DER MENSCHENFEIND (THE MISANTHROPE)

Alceste despises the hypocrisy and shallowness of his social circle. He follows an ideal of unconditional honesty and authenticity and fanatically tries to convert the people around him. Because he refuses to play by society’s rules and practise diplomacy, things rarely go his way. He makes an enemy of the poet Oronte, when he criticises him instead of praising him. He loses the lawsuit initiated by Oronte after refusing to bribe the judge, and he ignores his friend Philinte’s well-meaning advice. But his biggest loss is in love: He woos the fun-loving widow Célimène. Despite her affection for Alceste, she is not keen on the prospect of seeking solitude in the countryside and being alone with a grumpy misanthrope, preferring instead to indulge in short-lived flirtations. In the end, it is unclear whether Alceste will finally carry out his plan to escape from the world alone.

In TTHE MISANTHROPE, playwright and director Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known by his name Molière (1622–1673), takes great delight in scratching the surface and looking behind the glittering façade of a society acting as though categories like morality or truth are the consensual basis of coexistence, while these categories have all disappeared. No matter how suave their language and how glamorous the image they present of themselves, all of his characters seem trapped. Their sense of forlornness and loneliness has an almost existential urgency.