To see through the eyes of essayist and dramaturge Jan Kott is to gain in knowledge not just of the theater but also of human culture. Since his Shakespeare Our Contemporary appeared in English in 1964, Kott's work has altered—and strengthened—the way critics and the public approach the theater as a whole. The Memory of the Body highlights a number of dramatic personalities and personages: authors and directors Witkiewicz, Brecht, Kantor, Grotoswki, Ingmar Bergman, Wedekind; Tilly Newes on the stage in turn-of-the-century Vienna; the all-too-mortal, two-thirds divine Gilgamesh; and a shaman in rural Korea. In a style flecked with passion, poignancy, and wit, Kott moves beyond a mere discussion of theater to speak of eroticism, painting, love, and death.
Shakespeare, Our Contemporary is a provocative, original study of the major plays of Shakespeare. More than that, it is one of the few critical works to have strongly influenced theatrical productions. Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz are among the many directors who have acknowledged their debt to Jan Kott, finding in his analogies between Shakespearean situations and those in modern life and drama the seeds of vital new stage conceptions. Shakespeare, Our Contemporary has been translated into nineteen languages since it appeared in 1961, and readers all over the world have similarly found their responses to Shakespeare broadened and enriched.
In The Eating of the Gods the distinguished Polish critic Jan Kott reexamines Greek tragedy from the modern perspective. As in his earlier acclaimed Shakespeare Our Contemporary, Kott provides startling insights and intuitive leaps which link our world to that of the ancient Greeks. The title refers to the Bacchae of Euripides, that tragedy of lust, revenge, murder, and "the joy of eating raw flesh" which Kott finds paradigmatic in its violence and bloodshed.
(Applause Books). The acclaimed stage director and theatre critic Charles Marowitz in tandem with Jan Kott, one of the most penetrating and incisive Shakespearean scholars to emerge in the 20th Century, probe the mysteries of some of the more problematic plays in Shakespeare's canon. The innovative director and dazzling classicist bring two complementary viewpoints to bear as they delve into the collected works, illuminating the constantly changing nature and philosophic nuances of the various plays. The book's centerpiece consists of Kott and Marowitz's insights on such plays as Othello, Romeo & Juliet, Troilus & Cressida and Measure for Measure. They reveal the ideas behind Shakespeare's plays and the process of making them come alive before and audience and present frank, no-holds barred discussions on such subjects as The Shakespeare Industry, The Boundaries of Interpretation, Dramaturgy and Mise-en-scene.
The Bottom Translation represents the first critical attempt at applying the ideas and methods of the great Russian critic, Mikhail Bakhtin, to the works of Shakespeare and other Elizabethans. Professor Kott uncovers the cultural and mythopoetic traditions underlying A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Dr. Faustus, and other plays. His method draws him to interpret these works in the light of the carnival and popular tradition as it was set forth by Bakhtin. The Bottom Translation breaks new ground in critical thinking and theatrical vision and is an invaluable source of new ideas and perspectives. Included in this volume is also an extraordinary essay on Kurosawa's "Ran" in which the Japanese filmmaker recreates King Lear.
In the first English translation of Still Alive, the renowned Polish essayist and theater critic Jan Kott recounts his perilous odyssey through the endless political crises of Eastern Europe in the mid-twentieth-century, illuminating not only the fate of a whole generation of intellectuals, but also his main concern: how to make sense of one's own existence As a portrayal of turbulent times, the book is priceless, in particular because of its extraordinarily vivid depictions of the atmosphere of everyday life under Communism.-Stanislaw Baranczak, Harvard University An incisive and vivid testimony of a gifted and zestful survival, Still Alive offers a suspenseful story of its author's harrowingly narrow escapes in Nazi-occupied Poland, and an illuminating account of his vicissitudes under the postwar Communist regime. That this widely acclaimed memoir is now available in English is good news indeed.-Victor Erlich, professor emeritus of Russian literature, Yale University Written by a man with literary taste and a sense of the dramatic who knows how to tell a story without ever losing a sense of humor, taste for life, and a kind of gaiety.-Nicole Zand, Le Monde The entire writing resonates with life and its mysteries, some resolved, some not...The rigors and victories of Kott's life somehow offer sustenance to all who question existence.-Library Journal A splendid evocation by an eminent theater critic and philosopher of what it meant to be alive-sometimes barely-during the tremendous upheavals in Europe caused by the Second World War and the installation of the Communist regime in Poland...Kott shows an unerring sense of the telling detail that imprints a scene in the memory. A riveting book.-Kirkus Reviews
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