Oldal 268 [268]
OCR
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 English — they’re “quarreling” in this space that has suddenly become Shakespearean: 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 dislocation 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. + 266 +
