Cave of philosophers

The title of Zbigniew Herbert's play refers to Plato's Myth of the Cave, where non-philosophers are likened to prisoners in a cave who can only look in one direction and are always deceived. Vague shadows reach them from the true world of ideas. And only a philosopher can get out of the cave, constantly asking himself questions and looking for answers. Only Socrates has the talent to escape from Herbert's philosophical "Cave" - and only to death.

Because of this amazingly beautiful intertextual weave, skillfully stylized as an ancient drama and interspersed with allusions to classical and Christian texts by Nietzsche, Eliot, Sartre, our anxious "here and now" is constantly seen through: non-perception of otherness, unjust verdicts, premonitions of war, "the same speeches, monuments, prisons — one endless filth."