Nowe formy w dramaturgii Witkacego i wynikające stąd spory
New Forms in the Dramatic Works of Witkacy and the Resultant Disputes

On ‘Essential Conversations’

Summary/Abstract: The article attempts to present essentiality – one of the concepts used most frequently by Witkacy – as a performative category. The artist was aware that essentiality would not have the final form in the dictionary of intellectual concepts, that it could not be fixed within stable definitions, but continued his efforts to push the boundaries of the human mind as far as possible. The paper analyses Witkacy’s epistemological tactics using Anna Krajewska’s dramatic theory of literature, which draws, among other things, on the achievements of performative discourse. Seen in this perspective, Witkacy’s ‘essential conversations’ can be regarded as dramatic forms which establish essentiality in constant motion and give it the character of a processual event – of something uncertain in a state of unreadiness, something attempted.

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