In connection with a more scholarly project, I have just been re-reading Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play Der Besuch der alten Dame, which is available in an English translation by Joel Agee under the title The Visit. (Digression: I’m not crazy about that title translation. The German, literally, would be “The Visit of the Old Lady.” Which admittedly does not sound all that exciting in English. The German “Dame,” like the equivalent English “dame,” is a “lady” as opposed to merely a “woman”—a connotation that carries certain ironies in the play. But “The Visit of the Old Dame” doesn’t sound any better! Since the old lady of the title is in fact returning to the town of her youth, I might suggest something like “The Grande Dame Returns.”)
Dürrenmatt is probably not widely known among English readers, which is a shame, because he is a fantastic writer—one of my favorites, in fact. Along with Max Frisch, he was one of the two giants of mid-20th century Swiss literature. He was a prominent playwright but also successful as a writer of prose fiction. Much of his best work, including The Visit, falls within the genre of detective or crime fiction, broadly defined. His two novellas featuring Inspector Barlach, The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion (available separately in Agee’s English translations, or in a joint volume as The Inspector Barlach Mysteries) are outstanding. I consider Suspicion in particular—about a former Nazi doctor who has opened an alternative private practice under a false identity in Switzerland—one of the best books I have ever read, not only an edge-of-your-seat thriller but also a relentless interrogation of whether belief in objective morality remains possible after the Holocaust.
I am not sure I know of any other author quite like Dürrenmatt. He is wild and bizarre, immensely imaginative and creative. He is often extremely funny but also deadly serious. His characters launch unpredictably into philosophical monologues. Justice and injustice become tangled up in his work and blend into each other. He tackles big topics: faith, reason, morality, democracy, capitalism, the end of the world. He is like an iconoclastic combination of Plato, G. K. Chesterton, P. G. Wodehouse, and Raymond Chandler.
These qualities are on full display in The Visit. The small Swiss town of Güllen (a name derived from a Swiss German word for liquid manure) has fallen on hard economic times. As the play opens, its leading citizens are eagerly awaiting a visit from Claire Zachanassian, the “old lady” of the title. Originally from Güllen, she had left the town as a young woman, under circumstances gradually revealed as the play progresses. Now she is fabulously wealthy, and the “Gülleners” hope that her return signals an intention to fund the town’s economic revival.
From the moment of her arrival, however, it is clear that Claire will not be what the villagers expected. She emerges from a train wearing a pearl necklace and enormous golden bracelets, “all decked out, outrageous, but for that very reason a woman of the world, with a peculiar grace in spite of all her grotesqueness.” In tow is a bizarre entourage: an elderly butler, two gangsters she has ransomed from Sing-Sing to carry her around in a sedan chair, a pair of blind eunuchs, and her recently married seventh husband. (Before the play ends, a matter of days, she will be on husband number nine.) Her luggage includes a black panther and a coffin.
The townspeople hope that Claire’s old flame, Alfred Ill, will soften her up and induce her to make the gift they are all hoping for. She is indeed prepared to make one, but on rather unexpected terms. We learn that when Claire had left Güllen those many years ago, she was pregnant with Ill’s child. Ill perjured himself in order to deny paternity, bribing a pair of young men to say that they had also slept with Claire, who was driven out of town as an object of public shame and humiliation. Her child was taken from her after birth and died shortly thereafter; penniless and desperate, Claire turned to prostitution to support herself. She escaped that life only by marrying an old, wealthy client, with whose estate she began her climb into the ranks of the world’s richest people.
Now Claire is back, and she intends revenge—or, as she would have it, justice. Indeed, she intends to buy herself justice, having learned that money speaks in this world. She offers to relieve Güllen’s economic misfortune with a gift of one billion Swiss francs, half for the town, half to be divided equally among its residents. She has only one condition: in order for Güllen to receive the money, someone must avenge the earlier injustice done to her. Someone must murder Alfred Ill.
The townspeople react initially with indignation. “We are still in Europe,” the mayor proudly proclaims, “we’re still not heathens. In the name of the city of Güllen, I decline your offer. In the name of humanity. We would rather be poor than stained with blood.” As the citizens applaud, Claire says simply, “I’ll wait.” And she does, watching as the citizens begin wearing new clothes, purchasing newer and more expensive goods, making plans for an expanded town hall and even a new bell in the church tower. All of them clearly expect to come into money. Somehow. Somewhere. No one says how. But we know what they are thinking. Ill watches in growing panic, as do we. “No one wants to kill me,” says Ill. “Everyone hopes that someone else will do it. So sooner or later someone will.”
Even after multiple readings, it remains a chilling experience to watch the play hurtle toward a catastrophic conclusion that is hardly foreordained but that feels inevitable. (For much of the action, Claire—who is compared at one point to one of the fates—appears seated on a balcony above the stage, like a Greek goddess looking down upon the events she has set in motion.) No one openly threatens Ill. No one announces an intention to kill him. Everyone insists that Claire’s proposal is so obviously outlandish that it can only have been meant as a joke. Gradually the townspeople, motivated by greed and passively accepting an injustice that no one personally intends to commit, become more and more hostile towards Ill, criticizing his past treatment of Claire and saying that, really, he was a cad who certainly deserves whatever he has coming now. They hide what they are doing beneath a veil of righteous indignation and the refusal to admit that they would contemplate doing it. Weakness, passivity, cowardice, greed—all these combine to produce an injustice masquerading as justice.
The play culminates in a frightening parody of Swiss direct democracy, with the Güllener men assembled to vote on whether to accept Claire’s proposal to create an endowment for the town. They know exactly what they are voting for, although the international journalists there to cover the scene (they follow Claire’s every move in tabloid fashion) do not know the hidden meaning behind the debate. When the citizens of Güllen, chanting an oath together in unison, vote to accept the endowment “not for the sake of money, but for the sake of justice,” we understand what is happening.
That final scene, with its town hall meeting and show of hands, is very Swiss. And Dürrenmatt surely meant to criticize what he perceived as the hypocrisy of Swiss democracy and the outsized influence of wealth. But his warning resonates well beyond the borders of Switzerland. We inhabit a political moment when partisans of varying stripes are all too eager to “cancel” an opponent for a disfavored word, expression, or point of view. Being “canceled” sounds rather bland, but it can mean the loss of a job, livelihood, and reputation, especially for people without the fame or media access to make their cause known. We have our own scapegoats, our own Alfred Ills. We even have politicians—sometimes in high places—who promise to get revenge on their political enemies and encourage their supporters to do the same.
Churchill was right, I think, when he said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest. Even in the twenty-first century United States, there is a bit of Güllen. Read Dürrenmatt to reflect upon it. You won’t regret it.
Thanks for reading. See you later this week for another installment From My Bookshelf.