On Boleslaw Taborski

From London Times Dec 13 2011 Boleslaw - poet, essayist, translator and BBC World Service Polish Section radio journalist died in London on 6th December 2010, aged 83. A memorial mass will be held at 11.30am on 16th December at St. Andrew Bobola Church,

From the UK Guardian, a recollection by Zbigniew Pelczynski
see link here 

Bolesław was born in Torun, Poland. Liberated from a German prisoner of war camp, he settled in Britain, where he took a degree in English literature and theatre studies at Bristol University. Between 1959 and 1989 he worked as an editor and presenter at the BBC World Service. With great enthusiasm, dedication and perception, he covered cultural events such as the Edinburgh festival and reviewed plays.
Bolesław lectured and wrote in English and Polish. He translated Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory and the poems of Robert Graves and Robert Lowell into Polish. He also translated Polish studies of Shakespeare and Vladimir Maya- kovsky into English. One of his most notable achievements was translating and editing the collected plays of Karol Wojtyła, the future Pope John Paul II. He later corresponded with the pope, discussed his plays with him in Rome and was moved that he read and commented on some of Bolesław's poems.
Bolesław published 18 volumes of poetry and six collections of his work, winning prizes in England, America and Poland. His style changed over the years, but certain themes recurred, such as classical music, literature and drama. The dominant tone of his poems is sombre, reflective and philosophical. Poetry for him was a way to make sense of human nature, of 20th-century history and of social and political reality.
He was immensely glad to see his Polish homeland, having endured decades of communist dictatorship, achieve freedom and democracy. In his last years he spent roughly half of his time in Poland, but he remained happily anchored in his adopted homeland.

See a fragment of being, about the life of Taborksi at You Tube, here

Taborski on Wojtyla's Drama

Boleslaw Taborski 1927-2010

The definitive edition in English of Wojtyla's plays is still The Collected Plays and Writings on the Theater, translated and with introductions by Boleslaw Taborski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)

I found a remarkable passage in the editor's introduction to confirm the  interpretation  of the theater of the word along the lines of Augustinian philosophy of time.

Taborski says that Wojtyla's inner drama is unique, reaching beyond the bounds of the Rhapsodic Theater, because it "creates its own dramatic reality."

The world of external events is not so much expressed by the dramatist directly as absorbed into the "inner space" the psychological space, of the protagonist, where it exists timelessly, in projections into past or future (that is in the memory of the hero or in his prophecies), supported by the author's knowledge of history, or even theology. (p 16)

I started to say in my previous post that action is swallowed up, but chose not to say that because action remains in the theater of the word; but Taborski's "absorbed" is much better. Action is present, but absorbed into the word, suspended in its meaning. It is a different (truer) perspective on time and human action. Augustine got this right -- there is only present, and the soul's attention, through which passes memory (time past) and anticipation (time future). Time is not an external box into which we fix time or an apriori form onto which we fit actions, as school boys fuss over their time lines. No, time is a "distension of the soul." Aristotle had it partially right -- time is a measure of a before and after, and therefore time requires mind, an attentive awareness of change. But here is Augustine on time -- past and future do not exist as such, (the past is no longer and the future is not yet). So what then? Time is present, only present, even memory and anticipation:

Nor is it properly said, "there be three times, past, present, and to come": yet perchance it might be properly said, "there be three times; a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future." For these three do exist in some sort, in the soul, but otherwhere do I not see them; present of things past, memory; present of things present, sight; present of things future, expectation. XI.28

The inner drama, the theater of the word, rolls time into the present, the inner space of the actor. Taborski had earlier explained that Wojtyla's dramatic works belong to the sphere of poetic drama . .  he is not concerned so much with external events as with exploring man's soul; it is there that "action" often unfolds. (p. 15)

Taborski's overall assessment of Wojtyla's drama is quite generous:

To a remarkable extent the dramas of Karol Wojtyla, despite being written over a twenty five year period (1939-1964) and despite their stylistic differences, are in some respects monolithic, especially in their themes and their moral import, mature even in Wojtyla's work as a nineteen year old. They are coherent in what I call their inner form. In fact, from the beginning Wojtyla as a playwright was no debtor but consistently build his own vision of the drama of human existence: the vision of mans place on earth and in the divine plan of creation. In his plays he referred to the highest values in our culture, and at the same time, in the days when word and language were totally degraded and devalued by ideologies that demanded their subservience to shallow, often inhuman purposes, he aimed at the revaluation of words. With astounding consistency he developed a modern form of theater that is religious without being devotional. Even though the author of these works did not specifically aim at the theater at large, they are a proposition that the theater ought to seriously consider.

We owe a great debt to Taborski for his careful translations and his insightful comments on each play of Karol Wojtyla. Please see further posting on Taborski, who died less than a year ago.

"Rhapsodic theater" - how to suit action to word

In 1961 Karol Wojtyla wrote The Jeweler's Shop; he was Archbishop of Krakow, but he continued to take an interest in theater and in creative expression of important issues, especially human love. We know from his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope that he always showed a profound respect for human love --  “As a young priest I learned to love human love. ... If one loves human love, there naturally arises the need to commit oneself completely to the service of ‘fair love,’ because love is fair; it is beautiful. After all, young people are always searching for the beauty in love.” Weigel reports that John Paul II wrote the Jeweler's Shop from his memory of friends and their relationships. So writing the play in 1961 is consistent with his office as Bishop.


But it is consistent in a more profound way with his life as a whole. If we reach back nine years to 1952 we find the priest, Father Karol Wojtyla writing a review of a performance of Shakespeare in the style of the Rhapsodic Theater. And of course, ten years previous to that Wojtyla was present at the founding of the Rhapsodic Theater, as a gesture of underground resistance to Nazi occupation, as the Polish nationals preserved their  cultural identity through this medium. So what is the "Rhapsodic theater"? It is fascinating to read his understanding of the Theater of the Word" in this essay of 1952 (See his work on Theater of the Word here)


Wojtyla contrasts Rhapsodic Theater with Shakespeare; Rhapsodic theater is "far removed" from Shakespearean theater. Its action is more stylized, he says at the end of the essay, to give  "sway to the word." Yet it is more than the recitation of poetry. How is this? He explains at the beginning: "As in life, the word can appear as an integral part of action, movement, and gesture, inseparable from all human practical activity; or it can appear as 'song' --- separate, independent, intended only to contain and express thought, to embrace and transmit a vision of the mind. In the latter aspect, or position, the word becomes 'rhapsodic,' and a theater based on such a concept of the word becomes a rhapsodic theater."


Rhapsodic theater gives more sway to word; but how can word become separate or independent of  action? Would it not become simply philosophy or poetry? (Presuming even they could achieve such independence?) No, he will insist that it is theater - it requires acting, staging, drama. I think it is a way to open up the dimension of conscience and self reflection as an essential dimension of personal existence. So action must be suspended in the meaning of personal existence. 

Wojtyla finds a passage from Shakespeare inviting an inquiry into the relation of word and action.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance: that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the fist and now, was and is to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. [Hamlet, III.iii. 16-23]

But is it not ironic that Wojtyla will quote a passage from Hamlet, the man for whom "words, words, words" displace action or render action null? It must be ironic, because Wojtyla is neither a nominalist nor a nihilist. His point may be that action continues to reverberate in conscience; so too action emerges from the heart; and action intensifies (or degrades) love. As I said, action must be suspended in the meaning of personal existence, a meaning continually open to meditation and inner dialogue.  The Rhapsodic Theater captures that inner dialogue, as the true medium of action.

The Jeweler's Shop is a drama about love, marriage, divorce but the action is past or future; with Augustine we discovers that past and future are present as aspects of the soul (distension of the soul, Confessions 11:26-27). Memory and anticipation must be fed by present attention (present) and ultimately by prayer. So perhaps the Theater of the Word, the Rhapsodic Theater, is an Augustinian exploration of the person.


On the one hand, Rhapsodic theater will establish a different approach to both the content and form of theater, as we shall see; on the other hand, Wojtyla says that it is theater, and fulfills the vision for theater as propounded in Hamlet - the mirror held up to nature,  showing virtue her own feature, etc. How does it do so? How does one suit action to word, and word to action? A profound question of philosophic and political import, as well as dramatic or aesthetic. Before continuing the Augustinian interpretation, we best return to Wojtyla's review and see his account of how the Rhapsodic Theater suits action to word.

Suit the action to the word . . .

St. Clare - divine love is a reality

On the feast day of St. Clare I return from the summer break to take up the John Paul II Forum blog once again. I do this today to honor my friends, the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, whose residence is St Clare Hall at the University of St. Thomas. These sisters have blessed us with many gifts -- their joy and generosity, their practicality, and their love of Christ. Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, they live the Eucharist, as Blessed John Paul II said of Clare and Francis: "In reality Clare's whole life was a eucharist because, like Francis, from her cloister she raised up a continual "thanksgiving" to God in her prayer, praise, supplication, intercession, weeping, offering and sacrifice. She accepted everything and offered it to the Father in union with the infinite 'thanks' of the only-begotten Son, the Child, the Crucified, the risen One, who lives at the right hand of the Father." See his letter for the Eighth Centenary of the Birth of St Clare. Any women who seek to live a call to the religious life would do very well to consider this community of beautiful Franciscan women, the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist. See their website here.


In his book about St Thomas Aquinas (The Dumb Ox), Chesterton points out that the saint is an antidote, providing the age what it needs to counter a poison and they exaggerate whatever the world neglects. The world neglects reason today, so Thomas remains a saint for our time. The world neglects fair love; oh brothers and sisters, we see how they neglect fair love even more than they neglect reason, and yet their hearts still pine for a pure love, the love of Christ. Chesterton said of the roman empire that "it was no metaphor to say that these people needed a new heaven and a new earth; for they had really defiled their own earth and even their own heaven. How could their case be met by looking at the sky, when erotic legends were scrawled in stars across it." We too have defiled our surroundings; the media bringing us news and knowledge, sports and entertainment, have become choked with the weedy tendrils of disordered love and pornography. Thus, Francis and Clare are also very much saints for our day, bringing to us the newness of real love and the joy of self-giving. Chesterton has a fine passage about Francis and Clare, celebrating this love as a gift to the modern world:

There is no story about which even the most sympathetic critics of another creed have been more bewildered and misleading. For there is no story that more clearly turns on that simple test which I have taken as crucial throughout this criticism. I mean that what is the matter with these critics is that they will not believe that a heavenly love can be as real as an earthly love. The moment it is treated as real, like an earthly love, their whole riddle is easily resolved. A girl of seventeen, named Clare and belonging to one of the noble families of Assisi, was filled with an enthusiasm for the conventual life; and Francis helped her to escape from her home and to take up the conventual life. . . . he helped her to elope into the cloister, defying her parents as he had defied his father. Indeed the scene had many of the elements of a regular romantic elopement; for she escaped through a hole in the wall, fled through a wood and was received at midnight by the light of torches. . . .

If it had really been a romantic elopement and the girl had become a bride instead of a nun, practically the whole modern world would have made her a heroine. If the action of the Friar towards Clare had been the action of the Friar towards Juliet, everybody would be sympathising with her exactly as they sympathise with Juliet. . . .  But the point for the moment is that modern romanticism entirely encourages such defiance of parents when it is done in the name of romantic love. For it knows that romantic love is a reality, but it does not know that divine love is a reality. . . . The fact is that as soon as we assume for a moment as a hypothesis, what Saint Francis and Saint Clare assumed all the time as an absolute, that there is a direct divine relation more glorious than any romance, the story of Saint Clare's elopement is simply a romance with a happy ending; and Saint Francis is the Saint George or knight-errant who gave it a happy ending. And seeing that some millions of men and women have lived and died treating this relation as a reality, a man is not much of a philosopher if he cannot even treat it as a hypothesis. 

For the rest, we may at least assume that no friend of what is called the emancipation of women will regret the revolt of Saint Clare. She did most truly, in the modern jargon, live her own life, the life that she herself wanted to lead, as distinct from the life into which parental commands and conventional arrangements would have forced her. She became the foundress of a great feminine movement which still profoundly affects the world; and her place is with the powerful women of history. . . .  I have often remarked that the mysteries of this story are best expressed symbolically in certain silent attitudes and actions. And I know no better symbol than that found by the felicity of popular legend, which says that one night the people of Assisi thought the trees and the holy house were on fire, and rushed up to extinguish the conflagration. But they found all quiet within, where Saint Francis broke bread with Saint Clare at one of their rare meetings, and talked of the love of God. It would be hard to find a more imaginative image, for some sort of utterly pure and disembodied passion, than that red halo round the unconscious figures on the hill; a flame feeding on nothing and setting the very air on fire. 

So here is to St. Clare and to the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist who show us the reality of divine love and the beauty of Christ -- fresh shoots of divine love. With them, John Paul II points us to Christ in order to understand love: "love is greater than sin, than weakness, it is stronger than death; this revelation of love is described as mercy; and in man's history this revelation of love and mercy has taken a form and a name: that of Jesus Christ." (Redeemer of Man §9)

St Clare wrote: "Look upon him who became contemptible for you, and follow him, making yourself contemptible in this world for him. Your Spouse, though more beautiful than the children of men, became for your salvation the lowest of men, was despised, struck, scourged untold times throughout his entire body, and then died amid the suffering of the cross.... Gaze upon him, consider him, contemplate him, as you desire to imitate him. If you suffer with him, you shall rejoice with him; if you die with him on the cross of tribulation, you shall possess heavenly mansions in the splendour of the saints, and in the Book of Life your name shall be called glorious among men" (2LAg 19-22).