The coexistence of the grotesque and politics – Tom Stoppard’s Squaring the Circle

Abstract

The article discusses Tom Stoppard’s screenplay Squaring the Circle presenting Polish history between August 1980 and August 1982, that is the period of the strikes on the coast, the rise of the Free Independent Trade Union Solidarity and the introduction of the marshal law by general Wojciech Jaruzelski. Being aware of the fact that it is not possible to fully reconstruct the past, the artist uses a number of disclaimers – the Narrator who often claims that reality might have been slightly different, fi ve Witnesses, who often correct him, presentation of different versions of the same scene and numerous symbols (chess, card games, references to gangsters). While dealing with serious, political matters Stoppard employs the grotesque, a specifi c combination of th e tragic and the comic which is one of the characteristic features of postmodern literature and also of the theatre of the absurd. The article briefl y mentions the similarities in the use of grotesque in Stoppard’s screenplay and the political plays of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Sławomir Mrożek, the artists who are also often discussed as representatives of the theatre of the absurd.