Georg Büchner (1813-1837) lived little more than 23 years; he had time to graduate in medicine, to obtain a lectureship in Zurich, to write three plays, La Morte di Danton, Leonce e Lena and Woyzeck, a narrative prose work, Lenz, a revolutionary pamphlet, Il Messaggero dell'Assia, and in the end, thanks in part to this last work, he had time to die in exile. The text of Woyzeck, left by Büchner in fragmentary form, has been the object of a complicated editorial history, but, without going into overly technical details, the one we now possess, even if it is not a universally accepted version, is a work of extraordinary modernity that has inspired the work of a great many artists. Of the Italian translations we cite three, even if they are not very recent and more or less hard to find (knowing how quickly titles now vanish from publishers' catalogues); in any case there is an Adelphi edition (G. Büchner, Teatro, Milan, 1978); for Utet there is an edition of the Opere (G. Büchner, Opere e lettere, Turin, 1981); from Marsilio, finally, came a translation by C. Magris (G. Büchner, Woyzeck, Venice, 2003), edited by H. Dorowin, who, in a detailed and thorough essay, sets out the history of the text and that of the real Johann Christian Woyzech, protagonist of the court case by which Büchner had been inspired. Of cinematic and television versions there have been at least a dozen, most of which can be forgotten without feeling any guilt. The theatrical versions have been, obviously, countless, and more will certainly come in the future; we would like to recall, however, as a true masterpiece of modern music, the extraordinary operatic version by Alban Berg. Its composition completed in 1922 on a libretto by Alban Berg himself, drawn from Büchner's text, the opera, with its title altered to Wozzeck, is dedicated to Alma Mahler. Let us now give, in broad outline, an account of the dramatic plot: we are in a time not precisely defined, but roughly the early nineteenth century (Biedermeier, Restoration). A small provincial town, little more than a village, but in any case the seat of a permanent garrison. Franz Woyzeck is a common soldier, probably the Captain's orderly, since for him he fetches the wine, goes to gather firewood and serves him as a barber. The Captain harasses him with questions, insinuations and, of course, with the constraints of service. Beyond this Woyzeck, out of poverty, is forced to submit to the attentions of the Doctor, who uses him as a guinea pig for his experiments. Franz loves Maria, with whom he has had a child. They are not married, and it is by no means certain that the child is his; this is one of the grounds for reproach on the Captain's part, who explains to Woyzeck, with arrogance and contempt, the value and the meaning of virtue, of morality. Woyzeck has only one companion, Andres, weak and resigned. He does not even have a Maria, he has no passions. For Woyzeck, Maria is passion and security, the hope of a safe harbour when his obsessions seem to gain the upper hand. The obsessions that inhabit Franz are those of a man who can no longer find a balance between the society in which he lives and nature. When Maria betrays him with the Drum Major, something which, as in all provincial towns, soon becomes common knowledge, Franz is further taunted by the Captain, this time joined by the Doctor, who with insinuations and half-sentences practically force him to take revenge. Woyzeck loses the last glimmer of balance that allowed him to distinguish between dream and reality. He is humiliated again, publicly, by the Drum Major, who beats him and taunts him for not being a man because "real men drink". In the end Franz kills Maria.
The film is from '78, and follows hard upon the making of Nosferatu. The shooting of Woyzeck begins a week after the end of the making of Nosferatu and lasts 18 days. Five days in the editing room and the film is finished. This is not a frequent thing in Herzog's career; it rather brings to mind the rhythms of a Fassbinder.
Herzog, born in '42, is 36 years old and has reached full expressive maturity. The most discerning international critics recognise him as an Author, and at last his works begin to enjoy a decent international distribution, something which until now had not happened even in Germany. At this point in his career one may count a little under twenty works, among short films, documentaries and feature films. Among the latter: Fata Morgana, Anche i nani hanno cominciato da piccoli, Aguirre, Kaspar Hauser, Cuore di vetro, Ballata di Stroszek. They are all works for which Herzog signs the direction, the story and the screenplay. Herzog who, it should be noted, declares himself an absolute self-taught man, entirely free of any debt to schools, movements, authors and theoretical manifestos.
In '78 something happens that determines Herzog's need to "explore his own roots". In the works cited, he has succeeded perfectly in expressing a clear poetics, sharply recognisable, which is precisely what earned him recognition of the status of author. What interests him is to narrate, or rather, to make us see what they see, those whom, with Hans Mayer, we shall call "the different ones", that is, the marginalised, the eccentric, in short all the bearers of a vision of the world not conforming to accepted standards.
With Murnau's Nosferatu, more than once called by Herzog the finest film ever made in Germany, and then with Woyzeck, one of the most dazzling texts of drama, not only German and not only of the nineteenth century, Herzog measures himself against the Canon. The narrative canon (dramatic, that is literary in a broad sense, but then also filmic, musical, and so on) sets many limits but at the same time, to the one who knows how to grasp them, offers great opportunities. Herzog respects these limits (in the case of Nosferatu the rules of the Genre are rigorously accepted; note well: Herzog cares little or nothing for Bram Stoker's text, the almost sole reference being Murnau's filmic text, which is from '22; in the case of Woyzeck there is a respect one might call philological for the almost universally accepted textual form), but, within the limits of that respect, his mastery and command of the medium allow him to bring to light themes and problems which certainly were there in the sources, the parent works, but which no one until then had managed to express with such clarity and such restraint. With a very bold comparison we might liken Herzog's work on these two texts to that done by Glenn Gould on the Variazioni Goldberg. A work of unveiling: this is Herzog's work in both cases. Woyzeck, which is what concerns us on this occasion, a tragic ballad in 25 scenes, as it was traditionally described, in Herzog's hands proves to be a perfect sacrificial text. Woyzeck is, to put it with René Girard, the disputed master of contemporary anthropology, the scapegoat that the community needs, and of which it makes use, in order to silence the anxieties and the fears caused by the approaching collapse of the social order (of the Hierarchy, understood as the system of Institutions, Girard would again say) on which until then it had rested.

Something must be said about the way the characters are drawn. Woyzeck, an extraordinary Klaus Kinski, is from the very beginning both victim and executioner of himself; the anxiety that gnaws at him, and that shows itself in his obsessive relationship with nature – neither mother, nor benign -, hears voices that no one hears (that desperate cry which common people call silence, Lenz), has visions (the mushrooms, the moon red as blood) that trouble those beside him (Andres, Maria) as well as driving him to despair; it is Woyzeck himself who, answering the Captain with a gospel quotation (...suffer the little children...), which in itself is simple, obvious, the Bible being the only text the poor have to read, makes of it a use so true and sincere that it throws into crisis all the hypocritical tirades on morality and virtue that hold up the mask of power. But it is precisely this spontaneous knowledge of the good, which lies in the gospel word, in its clash with the awareness of evil, of pain and of misery and of injustice, which for Woyzeck, as for all those like him, are immediate givens, the true daily bread, it is from this conflict that Woyzeck's imbalance comes. An imbalance that cannot but lead to a tragic sense of life. And that cannot but lead one to be marginalised, eccentric, different, and as such to be perceived as a threat to stability, a danger to the community. At the moment of crisis, at the peak of the crisis, the community, in order to recover its cohesion, to re-establish the lost balance or rather to build a new one, will choose a victim to immolate in a ritual sacrifice, in which all take part and in which all the blind violence that had accumulated is discharged. Only in this way can the malaise and the hatred be appeased. The chosen victim, it is an archaic mechanism, if it belongs to the community nonetheless stands at its margins, is never perfectly integrated. Woyzeck is a perfect scapegoat.
The Captain, apparently even a good-natured fellow who in the end is not stingy with tips, is in reality a hypochondriac, a repressed man, in his turn obsessed with time (he can allow himself obsessions of a metaphysical nature) and with his health; he is an instrument of power, he is not true Power, for if he were he would not need to work so hard on himself to make virtue prevail where instinct lies in wait. The irritation and the agitation he feels when Woyzeck throws his mendacious certainties into crisis are far more sincere than the smiling good humour with which he greets what he thinks idiocy but which for Woyzeck is in reality simple indifference. As an instrument of power, the Captain represents the most feared of the Institutions; he works perfectly for conservation and does so with cynicism and premeditation. He is utterly ruthless.
The Doctor is the other face of power. An exemplary model of a scientism poorly assimilated by minds still steeped in a magical-archaic culture. He is the pseudo-rationalistic side of power, Science too made subservient to conservation. In reality, for Büchner, as for Herzog, it is a scientism as bogus as the experiments he sets down, which have the sole aim of intimidating the simple and repressing in them every impulse of rebellion. The Doctor plays with Woyzeck a self-referential game which he needs in order to confirm himself in his self-esteem and in the legitimacy of the role he holds. Woyzeck is the guinea pig of his experiments and the confirmation of the power of the role within the community. Andres, a figure apparently faded and passive, has an important role: he is the witness of Woyzeck's Passion. To him Woyzeck entrusts his memories: Andres is to Woyzeck what Horatio is to Hamlet (Büchner always has Shakespeare in mind). The need for there to be someone to remember. Andres is us, the spectators, passive witnesses of a sacrifice that ought at least to serve to make us reflect on the violence we carry within ourselves. Andres may call Maria a whore, but not for this does he take part in the sacrificial process that the whole community brings against Woyzeck. Andres does so only because it is an extreme and futile attempt to stop a mechanism which, once set in motion, no gesture, save the sacrifice itself, will be able to halt. Finally Maria, who in this reading is only a victim of the second degree.
We might say a necessary instrument for the accomplishment of Woyzeck's sacrifice, who in order to lose himself must lose Maria. Maria remains in any case a central figure; her carnality, her being at the mercy of instinct, erotic and maternal, her desire for redemption, are never reduced to the stereotype of an inferior and degraded feminine. Maria is a tragic figure and, even before being at the mercy of instinct, she is, like the great tragic figures of antiquity, at the mercy of fate.
One last remark: Woyzeck was filmed at Telč in Czechoslovakia (which at the time still existed as a single state, tricks of fate: the Germanies, on the other hand, were then two and are now a single one); it would mean little, except that it is a town of dimensions suited to the needs of the shooting and that, having been spared by the war, it preserves a splendid and uniform architectural structure. But a related note may prove curious: Herzog has repeatedly declared himself profoundly indebted, as far as the imaginative faculty is concerned, to painting and, in particular, he often cites Hans Baldung Grien, Bosch and in general the northern medievals, just as he has never hidden his distaste for Italian painting. Well, Nosferatu, the immediate predecessor of Woyzeck, in my view not only in time, was filmed in Holland. Precisely at Delft, and anyone, however little he may know of the history of painting, may recall that this is the city where Jan Vermeer lived and worked, practically all his life. I do not want to say that this fact is important, but in my opinion it conditions, in a subtle but continuous and easily legible way, the whole visual component of the Woyzeck (which is as much as to say everything, since it is a film).
(P.S.: the DVD can be purchased, besides in specialised video libraries, online at the following address: http://www.deastore.com)

Giorgio Pangaro, an editor of Studi Umbri, curates with L. Cimmino the "Corpo a corpo" series of texts between literature and cinema for Rubbettino Editore.