Theatre
The Last Days of Mankind
Die letzten Tage der Menschheit
Karl Kraus · 1922
Opening lines
Ein Zeitungsausrufer
Extraausgabee –!
Special editiooon!
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from projekt-gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Vienna and the fronts, from 1914 to 1918, in more than two hundred short scenes with no continuous plot. Some five hundred characters pass through: journalists, officers, profiteers, Prater onlookers, judges of courts martial. Two voices recur from scene to scene, the Optimist and the Grumbler, to comment on what the press writes, what the communiqués announce and what people repeat.
Context
The author assembled his text from authentic documents: military communiqués, articles, advertisements, speeches. Studies put the share of quotations at a third or at nearly half, and the preface warns that the most glaring inventions are quotations. Written from 1915 to 1922, the play first appeared in a special issue of his journal in 1919, then in book form, revised and expanded, in 1922. Kraus intended it for a Martian theatre and in 1930 drew from it a stage version of ninety-nine scenes.
Who it is for
A play that is never performed in full: according to the author, a performance would last about ten evenings. To be read by scenes, like an assemblage of documents.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its author's major work and as one of the great literary condemnations of the First World War.
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