The Witkacy by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz

Witkiewicz, The Beelzebub Sonata: Plays, Essays, Documents (PAJ Publications 1980), Witkacy: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz as an Imaginative Writer (University of Washington Press, 1981), The Witkiewicz Reader (Northwestern University Press, 1992), and his original translations of most of Witkiewicz’s plays.

Gerould was best known for introducing English-language audiences to the writings of Witkiewicz through such work as Stanisław I. Gerould was one of the world’s most recognized “Witkacologists,” a leading scholar and translator of the work of Polish playwright, novelist, painter, and philosopher Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz ('Witkacy'). A scholar, teacher, translator, editor, and playwright, Gerould was a specialist in US melodrama, Central and Eastern European theatre of the twentieth century, and fin-de-siècle European avant-garde performance. Visitors to Kraków can see a large collection Witkacy’s wacked-out paintings on the top floor of the National Museum.Daniel Charles Gerould (Ma– February 13, 2012) was the Lucille Lortel Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center and Director of Publications of the Martin E. But in a scene that wouldn’t have been amiss in one of his satires, it eventually emerged that bungling officials had buried the wrong corpse – the subject at the centre of the excellent Polish film ‘Mystyfikacja’ (available with English subtitles). Originally buried in a far-flung corner of the Ukraine, Witkacy’s body was returned to Zakopane in 1988. When the Red Army crossed into Poland on September 17, 1939, sensing the end of civilisation, Witkacy took a suicidal dosage of drugs, ending his life the next day.

He experimented with all forms of modern art, started his own theatre company in Zakopane (an hour south of Kraków) and expanded on his philosophical theories.Ī rabid anti-communist, Witkacy was hell-bent on proving that an individual’s aims would always be different from that of society and state. Twisted portraits of his high-society friends (heads springing from penises, beastly animal shapes flying in the background) became his trademark. As he plunged into heavy spells of morphine, cocaine and peyote abuse his paintings became all the more inspired.

The Witkacy by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz