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Idea, Reality and Play ‐ Acting in Der Tor und der Tod
Author(s) -
Bennett Benjamin
Publication year - 1975
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0730.1975.tb00702.x
Subject(s) - character (mathematics) , servant , epistemology , philosophy , doctrine , event (particle physics) , literature , aesthetics , sociology , computer science , theology , art , mathematics , physics , geometry , quantum mechanics , programming language
AIewyn recognized Iong ago that Death as he appears in Hof‐mannsthal's Der Tor und der Tod is not equivalentto death as a real event but rather has the character of an idea in Claudio's con‐sciousness, and this, taken together with the servant's testimony to Death's objective reality, forms the central paradox on which the play is constructed. This unbridgeable gap between death as idea and as reality has the effect of presenting us with death as a mys‐tery, which isalso the effect of the doctrine, derivable from Death's explicit vision of a fundamentally chaotic universe, thatthe whole positive character of human existence is an arbitrary human creation, a kind of play‐acting. But the mysteriousness of Death in this sense is presented with equal directness and in the same way to both Claudio and the audience, whence it follows that insofar as the play succeeds, the audience is meant to identify with Claudio, not regard him critically.