„Błędne Betlejem” Tadeusza Kantora / The Tadeusz Kantor’s Fallacious Bethlehem

I am convinced this book has a chance to become an exceptional position in Polish „Kantorology”, which suffers from certain dogmatism and reoccurrence of claims. Precise argumentation, courage and range of interpretive imagination, but most of all perspicacity and significance raised questions, and formed thesis, make, that it is really extraordinary book, and one of most important, that I was reading recently.

From publishing review by prof. Dariusz Kosiński

„Błędne Betlejem” Tadeusza Kantora can be threated as an interpretation of last stage of Tadeusz Kantor’s artistic work or as an effort to describe dynamics of imagined presence patterns structures in Kantor’s Work.

I am starting from Kantor’s decision about placing his personal presence on the stage. It is possible to say that his greatest Work is himself. And this Kantor’s personal presence in his Work and also its numerous philosophical consequences, which I noticed, are becoming the main thread of this book.

In the centre of my considerations I am placing an essential and at the same time repressed by other Cricot 2 researchers presence patters of Kantor and its transformations, which I am connecting to Christian theology, that I understand as imagined ideal presence pattern.

In „Błędne Betlejem” Tadeusza Kantora it was essential to mark ‘empty places’. That means: ‘empty place after Christ’ which can be understood as an error of certain imagined system and ‘empty place after Jew’ which is an effect of Holocaust. Both are placed alarmingly close to each other. The title term ‘Błędne Betlejem’ is based on this experience of ‘absence’, because ‘Błędne Betlejem’ establishes every origin of presence dynamic, but with engraved inalienable error, which is reproducing with increasing strength.

Marta Kufel