The Tragedy of Man
Encyclopedia
The Tragedy of Man is a play
written by the Hungarian
author Imre Madách
. It was first published in 1861. The play is considered to be one of the major works of Hungarian literature
and is one of the most often staged Hungarian plays today. Many lines have become common quotations in Hungary. The 1984 film The Annunciation
(Angyali üdvözlet) was based on the play.
The main characters are Adam, Eve
and Lucifer
. As God creates the universe, Lucifer decries it as futile, stating that man will soon aspire to be god and demanding his own right of the world, because God was forced to create with him, "the ancient spirit of denial". God casts him out of Heaven, but grants his wish: the two cursed trees in Eden, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Immortality. Playing on Eve's vanity and Adam's pride, Lucifer tempts both into sin
. After the Fall and expulsion from Eden
, Adam is still too proud to admit that he acted wrongly. Instead, he recounts his dreams of human progress and achievement; he feels that now, unencumbered by God's rules, he is ready to pursue his own glory. Lucifer puts Adam to sleep, and the two begin to travel through history. The first period they visit, ancient Egypt, is the realization of Adam's dream of immense human achievements. However, his joy is abruptly cut off when he finds that the pyramids are being built on the backs of slaves (as a later-executed slave points out, "millions for one"). Adam, in the role of a pharaoh, falls in love with Eve, a slave-girl; with renewed hope, he now tells Lucifer to take him to a world where all men live in equality, and Lucifer transports him to democratic Greece. In each period, Adam's previous dreams are exposed as futile, flawed, or unattainable, and Eve appears just in time to refresh Adam's spirit, and the cycle repeats.
Adam and Lucifer are introduced at the beginning of each scene, with Adam assuming various important historical roles and Lucifer usually acting as a servant or confidant. Eve enters only later in each scene, usually as a historical character. Adam is usually engrossed in his role at the beginning of each scene, and only becomes self-aware and aware of Lucifer as his guide near the end. Eve never breaks out of character. From the 19th century period on, Adam is no longer a leader, but retreats into an observer role, his political and historical enthusiasm having disappeared. Likewise, throughout the dream, Adam is older and older with each passing scene, representing not only his increasing wisdom but also the increasing burden of hopelessness.
The final dream scene is in an ice age in the far future. The Sun is dying, civilization has disappeared, and mankind has been reduced to a few scattered savages trying to eke out a living. It is never addressed whether this is truly the future Madách foresaw, or whether this is an elaborate illusion on the part of Lucifer to make Adam lose hope once and for all.
Awaking from his dream, Adam declares that the future is hopeless, and that the only course of action now open to him is to kill himself, thereby ending the human race before it begins and preventing all the meaningless suffering the future holds. As he is poised to throw himself from a cliff, Eve finds him, and happily announces that she is pregnant. Adam falls to his knees and declares that God has vanquished him. God rebukes Satan, and tells Adam that regardless of whether he sees hope or not, his task is only to "strive on, and have faith."
SCENE 1 - In Heaven
, immediately following the creation
.
SCENE 2 - In the Garden of Eden
at the Beginning of Time.
SCENE 3 - Outside the Garden of Eden at the Beginning of Time.
SCENE 4 - Egypt
, c. 2650
BC. Adam is a Pharaoh
, most likely Djoser
; Lucifer his Vizier; Eve is the wife of a slave
.
SCENE 5 - Athens
, 489 BC. Adam is Miltiades the Younger
; Lucifer is a guard; Eve is Miltiades' wife.
SCENE 6 - Rome
, c. AD 67. Adam is a wealthy Roman; Lucifer is his friend, Eve is a prostitute.
SCENE 7 - Constantinople
, AD 1096. Adam is Prince Tancred of Hauteville
; Lucifer is his squire; Eve is a noble maiden forced to become a nun
.
SCENE 8 - Prague
, c. AD 1615. Adam is Johannes Kepler; Lucifer is his pupil; Eve is his wife, Borbala.
SCENE 9 - Paris
, AD 1793 (in a dream of Kepler). Adam is Georges Danton
; Lucifer is an executioner; Eve appears in two forms, first as an aristocrat
about to be executed, then immediately following as a bloodthirsty poor woman.
SCENE 10 - Prague, c. AD 1615. Adam is Johannes Kepler
; Lucifer is his pupil; Eve is his wife, Borbala.
SCENE 11 - London
, 19th century. Adam and Lucifer are nameless Englishmen; Eve is a young woman of the middle class
.
SCENE 12 - A Communist
/Technocratic Phalanstery
, in the future. Adam and Lucifer masquerade as traveling chemist
s; Eve is a worker who refuses to be separated from her child.
SCENE 13 - Space
. Adam and Lucifer are themselves, Eve does not appear in this scene.
SCENE 14 - An ice age
in the distant future, at least AD 6000. Adam is a broken old man; Lucifer is himself; Eve is an Eskimo
's wife.
SCENE 15 - Outside Eden at the Beginning of Time.
's Paradise Lost
, as the two deal with the same subject matter—the creation and fall of Man, and the devil's role in it. As in Paradise Lost, some critics maintain that the true protagonist of the Tragedy is Lucifer himself, being more active than Adam and God combined. Milton offers a more well-rounded Lucifer, however; he is motivated chiefly by a desire for power, and all his actions stem from that, rather than from any specifically malicious drive. Madách's version is significantly more one-sidedly villainous, seeking to destroy mankind simply to prove God's creation experiment a failure. This spite, combined with his charisma in dealing with Adam and Eve, make him a decidedly sinister character, more so than Milton's.
Some critics suggest that the unique portrayal of Eve, the first woman, was prompted by Madách's own unhappy marriage. Eve is both the vehicle of Adam's fall, offering him the apple, but through her appearance in each scene, is also usually the means by which Adam regains his hope for the future. In the end, she is the force which prevents his demise. The relationship between man and woman is indeed at the heart of the play, portrayed as being both deeply flawed on the one hand, yet still affirmed as the basic human relationship.
While these interpretations may be up for discussion, the role of Hegelian dialectic
in the sequencing of scenes is an established fact. Each scene, each historical period, is the realization of some ideal of Adam (thesis), which Lucifer then exposes as being deeply flawed (antithesis). Adam, on the verge of losing hope, comes into contact with Eve, and decides upon a new ideal (synthesis) which would cure the worst problems of his present reality. The cycle then repeats. Unlike Hegel's philosophy, however, humanity does not constantly build towards a glorious future, but is slowly sinking into worse and worse depravity.
This leads to the most famous and one of the most controversial elements of the play. Adam cannot understand what the purpose of his existence is if mankind's future is so bleak. The last line is spoken by God
: "Mondottam, ember, küzdj és bízva bízzál!" ("I have told you, Man: strive on, and trust!") Depending on the interpretation, this can either be seen cynically as the words of a capricious deity, or else pointing to a "hope beyond all hope," that God has a purpose for all things which man may not necessarily comprehend. This is markedly different from Paradise Lost, where the Christian
hope is explicitly spelled out.
It may therefore be tempting to suggest that The Tragedy of Man is not really a Christian play. It is, in fact, rather critical of historical Christianity. However, it is really only the institutional Roman Catholic Church
that comes under direct attack; Madách was a devout Protestant, even having left out the Protestant Reformation
because he would have had to criticize it. His brief portrayal of the early church, and St. Peter specifically, is also completely positive. It is certain that Madách's contemporaries likewise saw the play an unquestionably Christian in character. János Arany
, who proofread Madách's poetry, was at first so disgusted by Lucifer's apparent blasphemous behaviour in the first scene that he refused to read further; however, once Madách begged him to read it to the end, he felt that the rest of the play's Christianity justified and explained what he had at first misinterpreted. Therefore, the interpretation of God as a capricious and arbitrary deity who wants to see his creations toil and suffer for no purpose does not seem to fit with Madách's probable intentions.
Literary influence, notably from Milton
's Paradise Lost
and Goethe's Faust
, cannot be overlooked. Both notably contributed to the representation of the Lucifer
, that takes characteristics from both Milton's Satan
and Goethe's Mephistopheles
. Likewise, existentialist themes reflecting on the apparent absurdity of existence are present throughout; Kierkegaard's
influence can also be inferred, especially in the ending, which affirms both the world's meaninglessness and the meaningfulness of striving for God.
, Czech
and Polish
theaters have staged adaptations. Graphic illustrations created for historic and contemporary printed editions, as well as stage sketches are of outstanding artistic value. A feature-length animated film was domestically produced in the 1970s. A non-animated version entitled Angyali üdvözlet (The Annunciation) was released in 1984, in which children play all the characters. There are also two operas based on the play: a two-act mystery opera ("Az ember tragédiája") by the Hungarian composer Györg Ránki and a very large scale work by the English composer Clive Strutt
("The Tragedy of Man").
Illustrations:
Adaptations:
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
written by the Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
author Imre Madách
Imre Madách
Imre Madách de Sztregova et de Kelecsény was a Hungarian writer, poet, lawyer and politician. His major work is The Tragedy of Man . It is a dramatic poem approximately 4000 lines long, which elaborates on ideas comparable to Goethe's Faust...
. It was first published in 1861. The play is considered to be one of the major works of Hungarian literature
Hungarian literature
Hungarian literature is literature written in the Hungarian language, predominantly by Hungarians.There is a limited amount of Old Hungarian literature dating to between the late 12th and the early 16th centuries...
and is one of the most often staged Hungarian plays today. Many lines have become common quotations in Hungary. The 1984 film The Annunciation
The Annunciation (film)
The Annunciation is a Hungarian film directed by András Jeles in 1984, based on The Tragedy of Man by Imre Madách.-Plot summary:...
(Angyali üdvözlet) was based on the play.
Synopsis
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
and Lucifer
Lucifer
Traditionally, Lucifer is a name that in English generally refers to the devil or Satan before being cast from Heaven, although this is not the original meaning of the term. In Latin, from which the English word is derived, Lucifer means "light-bearer"...
. As God creates the universe, Lucifer decries it as futile, stating that man will soon aspire to be god and demanding his own right of the world, because God was forced to create with him, "the ancient spirit of denial". God casts him out of Heaven, but grants his wish: the two cursed trees in Eden, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Immortality. Playing on Eve's vanity and Adam's pride, Lucifer tempts both into sin
Sin
In religion, sin is the violation or deviation of an eternal divine law or standard. The term sin may also refer to the state of having committed such a violation. Christians believe the moral code of conduct is decreed by God In religion, sin (also called peccancy) is the violation or deviation...
. After the Fall and expulsion from Eden
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
, Adam is still too proud to admit that he acted wrongly. Instead, he recounts his dreams of human progress and achievement; he feels that now, unencumbered by God's rules, he is ready to pursue his own glory. Lucifer puts Adam to sleep, and the two begin to travel through history. The first period they visit, ancient Egypt, is the realization of Adam's dream of immense human achievements. However, his joy is abruptly cut off when he finds that the pyramids are being built on the backs of slaves (as a later-executed slave points out, "millions for one"). Adam, in the role of a pharaoh, falls in love with Eve, a slave-girl; with renewed hope, he now tells Lucifer to take him to a world where all men live in equality, and Lucifer transports him to democratic Greece. In each period, Adam's previous dreams are exposed as futile, flawed, or unattainable, and Eve appears just in time to refresh Adam's spirit, and the cycle repeats.
Adam and Lucifer are introduced at the beginning of each scene, with Adam assuming various important historical roles and Lucifer usually acting as a servant or confidant. Eve enters only later in each scene, usually as a historical character. Adam is usually engrossed in his role at the beginning of each scene, and only becomes self-aware and aware of Lucifer as his guide near the end. Eve never breaks out of character. From the 19th century period on, Adam is no longer a leader, but retreats into an observer role, his political and historical enthusiasm having disappeared. Likewise, throughout the dream, Adam is older and older with each passing scene, representing not only his increasing wisdom but also the increasing burden of hopelessness.
The final dream scene is in an ice age in the far future. The Sun is dying, civilization has disappeared, and mankind has been reduced to a few scattered savages trying to eke out a living. It is never addressed whether this is truly the future Madách foresaw, or whether this is an elaborate illusion on the part of Lucifer to make Adam lose hope once and for all.
Awaking from his dream, Adam declares that the future is hopeless, and that the only course of action now open to him is to kill himself, thereby ending the human race before it begins and preventing all the meaningless suffering the future holds. As he is poised to throw himself from a cliff, Eve finds him, and happily announces that she is pregnant. Adam falls to his knees and declares that God has vanquished him. God rebukes Satan, and tells Adam that regardless of whether he sees hope or not, his task is only to "strive on, and have faith."
Sequence of scenes
The Tragedy of Man contains fifteen scenes, with ten historical periods represented. The scenes, their locations, and the identity of the main protagonists in each are as follows.SCENE 1 - In Heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
, immediately following the creation
Creation according to Genesis
The Genesis creation narrative describes the divine creation of the world including the first man and woman...
.
SCENE 2 - In the Garden of Eden
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
at the Beginning of Time.
SCENE 3 - Outside the Garden of Eden at the Beginning of Time.
SCENE 4 - Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
, c. 2650
27th century BC
The 27th century BC is a century which lasted from the year 2700 BC to 2601 BC.-Events:*2900 BC – 2334 BC: Mesopotamian wars of the Early Dynastic period.*2775 BC – 2650 BC: Second Dynasty wars in Egypt....
BC. Adam is a Pharaoh
Pharaoh
Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace...
, most likely Djoser
Djoser
Netjerikhet or Djoser is the best-known pharaoh of the Third dynasty of Egypt. He commissioned his official, Imhotep, to build the first of the pyramids, a step pyramid for him at Saqqara...
; Lucifer his Vizier; Eve is the wife of a slave
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
.
SCENE 5 - Athens
History of Athens
Athens is one of the oldest named cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for at least 7000 years. Situated in southern Europe, Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece in the first millennium BCE and its cultural achievements during the 5th century BCE laid the foundations...
, 489 BC. Adam is Miltiades the Younger
Miltiades the Younger
Miltiades the Younger or Miltiades IV was the son of one Cimon, a renowned Olympic chariot-racer. Miltiades considered himself a member of the Aeacidae, and is known mostly for his role in the Battle of Marathon; as well as his rather tragic downfall afterwards. His son Cimon was a major Athenian...
; Lucifer is a guard; Eve is Miltiades' wife.
SCENE 6 - Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
, c. AD 67. Adam is a wealthy Roman; Lucifer is his friend, Eve is a prostitute.
SCENE 7 - Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, AD 1096. Adam is Prince Tancred of Hauteville
Tancred, Prince of Galilee
Tancred was a Norman leader of the First Crusade who later became Prince of Galilee and regent of the Principality of Antioch...
; Lucifer is his squire; Eve is a noble maiden forced to become a nun
Nun
A nun is a woman who has taken vows committing her to live a spiritual life. She may be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live her life in prayer and contemplation in a monastery or convent...
.
SCENE 8 - Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, c. AD 1615. Adam is Johannes Kepler; Lucifer is his pupil; Eve is his wife, Borbala.
SCENE 9 - Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, AD 1793 (in a dream of Kepler). Adam is Georges Danton
Georges Danton
Georges Jacques Danton was leading figure in the early stages of the French Revolution and the first President of the Committee of Public Safety. Danton's role in the onset of the Revolution has been disputed; many historians describe him as "the chief force in theoverthrow of the monarchy and the...
; Lucifer is an executioner; Eve appears in two forms, first as an aristocrat
Aristocracy (class)
The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...
about to be executed, then immediately following as a bloodthirsty poor woman.
SCENE 10 - Prague, c. AD 1615. Adam is Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican...
; Lucifer is his pupil; Eve is his wife, Borbala.
SCENE 11 - London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, 19th century. Adam and Lucifer are nameless Englishmen; Eve is a young woman of the middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
.
SCENE 12 - A Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
/Technocratic Phalanstery
Phalanstère
A phalanstère was a type of building designed for an utopian community and developed in the early 19th century by Charles Fourier. Based on the idea of a phalanx, this self-contained community ideally consisted of 1500-1600 people working together for mutual benefit...
, in the future. Adam and Lucifer masquerade as traveling chemist
Chemist
A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
s; Eve is a worker who refuses to be separated from her child.
SCENE 13 - Space
Outer space
Outer space is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including the Earth. It is not completely empty, but consists of a hard vacuum containing a low density of particles: predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium, as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, and neutrinos....
. Adam and Lucifer are themselves, Eve does not appear in this scene.
SCENE 14 - An ice age
Ice age
An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...
in the distant future, at least AD 6000. Adam is a broken old man; Lucifer is himself; Eve is an Eskimo
Eskimo
Eskimos or Inuit–Yupik peoples are indigenous peoples who have traditionally inhabited the circumpolar region from eastern Siberia , across Alaska , Canada, and Greenland....
's wife.
SCENE 15 - Outside Eden at the Beginning of Time.
Interpretation
The play is invariably compared to MiltonJohn Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
's Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
, as the two deal with the same subject matter—the creation and fall of Man, and the devil's role in it. As in Paradise Lost, some critics maintain that the true protagonist of the Tragedy is Lucifer himself, being more active than Adam and God combined. Milton offers a more well-rounded Lucifer, however; he is motivated chiefly by a desire for power, and all his actions stem from that, rather than from any specifically malicious drive. Madách's version is significantly more one-sidedly villainous, seeking to destroy mankind simply to prove God's creation experiment a failure. This spite, combined with his charisma in dealing with Adam and Eve, make him a decidedly sinister character, more so than Milton's.
Some critics suggest that the unique portrayal of Eve, the first woman, was prompted by Madách's own unhappy marriage. Eve is both the vehicle of Adam's fall, offering him the apple, but through her appearance in each scene, is also usually the means by which Adam regains his hope for the future. In the end, she is the force which prevents his demise. The relationship between man and woman is indeed at the heart of the play, portrayed as being both deeply flawed on the one hand, yet still affirmed as the basic human relationship.
While these interpretations may be up for discussion, the role of Hegelian dialectic
Dialectic
Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...
in the sequencing of scenes is an established fact. Each scene, each historical period, is the realization of some ideal of Adam (thesis), which Lucifer then exposes as being deeply flawed (antithesis). Adam, on the verge of losing hope, comes into contact with Eve, and decides upon a new ideal (synthesis) which would cure the worst problems of his present reality. The cycle then repeats. Unlike Hegel's philosophy, however, humanity does not constantly build towards a glorious future, but is slowly sinking into worse and worse depravity.
This leads to the most famous and one of the most controversial elements of the play. Adam cannot understand what the purpose of his existence is if mankind's future is so bleak. The last line is spoken by God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
: "Mondottam, ember, küzdj és bízva bízzál!" ("I have told you, Man: strive on, and trust!") Depending on the interpretation, this can either be seen cynically as the words of a capricious deity, or else pointing to a "hope beyond all hope," that God has a purpose for all things which man may not necessarily comprehend. This is markedly different from Paradise Lost, where the Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
hope is explicitly spelled out.
It may therefore be tempting to suggest that The Tragedy of Man is not really a Christian play. It is, in fact, rather critical of historical Christianity. However, it is really only the institutional Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
that comes under direct attack; Madách was a devout Protestant, even having left out the Protestant Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
because he would have had to criticize it. His brief portrayal of the early church, and St. Peter specifically, is also completely positive. It is certain that Madách's contemporaries likewise saw the play an unquestionably Christian in character. János Arany
János Arany
János Arany , was a Hungarian journalist, writer, poet, and translator. He is often said to be the "Shakespeare of ballads" – he wrote more than 40 ballads which have been translated into over 50 languages, as well as the Toldi trilogy, to mention his most famous works.-Biography:He was born in...
, who proofread Madách's poetry, was at first so disgusted by Lucifer's apparent blasphemous behaviour in the first scene that he refused to read further; however, once Madách begged him to read it to the end, he felt that the rest of the play's Christianity justified and explained what he had at first misinterpreted. Therefore, the interpretation of God as a capricious and arbitrary deity who wants to see his creations toil and suffer for no purpose does not seem to fit with Madách's probable intentions.
Literary influence, notably from Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
's Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
and Goethe's Faust
Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
, cannot be overlooked. Both notably contributed to the representation of the Lucifer
Lucifer
Traditionally, Lucifer is a name that in English generally refers to the devil or Satan before being cast from Heaven, although this is not the original meaning of the term. In Latin, from which the English word is derived, Lucifer means "light-bearer"...
, that takes characteristics from both Milton's Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
and Goethe's Mephistopheles
Mephistopheles
Mephistopheles is a demon featured in German folklore...
. Likewise, existentialist themes reflecting on the apparent absurdity of existence are present throughout; Kierkegaard's
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author. He was a critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel...
influence can also be inferred, especially in the ending, which affirms both the world's meaninglessness and the meaningfulness of striving for God.
Stage adaptations
The poem is quite suitable for the stage, albeit a bit lengthy. GermanGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Czech
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
and Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
theaters have staged adaptations. Graphic illustrations created for historic and contemporary printed editions, as well as stage sketches are of outstanding artistic value. A feature-length animated film was domestically produced in the 1970s. A non-animated version entitled Angyali üdvözlet (The Annunciation) was released in 1984, in which children play all the characters. There are also two operas based on the play: a two-act mystery opera ("Az ember tragédiája") by the Hungarian composer Györg Ránki and a very large scale work by the English composer Clive Strutt
Clive Strutt
Clive Edward Hazzard Strutt is an English composer born 19th April 1942 in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. He was educated at Farnborough Grammar School....
("The Tragedy of Man").
External links
Translations:- The Tragedy of Man (translation by George Szirtes)
- The Tragedy of Man (translation by J. C. W. Horne)
- The Tragedy of Man (translation by Iain Macleod)
- Tragedy of the Man (translation by Ottó Tomschey)
Illustrations:
- Mihály Zichy's Illustrations of The Tragedy of Man
- Illustrations of the Tragedy by famous Hungarian artists
Adaptations: