An Artist Against the Fickle Play of Fate
I. A Paradise of Social Justice
Throughout the years of partition, Polish people adhered to the conviction that the restitution of independence would open the gates to a paradise of social justice. This myth proved popular largely amongst those of highbrow culture. 1918 rekindled social hopes, but also posed a number of questions — what role did literature play in the process of regaining independence, and hence what would become of its immediate future? There was also a third dimension to this question, namely fear for the future of the country and the form of the newly blossomed freedom. Significant for this period “were Żeromski’s dreams of a new world, where people covered with sweat and grease, black from it — sat down to discuss the fate of Poland along with the fate of the world. “The Beginning of the World of Work” (1918) — is a comprehensively developed program of construction. Here Żeromski expressed his belief that “the supremacy of the people” shall be proclaimed, that momentous social forms come into being. The choice was (in his opinion) only one: either a voluntary reform, a renunciation of rights to land and estates by the possessing classes, or a bloody slaughter, namely a revolution. […] The greater the strength of the social utopia, the stronger the clash with reality, consisting of stagnation in production, unemployment, inflation, the misery of the working masses. After the initial enthusiasm faded, images of social conflicts appeared in the literature. The post-war reality appears in a pragmatic, demystified way. These are “Romance of Teresa Hennert” by Zofia Nałkowska (1923), “Generation of Marek Świda” by Andrzej Strug (1925) and “The Spring to Come” by Stefan Żeromski (1925). […] It provoked many protests from the political right and criticism from the opposite side. The power of a realistic view of post-war Poland and the generalizations derived from it went hand in hand with a desire to warn against the revolution, understood by Żeromski as a disorder, chaos and bloodshed, favorable only to the enemy”.1
II. The Abomination of Tragedy
To tell the truth, revolts are difficult to write about objectively — it is also difficult to frame the phenomenon in a definite context, to include it in an iconoclastic definition (although there are many of such) except that it can be applied with reference to one, two or three examples. Disobedience, or the spirit of resistance, is (regardless of one’s preference ) a kind of morbid monument, a remnant of the historical process of sorrowful evolution that took place in the field of human affairs. So to speak, it has become an allegory containing disregarded lessons from the past epochs. It represents man and the chronic illness from which he suffers that no one can cure… Revolutions cause mankind to relinquish their individuality in favor of the massification of thought. In turn, they deprive each individual of consciousness and fill the void left by its absence with the idea of general happiness. Hence, right at our eyes and by our efforts, the reality is forged and we become a mere plaything of the circumstances we have foisted on ourselves. Then — dreadfully laws devised to safeguard the separate powers of administrative authorities, to protect the majesty of the legislature, as well as laws that are inherently favorable to all freedom and personal liberty of every citizen (with no exceptions), fall by the wayside. In other words, they become a meaningless statute. Assassinations are becoming a common form of governance. In essence, the country falls into a state to which nations are usually swayed by the overwhelming desire for renewal, inspired by a noble language. This is how the myth of the phoenix, burning only to rise from its ashes, becomes fleshed out in our midst. The conflagration thus awakened not only quickly sweeps through all strata of society, but also weans people away of a praiseworthy habit of obedience. Vestiges of former splendor dissolve, the glamour of times gone by is wearing off and the social conditions on which the dignity of office thrived are being poisoned by the reeking breath of revolutionary demagoguery. The power of fragile and unstable rule rests solely on physical strength. The mechanisms which could set the social pendulum of compassion in motion to good effect are gradually lacking. Moral strength ceases to hold any significance. For, as is not difficult to guess: what has emerged from the recent upheaval, what is the child of revolt, is itself based on the principle that after the first shock comes the next one; after the first revolution has broken out in a blaze of blood the next one shoots out — a hundred times more tragic. People, seeing that rebellion can be justified, delighted with its recent effectiveness, eagerly reach for weapons and stage a coup at every opportunity. A revolution that appears well-intentioned turns into a heavy veil of night drawn unexpectedly over the life-giving light of day. And how many people have been blighted this way?
A revolution is a mother who devours her children, yet the most perfect and at the same time the most tragic illustration of its character are the words of the dying Madame Roland2: “O Liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy name!” Thus, after the first admiration for the strength and skillfulness of the wise folk, widely proclaimed to all and sundry, over the first few years of disorder, there arises an unpleasant and heavy foreboding that the excesses and defects of society are thwarting all the efforts of those who care about genuine order. It is a terrible thing, such realization, and perhaps it would be better not to live to see it. For among those who have emerged from under the knives unscathed, in the majesty of the new times and needs, a general cheerfulness resounds, while in its former bedding sadness and gloomy disbelief in the beauty of exultation born of political adventurism are laid to rest…
Thus, “The Spring to Come” became a warning against what Madame Roland was shouting about, and “Glass Houses” turned out to be nothing more than a “fairy tale”, out of which, with undue care, a reader may draw the wrong conclusions and burn like that unfortunate phoenix.
III. A Tempestuous Sea of Poetry
cant quote but i can translate iiReactions to the novel varied — “and were as violent as the novel.” The hideousness, horror, and tragedy of the march on Belvedere — a scene that made my heartbreak when I was writing it — goes misunderstood”. — Żeromski complained. Young writers, peers of Cezary Baryka, often draw similar conclusions to his. Consequently, by going further in their opposition than Żeromski, they will advocate revolution. […] Bruno Jasieński and Anatol Stern published a collection of poems entitled Ziemia na lewo [“The Earth To The Left”] (1924). Further works by Jasieński would bring “Słowo o Jakubie Szeli” [“A Word on Jakub Szela”] and a novel “Palę Paryż” [“I Burn Paris”] (1928). […] In 1925 Władysław Broniewski, Ryszard Stande, and Witold Wandruski published together a volume of poems entitled “Trzy salwy” [“Three salvos”]. In the introductory declaration, they wrote, among others: “We are the laborers of the word […] Fighting for a new social order. This struggle is the highest content of our creativity”. This ideal of literature’s social servitude, questioned at the dawn of independence in its nationalistic version — has now resurfaced in a new guise”.3 The gentle rush of poetry turned into a restless, stormy sea. Its first wave poured into Polish hearts just after the end of the war. The hitherto ethos of poetry burned out in the fire of the needs of the new reality. Old heroes died, lyric poetry and its subject were adorned with new garments. Thought was feverishly transformed into action, and the cannons of an active stance towards life were brought to bear against the passive reverie. Such a change of approach seems to have resulted also from changing social conditions. For, along with the progress of civilization, new phenomena appeared and provided ever newer subjects. The avant-garde among the army of changed poets were the Skamndrites, for whom the concreteness of everyday life became the breviary of new times. Times that gear poetry in a homogenous uniform of short lyrical poems tailored according to a specific pattern, where real memories, some actual experiences serve as a reason for reflection. In a word — it is not poetry that stealthily slips into life, but the life that intrusively bangs on poetry’s door.
IV. Drama as a symbol of a new culture
The years between 1918 and 1939 were also a period of a wonderful flowering of onstage forms of literary work. “The highest ambitions were to assimilate the great Romantic repertoire to the national stage, which, after all, could not be performed under the conditions of enslavement. “1 This is how Leon Schiller’s idea of the “monumental theatre” came into being. There were also innovative attempts to popularise drama — for example, the plays of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz or the dramatic debut of Witold Gombrowicz (“Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy” 1936). But the most original phenomenon in the dramaturgy of this period was the work of Witkacy. “The thinker, novelist and cultural theorist developed his catastrophic vision of the past to its fullest in his dramas.”4
Witkiewicz’s oeuvre has something of Machiavellian flair therein since there follows in it a kind of tragic mystification of reality. One could have the impression that, like Messer Nicolo, Witkacy does not see the sense in inquiring into the common denominator of good and evil and the concept that some matter is right or even righter means as much to him as last year’s snow. The reader has virtually no choice — either he agrees with his suggestions or he does not belong to reasoning mankind. For, humans, much like guinea pigs that must submit to the verdicts of ruthless scientists, succumb to the inerrancy of cultural schemas. We have a strange tendency to all manner of shallowness, we delight in spiritual poverty, we bristle over it and we disgrace ourselves in the face of accepted conventions — either we adopt Witkacy’s point of view or we are fools… And it seems that we are, since in general, we’re not able to avoid a clash with the stereotypes invoked by the author of “Farewell to Autumn”. Stereotype always exposes man in his templates and shows maladjustment to what is offered to each of us by reality. The only salvation lies in its falsification, to which we must succumb or we will go mad. Witkacy draws handfuls from this onion — simplification of characters, reducing content to function, narrowing the moral, environmental and psychological background, neglecting the logic of the plot, mixing various epochs and styles — all serve to uncover a macabre truth: life becomes intoxicated by the stupidity of the “overcabaret” idea. The grotesque slips into the message of truthfulness and over its unbearability stretches the screen of great mystification. And yet, from here it’s not so far to Gombrowicz and Mrożek.
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz became the forerunner of a new type of art escaping from the confines of the known cultural canons. He turned his art into an extremely effective tool, one that he used masterfully. His titanic work, however, brought him a certain bitterness. For in his own eyes he became “the author of novels he couldn’t regard as works of art”. “Between 1911 and 1912 he wrote, “622 falls of Bung, or Demonic Woman” (published in 1972), interpreted as a portrait of the milieu of the young Witkacy and a reflection of his affair with the actress Irena Solska. The novels “Farewell to Autumn” (1927) and “Insatiability” (1930) show the protagonists’ efforts to satisfy their eternal insatiability with the unity of the individual, the strangeness of existence, and metaphysical feelings. For their yearning to be fulfilled, they seek to intensify their lives with erotic experiences, aesthetic sensations, drug trances, and philosophical disputes. The political background of the events, implying an impossibility of social solutions, shows how the lives of the protagonists are heading towards unfulfillment and emptiness. The end is revealed by an invasion of the Chinese (in Insatiability), and by the madness of the characters. Witkacy’s novels parody the conventions of realistic prose and the poetics of popular genres.”5
V. What did Witkacy bid farewell to?
“Farewell to Autumn” is worth examining with particular attention given the unconventional way of presenting the generally overtaken themes of the time. The theme of a novel written in 1927 is “the experiences of a gang of degenerate ex-pats against the background of mechanizing life”. Among its protagonists, we find the main characters of Witkiewicz’s works: an unfulfilled artist, a demonic woman, the leader of a revolutionary movement, and representatives of the aristocratic elite. In the face of an approaching catastrophe — revolution — they pursue the mystery of existence, struggling between art and life, debauchery, drugs, and philosophizing. The downfall of Athanasius Bazakbal, the novel’s protagonist, and society happen in parallel. The communist leader Sajetan Tempe wins. The picture of a new life under the rule of the Nivelists is a prophetic representation of the emergence of a totalitarian state. Witkiewicz was madly afraid of this vision of his, so when his prophecy began to take real shape, he took his own life on the day after the Soviet invasion (18th of September 1939).
And what did that life look like? I think that the most appropriate answer was given in 1980 by the poet and bard Jacek Kaczmarski in his song-poem “Witkacy’s Auto-Portrait”.
I gaze upon the world out of habit
so it’s not drug-induced
that I have the red eyes
of jackrabbits
I just got up off the table
so it’s not out of stupor
I have clenched lips
of famished Mongols
As opposed to words, I listen to sounds
so it is not of fermenting thoughts
that I bare the protruding ears
of naive confidants
Everywhere I smell thugs
so it’s not for colour
I cast a certain shadow
by my nose of wronged Jews
I behold things shaped in their essential sense
for this makes me unique and great
unlike yourselves, who, if you’ll forgive my claim
are idiot’s poem imprinted on a plate
My neck is pretty firm
and that’s why I’m still here
saying that politics for me
is a crystallized swill
My mind is as hard as knuckles
so don’t ketch me wrong
if I say that revolution
is no more than a redden claws
As sensitive as a membrane
so in the evening and during the day
I shake like a spleen
torn out of an eel
I fear the world’s demise
so to lighten the mood
I scream like a child
locked in a dark room
I choke and throttle harder than you do
and more than ye, cease to exist, yet I have to
but I swear no one will lie a hand on me, and then
If needed, I alone will deprive Witkacy of this realm6
The world is a bottomless cesspit filled with mankind’s emotions, absorbing reason and thoughts, in a word, whatever the human spirit expels from itself. So there we are, drowning in the excrements of reverie after thousands of unfulfilled dreams. But we cannot drown completely, something keeps us afloat… Fear of death? No… As a matter of fact, each one of us knows that sooner or later, it doesn’t matter when, but we will be compelled to give ourselves over to the afterlife for tutelage. Death, though terrible, does not frighten one as much as the thought of total annihilation. What we fear most is that our thoughts and dreams will die with us, and all our ups and downs will pass without an echo. “I fear the world’s demise”. — this is the guiding thought of almost all mankind and Witkacy is not an outlier in this respect. He was neither the first nor the last to tremble at the thought of approaching monstrosities. The thing is that the artist could unerringly sense and describe it, and also — which is hardly the highest merit — timely expel oneself from the world when it began to engulf all in frightening shadow. The work and, in a certain sense, the apologetic death of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz became a bitter confirmation of the defencelessness of thought in the face of the callousness of civilisational products of the new massified culture. A catastrophe! Oh, yes — a catastrophe, but one that has been ideologised and transformed into a higher concept. From now on, the vulnerability of thought struggling on the chains of soulless civilisation will be called catastrophism. So everyone who faces catastrophe, as well as all catastrophe, are children of the progressive degeneration of culture. „Every catastrophic thought implicitly contains a historical utopia, and it is therefore questionable whether catastrophism appeals to the intellect or to faith and fear. […] The validity of the theory of the end of civilisation can only be verified by the end of civilisation. If one does not believe: the notion of the end of civilisation is the fulfilment of the catastrophist’s desires — the unbeliever’s attitude to the apocalypse. If one believes: catastrophism is a prophetic announcement of the end — the sinner’s fear of the apocalypse. […] When Witkacy claims that progressive mechanisation threatens humanity and corrupts the ability of individuals to think creatively, he adopts the point of view of the masses. From this perspective, the thinker seems redundant to the functioning of the community, although it is difficult to agree that thinking is also redundant.”7
“Farewell to Autumn” is in fact a sad tale about the history of criticism and parting. And the moral can be interpreted in two ways. Firstly, in certain situations justified criticism serves as a valuable mechanism of improvement and for this reason it should be resorted to, and also — which is characteristic of Witkacy’s work — its power of influence should be strengthened through a pre-conceived degradation of the universally acknowledged literary style. Secondly, he is talking about the circumstances in those days when the appearance of the mechanism of separation triggering the vanishing of the mechanism of criticism acquires an immeasurable significance in restoring the mental efficiency of a society on the verge of intellectual collapse. But in the real world, where literature is merely the splinter of an unfulfilled dream, no community is fully immune to both separation and criticism of its members. In life, either one or the other is allowed, and even then with a fair amount of reluctance. In general, the occurrence of such mechanisms appears harmful and is described as unacceptable. Separation is usually seen in terms of betrayal and criticism is identified with rebellion. According to Witkiewicz, societies governed by such laws prove unable to exist within a longer perspective. They die and new ones appear in their place — not taught anything new and forever repeating the same cardinal error. If separation and criticism are treated as something unacceptable and severely punished, people will resort to it only when decomposition reaches such a degree that improvement is no longer possible and the eternally evoked specter of catastrophe becomes a reality. As a result, the combination of both factors, stifled by the brute force of political correctness, will shoot into space with a violence that could have been avoided if given a voice earlier and will have a far more destructive effect than anyone expected. On the other hand, it does not stem from Witkacy’s intention that societies which have both mechanisms at their disposal should be inherently more enlightened and vital than those who use mainly one. It suffices to look more closely at the figure of Sejtan Tempe. Everything depends on the way power responds to the mechanisms that, whether one likes it or not, society is endowed with. So if a community using the mechanism of separation is particularly sensitive to the loss of members, everything will reach its happy end. It will be similar in the case of a community equipped with the mechanism of criticism, whose representatives handle all complaints and protests of its members with due attention and no pretense of understanding. Accordingly, what happens to power not particularly sensitive to the reactions its actions elicit, or one not admitting the slightest hint of such social sensitivity whatsoever? Such power ends up in pain and needless bloodshed. Everything that has been accomplished and that previously seemed right loses its basis and dissolves in the dirt of bygone times, just like people’s feelings washed away into a depthless cloaca containing the excrement of a thousand digested ideas. Everything begins and ends with the immortal catastrophe that is human life. Bazkbal dies without meaning or need, his death brings nothing except the feeling that reality always is hostile towards thinking — so why should we think? If only to realize the insignificance of human life in the face of the playfulness of the circumstances amid we’re condemned to lead our piteous life.
1Historia literatury polskiej w zarysie, Vol. 2, pg 117–118, pod redakcją M .Stępnia i A. Wilkonia, wyd. PWN, Warszawa 1988. (in my translation)
2Jeanne-Marie Roland, in full Jeanne-Marie Roland de La Platière, née Jeanne-Marie Phlipon, byname Manon Phlipon, (born March 17, 1754, Paris, France — died November 8, 1793, Paris), wife of Jean-Marie Roland, who directed her husband’s political career during the French Revolution, greatly influencing the policies of the moderate Girondin faction of bourgeois revolutionaries.
3Historia literatury polskiej w zarysie, Vol. 2, pg. 119–120 (in my translation)
4Historia literatury polskiej w zarysie, Vol. 2, pg. 130 (in my translation)
5M. Bulowska Schielman Stanisław Ignacy WITKIEWICZ (WITKACY) (źródło: WIRTUALNA BIBLIOTEKA LITERATURY POLSKIEJ http://monika.univ.gda.pl/~literat/ (in my translation)
6Jacek Kaczmarski „Witkacy’s Auto-Portrait” Translated (interpreted) by Marcin Malek 11 May 2021
7T. Bocheński Powieści Witkacego sztuka i mistyfikacja, pg.122, 124–125, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, Łódź 1994 (in my translation)
