Przybos, Julian

Born Mar. 5, 1901, in Gwóznica, Rzeszów Województwo; died Oct. 6, 1970, in Warsaw. Polish poet.

Przyboś graduated from the Jagiellonian University in 1924. He began to publish in 1922, and his first poetry collections (Screws, 1925; Twin Grasp, 1926) reflected the views of the Krakow Vanguard, a literary group to which he belonged. Rejecting the idea of poetry as an expression of emotion, the Vanguard poets advocated rational verse construction and the translation of feeling into metaphor, and they perceived poetry as an autonomous linguistic entity. In the 1930’s, Przyboś turned to social themes, and motifs of social protest recur in the collections Into the Deep Forest (1932) and Equation of the Heart (1938). His postwar verse adheres to the principles of avant-garde poetry. He was the author of numerous articles and essays on literature and art, some of which were published in the collections The Meaning of Poetry (1963) and Undated Notes (1970). Przyboś was awarded the State Prize of the Polish People’s Republic in 1964.