5 Best The Creditor Monologues – Opening Monologue

The Creditor (Adolf)

Category: Play Role: Adolf From: The Creditor

Adolf says

It was I who fed her up with praise, even when I thought her work was no good. It was I who introduced her into literary sets, and tried to make her feel herself in clover; defended her against criticism my personal intervention. I blew courage into her, kept on blowing it for so long that I got out of breath myself. I gave and gave and gave -until nothing was left for me myself. Do you know -I’m going to tell you the whole story -do you know how the thing seems to me now? One’s temperament is such an extraordinary thing, and when my artistic successes looked as though they would eclipse her -her prestige -I tried to buck her up belittling myself and representing that my art was one that was inferior to hers. I talked so much of the general insignificant rôle of my particular art, and harped on it so much, thought of so many good reasons for my contention, that one fine day I myself was soaked through and through with the worthlessness of the painter’s art; so all that was left was a house of cards for you to blow down.

The Creditor (Adolf)

Category: Play Role: Adolf From: The Creditor

Adolf says

And it’s you I’ve got to thank for all this. Indeed, I have. Why, the first day after my wife went away, I lay on my sofa like a cripple and gave myself up to my depression; it was as though she had taken my crutches, and I couldn’t move from the spot. A few days went by, and I cheered up and began to pull myself together. The delirious nightmares which my brain had produced, went away. My head became cooler and cooler. A thought which I once had came to the surface again. My desire to work, my impulse to create, woke up. My eye got back again its capacity for sound sharp observation. You came, old man.

The Creditor (Adolf)

Category: Play Role: Adolf From: The Creditor

Adolf says

Quite. I have tested myself. When I went to bed the evening after our conversation I reviewed your chain of argument point point, and felt convinced that it was sound. But the next morning, when my head cleared again, after the night’s sleep, the thought flashed through me like lightning that you might be mistaken all the same. I jumped up, and snatched up a brush and palette, in order to paint, but -just think of it! – it was all up. I was no longer capable of any illusion. The whole thing was nothing but blobs of color, and I was horrified at the thought. I could never have believed I could convert any one else to the belief that painted canvas was anything else except painted canvas. The scales had fallen from my eyes, and I could as much paint again as I could become a child again.

The Creditor (Adolf)

Category: Play Role: Adolf From: The Creditor

Adolf says

Quite. I have tested myself. When I went to bed the evening after our conversation I reviewed your chain of argument point point, and felt convinced that it was sound. But the next morning, when my head cleared again, after the night’s sleep, the thought flashed through me like lightning that you might be mistaken all the same. I jumped up, and snatched up a brush and palette, in order to paint, but -just think of it! -it was all up. I was no longer capable of any illusion. The whole thing was nothing but blobs of color, and I was horrified at the thought. I could never have believed I could convert any one else to the belief that painted canvas was anything else except painted canvas. The scales had fallen from my eyes, and I could as much paint again as I could become a child again.

The Creditor (Gustav)

Category: Play Role: Gustav From: The Creditor

Gustav says

Do you remember how we met for the first time? You were such an ethereal little thing, a little slate on which your parents and governess had scratched some wretched scrawl, which I had to rub out afterwards, and then I wrote a new text on it, according to what I thought right, till it seemed to you that the slate was filled with writing. That’s why, do you see, I shouldn’t like to be in your husband’s place -no, that’s his business. But that’s why meeting you has an especial fascination for me. We hit it off together so perfectly, and when I sit down here and chat with you it’s just as though I were uncorking bottles of old wine which I myself have bottled. The wine which is served to me is my own, but it has mellowed. And now that I intend to marry again, I have made a very careful choice of a young girl whom I can train according to my own ideas. For woman is man’s child, don’t you know; if she isn’t his child, then he becomes hers, and that means that the world is turned upside down.