Zapomniana historia choroby Anny Iwaszkiewiczowej

Abstract

The article is an attempt to reconstruct the history of Anna Iwaszkiewicz in terms of her mental illness. At the same time, it is a polemic with the Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s biographers’s view, suggesting its sudden appearance and episodic course. Instead, based primarily on Iwaszkiewiczowa’s personal documents – diaries, correspondence – and accounts of bystanders, it reconstructs the causal connection that led to the escalation of the disease in the mid-1930s, as well as its multifaceted effects and echoes in later life. Thus, it is an attempt to verify the dominant biographical narrative and an attempt to present this fragment of Anna Iwaszkiewicz’s life as related to her personal life, artistic failure and problematic gender role, as well as the lives of her relatives, including Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz.

Keywords

• Iwaszkiewicz Anna (1897–1979)
• Iwaszkiewicz Jarosław (1894–1980)
• female biography
• mental illness