Uno specchio in frantumi. Il teatro della rivoluzione di Ernst Toller e Tankred Dorst

Scenes from a German Revolution: Ernst Toller and Tankred Dorst The fact that masses have become the main actors of political and social events (and not at least of revolutions) was the main topic of Ernst Toller’s play Masse Mensch. Ein Stück aus der sozialen Revolution des 20. Jahrhunderts. In this play, written in prison during the “German revolution” (1918-1919), the author brings to stage the dilemma of a revolutionary pacifist idea which has to face the necessity to use violence for the sake of revolution. Toller tries to elaborate the conflict between ideals and reality, which he considers impossible to solve, by giving form to it in the experimental form of his expressionist drama. As a matter of fact, Toller’s Masse Mensch is not only a politically engaged work, but also an aesthetical experiment, an open and visionary drama, anticipating techniques and languages of later Revolutionsdramen (e.g. Brecht, Weiß and Müller). It’s not a case that the German playwright Tankred Dorst (1925-2017) at the end of sixties dedicated his revue Toller. Szenen aus einer deutschen Revolution to the Munich November-Revolution, focusing on Toller and on his dilemma. Dorst aims at looking at the November Revolution from a historical and critical distance and not at least at unmasking its actors as intellectuals “who wanted to make the revolution but only made literature”. By doing this, Dorst himself works in an experimental way and concentrates on rhythm as well as on the open and fragmented aesthetical form of his play. Taking also reference to Dorst’s documentary studies about the Munich Revolution, this contribution would like to analyse Toller’s Masse Mensch and Dorst’s Toller as innovative aesthetical experiments about the November Revolution in Germany and at the same time as critical reflections about revolutions in the times of mass society.

Masse-Mensch. Ein Stück aus der sozialen Revolution des 20. Jahrhunderts di Ernst Toller (1919) è uno dei primi drammi novecenteschi che affrontano il tema del ruolo delle masse nelle rivoluzioni moderne. Quella di Toller in Masse-Mensch è una riflessione politica che mai si distacca da una sperimentazione estetica. Con tale riflessione lo scrittore non si limita a dar voce a una poetica genuinamente espressionista, ma prosegue un discorso ‘letterario’ sulla rivoluzione, inaugurato da Georg Büchner negli anni Trenta dell’Ottocento con Dantons Tod, e al medesimo tempo anticipa forme e concetti di successivi Revolutionsdramen. Partendo da tali premesse, il saggio intende far emergere le tensioni che animano Masse-Mensch e i dilemmi con cui il suo autore si confronta, approfondendo poi i legami del dramma della rivoluzione di Toller con il successivo Toller. Szenen aus einer deutschen Revolution di Tankred Dorst (1968). L’opera di Dorst, scritta sul finire degli anni Sessanta del Novecento e dunque nel momento delle rivolte studentesche, ripercorre le vicende vissute dal Toller storico a Monaco alla fine degli anni Dieci, con l’intento di riprendere tratti fondamentali della poetica di Toller in Masse-Mensch e al contempo di smascherarne aspetti ambigui e paradossali, al confine fra estetica e politica.