Oskar Panizza and The Love Council : A History of the Scandalous Play on Stage and in Court, with the Complete Text in English and a Biography of the Author (review)

Reviewed by: Oskar Panizza and The Love Council: A History of the Scandalous Play on Stage and in Court, with the Complete Text in English and a Biography of the Author Johannes G. Pankau Peter D.G. Brown . Oskar Panizza and The Love Council: A History of the Scandalous Play on Stage and in Court, with the Complete Text in English and a Biography of the Author. Jefferson, NC / London: McFarland, 2010. Pp. 292, illustrated. $49.95 (Pb). Oskar Panizza, poet, journalist, and psychiatrist, who broke taboos, disobeyed religious and political authorities, and experimented with new artistic forms, was probably the "most brazen, provocative, outspoken and fearless" (12) writer of his time.1 Today, he is mostly known for his scandalous piece Das Liebeskonzil [The Love Council], whose publication resulted in a one-year prison sentence on charges of blasphemy and obscenity. During his prime in the 1890s, however, Bavarian-born Panizza was not merely regarded as an eccentric or psychopath (although that is how he self-identified sometimes) but valued as a creative personality in avant-garde and Bohemian circles. This was largely a consequence of his activities in the Gesellschaft fü r modernes Leben [Society for Modern Life], an authors' group founded in Munich in 1890. He was a friend of important figures such as Frank Wedekind, author of the Lulu dramas, and naturalist Max Halbe. Increasingly, Panizza suffered, however, from manifest paranoia and spent his last seventeen years, until his death in 1921, in different psychiatric clinics. This development resulted in the marginalization and neglect of Panizza's literary achievements, including his undoubtedly most important play, Das Liebeskonzil, which satirically discusses the emergence of syphilis at the Vatican court of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) at the end of the fifteenth century and depicts the Christian trinity in almost caricature-like distortion. Immediately after its publication in Zurich, the text was confiscated by legal authorities, who charged Panizza with blasphemy and pornography. It was not until 1967 that the play premiered in Paris, and even later it remained an object of legal contestation, such as when a film adaptation by Werner Schroeter was screened in Austria in the 1980s. The attempt to introduce Panizza to a wider English-speaking readership seems highly justified, especially at a time in which questions regarding the satirical depiction of religious phenomena and "political correctness" in general have acquired international significance. One of the few scholars to deal in depth with Panizza's work is Peter D.G. Brown, who, in 1983, [End Page 244] published one of the first serious studies on the subject. In 2005, Brown published the original manuscript and different versions of the The Love Council, as well as various materials on the play's production and reception histories, thus laying an essential foundation for further research. His new English translation of The Love Council, along with contextual materials, is superior to previous English versions because it is the first to be based on the 1893 manuscript of the play. Possessing profound knowledge of his source material, especially of the many linguistic peculiarities and irregularities of the author (apparent, for example, in Panizza's increasing use of sometimes bizarre orthographical forms), Brown has mastered the difficult task of translating the drama's text into comprehensible English, and, despite an inevitable degree of standardization, he still manages to preserve many of the characteristics of the original. The volume also includes a fairly detailed biography of the author as well as material on Panizza's trials and the worldwide reception and stage history of the play (with some photographs). Brown's edition reveals not only Panizza's personal eccentricities but also his polemic and artistic energy, which he used to protest manically against obscurantism, the Catholic Church and its followers, opportunism, sexual inhibitions, and a hypocritical bourgeoisie that he saw as concentrated in Munich. The edition also documents Panizza's attempt to overcome the traditional theatre, which he regarded as obsolete. In ways similar to those of Wedekind and early Brecht, he tried to do so by systematically integrating versatile forms, such as parody, satire, caricature, variety show, cabaret, vaudeville, and commedia dell'arte. Thanks to a skilful selection of...

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