https://doi.org/10.21697/zk.2022.9.34
The essay is based on interpretation of the Dark Forest, the most important play by Andrzej Stasiuk. In the world of this grotesque-futuristic drama, the author of the sketch found a representation of a paradoxical mechanism, which consists in taking power over Western societies by the inhabitants of the East – previously employed as cheap labour or forced to slave labour. In this play the revolutionary mechanism is shown on the example of relations between Germans and Poles. The Germans are a nation of wealthy and long-lived people, but unable to do any work and internally sterile, and thus exposed to the displacement by nations such as Poles – ambitious, hardworking, ready to gain the power. The revolution in the Dark Forest takes place as a result of the sudden death of one of the gastarbeiter working in the forest belonging to the German owners and the arrival of the deceased man’s attractive wife. According to the author of the essay, these two events: the tragedy and the farce, trigger forces that have not been present in the heroes so far. The first is the symbolic strength of Thanatos and the forgotten funeral ritual associated with death, the second is the strength of Eros. Death gives the lives of people harnessed in great civilization processes a dramatic dimension, individualizes them and empowers as persons potentially capable of higher feelings. Love and desire, on the other hand, restore the vitality of the Germans, and give the Poles an unforeseen form of power over them (and also over the Chinese, who are pressing from the East). Jacek Kopciński argues that the Dark Forest in the play is not only a place where organic matter is processed, but also an internal metamorphosis of the protagonists who, in a sterilized, materialized world, experience substitutes for forgotten holiness, and through desire – they come to life.
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