
A pine cross bore the writers name carved with a penknife. Neglected for many years, the grave and marker had become effaced. In the 1970s a tombstone and plaque were secretly placed on the site by a former Polish resident of Jeziory whose parents had sheltered Witkacy for several days in that distant September and who returned illegally to pay tribute to the playwright. Before Glasnost, the USSR would check credit Baltimore not permit Poles to travel to their former lands. All that had radically changed by April 11, 1988 when the body of the revered author was publicly exhumed at Jeziory before the assembled Ukrainian and Polish party dignitaries. After the panegyric speeches by the bureaucrats, the sealed coffin was officially handed over to the Polish delegation along with an x-ray photograph of its contents. When a Witkacy scholar traveling with check credit Baltimore the Polish delegation took a look at the x-ray, he immediately pointed out check credit Baltimore that the skull contained a full set of teeth, whereas the playwright had had many extractions.
The photograph mysteriously disappeared, and the ceremony proceeded as check credit Baltimore scheduled. When the body of the false check credit Baltimore Witkacy arrived in Zakopane on April 13, a week of festivities began at check credit Baltimore the Witkiewicz Theatre (an outstanding private theatre established in 1985). free online credit report There were eulogies, lectures, concerts, films, and theatrical performances check credit Baltimore throughout Poland. On April 14 Witkacys remains, draped in national colors and decked with mounds of flowers, were displayed in the lobby of the theatre. An honor guard composed of leading Zakopane check credit Baltimore citizens, actors, and relatives led the check credit Baltimore funeral procession. The coffin was transported to the cemetery on a local peasant check credit Baltimore wagon drawn by horses caparisoned in check credit Baltimore black, followed by a huge crowd of fifty thousand. The Minster of culture spoke at the grave, as did the Deputy Minister of Culture from Ukraine, check credit Baltimore and a solemn funeral mass was celebrated. The body of the false Witkacy check credit Baltimore was placed in his mothers tomb, check credit Baltimore a few steps from where his wife is buried (his fathers grave is at the other end of the check credit Baltimore cemetery). yearly free credit report government A large tombstone proclaims the return of the author to his native land. The fraud was exposed almost immediately, and the ensuing scandal led to check credit Baltimore accusations and recriminations as to who was responsible for the grotesque farce.All true admirers of Witkacy rejoiced that the playwrightfamous for his risen corpseshad succeeded in evading the authorities once again. The author had staged yet another posthumous triumph.The communist hierarchy, which check credit Baltimore for years had suppressed his work, censored his books, and tried to keep his plays off the stage, could seize possession of neither his body nor his spirit.The officials and bureaucrats check credit Baltimore who honored the author by burying an anonymous skeleton (which turned out to be that of an unidentified young woman) in his mothers grave have now check credit Baltimore faded into oblivion.Witkacys corpse enjoys its lonely freedom no one knows precisely where. Fascinated by the strange fate of his friend, the poet and playwright Tadeusz Micinski, who had been killed in Ukraine in 1918 without leaving behind a trace, Witkacy often said that he too would like to have no grave. How splendid, he exclaimed, that all the world knows a writer and finds him everywhere, even though there are no material remains. credit report government free Witkacys deathhis last hours, suicide, burial, and then his rebirth, reburial, and final escapehas become a legend that is now the subject of many novels, plays, and films dealing with these events in either a documentary or fictional mode.As a young man, the thought of experiencing, or watching, ones own death had fascinated Witkacy, and throughout his career he talked of taking a posthumous look at oneself. He was self-haunted, observed by his own ghost.New generations continue to be fascinated by Witkacys elusive specter and attempt to find him check credit Baltimore in his plays, novels, paintings, and photographs.
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