Acropolis: The Wawel Plays

Although he never left his native Kraków except for relatively short periods Stanislaw Wyspiański (1869-1907) achieved worldwide fame both as a painter and Polands greatest dramatist of the first half of the twentieth century. Acropolis: the Wawel Plays brings together four of Wyspiańskis most important dramatic works in a new English translation by Charles S. Kraszewski. All of the plays centre on Wawel Hill: the legendary seat of royal and ecclesiastical power in the poets native city the ancient capital of Poland. In these plays Wyspiański explores the foundational myths of his nation: that of the self-sacrificial Wanda and the struggle between King Boleslaw the Bold and Bishop Stanislaw Szczepanowski. In the eponymous play which brings the cycle to an end Wyspiański carefully considers the value of myth to a nation without political autonomy soaring in thought into an apocalyptic vision of the future. Richly illustrated with the poets artwork Acropolis: the Wawel Plays also contains Wyspiańskis architectural proposal for the renovation of Wawel Hill and a detailed critical introduction by the translator. In its plaited presentation of Boleslaw the Bold and Skalka the translation offers for the first time the two plays in the unified composite format that the poet intended but was prevented from carrying out by his untimely death.Charles S. Kraszewski (b. 1962) is a poet translator and literary critic. He has published three volumes of original verse: Beast (Alexandria 2013) Diet of Nails (Boston 2013) and Chanameed (Atlanta 2015). Among his critical works is Irresolute Heresiarch: Catholicism Gnosticism and Paganism in the Poetry of Czeslaw Milosz (Newcastle-on-Tyne 2012); many of his verse translations are collected in the volume Rossettis Armadillo (Newcastle-on-Tyne 2014). His English translation of Forefathers Eve by Adam Mickiewicz was published by Glagoslav in 2016. This book has been published with the support of the (c)POLAND Translation Program.