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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 passivity, 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 concepts 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, Bibliothèque de I’Imaginaire, 1982. + 89 +
