He did not finish his fragments of the play about Empedocles, which was performed together on Wednesday by Maladype, the Theatre of Encounters and by Bárka Theatre. Unfortunately, Peter Weiss finished his drama about Friedrich Hölderlinről (1770-1843), who fell from German poverty to madness, who was an unsuccessful, lonely poet. It was performed in the National Theatre (1974), it was translated by István Vas, the main character was played by István Avar, and Endre Márton directed it.

I have not known if anybody has performed these poetic fragments of dialogues. It was directed in Berlin in Schaubühne by Klaus Michael Grüber, but it was only a prose theatre (1976) and then Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub were so brave to put it on film together with Andreas von Rauch as the main character: Empedocles’ death (1986).

Zoltán Balázs has irresistible intention to give soul to those play-like texts that have never been played before, that are hardly playable and that are temptations to god. He wants to find his way between unknown ones. Meanwhile use the question of entrance as the object of an experiment (up until the edge of the audience’s patience). Or at least: one of the entrances. In case of Zoltán Balázs, as the director, there is no use asking the theatrical rhetorical question: what makes the chafer?! The question is: can this kind of theatrical form become a chafer, can this bug get head, leg, mouth, nose, brain or it remains an exotic thing in theatre, a topic of tests, of post-graduated theatres.

The performance starts with a non-verbal song. László Sáry indicates those kind of vocal practices, which are similar to the sounds of the world as it is born. The world makes itself sounding into life. Sáry’s active background music can mix in a shocking way the music of different periods and styles together with Kornél Mogyoró’s solos, which create the rhythmical structure by his percussion instruments. He dares to put pop-music and rap into it. It is rare that the mixture of music can be so reasonable than in the case of the magical dramatic poem by the scientist-politician-poet-social person, who lived in 500-430 before Christ, and who wrote his biography-like drama in his solitude, living on the border of Greek classicism and German romanticism.

In the performance by the Maladype and Bárka Theatre the ordinary, everyday saying by ragamuffin kids, with their untimeliness do not cry into the classical text to make to actual on the first level. It handles the two centuries old dilemma with a respectful disrespect: get involved in the world or stay away from it and watches it from there; do we throw ourselves into the cauldron of our changing or keep ourselves in the enclosed meditation... and kill ourselves with it as well as by the jumping into the Etna, leaving only our mental shoes back to the descendants.

From Friedrich Hölderlin’ s play, Empedocles’ death (Der Tod des Empedokles, 1797-1800) remained only three different parts however originally it was planned to five parts: in Agrigento the philosopher’s drama who was planning to join with the nature on the peak of his victories and there is Empedocles on the Etna, where he was about to throw himself into the glowing crater. Gábor Hajnal in 1939 translated with law-level translational work the torso-trilogy. Since then this is the Hungarian Empedocles, Zoltán Balázs the director together with Judit Góczán, the dramaturg, and Judit Gombár, the designer uses it as a dramaturgical starting point. Judit Gombár is not one of those designers, who likes getting involved in everything (or as an employed worker just drawing lines for the future performance), but she is an educated and creative fellow thinker during the formation of the performance.

Empedocles (Artúr Kálid) in his meringue-like fur coat, white trousers is in the solid middle point of the circling world of the stage. He would leave the world. He is adored. He is denied, there is frightening atmosphere between the Whites the only black one is the ghost of dead ones – he is not in the original one – he is Manes (Balázs Dévai). He does not speak during one and half an hour, he is, like an enchanted waiter, setting the all stage long table with white cloth on it. He does it with 13 plates shining in the spotlight, he is walking around the table with parallel foot with affected aggression, rigid posture and a gothic S form of his backbone. He puts down 13 round plates, 13 small plates onto them, 13 soup plates, 13 perky folded napkins, 13 knifes of fish with his frightening, warning, stabbing then ceremonial peaceful movements, 13 forks, 13 glasses of champagne, 13 tiny glass vases with 13 roses in them and 13 candlesticks from the service tables which are in the four corners of the place, onto the Cenácolo to the last supper. He is doing it with leaning backbone as he is taking care of something else, with the widest movements he is setting ceremonially into their strict place. His hour-long setting is a ceremony, trick, ballet interval, concentrated attraction, Confucian meditation. He is the order, well-behaviour, the arbiter eleganctiae in an upside-down era, during the melting of the values. The precise measure of the places of cutlery is like a scale of tricks which is sophisticated in an illusionist way, the placement of knives-forks-spoons between fingers, the violently fine moving, the gothic wings of his tailcoat are floating easily after his body, as if it is made according to Leonid Massine’s gloomy caricaturist-like choreography, meanwhile the inner music of his movements was designed and thought by András Szőllősi, of course. Dévai is moving around dreamy during the setting of the table. Other members of the group are floating in a white contra dream according to the rules of Japanese dance, the buto.

Kristóf Horváth – as Pausanias, he is the Empedocles’ student – holds in his hand the frame of an umbrella with its dead finger above his master but maybe he is funning the flies away from him with a palm leaf. He is getting up very slowly from his cross-legged seat. It is like a dream, as the others, who are lying on the table, are melting down like floating time from it.

The girls (Erzsébet Soltész, Nóra Parti, Kamilla Fátyol, Gabriella Varga) are in their white dresses which are cut till their nipples, the boys (Zoltán Oláh, Rodrigó Balogh, Gábor Szabó) are with white wigs form Hölderlin’s era, in white vests, sandals but their trousers could come from Karl Eugen’s, the princess of Württenberg fashion lover’s court too.

Éva Bakos as Hermocrates, Agrigento’s the main priest and Olga Varjú as Kritias Archon, the main officer of the state, are the manipulators who can turn the social mood. Kálid’a Empedocles and Dévai’s angel of death fight against each other during a singing dialogue in the tragic final. Hölderlin could feel the world more and more unknown, at the age of 37 after a short hopeless hospital cure got into the Zimmer’s, the carpenter’s house who is from Tübingen. He could live forty years on in his gentle unconsciousness, in his happy loss.

Péter Gál Molnár, Népszabadság, 2005

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)