The Madman and the Nun and The Crazy Locomotive: Three Plays

by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz

Startling discontinuities and surprises erupt throughout these avant-garde landscapes by Poland's outstanding modern dramatist where duchesses and policemen, gangsters and surrealist painters, psychiatrists and locomotive engineers wander in and out, kill one another, and carry on philosophical conversations at the same time.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Polish Literature, Poland, Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2000

About the author

Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (24 February 1885 – 18 September 1939), commonly known as Witkacy, was a Polish writer, painter, philosopher, playwright, novelist, and photographer active in the interwar period.
Born in Warsaw, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz was a son of the painter, architect and an art critic Stanisław Witkiewicz. His mother was Maria Pietrzkiewicz Witkiewiczowa. Both of his parents were born in the Samogitian region of Lithuania. His godmother was the internationally famous actress Helena Modrzejewska.
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz – a writer, playwright, poet, painter, photographer, philosopher and an art theoretician. Witkacy was a visionary ahead of his times, and yet a concretely pungent prankster, whose cutting-egde judgement and catastrophic prophesies allow new generations to rediscover his work time and again. One of the few Polish artists whose significance for world art history endures the test of time.
He died by commiting suicide upon learning of the Red Army’s attack on Poland, on the 18th of September, 1939 in the village of Jeziory, Polesie region (present-day Ukraine).

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Theater of the absurd avant la lettre.

Witkiewicz was a Polish writer, artist, and amateur philosopher in the first part of the 20th century. He delighted in outrageous, provocative behavior. A modernist, he ended up supporting himself by painting portraits of both friends and the well-to-do. Sitters could pick a few parameters for the painting according to a preposterous sliding scale, after which they had to accept whatever he produced.

He invented a philosophy or theory of art that stated form was everything. The old importance of content or plot were to be abandoned. Content and form were one and the same.

Acknowledging that this worked better in art than literature, Witkiewicz allowed that the theater still had to have characters. But it didn’t need a linear, logical plot. His plays do step through a series of events , but the action doesn’t occur as the direct effect of prior events or what the audience knows about the characters.

Witkiewicz committed suicide in 1939 for both personal reasons and because he could foresee the looming European catastrophe. His work fell out of favor quickly but was brought back into production as the postwar theater of the absurd gained adherents.

I picked this up by chance but stuck with it after reading in the informative introduction that Witkiewicz was a good friend of Witold Gombrowicz. I read Gombrowicz’s Diary last year and wanted to learn something about one of the few Poles who didn’t suffer Gombrowicz’s venom.

Well, I was less than impressed with two of the plays but I quite liked The Mad Locomotive. This last play is Witkiewicz’s reaction to Futurism. It’s full of energy and more articulated ideas than the other two.

[Carolina Fidalgo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This edition includes three plays: ‘The Madman and the Nun’, ‘The Water Hen’, and ‘The Crazy Locomotive’, as well as an introduction that discusses Witkacy’s biography as a painter, playwright, philosopher, and art theorist. There’s no question that Witkacy was an odd figure; he was the kind of person who kept a numbered list of his relationships according to their proximity and would notify his friends when their position changed on this list. Sadly, this juvenile trait was, for me, much too evident in his writing. There is no doubt that Witkacy is an important precursor to the Theatre of the Absurd; his plays are imbued with eccentricity and illogical events, such as the unexplained return of characters who were killed earlier in the play (not as ghosts, but as themselves). He attempts bitter criticism, but this, to me, is where he fails: his targets are too fast-moving, his shots unfocused and scattered, especially in the first two plays. ‘The Crazy Locomotive’ is by far the one I’d recommend to anyone interested in getting a taste of Witkacy as a playwright. There is much to be enjoyed in this one: the subversion of stereotypes, a critique of industrialism, incorporation of cinema on the background, a touch of feminism, meta commentary on both Witkacy’s theories and the act of play-watching, and a good sense of humour.

[e]

*samo ludak i opatica; dec 2022

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read "The Madman and the Nun"--crazy and fun. A poet gone insane who is locked up in an asylum meets and falls in love with a nun.

[Péter · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 'The Mother' the conflict gets solved by doing cocaine

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Witkiewicz is quickly becoming my favorite playwright. His absurd theater antedates Ionesco and is vastly superior (although the latter's sole novel "The Hermit" is one of the greatest things I've ever read). Completely bonkers, but somehow always devastating.

[Patryk Denisiuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please visit my facebook site where I post translations of Witkiewicz’ works https://m.facebook.com/Stanislav-Igna...

[Nia · Rating 5 out of 5]

To je bila samo Ponorela lokomotiva. Nora drama, hudo hudo.

[mleko · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Madman and the Nun: 5/5
The Water Hen: 3/5

[Lydia]

totally weird but good. read for dramaturgy in college.

[Daniela · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am in love.

[Myhte]

There must be repressed truth even in lies.

[A L]

Really compelling stuff.