4. Island
This wasn’t an easy week. Part two is coming in and out of focus like an island in the fog, slowly and so intermittently that I can’t even see it fully and remember any of the details. The image is blurry. Staring at it is tiresome for the eyes. Yet I must remain here, keeping my gaze steady and waiting. I can’t take up anything new; I can’t turn my eyes away or rest; I can’t sleep. I have nowhere to sail.
A week of waiting later, I have finally got something. I think I have a grasp now on the general outline of part two. I can sense the process going on here and see its turning points. In her conversation with the Siren, the Woman goes from grief and longing, through a moment of joy and disappointment, all the way to rage. Similarly to the Man in part one, this way she gradually grows to stand on her own feet, grows mature. Or something grows mature within her. Yet the analogy is not simple here, I myself don’t fully comprehend it yet. Perhaps I never will; this is not a story to end with an easy moral. Complaints will not be heard here, wrongs will not be redressed…
The Woman is standing on the shore. She’s longing. Full of grief. Awaiting the Man’s return. Their relationship is not clearly defined; it is not necessarily romantic. Perhaps it’s a wife awaiting her husband or lover, a daughter awaiting her father or a mother awaiting her son. Well, in the end, as some say, it’s all the same. The Woman, therefore, longs and grieves. She is left alone and does not know what will befall her. She’s crying.
The Siren’s song is a counterpoint. It paints an image of a woman sailing together with a man, populating more and more isles sometimes with a sword and a shield, sometimes in chains and shackles. But not standing alone on the shore. The Woman seems deaf to this song. Perhaps she is unwilling to hear it. Fearing her own reflection. Or, in any case, succumbing to her grief.
These are the lyrics of the first fragment:
SEA / SIREN
In my majesty, at my elevated home,
I sing my song.
Currents and tides, washing through mangroves
and glaciers descending into me.
WOMAN
Standing on the shore, waiting for him to return.
Will he return? Why has he sailed away?
SEA / SIREN
Why do you make enquiries about him? Your enquiries are pointless.
WOMAN
I have waited for him so many times.
He abandoned me so many times.
In tears, I waited.
SEA / SIREN
You sail with him.
He does not embark on his own;
you would not be present on all the isles now
if you had not been on the with him.
You sail with him towards the north, free, with a sword and a shield,
you sail to Greenland in an open knar,
the unmarried lady of your lineage.
WOMAN
I have waited for him so many times,
I sat on the rocks above the harbour,
awaiting sails on the horizon.
Why has he abandoned me? Will he return?
SEA / SIREN
You sail in a black gown across the Atlantic from Europe,
in chains, you sail from Guinea to America,
under the decks of small galleons,
in the crowded holds of slave ships,
in search of paradise, pious and silent,
far from kings and princes.
You keep sailing for a month, two months, your children dying,
their corpses thrown away to the sea, as you die, too.
Violently torn from London’s sleazy backstreets,
you sail towards Australia.
Only from you could new settlers be born,
new sailors, new slaves.
There’s an important fragment in the libretto, the Siren’s line: “Your questions are pointless”. It was changed from a question to an affirmative sentence. As a question, it sounded false to me. As I read the lyrics, I get the impression that the Siren is not a character that would engage in a dialog. A conversation, I believe, is a lively, organic process. Happening in “biological time”. Occurring between parties that do not possess complete knowledge. The Siren is not alive in this manner. She exists outside of time. She is always in the present. And at any time, her present means always. So she cannot ask, for she knows. It is emphasized and reinforced by a consistently applied measure: her use of the present tense as compared to the humans’ use of past tenses. Much to my surprise, I did not notice it at first; it was Szczepan who made me realize it. But once I saw it, I was delighted; I think it's excellent. And back to the Siren’s question, Szczepan agreed and the change has come into effect.
Music-wise, this fragment is very slowly taking shape. It is going to be based on a short theme which sprang to my mind a really long time ago; in fact, I could say this is one of my first ever musical ideas. From the time when I was utterly blundering around, sitting at the piano and trying to compose any complete short piece.
This is what is looked and sounded like initially:
After some adjustment to symmetry, which I mentioned before, the harmony has taken this shape:
LISTEN (with a small development)
… and when sung, the melody develops both in reference to and as a far-reaching continuation of its initial shape.
Speaking of singing, I haven’t been bringing it up too often so far. When the right time comes, I will.
In this part, there is also a sequence I have recently used in Colus (recently mentioned in relation to Bartek Duś):
As can be seen, it appears in two manners, as an inversion to gis/as, in both cases with d as the farthest-reaching point. And with a kind of a triad of importance to me, formed by the first and two last stages of the sequence (an arrangement of a fourth and a triton); for some reason, this sound combination truly appeals to me.
This sequence has already appeared in part one during one of its “turbulent” culminations. And, in line with it, in part two it will be tied to moments when the Woman’s grief turns into rage.
Finally, a few words regarding the form. The subtitle refers again to the first dramas; melodrama is one of the first terms that the opera was described with. Today’s ambiguity of this term is deliberate, which I will expand on another time; today I want to focus on what drives the desire to go back to earlier forms. On the refusal to abandon them forever. On the feeling that they still have unfulfilled potential . I’ve recently spoken (via email) to a younger colleague who expressed his profound disappointment with the fact that using the sonata is practically forbidden nowadays. That it is incomprehensible and unjust. I understand his grief. I don’t think it’s forbidden, though. You should just beware of carrion, if I may phrase it this way. It’s no use pretending that something long rotten actually has a nice smell. But it is also good to remember that carrion fertilizes the soil. You just have to wait, and at harvest time reap the harvest and not the fertilizer. (A nod to my family’s farming past; I like to think it left a mark on me.) I can see an analogy to sailing, or actually to anything irresistibly alluring in spite of its particular functionality growing outdated. It makes little sense today to ship goods via a small, relatively slow wooden structure that poses a threat to your life and limb. Yet it does not mean that sailing ships are no longer beautiful, the shape of the sail and hull perfect, and the “maritime ethos” useful. Or that you can no longer experience leaving the harbour, losing sight of the land, as well as perceiving the harbour again and arriving back there.
Back to the Siren.
(transl. Zuzanna Wnuk)