“The Legacy of Hermann Broch: The Story of Zerlina, A Maid’s Love and Life”

After the death of the author, a literary legacy often takes on a life that the writer did not foresee. The work of the important Austrian novelist and essayist Hermann Broch can be proof. In 1931, he wrote the play Absolution, which today is more familiar to literary researchers. Much more predatory than the characters of the social drama from the times of the economic crisis, the servant Zerlína from the short story novel Nevinní invaded the stage. Variations on the motifs of the Don Juan myth online for listening for four weeks after the broadcast.

The story of a maid who recapitulates the great love ballad of her life is an acting opportunity that will never be enough in theatrical literature. In Broch’s novella, an old maid knocks on the door of the room of a young diamond merchant, Mr. A., who has taken up residence in the sublet of Zerlín’s mistress, Baroness Elvíra. She turns the sleepy young man into an involuntary listener of her life story at first – a love flare-up for the licentious Mr. von Jun, for whose interest she competed with her own mistress.

In the radio version, Zerlína addresses the audience directly, calling for their participation and the court. She relives her past love triumphs, only to confess the wretchedness of their endings. We feel Zerlína’s futile attempt to understand the true meaning of the story she has lived. And we see how distorted is the form of justice that the maid tries to establish in the story of her masters, at least retrospectively.

Broch’s modern version of the Don Juan myth, which is reminded not only by the names of the characters (Elvíra, von Juna, Zerlína), was first presented on the Czech stage by Divadlo za branáu II in 1992 with Věra Kubánková and Bohumila Dolejšová in the lead roles.