Timeless Relevance: Max Frisch's The Chinese Wall

Titnelcss Relevance: Max Frisch's The Chinese Wall MARIE WAGNER • IT IS FASCINATING AND DEPRESSING at the same time to discover that a play arising from the political atmosphere of 1946, and pointing back into history, can be so in line with the concerns of our time. The threat of the bomb still makes us cower, and we feel chagrined by our inability to overcome human nature: the ambitions of selfish rulers, the indifference and vanity of the ruled, and their uncanny knack of repeating past mistakes time and again. The Chinese Wall is a mirror to history and an appeal to break out of its invariant cycle. For the mistakes of the past that lead to local disasters will now lead to total destruction: "A single mood by him who now sits on the throne ... and everything is lost." 1 But can society be transformed, and is the individual willing to adjust? That is the question posed by the play. The Chinese Wall does not offer a clear-cut solution, nor should it. Frisch states in his Tagebuch: "The solution is always our business, my business, your business." Rut a direction is indicated, one that is antipodal to lust for power, profiteering, vanity, cowardness, opportunism, the easy solution. The play consists of a prelude and twenty-four loosely connected scenes. In the Prelude, the Heutige (man of today) sets the stage. He introduces the characters and defines time and place of the action: 200 B.C. at the Chinese court in Nanking. The selected time and location are more than an aid for our imagination. The manifold events of history that are separated through time and space are brought to a focus here and now on the stage. Nanking is our own mind, our individual consciousness, as the Heutige announces in the Prelude: Place of the action: this stage (or one could also say: our consciousness ....) Time of the action: this evening.2 149 150 MARIE WAGNER In the twenty-four scenes of the play, we find only a rudimentary plot: At the imperial court, the victory of the emperor over the enemies of the country is celebrated. Only a sole adversary, called Min Ko, which means "voice of the people," remains to be found and vanquished. Who is this strange opponent who dares to tell the truth in mocking couplets that criticize and deride the emperor? A mute peasant is found who is incapable of joining in with the required cheering and hailing of the emperor. His lack of vocal cords convicts him, because he cannot take advantage of the protective deceits of language available to everyone else. He is accused of being that seditious "voice of the people," and will be prosecuted in a colossal show trial.3 As a Doctor of Law, the Heutige is appointed attorney for the defense. He, the Intellectual, should be a defender of truth, but he shrinks back when threatened by the emperor and disavows his convictions. Instead it is his client, the mute peasant, who in his very muteness draws the truth from the lips of the emperor and makes the emperor reveal his own guilt. A pleasant contrast to the emperor is his daughter, Princess Mee Lan. She has been promised to Prince Wu Tsiang, a valiant general who always fights "to the last man," but she has seen through him, his lust for power, and his opportunism. She spurns the prince and instead declares her love for the Heutige. Yet she must also accuse the Heutige of never matching his words with deeds: "A defenseless man who has no voice screams! And you only hear yourself!" Through her love she converts the Heutige and makes him realize: "To make an imprint on history, self-sacrifice remains the only choice." And the Heutige thus finds the courage to face the emperor and the assembled dignitaries, and so takes his stand. The intellectual declares the emperor to be a tyrant whose way of shaping history can no longer be tolerated by mankind: he evokes the picture of a ruined world that is unconscious, pointless, lifeless, inhumane, without God. But his message is twisted craftily, the poetry of his language is...