Reflection 1985
Against the background of dark and dirty earth, I saw a bright spot the size of a saucer.
It was shining too brightly to be a part of that earthly matter out of which anything else been created.
When I raised my eyes above the rooftops, I saw the sky, which was shining as brightly as the spot and which did not belong to this earth either.
That “something” that was shining was the sky reflected in a piece of a broken mirror.
Reflection.
A phenomenon abused by art that defies naturalism.
A man who for the first time saw his reflection in the still waters must have experienced an illumination. Against the advice of surrealists one must not step into – God forbid – must not walk through the surface of the mirror.
Remain in front of it.
The reflection itself is a wonder. A mystery of the universe is enclosed in it. [This reflection shows] reality as if split in two, moved away from itself, caught and locked away
as if in a prison,
or lowered into the grave and thus no longer belonging to this world.
The impossibility of bringing life and death together is fulfilled.
Of course, this can happen only in the world of illusion and at play, the feeling of eternity while being still alive.
I want to restore to the word “reflection” its essential meaning and implications, which are tragic, dangerous, much deeper than those we were taught to believe in by the false con-missionaries of the truth-to-nature dogma. Neither copying nor recreating is the issue here. Something far important is – the extension of our reality beyond its boundaries so that we can better cope with it in our lives.
An extension that will give us an intimation of another world in the metaphysical and cosmic sense, the feeling of touching others realities.
Let us call it art
or, even better,
poetry, which I perceive as a daring expedition into the unknown
and the impossible.
Do not identify poetry
with fiction,
illusion, or
deception.
Poetry is an extension of reality;
its roots are in reality, which is mundane,
banal,
grey,
and despised by mediocre poets.
Despised.
I want to define this process that eludes all conventions and norms and is practically banned.
But first there is a poetic condition to be accepted:
the reflection of reality is its extension, which is as real and substantial as the reality. Anyway, maybe everything is but a reflection…
I am walking from the depths of infinity, which I have left behind. I am walking forward. There is a mirror in front of me, the invisible boundary of the mirror that marks the beginning of an extension of reality and the time of poetry. From this moment on, let us repeat the warning: everything is reality; illusion does not exist. Maybe it will be easier for us to enter the world of poetry. I am walking forward. Someone, who is another I, is walking up to me. In a moment, we will pass each other or bump into each other. I am thinking about this moment with growing uneasiness. But it does not escape my perception that I am walking, not forward, but in the direction of the depth where I started a moment ago. I am walking forward back.
And then I realize that the other person, the I-Over-There, is walking, not forward, but in the direction of the depth I left behind me. I lift my hat with my right hand. The raised hat is on the right-hand side of my body. He, the other I, makes the same motion. Even though he does it on the same side of the body, he uses his left hand. I tell him to use his right hand as I did. He obeys, but then his raised hat is
ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE of my body
and of my hat.
I have noticed that this correction of reversibility gives the impression of
REFLECTION on stage in real space…
I we make a step further on this road, it might happen that a smile will turn into a grimace; virtue into a crime; and a whore, into a virgin.
Because of those mysterious laws of reversibility, the imperative of contemptible death in the title [Let the Artists Die] refers to the artists. Fame and glory touch down in the hell of the bottomless social pit;
the world of bums, pimps, artists, whores.
Art, the noblest of man’s ideals, turns into a despicable chamber of torture,
from which the artist’s appeal to the world is tapped in a prison code.
KANTOR, Tadeusz. A journey through other spaces: essays and manifestos, 1944-1990/ Tadeusz Kantor; edited and translated by Michael Kobialka; with critical study of Tadeusz Kantor´s theatre by Michael Kobialka. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
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