Almanach for the Year 2013 Almanach_sklad.indd 1 2013-04-04 10:48:18 Almanach_sklad.indd 2 2013-04-04 10:48:18 A Be tween- Almanach for the Year 2013 Editor: Tomasz Wiśniewski Co-editors: David Malcolm, Żaneta Nalewajk, Monika Szuba Gdańsk MMXIII Almanach_sklad.indd 3 2013-04-04 10:48:18 A Between Almanach for the Year 2013 Editor: Tomasz Wiśniewski Co-editors: David Malcolm, Żaneta Nalewajk, Monika Szuba Advisory Board: H. Porter Abbott (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA), Enoch Brater (University of Michigan, USA), David Constantine (Oxford, UK), S.E. Gontarski (Florida State University, USA), Jerzy Jarniewicz (University of Łódź, Poland), Antoni Libera (Warsaw, Poland) Honorary Patrons: The Dean of the Faculty of Languages of the University of Gdańsk, prof UG, dr hab Andrzej Ceynowa The Dean of Polish Studies at the University of Warsaw, prof. dr hab Zbigniew Greń The Mayor of Sopot, Dr Jacek Karnowski The BETWEEN.POMIĘDZY team: Marta Aleksandrowicz-Wojtyna, Marzena Cho- jnowska, Agnieszka Kochanowska, Bartosz Lutostański, Jolanta Mańska, Marta No- wicka, Kaja Polachowska, Aleksandra Słyszewska, Aleksandra Pamela Szlachetko, Ola Wachacz, Miłosz Wojtyna, Roksana Zgierska BETWEEN.POMIĘDZY gratefully acknowledges financial support from the fol- lowing: The University of Gdańsk, The City of Sopot, The Marshall of the Pomeranian Voivodeship, Kąpielisko Morskie Sopot BETWEEN.POMIĘDZY cooperates with: Bookarnia Book Store (Sopot), the liter- ary quarterly Tekstualia (Warsaw), the literary bimonthly Topos (Sopot), Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Sopotu (Sopot), Teatr Wybrzeże (Gdańsk, Sopot), Młody Byron Café (Sopot), the Polish Cultural Institute (London), Un Gusto a Miel Art Foundation (Sopot) Copyright: The Between Almanach concept is the copyright of Tomasz Wiśniewski. The copyright for individual parts of the Almanach remains with the authors, 2013 Typeset by: Maciej Goldfarth Printed by: Pracownia, Gdańsk, Poland ISBN 978-83-64088-13-1 First published MMXIII by Wydawnictwo MASKI, ul. Myśliwska 22a/48, 80-126 Gdańsk, Poland www.wydawnictwomaski.pl Almanach_sklad.indd 4 2013-04-04 10:48:18 Table of Contents The Collage of Quotations: A Game – Żaneta Nalewajk, David Malcolm, Tomasz Wiśniewski 9 TELLING STORIES: ONE Graham Swift – On Swiftness and Slowness 15 Antoni Libera – from Godot’s Shadow (translated by Agnieszka Kołakowska) 17 Derek Attridge – Introduction to J. M. Coetzee 25 DAVID CONSTANTINE Monika Szuba – Seeing into the Heart of Life: On David Constantine 29 Connectedness – David Constantine Interviewed by Monika Szuba 31 David Constantine – Watching for Dolphins, Told one of the goldfish wouldn’t last the night… 33 David Constantine – A Few Belongings and Particulars 35 POETRY: ONE Justyna Bargielska – An Adventure, It shoots, shoots though is a butterfly, A project to change all the photo frames (translated by Katarzyna Szuster) 41 Jerzy Jarniewicz – Catalogue, Covering Your Traces, A Simple Love Poem (translated by David Malcolm) 43 Alan Riach – At Sandwick, from Passages from India: Kolkata 46 TELLING STORIES: TWO Zina Rohan – A Clean Bill of Health 53 David Malcolm – The Wizard Laird of Skene 62 POETRY: TWO Krzysztof Kuczkowski – Conway Twill Asks Cole Wilson about His Origins, A Song about Conway Twill (translated by David Malcolm) 77 David Kennedy – The Lime Blossom Tree, Cézanne at Les Trois Sautets 79 CONVERSATIONS ON THEATRE: JACQUES LECOQ, COMPLICITE AND BEYOND Simon Murray – Jacques Lecoq and the Paris School, 1983–2013: Fragments of a Retrospective 85 Beautiful Masks, or “That’s What I Know I’m Good at” – Fay Lecoq Interviewed by Tomasz Wiśniewski 90 Theatre Is Something Very Simple, Very Simple – Jos Houben Interviewed by Tomasz Wiśniewski 99 Almanach_sklad.indd 5 2013-04-04 10:48:18 The Instinctiveness and Liveness of a Child – Marcello Magni Interviewed by Tomasz Wiśniewski 110 Jon McKenna – How I Met Simon McBurney 117 Work in Transition – Douglas Rintoul Interviewed by Tomasz Wiśniewski 120 Boxing, Poetry and Theatre – Jon McKenna Interviewed by Tomasz Wiśniewski 124 POETRY: THREE Kazimierz Nowosielski – Name, Traces, From a Dream (translated by Georgia Scott and David Malcolm) 129 Michael Edwards – Where, Window 7 131 ON LITERATURE AND THEATRE ON POETRY Derek Attridge – The Sonnet Refashioned: Muldoon’s Maggot 137 Jean Ward – Instead of a Review: On True Friendship by Christopher Ricks 139 ON THEATRE Paul Allain – Ways of Hearing 145 Katarzyna Ojrzyńska – Complicite’s Devised Theatre – A Practical Approach 159 ON SAMUEL BECKETT Enoch Brater – Where Now, Who Now, When Now? Beckett Criticism Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 175 S. E. Gontarski – Back to the Beckett Text 176 H. Porter Abbott – Thoughts for Going Back to the Beckett Text 177 Bartosz Lutostański – “I Say”: The Post-war Fiction of Gombrowicz and Beckett: A Short Introduction 181 ON TOM STOPPARD Anna Suwalska-Kołecka – Ripae ulterioris amore – on the Poet and Poetry in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love 189 Joanna Kokot – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the Unreality of Words 202 ON JOHN BERGER Monika Szuba – Berger’s Sketchbook 217 Miłosz Wojtyna – Narrative Embodiment: Absence-Presence in John Berger 222 WHERE WE COME FROM Andrzej Zgorzelski – Twenty-five Years of the Gdańsk–Lublin School of English Literary Studies 231 CONTRIBUTORS 245 Almanach_sklad.indd 6 2013-04-04 10:48:18 The Between Almanach for the Year manach offers less immediately 2013 proudly echoes in its title practical fare, but the editors hope it Kasper Straube’s Almanach Cracov- may equally offer solace in dark iense ad Annum 1474 (1473), the days. Straube, like others since, had oldest surviving piece of Polish print- to fight for the money to print. Did he ing. Straube was a wandering Bavar- steal the type he used? If so, history ian printer who plied his trade in has surely forgiven him. He went on Kraków between 1473 and 1476. His to print works by Juan de Torquema- Almanach contains much useful in- da (not Tomás the Inquisitor but his formation: Church holidays, astro- uncle) and St Augustine of Hippo, nomical data, and medical counsel and a text on usury and ecclesiastical (especially on bloodletting). Our Al- curses. Almanach_sklad.indd 7 2013-04-04 10:48:18 Almanach_sklad.indd 8 2013-04-04 10:48:18 Żaneta NalewajK, David Malcolm, Tomasz WIśniewsKI The Collage of Quotations: A Game “… let me tell you… about…” (Graham Swift, Waterland, 1983) “Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other’s yarns – and even convictions”. (Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1899) “Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium”. (W. B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”, 1927) “There is an impression abroad that literary folk are fast readers. Wine tasters are not heavy drinkers. Literary people read slowly because they sample the complex dimensions and flavors of words and phrases. They strive for totality not lineal- ity. They are well aware that the words on the page have to be decanted with the utmost skill. Those who imagine they read only for ‘content’ are illusioned”. (Marshall McLuhan, Verbi, Voco, Visual Exploration, 1967) “We live in times of an interregnum – a kingless, a queenless time. Change has come: something is dying; something new is being born. The old ways of oper- ating effectively do not work any more; the new ones do not work yet. The crit- ics fall silent; no one knows any longer what art is and what it is not. The only measures of value are clicks on the screen and numbers of copies sold. No one speaks of a vision of the future; we do not know where we’re escaping from or where we’re running to”. (Zygmunt Bauman, an interview, 2013) Almanach_sklad.indd 9 2013-04-04 10:48:18 10 · Żaneta NalewajK, David Malcolm, Tomasz WIśniewsKI “Time that is intolerant Of the brave and the innocent, And indifferent in a week To a beautiful physique, Worships language and forgives Everyone by whom it lives; Pardons cowardice, conceit, Lays its honours at their feet. Time that with this strange excuse Pardoned Kipling and his views, And will pardon Paul Claudel, Pardons him for writing well”. (W. H. Auden, “In Memoriam W. B. Yeats”, 1940) “Writing-reading, presenting-looking – these are the only ways of becoming aware of life”. (Sławomir Mrożek) “We have an incredibly large number of problems with opening the theatre, but the company’s muscles are also incredibly resilient. I myself, and maybe any- one else in my position, would be finished – if it weren’t for that saving support that a tested and trained company gives so freely. We have no home, we have no kitchen, we don’t have our own work space, but who cares! We’ll have them later. A home, and a stage, and a kitchen, and money”. (A letter from Juliusz Osterwa to Stefan Żeromski written in Vilnius on 27 August 1925) “Theatre is a kind of space in which a special kind of energy is released. A book’s space, for example, is completely different. A book is published and really nothing happens. The characters do not take on any external shape; their image stays in the reader’s mind until the moment when someone tries to make a film or a play based on the book. But a play in the theatre is really the text locked up in the book, but granted an energy able to exceed its limits, to mul- tiply its creative possibilities. People who give a performance offer up their en- ergy to give external life to the characters, to create the sets, the music. And that way something real is created, something that exists for a while, and then vanishes, goes back into the book”.