Page 104 [104]
ENIKŐ SEPSI
spoken, ever since words were spoken... This characteristic of the inversion of time
cannot be observed more clearly than in language.
Actors, all sorts, act by means of the logaédres! Act the logaédres! Act by means of
the theatrolites!’”
Negative theology discusses God by formulating what is not God, that is, with
the help of denial. The anti-selves [anti-personnes] of Novarina’s theater, his
reversibly operating time, actions, and statements (in The Imaginary Operetta,
we hear a sentence spoken backwards) relate to theater as via negativa: state¬
ments about theatrical practice can be taken, if not by negation, then as para¬
doxes. The logaédres (which we sometimes translate as logoédres, alluding to
the Jogos) are the spatial realizations of speech that upset the traditional, linear
theatrical space.
In his text Tavolsagbol egység [Unity out of Distance],°* in which he engages
in dialogue sometimes with Péter Balassa and at other times with Gadamer,"
András Visky dissects a cognitive metaphor resembling Novarinas — totally
independently of Novarina’s works; specifically: that the theater is a “wedding
feast,” a celebration (true, this linguistic manifestation of the cognitive meta¬
phor does not place as great an emphasis on the material dimension of eat¬
ing). The wedding feast of the king’s son is a Mass sacrifice or Lord’s Supper, a
known cult symbol of Christianity, “a ceremony that obediently and devotedly
repeats the founding sacrificial act,” which “the theophanic appearance among
the participants keeps alive.” The “transformation” that comes into existence
thanks to the transubstantiation breaks through the space and “becomes the
joint experience of all the onlookers.” “The event imitates the foundational
act in a repetitive manner, but ‘true imitation always means a modification,”
We can understand Novarina’s subversive, circular dramaturgy in this man¬
ner, too. The imitators must be “destined for death’ — “they must undergo
an actual death to change the vision of the onlookers.”® Further spinning the
Shakespearean phrase, “all the world’s a stage,” Visky also regards the Apostles
as actors in the great theatrical work of salvation; and vice versa: he considers
57 Ibid., 161-162.
András Visky: Távolságból egység. Értekezés a módszerről [Unity out of Distance: A Report
on Method], in A különbözöseg videken [In the Land of Difference], Budapest, Vigilia, 2007,
5-19.
5° Specifically with Hans-Georg Gadamer: A szinhäz mint ünnep [Theater as Celebration] (in
Hungarian), trans. Judit Szántó, Színház, 1995/11.
6 Visky: Ibid., 7.
61 Tbid., 7.
6 Ibid.
63 Ibid. 12.
+ 102 +