Slawomir Mrozek Story

Prose by Slawomir Mrozek translated to English by Ewa Chrusciel

Prose by Slawomir Mrozektranslated by Ewa Chrusciel

The Eight Day

God worked for six days and on the seventh day He rested. Because it is man and not God who tires more quickly, man decided that he deserved Saturday as a day of rest. This resolution did not meet with any explicit objection from the Highest Office.

- If I managed to get Saturday, maybe I will be lucky with Friday - I thought and I addressed the following application to God:

"Due to the exhaustion I feel after Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, I kindly request that I also be granted Friday as a day off work. - Homo Sapiens."

There was no answer, so I considered Friday granted as well.

Between Wednesday and the rest of week, however, ominous Thursday lurked. Nothing exhausts so much as the work on the last day of the working week. So I wrote, this time more daringly:

"»Man is a thinking reed«" (Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662). I think that I should not work on Thursday either."

Now I was done with my work by Wednesday afternoon. Yet, this Wednesday... the silence of God encouraged me.

"I demand the abolition of Wednesday as a working day. Prometheus."

As regards Tuesday, this time I revolted openly:

"»How proud the word rings - Man!«" (Maxim Gorki, 1868-1936). Tuesday is beneath my dignity. I refuse downright and I close on Monday.

There was no answer, so with Monday it was jolly easy. A telegram sufficed:

"Monday is out of the question too."

Now I had seven days off and I was proud of my revolt (L'homme revolt? Albert Camus, 1913-1960). But after a while I noticed that the week had only seven days and that I could not have more than seven days off a week. Such a restriction of my freedom was unbearable. So I sent a telegram to God:


"Create the eighth day at once."

He did not answer and that confirmed my conviction that Nietzsche was right after all (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900), and God did not exist. But in that case who is to blame for the fact that the week has only seven days and that I cannot have more than seven days off?

I took a club and skulked on the stairs. When my neighbour passes by I am going to whack him. Thwack!

After all somebody has to make up for my loss.

***No one believes plays

An Interview with Slawomir Mrozek

Slawomir Mrozek was sitting demurely on a lunch-time panel with Günter Grass and Icelandic poet and editor Matthias Johannessen who was the discussion leader. The occasion was the 2000 Reykjavik Literature Festival and the place the serenely beautiful Nordic House, designed by Alvar Aalto. The topic for discussion was 'Freedom of Speech and Censorship' and Johannessen phrased his questions in the chillingly familiar and somewhat archaic vocabulary of the Cold War, which seemed to baffle the luminaries sitting next to him. The discussion got off to a shaky start when Mr. Mrozek politely declined to answer questions about the topic specifically, claiming he knew too little about such matters after 33 years of exile. It was Grass who saved the day with his sparkling intelligence and flamboyant storytelling, through which he managed to all but ignore the topic, while Mrozek's contributions consisted for the most part of brief and elegantly phrased compliments about the points Grass was making. Although not a journalist, for some reason I had been asked to interview the renowned playwright for tomorrow's paper. Slawomir Mrozek is a thin, balding man, wears a thick moustache typical of a Pole, a pair of dark, somewhat Spartan glasses, and keeps a fixed expression, which I could not decide whether to see as a projection of a profound sadness or that of a detached, courteous and quiet observer of humanity's blunders. His eyes, at least, seemed sad and his gaze seemed to come from the depths of a history of solitude. After the panel discussion I was introduced to Mr. Mrozek who received me warmly and we had a mere half hour for the interview in a small and rather chilly ante-room of the Nordic House Library.

Has your return to Poland affected your writing at all?


MROZEK: This question cannot really be answered because, for various reasons, I have not written anything since I returned. Besides, it is very difficult now to discern - in reference to my productivity - between the various changes that have befallen the country and my own age. Because now that I'm seventy, nothing is the same as it was. And age also affects my productivity or my style, or whatever. Anyway, to answer your question, the honest way to answer your question, writing is my profession, I have no other one. But, probably, another point, for the first time, since returning to Poland after 33 years abroad, I'm surrounded by the Polish language every day. Before, my everyday was Italian, my everyday was French, my everyday was Spanish, so maybe being surrounded by the Polish language is the most significant change.

When you lived abroad were there long periods when you didn't hear your own language at all?

MROZEK: Yes. Very long periods. I never became part of a Polish colony anywhere. I didn't look for them.

Has that exile from your language affected your writing?

MROZEK: I don't think that has had any effect at all, because staying in another culture for 33 years is very enriching. So I don't complain.

Do you find that the Polish language at home has changed very much during your absence?

MROZEK: It has changed very much, but I write in my own language, I don't write seizable Polish, in the daily speech, but in my own Polish. I don't mean that I invent new words, but I write in my own style, in my own way. I'm not interested in dialect or temporary changes and fashions. But of course the Polish language has changed very much, as has any language, I think. No language stands still.

Has the Polish language changed even more during the last ten years than it did before?

MROZEK: The change is enormous. It is a whole new world now which has necessitated changes to the language.

Have you found that, since Tango became such a huge, international success, that people, audiences, theatres, make demands on you on account of it?

MROZEK: Not any more. They don't make demands for two reasons. Firstly, I wrote Tango thirty six years ago, so it's a very old story for me. But Tango changed the situation for me. When I come to other countries, like now to Iceland, for instance, that is the only thing I can be connected to. Without it I would be a

Prose by Slawomir Mrozek translated to English by Ewa Chruscielcomplete disaster. Nobody knows anything about me. I'm not complaining, if Tango has been around that makes me very happy. So I wouldn't say it creates demands but that it saves the situation. Secondly, people don't expect me any more to write another play like Tango because, again, I'm seventy years old, slowly or not so slowly drifting beyond everything. Now I've become someone who's part of the history of the theatre. I'm not in the centre of interest anymore.

You found a new departure for your writing with the play called Watzlav, which opened up the stage and was a decisive move away from the realistic setting that characterized your previous plays.

MROZEK: Certainly, certainly, but if we are going to talk about that we'll only be talking to a very small circle of interested people.

Several of your plays have been staged in Iceland and Watzlav was performed here almost twenty years ago.

MROZEK: I'm very happy to hear that. And again I'm very happy to hear that another play of mine is known here. But, personally, that is also a very old story. It's part of my life. But I'm not the type to spend the rest of my life just with memories, celebrating my person.

I've always regarded you as a satirist, a political satirist, rather than as a so-called 'absurd' playwright. In fact, I've never been able to agree entirely with Martin Esslin's thesis about 'the theatre of the absurd'.

MROZEK: Martin Esslin found a very practical solution, he invented the theatre of the absurd, he's the creator of the term, which fitted some part of the reality of the theatre forty years ago. That's all. On one hand, I'm very grateful to him for including me in his book, because it made me better known, or less unknown in western Europe, but at the same time it is not very comfortable because it is an etiquette [definition] that sticks forever. Wherever I've gone over the last forty years I've hardly been asked about anything but the theatre of the absurd, every interview starts with Martin Esslin, his book has been read in every university all over the world, for all the critics it became a mantra in their criticism, it was just nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah after that. So I suppose, for me, it is OK because I am known, somehow, thanks to it, but bad because it makes no sense. The book is now very old, very dusty, and I think, I even hope, that a new generation will have new ideas and find a completely new approach.

Your numerous plays after the 1960s, at least, wouldn't easily fit into Esslin's category.

MROZEK: There are no plays at all which fit exactly into the category. It is a neat category nonetheless, it gives shape and is, in a sense, an estimate of

Prose by Slawomir Mrozek translated to English by Ewa Chruscielworth.

Another thesis about your work talks about a kind of logical absurdity.

MROZEK: Yes, that's also not only true, but I know it by heart. I won't protest against it, but would agree that this kind of theory tends to simplify things. It's by another old professor, a Polish professor about my age. We're all very old by now. Maybe I'm not quite dead now because I can feel how boring all this is.

Perhaps this statement comes from your ability to stand on the outside looking in?

MROZEK: Yes, it does.

And taking everything with a grain of salt?

MROZEK: I wouldn't say with a grain of salt. Rather with a grain of truth, perhaps.

I found that when I was directing Out at Sea many years ago with a group of college students, how strong the logic in the play is, how relentless and persistent, how inevitable, merciless and honest the conclusion is. In a sense the dialogue between the three men on the raft is like a philosophical dissertation or a symposium. You studied philosophy?

MROZEK: I didn't study anything. What the biographies say is only partly true. It is true, but it is also all wrong. True, I began to study architecture and stayed with it for about six months before dropping out. Then I studied fine arts for two weeks before dropping out of that. It's also true that I started to study oriental languages, but in fact, I didn't really study it. I was about to be drafted into the army, the Communist army, the idea of which was highly unpleasant for me. While I had an occupation as a student I could be free of it. I wasn't drafted immediately, so for one year I had the chance to have that proof, an amnesty, that I was registered as a student. That's what my study of oriental languages was about. It was the only department in the university that would admit me. So I didn't study anything. I regret not studying philosophy. I'm not very proud of it.

Do you see your work in a context at all? Do you for instance see yourself in the context of Witkiewitz and Gombrowitz?

MROZEK: No, I don't see myself in a context at all because I don't construct my ego or my self-image. Absolutely not. I know that sounds untrue because writers usually construct themselves very much in a literary way, but that's part of the writer's energy. I don't do that. It's an uninteresting part of the writer's

Prose by Slawomir Mrozek translated to English by Ewa Chrusciellife.

Were there any writers that you found useful during your formative years?

MROZEK: My reading was always very disparate and accidental. I read everything and nothing really. I mean I read everything casually and nothing systematically or profoundly. But I think, somehow, that is part of being a playwright. Because I'm mainly a playwright and not a writer. That's why I liked what I discovered in Bertolt Brecht's biography that he didn't read books, he read newspapers instead. I also like newspapers, reading them is like reading a part of the world, while writing a play is like giving it form. But I have never read anything systematically.

Would it then be fair to say that your plays are responses to the outside world, to things you observe, life around you, reading in the newspaper?

MROZEK: The problem with plays is they're not believed, while the papers are. This is true. I don't choose a subject, a pressing subject for socialist people, or whatever the belief. Because a good subject for a playwright is not a good subject for a politician or a social worker or a farmer. A good subject for a playwright is a subject which at any given moment, when the time comes to write the play, offers itself as an opportunity to build a dramatic situation. And the dramatic situation is a dynamic situation, which can be explored and become a play. For me, the subject can be whatever, but as long as it gives opportunity to write a good play about it I write a play about it. So, in that sense, all that I write is absolutely accidental, but only in that sense, because at the same time, I've always believed that the situation in the work needs to be a concrete situation, a concrete country, a concrete historical period. So on the one hand it is purely accidental, while on the other hand it is rather conditioned.

What is the most recent play you've written?

MROZEK: All I can tell you is that it's a play for two actors, a man and a woman, which I wrote two years ago. And one scenery change. Just some interaction between two people. It has not even been performed in Poland. Only on television. It is a TV play.

What will you be reading for the audience on Thursday night?

MROZEK: I'm going to read several mini short stories. Seven stories, in fact, which I chose for the function of reading them to an audience. Something which is not boring, which it is simple to read. This is rather closer to acting than to reading. Not very recent stories and the oldest is about ten years old.

We met again briefly after that Thursday night's reading. He thanked me for the

Prose by Slawomir Mrozek translated to English by Ewa Chruscielinterview and said he had enjoyed talking to me. I asked, since we had talked in English, if he would permit me to try to get it published somewhere in English. He said he felt comfortable with that and suggested I send him a transcript. If he hadn't responded to it by, say November, I should go ahead. I've kept my end of the bargain and left it for over a year now.

Slawomir Mrozek Story

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