cataloging evil
by Douglas Messerli
Jens Bjørneboe The Bird Lovers, translated from the Norwegian by Frederick Wasser
(Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1994)
Jens Bjørneboe Semmelweis, translated from the Norwegian by Joe Martin (Los
Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1998)
Yet as Joe Martin points out in his introduction to Semmelweis, Bjørneboe's theatrical "alienation," similar
as his views are to Brecht's, takes his plays in very different directions from
the master. Indeed, both of these plays work nicely with Bjørneboe's more
complex late trilogy, The History of
Bestiality (1966-1973), of which I wrote (through the example of Kruttårnet [Powderhouse]) in my 2007 essay. In these fictions, as well as in
the two plays, Bjørneboe is primarily interested in cataloging evil rather than
assigning it or even creating solutions which might prevent it.
In The Bird Lovers, a small
group of working Italians who served together in the war and were imprisoned by
the Germans, gather regularly at a bar to talk and to eat; they are
particularly fond of serving up the small game birds in the region. Enter Mrs.
Director Stahlmann, a bird lover who is determined to stop the practice of
killing birds in the village and, with the support of the National Society for
Animal's Rights, plans to bring new tourists to the region by establishing it
as a bird sanctuary. The various verbal volleys between the two groups are
predictable and mostly comic, with the locals clearly getting the better of the
situation.
To this town also comes Huldreich von und zu Greifenklau—a German judge
determined to enjoy the local songbirds for their music—and his servile friend,
Johannes Schulze, both of who are immediately recognized by the cafe regulars
as men who tortured them and killed their friend in prison. Despite the
protests of one of the men's wife, the group is bent on kidnapping the two from
the local hotel and putting them on trial for murder.
The mock trial reveals the horrible evils of Grifenklau's past, and the
group is ready to hang both him and Schulze until the defendant's assigned
lawyer, Father Piccolino points out that the evil these men have perpetuated
came as much from their superiors. Like the Nazis after World War II, Piccolino
argues (despite his belief they are guilty) that they were merely doing their
duty. But Piccolino also argues from another point of view, that of the
executioners, pointing out to them that if they proceed with the hanging, they
too will be guilty, just as Americans who strung Blacks up in trees, as Turks who
drove the Armenians into the desert, as the English who shot and hung the
Irish, and the French who electrocuted the Algerians. The theme, highly
reminiscent of Bjørneboe's listings and descriptions of punishment in Powderhouse, turns the tables, so to
speak. Gradually, one by one, the men see the folly of their acts, and
"sell out" by accepting the Germans' promises to financially help
them when the city becomes a tourist spot. This is no Judgment at Nuremberg.
In short, as translator Frederick Wasser points out, Bjørneboe does not attempt
to answer what to do about evil, but
merely wants to recognize it in all of us. It is as if Bjørneboe, despite his
hatred for all the tortures of individuals by human beings and institutions,
does not comprehend a way to end it—except through comedy and, of course,
death. We are a race unforgivably cursed by our past.
So too is the great Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis mocked by all
those around him for his theories about handwashing before operations. The
doctors and students he calls "murderers" are just that, men who
because they refuse to see the truth do not take the proper precautions and
kill every year hundreds of their patients—particularly women during childbirth.
One of comic frustrations of this drama is the outlandish statements of the scientific
belief of the day, that child-bed fever is not contagious but is brought on by
the sexual enjoyment of women of the lower class. These and other such notions
would be merely comical except for the fact that they cover up any truth, and
they use these beliefs, moreover, as tools to ruin Semmelweis.
But as in The Bird Lovers,
Bjørneboe's "heroes," the foes of this work, Semmelweis and
Kolletschka, are also fools. Semmelweis is a kind of mad innocent, a man so
devoted to his beliefs that he has no notion of how to properly achieve it or
to make any compromise that might cause his theories to be practiced. Despite
his seeming purity of purpose, Semmelweis drowns his sorrows in sentimentality,
wine, and whores, ultimately dying of a kind of slow suicide. Kolletschka dies,
ironically, of the very disease which he once proclaimed was not contagious.
Bjørneboe's play centers less on individuals that on the institutions,
the universities, the hospitals and other organizations which, while supposedly
searching for truth, fight any possibility of discovering it. The reality of
these organizations is that the teachers, students, and doctors were to admit
to being wrong, they would be crushed by the very thing they believe they are
promoting. Accordingly, truth is the last thing that such institutions can
permit. The playwright makes this even more ironic, but encasing his play in a
student protest which ends with a male student insisting that such protests
have been the "forerunners of fundamental change" while the students within
the play are often the most resistant to Semmelweis' dictums.
Once again Bjørneboe makes it clear that evil is so prevalent that
everyone can share in its curse. The students of 1968 may have been admirable
for their refusal "to allow [themselves] to be used for oppression and
genocide," but we know that the students of just a few years later would
become the powers behind new atrocities.
Los Angeles, March 27, 2010
Reprinted from Green Integer Blog (March 2010).
No comments:
Post a Comment