DOI issue:
Nr. 3-4
DOI article:Jakimowicz, Irena: Metaphor and Realism: Witkacy's Late Works in the National Museum's Collection. 1984 Acquisitions
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18901#0098
duality of life and the sharp distinction between good and evil in human nature quite early
in his life. He confessad: „It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations, than any
particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench
than in the majority of men, served in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and
compound man’s dual nature. In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on
that hard law of life which lies at the root of religion, and is one of the most plentiful springs of
distress... With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual,
I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to
such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.” This discovery prompted
his vision of the compound being divided into its pure components, good and ill, thus freeing
him from the distressing ambiguity and incertitude. Rather than a magic elixir, the separation
occurred at the instance of a potion concocted according to a scientific recipe and according
to the spirit of the period. Dr Jekyll transforms at will into Mr Hyde, the embodiment of pure
evil, whose crimes will remain unpunished. Mr Hyde, cruel and open about his passion for
lascivious delights, which lay hidden at depth of the honest doctor’s soul, „was pale and dwarfish;
he gave an impression of deformity, without any nainable malformation, he had a displeasing
smile, he had born himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and
boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice...” Not as shapely
built as the doctor, thinner (at the beginning his wickedness is not so conspicuous), Mr Hyde
gives a somewhat inhuman air with the satan’s brand on his pale face. As time goes on, his
smile is growing increasingly despicable. With every consecutive transformation, the evil trait
becomes stronger, and Dr Jekyll more and more attached to the wicked side of his personality.
The ending settles the human dilemma as old as mankind: inseparable elements in human
nature, even if they are antithetical, cannot be separated with impunity. The final transfor-
mation brings about catastrophe: Dr Jekyll suffers self destruction in the guise of Mr Hyde.
Witkacy’s „Mr Hyde” has a split running throughout the length of paper in the middle of
his face. It looks like self-destruction intended by the painter, watched with melancholy by
„Dr Jekyll” when the portraits are arranged in order of execution. Painfully ironical the cata-
strophic motif in a new, unexpected form meets with philosophical truth here.
A double portrait of Helena Lesińska and her fiancé Jan Gadomski, painted a year later,
in August just before the war, has apparently little in common with philosophical metaphor.
As may be inferred from the other surviving portraits and drawings by Witkacy, August 1939
was a period of fervent activeness in his life, as if instinctively intensified on the eve of the end.
In accordance with the typology of his Firm, the portrait is marked „B”, which places it among
the most frequently commissioned ones. Compared with type „A”, which was „smooth”, type
,,R” was only somewhat freer in the characterisation of the models and in drawing. A double
portrait as large and carefully finished as this required more sessions than just one, hence the
painter’s notes on his alternative smoking and non-smoking, and tea and psychedrine, a medicine
taken to quicken the mind (often by students before examinations), he treated himself to.
The portrait, classified in a category which prepares us for no surprise, is at first glance rather
discouraging for its insistent obviousness. On inspection, however, it becomes disturbing
for a different reason, for the truth conveyed that is no longer obvious. The sitters are rendered
very faithfully and meticulously. The colour-scheme, modelling and detail are so accurate as
to raise the faithful to the rank of the super-realistic. In the 1930s, especially in the second
half of the decade, Witkacy would occasionally reach out for the poetry of intensified reality.
After his abandonment of art in the Pure Form, he saw the only option for art, though in its
worse form resulting from a compromise, in the peculiar type of realism that he called hyper-
realism in his analysis of Rafał Malczewski’s painting (not art, he emphasized).
84
in his life. He confessad: „It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations, than any
particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench
than in the majority of men, served in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and
compound man’s dual nature. In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on
that hard law of life which lies at the root of religion, and is one of the most plentiful springs of
distress... With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual,
I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to
such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.” This discovery prompted
his vision of the compound being divided into its pure components, good and ill, thus freeing
him from the distressing ambiguity and incertitude. Rather than a magic elixir, the separation
occurred at the instance of a potion concocted according to a scientific recipe and according
to the spirit of the period. Dr Jekyll transforms at will into Mr Hyde, the embodiment of pure
evil, whose crimes will remain unpunished. Mr Hyde, cruel and open about his passion for
lascivious delights, which lay hidden at depth of the honest doctor’s soul, „was pale and dwarfish;
he gave an impression of deformity, without any nainable malformation, he had a displeasing
smile, he had born himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and
boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice...” Not as shapely
built as the doctor, thinner (at the beginning his wickedness is not so conspicuous), Mr Hyde
gives a somewhat inhuman air with the satan’s brand on his pale face. As time goes on, his
smile is growing increasingly despicable. With every consecutive transformation, the evil trait
becomes stronger, and Dr Jekyll more and more attached to the wicked side of his personality.
The ending settles the human dilemma as old as mankind: inseparable elements in human
nature, even if they are antithetical, cannot be separated with impunity. The final transfor-
mation brings about catastrophe: Dr Jekyll suffers self destruction in the guise of Mr Hyde.
Witkacy’s „Mr Hyde” has a split running throughout the length of paper in the middle of
his face. It looks like self-destruction intended by the painter, watched with melancholy by
„Dr Jekyll” when the portraits are arranged in order of execution. Painfully ironical the cata-
strophic motif in a new, unexpected form meets with philosophical truth here.
A double portrait of Helena Lesińska and her fiancé Jan Gadomski, painted a year later,
in August just before the war, has apparently little in common with philosophical metaphor.
As may be inferred from the other surviving portraits and drawings by Witkacy, August 1939
was a period of fervent activeness in his life, as if instinctively intensified on the eve of the end.
In accordance with the typology of his Firm, the portrait is marked „B”, which places it among
the most frequently commissioned ones. Compared with type „A”, which was „smooth”, type
,,R” was only somewhat freer in the characterisation of the models and in drawing. A double
portrait as large and carefully finished as this required more sessions than just one, hence the
painter’s notes on his alternative smoking and non-smoking, and tea and psychedrine, a medicine
taken to quicken the mind (often by students before examinations), he treated himself to.
The portrait, classified in a category which prepares us for no surprise, is at first glance rather
discouraging for its insistent obviousness. On inspection, however, it becomes disturbing
for a different reason, for the truth conveyed that is no longer obvious. The sitters are rendered
very faithfully and meticulously. The colour-scheme, modelling and detail are so accurate as
to raise the faithful to the rank of the super-realistic. In the 1930s, especially in the second
half of the decade, Witkacy would occasionally reach out for the poetry of intensified reality.
After his abandonment of art in the Pure Form, he saw the only option for art, though in its
worse form resulting from a compromise, in the peculiar type of realism that he called hyper-
realism in his analysis of Rafał Malczewski’s painting (not art, he emphasized).
84