1968 - Mark Kurlansky [46]
In Dubek’s Czechoslovakia, once-underground playwrights such as Václav Havel and Pavel Kohout were becoming international stars combining the Czech Kafkaesque tradition of absurdist wit and a dangerous, Beck-like fusion of art and politics. Communist bureaucracy was a favorite target. Papp’s Public Theater presented a production of Havel’s The Memorandum starring Olympia Dukakis, in which office workers struggle with a made-up language.
So it was not surprising, with avant-garde theater flowering everywhere, especially in neighboring Czechoslovakia, that the Polish National Theater’s production of the Polish classic would try something different. The play, with its political side but also a religious side rooted in Slavic Christian mysticism, was often presented in precommunist Poland as a religious and mystical piece. Under communism it was generally seen as political. Instead of choosing between a political play and a religious one, director Kazimierz Dejmek used both to create a complex production steeped in early Christian ritual but at the same time very much about the struggle for Polish freedom. Gustav/Konrad was played by Gustaw Holoubek, one of Poland’s most respected actors, who made the role one of inner struggle and uncertainty.
Like an old, well-known melodrama in which everyone knows the lines of the hero and villain, Dziady has always had its familiar moments certain to provoke applause. Most of these lines are nationalist in tone, such as, “We Poles have sold our souls for a couple of silver rubles,” and the Russian officer’s words, “It’s no wonder they hate us so: For full one hundred years, they’ve seen from Moscow into Poland flow such a sewage-laden stream.” These moments were part of the Polish experience of going to Dziady. The play was anticzar, which was perfectly acceptable Soviet thinking. It was not anticommunist. It said nothing about communists or Soviets, which it predates. In fact, the way it was taught and usually produced under communism was to emphasize the political messages. Far from an anti-Soviet symbol, the play had been originally mounted the previous fall as part of celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution that brought the Communists to power in Russia.
It was the attention paid to Christian religious belief in this production that disturbed the government, since communism rejects religion. Still, no one regarded this as an important departure from orthodoxy. Trybuna Ludu gave the production a negative but not particularly impassioned critique, simply stating that it was a mistake to think that mysticism played as big a role in the drama as politics. For the play to work, the critic argued, Mickiewicz has to be seen as a predominantly political writer. But the production was a popular success, playing to packed and enthusiastic houses and extended for months. Adam Michnik went. “I thought it was a fantastic production. Really stirring,” he said.
Then the government did a strangely unwise thing: It closed down the revered national play at the National Theater. Worse, it gave a closing date, January 30, and leaked it to the public two weeks in advance so that everyone knew that January 30 would be the last performance by order of the police. Poles were used to censorship, but it was never announced in advance. The government almost seemed to be inviting a demonstration. Was it looking for an excuse for repression? Was this General Moczar plotting again? Historians still argue about this. Amid all the plot and counterplot theories, the possibility is often raised that the government just acted stupidly. Michnik remembered, “The