Chapter 12 - “Hollow Sneering Laughter”: Mourning the Columbuses

Summary

Although they admired Grotowski's formal theatrical strategies, foreign scholars and critics remained unaware of the relationship between Grotowski and Borowski. In Poland, however, it was common knowledge that both the form and content of Grotowski's Akropolis were inspired by Borowski's writing and the style of his prose. In fact, many have suggested that in his theatrical strategy, Grotowski replicated Borowski's writing style. As Osiński points out, that relationship was completely overlooked, however, in European and American circles. Tadeusz Borowski (1922–1951) was a Polish writer, poet and essayist who survived Auschwitz, wrote a highly acclaimed series of concentration camp stories (published in the USA under the title This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen), and committed suicide in 1951 by inhaling gas from an oven. Borowski's 1942 volume of poetry has an “apocalyptic and catastrophist tone [that] stands out against the poetry of his generation, which was shot through with a grand romantic urge to fight.” The poster for Akropolis quotes an epitaph from a poem by Borowski. The poem cited by Grotowski goes like this:

Nad nami – noc. Goreją gwiazdy,

dławiący, trupi nieba fiolet.

Zostanie po nas złom żelazny

i głuchy, drwiący śmiech pokoleń.

Above us – night. Smoldering stars,

stifling, putrid purple of the sky.

We'll leave behind us iron scraps

and hollow sneering laughter [of those – generations – who'll come after us].