Witkacy and His Doppelgängers

The literary work of Stanisław I. Witkiewicz (Witkacy), whose world career began in the fifties of the last century, is considered today in many aspects as precursory to postmodernism. In his dramas and novels, this is manifested in the creation of characters who are internally broken up, who act like deregulated human machines and who are unable to control their own drives. These motifs are also reflected in the writer’s broken identity, which is torn apart by contradictions (“knots”) and which constantly doubles itself. In my article, I demonstrate to what extent this obsession with his own double is rooted in the instrumental treatment of Witkacy by his father, who wanted to see in his son a perfect artistic embodiment of himself. The whole of Witkacy’s work, considered from this perspective, is a rebellion against his father, expressed in the (futile) desperate attempts to break away from being his better copy, his double.