The Visit

Friedrich Dürrenmatt was perhaps the most significant German-language playwright of his era after Bertolt Brecht, but he was also a man of many talents. He was born in the small town of Konolfingen, Switzerland, in 1921, the son of a Protestant pastor. As a child, Fritz was precocious and intellectually curious. In 1933, he started secondary school and also began studying painting and drawing with a local artist. Despite his intelligence and curiosity, Fritz was a lackluster student and often skipped class. In 1941, Dürrenmatt struggled to decide whether to become a painter or a writer. He wrote to his father, “It’s not a matter of deciding whether or not I shall become an artist, for that cannot be decided—you become one out of necessity.” He chose writing, but he never stopped painting and drawing, leaving behind an enormous body of work when he died, most of which hadn’t been publicly viewed. His university career was as bumpy as his secondary education, with his dropping out of the University of Zurich after a semester. He transferred to the University of Bern and studied philosophy for a semester until his education was interrupted again when Dürrenmatt was drafted for military duty. Although Switzerland maintained their stance of neutrality, they also kept their military fortified in anticipation of potential invasion by Germany. Exempted for poor eyesight, he returned to school in 1942 along with the beginnings of his antimilitary, pacifist sentiments. Later, when his own son was jailed for refusing military conscription, Dürrenmatt would support him. Dürrenmatt was planning a doctoral dissertation on Kierkegaard and tragedy, but abruptly dropped out of academia in 1943. Decades later, while accepting one of the five honorary doctorates he would receive, he explained that he “realized that it is not only possible to think with the philosophy, but also with the theater stage.”

In 1946, Dürrenmatt married Swiss actress Lotti Geissler, and in 1947, his first child and his first play would both premiere. His son, Peter, would eventually have two sisters. His play, It Is Written, was intensely controversial, opening in Zurich to audiences who booed, protested, and broke into fights. But despite the strong audience reaction to the play’s broaching of religion and history, critics recognized Dürrenmatt’s potential, and he received a monetary award from the Welti Foundation. His second play, The Blind Man (1947), was a failure, placing him in dire financial straits. He was commissioned to write a play called The Building of the Tower of Babel, but although the play was cast and he had already penned four acts, Dürrenmatt scrapped it and instead wrote the play that would be his first hit. Romulus the Great (1949), subtitled an “unhistorical historical comedy,” is about the end of the Roman Empire and the emperor who lets it fall because he’d rather stay home and tend to his chickens. The play was a hit, but money was still tight, so Dürrenmatt wrote radio plays and began writing very successful detective thriller novels. Millions of copies were sold, and several of his novels spawned international film adaptations, including the star-studded 2001 film The Pledge with Jack Nicholson. His next two plays received mixed reactions, and he swore that he’d never write drama again. But in 1956, The Visit premiered in the same theatre that had seen the riots caused by his first play, and the work launched Dürrenmatt’s international reputation. It became a Broadway hit, was translated into 25 languages, was released as a major motion picture, and brought a slew of awards. Six years later, he had another hit with The Physicists (1962), a satirical tragicomedy about a scientist who hides in a mental institution to protect his brilliant discoveries from being taken and used for destruction.

In the years since he wrote his first play at the age of 26, Dürrenmatt had come to the conclusion that tragedy and drama are impossible in a postmodern, post-Holocaust, nuclear world. He wrote in his 1955 essay, “Problems of the Theatre,” that drama, like tragedy, “presupposes a world that the eye can take in.” The powerful antagonists of the world, like the atom bomb, are manmade. Therefore, a manmade artistic representation of manmade power will fail, as, “Two mirrors which reflect one another remain empty.” Tragedy also presumes a sense of conscience and responsibility, and in the absurd violence of the 20th century, “there are no more guilty and also, no more responsible men.” But comedy supposes a topsy-turvy world, and the absurdity of the grotesque. Comedy also encourages emotional distance, unlike tragedy, which provokes the cathartic purgation of pity and fear. Dürrenmatt’s tragicomedy is both humorous and uncomfortable. He sets the characters up for heartwarming redemption, and then not only denies it, but also shows that the characters were never capable of such warmth. In The Visit, there is the momentary suggestion of a romantic (or at least friendly) reunion between Claire and Ill, but over time, it becomes apparent that neither character has genuine affection for the other. Would-be heroes, such as the Schoolmaster, take a run at greatness and then fall short. The ipso facto hero of The Visit, Alfred Ill, is unwilling, and when he finally submits to becoming the town martyr, his sacrifice is immediately rewritten as a heart attack due to joy rather than the reluctant death of a man who didn’t want to be a hero. His life is traded for financial gain. Through Dürrenmatt’s ironic comedy, tragedy is exposed.