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Boy-Zelenski Thadeusz
(1874—1941)

Tadeusz Kamil Marcjan Żeleński of Ciołek was born December 21, 1874 in Warsaw, to the family of Wanda née Grabowska and Władysław Żeleński, a notable composer and musician. His cousin was Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, another notable poet of the epoch. Since Warsaw was at that time under Russian rule and education in Polish was forbidden, in 1892 Żeleński left for Kraków in Galicia, where he was accepted at the Medical Faculty of Jagiellonian University.

After finishing his studies in 1900, Żeleński started his medical practice as a pediatrician. In 1906 he started his own practice as a gynaecologist, which gave him economical freedom. The same year he co-organised the famous Zielony Balonik cabaret, where he met other notable personalities of Polish culture, including his brother Edward, Jan August Kisielewski, Stanisław Kuczborski, Witold Noskowski, Stanisław Sierosławski, Rudolf Starzewski, Edward Leszczyński, Teofil Trzcińki, Karol Frycz, Ludwik Puget, Kazimierz Sichulski, Jan Skotnicki, Feliks Jasieński, and Zenon Pruszyński.

In his sketches, poems, satirical songs, and short stories he wrote for the Zielony Balonik, Boy-Żeleński openly criticized and mocked the conservative authorities, two-faced morality of the burghers, but also the grandiloquent style of Młoda Polska and Kraków's bohemia in general. This earned him the nick-name of the enfant terrible of Polish literature.

At the outbreak of the Great War, Żeleński was conscripted to the Austro-Hungarian Army, where he served as a medic in railway troops. After the war he returned to Poland and, in 1922, he moved to Warsaw. He did not return to his medical practice and instead focused entirely on writing. Working for various dailies and magazines, Boy-Żeleński soon became one of the authorities of Polish liberal and democratic inteligentsia. He criticized the double-faced morality of the clergy, promoted the secularization of public life and culture, and was one of the strongest proponents of the equality of women. He was one of the first known figures in Poland to support abortion. Also, Boy-Żeleński often fought against the Polish romantic tradition in his essays, which, in his views, was irrational and seriously flawed the way Polish society thought about their past.

In addition, Boy prepared the translation of more than 100 classics of French literature, which ever since have been considered among the best translations of foreign literature to the Polish language. In 1933, Boy-Żeleński was admitted to the prestigious Polish Academy of Literature.

After the outbreak of World War II, Boy-Żeleński moved to Soviet-occupied Lwów, where he stayed at his wife's brother-in-law. In Lwów, Boy joined the Soviet-led University as the head of the Department of French Literature. Criticized by many for his collaboration with the occupants, he maintained contacts with many prominent professors and artists, who found themselves in the city after the Polish Defensive War. He also took part in creation the propaganda newspaper Czerwony Sztandar (Red Banner) and became one of the prominent members of the Society of Polish Writers.

After Nazi Germany broke the Nazi-Soviet Alliance and attacked the USSR, Boy remained in Lwów. The city was captured in the night of July 4, 1941, and he was arrested by the Ukrainian Nachtigall battalion and brought to Wulka hills, where he was murdered, together with 45 other professors in what became known as the massacre of Lwów professors.

Poland, 1974, Tadeusz Boy Zelenski