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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Drama texts, plays > From 1900 > Film & television screenplays
Although he never left his native Krakow except for relatively
short periods, Stanislaw Wyspianski (1869-1907) achieved worldwide
fame, both as a painter, and Poland's greatest dramatist of the
first half of the twentieth century. Acropolis: the Wawel Plays,
brings together four of Wyspianski's most important dramatic works
in a new English translation by Charles S. Kraszewski. All of the
plays centre on Wawel Hill: the legendary seat of royal and
ecclesiastical power in the poet's native city, the ancient capital
of Poland. In these plays, Wyspianski explores the foundational
myths of his nation: that of the self-sacrificial Wanda, and the
struggle between King Boleslaw the Bold and Bishop Stanislaw
Szczepanowski. In the eponymous play which brings the cycle to an
end, Wyspianski carefully considers the value of myth to a nation
without political autonomy, soaring in thought into an apocalyptic
vision of the future. Richly illustrated with the poet's artwork,
Acropolis: the Wawel Plays also contains Wyspianski's architectural
proposal for the renovation of Wawel Hill, and a detailed critical
introduction by the translator. In its plaited presentation of
Boleslaw the Bold and Skalka, the translation offers, for the first
time, the two plays in the unified, composite format that the poet
intended, but was prevented from carrying out by his untimely
death. Charles S. Kraszewski (b. 1962) is a poet, translator and
literary critic. He has published three volumes of original verse:
Beast (Alexandria, 2013), Diet of Nails (Boston, 2013) and
Chanameed (Atlanta, 2015). Among his critical works is Irresolute
Heresiarch: Catholicism, Gnosticism and Paganism in the Poetry of
Czeslaw Milosz (Newcastle-on-Tyne, 2012); many of his verse
translations are collected in the volume Rossetti's Armadillo
(Newcastle-on-Tyne, 2014). His English translation of Forefathers'
Eve by Adam Mickiewicz was published by Glagoslav in 2016. This
book has been published with the support of the (c)POLAND
Translation Program.
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