INTERNATIONAL

Poland : Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz – a great individual lost in XX-th century

Piotr Rudzki, Polish Embassy, New Delhi

The year 1985 was declared by UNESCO as Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz’s year. That year, all over Poland as well as Europe and some countries of the world, there were organized seminars, symposiums, concerts, exhibitions, and theatre performances to celebrate his hundredth birth anniversary. This year in September it was his sixtieth death anniversary. This, quite a sad occasion, was only marked by a seminar which took place in Szczecin – a city situated in north-west Poland, on the Baltic sea shore. He was born exactly on 24-th of February 1885 in Warszawa, and he committed suicide exactly on 18-th of September 1939, in the village Jeziory, situated in Polesie, which till that time was part of eastern Poland, and nowadays is a part of western Ukraine.

Thus, a period of his life covered all ups and downs of the first part of the modern European history: a revolution of the year 1905, the First World War, the February Revolution of 1917as well as the October Revolution of 1917. He experienced all important streams of modern art, including impressionism, expressionism, futurism, cubism, dadaism, and surrealism. He was of the same age as the artists who created and participated in these streams. Of course, it is still not the reason why his birth anniversary was celebrated almost all over the world. The reasons are his works which covered such a large variety of a human activities as: philosophy, theory of art, painting, writing novels as well as plays, photography, epistolography.

Apart from this, he took part in a scientific expedition to Ceylon, organised by a world famous Polish anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski, he was a soldier who fought in Russian army during the First World War. In fact, a battalion, whom he commanded, begun the February Revolution. So, a difference between Witkiewicz and the other writers, who wrote about both the Russian revolutions, is that he experienced them personally. He saw what kind of benefits, if there were any, as well as disasters they brought for a whole society. Moreover, he cooperated as an art director with Polish theatres which decided to stage his plays. He also set up his own theatre in Zakopane in order to prepare the performances based on his plays. One more thing from many others should be mentioned here: in the late twenties he set up his firm which was called The Portrait’s Firm. It was opened for public, everybody could come and book a portrait of him- or herself. In such a way a marvellous collection of portraits of Polish intelligentsia was created. This group which was thereafter exterminated by both the aggressors who occupied the Polish territories during the Second World War, which were Germans and Russians. As for one biography it seems to be sufficient. Four factors determined whole his life: his father, an atmosphere of his family home, his education, and a circle of his friends in Zakopane, a small hill station in southern Poland, in the Tatra Mountains, where in June 1890 Witkiewicz’s family moved in order to help Witkiewicz-senior to cure his lung disease. Witkiewicz’s father, Stanisaw Witkiewicz, was a renowned writer, painter and – most of all, – an art critic. In painting he represented a realistic and a naturalistic stream. Stanislaw Ignacy was his only son, and he wanted him to become an artist. From the very beginning he gave him a lot of freedom to choose a field of his future activity as well as a lot of pressure to follow his father’s way in art. Witkiewicz’s home in Zakopane was a kind of asylum which attracted all the best Polish artists of that time.

Three more events, which were somehow linked to each other, significantly influenced Witkiewicz as an artist and as a philosopher. On 21-st of February, 1914 his fiancée, Jadwiga Janczewska, committed suicide under the circumstances which are still mysterious. Anyway, Witkiewicz accused himself for this tragic event. As he wrote in one letter to his friend: "On Friday, 20-th of February, we had a quarrel, which was a reason for this horrible catastrophe". What the truth was , we will probably never know, but he himself wanted to commit suicide. A remedy for his situation was found by Malinowski. At that time he was in London preparing a scientific expedition to Papua and New Guinea via Ceylon and Australia. He proposed Witkiewicz to go with him. They left Europe on 12-th of June, 1914, and they reached Colombo on 28-th of June. They spent there two weeks, visiting among others: Kandy, Matale, Anuradhapura, Dambulla, Sigiriyia. Experiencing tropics was very important for Witkiewicz. When they called at Australia, they got to know that a war had broken out. Witkiewicz wanted to come back to Europe immediately. He left his friend in Australia and via Bombay, where he spent one day, he want to Sankt Petersburg. There, using family protection, he joined an exclusive regiment of Emperor of Russia with which he used to fight in many battles against the German army. He was even awarded for his performances by Medal of Saint Anna, one of the highest distinction in Russian army. But the most important fact is that he experienced Russian revolutions.

There in Ceylon as well as in Russia he matured as a human being as well as an artist and a philosopher. His philosophical and aesthetic systems were completed here. When in 1918 he came back to Poland, he began to sign his works as Witkacy (Witk-iewicz plus Ign-acy). That was a mark that showed that he gave up his links with his father, and that he himself became a mature and individual artist and philosopher. His aesthetic system is founded on his philosophy (a biological monadism), which is based on an individual as well as on – what he called – "a Mystery of an Existence". Generally speaking, the difference between a human being and an animal is that the former one faces "a metaphysical fear", a fear of an inexplicable "Mystery of an Existence". This fear could be diminished either by religion, which makes an order of our feelings, or by philosophy, which tries to explain "a Mystery" in terms, or by the art, which gives an opportunity to a creator as well as receiver to live through this "Mystery".

A very interesting part of his philosophical system are his opinions about the future of civilisation as well as culture. As it was mentioned above, his system was based on an individual. According to him, an individual’s aims were opposite to a society’s aims. Society as such needs only a happy life for its members. "A house, a toothbrush and a garden for everybody" – that is all what masses want. The great individuals were responsible for the development of civilisation. Together with its development a distance between the great individuals and masses diminished. Everything that was discovered by individuals and for individuals became a property of masses. Masses wanted the same and became the same but without this "fear of metaphysics" which is a feature of an individual. An idea of democracy together with an idea of equality of people and a development of technology made it possible to fulfil the materialistic needs of society. And this causes a liquidation of differences between people, which, in Witkacy’s opinion, is a condition sinequa non of any development. In near future an interest of society will be more important than interest of an individual. There will not be any places for individuals in a socialised society. The "fear of metaphysics" will disappear and will be replaced by common happiness. There will not be place for artists and for art, which will be useless for such a society. Witkacy did not deny that it is the only possible direction of development of a society. But as an artist and as lover of beauty he just could not agree with it. He saw what kind of disaster was brought by communism – the final point of these tendencies. So, when he got to know that on 17-th of September, 1939, the Soviet army crossed the eastern border of Poland, he realised that his prophecy came true. He could not find a place for himself in such a society.

Among various kinds of art Witkacy differentiated pure ones, which are based on one ingredient, as for example music, more complicated, as for example poetry, and most complicated, as for example theatre. A prose he did not consider as real art. He started as a painter, then shifted to theatre. He wrote his first play in 1918, that was Maciej Korbowa and Belatrix, and the last one in 1938, that was So-called Mankind in the State of Insanity, which unfortunately, has not survived till our time. The last his play known to us is The Shoemakers of 1934. Witkacy was not a very popular writer during his lifetime. He was treated by his contemporaries as an eccentric, as a scandalmonger, as a joker. Only a few of them described his works seriously. Then he was rediscovered after the Second World War, or being more correctly, after the collapse of Stalinism in Poland. In 1962 Konstanty Puzyna published all Witkacy’s plays which survived. After that – year by year – he became more and more popular. His plays were staged, first of all, in Poland and then all over Europe and America. He was declared as a father of surrealism, pop-art, and even postmodernism. He became one of the best Polish export products. Although during particular periods some of his plays were forbidden by communist censorship, when UNESCO declared the year 1985 as his year, the communist authorities of Poland decided to take part in this festival.

The biggest event planned by them was bringing his ashes to Zakopane in order to bury them in his mother’s tomb. An official high delegation went to Ukraine for this purpose. And they brought ... but not his ashes but ashes of an unknown soldier who died during war. Members of Witkacy’s family produced the evidences that the body brought to Poland was 100 % not Witkacy’s. Nobody wanted to listen to them. It was against the Polish strategic alliance during that time. A paradox of history. I wish I could see his face there in heaven.