Focus Spring 1994.tif KUNSTSPIEL: Artistic Paradigms at Play in Botho StrauE's Drama Der Park Jenifer S. Cushman H f one stroUs through Central Park in New York City or the Tierganen in Berlin , one may be stl1.lek by the strangeness of encountering remnants of the primeval forest within the steel and concrete labyrinth of late twentieth-century urban life. As the west­ ern world moved from rural to urban centers and those who inhab­ ited it began to grapple with industrialization and advancing capital­ ism, eifY planners were careful to include a bit of the old within the new, nature in the midst of co ncrete. In psychoanalytic terms, the city park is a signifier for the primeval depths w ithin our rational, twentieth-century psyches. As nature, but nature controlled by the hand of human beings, a lamed forest, so to speak, the park has been used to symbolize the realm of artistic production. Stefan George, for example, invited the skeptic to UKomm in den totgesagten Park und sc hau," in a comment on the state of art at the turn of the cen­ tury. In his drama De" Pllyk, Botho Strau6 also calls the attention of his contemporaries to the state of art today. Drawing from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Drell1l1, Strau6 uses the park image to create a world of illusion and confused perspective. In an absurd juxtaposi­ tion of the mythical wi th the eve ryday, lofty artistic ideals come "down to earth" as the Shakespearean cha racters Titania and Oberon "re­ veal" Ihel1lselve<; quite literally to the unsuspecting mortals; they "fl ash" the mundane citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany, in Straufl's words , th rough ''' ne frierende Erscheinu ng" (16). St rauG's humorous presentation is evidence of a playful attitude toward his drama. H e is, in effect, "playing" with the word "Spiel" itself. Katrin Kazubko notes of Strau6: "Das Theater des Botho StrauB verleugnet sich nicln als Spiel, sondern weist sich gezielt als Spiel aus" (4). Straufl's pIa)" his" Lustspiel, ~ is a tribut e to Shakespeare's skill of FoCl/s on Liter-atllr Vol. 1. No.1 (1994) I ULlj~ un L..lleranfr presenting the human condition in a humorous light. Shakcspe3re's A Mldmmmer .VlghlJ Dream was wrillen at the time th;at the English Enlightenment spread its glow of reason across noble Britannia; Shakespeue himself was a bit more skeptical of human rationality than his contemporaries. He set his play in ancient Athens, the cradle of western philosoph)', but his characters do not hathe in the glori­ ous light of human reason, rather they are lost in the wood 2t night, their minds muddled by the heat of midsummer and the moon, c2ught III a supernatural web of erotic confu<;ion and misunderstanding. StrauB is but one in a long tradition of German authors to honor Shakespeare, beginning with Gryphius, whose Herr Peter SqufflZ also draws from A Midmmmer Night's Dream, and continuing with Lessing and other Enlightenment rigurt"S. and ultimately Goethe, who con­ sidered Shakespeare a genius, a great .mist destined to create high art. Goethe's altitude LOward art and artists found a strong foothold in the Romantic movemenl, and its underlying assumptions about "high art" and artistic genius survi ved the modernist movements at the turn of the ct'mury and remain with us even today. In comraSl, StrauB responds to Shakespeare not -as a "great hard," but as: the marginal rigure he was, an actor and a playwright, a member of the theater crowd livmg a subversi\-e life-style and satirizing prevailing ideology. Like Shakespeare, StrauB questions dominant paradigms through hjs art. Using the park trope, he traces contemporary artistic viewpoints back to Romanticism and the Enlightenment and identifies inconsis­ tencies and problems of exclusivity inherent in Enlightenment, Ro­ mantic, and contemporary thought. Der Park rocust"S on the return of the Queen and King of the Fairies, Titania and Oberon, to the modern dOly Federal Republic or Germany. Their attempts to reinstitute a sense of ritual and meaning in liCe fail, as the married couple Wolf and Helma interact with Georg and Helen in an erotic entanglement replete with Shakespearean twists and miscommunication. The search (or a valid art form is central to each character's exploration of creativity and purpose, but eOich artist ulLimately faces the figure of death in the person ofume Man in Black." StrauB does not merely discount art in our time, rather he ex­ plores the possibility of new direction and justification for art in our century and the one to come. This visionary aspect of StrauB's artis· tic production has nOt genenlly been recognized by literary critics. Most have betn quick to label StrauB's work as typically "postmod· Artistic Paradigms in StrauB's Der Ptrrk ) ern." Hans·Thies Lehmann sees StrauB's "Lust am. Spiel" as.p~Slmod. ern and in connection with Til3nia and Oberon s aestl~euc rev~la­ tion" n~les: ·anhetische Erscheinungen [existieren] jenselLS (oder \'Iel­ leicht nur diesseits) von Moderne" (249). StrauB's wr~ling undoubtedly exhibits postmodern charaCleristics, but hiS work IS toO comp:ex to be aso;igned neatly to any pamcular cat~g~f')" T~e deslgna~lOn ptm modern" implies that StrauB negates t'Xlstlllg artistiC para~gms. cspc· cially those stemlTUng from the modernist movements, wlth~ut pr~ viding any hopeful alternatives. Yet, StrauB ~ub\'ens modernist. para.­ digms without succumbing to a postmodermsl refusal of meanmg or purpose. I In "Myth and ~Iodernity in Iftr Park," Russell Berman e oquent· Iy analyzes important modernist strains. i~ StrauB's .play, but he, tOO, sees them as ultimately £aJllI1g. -Descnblllg the failure of the thr«­ aesthetic options of modernity, [the play} rel~gates. them to a past, and this historicizing gesture locates the text Itself 111 a postmodern . . " (148) With his model Berman does not adequately position. . .,. I address all aesthetic options in the text, and the three he does exp o~e do not necessarily and unequivocally "faa" as such, nor can their respecLive fates even be: equated. .... .. Titania and Oberon represelll tv.'o of the three aeSl~etlC options identiried by Berman. He sees Oberon as the moder.l1I~t pro?onem of "high :ut," embodying the Romantic notion of artistiC gemus that was perpetuated in the "I'art pour l'art" attitude of Stefan Ge.orge:rnd other fin de si«le poets. Titania's relationship to Oberon IS one. of tension in Berman's model, as she represents the avant-garde a.rtISt. "The connict between the two," says Berman, "corresponds to that bet ween the autonomouS and avant-garde models of the wor~ of art, the fonner insisting on the separation of the work .(rom matenal pr.ac­ tice, the lauer motivated by an unremiuing passion for transf~rma.: tion, laking part in the quotidian ~cti\:'tie.s ~f human .expenence (t46). \'('hile Oberon seeks to maintaJl1 hiS dl~l~e se~aratlon fr~m the lowly I11oltals, Titania continu.ally seeks to !Olll .. With others III pas­ sionate union, to mix herself up 111 current affa~rs. Du soll~ ersc~ell1en konnen" Oberon admonishes her, Ifnicht dlch untermlschen (~O). When h'e asks her "Was fragst dll nach der Zeit?!" she re~ponds S1l11- ply, "lch mbcht sie wissell" (22),.an expression of her deme to locale and realize her specific role in history. . . Berman's model draws hea\·i1y from Critical Theory; hiS rehance roms 0" Llleratur all Adorno's model of the culture industry is evident in the third figure, Cyprian, the commercial artist particular to the twentieth cen+ tmy. Initially a servant to Oberon. Cyprian draws power from Oberon hUl uses his artistic skill ultimately to serve the marketplace_ Oheron, his lofty spirit "ppalled. reprimands Cyprian, saying of his .lftistic power: "du hast es unerlaubt bel1Ulzt und Il1UnZt Naturgeist um in Mas'ienware" (81). Cyprian responds: -kh dien dir gem, mein Herr, doch mcht nur dir. JCt7l bin ich auch ein Untertan der Menge" (83). This is the failure of Oberon: the inability for the Romantic no-­ lion of high art to survive in our century. Walter Benjamin, in his famou'i esS:ty, "Da'i Kun'itwerk 1m Zeitaher seiner technischen Re­ produzlerbarkell," nOtes: "die technische Reproduzierbarkeit des Kur151 werks eman7ipiert dieses zum ersten Mal in der Weltgeschichte von seinem parasitaren Dasein am Ritual" (144). John Berger in Ways o/Seemg sees the mystical aura of high art as being replaced by value of a different nature: "The bogus religiosity which now surrounds original works of an, and which is ultimately dependent upon their market value, has become the substitu te for what painting~ los t when the camera made them reproducible" (23). High art as exemplified by Oheron is II1deed dead in Ihe commercialized world, and in t he end of the play, Oberon relinquishes his divine powers and moves off­ stage through the circus curtain, a symbol which reappears through­ out lhe play, the significance of which I shall discuss later. In contrast to Oberon's subtle and symbolic death, the violent death of C)'pnan IS played out OllStage before the eyes of the audi+ ence. When Cyprian attempts to force the Kschwarzer Junge," a park maintenance worker, to his kn~ U1 a sexual power play, the "schwarz­ er Junge" belts him to death with a stone. I laving a1ready e'ilablished­ with the relationship between Cyprian and Oberon-lhe link between commercialism and the Romantic notion of high an, StrauB now extends 1m historica l per~pective and connects commercia lism to Enlightenment and colonialism. Much of the IIlherent problematic of Enlightenment thought was expressed in Horkheimer and Adorno's Dlafektlk dey AuJkliimng, in which the c1:tim was made: "Aufkli;irung ist totalitar" (12). \'{lhile the Enlighlenment ostensibly promised equality for huma nity, the hu­ man ity implied in this promise consisted exclusively of white Euro­ pean men. A lime o f expansion and colonialism coupled with the Artistic Paradigms in StrauB's Der Park rising capitalist drive for money and power, the Enlightenment found itS impetus in the uhunate goal of Europeans to swarm across the globe, to subjugate Olher races and cultures in the name of progress. Berman notes that the Indian boy in A Mulmmmer '.lIght 's Dream IS a reference to English colonialism; as the areas coloniz.ed br Germany were primarily in Africa, the Indian boy of Shakespeue 's play be­ comes the "schwarzer JUJlge" of SIT:tUWS. The death of the commer­ cial al,ist, Ihen, can be seen as a direct result of its roots in the Enlight­ enment and the deSire to subjugate, exploit, and capitalize. The insidious roots of Enlightenment thoughl are also portr.lyed in the marriage of Georg and I telen. I lelen's artistic endea"ors arc not explored by Berman, although her husband IS linked to Enlight­ enment thought. Their relationship begms as the play opens with a dramatic image of Helen, 2n acrobat, having fa.llen from a trapeze. A paradoxical union of "hjgh art "-the trapeze IS as high 2bove the masses :1.5 the "Sei!" of t he "Seiltanzer" in Nietzsche's Zaratbll5tra-and popu­ lar an-the circus is a popular arena accessible to all-Helen C2n be seen as an artistic paradigm that exhibits the state of an in the twen­ tieth century: fallen. Georg, as unaware of the disastrous state of dungs as he is of the pa radoxes Inherent in hIS Enlightenmenl outlook, beglils a {non)col1\-ersation with Ilelen, asking innocently: "Was macht die KunSt? Zufrieden?"' I Ielen responds 10 his casual question as if it were literall y meanl, and claims the superior al1istic attitude of a "called" artistic gelllus: "Kunst, ja? .. Kunst machen die, ja? Kunst ist was 0111- dert~s. Das ist kell1e Kunst, was die dOl mOlchen. Alles blutlge Lalen ~ (9). Georg encourages her 10 reclaim her old glory, but she insists, "Nein. Bin runtergefallen" (10). Ever the enhghtened SCIentific prober, Georg asks for more II1fonnation: "'\'ie?" and, more specirically, ·Vom Seil?" assuming, perhaps, the Nietzschean image of the artlsl suspended high abo"e the m:trketplace. ·Vom Trapez," insists Helen, reveailllt t hat an has, in fact, always been "in der Schwebe," never fastened securely at both ends. As an anist figure, Helen is caught in European constructs, espe­ cially those of racism and sexism. "Ich kann Nigger nicht ausstehen" (SO), she remarks, .:and Georg is shocked to diSCO\'er the insidiOUS relationship between Enlightenment thought and racism: "Du heir-nest eine schone Frau und es stellt sich heraus, es ist 'ne Frau vom Kuklux clan" (66), he says. The faClthat she is a "schone Frau," and IS named I uuo (In LHeromr I Icleil , alluding to the Greek ideal of beauty and ae~thetics. is also related to her ae<;:thetic elitism and her art. In coJIt rast to Cyprian, who can be a proJuctive artist in a patriarchal society, Helen is con­ filled to the female artist's role; her artistic talent lies in acrobatics the art of being seen. John Berger expresses it : "men aC! and wom~ appear. Men look at women. Women watch themsek es being looked at" (47). In refusing to ~rform, Ilelen consciously rejects these gen­ dered concepts; at the ~ame lime, she is "suspended" in the paradigm of female beaut)' and call no longer produce as an artist. Ilelen's relationsillp to death is quite different than that of Cypri lll 's. Rejected by Georg for her racist "iews, she reures to a quiet house in the suburbs, her only companion "der Mann in Schwarz" (1 11), the figure of death. As a woman, she can accept "death," that is, the death of the dominant discourse of Enlighten­ men~, and li"e together with "der Mann in Schwarz." Still c:aught wlthm the Enlightenment constructs of racism and womanly beauty, however, aud the Romantic belief in high art, she is destined to li ve only on the Olllskirts of the changing world, in a ·Vorort." The "Varort," incidentally, is an interesting counterpart to the park, as both imply a pseudo-su.spension of urban life and, symbolical ly, of history. . Yel, Helen does not rep resclil merely another failed artistic para­ digm. The promise inherent in her rejection of traditional female roles is carried funher in the "Madchen" character. Nameless, the "Madchen" in StrauB's play can be seen as the undefined new genera­ tioll of wo men at the cusp of the twentieth century. Unlike Cyprian's s~atue "Das Madchen mit den zerknicksten Knien" (32), the living girl on stage is not a Pygmalian object of male creation who destroys herself by continually bowing to patriarchy, When the "Junge" com­ plains "kannst du dich nicht all meinen Schritt gewohnen?" she re­ sponds, "Gewohn du dich doch an meinen" (13- 14). She recognizes that the mystification of art, beauty, and woman belongs to an ear­ lier age, as she gazes :n Titania transformed into a statue, and re­ marks, "Sie iSl nicht von heute .... Sie bnn nichts festhalten" (40). Nor does the girl accept male projection onto herself; when the "J unge," feeling gu ilt }' for his own sexual actions, accuses her of be­ illg "verhurt" (116) she refuses to accept the designation, saying "Verhurt. Das brauch ich mir von di r nicht sagen zu lassen" (117). While she rejects the myst ification of art and sex, the girl neve r- I Artistic Paradigms in StrauB's Der Pa rk 7 theless perceives a need for higher aspirations, a need that has appar­ ently been stined in today's world. COllluer to Enlightenment rea son, she asserts that "Die SchulterbHitter am Menschen sind eigentlich "erkummerte Flugel" (56). Through his "Madchen" character, StrauB identifies the need for art and ritual. The play "pleads for the urgency of art in a prosaic age" as Berman puts it (142). Yet, Berman claims, the three forms of modernist art fail miserably as they are carried to their post modern conclusions: - the aesthetics of classical aUlonomy are demonstrably ineffectuaJ, the interventionism of the avant-gArde has failed, and the mass marketing of the culture induStry succeeds onl y intriviaJizing aesthetic subStance" (147). Nevertheless, StrauB is nOt necessarily negating the validity of art; instead, he is searching for a viable mode of art istic expression in the late twentieth century, III a world, as Adorno put it, -after Ausch ~·itz." liden's inability to produce art, the failure of Oberon, and the death of Cyprian call all be seen as a comment on the Eurocentric model of art, stemming from the Enlightenment and RomantiCism. In our world of pOSt modernism, poslcolonialism, and post.Enllghten­ ment, the only hope fo r art must li e in an essential change in western thought; this altitude is in accord with the avant-garde mo,'emeill. While Berman sees Titania failing as miserably as Cyprian and Oberon, "her effon. to surpass aesthetic autonomy" resulting in "a regression to barbaric myth" (146), Titania is the only an.istic paradigm to sur­ "ive at the end of StrauB's drama, melancholy as her life may be. She is also the only artist ic figure to produce something last ing; her "Fabelsohn" is a result of her so-called "regression to barbaric myth," that is, her sexual uni on with a buB, and this "Fabelsohn" Literally takes center stage at the end of the play. Unfortunalely, this artistic production is problemauc in that It is the result of a barbaric encounter, is imbued with incestuous allu· sions and remains. ultimately, on ly a fable. Art as is cannot survi,'e; art as it can be cannOI yet be conceived. Yet, there is a gesture toward hope present III StrauB's play; a utopian anistic "ision is represemed by that which li es behind the circus curtain . One by one, StrauB's characters turn toward the cun.ain and enter the hidden real m. The fact that it is a circus curtain raises some mteresting speculation on the direction StrauB may be positing for the future of an. I lowe\'er much I lelen claims to be a high artist , lhe Romantic concept of high art iLSelf is an illusion, and she is, in the end, a circus performer whose rUClts on L.ueralltr an is accessible lO all: Histor.ically, circuses begall in Roman times, but . the modern yer.ao.n of Circuses and zoos began to appear with Enl~ghlenment expansion, when exotic animals-and people-were ~lIbJugated , caged, and brought back to be put on display before gap­ I~g crowds. The move toward lhi~ cll.nain suggestS that the justifica­ tIOn for ar: In t he next century lies In a rejection o f :t Euroceillric model and III a move to join with the cuhures that Europealllhought I~as labeled as oddities o f Olhe~e~s, to adopt a more global perspec­ live and accept other, new anlSl lC panldigms, as yet unrecognized and unexplored. Thf! Ohio Statf! Univf!rstty WORKS CITED Benjamin, ':Valter .. "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter sei ner technischen ~::roduz,erbarke,t.~ J!llJmmationen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977: IJ6- Ikrger, John. llVays o/~l1Ig. London: Penguin, 1972. Berman, Russell. "Myt h and Modernity in Der P. k" ',_J C I d c .. I 7be. ar. "\Xu'", II tIlt? an ntlca ~r)': A,,!, PalateS and tM Legacy althe Frankfurt School. Madi- son: U of Wisconsin p. 1988: IJ6-54. Horkhei~ler, Max & Theodor W. Adorno. Dla/ektikder Alifkltirtlllg. Frank­ fun : Fischer, 1944. Kazubko, Kalrin. Spud!ormen da Dramas be, BothoStral·n H'ld I . .01 1990. ~p. I ('S lelm. m , Leh~~nn,! lans-Thies. -Mythos und Postmoderne-Botho SIr:l.U!!, f Iciner Muller. Konrro1.:erun, alu lind IJelle: A kten deJ VII. Internaltollalen Gennamsten-Kongresscs. Ed. Alhre<:hl Schone. Tubingen· Niemeyer 1986. 249-55. . ,. StntuB, Botho. Del' Park. Mu nchen: I lanser, 1983. Zur Essayistik von Friedrich Nietzsche und Robert Musil Cary Henderson O nder Geschichte del" deulschen Essayistik spid ell Friedrich Nietzsche und Robert Musil eine emscheidende Rolle. Paul M.ichael Lutzeler, Franz. Mautner und Klaus Weissenberger sind nur eil1.ige von den vielen LitenllUrwissenschaftiern, die Nietzsche und Musil in iltre Untersuchungen zUln deulSChen Essay an wichliger Stelle einbeziehen. Diesen Untersuchungen ist die Andeutung gemeinsam, daB die essayis:tischen Arbeiten der beiden Autoren zwischen der zwei­ ten deuLSchen St:tatsgrundung und clem zweiten Weltkrieg das 'Gol­ dene Zeitalter' des deutschen Essays gleichsam einrahmen. Obwohl Nietzsche und Musil nicht nul" Essays, sondern auch an­ dere Prosastucke vero Henllicht haben, sind gerade in den letzleren besondel"S dort, wo Aspekte del" zeitgenossischen Gesellschaft unter­ sucht werden, deutliche Spuren i.hrer Essayistik 1.U finden. Den Ober­ g:mg in del" Essayistik beider Autoren von einer kunen , selbslindigen Prosaform 1.U umfangreicheren. anspruchsvollcren T exten nachzukon­ strui eren und 1.U kommentieren bildel das Thema der vorliegendt'n Arbeit. 1m erstcll T eil werden aIs Grundlage fur die Analyse ausgewahlte theorelische Ansatze zur literarische n Gauung Essay zitien und unter­ sucht. 1m zweiten und drinen Teil beschaflige ich mich speziell mil der Rolle dcs Essays in Nietzsches llnd Musils \X·erk . Die Zusammenfas­ sting stellt den Ve rsuch dar, die Essayistik beider AUloren als t),pischen Ausdruck ihrer Epoche z..u ,·erstehen. "Nicht durch Dcfi nil iollen, sondern ~ -so Gerhard f !aas-"dtlrch sorgfahige Beschreibung des Phanomen