Numer 31 (4/2013)
Witkacy in English: 21st Century Perspectives
Redaktorzy: Kevin Anthony Hayes, Mark Rudnicki
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Kevin Anthony Hayes
Introduction: Homo Sovieticus and the Evolution of a Socio-Philosophical Approach to Witkacy
13 – 22
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Kevin Anthony Hayes
Acknowledgements
23 – 28
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Janusz Degler
Dedication to the Founding Mother and Fathers
29 – 31
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Lech Sokół
Daniel Charles Gerould (1928–2012) In Memoriam
33 – 37
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Anna Brochocka
The History of the Witkacy Collection in Słupsk
39 – 47
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Streszczenie

This account describes the activity of the Museum in functional terms and reports on the 45-year presence in Słupsk of the Witkacy collection. The presence of Witkacy’s work in Słupsk was instigated by an initial acquisition of 110 works which were brought to Słupsk in 1965. This was part of a post-war endeavour aimed at countering the influence of Germanic traditions then present in the region. In a short space of time the collection of works by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz became the primary museum collection of Słupsk, eclipsing all other collections including. The museum now works with the City Council in a three-fold way: through exhibition, educational outreach, and as part of broader promotional activity of the City of Słupsk. However, perhaps the Museum's most important measure of success is the international scholastic conferences dedicated to the life and work of Witkiewicz.


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Muzeum Pomorza Środkowego w Słupsku
Beata Zgodzińska
The Witkacy Collection and Exhibition at the Museum of Middle Pomerania in Słupsk
49 – 52
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Streszczenie

This article describes the development of the Witkacy Collection in the Słupsk Museum. It details the original acquisitions in 1965 and the subsequent additions to the collection. While most of the exhibit consists of portraits, the author explains that other artistic works have been added to the collection, including drawings and oil paintings. In addition to the art works, the museum also maintains archival documents including postcards, letters, manuscripts, typescripts, and first editions.


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Muzeum Pomorza Środkowego w Słupsku
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz
The Rules of the Portrait-Painting Firm
53 – 58
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Daniel Gerould
Witkacy and Conspiracy Theories
59 – 71
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Streszczenie

In this article the author takes an historical overview of conspiracy theories and how they have been paraded in the work of Witkacy. They have been with us at least since the time of Ancient Rome, connected both with the Christians and Jews. The author argues that they have been used to explain historical events, especially at times of crisis, social change and upheaval, when nations, social groups, and individuals have felt threatened by inexplicable disasters and perils. Conspiratorial thinking detects labyrinthine plots and finds individuals or groups that can be held responsible for menacing social changes. They have clearly influenced Witkacy’s work. It is argued that the lonely protagonist is confronted by encroaching realms of otherness, ‘concentric circles of constraint and encroachment’ in the form of the cosmos, political and social order, family, and even the self.


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City University of New York, USA
Anna Żakiewicz
Witkacy’s Paintings as Frozen Drama
73 – 78
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Streszczenie

In this article the author applies Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński’s claim that Witkacy’s paintings are “theatre frozen on canvas” by examining the many characters who coexist in both his paintings and dramas. This is evident not only in the content of his later drawings and paintings when he was most productive with his dramatic literary output, but also in the subject matter of earlier art pieces before he even began the fruitful period of his dramatic works. Moreover, some of the images in his artwork reflect his own real life experiences. The author borrowing a phrase from Daniel Gerould claims that Witkacy creates a “unified world of imagination” in which various characters appear in multiple literary and art works.


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Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie
Małgorzata Vražić
Witkiewicz-Father and Son: The Double Portrait
87 – 98
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Streszczenie

In this essay, I describe the relationship between Stanisław Witkiewicz and his son, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy) as a relationship between two artists in the broadest sense of the word. That is both were painters, writers, and thinkers. Initially, I perceived the Witkiewicz’s as ‘challengers’ in the realm of culture issues. I ultimately turn my attention to stress the similarities between both Witkiewicz’s rather than the differences because the two artists shared a common view on many ideas, e.g. the crisis of culture, the death of the Polish Universum, the ideal of a high and pure art, authenticity in personal life as well as in the field of art. Their artistic works reflect different stages of Modernism, but at the same time they show how complex Modernism was. This comparative work shows Modernism as a ‘space’ for the formation of Polish culture identity.


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Uniwersytet Warszawski
Michael Goddard
Cinema, Insatiability and Impure Form: Witkacy on Film
99 – 107
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Streszczenie

In this essay the author discusses Cinema in the work of Witkacy, particularly its absence. He refers to many of Witkacy’s Western contemporaries as being fascinated by this increasingly dominant 20th Century medium, which Witkacy seems to have ignored despite his interest and participation in a wide range of modern aesthetic practices including painting, photography, mass produced portraits, and theatre. Part of the explanation for this, it is suggested, may lay in the relative underdevelopment of cinema in Poland prior to World War II; most of the local cinema produced was in the form of highly conventional romances, with an avant-garde cinema only developing towards the end of Witkacy’s life. The author continues to present a very succinct account of how Witkacy’s work has been transmuted into the medium of Film and Television.


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University of Salford, UK
John D. Barlow
Witkiewicz’s Theory of Pure Form and the Music of Morton Feldman
109 – 120
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Streszczenie

In this paper I discuss how “pure form” applies to the music of composer Morton Feldman. Starting from Witkiewicz’s idea that music is the purest form of art, I discuss his speculations on the “heightened metaphysical feeling” that results from aesthetic experience. I also look at Witkiewicz’s rejection of sentimental music. I then take up the conditions of music in our time, where music is used as light entertainment. This exemplifies Witkiewicz’s fears about the use of art as a distraction to keep people happy. I then examine the music of Feldman as an antidote to these trends. His music conveys a sense of a flat surface upon which the attention of listeners drifts contemplatively with the music, experiencing it as an end in itself. I try to show how his music affects listeners at the core of their being and gives them a sense of unity in the midst of the multiplicity of everyday life.


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Indiana University, USA
Gordon Ramsay
Futurism and Witkiewicz: Variety, Separation and Coherence in a Theatre of Pure Form
121 – 135
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Streszczenie

This article will consider Witkacy’s theatre plays alongside his contribution to dramatic theory with the Theory of Pure Form. In particular, it will examine the interplay between a sense of unity and a sense of the alogical, a term first used by the Italian Futurists. Focusing on The Water Hen but with reference to other plays as well as Futurist theoretical and dramatic counterparts, the article investigates on the one hand the interruption of narrative and linear progression, and uncertainty as to existence, identity and relationship; and on the other hand the persistent continuous underlying anxiety within the characters themselves and their sense of journey and destination. I suggest that his use of a series of arresting visual images and theatrical transformations unifies the scenes within a single dream-like world, bringing an order, however opaque, to the chaos.


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University of Nottingham, UK
Agnieszka Marczyk
The Witkacy – Cornelius Correspondence, or How to Cure Gout with Transcendental Philosophy
137 – 147
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Streszczenie

By drawing on archival materials that were previously considered missing, the author examines Witkacy’s epistolary friendship with the German philosopher Hans Cornelius, a friendship which lasted from 1935 to 1939. She explores how Witkacy and Cornelius discussed the body as an object of philosophical speculation and personal experience, and then briefly turns to the political elements in the correspondence, and in Cornelius’ recollection of the friendship during later years. Witkacy and Cornelius did not find a common language precise enough to transform their exchange of philosophical views into genuine dialogue, but their friendship became more intimate with time. It seems that the process of engaging in honest and passionate philosophical dialogue helped them develop a personal friendship which was more important than their conceptual misunderstandings.


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University of Pennsylvania, USA
Paweł Polit
Philosophical Marginalia by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz
149 – 154
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Streszczenie

This article develops the idea which stood behind the exhibition entitled Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz – Philosophical Margins held at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, in 2004. This exhibition focused upon the hitherto unknown forms of Witkiewicz's creative activities: it presented the notes and drawings that the artist and writer made in the 1930s in the margins of the philosophical books he read. Witkacy's marginal notes constitute often humorous comments to the texts he studied and are intertwined with notes of a personal nature; the drawings he added at page edges suggest motifs known widely from his paintings. The purpose of the exhibition was to draw an analogy between Witkacy's artistic concepts and his philosophical thinking. The article is meant as a reflection upon the question of place and role of philosophy in his output as a whole.


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Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski w Warszawie
Bryce Lease
Cutting the Romantic’s Throat: Witkacy’s Nasty Nightmare
155 – 165
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Streszczenie

This text, based on Witkacy’s The Anonymous Work, explores the devastating effects of revolution and the mode in which altruistic causes function as pretenses for power mongering. Witkacy exposes the mechanisms of ideology, the hopelessness of a large-scale utopian revolution. It is in Plasmonick’s ability to traverse his fantasy to overcome his love for Rosa, whose ideological interpellation is strictly contained within the coordinates of Romantic ideals, that Witkacy leaves behind the Romantic universe, the symbolic network that refuses to renounce the desire for desire. In so doing, Witkacy exposes the paradox of Romanticism: freedom and desire are exclusive; the metonymic nature of desire is always-already related directly to the subject’s fundamental fantasy, that inaccessible kernel which anchors the subject to his social field.


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University of Exeter, UK
Mark Rudnicki
The Profane and the Sacred in Insatiability
167 – 176
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Streszczenie

In this essay I examine Genezip’s effort to solve the mystery of existence by employing the theoretical and social insights of Georges Bataille. I argue that Bataille’s division of human time into profane and sacred time is applicable to Zip’s adventures as he follows sacred/erotic passions as opposed to the world of the profane/work to encounter the mystery. I examine this dichotomy as it is prevalent throughout the novel from Zip’s earliest encounters with sexuality and observations of his father’s factory workers. He abandons the world of profane not only in the forms of manual labor, but also in the forms of philosophy and literature. Instead, Zip opts for the sacred/erotic as he is initiated into the world of bohemia and experiences self individuation ironically at moments of transgression.


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George Mason University, USA
Ewa Wąchocka
Identity Traps in Witkacy’s Dramas
177 – 187
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Streszczenie

That ‘crisis of identity’ is one of the central problems addressed by the dramas of Witkacy is primarily linked in the mind of critics to the tradition of modernism. In this contribution I would like to suggest a change of viewpoint, and to present this problem rather from the point of view of contemporary discourse concerning identity. The problems that Witkacy’s characters have with their own existence are in accord, not only with today’s quite common conviction that individuals can experiment with their own sense of identity with relative freedom but also with the concepts of the individual ego, derived from the realms of the Social Sciences.


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Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach
Dorota Niedziałkowska
Witkacy’s Self-Portraits as Manifestations of the Dandy Figure
189 – 206
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Streszczenie

Many researchers of Witkacy’s oeuvre alert us to the strong presence of ‘dandyism’ both in his literary work and in his biography. The classification of ‘dandyism’ is significant, however, for his entire work including his art. It should be recalled that ‘dandyism’ is not only seen as an exaggerated concern with appearance but also an attitude expressed in a certain individuality of style, eccentricity, nonchalance and skepticism. This paper analyzes the self-discrediting strategy in Witkacy’s work, first described by Grzegorz Grochowski. It draws attention to the way in which Witkacy assumes various roles that usually have controversial cultural connotations. These include feminine self-stylization, the role of megalomaniac, snob, or amateur. The intention of the contribution is to explore the ways in which this self-discrediting strategy has been articulated in self-portraits.


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Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II
Christine Kiebuzińska
Witkacy and Ghelderode: Goethe’s Faust Transformed into a Grotesque Cabaret
207 – 220
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Streszczenie

The farce, realistic and surrealistic, trivial and yet transfigured, is an essential expression of both Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz’s The Beelzebub Sonata and Michel de Ghelderode’s The Tragic Death of Doctor Faustus. Both plays were written in 1925, and the subtitle of each play informs that we are at a great distance from Goethe’s transcendent drama, for Ghelderode’s play is subtitled “A Tragedy for the Music Hall” and Witkacy’s “What Really Happened in Mordovar.” This paper explores the deformation of any traces of Goethe’s tragic Faust, as each playwright situates his play in a grotesque cabaret. In both plays the Mephistophelian character has been deprived of his powers of negation, and instead as Diamotoruscant in Ghelderode’s version produces cheap tricks akin to those of Goethe’s “Witches Kitchen” in the music hall. Not only do both playwrights ridicule the potential of a twentieth-century Faust figure, but they also mock Naturalism in the theater and in Witkacy’s play even the possibility of a Theatre of Pure Form.


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University of Virginia, USA
Marta A. Skwara
What is still not known about Witkacy’s Intertextuality? An Analysis of Witkacy and Słowacki
221 – 236
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Streszczenie

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.


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Uniwersytet Szczeciński
J. Greg Perkins
Eluding the Void: Art and Humour as Anodynes for Witkiewicz, Beckett and Faulkner
237 – 248
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Streszczenie

The author considers the extent to which the literary work of these writers was driven by a response to the apparent vacuousness of existence. A brief overview of their lives traces the interplay of eschatological questions and the forces of creativity. Impressions gleaned from such varied backgrounds were often interwoven into their creative outputs which often share a Schopenhauerean common denominator. This often translates to a sullen pessimism which suffuses their respective works and emanates from the concept of the void. Establishing a case for the degree to which art and humor acted as anodynes is speculative; there is no question concerning the importance of both in their lives. Art, or engagement in the creative process, occupied the mainstay of their intellectual lives. Moreover, humor, particularly of the black or mordant variety, is a hallmark of the trio’s entire oeuvre.

Annex: Witkacy’s Portraits and the Słupsk Collection
249 – 269
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Instytut Filozofii
Grodzka 52
e-ISSN 2544-8242
Uniwersytet Jagielloński
31-044 Kraków