Stanisław Czycz

(1929–96) – a poet, prose writer, essayist and screenwriter.

One of the most ambiguous and original figures in Polish post-war literature.

He wrote works that broke the traditional genre boundaries, joining poetry and prose, philosophical reflection and colloquial language, psychological realism and formal experimentation. Czycz’s work, long marginalised in the Polish literary mainstream, is now a key point of reference for research into the literary modernism of the late twentieth century.

The son of Władysław Czycz, a railway locksmith, and Helena (née Spytkowska), whose family had a small farm. He spent his childhood in Krzeszowice, where he lived almost all his life and which, to a large degree, shaped his artistic imagination. After World War II, he went to the local middle school and to the Electrical Engineering Technical College in Krakow, graduating in 1952. He joined the Polish Youth Union. Until 1955, he worked in the Krakow Stone Construction Plant, first in Krakow, then in Krzeszowice. In 1955–57, he took jobs of various kinds. Then he was taken on as a guest student in the studio of Professor Adam Marczyński at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, but in 1959, he was forced to earn a living, and so left his studies.

He debuted in 1955 with ‘Prapremierze pięciu poetów’ (World Premiere of Five Poets) – a publication announced in Życie Literackie 51, introducing five young artists: Bohdan Drozdowski, Jerzy Harasymowicz, Miron Białoszewski, Zbigniew Herbert and Stanisław Czycz. Each poet was accompanied by an article by a famous critic: in Czycz’s case, this was Ludwik Flaszen. This collection was an aesthetic manifesto: it declared the renewal of poetry after years of Socialist Realist captivity and was a clear forerunner of the artistic ‘Thaw’. In 1957, Czycz published ‘Tła’ (Backgrounds), an existential volume with a clear catastrophic and ontological streak.

In the 1960s Czycz shifted to prose, which became the main field of his creative experiments. In 1967’s Ajol he used steam of consciousness, an associative montage of images and a dream poetic, recording a mental journey into the depths of a consciousness. The same year he released And, in which he continued this form of exploration, joining Surrealist images with an analysis of a sensory and existential experience.

Later, for some time, he abandoned complex literary experiments, and in 1968 published ‘Nim zajdzie księżyc’ (Before the Moon Sets). This is a collection of autobiographical stories, where the author returns to his childhood and youth in Krzeszowice in a spare, realist style.

In the 1970s and 80s, Czycz gradually retreated from literary life, while continuing to write – his short stories from this period appeared in ‘Nie wiem co ci powiedzieć’ (I Don’t Know What to Tell You, 1983), and in 1987 he published an autobiographical novel ‘Nie wierz nikomu’ (Don’t Believe Anyone). In these works, he addresses themes of memory, the passing of time and the reconstruction of the past, giving language a therapeutic and ontological function. Czycz’s prose from this time has a roughness and a tension between the structure of the world and its reflection in language.

After the author’s death in 1996, Arw (2008) was published – an experimental script about the life of Andrzej Wróblewski, joining prose, poetry and a film script. It is considered a precursor of Polish liberature.

Czycz is a key author for critics and writers in search of radical forms of expression; his work is an important point of reference for contemporary poets and prose writers.