Friedrich Dürrenmatt: Selected Writings, Volume 1, Plays (Volume 1) Hardcover – June 27, 2023

Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990) is unanimously considered, together with Brecht, as the greatest writer of theatrical plays in Germany of the second post-war period. There is, however, an important difference that sets him apart from Brecht and this is despite the fact that Dürrenmatt did study and, in fact, ended up sharing many of Brecht's theories on epic theatre. This difference stems from the unforeseeability and unconventionality of Dürrenmatt's work that contributed, on a par with one of his countrymen, Max Frisch, to a radical renewal of dramaturgy written in Germany and which offered, in a somewhat grotesque way, a disturbing picture of the shabbiness hiding behind the appearance of respectability of the society in which he lived. Frisch, however, was obsessed with questions pertaining to identity, to rationalism, and to relationships between men and women. He was, so to speak, 'a sceptic humanist', an expression he particularly liked to use to define himself. Dürrenmatt, on the other hand, while characterised by his sarcastic exuberance that tends to overwhelm his interlocutor through fierce and pitiless taunting, has always a 'Christian foundation', as Frisch himself used to say, or, to be even more precise, a 'Calvinist foundation' because of its eagerness to look for answers to questions about grace and justice and to deliver from the top its judgement about human foolishness through the 'grotesque' that always seems to touch on the excessive but that is, at the same time, very distant from the measure of the other.

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Imagine a travelling salesman whose car breaks down one evening in a remote area but outside the home of a retired judge. Too late to call out the garage, the retired judge invites the man to stay the night in his spare room - "Oh, and btw, I've invited a couple of friends round for dinner, perhaps you'll join us. We're all retired judges and like to hear the stories of people who pass through this country."Needless to say, the salesman accords and ends up telling the outlines of his life to the three other diners, whose legal training lead them to ask sharp questions in the hope of uncovering any crimes the salesman might have committed. Sure enough, in the morning the salesman is hanging from the light fitting, having committed suicide due to the guilt induced from playing the three retired judges' innocent game the night before.Here's another idea: a train is running north from Italy through the Alps to Germany. It is full of people, a wide cross-section of society. As it approaches the higher parts of the mountains, enters the ten-mile-long tunnel that will take the passengers through to the other side. The tunnel goes on and on, mile after mile, and after awhile the passengers become nervous because it never comes out into daylight. No, the train is going deeper and deeper, getting hotter and hotter ... it is going down into hell!These two story outlines come from a couple of short stories - Die Panne and Der Tunnel - that I studied as part of the literature element of my German A-level. And the visions that the stories portrayed have never left me. I recently re-read them in a new English edition of Durrenmatt's works and was so impressed by his writing that I also bought this volume of his plays in the same series.Durrenmatt (1920-1990) was a Swiss-German author whose works were profoundly political and philosophical. They were largely concerned with concepts of guilt, sin, hypocrisy; with politics high and low; they are political comedies. Kenneth Northcott, who wrote the introduction to this collection points out that Durrenmatt demonstrates the dichotomy of justice and freedom: you can either have one or the other, but not both.Durrenmatt uses real historical persons as characters and real places as settings - or otherwise employs characters and settings that readily stand as archetypes of such. But he cleverly - cynically? - twists their sense and meaning towards - but (hardly) ever as far as - the absurd. At bottom, Durrenmatt for me points out the ridiculous nature of humanity. There simply are no heroes anymore, and there never were any.