Disturbing Questions as the Axis of Plays by Artur Pałyga

Joanna MICHALCZUK

Chair of Drama and Theatre, Institute of Polish Studies, Faculty of Humanities, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin, Poland , Poland

Abstract

The article examines the literary output of Artur Pałyga, one of well-known and respected Polish playwrights. Although his plays (Nieskończona historia [“An Endless Story”], W środku słońca gromadzi się popiół [“In the Core of of the Sun, Ash Accumulates”], Powrót bogów [“Return of the Gods”], and Znak Jonasza [“The Sign of Jonah”], have each a substantially different plot construction, they express a similar and complex borderline experience, namely, one of suffering and death. The article addresses the emphasis given to existential and metaphysical issues by Pałyga, among them to those of the presence, or absence, of God, the theological view of a human life as opposed to its deterministic concept, and the true meaning of life. A special focus of the paper is the play entitled Znak Jonasza, in which Pałyga freely refers to the biblical tradition, invalidating the perspective of reading biblical texts as divinely inspired or sacred and exposing the incompatibility of the biblical reality with that of the human experience. Drawing on the liturgical play Visitatio Sepulchri, Pałyga ‘reactivates’ the question, “Who are you looking for?,” which the women on their way to the tomb of Jesus were asked. In this context, the author analyzes other motifs characteristic of Pałyga’s works, such as existential anxiety and the ineradicable experience of the incompleteness of being accompanied by the desire to understand what cannot be understood and to hear what cannot be heard.

Keywords:

Artur Pałyga, Polish plays after 1989, borderline experience in literature, metaphysical and existential issues in contemporary plays