CONTRADICTIONS CONCERNING TIME IN BUCHNER’S WOYZECK

BY MICHAEL PATTERSON

In order to stage Buchner’s WoyzecR with any degree of realism it is essential to establish at what time of the year the play is set. However, there are a number of contradictions in the evidence that Buchner gives. This is perhaps not surprising in an unfinished work, but it is safe to assume that Buchner considered his play almost completed, for in his last extant letter, written to his fianc6e shonly before his death, he wrote that he would ‘in Iangstens acht Tagen Leonce und Lena mit noch zwei anderen Dramen erscheinen lassen’. Given that these ‘two other dramas’ can only be the non-extant Pzetro Aretino and Woyzed, it is virtually certain that Buchner’s final intentions regarding Woyzeck were clear enough to allow him to complete the play within a matter of days. In this case, one may reasonably argue that, in as carefully written a piece as this, Buchner would have tidied up any contradictions that still remained.

There is one specific reference in Voyzeck to the timing of the action; it comes in the ‘Caserne’ scene, where Woyzeck is going through his things, giving his shirt to Andres and identifying other objects of value, and so by implication making his will and taking leave of the world. He pulls out a piece of paper and reads out (in the version supplied by most editions): *

Friedrich Johann Franz Woyzeck, Wehrmann, Fusilier im 2. Regiment, 2. Bataillon, 4. Kompagnie, geboren Maria Verkundigung, den 20. Juli- ich bin heut alt 30 jahr, 7 Monat und 12 Tage.

The first obvious contradiction is the date of the Feast of the Annunciation, which falls on March 25th and not on 20th July. Secondly, if we calculate the date of the play’s action from Woyzeck’s statement of his age, we arrive at March 4th (counting from 20th July) or November 6th (counting from the Feast of the ~nnunciation). But both of these dates are improbable, if we consider the remaining evidence that helps to determine the time of year.

According to Lehmann’s reading of the manuscript in the Hamburger Ausgabe Buchner later inserted these dates in this the last scene of the unfiihed ‘provisional fair-copy’ of the play as follows: ‘Mar& Verkiindigung d. 20.J + ’ 3 (where + indicates an illegible part of the word). The illegibility of ‘J + ’ does not resolve any problems, since there are no festivals associated with the Virgin on either 20th January or 20th June.

It is perhaps the case that Biichner intended this addition to a be a wry comment on the way in which Woyzedr rushes through the world wie ein offnes Rashesser’ : this man, ‘so verhetzt’,’ was already born on the Feast of the Annunciation.6 It seems most improbable, however, that Biichner did not know the date of the

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116 CONTRADICTIONS CONCERNING TIME IN BUCHNERS WOYZECK

Feast of the Annunciation, and to suggest that the mistake is a reflection of Woyzeck’s mental confusion is untenable, as he is reading out from a piece of paper apparently issued by the army.

Even if we were to overlook the contradictory dates of Woyzeck’s birth, we are still left with the contradiction between the two resulting dates of March 4th and November 6th and the weather conditions in the play. There are four ways in which the season is identified in the text.

(1) References to the weather. (2) The behaviour of the characters. (3) The effects of the weather on the characters. (4) References to time.

In the first category there is the following evidence: (i) The fiery sky, seen by Woyzeck as he and Andres cut sticks-perhaps

(ii) The strong wind, commented on by Woyzeck and the Captain in the

(iii) Sunshine, observed by the Doctor for its effects on sneezing (H4:8); (iv) ‘Schon Wetter, Sonntagsonnwetter’ , referred to by Woyzeck and Andres

(v) Blood-red moon in murder scene (Hl: 15); (vi) . . . ‘Schon wetter . . . ein schon, festen groben Himmel’, referred to by

The last of these is a passage which Buchner perhaps did not intend to use, since it is not taken up into the ‘fair-copy’.8 For the rest, the evidence is hardly conclusive. The fine weather of (iii) and (iv) may suggest spring or summer; on the other hand, the fact that the weather is worthy of comment might suggest that it is not typical for the season.

a brilliant sunset (H4: 1)’

shaving scene (H4:5);

(H4: 10);

Woyzeck in street-scene with Doctor (H2:7).

Evidence derived from the behaviour of the characters is more significant: (i) The following activities are performed in the open:

(a) Woyzeck and Andres cutting sticks (H4: 1); (b) People going to the fair (H1 : 1, H2 : 3) ; (c) Captain and Doctor conversing in the street (H4:g); (d) Journeymen and others drinking and singing (H4: 11); (e) Children singing and Grandmother telling fable (Hl: 14); (Q Doctor lecturing to his students (H3: 1).

windows of the ta-fern (H4: 11). (ii) The windows of Marie’s room are opened (H4:2 and H4:16) as are the

(ii) Woyzeck takes off his coat in the tavern (Hl: 17). Clearly the evidence here overwhelmingly suggests warm weather, late spring or summer, and it is virtually inconceivable that most of the behaviour would be appropriate to either March 4th or November 6th. (The only possible exceptions are (i) (a) and (c) and (iii)).

As to the effects of the weather, we have to discount purely psychological

CONTRADICTIONS CONCERNING TIME IN BUCHNER’S WOYZECK 117

responses, e.g. the sexual references to ‘being hot’. Nevertheless, there are several cases of people physically experiencing heat and none at all of feeling cold (the ‘Friert’s dich Myreth’ of H1:15 almost certainly refers to her shivering in fear). The remainder, which all suggest heat, are:

(i) Marie‘s child sweats in its crib (H4:4); (ii) Andres talks of the dancers ‘steaming’ (H4:lO) and Woyzeck speaks of

(iii) Woyzeck has to leave guard-room ‘s’ist so hei5 da hie’ (H4: 10); (iv) Marie, reading the Bible, says: ‘es wird hei5 hier’ (H4: 16); (v) Woyzeck, returning to the tavern, says: ‘Ich hab heii3, heii3’ (H1: 17).

their ‘sweating’ (Hl: 17);

Even though Woyzeck’s evidence in (iii) and (v) is not entirely reliable because it may be conditioned by his mental state, the references are exclusively to heat and clearly the play depends on the atmosphere of oppressive heat which goes beyond individual psychology. Interestingly too, Dr. Clarus in his report on the historical Woyzeck, records that Woyzeck was prone to hallucinations in the summer. 9

The fourth consideration, that of textual references to time, may help to determine the time of year more exactly. If we examine the first three scenes of the ‘fair-copy’ , we find the following information:

(i) It must be before evening when Woyzeck and Andres cut sticks, because

(ii) It is possibly sunset (‘Ein Feuer fiihrt um den Himmel’) (H4: 1); (iii) If, as seems likely, the sound of drums from the town is that of the parade

of H4: 2 , then there can only be a short interval of time between H4: 1 and H4:2.

(iv) Woyzeck has to go to roll-call, which could hardly be later than 8 p.m. (H4:2); (v) It still cannot be evening, as Woyzeck says to Marie he will see her ‘Heut

(vi) It is becoming dark at the end of H4:2 (‘Es wird so dunkel, man meint,

(vii) There are lights at the fair, suggesting darkness (scene heading H4:3) and

(viii) It is now evening, since Woyzeck exclaims: ‘Hey, was n’ Abend’ (H2:5);

Woyzeck says: ‘da rollt Abends der Kopf (H4: 1);

Abend auf die Mess’ (H2:2);

man war blind. Sonst scheint doch als die Latern herein’);

Louise1 (Marie): ‘Was Lichter mei Auge!’ (H2:5));

We may reject some of this evidence as being ambiguous or as not belonging to Buchner’s final conception. It is not necessarily sunset in H4: 1, Buchner omitted ‘Heut abend auf die Mess’ from his fair-copy, and it is not certain, though it must be thought very likely, that H2:5 was set in the fair-ground. Even so the picture is clear: it is getting dark by 8 p.m. at the very latest. That is to say, these scenes must be set before mid-May or after mid-August.

There are two more references to time which help to determine the season. First, when Louis (Woyzeck) asks Margreth (Marie): ‘Weat du auch wie lang es just ist, Magreth?’, she replies: ‘An Pfingsten 2 Jahr’ (H1:15). This must mean that this scene is set before Whitsun and suggests a date at least a few weeks in

118 CONTRADICTIONS CONCERNING TIME IN BUCHNER’S WOYZBCK

advance of Whitsun, for otherwise Marie would no doubt have used a phrase suggesting greater proximity (e.g. ‘in 10 Tagen’, ‘niichste Woche’). Since Whitsun falls on a date between 10th May and 13th June, this reference again implies that the scene is set no later than mid-May.

Secondly, when Louis (Woyzeck) throws the knife into the pond, it suddenly occurs to him that it might be discovered ‘im Sommer, wenn sie tauchen nach Muscheln’ (H1:20). This must mean again that the action takes place before the summer.

We now have as complete a picture as possible of the time of year: the only possibility that fits all the information is April or early May, during a spell of warm weather.

Returning now to the curious addition to the ‘Testamentszene’, it is clear that it does not accord with the rest of the play. I would speculate that Buchner inserted ‘Maria Verkundigung, d.20. J + ’ as a note to remind him of the idea of setting Woyzeck’s birth on the Feast of the Annunciation and to suggest a possible date for the action of the play. This would mean that ‘d. 20. J + ’ was in fact intended to stand in apposition to ‘heut’. Since June would fit in well with the summery heat and since June 21st was the date on which the historical Woyzeck murdered the widow Woost, Biichner may have intended the passage to read: ‘geboren Maria Verkiindigung-ich bin heut, den 20. Juni. . .’. Even though this makes better sense than the reading of most editions, it would necessitate a revision of the calculaticn of Woyzeck’s age and, as we have seen, June is too late in the year to accord with the early dusk of the opening scenes and the references to Whitsun and summer at the end of H1.

Since we are dealing with an afterthought in the last scene of the ‘fair-copy’ , it is probable that Buchner would have come back to the scene to sort out its conua- dictions, especially the calculation of Woyzeck’s age, which is so precise that it cannot but draw attention to itself. He might too have changed the references to Whitsun and summer in H1 when he revised them for the ‘fair-copy’ .

Possibly too Buchner might have left the contradiction between June 20th and the other evidence in the play. It might be argued that he was not concerned with this kind of question. For example, in H1: 14 the girl sings:

Wie scheint die Sonn am Lichunefltag Und steht das Korn im Bluhn.

Since Candlemas falls on February 2nd, it is absurd to sing of the corn in bloom. One might claim that Buchner was being merely careless, but it is sounder critical method to proceed on the assumption that he intended the contradiction. In this song there are implied contrasts: between the sensual image of the musicians’ red socks and the celebration of the Purification of the Virgin, and between the blooming corn and the winter festival. As Gonthier-Louis Fink observes, ‘Diese an sich fiir das Bliihen des Korns ungewohnliche Jahreszeit (2. Februar) bezeugt,

CONTRADICTIONS CONCERNING TIME IN BUCHNER’S WOYZECK 119

dai? es Buchner vor allem um den Konuast von Bluhen und Tod zu tun war. ’ If we accept, then, that Buchner was anything but careless in his attention to

time, we may proceed with an attempt to resolve contradictions in the way that will require least revision of the extant material. The course to adopt in the case of the ‘Testamentszene’ is to omit, as Lehmann has done,” ‘d. 20. J + ’. In order to accommodate ‘Maria Verkundigung’, it is necessary to alter the statement of Woyzeck’s age from ‘30 Jahr, 7 Monat und 12 Tage’ to a calculation that would set the play in the period April or early May. I would propose, arbitrarily, but with an eye to the May-tide festivities when there might well be a fair and a dance, the following formula: ‘30 Jahr, 1 Monat und 8 Tage’, which would set this scene on May 3rd.

To conclude, here is a proposed table of the timing of the scenes of H4 which, together with the concluding scenes of H1 (14-2 l), form the minimum of material which we may be relatively sure that Buchner intended to use:

H4: 1 Freies Feld. April 30th. Late afternoon. H4:2 Die Stadt. Same day. Early evening. H4:3 Buden. Lichter. Volk. Later the same evening. H4:4 Marie mit Spiegel. The next morning (May 1st). H4:5 Der Hauptmann. Woyzeck. The same morning. H4:6 Marie. Tambour-Major. Later the same day. H4:7 Marie. Woyzeck. Later the same day. H4:8 Woyzeck. Doctor. Later the same day. H4:9 Hauptmann. Doctor. Later the same day.

H4: 10 Wachtstube. Early evening the same day. H4: 11 Wirtshaus. Later that evening. H4: 12 Freies Feld. Later that evening. H4:13 Nacht. The same night. H4: 14 Wirtshaus. Evening of the next day (May 2nd). H4: 15 Woyzeck. Der Jude. The next day (May 3rd). H4:16 Marie. Der Narr. Later the same day. H4: 17 Caseme. Later the same day. H1: 14 Marie mit Madchen vor der Hausthur. Later the same day. H1: 15 Abend. Die Stadt in der Ferne. The same evening. HI: 16 Es kommen Leute. Consecutive on H1: 15. H1:17 Das Wirtshaus. Later the same evening. H1: 18 Kinder. Later the same evening. H1:19 Woyzeck allein. Later the same evening. H1:20 Woyzeck an einem Teich. Later the same evening. H1:21 Gerichtsdiener. Arzt. Richter. The next day (May 4th).

No attempt has been made to incorporate H1:8 (Casernenhof), H3:l p e r Hof des Professors), or H3 : 2, (Der Idiot. Das Kind. Woyzeck) , none of which I believe

120 CONTRADICTIONS CONCERNING TIME IN BUCHNER’S WOYZECK

Biichner intended to use, for if he had, he would have included them in his ‘fair-copy’ before it breaks off at H4: 17. l2 Even if we added these scenes or a part- scene like H2:7, for which a stronger case may be made, it would not affect the basic time-scheme.

Otherwise I have compressed the action into as reasonably short a time as possible, commensurate with the time of day and Marie’s statement in H4:16: ‘Der Franz ist nit gekomm, gestern nit, heut nit’. There is no necessary reason why the events of the play should take place within four days, but this compression intensifies the tragic impact and by placing, for example, the shaving scene on the same morning as Marie’s seduction, a cruel juxtaposition is achieved: Woyzeck earns a few groschen to give to his woman while she is giving herself to another man.

Most convincingly, the chronology of the scenes in the order that Biichner wrote them presents no problems at all. The only minor difficulty is with H1: 18, Kinder (which Lehmann transposes in his version13), where the children hurry off to see Marie’s corpse before it is carried in. This precedes H1:19, in which Louis/Woyzeck returns to the body alone and hears people coming only at the end of the scene. It is entirely plausible, however, that the characters of HI: 16 (Es kommen Leute) discover the body, that each is too afraid to remain by it on his own and that both return to the town to summon assistance. The children in H1: 18 would have just heard this news, while Woyzeck leaves the tavern (H1:17) at a run and so would reach the body before any others. A further objection by Lehmann that children would hardly be up at so late an hourI4 depends on a rather middle-class view of bringing up children, and even if one insists on Lehmann’s point, there is nothing to suggest that the first child may not be waking the second (the street setting is an assumption by editors but is not supported by any indication in the manuscript).

To sum up, Biichner’s order of scenes follows a perfectly coherent chronology, and the only contradiction in time consists of a few words jotted in to the last scene of his unfiished ‘fair-copy’ . By a small omission (of ‘d. 20.J + ’) and a minor textual change (to the calculation of Woyzeck’s age) one may achieve total consistency in the time-scheme of the play.

NOTES

’ Georg Biichner. Sdmtliche Werke undBriefi, ed. WernerR. Lchmann, Hamburg n.d.. 11, p. 464. This is Bergemmn’s reading, adopted by most subsequent editon, e.g. Meinerts. Miiller-Seidel,

Knusc. Lothv Bornscheuer’s edition of Woyzcck (Siuttgart 1972, p. 39) places ‘Maria Verkiindigung den 20. Juli’ after ‘heut’, but this reading does not resolve any contradictions.

Hamburger Ausgabc. I , p. 392.

Xbid., I, p. 163.

CONTRADICTIONS CONCERNING TIME IN BUCHNER’S WOYZECK 121

Ibid., I. p. 173.

1 reject Egon Krause’s suggestion that Biichner intended to establish an association between Christ and Woyzeck at this point (in his edition of WoyzecR, Frankfurt a. Main, 1969, pp. 223f.). It seems much more likely that the age of 30 is not a reference to Christ but derives from the statement in the Clarus Gutucbten to the deterioration of the historical Woyzeck from his 30th year (Hamburger Ausgabe, I, p. 507). I am indebted to Margaret Jacobs for drawing my attention to this (cf. also Walter Hinderer, Bficbner-Kommentar, Munich 1977, p. 220). ’ Scene identifcation as in Hamburger Ausgabe.

Since none of the critical debate about ’contamination’, i.e. the adoption of scenes from earlier drafts into the provisional fair-copy, materially affects the question of timing in the play (with the possible exception of H3.2, Der Idiot. Das Kind. Woyteck-see n. 12 below) I have adopted the ‘safe’ course of accepting as reliable evidence only scenes from the fair-copy with the addition of the concluding scenes of HI.

lo ‘Vohlied und Verseinlage in den Dramen Biichners’, Georg Bdcbner, ed. Wolfgang Martens (Wege der Forxhung, 53). Darmstadt 1965, p. 449. fn. 22.

l1 Hamburger Ausgabe, I, p. 425.

shortly as Methuen Theatre Classic. l 3 Hamburger Ausgabe, I, p. 430.

65 (1971), 83.

Hamburger Ausgabe, I, p. 499.

See my introduction to: Georg Biichner, Woyzeck, translated by John Madrendrick, to be published

Werner R. Lehmann, ‘Repliken: Beiu%ge zu einem Stteitgespdch iiber den Woyzeck’, Eupbonon,