Danton's Death by Georg Büchner

First produced:Dantons Tod, 1902; first published, 1835 (English translation, 1927)

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Tragedy

Time of plot: Spring, 1794

Locale: Paris

Principal characters

• Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins, deputies of the National Convention
• Robespierre and Saint-Just, members of the Committee of Public Safety
• Julie, Danton’s wife
• Lucille, Desmoulins’s wife
• Marion, a prostitute

The Story:

The action occurs between March 24 and April 5, 1794, during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. Georges Danton, who raised armies that had saved the Republic, becomes indifferent to politics, yet he retains sufficient popularity to pose a threat to the extremist Revolutionary leader Robespierre, who gains and keeps power by executing leaders of his opposition.

Danton, several friends, and their ladies exchange witticisms as they play cards through most of a night. At the same time, Camille Desmoulins tries to bring Danton back into the political arena to lead the attack against Robespierre’s totalitarian faction. Meanwhile Robespierre invites citizens to follow him to the Jacobin Club, where he dominates the Committee of Public Safety. At the club, Robespierre proclaims in a long tirade that he is an incorruptible leader and that his government was forced to proceed despotically against the villainy of Royalists, foreigners, and other enemies. To punish such oppressors of humankind is mercy, he insists; to forgive them would be stupid and even barbaric. He maintains that the French Republic needs to deploy weapons of terror to save its ideals, and he asks his listeners to trust his policies.

Instead of opposing Robespierre, Danton prefers to flirt with the prostitute Marion, who rhapsodizes about the joys of the body in a monologue in which she compares herself to a sea that swallows all men. Danton’s moderate friends, who heard Robespierre’s impassioned oratory, warn him of the latter’s enmity, but Danton only shrugs off their advice, certain that Robespierre’s people will not dare arrest him. When the two leaders meet in debate, Danton urges Robespierre to stop his massive slaughter of alleged conspirators, while the latter counters that a Revolution that is only half-finished is digging its own grave. After Danton leaves the room, Robespierre, in an extended soliloquy, convinces himself that even though some people might accuse him of acting out of personal jealousy, Danton is a threat to the Republic and has to be eliminated.

The Committee of Public Safety orders the arrests of the Dantonists. Instead of fleeing or fighting, Danton remains passive and introspective, brooding remorsefully about the bloodshed of the September, 1793, massacres of Royalists, for which he takes responsibility. His wife, Julie, reminds him that he thereby saved the nation, but he remains unconvinced that those massive executions were necessary. At the National Convention, Robespierre seeks to justify his decision to move against Danton’s group. He compares himself to Moses leading his people into the desert on their way to the promised land.

Danton and a number of his associates are now imprisoned, joining friends and acquaintances who previously were arrested. Formally arraigned by Robespierre’s subordinates, Danton demands that his accusers appear before him. The session of the Revolutionary Tribunal adjourns without granting his demand. Robespierre’s leading deputy, Saint-Just, then “discovers” a plot by the Dantonists to blow up the National Convention. The Dantonists are thereupon condemned to the guillotine, even though Danton publicly accuses Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety of high treason.

Awaiting execution, Danton meditates extensively on death and bids farewell to his beloved body, about to become a “broken fiddle.” He prophesies that Robespierre’s violent death will follow his within six months, a historically accurate forecast. As the Dantonists are taken by cart to the execution square, they banter among themselves and forgive one another’s sins. After the guillotine does its grisly work, Desmoulins’s wife, Lucille, deliberately shouts, “Long live the King!” She is immediately arrested as a Royalist, sure to share her husband’s fatal fate.

Bibliography

Hamburger, Michael. “Georg Büchner.” In Contraries: Studies in German Literature. New York: Dutton, 1970. Hamburger is a distinguished critic and translator of German literature. His essay focuses on the profound boredom that saps the willpower of Büchner’s heroes.

Hilton, Julian. Georg Büchner. New York: Grove Press, 1982. Hilton pays special attention to the scenic structure of Danton’s Death and to Büchner’s influence on such contemporary playwrights as Bertolt Brecht, John Arden, and David Storey.

Holmes, T. M. The Rehearsal for Revolution: Georg Büchner’s Politics and His Drama “Dantons Tod.” New York: Peter Lang, 1995. Danton’s Death is often interpreted as Büchner’s expression of political disillusionment over the collapse of the French Revolution. Holmes describes how French communist-oriented republicans in the 1830’s—a group of people with whom Büchner was associated—shared this sense of disappointment about the failure of the revolution.

Knight, A. H. F. Georg Büchner. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1951. This is the first full-length study of Büchner in English. It examines all of Büchner’s writings thoroughly, including his letters. In the discussion of Danton’s Death, Knight examines at length Büchner’s use of historic sources.

Lindenberger, Herbert. Georg Büchner. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964. Lindenberger writes gracefully and perceptively, with particular sensitivity to Büchner’s uses of rhetoric and dramatic form. His chapter on Büchner’s forebears and descendants is illuminating.

Lyon, John B. “Violence and the Tenacity of the Self: ’I Am Something, That’s the Misery of It!’—Georg Büchner’s Danton’s Death.” In Crafting Flesh, Crafting the Self: Violence and Identity in Early Nineteenth-Century German Literature. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 2006. Lyon examines images of wounded bodies in works of German literature, including Danton’s Death, describing how these images are linked to changing philosophical conceptions of the self.

Reddick, John. Georg Büchner: The Shattered Whole. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Seeks to offer new interpretations of Danton’s Death and Büchner’s other works and discusses the playwright’s values, ideas, and politics. Reddick argues that Buchner was aesthetically way ahead of his time primarily because his idealistic assumptions and aspirations were far behind the times.

Schwartz, Alfred. From Büchner to Beckett: Dramatic Theory and the Modes of Tragic Drama. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1978. Schwartz distinguishes and traces various patterns of tragedy. He examines Büchner’s kaleidoscopic art of composition, in which each scene expresses the violent assaults of history on people’s lives.