Stranger meets Freud Le Visiteur by Eric-Emmanuel-Schmitt. Translated and Adapted by Jeremy Sams.
ISBN : 0413760200

It is a play by Eric-Emmanuel-Schmitt. One of the most interesting ploys I have seen employed. Nazi Germany has taken over Austria and the troops are now walking the streets to rid the place of Jews. Freud is using his influence inside Europe and in US to get out. Those are his last days in Austria. The play begins with his daughter being rude to a Gestapo officer and he takes her down to the main office for a "chat". Freud is worried and waiting for her to come back. A stranger enters.

The whole play is the conversation between them. As the conversation unfolds, Freud begins to wonder about the strange aura that surrounds the visitor and his own vulnerable self looking outside for comfort in this troubling times. Slowly questions begin to raise in Freud's heart "Is this visitor God's own self?". But his heart refuses to admit, as he is a confirmed Atheist.

So Freud asks him "Why come to me?" and the visitor answers, "There is nothing more tiresome than talking to a fan. I am not sure that a priest would recognize me in the way I need. These people are so accustomed to speaking in my name, acting for me, advising on my behalf, ... I'd feel almost in the way."

Somewhere along this conversation they are interrupted by a Gestapo officer looking for a madman, called Walter Obersteit, who has escaped from an Asylum. And Freud, jumps to the most natural conclusion and their conversations turn a different direction and Freud becoming his skeptical self again. So as the visitor tempts him, Freud says

"I do not believe in god precisely because everything in me is disposed to believe! I do not believe in God because I long to believe in him! I do not believe in God because I would only be too happy to believe in him! "

"If God existed ... Let him to look outside the window, to see evil oozing about the streets in jackboots - here, in Berlin, all over Europe? ... It wasn't necessary for evil to become so very spectacular ... and that is what I would reproach God with if he were here -- a broken promise!"

Freud (continues) "Evil is a broken promise. What is death but a promise of life stated unequivocally in rushing blood, the pulsing heart ... and then broken? Death is nowhere implicit in life ... Death is nowhere to be felt, not in my stomach, nor in the head...And that is God's fault."

for which the Stranger replies, rather calmly, "You were expecting too much."

Soon Freud's daughter returns home and so does the Gestapo officer, but this time to tell him that the mad man was found. And Freud wavers back, to see the stranger in new light.

Stranger observantly says to Freud "You don't want ... a God who loves? You'd prefer a God who scolds, an angry old man, ... Oh yes, you would like a God to prostrate yourself to but not a God who'd kneel to you..."

they both hear Countess' aria, 'Dove sono', The marriage Figaro playing in the background and the stranger dreamily remarks "Mozart ... Enough to make god believe in Man ... "

The last scene especially is a tempting one, where the Stranger chooses to leave by the window like a human, refusing to perform a miracle, leaving Freud wondering if Stranger was indeed God or just a smart guy, who happen to come into his office.

And the Stranger bids adieu saying "Faith must feed itself on Faith, not on proof."

The whole conversation is beautifully woven and it is very delightful to see it play out the way it does. Only one thing disappoints me: God/Stranger speaks in a language very similar to Freud, arguments based on reason, mixed with mysticism, going back and forth. Maybe I expect too much.

Please read it when you get a chance. Its wonderful.  ¶ 11:18 PM  4 stomped here! links to this post