316 NIEPODLEGLOSC
of Fascism or Stalinism. For example, to compare the rigours on the Polish
internment camp at Bereza Kartuska (where seventeen persons are thought to
have died) with the Stalinist purges which killed tens of millions, or to hint that
the discomforts of the Jews under Polish rule were in some way related to the
horrors of Auschwitz, is absurd. It is obviously true that Polish foreign policy
under Col. Beck did not save the Republic. But it is doubtful whether anything
that the Polish government might have done could have made much difference.
The conditions of life in inter-war Poland were often very harsh; but they could
not have been improved by recourse to Poland's neighbours.
Polish intellectual life, in particular, experienced a veritable explosion of cre-
ativity. In the pure sciences, the Warsaw School of Analytical Philosophy
headed by Jan Lukasiewicz (1878-1956), the inventor of 'Polish notation', vied
in the headlines of world learning with the Lwow School of Mathematics
headed by Stefan Banach (189Z—1945), the pioneer of Functional Analysis. The
anthropologists, Edward Loth (1884-1944) and Jan Czekanowski (1882-1965);
the lingui-sticians, Jan Baudouin De Courtenay (1845—1929) and Jerzy
Kurylowicz (1895—1978); and the economist Michat Kalecki (1899-1970), who
is credited with expounding Keynesian economics before Keynes, figure among
the founding fathers of their subjects. In all branches of the arts - but especially
in graphic art, in drama, in poetry, and in music — established forms were chal-
lenged by a rash of experimentation. A mere catalogue of names serves little
purpose; but the men whose sensational talents perhaps best express the vitality
of their day are those of the two artist-philosophers, Leon Chwistek
(1884-1944) and Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, also known as 'Witkacy'
(1885-1939). Chwistek first appeared as a painter, in the so-called Formist
movement; but then he made his name as a logician. According to Bertrand
Russell, Chwistek, together with Lukasiewicz and Lesniewski, was one of the
six people in the world who had actually read and understood the technical sec-
tions of Russell's own Frincipia Mathematica. Later on, he expanded a hypoth-
esis about aesthetics into a general philosophical theory of 'the plurality of
reality'. His extravagant Bohemian lifestyle, no less than his ideas, scandalized
the traditionalists. Witkiewicz, too, first emerged as a painter, and his psycho-
logical portrait studies remained very much in vogue. His novels, in contrast,
and his forays into drama, which are now generally accepted as masterpieces of
the Absurd, remained largely unknown until long after his tragic death.
Eventually, his professional interest in theoretical aesthetics led him, like
Chwistek, into speculative philosophy. In 1935, in his Pojecia i twierdzenia
implikowane przez pojgcie istnienia (Concepts and statements implied by the
concept of existence), he expounded his theory of 'biological monism' and
launched himself into a profound critique of 'sexless' contemporary thought.
Appalled by the sterility of European culture, Witkiewicz resolutely prophesied
its impending doom. With an exact appreciation of Poland's fate, he committed
suicide in the night of 17 September 1939. Although official encouragement
played its part in fostering an environment that was sensitive to intellectual