illusions. The modern drama, however, still encompasses the romantic quest for
a lost Eden at the same time as it reaches toward an uncertain future grasping
for a nebulous missing savior figure, some mysterious and paradoxical being
slouching toward Bethlehem.

Since the absence of God as the ground of Being has become a central
concern in modern drama, one avenue worth exploring is the use of the absent
father in modern drama, for the father image symbolizes creation and the origin
of meaning and in patriarchal cultures is subsumed into the Transcendental
Father or God, the Father, a figure whose absence seems to penetrate the
various strands of modern drama. One way to address and understand how
modern drama plays out profound loss for that which once was or, at least, was
thought to be, is to explore the workings of the absent father in modern plays.
However, in order to better understand the concept of the absent father, the
father who is central to the dramatic action but never appears on the stage, one
needs to define the nature of the absent character and its unique construction in
dramatic literature.

Drama depends upon mimesis, the imitation or direct presentation of an
action. A dramatic character is most often presented to the audience through an
actor. The dramatic action historically takes place in the conventional present.
Since Aristotle, mimesis in drama has been given a privileged position. Over the
years, critics who favored mimesis have tried to assure its effectiveness by
proposing the contraction of dramatic action and espousing the unities of place,
time, and action. One consequence of this contraction, however, has been the
increased use of diegesis or narrated discourse. The focus on absence in modern
drama brings diegesis to the foreground and emphasizes the dramaturgy of that
which is not presented, but which is always represented or mediated through the
discourse of an Other.

Critics, however, emphasize the fact that drama focuses on a present action
in which events are presented, not narrated to an audience. Peter Szondi, for
example, defines drama as "always primary; its internal time is always the
present. . . . In the Drama, time unfolds as an absolute linear sequence in the
present" (9). Szondi, however, finds that modern drama focuses on internal
conflicts that emphasize the welling up of past actions, thus rendering drama
more like an epic. For Szondi, modern drama is a drama of reflection in which
"the (spoken or unspoken) 'three years later' presupposes an epic I" (9). In
discussing Ibsen's drama, for example, Szondi considers the present to be
merely "an occasion for conjuring up the past" (16). In examining John Gabriel
Borkman ( 1896), Szondi finds that "the past itself, the repeatedly mentioned
'long years' and the 'wasted life,' is the subject of the play, a subject that does
not lend itself to the dramatic present" (16). Szondi sums up his position: "Only
something temporal can be made present in the sense of dramatic actualization,
not time itself. Time can only be reported about in drama" (16). Debating the

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