Heiner Müller. HAMLETMACHINE

1

FAMILY ALBUM

I was Hamlet. I stood on the shore and talked to the surf BLABLA, behind me

ruins of Europe. The bells rang for the state funeral, the murderer and the widow alone

Satan, with printed steps walked behind the coffin of a high cadaver, the advice of howling in

low-paid sadness. WHOSE CORPSE IS ON THE CORPSE TRUCK / WHO IS SO MUCH ABOUT?

SCREAMING AND MOANING / THE CORPSE OF ONE BIG / GARBAGE GIVER

the trellis of the population, the fruit of its state. HE WAS A MAN STRUGGED FROM EVERYONE AND

ALL. I stopped the procession, lifted the coffin lid with a sword, the blade

broke, turned into a blunt fragment, and distributed the dead parent FLESH TO

FLESH to the figures of sorrow bending around. Mourning turned into delight, and

after they began to slurp, on the empty coffin the killer perched on top of the widow

HELP YOU CLIMB IN MY UNCLE SPREAD YOUR LEGS MOMMY. I lay down on

earth and heard how the world turns in circles, walking in step with decay.

I'M GOOD HAMLET GI'ME A CAUSE FOR GRIEF

AH THE WHOLE GLOBE FOR A REAL SORROW

RICHARD THE THIRD I THE PRINCE KILLING KING

OH MY PEOPLE WHAT HAVE I DONE UNTO THEE

LIKE A HUMP I CARRY MY HEAVY BRAIN

THE SECOND CLOWN OF THE COMMUNIST SPRING

SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THIS AGE OF HOPE

LETS DELVE IN EARTH AND BLOW HER AT THE MOON

Here is the ghost that killed me, there is still an ax in my head. You can stay in

hat, I know you have one more hole. I wish my mother had one

it was less like you were in the flesh: if only I had been delivered from myself. Babs need to

darn: a world without mothers. And we could easily kill each other, really

rest assured, if life becomes too long for us, and our throats become too

narrow for our cries. What do you need from me? Or at your state funeral

got little. Old beggar. Or there is no blood on the shoes. What do I need

your corpse. Be glad the ax is sticking out, maybe you'll go to heaven. What are you doing

you're waiting. We slaughtered all the chickens. There will be no more mornings.

IS IT WORTH IT?

STICK ME, AS THE CUSTOM SAYS, A STEEL BLADE

INTO THE FLESH OR WHAT IS CLOSEST

HOLD ON TO HIM, BECAUSE THE WORLD KEEPS TURNING

LORD BREAK MY NECK BY DROPING IN A BEER FROM A BENCH

Horatio enters. Knower of my thoughts full of blood since morning

curtained by empty skies. YOU CAME TOO LATE FOR A FRIEND

FEES / NO PLACE FOR YOU IN MY TRAGEDY. Horatio, you

do you know me? Are you my friend, Horatio? And if you know, how can you

be a friend. Would you like to play Polonius, who wants to sleep with his mother?

daughter, charming Ophelia, she takes the cue, look how she turns

backwards, tragic role. Horatio Polonius. I guessed that you were an actor. I

here too... playing Hamlet. Denmark is a prison, and a wall has grown between us.

Look what's growing out of the wall. Exit Polonius. And my mother is a bride. And her breasts

buds of roses, and the bosom is a den of snakes. Have you forgotten your role, mom?

I suggest MY PRINCE YOU WASH MURDER FROM YOUR FACE / AND NEW DENMARK

MAKE A KINDER FACE. I will make you a virgin again, mother, so that

The king's wedding was bloody. BUT THE MOTHER HOLE IS NOT NARROW

LANE. Now I’ll tie your hands on your back with a veil, I’m disgusted

your embrace. Now I'll tear the bride's dress. Now you're going to scream. Now

I will smear the rags of my dress with the dirt that my father became, and I will smear your face with the rags,

belly and your breasts. Now I, mother, will take your trace, the invisible trace of my father.

I will stifle your cry with my lips. Will you recognize the fruit of your body? Now go

to the wedding, whore, under the bright Danish sun, shining and dead and

alive. I’ll put the corpse in the toilet so that the royal palace will choke on the shit from it.

Then give me your heart to be devoured, Ophelia, with my tears it

crying.

2

EUROPE WOMEN

Enormous room. Ophelia. Her heart is a clock.

Ophelia (chorus/Hamlet)

I'm Ophelia. Which the river could not bear. That woman in the noose. That woman with

open wrists. She died of an overdose ON THE LIPS OF A SNOW BALL That with

head in the oven. Yesterday I stopped killing myself. Alone with breasts

hips and womb. I destroy the tools of sharpening that chair that table

bed. I am destroying the battlefield that was my home. I tear the door off

loops so that the wind bursts in and a cry of peace. I'll break the window.

With bleeding hands I will tear up photographs of the men that I

loved those who used me on that table on the chair on the floor. I'll set the prison on fire.

I will throw the robes into the fire. I will tear out of my chest the watch that was my heart.

I'll go outside, dressed only in blood.

3

SCHERZO

University of the Dead. Whispers and mutterings. From their tombstones (pulpits)

dead philosophers throw their books at Hamlet. Gallery (ballet) of the dead

women. That woman in a noose, that woman with her wrists cut open, etc.

Hamlet examines her in the pose of a museum (theater) visitor. Dead

the women tear the clothes off his body. From an upright coffin with

with the inscription HAMLET I come Claudius and dressed up and made up as

whore Ophelia. Ophelia striptease.

Ophelia

Would you like to eat my heart, Hamlet? (laughs)

Hamlet (hands in front of face)

I want to be a woman.

Hamlet puts on Ophelia's dress, Ophelia puts on his whore makeup,

Claudius, now Hamlet's father, laughs silently, Ophelia sends Hamlet

blows a kiss and, together with Claudius/Hamlet's father, retreats back to

coffin. Hamlet in the pose of a prostitute. Angel, face on the back of the head: Horatio. Dancing with

Hamlet.

Voice(s) (from the grave)

What you killed you must love.

The dance becomes faster and crazier. Laughter from the grave. Madonna on a swing with

breast cancer Horatio opens his umbrella and hugs Hamlet. Freeze in

hugs under an umbrella. Breast cancer shines like the sun.

4

PEST IN BUDA BATTLE FOR GREENLAND

Room 2, destroyed by Ophelia. Empty armor, an ax in a helmet.

Hamlet

The stove smokes in a restless October

A BAD COLD HE HAD OF IT JUST THE WORST TIME

JUST THE WORST TIME OF THE YEAR FOR A REVOLUTION

Cement comes into color through the suburbs

Doctor Zhivago Howls

About my wolves

IN WINTER SOMETIMES THEY CAME TO THE VILLAGE

THEY CUT UP A PEASANT

(removes makeup and costume)

Performer of the role of Hamlet

I'm not Hamlet. I'm not playing a role anymore. My words tell me more

nothing. My thoughts suck the blood from the images. My drama is bigger

will not be installed. Behind them they are dismantling the decorations. Those people whom I

drama doesn't care, for people who don't care about it. It all me too

doesn't start anymore. I don't play anymore.

The stagehands, unnoticed by Hamlet, are installing a refrigerator and three

TV. Three programs without sound.

Decoration monument. In a hundredfold increase it depicts a man,

who made history. Relic of Hope. His name is easily replaceable. Hope is not

justified. The monument lies on the ground, hewn three years after

state funeral of the hated and revered by his followers in power.

The stone is lived in. In empty holes from the nose and ears, folds of skin and

the poorest population settled in the uniforms of the broken monument

metropolis. The fall of the monument after the allotted time will be followed by

mutiny And the drama, if it happens, will happen precisely during the rebellion. Mutiny

It will start as a walk. On a working day, against all traffic rules.

The street belongs to pedestrians. Cars are being overturned here and there.

Knife Thrower's Nightmare: Driving slowly down a narrow alley to

the inevitable parking lot overrun by pedestrians. If the police

find themselves in the way, they are thrown to the side of the road. Approaching

government quarter, the procession stops in front of

police cordon. Groups are formed from which

speakers. A man appears on the balcony of a government building

in an ill-fitting tailcoat and also begins to talk. When it hits

the first stone, he retreats behind the armored glass door. Screams about

greater freedom turn into cries for the overthrow of the government.

They begin to disarm the police, they collapse two or three buildings, a prison

police station secret police department, hang a dozen

minions of the authorities by the feet, the government sends in troops. My place if

the drama will still take place, it will be on both sides of the front, it will be between

fronts, above them. I stand in the smell of the sweat of the crowd and throw stones at

police soldiers tanks and armored glass. I'm looking through the door from

armored glass on the pressing crowd and I smell my

sweaty fear. I threaten, choking from vomit from my belly, with my fist, I stand

behind armored glass. I see, agitated by fear with contempt in

the crowd pressing against me, my mouth in foam, shaking my fist. Hanging

on the leg I'm meat in uniform. I'm a soldier in the turret of a tank, my head is under a helmet

empty, a suffocated cry under the caterpillars. I am a typewriter. I'm knitting

nooses, when they hang the ringleaders, I knock the bench out from under my feet, I break my own

neck. I am my prisoner. I feed computers with my data. My roles are

saliva and a spittoon, a knife and a wound, a tooth and a throat, a throat and a noose. I'm the base

data. Bleeding in the crowd. Sighing behind the doors. I separate

verbal mucus in my shell-thick bubble over the battle. And the dramas

it was never mine. The libretto was lost. Actors in their wardrobe

hung on a nail. The prompter is rotting in his booth. And gutted plague corpses

in the auditorium they don’t move a hand. I'm going home and killing time, isn't it?

that / His own indivisible Self.

TV Rot Rot

On drugs chatter On joy prescribed by a doctor

How to spell KINDNESS

Give us our daily decay today

For Yours is Nothing Rotten

And the lies they believe

Liars and no one else but them Rotten

Cut down on the faces of businessmen

From the fight for posts to voices to bank accounts

Rotten Chariot shines with witticisms

I walk along the streets of markets and faces

In the scars of the struggle of consumption Poverty

Without dignity Without dignity

Knife fist and brass knuckles

Humiliated bodies of women

Generations of hope

In the blood of cowardice, stupidity dies

Laughter comes from the dead belly

Heil COCA COLA

Kingdom

For the killer

I WAS MACBETH THE KING OFFERED ME HIS THIRD CONCUBINE

KNEW EVERY MOLE OF HER HIPS RASKOLNIK ON THE HEART UNDER

THE ONLY JACKET IS AN AX FOR / SKULL / PENT-WARDER

OLD WOMEN

In the solitude of airports

I take a breath

Privileged and my rottenness

Privilege

Covered by a wall

Barbed wire prison

Photo by the author.

I no longer want to eat drink breathe love wife husband child animal. I

I don't want to die anymore. I don't want to kill anymore.

The author's photograph is torn.

I reveal my sealed meat. I want to live in my vessels, in my brain

of my bones, in the labyrinth of my skull. I'm going back to my

entrails. I'll take my rightful place in the middle of the shit. They're opening it somewhere

carcasses so I can be alone with my blood. My thoughts are wounds in my

brain. My brain is a scar. I want to be a machine. Hands - grab legs - walk

no pain, no thought.

The screens are black. Blood from the refrigerator. Three Naked Women: Marx Lenin

Mao. Each person speaks their own language at the same time

THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE COMMANDING TO OVERTAKE

ALL RELATIONS IN WHICH A PERSON... Performer of the role of Hamlet

wears a suit and mask .

HAMLET THE PRINCE OF DANISH AND THE WORM FOOD STUMBLING

HE IS HAPPY TO THE HOLE UNTIL THE LAST HOLE

THE ONE WHO CLOSED HIM BEHIND HIS BACK IS A GHOST

GREEN THAT OPHELIA'S FLESH AT REST AFTER BIRTH

AND EXACTLY BEFORE THE THIRD CROW OF THE ROOSTER BREAKS

FOOL WITH A BELL PHILOSOPHER'S CAP

THE BLOVELOVED BLOODSUCKER CLIPS INTO ARMOR

He gets into his armor and blows off the heads of Marx Lenin Mao with an ax. Snow.

Ice age.

5

IN WILD IMPATIENCE / IN TERRIBLE ARMOR / MILLENNIUMS

Open sea. Ophelia in a wheelchair. Fish debris, corpses and body parts

float by.

Ophelia

(while two men in medical gowns wrap her and the wheelchair

from bottom to top in gauze bandages)

Electra speaking. In the heart of darkness. Under the sun of torture. To the metropolises of the world.

On behalf of the victims. I will push out all the seed that I took into myself. I'll turn everything around

breast milk into deadly poison. I will take back the whole world that I gave birth to. I

I will strangle the world that I gave birth to between my thighs. I'll bury him in mine

shame. The happiness of submission is over. Long live wrath

contempt, riots and death. When they come into yours with a butcher knife

bedrooms, you will know the truth.

The men leave. Ophelia remains on stage, motionless, in a white package.

Translation by A. Filippov-Chekhov