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Theater 34.3 (2004) 84-99


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A Feast At Countess Kotlubay's

Based on the short story by Witold Gombrowicz

Adapted by Michael Hackett and

Anna Krajewska-Wieczorek

Translated by Anna Krajewska-Wieczorek

Click for larger view		 Figure 1
Barbara Krafftowna as the Countess and Paul Gutrecht as the Narrator in A Feast at Countess Kotlubay's, directed by Michael Hackett, 1997. Photo: Andrzej Stachura
[End Page 84]

Characters

COUNTESS KOTLUBAY
NARRATOR
BARON APFELBAUM
MARQUISE
FOOTMAN ONE
FOOTMAN TWO
THE COOK [End Page 85]
NARRATOR
(dressed in white tie and tails—alone in a spotlight center stage)
It is not easy to say what helped to establish my close relationship with the Countess Kotlubay. She is a bona fide aristocrat, purebred to the marrow of her smallest bone. If I speak of friendship, I mean of course that faint degree of closeness that is permitted between a lady of the highest society and a person such as myself. I was born of a class that is honest and dignified, but only bourgeois after all.
I flatter myself that it was, perhaps, a sublime sense that I managed to exhibit from time to time, and at the right moments. Perhaps it was my ability to perceive matters more profoundly and my propensity for idealism that won me favor with the discriminating Countess.
Pascal has said that "man is a reed, but a thinking reed." Since childhood, I have been that thinking reed. Lofty matters have enthralled me. I spend long hours pondering the nature of Beauty and the Sublime.
My selfless quest for knowledge, my nobility of thought, and the romantic, aristocratic, idealistic—and a bit anachronistic—predisposition of my mind—earned me access to the Countess's petits fours and her incredible Friday Dinners. For the Countess belonged to a higher category of women. On the one hand, she was evangelic. On the other, a Renaissance lady. She was patroness of charitable fund-raisers and she worshipped the Muses.
Her various charitable initiatives were admired—especially famous were her tea parties for the benefit of the needy. These were the artistic five-o'clocks at which she appeared as some kind of Signora Medici, while her smaller salon attracted attention as a place for exclusive gatherings. In the smaller salon of her palace, the Countess received only a very few guests—truly close and trusted friends.
But the most famous were the Countess's Friday Fast Dinners during Lent. These dinners, as she herself used to say, were to bring relief from the monotony of everyday philanthropy. They were more like a holiday or an escape.
Two months ago, she invited me for the first time!
(He opens a gold embossed invitation and reads.)
"Please come to me on Friday. There will be a bit of singing, a bit of music, several of my closest friends—and you. And come on Friday because there shouldn't be the slightest hint of meat. About this meat eating of yours and about blood—there is too much of the carnivore; too much smell of cooking meat. You can't be happy without a beefsteak—you avoid fasting—you could even eat the dog's scraps. I am offering you a challenge; I am throwing down my glove! I intend to convince you that fasting is not a diet but a Feast for the Soul."
Higher spheres have always enticed and magnetized me, let alone the world of those dinners. Perhaps it was the Countess's hidden intention to create something like a siege of the Holy Trinity against contemporary barbarity. It was not for nothing that the blood of the Krasin´ski family was flowing in her veins! She seemed to profess a most profound principle that the aristocracy's mission did not end in lending splendor to entertainment and social gatherings. An aristocratic salon, by power of that superior race which brings leadership in all possible fields—artistic and spiritual, among others—should prove its sublime and exclusive validity.
The idea was...

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