3 For this description, see also “Demonic Berlin” (26).
4 In 1893, Panizza published his controversial parody of the doctrine of Immaculate Conception, Die unbefieckte Empfängnis der Päpste: Von Bruder Martin O.S.B; Aus dem Spanischen von Oskar Panizza [The Immaculate Conception of the Popes: By Brother Martin O.S.B; Translated from the Spanish by Oskar Panizza] (Zurich: J. Schabelitz, 1893).
5 See Panizza’s Das Liebeskonziclass="underline" eine Himmels-Tragödie in fünf Aufzügen (Zurich: J. Schabelitz, 1895), for which he was charged and convicted of blasphemy.
6 Panizza, Parisjana, deutsche Verse aus Paris (Zurich: Zürcher Diskußionen, 1899).
7 Panizza, Visonen der Dämmerung [Visions of Gloaming] (Munich: G. Müller, 1914), xiii.
8 See the account of Panizza’s life by Deacon Friedrich Lippert, In memoriam Oskar Panizza (Munich: Horst Stobbe, 1926).
9 See “Die Kirche von Zinsblech” [The Church of Zinsblech] and “Das Wirtshaus zur Dreifaltigkeit” [The Inn of the Trinity] in Panizza, Visionen: Skizzen und Erzählungen (Leipzig: W. Friedrich, 1893).
10 Panizza, “Menschenfabrik” [The People Factory], in Dämmrungsstücke: Vier Erzählungen (Leipzig: W. Friedrich, 1890).
11 Panizza, Die unbefleckte Empfängnis der Päpste, 7ff.
CHAPTER 35. Prescriptions for Comedy Writers
A Conversation between Wilhelm Speyer and Walter Benjamin1
BENJAMIN: Did you hear, Stefan Großmann is suing Fehling!
SPEYER: You could at least say “Good day.”
BENJAMIN: Good day.
SPEYER: Good day. Now why is he suing?
BENJAMIN: You must know that Fehling staged Großmann’s play Apollo, Brunnenstraße in Berlin.2 If I’m not mistaken, you were even at the premiere. The long and short of it is, he’s suing him because he feels artistically compromised by their collaboration.
SPEYER: I’m very sympathetic to Großmann’s cause, suing his colleague. You see, we too have joined forces for some collaborative work. You, the critic, and I, the playwright. It was probably a mistake. Earlier on, at least, I was always of the opinion: massacre the critics. But now you’ve got me saying “good day” to you, shaking your hand, and allowing you to jam my signals with every one of your critical aperçus as I write.
BENJAMIN: I’m deeply saddened, dear Speyer, to see that you have once again reverted to erroneous thinking. So we’ve met here today by coincidence, just like that? What’s the matter all of a sudden?
SPEYER: I have a little problem, my dear critic. In the third act.
BENJAMIN: And in just such a situation you want to chase away so useful a demon as the critic? Did the critic not speculate with you in great detail about the world and people and especially about the state of social drama today, before one day deciding to put these musings to the test? Let me remind you that at that time we were in agreement on the main point: that the writer, especially the playwright, and particularly the author of social comedies, is currently in a very exposed position. Because what does today’s society give him? Does it give him a firm measure of the important questions in life — that is, in terms of marriage or fortune or status — or a clear notion of state or civic virtue or the like? Not a chance! Sometimes society swears by the itinerant preacher, other times by the snob, and each week it’s something new. So, that’s what it gives the playwright: nothing. And what does it demand from the playwright? Everything! When society doesn’t know where to turn, he is expected to furnish the answer. When standards are lacking, he is expected to provide them. When it is deluding itself, he is to point the way, and because he is a comedy writer, everything has to be enjoyable, delivered gently and cajolingly. In short, everything should serve to entertain.
SPEYER: I have the feeling that lurking in what you just said is a small attack on the writer. Of course, you are yet again of the opinion that the critic can intervene with a healing effect on the comedy writer’s difficult situation … Once again you fancy yourself the doctor of poetry, like most of your colleagues.
BENJAMIN: Doctor is a well-chosen word. For a doctor has other tasks besides curing an illness, namely, diagnosing it.
SPEYER: I would be grateful if you could provide a good diagnosis of the ailments currently besetting me, which cause me to be apprehensive and, thankfully, allow me to see the value in collaboration, which — if I may speak earnestly — I have often tried in the past. At the moment, perhaps the most appropriate thing is to abide by the words of Nietzsche: “Go not to the people, stay in the desert.” In other words: a friend of mine has a cabin in the mountains of Upper Bavaria. I will go there to reflect on the problem in my third act.
BENJAMIN: As always, your escape plans will end, as far as I can tell, in a shared car ride, and I am hereby ready to take part.
SPEYER: I would like to remind you that your dramaturgical theories are the most expensive ones around. The last time you shared your constructive ideas about our social comedy, during a particularly riveting aperçu I drove straight into the guardrail on the road from St. Moritz to Tarasp. This aperçu cost my car insurance company three hundred marks.
BENJAMIN: Of course, you say nothing of what it earned you.
SPEYER: A play that lacks a final act, dear Dr. Benjamin, earns absolutely nothing. I have no intention of giving German literature a new Robert Guiscard. So let’s try to cure the disease! Are you honestly of the opinion that I should not go to my cabin?
BENJAMIN: I’m happy to share my thoughts on your literary housing schemes. For one thing: enough of this going-it-alone business! For the writer of dramas of any kind, collaboration is practically the rule. If not in his study, then later in stage rehearsals.
SPEYER: But there is a fundamental difference between those two things.
BENJAMIN: I grant you. That’s what I was getting at. But let’s first agree on one thing: the drama is a collaboration to a much higher degree than any other literary work.
SPEYER: But is collaboration today anything like it was fifty years ago, with Sardou and Scribe?3
BENJAMIN: Not in the least. You have to adhere to the most modern tendencies of the theater, where the collective itself writes the plays.
SPEYER: This does seem to be your inclination.
BENJAMIN: Indeed! But I’m not interested in what has come from these experiments that, for the most part, remain wholly unsatisfactory. Here’s what does interest me: how do such efforts come about? It’s very simple: precisely because our concept of society is shattered and in flux, the theater, and the playwright, need correctives and control measures so as not to lose the ground under their feet. Fifty years ago it was very different; collaboration could be a mere act of improvisation, of whim, of mutual enjoyment. Hopefully this is also true for us from time to time. But behind it lies an imperative about which, I believe, we both are clear.
SPEYER: But in using such methods there’s always the risk of the central literary idea getting completely lost. Everything becomes just a montage.
BENJAMIN: But that’s just it: the central idea should not be sheltered, so to speak, in a literary finishing school, protected from the harsh winds of reality. It should develop in this harsh reality amid the objections of the critic, the dramaturge, etc., etc.