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1

Nadobny komisarz Mandelbaum

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Pawlak P.

Pamiętnik Teatralny

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2016

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vol. 65

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issue 4(260)

91-112

EN

Why is it that The Shoemakers is considered to be a drama about revolution, even though, if we take into account all the surviving plays by Witkacy, it is Dainty Shapes and Hairy Apes that is most imbued with allusions to the Petrograd revolt that occurred a hundred years ago? The story unfolding on stage seems at times to be a parody of the attack on the Winter Palace. The brave and uncompromising girl-soldier Sophia kills Tarquinius and Pandeus, makes Sir Grant commit suicide, and pushes and taunts the group of Forty Mandelbaums beyond endurance to finally fall victim to their rage. In 1917, a certain Bernard Mandelbaum (1888–1953), son of a Lublin merchant, a Polish philologist sympathising with Communism, a journalist of Promień, and the ideological and literary manager of the People’s Theatre in Petrograd became one of two Bolshevik commissars of state museums and art collections in Petrograd and was additionally tasked with investigating the fate of the Women’s Battalion that defended the Winter Palace. In recognition of his questionable contribution to the revolutionary cause, Stalin appointed Mandelbaum to the post of Education Commissioner of the Committee for the Kingdom of Poland. Being on vacation following his injury during the battle on the Stokhod River, Witkacy might have got to know Mandelbaum though mutual acquaintances or might have seen him speak out at political rallies. Mandelbaum came back to the re-emerging Poland to campaign against the Soviet–Polish War, for which he got arrested. After his release, Mandelbaum landed a school teaching position. In the interwar period, having assumed the name “Stefan Drzewiecki,” and later “Drzewieski”, he rose to prominence as Vice-President of the Polish Teachers’ Association and a member of the State Council for Public Enlightenment. Despite being attacked, he supported the Jędrzejewicz reform of education of the Sanation government. After the outbreak of the Second World War, Mandelbaum worked in General Sikorski’s government administration in London, and in 1945 he joined the diplomatic service of the People’s Republic of Poland. After a few years, he decided to stay in the West and managed to become Chief of the Reconstruction Department of UNESCO. In that capacity, he greatly contributed to the foundation of the International Federation of Children’s Communities (FICE) whose first task was to establish a committee supporting directors of children’s communities for war orphans.

2

Cztery noty o Witkacym

85%

Degler J.

Pamiętnik Teatralny

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2016

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vol. 65

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issue 4

113-139

EN

Four notes on Witkacy’s biography. 1. Did Witkacy Intend to Return to the Tropics? On 9 April 1918, Maria Witkiewiczowa, Witkacy’s mother, sent a postcard to her friend, Leon Chwistek’s sister, with an information that Witkacy was planning to return to Poland from Petrograd or to travel to Sumatra. Though fascinated with tropical wildlife and nature, after his travel with Malinowski in 1914, which has influenced his painting and other creative work, in July 1918 Witkacy returned to Poland and described his Ceylon experiences in the reportage Podróż do Tropików (A Voyage to the Tropics). 2. The Puzzle of Prologue to Pentemychos i Jej Niedoszły Wychowanek. The Jadwiga Witkiewiczowa archive contains a single page with a German-language piece of verse which is a fragment of the prologue of the now lost play Pentemychos i Jej niedoszły wychowanek (Pentemychos and Her Would-be Pupil), written at the beginning of 1920. The surviving fragment probably comes from a translation that Witkacy commissioned from a friend in 1922, after meeting in Zakopane with Ms. Eckert who promised to recommend his plays to a theatre producer in Hamburg. 3. Witkacy “Honeycombed with Childishness,” or a DIY Way of Improving One’s Kaleidoscope. Witkacy had been a passionate collector since childhood. He collected walking sticks and various curios, which he put in his “albums of curiosities.” For a kaleidoscope, his favorite toy, he wrote a detailed funny manual. 4. Grotowski and Witkacy. As a student of the Cracow theatre school, Jerzy Grotowski planned to put on The Shoemakers at Wawel in 1958/59. Since the plan was not approved, Grotowski dropped out of school and went to Opole where he became the artistic manager of the 13 Rzędów Theatre. When asked whose portrait he would hang up in his directorial office, Grotowski mentioned Witkacy along with three other “martyrs” of the theatre: Artaud, Meyerhold, and Stanislavsky.

PL

Cztery uwagi do biografii Witkacego. 1. Czy Witkacy zamierzał wrócić do tropików? 9 kwietnia 1918 roku Maria Witkiewiczowa, matka Witkacego, wysłała pocztówkę do swojej przyjaciółki, siostry Leona Chwistka, z informacją, że Witkacy planuje powrót z Piotrogrodu do Polski lub podróż na Sumatrę. Choć zafascynowany tropikalną przyrodą i naturą, po podróży z Malinowskim w 1914 roku, która wpłynęła na jego malarstwo i inną twórczość, w lipcu 1918 roku Witkacy wrócił do Polski i opisał swoje cejlońskie doświadczenia w reportażu Podróż do Tropików. 2. Zagadka Prologu do Pentemychosa i Jej Niedoszłego Wychowanka. W archiwum Jadwigi Witkiewiczowej zachowała się jedna kartka z niemieckojęzycznym wierszem będącym fragmentem prologu zaginionej sztuki Pentemychos i Jej niedoszły wychowanek, która powstała na początku 1920. Zachowany fragment pochodzi prawdopodobnie z tłumaczenia, które Witkacy zamówił u przyjaciela w 1922, po spotkaniu w Zakopanem z panią Eckert, która obiecała polecić jego sztuki producentowi teatralnemu w Hamburgu. 3. Witkacy „dzieckiem podszyty”, czyli jak samemu ulepszyć kalejdoskop. Witkacy od dziecka był zapalonym kolekcjonerem. Zbierał laski i różne osobliwości, które umieszczał w swoich "albumach osobliwości". Dla kalejdoskopu, swojej ulubionej zabawki, napisał szczegółową zabawną instrukcję. 4. Grotowski i Witkacy. Jako student krakowskiej szkoły teatralnej Jerzy Grotowski planował wystawienie Szewców na Wawelu w 1958/59 roku. Ponieważ plan nie został zaakceptowany, Grotowski rzucił szkołę i wyjechał do Opola, gdzie został kierownikiem artystycznym Teatru 13 Rzędów. Zapytany o to, czyj portret powiesiłby w swoim dyrektorskim gabinecie, Grotowski wymienił Witkacego wraz z trzema innymi „męczennikami” teatru: Artaudem, Meyerholdem i Stanisławskim.

3

Witkacy na scenach polskich 1990–2015

85%

Pawlak P.

Pamiętnik Teatralny

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2016

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vol. 65

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issue 4

140-210

EN

The inventory of performances based on Witkacy's texts produced on Polish stages between 1990 and 2015 includes 282 entries in chronological order. Included are both stagings of theatrical works: dramas, self-parodies and juvenilia, as well as novels, poetic, theoretical, philosophical and journalistic texts, and also performances based on still found and published correspondence and motifs from Witkacy's life. In the introduction to the inventory, the author analyzes and discusses the most important tendencies in the approach of theater artists to Witkacy's works.

PL

Spis przedstawień zrealizowanych na podstawie tekstów Witkacego na scenach polskich w latach 1990–2015 obejmuje 282 pozycje w układzie chronologicznym. Uwzględniono zarówno inscenizacje dzieł scenicznych: dramatów, autoparodii i juweniliów, jak i powieści, tekstów poetyckich, teoretycznych, filozoficznych, publicystycznych, a także spektakle oparte na wciąż odnajdowanej i publikowanej korespondencji oraz motywach z życia Witkacego. We wstępie do spisu autor analizuje i omawia najważniejsze tendencje w podejściu twórców teatralnych do twórczości Witkacego.

4

Żal mi tropików…

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Sztaba W.

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2014

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vol. 68

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issue 3-4(306-307)

377-382

EN

The text follows the traces of the journey to the tropics made by Bronisław Malinowski and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz.

5

Cztery noty o Witkacym

80%

Degler J.

Pamiętnik Teatralny

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2016

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vol. 65

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issue 4(260)

113-139

EN

The monographic issue of Pamiętnik Teatralny (1985, vols 1–4) devoted to S. I. Witkiewicz on the centennial of his birth, an occasion noted in the UNESCO Calendar of Anniversaries of Great Personalities and Events, featured a text by Jan Kott which comprised six Notes. Each of them had a title and indicated possible sources of inspiration of some works, i.a. The Water Hen, which is ridden with motifs characteristic for modernist dramaturgy, e.g. Lulu by Frank Wedekind. Kott concluded his notes by asserting: “Witkacy the modernist, the historical, anachronistic and decadent one, is still waiting for his director and for his appearance on stage.” It has been fifteen years since Jan Kott passed away on 23 December 2001. These four notes have been written in his memory. 1. Did Witkacy Intend to Return to the Tropics? On 9 April 1918, Maria Witkiewiczowa, Witkacy’s mother, sent a postcard to her friend, Leon Chwistek’s sister, reporting that she had received a letter from her son in Petrograd with the news that he was planning “to return to Poland or to travel to Sumatra.” Enclosed with the letter was the now famous “Multiple Portrait” photograph. Witkacy’s travel with Bronisław Malinowski to the tropics, which began in June 1914 and ended in October of the same year when Witkacy arrived in Petrograd, was an important experience for Witkacy and influenced his painting and other creative work (stories of several of his plays were set in the tropics). Though fascinated with tropical wildlife and nature, like Gauguin and several other artists, he decided not to go to Sumatra; instead, he returned to Poland in July 1918 and described his Ceylon experiences in the reportage “Podróż do Tropików” (‘A Voyage to the Tropics’) that appeared in Echo Tatrzańskie (1919). 2. The Puzzle of Prologue to Pentemychos i Jej Niedoszły Wychowanek The Jadwiga Witkiewiczowa archive contains a single page with a German-language piece of verse which is a fragment of the prologue of the now lost play Pentemychos i Jej niedoszły wychowanek (‘Pentemychos and Her Would-be Pupil’). Witkacy wrote it at the beginning of 1920 and sent its copy to Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz in September 1921 suggesting that it be put on for the opening of the Elsynor Theatre founded by members of the Skamander group. There was, however, no actress to perform the “wonderful female part,” and only the premiere of The Pragmatists took place (29 Dec. 1921). In 1922, while in Zakopane, Witkacy met Ms. Eckert of Hamburg; he gave her a copy of The Water Hen, and she promised to recommend it to a theatre producer in Hamburg. Probably the hope for success of her mission spurred Witkacy to entrust one of his friends with translating Pentemychos i Jej niedoszły kochanek into German. The anticipated Hamburg premiere never panned out. The surviving fragment of the Prologue is probably a part of the aforementioned translation. 3. Witkacy “Honeycombed with Childishness,” or a DIY Way of Improving One’s Kaleidoscope Witkacy had a great sense of humour and exceptional acting talents; he liked putting on a show to spice things up for himself and his friends; he had been known to surprise those around him by making “monstrous faces” and acting in an unconventional way. He had been a passionate collector since childhood. He collected walking sticks and various curios, which he put in his “albums of curiosities.” He was always on the lookout for fun. His favourite toy was a kaleidoscope. He wrote a detailed manual on how to improve it so that anyone could change the images it produced whenever they liked. 4. Grotowski and Witkacy As a student of the Cracow theatre school, Jerzy Grotowski planned to put on The Shoemakers at Wawel in the school year of 1958-59. The school authorities did not approve, and as a result, Grotowski dropped out of school and went to Opole where he became the artistic manager of the 13 Rzędów Theatre. In his first productions, he harked back to the tradition of the Romantics and to Witkacy (i.a. in Kain). When the editorial board of Teatr asked him whose portrait he would hang up in his directorial office, Grotowski replied that it would be of four “martyrs” of the theatre: Artaud, Witkacy, Meyerhold, and Stanislavsky. He was also interested in Witkacy’s theatrical experiences during his stay in Russia in 1914–1918. This issue is, however, still open, requiring archival research.

6

Witkiewiczowie w Lovranie

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Bocheński T.

Przestrzenie Teorii

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2010

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issue 14

203-213

EN

The essay explores a theme of differences between the two Witkiewiczes – father and son. These disparities concern lifestyle, ethics, politics and art. The father wanted his son to realize his own ideas of art. In the son’s opinion the father’s idea had failed and in turn he invented an even more radical aesthetics. Lovran is a place where the basic categories of Witkacy’s theory of Pure Form were formulated.

PL

Bocheński Tomasz, Witkiewiczowie w Lovranie [The Two Witkiewiczes in Lovran]. „Przestrzenie Teorii” 14. Poznań 2010, Adam Mickiewicz University Press, pp. 203-213. ISBN 978-83-232-2210-1. ISSN 1644-6763. The essay explores a theme of differences between the two Witkiewiczes – father and son. These disparities concern lifestyle, ethics, politics and art. The father wanted his son to realize his own ideas of art. In the son’s opinion the father’s idea had failed and in turn he invented an even more radical aesthetics. Lovran is a place where the basic categories of Witkacy’s theory of Pure Form were formulated.

7

Deformacja, rzeczywistość i „Szewcy”

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Ziomek J.

Przestrzenie Teorii

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2010

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issue 14

287-303

PL

brak

8

„Witkacy rzucił się jak szczerbaty na suchary” Witkiewicz w czasie pierwszej wojny światowej

80%

Okołowicz S.

Przestrzenie Teorii

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2010

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issue 14

235-249

EN

This text is a polemic with an article by Maria A. Potocka “Ja” jako materiał twórczy [“I”as a material for creation]. When considering the problem of the presence of Witkacy in the Tsarist army, the author comes to a conclusion that Witkiewicz went there where he did not intend to go, misled by inaccurate information. The choice of the Russian opportunity based on incomplete or untrue information and unsuccessful coincidences – according to the author – should be considered in the categories of Witkacy’s personal tragedy no matter what significance this fact gained later.

PL

Okołowicz Stefan, „Witkacy rzucił się jak szczerbaty na suchary”. Witkiewicz w czasie pierwszej wojny światowej [“Witkacy darted like a gap-toothed person onto rusk”. Witkiewicz during the First World War]. „Przestrzenie Teorii” 14. Poznań 2010, Adam Mickiewicz University Press, pp. 235-249. ISBN 978-83-232-2210-1. ISSN 1644-6763. This text is a polemic with an article by Maria A. Potocka “Ja” jako materiał twórczy [“I”as a material for creation]. When considering the problem of the presence of Witkacy in the Tsarist army, the author comes to a conclusion that Witkiewicz went there where he did not intend to go, misled by inaccurate information. The choice of the Russian opportunity based on incomplete or untrue information and unsuccessful coincidences – according to the author – should be considered in the categories of Witkacy’s personal tragedy no matter what significance this fact gained later

9

Pocztówki z piekła. Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz w Paryżu 1908

80%

Sztaba W.

Pamiętnik Teatralny

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2016

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vol. 65

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issue 4(260)

55-70

EN

We know little about Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz’s stay in Paris in the spring of 1908; we do not know the letters to his father where he probably reported what he experienced there, and the correspondent letters by his father contain few traces of such reports. Traces of the stay have, however, made their way to his literary creations: he recounted his impressions of his encounter with the new painting in The 622 Downfalls of Bungo, whereas The Beelzebub Sonata contains evidence of his visits to Paris cabarets, particularly to L’Enfer and Le Néant. The playwright suggests that the Hell of Acts 2 and 3 is to resemble a cabaret in Paris—and a little Budapestian—or in Rio (Salon di Gioja), but mostly Parisian, which he repeats in the play on numerous occasions, including the opening-scene stage directions where he emphasises, importantly, the general atmosphere of demonic tackiness of such entertainment establishments. Reading contemporary reports and looking at old postcards and photographs of the cabarets’ interiors one can see just what Witkacy meant by tackiness. And one can imagine an atmosphere he strove for in the stage setting for The Beelzebub Sonata. Knowing Witkacy’s penchant for the macabre, one can guess that he visited the Grand-Guignol Theatre. And probably the Musée Grévin, too. While Witkacy stayed in Paris, a theatrical event of great importance—the greatest importance, indeed, from today’s point of view—took place. The Antoine Theatre gave two performances of Ubu Roi by Jarry with Firmin Gémier. They were only afternoon performances, but they were widely publicised. Did Witkacy take notice? Twenty years later, Ubu Roi cropped up, perhaps as a reminiscence from Paris, in his letter to Edmund Wierciński, where he recommended some plays for the repertory: “By the French, Roi Ubu, I don’t recall the author’s name.”

10

Tuwim and Witkacy: Visual Translation of 'Kalinowe dwory'

80%

Polit P., Museum of Art in Lodz, p.polit@msl.org.com

Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica

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2016

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vol. 36

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issue 6

EN

The article offers a comparative analysis of a lost painting by Witkacy (know only from a photographic reproduction) and a poem by Julian Tuwim. Tuwim’s poem inspired Witkacy to create his work. The poem is used by the author as a model for interpreting philosophical aspects of Witkacy’s painterly composition, offering a concluding remark that the visual translation of the poem reflects Witkacy’s aesthetic philosophy. The article also provides an new way of reading Tuwim’s poetry in which the painterly aspect of his writing is being particularly exposed.

11

What is still not known about Witkacy’s Intertextuality? An Analysis of Witkacy and Słowacki

80%

Skwara M.

Estetyka i Krytyka

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2013

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issue 4(31)

221-236

EN

The author addresses the extent to which Witkacy’s work should be seen in relation to Romantic playwright Juliusz Słowacki who began the Artistic Theater in Poland according to Witkacy’s own words. While subsequent creators of Artistic Theatre, especially Stanisław Wyspiański, the author of symbolic national dramas, attracted much attention among Witkacy scholars, Słowacki has been barely mentioned in the context of Witkacy theatre. The author compares Słowacki’s Kordian with Witkacy’s John Mathew Charles the Furious and concludes that both the protagonists’ dilemmas and their self-referential statements are profoundly connected. In addition, the author presents an analysis of both Słowacki’s and Witkacy’s treatment of the motifs of ‘Violence’ ‘A Corpse’ ‘A Dream’ and ‘A Ghost.’ It is argued that Witkacy deconstructs national myths and pushes romantic imagination to the limits, developing elements of romantic fantasy bordering on surrealism typical of Słowacki into modern surrealistic theatre.

12

Witkacy’s Amusia

80%

Bocheński T., University of Lodz F. o. P., tomasz07@wp.pl

Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica

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2016

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vol. 38

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issue 8

EN

Witkacy suffered from amusia as a child and as an adult person. He was seriously interested in music only for a little over twenty years (1890–1914?). He wrote his main works as an amusic. The relation between amusia and metaphysical feelings may suggest that Witkacy wrote dramas and created painting compositions in order to evoke the lost strangeness of being. Amusia could have also been the reason for Witkacy’s ambiguity – he was defending and degrading high art at the same time.

13

Zakryte Zaryte, czyli zakopiańszczyzna na styku kultur. Dygresje na marginesie lektury Witkacego

80%

Łoboz M.

Góry, Literatura, Kultura

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2016

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vol. 10

187-195

EN

The article is an attempt to describe the cultural phenomenon of Zakopane in the early 20th century on the basis of Witkacy’s Pożegnanie jesieni [Farewell to Autumn]. In the dynamic and multi-layered plot of his novel Witkacy, emotionally involved but also with his usual sarcastic and critical distance, presents a collection of characters who make up a collective model of a specific group of residents of Zakopane set against the background of a clearly defined mountain space (the action of the novel takes place in Zakopane). The key motifs of the novel correspond to the narcotic Zakopane demonism — a style characteristic of the Zakopane culture at the turn of the centuries and using the legend and creative capital of the Young Poland movement in the Tatras. An important plane bringing together the protagonists’ sentimental sublimations in the novel is music as a universal form of art, using the power of sound, i.e. communication tool available to all sensitive recipients. Two protagonists compose and perform it (Żelisław Smorki and Prince Azalin Prepudrech), others listen to it. Smorski is a pupil of Karol Szymanowski (who lived in Zakopane at the time); the name of the composer recurs several times, which testifies to the author’s intention to make his literary fiction credible. The model of the protagonists’ pianistic interpretation also draws on the virtuoso method of Egon Petri, who in the inter-war period ran his own piano school in Zakopane.

14

Witkacy na wrocławskich scenach lalkowych

80%

Suszczyński K.

Pamiętnik Teatralny

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2017

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vol. 66

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issue 1-2(261-262)

165-198

EN

Given the rich history of dramas by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz in puppet theatre (27 productions since the Second World War), the author focuses on the shows put on in Wrocław. The first two productions using puppets as means of theatrical expression premiered, almost concurrently, half a century ago: one was put on by the Zespół Amatorski Klubu Oławka (Juwenilia, prem. Nov. 1966), while the other was prepared by the outstanding puppet theatre soloist Andrzej Dziedziul (Twój powszedni morderca [Your Everyday Murderer], prem. 1966). The forgotten show by Dziedziul introduces Witkacy’s dramaturgy into professional puppetry. His subsequent play, inspired by the playwright’s juvenilia, the drama Kurka wodna (The Water Hen), and letters written by Stanisław Witkiewicz Senior to his son (Glątwa [The Hangover], prem. 2 March 1973) acquired international recognition, promoting not only Polish puppetry but also Witkacy’s dramaturgy, which was gaining popularity at the time. In the 1980s, the managing director of the Wrocławski Puppet Theatre, Wiesław Hejno in cooperation with the designer Jadwiga Mydlarska-Kowal and the composer Zbigniew Piotrowski put on one of the most outstanding puppet plays based on a piece by Stanisław Ingacy Witkiewicz, i.e. Gyubal Wahazar (prem. 13 March 1987). The show, addressed to adult audiences, was admired for the visual qualities and novel construction of the puppets as well as for remarkable performances by the puppeteers. The play garnered numerous awards at festivals in Poland and abroad and ran for twelve seasons. Hejno had another go at Witkacy, again in cooperation with Mydlarska-Kowal and Piotrowski, when he staged Komedia dla mamy i taty [A Comedy for Mommy and Daddy] (prem. 7 Jan. 1996), which was inspired by the dramas that Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz had written as a child. The puppet show was meant for children, but the world it represented proved attractive for older audiences as well. Even though the multiplicity of plastic means of expression proved a bit confusing for some viewers, Komedia was regarded as one of the best of those rare puppet shows that Hejno put on for younger audiences. A puppet show based on a drama by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz was performed at Wrocław Branch of the Ludwik Solski National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Cracow in the 1990s. The Puppetry Department diploma performance of ONI [They] was put on by Hejno, Mydlarska-Kowal, and Piotrowski. Eight years later, Witkacy returned onto the stage of the Academy’s theatre in the company of other playwrights when Aleksander Maksymiak in cooperation with Jadwiga Mydlarska-Kowal prepared a diploma performance titled Natrętny Książę. Seans dadaistyczno-surrealistyczny według Georges’a Ribemont-Dessaignes’a, Eugene Ionesco, Tristana Tzary i Stanisława Ignacego Witkiewicza [The Importunate Prince: A Dada and Surrealist Séance According to Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Eugene Ionesco, Tristan Tzara, and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz] (prem. 10 Feb. 2000). Based on photographs, articles, reviews and other publications appearing both in daily press and in specialised periodicals, the author describes the puppet shows and analyses them thoroughly, focusing on the puppet theatre repertory addressed to adult audiences, which is rare in puppet theatre studies.

15

Formy, farsze i prawa syntezy, czyli „chemia związków jakości teatralnych” według Witkacego

80%

Stacewicz-Podlipska J.

Pamiętnik Teatralny

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2016

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vol. 65

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issue 4(260)

71-90

EN

The reception of Witkacy’s work can be reduced to acts of cutting pieces of closely related contents that happen to fit one’s purpose out of a whole that contains many other qualities and ingredients. It was so before the war, when Witkiewicz, hardly recognising his own dramas on stage, complained that there must be “some limits of identity of a work with itself.” The same was true for the second half of the 20th century, when he joined the avant-garde classics in supplying his creations as raw material for artistic experimentation, the practice which he had, by the way, hated. He also became an “honorary patron” of a heterogeneous artistic phenomenon known under the unfortunate name of “visual theatre,” which, as Konstanty Puzyna once remarked, reacted only “to a small portion of what Witkiewicz’s plays contain: to his visual imagination.” Misconstructions of the concept of Form which, fused with its other historical definitions and uses, generated more and more misunderstandings was what added most to the confusion. Had the concept been analysed in all of its complexity that Witkiewicz intended, and particularly, within the larger conceptual framework of his thought, there would have been no room for ambiguity. The closest terminological associates of Witkiewicz’s “Form” belong to the family of words referring to unity, namely: “alloy,” “amalgam,” or “synthesis.” Form was meant to contain all that, having been “processed,” i.e. having undergone amalgamation, constituted the primordial matter of Art. Therefore, what Witkacy wanted for the theatre was not profusion of visual qualities, not to “make theatre ‘painterly’”, as he put it—not to eliminate content in favour of form. Instead, he wanted the theatrical work to be composed mysteriously, in the process of chemical, or alchemical, Formation, in a magical act of giving shape. This was the level at which the issues that interested him the most really resided, including the fundamental question of unity in plurality. It is precisely this mystery of Form, with all its perplexing and embarrassing metaphysics that has been persistently and pointedly ignored by Witkiewicz’s self- or otherwise appointed inheritors. And representatives of various types of “the theatre of visual narration”, to use a more adequate term coined by Zbigniew Taranienko, from the pre-war Cricot Theatre to the group that Puzyna dubbed “Witkacoplastic theatre” (Witkacoplastyka), did err in this respect as well. Just as long, however, as the theatre of visual narration was preoccupied with resolving the problems stemming from aporias of Modernism, references to Witkacy were more or less warranted. But postmodernism that loves the fragmentary, makes values relative and annihilates all stable points of reference misses the point completely, and the Theory of Pure Form transmogrifies into the practice of “open form” that leaves Witkiewicz’s major postulates further and further behind.

16

Matka Witkacego. Tragedia rodzinna – zagłada człowieczeństwa w człowieku

80%

Sokół L.

Pamiętnik Teatralny

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2016

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vol. 65

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issue 4(260)

15-32

EN

The Mother (1924), one of the most highly valued plays by Witkacy, is sometimes considered to be a family drama, or a family tragedy or grotesque. It has been widely praised for its brilliant inventiveness and shocking avant-gardism. In 2016 it is worthwhile to refocus on its grim prophetism, which has been forgotten. Witkacy’s catastrophism has not become trivial or out-dated, quite the contrary. Witkacy himself confirms the adequacy of classifying The Mother as a family drama by openly using other family dramas in his play: Ghosts by Ibsen, and—which may be less obvious—The Ghost Sonata by Strindberg. What sets these family dramas apart is their eeriness; they feature vampiric motifs; they expose the secrets and putrid decay hidden behind the façade of a happy bourgeois home that has lost all flavour of tragedy and thus belongs to the category of grotesque. In all of the dramas, what is real turns out to be often a false appearance hiding motivations which can be summed up as metaphysical. The analysis of the Eely family in Witkacy goes further than to show a crisis, or downfall, of the bourgeois world; it aims at showing the downfall of man, and of humanity in a human being. The downfall is gradual. At first, the world starts fading away, and all that has been stable and solid is disintegrating. A rejection of the values and principles of the world as we know it becomes something done easily and unabashedly, and the humanity of man degenerates and withers away. To put it in Witkacy’s own terms, religion, art, and philosophy will die away one by one, and what comes next could be called dehumanisation. The Mother brings a concrete vision of the downfall. Leon proclaims that a prophet of today may be a scumbag. What he means is that the link between moral virtues, represented in the past by the prophet whose dignity and authority were conferred by God, and the merits of his prophesy or mission has been severed. A today’s prophet can be a despicable and contemptible person, and yet his prophesy may still be valid and true. Leon Eely, despite his fiendishness, is still aware of the sheer scope of the imminent doom, and he wants to prevent it. His chances of success are miniscule. People who are de facto human, i.e. Individual Beings sensitive to metaphysics, will perish forever, replaced by people only nominally human whose whole existence is reduced to the processes of production, consumption and reproduction, people who hate metaphysics of any kind and are just post-human, “mechanised” individuals. Leon Eely will pass away into nothingness. After a squad of “ex-people” executes him in an act of revolutionary justice, even his corpse will disappear. Nothing will remain.

17

Dedication to the Founding Mother and Fathers

80%

Degler J.

Estetyka i Krytyka

|

2013

|

issue 4(31)

29-31

18

The Rules of the Portrait-Painting Firm (trans. Beata Brodniewicz)

80%

Witkiewicz S. I., Brodniewicz B.

Estetyka i Krytyka

|

2013

|

issue 4(31)

53-58

EN

This version of The Rules of the “S. I. Witkiewicz ”Portrait Painting Firm was originally published in Witkacy in Słupsk. The “S.I. Witkiewicz” Portrait Painting Firm, pub. Słupsk 2010.The City Hall in Słupsk (ed.) Beata Zgodzińska & translated by Beata Brodniewicz. We are able to reproduce this extract here thanks to the kind permission of Maciej Kobyliński The Mayor of Słupsk. The text presented here appeared in print in Polish in 1932 and was published by “UNIVERSUM” Printing House, 9 Oboźna Street, Warsaw

19

Witkacy – nasz współczesny

80%

Degler J.

Pamiętnik Teatralny

|

2016

|

vol. 65

|

issue 4(260)

7-14

EN

Czesław Miłosz was wrong about Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz when he predicted in his Traktat moralny (‘A Treatise on Morality,’ Twórczość 1948 No. 4) that “Not for a hundred years, I guess, | Will his books ever come to press” [“W ciągu najbliższych stu lat chyba | Nikt w Polsce jego dzieł nie wyda”]. Next year a 26-volume edition of S. I. Witkiewicz’s Dzieła zebrane (‘Collected Works’) will be completed, and thus all of his surviving texts (including seven volumes of correspondence) will be available in critical edition. Banned in 1949–1955, Witkacy was reclaimed for Polish culture in the process of political change in 1956. He has been with us ever since, surprising us with how often his oeuvre bears on the present. His work has the extraordinary capacity to renew meanings and to resonate with what is happening at a given moment, in changing political, social, and artistic contexts. There appears to be a definite pattern to the post-war reception of his oeuvre: there is a surge of interest in it whenever an important event followed by some major political shift occurs (December 1970, August 1980, December 1981, June 1989). The stage history of The Shoemakers, the most outstanding political play by the dramatist, considered to be on a par with The Undivine Comedy by Zygmunt Krasiński and The Wedding by Stanisław Wyspiański, confirms that assertion. One of the main characters of the play is Gnębon Puczymorda (Pugnatsy Jawbloatski in Daniel Gerould’s translation), an embodiment of the vices of Polish nobility which Witkacy thought to have caused the downfall of Poland in 1794 and whose remnants he still detected in the social and intellectual life of Poland. Witkacy described and attacked them fiercely in his 1936 study Niemyte dusze (‘Unwashed Souls’), though, probably due to this fierceness, no publishing house decided to publish it in his lifetime. The historiosophy of Witkiewicz turned on a vision of happiness enjoyed by the whole of humanity that, however, terrified him because he assumed it would be achieved in an egalitarian, perfectly well organised society resembling an anthill where there was prosperity, equality, and justice but no room for any expression of individualism. Such society would necessarily eradicate what Witkacy believed to constitute the essence of our humanity, i.e. the ability to experience metaphysical feelings. He tried to warn us of the impending danger, even though he realised that the process was irreversible. Nevertheless, Witkiewicz thought it was an artist’s duty to try to stop or at least slow it down. This was the role he ascribed to his art. On 18 September 1939, Witkacy committed suicide. Czesław Miłosz emphasised the symbolic significance of this final gesture of life in the second stanza of Traktat moralny: “He deemed death to be so splendid | That what he’d begun, with a razor he ended” [“Śmierć uznał za rzecz tak zaszczytną | Że to, co zaczął, skończył brzytwą”].

20

Serwetka z zakopiańskiej cukierni

80%

Mitzner P.

Colloquia Litteraria

|

2006

|

vol. 1

|

issue 1

155-156

PL

Artykuł opisuje szkic Witkacego, przedstawiający Wincentego Koraba Brzozowskiego.

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