Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer

Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer was a Polish poet, novelist, playwright, journalist and writer. He was a member of the Young Poland movement, a modernist period in Polish literature. He was influenced by romanticism, symbolism, and decadence. He wrote about love, death, nature, and the Tatra mountains. He was also interested in the folklore and culture of the Gorals, the highlanders of Podhale. He debuted in 1886 with a prose poem Illa, but his first acclaimed work was a novella Rekrut (The Recruit) in the same year. He published eight series of poetry, of which the most notable are the second (1894), the third (1898), and the fourth (1900). He also wrote several novels, such as Na skalnym Podhalu (On the Rocky Podhale, 1903-1910), a saga of the Gorals, and Zawisza Czarny (Zawisza the Black, 1917), a historical novel. He also authored several plays, such as Książę Józef Poniatowski (Prince Józef Poniatowski, 1910), and numerous essays and articles. He was awarded the Polish Academy of Literature's Golden Laurel in 1935. He suffered from mental illness in the later years of his life, which prevented him from writing. He died in 1940 in Warsaw, after being evicted from a hospice by the German occupants. He was buried at the Powązki Cemetery.