Polish painter, illustrator, and photographer, playwright and novelist, philosopher, art theorist, and critic; member of the first-ever Polish group of avant-garde artists known as the Formists; author of the aesthetic theory of Pure Form; creator of the Firma Portretowa (Portrait Company). Born in 1885 in Warsaw, died in 1939.

On this page you'll find three articles devoted to Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz – Witkacy.


WITKACY - Thinker and Novelist

The Ontology of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz

Ontology is that field of philosophy which attempts to define what actually exists and what the features of existence are. Any attempt at answering these questions requires some fundamental and incontrovertible assumption similar to Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." In constructing his ontological system, Witkacy accepted as his point of departure a "view of life" based on introspective experience: a fundamental confidence in the existence of his own self, his ego. "I experience myself as a unity, identity and enduring entity, in spite of the passage of time and the flow of experiences. I know I am a unity in varying circumstances, thus I am a unity in multiplicity. In experiencing myself as a Specific Existence, I simultaneously notice and acknowledge the presence of other Specific Existences."

The antinomy of unity and multiplicity constitutes the basis of Witkacy's ontology. The world is a unity, but it is composed of a multiplicity of existences. As a whole, the world is infinite. Its parts - i.e. Specific Existences - exist in time and space, are finite and complete. Inwardly, they experience themselves as self-sufficient; viewed from without they are parts of a whole. With his philosophy Witkacy inscribes himself in monadic tradition, whose most exceptional exponent was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz's monads, however, were spiritual entities "without windows," i.e. they did not act upon themselves and they owed their place in the reigning hierarchy to a predetermined divine harmony. Witkacy's monads are psychophysical entities: the experience of one's own corporality is as primal as the experience of one's mental identity. In the debate between realism and idealism about the existence of the world, Witkacy clearly argues in favor of realism.

Capturing the structure of the world built of Specific Existences is the chief task of philosophy, which is why philosophy should strive to build a solid ontology instead of using simplifications and rendering absolute some single feature attributable to existence. According to Witkacy, unsuccessful attempts along this line included contemporaneous approaches like physicalism, psychologism, logicism and reism. Witkacy found himself at the very center of the philosophical debates of his time. He entered into disputes with Bertrand Russell, Alfred Whitehead, Hans Cornelius, Leon Chwistek, Roman Ingarden, Jan Leszczyński and the Lvov-Warsaw School. Himself a non-professional, Witkiewicz debated and exchanged correspondence with exceptional university professors. He set down his views in numerous articles and letters, laying them out most fully in "Pojęcia i twierdzenia implikowane przez pojęcie Istnienia" / "Concepts and Assertions Implicated by the Concept of Existence" (1935). This was then superbly supplemented by the book "Spór o monadyzm. Dwugłos polemiczny z Janem Leszczyńskim" / "A Dispute about Monadism - A Dialogue with Jan Leszczynski." This contained Leszczyński's correspondence with Witkacy, which the philosopher had preserved and which was ultimately published in 2000.

What is unacceptable to Witkacy? Physicalism is incapable of explaining the existence of the ego. Psychologism cannot account for the unity of identity. Mathematical logic incorrectly claims to be the basis of sound and secure knowledge. All reductionism leads ontology astray. Does this, however, mean that the concept of existence as a unity implies a rational knowledge of the entire truth of being? No - because complete knowledge of this kind is unattainable. The unity of identity and its finite nature relative to the infinity of being is the Mystery of Existence, achievable to man through fundamental metaphysical experience. Experience of this nature is possible in exceptional moments, under strong emotional influence, at moments when one asks fundamental questions about the meaning of the world and one's own presence within it. At this point Witkacy's ontology becomes the philosophical basis of his historiosophy, theory of art, painting and playwriting.

The Theory of Pure Form and Historiosophy

The metaphysical angst elicited by the Mystery of Existence is expressed through religion, philosophy and art. Religion and philosophy are incapable of providing complete answers to the questions that haunt humankind; in any case, the significance of these questions in the present day has clearly declined. The responsibility that lies upon art is thus so much greater. A real work of art is a unity composed of a multiplicity of elements, and thus it symbolically reflects the essence of existence, is capable of generating a sense of mystery and evoking metaphysical anxiety. The work of art has no informational, educational or entertainment purpose. It exists solely as "Czysta Forma" (Pure Form), and as such fulfills its proper function.

Witkacy expressed his views of art above all in "Nowe formy w malarstwie i wynikąjace stąd nieporozumienia" / "New Forms in Painting and the Misunderstandings Resulting from Them" (1919), "Szkice estetyczne" / "Aesthetic Sketches" (1922), and in "Teatr. Wstęp do teorii Czystej Formy w teatrze" / "Theatre - An Introduction to the Theory of Pure Form in Theatre" (1923).

Witkacy divided the arts into the homogeneous and the complex depending on their form. He identified music, which utilizes sound, and painting, which utilizes lines and colors, as homogeneous arts. The complex arts included poetry and theatre. However, Witkacy did not consider novels as lying within the realm of art, in light of the fact that by necessity they are carriers of information. This can be seen as something of a paradox given that he authored a number of famous and highly innovative novels.

According to Witkacy, early art forms were harmonious: Pure Form reflected the harmony of existence as experienced by its creator. It was his opinion, however, that in his time the artist experienced the world as full of contradictions and dangers, as a result of which artworks contained elements which were corrupt and perverse, disharmonious and ugly. Why? Because humanity was steering toward an unavoidable catastrophe, the effect of which would be a society of universal contentment characterized by a complete lack of metaphysical feelings. Witkiewicz described the mechanisms leading toward this catastrophe in an essay titled "O zaniku uczuć metafizycznych w związku z rozwojem społecznym" / "On the Decay of Metaphysical Feelings in Connection with Social Development" (in: "Nowe formy w malarstwie" / "New Forms in Painting").

The contradiction between creative individualism and public tendencies leading to uniformity, to the creation of a special unity within which all are equal and happy, was already a topic that writers of the "Młoda Polska" (Young Poland) movement explored consistently. Witkacy brought this conflict to its tragic extreme. He had experienced World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of totalitarian governments throughout Europe. He was not alone in his fears. The two decades between the world wars witnessed the appearance and ultimate domination of a catastrophic trend in thought that perceived processes of democratization, universal education and the rising mass culture as a threat to high culture and emerging elites. The best-known writers of this current included Jose Ortega y Gasset, Oswald Spengler, Nikolai Bierdayev, and two Poles, Marian Zdziechowski and Jan Korwin Kochanowski.

No one, however, provided such personal testimony - through their life, art, and ultimately through their death by suicide - of experiencing this historiosophic drama. Witkiewicz believed that universal equality, borne on the shoulders of inevitable social revolution, denoted the eradication of culture based on individualism and of metaphysics. Witkacy referred to this as the triumph of ethics over metaphysics, and he understood ethics to consist of systems propagating a drive toward universal contentment. He perceived Marxism as chief among these systems. After the revolution, there would be no more individuals capable of experiencing the Mystery of Existence, perceiving its strangeness. Humankind would not cease existing physically but would be transformed into sated cattle. Religion, philosophy and art would disappear. The path to catastrophe, the last instances before the deluge - these are the substance of his novels.

Witkacy - the Novelist

It would therefore be topical to ask Witkacy the Novelist the following: what is the novel if it is not art, and why did he devote time to producing novels? His answer would be that the novel is a sack into which one can toss everything. It can contain a discursive presentation of one's views and characters illustrating those views; it can be used to initiate debates, caricature current realities, create anti-utopias of the future. His own novels combine philosophical discourse alongside highly political material, mixing reflections on psychology with political burlesque. Writers of the Young Poland movement already accustomed readers to syncretism in their own novels, but they were serious, often tragic, in their philosophizing and prophesying. Witkacy proved equally, if not more, tragic. But the tragic tone of his works is concealed under total scorn, caricature and somber grotesqueness. The protagonists of his novels are the "last people" - i.e. the last individuals capable of experiencing metaphysical emotions on the eve of a social revolution that will bring the destruction of European culture. These "last people" are still capable of experiencing the strangeness of existence, but do so at the price of their own moral degradation, which leads to committing erotic excesses, experimenting with drugs, engaging in artistic debauchery.

Atanazy Bazakbal, the hero of "Pożegnanie jesieni / Farewell to Autumn" (1927), is exactly this kind of decadent artist. The excesses he commits ultimately drive his wife to suicide; he is then entangled in a neurotic relationship with Hela Bertz, a demonic woman (a favorite character type of Witkacy's that appears in his prose works and plays). Bazakbal goes on to survive a revolution that eradicates all social differences, but he subsequently faces persecution and flees the country. In an attack of determination, he decides to return to struggle against the destruction of individuality. Of course, this proves futile: he is stopped at the border and executed.

In "Nienasycenie / Insatiability" the young hero Genezyp Kapen takes lessons in the 'strangeness of existence' from degenerate intellectuals and artists, male and female lovers. Kapen lives in times when the last remaining bit of European history still exists. The continent's old culture is threatened from the inside by the spread of Communism, and from the outside by even more dangerous Chinese Communism, which Witkacy describes as never having known the value of individualism. The Chinese Army lead by Murta-Bing is closing in on Poland's borders. Mysterious agents go about selling Eastern pills that give those who take them a feeling of contentment and effectively paralyze the will. The General Quartermaster Kocmołuchowicz, who controls the disintegrating world around with an iron hand, is preparing the country's defense. But the general then unexpectedly surrenders and is decapitated. After experiencing the drama of war and revolution, the stunned Genezyp and the last individualists like him live out their days cared for by the Ministry of Cultural Mechanization.

These two novels are set in the future - somewhere toward the end of the 20th century. The question remains to what extent these prophecies remain current. Have we safely lived through the critical times, or are we in the midst of a process under which the viewers of reality shows are taking the place of intellectual elites in public life?

Both novels had a strong effect on Polish literature using the grotesque as a means of expression. They were also translated into many foreign languages.

Witkacy's third novel, "Jedyne wyjście / The Only Way Out", the manuscript of which had been considered lost, was published in 1968. Its hero, Izydor Smogorzewicz Wędziejewski, is to a great extent the author's alter ego. He creates a philosophical system titled "Ontologia ogólna, nowym sposobem wyłożona" / "A General Ontology, Presented in a New Way." He becomes embroiled in sexual and drug exploits. He engages in disputes with Chwistek, Russel and Carnap. He discusses the dualities of existence and art with his friends. Finally, he is killed by one of his debaters but seems subsequently to rise from the dead. The marginal annotations found by the book's publisher suggest that this novel had a sequel with the same protagonist and with the setting moved from Warsaw to Zakopane. It is unknown, however, if Witkacy ever wrote this.

As far as prose is concerned, Witkacy also left behind a treatise reporting the effects of his experiments with vices and narcotics titled "Nikotyna, alkohol, kokaina, peyotl, morfina, eter. Apendix" / "Nicotine, Alcohol, Cocaine, Peyote, Morphine, Ether - An Appendix" (1932), the novel "622 upadki Bunga czyli Demoniczna kobieta / The 622 Falls of Bungo, or the Demonic Woman" - a satirical take on the artist's friends (written around 1910, published 1972), and "Niemyte dusze / Unwashed Souls" - a political lampoon on Witkacy's countrymen (written c. 1936, published 1975).

The Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy (State Publishing Institute) is in the process of publishing subsequent volumes of a critical edition of Witkacy's "Dzieła zebrane" / "Collected Works." The whole edition will span twenty-three volumes.

Author: Halina Floryńska-Lalewicz, April 2004



WITKACY – Playwright

Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, an artist who expressed himself through a variety of creative forms, including painting, drawing and novels, also wrote over thirty plays for the stage between 1918 and 1926. Thus, during this period Witkacy created practically all of his dramatic works. He went on later to write "Szewcy / The Shoemakers", completed in 1934, and "Tak zwana ludzkość w obłędzie / So-called Humanity Gone Mad", which the author completed in 1938. The latter was subsequently lost and is now considered the last play Witkacy wrote.

Early on, Witkiewicz began developing his own, original and highly controversial concept of theatre. This theoretical foundation was to explain the rules that governed his plays, but above all it proved to be an expression of the artist's deep reflection on the nature of drama and theatre. Witkiewicz fervently criticized theatrical naturalism, psychologism and symbolism. He contended that the theatres of his time were dominated by "the cry of desire" and an "over-magnification of life." He proposed to replace this with the theory of pure form. He looked upon theatrical art from a formal standpoint, demanding that formal elements be composed in a manner that would be necessary above all, and also stripped of life's logic. He stated that ultimately meaning should be perceivable only in the work as an entirety. The theatre artist had the right to dismantle cause-effect relationships, to freely deform both psychology and the actions of characters. Witkacy wrote of drama that it should be akin to "the brain of a madman presented on stage." However, he simultaneously conceded that a certain rationale of life was unavoidable in stage plays, because these works are human creations. The complete elimination of codes based in life would turn art into something programmed, resulting in what Witkiewicz could not himself term an honest creative act. Already before World War II, the Theory of Pure Form was criticized for being incoherent, sometimes unimplementable and certainly not consistent with its author's efforts as a playwright. Witkacy ardently defended the theory, though he was aware that he did not always remain true to it in his own plays. As if in confirmation of this, he marked his own plays accordingly, placing a cross on those he considered more realistic (e.g. "W małym dworku / Country house") and a star on those he thought of as approaching Pure Form (e.g. "Nowe wyzwolenie / A New Deliverance").

The Theory of Pure Form grew out of Witkacy's perception of art as a metaphysical experience; simultaneously, it constituted a reflection of the writer's philosophical views which were saturated with a sense of catastrophe. Religion, philosophy and metaphysics had been defeated, Witkiewicz believed. It was solely in art, which itself had degenerated as since the Renaissance it had focused on re-creating, that any change was possible, and only on condition that it would be looked upon through the prism of form. Witkacy seemed to say that the purpose of art - the last refuge of individual existence - thus lay in inciting metaphysical feelings, evoking a non-reducible metaphysical sense of the strangeness of existence, rather than in simply replicating everyday life.

"(...) A theatrical play is possible," wrote Witkacy, "in which actual becoming, independent of the over-magnification of life, might produce in viewers a state of metaphysical awareness, independent of whether the 'core' of the play is realistic or fantastic, or whether it is a synthesis of both types in its individual parts; naturally, as long as the entirety of the play derives from an honest need on the part of the author to create, on stage, an expression of metaphysical feeling in a purely formal dimension" (S.I. Witkiewicz, "Wstęp do teorii czystej formy w teatrze" / "An Introduction to the Theory of Pure Form in Theatre," in: "Teatr i inne pisma o teatrze" / "Theatre and Other Writings on Theatre," Warsaw 1995).

In Witkiewicz's plays, the same motifs appear time and again, combining and intertwining in a variety of ways. The topics that recur in his plays, sometimes obsessively, are inextricably linked to the writer's philosophy as laid out in his philosophical works and novels. In his plays, Witkacy strongly underlines the motif of the insatiability of life. Culture and civilization are presented as in deep crisis and as degenerating. Humans, separated from elevated, sublime feelings and spiritual experiences, are being consumed by boredom and intellectual and emotional laziness; nevertheless, drawing on what strength they have left, they seek answers to fundamental questions about existence, attempt to access the Mystery of Existence. In other words, they seek metaphysical experiences. Oftentimes Witkiewicz's protagonists have the same aims that the author perceives art as having. They seek to intensify their experiences, grab and "wring" all that is possible out of reality; they revel in perverse erotic activities, take narcotics and finally produce various suspect, often fraudulent, artistic creations. For them, this is a means of feeling the strangeness of existence and simultaneously an act of self-defense. In "Bzik tropikalny/ Tropical Craze", Mister Price and his demonic lover Ellinor try to drown the dangerous and overwhelming dullness of the tropics in animalistic, sadomasochistic desires. The depraved Tatiana in the philosophical fantasy "Nowe wyzwolenie / A New Deliverance" strives in turn to deprave the young Zabawnisia (Playdemoiselle) by exposing her to the mysteries of "real life." They proceed together to psychologically torture their prey, Florestan Wężymord (Snakemug), by staging a refined, cruel game designed to ensnare him. This motif of youthful initiation combined with a faking of real experience, ultimately never achieved, also appears in the dream-like "Kurka wodna / The Water Hen". Tadzio (Thaddeus) shows tremendous potential and could become someone worthy of being called a 'man of metaphysical experience.' He says, "I wish to know my beginning, where I come from and where everything is going." Ultimately, however, he turns into a cad who comes down on the side of chaos and joins the revolutionary mob. In "Nadobnisie i koczkodany / Dainty Shapes and Hairy Apes" decadence, deformed and macabre eroticism, and the battle of the sexes - one of Witkacy's favorite motifs which is also in evidence in "Tropical Craze" - intensify and acquire new character.

"In 'Dainty Shapes and Hairy Apes', the author seems to redraft characters and situations from earlier works and push them to the absurd while expanding and multiplying them," wrote Daniel C. Gerould. "This is particularly true of character types like the innocent witness learning about life and the demonic woman surrounded by breathless admirers. They are shown as if through a magnifying glass and multiplied, becoming exaggerated monsters and gargoyles" ("Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz jako pisarz" / "Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz as a Writer," Warsaw, 1981).

Witkiewicz's protagonists are beset by troubles and ensnared by their efforts to feel the strangeness of existence. Oftentimes they produce elaborate crutches and replacement worlds, and though in Witkiewicz's dramatic structures "they do not conceal" their artificially devised condition and more often than not succeed in completely compromising themselves, in essence they seek to mask their pain, turn their crutch into a dressing for their suffering.

"Witkacy's protagonists constantly talk about 'a second ego,' 'an artificial life,' 'a deformation of life,' 'inverted feelings,' 'a life beyond life,' 'another world' and 'an artificial mental structure,' " summarized Jan Błoński. "His women do not desire love, his tyrants want no power, his scholars seek no knowledge, his activists do not wish for revolution. Or rather, they want love, knowledge or revolution, but they want these in order to live through unusual events, undergo transformation, experience the mysterious 'x,' the peculiar upheaval, the puzzling emotion" (in: S.I. Witkiewicz, "Wybór dramatow" / "Selected Plays," introduction by Jan Blonski, Wroclaw 1974).

Witkacy's plays highlight the author's fear of deepening social dehumanization and mechanization. There are two sides to this fear - one focusing on dictatorship by the gray masses, the other on the advent of far-reaching social uniformity, the eradication of individuality.

"It is easiest to understand Witkiewicz as a social prophet and forecaster of the decline of civilization," wrote Jan Błoński. "Like so many others, he announced the end of art, the destruction of individuality, the decline of sensitivity to the metaphysical, though his argumentation was highly original. He believed that these virtues would be defeated by the increasing democratization of life, which would generate a society of robots who would be completely content but also perfectly dull" ("Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz jako dramaturg" / "Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz as Playwright," Krakow, 1973).

In "Bezimienne dzieło / An Anonymous Work" Witkacy explores social and political change, revolution that leads to social disintegration and literally eradicates the individual. In the play's finale, the unfulfilled artist Plazmonik admits, "There are only two possible places for metaphysical individuals in our times: prison or the madhouse." He says this almost at the same time as we hear the crying of the revolutionary crowd: "Hurrah!! Long live the uniform MASSES!!! Down with the individual! Down with personality!!! (...) On the street lamps! Hang them! Hang them! (...) Hang the entire government from street lamps!! Down with the priests!! (...)." Towards the end of "Oni / Them", Tefuan, one of the play's protagonists and "the founder of a new religion known as Absolute Automatism," cries: "(...) You see, I don't believe in anything myself - not even in automatism. Damn it! - I don't believe in anything, and that's that. (...)". The ideology he has created turns out to confirm a total lack of faith; a surrogate activity, it proves to have been a compensation for life, a surrogate even for his frustrations of an erotic nature. "Szewcy / The Shoemakers", a play Witkiewicz worked on for a very long time, from 1927 to 1934, seems to summarize his catastrophic visions and to be the fullest expression of his historiosophic views. The story is of a revolution prepared by master shoemaker and old-style Socialist Sajetan Tempe and his fellow journeymen. The shoemakers, however, embody an entire people. They are bored, they suffer, they experience their lives as hopeless and must constantly endure social repression. They are led by the liberal Scurvy, who stands at the head of an organization called "Dziarscy Chlopcy" (Brisk Boys) and begins at one point to employ Fascist methods. Simultaneously, he is the lover of Princess Irina Vsevolodowna Zbereznicka-Podberezka - a demonic representative of the aristocracy. Scurvy leads a coup d'etat and introduces a regime of terror, simultaneously imprisoning the shoemakers. But this is hardly the end of this story of social upheavals. The shoemakers have their day as well, rebelling, "installing themselves" in place of the aristocracy and truly living the life. This brings them absolutely no satisfaction and they continue to feel their lives to be bland. They are like Scurvy and Irina who had felt an emptiness which they tried to drown in various ways, not least among them through sexual exploits. History rolls on and the time finally comes for the third, most threatening and final revolution. This is accomplished by real laborers or technocrats lead by the Hyper-Laborer. Human robots stripped of all feeling, they introduce their own order, irrevocably eliminating individuality and individualism, mechanizing and automating society.

"(...) To Witkiewicz, revolution becomes something inevitable, more - even necessary; simultaneously it is something catastrophic as it brings the mechanization of society, the end of great individualities," wrote Konstanty Puzyna. "It is worth underlining that it is something that accelerates negative changes, rather than being their root cause. Witkiewicz's diagnosis thus runs deeper, for revolution for him constitutes one link within a chain of far more general processes. (...) In specific scenes from his plays and novels, one can see very clearly, behind the grotesque, demonized presentation, how the world is dying, rotting, degenerating. 'Bourgeois formations,' 'former humans,' the aristocracy, financial and diplomatic spheres, members of the artistic and scientific boheme all give themselves over to 'devilish' orgies in anticipation of the deluge. In Witkiewicz's art theory and historiosophy, this expands into the complete eradication of all manifestations of culture" ("Witkacy" in: "Witkacy," Warsaw, 1999).

In the world of Witkiewicz's plays, breakthroughs are sharply delineated. The old order is destroyed, replaced by a new catastrophic, degenerated and standardized reality. Witkacy's protagonists often seek salvation from this. In doing so, they strive to conquer their solitude and boredom, the basic ingredients of a civilization in decline. It is in searching for metaphysical feelings that they intensify and multiply individual feeling. They shape alternative worlds of creation, they go mad, they become tyrants. At times they also seek to save the world, though their efforts invariably prove a fiasco. The hero of "Matka / The Mother", the philosopher Leon, is not only a prophet of the death of culture and civilization, but also, though in truth in a somewhat lukewarm manner, also announces his program for the salvation of society. In "Mątwa / The Cuttlefish", Hyrkan creates his own kingdom, which he then quickly turns into a dictatorship. He shapes an artificial world, however, all these efforts betray a desperate effort to salvage the old order and values related to absolute power. Finally, there is Gyubal Wahazar, a deviant of individualism, a perfect tyrant, a character prophesying the arrival of the world's 20th century dictators, all in a play dating from 1921. Wahazar would later be compared to Hitler, to name but one real figure. Years after they were written, many of Witkacy's plays, including "Gyubal Wahazar" and "Szewcy / The Shoemakers", began to be perceived almost as prophetic visions.

"In this portrait of a 'non-Euclidian' dictator and his system, Witkacy analyzed and showed the essential shared feature of all of Europe's later dictatorships," Puzyna wrote of "Wahazar". "Much later, toward the end of the totalitarian era, after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, this 'something' was defined and condemned as the 'cult of the individual.' In spite of additions of great fantasy, Witkacy precisely and accurately demonstrated the mechanism of that cult: its source, its model form, its consequences and the social reactions to it. He also correctly predicted that these cultures would soon increase in popularity" ("Witkacy i rewolucja" / "Witkacy and the Revolution" (in:) "Witkacy," Warsaw, 1999).

Witkiewicz's plays, unappreciated and largely misunderstood before World War II, were rediscovered in Poland in the 1960s and 70s. Largely characterized by a tone of parody, Witkacy reveals his derisive abilities in them with great force. All the literary references in the plays seem to reflect these abilities. What we have here is both mockery of the rhetoric of the Romantic and Young Poland movements, as well as a parody of motifs drawn from Ibsen and Strindberg, Shakespeare and Wyspiański, Rittner and Conrad. In Witkacy's works, humor almost always becomes macabre, a burlesque tone - an invariable ingredient of Witkiewicz's plays - combines with fantasy. Bitter irony and sarcasm strongly color the represented world, in which seriousness and "elevated" philosophical discourse are mixed perfectly with, and complement, the comedic tone. Konstanty Puzyna, in his classic introduction to the first full edition of Witkiewicz's plays, classified the writer as an exponent of the avant-garde current in European playwriting. Puzyna highlighted certain similarities with Expressionism, wrote about the parallels between Witkacy's plays and Alfred Jarry's "Ubu Roi", referred to the writer's poetic as Surrealist.

"We encounter ideas that in their bravura surpass the entirety of European drama of the time," he wrote, "ideas that to this day have not been improved upon either by Ionesco or by Simpson, though both these writers consciously reference the Surrealistic tradition" ("Witkacy" in: "Witkacy", Warsaw, 1999).

The singularity of this poetic consists in its density of events, events that are often realistic but occur in such concentration and accumulation that they constitute a real fireworks display of fantasy and dreams. They form an illogical structure that breaks away from principles of reason. The absurd is also born in the juxtaposition of un-matching or mutually destructive "realities." Oftentimes the very structure of the plays exposes reality as seen by the author (e.g. "The Water Hen"). The plays begin at what seems to be the end of their story. Edgar kills the Water Hen, which shortly thereafter reappears in the play. Even death proves a reversible event, Witkiewicz seems to say, thereby stripping the presented reality of seriousness and rationale, subverting and negating it. Jan Błoński points to another important element of Witkacy's poetic - an all-encompassing, derisive laughter that seems to permeate virtually the entirety of his oeuvre as a playwright. This laughter is destructive, a primal force, one that well serves Witkiewicz's passion for unmasking falsehood.

"Grimness is born only when humor reveals its second visage, when it becomes pone with the feeling that all is small and mean," noted Błoński. "Witkacy's laughter is a cynical laughter, a laughter both anarchic and destructive. Sometimes, however, as in 'W małym dworku / Country House', the writer seems to stop half way and limit himself to parody (or self-parody). What dominates then is a playful, humorous mood. The overstatement of effects so symptomatic of Witkacy strips events of their gravity and weight, while the audience does not necessarily anticipate the depressing conclusions to which the sarcastic humor of 'The Mother' or 'The Shoemakers' leads" (in: S.I. Witkiewicz, "Selected Dramas," introduction by Jan Błoński, Wroclaw, 1974).

All quotes from plays after Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, "Dramaty" / "Plays," vols. I and II, edited and with an introduction by Konstanty Puzyna, PIW (State Publishing Institute), Warsaw, 1972.

THE DRAMATIC WORKS of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz
(Based on: Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, "Dramaty / Dramatic Works", vols. I and II, edited and with an introduction by Konstanty Puzyna, PIW (State Publishing Institute, Warsaw, 1972)

JUVENILIA:

• "Karaluchy / The Cockroaches", 1893
• "Komedie z życia rodzinnego / Family Life Comedies", 1893
• "Komedia pierwsza / First Comedy"
• "Komedia druga / Second Comedy"
• "Sceny z komedii trzeciej / Scenes from the Third Comedy"
• "Z komedii czwartej / From the Fourth Comedy"
• "Menażeria, czyli wybryk słonia / The Menagerie, or the Elephant's Rollick", 1893
• "Księżniczka Magdalena, czyli natrętny książę / Princess Magdalena, or the Persistent Prince", 1893
• "Odważna Księżniczka / The Bold Princess", 1893
• "Biedny Chlopiec / The Poor Boy", 1893

PLAYS:

• "Maciej Korbowa i Bellatrix / Maciej Korbowa and Bellatrix", 1918
• "Pragmatysci / The Pragmatists", 1919
• "Tumor Mozgowicz / Tumor Brainowicz", 1920
• "Mister Price, czyli bzik tropikalny/ Mister Price, or the Tropical Craze", 1920
• "Nowe wyzwolenie / A New Deliverance", 1920
• "Oni / Them", 1920
• "Panna Tutli-Putli / Miss Tootli-Pootli", 1920
• "W malym dworku / Country House", 1921
• "Niepodleglosc trojkatow / The Independence of Triangles", 1921
• "Metafizyka dwuglowego cielecia / The Metaphysics of a Two-headed Calf", 1921
• "Gyubal Wahazar, czyli na przeleczach bezsensu / Gyubal Wahazar, or Along the Cliffs of the Absurd", 1921
• "Kurka wodna / The Water Hen", 1921
• "Bezimienne dzielo / An Anonymous Work", 1921
• "Matwa, czyli hyrkaniczny swiatopoglad / The Cuttlefish, or the Hyrcanian Worldview", 1922
• "Nadobnisie i koczkodany, czyli zielona pigułka / Dainty Shapes and Hairy Apes, or the Green Pill", 1922
• "Jan Maciej Karol Wścieklica / Jan Maciej Karol Hellcat", 1922
• "Wariat i zakonnica, czyli nie ma złego, co by na jeszcze gorsze nie wyszło / The Madman and the Nun, or All Things Bad Will Always End Up Worse", 1923
• "Szalona lokomotywa / The Crazy Locomotive", 1923
• "Janulka, Córka Fizdejki / Janulka, Daughter of Fizdejko", 1923
• "Matka / The Mother", 1924
• "Sonata Belzebuba, czyli prawdziwe zdarzenie w Mordowarze / The Beelzebub Sonata, or a True Story from the Town of Mordowar", 1925
• "Szewcy / The Shoemakers", 1934

FRAGMENTS:

• "Straszliwy wychowawca / The Terrifying Teacher", 1920
• "Nowa homeopatia zla / A New Homeopathy of Evil", 1918 (?)
• "Wampir we flakonie, czyli zapach welonu / The Vampire in a phial, or the Scent of a Veil", 1926
• "[???]" [unidentified drama] (title and year unknown)
• "Tak zwana ludzkosc w obledzie / So-Called Humanity Gone Mad", 1938 (lost - only the title, subtitle and a list of characters remain, though it is not known if the character list is complete)

SELF-PARODIES:

• "Negatyw szkicu / Negative of a Sketch" (essay and sketch), 1921
• "Redemptoary / Redemptoaries", 1921
• "Manifest (Fest - Mani) / Manifesto (Festo-Mani)", 1921
• "Romans Schizofrenika / The Romance of a Schizophrenic", from 1918-1922 (?)

Author: Monika Mokrzycka-Pokora, March 2004



WITKACY - Visual Arts

Polish painter, illustrator, and photographer, playwright and novelist, philosopher, art theoretician, and critic; member of the first-ever Polish group of avant-garde artists known as the Formists; author of the aesthetic theory of Pure Form; creator of the Firma Portretowa (Portrait Company).

Witkacy was the son of Stanislaw Witkiewicz, an exceptional art critic, painter, creator of the "Zakopane Style" in architecture and handicrafts, and a propagator of Realism in the visual arts. Between 1905 and 1910 Witkacy studied painting at Krakow's Academy of Fine Arts under Józef Mehoffer. In 1901 he visited St. Petersburg briefly; in 1904 he traveled to Italy, visiting Vienna and Munich on the way. In 1908 he traveled to Paris on a study visit. During his second journey to France in 1911, he stayed with Władysław Ślewiński in Doëlan in Brittany. It was at that time that he was taken with the beauty of the landscapes of Pont-Aven and Le Pouldu, and became fascinated with the symbolic "synthetism" of the paintings of Paul Gauguin, which also influenced Slewiński. While in Paris Witkiewicz also became interested in the initial experiments in Cubism. He visited Polish anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski in London the same year. In 1913 the artist had his first solo exhibition at Krakow's Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Sztuk Pięknych (Friends of the Fine Arts Society).

In 1914 Witkiewicz traveled to Australia as a member of a scientific expedition organized by Malinowski. Following the outbreak of World War I, Witkiewicz made his way through the Balkans and Odessa to St. Petersburg, where he joined the ranks of the Russian army. Wounded in battle, he landed in a St. Petersburg hospital in 1916. He was decorated for bravery and promoted to the rank of lieutenant. In 1917 he visited Kiev and Moscow, and settled in Zakopane a year later, becoming a member of the local artistic and intellectual elite. He also became a member of the Polish Expressionists group (renamed the Formists in 1919), with which he exhibited his works in Krakow (1918, 1919, 1921), Warsaw (1919, 1920, 1921), Poznań (1919/1920, 1921), and Lvov (1920). He also took part in the exhibitions of the "Podhale Arts" Society held in Zakopane (1912, 1919, 1924, 1925) and Warsaw (1926). In 1919 he published a theoretical essay titled "New Forms in Painting and Resulting Misunderstandings." He presented his work at the Towarzystwo Zachety Sztuk Pieknych (Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts) in Warsaw (1907, 1912, 1929-31), Towarzystwo Przyjaciol Sztuk Pieknych (Friends of the Fine Arts Society) in Krakow (1908, 1913, 1914, 1919, 1932), Lviv (1924, 1929, 1930) and Torun (1924), in the Garlinski Salon in Warsaw (1924, 1925), and the Salon of the Wielkopolski Zwiazek Polskich Artystow Plastykow (Great Poland Association of Visual Artists) in Poznan (1929). Witkiewicz's works were included in exhibitions of Polish art held in St. Petersburg, (1918) and Paris (Galerie du Musée Crillon, 1922; Autumn Salon, 1928). The artist also had solo exhibitions at Krakow's Friends of Fine Arts Society in 1919 (with Tymon Niesiolowski and August Zamoyski), the Garlinski Salon in Warsaw in 1924 (with Rafal Malczewski) and 1925 (with Tymon Niesiołowski), and at the Friends of Fine Arts Society in the city of Torun in 1924. In 1930 the artist's paintings were shown at the Galerie Zak in Paris.

In the history of Polish culture, Witkacy is recorded as a novelist and playwright, philosopher, art theoretician and critic, painter, illustrator, and photographer. He began by painting views of the Tatra Mountains when he settled in Zakopane in 1904. Between 1904 and 1909 he created a series of paintings which he titled "Przedwiośnie" ("Early Spring"), which were influenced by the romantic scenes produced by artists of the Młoda Polska (Young Poland) movement. While studying in Krakow, Witkacy developed a strong fascination for the highly expressive paintings of Witold Wojtkiewicz and the literary works of Roman Jaworski and Tadeusz Miciński. Between 1908 and 1914 Witkacy created a series of drawings in which he subjected the human figure to grotesque transformations, creating demonic looking beings in unreal situations ("Kompozycja figuralna / Figural Composition", 1914). Charcoal became his primary medium, his assumptions about the reality-heightening possibilities of black and white representation proving correct. He viewed his half-imagined compositions as deriving from the phantasmagoria of Goya, Rops, and Beardsley - artists he thought of as the leading "demonologists" of the 19th century. Devoid of a clear narrative, these scenes are primarily populated by demonic women and their victims - will-less, despairing men condemned for destruction. Witkacy gave these compositions enigmatic, often ironic, titles designed to elicit a plethora of associations, generating a complex metaphorical fabric much akin to the effect of Goya's captions to his "Caprichos". In his drawings, Witkacy caricatured motifs drawn from the Expressionistic paintings of Edvard Munch, which reflected the basic theses of the "metaphysics of gender" preached by Polish poet Stanisław Przybyszewski. These works contained early examples of the parodying, grotesque tone the artist would develop in his mature playwriting, prose, and painting. Witkacy and his friend Wojtkiewicz shared a desire to "play" with established conventions, paraphrasing and lampooning them. This complex of shared influences and interests is the link between these two artists and the perverse imagination of another friend and peer, writer Roman Jaworski, whose collection of novellas titled "Stories of Maniacs" celebrated ugliness and was very much a distillation of the author's "sense of strangeness." Published in 1909, Witkacy designed its title page while the illustrations inside the volume were by Wojtkiewicz.

While in Brittany in 1911, Witkiewicz developed a close relationship with Slewinski and came under the influence of the painterly "synthetism" of the Pont-Aven school. His fascination with the art of Gauguin (the artist's soft contour lines surrounding lightly modulated planes of harmonious, saturated color) is as evident in the landscapes Witkacy painted in Brittany as it is in the decorative styling of his portrait of Leon Chwistek ("Udzielny Byk na urlopie / Independent Bull on Vacation", 1913) and the similar and complementary "Autoportret / Self-Portrait" of the same year. The artist gave his images dating from before 1914, often referred to as "psychological" portraits, titles that sought to comment ironically on the personalities of their subjects. While in Russia Witkacy created a series of pastel drawings he referred to as "astronomic compositions" (1917-1918). During his Formist period he formulated a theory of art whose core concept was "absolute form," singular and un-repeatable; around this time he also devised the aesthetic category of Pure Form, which he conceived to be the essence of an artwork as constituted from a unification of its various substantive components. Witkacy differed from the other Formists in that he believed Pure Form possessed symbolic meaning, reflected the Mystery of Existence, and was an analogue of the structure of the Universe. According to the theory of Pure Form, art expresses the metaphysical restlessness of "individual beings," who seek to defend themselves against solitude through creativity. The ever expanding "in-satiation [incompleteness] of form," brought on by the disappearance of the spiritual dimension of human existence, incessantly complicates matters and causes continuous growth in perversions, which become the last possible source for metaphysical jolts. Witkiewicz's works in the 1920s differed from those of the Formists in terms of both iconography and morphology. In them the artist visualized the play of lines and relationships between compositional masses through their association with objective reality, and in which objects nevertheless remain conveyors of the painting's structural qualities. Compositional arrangement is contingent upon the mutual cancellation of "directional tensions" and generally reflects the artist's search for unity through multiplicity. Flowing contours and clashing combinations of flat planes of color are used to create obsessive, eschatological visions with a dream-like mood ("Rąbanie lasu. Walka / Felling the Forest. The Battle", 1921-22). The phantasmagoric landscapes in Witkacy's paintings are populated by half-human, half-animal beings who swirl within the space of artistic vision ("Ogólne zamieszanie / General Confusion", 1920). Curving lines encircling planes of dissonant color are used to create spastic gestures and grotesque shapes. This apparent chaos exists in compositions whose arrangement was devised to allow for the cancellation of "directional tensions" and fulfillment of the metaphysical moment of "unity with the absolute."

In 1924 Witkacy announced his retirement from artistic exploration in favor of painting commissioned portraits. In the concept for his Firma Portretowa (Portrait Company), he underlined the threats he perceived from the imminent onset of a dehumanized and "technicized" culture in which art was to lose its reason to exist. The rules and regulations for the Company defined five basic image types - A, B, C, D, and E - corresponding to different conventions of representation. Types A, B and E called for the artist to maintain maximum objectiveness during the creative process and were to result in verisimilar representations of the models. His mimetic representation of facial features, refined modeling of light and shadow, and fluid contour lines were decidedly of Young Poland provenance and derived from the portrait art of Stanislaw Wyspiański and Jozef Mehoffer. On the other hand, the abstract backgrounds composed of overlaid planes outlined in thick lines were a reference to the artist's Formistic explorations. The portrait typology also took account of iconographic issues and included provisions for representing the heads of subjects on pediments as sculpted busts, their heads floating above lightly sketched landscapes or adorned with oriental turbans and shawls. Models could and were shown against fantastic backgrounds, surprising for their luxuriant vegetation and accumulations of rocks and ruins. At times, the decoratively linear backgrounds resemble theatrical curtains ("Jadwiga Witkiewiczowa na tle egzotycznego pejzażu / Jadwiga Witkiewicz Against an Exotic Landscape", 1925). Highly detailed, these works were loaded with symbolic content, conveying metaphorical meanings that referenced remnants of past times and oriental cultural contexts on one hand, and the spiritual alienation and emotional tensions of the individuals represented in the portraits on the other (Maryla Grossmanowa - "Fałsz kobiety" z autoportretem / Maryla Grossman - "The Falsity of a Woman" with self-portrait, 1927). The "double portrait" was yet another of the types on offer, and most frequently involved juxtaposing the deformed figures of a woman and a man. The Portrait Company's contracts excluded the possibility of selling type C portraits a priori as the artist viewed these as further experimentation into the concept of Pure Form. The rules and regulations classified this type as a "Subjective description of the model - caricatured exaggeration of both a formal and psychological nature not excluded. In the extreme, an abstract composition, i.e. a 'Pure Form'" ("Autoportret / Self-Portrait", 1930). In his endless efforts to penetrate deeper into the psyche of his models (usually the artist's friends), Witkacy created under the influence of narcotics (cocaine, peyote, mescaline) and alcohol, which he believed intensified intuitive cognizance to the point of making psychoanalytical vivisection possible ("Leon Reynel", 1926). Witkacy also pursued a peculiar analysis of facial grimaces in a series of photographs, dating from the 1930s, that recorded his own grotesque mimicry. This experiment is an example of Witkacy's explorations into the idea of multiple personalities in individuals and manifests the artist's propensity for playing with "masks" that sometimes hide and at other times expose the world of emotions and internal tensions. The artist's final gesture of negation for contemporary reality was his death by suicide, which occurred one day after the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939.

Author: Irena Kossowska, Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Science, December 2001

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