Other ( S )

Introduction The present text attempts to approach the work through the aspects that make it different, rather than those that make it familiar. The five themes that made up the essential experimental material at the disposal of the psychologists constitute the familiar aspects of The Angel of Death. We will strive to interpret the work on the basis of all the elements that fall outside the thematic framework of reference. The subject of this investigation will be everything that is “other”. The “other”, in The Angel of Death, appears in three different forms: reversal structure, variation and otherness. The first form, following the example of the ancient tragedies, governs the structure on the large scale. The second constitutes a tool for exploiting and transforming the thematic materials. The third breaks away from the unity of the work and constitutes a kind of opposing force. Some of these “nonessential” elements had a considerable impact on the way the piece was conceived and received. Above all, we will speak of Other, the passage which is the most “foreign” to the piece. This element, by taking on an unforeseen degree of importance, in a manner of speaking escapes from the control of its creator and imposes itself on the dramatics. Its radical otherness causes the center of gravity of the work to tilt away from the balanced world of the Apollonian to the intoxicating one of the Dionysian.