As I mentioned, Bruno took me to Witkacy's. We marched up some floor off the courtyard of a building on Bracka Street. We rang the bell; I was somewhat on edge after hearing the stories going round about the eccentricities and extravagances of this man, who was gifted with such an outstanding mind. And here in the opened door there appeared an immense dwarf who began to grow before our eyes: It was Witkacy, who had opened the door from a squatting position and was slowly standing up. He liked practical jokes like this! I, on the other hand, did not find them amusing. From the very first moment Witkacy fatigued me and bored me. He was never at rest, always highly strung, tormenting himself and others with his perpetual playacting, his craving to shock and to draw attention to himself, forever cruelly and painfully playing with people. All these shortcomings, which I shared, I now observed as in a distorting mirror, turned monstrous and inflated to apocalyptic proportions.
He started to show us his 'atrocity museum,' the highlights of which included something he identified as the dried tongue of a newborn child, some hair that had allegedly belonged to Bejlis, and a letter from a nymphomaniac that was indeed revoltingly licentious.
I said, 'Sir, please stop showing us these things! They're unseemly!'
He gazed at me intently.
'Unseemly?' he asked.
He was somewhat taken aback. And I had once again been overcome by my mania for being an artist and a Bohemian in the homes of the God-fearing gentry, but a member of the landed gentry and even of the nobility amongst Bohemians, intellectuals, and artists. Unseemly! It must have been years since this smoker of hashish and goodness knows what else, this morphine addict, megalomaniac, schizophrenic, paranoiac, jokester, cynic, pervert, Dadaist, and pseudo-madman had heard such naivety...
| Witkacy |