Quartet

Parting Heiner Muller

He who kept the dialogue with the dead,
Now he is dead. A Chinese [Sage] in Prussia,
The master is dead.
The wave rolled over him, the water
Keeps flowing without him. His stony work
Slowly goes down to the ground.
Before he could look out for the next millennium,
His body betrayed him, the enemy.
He who thought he was dying too slowly,
He who was waiting patiently, nothing is waiting for him.

His cynicism was goodness
Since he announced the great falls, the catastrophes
That were silenced by harmony.

The terror he was writing of came from Germany.

(Durs Grunbein, December 30, 1995. Translated by Thomas Irmer.)

Perhaps his most moving and most important play will be the totality of all his public statements. There is a second, ultimately important and creative life for the playwright, even though he does not see the dramatic text become writing through himself: he performed it, as a speaker. Also, one can only speak and think in that way if one had been, for many years, in this absurd self-consuming state of waiting when one keeps listening and hopes that the text that emerges from the inner self can be understood, all of a sudden. Word for word.

Therefore it's a damn cheek that Heiner Muller is dead now.
It doesn't matter that Deleuze died. And it is still hard to believe that Foucault isn't alive anymore. That Jasper Johns is living and Andy Warhol isn't: a disgusting absurdity. There used to be one so-called Hermann Burger, so what? And it is still unbearable, every other day, that Thomas Bernhard isn't around anymore, dead. And for more than eleven years, Truffaut is dead while Godard is still alive. This is horrible, it can't be true, absolutely impossible.

And therefore, unfortunately so, it will now be like that: whenever something important happens in the world, we will have this reflex-like thought: that it is a damn shame that Heiner Muller can't see this anymore. And that's so sad and wrong.

(Rainald Goetz, "Where is he, where is he?," 2 Jan 1996. Translated by Thomas Irmer.)

The author of the primary inspiration for the text of Quartet, Choderlos de Laclos, was born in Amiens, France, on October 18, 1741. During his service in the French military, he began publishing poetry, the first of which was published as part of a periodical in 1767. A comic opera, Ernestine, an adaptation of a popular novel, was performed once in 1777. Soon after, he most likely began writing Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 1778.

This work is influenced in part by Samuel Richardson’s novel Clarissa Harlow and the fiction of Claude Crébillon, works which focused on the character of a male libertine – a man whose self-proclaimed endeavor in life is to liberate women through his delight in free-thinking and rejection of religious and societal morals – embodied by the character of the Vicomte de Valmont. Laclos’ wholly new and most memorable character is that of the Marchioness de Marteuil, a relatively young widow who’s aged husband has conveniently passed away. Through a series of letters, the two characters illustrate the importance of the upper-class’ command and abuse of language to play a series of games between each other and upon unsuspecting virginal youth.

“Quartet is brimming with paraphrased or literal quotes, allusions and references from the eighteenth century Enlightenment; Schiller’s idealism; Goethe’s archetypal German, Faust; Büchner’s portrait of the revolutionary hero, Danton; Nietzsche’s view of Man; on to the more contemporary: operattas of Franz Lehár; the theatrical visions of Artaud and the sensual imagery of Genet.”

Classical Context

Oh! Two souls reside in my breast,
The one wants to part with the other.
…

Beware of her fair hair, for she excels
All women in the magic of her locks;
And when she winds them round a young man's neck,
She will not ever set him free again.

Only children who want to be bandits in order to resemble the bandit they love – or to be that bandit – dare have the audacity to play their character to the very end… We were savage children who went far more deeply into cruelty than our idols, the bold gangsters. But though I have lost the ability to steal the bruisers' adornments, do not be surprised that, at the beginning of my stay in the hole, I unwittingly gave myself a bruiser's build when I drew a pencil sketch of myself on a paper bag for Bulkaen. I drew myself with the muscles I knew I had, and I knew I was strong. It will take […] the knowledge of his treachery to deflate me.

GREEN EYES (sadly): Listen, I tell you it's so sad that I wish it were night so I could try to cling to my heart. I'd like – I’m not ashamed to say it – I’d like, I'd like, I'd like, I'd like to… to cuddle up in my arms.

When he walked by, Darling was smoking, and a slit of abandon in the woman's hardness of soul chanced just then to be open, a slit that catches the hook cast by innocent looking objects. If one of your openings happens to be loosely fastened or a flap of your softness to be showing, you're done for.

A dramatic poet is, in my view, no more than a writer of history, but he stands above the latter by creating history for the second time and, instead of giving us dry narrative, transfers us into the life of the epoch; gives us characters instead of characteristics and real people instead of descriptions. .. If, incidentally, somebody tells me the poet is not to present the world as it is but as it should be, I reply that I do not intend to do things better than God. ..I cannot turn Danton and the bandits of the revolution into paragons of virtue! When I wanted to depict their slovenliness I had to make them slovenly; when I wanted to show their godlessness I had to make them talk like atheists. ..The poet is no teacher of morality, he invents and creates characters, he revives past times. Let people learn from it just as they may learn through the study of history and from observation of daily life.

Out of damp and gloomy days, out of solitude, out of loveless words directed at us, conclusions grow up in us like fungus: one morning they are there, we know not how, and they gaze upon us, morose and gray. Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener but only the soil of the plants that grow in him!

We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities others ascribe to us - in order to deceive ourselves.

Someone took a youth to a sage and said, ‘Look, he is being corrupted by women.’ The sage shook his head and smiled.
‘It is men,’ said he, ‘that corrupt women; and all the failings of women should be atoned by and improved in men. For it is man who creates for himself the image of woman, and woman forms herself according to this image.’
‘You are too kind-hearted about women,’ said one of those present, ‘you do not know them.’ The sage replied:
‘Will is the manner of men; willingness that of women. That is the law of the sexes - truly, a hard law for women. All of humanity is innocent of its existence; but women are doubly innocent. Who could have oil and kindness enough for them?’
‘Damn oil! Damn kindness!’ someone shouted out of the crowd, ‘Women need to be educated better!’
‘Men need to be educated better,’ said the sage and beckoned to the youth to follow him.
The youth, however, did not follow him.

"I have felt as though crushed beneath the fatalism of History. I find in human nature a terrifying sameness, and in the human condition an inexorable force, granted to all and to none. The word ‘must’ is one of the curses in which Mankind is baptized. The saying 'It must needs be that offenses come; but woe to him by whom the offense cometh' is terrifying. What is it in us that lies, murders, steals?"

“There is no better way of making yourself familiar with death than by connecting it with the notion of sexual excess.”

Contemporary Context

Images mean everything, at first. They’re stable and roomy.
But dreams coagulate, form shapes and disappointments.
No image can hold the sky any more. The clouds from a plane
Only steam that hides the view. The heron just a bird.
Even communism, the final image, always renewed
Because it’s washed over and over in blood - daily life
Doles it out in small change, tarnished and blind with sweat.

The great poems: ruins, like bodies long loved, but no longer
Needed, border the path of our finite,
voracious species

Drawing room before the French Revolution.
Air raid shelter after World War III.

Question
At the beginning of this year, i went out with a guy for about a month but it didn't really work so, after a mutual decision we decided to break up. During the summer we both admitted that we still held strong feelings for each other and decided to get back together. This was at the end of the summer and the second time it was brilliant. We reached that 'comfortable' stage and i loved being around him. Unfortunately he had to go off to university in october and we had to break up because of distance. I'm missing him so badly and carry on thinking 'what if' and whether he still likes me as before he left he said he'd never forget me. i'm going up to visit him next week as a friend and with a friend but i'm worried all my feelings will come back. I just can't get over him as we have the same friendship group and i still always talk to him online, text messaging etc. please help me. Thank you katie

Well to tell you the truth I know for a fact all those feelings will come back once you see him. It always happens to people where they go out with someone then break up but still have feelings and once you two see each other those feelings come back. But it only takes time till you can actually get over him. You just have to give yourself time. I know it's hard but that's the only best way. Maybe go out with some of your close girl friends, have a girls night out, go running, or something. I know exercising is the best way to take out all your feelings and to get your mind off things. I know it's helped me in the past. So just hang in there give yourself time. When you go to see him try not to be around him a hole lot. I mean keep your distance and everything. Sure you can talk to him but I mean if your always hanging around him and talking to him ect then theres no doubt you'll get those feelings back that you once had or maybe stonger then what you feel now. I hope this helps. If you need anymore advice im always here.
Take Care,
Colleen

Contents

Biography of Heiner Müller

Biography of Choderlos de Laclos's & synopsis of Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Inspirations and Context (Classical and Contemporary)

Classical Context

Contemporary Context

Questions for performance