Ramy światów. Wizualny komentarz do dramatu An-skiego ‘Dybuk. Pomiędzy dwoma światami’
Frames of Worlds. Visual Commentary on ‘Dybuk’, the Drama by An-ski. Between Two Worlds

Summary/Abstract: The author proposes a selection of her works from the Dybuk (Dybbuk) cycle, a combination of the paper cut-out technique derived from traditional Jewish art and her auteur visual-arts techniques. The presented examples refer to the text of the play as well as motifs that An-ski borrowed from Jewish tradition and folklore in the course of his ethnographic studies. In her cut-outs the author combined image and text, as well as quotations in Yiddish selected from Dybuk - with Hebrew verses originating from Jewish religious tradition. In doing so she merged Yiddish and Hebrew so as to render the complicated history of the drama from the viewpoint of language; written in Russian, the Yiddish version became lost and recreated according to the Hebrew translation, while both versions functioned parallel on theatre stages. This is, therefore, her personal artistic commentary on An-ski’s play in which philosophical and religious motifs are intertwined with the drama of thwarted love. The works are granted commentaries referring to the plot of the drama and to Jewish art and symbols.Both Dybuk the drama and Sz. An-ski’s life tell stories about transgressing the frames of worlds. The titular borderland of those worlds is the region between life and death, a state of the soul whose fate “in this world” has not ended and “possesses” (from the Hebrew: dibbuk) a living creature, becoming the reason why the latter too finds himself/herself ”on the borderline” and crosses the frames of ordinary earthly functioning. Traversing the frames of “this world” not only by Lea and Chonen - the lead protagonists - delineates the turning points of the drama.

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