Stanisława Przybyszewska as a Case of Posthumous Victimisation: On the Ethics of Biofiction

Shmydkaya, Ksenia

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-09019-6_10

Ksenia Shmydkaya⁵

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Life Writing ((PSLW))

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Abstract

This chapter analyses three theatrical portrayals of the Polish playwright Stanisława Przybyszewska’s (1901–1935) life and death, which were produced in recent decades, in order to demonstrate a number of troubling trends prominent in women’s bio-drama and biofiction in general: namely, the victimisation and marginalisation of the subject that ensues when narratives of sickness and/or trauma are used to explain or undermine women’s creative achievements. By highlighting the discrepancies between Przybyszewska’s own interpretation of her situation and those proposed in the analysed works, the chapter seeks to uncover the mechanics of the process by which a woman’s biography becomes distorted to fit into narrative models that strip her of individual agency.

Two larger theoretical issues are raised. First, the idea of an ethical link between author and biofictional subject: how legitimate is the demand to follow the “core truths” of the protagonist’s life in biofiction, and what tensions arise between this demand and the author’s right to take creative liberties? Second, the possible solutions to the problem of de-victimisation: can this be achieved without once again violating the protagonist’s “truths”—as seems to be the case with Przybyszewska?

Research for this chapter was supported by a European Research Council Starting Grant (TAU17149) “Between the Times: Embattled Temporalities and Political Imagination in Interwar Europe.”

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Notes

1.
Przybyszewska to Stanisław Helsztyński, September 4, 1933, in Listy, vol. 2, ed. Tomasz Lewandowski (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1983), 496. All translations from Polish are mine, unless stated otherwise.
2.
See Elwira Grossman, “‘The Woman Who Died of Robespierre’: The Stage Afterlife of Stanislawa Przybyszewska,” in Omagiu Profesorului Contsantin Geambasu La 65 De Ani, ed. Antoaneta Olteanu (Bucharest: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, 2013), 124–36.
3.
Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 9.
4.
Caitríona Ní Dhúill, Metabiography: Reflecting on Biography (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 187.
5.
Emma Short, “Making Up, or Making Over: Reconstructing the Modern Female Author,” in The Female Figure in Contemporary Historical Fiction, ed. Katherine Cooper and Emma Short (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 41.
6.
Ibid., 41–42.
7.
Hermione Lee, “Am I Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, in Writing the Lives of Writers, ed. Warwick Gould and Thomas F. Staley (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), 225.
8.
Ibid., 226.
9.
Ní Dhúill, Metabiography, 203.
10.
Michael Lackey, introduction to Biographical Fiction: A Reader, ed. Michael Lackey (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 10.
11.
Frédéric Regard, “The Ethics of Biographical Reading: A Pragmatic Approach,” The Cambridge Quarterly 29, no. 4 (2000): 406.
12.
See Lucia Boldrini, Autobiographies of Others: Historical Subjects and Literary Fiction (New York: Routledge, 2012), especially the discussion of Anna Banti’s Artemisia in Chapter 5. Even though Boldrini argues that in biographical plays “the character is staged as him- or herself, and the categories of the subject, of history, of reality, of biography and autobiography are not really in question,” her insights prove to be relevant for my study, particularly in the case of Pam Gems’s substituting her rewriting of Przybyszewska’s play for the original text.
13.
Kate Moses, “Re-Composing a Life in the Biographical Novel,” in Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists, ed. Michael Lackey (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 165.
14.
Hannah Kent, “Fictions of Women,” interview by Kelly Gardiner, in Conversations with Biographical Novelists: Truthful Fictions across the Globe, ed. Michael Lackey (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 118.
15.
Valentina Vannucci, “The Canon and Biofiction: The Subjects of History and New Literary Worlds,” in Biographical Fiction, ed. Michael Lackey (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 384.
16.
Olivia Wood, “Time, Place, and ‘Mrs. D’: Uptake from Mrs Dalloway to The Hours,” Virginia Woolf Miscellany 93 (Spring/Summer 2018): 26.
17.
Ibid., 28.
18.
Ursula Canton, Biographical Theatre: Re-Presenting Real People? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 111.
19.
Ibid., 174.
20.
Ursula Canton, “We May not Know Reality, but It Still Matters—A Functional Analysis of ‘Factual Elements’ in the Theatre,” Contemporary Theatre Review 18, no. 3 (2008): 325.
21.
Ibid., 326–27.
22.
Ibid., 327.
23.
Julia Novak, “The Notable Woman in Fiction: The Afterlives of Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 31, no. 1 (2016): 102.
24.
Jadwiga Kosicka and Daniel Gerould, A Life of Solitude: Stanisława Przybyszewska, a Biographical Study with Selected Letters (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1989).
25.
Tomasz Lewandowski, Dramat Intelektu: Biografia literacka Stanisławy Przybyszewskiej (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1982); Krystyna Kolińska, Córka smutnego szatana (Warsaw: Twój styl, 1993). While a number of interesting theoretical works on her thought has been published, those are aimed at quite a narrow academic readership.
26.
See Monika Świerkosz, “O ‘niekobiecości’ jako problematycznej kategorii w czytaniu literatury kobiet. Na marginesie recepcji biografii i twórczości Stanisławy Przybyszewskiej,” in Sporne postaci polskiej krytyki feministycznej po 1989 roku, ed. Monika Świerkosz (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Katedra 2016), 17–45.
27.
Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf’s Nose: Essays on Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 55.
28.
Przybyszewska to Helena Barlińska, March 19, 1929, in Listy, vol. 1, ed. Tomasz Lewandowski (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1978), 433. Translation: Kosicka and Gerould, A Life of Solitude, 138.
29.
Leigh Gilmore, Tainted Witness: Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their Lives (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 9.
30.
Przybyszewska to Helena Barlińska, January 16, 1929, in Listy, vol. 1, ed. Tomasz Lewandowski (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1978), 352. Translation: Kosicka and Gerould, A Life of Solitude, 127–28.
31.
Przybyszewska to Helena Barlińska, March 5, 1929, in Listy, vol. 1, ed. Tomasz Lewandowski (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1978), 383. Translation: Kosicka and Gerould, A Life of Solitude, 133–34.
32.
The distinction between legitimate and illegitimate falsehoods is elaborated by Michael Lackey in Conversations with Biographical Novelists (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 248.
33.
Anna Schiller, interview by Małgorzata Terlecka-Reksnis, Twój Styl, no. 10 (October 2001), http://www.encyklopediateatru.pl/artykuly/119102/w-pulapce-przeznaczenia.
34.
Anna Schiller, Stacha, theatre programme (Łódź: Teatr Nowy, 2001), VIII.
35.
Ibid., 3–4.
36.
“You’re a woman … Simply a woman …” Ibid., 39.
37.
Ibid., 60.
38.
Pam Gems, interview in Rage and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwriting, ed. Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 1997), 91–92.
39.
Pam Gems, “The Danton Affair (A Writer’s Diary),” Drama: The Quarterly Theatre Review, no. 3 (1986): 5.
40.
“I’d had a weakness for Danton for years, and a picture of his ugly mug hung halfway up the stairs.” Pam Gems, The Snow Palace (London: Oberon Books, 1998), 8.
41.
Ibid., 9.
42.
Ibid.
43.
Gems, “(A Writer’s Diary),” 6.
44.
Gems, The Snow Palace, 21, 42, and 50 respectively.
45.
“In the whole of Europe there is a single opinion about us, which we sadly deserve: that we are a funny bunch of undisciplined, unreliable in all matters, megalomaniac fools. I have to admit that I share this opinion; I must even shamefully confess that two times already I have lied like an utter snob, when asked about my nationality. I claimed being ‘half-Russian’ without, however, explaining what the other half is made of.” Przybyszewska to Iwi Bennet, February 19, 1928, in Listy, vol. 3, ed. Tomasz Lewandowski (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1985), 30.
46.
Gems, The Snow Palace, 21, 27.
47.
Ibid., 45.
48.
Ibid., 50.
49.
Kosicka and Gerould, A Life of Solitude, 28.
50.
Lewandowski, Dramat Intelektu, 46.
51.
Gems, The Snow Palace, 13.
52.
Ibid., 14.
53.
Ibid., 71.
54.
Ian Shuttleworth, review of The Snow Palace, Tricycle Theatre, London, opened 1 December, 1998, written for the Financial Times, accessed February 21, 2022, http://www.cix.co.uk/~shutters/reviews/98072.htm.
55.
Paul Taylor, review of The Snow Palace, Independent UK, December 19, 1998, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-reviews-the-snow-palace-1193349.html.
56.
See, for instance, the introductions by the city mayor and the opera’s artistic director. Olimpia z Gdańska, theatre programme (Gdańsk: Opera Bałtycka, 2015), 4–5.
57.
Hilary Mantel, “What a Man This Is, with His Crowd of Women Around Him!”, review of Robespierre, eds. Colin Haydon and William Doyle, London Review of Books 22, no. 7 (30 March 2000): 3–8, https://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n07/hilary-mantel/what-a-man-this-is-with-his-crowd-of-women-around-him. These two formulae have been referenced multiple times since. De Obaldia use the second expression in Olimpia z Gdańska, 19.
58.
Zygmunt Krauze, “Prapremiera opery ‘Olimpia z Gdańska,’” Facebook, November 20, 2015, https://www.facebook.com/events/157909047895220/.
59.
Olimpia z Gdańska, 18.
60.
Ibid., 12.
61.
Ryan M. Claycomb highlights the following elements, typical of the genre: “the reclaimed historical performance as site of feminist praxis for both biographical figure and actor, the performance of historical reclamation itself, and a replaying of the eliding processes of history that makes such a reclamation possible and necessary.” Ryan M. Claycomb, “Playing at Lives: Biography and Contemporary Feminist Drama,” Modern Drama 47, no. 3 (2004): 527.
62.
See Boldrini’s observation that “if Banti’s aim were simply to make a feminist point, then she would indeed sacrifice the integrity of her subject as an individual, make her subservient to an abstract category (‘woman’).” Boldrini, Autobiographies of Others, 163.
63.
Przybyszewska’s reflections on Robespierre are scattered all over her letters and too numerous to choose from. For a thorough analysis of her philosophy and Robespierre’s place in it, see Kazimiera Ingdahl, A Gnostic Tragedy: A Study in Stanislawa Przybyszewska’s Aesthetics and Works (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1997).
64.
Olimpia z Gdańska, 19.
65.
The novelist Sabina Murray explained this idea very convincingly: “The belief system is provable. My father’s belief system would generate that thought, so it belongs with his thoughts … that would be a thought that he could have, and that could coexist with his other thoughts without creating conflict.” Sabina Murray, “Complex Psychologies in the Biographical Novel,” interview by Michael Lackey, in Conversations with Biographical Novelists: Truthful Fictions across the Globe, ed. Michael Lackey (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 190.
66.
Przybyszewska to Helena Barlińska, May 13–17, 1931, in Listy, vol. 2, ed. Tomasz Lewandowski (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1983), 342.
67.
Gilmore, Tainted Witness, 5.
68.
Przybyszewska to Stanisław Helsztyński, July 14-August 16, 1933, in Listy, vol. 2, ed. Tomasz Lewandowski (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1983), 484. Throughout the paragraph Przybyszewska uses the word “żal,” which I translate as “pity” and “regret.”
69.
Ibid., 479.
70.
Przybyszewska to Stanisław Helsztyński, September 9, 1933, in Listy, vol. 2, ed. Tomasz Lewandowski (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1983), 496.
71.
Short, “Making Up,” 56.
72.
Przybyszewska to Helena Barlińska, March 5, 1929, in Listy, vol. 1, ed. Tomasz Lewandowski (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1978), 393–94.

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Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia
Ksenia Shmydkaya

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Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Julia Novak
Department of German, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
Caitríona Ní Dhúill

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Shmydkaya, K. (2022). Stanisława Przybyszewska as a Case of Posthumous Victimisation: On the Ethics of Biofiction. In: Novak, J., Ní Dhúill, C. (eds) Imagining Gender in Biographical Fiction. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09019-6_10

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