Битеф

The Slow Black-out of Images (Powolne ciemnienie malowideł), adapted, directed and designed by Jerzy Grzegorzewski, is a theatre variation on Lowry’s novel Under the Volcano, and on the main theme in Grzegorzewski's all oeuvre. The director wrote in a short note published in the programme: „I am thinking of a play i am not able to write. The plot is set in an old quarter in Amsterdam, recently pulled down. They say it has stood empty since the war, a whole section of the city. The houses, streets, furniture, books, paintings waited for the missing owners to return. Time must lapse for the law to recognize them as definitely missing. The fate of the residents is no mystery. They were burnt in crematoriums. The Consul from Under the Volcano might well walk these empty streets. No se puede vivir sin amar It is impossible to live without love. The quotation from Lowry could easily act as a motto for Grzegorzewski's whole output. For years, in The Marriage (Ślub) by Gombrowicz, The Undivine Comedy (Nieboska komedia) by Krasiński, The Wedding (Wesele) by Wyspiański, The Seagull (Chaika) by Chekhov and Death in an Old Setting (Śmierć w starych dekoracjach) by Różwicz, he has constructed worlds afflicted with amnesia, dark cosmogonies of objects, the undurable, frail constellations of human bonds which are brought to life only for a while by a brief spark of memory, a sudden reminiscence or association. Fragmented instants with the petrified shape and substance of beauty within them bombard the impervious shell of time congealing anew and anew. Where time devours his own children, nothing may happen. And yet art, in general and Grzegorzewski's art in particular, is engaged in an unceasing Faustian striving, hoping for transcendence and for a paradise lost; just like love, it seeks to find the eternal connection of things and the only eternal meaning. The Garden of Eden and Arcadia are dreams cherished by artists and lovers alike. It is no accident that the Con-