Carlo Susa

At the height of his legendary attack on the press, Karl Kraus (1874-1936) used an alienating metaphor in his writings several times that compared the newspapers’ effect on Viennese society to “Black Magic”. This image was broadly developed in an essay published in his magazine The Torch in December 1912, significantly entitled The End of the World through Black Magic. Here, in his style – at once grotesque and apocalyptic – the writer presages the immense tragedy that would soon devastate Europe. The essay’s content and tone anticipate the structural themes and typical elements of his great dramatic masterpiece, The Last Days of Mankind, written during and after World War I, containing his revolutionary description of the nature of the conflict, focusing on those not at the front, who ‘fight’ through the news published in the newspapers...

Questa Storia essenziale del teatro offre al lettore uno sguardo panoramico sull’evoluzione nel corso dei secoli dell’arte della scena e dei suoi elementi costitutivi.