CPL310 10/18/2004 More on "The Word" -- called "Ordet" in Danish -- subtitle: A Legend of Today -- published in 1932 -- not translated to English until 1953 -- Danish film versions in 1943 and 1955 (later by Carl Theodore Dryer) -- part of Act IV that wasn't covered earlier is that when Inger dies Johannes collapses, calls his dead wife's name (Agatha) and then escapes the house, living in the cold winter outside for 5 days -- Esther's family are Lutherans but Pietists; the Borgens follow Grundvy; Pietists (meet in their homes and don't have clergy) and Grundvy (a great Danish bishop who was also much into adult education) -- Kaj Munk as a young person himself tried to bring someone back to life through prayer and it didn't work -- Dr Hye thinks the pastor sounds like the cardinal in Galileo who refuses to look through the telescope -- he also thinks the doctor sounds like the doctor in Before Dawn who thinks all doctors can do is to give people drugs to get through this horrible life -- epigraph from the play really touched Dr Hye to the point of tears Friedrich Durrentmatt -- greatest Swiss writer of the 20th century -- Max Frisch was a contemporary of his who with him were Brecht's successors as German-language playwrights (Chinese Wall is one of Frisch's famous works) -- they both also wrote novels as well -- they both dealt with science -- Durrenmatt tended to write tragicomedies -- he wrote what was almost a manifesto about theatre; he said that we live in a world that is no longer ordered as it was in Schiller's world; tragedy in that world presupposed things that we no longer have, especially after World War II; because we live in this crazy world the only way to look at it is through laughter; you could call it black humor or sarcasm or cynicism -- he also talks about the Three Unities, from Aristotle, of time, place and action; 24 hours in one place and with no subplots; Durrenmatt tries to impose this classical form on a postmodern crazy world -- The Physicist takes place on one day in the sanitorium with no major subplots -- he makes a subliminal unity by having so many examples of the number 3; Three Unities; 3 physicists; 3 nurses; 3 murders (some are referred to in hindsight to keep Unity of Time; and the second is the opening of the play, a dead nurse on stage); 3 doors; 3 chairs; M?bius has 3 sons; his wife who finally divorces him after running out of money marries a guy with 6 sons; there are more examples -- Dr Hye saw it once in German and once in English; the English one was at Princeton and he noticed the audience laughing; there's a question of who's really mad; after the murder at the end of the first act, they didn't laugh so much because they realized it was serious -- religion in this play is mainly a parody of the missionary who marries the former Mrs. M?bius; they come to make one last visit to M?bius before going to the Marianas in the Pacific where they'll be missionaries; he chases them away; he forbids his one son who says he wants to be a physicist from following that; the nurse later asks him if he was really as mad as he'd acted at his son's news -- there are many things in this play that can have two meanings Characters: -- M?bius, who's gone to the santarium to hide his knowledge -- Newton, from the West -- Einstein, from the East -- Newton and Einstein come to the asylum to try to find out what M?bius knows -- Durrenmatt calls M?bius the courageous individual (der mutige Mensch), a kind of idealist who will stand up to both superpowers</plaintext><br /></body></html>