Izanagi und Izanami: Ein Spiel für Sprechstimmen, Gesang und Musik by Erich Fried (review)

Vienna-born poet and prose writer engagé Erich Fried, who survived the Nazi era in England in exile and spent his later years between the U.K. and Germany, is less well known for his musical plays and radio plays inspired by historical themes and genres than for his poetry, his translations, and his political activism. Fried’s plays’ crossing historical boundaries and transcending the confines of genre, language, and culture makes for their affinity with opera and musical dramas. An example of the author’s fascination with forms blending poetry, music, and dramatic action is the libretto for composer Alexander Goehr’s Arden Must Die: An Opera on the Death of the Wealthy Arden of Faversham (1967). The work is based on the Elizabethan drama Arden of Faversham and was originally written in German and later translated into English by Geoffrey Skelton. The work reveals Fried’s preoccupation with the burning issues of his time and his biography as the target of prejudice and persecution. In the play, envy and resentment precipitate the murder of a fundamentally well-intentioned rich man whose only flaw is his wealth. Opera being the medium for this work, Fried stylizes and universalizes the story of Arden and has it emerge as paradigmatic of the kind of irrational hatred that was epitomized by Nazi anti-Semitism. The play also reveals the processes involved in such deep-seated biases against individuals and groups. Fried maintains that the combination of genres that make up the musical play is showcased most effectively in the radio play, the form he chose for the drama Izanagi and Izanami, which is based on the ancient Japanese creation myth, of which short versions appear in various parts of the chronicle Nihongi, as Fried explains in his foreword to the work, which remained unpublished during his lifetime. In his commentaries and notes, Fried also addresses his choice of genre, explaining that he preferred other Japanese traditions over the Noh play, despite its popularity in 1960s Europe. He also contextualizes the play with his environment and friends who inspired him, most notably Elias Canetti, whom he credits for having pointed him to his source.

Christine Ivanovic deserves recognition for producing an attractive and lucid edition of the approximately fifty-page-long play and for including in the volume pertinent materials that provide valuable insights into Fried’s creative process and the strategies and considerations that shaped the text of the play. The author’s preparatory notes for the work (65–79) reveal that it took considerable research and reflection to transpose the archaic subject matter, the myth of the creation of the universe from a “world egg,” the loving interaction between two sibling deities, Izanagi and Izanami, setting the process of creation in motion, and finally, the destruction of the mother/sister goddess Izanami caused by the birth of Kagu Tsuchi, Fire, the son that not even the father, Izanagi, fails to tame or contain. Fried carefully considers matters of form and content, trying to avoid the temptation to associate his subject too closely with Western traditions such as the Greek Orpheus myth, with which the Izanagi myth has obvious affinities. Fried’s exploration of the Shin-tu pantheon and the characteristics and roles he associates with the main figures attest to his attention to culture-specific details. At the same time, the distinctly European play is directed at Western audiences, and Fried observes the parameters set by his lack of Japanese, which limits his possibilities as a cultural mediator. Despite the obvious aspiration for authenticity, the play is a product of its time and of Fried’s historical and cultural position. The creation of the world as his subject matter, followed by the destruction of the maternal creator by her fiery offspring and thus the destruction of the female principle complementing the male points to Fried’s interest in destruction as part of the...