From the beginning,
Durrenmatt makes it clear that the mythical land of Elis is a stand-in for the
dramatist's native Switzerland. In the prologue, Hercules's private secretary
Polybius announces that the play deals with "man's zeal for
cleanliness." This poking fun at Swiss stereotypes continues in the next scene,
where Hercules chases the Erymanthian Boar through freezing mountains,
which--much like the Alps--are prone to avalanches. In the third scene, Augeas
describes the climate of Elis as "temperate--like our morals." This
vision of a middle-of-the-road people continues when he describes the country's
religion as "moderate Dionysian tempered with orthodox Apollonarian."
Even Switzerland's history of relative tolerance for both Protestants and
Catholics is fodder for laughs.
Most importantly, however,
Augeas is not a king, as he is in the original myth, but merely president of a
small republic. This honor falls to him not due to any great ability, but
simply because he is the wealthiest of a number of peasant farmers. The
original audience probably recognized Augeas as a version of Rudolf Minger, the
successful farmer who rose to become President of the Swiss Confederation in
the 1930s. Even if audiences today miss this point, however, they will
undoubtedly catch that Augeas is precisely the type of moderate politician
produced by small democracies like Switzerland. After his lengthy introduction,
Augeas uses a bell to call parliament to order and suggests his plan: Hire
Hercules to clean the dung-filled stables so the Eleans can have time to tend
cattle and to produce cheese and butter. Durrenmatt does everything to
associate Elis with Switzerland short of stating that Elean cheese has small
round holes.
In spite of his humiliation
at the idea of a hero being reduced to a glorified janitor, Hercules accepts the
job of cleaning the stables simply in order to clear his debts. (Elis,
Durrenmatt later informs us, is known for its sound currency, yet another
resemblance to a certain other country, and there are frequent allusions in the
play to a flourishing banking industry.) Unfortunately, the problems of the
modern world are not suited to the brute heroics of an earlier age. Before
Hercules can damn up the rivers and wash out the Augean stables, he must get a
permit from the Water Board, and before he can do that, he must register with
the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Works, the Ministry of Finance, and the
Ministry of Dung. The battle with bureaucracy turns out to be a more Herculean
task than any of the hero's famous twelve labors.
The 1960s saw the awakening
of an environmental consciousness in Western society. Hercules and the
Augean Stables premiered only a year
after the publication of Rachel Carson's groundbreaking book Silent Spring in the United States. A growing concern for the
environment is apparent in Durrenmatt's play as well. In the world of the
piece, humanity is choking on its own filth. Pollution, in the form of bovine
waste, is threatening society with complete collapse, but to wash it all away
could "pollute the entire Ionic Sea."
Reflecting the environmental
movement of the early 1960s, Durrenmatt echoes calls for a greater respect for
nature. In Scene 10, Hercules's mistress Deianira rhapsodizes on the earth,
which produces all that man requires. While Augeas's son Phyleus is determined
to dominate nature, Deianira's vision is of a harmonious world in which
humanity loves the earth, and the earth requites that love with its
fruitfulness. No one listens to Deianira, however. The dung becomes an
unqualified environmental disaster, submerging the landscape, burying trees,
and suffocating a once pristine brook.
Environmental concerns in
drama go back at least as far as Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. Like Ibsen, Durrenmatt is less concerned with
physical pollution than he is with the moral pollution that is tainting
society. Just as Ibsen takes aim at democracy in An Enemy of the People, Durrenmatt uses Hercules and the Augean Stables to attack the inability of democratic governments to
deal with any serious crisis. As Augeas's servant Cambyses remarks, "the
dung is deepest in the minds of the Eleans. And you can't purify them with
river water." Hercules fails to clean out the Augean stables not because
he is unable to do so, but because the government will not allow him to do so.
As in the public meeting in Act IV of An Enemy of the People where the crowd turns on Dr. Stockmann, the citizens
of Elis turn against Hercules in the parliament scene of Durrenmatt's play,
placing more and more obstructions in the way of his job.
The bitterest satire comes at
the end of the play. After Hercules abandons Elis, Augeas shows his son Phyleus
another plan for dealing with the catastrophe. In a private garden, Augeas has
been composting small amounts of dung, slowly converting it to soil. Democracy
has failed, but like Ibsen's Dr. Stockmann, Augeas is doing what little he can
to improve his country. Multiple critics have compared the ending of the play
with Voltaire's final chapter of Candide. However, the ending even more closely follows the final scene in An
Enemy of the People. Augeas rejects
politics as doomed to failure and exhorts his son to prepare the way for
enlightenment, just as Stockmann turns his back on the majority to train his
sons and a few other young people for the future.
Durrenmatt goes one step
further than Ibsen. Stockmann can envision an improved democracy somewhere in
the distant future where his descendants can continue the fight for truth.
Augeas has no such comfort. His
teenage son ignores his advice and goes off to fight Hercules, an action
certain to be fruitless and fatal. Not only does democracy not work now; there
is no prospect for it to ever work in the future if the youth of Elis refuses
even to try.
The play originally ended
with Augeas's hopeful speech, but Durrenmatt decided to add the twist ending of
the son's rejection after the opening night performance. In the new ending, the
playwright offers a sliver of hope only to pull it away at the last moment, a
technique he used the previous year in the bleak conclusion of The
Physicists. The optimism of Augeas
masks the play's pessimistic nature. The audience can sympathize with the
patient farmer-president even as the play proves him to be wrong. While Hercules
and the Augean Stables seems like
good-natured fun, its critique of democracy actually cuts quite deep.
Tomorrow, I'll be posting my
thoughts on another play dealing with the Herakles myth, Omphale by Peter Hacks.
