Writing these words that precede Dr. Mieczyslaw Kotlarczyk's three-part work, I wish to repay a debt of gratitude to the author. I first knew Mieczyslaw Kotlarczyk in our native town of Wadowice in the late twenties and early thirties. I got to know him as the pioneer of an original theater, in the noblest sense of the word; as an exponent of the true Polish and Christian traditions of that art, traditions passed on to us by all our literature, and especially by the great romantic and neo-romantic literature. A philogist by education, student, master, and doctor of Polish philogy at the Jagiellonian University at the time of professors Chrzanowski, Kallenbach, Windakiewicz, then Pigon and Kolaczkowski [1], he enriched, with his interests and original interests in theater -- first of all amateur theater -- the cultural life of our provincial town in the period I have mentioned. I remember that in the same period he went to Salzburg during the summer festival to see Jedermann and Faust. In the same period he was awarded a doctorate for his thesis about the critical work of the X Society [2], and his interests in religious theater took shape.
He began his work in the theater of Krakow, work that brought about the founding of the Rhapsodic Theater in unusual circumstances and in an unusual way. It was the time of the German occupation. After two members of his family had been taken to a concentration camp, Mieczyslaw Kotlarczyk illegally crossed the border from Wadowice, then incorporated into the German Reich, appeared in Krakow, and took up work as a tram conductor. At the same time the concept of a theater of the pure word was ripening in him. He founded such a theater and directed it clandestinely in Krakow until the end of the occupation. As we know, during this period the life of the nation had to go underground, and with it went the living Polish word in its highest manifestations, from Pan Tadeusz to Samuel Zborowski [3]. That word was the purpose served by Mieczyslaw Kotlarczyk's clandestine theater.
At the end of the German occupation his theater began open activities as the Rhapsodic Theater. New elements appeared in those activities, such as costume and stage design, unknown in the underground but possible and even, to a degree, indispensable since the theater of the living word now had a stage at its disposal. Nonetheless, the word -- the living Polish word -- always remained the focus of Mieczyslaw Kotlarczyk's theater. And always the word was its peak achievement, both in Polish literature and in translations. It is enough to recall King-Spirit, Beniowski, Acropolis [4], Lord Jim, Eugene Onegin, or The Divine Comedy. Kotlarczyk always wandered around the peaks, rightly thinking that only there did words have durable power in creating culture and educating the young generation.
Mieczyslaw Kotlarczyk was always faithful to his conviction that theater -- great theater -- had a mission and must serve that mission steadfastly and uncompromisingly. That conviction gained the Rhapsodic Theater many followers, and many opponents. It is enough to state that this theater was twice suppressed. The first occasion was in 1953; restored to existence after October 1956, the theater was abolished again in 1967, and in spite of many efforts, it has not regained the right to exist. One must add, however, that though the Rhasphodic Theater itself has ceased to exist, the idea of the theater of the living word implanted by Mieczyslaw Kotlarczyk has entered under various guises into theatrical practice all over Poland.
While running his theater, Dr. Kotlarczyk did not cease to tackle the problems of the living word in a theatrical way. Since the suppression of the Rhapsodic Theater he has worked on these problems even more intensely. This book is the fruit of these labors.
[2] The X Society was a group of theater critics who signed their reviews in the Warsaw Gazette and Correspondent's Gazette, in the years 1815-1819, with the collective pseudonym X. [back]
[3] Samuel Zborowski (1845) is a poetic drama by Juliusz Slowacki. [back]
[4] Beniowski (1841) is a narrative poem by Juliusz Slowacki; Acropolis, a poetic drama by Staislaw Wyspianski, is discussed in the introduction to Jeremiah, pp. 88-90. [back]