Tadeusz Różewicz


Tadeusz Różewicz was a Polish poet, playwright, writer, and translator. Różewicz was in the first generation of Polish writers born after Poland regained its independence in 1918, following the century of foreign partitions. He was born in Radomsko, near Łódź, in 1921. He first published his poetry in 1938. During World War II, he served in the Polish underground Home Army. His elder brother, Janusz, also a poet, was executed by the Gestapo in 1944 for serving in the Polish resistance movement. His younger brother, Stanisław, became a noted film director and screenwriter.

Biography and career

Tadeusz Różewicz was the son of Władysław and Stefania Różewicz. After finishing high school, Różewicz enrolled at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He then served in World War II. After the war, he moved to Gliwice, where he lived for the following two years. In 1968, he moved to Wrocław, where he lived for the rest of his life.
Różewicz wrote and published fifteen volumes of poetry between 1944 and 1960. Czesław Miłosz wrote a poem dedicated to Różewicz and his poetry in 1948. Różewicz's debut as a playwright was in 1960, with The Card Index.
He wrote over a dozen plays and several screenplays. His dramaturgical work continued to be accompanied by volumes of poetry and prose. Some of Różewicz's best known plays, other than The Card Index, include: The Interrupted Act, Birth Certificate, Left Home, and The White Wedding. His New Poems collection was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2008.
Różewicz's works have been translated into nearly all major languages. Two of his plays were translated into English and produced at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1965, Karen Cross and Johan Holm directed a series of Różewicz's three short plays, collectively titled The Witnesses. A Village Voice review of the production reads: The first play, the most abstract, is a string of metaphors meant... to convey a view of man's condition... The second play presents a young married couple at breakfast planning their day. They work very hard at it, as if a night of sleep cuts them off drastically from life and contact must be reestablished. By means of a forced calm, a dedicated attention to trivia, and a patronizing attitude toward other people, they organize the day's activity... The key to the piece is the husband's matter-of-fact account, as he watches at the window, or two children tormenting and then destroying a kitten... The children quite coldly mutilate and murder the animal and the husband blandly but not indifferently reports the event to his wife who isn't listening. In the third play two men facing in opposite directions have a conversation of sorts. Constantly demanding attention of each other, they deliver up monologues of self-revelation which reveal next to nothing and on top of it are not being listened to. Through it all an injured dog suffers an elaborate death agony at the feet of one of the men, whose only response is to intersperse his fatuous self-revelations with bulletins on the progress of the dog's demise." In 1972, Mavis Taylor directed a production of Różewicz's The Old Woman Broods. The piece was partially funded by the New York State Council on the Arts and was performed at the College of White Plains, Hudson River Museum, and Community Action Program in Mamaroneck in addition to La MaMa's theatre in the East Village, Manhattan.
Różewicz has been regarded as "one of the most versatile and creative continuators of the Polish and international avant-garde". He was a member of the Polish Writers' Union and was nominated multiple times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1987, he received the Golden Wreath at the Struga Poetry Evenings festival in Struga, Macedonia. In 2000, Różewicz received Poland's top literary prize, the Nike Award, for his book Matka odchodzi.
Różewicz died in Wrocław from natural causes on 24 April 2014 from. He was 92.

Awards and decorations

Różewicz' works include:
Slovenian punk band Niet used parts of Rozewicz's poem Pierwsza miłość and recreated it in their 1984 punk balade Lep dan za smrt. Filmmaker Werner Herzog paraphrased a line from Rozewicz's "Draft of a Modern Love Poem" in his 2007 film Encounters at the End of the World, observing that "For me, the best description of hunger is a description of bread. A poet said that once, I think." In 2008, mainstream Slovenian band Dan D remade the Niet's song for what was to become one of the 2008 top hits on Slovenian radio stations.