The experience of melancholy in “Domestic Comedies” by Hanoch Levin

Abstract

The article attempts to depict the experience of melancholy in family dramas by an Israeli playwright Hanoch Levin. With regard to their themes Levin’s domestic comedies can be divided into dramas of ‘lonely hearts’, ‘family relationships’, and ‘neighborhood’. What is common to these three groups of dramas is the gallery of the same personae – melancholy men: depressed, detached subjects, deprived of any possibility of symbolization. Firstly, melancholy appears to be a general condition of the depicted world; secondly, it is deeply related to the inner dramas of personae of the drama – their embodiment and their perception of the world. The condition of male and female characters in Levin’s domestic comedies is determined by the longing for the past and the sadness of passive existence. The basic purpose of the article is to provide an analysis of the selected issues in the context of psychoanalytical readings of melancholy, especially Sigmund Freud’s as well Julia Kristeva’s works. This perspective allows to elucidate the melancholic condition of dramatis personae, and also to describe some complicated relationships between them (especially the relation between mother-figure and the son).