In 1969, in his review of Grotowski’s production, Irving Wardle quotes Polish critic Boleslaw Taborski as saying that “Grotowski’s company was little prized in its own country until it won its reputation abroad, that is: from spectators who knew not a word of Polish and were dependent for understanding on non-Polish speaking converts like Raymonde Temkine and Grotowski’s own statements of intention in Towards A Poor Theatre.”71 Contrary to what Wardle suggests, however, Grotowski’s fame abroad was never the basis for his purported recognition in Poland. On the contrary, the fact that Grotowski became a guru to America’s flower-power generation actually contributed to marginalization of his work and his methods in Polish theatrical circles. This contradiction may seem bizarre at first, but praise for an eastern european artist in the West, with a corresponding loss of prestige in his native country, was not unique to Grotowski. Czesław Miłosz, the Polish poet and writer who served as cultural attaché of the communist People’s Republic of Poland in Paris right after World War II, and who defected and received political asylum in France, is another example of how success in the West often diminished the status of the eastern european artist in his homeland.
In 1960, Miłosz emigrated to the USA, and shortly thereafter became an American citizen. After Miłosz’s defection, he was branded a traitor and his books banned by the communist government. In 1980, at the height of heated political protests in Poland, and when the Solidarity movement was just beginning to gain momentum, Miłosz won the nobel Prize in literature. In fact, many Poles heard about him for the first time on the day that the prize was announced. Although Poles generally embraced Miłosz’s nobel, they were not quite convinced that he had won it on merit. On the contrary, many interpreted it as a political nod to the Polish Solidarity dissidents – a welcome gesture, but one suggesting the prize was not awarded on the basis of Miłosz’s literary talents alone.
The Polish response to Miłosz’s nobel Prize was additionally understandable insofar as Miłosz, who never actually lived under the communist regime, was seen by Western academics as an expert on Polish life under communism. This paradox was viewed as yet another example of the fashionable, but hollow, tokenization of an intellectual from behind the Iron Curtain. Miłosz’s Captive Mind, a study of the behavior of intellectuals under the totalitarian regime and a masterwork in its own right, was perceived in Poland as a signature book that built Miłosz’s political, rather than literary, identity. Moreover, the Polish public, as well as members of Polish literary circles, saw the works of many other writers – among them the poet Zbigniew Herbert, poet-playwright Tadeusz Różewicz, experimental poet Miron Białoszewski, and poet Wisława Szymborska (who won her own nobel in 1996), to name a few – as far superior to Miłosz’s. These artists
stayed in their home country, for better or worse. This decision contributed to their lack of visibility in the West but enhanced their reputations and credibility at home.
Staying in the country meant learning to write between the lines, or often writing “into the desk drawer,”72 an effort both hopeless and heroic.73 While Miłosz enjoyed his life in Berkeley, Herbert and Różewicz consciously sentenced themselves to oblivion, food shortages, censorship and political instability.
For a long time, many Poles felt that the West, particularly American intellectual and creative elites, developed a tendency to fetishize artists whose works had been banned or censored by their own governments. depending on the unfolding events in eastern europe, they would become favorite causes célèbres for the bored new york artistic socialites, who often held highly idealized, misinformed and foolish views of eastern european socialism.74 One interesting example is eugenio Barba’s honest description of his encounter with Polish socialism vis-à-vis his idealized, leftist vision:
In this society which defined itself as socialist, my left-wing ideas collided with endless examples of injustice, abuse of power, bureaucracy, indifference and cynicism. My ingenuousness vanished, and in its place I felt acquiescence and apathy creeping in.
I was confused. All my theories, both political and theatrical, dissolved. […] I had come to Poland because I believed that “communism restored its fertility to the human race.” But, as I saw it, socialism was an obscure caricature, often even a nightmare.75 does an idealized political view skew the formation of cultural tastes amongst foreign audiences? Many Poles thought so. Although many prominent Polish artists like Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Kieślowski and Andrzej Wajda, to name a few, succeeded abroad and continue to be revered in Poland – in fact, their Polish fame is often boosted by their international success – those who were initially not highly regarded in Poland, but who did succeed abroad, especially in the USA, were perceived as doing so by humoring and manipulating the utopian political impulses of the American left, rather than on the merits of their own work. While this opinion was prominent among Poles, it was also a message emanating from communist propaganda, which makes the task of differentiating between genuine and manipulated sentiment vis-à-vis the American art scene a difficult one. Many Poles see Miłosz as having been made something of a poster boy for the liberal Western cultural establishment – which to this day, even despite his now-iconic status, continues to fuel some measure of Polish ambivalence about his literary virtues.
Polish theatre circles were similarly suspicious of Grotowski’s international success.
Critics questioned the degree to which his success was based on artistic merit rather than his usefulness as a position statement for the politically-engaged, new york avant-garde, a fad that would pass with the first winds of political change. Adam Hanuszkiewicz, director of the national Theatre of Poland, bluntly sums up the prevailing sentiment, questioning the Western motives for embracing Grotowski:
Anything exotic always fetches good prices on the Western market! Grotowski is a
“child” of Stanislavsky, and his theatrical father-figure creates all the problems for
him. I despise mystification. Grotowski’s theatre lacks a truthfulness of purpose and is typified by a confusion of intentions. It is a hybrid, a deformed birth of naturalism and expressionism. He starts with physiological naturalism and ends up in his own cul-de-sac of stylization and formalism. It is too real to be art, and yet it is too contrived to be real or spontaneous in the manner Grotowski intends us to believe it is. I respect immensely the Living Theatre. Its members are not hypocritical. They come and touch you in the audience. I would not mind if they spat at me, and hit me as a member of the audience they would like to activate. In Grotowski’s Theatre on the other hand, to profess utmost naturalism or realism with all its sexuality, and tend to audience-involvement, and then at the same time ignore that there even is any audience, not involve them, or even attempt to do so, to respect them as others, it is sheer hypocrisy; it defeats its original purpose and is a new guise for the old Fourth Wall business. Grotowski’s is a theatre of peepholes… The audience is put in a position of Peeping-Toms. To witness therefore, the reactions of disgust on the part of the audience is a more rewarding theatrical experience than the actual performance. […]
To defy respect-worthy critics is all very exotic-esoteric for you in the West, but it will soon wear out though. Inevitably it happens to all art that lacks truth! To philosophize on laboratorial improvisation and then spend weeks discussing whether the forefinger or the middle finger must come forward in a certain pose the actor strikes, is cheating one’s own principles, and is a betrayal of one’s audience.
I have personally two arguments against Grotowski’s type of theatrical expression.
Firstly, theatre, by definition, by its very nature and essence is a live, collective art and must make sense to the masses, from the child to the professor. Good theatre cannot be limited to an audience of initiates, familiar to the secret rites of their society. Secondly, if Grotowski were serious in his commitment to discover in the theatre an equivalent to religion in an atheistic society, then he would not limit his audience to a select few.
The concept of the Chosen is basically an expression of a negative, fascistic attitude.
Religion shares the same essence with Theatre, it is meant for the masses, the child and the professor must be able to pray together in the same church. The utmost Grotowski may hope to evolve would be a Cult, a mystery-cult of a Secret Society, which is never a Religion.76
As Hanuszkiewicz cannot see any redeeming qualities in Grotowski’s work, he concludes that explanation for its popularity in the West is the West’s own appetite for exotic cultural treats. Although Hanuszkiewicz’s statement may seem reductive and dismissing, to fully understand its implications we need to understand the psycho-political framework of Polish postwar culture.
One of the primary reasons for Grotowski’s poor standing in the Polish theatre scene had to do with what appeared to be his exceptional political status. In their 1986 article, Jerzy Tymicki and Andrzej niezgoda captured the complexity of Polish sentiments towards Grotowski during the early days of his international career:
In those days, Grotowski was in a very special position. He was both conservative and radical, compliant and blasphemous. He was backed by the authorities, having been a
member of the Party for years (as were his actors). Critics praised him as an innovator.
Groups of youths regarded him as a guru. At the same time, he was never accepted by the larger Polish public because he rejected traditional national and religious values and beliefs. Grotowski’s deconstructions of Polish classics (Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve and Kordian, Słowacki’s The Constant Prince, and Wyspianski’s Akropolis) were regarded as offenses against national treasures. Apocalypsis cum Figuris, with its scene of fucking the sacred bread, caused people to cry, “blasphemy.” Abroad, Grotowski’s reputation was much stronger. In Poland he was accused of manipulating his actors and spectators.
Indeed, people said, Grotowski appeals only to the youth because they are easier to manipulate. When in the mid-1970s Grotowski announced his “exit from the theatre,”
many felt relief. He ceased to be a challenge and a provocation.77
As Tymicki and niezgoda suggest, there was something uneasy about Grotowski’s relationship with the communist regime. Under the Soviet regime, it was literally impossible for the average Pole to obtain a passport, yet Grotowski visited Russia, China and India. Such travels were unfathomable for anyone who was not somewhat connected to the Communist Party; Polish citizens were simply not allowed to travel beyond Polish borders. Only those who somehow collaborated with the Communist Party were permitted to travel. As Barba recalls, a passport was “a document that nobody possessed in a socialist country. […] Poland was a prison, where you could neither have a passport nor travel abroad as could citizens in capitalist europe. The secret police were omnipresent and the friendliness of a girl could conceal the interest of an informer.”78 In 1956, Grotowski traveled extensively abroad, even writing an article on his travels, titled “Between Iran and China.” These early travels alone put Grotowski in a politically questionable position. eugenio Barba recalls his conversation with Grotowski, about Grotowski’s meeting with the Russian theatre director yiru Zavadsky, “the grandson of a Polish aristocrat who had been deported to Siberia during the Warsaw insurrection of 1863. [His] productions were in the worst socialist-realistic style and had won him innumerable honours.”79 While hosting in his apartment in Moscow, Zavadsky showed Grotowski his passport, bragging, “I can go to Capri or to London tomorrow if I want to see a show in the West end.” Then Zavadsky led Grotowski “to the window and pointed out two large ZIM limousines parked in the courtyard, each with its own chauffeur inside. ‘The Soviet people put them at my disposal day and night. I have lived through dreadful times and they have broken me.
Remember Jerzy, nie warto, it is not worth it. This is the harvest of compromise.’”80 According to Barba, Grotowski talked about “this moment as of a turning point in his life. […] Zavadsky had been his great master.”81 One can’t help wondering why…
When reading Grotowski’s newspaper articles from that period of the late 1950s to the early 1960s – and knowing the historical currents that governed Poland’s political life at that time – one is struck by a certain blatant opportunism glaring from Grotowski’s writings. In 1955, at the height of socialist realism, Grotowski openly denounced artists who choose to engage in any kind of private, and therefore unchecked, art making. He wrote: “We often hear of a peculiar double life among artists. They create one kind of art for the critics and the official exhibits, and another kind of art for themselves, their friends
and their families. This is the art in which they reveal their true selves.”82 In denouncing such double lives, Grotowski called for everyone to embrace socialist realism: “We ask for an atmosphere in which we could openly speak the same way that we speak in private. […]
The common goal: Socialist Realism. The strategy: honesty, bravery of expression and artistic exploration.”83 The language that Grotowski used in this article echoes the clichéd language used by the Communist Party in its propaganda materials. In another article from 1955, Grotowski literally used the same vocabulary that had become a signature party line: “We, the young would like to dedicate ourselves to a theatre that evokes revolutionary passion, love, class brotherhood, cult of heroism, and hate towards capitalist oppression.”84 In 1956, at the height of the October Thaw, Grotowski again opportunistically followed the trend – this time, however, denouncing Stalin and socialist realism. In the October issue of Dziennik Polski, he writes: “From the mid-1930s, that is, from the era of the cult of Social Realism, Stalin has drastically limited the creative freedom of Soviet artists.”85 By then, socialist realism was no longer “one common goal” and Grotowski modified his position to fit the current political winds. In 1957, however, the wave of temporary freedoms was again slowly receding, and Grotowski again renewed the call for socialism, repeating the propaganda slogans of the Communist Party in a communist youth journal:
“We are obliged to fight against those who want a return of capitalism, who want the land to be returned to the landowners, who want the factories to be returned to their owners.
We need to fight against those who want the return of dictatorship over the proletariat.”86 Reading Grotowski’s writing from this period, one finds it difficult not to at least suspect Grotowski of collaboration with the regime. As the times changed, the tone and message of his articles always paralleled the official party line. In his book, Grotowski: Przewodnik [Grotowski: A Handbook], dariusz Kosiński writes about a 1997 meeting with young students, during which they accused Grotowski of having an “unclean” political record, on account of running an official theatre in what was a totalitarian country. defending himself, Grotowski reportedly responded: “We could do nothing and lose our only chance or try to do as much as we could under the circumstances.”87 Kosiński wonders if the compromises were always necessary, and about the extent to which Grotowski availed himself of politically expedient solutions.88 Whatever the answer, Grotowski’s ambivalent political sympathies put him in the communist camp, which made him suspect amongst Polish artistic circles, which generally opposed the regime. As could be expected, anyone suspected of collaborating with the Party was automatically suspected of being an informer, and, needless to say, informers were unwelcome in artistic circles – their presence inhibited private conversations, and, more importantly, could be dangerous. Of course, there remain many unanswered questions swirling around the communist past:
who collaborated with whom and for what reasons? Who now wants to know, and why?
Was it at all possible to be even slightly successful without appearing as if one collaborates with the regime? What did that collaboration entail, and how far did it go? How are we to judge it from the current political perspective?
Another reason why Polish theatre circles shunned Grotowski is rooted in both the historical strategies for coping with totalitarian oppression, and the ways in which such political strategies influenced Polish acting. Both nazis and Communists took themselves extremely seriously. As Wittgenstein rightly noted in 1948, there was no humor in nazi
Germany: “Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world [Weltanschauung]. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.”89 Communists offered a similar vision of the world, a world in which they were unable to laugh at themselves because the very existence of the totalitarian regime they perpetuated was threatened by laughter; it was a world without irony. In his 1984 book Carnival! Umberto eco suggests that: “The most repressive dictatorships have always censured parodies and satires but not clowneries; [that’s] why humor is suspect but circus is innocent.”90 Since dictatorial power is grounded in fear, and fear is disarmed by laughter, dictators fear irony, or as Peter Sloterdijk puts it: “An essential aspect of power is that it only likes to laugh at its own jokes.”91 neither communism nor fascism was able to withstand irony because, like any totalitarian system, they were unable to withstand self-criticism.92 Thus, as a coping mechanism under the years of totalitarian oppression, Poles developed a proverbial form of resistance: an intellectual distance from the oppressive ideology. Peter Sloterdijk calls it kynicism, “a rejection of the official culture by means of irony and sarcasm.”93 It was a peculiar form of “pissing against the idealist wind” of the ardent party apparatchiks.94 As Sloterdijk puts it:
Cheekiness has, in principle, two positions, namely, above and below, hegemonic power and oppositional power. […] The kynic, as dialectical materialist, has to challenge the public sphere because it is the only space in which the overcoming of idealist arrogance can be meaningfully demonstrated.95
In Poland, years of partitions, followed by nazi and then Soviet occupation, created a society that couldn’t approach existential questions other than through sardonic self-debasement. For decades, the language of kynical dialectic permeated every aspect of Polish culture, from music to literature, from high- to lowbrow – including Polish theatre.96 Kynicism established lines of communication between the theatres and their
In Poland, years of partitions, followed by nazi and then Soviet occupation, created a society that couldn’t approach existential questions other than through sardonic self-debasement. For decades, the language of kynical dialectic permeated every aspect of Polish culture, from music to literature, from high- to lowbrow – including Polish theatre.96 Kynicism established lines of communication between the theatres and their