Felicja Kruszewska’s Venture into Theater

Marek Piekut

Abstract

Felicja Kruszewska was born in Podolia in 1897; she studied literature on her own and taught herself French and English. Then she studied Polish and English philology at the University of Warsaw and journalism at the School of Political Sciences (Szkoła Nauk Politycznych). She was a humanist by education and an active patriot who served as a medical technician near the end of the First World War and was part of the Home Army underground during the Second World War. She died in unknown circumstances in 1943. She debuted in the press as a poet in 1921 and soon afterwards published two volumes of poetry, Przedwiośnie [“First Spring”] (1923) and Stąd – dotąd [“From There to Here”] (1925). She wrote Sen in 1925 (it appeared in print in 1927). In the following years, she published subsequent books of her poetry as well as autobiographical short stories. Her novel for young adults, Bolesław Chrobry, and drama Pożar teatru [“Theater on Fire”] burned during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. The last part of the publication contains letters written by the playwright to the Edmund Wierciński in 1927–1928. Seven of them have survived, and they are currently held in the Special Collections of the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. In letter from February 1927 Kruszewska discusses what she would want to see on the stage, but her remarks do not go beyond her stage directions in the play. In the first letters, she is both bashful and overjoyed; she is first happy that the theater has taken interest in her play and then satisfied with the effect achieved on stage. In her latest letters she writes about the scene where the Black Army enters the town to take hold of it. She stresses that the crowd should be enthusiastic and not desolate. At the same time, she makes it clear that her comment is limited to interpretation, and where the form is concerned the director is free to do as he pleases.