is no rational faith, no man-made way to God. To be a serious Christian means to die unto this world, to be sacrificed in this life, for "him whom God blesses He eo ipso curses in a worldly sense."6 Diirrenmatt's divine plan is also similar to the religious writings of Karl Barth,7 especially to his famous commentary to Paul's "Epistle to the Romans," where he speaks of the relationship between God and man in the emphatic terms of a divine No and Yes. All life is viewed as standing under the condemnation of God's radical No. Man must be made aware of his mortality, his imperfection, of the fact that all his worldly ways are dead-end roads. Only then is the individual in a position to experience God's gracious Yes.s In addition to these two religious thinkers, there was also for Diirrenmatt, a Protestant minister's son, the more direct influence of the Bible. Elisabeth Brock-Sulzer, the critic most familiar with Diirrenmatt's work as a whole, believes that the Bible affected him more than any other book.9 This influence is most evident in his early prose and dramas, especially "Pontius Pilate," It is Written, The Blind Man, and An Angel Comes to Babylon. Diirrenmatt's dramatic production stresses the three facets of the divine plan in a definite sequence: first God, then the individual, and finally, worldly chaos. His eight plays can be divided accordingly into...