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ANAMNESIS OF ART: VOICE / MEMORY / IDENTITY
minds, yet living with the breath, speaking with the organ of speech,
hearing with the ear. At this the mind entered the body.
12. Then, as the Prana was about to depart, it uprooted the other senses just
as a horse of mettle would uproot the pegs to which it is tethered. They
all then came to it and said, ‘O revered sir, be our lord, you are the best
amongst us; do not depart from the body.’
13. Then speech said to that one, ‘Just as I am the richest, in the same
manner are you also the richest.’ Then the eye said to that one, ‘Just as
I am the stable basis, in the same manner are you also the stable basis.’
14. The ear said to that one, ‘Just as I am prosperity, in the same manner
are you also prosperity.’ Then the mind said to that one, ‘Just as Iam the
abode, in the same manner are you also the abode,’
15. Verily, people do not call them as organs of speech, nor as eyes, nor
as ears, nor as minds. But they call them only as Pranas; for the Prana
indeed is all these.
The long fragment quoted above belongs to the Chandogya Upanishad, Chap¬
ter 5.
THE QUESTIONS
It is often stressed that what is most inspiring and fresh in Polish theater
tends to be rooted in the Romantic trend or is a response to the tradition of
Polish Romanticism, a response to a new, total perception of the human be¬
ing; a complete human whose being is almost identical to the gods. For the
sake of a complete individual and complete community, the tradition insisted
that the endless procession of life be joined by those who have passed away
and who have not yet been born. The Romantic tradition is permeated by the
spiritual presence of Others, by communing with the dead. Prof. Maria Jan¬
ion writes straight out, “In Romantic tradition, which I have a special affinity
for, the layers of generations express the idea of a communion of the living
and the dead. Mickiewicz was convinced that this idea was the basic mode of
existence of our culture.” Communion with the dead ancestors, the ritual of
“forefathers,” might be the basic form of existence of people in general; our
main tasks include remembering, with memory, perhaps, holding the key to
the essence of life. Jam not talking about memory understood as a record ora
chronicle of facts but about noticing that we ourselves are “the memory of life
that remembers itself”, that our bodies are not just vessels but memory itself.
This evokes the image of a scroll unrolling along a line — the axis of time —
which contains a number of points. Rather, it is the kind of memory where the
points are accessible at the same time and at all times. The memory resides in
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