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THEATRICAL APPROACHES TO MYSTERY: “KENOSIS” IN VALERE NOVARINA S WORKS
Acting poorly and acting non-acting are characteristic of Tadeusz Kantor’s
Zero Theater, but they can also be seen as part of the heritage of Indian and
Chinese cultures (Bhagavad-Gita and Taoism).
THE “KENOTIC” THEATRE OF VALERE NOVARINA
AND TALKING WITH ANGELS
While writing this paper, I read Talking with Angels, first published in
France with the title Dialogues avec l’Ange. The work is the transcription of
spiritual instructions received by four Hungarian friends over a period of
17 months during the Second World War, from June 1943 to November 1944.
Gitta Mallasz, Lili Strauss, Joseph Kreutzer, and Hanna Dallos held weekly
meetings on Friday afternoons. During these meetings, over the course of
88 conversations, Hanna Dallos transmitted voices which, she said, did not
emanate from her, but rather from four distinctly different personalities
or entities. They were transcribed word for word by Gitta Mallasz and Lili
Strausz. Ihree of the four were Jews who perished during deportation.
The only survivor, Mallasz, who took refuge in France in 1960, spent years
translating these conversations into French. The first edition was published in
1976, followed by a second, complete edition in 1990. The original Hungarian
notes were published in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The most
recent edition was published in 2010 by Fekete Sas. It is entitled Az angyal
valaszol. (Ihe first editions were preceded by a samizdat in the 1990s by
the Reverend Farkas Jézsef of the Reformed Church.)
While reading the book, I realized that some of the themes are profoundly
related to Novarina’s work, as is the case with writings by several other
mystic authors and philosophers. I have already analysed the affinities of
thought between Novarina’s work and the ideas of Simone Weil.'° However,
the analogies with Talking with Angels came as a surprise to me. After having
drafted the essential points of this paper, I conversed with Valére Novarina
about the books in question. Eventually, he wrote to me and informed me that
he had read the book and it is the “livre de chevet” (bedside reading) of his
principal actor, Claire Sermonne, in Le Vivier des noms.
10 Poésie sans « je » dans l’espace: le théâtre de Valère Novarina et de Janos Pilinszky, in Jézsef
Fülöp — Zsuzsanna Mirnics, Miklös Vassanyi — Gabriella Szilvia Kuhn (eds.), Kapcsolatban¬
Istennel és emberrel: Pszichológiai és bölcsészeti tanulmányok (Getting Connected— with
God and Man. Papers in Psychology and Philology), Budapest, KRE — LHarmattan, Károli
Könyvek, 2014, 361-371.
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