Encounters with Tadeusz Kantor (review)

A documentary filmmaker, cultural critic, and actor in his own right, Krzysztof Miklaszewski is an acute observer of Tadeusz Kantor's work. Perhaps because Miklaszewski's first encounter with Kantor was as a filmmaker, the author ably maintains a critical distance to the director's work throughout the book. Despite fifteen years of collaboration with Kantor's Cricot 2 Theatre, and an apparent admiration for him, Miklaszewski rarely resorts to anecdotal accounts.

Encounters with Tadeusz Kantor is arranged chronologically; conversations, critical commentaries, reviews, and film scripts form the chapters. Miklaszewski's narrative is not as much a theoretical investigation as it is a critical and interpretive inquiry into Kantor's creative methods, philosophy, and influences. Thus interviews with Kantor are appropriately termed "conversations." This semantic choice reflects the urbane nature of the book. Yet Miklaszewski's familiarity with Kantor's work, and the Polish sociocultural context from which it derived sometimes acts against him or, more appropriately perhaps, against the reader. The author's intricate linguistic form carries an underlying assumption of the reader's cultural knowledge. This poses a particular challenge for the translator, who has to transmit the cultural significance contained in the factual information while remaining faithful to the linguistic form and content of Miklaszewski's text.

George Hyde is attuned to the difficulty of the task. Having lived in Poland during and after the communist period, he exhibits a deft understanding of its cultural and political life. So as not to disrupt the flow and structure of Miklaszewski's narrative and conversations with Kantor, Hyde uses endnotes as a medium to contextualize and define culturally specific references, artists, and incidents. Hyde's content of the endnotes demonstrates his finesse as a culturally conscious translator. These endnotes range from factual, such as defining Formism as a Polish version of Constructivism, to informational, such as highlighting that "[no] one who was not in Eastern Europe in the communist period can know the excitement of waiting in a restless queue for some scarce commodity" (46) and help to frame the sociocultural aesthetic of Kantor's work.

Hyde's attention to the connotative meaning of language is also exemplified in the Translator's Preface. "I have chosen to translate the Polish word 'spotkanie' as 'encounter,'" he explains, "despite the fact that its first meaning is 'meeting', because I want it (legitimately!) to have the existential and aesthetic resonance which 'encounter' catches." He further justifies his word selection by questioning Miklaszewski's motivation for the "distant" title choice, Encounters, when the author clearly knew Kantor well. Hyde infers that it is because "Kantor was a deeply lonely man, whose solitariness is his real theme" (xiii).

Hyde vouches to remain true to Miklaszewski's philosophy when he suggests that he approached the author's text "as respectfully as possible, even some kind of poem" while remaining "fixed on the communicative functions of translation." Although he maintains "that these two aspects can never really be mutually exclusive for very long" (xvi), the thesis proves more arduous in practice. Especially in the first chapter, "The Legislator and the Renovator of Radical Ideas," there is an evident struggle of the poetics and communicative function of translation.

In Polish, the first chapter is entitled "Cricot - Teatr Malarza," which literally translates into "Cricot: A Painter's Theatre" and offers the Polish reader an overview of Kantor's creative influences. Miklaszewski relies heavily on the reader's familiarity with the "artistic origins" of Kraków (and its status as Poland's cultural and intellectual center), Poland's art scene (Frycz or Pronaszko), and literature (Norwid, Wy´spianiski, or Słowacki) to name but a few. Names and places are mentioned in passing, organically intertwined with Kantor's oeuvre. To the non-native reader, or the reader unacquainted with Poland's art and cultural scene, there is little value in a literal translation of the chapter. Ultimately, Hyde makes the appropriate editorial decision: he opts for a communicative and factual approach to...