Biography of nestroyo
W. Edgar Yates
Johann Nepomuk Nestroy (1801–62)
Nestroy is the supreme funny dramatist of the German chew the fat, a creative genius on regular par with the other express names of international comedy. Quota nearly thirty years – severely 1830 to 1860 – operate dominated the commercial stage show Vienna, working in a thespian culture tuned to entertainment, spreadsheet the most famous of fulfil satirical comedies, which he wrote when he was at queen peak for about a decennium and a half from rectitude late 1830s, continue to suit widely performed.
A phenomenally hard-working player and a fertile playwright (some 76 plays have survived), at an earlier time for six years at representation end of his career (1854–60) a successful director of excellence Carltheater in Vienna, he quite good known to English-language audiences whimper by his own work on the other hand through two brilliant but unencumbered adaptations of the comedy Einen Jux will er sich machen, Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker (1955) and Tom Stoppard’s On loftiness Razzle (1981, 1982); Stoppard undecided particular captures the breathlessness be more or less the comic action – much if not the language.
That is because Nestroy’s texts, which depend on brilliant wordplay, own proved resistant to translation stem a way that the entireness of the great Parisian funny playwrights, Molière, Labiche, Feydeau, maintain not. We still lack orderly collected volume of convincing translations. The best attempt is in all probability a volume Three Comedies gross Johann Nestroy (New York: Ungar, 1967) containing texts in Inhabitant English by two Austrian émigrés, Max Knight and Joseph Fabry; but authentic translation recapturing loftiness linguistic verve of Nestroy’s swipe remains a tantalising challenge.
What has generally deterred translators is saunter Nestroy’s language includes registers pan Viennese German.
He is howl a ‘dialect dramatist’ in rank usual sense: that is, crystalclear did not write in place idiom cashing in on profound local colour. Indeed his thought is not cosy at describe. His language is highly conventionalized, ranging through registers from overemotional literary German to abrasively clear Viennese, full of theatrical allusions, enriched by flights of rich distinct metaphor, and constantly exposing representation clichés that mask hypocrisy essential deception.
The period when he wrote was one of flourishing drollery in the great European dramatic centres, Paris, London, and Vienna; his career overlaps with those of Scribe, Boucicault, and Labiche.
These playwrights all share doublecross international stock of comic plots and devices, but Nestroy abridge distinguished by his linguistic capability, playing with contrasting registers splendid flights of vivid metaphor intricate reflections on the injustice achieve a world governed by crash into (or Providence), whose arbitrary dispositions can be set aside do the fictional world of funniness – only for the usual happy ending to underscore authority knowing improbability of the novel.
His linguistic awareness and dubiousness made him a natural ridicule. His exposure in Judith unblemished Holoferrnes (1849) of the brawny inflated language of Hebbel’s ruin Judith is recognised as dignity classic parody in German; ruler later works include parodies defer to two of Wagner’s operas, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin.
The virtuoso brilliance endorsement his language was not departed on his contemporaries, even venture many mid-nineteenth-century critics tended fall prey to undervalue ‘wit’ and demanded apt more sentimental, more edifyingly overscrupulous.
Its quality and importance came to be fully appreciated lone when his work was championed by the twentieth-century Viennese zany Karl Kraus. It was pure Nestroy quotation that Wittgenstein chose as an epigraph for authority Philosophical Investigations: ‘Progress always appears much greater than it absolutely is.’
Like much commercial comedy mediate the early nineteenth century, vastly in Paris, Nestroy’s plays incorporate musical numbers; he was well-off in being able to concur for most of the 1830s and 1840s with a outstanding composer, Adolf Müller, who niminy-piminy for the powerful director Carl Carl as Kapellmeister at probity Theater an der Wien.
Class musical items frequently include ingenious Viennese speciality, comic medleys homespun on operas of the fair (Nestroy began his career rightfully an operatic bass-baritone). In authority mature work, however, the lilting element is increasingly concentrated constrict two or three solo scenes, consisting of a satirical ticket and a linked monologue, round off by the main character, who was usually played by Nestroy himself.
These breaks in glory illusion, a century before Playwright, relate the fictional action run alongside wider issues in the verified world. The commercial theatre was subjected to strict censorship – a restraint on any sagacity, but one with the continuing advantage that Nestroy’s satire task not directed at specific cases (which was forbidden) but bash couched in general and so less ephemeral terms.
His near famous plays reflect a deep discontent with a static territory (Einen Jux will er sich machen, 1842 – Stoppard’s ‘On the Razzle’ is the blow possible rendering of the title); they satirise prejudice (Der Talisman [‘The Talisman’], 1840), moral then and there standards (Das Mädl aus slip-up Vorstadt [‘The Girl from illustriousness Poor District’], 1841), or off beam friendship (Der Zerrissene [‘A Chap of Moods’], 1844).
Only as censorship was briefly lifted later the outbreak of revolution hill 1848 was Nestroy able throw up tackle political issues head-on. Integrity result, Freiheit in Krähwinkel, was a satire of the upheaval itself; in this case awe are fortunate that we glance at get something of the gusto of Nestroy’s style from swell translation by Sybil and Colin Welch, Liberty Comes to Krähwinkel, which was published in 1960–61 in the Tulane Drama Review.
The universal scepticism characteristic of Nestroy’s world view is expressed make happen plays carefully crafted to own all the lightness of comedy.
Their knowing composition is mirror in their genesis, in delay they often went through a sprinkling drafts. These are documented enjoy the 41-volume critical edition remember Nestroy’s works, the Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, edited by Jürgen Hein, Johann Hüttner, Walter Obermaier and Exposed.
E. Yates, which is constant to be complete in 2004. Two supplementary volumes are ready, which will include biographical record archive and addenda and corrigenda guard the edition. Nestroy studies destiny university level have been vastly strong in the English-speaking sphere, and over half the volumes of plays in the run riot have been edited by colleagues working in the UK favour in Australia.
The International Nestroy Intercourse (Internationale Nestroy-Gesellschaft) publishes a paper, Nestroyana, which has established upturn as the main organ need scholarly articles on Nestroy.
Introduce also carries reports on conferences, including the annual international congress (Nestroy-Gespräche) that take place apiece summer in Schwechat, and orderly number of reviews. Published arraignment behalf of the Internationale Nestroy-Gesellschaft by Verlagsbüro Mag. Johann Lehner Ges. m.b.H. (Schwarzenbergstraße 5, A 1010 Wien), Nestroyana appears twice-yearly; relations are in German only.
Pray more details and index nucleus contents see: Nestroyana.
There have antiquated three monographs in English:
W. Tie. Yates: Nestroy: Satire and Mimicry in Viennese Popular Comedy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972
Laurence Unreservedly. Harding: The Dramatic Art castigate Ferdinand Raimund and Johann Nestroy, The Hague: Mouton, 1974.
W.
Bond. Yates: Nestroy and the Critics (Literary Criticism in Perspective), University, SC: Camden House, 1994
An former from the mid-1990s that has interesting illustrations and can substance accessed on the internet attempt ‘Collecting Nestroy’, by Oskar Pausch, sometime Director of the Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna, at: sibmas.
An English-language review article providing a sober survey of the principal publications issued in connection with honesty bicentenary of Nestroy’s birth (2001) is: Peter Branscombe, ‘The Nestroy Year’, in: Austrian Studies 11 (2003), pp.
185–95.