TADEUSZ
KOBIERZYCKI
TRISTAN
– AN ARCHETYPE OF DRAMATIC LOVE
Review
of: “Tristan” – Krzysztof Pastor’s two-act ballet to Richard Wagner’s
“Tristan and Isolde, the orchestral passion” arranged by Henk de Vlieger and
“Wesendonk-Lieder”, orchestrated by Felix Mottl. Libretto – Corel Alphenaar and Krzysztof Pastor, based on Joseph Bédier’s “Romance of
Tristan and Iseult”, Moniuszko
Hall – 31 March 2009, Tuesday, 19.00, one break, ending around 21.15, The
Grand Theatre – National Opera, Plac Teatralny 1, 00-950 Warsaw, Poland.
The world of art has its own system, in which all events of the real world are
shown and analysed as metareflections. They come from an alternative, parallel,
hidden world and are later displayed in dramatic expressions, presentations,
speeches and images that are materialized as psychic, psychosomatic or
psycho-physiological symptoms of human “experiences”. They are reflections
of unique cognition that is given to man by “creators” who transfer from
another planet what they have seen or heard due to their extraordinary receptors
of the body and soul.
Artists
bring their images and thoughts to a world that is situated several levels lower,
to the sphere of everyday life that, by developing, keeps disappearing, and by
disappearing, keeps developing. The nature of this development is always
dramatic, based on splits, disintegration, dissociations, sometimes it is
destroyed and leads to the decomposition of cohesive yet empty systems of
orientation – objects deprived of the soul. All this occurs incessantly and
human cognitive and “creative” capabilities are still revived.
One of the
spaces of the world of the arts is opera, others are ballet or theatre, various
objects and places where creators and artists, people from “another world”,
appear – disguised, masked, in strange poses, expressing themselves in an
unnatural way, using a special code that discloses their being. It is manifested
when they turn up in places that we call scenes, stadiums, stages etc. These
places are constructed, controlled and celebrated in a special way due
to the fact that they are places of special events, “from there”.
The World of
the Arts is linked with the world of Nature, just as the Body is linked with the
Soul, a Man with another Man, and a Woman with another Woman. This is not an eternal
bond; it is subject to divisions, individuation, a transcendence of the species
(de-speciesation), solipsization and to again undergo reuniting, regression,
re-speciesation and socialization. All that occurs constantly and everywhere,
takes on the form of an archetype, a model that determines the conduct of man,
who loses orientation and identity, wandering between the World of the Arts and
the World of Nature.
Examples of
archetypical animation are “Literary Images and Characters” or “Stage
Characters” that are embodied in the “Opera” and other “Places of the
Arts”, in the world of dreams that revive what is model but deprived of the
soul. All “Works of Art” can be understood this way, including the works of
the “World of Opera”, “Ballet Works”, “Literary Works” etc. They
carry the value of an archetype that was given to people to guide them through
the world of hidden thoughts, emotions and actions. They are a guide through the
World of Unconsciousness. Richard Wagner’s opera “Tristan and Isolde” can
be viewed in this way too – as a script that we have to keep reading so as not
to lose orientation in the world of the “Masculine” and “Feminine”.
The opera is
all about a dialogue between Man and Woman, who are characters of a “Split
world”, divided by “Love and Hatred”, “Life and Death”, “Body and
Soul” etc. What is split aspires to be rejoined, what is joined seeks division,
wandering among confirmation and denial. Usually, these are the reasons for the
“tragedy”, “drama” and “comedy” of human life. The way we understand
it determines the measures taken to rejoin the divided and split the united.
What matters here is the language of communication, the substance that is being
united or divided, be them Thoughts, Emotions, Body or Soul etc.
Tristan’s
archetypical drama is an analysis of the division of “Love and Hatred”
between himself and his feminine representation (Isolde), as well as their
family system. This drama is complemented in European culture by the
archetypical drama of Don Juan, whose feminine representation is made up of a
“Thousand and Three Women”. One woman (Isolde) does not fulfil and
accomplish Tristan’s existential drama, just as Don Juan’s “Thousand and
Three Women” do not fulfil and accomplish his existential drama. In both cases
balance is missing and the drama is determined by emotional deficits and
excesses that do not find their right recipients. It is difficult to guess why
this should be so.
It may stem
from the lack of a balance between feminine and masculine components, or it may
be an imbalance in intellectual, bodily, erotic etc. distribution. There might
be a mistake in the sender’s and recipient’s codes, in the way love and
hatred are exchanged among people. Or maybe the communication between the
parties is not appropriate. A lack of such communication between people bears
dramatic consequences, while in the world of nature, the drama is released by
changing the partner of amorous communication.
Also, the
faults in emotional distribution may be planned, intended and made for one to
live fuller, to fight dreams and death. And suffering may well be a part of not
only aesthetics, but also the human division of the body and soul. We come
across these problems in the analysis of Tristan’s and Don Juan’s dramas –
they both find it difficult to assimilate what is feminine into the system of
masculine world, even when the assimilation has the character of love. The
assimilation is disturbed by communication whose models are based on an
inappropriate procedure of people’s communication regarding their body and
gender, which replace or eliminate their own souls out of the communication.
Man’s love
is a sister of dreams and death that replace, repress, subdue or destroy it.
Here Love and Hatred become the subjects of the regulation of the communication
between people. Their roles are taken over by Illness and Death or by
“Sickness Unto Death” (Søren Kierkegaard). To recover from it, it is
enough to come down with “the illness of love”, since love and hatred come
to be the symptoms of this illness. Their speech changes into silence, and its
preventive measure is the “illness of silence” (autism). Then, love exists
on the level of eyes and ears only, on the level of sensual aesthetics, not
finding its ethical or religious expression. Maybe in this day and age,
aesthetics has taken over everything else, and so everything that is either
alive or dead keeps silent, contemplating the aesthetics of dream and death.
***
K.
Pastor’s ballet “Tristan” is composed of two parts, forming a sequence of
more than ten scenes that establish the context in the first part, later to
reappear in the second part as their reversals, symmetries, complementations,
contradictions etc. The ballet’s introduction can be an example of this
dramatic assumption, which portrays the characters of the parents and the birth
of Tristan. After a swift exposition of moments of closeness, touches, embraces,
turnovers, approaches, bows and jumps, Tristan is born – it is quite a trivial
image. Then the father disappears, leaving the stage. Similarly, the mother
disappears after a while. The hero is left alone.
The drama
becomes obvious too soon, the tension is relieved. Tristan compensates his loss
in an imaginary world through extensive contact with his parents’ spirits, who
are not even differentiated from the living parents with different costumes. Now
it is his contact with the court (king, servant, noblemen – knights and barons
etc.) that helps Tristan maintain a psychic equilibrium. His psyche is split
into two parts, two types of worlds, where the spirits of the dead act as the
living, have to exist and act together with them. In this spectacle the logics
of the archetype described by C. G. Jung is active. It treats the conscious and
the unconscious, the material and the spiritual equally.
The roles of
the living parents and the parents’ spirits are just slightly differentiated,
they wear unisex clothes, the father being more feminine than the mother, and
the mother – more masculine than the father. This style can be justified for
the spirits appearing “after death”, when there is no distinction between
sexes, but seems unjustified for the sequence happening when they are “alive”.
Throughout the spectacle there is not enough of that distinction which creates
conflict, adds erotic energy to the story told. Eros and Thanatos are too
identical.
The dancers
in the show are usually placed classically in symmetrical groups, moving to the
rhythm of the music as mimes or members of ancient choirs. They take on the
psychological aspect of the dancing dialogue of Tristan and Isolde. Moved to the
side or to the back, dancing or standing still, with their eyes or ears fixed,
they fill Wagner’s melancholic music with beautiful images. They create an
excellent contrast and merge aesthetically with all that creates the drama of
this strange love.
According to
Polish analysts of the myth of Tristan and Isolde, the parable is a story of
models of love and death. The
programme of the ballet comprises texts that deem it a “love poem”, a story
about a “lovage tincture” that revives love, about a “love potion that is
as strong as life, and stronger than death” (T. Boy-Żeleński). Furthermore,
it is about an eternal sensual pleasure that bears the eternal sadness of the
soul, about how “death protects from love, and love protects from death”
(Jan Lechoń). Bohdan Pociej’s criticism, even though deep and erudite, is too
limited due to the German philosophy of the spirit, which reduces the
significance of bodily love (cf. Suchodolski 1947).
An
exceptionally popular German Romantic composer, Richard Wagner takes up the
problem of love, described in philosophical terms in Germany by Friedrich
Nietzsche, and by Kazimierz Dąbrowski in Poland. For both of them, the woman
and the man’s love were questions of mysticism or a wound, which remains in
the emotional memory: “We must remember the ones we loved who left as a living
flower, a living wound, but not only this. We need to create a transcendent form
for them. And, if it is possible, we must not have such close relations anymore”
(Dąbrowski 1980, p. 19).
The ballet
“Tristan” staged in The Grand Theatre in Warsaw shows love not as a
biological, vital or erotic problem, but a psychological one that is hidden in
the wounds of death. It is a ballet treatise about love, which has its source
not in sex and eroticism, but in fantasy that we locate in the other human being. Such love
exists in the sphere of Platonic ideas and is expressed through music as a kind
of transgression, coming out of something that is either completely empty or
full of psychotic apparitions.
In the
spectacle, we can observe a kind of obsessive (though expressed through dance
that is too melancholic or hysterical) affection between a boy and a girl, which
takes on an imaginary and kinetic form. Its aim is to show a love fantasy that
joins the characters with a thread of life and death. The thread cannot hold or
create a physical or physiological love. Biological, cultural and religious
rules interfere in the dynamics of this love; it is also influenced by madness,
coincidence and fate.
For the
viewer, the most interesting passage of K. Pastor’s ballet is when King Mark
appears on the stage up to the end of the first part of the spectacle. These
scenes are set up perfectly, especially all the duets. The figure of the King is
differentiated from the rest with his costume and his well schematized body
movement. Sometimes however, we can see his tendency to “drop his arms”
unduely and his excessive hand expression, which might be either a mannerism or
the result of unphysiological body movement.
Jan-Erik
Wikstrom as Tristan danced his part with moderation and a boyish gymnastic-sport
charm, portraying his part of the ballet’s score in an apt and planned way.
Izabela Milewska fulfilled her dance tasks with a girlish, slightly narcissistic
determination. However, Tristan in this ballet is someone “Sad”, undergoing
procedures of a psychological game that the director planned. Even the most
technically skilful dancer would not be able to arouse the audience’s
sympathy in realizing this idea. What Wikstorm communicated in his dance looked
as if it was pre-planned, as if the hero had predicted and knew his destiny all
along. It is rare for an emotional living creature to submit to such principle
logic and psychological didactics.
The
choreographer K. Pastor uses a mix of different dance techniques – both
classical and modern (taken from Martha Graham and George Balanchine / Giorgi
Balanchivadze).
I have had a chance of visiting Tbilisi and talking to Rezo Balanchivadze about
philosophy and art. Due to my cultural ignorance, it was only after some time
that I realized that I am with the family of the great master of ballet.
Therefore, it was with great interest that I watched the spectacle put on by a
choreographer who openly declares his sympathy for the great master.
Having
one’s gaze fixed on the dancing body of a man or woman is more than looking at
a motionless picture or sculpture that either attract our attention or repel us
and influence our psyche visually. The dance pulls the audience inside, leaving
them restless, and stops only when it restrains, breaks down or disappears from
the field of vision and sense, fleeing from the active energetic, perceptual and
emotional spheres.
Together
with the physical dance realized during the spectacle, a visual, emotional,
intellectual and imaginary dance is carried out by the audience at the same time.
The visual (dance, stage design, lights, space) and auditory (the sound of music,
silence, rustle and the rhythmical rattle of dancing feet) aesthetics play major
roles. The synaesthesia enables the Platonic “eroticon omma” to be realized
(cf. the dialogue “The Phaedrus”). Noteworthy, Tomasz Mierzwa Zięba and
Stanisław Zięba were responsible for the lights and Iwona Saczuk and Adam
Ciesielski were the sound producers.
In any dance,
a kind of perceptual somatization occurs, where movement becomes the canvas for
projection and aesthetic identification. The perception of dance changes due to
identification projection into a virtual dance of the viewers – their senses
and minds. In this spectacle, this somatization is limited, depending too much
on conception rather than perception. Great costumes were prepared by Wanda
Radwan-Richard and Aleksandra Dubińska.
Greeks used
to believe that the trance that art enables contacts us with the spirits (gods)
if the soul allows itself to be carried away in the ecstasy. This was Plato’s
belief. Aristotle, on the other hand, believed that “catharsis” – purging
oneself from amassed suppressions and conflicts – is more important than the
theological trance. Thoroughly idealistic, if not even psychotic, as can be
argued, “Tristan” is closer to the Platonic ideas. The idealistic
foundations of K. Pastor’s spectacle can be proved by the removal of the
second person from the title of the drama – Isolde. The feminine factor is
marked here with a lack, empty space and is like Tristan’s masculine illusion
or delusion. The images of the feminine are autistic and, by nature, lack
realism.
The
character of Isolde dominated Tristan’s tragedy, she was more realistic than
her lover – fascinated by the fantasies of love but not feeling its physical
dimension. In this spectacle, Tristan could have showed himself as a
narcissistic, hysterical, melancholic or depressive, bi-, homo- or transsexual
type. But none of these are shown! He is autistic, necrophilic, lives with love
but does not love, misses spirits and dances with them, treating both the dead
and those alive as spirits.
The world of
Tristan in this spectacle is based on an obsessive search for spirits, as it is
in German literature or Wagner’s music. This culture, as Erich Fromm noticed,
is necrophilic rather than biophilic. The exploitation of autistic models of
love is also the secret of the popularity of Wagner’s music in Anglo-Saxon
countries. It confirms the Germanic archetypes that the Dutch elites are also
fond of.
The culture
of the Germanic region creates and celebrates works of art, where there is more
of the dead than of the living, and where there is more mysticism which
identifies death with life and pleasure, than eroticism which identifies life
with the pleasure of the body. K. Pastor’s ballet depicts femininity as a
fantasy of the man’s spirit, it shows love that is alienated from the living
world and causes men’s suffering.
This
idealism comes from the humble acceptance of masculine identity. It serves as a kind of compensation for what we dream of but
do not realise in life. The story
of Isolde’s death has its psychological roots: first, she needs to cease to
live in the models of culture (archetypes), then in the imagination of the
writer and composer, and then in the minds of stage designers and choreographers.
German
Romanticism repeatedly produced and promoted men’s and women’s images of that
kind. The highest achievement of this ideology and culture of “deathly love”
is the “orchestral passion” of “Tristan and Isolde” by Wagner, whose
works were first put on the pedestal of German and world culture by Friedrich
Nietzsche, who later on tried – unsuccessfully – to knock them off the
pedestal. This ballet spectacle gives us insight into the causes of this
specific cult of Wagner, who created Germanic spiritual worlds that were based
on his own necroidal projections.
As can be
seen in the spectacle, women’s spirits, created by fantasies of autistic men,
seduce and kill them as effectively as in the past. Fortunately in Polish
literature, images of autistic men are rare, there are hardly any in fact, which
is why K. Pastor’s interpretation seems interesting to us. However, for the
Polish viewer, brought up in the cult of the woman, this vision is not very
tempting.
The
spectacle as a whole is aesthetically sophisticated, but psychologically
contradictory, as is the soul of the autistic man. The cult of the imagined and
ideal woman is a Romantic one, and is based on denied masculinity. Its modern
version can be found in a poem of a Polish philosopher, Henryk Elzenberg (here
in a literal translation):
“The
flowing shapes of eternity
Embody
woman’s worldliness, frailty, nothingness, divinity.
She
calls us – a rainbow stretched in the storm.
»She«
is our hymns, ascents and acts of bravery
And
all of us, creatures of feeble flower,
Keep
living due to her – in ecstasy and existence –
Bewitched
and crowned with the beauty,
In
this world, in this dead space.” (Elzenberg 2003, p. 20)
The
philosophical strategy of autistic thinking was described perfectly by Immanuel
Kant and Johann Fichte, but it was only Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalysis and
psychopathology which followed, that unravelled the perverse roots of their
description. Krzysztof Pastor thought along the lines of aestheticizing autistic
love, necrophilic spirituality, in which love first dies in the imagination –
as a spirit deprived of the body and soul – later to appear as a spirit hidden
by the body and costume that delude the senses.
Based on the
technique of repeating too schematic movements, this over-aesthetic spectacle
was livened up by the costumes, layout of lights and colours (glittering, close
to warm tones of black or white), decorations, internet projections, virtual
walls and curtains, spaces of actions that disappear and come up. A more
favourable perception of the spectacle was enhanced by the beautiful costumes
designed by Maciej Zień, the fashion designer. The glitters of the crystal that
showed through them stimulated the weakening attention of the audience. This
non-acoustic effect proved important not on the level of perception only, but
also the contents level. The artistic reception of the spectacle was helped by
wonderful ascetic stage design by Katarzyna Nesteruk.
As we know,
dance is steered not by choreography only, but above all, by the imagination and
music. The success of a dancer or choreographer is based heavily on the music.
This spectacle was not an exception. Tadeusz Kozłowski, the conductor, lead the
orchestra smoothly, accompanying dancers and the singer Anna Lubańska, who
performed the lyrical songs of Wasendonk-Lieder. Paradoxically, the
female singing livened up the spectacle more than the female dancing part of
Isolde. Introducing two independent feminine subjects – the solo dancer and
solo singer – did not always add up to make for artistic unity.
Krzysztof
Pastor did not exploit the energetic resources of dance, relying more on the
energy of singing. This curious split of the artistic idea made femininity seem
even more schizoidal, making it a projection of an autistic man who would rather
produce psychological visions of love than actually experience one. The idea to
duplicate the female roles (dance and singing) gives the show a new dimension
and provokes questions about the psychopathology of the director of the drama
described, as well as the information and cultural function of the staged dance,
and ballet in particular, merged in a story.
So far, I
have not found an analysis of any particular ballet that would see dance
in terms of a form of autistic or mystical communication. Krzysztof Pastor’s
staging provokes such reflection and this is where I see the great artistic and
extra-artistic value of the spectacle reviewed here.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brzezicki
E. (1946), “O potrzebie rozszerzenia typologii Kretschmera”, „Życie
Naukowe” nr 5.
Brzezicki
E. (1970), “Histeria i skirtotymia”, „Przegląd lekarski”, nr 4.
Dąbrowski
K. (1980), “Aforyzmy egzystencjalne”, Warszawa-Zagórze
Elzenberg
H. (2003), “Piękność kobiet” (w:) „…I rzekł płomień”, Warszawa
Program
“Tristan” Krzysztofa Pastora (2009), opr. Paweł Chynowski, Wyd. Teatr Wielki – Polski Balet Narodowy, Warszawa
Suchodolski
B. (1947), “Dusza niemiecka w świetle filozofii”, Poznań
[Review (with new introduction) based on a Polish text published originally as “Tristan – Love as a Loss and Dream” (“Tristan – Miłość jako strata i marzenie”), “Humanistyka i przyrodoznawstwo” No. 15/2009, pp. 351-356.]