Marat/Sade E-Book

Peter Weiß

• Herausgeber: Marion Boyars
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

No play by a German since Brecht has enjoyed the success of Marat/Sade, and its author Peter Weiss has emerged as one of the most remarkable of the post-war generation of German writers. This English version by Geoffrey Skelton and Adrian Mitchell was the text used in Peter Book's brilliant production for the Royal Shakespeare Company, which was undoubtedly the theatrical event of 1964 in London. It has also been produced all over the world by the most outstanding directors - Konrad Swinarski in Berlin, Ingmar Bergman in Stockholm, Roger Planchon in Paris, and many more. The RSC's work in establishing Antonin Artuad's conception of 'Theatre of Cruelty' found its climactic expression in this powerful and savage play, in which the discipline of verse heightens the emotional impact. The combination of sheer entertainment, Sadean philosophy and the range of theatrical shock techniques leaves the audience limp but excited at the end of the evening. The published text allows the reader to see how skilfully the author has dramatised the paradox of Sade, a black saint whose hjumanity must be set against the horrors of his imagination.

Leseprobe

THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE

By the same author

PLAYS

The Investigation

Discourse on Vietnam

NOVELS

Leavetaking and Vanishing Point

The Conversation of the Three Walkers and

The Shadow of the Coachman’s Body

POLITICAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES

Notes on the Cultural Life of the Democratic

Republic of Vietnam

MARAT/SADE

PETER WEISS

The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade

English version by Geoffrey Skelton

Verse Adaptation by Adrian Mitchell

Introduction by Peter Brook

With a Students’ Introduction by Gill Lamden

MARION BOYARS

LONDON • NEW YORK

First published in the United Kingdom in 1965.

Reprinted in1982 by Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd.

Reprinted 1986, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1995, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2017

Marion Boyars Publishers

26 Parke Road

London SW13 9NG

www.marionboyars.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2020

All rights reserved :

© 1965 Marion Boyars Publishers for the translation by Geoffrey Skelton and Adrian Mitchell

© 1964 Surhkamp Verlag All rights reserved by and controlled through Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin

The moral rights of the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

10 digit ISBN: 0-7145-2001-2

13 digit ISBN: 978-0-7145-2001-8

CONTENTS

Marat/Sade: A Students’ Introduction by Gill Lamden

Introduction by Peter Brook

Cast List for the First English Performance, August 20, 1964

The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the direction of the Marquis de Sade

Literal Verse Translation of the Original Text

Author’s Note on the Historical Background to the Play

Music Composed Specially for the First British Production

MARAT/SADE

A Students’ Introduction by Gill Lamden

The World of the Play

Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade is a play within a play. It is gory and violent and visually shocking while presenting a complex and challenging set of ideas. The year is 1808. The action takes place in a French asylum ‘for the socially impossible’, according to Peter Weiss in his notes on the historical background to the play (see page 112), ‘the moral rejects of civilised society’. An inmate, the Marquis de Sade, has written a play to be performed by himself and the other inmates before an invited audience that includes Coulmier, director of Charenton, together with his wife and daughter. Sade’s play is set in 1793, fifteen years earlier, during the bloodiest part of the French Revolution: the Terror. The subject is the assassination of revolutionary thinker and leader Jean-Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday.

Historical Context

The French Revolution was fuelled by a new ideology of freedom and independence developing against a stranglehold of church and monarchy. Its first success was the storming of the Bastille in Paris on July 14, 1789. As the French people rose up against their former rulers, an ordered system of trials and executions was established. Between 1793 and 1794, however, with economic pressure and political turmoil in Paris growing, factions developed between opposing revolutionary groups, including the Girondists, over whom the more radical Jacobins triumphed. The outcome was an increase in executions of anyone thought to be a counter-revolutionary. During the Terror thousands of alleged counter-revolutionaries and aristocrats were executed. In 1794 the Jacobins were overthrown by a more moderate Directory — after which many radical and egalitarian policies were introduced, both before and after Napoleon’s appointment as First Consul in 1799 and de facto ruler of the first French Republic. By the time of the play, 1808, France had taken great steps towards becoming a more stable and modern society. As Coulmier boasts during the course of Sade’s re-enactment of Marat’s death: ‘We’re citizens of a new enlightened age’ (page 51). Through the action and arguments of Marat/Sade, Peter Weiss reveals how this assurance can be emptier than it seems.

Sade and Marat

Throughout the play Peter Weiss pits the desires of the individual against the collective needs of the revolution as a means of obtaining personal freedom. To establish this conflict, Weiss presents the opposing opinions of two key eighteenth-century figures: the Marquis de Sade, known for his depravity, and Jean-Paul Marat, who advocated the violent overthrow of an unjust society. Although the play’s narrative advances chronologically through a series of individually titled episodes or scenes, these scenes are punctuated by discussions between Sade and Marat arguing the strength of their respective philosophies. Since Marat is also a character appearing in Sade’s play, this means that they are arguing across the historical divide between 1793, the year in which Sade’s play takes place, and 1808, the setting of Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade.

The two characters have certain things in common. Sade observes that both men ‘advocated force’ (page 107). Sade also identifies with Marat as an extremist:

For you just as for me

only the most extreme actions matter

(page 35)

However, the outcomes are different. Sade is an individualist. ‘I believe only in myself,’ he announces (page 49):

For me the only reality is imagination

the world inside myself

(page 42)

He seeks transformation through experiencing extreme sensations brought about by pushing back the boundaries of sexual exploration and pain:

Man is a destroyer

but if he kills and takes no pleasure in it,

then he is a machine

(page 32—33)

Meanwhile Marat demands a radical change in the structure of human society. As Roux, the rabble-rousing priest, observes:

...you came one day to the Revolution

because you saw the most important vision

that our circumstances must be changed

fundamentally

and without these changes

everything we try to do must fail

(page 77)

The changes Marat is seeking are absolute:

The important thing

is to pull yourself up by your own hair

to turn yourself inside out

and see the whole world with fresh eyes

(page 35)

However, where Marat believes in changing society through the ‘axes and knives’ of bloody revolution, Sade wants to turn inwards: to ‘submerge in his imagination/seeking a personal annihilation’ (page 107).

Staging/Interpretation

Peter Weiss’s text does not give any answers. Nor does Sade’s own play:

...for me the last word can never be spoken

I am left with a question that is always open

(page 107)

In both cases the spectators are invited to make up their own minds. A directorial interpretation of Marat/Sade would, of course, guide them towards a specific reading. For example, Peter Brook’s 1967 film production ended with the inmates taking control of the asylum while the invited audience climbed bars to get a better view of the rape and violence as Sade laughed with pleasure. Other productions, however, could be more neutral. While dialogue is used to examine whose approach to the central arguments is right, other themes, such as pain, desire, inspiration and the human condition, are explored through a variety of devices that push and pull the audience through a range of perspectives.

There is consequently the potential for a very strong visual emphasis on character and action, with detailed attention to gesture and placing of groups to make physical meaning of relationships and attitudes. The juxtaposing of inmates afflicted by differing mental and physical illnesses constantly challenges the audience’s sense of what it is to be normal. For example, the ‘erotomaniac’ Duperret attempts to fondle the girl with sleeping sickness who plays Corday while they speak their carefully rehearsed lines.

There are also those who are not ill at all, but whose views simply do not fit in with ‘civilised society’. Jacques Roux, the priest, appears articulate and persuasive but is shouted down by Coulmier for expressing pacifist principles at a time when France is looking for soldiers to fight:

This is outright pacifism

At this very moment our soldiers are laying

down their lives

for the freedom of the world and for our

freedom

(page 53)

The vulnerable and twitching Patients are contrasted sharply with the violent controlling Nurses who enforce the rules laid down by Coulmier, the asylum director, who continually intervenes ‘as the voice of reason’ (page 21) between the audience and the performers. Speaking for and against the established order of France’s Second Republic, both Marat and Sade eloquently express ideologies that have a violent outcome — the connection between the intellect and the visceral is incarnated in the play’s bloody and brutal action.

Peter Weiss and Dramatic Practice

As a playwright Peter Weiss was concerned to explore and experiment, to draw on different genres and forms to achieve a powerful dramatic impact. He drew on contemporary dramatic practice and writing and had read Antonin Artaud (1896—1948) on the Theatre of Cruelty as well as Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) on Epic Theatre. Although Artaud and Brecht seem diametrically opposed in aim and methodology — Brecht seeking coolness and clarity, while Artaud favoured an emotional, transforming onslaught — Weiss’s play brings their theories into close proximity.

Where Brecht believed in the Marxist ideal that society should change through revolution, Artaud thought that change could be forced upon society through theatrical transformation. For him, the extremities of emotions experienced by actors and communicated to the audience would result in a process whereby the superficial ways in which people experienced life would be replaced by a more profound capacity for sorrow and joy and thus different, more honest relationships between members of society.

Artaud’s life was a struggle in every way. A struggle for sanity, a struggle against drug addiction and, above all, a struggle to find a language that could express the actual processes of living. In searching for a means of expression, he recognised the inadequacy of verbal language to express the nature and experience of living. Theatre was the double of life; the emotions experienced there should be more intense than living. He called it ‘The Theatre of Cruelty’.

By ‘cruelty’ Artaud meant the physical evocation of emotion and, associated with this, the discipline and endeavour of both actors and audience in creating and experiencing this emotion. In his writing he stressed the prime importance of the body’s concrete physical language over verbal language and abstract thought. He believed that visual and poetic imagery could reach directly into the well of human experience and result in truths deeper and more fundamental to the experience of living than rational processes allowed. To this end he envisaged a theatre that would act directly and physically on the audience’s emotions, a spiritual force that started in the senses and transcended reality. This theatre was to be a religious experience drawing heavily on ritual. Artaud advocated that a number of additional elements should be used in the realisation of drama. These included oscillating lights, new and unusual musical instruments with live sound if possible, ceremonial costumes made from sensuous materials, seating the audience in the centre of the action and the use of ritualistic movements, cries and shrieks, together with other extreme variations on vocal technique.

If Artaud is fire and passion, then Brecht is reason. He, too, wanted to change the world, but envisaged this happening through a Marxist revolution. In his plays he wanted to show the familiar in an unfamiliar way so the audience would recognise the inequities of the economic system in which they lived. He developed a technique called ‘Epic Theatre’; this was narrative-based, and used a multitude of distancing or ‘alienation’ techniques to engage the audience in cool, critical thought about action on stage rather than emotional involvement. The plays have an episodic structure, utilising a montage framework with each scene introduced by titles so that the emphasis is not on what happens, as in more traditional forms of theatre, but on how it happens. Songs break up the action and remain separate from it, rather than pretending to be part of the reality. Humourous devices, exemplified in Marat/Sade by the performers’ use of a human head as football, invite the audience to laugh at events that should normally be taken seriously. Such effects are geared towards making the audience reflect on the action and draw conclusions.

Weiss’s Marat/Sade is a play that appeals to the intellect and the senses. The spoken text follows a Brechtian ‘Epic’ structure, its main focus on telling the story which is fully elucidated by tangential scenes in which Sade and Marat clarify their positions through intellectual discourse. Devices to distance the audience from the action are peppered throughout the play: for example, in the way Coulmier, The Herald and the other characters address the audience directly, the insertion of scene titles, the songs, the carefully posed tableaux. All of these serve to demonstrate how the assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday came to pass.

At the same time, a darker, less coherent force is loose in Weiss’s play. It is manifested in the world of the Charenton asylum and the unpredictability of its inmates, articulated through their gestures and responses, through the music and sounds, through the subversive anarchy of The Herald’s response. The inmates of Charenton are there because they are socially unacceptable: they threaten the civilised and ordered nature of society. On one level a Brechtian order is imposed, but it is in conflict with a far more dangerous and irrational force, one that Artaud, who had spent many years as an inmate in various asylums, would have fully understood.