The return “in cake”– a grotesque recipe according to Matéi Visniec

Abstract

The play The Return Home by Matéi Visniec commemorates the First World War, but thanks to its universality it may refer to any war. The characters – the Dead of the Homeland – are all presented as alive and they claim their right to a dignified return to the Homeland. But how to return home with dignity in the state of decomposition in which they are? As it happens every day in a community life, ambitions take over. The Commission of Reconciliation solves the problem by proposing to return them “in cake”: all the soldiers pass through a food mill to become a smooth paste with which then a giant cake is made. This return to the past, presented through grotesque images, serves the author to denounce how people are manipulated by big ideas. He also poses questions about the meaning of war.