Complete is also Leśmian. The last song, Niewidzialni [The Invisible], emerged from an idea I had about finishing the penultimate song, but I ended up not using it there. I was turning a chord progression over and over again in my mind; it felt like a good final touch for Gad [The Snake]. Gad [The Reptile] ended differently, though, and I was already about to throw the progression away, but it turned out to be a perfect ending after all, both for Gad [The Snake] and for the rest that came before it. I get the impression that it sounds like an echo of all the previous songs, but maybe that’s just hallucination. 

The title of the entire five-part cycle (Śmiercie, Goryl, Dookoła klombu, Gad, Niewidzialni [Deaths, Gorilla, Around the Flowerbed, The Reptile, The Invisible) will be: Lesmian – the couplets. The name couplet, on top of the fact that it reflects the actual structure of all texts, is understood by me as a two opposing halves, alternating. That alternation exists in this entire cycle. The hidden, ephemeral and barely recognisable alternate with the tangible, imposing and aggressively expansive. A Nymph alternating with a Beast. The Nymph is both the memory of the past and the potential for something new; a kind of a fragile basis for any continuity, whose condition – and vulnerability as well – lies in the memory, in the inaccuracy of successive repetitions. And the Beast is a blind, brutal power, heedless of either beauty or precision; heedless of the risk of death; a force that can give movement, direction and momentum to this potential – towards its inevitable end, but with everything in its wake as a reward. Like in any two opposing – and alternating – halves, there is unevenness and instability, a lack of symmetry. The Beast does not only appear in name.

The Beast pervades Wiktoryn and Kóba, it is the snake (reptile), and it is the gorilla. by the way, it is also, incidentally, the mantis and the machine, the bull, the dragon and the siren. It is Ereshkigal. It is a wild boar in the bush. It is foolish not to see the Beast and simply let it devour you, but it is also foolish or even more foolish to see the Beast and renounce it. To barely hear it and to quail. To run away, squealing like a piglet. Even after taking a few steps away, you just need to stop; and despite the terrifying fear – to turn around and look at the Beast. To move towards it. Without getting rid of the fear – while wearing it like a mask. To come closer and closer, putting on other masks as well, hiding behind them with a beating heart, like a stone. To finally take the Beast in your arms and dance. Letting yourself be led in the dance, looking into the Beast’s eyes –  and then to stab the Beast in the heart. But, one should not succumb in this last moment to the temptation of an idiotic, false, sanctimonious triumph – that at last, finally, righteously and beautifully it happened, but one should heartily say grace, drinking a little bit of the Beast’s blood, with utmost respect; and to gently lay it on the ground and tenderly soothe it.

 
And, by the way, it is also foolish to succumb to the Beast’s spell, to be fooled by the charm of its strength and the semblance of its focused attention. To be hypnotised and to talk nonsense beyond any imagination. Oliver Stone is an example.

So, then, it is done. I don’t think I’ll ever say “yes” to writing more than one piece at the same time again. Thank you very much. And now, in a moment, the big thing that has been gaining momentum for some time now, silently and in the background, together with other people. Now it’s my turn. More on this soon.

Next week, HEVEL again, in NOSPR.