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Sławomir Mrożek (1930-2013) |
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Polish dramatist, prose writer, and cartoonist, whose works
explored alienation, abuse of power, conformity, and the limitations of
human freedom under a totalitarian system. Sławomir Mrożek used
surrealistic humor and grotesque situations to show how ridiculous the world we live in is. His most famous plays include Tango
(1964), a multileveled family drama, and Emigranci (1974),
about the collapse of illusions. ELEANOR: He's right. Stomil, do you still remember how we shattered tradition? How, in protest agaist tradition, I gave myself to you with Mummy and Daddy looking on? In the first row of the orchestra at the opening night of Tannhäuser. What a gorgeous scandal that was! Where are the days when people were still shocked by such things. And then you proposed to me. Sławomir
Mrożek was born in Borzecin, near Cracow, the son of
Antoni Mrożek, a village postmaster, and Zofia (Kedzior) Mrożek; she
died in 1949. His early years Mrozek spent in the villages of
Borzecin and Porabka Uszewska and in Cracow. Though he received a
conventional Catholic education, religious issues have not been in the
forefront in his plays. More important for his development were the war
years, the Nazi occupation of Poland, the establishment of a "people's
republic" after the war, and the Stalinist repression, which created a
whole generation of disillusioned young people. A Warsaw censor
condemned "Catholicism, bourgeois liberalism, formalism in art and
lierature and all influences of western though -
including the sciences." (Censorship, Translation and English
Language Fiction in People’s Poland by Robert Looby, 2015, p. 15) Mrożek graduated from the Nowodworski Lycée in
1949, and then started to study architecture. After
three months, he dropped out, and entered the Academy of Fine Arts in
Cracow, but again abandoned the curriculum because he was "bored" and
joined the staff of Dziennik Polski. For a short time he
studied also Oriental philosophy at the University of Cracow, to avoid
being drafted in the army. His early journalistic pieces were in
tune with the official ideology. "We trust the Great Stalin, trust the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Why should we be not certain of
the future," he recalled those days. (Transcending the
Absurd: Drama and Prose of Slawomir Mrozek by Halina Stephan,
1997, p. 32) When his love for
Stalin began to wane, he started to think that jazz can help solve the problem of
youthful boredom. At the time Mrożek joined the Young Writers' Section of the
Writers' Union, he read some of Witold Gombrowicz's (1904-1969) works. During his first years in emigration,
Mrożek
talked about the literary icon, who had left Poland in 1939, as his
"nightmare", but added that he "would be devasted it if [the nightmare]
did not exist." (Transcending the
Absurd: Drama and Prose of Slawomir Mrozek by Halina Stephan,
1997, pp. 138-39) Opowiadania z Trzmielowej Gory (1953, Tales from Bumble Bee Hill) Mrożek's first published book containing two satirical stories, was printed in an edition of 25,000 copies. The second volume, Polpancerze praktyczne (Practical Half-Armour) also appeared in 1953. A propagandist work, it attacked petit bourgeois mentality, warned about the revival of fascist tendencies in Germany, and introduced Dwight D. Eisenhower as a continuator of Hitler's tradition. In 1956 Mrożek traveled to the Soviet Union. Allowed to travel to the West, he spent next year two months in France. Mrożek's satirical drawings started to appear regularly in the humor magazine Przekrój and in Szpilki, and in 1958 he began editing a weekly, Postepowiec. In 1959 Mrożek married the artist Maria Oremba; she died of cancer in 1969 in West Berlin. For a while Mrożek was better known for his cartoons than for
his fiction. His talent for playwrighting Mrożek
discovered when he wrote a show, Joy in Earnest, for the
student theatre Bim-Bom. Policja (1958, The
Police), his first play, presented the old story of the fox and the geese in a new form
- an highly efficient police
force, that has imprisoned all dissidents, must create fake agent-provocateurs to secure the existence of the
system. In the 1950s, student and cabaret theatres began to develop in Poland, Andrzej Wajda made his early films (Kanal in 1957 and Ashes and Diamonds in 1958), Stanislaw Lem published his early science-fiction stories, and Witold Lutoslawski made his international breakthrough with Funeral music in memoriam Béla Barók (1958), in which he used 12-tone techniques. The most important playwrights at that time, Mrożek and Tadeusz Rozewicz, introduced fresh ideas in the Polish theatre, especially from the repertoire of the absurd. Liberalization of the system, the "Polish October", did not last long. Following serious strikes and riots over food shortages, Wladyslaw Gomulka assumed power and promised reforms but instead his regime crushed the protests. In October 1957 the journal Po prostu was closed down and the workers' councils were dissolved. Mrożek
established his international reputation with his early
short story collections. Słoń
(1957, The Elephant), in
which the themes were not tied down to Polish conditions too
demonstratively, became a bestseller and received the prestigious award
of the literary review Przeglad kulturanly. Daniel Mróz's surrealistic drawings are perfectly in tune with the text. This collection was followed by Wesele
w Atomicach (1959, Wedding in Atomville) and Deszcz (1962,
Rain). Almost all volumes of Mrożek's short stories and plays were usually sold out instantly. He satirized the Polish mentality, romantic heroism and grandiloquence, or the oddities of the Communist system, but his main target is the human behavior, human follies. In 'The Elephant' Mrożek parodied didactic tales. The director of the Zoological Gardens wants to reduce the costs of the establishment. He orders an elephant made out of rubber. Unluckily, it is filled with gas. Next morning children from a school visit the zoo. The teacher tells that "the weight of a fully grown elephant is between nine and thirteen thousand pounds." A gust of wind blows the elephant away. As a result, children start to neglect their studies. The story ends with a sad note: "And they no longer believe in elephants." Mrożek traveled in France, England, Italy, Yugoslavia, and
other European countries. As a cartoonist, Mrożek enjoyed a huge
popularity. Along Martin Esslin's
book The Theatre of the Absurd, (1962) Mrożek's fame spread through the West. His plays were performed in London, New York, and
Paris. Esslin coined the concept of "the Theatre of the Absurd" to describe a group of European non-naturalistic playwrights, who dramatized the strange, meaningless nature of life, which has no certainties or purpose. According to Esslin, "the decline of religious beliefs has deprived man of certainties. When it is no longer possible to accept complete closed systems of values and revelations of divine purpose, life must be faced as in its ultimate, stark reality." (The Theatre of the Absurd, Methuen, 1974, p. 352) Esslin labelled Mrożek as an absurdist, but Mrożek himself later resisted the etiquette, saying that his plays do not fit exactly into the category. The Police, one of Mrożek's most acclaimed early works, was broadcast on television in the United States and was also produced at the Phoenix Theatre, New York, in 1961. Na pelnym morzu (1961, Out at Sea), Karol (1961, Charlie), and Strip-Tease (1961, Eng. tr. 1972) all one-act plays. Mrożek dealt with relationship between the experience of an individual and lost values in impersonal, mechized society. These plays move beyond the East European communist scene and strive for a blend of various literary tradition, different from the concept of socialist realism. Already in his early dramas, Mrożek avoided explicit political or historical allusions, but his Orwellian criticism of a modern totalitarian state did not go unnoticed by his public or the censors, who well knew that the author was very good at hiding meanings in between the lines. Like many Eastern European writers, Mrożek regularly made use of allegory instead of openly criticizing society and speaking of its faults. Publicly Mrożek denied that his works were political. In 1963 Mrożek left Poland. He lived with his wife in self-imposed exile in Italy until 1968 and moved then to Paris. Two of Mrożek's plays were seen in London in 1964 during the first World Theatre Season. Referring to the situation in his country, Mrożek said in a letter to the literary critic and scholar Jan Błoński: "I know I'm too weak for life in Poland. My strength is of the kind that doesn't help very much in those conditions." (Polish Writers on Writing, edited by Adam Zagajewski, 2007, p. 220) Mrożek's first full-length play, Tango, is perhaps
still his most famous work. It was first performed at the Jugoslovensko
Dramsko Pozoriske in Belgrade, Yugoslavia on April 21, 1965. In Poland
it was produced in 1965 by the director Erwin Axer at the Teatr Wspolozesny.
Tom Stoppard's adaptation was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare
Company in 1966. (Stoppard also revised the literal translation of the
play with the assistance of a native Polish speaker.) The first
performance in New York took place at the Pocket Theater in 1969. Seemingly an absurdist family
drama, a tale about the conflict between
generations, Tango basically demonstrates the process, in which
youthful idealism turns into struggle for power and paves
way to despotism. Without doubt, the
theatre audience in Warsaw took the play as a
comment on Stalinism. "I am going to create a system in which rebellion
will be combined with order, nonbeing with being," declares the young
idealist, Arthur. "I will transcend all contradictions." (Ibid., Grove Press, 1968, p. 97) Arthur, who
has tasted power, is killed by Eddie. "He meant
well, but he was too highstrung," he says. (Ibid., p. 105) At the end a tape recorder plays the popular
tango 'La Cumparsita'. The old generation, Uncle Eugene, and Eddie,
the new dictator, dance together. After Mrożek denounced his country's part in the 1968 invasion
of Czechoslovakia in Le Monde, and the Paris émigré journal Kultura, he was immediately called
home.
However, Mrożek accepted his "homeless" state, his position as an
outsider, and decided to stay in Paris. Authorities in Poland responded
by banning his plays – Vatzlav
was the first not to be performed – and stories
for some time. His books were
withdrawn from libraries. "I do not hope for any brilliant, thundering, effective public career," Mrożek pondered
about his future as a writer in the West, "but the chance remains for a
less sensational but solid position, and, more important in my opinion,
for continuosly growing success." (World
Authors 1950-1970, edited by John Wakeman, 1975, p. 1043) In the early 1970s, Mrożek traveled in the
United States and South America. In 1978 he became a French citizen.
His own experiences in exile Mrożek dramatized Emigranci
(1974,
The Emigrants), in which an intellectual ("AA") and a worker ("XX")
exchange views on New
Year's Eve. These refugees from Eastern Europe, who have
little in common, share the same experience of marginalization. Their
illusions have been torn apart by reality. "AA: That's it. It's always
like that with us. We embellish the facts, we take out dreams for
reality, we're full of pious hopes . . . And falsified present produces
a sick future. History takes its revenge." (The Emigrants, translated by Henry Beissel, in The Mrozek Reader, edited by Daniel Gerould, 2004, p. 334) The theme struck a chord in the stagnation-era Soviet Union, where the play had an illegal Moscow performance in 1984. The ban on Mrożek's writings was gradually lifted and his plays Szczesliwe wydarzenie (1971, A Happy Event) and Rzeznia (1973, Slaughterhouse) were published in Poland. When Wojciek Jaruzelski proclaimed martial law in 1981 and arrested Solidarity leaders, Mrożek protested in Le Monde, and forbade television performances of his plays and publication of his writings in Polish papers. However, his works were still performed in Polish theaters, although authorities banned Ambasador (1982), which had its world premiere in Warsaw just before martial law was declared. With several other writers, such as Czeslaw Milosz and Leszek Kolakowski, Mrożek protested in 1983 against the dissolution of the Polish Writers' Association (ZLP). Mrożek married in 1987 the Mexican theatre director Orario
Rosas. He received the Franz Kafka award, but refused
to accept the Polish Fundacja Literacka award. In 1989 the
Mrożeks moved to Mexico, settling on a ranch called La Epifania.
There Mrożek composed the first part of his diary, Dziennik powrotu. He later finished it in Poland. In exile, Mrożek felt that work is his homeland. Miłość na Krymie (1993, Love in the Crimea), about Russian history with satirical Chekhovian allusions, runs four hours in performance. The play is subtitled a "Tragic Comedy." Piękny widok (1998, The Beautiful Sight) tells of two European tourists, whose vacation is ruined by the Balkan War. "Now I'm homeless once again," Mrożek said after finishing the play. ('"Why do I write?" On Sławomir Mrożek’s writing philosophy' by Sara Kurowska, in Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica 4(59) 2020) In 1990, a festival dedicated to Mrożek was arranged in Cracow. The ancient city-hall tower in the middle of the main square was wrapped in Mrozek's trademark - a large natty tie. In 1994 Noir sur Blanc started to publish his works in Polish. Mrożek moved with Orario Rosas to Cracow in 1997. His 70 years birthday was widely celebrated in Cracow and Borzecin. From the late 1990s, his cartoons and columns have appeared in the largest daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. In 2003, Mrożek received the highest French national distinction, Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur. His last years Mrożek lived in France. Sławomir
Mrożek died on August 15, 2013, at a hospital in Nice. His ashes were buried at the St. Peter and Paul Church in Kraków. For further reading: 'Slawomir Mrozek: Jester in Search of an Absolute' by E.J. Czerwisnki, in Canadian Slavic Studies, 3(4), (1969); 'Mrozka dialektyka magiczna' by M. Piwinska, in Legenda romantyczna i szydercy (1973); 'Mrożek, Slavomir,' in World Authors 1950-1970, edited by John Wakeman (1975); Mrozek by Jan Klossowicz (1980); 'Slawomir Mrożek' by Daniel Geroud, in McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama, Vol. 3, edited by Stanley Hochman (1984); 'Slawomir Mrożek: From Satire to National Drama' by Halina Stephan, in Polish Review, 34(1), (1989); 'My Autobiography' by Slawomir Mrozek, in Mrozek Festival (1990); Mrozek by Halina Stephan (1996); Transcending the Absurd: Drama and Prose of Slawomir Mrozek by Halina Stephan (1997); 'To Escape From History One Day' by Malgorzata Sugiera, in Perspectives on Modern Central and East European Literature, edited by Todd Patrick Armstrong (2001); 'Sławomir Mrożek', in Polish Writers on Writing, edited by Adam Zagajewski (2007); Mrożek: striptiz neurotyka by Małgorzata I. Niemczyńska (2013); Wolność w prawdzie w twórczości literackiej Sławomira Mrożka by Agnieszka Kurnik (2013); Rekolekcje z opowiadaniami Sławomira Mrożka: przedpola teologii absurdu by Bernard Sawicki (2014); Mrożek i nowoczesność, redakcja: Antoni Winch (2021); Mrożek: biografia by Anna Nasiłowska (2023). Note: Sławomir Mrożek's date of birth in this calendar: 29 June, 1930. The official date of birth, 26 June, is a result of a mistake in the transfer of record from the parish books. Selected works:
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