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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2022
What has been called “the intellectual adventure of the twentieth century” is a sudden awareness of the unexploited possibilities of the arts. It is more than a lucid hubris, more than a deliberate effort to transcend the limits imposed by tradition and prudence. It is a deep conviction that art must change its structure and even its function. All the arts have purified themselves, eliminating the intrusions of other arts; they have rejected everything that was not necessary and vital to their own intentions.
1 Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo: “A celebration is an excess which has been permitted or even ordered. It is the solemn violation of a prohibition.”
2 Emile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life: “Besides the individual images and sensations, there exists a whole system of collective representations which are endowed with marvelous characteristics. Collective representations which can add to our personal experience the wisdom accumulated by the community through the centuries.”
J. Prokopiuk, K. C. Jung jako psycholog psycholog religii (Euhemer I, Warsaw 1962): “The basic elements of the collective unconscious are the archetypes. According to Jung, the archetypes are the possible forms or the models of the individual and of the whole community. They are in fact capable of being changed into images: symbols and myths.”
3 Grotowski uses the word archetype in a very precise and explanatory sense. For Jung, the archetype could not be grasped consciously by the individual. The collective unconscious was a supra-individual psyche. On these points, Grotowski disagrees with Jung.
4 Historical Polish hero transformed by the popular tradition into a national Faust.
5 Grotowski in Wspolczesnosc, November, 1961
6 Flaszen, “Commentary on the Directing of Kordian,” interview with author.
7 Grotowski, op. cit.
8 Flaszen, “Documents on the Laboratory Theatre 13 Rzedow,” for International Theatre Institute.
9 Ibid.
10 Grotowski, op. cit.
11 Robert Brechon, Michaud: “Like all naked and exposed flesh, the face is obscene. More naked than the naked body because the expression and the eyes betray the soul. Man is caught in the trap of his own face, but at the same time he wears it like a mask of the image of what he thinks he is. One can be ashamed of one's face more than of one's body because one is responsible for it; it has a meaning…. Sometimes the face reveals spirituality. It can escape from the curse which weighs on the body.”
