Jerzy Żuławski
Jerzy Żuławski | |
---|---|
Born | Jerzy Żuławski 14 July 1874 Lipowiec |
Died | 9 August 1915 | (aged 41)
Nationality | Polish |
Education | University of Bern |
Occupation(s) | writer, philosopher, translator |
Notable work | The Lunar Trilogy (1903-1911) Laus feminae (1914-1916) |
Awards | Cross of Independence |
Jerzy Żuławski (Polish:
Literary legacy
In a twenty-year writing career, from his first book of poems in 1895, at the age of 21, to his final World War I dispatches in 1915, Jerzy Żuławski created an impressive body of work—seven volumes of poetry, three collections of literary criticism, numerous cultural and philosophical essays, ten plays and five novels. He was considered an important and influential intellectual figure in the early years of the 20th century, but a century later, the only creation which has remained in print and assured him literary immortality is The Lunar Trilogy.
Early life, education and studies in philosophy
Jerzy Żuławski was born into a strongly patriotic Polish household in the village of Lipowiec, near
Educated at good schools in
First writings
The earliest publication bearing Jerzy Żuławski's name was also written in Bern. Dispatched to a Kraków publishing concern, the slim collection entitled Na strunach duszy (On the Strings of the Soul) was offered to the public in 1895. While a volume of Polish-language poetry in German-speaking Bern did not make much of an impact, the young author did receive moderate praise from the few Polish press organs that reviewed it. A decade later, at the height of Żuławski's brief fame, it came to be viewed as an experimental work, not truly representative of his real ability. He returned to Poland in spring 1899 to co-edit the literary magazine Krytyka (Critique) and initially became a schoolteacher in Jasło and, following his marriage, in Kraków. A number of his essays were published in another literary publication, the Kraków-based Życie (Life).
Philosophical outlook
Żuławski's studies shaped the construct of his philosophical world view, which he referred to as syntetyczny monizm ("synthetic
The Lunar Trilogy
By the end of 1901, Żuławski had largely abandoned teaching and devoted himself entirely to traveling and writing, including the completion of the first volume of his magnum opus about a tragically ill-fated Moon expedition, On the Silver Globe, which has as its final words, "Pisałem w Krakowie, w zimie 1901–2" ("I wrote in Kraków in the winter of 1901–2"). Following common practice of the period, the novel was written in installments, each of which was published, upon completion, in the literary journal Głos Narodu (The Voice of the Nation) between December 1901 and April 1902 and subsequently appeared in re-edited form as a 1903 book in Lwów.
For the next five years it was a stand-alone work, but between autumn 1908 and spring 1909, installments of a sequel entitled Zwycięzca (The Conqueror) appeared in the pages of Kurier Warszawski (Warsaw Courier). Continuing the story generations and centuries later on the Moon, it was a longer, more complex and more philosophical work than On the Silver Globe. Its publication in re-edited book form came in 1910. 1910 also saw the first installments of the final volume, Stara Ziemia (The Old Earth). It was an immediate continuation of The Conqueror, following two of the diminutive human denizens of the Moon who use the spaceship of the previous volume's protagonist, the already-martyred Marek the Conqueror, to return to the planet of their ancestors. Głos Narodu, the same journal which serialized On the Silver Globe, now completed the trilogy by continuing the installments to their conclusion in spring 1911, with a re-edited book version coming out later that year.
The first edition of the complete three-volume set was first published in Lwów in 1912. Beginning shortly thereafter and continuing over the following decades, The Lunar Trilogy was widely read in virtually every European language, with one notable exception—it had not been translated into English at the time of its initial publication.
Marriage, sons and later works
In 1907, Żuławski married for the second time and, in his few remaining years, became the father of three sons,
Starting in 1901, and as time permitted, Żuławski had lived on and off in his favorite location, Zakopane, Poland's best-known mountaineering town. By 1910, he had finally bought a large house there and settled with his growing family. He became the co-editor of the local literary journal, Zakopane, and welcomed many notable writers and friends, such as Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, Jan Kasprowicz and Leopold Staff, who paid regular visits. A dedicated traveler and sportsman, he climbed many of Europe's mountains and visited much of the continent in between his writing. His poems appeared frequently in Polish literary magazines, such as Życie(Life), Młodość(Youth), Krytyka (Critique), Strumień (Stream), Chimera (Chimera e.g. Idle Fancy) and Słowo Polskie (The Polish Word) and he continued to produce short stories, essays, translations and other works for the next four years.
World War I and death
In the first days of August 1914, as the three entities of partitioned Poland—Russia, Germany and
Family
Marek, whose birth coincided with his father's starting work on The Conqueror, became the namesake of the epic tale's tragic hero.
Jerzy's widow,
Grand-nephew Andrzej Żuławski
Filmmaker and author
Andrzej Żuławski had always wanted to film his granduncle's masterwork and saw the offer as a unique opportunity to achieve that aim. An auteur, whom a number of critics have described as a self-destructive genius, he devoted over two years to the task of adapting the first two volumes to the screen (he judged The Old Earth which, except for the first chapter, takes place entirely on our own planet, to be outside the scope of this already-overlong undertaking). Between 1975 and 1977, he wrote the screenplay and lensed the film on various locations around Poland, as well as Crimea, the Caucasus Mountains and even the Gobi Desert.
In spring 1977, however, the project came to a sudden halt with the appointment of the
Family tree
Jerzy Żuławski's published works
Poetry
Żuławski's poetry is primarily confined to the 1895–1904 period. In subsequent years his occasional poems found their way into the many literary journals that he edited, and were gathered, along with some essays and other pieces, in a posthumous collection of miscellanea published in the early 1920s. One of his most famous poems was transformed into a song, which was still sung during the Second World War by Polish fighters. Do moich synów (To My Sons) was written during his brief 1914 wartime service in Vienna and put to music by Stanisław Ekiert.
- 1895 - Na strunach duszy (On the Strings of the Soul)
- 1897 - Intermezzo
- 1897 - Stance o pieśni (Songs for Stanca)
- 1900 - Poezje II (Poetry II)
- 1902 - Z domu niewoli (From the House of Enslavement)
- 1904 - Pokłosie (Ears of Grain)
Plays
Between 1904 and 1907, the main focus of Żuławski's creative energies was directed towards writing plays. His initial dramas were patriotic reminders of Poland's struggle for independence, but subsequently he began to undertake themes of psychological insight and the emancipation of youth. The most successful of the plays, the dreamlike Eros and Psyche understood the spirit of the age in giving expression to the audience's innermost thoughts through the symbolic vehicles of myth, legend and fantasy. The occasional historical costume dramas also tended to emphasize poetic expression and blank verse over harsh reality. Żuławski's theatrical endeavors were viewed with suspicion by many critics who called them controversial and unconventional, but most were widely popular with audiences, especially when exhibited by such renowned masters of stagecraft as Tadeusz Pawlikowski and performed by top stars, such as Irena Solska.
- 1903 - Dyktator (The Dictator) [written to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the 1863 January Uprising]
- 1903 - Wianek mirtowy (A Myrtle Wreath)
- 1904 - Eros i Psyche (Eros and Psyche), later adapted as Ludomir Rozycki's opera of the same title
- 1905 - Ijola (Iolanthe)
- 1906 - Donna Aluica
- 1906 - Koniec Mesjasza (The End of the Messiah) [which explores some of the philosophical and metaphysical themes later raised in The Conqueror—the inability to offer salvation and the limits of martyrdom]
- 1906 - Gra (The Game)
- 1909 - Za cenę łez (For the Price of Tears)
- 1911 - Gród Słońca (The Castle City of the Sun)
Fiction
Żuławski's most renowned work is, undoubtedly, The Lunar Trilogy, which was first published as a complete set in book form in Lwów in 1912. While, on the surface, it is a work of vibrant and exciting science fiction, deeper down, it functions as a philosophical tract. Profoundly influenced by Spinoza, von Hartmann, Avenarius and others, filtered through Żuławski's own unique vision, the trilogy offers an essentially pessimistic dissection of human character, our creation of religious myths and our unattainable desire for utopian salvation. Anchored on the persistence of the Christian concept of the Savior, the work's complex and multi-layered elements provide bitter irony in its regressive portrayal of human society and civilization.
Jerzy Żuławski wrote numerous short stories, but his only other novels are two volumes of another projected trilogy, Laus Feminae (the title is a
Other writings
Due to the volume of his contributions to magazines and newspapers, Żuławski built up a large number of lesser-known texts which, in addition to short stories and poems, include critical essays and discussions of philosophy. Some of those were collected and published well after his death, in the 1920s and 30s and many others remain scattered and unknown. Additionally, Żuławski was held in high regard as a multi-lingual literary translator, especially of poetry, rendering into Polish the poems of
.Legacy
In 2008, the
See also
- List of Poles
Notes
- ^ Theodore Sturgeon: "Introduction". Archived from the original on October 17, 2007. Retrieved 2010-04-07.
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: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) to Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, MacMillan Publishing Co., New York, 1976 (Archived 17 October 2007) - ^ Żuławski, Adam (November 29, 2020). "The Origins of Polish Sci-Fi & Jerzy Żuławski's Legacy | Feature". Culture.pl. Retrieved 2021-06-19.
- ^ "Polish Righteous". Archived from the original on April 26, 2006. Retrieved 2006-07-05.
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: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ^ "SFE: Żuławski, Jerzy". sf-encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2024-01-21.
References
- Cross, Tim (1988). The Lost Voices of World War I. Great Britain: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 0-7475-4276-7
External links
- The Origins of Polish Sci-Fi & The Legacy of Jerzy Żuławski, feature article on Culture.pl including photos from the Żuławski family's private archives
- Portrait of Jerzy Żuławski by Stanisław Wyspiański (1869–1907), which originally appeared in Współczesna literatura polska 1880-1904 (Contemporary Polish Literature 1880-1904) by Wilhelm Feldman (1905).
- A literary-biographical overview of Jerzy Żuławski from the Virtual Library of Polish Literature
- Works by or about Jerzy Żuławski at Internet Archive
- Works by Jerzy Żuławski at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Science Fiction Studies (March 1985) includes a three-sentence abstract from Stanislaw Lem's introduction to On the Silver Globe
- Dargis, Manohla. "Movies: About Na Srebrnym Globie". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-08-08.
- Fright Site review of On the Silver Globe Archived 2012-08-24 at the Wayback Machine
- A small reproduction of the Wyspiański portrait of Jerzy Żuławski accompanied by an incomplete Polish-language text of the 1956 edition of On the Silver Globe (based on the 1979 edition, the online text is missing the last 88 pages of the first section)
- Jerzy Zulawski at IMDb