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THE TRAGEDY OF MAN AS THEATRUM THEOLOGICUM (A DRAMATURG’S DIARY) still needed are the “living stones,” whose numbers, however, are continually dwindling. In its every gesture, Timisoara is a collection of fragments; my heart constricts from these spaces, and its atmosphere of the mausoleum depresses me, but I drive the thoughts away, since the auditorium was packed for my appearance tonight. Three of us at dinner at the Scotland Yard gastropub in Savoy Street. I’ve just arrived in Timisoara, on this evening. Until now, for me only an unfamiliar and at times frightening city’s theater and company existed. All that it takes is a single face, a look or an unexpected exchange of words for one to arrive, finally, and to feel not only the work but also the community of the people who will see the production. FEBRUARY 6, 2020 “Théâtre à l'ancienne,” says Purcarete, “we need something like that. Raised voices, mild pathos, a slower rhythm. Dispozitie barocda,” he says.** At the break, the actors come over to me and flood me with their affection because of the conversation and reading last night; they also tell Silviu what happened. Now I bathe a little in their lovely regard. It’s worth noticing that in the scene set in Byzantium,” it is not Eve through whom the story turns, while Adam longs not for a “new path” but a “new life” at the scene’s conclusion: it is a strong change of emphasis in the text. It is indubitably the deepest point of the Tragedy, the symmetric pair to the ice age tableau? that horrifies Adam so terribly. Here, Adam seriously doubts the sense of continuing the experiment called history, and it seems as if this is related to Eve, or more precisely to her absence: she who, rejecting the sensual life, finds the fulfillment of her own life in the cloister.*° The Byzantine scene is the triumph of Luciferian logic, since murderous impulses are released within the religion of love. Yet Lucifer fails to triumph: it seems as if he himself is surprised by the undisguised evil of the “human race.” Madach is unable to digest the bloody, self-annihilating history of Christianity: he feels they have tricked him, indeed, cuckolded him. I feel his feeling. Of course, I realize that it’s more difficult for a Catholic.*” With respect to the “baroque frame of mind,” mention is made of Péter Esterhazy, whom Purcarete met personally at our house, during the rehearsals Dispozitie barocä (Romanian): a baroque disposition. 54 Madäch: Ibid., Scene 7. 55 Madäch: Ibid., Scene 14. Eve is an active participant in many ofthe scenes. In Scene 6 (Rome), she was a courtesan; in Scene 7, she becomes a nun. The author is a member of the Calvinist Reformed Church, where the existence of evil is perhaps more easily digestible as an element of predestination. + 249 +
