 Welcome everybody to the Martin E. Segal Theater Center here at the Guarney Center of CUNY, my name is Juan Kenchman, I'm the executive director and director of programs. And thank you for taking the time to come so shortly after the Easter break in Europe. This is the Easter Monday, which will be a day of no working in Greece. It will be in 10 days of not important background celebration. And so that's always where we have sometimes a little smaller house, but everybody who's here are real supporters. So we always feel this is a core family. So thank you for taking time out of your life. It's, we need a good theater, but we also really need a good audience and a dialogue. Tonight we have a very special event. It's about Amalia Hertz, kind of forgotten a lot. And probably recently we discovered a Polish playwright from the 20s and 30s. And we will hear much, much more about her in a minute. And we would like to say, first of all, that we have Christina who's here with us, the translator of the plays in the collection. And does anybody have the book handy? We can hold it up. So yeah, here it is. There's a list. And normally it's, I think, 20 or 25. So tonight you get it for $10. Amalia Hertz happened to be the aunt of Yankat, which also he didn't know, a great significant Polish theater. A thinker, actually one of the greatest in the world. And there's Shakespeare books meeting God, others are really of significance. And we are truly honored to host this first reading most probably in the Americas, perhaps ever. We don't really know yet, either. I'll tell a little bit more also about her life. And it's especially also for us. Daniel Gerald, who was the executive director of the series, was a wonderful colleague and a great, great friend. And we are missing him this Thursday today. He also was a very strong supporter of this project. And after it was supposed to be published in London by a publishing house that went under. And then we took this over. So the evening will have the following schedule. It will be a small introduction by one of the supporters of the evening. This is Agata Granda, who is the director of the Polish Cultural Institute in New York. So thank you for coming and joining also one of the curators of the Polish Cultural Institute. It just shows how significant this writer really is. Derbiga will give a few remarks. I hope you are mic'd up and have a question to give us a little bit of context about this truly unusual woman, Mary Obi-Wan. In the feminist sense, she was a pioneer, I think. And it is only time that her work gets recognized. And also it is truly the first reading of her plays. And I think it's a great honor for the viewers to be the host. It will be followed by an introductory essay. It's all about the White Hens. This will be read by Jon Krupp, who is one of the actors of tonight. So to give a little bit more of context to this quite exquisite play, which we're going to hear. It's all about the White Hens, which has been directed by Jane House, who is here with us, who studied also here at the Guarani Center. She's also a professional actress and has a small theater company, a fine-runner that specializes in readings, actually most of them are Italian. And it will be followed by a small discussion afterwards, and we have a little dream as a small reception here in the room. So if you have some additional questions, that would be all answered against. Thank you all for coming. If you have a cell phone, I'll be the same. Maybe in you, I don't know. So take me out, give me the same, take your time. It should say, bring more silence with us, everyone. And it never rings in our room. It's really true. All of our meetings have never happened, so it shouldn't be this evening. And now again, a great friend, a great colleague, I think one of the great leaders of a cultural institution here in New York. We have over 10 of these workers, many, many. And there were one or two great ones. There was Emmanuel de Monde, one of the French Cultural Services, and Ignacio from the Spanish Cultural Fund. Agata is one of the two or three really, really great ones. And we're so happy that you're back and they're out of the Polish Cultural Institute and it's a great testimony also to the country of Poland that they have you here representing them. So thank you for coming, and here we go. Who do you think have won? Thank you so much, for all your nice words. And I'm very happy to be back here at Mark Musico Theater Center. I'm director of Polish Cultural Institute at B, but I was curious that you'd be director there, 2006, 2011, and I also served at that time as theater curator. And we had some great events here at CUNY with Danny Gerald. And I'm very happy to be here on his birthday today and it's really touching for me to have, because I have been here, I really have him in my heart and I'd like to be able to know that. About Amelia Herzl Herzuzna, as she was called in Poland, she's one of the undiscovered treasures of Polish drama. Born in Warsaw in 1878, she was a Jewish woman living through one of the most turbulent and violent periods in Polish history. Yet her life was one of most scholarly and artistic achievements. She was an expert in ancient languages. She traveled widely living in Switzerland and Germany before returning to Poland in 1914. But her innovative plays so far ahead of their time were largely dismissed and even censored. In the end, her life was cast tragically short, arrested by the Gestapo in 1941. She died a year later in Nazi German prison. In many ways, her presence generations of Polish artists affected by social exclusion, political oppression, and war. Her unique voice was nearly silent, along with so many other whose work has been passed over forgotten or even lost forever. For that reason, it is tremendous achievement to be hearing her plays in English here in New York today. We are so grateful to Jadwiga Dusicka Center for helping preserve and promoting her work. These plays enrich Polish culture, American culture, and world culture. We are very lucky to still have them with us. It is an honor to bring this incredible woman's work to new audiences today. Amelia Herz has not been silenced, and we hope her voice will continue to be heard for generations to come. And really, I feel privileged because my privilege was working on many collaborating on many projects with my mentor in intellectual diet. The best diet I could ever imagine with whom I shared my life. It is that original. And before long, and I know he wouldn't be very happy to be here because actually he brought it along to keep on and finish my translation that I worked on with a site on the same long period I started working on it in the 90s. And I'll tell you more about it. Of course I know about Hans. She was present in a history of literature mentioned that yes, it was a very interesting voice, but her plays were never published except that they appeared to be very small periodicals elite. So I didn't know if I didn't know if they played myself and I was working on various projects in libraries and I remember working on the National Library and getting bored and irritated with the apocalyptic moods with and then they came the end of the world and so on. I looked for some great version and I ordered some of those little magazines that had actually her plays were printed appeared in and to my surprise I found very great actual dramatic miniature very refreshing a very unusual so I started a little because that was about you about the vision of her play with the white hands I was familiar again with the the white hands but I didn't know too much so I applied some research into the Tristan and his old story and all the versions and so on and it happened that her play was the only the first play ever that it was removed the result was removed from the narrative line in old versions of the Tristan and his old story which by the way the result of the white hands is it has not appeared in fragments of the average and it was the first play and of course the scholarship on Tristan and his old synonyms it's almost an industry and again in the late 90's there was enormous interest in the other result of white hands and Thomas Harding wrote a play in 1923 that the result of white hands appeared and that was promptly done into made into an opera by William Botton a British composer and it meant with it met with enormous enthusiasm and then I thought ok here you have and that was Amelia Hertz actually wrote the play 20 years before Thomas Harding and so I thought that at least justifying that Hertz will have a niche in Tristan and his old scholarship anyhow what I'm going and what I'm going to say now it's more it will be sounding like a sales pitch but it isn't when you undertake any project on people that are absolutely not known out of mainstream it's always whom do I address your work to what is a possible readership it's going to have a future it's going to arouse any interest so let me tell a little about myself and why I did that so I began so called my career as a translator in the late 80s working with variety of forms letters essays fiction and drama and all that I have been very eclectic in my past from the start my interest has centered on two topics polish literature of exile by the uprooted and culturally displaced people and early 20th century polish women writers who have been neglected forgotten and on the margin and since I am always been less interested in the new but more in what is forgotten so it fits me very nicely and at the time now when there is such enormous and lively industry into reclaiming unjustly forgotten women writers Amelia Hertz is certainly one of them and I'm glad to have an opportunity to introduce Hertz to you tonight and then a justification Hertz is a discovery on several counts first as a playwright who developed a new kind of drama that united the foundation themes and sensibility with intellectual rigor toughness of mind and a historian's search for accuracy but whether dealing with historical or legendary subject Hertz in her dramas always explores the dark side of the human condition a generation before Arthur she created a theater of cruelty, violence and death set in decadence periods of history that contains a strong existential team in the first decade of the 20th century modernist period or if you want to neo-romanticism filled with various isms nobody at that point I think plays like Hertz and Hertz represents characters and experiences unexplored by the theater of that time and her dramaturgical method characterized by simplicity and sobriety of style that avoids any cloudy mysticism of the turn of the century and bombastic rhetoric is entirely her own then I thought that her if I thought about reception possible that her plays are stage worth she didn't have any luck in her lifetime although she considered herself not so much as a scholar but she wanted to be a literary person and a writer and a playwright after all she paid attention to matters of craft and worked carefully on structure of her place to make them stageable she wouldn't compromise she wouldn't use the easy tricks of the professional professional playwrights for theater who knew how to appeal to the public and how to secure staging she wouldn't compromise she wouldn't go for anything of that sort she wasn't a part of any movement she was not a part of a mainstream so she didn't have any chance she tried but she is extremely busy person doing a scholarly scholarly person simply at certain point not having a recognition she simply stopped writing her first play was written in 1905 she still was abroad studying and yes the literary critics noticed that there is something fresh and unusual voice but of course that didn't translate into being considered for any production she would have to access to theater circle people who were responsible she didn't have any of that and the plays I thought her plays are generally accessible to western readers and spectators since she used European myth legends and history as motifs rather than specifically polish national teams that makes the polish neo-romantic especially romantic and neo-romantic playwrights are difficult to transfer to translate culturally third which I thought makes worthy attention in her unusual life it's very very difficult even to conceive that the person will have such a absolutely unrecorded life whatever was gathered about her details very scanty details about her life were actually collected by a short CV she submitted while defending her dissertation in Berlin in 1904 then from a short letter actually there are only two letters that survived to our day which is absolutely incredible and from some information about her arrest and her death provided by I believe Ines of her who survived the Holocaust that was all and let me tell you there is no nothing we don't know anything about her there is no a photograph or any portrait no documents nothing and what we have I have six plays that actually appeared in I believe in 2003 for the first time in Poland in her vision and these are her plays and then her scholarly monographs and articles which had been published came out in a variety of scholarly journals and written in German French and Polish and that were about 40 articles and monographs that appeared between 1914 and 1939 as Agata mentioned she came she was born in 1878 in Warsaw her father was a humanitarian doctor and very very much involved in social work and she had she first attended a gymnasium in Poland, born in Warsaw and then because of the university that was Russian partition the quality of Polish universities at that point especially in science is quite low so Poles usually would go study abroad mostly in France and Germany and since I think it was a fairly her family was fairly well off and perhaps there was some philanthropics that provided money for expenses while studying there she went to Berlin she was at that point 18 and for the next six years started the first in Berlin for two semesters she started there apparently in logistics then she switched to Berlin and from that schooling she attended the university in Berlin, in Humboldt University and graduated with actually a doctorate in chemistry then in 1905 I suppose because she was in Paris then in 1908 she again went back to Germany and started in Germany archaeology aseriology for another four years then after she went to Paris entered a cult which she started again archaeology and languages in the there is better sketchy things so we don't know her itineraries or anything of that sort but apparently she started in some other academic centers in Germany in Munich Leipzig so her it's very baffling because of course Berlin and Paris were really capital whatever happened at that point it was Berlin and Paris we don't know I think or her archives or anything the whole family perished during the war in Holocaust perhaps the worst was absolutely as we know wiped out of the map completely destroyed in 1944 she perhaps everything just either perished in the fires so there is nothing so you really can't know what happened what did she what were her leg readings whether she attended a theater how what happened what happened that she decided to become a playwright whether she in Paris there was very lively Polish cultural life many many small theaters whether she attempted to do Jewish for example there are no any records any correspondence perhaps there is some way in the institution in the university that she worked in and we simply don't know anyhow she wrote plays between 1905 and 1911 she from time to time she could back to Poland and because that's why her plays appeared here and there and there was a quite favorable reception on the part of the critics so she may have tried to interest them but it wasn't any way so she had given up and of course in when the war broke out she came back to Poland for good and started to teach in schools first German languages then when the Poland regained independence in 1918 and the situation has changed for the better for women, for Jews she decided that perhaps that's what I mean that's enough she's going to devote her time to her scholarly pursuit and to teaching and to popularizing so she taught in various schools she got interested in children's literature it was easier for people at that point she didn't have to deal with theater, theatrical world or anything of that sort so she wrote a lot of small play for children and short stories and novellas and that appeared in periodicals and magazines but for children, targeted children then of course that was in then she worked as a teacher in one of the so-called flying universities that was actually a private enterprise called which is a free Polish university a private institution but with an excellent faculty in sciences social sciences and humanities and she taught there from 1930 to the war to the outbreak of the war teaching history of writing archeology and about ancient civilization this free university actually went underground when the war broke out and apparently she continued to teach and we don't know what happened because actually she was arrested apparently transferred together whether she would transfer or or she went there voluntarily because apparently her sister was there she got arrested by the staff to public notorious private prison which was a sort of halfway we come between concentration camps the inmates were transferred to Auschwitz other camps or just simply exterminated right and there so during the war about 100,000 people got through the path 60,000 were were transferred to camps and 37,000 liquidated one way or another and that's how she perished I have to mention also that she had some recognition now and then because of her she was actually became an active member of the Polish Oriental Society which was a very significant distinction and there was an attempt to reintroduce her to the theatrical establishment by an imminent police critic Czachowski who who in an article unannounced unannounced dramatic poetess again pointed out the excellence of her work but but it didn't with the analysis in the interest so she she actually she wrote to thank you letter to the critic and she said you included some biographical information about her so that's where it was called from included in her biography the scraps of biography and she said something to the but he was the first reader of her plays in the past 25 years and she ended up without any bitterness that it it's actually perhaps it had to be that way who had this really the very paradoxical and ironic that she always she wrote about old civilization called crumbled about kingdoms are worn and lost about predicament of other existence that she had to go through witness to actually disappearance of the two empires emergence of the new empires with the seed of destruction already planted in and then terrible history hell there is holocaust and one of her plays called there is a young prophet Ezekiel who prophesied destruction of time lamenting you know the fate of the Jews after when the Babylonians the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and being driven to the Babylonian captivity of course the Babylonian captivity paled in comparison with the new Babylonians who institutionalized bureaucratized and were held bent on extermination of the people of culture forever to I there is no time to talk more about her I'll be happy to answer any questions we have after the reading I provided a small introduction if it sounded like a sales pitch I would you know if it's a sales pitch it's a gentle pitch just a good book and read it and without too much ado again I thank you and let's go to the end the second is old as a hero not in the legend is old of the white hands is portrayed as a victim married to a husband who cannot love her initially of the cause of her rejection she suffers in silence and is sadly resigned to her fate until she learns of her rival then she strikes back in a fit of jealousy knowing about the tragic death of the ill-fated lovers Hertz extends the action beyond the traditional ending and creates a drama focused on is old of the white hands Tristan's widow who is living on as the powerful independent minded mistress of her castle the legend of Tristan and his paramour is old affair enjoys considerable popularity in the second half of the 19th century 1665 music drama Tristan and his old and to the poetic versions in England by Matthew Arnold, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Algernon Swinburne and at the turn of the century a popular composite reconstruction of the entire legend in modern French prose proved highly influential and was translated into many languages in the early years of the 20th century dozens of poems, novels and poetic first dramas were written on the subject by women as well as men in England, America, France and Germany a few of these authors made is old of the white hands the chief character she is the heroine of Lesia Ukrainka's 1912 poem is old of the white hands of Marie Itzorot's 1916 play Die Weisse Hand and of Thomas Hardy's 1923 drama the famous tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall and she appears in Jean Cocteau's 1943 film L'Eternale Latour but Heertz's 1905 version was the first play on the subject and the only work to explore the perverse psychic disorder of the aggrieved heroine and her ambiguous retributive justice Heertz treats the story from the point of view of his old of the white hands and she was the first to give the legend a distinctly modernist and revisionist interpretation of the French as the high-flung poetic tradition her drama takes place some years after the purported death of Tristan in her description of the stage scenery the playwright immediately establishes the gothic atmosphere of his old castle the stage shows a great hall draped in black a suit of armor belonging to Tristan stands at the entrance a skull embossed on the helmet attached to the right glove the action begins in a scene between the bishop and Lord Cape his old brother I do not know the Duchess really but he baptized her I am so worthy of you close the window it's cold in this accursed castle why are you suddenly so angry find some George this castle reaps of death these black draperies that armor at the entrance and the silence you would swear someone is breathing his last in the room next door I cannot stop death are you laughing reach my age and you will laugh at death no more oh yes it's easy to die in battle amidst the clang of arms while thinking only how to inflict death on others have you ever seen a corpse beneath a shroud a rigid cadet the folds of the cloth molding its face in you into a white expressionless mask I warrant it it has never once occurred to you that the moment can approach when you yourself will resemble that shrouded corpse tell me what did you drag me here for you've come here with your own free will free will indeed I had one groom with me armed with a stick to your five knights in full armor and you call that free will what are your squabbles and pros to me you seek the aid of Roger a promenade in your plundering and rape and I am supposed to persuade your sister to remarry him that is not a task fit for a dignitary of the church but over it is a blessed and sacred state as it is written as it is written by St. Paul of the Epistle to the Corinthians I waited my next Paul never wrote anything of the sort well maybe not but what does it matter to you helmet what's the need of putting human bones on display but will she listen to me she wouldn't listen to her own father have you ever met anyone listen to the old duke I sure have soon I'll be locking him up in some dark closet so he won't shame us what are you talking about he drinks too much meddles egregiously with serving girls at his age and he meddles in my affairs you're a bad son my lord bad I know I am bad sons I am ready to speak with the duchess I'll try to bend her to your will if she were willing to speak to me I wouldn't need your help but she refuses remember I was the matchmaker for Tristan it won't burn any luck here the lie insolent rogue he swore on his honor as a knight that he no longer loved the other he sold I wish I could remember his words he spoke beautifully then later on every grudan every page, every peasant knew that he was betraying my sister with that Irish slut who was ready to stop it enter the lists against you to defend her honor I won't fight you why didn't you challenge Tristan by Sir George by knights at your side you wouldn't dare spew that slander of yours if Tristan was still alive the duchess will be here in a moment where was she at the grave she was praying so she's forgiven everything then I must admit it's typical for me to believe it to forget yes that's possible but to remember and to forgive I found human strength the duchess is a saint I used to hate her as the wife of my lord because he didn't love her but now I would kiss the prince that her feet lead in the sand and I could flay you alive for bringing your mistress to ever new tears it is not my fault that the duchess refuses to remarry not your fault then who is it I haven't seen you for six months you're pale look as if you were hiding some great secret behind those tightly closed lips leave me alone please Cordoba why didn't you tell me that Mr. Caden had come he forbade me to mention his name to anyone I had to have recourse to coming in order to see you I wished you so much what do you want from me I came here accompanied by the bishop forgive me for not meeting you sooner it is my brother's fault that I did not see you right away grab me with you my daughter board Caden to the dying hall for Cordoba and have my wing weight upon what do you wish of me I am completely out of your service I have come on the orders of your father you can undoubtedly guess what I want of you your father wants you to marry Roger of Palmy I see I do not approve of widow's remarrying widow Hurd is a blessed and sacred state but your old father the Duke needs tender care and love if you were to marry Roger your father would have in you and your husband support and defence against his enemies you know your brother well enough I think to know that he above all let me open the window and stifle do as you please you are alone and childless that is all right while you are still young but how will you go on living once your hair turns grey the lonely old age is old age twice over is old who will hold your hand when your last hour is struck your service they will run away as soon as the power to order them about fails you and there will be no one to close your eyes when you breathe your last you'll go through life like a shadow without leaving behind the slightest memories there will be no one to pray for you and no one to order a mass to be saved for your soul and who knows how many more years you will have to make atonement atonement and what am I going to head if I did not know that you were Lord Caden's sister I would know it by that godless joke forgive me I have said what was on my mind and you must pardon me again I have not seen any people for such a long time I have forgotten how to receive and entertain a guest like you and I never mind about that all I want from you is a clear answer do you marry Roger of Palmyny no think it over Caden in a few years no one will desire you as a wife as long as the castles and the lands I inherited from my mother are in mine why don't you think that you are mourning the most faithful and excellent of husbands every trouvère sings of the love of Tristan of Lyones for the queen of Cornwall and yet you remain faithful to him even after his death now that Tristan was the most beautiful and valiant of might but he wronged you he wronged me so you feel it yourself he wronged me there is not a human being not a flower not a song not a moment of the day that did not have some portion of my love and everything else was and I was nothing without him even after his death you can't forget him but he was my life and soul for years I sang here by that window looking out on the highway leading to the north my heart and my eyes were embedded in those cobblestones of that road along which he was to return and when it grew dark I would close my eyes because they could no longer see him and I would tremble at the slightest clang of the centuries old at every howling of a dog or nagging of the horses for long, long years do you want to come back from time to time and then he would close his eyes as I did and kiss my lips and call he is all and then I knew he had destroyed my life in order to be able to call his wife he is all the other ones name most all this seems to be to die without a trace all my frightful pain all my humiliation all my love and the long years I swung here in this castle was all and I told wife it all out of my life and forget no forget life is long but youth is short look at me I too was young once I am loved and I am hated I was famous and I was brave and my arms were strong and so was my mind and now I remember nothing of it and even if memory brings me back a moment out of the past it seems to me it is rather a remembered chapter from a book of chivalry I once read not from my own life everything is subject to forgetting you once were lord George of Dulé but didn't you have enemies you hated with every drop of blood in your body with every breath with every thought enemies who would appear by your bed in your dreams and whose lives weighed on your chest like a heavy stone didn't you have such enemies no man is without enemies I had mine did you kill them yes perhaps I did but not at once be careful plans to set a trap you'd send spies to find out when your enemies would leave their castles and you'd wait for them in ambush in the forest or perhaps to your indescribable joy you'd meet them on the battlefield you'd recognize them not by their colours and their armour but by the beating of your heart did you slay them in there or did you prolong their agony I was a great sinner but you are not entitled to remind me of my sins I would so like to look at those are the most beautiful memories of your life but you see I was not able to avenge myself I had to wait patiently until God took pity on me and sent him to my chamber in the throes of death stood by his bed for years on end and looked into his despairing eyes when I told him the black sails were flying on Corneval's ship if just once again I could hear her cries over his dead body her cries like that of my entire life as she did from grief you are a frightful woman this old I'm not surprised that your husband abandoned you your heart is a nest of vipers it is his fault my heart was once like a garden full of fragrant flowers and sweet one should forgive I cannot forgive even at the hour of my death I shall not forgive even if I am dead for all eternity I cannot forgive own to me yes the wrong they did you was great but leave the dead in peace look the flowers are blooming on their graves the roses are twined around their tombs forget them someday the roses could flower for you too as they do for that dead pair the roses on their graves are travelling through their scenes of the roses on the grave of Tristan of Leonas and Isolde of Cornwall every true their scenes of their love but I swear had they not died no one would sing of Tristan and the queen of Cornwall but only of the revenge of Isolde of the white hands of my revenge even if you would kill them with your own hand even if you had murdered them inflicting upon them tortures so terrible that no one until then had ever dared use them they would be dead by now anyway and your revenge could only set itself on their graves you must stop lamenting for sins you never committed they would be dead by now anyway you said with your hearts of barbarians killing is vengeance and suffer let him know that only death can put an end to his agony and let him fear death the way only the truly miserable can hear he used to fear dying I won't stay here another moment I don't want to talk with you get out send for other people if you hear me I order you no you have to hear me to the end I ordered empty coffins put into the ground I am an absolute sovereign here in my castle an only corner of Alka could betrayed me and you know how easy it is to seal human lips forever seeing the dungeons beneath this castle they are so deep that the sound of a stone falling to their bottom cannot be heard so dark I must hold a torch close to the face of a prisoner in order to see his eyes when I go down into those subterranean chambers I feel such a weight on my chest I have the impression I'm being buried alive and yet I often go down into the dungeon the executioner goes with me and sets up his instruments of torture down there I swear no one is being tortured I'm the only one the moans and my voice echoes against the walls of the prison no there's no arm down there straining under the irons and vainly trying to break the chains which keep it fast into the stones of the dungeon and the manacles is heard it's only because a menial has dropped them there's never anyone down there but the two of us me and the executioner and sometimes one of my servants comes with me with her lover and then I can hear their sigh and the broken whispers I swear to you I don't know who is howling down darkness in an inhuman voice I don't know stop talking and whispers even a whisper can be heard down there the dungeon is right below this chamber often I sit here and have the traveling to there sing songs but only a Tristan and his old and down there they can hear the singing and I have the impression that they are digging the fingers of their chained hands into the walls and the entire castle trembles from their hopeless anguish over the past stop that they are here in the castle out of the chapel with their faces uncovered even if they were alive now no tortures could force me to disclose this secret anyway look on liberators do you think those two hideous skeletons would still love each other if they met now wouldn't that be the worst form of punishment for them to see each other now they should take you down into the dungeon so you can see for yourself there's no one down there I know I don't want to let Lord King go here it would be too great a temptation for me I might keep him down there for good your own brother to defend my right brother to me but friend to Tristan why didn't he avenge me while there was still time why didn't he slay Tristan in her oars I think nothing would be lucky to make my happiness complete they were down in the dungeons with them you speak as if they were still alive even after dying they lived on feasting like vampires on the blood of my heart but now they are dead while I was talking to you to begin to pale and breathe their last they vanished and won't come back again but I may set off with them pray that your entire life cannot stay any longer cool, go over there his old leaves while passing by Tristan's armor she leans against it the battle axe becomes detached wasn't it cornival who welcomed you on the drawbridge if cornival is alive his lord could not possibly be in the dungeons of my castle that's true I'm going back in that's what cornival you know you were right when you said old age is a tire of forgetting despite all the despair he felt cornival would have forgotten Tristan and even grown accustomed to the sight of the skull on his helmet but I am constantly with cornival and every day my words tear of the wound in his bleeding heart every day I remind him of his lord and myself watch the tears streaming down his wrinkled old face and the immense helpless despair filling his eyes in my heart calling with my sister who spoke with me tonight thank you all so much thank you for staying and we're going to have a little discussion again an applause for the actors and for the director it was quite a traumatic reading a sense of a traumatic reading maybe go a little closer since we are not somebody yet who would like to come and join maybe you sit in the middle and so first of all how does it feel like listening is this the first reading perhaps ever apparently in the late 50s there was a radio reading but of course I don't know what it sounded like and yes it was the first reading because in Poland you see Hertz's plays are treated as literature and not theater people since there was no single production except I think in 75 I another of her long play Great King about Byzantium which was apparently quite inept and that was it and so I was just very very curious how it will sound because I I tried to think when I was translating translating to hear it whether it would be effective or not I think it's a marvelous play and it would be again a wonderful chamber opera it's an ideal libretto for it anyhow by the way explanation Hertz used the story of Tristan and his soldiers enjoying tremendous popularity at the turn of the century due to a compiled version prose version of Joseph Badiere French Medievalist who taught at the College of France and it all indicates that Hertz was familiar with the version and that she may have heard him actually at the College of France lecturing this version which he Badiere did some extent infragmented parts of Tristan and his old stories actually it went apparently because some scholars of Tristan and his old scholar account and went into trouble to actually find out how many apparently from the turn of the century to the 90s of this there were 600 editions in many many translations every conceivable language that there is and apparently Hertz read it because actually as a motto I could I would just quote lying from Badiere translation Badiere's story it sounds a bit so now a woman's wrath is a fearful thing and all men fear it for according to her love so her vengeance will be the result of white hands this is very interesting because whether it's a reality whether it's her hallucination whether she's in a trance spinning scenarios what she would do and how would she do whether they are alive or not even Bishop gets very confused about it she draws into her madness is she mad isn't she mad her revenge and her vengeance was so much more frightful and so deep that she felt betrayed by everybody very strong woman again all very debates whether Hertz was a feminist or not all her women are very strong very proud much more than the male characters and of course she couldn't forgive her brother she was kept in the dark because she didn't know about is all the way unfair until the very end and again her marriage she loved him very deeply was not consummated and that's why they're talking about sanctity of the widowhood because then she was supposed to either marry or go to the convent and serve another lord that is the eternal world the situation of women in the 20th 12th century was surprisingly good they could inherit property which was in her case that she inherited property after her mother plus whatever Tristan had she was her wedded wife so it was a natural and in the play there is a domestic drama going on because Cadine doesn't want to take responsibility for his father who is apparently a drunk chaser of a servant girl virtuous awful and so if she remarried she would have to take care of her father and Cadine would be free she wouldn't have it absolutely not she wouldn't remarry she doesn't want to to go into any bondage again and be betrayed she accuses Cadine that he didn't revenge her that he didn't tell her that about the other result and there is a beautiful line very poetic in the video version she is actually with Cadine is old with the white hands they are going forward in some stream and the water splashes on her ties she is very delighted and she says to Cadine my husband never reached that far never reached that far and again Cadine didn't say anything he was startled by the news by Abeth did nothing she in celebrated her this version the story goes as follows yes Tristan on his deathbed Samans is old fair so she would cure him she would if she comes he would recover and he is old with white hands by that time she overheard conversations and she figures out she lived for so many years betrayed loved and they got nothing so when she sees the sales and that the the fair is coming she runs and tells she is old but unfortunately Tristan had died and his old is crashed but goes back to Cornwall and then Tristan learns of the betray so he rushes Cornwall to see his old although he is dying apparently and Mark the king the husband of the old fair kills him in a fit of jealousy his old grabs the weapon out of Mark's hand steps herself and dies also and his old of the white hands goes back to Brittany and that story ends so it is truly in Amelie Hertz's version quite a tale of revenge and indifference to suffering almost angelic I think but a very strong female role unusual and as you said that would be quite an astonishing opera but Jane our question to you I know that you all had the idea also to direct plays of her especially this play what was your motivation why did you think this is a good this I would like to direct the microphone it is a wonderful they're all very interesting roles every single one of them the four of them and she says very succinctly what each character is each character's role in the play she brings them in and then so that I loved even Lord Caden you get a very clear idea of who he's supposed to be even though he only has maybe 20 lines so there's a lot the actor can bring to that and then of course there's this wonderful scene between the bishop and Esolder where she she explores her inability well she explores the past and her inability to let go of the past and I for me it was a great deal of play about forgiveness that she is she is unable to forgive the bishop too is unable to he's unable to forget he says I wish I could forget I mean he does have a line about that so for me that was very important those two the ability to forgive was a very important part of the play because Esolder really she can't forgive so she goes mad she plays over and over in her mind she tortures herself with this these memories and there's nothing she can do about them I mean the bishop is very right in his he's sort of a therapist and of course Freud was quite popular at this time he was coming up in importance at this time so I like that the fact that these very interesting psychological threads were happening at the time also with Dr. Charcot and his investigation of hysteria so and then there is also there is also this wonderful part of it you know it's sort of grand guignol there's a there's a playing on people's terror and that's very popular today by the way I did a lot of looking at dungeons on the web and there's an amazing number of web things if you want to look at dungeon sounds and dungeons and people hanging from you know chains and things there's a lot of that on the web so it's a very it's a very timely play it has a lot to say about today even though it's set back in the middle ages whether it's had a place in the Byzantium in the 6th century they are in the 15th century they are not antiquarian at all they sound absolutely contemplative yes we wanted to do a play that was you know the other plays are longer there was one play the Fleur de Lis which which was short but you need one of the act of the characters in it is an 8 year old girl so so that would have been a little you know a little bit difficult to manage anyway we decided against that and we decided that's why we decided on this play and of course I think Yan Kot was the one who said theater is a place between the living and the dead where the ghosts come and she's ghost like presence whether she is if she exists or not like in a Beckett play where you know foot falls you know is she alive is she not are these people alive are they not but perhaps Forsher on her own fate and the fate of Poland by so many parts of the world and whether one can forgive or not with such betrayal of the her of course whatever the greatest betray is about love and that her real pure love and was betrayed but we have five or six more minutes left maybe one or two questions from the audience which will give you a microphone it's also live streamed or not it's also for a little archival it's a university archive so please do you take a microphone and and there's one question over here this is splendid work but I'm familiar I guess most people are with the versions the and then the translation of over Arlington Robinson but this one is I was wondering if it is a contemporary with that but yeah is it coming after but yeah my question is but yeah came out in 1900 the Robinson translation I think Arlington Robinson he's a Frenchman but I think I translated it for the American audience Arlington Robinson but there was immediately in 1903 translation by maybe I'm wrong also he might but I'm not it's not about literary history but this play astonishes me by the cruelty of her version well because in all the other versions I believe with and then which I kind of grew up with hmm the tragedy the tragedy is compensated for by the aestheticism let's say in Wagner but this is so stark it's like a forerunner of let's say Arto's play about the chenshi oh yes yeah so this is really hard stuff so I loved it but it is something special it is sort of like deconstructing a Tristan through Freud and Marquis de Saint and so yes and interesting things that are actually in the old version is all the of quite hence just informs Tristan that the sails are black and he dies and she doesn't have any lines spoken actually so she her it's actually takes her as a true heroine because no she's okay is all of the quite hence if it went for her they would have died the story would be like any story any love story and the true verse wouldn't be thinking about her yes nothing nothing thank you another comment thank you first of all the actors did a marvelous job Jane really yes they did the flavor was absolutely there but I found something very interesting in the psyche of the woman when she says before she knew Tristan she loved everything the love of the child of life of the young woman of life the inner life that's around her and then this man enters her life and he sort of sucks up everything only then to be betrayed so her recognition of the before and after and this absolute betrayal is stunning in its in its in this play in its kind of a logic that she exposes here really the that sense which I'm sure would horrify many men but that is very deep inside the ultimate betrayal is not so much that she's betrayed that this man goes off to somebody else but that it is also a betrayal of her very being as I understand I think that's a very good point thank you it is a very good point she she is a living corpse everything every emotions killed in her except vengeance she says she enjoys seeing suffering it fills her with joy because she's not she just want absolute revenge for her life destroyed maybe one more comment over there I wanted to ask on the particular challenges of translating Herz's work particular challenges what are you wrestling with? well I think that unlike many turn of the century pieces her are very tight very logical even in a madness there is a palpable logic right you could feel it it's a simplicity she is very economy of her place it's just admirable they are constructed without I think any fault whatsoever there is no unneeded word so the challenges the two actually hear it have it would sound on stage so you have to read it aloud yes but well yes with some they are to keep because actually her research and her knowledge about just incredible erudition she covered she wrote a play about 18th century England with all the details absolutely impeccable for example she makes a distinction she doesn't use troubadour she uses trouvere and of course you find out that troubadours were in me south of France this is Brittany and there were trouvères and the trouvères were more sophisticated perhaps with the better music made so she did you have to check her everything and I read of course I followed all her possible sources what she could have read and what she used and to be as exact and as true as she was to the that she was describing and that is true about everything of course I can talk about you know I couldn't with the Byzantium that's my Byzantium but again which I did research when translating about Gilbert she used actual sources it was again a very big craze about Gilbert it was a story about serial murder and so on so she used appeared at transcripts actually of the Gilbert trial and she used that and some extensive reading of the contemporary writing of scholarship on the 15th century so you have to be very careful because you have to be actually respect her you have to follow and not to be unfaithful because I could feel that would be revenge too she might she might put you in the dungeon so I would say it is truly I think it was a truly respectful and great translation I think her spirit was shining through her idea and this idea of a deconstruction which we said earlier I think now we know wicked you know where you take a story apart and look at it from another side and do that so early on and creating someone unsympathetic but who we can somehow relate to more you know than to the lovers that is quite an achievement we are close to the end of the evening we are already a little bit over time and Jane will be here a little bit longer and so stay with us for a glass of wine for the assault of the White Hand again it's a great great honor even so we are very few but what does a few mean the last episode of Friends was watched by 25 million people and if we had here 10 or 100 or 1000 what is it really I just think we really honored a great writer whose living whose work is now still in the dark and brought into light and it's a great achievement and we would like to thank you Vika for doing this as you know parts of her life's work as she said so our highest respect for what you did and I think this will be inspiring evening and I might guess that we have not heard the last of Amelia Hertz and things will come and I'm sure one composer one of those days will put it into a work where it will have a form and put some hot water into that beautiful tea that she put together so thank you all and maybe the last amazing thing about her place is that they are absolutely open to a myriad of interpossible interpretations so it's absolutely amazing thank you all and thank you for coming