2 - The absurd in the East and the West. Similarities and close links

Summary

Contrary to the opinions of the domestic commentators of the theatre of the absurd in Poland, the legislator and codifier of this troublesome, frequently used category—Martin Esslin—had noticed a distinct variety of Eastern absurdity and added to the list of absurdists Polish, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian authors much earlier than in 1970, when he published the article cited by Krajewska in French in the book version, and much earlier than in 1972, when its German version mentioned by Sugiera was published.

Already in the summer of 1963 (only two years after the publication of the first book edition of The Theatre of the Absurd, which did not include the representatives of the Soviet bloc, and simultaneously with the publication of the French translation of this book), Martin Esslin published an article entitled Epic Theatre, the Absurd and the Future in the American journal “Tulane Drama Review.” In that article, the author distinguished between two models of contemporary, avant-garde drama (popular, in his opinion, in Anglo-Saxon countries and in France).

The first model referred to the early 1930s and Brecht's epic theatre. The second model—the actual theatre of the absurd—was the culmination of a process started in the 1920s, encompassing both surreal painting and the works of Kafka and Joyce. In this two-fold structure of the new theatre, Esslin included not only the authors already mentioned in the The Theatre of the Absurd (e.g. as Ionesco, Beckett, Pinter, Genet, Adamov). He also subjected the Western authors who completed that list (e.g. Dürrenmatt, Frisch, Arden, Albee) to a similar, bipolar analysis, and, what was most significant, for the first time he introduced two Polish authors to his absurdist considerations: Mrożek and Różewicz—the only representatives of the Eastern Absurd, still poorly recognized in the West. It is important to stress here that we are talking about the summer of 1963.

Esslin emphasized, what is hardly surprising, the relationship of the two Polish authors with the “cultural revolution” of October 1956. He called them “undoubtedly among the most interesting playwrights now active in Europe.”