Die satanische Genesis des Bösen. Franz Werfels Versuch einer Rationalisierung des Bösen in Die schwarze Messe

In his fragmentary work Die schwarze Messe (1920) Werfel goes back to traditional theological ideas and he anthropomorphizes and fictionalizes the Evil. The aesthetic representation and the staging of the Evil are characteristic of an Anti-Bildungsroman. The action takes place in a monastery, in the opera and in a tavern. The Evil is symbolized by ambivalent personalities representing different strata of a demonic modernity: women, scientists and a monk who had lost his faith. Well informed about the processes of interiorization of the Evil that create the sentiment of culpability (Freud, Groß, Steiner), Werfel stipulates the exteriority, the antecedence and the autonomy of the Evil. He recovers religious thought and turns the Evil into the figure of a certain Dr Grauh, an avatar of the devil and spokesman of the secularization. Werfel’s text must be understood as an apology of mankind, as a renewed mythology of the Evil that results from the double nature of human beings. The author challenges the triumphant spirit of rationalisation which prevails in his epoch.