In the general resurrection of the royal dramatic theatre in stockholm, it is easy to forget that they also engaged in artistic activities. But thanks to Stefan Larsson’s wonderful set of ”Line:” I got in a week a sudden urge to read about some of Tennesse Williams ‘ plays and short stories.
In a column noted recently, Leif Zern that there is something in Williams that are so familiar in times like these (DN 9/2). He is looking for the answer in the two scales in a Williams, that the protagonists in the plays is often faced with the choice to win or disappear, that they inhabit a society dominated by lies and conspiracy theories, where the liberal dream of reason thrown on the sophögen.
It is a very interesting analysis. Now, when I read about Williams, I see that I also turned off undergångsdriften of several of his characters, their half-expressed longing to be overthrown from their often privileged positions, the pleasure of being in the mud. There is a tendency that recurs in several of Williams ‘ predecessor in the modern drama, not the least of Strindberg’s Miss Julie who is constantly dreaming the same dream: ”I am longing to fall, but I don’t fall and still I get no peace till I come down!”
the expression of a similar fantasy. In many ways, she is a vulgariserad Julie-figure, or even a Fedra: a halvalkad aged sex addict who compulsively seek out a brutal slob. Why she does it with such a envetenhet remains really unclear – possibly able, she just can’t maintain the facade any longer, that if she sought an outlet for the boredom that it means to comply with social expectations, a result of being a nice girl with legs crossed.
Yet it is precisely this bit of obsolete tension between the overself and the desire to give in to the gritty, to the hang of it civilization-building the yoke, and let the ugly in a get free reign of a kind, which makes you really sharks to the face of the ”Line Lust” and Tennessee Williams in the day.
at any time, we can, for the reasons we have never before faced, happen to choose our own destruction.
so here among the digital troll, kommentarsfältherrars and various radicals rallying, ahead of the parliamentary elections in a Europe that is torn apart by populism and polarization, feels all these ambivalent Williamska antihjältar as an unexpectedly current picture of our ability to continually short-circuit our own opportunities, but also as a kind of respite. Williams is completely uninterested to distance themselves even from their most abominable figures and look instead at them with equal parts pity and irony. Yes, people are on the whole animals – but what should you do? Shoot them?
gaphalsradikalerna on social media sometimes seem to find it when they advocate their peculiar requirements on the sprickfrihet of his fellow-men, and closest to the random buses to their followers on the first best meningsavvikare. In such moments works Williams studies in destructiveness and crapulous, emotional cadavers as a kind of reminder of our own darkness, our own fragility. At any time we can, for the reasons we have never before faced, happen to choose our own destruction. And then uppsträckningar and pöbelrop a pretty badly aids. Ask Blanche Dubois.
It sounds like a moralist? Tennessee Williams gives no response, thankfully. But he also never gets enough of the conflict between violence and civilization, between the human façade, and the beast under the surface, between cruelty and even, the strength and the weakness, the norm and a century, is in a way an answer in itself.
the kind of affection that is based on the knowledge that it has the power to destroy, and who only becomes stronger by mixing up with contempt”, he writes about a woman’s obsession with her young gigolo in the masterful the national ”Mrs. Stone roman spring”.
The insiktsfullheten, precision and formuleringskonsten makes him absolutely indispensable, even in the year 2019.
Read more texts by Johan Hilton, for example, about how shame does not disappear automatically with openness and Pride
