Selected Essays

In this volume, the full range of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s interests in arts and letters—and their relationships to each other—becomes evident. In one section, a cluster of essays on the theatre illuminates his idiosyncratic dramaturgical theories, drawing from Attic comedy to Schiller, Brecht and professional wrestling. In another, his philosophical essays mingle his passionate reflections on ethical and political questions with his sceptical forays into metaphysics. And in autobiographical pieces such as ‘Vallon de l’Ermitage’, he offers an intimate look at his ‘web of time’—the places where he travelled and the people with whom he lived and worked. Suffused with melancholy, flashes of tenderness and his inimitable sense of the grotesque and absurd, these essays provide a compelling look at Dürrenmatt’s prodigious strength as a writer of nonfiction.