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Startling discontinuities and surprises erupt throughout these
avant-garde landscapes by Poland's outstanding modern dramatist
where duchesses and policemen, gangsters and surrealist painters,
psychiatrists and locomotive engineers wander in and out, kill one
another, and carry on philosophical conversations at the same time.
The Polish playwright and artist Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, known
as Witkacy, is now recognized as Poland's leading theatrical
innovator of the interwar years and one of the outstanding creative
personalities of the European avant-garde. This volume contains two
of Witkacy's "tropical" plays inspired by the playwright's trip to
Ceylon and Australia in 1914 with his close friend, the
anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. Mr. Price, or Tropical Madness
is a drama of heightened passion and greed among British colonists
in Rangoon who seem to have stepped out of Joseph Conrad's tales of
the South Seas. Metaphysics of a Two headed Calf, set in New Guinea
and Australia, pits savage European imperialists against a native
tribal Australia and pits savage European imperialists against a
native tribal chieftain whose fetish of a great golden frog offers
greater insight into the mystery of existence than the Westerners'
shallow rationalism. Both plays puncture the white rulers' poses of
superiority and parody their images of the tropical Other. Also
included in the volume are Witkacy's Foreword to Metaphysics of a
Two-Headed Calf in which the playwright defends his concept of
theatre as an autonomous art with a scenic language of its own and
an appendix containing a documentary itinerary of Witkacy's journey
to Ceylon.
Edited and translated by Daniel Gerould and C.S. Durer, foreword by
Jan Kott. Painter, playwrights, novelist, aesthetician,
philosopher, and expert on drugs, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz - or
Witkacy, as he called himself - remains Poland's outstanding figure
in the arts between the two world wars. This volume brings together
three of Witkiewicz's best works for the stage as well as a
selection from his critical writing. The plays deal with the
author's principal themes and obsessions: the dilemma of the artist
in the twentieth century; the revolutions in science and politics;
and the bankruptcy of all ideology, the decline of western
civilization, and the coming of totalitarianism. Yet, far from
being solemn or even serious in tone, these apocalyptic dramas are
permeated with grotesque humor and characterized by a wild
theatricality that particularly appeals to contemporary
sensibility.
The Polish playwright and artist Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, known as Witkacy, is now recognized as Poland's leading theatrical innovator of the interwar years and one of the outstanding creative personalities of the European avant-garde. This volume contains two of Witkacy's "tropical" plays inspired by the playwright's trip to Ceylon and Australia in 1914 with his close friend, the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. Mr. Price, or Tropical Madness is a drama of heightened passion and greed among British colonists in Rangoon who seem to have stepped out of Joseph Conrad's tales of the South Seas. Metaphysics of a Two headed Calf, set in New Guinea and Australia, pits savage European imperialists against a native tribal Australia and pits savage European imperialists against a native tribal chieftain whose fetish of a great golden frog offers greater insight into the mystery of existence than the Westerners' shallow rationalism. Both plays puncture the white rulers' poses of superiority and parody their images of the tropical Other. Also included in the volume are Witkacy's Foreword to Metaphysics of a Two-Headed Calf in which the playwright defends his concept of theatre as an autonomous art with a scenic language of its own and an appendix containing a documentary itinerary of Witkacy's journey to Ceylon. eBook available with sample pages: 0203218639
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