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Georges Banu
Honorary President |
In Memoriam: Andrzej Zurowski
By Georges Banu
Honorary President of the IATC
Translated by Michel Vaïs
with Lissa Tyler Renaud
We are of the same generation, born in the same year: 2013
was supposed to be our year to have a private party together. I was expecting
the publication of a book about him, being prepared for him by Anna Cetera in Warsaw, hoping that the
illness would wait, that it would allow him some respite, that it would perhaps
forget him. It did not. It did not accord Andrzej the additional time that
would have done him so much good! I know that when the end is expected, every
day—let alone every month, every year—is important. Today we, his friends, go
on but, just as in war, some fall, others weaken, and all hope for another day.
Like Andrzej! But he did not get one. Let us hope that this book devoted to him
will be published soon, knowing how much he would have liked to hold it in his
hands.
Andrzej was intensely active in the life of the
International Association of Theatre Critics, and our organization benefited
from his sense of duty, as well as from his joie de vivre. These were
both indistinguishable and excessive. He was never a man of half-measures. All
that he undertook—meetings, two congresses, especially the one in Gdansk—bore the hallmark
of his personality. He was in no way indifferent, in no way a neutral person
protecting himself. He was always present, diving deep into work or pleasure.
Reading his book on Shakespeare in the Romanian version, I
recognized his freedom, his sense of humor, and equally his capacity for
bringing culture closer to the human, to life, to perception. This is a book
which the younger generations will always be happy to consult! I did not have
access to his critical activity for linguistic reasons, but, when we shared our
opinions, his were always clear, trenchant, neat—without being rigid. He knew
what he liked and what he did not like. And he was never ready for a
compromise! This explains the courage he often showed by leaving a room and,
tall as he was, his departure never went unnoticed: the meaning of his exit was
an uncompromising value judgment.
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Andrzej Zurowski (1944-2013)
Photo: Adam Warżawa/Archivum |
He managed to follow his path throughout the long night of
the Polish state of siege, saving his integrity without, however, going along
with the activists in his city of
Gdansk.
I saw him as a Brechtian character on a quest for survival, similar to Shen-Te
in
The Good Woman of Setzuan: How is it possible to live when everything
prevents you from living? Many were those confronted, in the East, with this
painful quartering. Andrzej confronted it and found his answer: at the heart of
history, at the center of those fights.
Zurowski loved Shakespeare and the theatre, life and the
stage, indistinct from one another, everywhere in the world. He did not separate
them, he immersed himself in them with full and present confidence, every
passing day. We were often together during meetings, and, with an indiscreet
eye, I spied on his open notebook when I was bored. I was always puzzled to see
Andrzej relentlessly crossing out all that was already accomplished, every day
that had passed: he made a tabula rasa of the past by blackening it to the
point that it became unreadable, indecipherable. He kept blank only the pages
for the time to come, as if he never wished to return to his actual experience,
only to move forward, free, towards some horizon of actions, passions, future
dramas. As for me, ”captive lover” of the past, I envied him—but at the same
time, this rage for oblivion worried me.
We were born in the same year and we became honorary leaders
of IATC at the same time—a sign when the time comes to move to the margins—and
today, I write these lines about him with the sadness inherent in any ending of
a life. But he knew how to live!
