Słobodziankovo mytologizovani

Abstract

The myth, as an element of central importance to the structure of the plays by Tadeusz Slobodzianek, contemporary Polish playwright, appears on various levels of his dramatic discourse. By inscribing in his texts such elements as New Testament citations, orisons or religious songs, Slobodzianek informs his work with basic principles of mythical thinking. Both explicitly and implicitly, his plays feature allusions to elementary archetypes, symbols, and mythical motifs. However, the mythological linkage of Stobodzianek’s drama is by no means limited to the bare inclusion of mythical elements in the text. Also the narrative strategy employed by the author involves techniques used by ancient rhapsodists. Therefore, it is primarily himself to tell the contemporary theatrical audience his awesome stories: instead of abandoning the texts of his plays once they have been published, he modifies them in preparation for the subsequent first nights. Thus, Slobodzianek’s dramatic oeuvre appears never to arrive at any ultimate, canonical version. His plays are open structures of sorts; structures concretized anew with each instance of the authors telling the story again. Hence, the variance characteristic of the oral literature is also one of the defining traits of the mode, in which Slobodzianek’s drama functions. The particularity of this mode is further reinforced by the presence of elements of the poetics of orality, which Walter J. Ong indicated as typical: the additive structure of protagonists’ utterances, formulaicality, the use of fixed epithets, and finally the principle of the antagonistic construction of the world.