The Theater of Essence by Jan Kott (review)

Book Reviews 357 JAN KOTT. The Theater a/Essence. Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1984. Pp. 218. $9.95 (PB). In most major European and Asian universities, capital cities, and internationally renowned state theatres, Jan Kalt enjoys an extraordinary reputation. As a true scholar du montie, teacher, essayist, and dramaturge, Kalt has altered the course of modem theatre history. In his native beleaguered and beloved Poland, students of dramatic literature consider Kau a "living legend." Unfortunately, though, far too many American professors of drama, critics, and theatre practitioners find Katt's essays difficult, too consciously provocative, and somewhat eccentric. As Eric Bentley amusingly - yetc1early approvingly - puts it: "Even those who think Jan a little mad will concede that there is no methodology in his madness." But in Kott's essay "Witkiewicz, or The Dialectic of Anachronism," printed in his new book, The Theater of Essence. Kott addresses a similar charge made against Stanislaw Witkiewicz. Kott writes: "Witkacy was understood only by a few - maybe because we were all still before, while he was already after." This defense applies, I believe, to Kott in North America. Kou's always infonnative and controversial essays evoke strong reactions and radical theatrical innovations. Twenty-three years ago, his essay"King Learor Endgame" from Shakespeare OurContemporary (which has been translated into twenty-four languages) inspired Peter Brook's revolutionary production of King Lear. More recently, in 1983, Kott worked as an adviser and dramaturge for Giorgio Strehler's gorgeous production of The Tempest. The sixteen essays in The Theater of Essence will not revolutionize theatre prOductions, for these essays seem to serve other, less global, and perhaps more personal purposes. Here, Kott uncovers theatrical as well as historical essences in, for the most part, modem Slavic drama and literature. In eight of these essays, Kott discusses the work ofWitkiewicz, Gombrowicz, Ionesco, Grotowski, Tadeusz Kantor, and Tadeusz Borowski, the author of the astoundingly terse and nearly Beckettian volume of short stories, "This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen." The remaining pieces deal with Gogol, Ibsen, Japanese theatre, and Kafka. In the book's last two essays, ''The Serpent's Sting" and "The Seriousness of Theater," Kott unabashedly writes about himself. ''The Serpent's Sting," a scholarly yet poignant confession and nearly Faustian lamentation, tells us: ''This essay is merely an introduction to stings, those of my generation, and my own.... This essay in a certain way is an introduction to my autobiography." Despite his intermittent tones of political and aesthetic disappointment, the old Jan Kott, the irrepressible scholar as rapscallion whom so many people love to carp about, surfaces and flits, alternately like either Ariel or Prospero, through the pages of The Theater of Essence with characteristic verve, nelVe, and playfulness. Kolt's brio persists. The book abounds with purely "Kottish" perceptions, ideas, and imaginative leaps which prompt readers to look again and see anew. In the first short and anecdotal chapter, "Shakespeare's Riddle," Kott, in his inimitable style, tells us that Jorge Borges solved the riddle of Shakespeare at a Book Reviews convention in ]976. While the blind Borges unknowingly ·talked into a microphone placed too high on the podium, the audience heard, over and over again for an hour, the repetition of one word: "Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare.... " In this instance, we experience Kott as Zen master and raconteur. "The Author of Comedy, or The Inspector GeneraZ"links Gogol's play to Moliere's oeuvre, the use of masks, and finally Secret Police. KoU's uncanny ability to create strange - not strained - correspondences and historical juxtapositions encourages the readers to re-view Khlestakov as a character from commedia dell'ane or a Charlie Chaplin film. In "Bunraku and Kabuki, or About Imitation," Kan invokes Artaud and Grotowski. He finds in Kabuki that: "Eroticism as ritual and cruelty as rigor, so disturbingly close to the visions of Artaud and Grotowski, seem to be rooted very deeply not only in the traditions of Japanese theater, but in the whole Japanese ethos." For elaboration, Kon knowingly mentions Japanese novels and geisha schools. Then he concludes (in Kottish syntax); "The Brechtian alienation - Verfremdullgseffekt -I found in Kabuki. That is quite a linguistic and theatrical ragout... Kou's essay...