The Role of Women in Securing and Popularizing Witkacy’s Legacy in 1940–1956

Abstract

Many Witkacologists share a conviction that there is a break in the reception of Witkacy’s work, caused first by World War II, and then by socialist censorship. This opinion was strengthened by numerous statements such as Janusz Degler’s claim that “during the Stalinist period, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz was on the list of prohibited works, it was forbidden to publish him, or to write about him […]. In May 1956, Witkacy returns, after years of absence and anathema, thanks to Kantor, who stages The Cuttlefish at the Cricot Theatre” (Degler 2013: 23). In order to enlarge our knowledge about the chronology of discovering Wikacy’s work, and to verify some well-established but not quite true critical statements, it is worth recalling the postwar appeals of Zofia Nałkowska for the publication of Witkacy’s collected works, or MA theses and publications about the Formists by art historians such as Anna Miazek, Joanna Szczepińska-Tramer and Hanna Morawska. This article will draw attention to some lesser known areas of Witkacological research, which include the linguistic study by Antonina Obrebska-Jabłońska of word formation in Insatiability and Narcotics, as well as the role of Irena Sławińska in popularizing Witkiewicz’s plays at the Catholic University of Lublin during the dark Stalinist period.