Max Frisch: The Firebugs

The helicopters already patroling the East Side tonight are a pithy reminder of tomorrow's Devil's Night. As is a copy of Max Frisch's The Firebugs / Herr Biedermann und die Brandstifter (1958), a surrealistic play about arsonists. This is existentialist Theatre of the Absurd, akin to Samuel Beckett's En attendant Godot (1952) / Waiting for Godot (1954) and Eugene Ionescco's Rhinoceros (1959). All three of these plays were widely read and well-respected when I was a student.

(A large boom outside as I compose -- this isn't a time warp to July Fourth, is it?)

The Firebugs story line is also a metaphor for letting evil in, even helping spread havoc and destruction -- thanks as much to the complicity and apathy of the general populace as direct action by agents provocateur. In this, it is a parable of the fascists and Nazis coming to power in the 1920s and 1930s in Italy and Germany respectively. Luchino Visconti's The Damned / La Caduta degli dei (1969) provides a more literal if operatic version; films like Aguirre, The Wrath of God / Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972) and High Plains Drifter (1973) also allude to the banal powers of evil. In all cases, some in the status quo grasp what's going on but figure they can channel the encroaching powers into their own schemes. In all cases, they are proven wrong. One cannot sup with the Devil at any level and expect much good to come of it.

From Mordecai Gorelik's 1963 translation:

Useless, quite useless.
And nothing more useless
Than this useless story.
For arson, once kindled,
Kills many,
Leaves few,
And accomplishes nothing.



Today's Rune: Signals.