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375
Many years later Kott would state: "We didn't realize how rapid had
been the changing of the guard in the race to Zhdanovism and how
quickly the new team had seized the baton, or rather the stick." This
attitude reflected on the one hand fear of History, of the younger gen–
eration, and of the new socialist-realist esthetic, and on the other hand,
an attempt to catch up with an era that was constantly changing its skin.
Later Kott wrote:
Through the window one heard the cry of a rhinoceros. Never
before had anyone heard a rhinoceros in the town. Then one could
actually see the rhinoceros through the window.
It
began to stroll
around the streets. A dentist opened the door to his surgery and
bellowed like a rhinoceros. The owner of a women's clothing store
had a horn growing out of his head.
One could hear rhinoceroses everywhere. The rhinoceros was conta–
gious. This scene from Ionesco's play served as an illustration. Wazyk
had said he was in a lunatic asylum. Did this mean shame, self-delusion,
fawning, madness? No doubt something different for each person. For
Kott it meant making yet another face-the face of a rhinoceros.
The thaw brought new faces: the unmasker from
Kuznica,
unmasked
by the younger generation again became an unmasker-this time, the
unmasker of Stalinism. Once again he tore the masks from the hyp–
ocrites: he attacked the politics and esthetics of socialist realism; he
defended jazz and the stories of Marek Hlasko.
In
1955,
in a review of
Groteska,
he noted: "Terrifying masks are worn by the dreadful old
woman who believes in miracles, by the children, who have been fooled
by the old woman, and by Serafynski, who has been fooled by stupid–
ity. Horrible masks are also worn by the professional swindlers and spe–
cialists in miracles. The enormous, mystical, petty-bourgeois humbug
wears a frightening mask. Ciemnogrod wears a mask." Thus the notion
of Ciemnogrod was redefined: once it had referred to the old-Polish,
chauvinistic, clerical strand of the national tradition, to which enlight–
ened communism was supposed to provide an antidote. Now it had
come to mean a way of thinking to be found within communism itself.
Then came Mickiewicz's
Forefathers' Eve.
"On the opening night,"
wrote Kott (November
1955),
in the stalls and in the balcony, people were in tears. The stage–
hands cried, the cloakroom attendants wiped their eyes with their
handkerchiefs.
Forefathers' Eve
was stunning.
It
gave rise to
