2023-04-29 10:15:29
WHow dark can a theater evening be? The answer that Sebastian Hartmann gives with “destroy” at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden is: very much. After the eyes have slowly gotten used to the twilight state, you can see a few gnarled trees in the distance at the back of the stage. Piano sounds swirl spherically through the room, while the ensemble wanders from left to right and back in slow motion. It is a poorly lit end-time mediation about the passage of time and the transience of the human body in front of the dream image of German Romanticism: the eternal forest.
The material that Hartmann symbolically condenses was taken from Michel Houellebecq’s last novel, Destruction. Existentialist monumental prose is Hartmann: “Ulysses” or “The Magic Mountain”, “Crime and Punishment” or “War and Peace”, these are just a small selection of the novels that he has brought to the stage with great success in recent years. With one rule: the plot is not retold, instead motifs are singled out and staged – a more installative aesthetic. In fact, one gets closer to the Houellebecq phenomenon than through mere reproduction.
The themes or circles of hell around which Hartmann revolves with Houellebecq are on the one hand illness, suffering, old age, death and decadence, on the other hand melancholy, romanticism and nihilism. As with the cameras and screens on stage, Hartmann also works with the material with crossfades. The narrator’s ailments become a diagnosis of a cultural decline. The cancer that eats away at the protagonist’s oral cavity also grows rampant in the social body, undermining the ability to speak and communicate. An epoch falls silent.
Being human is not an idealistic abstraction
In the gloom, the promises of the doctors to surgically remove the ulcer, as well as the jaw and tongue, ring out in a distorted voice. It’s about statistics, about chances of survival. It is a monologue of the medical administration of the body, which entices with the utopia of a pain-free life, which, however, is deprived of all stimuli as a result of this treatment. Houellebecq, on the other hand, puts up a great refusal that pain should not be repressed, just as little as pleasure. They are the proliferations of the body, abnormalities in the border areas between death and sex.
If one wanted to sum up the impulse of Houellebecq’s work, it would be the deep skepticism about progress that is based on repression: repression of old age, illness, death, the transience of the fragile and tormentable human body in general. Hartmann shows us this naked body in the style of the old Dutch masters, radiant skin against a dark background and entwined with fruit. And he lets the pain of the creature scream out – like Christ on the Isenheim altar – that a visit to a Screamo Death Metal concert would be tantamount to an acoustic vacation. Being human is not an idealistic abstraction.
Terrible suspicion: Is Houellebecq a humanist after all? Hartmann pursues this question with his reminiscences of the early modern period and the rebirth of European humanism, the Renaissance. Two breaks divide the evening like a triptych. It is a journey on the dark side of enlightenment, where the hope that remains in Pandora’s box is considered the greatest evil, because the chains forged from illusions enslave not only the body but also the soul. They are dreamlike and nightmarish sequences, symptoms of a severely shaken present.
Is that how it is in the novel?
Hartmann reads Houellebecq as a resigned seismograph of a world in turmoil, as a revenant of romanticism. Destroy states that “the whole system would come crashing down in a colossal collapse, the date or the exact circumstances of which cannot be predicted at this time”. From Goethe to Georg Lukács to Peter Hacks, everyone has always agreed that Romanticism flourishes where societies are in decline. But what follows from the crisis? Retreat to inwardness or restoration? Or a departure into the indefinite?
Whoever lasts until the end of the four hours, which is estimated to be half of the premiere audience, will experience an overwhelming finale – and the first dash of color in this dream of deepest black. Tilo Baumgärtel’s animations, including the “Blue Flower”, are now projected onto the retina of the spectators armed with 3D glasses. It bangs in. This is accompanied by a sacred chorale “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)”. When the night is deepest, is the day closest? “And although I’ve wandered in the dark valley, I fear no misfortune, because you are with me” would also have fitted. You are not alone, love saves you. Here comes the kitsch.
The world resonates – on the love frequency. Quasi in the credits, Edwin A. Abbot’s “Flächenland” and quantum physics are about a new universal poetry. Is that how it is in the novel? The answer is: no. That’s why it hits him to the core. Here, a convincing reading is transformed into impressive images. The keystone of Houellebecq’s nihilism is the belief that the individual – and possibly also the West as such – must learn to die. Although it sometimes looks almost like the music video of a Scandinavian depri-pop band, it is coherent and powerful. This is how Houellebecq should be read. And decadence only looks so somberly pretty in the theater.
#Michel #Houellebecq #Dresden #Learning #die