The Multifaceted Sverkhzadacha : How Stanislavsky Contradicts Himself

Abstract

Sverkzadacha (superobjective, supertask) is a key term in Stanislavsky’s system and, arguably, the most troublesome. His scattered remarks are ambiguous, metaphorical, and often contradictory, and his direct explanations are unacceptable when they run counter to the overall course of his teaching, promoting or even imposing general, flat formulas that easily turn into clichés. This essay attempts to collect, structure, and analyse Stanislavsky’s instructions and notes on the topic, rejecting objectivist interpretations of the supertask and finally arriving at the ground of contemporary neuroscience. As in many other cases, Stanislavsky’s practice and reflection gave him insights into the workings of human consciousness that he could not formulate in the categories of his time. Now, the pursuit of the sverkhzadacha he describes strongly resembles the operation of human awareness towards the greatest possible homoeostasis in the given conditions and against the given challenges, as described by Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tononi. Even Stanislavsky’s ambiguities reflect the dynamic character of such a pursuit: his contradictions delineate the polarized dimensions of the space in which an organism seeks balance. The overall situation, in which the striving takes place, changes in every moment and is so complicated that it eludes any categorization and, hence, verbalization. It is therefore unrepeatable, and for the conscious mind, it appears as an overarching quale, which is again consistent with Edelman and Tononi’s hypotheses.