Three Stage Approaches to Słowacki’s Beniowski. Will the Song Survive?

Abstract

The paper concerns a digressive poem by Juliusz Słowacki, Beniowski. It was written in 1841 and since 1942 it has been one of the most frequently staged romantic poems in Polish theatres. This article discusses the works of three artists: Mieczysław Kotlarczyk (1942, 1945, 1949, 1959), Adam Hanuszkiewicz (1971, 1975) and Małgorzata Warsicka (2018). Beniowski, as a romantic open work, provides an opportunity to create an original adaptation without disturbing the content and ideological tissue of the poem. The three styles of staging which are discussed show how this poem inspires not only personal but also modern creative thinking. Kotlarczyk’s search for a suitable form led to the shaping of a rhapsodic form inspired by Lesson XVI of Mickiewicz, reminiscent of contemporary storytelling. Hanuszkiewicz introduced naturalistic themes portraying the life of the gentry with elements of pop culture. Małgorzata Warsicka reached for the aesthetics of “uncanny Slavic culture” (Freud’s and Jentsch’s das Unheimliche) in the form of a female oratorio. The stagings of Beniowski also show the mental changes that Polish society is undergoing, beginning with the almost religious rhapsody of Kotlarczyk, through the pop-cultural cabaret with elements of Hanuszkiewicz’s life of the gentry, to Warsicka’s feminist manifesto supported by pre-Christian Ukrainian culture. Each project was modern in its own way, original and faithful to the original at the same time.