mueller - the hamletmachine.pdf - m - enkei

The Hamletmachine

by Heiner Mueller, 1979

Translation notes: Mueller’s original text quotes a number of English words and phrases.

These are outlined below by rectangles, rather than an alternate font or italics, so as not

to disrupt Mueller’s deliberate use of capital letters and spacing.

FAMILY ALBUM

I was Hamlet. I stood on the coast and spoke with the surf BLABLA at my back the ruins

of Europe. The bells sounded in the state funeral, murderer and widow a pair, the town

councilors in goose-step behind the coffin of the High Cadaver, wailing in badly-paid

grief WHO IS THE CORPSE IN THE MEAT-WAGON’S STY / FOR WHOM IS

THERE SUCH A HUE AND CRY? / THE CORPSE IS OF A GREAT / GIVER OF

ESTATE The pillar of the population, work of his statecraft HE WAS A MAN WHO

ONLY TOOK ALL FROM ALL. I stopped the corpse-train, sprang the coffin with my

sword, broke it to the hilt, succeeded with the blunt remains, and distributed the dead

progenitor FLESH ENJOINS HAP’LY FLESH to the surrounding faces of misery. Grief

gave way to joy, joy into munching, on the empty coffin the murderer mounted the

widow SHOULD I HELP YOU UP UNCLE OPEN THE LEGS MAMA. I lay on the

ground and heard the world revolving step by step into putrefaction.

I’M GOOD HAMLET GI’ME A CAUSE FOR GRIEF

AH THE WHOLE GLOBE FOR A REAL SORROW

RICHARD THE THIRD I THE PRINCEKILLING KING

OH MY PEOPLE WHAT HAVE I DONE UNTO THEE

LIKE A HUNCHBACK I DRAG MY OVERBRAIN

SECOND CLOWN IN THE SPRING OF COMMUNISM 1

SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THIS AGE OF HOPE

LET’S DELVE IN EARTH AND BLOW HER AT THE MOON 2

Now comes the specter who made me, the axe still in the skull. You can keep your hat

on, I know, that you have one hole too many. I only wish my mother had one too fewer,

when you were yet in your flesh: I would have been spared myself. One should sew the

wenches shut, a world without mothers. We could slaughter one another in peace, and

with some consideration, if we wearied of this world or if our necks were too narrow for

our cries. What do you want from me. Is one state funeral not enough for you. Senile old

fool. Don’t you have any blood on your shoes. What’s your corpse to me, anyway. Just

be happy that the executioner is delayed, maybe you’ll still make it into Heaven. Why are

you still here. The hens have been slaughtered. Tomorrow has been cancelled.

SHOULD I

BECAUSE IT’S EXPECTED STICK A PIECE OF IRON INTO

THE NEAREST FLESH OR THE NEXT-NEAREST

HOLDING ME FAST BECAUSE THE WORLD SPINS AROUND

LORD BREAK MY NECK FALLING FROM A BEERHALL

BENCH

Enter Horatio. Co-conspirator of my thoughts, which are full of blood since the morning

was draped with the empty sky. YOU COME TOO LATE MY FRIEND FOR YOUR

WAGE / NO PLACE FOR YOU IN MY TRAGEDY-PLAY. Horatio, do you know me

still. Are you my friend, Horatio. If you know me, how can you be my friend. Do you

want to play Polonius, who wants to sleep with his daughter, the alluring Ophelia, she’s

about to get her cue, see how she shakes her rump – a tragic role. HoratioPolonius. I

knew that you’re an actor. I’m one too, I play Hamlet. Denmark is a concentration camp,

between us grows a Wall. See what grows from the Wall. Exit Polonius. My mother the

bride. Her breasts a bed of roses, her lap a nest of snakes. Have you forgotten your text,

Mama. I stage-whisper WASH THE MURDER FROM THY FACE MY PRINCE / AND

MAKE A CHEERFUL FACE FOR THE NEW DENMARK. I’ll make you into a virgin

again Mother so that the King has a bloody wedding THE MOTHER’S LAP IS NO

ONE-WAY STREET Now I tie your hands behind your back with the bridal train

because I loathe your embrace. Now I tear apart the bridal gown. Now you must scream.

Now I smear the rags of your dress into the earth which my father has become with the

rags your face your belly your breasts. Now I take thee my mother in his, my father’s

invisible trace. I strangle your cry with my lips. Do you recognize the fruit of your flesh

now go, go to your wedding, whore, broad in the Danish sun shining on the living and the

dead. I want to stuff the corpse in the drainhole so the palace drowns in kingly shit. Then

let me eat your heart, Ophelia, which sheds my tears.

THE EUROPE OF THE WOMAN

Enormous room. Ophelia. Her heart is a clock.

OPHELIA [CHORUS/HAMLET]

I am Ophelia. She who the river could not hold. The woman on the gallows The woman

with the slashed arteries The woman with the overdose ON THE LIPS SNOW The

woman with the head in the gas-oven. Yesterday I stopped killing myself. I am alone

with my breasts my thighs my lap. I rip apart the instruments of my imprisonment the

Stool the Table the Bed. I destroy the battlefield that was my Home. I tear the doors off

their hinges to let the wind and the cry of the World inside. I smash the Window. With

my bleeding hands I tear the photographs of the men who I loved and who used me on

the Bed on the Table on the Chair on the Floor. I set fire to my prison. I throw my clothes

into the fire. I dig the clock which was my heart out of my breast. I go onto the street,

clothed in my blood.

SCHERZO

University of the Dead. Whispers and murmurs. From their gravestones (cathedrals)

dead philosophers throw their books at Hamlet. Gallery (ballet) of the dead women The

woman on the gallowsThe woman with the slashed wrists etc. Hamlet observes them with

the attitude of a museum(theater)goer. The dead women tear his clothing from his body.

From an upright coffin with the inscription HAMLET 1 enters Claudius and, clothed and

made up as a whore, Ophelia. Striptease of Ophelia.

OPHELIA Do you still want to eat my heart, Hamlet. Laughs.

HAMLET Head in his hands: I want to be a woman.

Hamlet puts on Ophelia’s clothes, Ophelia paints a whore’s mask on him, Claudius, now

Hamlet’s father, laughs soundlessly, Ophelia offers Hamlet her hand to be kissed and

steps with Claudius/Hamlet Father back into the coffin. Hamlet in pose of a whore. An

angel, the face in the back of the neck: Horatio. Dances with Hamlet.

VOICE(S) from the coffin:

What you killed you should also love.

The dance becomes wilder and wilder. Laughter from the coffin. On a swing a Madonna

with breast-cancer. Horatio opens an umbrella, embraces Hamlet. Freeze in the embrace

under the umbrella. The breast-cancer shines like a sun.

PEST IN BUDA BATTLE OF GREENLAND 3

Room 2, destroyed by Ophelia. Empty armor, axe in the helm.

HAMLET

The oven smokes in cheerless October

A BAD COLD HE HAD OF IT JUST THE WORST TIME

JUST THE WORST TIME OF THE YEAR FOR A REVOLUTION

Through the suburbs blooming cement goes

Dr. Zhivago in sorrow

for his wolves

IN THE WINTER SOMETIMES THEY CAME INTO THE VILLAGE TORE APART

A PEASANT

puts costume and mask down.

HAMLET-ACTOR

I am not Hamlet. I play no role anymore. My words have nothing more to say to me. My

thoughts suck the blood of images. My drama is cancelled. Behind me the scenery is

being taken down. By people who are not interested in my drama, for people, to whom it

doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to me either. I’m not playing along anymore. Stagehands

install, unknown to Hamlet-actor, a refrigerator and three TV sets. Humming of the

refrigerator. Three programs without sound. The scenery is a monument. It portrays a

man who made history, a hundred times life-size. The petrification of a hope. His name in

interchangeable. The hope has not been fulfilled. The monument lies on the ground, razed

three years after the state funeral of the Hated and Honored One by those who now rule

us. And the stone is inhabited. In the spacious nose and earholes, in the folds of skin and

uniform of the shattered icon dwell the poorer population of the metropolis. At the fall of

the monument followed, after an appropriate time, the Rebellion. My drama, if it could

yet take place, would happen in the Time of the Rebellion. The Rebellion begins as an

urban promenade. Against the traffic regulations during working hours. The streets

belong to the pedestrians. Here and there an auto is overturned. Evil dream of a knife-

thrower: the slow journey down a one-way street to an irrevocable parking-spot, which is

surrounded by armed pedestrians. Police who get in the way are simply pushed aside.

When the procession approaches the district of the rulers, it is brought to a halt by a

police cordon. Groups form, out of which speakers arise. On the balcony of a

Government building appears a man with a badly fitting suit and starts to speak. When

the first stone hits him, he draws back behind the double-doors fitted with bulletproof

glass. From the call for more freedom comes the cry for the overthrow of the

Government. People begin to disarm the police, storming two three buildings, a jail a

police station an office of the secret police, hanging a dozen quislings of the authorities

by the feet, the Government deploys troops, tanks. My place, if my drama ever took

place, would be at both sides of the front, between the fronts, over them. I stand in the

sweating masses and throw stones at the police soldiers tanks bulletproof glass. I glance

through the double-door outfitted with bulletproof glass at the oncoming crowd and smell

the perspiration of my fear. I shake, choked with nausea, my fist against myself, standing

behind the bulletproof glass. I see, choked by fear and loathing, myself in the oncoming

crowd, foam licking at my lips, shaking my fist against myself. I hang my uniformed

mueller - the hamletmachine.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: