Both Frisch and Dürrenmatt, the terrible Swiss twins of moralistic postwar drama, have shown themselves fascinated over the last forty years with the tragicomic analysis of evaded ethical responsibility. The guilt of their protagonists has commonly had allegorical overtones for the whole of Western civilization. These male protagonists are violently expelled from the ostensible harmony of their cowardly lives. They are forced into tragic introspection that reveals they are en mauvais foi with themselves. Their lives culminate in the moving confession of guilt and failure. This is so with Dürrenmatt's III in Der Besuch der alten Dame and with Trapp in Die Panne, just as it is with Frisch's teacher in Andorra. Frisch's Biedermann und die Brandstifter is a farcical but still allegorical variation on this theme.

Frisch's latest novel Blaubart reads like an absurd inversion of these plays in a minor domestic key. The main...