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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: statements about theatrical practice can be taken, if not by negation, then as paradoxes. 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 metaphor does not place as great an emphasis on the material dimension of eating). 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 manner, 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 +
