Sławomir Mrożek

Biography

Mrożek’s first drawings appeared in print in 1950, when he was twenty. He had not yet finished studying anywhere.

He was born on 29 June 1930 in Borzęcin, near Kraków, the son of a post office manager. Sources also give 26 June, but the 29th is more common. When the boy was about three, the family moved to Kraków. He took his school-leaving certificate in 1949 at the Bartłomiej Nowodworski secondary school in Kraków, then tried the architecture faculty of the Kraków Polytechnic, attended the Academy of Fine Arts and studied Oriental studies at the Jagiellonian University. He completed none of these courses.

He made his debut as a cartoonist, and from 1953 published series of drawings in the weekly “Przekrój”. He also worked at the Kraków daily “Dziennik Polski”, at first, in his own words, as an errand boy, and later writing satirical columns and humorous pieces. In 1953 two collections of stories came out, “Opowiadania z Trzmielowej Góry” (“Stories from Bumblebee Hill”) and “Półpancerze praktyczne” (“Practical Half-Armours”); in 1956 came the novel “Maleńkie lato” (“The Little Summer”). From 1956 to 1958 he ran a satirical column, “Postępowiec” (“The Progressive”), in the weekly “Życie Literackie”. In 1956 he went abroad for the first time, to the USSR, and visited Odesa.

From 1953 to 1959 Mrożek was a member of the Polish United Workers’ Party, the ruling communist party. In 1953 he signed a letter from Kraków writers supporting the verdict against priests of the Kraków Curia, who had been convicted at a show trial on charges of espionage, and he published an article in “Dziennik Polski” entitled “Zbrodnia główna i inne” (“The Capital Crime and Others”). Later he recalled his enthusiasm for revolutionary ideas at the time, remarking that at twenty he had been ready to accept any idea so long as it was revolutionary. The death sentences were not carried out.

His columns and drawings made him popular in Poland, but the real turn came at the end of the 1950s: he left journalism and took up the theatre. “The Police”, staged in 1958, is built on grotesque: in a state with no political prisoners left, the policemen, in despair, begin arresting one another. In 1962 he was one of the first four winners of the Kościelski Foundation literary prize. He spent the early 1960s in Warsaw.

In 1963 Mrożek travelled to Italy with his wife, the painter Maria Obremba, and stayed abroad. Five years later he settled in France; he also lived in the United States, Germany and Mexico, where he spent 1989 to 1996 at the ranch La Epifanía. “Tango” (1964), a play about totalitarianism in the manner of the Theatre of the Absurd, became his most successful work and was staged in many European countries. In 1968 he published in the French press a letter protesting against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, and in December 1981 he spoke out against the introduction of martial law in Poland. After that, productions of his play “Alfa” were banned in Poland, as were those of “The Ambassador” and “Vatzlav”. In 1975 Andrzej Wajda directed “The Émigrés”, a bitter and ironic story of two Poles in Paris, at the Stary Theatre in Kraków. In 1978 Mrożek received French citizenship.

It seems to me that what is hardest to translate in his plays and stories is not the words but the tone: his absurdity always says something quite definite about a particular government and particular people.

From 1994 he published notes and drawings in “Gazeta Wyborcza”. In 1996 he returned to Poland and settled in Kraków. In 2002 he suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak or write; recovery took about three years, and its outcome was the autobiography “Baltazar” (2006). It was nominated for the Nike Literary Award. In June 2008 Mrożek left Poland again and settled in Nice.

His honours include the Franz Kafka Prize (1987), honorary citizenship of Kraków (1990), honorary doctorates from the Jagiellonian University (2000) and the University of Silesia (2012), the Legion of Honour (2003) and the Commander’s Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1997). His letters to Stanisław Lem won the Jan Parandowski Prize of the Polish PEN Club (2010). His diaries for 1962 to 1989 were published in three volumes between 2010 and 2013.

Mrożek died in Nice on 15 August 2013. He was buried on 17 September in Kraków, at the Church of Saints Peter and Paul; the Mass was celebrated by the Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz.