“His life was short, and all backs were turned.” So reads the inscription on his grave at Warsaw’s Old Powązki Cemetery, the pantheon for Poland’s artists, intellectuals, politicians, military heroes, and spiritual leaders. Author of short stories and gritty novels in the realist idiom, Marek Hłasko passed away at an age when many writers come into their own, what biographers like to refer to as the
major creative phase. Merely thirty-five at the time of his death —a suspected suicide, but never proven irrefutably—in the summer of 1969, he is said to have looked over fifty; years of marginal existence as an expatriate, when Hłasko would frequently resort to what Poles of his generation called “black work”, as well as abuse of alcohol and pharmaceuticals, had clearly…
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Citation: Gasyna, George. "Marek Hłasko". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 April 2018 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13744, accessed 21 November 2024.]
