t r a n s l at o r ’s n o t e
Reviewers in the 1930s of this “nobly shameless confession” were surprisingly openminded and levelheaded, and all but unanimous in their praise — nowhere is there the slightest hint of anyone being scandalized by the content. The book was also hugely popular, with one critic commenting that it needed no introduction because half of Poland could be seen carrying it around. Yet some reviewers were not so enthusiastic, and it is no surprise why: The extreme eclecticism of Narcotics is undeniably both exhilarating and exasperating. Indeed, for a book so deliberately unhinged it maintains an oddly conservative undertone. The main difficulty with Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy, for short) is that no matter what he was writing, it seems he wished he were writing something else. His plays give the impression he would rather be writing philosophy, his novels are larded with pseudo-historical digressions, and his philosophy and art theory veer wildly from analysis to anecdote to digression to, yes, literature. This willful genre bending, however, is a strength and not a handicap, and Narcotics is a literary hodgepodge that wears its idiosyncrasies like a badge. It would be a mistake to view Witkacy’s evident buffoonery as entirely lacking in method. It is quite consistent with his personality on the whole. When his philosophy was not taken seriously it angered him, yet he would arrive at university philosophical conventions dressed in the colors of the papal guard. The vast majority of his many photographs are of him making faces, which is the first impulse of an adolescent with a new camera. Witkacy, however, kept it up for decades, even once convincing the otherwise reserved Bruno Schulz to join in. His portraits, produced • 152