Metamorphoses
Q: What does metamorphosis mean for you?
A: Children came up with the idea of calling their scenes and stories metamorphoses. In one of my books, I recorded several original descriptions of their metamorphoses but these represent only a selection of so many the children created. The descriptions in this particular book were chosen in connection with some theme. There are many more recorded stories elsewhere.
Q: Where can these stories be found?
A: On the audio tapes recorded during our six school years. If in the future we have time to transcribe these tapes, people will easily find the stories in the children’s narratives. There are many-many of them.
Q: How come there are so many?
A: Because we prize individual invention and do not evaluate the tasks set by the teacher with the help of marks, as it is customary in traditional schooling. For us, the idea that springs from the child’s imagination is a precious thing, and our children learn this very early through their experience. They rejoice in this and happily communicate their ideas.
Q: Do you accept all of their ideas?
A: All of them.
Q: Even stupid ideas?
A: There is no such thing as a stupid idea. The unusual idea may be the proof of the child’s creativity. Ideas conforming to an adult’s expectations are not original. Many years of experience prompts me to say that children bring more interesting ideas than the ones we adults can think of with our adult minds.
Q. Does this happen already at the beginning of the courses?
A: No. At first they only come up with ideas from a narrower range of imagination, or nothing. A couple of weeks (maybe a month) pass before they learn that their individual ideas are appreciated. That is, that we do not laugh at their unusual ideas.
Q: You mustn’t laugh then?
A: You mustn’t laugh at them, smile at them condescendingly, or wave them off. You mustn’t correct them either. Acceptance is the first condition for the children to be able to communicate their thoughts. All of their ideas are valued.
Q: Even if he or she says something really stupid?
A: Who am I to judge at once, at first hearing? What if it takes a more thorough consideration to see that his or her idea is valuable, only unusual? If I want them to speak bravely, I will have to make them understand that their ideas are important for me.
Q: How can they understand this?
A: From experience. From each and every moment of the class.
Q: Still, how does it all begin?
A: I introduced a reform to our circle-games: the child standing in the middle of the circle changes into something. For example, to the tune of the song “Kis kece lányom” (My graceful little daughter) she will be the little girl’s shoe. Or the ribbon in her hair, or her little lamb, or the sunbeam shining on her, or a reseda.
Q: And if the one about to change into something says he or she is the Danube?
A: I will praise him or her that the little girl in the song has just wanted to have a swim or search for pebbles along the bank. There is always something to be praised.
Q: And if they would like to turn into lions?
A: They often say the lion, it is important for a lot of children to be the king of the animals and roar at their own pleasure.
Q: Can they roar?
A: I usually say: “You were a great lion, but so far we have only heard the voice of the lion. We would like to see it. Can you show us with your movements? Let’s say as if you were approaching the river quietly because you are thirsty.” Then they try this harder task: to experience the lion in its movements. In the meanwhile they pay attention to their movements and forget about the roaring.
Q: Do you try to avoid forbidding them the roaring?
A: Exactly! I try to avoid forbidding anything. To tell them to “do it in this way and not that” would already be controlling them. And if I start to control them, they will start to look for the solutions that please me, since they like me and would like to please me, their teacher.
Q: Isn’t this the objective of teaching, though?
A: No. The objective is their own personal development. They shouldn’t aspire to become like me, but look for their most beautiful character-traits and qualities.
Q: Still, you would like to influence them somehow, wouldn’t you?
A: Of course I would, not only with my words, but through my emotions, thoughts, my whole being. That is why I am their teacher. I would like to influence them with the culture I bring to them, too, since I bring them Bach, Bartók and the most beautiful folksongs: everything I think important and everything that helps my being develop. I do my best to be accepted by them as I accept them.
Q: Do they accept everything in you?
A: I don’t know. Perhaps not, perhaps they discover and reject my weaknesses.
Q: What do you do at those times?
A: If they say it, I will hug them. Perhaps they will notice if I have managed to correct some of my mistakes and overcome some of my weaknesses, and they will appreciate my effort. Metamorphoses provide a good opportunity for this.
Q: Could you give an example?
A: I used to be scared all my life that when my mother dies her body will be eaten by worms and bugs in the grave. It was a horrible thought, the nightmare that made me wake up in the middle of the night. Once we were dancing to some beautiful Bach piece and Orsi who understood me wonderfully came up to me and danced with me moving her fingers around me. All around my body and even my legs, but she did not touch me. At the end of the dance she said: “I was a myriad cute bugs and cheerful worms who were feasting on you”. I never spoke to anybody about my fear, not to my pupils, naturally. Orsi must have been eight at the time.
Q: Do metamorphoses lead on some path towards the transcendent?
A: They do, but they are also one of the important components of the child’s being. All parents know this from the games of their children, that is, what we consider games. Sándor Török writes about this beautifully, for example, he recounts the metamorphoses of the five-year-old Máté to which he could assist.
Q: Why don’t schools make use of children’s’ metamorphoses?
A: Some of them do, but it is difficult to accommodate, since, as we know, Marxist philosophy used to prohibit such things.
Q: Prohibit them?
A: Once, sometime in the seventies, I prepared a presentation class for a nursery-school inspectors, a live presentation with nursery-school children whom I saw there and then for the first time. We played about an hour starting from one of the nice songs from Kodály’s Songs of Little People: “From below the reed, from below the fog, from the water-castle there is a song playing, / Outside the smooth meadow hears the song of the frog-king”. We sang the song many-many times because the ones who were invited by the frog-king had to turn into different kinds of frogs in the middle of the circle. There was a frog-princess, a frog-chef, a frog-driver, all sorts of imaginable frogs because all the children were invited. We were having a great time, even had a bit of a romp at the end, and finally managed to fall quiet again, so I sat down before the inspectors happily. I was immediately rebuked by one of them for my grave mistake: children can’t turn into frogs, they can only behave as if they were frogs.
Q: What did you answer?
A: I answered modestly that children never “behave as if,” but they metamorphose in most of their games. Around that time the unforgettable Éva Szabó, the radio presenter who could understand children best, came to one of my classes and conversed with Eszter about the dance of the maybeetles. Their conversation disclosed that Eszter was dancing as a long-winged maybeetle to Händel’s music, and she withdrew her wings right at the end of the piece. This way she could hide behind a leaf at the right time, before a blackbird would have eaten her. Eszter was describing her fear and her skill in hiding convincingly. Éva received the story as a partner, it was worth sharing even the emotional overtones with her.
Q: Could you convince the inspectors?
A: I could not have convinced them but maybe I helped them to remember their childhood. But even if they had memories, they would not nor could not speak of them. In a system informed by an obligatory ideology there are no private opinions.
Q: Are metamorphoses characteristic of children only?
A: Thank God, no. Poetry, art, could not do without it. It is the heavenly likeness of reality.
Q: Only creative artists can take part in metamorphoses?
A: No. I believe everybody can, but it is more difficult for those who have gotten rid of the creative pleasures of childhood and made themselves comfortable in their everyday routines.
Q: Do you let parents join the metamorphosis-games?
A: Of course I do. In the past few years this has not been a problem, they join the game with pleasure.
Q: Was it a problem earlier?
A: Twenty years ago the director of the cultural centre called me in his office and told me off for letting parents in my nursery-school music classes. There weren’t many parents attending though, since most of them did not want to come in and went shopping or smoked cigarettes outside.
Q: Why was it a problem that they went in?
A: That is exactly what I asked. He then started to lecture me that following the example I set they would ask to go to other classes, to the ballet or gymnastics courses, and they would disturb the course-leader.
Q: Did you obey him?
A: No. Those who wanted to come in could come in. At that time the participation of adults was not so intensive as years later in the Budapest Cultural Centre where I taught groups for so many years and developed a way to accommodate parents who would like to participate. I learnt what to look out for and how to prevent certain things.
Q: What did you have to prevent?
A: I had to prevent them from talking. When there is music, there is no talking: my children easily learn this rule but adults don’t. They would have chatted happily if I had let them. But this is a small detail. The most important thing was that they are prepared spiritually to participate.
Q: What kind of spiritual preparation are you referring to?
A: Singing and listening to music are the preconditions and circumstances of metamorphoses in our classes, there is a need, therefore, for complete attention. I have written several times about complete attention, I have explained it in several chapters and articles. It is a state of the soul, and the prerequisite of all creative activities, of child-rearing (in my opinion) as well as of listening to a concert. It must be the precondition of a successful healing process, too. When children receive music in our classes, they learn complete attention. If adults want to participate in this experience they will have to learn the same thing.
Q: Together with their own children?
A: Not only with their own children, but with the children of others, too. It is very important that they bring their soul to other children’s performances, encouraging them and giving them strength. It is even better if they are not envious of other children’s success, their outstanding performances. They should not wish their own children would be the best.
Q: But this is impossible! How can you require such a thing?
A: It is not impossible. We felt such things in our community that had formed for years. Not always, of course. But there were some occasions when we experienced what sublime pleasure is, pleasure which leaves behind selfish thoughts and envy. Once you experience such things you would like to relive them. Children feel similarly about their metamorphoses. They experience them again and again. They would like to relive them.
Q: Are you saying you must not be selfish in order to experience pleasure?
A: In our classes this is true. In the first part of our classes there is group dancing, everybody moves at their own pleasure, alone or with partners they chose. After several repetitions I ask: “Who would like to dance a solo?” They are out shouting each other: “I do, I do!”. They are happy if they can show themselves, and if we watch them attentively. We play short pieces of music, they are one or at most two minutes long, so there is time for several solos.
Q: Do the others watch the solo patiently?
A: I work a lot on this common attention: it needs deep empathy and a lot of patience. Of course all children expect us to watch their dance with distinguished attention. One of the most important results of my pedagogic work is that my advanced nursery-school classes become capable of this. Knowing, of course, that sooner or later they would all have their turns. If not today, then next time for sure.
Q: How do you discipline?
A: Well, not with the usual prohibitions by all means. I have many tricks for making them quiet, but “listen to me!” is not among them. I do say “I always listen to you when you ask for something, don’t I?” Since this is true, it works. My true method is, however, the pleasurable experience of metamorphosis. It is only from these experiences that they can learn that the silence before the music has a meaning, that listening to music is interesting and good, and that the metamorphoses coming from it lead to a spiritual renewal.
Q: Can children realize the experience of spiritual renewal?
A: Oh my God, what a question! Nobody can experience spiritual renewal more intensely than children. One of the most beautiful scenes of our latest family film is when we see the four-month-old Matyi by the cello of Katalin Masopoust as he is enjoying Bach’s solo-sonata. Those of us who were there could hear as Matyi talked to the artist as the music stopped. He encouraged her with a fantastically beautiful cooing. Thus the piece was repeated many times, Katalin was playing more and more profoundly to the baby lying in the basket near her. We could witness the most beautiful moments of metamorphosis then.
Q: Aren’t all metamorphoses related to some content?
A: Not necessarily. A metamorphosis has a course like the rainbow’s arch in the sky. It starts down close to earthly things like when one turns into a frog-princess or the grandma of mice or the buds of a briar. We relate ourselves to song, music, some kind of specifiable content. True, we can relate to fabled content, too, the house may be made of snowflakes or petals, polliwogs may live in a crystal palace, a magic steed may turn into a mallard in the blink of an eye. But our metamorphoses through music may lift us up to different, unknown heights to a place where something like “burning bush” that one has always believed in and hoped for shall appear.
Q: Does this happen often?
A: Rarely even within a lifetime. Still, how we would like to experience it, wouldn’t we! We are hoping secretly in our hearts. Perhaps today? If I could go somewhere where it finds me? Will I find it in travelling? Will I find it in a sunset at sea? In a church-service? In a concert? In pictures or poems? In the arms of my love? We try here and there.
Q: Will we find it?
A: Not by order. It is a gift, a grace. We have the hope to find it, though, if we approach the sources humbly. Bach’s music is such a mysterious source as the four-month-old Matyi recognized.
Note:
Klára Kokas: “Gólya, gilice” (“Stork, turtle-dove” (Hungarian folk song)) and imagination. (excerpt)
A child will always be resourceful in metamorphoses. He or she will find out something personal, unusual, funny; by praising him or her you make your children understand that this is a place where their individual ideas are prized. Once they realize this masses of their ideas will come! It is important that these ideas shouldn’t only be said in words, but performed with their bodies. They don’t “play” or “act” as an adult would do, but they turn into tiny ants or crouching panthers “who would not hurt the little storks, just came to see them” as one of my four-year-olds found out. Imagination is flying on vast fields here gathering honey from unpredictable flowers and bringing small, highly significant seeds from secret nests.