Drama and Dramatic Theory:

Peter Szondi and the Modern Theater

Michael Hays
Because the form of a work of art always
seems to express something unquestionable, we
usually arrive at a clear understanding of such formal
statements only at a time when the unquestionable
has been questioned and the self-evident has
become problematic
Peter Szondi
Theorie des modernen Dramas
In the light of contemporary structuralist and semiotic endeavor, these words may not seem very revolutionary Some of you no
doubt even caught the reference to Hegel's, or should I say Minerva's,
owl in this formula. If so, Peter Szondi might, at first, appear to be
little more than a recent avatar of the "old" Hegelian aesthetics. His
work has, m fact, brought new life to this tradition, but it also marks a
difference which defines Szondi's historical position and his contribution to modern criticism and hermeneutic theory I hope I can do
justice to part of this contribution today by discussing the nature and
implications of Szondi's work on the drama
There is no question about the fact that Szondi drew his early
inspiration from Hegel and from Hegel's followers, Lukacs and
Adorno This is obvious in the opening sections of his book. Theory of

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the Modern Drama, where he first establishes the idea that dramatic
form IS not an abstract entity, independent of time and place, but
rather inextricably tied up with the content it informs "Context," he
quotes Hegel as saying, "is nothing but the inversion of form into content and form nothing but that of content into form " He also cites
Adorno's use of a chemical metaphor to express the same idea Form
IS "precipitated" context. By borrowing m this fashion Szondi is able
to quickly establish the theoretical starting point for his own analysis
of the drama: formal structure is as important to the process of
signification in a play as is content. There is, for Szondi, no such thing
as a form which exists beyond the moment of its use There are only
particular sets of form-content relationships and form, like content
must be "read" as a statement about the nature and significance of
the aesthetic enterprise as a whole, dramatic form codifies assertions
about human existence
Szondi proposes a "structural" model for the drama, then, but
unlike the structures which Levi-Strauss had in mind, those
discovered by Szondi are not "fundamentally the same for all
mindsancient and modern, primitive and civilized .."' They are, instead, inextricably bound to the historical and ideological situation m
which they develop. This historicization of the idea of form eliminates
the possibility of any systematic, normative poetics as such The
formal distinctions which have traditionaily been used to designate
the "universal" characteristics of each of the major genres are transformed into historical categories. One cannot discuss genre outside a
specific historical context and, therefore, it is useless to discuss, for
example, Greek or medieval drama in the same terms that one would
use to deal with eighteenth-century drama or modern drama
The significance of this historicization of drama and criticism
is obviously rather profound. There is no longer any possibility of
positing a simple continuity of either literary or critical tradition. The
"history" of literature ceases to be history at all in the sense of a
diachronic series of cause and effect relationships. Szondi again
seems very close to proposing the same kind of non-linear structure
that L6vi-Strauss has been accused of propoundingliterary history
at this point would be nothing but a series of juxtaposed, synchronic
moments, each with its own systems of structure and meaning, each
independent of that which temporally precedes or follows it.
Szondi's theory avoids this a-historical pitfall in two ways.
First of all, he demonstrates in his own work that it is not only possible, but sometimes necessary to examine one form, one moment in
relation to that which immediately preceded it History then manifests
itself in the demonstration of difference. This as I will show later, is
what Szondi does in his work with the modern drama when he
analyzes it in terms of its failure to sustain the old drama's formcontent relationship: the modern playwright tries to resolve the contradiction between a new social content and a form which, t}ecause it
IS historically conditioned, is no longer able to inform the statement
of the content History and the process of change appear here as
"technical contradictions," as "technical difficulties internal to the
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concrete work itself "" This point is extremely important for an understanding of Szondi's method. It shows that unlike other historically
oriented critics, Szondi assumes that the social problematic of an age
does not simply manifest itself m the content of the work of art. It appears as part of the formal signifying process social contradictions
present themselves as aesthetic problems which the work of art itseif
attempts to resolve Thus, as Szondi indicates in his essay on Diderot,
the movement of the hermeneutic circle must be from the "text" out
into the sociai context and then back into the text Exactly how this
"text" should be defined is a problem I will discuss later For the
moment, I simply wish to point out the way in which Szondi organizes,
successfully as far as I am concerned, the process of investigating
the interrelationship between language, text and history
The second source of diachronic movement is to be found m
the critic's relationship to the object of his study. Szondi reminds us
that criticism and critical models are also historically bound
phenomena and, therefore, have the tendency to isolate and fix that
which may in fact be part of a process Such model building may be
quite successful when the critic turns toward the past. Critics in fact
prove their own historical distance from this past through their ability
to define and close out earlier formal processes But the critic also
marks his historical position by his inability to stand outside his own
historical-conceptual frame of reference Critics including Szondi
himself enable us to understand socio-aesthetic process and perceive
what IS fundamentaily new to their age through their inability to adequately account for these new artistic structures History manifests
Itself m what is left out, in what the critical rhetoric cannot name
Despite these limitations, the critic can try to establish what
Szondi calls a "semantics of form," which can be used to analyse the
form content relationship of a given historical period. What Szondi
has in mind here seems to be the possibility of a semiotic analysis of
the signifying structures which organize the dramatic performance as
a whole. If he did not say precisely this, it is undoubtedly because
these terms were not yet available to him. Szondi's language and
choice of focusas his own theory predictsdepend on his situation. The terms he uses are nonetheless adequate for his analysis of
the forms and dramatic theory of earlier drama If they work only partially for the modern drama it is because Szondi cannot escape his
contemporaneousness with the object of his investigation. As I will
try to demonstrate later in this paper, a further historical remove is
necessary to deal with the formal principles of the modern as such
Szondi could anticipate this problem, but he did not live long enough
to overcome it. Thus we must look at his work m two different lights,
first of all in terms of his successful description of prior dramatic
forms and then in terms of his method and what it offers us m our own
encounters with more recent drama.
When analyzing seventeenth- and eighteenth-century drama,
Szondi sets about showing the homologies between the signifying
properties of acting space, decor, language and gesture. He
demonstrates how these systems work together to create a single
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conceptual "perspective". I have borrowed the term from painting, but

It seems most appropriate to the ideologically-bound image-making
process Szondi describes The drama of these periods presented a
"picture" of a world in which life was defined solely in terms of the
structure of interpersonal relations and their products As Szondi
says, "the verbal medium for this world of the interpersonal was the
dialogue In the Renaissance, after the exclusion of prologue, chorus
and epilogue, dialogue became, perhaps for the first time in the
history of the theater,. . the sole constitutive element in the
dramatic web In this respect, the neo-classical drama distinguishes
Itself not only from antique tragedy, but also from medieval clerical
plays, from the baroque "world theater" and from Shakespeare's
histories. The absolute dominance of dialogue, that is, of interpersonal communication, reflects the fact that the drama consists m
the reproduction of, is only cognizant of what shines forth in this
sphere Most radical of all was the exclusion of that which could not
express itselfthe world of objectsunless it entered the realm of
interpersonal relations'
This then was a world the limits of which were determined by
the actions of self-conscious individuals, individuals who created
their own "presence". There were no external causal factors which
might imply the existence of other worlds or other creative forces The
singularity of this condition was reproduced and reinforced by the
formal requirements of the drama as a whole as well as by the proscenium stage and its decors The unities of time, place and action
created an absolute linear sequence in the present. Nothing existed
outside this sequenceno other place, no other time, no other possible action. The decors in perspective which enclosed this action
added to its exclusiveness and, as Jean Duvignaud has pointed out, to
Its psychological depth.* Thus, the "picture-frame" stage is quite properly named. It enclosed and organized performance systems which
indeed produced a "picture" of the world. This picture provided a perspective which incorporated the spectator and his role as well It
operated to exclude all perceptual possibilities from his line of vision
that did not correspond to the stage image perported to represent or
reflect the real "nature" of things.
As Szondi so aptly shows, the specific function of this signifying process depends on the historical situation in which it unfolds. In
his discussion of Diderot and middle class drama, he demonstrates
the manner in which the "picture" of the world is organized m terms of
the Ideological stance of this class. Although Szondi does not, in this
essay, deal with all the coded systems he Introduces in his discussion
of earlier drama, he nonetheless builds a model analysis, one which
will serve both as a demonstration of his method and a way into my
critique of Szondi's discussion of the modern drama.
In Tableau und coup de th^itre which is subtitled Zur
Soziologie des bOrgerlichen irauerspiels bel Diderot,' Szondi illustrates his method of analysing language and context as a means
of describing the socio-historical situation of an author and his texts
He wants to show that one cannot define a text or a literary genre
72

from the outside, simply by applying Knowledge of the historical

epoch to the text The movement of the circle must be from text to
history, not from history to text.
Cases in point are George Luk^cs and Arnold Hauser Both
assert that the bourgeois theater provides the first example of a
drama which took as its goal the direct presentation of social conflict
and openly played a role in the class struggle. Szondi quickly alerts
his readers to the fact that such assertions simply do not correspond
to the actual early development of middle class drama m eighteenthcentury England, France, and Germany. None of the earliest of these
plays show any overt conflict between the bourgeoisie and the
aristocracy. In fact, Lessing's and Diderot's heroes come from the upper class. What then, asks Szondi, is bourgeois about these early
plays? To what degree are the conditions of their composition determined by the social and political situation of the rising middle class?
In order to answer this question Szondi turns first to Diderot's theory
of the drama since, as will be seen, this theory, like neo-classical
theory before it, naturalizes the ideological perspective of the dominant group in terms of certain formal requisites of the drama itself
The most important motive for Diderot's theory of bourgeois
drama, that which leads Diderot to break with the tradition m which
tragic heroes are princes or kings can be inferred from a few
sentences in the "Entretiens sur ie fils naturel" The lines that Szondi
focuses on are the foiiowmg.
Si la mre d'lphig6nie se montrait un moment reme
d'Argos et femme du general des Grecs, elle ne me
paraitrait que la derni^re des creatures. La veritable
dignite, ceile qui me frappe, qui me renverse, c'est Ie
tableau de I'amour maternel dans toute sa verite'
Tableau and v^rite are the two key words here They appear again m
the same conversation when a poor peasant's wife is mentioned. In
both cases it is the private emotional response of the individual that
Diderot focuses on This personal response is deemed "true," true
that is in the sense that Diderot assumes the existence of "natural"
human responses which are true to a situation, not simply to a class.
But the feelings naturalized here are of a specific kind. They do not
come from nature as Diderot's theory suggests, but from the middieciass drawing roomas his piays show. This contradiction reveals
the real thrust of Diderot's efforthis desire to naturalize middleclass emotional economy. In his plays Diderot focuses on a category
of feelings, not on action, and the formal homologue to this turning
away from action towards situation is found in Diderot's interest in
the tableau.
Thus, the opening tableau in Diderot's Pdre de famille testifies
to a social change. This change consists not so much in the appearance of a new social class as in a change in the organizational
form of the drama and the way in which the spectator views society
The formal coding of the life led by the characters Diderot brings on
73

stage signals the bourgeois perspective It illustrates the notion

which IS the socio-historical center of the domestic tragedy the
patriarchal, nuclear family. This transformation demonstrates within
the drama itself the restructuring of society that Jurgen Habermas
and, more recently, Richard Sennet have attempted to describe m
terms of objective changes m social and family practice'
According to Szondi, the opposite of the tableau in Diderot's
theory is the coup de theatrethe unexpected event which entirely
transforms a situation it is proscribed by Diderot, no doubt because
the coup de theitre belongs to the conventions of the court drama
and to the family intrigues which surround the king. In its place Szondi
shows that Diderot proposes a stable picture of a different kind of
family life*'
Ajoutez k cela, toutes les relations le pere de famille,
I'epoux, la soeur, les freres. Le pere de famille! Quel
sujet, dans un siecle tel que le notre, ou il ne parait
pas qu'on ait le moindre idee de ce que c'est qu'un
pere de famille!'
The virtues of the bourgeois social order as represented in this
drama did not correspond to experienced reality of the public
however.
C'est en allant au th^dtre qu'ils se sauveront de la
compagnie des m^chants dont ils sont entour^s;
c'est la qu'ils aimeront k vivre, c'est \k qu'ils verront
I'espece humaine comme elle est, et qu'ils se reconcilieront avec elle."
Seeing virtue embodied in the theater serves the function of allowing
people to flee their real but evil environment. The world of illusion, the
world of the theater is proposed as "reality". And the spectator who
flees out of pernicious reality into the theater finds reality transformed into illusion. Thus the audience is reconciled with the conditions It experiences outside the theater. The middle class fled from
the coups de th4itre of real life mto the verite of the tableau, the formal aesthetic ideal.
Szondi has done more here than expose the internal, technical
problems which Diderot had to confront in producing his version of
middle class drama He has successfully delimited the formalideoiogical nexus of this drama. As I suggested earlier, Szondi's position m the middle of the twentieth century places him outside the
cultural systems which generated the formal structures he describes
He stands at a point where he can not only question the validity of
these formal statements, but also determine their historical and
ideological grounds.
When Szondi turns his attention to the modern drama, he reapplies the formal model of middle class drama as a structural tool in
analyzing the works of several early modern dramatists. He does so
74

primarily because he has no other organizational set available to him

Since, at the time he wrote his book on the modern drama, he stood
within the modern himself, he could not develop an analysis of contemporary drama in its own terms. It had not yet, could not be fixed.
Therefore, Szondi had to analyze this theater in relation to what
preceded it. He marks the advent of the modern not in terms of what it
IS, but m terms of its difference from what was "It is in this light," he
states m Modern Drama, "that the drama will be dealt with herein
terms of what impedes it todayand the idea of the (earlier) drama
will be examined as a moment of inquiry into the possibility of modern
drama" Here again we see the relevance of Szondi's historically
based hermeneutics Within the body of his own critical work we see
the tension between his historical position and the object of his investigation, between his method and its content If he is successful at
first in dealing with the modern drama, and he is, it is because the
early plays themselves, as Szondi shows, also came to grips with the
problem of nineteenth-century formal structure. If he is unable to deal
With modern drama as a whole, the problem lies less with his method
than with his historical situation.
In Theory of the Modern Drama, Szondi begins with a
demonstration of the way in which the thematic content of the plays
by Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Chekhov and others militates
against the stable formal constructs of earlier drama Szondi begins
with Ibsen because it is traditional to do so but I should like to add
that the process Szondi describes can be traced in the dramatic works
of other less fashionable playwrights such as Daudet as well. In these
works, the formal requisites of nineteenth-century dramatic theory
(e.g, act structure, dialogic form) were rigorously applied, but this
"well made" world was subverted from within The characters in these
piays could not create an active world through their language They
describe a situation which is static, in which the past, though irrevocably lost, IS at the same time more "real," more amenable to productive acts than the present. All that remains is the presence of what
might have been, but this "presence" is in fact absencethe impossibility of unified action or understanding.
Strindberg's and Maeterlinck's work carries the process of the
formal destruction of the old dramatic world one step further. The individuals in their plays no longer seem able to define their world, they
endure it; they wait, they speak past each other in monologues that fill
up time but give no center, no logos to the community and space in
which they exist." This space, finally, is as fragmented as the social
world and the psyche of each of the characters. As subjects they are
no longer able to objectify themselves in dialogic interaction with
their fellow human beings. This breakdown is paralleled by several
other transformations in dramatic form: the logical, linear development of the act structure is fragmented, as are the systems of spatial
and temporal representation. Because the characters can no longer
create their own presence, the drama itself is in jeopardy Szondi
shows us here then how the early modern dramatists, in trying to
solve this problem in fact demonstrate its existence Their characters.
75

far from reestablishing the internal perspective of the old drama, are
actually incapable of controlling or defining their worlds. They are
locked inside their subjectivity and their metaphysical helplessness.
On the plane of formal organization, this leads to the appearance of
the "epic" in the dramatic and the epic narrative figure as a necessary
formal principle to bind the dramatic movement together
There is no question about the fact that Szondi's analysis of
early modern drama provides rewarding insights into its formative
problems His method gives new insight into the formal experimentation which marks the advent of the modern drama. It must be
added, however, that his critical model also obliges him to ignore or
merely hint at the significance of other fundamental aspects of
modern theater practice. As is the case with many other historically
oriented analyses, Szondi's decision to use the pre-modern as a
model for demonstrating "difference" m the modern drama has led
him to deal only with those aspects of the drama for which there is
adequate terminology withm the old modela model developed out
of a modern critical perception of the inactive forms which preceded
it. Szondi's success with the early modern drama stems in great part
from the historical position which they hold in common. Ibsen, as
Szondi demonstrates so brilliantly, focused primarily on a lost past, a
past in which there existed the possibility of creating an active communal presence. His drama is, in effect, a statement about the loss of
this past and its unity, both of which earlier drama had produced in its
systematic representation of the middle class perspective. In other
words, Ibsen's early plays announce in their own terms the historical
and aesthetic movement which Szondi later rephrases in the language
of critical analysis. He doubles Ibsen's dramatized nostalgia for
unified systems of social and dramatic representation with a critical
nostalgia of his own. As a modern critic Szondi can only describe the
art and the world of the modern as a dis-ordering of the stable
systems of signification which the past offers him once he has
mastered the formal structures of its art. This is evident not only in his
critical focus, but also in his terminology, which reflects the modern's
concern with metaphysical, and spiritual unity as well as the modern
critics' dependence on traditional aesthetic and its categorieslyric,
epic and drama. Szondi equates the "epic" with the modern in contradistinction to the "dramatic" which serves to designate the formal
properties of middle class drama.
Because of his interest in locating the "epic," that is,
non-"dramatic" features in the modern drama, Szondi fails to notice
that this "epic" quality is really part of a larger formal process.
Because of this failure he makes distinctions between Brecht's
theater, for example, and that of Pirandello, Wilder and Miller, which
are distinctions only in terms of the earlier drama not in the formal
terms which the modern drama itself generates.
Szondi was at least partially aware of this problem t am sure,
since he indirectly raised the question by Including a discussion of
Piscator and his work as a director In a book that is otherwise devoted
to dramatic texts. Why was a director included along with these

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critical readings of the works of practicing playwrights'' In order to

answer the question we must return to Szondi's description of the
birth of the modern drama. This theater was generated out of the collapse of a unified perspective based on the production of the world
through interpersonal activity " Earlier drama contained the formal
assumption that language, space and time were ordered according to
a single point of view which allowed these conventions to be seen as
reflections of common experience The modern drama, however,
seems to deny the existence of any uniform perspective or signifying
system, such as which would unite the experiencing subject with the
world around him It is precisely this absence which, in Szondi's eyes,
calls forth the epic narrator in the theater He serves as a coordinating
device or figure to provide that background necessary for minimal
comprehension of the characters situation. His function within the
tests IS to prevent a collapse into silence and immobility But the epic
figure is more than just an internal coordinator/communicator This
personage and his function are also symbolic referents for that new
figure who makes his appearance in the modern theatrical event, the
director
If we apply the method suggested by Szondi's analysis of
dramatic production m the Renaissance we are led to an investigation
of the total process of semoiosis in theatrical practice This is a step
that Szondi could not take at the time he wrote his book on the
modern drama, because his terminology and his method were limited
by the traditional literary demands of the modern A later essay entitled "Der Mythos m modernen Drama und das Epische Theater," indicates that Szondi was in the process of moving beyond these limits
at the time of his death " To return to the drama, though, when we
begin to analyse the signifying process of the modern theatrical
event, it is immediately obvious that the dramatic text is, m fact, a
sub-text in the total system of signification The destruction of the
socio-lmguistic nexus which Szondi describes as the hallmark of the
modern drama m fact functions on several other semiotic planes
besides that of the text There are also de-structions in the performance space, in the system of decor and lighting and in the rapport between the house and the stage- In the modern theater, when the house
lights are shut off, the audience is left in much the same situation as
the characters which figure in the play text. They are left "m the dark."
Thus, the public sees its own experience in the theater objectified in
an encoded explanation represented by the stage event. The metatext of performance, then, adumbrates a fragmented world which
(re)presents the powerlessness of the individual, the impossibility of
interpersonal communication and the futility of trying to comprehend
the forces which exist in and outside the subject. This is the new
"perspective" provided by the modern drama
But IS not a perspective which, like that of the earlier theater,
authorizes any action, any conceptual ordering or decision making on
the part of the individual, be that individual a character in the play of a
spectator This might lead us to conclude, along with some recent
critics, that contemporary drama only offers disorder and mean77

mglessness as its meaning In fact, the formal structure of play and

performance suggest that this discomfiting possibility only
represents a partial decoding of the dramatic message. If we look at
the performance a whole, we find that the director/interpreter (like the
epic narrator m the text) mediates between the helpless individual and
the unknown, disjointed world. The problem of the fragmentation of
personal and social existence is not resolved by this intercession,
however It is overcome only insofar as it is removed to a higher level.
The director's interpretation provides an "order" which is abstract
and formal. This ordering simply replaces the objective problems announced in the play with the problem of understanding the interpretation which has been put forth as the meaning of the dramatic experience. And so, the modern theater posits a world in which there is a
"director" who stands at the head of a highly codified informational
structure. Characters/spectators only have access to the "meaning"
disseminated through this structure if they submit to its ordering
principles They must, therefore, negate (or have negated) their own
capacity to understand and generate meanings In order to be enclosed withm a "significant" perspective, they must give up their
freedom to act.
This condition is at once evident when one enters the modern
theater. One is engulfed by the bureaucratic structures which the
place and the event represent. As Donald Kaplan has put it, the
theater has institutionalized the executive function.'= The dynamic
kinesthesis which had been part of the performance in earlier
centuries has been overwhelmed by a sense of complacency
generated by the knowledge that the event is under the control of someone else. This is the key to understanding why so many different
kinds of plays, from avant-garde to classical can be staged one after
the other in the same house to essentially the same audience. The
metatextual signifying process is the same for all of them and for all
of the modern. The uncoded code of the ideological context asserts
the need to submit to the authority of the director in order to belong to
a reality (mythic or intellectual) which has "meaning "
In 1906, Paul Souriau announced this condition m the following
manner:
The experiencing subject should have very little will
and a great deal of imagination. Little will in order to
give in without resistance to all impulses he receives
from the exterior. Lots of imagination in order to
quickly and painlessly give m to the illusions toward
which he is led and dream, as it were, on command.
Verbal, graphic or musical suggestion does not provide us with finished images; it only orients our
faculties in a predetermined sense...the work of art is
not really perceived, it is imagined. It is a dream
which the artist offers us and which he directs."
A comment made by Henri Bergson and quoted by Souriau is worth
78

adding here as well "The object of art[ modern art that is] is to put to
sleep the active and rather the resistant forces of our personality and
to so lead us to a state of perfect docility where we realize the idea
which one suggests to us " "
This then is the function of the director His social and
aesthetic role in the modern period is to complete the incomplete, to
overcome the lack of a common base in the culture of the modern
which he himself represents This is also why Piscator must appear in
Szondi's booknot as Piscator the man, but as representative of the
directorial function which Szondi's method allows him to sense but
not describe
Had Szondi recognized this initial condition of the modern
drama, his discussion of Brecht and other, later playwrights would
also have been different I only have time to sketch out some of these
differences, but I hope that my suggestions will illuminate the formal
development in and the historical movement of recent drama
Brecht and Pirandello represent dialectically opposite
responses to the condition of the modern, though each in his own way
codifies Its formal process Pirandello's plays assert the impossibility
of establishing a common and meaningful order whether on the level
of language, dramatic form or social interaction Plays like Henry IV
and SIX Characters m Search of an Author represent the ideological
position of the modern which Pirandello attempts to naturalize m his
texts on dramatic theory He propounds a theory of the necessary
presence of the author/director as receiver and transmitter of ordering
perceptions into the unmanagable world depicted m his plays Brecht
too was m the forefront of the movement towards a radical fragmentation of the dramatic world But his dramatic theory attempts to
naturalize a somewhat different explanation of this world By doubling the fragmentation of the formal structure of the drama through his
alienation effects, he creates a "dis-disorder" which implies that the
apparently disjointed and incomprehensible experience of life m fact
has a social and historical explanation. In the matatext of performance, his alienation effects establish a semiosis which signifies the
return of interpretive control to the audience. At the same time the
fragementation depicted by the stage set is revealed as illusory, light
once again shines forth from the house onto the stage The stage no
longer sheds its light on spectators sitting in the dark
Brecht never completely broke out of the dramatic structure of
the modern howeverindeed he could not. He could only symbolically assert the possibility of a reunified socio-aesthetic practice His
theory of codes, if one can call it that, was of necessity more intuitive
than scientific and his plays remain within the same modern frame of
reference as Szondi's early dramatic criticism. They share a nostalgia
for the order and community implicit m the form and dialogue of
earlier drama and a Utopian desire for a world in which the bits and
pieces of the modern would be rejoined At the same time, their work
demonstrates the absence of any such unity
The process of the modern drama of which this absence is a
sign has been carried to Its logical conclusion in the works of recent
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playwrights like Beckett, Handke and Genet. Szondi refers to

Beckett's Waiting for Godot as a conversation piece about the desire
for immanence in a world without God If this reading falls short of the
original goal of Szondi's work and of the thematic material in the play
Itself, one can again ascribe this shortcoming to a critical model
which was not yet fully developed and could not completely analyse
modern formal signifying practice Beckett and his contemporaries
did not create a new or "absurd" drama either, despite what critics
since Esslin have been fond of suggesting Their works, as did those
of the early modern dramatists, deal with the collapse of the systems
of signification which had given rise to and ordered the conceptual
world of the immediate past The problems of language and action
which confront Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot are, in a
sense, only magnified versions of the social and metaphysical problems faced by the characters who await the inexplicable in
Maeterlinck's The Blind and Interior Beckett's works are, in effect,
ironic restatements of the thematic material found in these and other
plays of the turn of the century If his plays no longer take this
material seriously, that is because the form of the modern drama
itself embodies an assertion of the meaninglessness of the cultural
paradigms on which it draws. It consumes the past as material for the
present Thus, every aspect of the early modern drama has, like the
drama of the nineteenth century, become fair game for the author and
director. Their "play" exposes the conventions of the modern at the
same time that it employs them
The works of Genet and Handke also deal selfconsciously with
the form and conventions of the modern, but, unlike Beckett's, their
plays do not remain in the realm of the abstract and the playful. They
instead attempt to demonstrate that the conventions of language and
action in the theater are grounded in the cultural conventions of society at large and that all these conventions are bound up in the
developments of contemporary history and ideology. Their works embody the disorder of the modern as a social as well as aesthetic
phenomenon and thereby take a step that Brecht was unable to make
By exposing the formal patterns which have organized the modern,
they have marked its historical limits and, in so doing, put an end to it,
much as Cervantes did to the romance when he wrote Don Quixote
Genet and Handke do not signal the end of dramatic representation,
however. Instead they announce the coming of a new formalideological construct which as yet can only be referred to as the
"post-modern "
Thus, It seems we have once again reached the point at which
"the unquestionable has been questioned." A clear understanding of
the formal properties of the modern, as Szondi demonstrated earlier
with the nineteenth century drama, can only come when one is in a
position to mark off a distance from those forms and use their
fragments as the building blocks of a new theater That is the job of
the dramatist. The role of the critic is to shed light on this process
both in terms of text and context Once again the importance of
Szondi's contribution is obvious His critical hermeneutics allows for
80

an analysis of the drama that comprehends the situationalness of the

critic as well as that of the work of art Therefore, although his concrete discussion of the modern drama may now seem incomplete, his
theoretical work both explains this incompleteness and provides the
methodology with which to investigate the modern theater and what
comes after In the very act of going beyond Szondi we see the scope
of the critical field he has opened for us.
Cornell University
NOTES
1

Claude L6vi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (Garden City, New 'Vork, 1967), p 21

Theorie des modernen Dramas (Frankfurt a M , 1956), p 12

Theorie des modernen Dramas, p 14

See Spectacle et sociM6 (Par(S, 1970), pp 67-82

Lekturen und Lektionen (Frankfurt a M , 1973), pp 13-43

Denis Diderot, Oeuvres Esth4tiques (Paris, 1965), p 91, Szondi, p 15

Jurgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der bffentlichkeit (Neuweid, 1962) and Richard

Sennet, The Fall of the Public Man (New York, 1977)

There is a striking similarity between this transformation in the structure of

theatrical performance and that social transformation which Michel Foucault has
identified in the transition from public execution to penal incarceration See M
Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans A Sheridan (New York, 1977)

Oeuvres Esth^tiques, p 154, Szondi, p 25

10

Oeuvres Esth^tiques, p 192-93, Szondi, p 30

11

Theorie des modernen Dramas, p 13

12

See Theorie des modernen Dramas, pp 40-62

13

Compare this with Foucault's discussion of the collapse of a unified field of

representation in Les mots eties choses (Pans, 1966)

14

"Der Mythos in modernen Drama," in Lekturen und Lektionen, pp 185-91

15

"Theater Architecture as a derivation of the Primal Cavity," in The Drama Revievt,

Spring, 1968

16

La Suggestion dans /'art (Pans, 1909), pp 66-67

17

Essai sur les donnes immidiates de la conscience, fifth ed (Pans, 1906), cited in
Sounau, p 66

81