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THE TRAGEDY OF MAN AS THEATRUM THEOLOGICUM (A DRAMATURG’S DIARY)
the plot — Gyöngyösi is planning to compose a scenic oratorio to the text.
Purcarete asks me: where did we end up? We departed significantly from
Madach, or at least from the work’s overdone modernist worldview, from the
equalized dualism between the Lord and Lucifer. Our theatrical Tragedy is
much more “a” Tragedy interpretation, without any doubt personal to us, and,
in fact, a radical rejection of the modern dogma that emphasized the neces¬
sity of Evil in the name of development and progress. According to Madach,
that is, God generously forgives Lucifer; as a matter of fact, He doesn’t even
regard him as The Evil One in the philosophical sense, but merely as the spirit
of “cold,” unemotional reason lacking the feminine principle:
And you too, Lucifer, you are a link
Within my universe — and so continue:
Your icy intellect and fond denial
Will be the leaven to foment rebellion
And to mislead — if momentarily —
The mind of man, which will return to me."
According to Madach, Lucifer is not merely the “leaven” of progress but also
the agent of Salvation, since he only “misleads” humanity temporarily from
the Creator so that it may find its way home to Him with yet more eager desire.
It is certain that Madach was familiar with the Augustinian concept of the
“felix culpa” [happy sin] which resounds in the Exultet [gospel, good news] of
the Easter vigil, but the theological propositions of the Protestant tradition
made no impression on him; at least, I could find no trace of them in the poem.
And it is on this point that the difference between Faust and The Tragedy of
Man seems essential. By the end of Faust, Goethe’s Mephistopheles becomes
isolated, indeed laughable, even in his own eyes. The angels definitively rescue
Faust’s soul from him, while Mephistopheles laments thus:
To whom can I go for redress?
Who will get me my well-earned right?
You have been fooled in your old days. Confess,
However, you deserve your sorry plight.
I have outrageously mismanaged,
A mighty outlay — shamefully! — is lost,
Absurd amour and common lust have managed
To catch the canny Devil to his cost.
But if the one of wise experience got
Himself involved in that mad, childish game,
1 Madach: Ibid., Szirtes, 259.
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