Jerzy Żuławski

In a twenty-year writing career, from his first book of poems in 1895, at the age of 21, to his final World War I dispatches in 1915, Jerzy Żuławski created an impressive body of work—seven volumes of poetry, three collections of literary criticism, numerous cultural and philosophical essays, ten plays and five novels. He was considered an important and influential intellectual figure in the early years of the 20th century, but a century later, the only creation which has remained in print and assured him literary immortality is The Lunar Trilogy. Stanisław Lem (1921–2006), renowned as the "most widely read science-fiction writer in the world",[1] contributed an introduction to the 1956 and 1975 editions of the Trilogy's initial volume, Na Srebrnym Globie (On the Silver Globe), crediting Żuławski's words with inspiring him to become "a writer of the fantastic" and describing the time he spent reading The Lunar Trilogy as "one of the most fascinating and life-changing experiences" of his youth.

Jerzy Żuławski was born into a strongly nationalistic Polish household in the village of Lipowiec, near Rzeszów, a major city in the region of Galicia. In 1772, Galicia, with its capital Lwów, was separated from Poland in the First Partition and, for the next 146 years, became part of the Austrian Habsburg Empire. Eleven years before Jerzy's birth, his father Kazimerz Żuławski, a country squire, had participated in the 1863 January Uprising against Czarist rule in the Russian portion of partitioned Poland. Kazimierz had a great influence on young Jerzy's life and Jerzy shared many of the views his father expressed.

Educated at good schools in Limanowa, Bochnia and Kraków, Żuławski was in Switzerland from 1892 to 1899, where he studied first at the University of Zürich and then pursued his doctorate of philosophy at the University of Bern under the guidance of the eminent positivist Richard Avenarius (1843–1896), who died before the completion of Żuławski's dissertation on Spinoza, Das Problem der Kausalität bei Spinoza, which was published in Bern in 1899. Żuławski subsequently revised and expanded his German-language text into a 1902 Polish popular-philosophy book, Bededykt Spinoza, Człowiek i Dzieło (Benedict Spinoza, Man and Achievement). He also wrote about, and provided the first Polish translations of some of the works of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann as well as the original Hebrew Old Testament and Talmud and the writings of a number of Eastern philosophers.

The earliest publication bearing Jerzy Żuławski's name was also written in Bern. Dispatched to a Kraków publishing concern, the slim collection entitled Na strunach duszy (On the Strings of the Soul) was offered to the public in 1895. While a volume of Polish-language poetry in German-speaking Bern did not make much of an impact, the young author did receive moderate praise from the few Polish press organs that reviewed it. A decade later, at the height of Żuławski's brief fame, it came to be viewed as an experimental work, not truly representative of his real ability. He returned to Poland in spring 1899 to co-edit the literary magazine Krytyka (Critique) and initially became a schoolteacher in Jasło and, following his marriage, in Kraków. A number of his essays were published in another literary publication, the Kraków-based Życie (Life).

Żuławski's studies shaped the construct of his philosophical world view, which he referred to as syntetyczny monizm ("synthetic monism"). He planned to use the method to conceptually solve the dilemmas facing the early-20th century generation of intellectuals known as Młoda Polska (Young Poland). An advocate of metaphysics and the idea of putting art in its service, he tried to give a tangible shape to the slogan "naga dusza" ("naked soul") and the theory of the symbol as an expression of the Absolute. Along with other contemporary theorists, he was concerned with the problems of the development and future of culture, the responsibility of intellectual leadership within the circumstances of creativity and the role of the individual in the life of society. The central thesis of synthetic monism revolved around the idea of Being as an entity simultaneously spiritual and material, the Absolute and the Process.

Cover of Ezüstös mezőkön (ca.1922), Hungarian version of Na srebrnym globie (On the Silver Globe)

By the end of 1901, Żuławski had largely abandoned teaching and devoted himself entirely to traveling and writing, including the completion of the first volume of his magnum opus about a tragically ill-fated Moon expedition, On the Silver Globe, which has as its final words, "Pisałem w Krakowie, w zimie 1901–2" ("I wrote in Kraków in the winter of 1901–2"). Following common practice of the period, the novel was written in installments, each of which was published, upon completion, in the literary journal Głos Narodu (The Voice of the Nation) between December 1901 and April 1902 and subsequently appeared in re-edited form as a 1903 book in Lwów.

For the next five years it was a stand-alone work, but between autumn 1908 and spring 1909, installments of a sequel entitled Zwycięzca (The Conqueror) appeared in the pages of Kurier Warszawski (Warsaw Courier). Continuing the story generations and centuries later on the Moon, it was a longer, more complex and more philosophical work than On the Silver Globe. Its publication in re-edited book form came in 1910. 1910 also saw the first installments of the final volume, Stara Ziemia (The Old Earth). It was an immediate continuation of The Conqueror, following two of the diminutive human denizens of the Moon who use the spaceship of the previous volume's protagonist, the already-martyred Marek the Conqueror, to return to the planet of their ancestors. Głos Narodu, the same journal which serialized On the Silver Globe, now completed the trilogy by continuing the installments to their conclusion in spring 1911, with a re-edited book version coming out later that year.

The first edition of the complete three-volume set was first published in Lwów in 1912. Beginning shortly thereafter and continuing over the following decades, The Lunar Trilogy was widely read in virtually every European language, with one notable exception—it has never been translated into English.

In 1907, Żuławski married for the second time and, in his few remaining years, became the father of three sons, Marek [MAH-rek] (1908–1985), Juliusz [YOOLY-yoosh] (1910–1999) and Wawrzyniec [vahv-ZHIH-nyetz] (1916–1957).

Starting in 1901, and as time permitted, Żuławski had lived on and off in his favorite location, Zakopane, Poland's best-known mountaineering town. By 1910, he had finally bought a large house there and settled with his growing family. He became the co-editor of the local literary journal, Zakopane, and welcomed many notable writers and friends, such as Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, Jan Kasprowicz and Leopold Staff, who paid regular visits. A dedicated traveler and sportsman, he climbed many of Europe's mountains and visited much of the continent in between his writing. His poems appeared frequently in Polish literary magazines, such as Życie(Life), Młodość(Youth), Krytyka (Critique), Strumień (Stream), Chimera (Chimera e.g. Idle Fancy) and Słowo Polskie (The Polish Word) and he continued to produce short stories, essays, translations and other works for the next four years.

Grave, Dębica, Poland

In the first days of August 1914, as the three entities of partitioned Poland—Russia, Germany and Austro-Hungary were entering the First World War, Jerzy Żuławski made the only decision he felt reflected his principles and joined Piłsudski's Legions to fight for the cause of regaining Polish independence. He wrote home regularly from the front and, due to his high literary repute, was given a major position on the Legion's journalistic staff in Łódź, where he edited and wrote for their newspaper Do Broni (To Arms). At the end of 1914 he was assigned to Naczelny Komitet Narodowy (Supreme [Polish] National Committee) in Vienna and, in April 1915, was moved to Piotrków where he served at the Legion Headquarters as a liaison to the First Brigade command. During a visit to the front in early August, he contracted typhus and, after a few days' illness, died at a field hospital in Dębica. He was 41 years old. His third son, Wawrzyniec, was born six months later, on 14 February 1916.

Marek, whose birth coincided with his father's starting work on The Conqueror, became the namesake of the epic tale's tragic hero. Jerzy's widow, Kazimiera Żuławska, subsequently resettled with their sons in Warsaw, where they remained into the Second World War. Due to Jerzy's early death, the boys did not have the opportunity to gain their father's experience first-hand, but all three inherited his dedication to alpinism, spending much of their time participating in mountaineering expeditions. The three brothers also gained renown in the arts—Marek as a painter, Juliusz, emulating his father, as a poet, novelist and translator of poetry, and Wawrzyniec as a composer. Kazimiera and son Wawrzyniec were particularly helpful to the Polish Resistance and sheltered Jews in their apartment, an act which would have resulted in death at the hands of the German occupiers if they were caught. As a result, both were listed as Righteous Among the Nations[2] after the war. Wawrzyniec who, in his widely praised musical career, was known by his full name, Wawrzyniec Jerzy Żuławski was also a dedicated mountain rescue specialist. He was 41, the same age as his father, when he died in the midst of a 1957 ice avalanche in the Alps, while participating in a rescue mission.

Due to the volume of his contributions to magazines and newspapers, Żuławski built up a large number of lesser-known texts which, in addition to short stories and poems, include critical essays and discussions of philosophy. Some of those were collected and published well after his death, in the 1920s and 30s and many others remain scattered and unknown. Additionally, Żuławski was held in high regard as a multi-lingual literary translator, especially of poetry, rendering into Polish the poems of Nietzsche, Richepin and many selections from the original Hebrew texts of the Old Testament.

• List of Poles

• Cross, Tim (1988). The Lost Voices of World War I. Great Britain: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 0-7475-4276-7

• The Origins of Polish Sci-Fi & The Legacy of Jerzy Żuławski, feature article on Culture.pl including photos from the Żuławski family's private archives
• Portrait of Jerzy Żuławski by Stanisław Wyspiański (1869–1907), which originally appeared in Współczesna literatura polska 1880-1904 (Contemporary Polish Literature 1880-1904) by Wilhelm Feldman (1905).
• A literary-biographical overview of Jerzy Żuławski from the Virtual Library of Polish Literature
• Works by or about Jerzy Żuławski at Internet Archive
• Works by Jerzy Żuławski at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Science Fiction Studies (March 1985) includes a three-sentence abstract from Stanislaw Lem's introduction to On the Silver Globe
• Dargis, Manohla. "Movies: About Na Srebrnym Globie". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-08-08.
• Fright Site review of On the Silver Globe
• A small reproduction of the Wyspiański portrait of Jerzy Żuławski accompanied by an incomplete Polish-language text of the 1956 edition of On the Silver Globe (based on the 1979 edition, the online text is missing the last 88 pages of the first section)
• Jerzy Zulawski at IMDb