Hamletmachine Heiner Müller

Introduction interested in answers and solutions. I don’t have any to offer. I’m interested in problems and Heiner Müller was born in eastern Germany in conflicts. 1929. In 1945 he was drafted into the German (1982: 50) army and after the end of the Second World War returned home to the part of Germany occupied Hamletmachine is the most celebrated of Müller’s by the USSR. He took up writing in the 1950s and adaptations. It developed over many years from a began a checkered relationship with communist much longer work into the short, dense, allusive, officials in the German Democratic Republic: he and difficult text printed here. (A good attempt at worked for the League of German Writers in detailed and extensive explication can be found in 1954–1955; he wrote for Berlin’s Volksbühne Teroaka: 87–121.) The East German authorities did Theatre in 1957; he was expelled for political not allow the play to be produced, so it was first reasons from the writers’ league in 1961, so that staged in Brussels in 1978 and West Germany in his plays could not be performed until 1967; he 1979. Since then it has been produced many times was invited to join the prestigious Berliner in many different and striking ways. Robert Ensemble (founded by Brecht) in 1969; in the Wilson, for instance, brought a very studied and 1970s and 1980s he was given unprecedented coolly stylized approach to the play in New York freedom to travel to and return from Western in 1986 (see Rogoff), while Montreal’s Carbone 14 Europe and North America, although many of his infused the text with Gallic passion – a number of plays remained banned in East Germany. By this Ophelia’s speeches were delivered as torch songs time he had become a world-renowned playwright, (see Leonard). The text, such as it is, is open to ‘a sort of socialist William Shakespeare’ (Hofacker: – even demands – such interpretative leaps. 335). After the fall of the East Bloc, Müller was Müller himself included Hamletmachine in a seven- forced to rethink his position in the world and the and-a-half-hour production of Hamlet in Berlin in political role of his theatre (see Croyden, Höfele). 1990. In the face of the triumph of the West, the He died on 30 December 1995. play ends as ‘Fortinbras, wearing a business suit Müller adapted a number of Western classics and a gold mask, a star warrior of capitalism, takes over his career: Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (1967) and over’ (Höfele: 85). Philoctetus (1968); Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1972); Müller’s two most important precursors are Karl Brecht’s The Measures Taken (as Mauser 1975); Marx and Bertolt Brecht – note the central Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons (as Quartet 1982). truncated quotation from Marx’s ‘Contributions to Often his point in these adaptations is to show the the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ in long history and legacy of barbarism and the Hamletmachine: that the main point (of limitations of this history faced by people in the revolutionary struggle) is ‘to overthrow all those present: revolution has never been, is not going to conditions in which man is an abased, enslaved, be, easy. Müller describes his project in these abandoned, contemptible being.’ However, Müller terms: is anything but doctrinaire and uncritical in his approaches to these influences. For instance, an What I try to do in my writings is to strengthen the essay he wrote on Brecht is called ‘To Use Brecht sense of conflicts, to strengthen confrontations and without Criticizing Him Is to Betray Him.’ Here contradictions. There is no other way. I’m not Müller rejects Brecht’s ‘posthumous petrification

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Plate 3 Photo: © Yves Dubé 1987. Production of Hamletmachine by Carbone 14, Montreal into the father figure by socialist cultural policy’ harsh call to action: his failure is his intellectual (33). As the world changes, the ideas of the past paralysis in the face of the need to act. Hamlet is must be submitted to ‘permanent revolution’ (31). similarly paralyzed by his own position of The lack of unquestioned veneration extends, of privilege: he sees himself both inside the palace course, to Shakespeare, and ultimately to the and down with the revolutionaries in the street – a works of Müller himself – as he writes in position with which Müller, as renowned author, ‘Reflections on Post-Modernism,’ ‘Work toward the identifies. Finally, Hamlet is privileged and disappearance of the author is resistance against paralyzed by his gender: he wants to be a woman, the disappearance of humankind’ (57). One way of but clings to his male advantages. In the end, freeing texts from the authorial dictates of the past Hamlet gives up, and abandons the future and is by crossing them with other voices. This revolution to others. explains the multitude and variety of allusions in One of the most striking aspects of Hamletmachine, which is not Shakespeare’s text, Hamletmachine is the prominence given to Ophelia nor Müller’s alone. – Rogoff writes that the play might better be called The invocations of Josef Stalin in Hamletmachine Opheliamachine (57). By having Marx, Lenin, and point to Müller’s struggle within and against East Mao appear as three naked women, Müller asserts Bloc socialism: he sides with the revolutionary, that it is not ‘man’ who has suffered the most utopian impulse but not with its ossification into egregious enslavement and abasement. The play dictatorship. The play is no more accepting, does not shy away from the litany of horrific however, of Western capitalism, encapsulated in victimization to which Ophelia and other women the line ‘Hail Coca Cola.’ After 1989, Müller spoke have been subjected. Indeed, at the end (in a of a ‘third way’ which is ‘not communism, not hyperbolic echo of Shakespeare’s mad and capitalism, but something else – nobody knows drowned heroine) Ophelia sits bound to a what’ (Croyden: 106). wheelchair at the bottom of the sea. However, she Hamletmachine is structured as alternating is also fiercely enduring through ongoing sections focused on Hamlet and Ophelia. For millenniums of oppression. She remains dedicated Müller, Hamlet is ‘the man between the ages who to the struggle against enslavement. Working in a knows that the old age is obsolete, yet the new age dialectic of harsh opposition rather than easy has barbarian features he simply cannot stomach’ reconciliation, the play ends with a quotation from (quoted in Weber: 137). He is the man of Susan Atkins of the Manson Family: ‘When she Enlightenment reason who cannot deal with the walks through your bedrooms carrying butcher

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