Co wchłania gąbka?
What Does the Sponge Absorb?

Some Remarks Regarding Hamlet on Polish Stages after the Second World War

Summary/Abstract: The history of Shakespearean Hamlet on Polish stages after the Second World War is rich enough to provoke an attempt to make some general points. They can refer to our modernity, because theatre has heeded the call formulated expressly by the critics that Hamlet should reflect the current sensibilities and define the world here and now. Thus, the presented study, which takes into account over ninety post-war productions of the Shakespearean tragedy, not only explores the issues concerning persistence of the theatrical convention that a production should follow closely the text of the drama and respect its integrity, but it also tackles some questions concerning social role models and their transformations related to deeper cultural changes. Remarks on this subject are a contribution to the ongoing discussion about Maria Janion’s proposition that a certain form of Polish culture is dying away, taking the Romantic paradigm along with it. Until the end of the 1990s, the Polish stages were dominated by conventional productions, both mediocre and outstanding, that reflected the sensibilities and intellectual climate of their times. These productions include: Hamlet directed by Roman Zawistowski in 1956, Irena Babel’s show in 1959, and the much later productions by Hanuszkiewicz in 1970, Warlikowski in 1999, and by Klata (H.) in 2004. All these productions indicate two areas essential to the contemporary ‘thinking with Hamlet’, i.e. a broad sphere of political issues combined with reflexion on the mechanisms of power and laws of historical process, on the one hand, and the problems of cultural change that brings about changes in the psychology and personalities of the play’s protagonists, on the other hand. So what does Hamlet absorb? It absorbs the shocks of the convention under siege, which, giving way to individual formulae, has retained its productivity as a means of making sense of the world. Hamlet himself has lost his heroic qualities and even his intellectual potential, thus demonstrating the unattractiveness of reason. It reinforces Maria Janion’s assertion that the modern culture has lost its utopian aspect. One has to agree with her observation about ‘the sense of impunity and helplessness bred by the collapse of the present Polish cultural system happening before our very eyes’.

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