The Art of Dialogue. Jurij Alschitz

meeting with your second half? What exactly is wholeness? All wholeness of individuality, which before seemed to us to be final, suddenly appears only as part of a something new, unknown. And now you feel some obscure, but strong attraction, a premonition of a unique dialogical contact leading you to a new Unity. In that way, people remember their kinship with the cosmos. There are no facts and therefore it’s not just human memory. It is non-human memory. It is no memory at all, but a metaphysi­cal attraction. That’s energy! Metaphysical energy is always present in dialogue. How little we actors think about this but we want to play dialogue well. Rarely do we reminisce about our involvement in the Absolute.

      Look at the scene when Rachel meets Jacob in Thomas Mann’s novel Joseph and His Brothers. Please excuse me for jumping from Plato to the twentieth century. But this scene is so beautiful and it will explain everything to you better than I, or even, Plato could.

      Thus first he beheld her, his heart’s destiny, his soul’s bride, for whose lovely eyes he was to serve fourteen years, the mother sheep of lamb (…)

      “Here am I,” said she; like a short-sighted person she contracted her eyes, but then lifted her brows in surprise and delight as she added: “Lo, a stranger!” (…)

      “Whence cometh my lord?” He pointed westwards over his shoulder and said “Amurru”.

      She turned towards Jerubbaal and laughing beckoned him with a motion of her chin.

      “So far?” said she, in words and gestures. And then she asked in more detail, saying that the west was wide, and naming two or three of its cities.

      “Beersheba,” Jacob answered.

      She started and repeated the word, and her mouth, which he had already begun to love, shaped the name of Isaac.

      His face twitched, his mild eyes ran over. He did not know Laban’s people and would not have been eager for contact with them. He was an outlaw, stolen to the lower world, not here of his own will, and felt not much cause for soft emotion. But his nerves gave way; under the strain of the journey they had gone soft. He was at his goal, and this maiden, with eyes so darkly sweet, uttered his far-off father’s name and was his mother’s brother’s child.

      “Rachel,” said he, with a sob, and put out his arms to her, his hands trembling. “May I kiss thee?”

      “How canst though claim such a right?” she asked, and retreated in smiling dismay. She gave no sign of suspecting anything, just as before she had not seemed to mark the presence of a stranger.

      But with one arm stretched out towards her he pointed to his own breast. “Jacob, Jacob,” he said. “I! Yitzchak’s son, ­Rebecca’s son, Laban, thou, I, child of mother, child of brother…”

      She gave a little cry. She put one hand on his breast and so held him away from her as together they reckoned up the kinship between them, laughing, but with tears in both their eyes. They cried out names, nodded their heads, making out the genealogical tree by signs to each other, putting their forefingers together, crossing them, or laying the left across the tip of the right.

      “Laban - Rebecca,” cried she. “Bethuel, son of Nahor and Milka! Thy grandfather and mine!”

      “Terah,” cried he. “Abram - Isaac, Nahor - Bethuel! Abram - forefather, thine and mine.”

      “Laban - Adina,” cried she. “Leah and Rachel! Sisters, cousins, thine!”

They nodded to each other over and over, amid tears, while they came to the conclusion as to the blood relationship between them, through both his parents and through her father. She gave him her cheeks and he kissed her solemnly. Three dogs sprang at them baying, as the creatures do when men, for good or evil, lay hands on each other. The shepherds applauded rhythmically, singing in high head-tones: “Lu, lu, lu!” So he kissed her, first on one cheek then on the other. He forbade his senses to perceive more of her femininity than just the softness of her cheeks, he kissed her reverently; but the friendly darkness of her eyes had bewitched him already, and he felt favoured to have received her kiss at once. Many a one must look longingly, desire and serve, before there would be incredibly vouchsafed to him that which had fallen at once as it were into Jacob’s lap, because he was the cousin from afar. 6

      Look what happens to the dogs and shepherds! The ­energy of the meeting overcomes them too, that is why they are happy, they jump and sing like mad people. The real dialogue always produces a mass of energy and everyone present in the field of energy (in theatre – it’s the spectators) will be affected by it. This kind of Dialogue is constructed on the energy of confluence, contact, striving towards one’s own self-­development and the revelation of the Other; on the ­energy of joy of the transformation of oneself and the other. Without the energy of creation, the energy of revelation, the energy of artistry, there won’t be a dialogue.

      Dialogue is – recognising yourself in another. That is what I discovered in Plato. To unconditionally trust another, as yourself. And yourself, as another. You have seen how the things around us begin to communicate with us, open up their essence to us, show their character, not when they act contrary to our intentions and plans but at the moment that they sense our trust. That is when they begin to reveal their secrets. Then, we understand – a dialogue is being created between us and them! As if the magic words ring out – “We be of one blood, thou and I!” Remember the Jungle Book by Joseph Rudyard Kipling. I remembered those magical words my whole life. The jungle is a difficult battle where each fights for their own survival, and when these words ring out, and the connection opens up, a dialogue begins. Masters know that the violin will never call out if the wood does not trust its creator, bread will not be made if the dough does not trust the baker. The exact same thing happens between us in a dialogue – if there is a mutual trust, then the hidden possi­bilities in us open up. This trust towards each other is what Plato’s dialogues are built on.

      I probably haven’t told you everything that was revealed to me in my teacher Plato’s dialogues. Go to his school. Read his words yourself, speak to him, and I am sure that he will reveal many other secrets to you. You will be persuaded that his dialogues are not only contemporary in their content but are also the best possible school for us actors. Therefore, when you are beginning to work on any form of dialogue, and their exist many and they are very different, remember the great philosopher who first revealed the beauty of Dialogue; remember his main principles of the construction of dialogue which he discovered, and you will be convinced that they can help you to resolve your most difficult tasks.

      And one further piece of advice – don’t forget that Dialogue arose in the heart of the young Greek democracy. Which means that Dialogue significantly helped to build free, democratic relations. It could be built on thorny competitiveness, hard battle, but anyway, it’s foundations were agreement between people. We be of one blood, thou and I! Never forget this. And try to start work on each dialogue from that perspective.

2 Plato (1994), Complete Works [Sobranie socinenija], Anonymous Prolegomena, vol. 4, p. 367. Moscow.

3 R. Müller: Stuttgart zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Stuttgart, 1988. pp. 37

4 Plato, Protagor. 1994, Complete Works [Sobranie socinenija], vol. 1. p. 418. Moscow.

5 Plato, Pir., 1993 Complete Works [Sobranie socinenija], vol. 2. p. 98. Moscow.

6 from Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, 1933, translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter, published by Secker & Warburg, pp. 148-150. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

      3. LABYRINTH OF QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

      Around ten or more years ago, at