Bruno, Bruno Stroszek. Everything is concentrated in his figure. All the secrets of the world, of the end of the world. Everything that is to happen, that will happen. Fate, the secret of fate.
He speaks of himself in the third person, which is already a sign. In the third person as if he were also someone else, another person, away from him. As though he were already away from himself, displaced. As though he somehow happened to himself, as all events happen to him. As though he suffered himself, befell himself, lived – and died – as his own fate; no – as fate, not his own fate. As fate.
Bruno suffers … he suffers in advance of whatever will happen to him. He's a kind of prophet, but what sees is doom, not salvation. He knows in advance that it's all going to fail. We're going down: he knows that. The descent has begun: that he knows.
He's not even resigned – that's not the word for it. It's not as if he knows his fate and then resigns himself to it. He's not a man dead in advance. All hope has not been hollowed from him. It's rather that hope, his hope takes place amidst fate.
He knows it will end, that it's all coming to an end, but he hopes nonetheless. He hopes nevertheless, against himself and against fate. He can still enter into life, or at least part of him can. But there's another part, which is what he speaks of in the third person. It's why he speaks of himself in the third person, he must do. Because what he is is divided, there where he should be one. Divided, right there, as hope and despair are divided …
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