Friedrich Durrenmatt

Born in Konolfingen, Switzerland, Friedrich Durrenmatt's father was a minister in the Protestant church and his grandfather had a low-key role in Swiss politics and also was well known for satire. Durrenmatt, began his studies in Bern and Zurich twenty years after his birth, focusing intently on literature and philosophy – he used justice as a tool in his writing taking it to an epistemological extreme. His first few plays all exhibit the same theme: the Church displaying weakness when faced with serious moral questions. A famed quote of Durrenmatt’s was, “As a Protestant, I protest;” he must therefore, have been very pleased with the fights and protests that exploded in the audience on the opening night of his first play in April, 1947. Romulus The Great, on which Romulus was based, was his first major success. In his play, Romulus hates Rome and is the only one able to see the true state in which Rome finds itself, one of degradation and corruption (hence the barnyard like nature of the court the audience sees at the beginning of the play and Pyramus and Achilles continual assertion that the Roman Empire is eternal and incapable of collapse). The calm sense of justice that give Romulus his heroism is seen in many of Durrenmatt’s main characters and can be considered one of the tools at the forefront of his arsenal. An interesting quality of his writing is how firmly he was opposed to the use of symbolism: “Misunderstandings creep in, because people desperately search the hen yard of my drama for the egg of explanation which I steadfastly refuse to lay.” Critics claimed that Vidal made frivolous Durrenmatt’s dark and majestic dramatic interpretation of the dangers of the Cold War so he felt forced to include in his 1966 hardcover publication of Romulus a translation of the original play of Durrenmatt’s from which he adapted his work.