1124939

Georg Bchner's "Danton's Death"
Author(s): Lee Baxandall

Source: The Tulane Drama Review, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Mar., 1962), pp. 136-149
Published by: The MIT Press
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Georg
Biichner's
Danton's Death
By
LEE BAXANDALL
Danton's Death is the first
play
of a
twenty-one year
old German
revolutionary
who died before he had lived another three
years.
Written
in
secrecy during
five weeks of
1835,
it
may
well be the most remarkable
first
play
ever
composed.
It breaks
through prevailing patterns
of dram-
aturgy
to a new
form,
creates the first
passive
hero in the
history
of
tragedy,
and
strikingly
foreshadows
surrealism,
expressionism
and nat-
uralism. Its
author,
a
youth
who short weeks
previously
had
barely
escaped
arrest for his own
revolutionary writings
and
organizational
activities,
proceeded
to
concentrate,
in this
study
of the decline of the
Fiench
Revolution
during
Danton's last
days,
on the
antinomy
of his
passionate
desire for social
change
and his calm
knowledge
that revolu-
tion could not succeed in
Germany
in his time. In this chronicle of the
Thermidor
days
of
France,
as Danton and the Girondist revolutionists
are maneuvered toward the
guillotine by
the
Robespierre
revolutionists,
we
perceive Georg
Biichner's expression
of the
hopelessness
of his own
situation. This is a
play
about
revolution,
but not a
revolutionary play.
It is a drama of
profound pessimism
which reflects a fatalistic view of
history.
It also
happens
to be one of the earliest artistic
expressions
of
what has come to be called Social Alienation.
Georg Biichner
has
frequently
been described as an
early
and ex-
treme
depictor
of the
increasing
alienation of man from God. It is said
of his characters that
they
live in a world isolated from
deity.
The
corollary
is that
they
are
equally
isolated from the
morality
and mean-
ing
which are
normally imparted by
a belief in
deity,
and that
only
the
horrible,
amoral fatalism of
history sweeps through
and orders
Biichner's plays.
In
short,
it is said that
Buichner
is a
Nihilist,
or that he
would be one if it were not for his sense of
tragedy.
The sense of
tragedy by
its
very
existence
implies
a set of values. This view has been
prominently
advanced
by
most
Biichner
scholars. It is a view which cuts
across the otherwise
forrhidable
ideological
fences of our time.
Among
those critics who share it are Hans
Mayer
and Benno von
Wiese,
the
one a Marxist atheist
working
in East
Germany,
the other a Christian
exponent
of the
tragic
condition of man who works in West
Germany.?
There can be little doubt that this view is correct. Danton and his
friends suffer
severely
from
religious
disillusion,
and articulate their
despair frequently
and
brilliantly. Perhaps
their alienation from God
136
LEE BAXANDALL 137
is best
exemplified
in the
Luxembourg
scene,
when Tom Paine delivers
an atheist's catechism to his fellow
prisoners.
It is also
powerfully
articulated in Danton's last-act
despair
before
leaving
the
Conciergerie;
and it
permeates
the Girondist faction's
opinions throughout
the
play.
Much less noticed has been the sense of alienation of man from man
which
equally permeates
the
play." Perhaps
because the characters'
alienation from God is much more discussed
by
them,
the
religious
alienation has attracted the inordinate share of attention.
Nevertheless,
I believe that social alienation in Danton's
Death,
the
nearly
total iso-
lation of the
individual,
is in fact much the more
important
form of
alienation in the
play.
This is because theatre is first of all the
play
of
relationships
between
individuals;
this is what constitutes the theatrical
action. The
relationship
of the characters to a
deity,
unless that
deity
is
brought
onto the
stage
as in the Greek
drama,
must
by
the nature of
dramaturgy
remain
secondary
to the interhuman
relationships.
This in
spite
of
anything
the characters
might say.
The
implications
of this for
the
interpretation
and structural
understanding
of
plays
has all too
frequently
been
overlooked,
particularly by
critics with little under-
standing
of the
physical-sensuous
basis of theatre. Thus it is that the
alienation of the characters from God in Danton's
Death,
while fre-
quently upon
the
tongues
of those
characters,
cannot have a
profound
effect
upon
the
play's
structure as
such;
and that is
why
the social aliena-
tion,
although
seldom
explicitly
stated,
permeates
and
shapes
the total
structure of the
play
and indeed
virtually every
line of
dialogue.
The
manner in which
Biichner's characters
speak
to each
other-or
let
us
say,
not to each other but to
themselves--provides
a classic
example
of the
unity
of "form" and
"content"
which is characteristic of
great
works of art.
Biichner
is one of the first writers to
develop
the intuition that there
are as
many ways
of
experiencing, expressing
and
formulating "reality"
as there are individuals. Even
today,
with the
emergence
of
playwrights
like Beckett and
Ionesco,
I believe that no one has better embodied
in drama the sense that all
experience
of
reality
is
idealogical experi-
ence.
[I
do not use
"ideology"
in the sense
frequently given
to the idea-
tional
activity
of man. I use the word as it is used
by
Karl Mannheim
and his school of
sociologists,
to indicate that man cannot
directly
ex-
perience reality.
One
abstracts,
simplifies,
schematizes one's
perception
of the "world
outside";
reality
is too
complex
and
confusing
and mani-
fold to be known
directly.
We sense and we
speak only through
the
clumsy
mediums of our
unique ideological
characters,
and there is no one
who can
pretend
to the
truth,
the whole
truth,
and
nothing
but the
138 The Tulane Drama Review
truth. A man realizes that he
is,
to
greater
or lesser
degree,
isolated from
all other men.
Biichner
embodies this intuition in his drama
nearly
a
hundred
years
before the
sociology
of
knowledge conceptualized it.]
One
begins
to see how he came to this
understanding,
so radical for his
time,
when one thinks of how he
virtually
alone
among
the revolutionists of
his time held an
economically-oriented
view of social
dynamics,
and
when one thinks of the conditions under which Danton's Death was
written. The
playwright's co-conspirators
were in
prison,
his house under
surveillance,
a ladder
propped against
the window for a
quick escape;
he
imminently expected
the warrant for his own
arrest;
he was under
the
necessity
of
concealing
the
play
even from his father in whose
study
he wrote. The
youth
was in severe
disharmony
with his milieu and
his time. He would be the last
person
to underestimate the aloneness
of a man and the
singularity
of man's
perception.
Man's essential
inability
to communicate is
boldly
set forth in the
first moments of the
play.
Our habitual inattention to the
beginnings
of dramatic
works-our propensity
to
regard
these as
"preliminaries,"
a
propensity
conditioned
by
the classical rules of dramatic structure
as we so
frequently experience them-may perhaps explain why
this
statement is so
frequently bypassed
or
vastly
underrated in its
impor-
tance. It is Danton's
next-to-opening speech. Julie,
Danton's
young
wife
who loves him
devotedly,
is concerned
by
Danton's
cynical
remarks
regarding
the
manipulative ways
of ladies who are
supposedly
in love.
She
says
to him: "Don't
you
believe in me?" Danton
replies:
How do I know? We know little of each other. We're
pachyderms;
we
stretch out our hands toward each
other,
but it's wasted
effort,
for the
coarse skins
only
rub
up against
each
other,-we
are
very
much alone.
Julie, apprehensive,
tries to
get
Danton to reassure her. Her effort
only
drives Danton into
asserting
that to know one
another,
it would be
necessary
to break
open
the skull
cavity
and to draw forth the
thoughts
one
by
one from their brain fissures.
Thereupon
the
unpleasant subject
is
dropped.
But it does not leave the mind of
Danton;
when the
prison-
ers sit in the
Conciergerie
in Act
III,
he
expresses
it
again:
We are all of us buried
alive;
like
Kings
we have been
deposited
within
three and fourfold
coffins,
under the
heavens,
inside our
houses, in our
coats and
shirts.--We
scratch for
fifty years upon
the coffin lid.
We
note, however,
that a moment later Danton
interrupts
his well-
turned,
epigrammatic expressions
of isolation and
despair
with a
cry
of
LEE BAXANDALL
139
almost
physical pain. "O Juliel
What if I
go
alonet What if
you
leave
me alone!" In his terror of
dying
without
Julie,
Danton
appears
to con-
tradict his
earlier,
brutal assertions to his wife that he feels
perfectly
isolated from her. He would be even more alone without her. Nor is
this an
unique
outburst;
there are several moments in Danton's Death
when the walls of isolation are tumbled and human
beings
communicate.
What is communicated? Not
viewpoints, certainly.
There is communi-
cated
only (but
such a vital
onlyl)
the
inarticulate,
shared sense of what
it feels like to be a human
being.
This
togetherness, seemingly
the
only
one
possible,
is
paradoxically
a
togetherness
in
sensing
the
apartness
and
ultimate
tragedy
of human existence. This is the real
meaning
of the
wordless embrace shared
by
the doomed Girondists as
they
hold each
other
tightly
one last time before
going
to the
executioner's
cart. This
is the
meaning
of Danton's
angry
rebuke to the
executioner,
who would
keep
Danton and
Htrault
from a final embrace before Hdrault
goes
under the
blade;
"Can
you,"
he
demands,
"can
you prevent
our heads
from
kissing
one another at the bottom of
your
basket?"
We note that this is
essentially
a nonverbalized
communication,
in-
articulate. Words can
only get
in the
way
of such
understanding.
Women
are its best
practitioners
and their men need women in order occa-
sionally
to
escape
their loneliness. There
is,
for
example,
the
seemingly
irrelevant
passage
in the
play
when Danton has left Camille and Lucile
alone for a moment:
CAMILLE. What do
you say,
Lucile?
LUCILE.
Nothing;
I'm so
happy watching you speak.
CAMILLE. But do
you
hear me?
LUCILE. 0
certainly!
CAMILLE.
Am I
right?
And do
you
know what I've said?
LUCILE. No,
to be sure I don't.
It is a
fleeting
moment
only,
it
scarcely
attains
expression,
it is not
even
equally
shared;
that is the nature of this communication. Lucile
and
Biichner's
other women understand such
things.
The
men, however,
with the
exception
of
Danton,
place
excessive
emphasis upon
the
power
to communicate with
words,
conceptually; they
underestimate their
isolation. Camille is able to
say
a moment
later,
as if to
explain
Danton's
irritation with him: it is a difference of
views,
nothing
elsel
As if the
difference of views were not
perhaps
the chief source of Danton's and
the
playwright's despair.
There
is, then,
upon infrequent
occasions the
momentary
and inar-
ticulate
sharing
of
emotion,
an emotion which has at its core the shared
pity
of
apartness. Beyond
this
emotion,
and
emphasized by
it,
there is
only
the
isolation,
the
ideological singularity;
such,
Biichner's
play
im-
putes,
is the normal state of existence and not
simply
a
periodical
oc-
currence.
In what
way
does
Biichner's
sense of social isolation
shape
the struc-
ture and
style
of Danton's Death? An excellent recent book on
Biich-
ner's
style by
Helmut
Krapp
takes us far toward this
understanding.
His
analysis
of the
language
in Danton's Death is
basically
this.
Biich-
ner
rejects
the
elevated,
pathetic expression
characteristic of Schiller's
Idealist classicism. He favors a concrete and flexible
style
which can
adequately express
his determinist realism. Elevated
speech
he
employs
chiefly
for the
purpose
of
parodying
Idealism. We find the
plebe
Simon
howling
at his wife in
phrases
which we would
expect
from Schiller's
noble heroes. Buchner cannot, however,
do without some form of lan-
guage
which will
express subjective feeling.
He transforms the
pathetic
into the
lyric,
in accord with his disbelief in communication and his
nihilist
leanings. Monologic lyricism:
this is the form which
Biichner
employs
to
express
emotion which is
purely subjective.
We note that
monologic lyricism
is
chiefly
the
linguistic strategy
of the Danton
circle,
and is
largely
restricted to their use. Those in
Robespierre's camp speak
largely
in rhetorical
language;
their
language
is
shaped
with the
purpose
of
convincing,
therefore these
figures
also do not as a rule attain to
genuine
dramatic
dialogue. They expect
no
answer;
they
seek
only
to
convince,
to find
acceptance
for their
opinion.
This does not constitute
dramatic
dialogue. Types
of this rhetoric are the
epigrammatic sharpen-
ing
of
many
sentences;
the
programmatic clarity
of
others;
the
polemics;
and the
speeches
of
logical
deduction. In none of these
categories
of
rhetoric does communication occur. Rhetoric entails achieved communi-
cation no more than does the
lyric monologue;
in this
respect,
it differs
from
lyric monologue only
in that it is
public
rather than
private
speech.
At several
points
Biichner
builds
great fugues
of rhetorical
sentences;
we
might
be deceived into
believing
that here is communica-
tion,
for these
speeches
share a common vein of
emotion; but
always
these rhetorical utterances are so
impersonal
that the
dialogue
could
easily
be shifted between characters or even
given
to a
single person.
Indeed,
what Herr
Krapp
has written of
Woyzeck
could as well be said
of Danton's Death: the
language, corresponding
to its
expressive
struc-
ture,
creates instead of
community only
isolation.
In this manner
Biichner's
sense of social alienation
shapes
the struc-
LEE BAXANDALL
141
ture of his
dialogue.
It has
perhaps
been incautious to attribute to
the
author an attitude which is articulated
only by
the character of
Danton.
We
have, however,
seen that this attitude informs the total
dialogic
structure;
how could the author hold a
dissenting
view? We have
suffi-
cient evidence in the
unity
of "form" and "content." Nor has
any
im-
portant
critic taken
any
other view. Marxists, who most
conceivably
might reject
the
thought
that
Biichner
sympathized
with the hedonist-
decadent
Danton,
do not
object."
There remains to see whether an
equal
correspondence
between "form" and "content" is manifested on
the
broader structural
level,
when
plot
and scenic construction are
ex-
amined.
It has been observed that Danton's Death is
very nearly
a
play
with-
out a
plot.
Karl
Victor
has called the action
nothing
but a
relentless
slide into the
abyss,
which is slowed at a few
points,
but which
nothing
can resist. Or as Hans
Mayer
has
expressed
it: Danton's Death is all fifth
act.
Danton,
hero of the
piece,
is
essentially
the same
figure, unchanged
from first scene to last. He
expresses
from time to time his
contempt
for the
Decembrists,
or he
says
without conviction that
"they
wouldn't
dare";
he defends his actions and his name before the
Convention;
but
indeed
throughout
there is no
qualitative change
in his fortunes or his
attitudes.
History
dooms him to the
guillotine.
He knows it and even
desires his death. It has been asserted that Danton's Death contains but
a
single
decision in its entire
length:
the mad Lucile's
decision,
at the
very
end of the
drama,
to
cry "Long
live the
Kingl"
and thus to die.'
The classical
drama,
of
course,
is structured around
decision,
a direct
contrast to this element of
Biichner's dramaturgy.
But to assert that
there is
only
one decision is to
go
too
far;
it is the result of
directing
at-
tention
solely
to the Dantonists. A considerable amount of decision-
making
occurs
among Robespierre's
Decembrists:
they
make the decision
that the Danton circle must
die,
and
they
must obtain a
concurring
decision in the Convention and
among
the
people.
Nevertheless,
the
assertion that Danton's Death lacks
operative
decisions is true. This be-
comes
clear
when Danton's Death is contrasted with the dramas of Ger-
man Idealism. In Schiller's
plays,
for
example,
the heroes'
freely-willed
decisions and their results when enmeshed in
necessity
are the crux of
the drama.
Tragedy
there
represents
the conflict of freedom and neces-
sity.
With
Bichner
freedom does not exist and
apparent
decisions are
only
knots in the
warp
and woof of historical
necessity.
The fatalism of
history
is all there is. With this
ideological development
there
appears
upon
the
stage
of world theatre:
Danton,
its first
passive
hero.
This novel
conception
was not fashioned out of a vacuum. It
may
be
explained,
at least in
part, by
the conscious antithesis which
Biichner
opposed
to German Idealism and
especially
to Schiller. It was
always
Schiller whom
Biichner
had in mind when he vented his
contempt
upon
Idealism,
"that most scornful
contempt
of human nature." It
was
in contrast to
Schiller
that
Biichner
defined his aesthetic
principles.
This
antagonism
and its
implications
for
Biichner's style
have
been
skillfully analyzed by
Hans
Mayer."
When
Biichner
took
up
the
battle
against
"Idealism,"
Mayer
makes
clear,
he meant that he disliked
poli-
tical liberalism and the
politics
of
education,
ethical-political
demands
and the tactics of
persuasion;
also that he disliked
everything
which
was
implied
in the realm of aesthetics
by
these tenets. Man is defined
by
the circumstances of his material
being,
into which he is born and which
he cannot
alter;
where is there room for ethical
postulates? Biichner
does not
reject
the works of the "Idealist" dramatists because
they praise
ideals,
but because these ideals are unrealizable. The
stage
as a moral
institution must be
rejected
as
falsely
conceived and
impracticable.
It is
thus his
concept
of absolute fatalism in
history
and in character which
determines
Biichner's
demand that art must
depict reality
as it is.
Biichner's
philosophy
of
history shapes
and informs
every
element of
his
dramaturgy,
from the realism of the
dialogue
to the
passivity
of his
heroes.
Something
more must be said at this
point concerning
the
meaning
of Danton's
Death,
if we are to
agree ultimately
whether "form" and
"content"
in this
play comprise
an indissoluble
unity.
We must come to
some
agreement
on what this
"content"
may
be. I do not
propose
to
work out
everything
which is
problematical;
indeed,
I do not think
that it can be done. The book has not been
written,
I
think,
which does
equal justice
to what we
may,
at the risk of
simplification,
call the
existential
aspects
on the one
hand,
and to the revolutionist and social
aspects
on the other hand.
Although
the authors of Marxist
volumes,
Lukacs and
Mayer, acknowledge freely
that the
play
does not
prosyletize
revolution,
they
have not
satisfactorily
come to
grips
with Danton's
elemental
anguish.
Lukacs
equivocates,
when he treats Danton as an
historical
personage
rather than as a fictional character and on this
basis condemns him for
being
limited
by
eighteenth-century
under-
standing. Mayer,
who avoids Lukacs' error and does treat Danton's
anguish
within the context of the
play,
concludes however that the an-
guish
is
only
Danton's
farsighted
historical
understanding
that the revo-
lution must fail.
(This,
let us
note, contradicts Lukacs'
judgment
that
Danton understood too
little.)
It is one
thing
to
understand
anguish
within an historical
context;
it is
quite
another
thing
to believe that
LEE BAXANDALL 143
man within his historical context can eliminate
anguish.
It is
unaccept-
able that all Danton's
overwhelming despair
and
resulting
hedonism, his
tedium and his
longing
for an
escape
from
repetition
and
sameness,
would be cured if the revolution had succeeded. When we turn to the
camp
of Western
critics, however,
to those who
may
be
loosely
termed
the
exponents
of man's
tragic
condition,
we see that these critics in-
variably
have lost
sight
of the
importance
of
Robespierre's
faction.
They
prefer
to dwell
excessively upon
"man's
tragic
condition" as the
play
seems to manifest it."
Predisposed
to find
only
the existential condition
of man in the
play, they usually
assert that
by
the time
Biichner
wrote
Danton's Death he was
totally
disillusioned with the
efficacy
of revolu-
tion. In
asserting
this
they
overlooked such evidence as
Biichner's
letter
addressed to his
brother,
written five months
after completing
Danton's
Death,
in which he
sharply
criticizes the German revolutionaries for
their
inability
to
act,
and ends with the
hopeful
and committed: "Let us
hope
for better times!" There is sufficient evidence within the
play
to
refute the
one-sidedness
of
purely
existential views. Lacroix' confes-
sion,
for
example,
that the Paris mobs have much truth on their side
when
they
tell the
bourgeois
Girondists that their hedonism makes ras-
cals of them. Most
important
to this end are Danton's
thoughts
as the
executioner's cart
approaches
to
transport
him and his friends to death.
He reflects that the
revolutionary
flood
may
wash
up
their
corpses
where
it
will; nevertheless,
future
generations
can still
employ
their fossilized
bones to smash in the skulls of
kings
to come. This
reflection,
personally
pessimistic
as it
is,
mirrors a
continuing
faith in
the
uses of
revolution,
a faith no Western scholar has
been
willing
or able to discover.
In
my
own
opinion,
both
ideological camps
have found out a
good
deal of the truth and have also shown a
good
deal of blindness
by push-
ing
their basic
point
of view too hard. I do not think that
Biichner
committed himself so
completely
and
singly
to either
viewpoint
which
his admirers would
assign
him. He himself was
very likely
uncertain
how far
revolution,
under the
sign
of a more
propitious necessity, might
carry
mankind.
"My opinion
is
this," he once
wrote,
"if
anything
is
going
to
help
in our
time,
then it is force." There is no
proof
that he
ever
rejected
this
hope
for
improvement.
The
play's
"ultimate" state-
ment remains
ambiguous.
The scholars and critics I have
cited,
far from
having provided
a definitive
reading
of Danton's
Death,
seem to
prove
only
that the
sociology
of
knowledge
is correct: all
knowledge
is ideo-
logical.
We
may
therefore
grant
Biichner
his ultimate
ambiguity.
It is an
ambiguity
similar,
not
surprisingly,
to that contained in the
fleeting
moments of non-verbal
understanding
which we found between his
characters. And the main lines of Danton's Death remain
powerfully
articulated.
* * *
As Karl ViEtor has written: the more
dependent
and conditioned
that man is believed to
be,
the more circumstantial must be his
repre-
sentation in drama. Yes; but the
impulse
to render Nature
exactly
as
it is has in
practice
taken a
variety
of forms. This
diversity
of "exact
portrayals
of
reality"
has in turn reaffirmed the
uniqueness
of the work
of
art;
and it has
reaffirmed,
even more
basically,
the
uniqueness
of
each artist's schematization of
reality,
the role of
Weltanschauung
in
even the most
"photographic" representation.
For
Biichner
to demand
the exact
portrayal
of
reality
is not
enough;
we must ask
what,
for
Biichner,
was
reality?
This is not
actually
a
question
of what he
saw,
but of how he saw.
And it is obvious
that,
despite
a belief in historical determinism
which he shares with the naturalist
playwrights,
Biichner's
work is as
distinct from Zola's as it is from Schiller's.
Biichner
gives
us
reality
in brief
fragmentary
scenes of the broadest
conceivable contrast and
diversity.
Is there
stylistic consistency
and
pur-
pose
in this
practice?
Or is it due to the haste and tension under which
Biichner wrote,
as Gutzkow
suggested?
Is this
fragmentary quality
due
perhaps
to the
playwright's "rudimentary"
sense for architectonic form
and the
development
of dramatic scenes-as Ronald Peacock has
sug-
gested?
I
submit,
to the
contrary,
that
Biichner
was
following
an un-
precedented
but
perfectly
coherent and consistent aesthetic when he
wrote Danton's Death.
Karl Vietor starts us on our
way
to an
understanding
of this
style.
He finds that
Biichner's
scene divisions
grow organically
out of his ma-
terial
according
to what he calls the
principle
of
"antipathetic
con-
trasts." The
strongest possible
contrasts are
brought together:
Danton's
ecstatic scene in the arms of Marion is followed
by
the
swapping
of
obscenities with the
prostitutes
who intrude
upon
them;
the
harrowing
night
scene in Danton's house is followed
by
the
grotesque
entrance
of the Citizen-Soldiers.
Beyond
this
insight Vietor
does not
go.
It is a
sound
start,
but we can
go
further. We can see how far
Biichner
goes
with the
principle
of
antipathetic
contrast-which I will call the
prin-
ciple
of
montage,
a better term in
my opinion
for the effect which
Viitor
describes. How far does
Biichner
go
with
montage
and its con-
comitant,
the
fracturing
of scenic
representation? Again
we can draw
LEE BAXANDALL
145
upon
the
insights
of Helmutt
Krapp,
who has carried the
investigation
of
Biichner's
style very
far indeed.
Krapp intensively analyzes
the dia-
logue
and the scenic
construction.
He concludes that contrast in Dan-
ton's Death becomes the formal
principle,
to the
astonishing degree
that
the
playwright images
the fracture, he constructs contrasts. Carried to
these
ends,
almost
unparalleled
in
literature,
it becomes
impossible
to
sustain the claim of an inner
linguistic unity. Unity
is to be discovered
only
behind the
words,
in the
figures
themselves,
which
possess
an emo-
tional stream not
expressed
so much in the
phrases
and
sentences--un-
like the
characters
of German classicism who
explain
themselves ex-
plicitly-as through
and between their
fragmented particles
of
speech.
Danton,
for
example,
when asked
by
his
compatriots
to
represent
them
at the
Convention,
expresses
his
response
not in a coherent
sentence,
but
by conjugating
a
verbl
and his
response
is
yet
more
lively
than
any
explicitly
worded answer would be.
Liveliness,
the
appearance
of real-
ity,
is
Biichner's highest goal. Biichner
needs a
language
and a scenic
arrangement
of the
greatest flexibility.
He conceives of
representing
real-
ity
not in well-turned
propositions
which make more or less
pretension
to the cadences of
genuine speech;
he would
represent
the moment-to-
moment
spontaneity
of
turbulent,
complex personalities.
Camille
says
in the first scene that the form of state must be a
transparent garment
through
which
may
be seen the
body
of the
people: every swelling
of
a
vein,
every tensing
of
muscles,
every
flick of an
eye;
and we
may
be
certain that
Biichner
intends this same adherence to the
dynamic
minutiae of
psychological reality
for his form of art. And he succeeds:
one
agrees
with Herr
Krapp
that the
momentary
and unreflected is
brought
into drama. The
epigrammatic
form of
speech,
the lack of con-
sidered
exposition,
the
beginning
at the
high point
of scenic conversa-
tion,
the
discontinuity
of
conversation,
the
expressive
rather than de-
clarative character of
speech,
the
eruptive explosion
of
words--all
these
speak
for the substitution of
expression
in the
place
of classicism's re-
flectivity
and
pondered finality. Bichner's
characters do not know what
they
will
say
next,
their words are
scarcely
ordered within a causal
pro-
cession;
they
are
spontaneous,
of the
moment,
new in
every
word and
every
scene.
This lack of monolithic
unity
in
Biichner's language
is
among
other
things
the formal
expression
of the
playwright's
psychology
of character.
Biichner's figures
have
complex
and
contradictory psyches; they
need
a suitable
speech.
As Camille is made to
say
of human
beings:
we are
all rascals and
angels,
blockheads and
geniuses,
and that all at the same
time. Let us not strike such
virtuous,
such clever and heroic and
gifted
poses,
for we know one another! Such
creatures,
portrayed
with
frank-
ness,
require
this new attainment in
variety
and
flexibility
of
language.
Herr
Krapp goes
on to make a
very
bold assertion. Danton's Death
has not the dramatic form as Aristotle had defined it and more recent
Classicists
practiced
it;
this fact has been rather
generally recognized.
But neither is the
play essentially epic,
Herr
Krapp argues.
The series
of
images
in the
play
does not have the essential character of a narra-
tive,
a course of
action,
the
spinning
out of a
tale,
which would mark it
as
epic
in form.
No;
Danton's Death is
essentially lyric.7
This
proposition
is not as absurd as on first
thought
it
may
seem. One
can
hardly imagine
a
play
in which more
occurs,
nor one in which there
is less
"moving
forward,"
less "decisive action." From first to last Danton
awaits the executioner's cart. Yet in the course of the
play
a world is
built,
a revolution is demonstrated in its decline. All this
by
the means
of word
particles, gestures, phrases,
sentences, outcries;
brief
scenes,
all
of them
self-contained, self-sufficient;
nearly
all
susceptible
of
being
changed
to another
position
within the
play,
from first act to last act
or the
reverse,
and indeed
susceptible
of total omission without notice-
able loss to the
play. Through montage
a
momentary
cross section of
revolution is constructed. As Herr
Krapp
has written: for a moment the
world
appears dazzlingly
lit-and thus it is
captured, circumstantially,
statuesque,
substantial,
as if without tradition and without a future. The
characters do not
oppose
each
other,
they
are too
isolated;
their conflict
is with their
fate,
the conflict of
lonely
man and his world. Even Danton
and
Robespierre oppose
each other not because
they
want
something
different,
but because
they
are
something
different. Men
destroy
each
other without
comprehending
each other. This is not the
tragedy
of Ni-
hilism,
but that of
lonely self-asserting
man. There is little of movement
through
time;
the
catastrophe
is imminent in
every
sentence Danton
speaks.
The scenes are not ordered in a linear and
"perspective"
fash-
ion,
but are
scattered,
spread
around;
between the individual scene and
the central theme there rules a
greater affinity
than between the indi-
vidual scene and that which
precedes
or follows it. What
Biichner
sacrifices in
causality
and linear
development
he
gains
in
essentially lyric
quality.
His
break-up
of form results in new
tension-energies:
haste,
im-
patience,
a nervous and
thorough-going rhythm.
Brilliant as is Herr
Krapp's analysis,
I believe that he
ultimately
comes
to the
wrong
conclusion. We can
grant
him the virtual self-containment
of most of the scenes and
speeches;
and the
statuesque
manner in which
Biichner
unveils one facet of his
portrayal
for a brief
glance, only
to
conceal it
again
before
anything
decisive can
happen
and to whisk us
LEE BAXANDALL
147
off to
another,
contrasting image
of the revolution. It is this
accumula-
tion of
side-by-side, essentially
a-causal moments which makes the
effect.
And
yet,
there is a sustained action
being
carried out
by
the
Decembrists;
and more
important,
Danton is
undergoing
an
experience
if
nothing
else.
Perhaps
this
experience
is of considerable
import?
There is a
passage
in
Biichner's
one short
story,
Lenz,
which
casts
much
light
on his
stylistic practice.
The
passage opens
with
Biichner's
familiar strictures
against
Idealist drama and in favor of
imitating
Nature as it
is, unfalsified. Then comes a
passage
almost
universally
overlooked. Lenz tells how he went
up
into the
valley
and there
came
upon
two
girls
seated on a stone. The
image
of the two was lovelier
than
any
German
painter
ever
captured
on
canvas;
Lenz would have
loved to
sculpt
them in stone. Then the two
girls
stood
up;
the
image
was
destroyed;
at
once, however,
the
girls
formed another
image, fully
as beautiful as the
firstl
"The loveliest
images,
the most
swelling
sounds
group
themselves and dissolve. One
thing
remains: an infinite
beauty
which
changes
from one form into
another,
eternally expands,
alters."
Only
if one loves mankind can one
penetrate
into this
singular
essence.
Herr
Krapp (only
he has noted the
importance
of this
passage)
cor-
rectly
sees here
Bichner's
fundamental
principle
of
depicting
the iso-
lated
image,
the
scene,
the
gesture,
the
statuesque,
the
momentary
situa-
tion,
which is made to
pass
and become the next
image
without concern
for a smooth transition. Herr
Krapp
is
mistaken,
I
believe,
in his ex-
cessive
emphasis upon
the
discontinuity
between the one observed
image
and the next. And here is the heart of his error. He
describes the transi-
tion as if there were
only
the
images
which
played any
role in the situa-
tion,
whereas there is the
observer,
the
spectator
as well. One
might argue
that Herr
Krapp
takes the
spectator
for
granted. Yes,
of
course,
that is
precisely
Herr
Krapp's
error,
that he takes the
spectator's
role for
granted;
the
spectator's
role is
anything
but obvious in this and similar
plays.
For the role of the observer is not
passive;
the observer is
kept
busy making comparisons,
contrasts,
syntheses.
The observer is active.
The observer
provides
the inner
continuity
between the scenes which
the
images
themselves lack. And if the situation within the
conglomera-
tion of
images
remains
relatively unchanged
and
unchanging,
it is en-
tirely
different for the observer who must be
constantly judging,
order-
ing, relating
the
images
which tumble
passively
one after the other
before his
busy eyes.
No one formulates for him in
measured declara-
tions the essential values of this
drama,
as had been the case in
German
classicism. The observer must make his own
decisions. No
easy
task-
as the
continuing controversy
over the
play's meaning
provesl
What in fact
happens
here,
in this
seemingly passive, fragmented,
lyrical
and
monologic play,
is that the
spectator
has become the
genuine
"hero." Situated
superior
to the events which
transpire
on the
stage,
the
spectator
reflects and makes observations and formulations of what he
sees,
and he draws conclusions which transcend the
knowledge
of
any
of
the characters.
Deprived
of classicism's
easy-to-follow
causal
plot
line,
and
deprived
of classicism's
summarizing
declarations,
the
spectator
as-
sumes the burden of
making
decisions,
a burden
formerly
reserved to
the
dramatic
hero. The
spectator
becomes the
epic
"Ich."'
But if Danton's Death is not
simply lyric
theatre,
if it still has these
strong
similarities to that narrative form of
"open"
theatre which is
most
properly
called
epic
theatre,
it will be useful to remind ourselves
of the distinctions
by
means of a few
examples. Probably Biichner's
lyricism
finds its closest modern
counterpart
in Beckett's
Waiting for
Godot. Beckett has
expressed
his admiration for the author of Danton's
Death;
it is not
surprising
to find that both
plays
are
shaped by
a sense
of historical fatalism. Most of the theoretical observations made about
Danton's Death are
applicable
to
Waiting for
Godot. In
contrast,
other
"open,"
non-Aristotelian
plays
such as Wedekind's
Friihlings
Erwachen,
the
great majority
of
expressionist pieces,
and the later Brecht
plays
do
not lack narrative
purposefulness; they
are
dearly epic.
Examined for
meaning,
we find these
plays relatively optimistic
in their
philosophy
of
history;
their authors
reject
fatalism,
they
believe in some
"way
out."
Again
there is the correlation of "form" and
"content."
I want to
point
out two
examples
in
Biichner's
work of the
active,
synthesizing, constructing, deciding
attitude which the author believed
must be taken
up
in the
pursuit
of
beauty.
Neither
example
has
pre-
viously
been
emphasized by
the
Biichner
critics. The first is the declara-
tion Lacroix makes
regarding
Danton's
whereabouts,
early
in Act One.
Danton has
gone
to the
brothel,
the
Palais-Royal, says
Lacroix. He is
looking
for the Medicean Venus
piecemeal among
all the
grisettes;
he
says
he is
making
a mosaic.
It's
a shame that nature has scattered
beauty
just
as Medea did with her
brother,
and sunk it
away
in
fragments
in
the
body.
In the
light
of what
already
has been
ascertained,
one
readily
sees in this
passionate
Danton,
who courses the whorehouses of revolu-
tionary
Paris
looking
for the individual limbs which will
comprise
his
Beauty
entire in a
single
mosaic,
the
image
of
Biichner going
about
his observation of Nature. Indeed the Medicean Venus is the finest
image
of what constitutes a
Biichner
play;
and the
synthesizing
Danton
is not a bad
image
of
the
observer of the
play.
My
final
example
is
perhaps negligible,
but I think that as an
image
LEE BAXANDALL 149
it offers a concise
example
of
Biichner's
art. It confirms the
picture
we
have drawn of an active
synthesizing
vision which
comprehends
the
montage
of
passive images.
This
example
comes from Lenz. It is the
one-sentence
vignette
which describes how Lenz
passed through
the
village
of Waldbach: "The
lights
shone
through
the
windows,
and he
looked within in
going past:
children at
tables,
old
women,
girls,
all
with
placid, quiet
faces."
If
Biichner
ever wrote a sentence
epitomizing
his
artistry,
I believe
that this would be it.
NOTES
1 Hans
Mayer, Georg Biichner
und seine Zeit
(Berlin, 1960), p.
340;
Benno
von
Wiese,
Die deutsche
Trag6die
von
Lessing
bis Hebbel
(Hamburg, 1948),
II,
p.
325.
2Walter
H611erer,
in a brilliant and
suggestive essay published
in Das
deutsche
Drama,
edited
by
Benno von Wiese
(Diisseldorf,
1958),
II,
pp.
65-88,
emphasizes
this element. But H611erer in
general
treats Danton's loneliness as
an
integral part
of
scepticism
and
disillusionment,
as an attitude
emerging
periodically
whenever man's radical
hopes
are
disappointed. My emphasis
is
different,
as will be seen. Karl
Victor,
Georg
Biichner.
Politik,
Dichtung,
Wissenshaft.
(Bern, 1949), p.
103,
notes this element in
passing
but fails to
develop
its contextual and formal
importance
where it is not
explicit-which
is almost like not
noticing
it at all. Helmut
Krapp,
Der
Dialog
bei
Georg
Bilchner
(Darmstadt, 1958),
offers a
splendid stylistic analysis upon
which the
present
writer has
freely
drawn.
3
Mayer, pp. 192-194; Georg
Lukacs,
Deutsche Realisten des 19.
Jahrhunderts
(Bern, 1951), p.
76. Both make the demurrer that while
Biichner sympathized
morally
with the
eighteenth-century Epicurean
materialist and individualist
Danton,
yet
Biichner politically
favored
Robespierre's position.
'Krapp, pp.
120-121.
1
Mayer, chapter
on "Kunst und
Natur,"
p.
275
ff.
6
For
examples,
see
Victor,
p.
105;
von
Wiese, II,
p.
310; Ronald
Peacock,
The Poet in the Theatre
(New
York,
1960), p.
186;
Krapp, p.
136.
7
Krapp, pp.
144-145.
8
In
a
general
manner this notion has been
put
forward
by
Walter
Benjamin,
in "Was ist das
epische
Theater?",
Akzente
(2/1954).

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Georg Bchner's "Danton's Death"

Author(s): Lee Baxandall

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