Bezdomni zmarli: rzecz o Szekspirowskich widmach
The homeless dead: the case of Shakespeare’s spectres

Summary/Abstract: The paper begins with an anecdote concerning one of most intriguing works of Frédéric Chopin, Nocturne in G-minor, Op. 15, nr 3. A story goes that Chopin composed this nocturn inspired by a performance of {Hamlet} and intended to name it: {In the Graveyard}. Regardless of whether this story is true or false, the implied plot-line of Chopin’s nocturn, developing from a wistful and then dramatic opening passage to the harmonious, hymn-like second part well fi ts the atmosphere of Shakespeare’s drama which does not preclude the possibility of consolation and the faith in transcendence, despite its prevalent reoccupation with ubiquitous iniquity, death and decay. In contrast with the rest of the play, however, act 1 scene 5, set in the graveyard, is marked by an entirely materialistic tendency, in the vein of the late medieval dance macabre. Still more unsettling is the vision of tenantless graves and the dead returning from the liminal space of the cemetery to the {polis} reserved for the living. The ghosts of the people who have died violent death are not harmless apparitions, fi gments of imagination, but as Quentin Meillassoux argues, they destroy the very boundary between life and death which safeguards our existence. The ghost of Banquo in {Macbeth} is a “living” example of such a radical subversion of the established dichotomies, which Shakespeare examines most carefully in his great tragedies. In the theatre of the 20th century, Shakespeare’s refl ection on the elusive boundary between the world of the living and the uncanny realm of the dead gained a great momentus in the perplexing stage production of {Macbeth} directed by a Lithuanian, Eimuntas Necrošius. The power of his vision stems from the connection of Shakespearean tragedy with the folk tradition of “Dziady”, an ancient Balto-Slavic custom commemorating the dead.

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