The Anthropos-Spectre-Beast by Tadeusz Konwicki

What an odd, surreal, sometimes sorrowful, sometimes farcical lark this turned out to be. Synopsis: Smug, know-it-all little boy meets smug, know-it-all Investigator Dog. The autobiographical Wschody i zachody ksie̦życa (1981 Moonrise, Moonset) recounts some of Konwicki’s experiences during the period of martial law in Poland. His later books-including Kompleks polski (1977 The Polish Complex), the bitterly mocking Mała apokalipsa (1979 A Minor Apocalypse), and the lyrical Bohiń (1987 Bohin Manor)-confront Poland’s social cataclysms of the late 1970s and the ’80s. Chief among his novels are Rojsty (1956 “The Marshes”) and Sennik wspóczesny (1963 A Dreambook for Our Time), a book that writer and critic Czesław Miłosz called “one of the most terrifying novels of postwar Polish literature.” His other works of that period are Wniebowsta̦pienie (1967 “Ascension”) and Zwierzoczłekoupiór (1969 The Anthropos-Spectre-Beast). Konwicki’s work is suffused with guilt and anxiety, coloured by his wartime experiences and a sense of helplessness in confronting a corrupt and repressive society.

By the late 1960s he had quit the Communist Party, lost his job in the official film industry, and become active in the opposition movement.

He began a career as a filmmaker and scriptwriter in 1956 his film Ostatni dzień lata (“The Last Day of Summer”) won the Venice Film Festival Grand Prix in 1958. His first work, Przy budowie (1950 “At the Construction Site”), won the State Prize for Literature. He served on the editorial boards of leading literary magazines and followed the official Communist Party line. Konwicki was educated at the Universities of Cracow and Warsaw and began writing for newspapers and periodicals.

Born in 1926 in Nowa Wilejka, near Vilnius (today Naujoji Vilnia, Lithuania), died on January 7th in Warsaw at 88 years old. Founder of the 'cinema d'auteur' in Poland and author of 20 books. Prose writer, screenwriter and film director.

The Anthropos-Spectre-Beast by Tadeusz Konwicki