Der Eisheilige und die Liebesheldin. Versuch über Ernst Hardts Drama "König Salomo"

Hardt's "König Salomon" was one of the most successful plays of the Weimar Republic, although it received scathing reviews from the critics. The play lacks any drama in the conventional sense, and thus also any pathos of departure; there is no way out, neither for the fearful, fidgety Solomon, nor for the courageous Abisag and Adonia, only paralysing mood and creeping doom. That Hardt did not cater to the yearnings of theatre critics pining for radiant heroes must be credited to him today - his poetics follow a different ethos. He neither heroises nor demonises his characters, nor do they bathe in the voluptuousness of cruelty, like the eccentrics of décadence and expressionism, but remain, with the exception of Abisag, peculiarly erratic. What makes Hardt's Solomon figure interesting is precisely their combination of uncanny coldness of reason and weakness of action. Solomon, who will have thousands of wives, doesn't help Abisag out of her love trouble, indeed he doesn't even protest, like the passionate Adonia, against the aged David's morbid desire for the young woman he himself loves. It is the love that has not been lived, the life that has not been lived, that weighs heavily on the characters here, whose dead-like torpor promises no future for the dawning new reign.