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ON BEARING WITNESS TO A POETIC RITUAL predetermined play in the mind of the spectator. This tendency is characteristic of Robert Wilson’s theater and some Far Eastern forms of theater, such as the Beijing Opera or Noh. The other tendency is the organic one, in which the montage is created, in a sense, in the actor who is becoming a vehiculum, a word applied to Grotowski’s theater by Peter Brook. My discussion of Pilinszky’s prose and poetry based on the experience of having borne witness to the rituals in Deafman Glance affirms Grotowski’s observation. Ritual, even if it is a quasi-ritual or a poetic ritual, does not allow the spectator to remain separate from the scene. In this sense, Pilinszky bears witness to Deafman Glance, and especially the murder scene, as an anthropologist. As a spectator, he is cognitively involved. There is a certain anamorphism in understanding ritual. In other words, the spectator must have the correct angle to see a comprehensible form or figure. On the other hand, there are multiple correct angles, due to the poetic, i.e., metaphorical, construction of meanings in poetic rituals. In Pilinszky’s case, the writer of this article saw the recording — so to speak, the relics of a performance — and analyzed the impact it made on a poet who was witness to this theatrical rite and who wrote of this memory in prose and poetry, writings which I have presented in this paper in the published English translations. Compared to the “liminoid” state of receptivity of the live theater performance, a double border-crossing takes place through the text that is both written and translated. Thus Pilinszky’s relationship to Deafman Glance gives the English readership another perspective on Wilson’s work: that of poetic rituality. BIBLIOGRAPHY BRECHT, Stephan: LArt de Robert Wilson (Le Regard du sourd), trans. Françoise Gaillard, Paris, Christian Bourgois, Le Théâtre, 1972/1. BRECHT, Stephan: The Theatre of Visions: Robert Wilson, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1978. FISCHER, Saskia: Reflektierte Ritualität. Die Wiederaneignung ritueller Formen in der Dramatik nach 1945, Bielefeld, University of Bielefeld, 2016. (PhD dissertation manuscript). FISCHER, Saskia: Ritual und Ritualität im Drama nach 1945, Paderborn, Fink, 2019. GENNEP, Arnold van: The Rites of Passage, Routledge Library Editions Anthropology and Ethnography (Paperback Reprint ed.), Hove, East Sussex, UK, Psychology Press, 1977 [1960]. GROTOWSKI, Jerzy: Anthropologie théâtrale. La «lignée organique» au théâtre et dans le rituel, Paris, Le livre qui parle, Collection Collège de France, 1997. + 147 +
