Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz

Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz
Born February 24, 1885
Warsaw, Poland
Died September 18, 1939 (age 54)
Jeziory, Poland
Pen name Witkacy
Occupation Writer; painter; dramatist; philosopher
Nationality Polish
Notable work(s) Szewcy

Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, a.k.a. "Witkacy" (February 24, 1885 – September 18, 1939) was a Polish playwright, novelist, painter, photographer and philosopher.

Contents

Life

Born in Warsaw, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz was the son of painter, architect and art critic Stanisław Witkiewicz. His godmother was the internationally famous actress Helena Modrzejewska.

Witkiewicz was reared at the family home in Zakopane. In accordance with his father's antipathy to the "servitude of the school," the boy was home-schooled and encouraged to develop his talents across a range of creative fields.

Witkiewicz was close friends with Karol Szymanowski and, from childhood, with Bronisław Malinowski and Zofia Romer. Following a crisis in Witkiewicz's personal life due to the suicide of his fiancée Jadwiga Janczewska, he was invited by Malinowski to act as draftsman and photographer on a 1914 expedition to Oceania, a venture that was interrupted by the onset of World War I.

On his return, Witkiewicz, a citizen of the Russian Empire, went to St Petersburg and was commissioned an officer in the Imperial army. His ailing father, a Polish nationalist, was deeply grieved by the youngster's decision and died in 1915 without seeing his son again.

Witkiewicz lived through the Russian Revolution in St Petersburg. He claimed that he worked out his philosophical principles during an artillery barrage, and that when the Revolution broke out he was elected political commissar of his regiment. His later works would show his fear of social revolution and foreign invasion, often couched in absurdist language.

He had begun to support himself through portrait painting and continued to do so on his return to Zakopane in Poland. He soon entered into a major creative phase, setting out his principles in New Forms in Painting and Introduction to the Theory of Pure Form in the Theatre. He associated with a group of "formist" artists in the early 1920s and wrote most of his plays during this period. Of about forty plays written by Witkiewicz between 1918 and 1925, twenty-one survive, and only Jan Maciej Karol Hellcat met with any public success during the author's lifetime. The original Polish manuscript of The Crazy Locomotive was also lost; the play, back-translated from two French versions, was not published until 1962.

After 1925, and taking the name 'Witkacy', the artist ironically re-branded the paintings which provided his economic sustenance as The S.I. Witkiewicz Portrait Painting Firm, with the motto: "The customer must always be satisfied". Several grades of portrait were offered, from the merely representational to the more expressionistic and the narcotics assisted. Many of his paintings were annotated with mnemonics listing the drugs taken while painting a particular painting, even if this happened to be only a cup of coffee. He also varied the spelling of his name, signing himself Witkac, Witkatze, Witkacjusz, Vitkacius and Vitecasse — the last being French for "breaks quickly".

In the late 1920s he turned to the novel, writing two works, Farewell to Autumn and Insatiability. The latter major work encompasses geopolitics, psychoactive drugs, and philosophy. In 1935 he was awarded the Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature for his novels.[1]

During the 1930s, Witkiewicz published a text on his experiences of narcotics, including peyote, and pursued his interests in philosophy. He also promoted emerging writers such as Bruno Schulz. Shortly after Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany in September 1939, he escaped with his young lover Czesława to the rural frontier town of Jeziory, in what was then eastern Poland. After hearing the news of the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939, Witkacy committed suicide on September 18 by taking a drug overdose and trying to slit his wrists.[2] He convinced Czesława to attempt suicide with him by consuming Luminal, but she survived.[3]

Witkiewicz had died in some obscurity but his reputation began to rise soon after the war, which had destroyed his life and devastated Poland. Czesław Miłosz framed his argument in The Captive Mind around a discussion of Witkiewicz's novel, Insatiability. The artist and theater director Tadeusz Kantor was inspired by the Cricot group, through which Witkiewicz had presented his final plays in Kraków. Kantor brought many of the plays back into currency, first in Poland and then internationally.

In the postwar period, Communist Poland's Ministry of Culture decided to exhume Witkiewicz's body, move it to Zakopane, and give it a solemn funeral. This was carried out according to plan, though no one was allowed to open the coffin that had been delivered by the Soviet authorities.

On November 26, 1994, the Polish Ministry of Culture and Art ordered the exhumation of the presumed grave of Witkiewicz in Zakopane. Genetic tests on the remaining bones proved that the body had belonged to an unknown woman — a final absurdist joke, fifty years after the publication of Witkacy's last novel.[4]

Works

1935

Criticism

Novels

Plays

Other works

Performance of Plays

[14]

See also

References

  1. ^ Prof. dr hab. Miłosława Bulowska Schielman. "Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz". Virtual Library of Polish Literature. http://literat.ug.edu.pl/autors/witkacy.htm. Retrieved December 13, 2011. 
  2. ^ Donald Pirie, John Bates, Elwira Grossman. "Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz". http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Witkiew.htm. Retrieved 16 April 2009. 
  3. ^ Journal of Czesława Oknińska, quoted in: Gerould, Daniel Charles; Witkiewicz, Stanisław Ignacy (1992). "Part 5: Philosophy and Suicide, 1931-1939". The Witkiewicz Reader. Northwestern University Press. p. 275. ISBN 9780810109940. http://books.google.com/books?id=A-0qcaoHr8IC&pg=RA1-PA271&lpg=RA1-PA271&source=bl&ots=Fh9h60YkTi&sig=72cPOb3aWsQiFQs4nSV4VWpLhPI&hl=en&ei=GHMJS7_5IceVtgfUjOy1Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&f=false. Retrieved November 22, 2009. 
  4. ^ "...Przeprowadzone badania wykazują, że szczątki kostne, przywiezione w 1988 roku ze wsi Jeziory na Ukrainie należą do kobiety w wieku 25–30 lat, o wzroście około 164 cm. ..." ("the tests conducted indicate that the bone remains, brought in 1988 from the village Jeziory in the Ukraine, belong to a woman 25-30 years old and about 164cm tall...") from the protocol of the commission called by the Ministry of Culture and Art after the exhumation on November 26, 1994 of the presumed grave of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz at Pęksowy Brzyzek" cemetery in Zakopane. From: Maciej Pinkwart, "Wygraliśmy" in: "Moje Zakopane" dn. 21-02-2005. Wygraliśmy (in Polish). Retrieved November 23, 2009.
  5. ^ http://broadwayworld.com/shows/cast.php?showid=327362 BroadwayWorld: The Crazy Locomotive, complete cast & crew listing.
  6. ^ http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?id=2960&search_by=show
  7. ^ http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070408/news_lz1a08des.html
  8. ^ Cantwell, Mary (January 6, 1996). "Editorial Notebook;Small Theater". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E0D81239F935A35752C0A960958260. Retrieved May 24, 2010. 
  9. ^ http://pro.imdb.com/name/nm0563058/
  10. ^ "No Headline". The New York Times. October 31, 1983. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9406E4D81639F932A05753C1A965948260. Retrieved May 24, 2010. 
  11. ^ [http://bradmays.com/thewaterhenreview2.jpg Matousek, Mark (1983). "Water Hen - (review)". Other Stages. 
  12. ^ http://catalog.nypl.org/search~S61?/tthe+water+hen/twater+hen/1%2C2%2C2%2CB/frameset&FF=twater+hen&1%2C1%2C/indexsort=t
  13. ^ The New York Times. http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?_r=2&res=9B0DE3D9103CF937A15750C0A961948260&oref=slogin. 
  14. ^ http://southbrooklynpost.com/things-to-do/puppet-theatre-party/
  15. ^ http://www.lamama.org/archives/2003/THEMOTHER.htm

Further reading

External links