Gabriela Zapolska
Encyclopedia
Maria Gabriela Stefania Korwin-Piotrowska (1857–1921), known as Gabriela Zapolska, was a Polish
novelist, playwright
, naturalist writer
, feuilleton
ist, theatre critic and stage actress. Zapolska wrote 41 plays, 23 novels, 177 short stories, 252 works of journalism, one film script, and over 1,500 letters.
Zapolska received most recognition for her socio-satirical comedies. Among them, Moralność pani Dulskiej (The Morality of Mrs. Dulska) – a tragic-farce
about petty-bourgeois – is considered the most famous internationally. It is regarded as a landmark of early modernist
Polish drama. Her stage plays were translated into foreign languages, and performed at Polish and European theatres, as well as adapted for radio and film. Zapolska herself acted on stage in over 200 plays in Warsaw
, Kraków
, Poznań
, Lwów, Saint Petersburg
and Paris
.
, to a family of Polish gentry; on the territory ruled by Austria-Hungary after the Third and final Partition of Poland
, (now Pidhaitsi
, Ukraine). Her father was a marshal of Volhynian szlachta
. Zapolska studied at the Sacré Coeur Institute and in the Institute of Education and Science in Lwów. In 1876 she was forced by her family to marry a Polish lieutenant in the Tsarist guard, Konstanty Śnieżko-Błocki, but soon left him and divorced in 1888. During the years of 1879–1880 she lived in Warsaw
, where she acted in an amateur theatre ran by the Philanthropy Society. In 1881 Zapolska became pregnant by an out-of-wedlock relationship and left her family. The same year she made her own short story debut by Jeden dzień z życia róży (One Day in the Life of a Rose). The following year, in 1882, she became a professional actress in the Kraków
theatre, and assumed the pseudonym of Gabriela Zapolska. She also acted in Poznań
, and in travelling troupes throughout the Congress Poland
. In October 1888 she reportedly made a suicide attempt.
In 1889 Zapolska moved to Paris
in hope to make an artistic career. There, she played minor roles in boulevard theatres, Théâtre Libre
and Théâtre de l'Œuvre
. She played in a stage adaptation of Intérieur (Interior) by Maurice Maeterlinck
in Théâtre Libre. In Paris, Zapolska established contacts within the artistic milieu as well as with Polish socialist emigrants, which influenced her social views.
After coming back to her country, she settled in Kraków and acted in garden theatres, travelling troupes, and then in Kraków Juliusz Słowacki Theatre directed by Tadeusz Pawlikowski. Her defiant, suffragist
nature led to conflicts with theatre principals. Following Pawlikowski's departure, in 1900 she abandoned her contract. After that, Zapolska set up her own stage which was active time-by-time. In 1902 Zapolska ran a drama school in Kraków and the Gabriela Zapolska Independent Theatre was founded later. Her experiences in Paris let her to produce two Maeterlinck stage adaptations – Princess Maleine, and L'Intruse (The Intruder), both produced in 1902.
In 1904 she moved to Lwów and married a painter, Stanisław Janowski. She became a patron of the travelling theatre named after her (Gabriela Zapolska Theatre) which during the years of 1907–1908 toured Galicia. She divorced her second husband in 1910. In the years of 1912–1913 Zapolska was a literary director of Teatr Premier. As a feuilleton
ist and theatre critic she collaborated with Gazeta Krakowska, Słowo Polskie, Nowa Reforma, Ilustracja Polska and Wiek Nowy. In 1915, after Lwów was captured by the Russian Army, she ran a small confectionery. Zapolska died on 21 December 1921 in Lwów
(now Lviv, Ukraine
) and buried at the Lychakivskiy Cemetery
there.
– a literary movement seeking to replicate everyday reality. She was mainly influenced by Émile Zola
, a French naturalist writer. Her output has a journalistic
and didactic tone. She portrayed the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable people including proletarians, Jews, servants, prostitutes, etc.
Characters in Zapolska's works are mostly of ordinary type. She tends to skip psychological analysis as it was specific for the Young Poland
writers. She also brought up controversial subjects, such as prostitution and venereal disease (O czym się mówi, O czym się nawet myśleć nie chce).
Zapolska created acrimonious and embiterred literary characters, such as those in her best-known works, Moralność pani Dulskiej,
Żabusia, Ich czworo. Tragedia ludzi głupich, Sezonowa miłość, and Panna Maliczewska.
Polish drama. The story of Moralność pani Dulskiej was continued in two short stories—Pani Dulska przed sądem and Śmierć Felicjana Dulskiego. Her dramas were translated into other languages, played at the Polish and European stages, and adapted into radio and film. Notable Zapolska dramas include:
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
novelist, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, naturalist writer
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...
, feuilleton
Feuilleton
Feuilleton was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the latest fashions, and epigrams, charades and other literary trifles...
ist, theatre critic and stage actress. Zapolska wrote 41 plays, 23 novels, 177 short stories, 252 works of journalism, one film script, and over 1,500 letters.
Zapolska received most recognition for her socio-satirical comedies. Among them, Moralność pani Dulskiej (The Morality of Mrs. Dulska) – a tragic-farce
Farce
In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...
about petty-bourgeois – is considered the most famous internationally. It is regarded as a landmark of early modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
Polish drama. Her stage plays were translated into foreign languages, and performed at Polish and European theatres, as well as adapted for radio and film. Zapolska herself acted on stage in over 200 plays in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, Kraków
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
, Poznań
Poznan
Poznań is a city on the Warta river in west-central Poland, with a population of 556,022 in June 2009. It is among the oldest cities in Poland, and was one of the most important centres in the early Polish state, whose first rulers were buried at Poznań's cathedral. It is sometimes claimed to be...
, Lwów, Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
and Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
Life
Zapolska was born on 30 March 1857 in Podhajce, VolhyniaVolhynia
Volhynia, Volynia, or Volyn is a historic region in western Ukraine located between the rivers Prypiat and Southern Bug River, to the north of Galicia and Podolia; the region is named for the former city of Volyn or Velyn, said to have been located on the Southern Bug River, whose name may come...
, to a family of Polish gentry; on the territory ruled by Austria-Hungary after the Third and final Partition of Poland
Partitions of Poland
The Partitions of Poland or Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the 18th century and ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland for 123 years...
, (now Pidhaitsi
Pidhaitsi
Pidhaitsi is a small city in the Ternopil Oblast of western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Pidhaitsi Raion , and is located at around . Pidhaitsi is situated ca. 15.5 mi south of Berezhany, 43.5 mi from Ternopil and ca. 62 mi south-east of Lviv. In 1939...
, Ukraine). Her father was a marshal of Volhynian szlachta
Szlachta
The szlachta was a legally privileged noble class with origins in the Kingdom of Poland. It gained considerable institutional privileges during the 1333-1370 reign of Casimir the Great. In 1413, following a series of tentative personal unions between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of...
. Zapolska studied at the Sacré Coeur Institute and in the Institute of Education and Science in Lwów. In 1876 she was forced by her family to marry a Polish lieutenant in the Tsarist guard, Konstanty Śnieżko-Błocki, but soon left him and divorced in 1888. During the years of 1879–1880 she lived in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, where she acted in an amateur theatre ran by the Philanthropy Society. In 1881 Zapolska became pregnant by an out-of-wedlock relationship and left her family. The same year she made her own short story debut by Jeden dzień z życia róży (One Day in the Life of a Rose). The following year, in 1882, she became a professional actress in the Kraków
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
theatre, and assumed the pseudonym of Gabriela Zapolska. She also acted in Poznań
Poznan
Poznań is a city on the Warta river in west-central Poland, with a population of 556,022 in June 2009. It is among the oldest cities in Poland, and was one of the most important centres in the early Polish state, whose first rulers were buried at Poznań's cathedral. It is sometimes claimed to be...
, and in travelling troupes throughout the Congress Poland
Congress Poland
The Kingdom of Poland , informally known as Congress Poland , created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, was a personal union of the Russian parcel of Poland with the Russian Empire...
. In October 1888 she reportedly made a suicide attempt.
In 1889 Zapolska moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in hope to make an artistic career. There, she played minor roles in boulevard theatres, Théâtre Libre
Théâtre Libre
The Théâtre Libre was a theatre company that operated from 1887 to 1896 in the Montmartre district of Paris, France.-History:Théâtre Libre was founded on 30 March 1887 by André Antoine, who wanted to create a dramatization of an Émile Zola novel, Thérèse Raquin after the theater group for which he...
and Théâtre de l'Œuvre
Théâtre de l'Œuvre
The Théâtre de l'Œuvre is a Paris theatre, located atop cité Monthiers, at 55 rue de Clichy in the 9° arrondissement in Paris, France. It is best known as the theatre where Alfred Jarry’s nihilistic farce Ubu Roi premiered in 1896....
. She played in a stage adaptation of Intérieur (Interior) by Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
in Théâtre Libre. In Paris, Zapolska established contacts within the artistic milieu as well as with Polish socialist emigrants, which influenced her social views.
After coming back to her country, she settled in Kraków and acted in garden theatres, travelling troupes, and then in Kraków Juliusz Słowacki Theatre directed by Tadeusz Pawlikowski. Her defiant, suffragist
Suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply the franchise, distinct from mere voting rights, is the civil right to vote gained through the democratic process...
nature led to conflicts with theatre principals. Following Pawlikowski's departure, in 1900 she abandoned her contract. After that, Zapolska set up her own stage which was active time-by-time. In 1902 Zapolska ran a drama school in Kraków and the Gabriela Zapolska Independent Theatre was founded later. Her experiences in Paris let her to produce two Maeterlinck stage adaptations – Princess Maleine, and L'Intruse (The Intruder), both produced in 1902.
In 1904 she moved to Lwów and married a painter, Stanisław Janowski. She became a patron of the travelling theatre named after her (Gabriela Zapolska Theatre) which during the years of 1907–1908 toured Galicia. She divorced her second husband in 1910. In the years of 1912–1913 Zapolska was a literary director of Teatr Premier. As a feuilleton
Feuilleton
Feuilleton was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the latest fashions, and epigrams, charades and other literary trifles...
ist and theatre critic she collaborated with Gazeta Krakowska, Słowo Polskie, Nowa Reforma, Ilustracja Polska and Wiek Nowy. In 1915, after Lwów was captured by the Russian Army, she ran a small confectionery. Zapolska died on 21 December 1921 in Lwów
Lviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
(now Lviv, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
) and buried at the Lychakivskiy Cemetery
Lychakivskiy Cemetery
-History:Since its creation in 1787 as Łyczakowski Cemetery, it has been the main necropolis of the city's inteligentsia, middle and upper classes. Initially the cemetery was located on several hills in the borough of Lychakiv, following the imperial Austro-Hungarian edict ordering that all...
there.
Style and themes
Gabriela Zapolska's works were dominated by naturalismNaturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...
– a literary movement seeking to replicate everyday reality. She was mainly influenced by Émile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
, a French naturalist writer. Her output has a journalistic
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
and didactic tone. She portrayed the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable people including proletarians, Jews, servants, prostitutes, etc.
Characters in Zapolska's works are mostly of ordinary type. She tends to skip psychological analysis as it was specific for the Young Poland
Young Poland
Young Poland is a modernist period in Polish visual arts, literature and music, covering roughly the years between 1890 and 1918. It was a result of strong aesthetic opposition to the ideas of Positivism...
writers. She also brought up controversial subjects, such as prostitution and venereal disease (O czym się mówi, O czym się nawet myśleć nie chce).
Zapolska created acrimonious and embiterred literary characters, such as those in her best-known works, Moralność pani Dulskiej,
Żabusia, Ich czworo. Tragedia ludzi głupich, Sezonowa miłość, and Panna Maliczewska.
Prose
Gabriela Zapolska made her own short story debut in 1881 by Jeden dzień z życia róży. Many of her early works was published in parts in Lwów and then, in Warsaw press, mainly in Przegląd Tygodniowy. She collected her early short stories in the volume of Z dziejów boleści (1890). Her novels and short stories were translated into many languages, including English, Russian, German, Swedish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Ukrainian. Zapolska was criticized by conservatives for the more naturalist aspects of her works, such as perceived immorality, squalor, taboo subjects, etc. Notable Zapolska prose works include:- Jeden dzień z życia róży (One Day in the Life of a Rose, 1881)
- Małaszka (1883)
- Kaśka Kariatyda (Cathy the CaryatidCaryatidA caryatid is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. The Greek term karyatides literally means "maidens of Karyai", an ancient town of Peloponnese...
, 1885–1886) - Przedpiekle (1889)
- Menażeria ludzka (1893)
- Janka (1895)
- Fin-de-sièclistka (Fin-de-siècle-ist, 1897)
- Zaszumi las (1899)
- Sezonowa miłość (1904)
- Córka Tuśki (1907)
- Pani Dulska przed sądem (1908)
- O czym się nie mówi (1909)
- Śmierć Felicjana Dulskiego (Death of Felicjan Dulski, 1911)
- Kobieta bez skazy (1913)
- O czym się nawet myśleć nie chce (1914)
Dramas
Zapolska is best-known for her dramas, socio-satirical comedies and tragicomedy works. Her Moralność pani Dulskiej, a 'petty-bourgeois tragic-farce', is considered by her most-known work and regarded as a landmark of early modernistModernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
Polish drama. The story of Moralność pani Dulskiej was continued in two short stories—Pani Dulska przed sądem and Śmierć Felicjana Dulskiego. Her dramas were translated into other languages, played at the Polish and European stages, and adapted into radio and film. Notable Zapolska dramas include:
- Żabusia (Froggie, 1897)
- Małka Szwarcenkopf (1897)
- Jojne Firułkes (1898)
- Moralność pani Dulskiej (The Morality of Mrs. Dulska, 1906)
- Ich czworo. Tragedia ludzi głupich (1907)
- Skiz (1908)
- Panna Maliczewska (Miss Maliczewska, 1910)
Film adaptations
Movies based on Zapolska novels or dramas include:- Carewicz (1918) – directed by Marian Fuchs
- Tamten (1921) – by Władysław Lenczewski
- O czym się nie mówi (1924) – by Edward Puchalski
- Policmajster Tagiejew (1929) – by Juliusz Gardan
- Moralność pani Dulskiej (1930) – by Boleslaw Newolin; the first Polish movie with sound recorded on a gramophone record
- O czym się nie mówi (1939) – by Mieczysław Krawicz
- Morálka paní Dulské (adaption of Moralność pani Dulskiej, 1958) – by Jiří Krejčík; a CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
n movie
Gallery of photographs
See also
- Feminism in PolandFeminism in PolandThe history of feminism in Poland has traditionally been divided into seven "waves," beginning in the 19th century.-First wave :Feminist ideas reached Poland considerably later than other Western European countries – only in the 19th century...
- Polish literaturePolish literaturePolish literature is the literary tradition of Poland. Most Polish literature has been written in the Polish language, though other languages, used in Poland over the centuries, have also contributed to Polish literary traditions, including Yiddish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, German and...
- List of Poles