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GABOR SZEKELY: THE MISANTHROPE, 1988 disappeared, and the general informality of addressing each other, together with the often rather crude phrases had made the dialogues familiar, echoing “the court” as Hungarian people used (and still use) “the system” in terms of state socialism. As the sine qua non of Székely’s mise-en-scène, Petris translation also implied present-day forms of behavior,’ especially since it transformed misanthropy into “vital hatred”.*°° With the help of the (more than) dramaturg, Géza Fodor, and as a result of the elimination of the traces of Moliére’s times, Alceste became almost a tragic hero,*” who cried out his distaste for the world and the people around him as a self-destructive intellectual, and seemed to be a contemporary of the spectators. Because the play focused on a central character and the directness of the protagonist’s anger, this relationship became a determining factor to refashion most of the events. STAGING Although many reviewers mentioned “the personal [as such] that governed the production”,** the anger in the Katona’ Misanthrope was not due to the individual discontent of its creators. Rather, it had become paradigmatic as an example of a consistent conception of theatre, arguing over social existence many forms of human contact (from the way points of honor were handled to always saying ‘thou’) are all dramatic factors in the play, because they were of particular importance to the theatre and audience of the time.” Ibid., 12. Cf. “This language and this reworking gives the theatre, the director and the actors the opportunity to adapt our intense rhythm of life, our accelerated pace, our feelings of life that barely allow for softness, the often agitated, hysteroid behaviors and the influences on our mindset.” Katalin Róna: A mizantróp, Film Színház Muzsika, Vol. 32, No. 47, 194 November, 1988, 6. The phrase is used in Petri’s Two fragments from the Brezhnev era. The word by word translation of the poem goes like this: “1 (objectively) This part and that part / are afraid of each other more and more, / so they can form a whole / in which there is no room for any parts. 2 (subjectively) One day we will wake up forgetting all, / we won't find the vital hatred in our hearts. / The day we lose everything. / Even if it does come, it’s too late for the News: / We're shrinking like burning paper.” Petri György versei. Budapest, Szépirodalmi, 1991, 281. In this respect, Géza Fodor’s comment is fairly telling. “Approaching the [1789] revolution, Alceste had increasingly become a positive hero of the opposition to the existing social order, until Camille Desmoulins called him a Jacobine.” in Moliere: A mizantröp, Program for the production of the Katona Jézsef Theatre, November 1988, 5. Cf. “Alceste is a tormented intellectual here, who fights his battle with Céliméne neck or nothing in a single day and tumbles from failure to failure.” Colette Godard: A pillanatok, amikor minden odavész, Le Monde, 1" December, 1988, trans. Judit Szántó, Színház 22:2 (1989), 48. — "It is as if we are hearing the literary monologue of an intellectual, misled, desolate and fed up, who is going into a one-man civil war for the right to honesty." Judit Csáki: , Ez a világ — rohad". A mizantróp a Katona József Színházban, Új Tükör, Vol. 25, No. 48, 274 November, 1988, 28. Róna: A mizantróp, 6. — Cf. “Gabor Szekely says that Molière painted a self-portrait in Alceste, but the people around Székely believe that the director has transferred a great much of himself into the production.” Godard: A pillanatok, 48. 949 950 95 2 952 95: o + 191 +
