Jestem teatrem w lesie...

Abstract

In the foregoing article author has presented the symbolic dissection of the Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog. The director set the film's action in the place, in which the world of the culture is the next-door neighbour to the uncontrollable nature. The man functioning like a distorting mirror, in which all the passions and fears of the old world are clearly reflected, has become Herzog's main character. He is the mad man who, thanks to his own insanity, can transmute into a "conveyor" of the most dignified and respected values. The title character of the film tries to transport an opera into Peruvian jungle. The idea isn not irrational at all, as it initially seems. The whole conception is deeply rooted in his symbolic instinct. In order to overcome the vital forces of nature and transform civilization into wild uninhabited areas, Fitzcarraldo refers to the ceremony taking place in the very centre of his own world - the opera. Fitzcarraldo treats it like a ritual re-creating mythological events; the particular rite being able to consecrate wilderness and primeval character of this land and set the chaos in order. Only God's voice can give all the things their name, differentiate and create the world itself. That is why, Fitzcarraldo concludes, it is necessary to introduce God into the jungle in the shape of Enrico Caruso's divine voice. At the climax of his journey Fitzcarraldo reaches the point from which further road is bared by the hill mounted over two rivers. To get to its summit Fitzcarraldo begs a tribe of Amazonian Indians for help. From the point of view of these autochthons this enterprise is equally mythical and sacred method of rejuvenating the reality. It is also an act of introducing a stranger derived from the other world of Heavenly Vehicle to the mountaintop - axis mundi. In conclusion author of the article tries to explain that Herzog by using his film, displays the wholly new version of the myth concerning travel into beyond. Languages of symbol and myth in Herzog's work of art are the perfect way to describe the variety and complexity of the worlds, which we constantly create and inexhaustibly exceed.