The Witkacy by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz

He claimed that he worked out his philosophical principles during an artillery barrage, and that when the Revolution broke out he was elected political commissar of his regiment.

In July 1916 he was seriously wounded in the battle on Stokhid River in what is now Ukraine and was evacuated to St Petersburg where he witnessed the Russian Revolution. His ailing father, a Polish patriot, was deeply grieved by his son's decision and died in 1915 without seeing him again. After quarrelling with Malinowski in Australia, Witkiewicz who was by birth a subject of the Russian Empire, travelled to St Petersburg (then Petrograd) from Sydney and was commissioned as an officer in the Pavlovsky Regiment of the Imperial Russian Army. The venture was interrupted by the onset of World War I.

In 1914 following a crisis in Witkiewicz's personal life due to the suicide of his fiancée Jadwiga Janczewska, for which he blamed himself, he was invited by Malinowski to act as draftsman and photographer on his anthropological expedition to the then Territory of Papua, by way of Ceylon and Australia. Taught wet plate photography by his father, it was during this period that he also began producing the intimate portrait photography for which he is known producing striking portraits of his circle in Zakopane and many self-portraits. The unfinished novel, which was not published until 1972, also describes erotic encounters between Bungo and the Duke of Nevermore. According to Micińska he also represented himself as the character Bungo and Malinowski as the Duke of Nevermore. He had a tumultuous affair with prominent actress Irena Solska who according to Anna Micińska is represented as the heroine Akne Montecalfi in his first novel, The 622 Downfalls of Bungo or The Demonic Woman, 1911. Romer was romantically linked to both Bronisław Malinowski and Witkiewicz. Witkiewicz was close friends with composer Karol Szymanowski and, from childhood, with Bronisław Malinowski and Zofia Romer. Against his father's wishes he studied at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts with Józef Mehoffer and Jan Stanisławski.

In accordance with his father's antipathy to the 'servitude of the school,' he was home-schooled and encouraged to develop his talents across a range of creative fields.

Witkiewicz was reared at the family home in Zakopane.

The Witkacy by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz