Tantalizingly Bizarre. Those two words sum up how i felt about Heiner Muller's Quartett. After a weeks worth of anticipatory class room discussion based on texts, I was looking forward to seeing the beast itself live on stage.

At first it was a bit jarring, and I struggled to make sense of it all between the captions and all the eccentric activity on stage.

But without realizing it, I soon became entranced. It was something in the way the ribald french rolled so nonchalantly off of their tongues,

and the repetitions that simultaneously agitated and subdued me. This play made me feel a luscious mix of emotions,

but for all our sakes, instead of trying to dissect those i will focus in on one quote that stuck with me.

"The greatest fall into hell is from the heights of innocence"

Wow. Indeed an arrival in hell would be a much greater, and harsher, surprise to the Calvinist who shunned sin and has devoted their entire lives to reserve and piety, than to the pedophile, murderer or necrophiliac, the purveyor of sin who was daily warmed and animated by the flames of hell. This raised many questions for me. Drawing from the calvinist belief of pre-destination, why be moral and just in life if we are, regardless of our actions, doomed to an eternity of pain and suffering? Instead, let us make every day a celebration of mirth and depravity and when we die, let the chips fall where they may. Should we stay true to the arbitrary morality of a transient world, or to the contentment of our eternal souls? As they continued in dialouge "the world only needs one redeemer. Let us be insatiable.