P RESUPUESTOS DE LA CONSTITUCIONALIZACIÓN Y SU CONCEPTUALIZACIÓN

At the end of 1980s, when the communist system in Europe was slowly collapsing, Krzysztof Kieślowski, with Krzysztof Piesiewicz, wrote and filmed ten episodes of their television series entitled The Decalogue. It was shown on Polish television from the end of 1989 and through the first half of the 1990. It is worth mentioning here that the first episode shown in Polish television was Decalogue 10 on Saturday 24^th June 1989. Then Decalogue 1 was broadcasted almost six months later, on Sunday 10^th December 1989. The rest of the episodes appeared on television another six months later, on Fridays, starting on 11^th May 1990 weekly after that until 29^th June 1990. In this chapter we will discuss all of the ten episodes and their relation to the Ten Commandments.

Kieślowski stated that at the beginning he thought that the Decalogue would just be one more Polish television series. He admitted that he hoped somebody else might buy it but, back then, he did not expect it to be such a success. However, he told Zawiśliński, that he was relentlessly looking for a co-producer who would give him some thirty-five millimetre film reel as he did not like the sixteen-millimetre film used in television. He explained: ‘the sixteen-sixteen-millimetre film reel developed in our technical conditions did not come up to the world standards and as such was unsalable abroad. (…) While endeavouring to get that thirty-five millimetre film I was telling around that I needed it in case somebody from outside Poland will buy it' (Zawiśliński 1994, p. 40).

The idea of writing ten scripts and making a ten-episode television series based on the Ten Commandments came from Krzysztof Piesiewicz. In the interview conducted by Michał Komar, Piesiewicz revealed that the earliest source of The Decalogue was a panel painting exhibited at the National Museum in Warsaw on which 'an unknown master had painted ten generic scenes illustrating the Ten Commandments' (Komar and Piesiewicz 2013, p. 61). While writing the scripts with Kieślowski, Piesiewicz remembered these scenes. He recalled the one illustrating the first commandment 'You shall have no other gods besides me' represented a priest who was cross with some peasants worshipping stone idols. He was holding an aspergillum and was running towards the peasants across a field.

For Piesiewicz the Commandments were not necessarily just orders and proscriptions, but 'propositions' and 'moral sign posts' (ibid, p. 111). He deliberated that 'maybe the Commandments are an expression of concern about the victims of the violation of the law? Don't they appeal to the conscience of the human being endowed with the free will?' (ibid). He recalled that when he met Kieślowski and started to raise these questions with him, Kieślowski was very surprised and then Piesiewicz understood that Kieślowski was pondering the same questions and was amazed that he was not alone.

When asked about his ideas, Piesiewicz admitted that he drew some of them from his legal practise, but most came from books, such as the essays of Simone Weil or Tropy (Traces) by Andrzej Kijowski. He confessed that Decalogue 7 was based on the story of a family, in which the father impregnated his daughter and the whole family pretended that the baby girl was her sister and not her child. Piesiewicz added that he had encountered a few similar cases (ibid, pp. 155-156). He also mentioned his dilemmas regarding the command 'Thou shall not kill' and questioned whether it has an imperative form or rather should be formulated as 'a demand recommending the respect for the human existence' (ibid, p. 217). These doubts, experienced during his work were the source of Decalogue 5 and they reappeared when he was defending some young murderers and he asked himself whether rehabilitation would work for them.

Doubt appeared again when he was acting for the first time as prosecutor during the trial of the three Secret Security policemen accused of the murder of father Jerzy Popiełuszko in 1985. From his interview with Komar (2013, pp.

204-218) it is easy to see that this trial made a big impact on Piesiewicz. Father Jerzy Popiełuszko was tortured and then dumped in Vistula River, still alive, with a rope around his neck. The other end of the rope was knotted around his feet. This way the noose tightened more and more with his every move. Four years later Piesiewicz’ mother was killed in her house in exactly the same way and therefore it is no wonder that he asked himself these questions. He used them while he was co-writing the script of Decalogue 5 and A Short Film About Killing with Kieślowski that would make them both really famous abroad after the screening at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988.

In non-Polish literature there is confusion by the numbering of the Decalogue.

This confusion was caused by the fact that there are two main versions of the Ten Commandments, both based on the Bible (Exodus 20 2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21), but because there are more than just Ten Commandments in each book, different churches in various countries have adopted them differently. Therefore the subject has become confused when addressed in some of the English (Dunkley 1990, Piquet 1992, Garbowski 1996, Coates 1999, Wilson 2000, Žižek 2001, Haltof 2004, Kickasola 2004 or O'Sullivan 2009) and French (Campan 1993) scholars’ work.

The main difference between the different versions of the Ten Commandments is that in some cases the first and second commandments are sometimes merged into number one and number ten is, in some cases, divided into two – number nine and number ten. The third to the tenth commandments in Exodus and Deuteronomy are essentially the same, but numbered differently. On the other hand, the first commandment is the same in both Exodus and the Roman Catholic Catechism, but after that there is a shift between the rest of the Commandments, which is equalised only at the end by the division of the ninth and tenth Commandments in Exodus; one concerning the flesh (wife) and the other one worldly goods (house, field, male or female servant, ox or donkey).

Table 1. The differences between various versions of the Ten Commandments:

Exodus 20 2-17 Deuteronomy 5:6-21 Catechism Formula I am the LORD your God,

4. Remember the

6. You shall not murder. 6. You shall not murder. 6. You shall not commit adultery.

The differing enumerations of the Ten Commandments among various religious traditions is not generally regarded as a doctrinal matter dividing the churches.

Metzger and Coogan in The Oxford Companion to the Bible (1993, p. 737) state that 'the contents of the Ten Commandments are, however, the same for all of the religious communities, despite the differences in their enumeration'.

However, my argument here is that in Poland at the beginning of 1990s everybody knew the Catholic version of the Ten Commandments by heart and there was no need to clarify them. It would be too banal and trivial to do so, as it was obvious to Kieślowski’s Polish audience which episode corresponded to which commandment. This does not change the fact that the films could have still been treated as only a starting point to a deeper reflection about them all

and the connections between them. Therefore stating that both Kieślowski and Piesiewicz did not name the episodes on purpose because the stories did not correspond to the Ten Commandments in any order as seen by Western viewers and critics is an example of historical presentism (Hunt 2002, Markosian 2004). This chapter will later show that there was no problem when Kieślowski and Piesiewicz wrote the ten episodes of The Decalogue, or when they were broadcasted on the Polish television in 1989 and 1990. The difficulty appeared when the series started to be shown in other countries and Western authors started to write about them.

They stated that Kieślowski refused to say which Commandment corresponds with which episode because there is an interconnection between all of them and no one-to-one connection (Dunkley 1990, Piquet 1992). Campan (1993) noticed that there is no episode dedicated to the second Commandment in the book of Exodus – 'You shall not make for yourself a carved image'. Garbowski (1996) highlighted the difference between the Exodus version adopted by Anglicans or Protestants as opposed to the Catechetical version adopted by Catholics or Lutherans, but he still agreed with Dunkley and Piquet that Kieślowski’s episodes do not illustrate the Commandments one by one because 'the presence of the Commandments in the films often escapes the superficial viewer and is at times treated paradoxically’ (ibid, p.15). Coates in Lucid Dreams: The films of Krzysztof Kieślowski (1999) wrote that 'each episode in the ten-film sequence correlates – more or less – with one of the Ten Commandments' (ibid, p. 94). He did remark that Kieślowski followed Roman Catholic Catechism version but believed that 'the multiple reference is enhanced by the disparity between the Catholic system for the Commandments' subdivision (…) and many Protestant ones' (ibid). In the notes to his chapter The Curse of the Law: The Decalogue he quotes Campan and states that she overlooked the second commandment's 'absorption into the first in the Catholic numbering system employed in Kieślowski's native Poland' (ibid, p. 113) and mentions the differences between the Exodus and Deuteronomy versions in the Bible (Appendices 1 and 2). Di Bartolomeo (2000, p. 683) notes that even though the Kieślowski and Piesiewicz 'did not intend a direct one-to-one correlation between the films and the Commandments, there are clear associations, without which the films lose some meaning'.

Coates later stated that ‘the relationship between the commandments and the individual, fifty-minute stories is vexed, as each appears to activate – not necessarily ‘illustrate’ – more than one’ (Coates 2004, p. 269). Indeed, each commandment is connected with another so we can find more than one in each episode, however, the structure of the television series was based on the idea of illustrating each individually. In the chapter ‘Dekalog and The Decalogue’

Coates (ibid, p. 270) writes about the differences between the biblical Ten Commandments and the Deuteronomy version and again states that 'Kieślowski's Dekalog owe more to their Deuteronomic reiteration before the Israelites' entry into the Promised Land' (ibid). He also mentions again that Kieślowski used the Catholic numbering system but gave the Deuteronomy version as an example instead of the version from the Roman Catholic Catechism, which is more accurate. He then discussed this problem further quoting the misconceived theories of Wilson and Žižek described below.

In reality the Ten Commandments consist of more than ten orders, however, Kieślowski and Piesiewicz concentrated on the main ten and illustrated the Commandments one by one, following the formula memorised, from the Roman Catholic Catechism, by every child in Poland. For Polish audiences this was obvious and raised no questions. However, in the Western world and in English-language and French-English-language film criticism many authors have focused on this issue and have been confused by the numbering. It is clear that the English-speaking world tends to be Anglican or Protestant and thus follows the biblical version of the Ten Commandments. Even Coates mentions the Deuteronomy numbering system instead of the version from the Roman Catholic Catechism which is more accurate. Wilson (2000) quotes Dunkley's suggestions that Kieślowski had good reasons for refusing to say which commandment matched which story as he 'was not concentrating exclusively on one commandment in the case of each film' (Dunkley 1990, p. 17). However, Kieślowski did not refuse to say which film relates to which commandment, he simply did not see the need to do so as they were so well known to his Polish audience. Then Wilson mentions Garbowski (1996) and his links with the Catholic and Lutheran sequencing, observing that the English-language translation of the screenplay was prefaced by the Anglican sequencing, which confused English-speaking audiences even more. It is also important to note here that the Catholic and

Lutheran versions also differ – they both lack the commandment about the representation, often referred to as the second commandment but differ in the ninth and tenth commandments, as the Catholic version of the ninth forbids coveting the wife and in Lutheran version – only the house of the neighbour.

Finally Wilson also refers to Coates and mentions the lack of the second commandment from the Bible version: 'You shall not make for yourself a graven image'. She follows Campan’s (1993, p. 15) reasoning that it is paradoxical for the director of images to forget the interdiction of representation. For Wilson The Double Life of Veronique was the missing illustration of the second biblical commandment as 'a pained meditation on the cult of the image in both Eastern and Western Europe' (Wilson 2000, p. 5). However, it should be understood that Kieślowski did not decide to ignore this commandment but that, as he was brought up in a Catholic country, such commandment did not exist for him and was certainly not a part of The Decalogue. Therefore Kieślowski did not forget it, as Campan suggests, as this prohibition of representation, so important to the Protestants, is completely absent in the Catholic Church.

Even though the Bible was fully translated into Polish in sixteenth century and used by the Polish Protestants, it was not widely read by the Catholics. It should be remembered that in Polish Roman Catholic churches masses were still said in Latin until 1967. Therefore Catholics were not encouraged to read the Bible but to listen only to selected passages during mass. This explains how the only Ten Commandments known to them were from the Catechism, that every child had to memorise before they can receive their First Holy Communion sacrament – second to their christening, but the first sacrament that is consciously attended. Without the sacrament of the First Eucharist a worshipper cannot attend other sacraments such as their confirmation at the age of eighteen, matrimony, holy orders, penance and extreme unction. For this reason Kieślowski did not entitle each story with the full Commandment – as his Polish audience could just count and name them themselves (Appendix 4). It is interesting to note that none of these problems were raised in the United States and American critics (Insdorf 1990, Holden 2000, Klawans 2003, McConvey 2006, Wilmington 2006 and 2007) correctly connected the numbers of each episode with the right Commandment.

However, the shift of Annette Insdorf's (1990) point of view concerning this matter is very surprising. In an article for the New York Times she discusses seven of the ten episodes in detail and relates them with the commandments from the Catholic Catechism, even though she did call them 'one-hour dramatizations loosely based on the Ten Commandments' (ibid, p. A 28). And then in 1991 in Double Lives, Second Chances she not only states that 'Kieslowski's reticence about labelling a segment as illustrating a particular commandment reflects his own understanding of the moral principles articulated in Exodus' (Insdorf 2006, p. 124) but also quotes the unpublished work of Columbia University student Rahul Hamid (1997, p. 192) who 'explores the absence of a simple one-to-one correspondence between each Decalogue episode and a commandment'.

Hamid (ibid) states that 'each episode relates to one, or no main Commandment and then few secondary Commandments'. His list of main and secondary Commandments connects no main commandment with Decalogue 6. He states that both Decalogue 1 and 2 portray the first Commandment ('Thou shalt have no other gods before me'); Decalogue 8 two main Commandments – three ('Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain') and nine ('Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor') and Decalogue 10 combines Catechetical Commandment nine and ten, as it is in the Exodus ('Thou shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's') and as secondary Commandments lists the remaining ones from Exodus, excluding number three ('Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain').

Table 2. Hamid's division in Insdorf's book (1997, p. 192):

Nr MAIN SECONDARY

1 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me'

'Honor thy father and thy mother' & 'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image'

2 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me'

'Thou shalt not kill', 'Thou shalt not commit adultery' & 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor'

3 'Remember the Sabbath day, witness against thy neighbor' & 'Thou shalt not kill' 7 'Thou shalt not steal' 'Honor thy father and thy mother' & 'Thou shalt not

bear false witness against thy neighbor' kill', 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy', 'Thou shalt not steal', 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me', 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor', 'Honor thy father and thy mother' & 'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image'

However, Slavoj Žižek's in a chapter entitled Displaced Commandments explains that Kieślowski supposedly decided to change the order of the Commandments by starting with the second Commandment, finishing with the first one and getting rid of number ten, to make number five and six work, in the following way:

Table 3. Žižek's division with 'a shift of gear' (2001, p. 111):

Episode 1 'Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image... For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children'

Exodus 2

Episode 2 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain' Exodus 3 Episode 3 'Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day' Exodus 4 Episode 4 'Honour thy father and thy mother' Exodus 5

Episode 5 'Thou shalt not kill' Exodus 6

Episode 6 'Thou shalt not commit adultery' Exodus 7

Episode 7 'Thou shalt not steal' Exodus 8

Episode 8 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour' Exodus 9 Episode 9 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife' Exodus 10 Episode 10 'Thou shalt have none other Gods but me' Exodus 1

He follows this assertion, conveniently matching his own ideas with the episodes, interpreting the son's death in episode one as God's punishment of the father for using the computer – 'the graven image' (Žižek 2001, p. 112).

Žižek argues that the character of the father must have violated the prohibition to make graven images, using 'a fake-god machine which generates icons' (ibid). Therefore even though Žižek states that 'one should emphasise the strict correlation between the episodes and the Commandments: each instalment refers to only one Commandment' (ibid, p. 111), he does not correlates the episodes with the right commandments from the Roman Catholic Catechism.

Žižek as an atheist was not familiar with the Roman Catholic version and turned his research towards the Bible where in Exodus 20 2-17 he found the version including the commandment prohibiting the graven image and number ten which he reduced only to coveting the wife. However he does briefly consider the correct version, but based on the false hypothesis that the directors must have missed out the second biblical Commandment about the forbidden images, or become absorbed by the first Commandment in the Roman Catholic

Žižek as an atheist was not familiar with the Roman Catholic version and turned his research towards the Bible where in Exodus 20 2-17 he found the version including the commandment prohibiting the graven image and number ten which he reduced only to coveting the wife. However he does briefly consider the correct version, but based on the false hypothesis that the directors must have missed out the second biblical Commandment about the forbidden images, or become absorbed by the first Commandment in the Roman Catholic