Thematically and structurally, Grotowski’s theatrical vision of european civilization negates Wyspiański’s: resurrection is replaced by voluntary descent into the underworld.
In the final scene, the prisoners follow the headless ragdoll into the crematorium which they have just built, shutting the covers behind them. As they disappear into the hole, they sing a triumphant song. Are they oblivious? Ironic? defying? Grotowski describes the scene as an inversion of Wyspiański’s ending, a form of cruel variation on the easter procession:
At the end of Wyspiański’s play, the Savior arrives. But in Auschwitz the savior never came for those who were killed. […] The final procession was the march to the crematorium. The prisoners took a corpse and they began to sing: “Here is our Savior.” All the processions disappear into the hole during the song of triumph.588 Kalemba-Kasprzak notes that there is an element of “religious fervor” in the prisoners’
procession, as “One by one, they disappear into the trunk that now is their coffin. Once the last prisoner is gone and the cover is shut, the voice coming from inside recites two lines from Wyspiański’s text: ‘they’re gone – and smoke circles linger above.’”589 The scene attempts to represent metaphorically one very specific aspect of Auschwitz life.
Customarily, Germans would employ a number of strategies to prevent the creation of martyrs, whose elevated status could inspire and unite the prisoners. Bettelheim describes one such strategy:
If a prisoner tried to protect a group, he might have been killed by a guard, but if his action came to the knowledge of the camp administration then the whole group was always more severely punished than it would have been in the first place. In this way the group came to resent the actions of its protector because it suffered under them.
The protector was thus prevented from becoming a leader, or a martyr, around whom group resistance might have been formed.590
In Akropolis, the beatification process is mocked to reflect the reality of the camp. Thus, the savior, the redeemer who could inspire or lead, is nothing more than “a headless, raggedy doll rag.”591 He is denied humanity, as there is no difference between human body and trash; both are treated the same. The purpose of the camp was not just to eliminate millions of people, but to create the moral conditions that would justify that purpose. The victims had to be deprived of any sacral, any human, dimension; they
had to agree to acknowledge their own status as objects. Flaszen writes that in the final scene of Akropolis,
[t]he procession evokes the religious crowds of the Middle Ages, the flagellants, the haunting beggars. Theirs is the ecstasy of a religious dance. Intermittently, the procession stops and the crowd is quiet. Suddenly the silence is shattered by the devout litanies of the Singer, and the crowd answers. In a supreme ecstasy, the procession reaches the end of its peregrination. The Singer lets out a pious yell, opens a hole in the box, and crawls into it dragging after him the corpse of the Savior. The inmates follow him one by one, singing fanatically. They seem to throw themselves out of the world. When the last of the condemned men has disappeared, the lid of the box slams shut. The silence is very sudden; then after a while a calm, matter-of-fact voice is heard. It says simply, “They are gone, and the smoke rises in spirals.” The joyful delirium has found its fulfillment in the crematorium. The end.592
In a similar tone, Jerzy Gurawski adds: “The finale had a shocking effect as the actors disappeared into a big trunk, in which they stacked themselves up according to a pre-designed plan.”593 In one of the first reviews of the show from 1963, the critic Jerzy Panasewicz notes that “The final scene, when the crowd disappears into the crematory oven, is dramatic in its final moments of silence.”594 not everyone, however, was taken by those final moments. One Polish reviewer sarcastically commented: “The actors disappeared into a box, and we were told to leave quickly because they wouldn’t come out while we’re around, and they might suffocate. I would suggest that the next time, they drill some holes in the box. Better to be safe than sorry.”595 (Anticipating criticism of her criticism, however, the reviewer also rightfully points out that “Just because the subject matter is sacred, doesn’t mean that the form cannot be criticized.”)596
Robert Findlay points out that, at the end, “the audience typically does not applaud;
it simply leaves the theatre.”597 Peter Brook suggests that the lack of applause can be explained by the fact that the performance appears to leave most people shell-shocked:
“most people go away silent because they have seen something with their own eyes that they would rather, much rather, have heard about, and not have seen.”598 Jack Gould adds: “conventional applause at the play’s end was basically a cop out. A witness does not cheer his own conclusions or discoveries.”599 Or as Robert Findlay puts it:
One does not applaud a ritual, because one would be applauding oneself as a participant. nor would it have been appropriate at the end to applaud the seven performers obviously cramped together under the black box in the central area. One is awed by their integrity as performers, but simply leaves without ceremony in order to facilitate their quick exit.600
Osiński points out that the structure of Wyspiański’s Akropolis “is ascending, framed by and culminating in the myth of resurrection. Grotowski’s version of Akropolis, however, is descending, framed by the myths of death and sacrifice. Such an approach makes explicit the tragi-grotesque character of Grotowski’s work, and allows one to define
the entire theatrical reality in the context of the absurd, suffering and irony.”601 Osiński notes that Grotowski’s use of juxtaposition – resurrection versus mass graves, cathedral versus crematory ovens – is a technique known since the Middle Ages, the so-called coincidentia oppositorum, the aim of which is to create a larger, overarching synthesis.602
“We looked for ways to express a tragic situation in an unsentimental way,” Grotowski writes.603 This unsentimental – some would say cruel – strategy was taken directly from Borowski.