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ANDRÁS VISKY
London.? The beginning doesnt please Purcárete. It has no meat. "Does
anyone know a Shakespeare monologue in English?" he asks. Csongor Mihály
volunteers, reciting a monologue Írom Henry V:
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead...
and then Attila Balázs spontaneously joins in with Sonnet LXVI, also in Eng¬
lish — they’re “quarreling” in this space that has suddenly become Shakespear¬
ean: passionately, committedly, at the highest pitch of poetry.
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced...
It’s a confusion of sound, at times an explicitly humorous situation; but it is not
yet a scene. We discuss whether we should, as it were, lay the London crowd
scene over this very English theatrical moment, one that really cries out more
for Danton’s severed head than for the modern age’s Yorick-skull, and which
would remain in the space through to the end, anyway. A severed, bloody head
over which the actors compete with the passions of Shakespeare’s texts, in
English. “Hai sa facem cum zice Andras,”** says Silviu, and he inserts the new
version: two lost actors and a severed head. The crowd enters later. The whole
thing is beautiful. Simultaneously funny and heartrending. Theater itself. And
Lucifer announces,
But this is what I’ve looked for all these years,
A place where we could have a splendid time.
The din of merriment, abandoned laughter,
The kindling of the Bacchanalian fire
To bring a rosy glow to every cheek
And lend a foolish mask to poverty.
Isn’t it splendid?®°
It is transformed into a strong start to the scene, with humor, blood, and dislo¬
cation ofthe theatrical tradition. Iblush, inside, that Purcärete has completed
the scene by citing me.
83 Madäch: Ibid., Scene 11.
84 “Let’s do it the way Andras wants.”
85 Madach: Ibid., 179-180.
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