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ENIKŐ SEPSI RITUALS OF SELF-EMPTYING, EATING, AND SUPPER IN NOVARINAS WORKS A recurrent scene in Valére Novarina’s works is that of communal eating — the supper — just as the central recurrent theme is the consumption of words. It is a biblical theme, on account of the Last Supper too, and aside from this it also represents the dynamic opposite of self-emptying. In the chapter on Valére Novarina and Janos Pilinszky, entitled “The theater of unselfed poetry,” we mentioned the importance of the God-emptiness anagram [Dieu-Vide] in Novarina’s oeuvre. That explication is only reinforced by his lines about the spatial composition of Un Coup de dés [A Throw of the Dice], and the influence exercised upon him by empty spaces: “At the age of 18, I experienced a particular enlightenment when I read an extensive study of Mallarmé’s A Throw of the Dice: all of a sudden in the Sainte-Genevieve Library, I found myself in the depths of the drama of word and body. At the intersection of opposites: at the intersection of the page’s two dimensions and the bodily, extensive aspect of the stage." Ihe beckoning emptiness of presence is the fundamental paradox not only of Novarina’s conception of God but also of his entire oeuvre. Just as does God, so the actor empties himself, retreats: it is not the actor who acts but the word that acts through him. The Swiss literary and theatrical historian, Marco Baschera, sees the same enactor of ritual in the Novarina-actor and the priest: the priest also disappears during the ritual’s final act, the distribution (blessing) of the Eucharist. According to Baschera’s analysis, while the priest disappears so that the believer can unite with Christ in taking the bread (Host), he speaks Christ’s words, thus effectively doubling Christ: He becomes simultaneously the body in the bread and the word in the priest’s mouth.” According to Leigh Allen’s excellent analysis, the Novarinian actor is simultaneously impersonal speech and the one who eats.”’ The actor is also doubled: sometimes he is a body and at other moments, an absentee (absence, hole, etc.). The actor is thus a Christ-imitator, which is why he “walks on water” in Pendant la matiére [During the Matter], while he seeks his equilibrium or becomes the embodiment of the Passion, part of the story of suffering. In Espace furieux [Enraged Space], he says: I am Gods theater: the place of the drama of divine speech that we hear.‘ #5 Evelyne Grossman: Artovarina. Un théâtre résurrectionnel, in ©. Dubouclez (ed.): Valère Novarina: Une poétique théologique?, Littérature 176 (December 2014), 88-96, 91. Marco Baschera: Le transsubstantiation et le théâtre, in E. Sepsi (ed.): Le théâtre et le sacré — autour de l'oeuvre de Valère Novarina, Budapest, Räciö Kiadö -— Eôtvôs Collegium, 2009, 60. Leigh Allen: Le rituel de la (s)cène dans quelques pièces de Valère Novarina, in ©. Dubouclez (ed.): Valère Novarina: Une poétique théologique?, Littérature 176 (December 2014), 63. 18 Quoted by Leigh Allen: Ibid., 63. 46 47 + 098 +
