Born: 30 March, 1857, Podhajce, Russian partition of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (presently Podhaytsi, Ukraine)
Died: 17 December 1921, Lwow, Poland (presently Lviv, Ukraine)
An opinion (BBC). Gabriela Zapolska, nicknamed 'Zola in a Skirt', was one of the most successful and famous playwrights of her day. Writing over a century ago she's now little-known beyond her native Poland.
Quotes (Zapolska). Every woman is like a piano- one must only know how to play it… A woman without coquetry is like a flower without a scent… A woman doesn’t age as long as she is desired… There are women who to hide their crooked legs have a very low neckline… Only fools do not change...
Early days. Father- Wincenty Piotrowski (coat of arms Korwin), a wealthy landowner, mother- Jozefa nee Karska, an ex- ballet dancer. She got her education at home and briefly in the Sacre Coeur school and in the Instutut Wychowawczo-Naukowy in Lwow. In 1876 her family forced her to marry an officer of Russian army, Konstanty Sniezko-Blocki (coat of arms Leliwa). In 1881 she got a lover, got pregnant and left her husband breaking also the ties to her family. Her first marriage was annulled in 1888.
Acting. In 1882 she started pursuing an acting career and was playing on the stages of Lwow, Cracow, Poznan. She was obsessively anti-male and had problems with her theatrical colleagues. In 1889 Zapolska went to Paris where she stayed until 1895 playing in Théâtre Libre A. Antoine'a and later in Théâtre de l'Oeuvre. Her acting attempts were unsuccessfull. While in Paris she was in contact with Polish socialist emigration which influenced her later views on social matters. Her second marriage to the painter Stanislaw Janowski din’t last long: they divorced de-facto in 1904.
Literary career. Zapolska was a prolific writer. Her first work was a short story Jeden dzień z życia róży (1881). Then came Małaszka (1883), novels Kaśka Kariatyda (1885, 1886), Przedpiekle (1889) which caused indignation among conservative critics. In the novels O czym się nie mówi (1909) and O czym się nawet myśleć nie chce (1914) she talks about prostitution and social illnesses. she has written many other short stories, novels and plays. Among the plays the most famous and still popular Moralność Pani Dulskiej (1906) To be published in English in Nov.2007 as The Morality of Mrs. Dulska. This and other plays- Ich czworo, tragedia ludzi głupich (1893), Zabusia (1897), Małka Szwarcenkopf (1897), Jojne Firułkes (1898), Panna Maliczewska (1910) – have been translated into many languages and played in several European theaters. These plays show hypocrisy, licentiousness and other vices of the middle class. The greatest influence on her work in which he defended the weakest and the poorest had French writer Emile Zola. As a theater reviewer she collaborated with "Gazeta Krakowska", "Słowo Polskie", "Nowa Reforma", "Ilustracja Polska" and "Wiek Nowy." She spent the later years of her life in the villa „Skiz” at the Lyczakow district of Lwow.
Sources:
This article uses, among others, material from the Wikipedia article "Gabriela Zapolska" licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. :
Wikipedia (in Polish)
Supplemented and modified with information from other sources:
Kultura Polska (Halina Florynska-Lalewicz)
Virtual Library of Polish Literature (Dr. Marek Adamiec)
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