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ABSTRACT
Theatre artists and philosophers all over the centuries have often pointed out the existence of two levels within every phenomenon; we call this thought “Dualism”. During the last centuries, many have focused on a specific, although traditional, example of dualism, which envisions a superior, transcendent reality – that is not connected to ours -. The performer can create such a connection, through her work on “verticality”, touching the superior invisible realm, which must then descend back to our everyday dimension. This article analyses one of the main tools used in order to set up a connection between these two dimensions, that is attention, according in particular to one of the main thinkers of the twentieth century: Simone Weil. In this regard, the author explores the last pedagogical work of French actor and theatre pedagogue Louis Jouvet and the last period of research by Jerzy Grotowski and his pupils, both focused on that “attention” and “descending way”, which works on the same line of what is better known as “Verticality”.
In the second part, Campo comments on Weil’s selected passages.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. See Lessing, Lacoonte, 18, 201 and following and 225 and following. English edition: Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry, London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1853.
2. See Lessing, Drammaturgia d’Amburgo, 6, 22, 312–3.
3. Ideas for a Mimicry, published in 1785.
4. Translated as Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man, or Too clever by half, or, The diary of a scoundrel. However, Eisenstein’s adaptation of Ostrovsky’s play is known as The Wiseman.
5. See Arvatov, Iskusstvo I Klassy; (in English) Boris Arvatov, Everyday Life and the Culture of the Thing (Toward the Formulation of the Question), [1925] trans. Christina Kiaer, October, no. 81 [Summer 1997] and (in Italian) Boris Arvatov, Arte produzione e rivoluzione proletaria. Le proposte dell’ avanguardia sovietica degli anni 20 per un’ estetica socialista e un’ arte proletaria, ed. by Hans Günther and Karla Hielscher, Firenze, Guaraldi, 1973.
6. Here I intend as “ontological” the research object, the essence of the thing, as I do not mean to associate such term to the point of view, the method, which is critical instead. Simone Weil clarified well this point in her lectures of philosophy: “There is no other philosofical study rather than metaphysics. But we must understand well that there are two ways to conceive metaphysical research: the ontological point of view and the critical point of view. Relationships between scientific, ontological, critical points of views: Science: quantitative relations between phenomena. Ontological point of view: one takes God’s point of view. One assumes to know things in themselves and compare them with one’s own knowledge of them. Critical point of view: one tries to become conscious of what one does when one does science ecc. The critical point of view tries to compare science as it is with the perfect method that we have. This point of view is perfectly legitimate, while the ontological point of view is absurd. Critical philosophers: Plato, Descartes, Kant who invented the term. (LDF:232). For a fervent yet convincing confutation of metaphysical ontological approaches see Bertrand Russell’s early essay “Mysticism and Logic” (1918).
7. Engel, Lettere intorno alla mimica, 16.
8. Ibid., 5 e 11. This is a repeat from Lessing, who comments Le comédien by P. Rémond de Sainte-Albine. Take note of the correspondence with Zeami’s example of flower.
9. Ibid., 13.
10. Besides, various notable episodes connect the life of Simone Weil, who was a philosopher, a lecturer and a worker, to theatre: for example, her theatrical vocation born at the Vieux Colombier after Jacques Copeau’s public readings; the close friendship with Copeau’s daughter, Edi, at the time of father’s and daughter’s contemporary conversion, which brought Copeau to his “theatrical conversion” from the centre, that was Paris and the productions, to the going out of the centre, towards the countryside and the pedagogical work; Simone Weil’s purely theatrical reflexions, also stimulated by the view of other productions, in particular those performed by Louis Jouvet; the operation theatrically notable of trying to improve the lives of factory workers, pursued with offering them some spiritual nourishment through her theatrical efforts, such as the articles written for the journal “Entre nous”; the projects for a rebirth of classical tragedy and the writing of Venise Sauvée (Venice saved), as an operation exclusively spiritual on the self along the way of transcendence.
11. Jouvet’s heirs and copyright owners acknowledged my work and request for publication by email on 30/5/2019.
12. Jouvet 2002, 7.
13. Ibid, 218.
14. Jouvet Citation1968, 80.
15. This is the Prologue by Simone Weil, written in the April of 1942:
He came into my room and said: ‘You poor wretch who understand nothing, who know nothing. Come with me and I will teach you things you have no idea of‘. I followed him.
He took me into a church. It was new and ugly. He led me before the altar and said: “Kneel”. I told him: “I have not been baptized”. He said: “Fall on your knees before this place with love as before the place where truth exists”. I obeyed.
He led me out, and up to a garret from whose open window one could see the whole town, some wooden scaffoldings, and a river where boats were unloading. In the room there were only a table and two chairs. He made me sit down.
We were alone. He talked. Now and then somebody else would come in, join in the conversation, then go away again.
It was no longer winter. It was not yet spring. The trees‘ branches were bare, without buds, in a cold air full of sunshine.
The light rose, shone bright, faded, then the stars and moon shone through the window. Then the dawn rose again.
Sometimes he paused, he took some bread from a cupboard and we shared it. That bread truly had the taste of bread. I have never found that taste again.
He poured wine for me and for himself, which tasted of the sun and of the soil on which that city was built.
Sometimes we lay down on the floor of the garret, and the sweetness of sleep descended on me. Then I woke up and drunk the light of the sun.
He had promised me teaching, but he taught me nothing. We used to talk in a rambling way about all sorts of things, like old friends do.
One day he said to me: ‘Now go away‘. I fell down on my knees, clung to his legs, begged him not to send me away. But he flung me out towards the stairs. I descended them as if unconscious, as if my heart was torn in shreds. I walked through the streets. Then I realized that I had no idea where that house was.
I have never tried to find it again. I saw that he had come for me by mistake. My place is not in that garret. It is anywhere else, in a prison cell, in some bourgeois parlour full of trinkets and red plush, in a station waiting-room. No matter where, but not in that garret.
Sometimes I cannot prevent myself from repeating, in fear and compunction, a little of what he said to me. How am I to know if I remember it correctly? He is not here to tell me.
I well know that he does not love me. How could he love me? And yet, there is something in the depths of myself, some point of myself which cannot prevent itself from thinking, with fear and trembling, that perhaps, in spite of everything, he does love me. (see FLN: 63)
16. Grotowski and Tinti, 202.
17. Ibid., 136–8.
18. Grotowski, in Richards, 125.
19. Richards, 20.
20. Weilian texts which are useful to theatre are numerous and it is not possible to report them here. The reader should refer to the general theoretical study I have published online at www.teatrostoria.it (section “Hospites 2006”, in Italian) with the title Dall’attenzione alla via negativa. Simone Weil/Jouvet/Grotowski. However, some concepts are essential for a basic understanding of her approach, and these I present here shortly, together with examples of connections with theatrical practices.
21. cfr. QI: 131.
22. André Weil, referring to the time of his training, notices: “It is been long time, and at the beginning after reading the Greek poets, since I got convinced that in the history of humanity only the utter geniouses count and that in order to get to know them it is only worth the direct contact with their works. Afterwards I learnt to quite moderate such judgement, although I never completely denied it; my sister instead, who – spontaneously or maybe influenced a little by me – had assumed this way of seeing, remained loyal to it until the end of her too short existance.” (A. Weil 1994:32).
23. OC I: 392.
24. QIII:156.
25. Stanislavski, 1997, 86 and 88.
26. Ibid., 554.
27. See LF:243–245 and LF:226, 228–229.
28. Barba, 224–225.
29. Stanislavski, 1963, 363–364.
30. QIII:156.
31. This great and fundamental Weilian thought, which anyway refers to the Greek tradition, is original and, for example, does not take place, at least expressed in this way, in the Vedic and in general Indian classic tradition, that is even still rich of examples of incarnations, realized, among others, by the Tantric practices. According to Charles Malamoud indeed the incarnation as encounter between two wishes, like that of Krishna – in turn incarnation of Vishnu – and of the Bengali sage Caitanya (XVI century), or even just out of the desire of the god, might take place, but the asymmetrical relationship prevents the human from obtaining the incarnation of the god out of his own sole will. See C. Malamoud, Un vento violento mi ha separato da me (A violent wind separated me from myself), paper presented at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” on the 26th of November 2004.
32. QIII:43–45,47,48.
33. QIII:272–274,277,280,290,291,293–297.
34. See Artaud, Antonin, Heliogabalus; or, the Crowned Anarchist, USA, Solar Books, 2006, and the new English edition, titled Heliogabalus, or the Anarchist Crowned, Richmond, Calder Publications 2019. In the text I refer to the Italian edition, Eliogabalo o l’anarchico incoronato, Milano, Adelphi 1969, and the French edition, Héliogabale ou l’anarchiste couronne, Paris, Gallimard, 1967.
35. Artaud, Heliogabalus, 53.
36. QIII:308,309.
37. QIII:350.
38. It is also the final condition of the state of the Bodhisattva (Sattva refers to one who owns the mind of illumination), to whom we can associate the so-called “solitary realisators”, who even Chandragomin in his The Twenty Verses on Bodhisattva’s Vows, considers as buddhas’ spiritual sons and respectfully prostrates to them. About fire see also the Rig-Veda, X, 51 and the notion of Agni as charioteer of the “cosmic cart”.
39. Except for the extreme case of the awliya es-Shaytan. See René Guénon’s The Symbolism of the Cross, Hillsdale NY, Sophia Perennins, 2004.
40. QII:202.
41. French edition: Guénon, René, Initiation et réalisation spirituelle, Paris, Les Éditions Traditionelles, 1952; English edition: Initiations and Spiritual Realization, Hillsdale NY, Sophia Perennins, 2001.
42. In this essay Guénon clarifies the functional identities of the Mandukya Upanishad, of the avatara (Sanskrit for “a going down”) of the Bodhisattva, of the rasul of the Islamic tradition, of the grades up to 30 in the Scottish Massonery, until the sacrifice (from the Latin sacrum facere) of the Maha-Purusha, and even finds traces of them in Plotino’s and Dante’s lives. Besides the author explains here how and why ecstasy is a transitory condition. This article worked as the base for another published in 1953 by Michel Valsan (who took over from Guénon the direction of the journal Etudes Traditionelles) illustrating the thought of the Shaykh Al-Akbar (which corresponds to the Latin “Doctor Maximus”) Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi with reference to his “descending realization”, clarifying some of Guénon’s intuitions, in particular concerning the details of the function of the wali (saint).
43. QIII:353.
44. Ibid., 364.
45. Ibid., 407.
46. QIV:85,86.
47. QIII:404.
48. See Ruffini, I Teatri di Artaud, Crudeltà, corpo-mente.
49. See also Ruffini, Grotowski e Gurdjieff.
50. QIII:406,407.
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Notes on contributors
Giuliano Campo
Giuliano Campo is an actor, director, writer and lecturer in Drama at Ulster University (Northern Ireland). His research interests include the actor’s work on the self and performance and altered states of consciousness. He has a long time collaboration with members of ISTA, the International School of Theatre Anthropology directed by Eugenio Barba, and with former members of Jerzy Grotowski’s Teatr Laboratorium.