This morning, out of the blue, I thought of the 1953 play I last saw back in 2007, The Arsonists by Max Frisch. (You may know it by its earlier, better, English title The Firebugs.)
I wouldn’t be prepared to argue whether or not it’s the best play of the 20th century – we all have our favourites. Yet there is no argument it’s the most prophetic.
I’m not going to tell you what it prophesies. Doing so would be insulting your intelligence, and it’s the last thing I’d ever be prepared to do. So, in case you haven’t seen or read the play, let me just tell you what it’s about.
A town is plagued by a spate of arsons. Firebugs, disguised as hawkers, talk, cajole, threaten or otherwise insinuate themselves into people’s homes. All they want is to spend a night or two in the attic, and the townsmen are either too kind or too intimidated to turn them away. Having ensconced themselves, the arsonists proceed to do what arsonists do: setting the houses on fire.
The local worthies, such as the principal character named Biedermann, read accounts of such blazes with smug complacency. That sort of thing may happen to other people, but certainly not to them. They are solid bourgeois burghers, the salt of the earth. No one would dare play fast and loose with them. And if anyone tried, they’d see right through the evildoers’ perfidy.
The name Biedermann derives from der biedere Mann, literally (and ironically) ‘worthy man’ or ‘Everyman’. The protagonist thus embodies the philistine conceit Frisch treats with scathing if subtle derision.
Sure enough, no sooner had Biedermann finished reading yet another newspaper report of an arson than a hawker turns up at his doorstep. Using persuasion faintly tinged with intimidation, he talks his way into Biedermann’s attic, where he promises to spend just one night. Biedermann acquiesces, telling himself his cowardice is actually kindness, and his spinelessness is in fact empathy for his fellow man.
One night becomes several, and before long another hawker appears to share his friend’s new lodgings. The self-invited guests begin to pile the attic high with oil drums full of petrol, which should really tip Biedermann off. So it does, fleetingly, before his congenital smugness takes over. The firebugs don’t even have to deceive him. He does a good job of it himself.
Hence Biedermann does nothing to stop the arsonists. In fact, to prove to himself that no one would dare play a dirty trick on him, the apex of creation, he even gives the criminals matches and helps them to measure the detonating cord to make sure it’s just the right length.
An infernal finale follows, with the two hawkers turning out to be Beelzebub and the Devil unleashing the fires of hell on Biedermann’s cosy world. The philistine Everyman, the Swiss playwright appears to be saying, doesn’t deserve to survive because he’ll do nothing to fight for his survival.
There Frisch echoes Goethe who, in his Faust, conveyed a similar idea: “Of freedom and of life he only is deserving who every day must conquer them anew.” But unlike Goethe, Frisch lived through two world wars. That’s why, unlike Faust who finally goes to heaven, his Biedermann ends up in hell. The 20th century left no room for even Goethe’s semi-happy ending.
Lovers of tags usually mention Frisch side by side with Becket, Ionesco, Pinter and other key figures of the so-called ‘theatre of the absurd’. But life has a tendency to reshuffle the pack, with reality itself becoming so absurd that only absurdity can approach reality.
I’d call Max Frisch a prophetic realist – after I’ve finished calling him a great playwright.
And now let’s talk about the delights of Muslim immigration…
P.S. A retired American lawyer living in Panama yesterday drove down the road only to find his way blocked by anti-oil fanatics. He tried to remove the tyres and rocks they had used as barriers, but his 77-year-old body wasn’t up to the task. As the zealots moved in on him, the lawyer pulled out a gun, a Glock Compact by the looks of it, and shot two of them dead.
He is now held on remand, awaiting a long stint in prison. Call me a heartless brute, but instead of a custodian sentence I’d give him a British passport and a lifelong supply of 9mm ammunition. Perhaps I ought to write a play about it.
Spot on, Mr Boot! Spot on!
So far Muslims have behaved more or less decently in the Moscow area. True, several Tajik rascals strangled an elderly ear training music teacher Tatyana Stoklitskaya at her summer house some 8-9 years ago. She hired them to do some work on her land plot. Yet such cases are quite scarce here. I wonder why? Maybe those cast off all restraint in a liberal society like they do in Paris where they are in the habit of setting cars on fire?
That the Russians keep the Muslims in check is good. That they do the same to everyone else is bad. On balance, I’d rather live in a liberal society, even at the risk of having my car burned.
Frisch was Swiss, you say? So he was most likely never placed in such a difficult situation.
If the government won’t defend the Cenotaph from Palestinian activists why should I? What, head down there with some ‘Norf FC’ types to be ‘kettled’ by the police and branded ‘far-right’ by the media? I fell for the counter-Jihad bait and switch as a young man, never again.
I’ll tell then not to count on you.
I had not heard of the play. It sounds very much like our ever-accommodating society where we invite in or vote for things that many men died trying to prevent. The people who support Muslim immigration are in for a rude awakening should those Muslims ever feel their population has hit critical mass. Sounds like a job for the Charles Martel Society for Multiculturalism.
Anti-oil lunatics in Panama? I thought it was strictly a first-world phenomenon. Perhaps they were there on holiday?
I’d never heard of Max Frisch. Thank you for introducing me to him. I can see possible parallels in 20th Century literature.
“One fine morning Gregor Samsa awoke to find himself transformed into a Christian living in a Mahometan country.”
“The clocks were striking thirteen when Winston Smith heard the call to prayer from the Ingsoc minaret.”
And so on. The devil is always the same, whatever clothes he wears.
If we cannot refute a man’s argument, as is usually the case with yourself, we can always point out a petty insignificant oversight in it: You meant to write Beckett, but your fingers had a predilection for the Archbishop. Perhaps you visited Canterbury recently?
Touché. Misspelling on my part. Actually, no oversight is petty and insignificant; all are lamentable.