The Mrożek Reader

by Sławomir Mrożek

Slawomir Mrozek has reigned as the pre-eminent playwright and satirist of Eastern Europe for the past half-century. A sharp critic of all oppressive systems during the Cold War, he began his career as a young enthusiast for the new Communist regime in the early 1950s. It didn’t take long, however, until he was deemed such a threat that his work was banned not only in his native Poland, but also in all Eastern bloc countries. After the fall of Communism, he returned home from self imposed exile in the West and was recognized as a major literary figure. This reissue of fourteen plays and ten short stories, along with a sampling of his capricious cartoons, affirms Mrozek’s mastery of a wide spectrum of styles, and illustrates the development of his talent over the decades. From the vantage point of the twenty-first century, Mro¿ek’s questioning of authority, his razor-sharp sense of the comic, and his spirit of contradiction seem as fresh, and as relevant, as ever.

Genres: Poland, Short Stories, Polish Literature, Plays

352 pages, Paperback

First published April 26, 2004

About the author

Sławomir Mrożek (born June 29, 1930, died August 15, 2013) was a Polish dramatist and writer.

Mrożek joined the Polish United Workers' Party during the reign of Stalinism in the People's Republic of Poland, and made a living as a political journalist.

In the late 1950s Mrożek begun writing plays. His first play, "Policja" (The Police), was published in 1958. Mrożek emigrated to France in 1963 and then further to Mexico. He traveled in France, England, Italy, Yugoslavia and other European countries. In 1996 he returned to Poland and settled in Kraków.

His first full-length play "Tango" (1964) – a family saga – is still along with "The Emigrants" (a bitter and ironic portrait of two Polish emigrants in Paris) his best-known work, and continue to be performed throughout the world. Director Andrzej Wajda made a theatre production of "The Emigrants" in 1975 at the Teatr Stary in Kraków. In 2006 Mrożek released his autobiography called "Baltazar".

Mrożek's works belong to the genre of Theatre of the Absurd, intended to shock the audience with non-realistic elements, political and historic references, distortion and parody.

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Controversy

An illustration by Daniel Mróz for Mrożek's book „Słoń” ('The Elephant'), 1957

In 1953, during the reign of Stalinism in Poland, Mrożek was one of several signatories of an open letter to Polish authorities participating in defamation of Catholic priests from Kraków, three of whom were condemned to death (but never executed) by the communist government after being groundlessly accused of treason.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Poster for Sławomir Mrożek's play Vatzlav as performed by Trap Door Theater, a Chicago based avant-garde group

The Mrożek Reader - outstanding collection of plays and stories from Eastern Europe's preeminent playwright Sławomir Mrożek of Poland. The plays include The Police, Out at Sea, Charlie, Striptease, Tango, Vatzlav, Emigrants and The Hunchback. The ten stories are taken from his collection The Elephant. Since I plan to post separate reviews of a number of his plays, I will focus here on two Sławomir Mrożek stories I count among my favorites.

THE TRIAL
A zany mixing of wild satire and black humor, a Sławomir Mrożek send-up of the state attempting to control and regiment writers and writing so that "chaos, lack of criteria, unhealthy artistic tendencies, and the obscurity and ambiguity of art have been removed once and for all."

For the fun of it, let's give the unnamed state in this story a name - let's call it "Big Red." So, right off the bat our narrator lets us know a batch of fearless leaders down at Big Red Central Headquarters work out the design for uniforms to be worn by all comrades calling themselves writers or authors. Of course, it goes without saying but I'll say it anyhow - those all-knowing fearless leaders came up with what they came up with only after conferring with the Supreme Council of the Writer's Association.

The basic uniform is simple but each uniform will contain specific ribbons, stripes and bars in order to clearly display to which particular district and formation a writer belongs - for example, two regiments of poets where set up, as where three divisions of prose authors and, just to let all writers know the seriousness of being caught out of uniform, a firing squad was created by a mixture of those writing poems and prose. Meanwhile, the greatest changes take place among the ranks of literary critics and book reviewers - most are banished to the salt mines (OUCH!) and the remainder are made part of the military police.

Within each regiment and division, a writer is assigned a rank, from lowly private to top general depending mainly on the number of their published works. A prolific James Patterson or Stephen King-type author will rate general while a one book novelist like Boris Pasternak or J. D. Salinger are definitely private material. One immediate advantage: the reading public will know the generals parading around with their gold ribbons, red stripes and many bars pinned on their chest are the ones who write the really good novels, the novels truly worth reading.

But wouldn't you know it, there was one eccentric scribbler who upset the whole Big Red program. Damn those flaky artistic types! Too short for novels, too long for short stories, too poetic to be strictly prose, too satirical to be considered poems, his writing defied categorization. Will the fearless leaders at Big Red Central be forced to expel this flake the way they expelled several writers who were so fat and misshapen they looked terrible in uniform? Or, better still, will they make a prime example of him - put his eccentric ass on trial before they shoot him? Comrades, you will have to read for yourselves to find out.



THE CHRONICLE OF A BESIEGED CITY
As a new fan of Slawomir Mrożek I assumed the besieged city in this tale would be located in Poland, say Warsaw or Kraków or Wrocław, and the besiegers would be Nazis or more probably Soviets. But as I began reading my assumptions were turned topsy-turvy.

After all, what am I to make of a siege against a city when the city inhabitants deal with the siege by constantly dusting off the cannon in front of their town hall with feather dusters and a wet rag?

And what to think when the narrator makes a special note that people no longer clean their shoes but, since they are fearful of informers, they obsess about scratching between their shoulder blades although their backs are really not itching?

Then there's the enemy shell that fell in a suburban house killing two goldfish in an aquarium prompting the ordering of a state funeral. And once at the open grave, the archbishop tripped on his ecclesiastic robe and fell in and was burred by mistake. However, this goof was quickly corrected and the gravediggers dug him out and apologized.

Meanwhile, an old man in the narrator's apartment building shot the guy who goes around the city lighting streetlamps. The old guy claimed it was bad lighting - he thought he was shooting the enemy. The next morning at breakfast, an avid city patriot found a torpedo in his coffee. The newspaper's reaction: a army general should be posted in every house.

There's a string of more oddities: the landlady reports the police confiscated all the photos of bearded men in a photographer's shop window; police take the narrator to a photographer to have his picture taken then immediately confiscate it; an armored car patrols on the roof of his apartment building and arrests all the prowling cats; one starving caretaker threatens his son that he'll eat him if he doesn't behave.

I read all this and wonder what the hell is going on here. Sounds like the city is being besieged by either madness or absurdity. Then I discover the reason for all the craziness: the newspapers report the culprit has been tracked down: an American from Philadelphia is responsible for all the city's abnormality, the man reading The Chronicle of a Besieged City at this very moment by the name of Glenn Russell.

Oh, Slawomir Mrożek! Now that's really absurd!




Sławomir Mrożek, 1930-2013

[Inna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ironically tragic plays and stories by a very East European (and this is a compliment) author. Brilliant. I am very grateful to my friend Anna who was so sure I will enjoy Mrozek's work.

[Mana Karkouti · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most ultimate mindful pieces ever created by an "Artist". Yes, I do believe that Slawomir Mrożek is an artist whose works are "Creations of Art" rather than just smart writings.