A Life of Solitude: Stanislawa Przybyszewska, a Biographical Study with Selected Letters

It is difficult to imagine an audience for these cranky letters, so obsessive that their recipients probably threw them away without a second thought. According to Kosicka, a translator, and Gerould, Kosicka's husband and a professor of theater at City University of New York, Przybyszewska (1901-1935), an illegitimate daughter of an acclaimed Polish writer, merits attention for the genius she evinces in her play about the French Revolution, The Danton Case. But because that work awaits publication and staging in English, the trials and tribulations of the Polish Przybyszewska's literary career--the chief subject of her epistles--elude appreciation. Determined to be ``100% a writer,'' she isolated herself at age 24, moving into a tiny, poorly heated apartment which she rarely left, writing for eight to nine hours each night and sleeping during the day, and maintaining contact with others almost exclusively through correspondence (of which she kept copies). An addiction to morphine only deepened her peculiarities and her immoderate sense of self-importance. Illustrations not seen by PW. (June)