Żeleński Boy, Tadeusz (EN)

Żeleński Boy Tadeusz, *21 December 1874 Warsaw, †3/4 July 1941 Lviv, Polish publicist, literary and theatre critic, satirist, translator. He was a doctor by profession, and while he was still a student, he joined S. Przybyszewski’s group called “Cyganeria Krakowska”. From 1906 he was a co-author of the literary cabaret Zielony Balonik [Green Balloon], adopting the pseudonym Boy. From 1919, he devoted himself entirely to writing. Żeleński’s vast literary output includes: the famous Słówka (1913) – a collection of satirical texts written for the Zielony Balonik (“The Green Balloon”), “Biblioteka Boya” [Boy’s Library], which is a series of translations into Polish of the canon of French literature (over 100 titles), 18 volumes of theatre reviews (10 volumes entitled Flirt z Melpomeną), numerous columns, essays, and literary papers, as well as memoirs and social journalism. The motivation for his work was to polemicize and fight (coupled with a pamphleteer’s temperament) against all hypocrisy, obscurantism and glorification. He was a great promoter of French culture.

As the son of the composer Władysław Żeleński, he was exposed to music from childhood. His adolescence coincides with the years of his father’s arduous work on the opera Goplana. The Żeleński house on ul. św. Sebastiana in Krakow hosted Sunday musical gatherings, featuring piano performances by individuals such as I.J. Paderewski, J. Śliwiński, J. Hofman, among others, as well as violin performances. O. Kolberg and Marcelina Czartoryska were among the guests. As a young boy, Tadeusz Żeleński was also a frequent guest of Leontyna Bochenek (indirectly the inspiration behind Warszawianka by S. Wyspiański), singing national songs with other children to her accompaniment on the clavichord. Like his two brothers, Żeleński took piano lessons from a friend of his father’s; however, he showed neither the desire nor musical ability. He never really learned to play and years later confessed: “I sometimes choke back the withheld music” (Z rękami na klawiaturze, in O Krakowie). In his memoirs about the “Cyganeria Krakowska” Znaszli ten kraj?… he devoted much space to Przybyszewski as a pianist, and to musician Dagny Przybyszewska. He regarded his playing of Chopin, always with alcohol in the background, as the essence of the “Dionysian” element of the composer’s art.

The time when Żeleński had the most in common with music was during his collaboration with Zielony Balonik, for which he wrote song lyrics –Słówka (numerous couplets to Szopki krakowskie mainly set to the music by W. Noskowski (referred to as “Nos”) and traditional melodies. Musical didaskalia (for example, Chopin from Schumann’s Carnaval as background to the poem Dusza poety) and word plays with musical terms (for instance “To wielka RA-mol Symfonia, / Symfonia polskiej JAŹNI” from the poem Majową, cichą nocą…) can be found in them. According to Zeleński, songwriting was his “only school of craft,” and its mastery served as inspiration for his work as a translator. He considered cabaret song to be the symbolic culmination of modern, transformed “old” Krakow, a continuation of his beloved Parisian song. Żeleński was sensitive to the musicality of words: his own (the virtuosic rhythmic and rhyme variety of the humorous Słówka) and those of others (The Wedding by Wyspiański, In Search of Lost Time by M. Proust). He repeatedly emphasised the superiority of music, with its “pure form,” as the only one of the arts capable of expressing all feelings, over literature, which is “bound” by the meaningfulness of words and the concreteness of reality. One of the songs from Słówka – Dzień p. Esika w Ostendzie – was the basis of the ballet Esik At Ostend by G. Bacewicz with libretto by L. Terpiłowski (1964).

Literature: B. Winklowa Tadeusz Żeleński (Boy). Twórczość i życie, Warsaw 1967; A.Z. Makowiecki Tadeusz Żeleński (Boy), «Profile», Warszawa 1974, ²1987; T. Weiss Legenda i prawda Zielonego Balonika, Krakow 1976.