Buchner Complete Plays

Collected in this volume are powerful dramas and psychological fiction by the nineteenth-century iconoclast now recognized as a major figure of world literature. Also included are selections from Büchner's letters and philosophical writings.

"The life of Georg Bèuchner was short, intense, and tragic--and ... significant for the development of modern drama. His three plays ... were ... ahead of their time in their ... dramatic and psychological treatment. They served as an impetus for contemporary schools of drama as different as the Theatre of the Absurd of Ionesco and the Epic Theatre of Brecht. Also presented in this only complete volume of Bèuchner in English are his two powerful prose pieces, The Hessian Courier and his short story Lenz"--Publisher marketing.

The complete collection of Büchner's plays in one volume Büchner was acknowledged by figures as divergent as Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht to be the forefather of modern theatre. On his death at the age of 23, he left behind some outstanding dramatic works: his historical drama, Danton's Death, 'the most remarkable first play in European culture' (Guardian), translated here by Howard Brenton and Jane Fry; the innovatory tragedy, Woyzeck, translated by John Mackendrick; and the absurdist comedy, Leonce and Lena, translated by Anthony Meech. He also left a powerful short story, Lenz, an important account of his research into cranial nerves, and his revolutionary pamphlet, The Hessian Courier. All these are collected in this one volume and supplemented with a selection of his remarkable letters.

This is your rhetoric translated. These wretches, these executioners, the guillotine are your speeches come to life. You have built your doctrines out of human heads... Why should an event that transforms the whole of humanity not advance through blood? 1794: the French Revolution reaches its climax. After a series of bloody purges the life-loving, volatile Danton is tormented by his part in the killing. His political rival, the driven, ascetic Robespierre, decides Danton's fate. A titanic struggle begins. Once friends who wanted to change the world, now one stands for compromise the other for ideological purity as the guillotine awaits. A revolutionary himself, George Büchner was 21 when he wrote the play in 1835, while hiding from the police. With its hair-raising on-rush of scenes and vivid dramatisation of complex, visionary characters, Danton's Death has a claim to be the greatest political tragedy ever written. In his newly-revised translation, Howard Brenton captures Büchner's exhilarating energy as Danton struggles to avoid his inexorable fall.

The works of Georg Buchner consists of only a few hundred pages written by a man who died in 1837 at the age of twenty-three, yet its influence on 20th-century literature can hardly be exaggerated. Particularly his drama, a century before Brecht, is considered an important precursor of the major trends in drama today. This edition includes the plays Danton's Death, Leonce and Lena, a reconstruction and synopsis of Woyzeck, the novella Lenz, the political essay The Hessian Messenger, and all the surviving letters.

'Everyone's an abyss. You get dizzy if you look down.' -- Woyzeck Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck was left unfinished at the time of its author’s death in 1837, but the play is now widely recognised as the first ‘modern’ drama in the history of European theatre. Its fragmentary form and critical socio-political content have had a lasting influence on artists, readers and audiences to this day. The abuse, exploitation, and disenfranchisement that Woyzeck’s titular protagonist endures find their mirror in his own murderous outburst. But beyond that, they also echo in the flux and confusion of the various drafts and versions in which the play has been presented since its emergence. In this fresh engagement with a modern classic, Gritzner examines the revolutionary dimensions of Büchner’s political and creative practice, as well as modern approaches to the play in performance.

A classic of the German stage adapted as a monologue. Though written in 1837 Woyzeck is widely regarded as the first Expressionist play due to its splintered and fragmentary nature. Here it is presented in a new form.