The 20th century

The Young Poland movement

The Young Poland movement united several different groups and tendencies in opposition to the Polish version of Positivism and in a desire to reinstate imagination as paramount in literature; hence, the movement is also known as Neoromanticism, Modernism, and Symbolism. Among its pioneers were Antoni Lange, the poet, and Zenon Przesmycki (pseudonym Miriam), editor of the Symbolist review Chimera. Both made translations from a number of other languages and expressed aesthetic theories in critical essays. Przesmycki’s most influential contribution to the development of a modern literature, however, was his discovery of Cyprian Norwid.

Kazimierz Przerwa Tetmajer achieved popularity with his often nostalgic Poezje (1891–1924; “Poems”), but his prose had a greater vigour and precision of observation. Tetmajer’s Na skalnym Podhalu (1903–10; Tales of the Tatras) contained some effectively stylized folk material. His contemporary Jan Kasprowicz wrote long, lyrical poems; those in the volume Ginącemu światu (1902; “To a Dying World”) employed a technique of associations, quotations, musical repetitions, and free metre that anticipated modern European poetry. Tadeusz Miciński, a forerunner of Expressionism and Surrealism, wrote philosophical and mystical poems and plays, notably the collection of poems W mroku gwiazd (1902; “In the Twilight of the Stars”) and the play Kniaź Patiomkin (1906; “Prince Potemkin”). The lyrical poet Leopold Staff, whose work shows great variety and technical dexterity, was at this period associated with the Young Poland movement, although some of his finest work was written later.

Stanisław Przybyszewski was a leading exponent of the movement’s new aesthetic theories and edited a literary magazine, Życie (“Life”). Stefan Żeromski expressed passionate concern for social justice and national freedom in widely read works, but an excess of Realist documentation frequently vitiated the power of his later work. Władysław Stanisław Reymont, of peasant stock, adapted the Naturalist technique to create a vision of peasant life in a four-volume epic novel cycle, Chłopi (1904–09; The Peasants), for which he received the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1924. One of the most effective novels of the period, Żywot i myśli Zygmunta Podfilipskiego (1898; “The Life and Thoughts of Zygmunt Podfilipski”) by Józef Weyssenhoff, presented an ironic portrait of the egoist in society. Wacław Berent’s Próchno (1903; “Rotten Wood”) portrayed with biting irony late-19th-century decadence in life and art. Berent’s Ozimina (1911; “Winter Crop”), a Symbolist novel, foreshadowed the associative structure and narrative technique of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). His Żywe kamienie (1918; “Living Stones”) stressed the unity of medieval culture and Poland’s place within it. Karol Irzykowski’s Pałuba (1903; “The Hag”) was a bold experiment antedating by several years the psychoanalytical novel in western Europe. In it, motivation and behaviour were presented from different viewpoints, ingeniously cemented by the author’s own analyses, as in a scientific study. Irzykowski was also a critic and, in Dziesiąta Muza: Zagadnienia estetyczne kina (1924; “The Tenth Muse: Aesthetic Problems of the Cinema”), was the first to give attention to the cinema as an art form. Another influential critic, Stanisław Brzozowski, insisted that a critic represent the moral consciousness of his age; in Legenda Młodej Polski (1909; “The Legend of Young Poland”) he analyzed the weakness of turn-of-the-20th-century literature and expounded his view of the unity of all work—physical, technical, intellectual, and artistic.

Stanisław Wyspiański was a fine artist and dramatist. In his plays he reforged elements from classical tragedy and mythology, Polish Romantic drama, and national history into a complex whole. Wesele (1901; The Wedding, filmed in 1972 by Andrzej Wajda) is a visionary parable of Poland’s past, present, and problematic future, cast in the form of the traditional puppet-theatre play. It is a masterpiece of evocative allusion, tragedy, and humour.

The literature of the period was characterized by close contact with western European literatures, but writers such as Wyspiański turned to the Polish Romantics in search of a new poetic language.

Literature in independent Poland

The restoration of the country’s independence in 1918 decisively affected Polish literature. The period between 1918 and 1939 was characterized by richness, variety, and increasing contact with other European literatures, especially through the publication of translations. Lyrical poetry predominated for nearly a decade after 1918. The periodical Zdrój (“The Fountainhead”) showed affinities with German Expressionism. In Warsaw several poets formed a group called Skamander, from the name of their monthly publication; it was united by a desire to forge a poetic language attuned to modern life. One of its founders, Julian Tuwim, was a poet of emotional power and linguistic sensitivity. During World War II, in exile in Brazil and the United States, he wrote Kwiaty polskie (1949; “Polish Flowers”), notable for its nostalgia and for its length. Other Skamander members were Jan Lechoń and Kazimierz Wierzyński (both died abroad after World War II), Antoni Słonimski, and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, who was also a prolific prose writer. The group’s sympathizers included two eminent women poets: Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, an urbane, lyrical poet, and Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna, a lyrical poet who often incorporated elements of folklore into her work. Another sympathizer was Władysław Broniewski, a poet with strong left-wing sympathies who became a master of the revolutionary lyric, expressing involvement in current social and ideological problems.

Bolesław Leśmian wrote symbolic, Expressionist poetry that was remarkable for its inventive vocabulary, sensuous imagery, and philosophic content, all anticipating Existentialism. He published only three notable collections—Łąka (1920; “The Meadow”), Napój cienisty (1936; “The Shadowy Drink”), and Dziejba leśna (1938; “Woodland Tale”), published posthumously—but was considered by his admirers to be one of the most outstanding 20th-century Polish lyrical poets.

The Polish Futurist movement followed revolutionary trends in poetry—particularly in Italy and Russia. More original was a group called Awangarda Krakowska (“Vanguard of Kraków”), led by Tadeusz Peiper. It produced few works but had widespread influence on the modernization of poetic technique. Two of its adherents, Julian Przyboś and Adam Ważyk, the latter of whom was only loosely connected with the movement, rank among the outstanding poets of the post-World War II period. Also noteworthy is Józef Czechowicz, who assimilated traditional and regional elements to the catastrophic images in his poems.

Prose writing reached its ascendancy in the second decade of independence. Early novels by Zofia Nałkowska showed the influence of the Young Poland movement and focused on exploring the feminine psyche; later Nałkowska became preoccupied with social problems. Two other women writers of distinction were Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, noted for historical novels, and Maria Kuncewiczowa, who wrote psychological novels. Juliusz Kaden-Bandrowski used experimental realism in Czarne skrzydła (1928–29; “Black Wings”) and Mateusz Bigda (1933; “Matthew Bigda”), which treated social and political themes. Michał Choromański’s Zazdrość i medycyna (1933; Jealousy and Medicine) employed experimental methods of narrative sequence and was remarkable for its clinical analysis of character. A writer skilled in reflecting subtleties of perception was Bruno Schulz, author of Sklepy cynamonowe (1934; Cinnamon Shops), with prose reminiscent of Franz Kafka.

Tadeusz Żeleński (pseudonym Boy), witty, irreverent, and widely read, was a leading literary critic and one of Poland’s best interpreters of French literature. The essay form was represented by Jan Parandowski, whose main theme was the classical culture of Greece and Rome. A subversive attack on intellectual and social conventions was launched in the novel Ferdydurke (1937; Eng. trans. Ferdydurke), by Witold Gombrowicz, who displayed in it a satirical talent similar to that of Alfred Jarry. The taste for the cyclic novel was satisfied by Maria Dąbrowska with her four-volume Noce i dnie (1932–34; “Nights and Days”), an outstanding modern Polish example of a chronicle novel in epic style, about the development of the Polish intelligentsia of upper-middle-class origin.

Drama was the weakest of the literary forms during this period, and playwrights such as Karol Hubert Rostworowski and Jerzy Szaniawski often used symbolism inherited from the Young Poland tradition. The experimental dramas of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz were of interest chiefly for their expression of anti-Realist aesthetic theories; he developed many ideas of the Awangarda, applying the principles of “pure form” to painting and drama. He also forged catastrophic images of the future in his novels Pożegnanie jesieni (1927; “Farewell to Autumn”) and Nienasycenie (1930; Insatiability). Obsessed with the idea of a disintegration of European culture, which he viewed as endangered by totalitarian ideologies and an attempt to impose the uniformity of a “mass society,” Witkiewicz developed his ideas into plays combining elements of Surrealism, grotesque misrepresentation, and what later became known (in the plays of Eugène Ionesco, for example, whose work Witkiewicz to some extent foreshadowed) as the Theatre of the Absurd. After World War II his work attracted interest abroad and appeared in translation (e.g., The Madman and the Nun and Other Plays, 1968).