Jaros³aw Marek Rymkiewicz is dead. The poet and playwright was 86 years old

On Saturday afternoon, a status with a photo of his father appeared on Wawrzyniec Rymkiewicz’s Facebook profile. According to the information, Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz died on Thursday.

To the news of the creator’s death, he reacted, inter alia, Minister of Culture Piotr Gliński, who in 2016 awarded the poet for lifetime achievement. “A very sad news: Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz has passed away, a great poet and intellectual. A patriot, an authority, who understood and loved Poland like hardly anyone. Honor his memory!” – we read on Gliński’s Twitter.

Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz is dead. He created for over six decades

Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz was born on July 13, 1935 in Warsaw. His first book of poetry, Conventions, was published in 1957. It was also then that his dramatic debut in the form of an imitation of the play “Eurydyka, or Everyone Dies the Way They Feel Comfortable” was presented in the “Dialog” monthly. In the work “What is Classicism. Poetic Manifests”, published ten years later, Rymkiewicz formulated his poetic program, which was based mainly on references to baroque literary traditions.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the writer regularly published new comedies and tragedies. These were, among others “King in the Wardrobe”, “Professor Tulp’s Anatomy Lesson: According to Rembrandt”, “Abduction of Europe”, “Heavenly Twins” and “Manor on the Narew River”. In the meantime, such volumes of poems as “A man with a hawk’s head” or “What is a thrush” were published.

Rymkiewicz’s output also includes translations of plays from the Spanish Golden Age, including “Life is a Dream”, “The Princess Turned Upside Down” and “Invisible Lover” by Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Imitations of these dramas were performed at the Polish Radio Theater and the Television Theater. Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz also translated works by Wallace Stevens or Federico Garcia Lorca, such as “Dom Bernardy Alba” and “Yerma, or infertile”.