Oldal 91 [91]
VALERE NOVARINA AND JANOS PILINSZKY OR THE POETIC THEATER OF UNSELFING RITUAL
created by poetic language. This is why Artaud speaks of “poetry in space.”’ In
his text “Theater of Cruelty and the Closing of Representation” Jacques Derrida
emphasizes that this attempt by Artaud to bring a language into being that
belongs exclusively to the theater is nothing other than the desire to create a
representation “that is complete presence, that bears nothing in itself other
than its own death, of a present that never repeats itself — that is, one that
stands outside of time, not-present.”® (At that time, Derrida was writing his
Grammatology, whose main theme is the “differentiation” between language
and writing.)
Neither does Valére Novarina believe in the illusion of supportable presence:?
True presence attaches to nothing, the present is a gift, a present. The present
existing before us is in the future: something handed to us, pointed out and
appearing open (...) we are handed over as persona (...) The word persona opens
us up.” (399)'° When the curtain rises, the actor — or, rather, any person
performing an act — enters his own Passion as a disassembled figure (233)
and submits to the acts of language. “Exactly the way a good swimmer swims
thanks to the water. The undulation of the text goes forward, breathing, while
the actor remains motionless (...) No hesitation, no portrayal, no contingency:
the text is seemingly dictated, the actor is its victim and transmits it to the
audience in a stream, with a single impulse. The actor undertakes a passive
act. Or he steps into the Passion of language. It is the actor’s Passion, his pas¬
sivity, his idiocism, and his failure is that which renders the spectator visible.”
(190-191) In other words, just as in Artaud’s theater of cruelty, catharsis is
banished from Novarina’s as well (it renders the spectator visible — perspective
is in his eyes, and the point of death is in his soul), or rather, in this respect it
is an Aristotelian theater.' The actor provides respir(it)ation and before the
forgetful audience, he remembers, and, in doing so, the text that he allows to
pass through his body, that he breathes out into the space, returns from death,
repeats the original creative act on his body, via the biologically transpired
7 Artaud: Thédtre oriental et thédtre occidental, 112.
Jacques Derrida: Le théatre de la cruauté et la clôture de la représentation, in L'écriture et
la différence, Paris, Seuil, Essais, 1967, 364 [re-présentation qui soit présence pleine, qui ne
porte pas en soi son double comme sa mort, d’un présent qui ne se répète pas, c’est-à-dire
d’un présent hors du temps, d’un non-présent.]
° As Michel Corvin observes in a footnote in his foreword to the French edition of The Unknown
Act, many links tie Novarina to Artaud. This similarity is distant but important: “The con¬
cepts of body, matter, flesh, death and holes, separation and emptiness, breath and rhythm,
a new genesis, are also fundamental concepts in Artaud. Artaud’s monism also comprises
the osmosis between matter and spirit.” (Michel Corvin: Préface, in Valére Novarina: L’Acte
inconnu, Paris, Gallimard, Folio Theätre, 2009, 13-14.)
Numbers in parentheses refer to fragments from the following publication: Valére Novarina:
Lumières du corps, Paris, P.O.L, 2006.
Pierre Brunel: Théâtre et Cruauté ou Dionysos profané, Paris, Librairie des Méridiens, Bib¬
liothèque de I’Imaginaire, 1982.
+ 89 +