Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 12 Number 3, December 2011
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ALL OR NOTHING
by Bruce Sarbit
at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, 2011
when Harry Nelken plays Miguel de Unamuno
in his cell after eleven weeks, each week presented
with a document to sign in support of Franco
he performs in the good old way. He uses to the full
his voice to modulate and to enlarge, to whisper
and to shift characters when Unamuno quotes. His stances
and gestures are often histrionic, angular and bombastic
- like the sculpture at Salamanca by Pablo Serrano –
forming the marriage of sensuality and Platonism
body and idea, that delivers flamenco, falangist
and anarchist, the allure of duende, life on the edge
Harry takes on Miguel’s difficulties and delivers
his resistance to barbarism, his faith that renewal cannot happen
through death (creative destruction is a murderous delusion)
though it could mean that you’ll have to die in the fight
against forces of Death, hoping to be remembered while risking
death swallowing all your traces. All that could be left is
a burning manuscript. The odds may be on the side of darkness
yet life must be played for all or nothing unless you want to settle
for nothing and not play at all.
Harry’s large Miguel gestures and big voice
calls to memory that, “If it is nothingness that awaits us
let us make an injustice of it; let us fight against destiny
even without hope of victory.”