French Literature Reviews - 2026

A. Fialkiewicz-Saignes, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz and European Modernism
Novel and Narrative Prose

Anna Fialkiewicz-Saignes, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz and European Modernism
Ellug, 2006
ISBN: 2 84310 073 9

EAN: 9782843100734
24 €

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Summary:

Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939) is today unanimously recognized in Poland as the most outstanding figure of the interwar period. A few years before Bruno Schulz and Witold Gombrowicz, Witkiewicz, who primarily considered himself a philosopher, paved the way for a new dramaturgy, an unprecedented style of painting, and, with Farewell to Autumn, Insatiability, and The Only Way Out, an original art of the novel. He became an essential reference for several generations of Polish writers and artists.
This book focuses on Witkiewicz's reinvention of the novel, aiming to assess its stakes in light of the novelistic renewal that was in full swing in Europe during the 1910s and 1920s. What do Witkiewicz, Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf have in common? Born from a sense of cultural crisis brought about by modernization, organized around the question of the place and meaning of art in the modern world, tempted by metaphysics while simultaneously driven by a profound suspicion of language, Witkiewicz's novels fully participate in the European debate on the novel. Yet, to European questions, Witkiewicz offers his own distinct answers, which are more violent (perhaps because they are peripheral?) in both their discourse and their form. They undermine the novelistic form from within, forcing it to test its own limits. They thus invite us to re-examine the very concept of modernism.

This study places Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz alongside major European novelists such as Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Driven by a profound sense of cultural crisis resulting from modernization and a deep suspicion of language, these writers placed the role and meaning of art at the center of their work. Fialkiewicz Saignes analyzes how Witkiewicz engaged with these shared continental concerns while offering uniquely violent and radical responses that challenged conventional narrative structures.

The book will be particularly useful for readers interested in comparative literature, interwar narrative forms, and the avant-garde traditions of Central and Western Europe. By examining works like Farewell to Autumn, Insatiability, and The Only Way Out, the author invites scholars and enthusiasts alike to reconsider the boundaries and definitions of literary modernism through the distinct perspective of a central yet peripheral Polish visionary.