Zycie
Encyclopedia
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
and Lwów in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. Founded by Ludwik Szczepański, with time it became one of the most popular Polish literary and artistic journals. Although short-lasting (it went bankrupt in 1900), it shaped an entire generation of Polish artists and art critics, notably those associated with the so-called Young Poland
Young Poland
Young Poland is a modernist period in Polish visual arts, literature and music, covering roughly the years between 1890 and 1918. It was a result of strong aesthetic opposition to the ideas of Positivism...
.
Initially the weekly was focused on current news, politics, social and national matters in what was then the Austro-Hungarian
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
Galicia. Among its collaborators and correspondents in the early period were Socialist journalists Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz
Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz
Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz was a Polish philosopher and sociologist, member of the Polish Socialist Party. He was one of the most significant Marxist thinkers at the end of the 19th century....
, Iza Moszczeńska and Wilhelm Feldman.
The magazine was initially a commercial failure and failed to gain enough readership. Under such circumstances the title was bought by Ignacy Sewer-Maciejowski, who offered the job of editor in chief to Stanisław Przybyszewski, who refocused the magazine to art and literary matters. Since then Życie gained much popularity thanks to publishing literary works by some of the most renown Polish writers of the epoch, including Stanisław Przybyszewski, Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer
Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer
Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer was a Polish poet, novelist, playwright, journalist and writer. He was a member of the Young Poland movement.-Life:...
, Gabriela Zapolska
Gabriela Zapolska
Maria Gabriela Stefania Korwin-Piotrowska , known as Gabriela Zapolska, was a Polish novelist, playwright, naturalist writer, feuilletonist, theatre critic and stage actress. Zapolska wrote 41 plays, 23 novels, 177 short stories, 252 works of journalism, one film script, and over 1,500...
, Jan Kasprowicz
Jan Kasprowicz
Jan Kasprowicz was a poet, playwright, critic and translator; a foremost representative of Young Poland.-Life:...
, Maria Konopnicka
Maria Konopnicka
Maria Konopnicka nee Wasiłowska , was a Polish poet, novelist, writer for children and youth, a translator, journalist and critic, as well as an activist for women's rights and Polish independence.Maria Konopnicka also composed a poem about the execution of the Irish patriot, Robert...
, Adolf Dygasiński
Adolf Dygasinski
Adolf Dygasiński was a Polish novelist, publicist and educator. In Polish literature, he was one of the leading representatives of Naturalism....
and Adam Asnyk
Adam Asnyk
Adam Asnyk , was a Polish poet and dramatist. Born September 11, 1838 in Kalisz to a szlachta family, he was educated for an heir of his family's estate. As such he received education at the Institute of Agriculture and Forestry in Marymont and then the Medical Surgeon School in Warsaw. He...
. Stanisław Wyspiański became the new art director
Art director
The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
of the magazine. Thanks to his efforts each edition was richly illustrated with reproductions of symbolist
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
, impressionist
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
and Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
paintings and prints
The reformed Życie was soon turned into a bi-weekly published in large, broadsheet
Broadsheet
Broadsheet is the largest of the various newspaper formats and is characterized by long vertical pages . The term derives from types of popular prints usually just of a single sheet, sold on the streets and containing various types of material, from ballads to political satire. The first broadsheet...
format, but on coated paper
Coated paper
Coated paper is paper which has been coated by a compound to impart certain qualities to the paper, including weight, surface gloss, smoothness or reduced ink absorbency. Kaolinite or calcium carbonate are used to coat paper for high quality printing used in packaging industry and in magazines...
and in full colour. In addition to numerous reproductions and gravures published in every issue, the magazine also ordered a distinctive, elaborate font
Font
In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...
. Apart from the aforementioned authors, Wyspiański and Przybyszewski themselves, the Życie frequently also published texts by Kazimiera Zawistowska
Kazimiera Zawistowska
Kazimiera Zawistowska de domo Jasieńska, pseudonym Ira, was a Polish acclaimed poet and translator.Zawistowska was an author of modernist erotic and landscape poems related with mysticism, symbolism and Parnassianism. She published her works in Kraków and Warsaw magazines – Życie, Krytyka and...
, Wincenty Brzozowski, Jerzy Żuławski and Tadeusz Rittner
Tadeusz Rittner
Tadeusz Rittner was a Polish dramatist, prose writer, and literary critic.Rittner was born in Lemberg, Ukraine.-Sources:*...
. It also published many works of foreign literature, including French, Czech and Scandinavian.
Among the most outstanding examples of Życies influence on contemporary Polish culture was the January 10th, 1899 issue that contained Confiteor
Confiteor
The Confiteor is one of the prayers that can be said during the Penitential Rite at the beginning of Mass of the Roman Rite in the Catholic Church. It is also said in the Lutheran Church at the beginning of their Divine Service...
by Stanisław Przybyszewski (a monumental essay on the role of artist) and a set of essays by Artur Górski
Artur Górski
Artur Górski is a Polish politician. He was elected to Sejm on September 25, 2005 getting 2850 votes in 19 Warsaw district, running on the Law and Justice ticket...
under a common title Young Poland
Young Poland
Young Poland is a modernist period in Polish visual arts, literature and music, covering roughly the years between 1890 and 1918. It was a result of strong aesthetic opposition to the ideas of Positivism...
that gave the name to the entire modernist period in Polish literature, graphic art and music.
Despite relatively high influence and readership, the Życie struggled constantly with Austro-Hungarian State Censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
Office, which on numerous occasions ordered all the copies of several consecutive issues of the journal to be confiscated and destroyed. This resulted in financial difficulties and eventual bankruptcy in 1900.