Witkiewicz’s Anthroponymy

Witkiewicz’s Anthroponymy Jerzy R. Krzyzanowski The last decade has witnessed a remarkable revival of interest in Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939), the Polish novelist and playwright whose dramas foreshadow the avant-garde phenomenon known as the Theater of the Absurd. Highly controversial during his lifetime, Witkiewicz had been forgotten for nearly a quarter of a century after his tragic suicide on the day of the Soviet invasion of Poland. World War II had precluded the focusing of literary criticism upon Witkacy’s work, while in the post-war years his plays were regarded as totally alien to the Marxian aesthetic and the literary technique dominating Polish letters until approximately 1956. When political restrictions were lifted and a degree of freedom was granted, the way was opened for the rediscovery of Witkiewicz in his native country. A collection of his critical essays was published in 1957,1 followed by the preparation of an edition of his complete plays.2 Resulting excitement and critical attention focused on Witkacy’s work in numerous articles in literary journals and periodicals. Now Witkacy is receiving international attention; a carefully edited selection of his dramas was issued last year in English translation under the title The Madman and the Nun.3 Ironically, despite the widespread interest in Witkiewicz, there has been little attempt thus far to engage in analysis which genuinely focuses upon specific aspects of his dramatic technique. Much discus­ sion has, of course, hinged on his esthetic theory and his Weltan­ schauung, while also a great deal of attention has been shown in his biography. Neither approach fails to be legitimate, but closer exam­ ination of the dramas can be expected to yield fruitful results. This paper therefore will take up one specific aspect of Witkacy’s art— his naming of characters— as a means of gaining a more precise understanding of his use of the comic as well as his anthroponymy. Witkiewicz’s remarkable dramatic art is only partially literary; he himself insisted that “the literary side of a performance is only a small part of the play being created on stage, where the author supplies only a formal skeleton for the creative work of the director and actors.” 4 Yet, as a creator of the “formal skeletonfs]” of his plays, 193 194 Comparative Drama Witkacy was inventive in the extreme. His imagination went beyond the surface of reality to sketch forth the grotesque with incredible vitality. He combines pathos with vulgarity, urbanity with collo­ quialism. The names of the characters in the plays are illustrative of his literary method in ways which have not always been noted by critics.5 The editors of the English translation include the following, at the end of their introductory essay: The names in Witkiewicz’s plays are often bizarre and comic inventions, polyglot and cosmopolitan in tone and etymology, befitting the representatives of the world of international de­ pravity. We have attempted to reproduce this atmosphere by retaining Witkacy’s names wherever they are intelligible and pronounceable in English and, in other cases, by creating new names along the lines suggested by the Polish. For example, in The Madman and the Nun, Grim and Walldorff remain un­ changed, whereas in The Water Hen, Elzbieta Flake-Prawacka (flaki— tripe and prawiczka— virgin) becomes Elizabeth GutzieVirgeling .6 The name of each character in the plays thus tells the audience what to expect of him. Karol Irzykowski, who was Witkacy’s most severe critic, strongly objected to this method of setting forth the nature of the character in advance through his name; thus, Irzykowski charged, the characters are “irrevocably and dogmatically defined, and [hence are] doomed to infamous failure.” 7 Irzykowski, however, was not sensitive to the comic elements involved in that type of characterization. Witkacy’s dramatis personae are capable of division into three groups: those having Polish names, those with names of foreign and pseudo-foreign origin, and those with names representing pure neolo­ gisms. A quick glance at each group reveals some typical features of Witkiewicz’s style and artistic method. I. Polish names. “ Tumor Brainard [Tumor Mozgowicz],” wrote Witkiewicz in his introduction to that play, “was conceived, as is obvious from the very title...