Kantor's Last Tape

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

[The first version of this text appeared in Dialog, 2 (1994), pp. 118–130) as ‘Notatki po spektaklu: Próby, tylko próby’ (‘Notes after the performance: Rehearsals, Nothing but Rehearsals’) and was then reprinted as ‘Ostatnia taśma Kantora’ (‘Kantor's Last Tape’) in Leszek Kolankiewicz's Wielki mały wóz (The Big Little Vehicle, Gdańsk: słowo/obraz terytoria, 2001). This edited and cut translation with additional notes is based on the later version of the article.]

Próby, tylko próby. Dziś są moje urodziny, screenplay and realisation: Andrzej Sapija. Consultation: Anna Halczak. Camera (SVHS): Marek Stefański. Montage: Barbara Konstancin, Aleksander Stefański. Production: Ośrodek Teatru Cricot 2 (Kraków, 1991).

[In Poland as in many Catholic countries people celebrate their name day, connected to their patron saint's day, as well as their birthdays.]

James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1958), p. 284.

‘Przekroczenie granicy’ (‘Crossing the border’), Andrzej Wełmiński interviewed by Bronisław Mamoń, Tygodnik Powszechny, 15 (4 April 1991).

[Miklaszewski directed and produced the film.]

Konstanty Puzyna, ‘My, umarli’ (‘We, the Dead’), in Konstanty Puzyna, Półmrok. Felietony teatralne i szkice (Dusk: Theatre Columns and Sketches) (Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1982), pp. 110 and 111. [Puzyna (1929–89) was an outstanding Polish theatre critic, essayist and poet. For many years he headed Dialog, an important Polish monthly journal devoted to publishing plays and theatre criticism.]

Juliusz Tyszka, ‘Chocholi taniec’ (‘The Mulch's Dance’), Gazeta Wyborcza, 169 (20 July 1992).

T[omasz] Woł[oćko], ‘Ostatnia taśma’ (‘Last Tape’), Gazeta Wyborcza, 157 (6 July 1992).

Konstanty Puzyna, ‘My, umarli’ in Półmrok. Felietony teatralne i szkice, p. 107. [Witkacy is the nickname of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. Witkacy, Schulz and Witold Gombrowicz are a trilogy of writers who have had a substantial influence on Polish theatre.]

Artur Sandauer, ‘Sztuka po końcu sztuki’ (‘Art After the End of Art’), Dialog, 3 (1981), p. 111. [Sandauer (1913–89) was a Polish literary critic who analysed experimental writing such as that by Schulz and Gombrowicz.]

Published by Verba (Chotomów, 1990).

Published by Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy (Warszawa, 1990).

Dialog, 5 (1993), 92–102.

Bruno Schulz: An Essay for S. I. Witkiewicz, trans. Walter Arndt and Victoria Nelson, in Bruno Schulz, The Collected Works of Bruno Schulz, ed. Jerzy Ficowski (London: Picador, 1998), pp. 367, 368 and 370.

[Cinnamon Shops is also known in English as The Street of Crocodiles.]

Bruno Schulz, A Description of the Book Cinnamon Shops in The Collected Works of Bruno Schulz, ed. Jerzy Ficowski (London: Picador, 1998), p. 412.

Konstanty Puzyna, ‘My, umarli’, in Półmrok. Felietony teatralne i szkice, p. 107.

Jerzy Kwiatkowski, Literatura Dwudziestolecia (Literature from Two Decades) (Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1990), p. 285.

Jerzy Jarzębski, Wstęp (Introduction), in: Bruno Schulz, Opowiadania. Wybór esejów i listów (Stories: A Selection of Essays and Letters), ed. Jerzy Jarzębski, 2nd edn revised and supplemented (Kraków: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1998), p. LXIX.

Bruno Schulz, A Description of the Book Cinnamon Shops in The Collected Works of Bruno Schulz, ed. Jerzy Ficowski (London: Picador, 1998), p. 413.

Jan Kott, The Theater of Essence: Kantor and Brook, trans. Deniz Sengel and Michael Kott, in Jan Kott, The Theater of Essence and Other Essays, with an Introduction by Martin Esslin (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1984), p. 162.

Artur Sandauer, ‘Sztuka po końcu sztuki’, Dialog, 3 (1981), 111–112.

Tadeusz Kantor quoted in Michal Kobialka, Found Reality, in Tadeusz Kantor, A Journey Through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos, 1944–1990, ed. and trans. by Michal Kobialka, with a Critical Study of Tadeusz Kantor's Theatre by Michal Kobialka, (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1993), p. 366.

Ezek, 37, 1–3, The English Bible, trans. from the original by command of King James The First, Anno 1611, vol. IV, Isaiah to Malachi, (New York: AMC Press, 1967) p. 242.

Czesław Miłosz, Bells in Winter, part of From the Rising of the Sun, in Czesław Miłosz, Collected Poems, 1931–1987 (New York: The Ecco Press, 1988), p. 314. [Cf.: ‘The demiurge's workshop will suddenly be stilled. Unimaginable/And the form of every single grain will be restored in glory./I was judged for my despair because I was unable to understand this.’ ]

Ezek, 37, 8, The English Bible, trans. from the original by command of King James The First, Anno 1611, vol. IV, Isaiah to Malachi (New York: AMC Press, 1967).

A New Translation of The Bible containing The Old and New Testament, trans. James Moffatt (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1935), p. 944.

Carl Gustav Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, recorded and ed. by Aniela Jaffé, trans. from the German by Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Pantheon Book, 1961), p. 191.

Ibid.