PRZYBYSZEWSKI, STANISLAW

born May 7, 1868, Lojw, Kingdom of Poland, Russian Empire died Nov. 23, 1927, Jaronty, Pol. Polish essayist, playwright, and poet. Having completed his secondary education at a German Hochschule at Torun, he went in 1889 to Berlin to study first architecture and then psychiatry. There he became closely associated with the Berlin German-Scandinavian artistic circle, which included August Strindberg. The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch introduced Przybyszewski to a Norwegian pianist, Dagny Juel, whom he married in 1893. Five years later they settled in Krakw, where he took over the editorship of Zycie (Life) and became a leader of the Polish Modernists. Przybyszewski's poetry displays a passionate, sensual mysticism, while his prose works describe unusual psychological types and the ambivalence of eroticism. His unconventional philosophical writings and plays enjoyed a meteoric but ephemeral success. His autobiography, Moi wsplczesni, 2 vol. (192630; My Contemporaries), is an interesting, if not very reliable, account of the central European cultural scene at the turn of the century.