Lato Tadeusza Rittnera „Ostatnie dni starej Europy” i nowoczesny teatr uczuć

This is a reassessment of the work of Tadeusz Rittner, a bilingual Polish/German writer and dramatist from Galicia who won much acclaim in the early decades of the last century. This article examines his narrative and dramatic strategies by focusing on his drama Lato (Summer), published in 1913. It is a story about a timid young man who, after hearing from his doctor that he will not live much longer, turns suddenly into a bold and shameless seducer. This could be the stuff of a conventional, farcical exposure of middle class hypocrisy, yet in Rittner’s drama it becomes a fascinating study, never far from Czekhov and Witkacy, tapping all the resources of realism, irony and grotesque to show the whole spectrum of human emotions. The article argues, contrary to the traditional consensus, that his art owes a great deal to Vienna, where he spent most of his life. The peculiar combination of lightness and earthiness, the essence of the Viennese spirit, is crucial for his achievement – the creation of convincing and timeless dramas of human emotions, which expose the precariousness of interpersonal relations. This interpreta-tion of Lato sets it free from the realistic-naturalistic straitjacket imposed upon it by a succession of theatre directors who thought of it as an anachronistic farce rather than a comedy of manners with sparkling dialogue and intelligent alteration of tragedy and comedy, seriousness and buffoonery.