Maciej Korbowa and Bellatrix

by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Daniel Charles Gerould (Translator)

Witkacy's first play, written in 1918 following his four years of service as a Tsarist officer, Maciej Korbowa and Bellatrix portrays the disintegration of the Russian empire and the coming of revolution seen as a theatrical spectacle. A psychotic guru known as the Master, Maciej Korbowa, aided by his gender-shifting alter-ego Bellatrix, presides over a secret club of disciples addicted to drugs, alcohol, and sado-masochistic orgies and leads this band of metaphysical desperados and decadent artists no longer able to create on a philosophical quest for absolute Nothingness-until he finally betrays them all to the revolutionary Sailors of Death. This strange and haunting drama, bursting with violence, rage, and anguish, is a seminal work for understanding Witkacy, who frequently returns to its characters and themes in creating his later works.

108 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1918

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).