In 1929 his tuberculosis spread to his lungs, with resultant hemorrhaging, making teaching an impossibility. For health reasons he was forced to move to the country. His situation quickly became desperate. Medicines and proper care were costly, as was his new secluded residence. Aware of his pitiful situation, Karol Irzykowski and another critic, Jerzy Plomienski, succeeded in getting the city of Lwow to acknowledge its native son. Grabinski was given the Lwow Literary Award in 1931, but the money he received was soon dissipated, impelling him to give up the country retreat and move back to Lwow.
Grabinski’s last years were torturous. Restricted mostly to his bed, barely able to write yet never giving up, he withered away, his mother by his side. Jerzy Plomienski visited the author at the end of 1935, when Grabinski was completely bedridden. Plomienski found the author transformed beyond all recognition by his illness, the once noble features gone, the face ashen and bearded, the eyes glassy, the lips swollen and chapped and allowing the escape of blood-tinged saliva. Plomienski tried his best to bolster the dying author’s spirits, telling him that his works were destined to be read and acknowledged in future generations, that he would find acclaim abroad. Grabinski refused to be swayed and bitterly complained that writers who wanted to be individuals and not followers of literary fashion had no place in Poland.
On November 12, 1936 Grabinski finally died. There were a few notices and a couple of touching tributes in newspapers and journals by those, like Irzykowski, who knew him and recognized the value of his work. Then the Second World War clothed everything in its dark pall, and it seemed that Grabinski would never be heard of again.
Yet, beginning in 1949, Grabinski’s work saw a revival in Poland. That year an important collection of Polish fantasy, edited by the poet Julian Tuwim, contained two Grabinski stories. Later on, in the 1950s, a collection of Grabinski’s best work was published, as well as a mammoth thesis by Professor Artur Hutnikiewicz devoted to Grabinski’s oeuvre. It is possible that some of Poland’s young, rebellious filmmakers became familiar with the misanthropic author, notably Roman Polanski, whose films Repulsion and The Tenant share certain Grabinski trademarks. (The Tenant, though based on a French novel by Roland Topor, is disconcertingly filled with many Grabinski-isms.) Gradually more of Grabinski’s work was published, including a collection in 1975 edited by the famous SF writer Stanislaw Lem, one of Grabinski’s strongest admirers. The 1980s saw Grabinski’s work translated into German, including two volumes published under the ‘Library of the House of Usher’ imprint, and Grabinski’s name appeared alongside those of Blackwood, Lovecraft and Machen.
And now this maverick of the macabre who wrote in spiritual seclusion and in physical pain, who wrote consumed with the essence of the dark domain, is before a new audience.
It is impossible to know what Grabinski felt in the final moments of his life. Surely there must have been despair, anger, bitterness, and perhaps even resignation. But if he reflected on a central tenet in his tales – that no thought disappears, that one day it will be made flesh – then maybe he would have, as he breathed his last, hoped for a genuine revival and validation of his work in the future. It is this thought, this hope, that has been indeed made flesh. One of the great voices of supernatural fiction lives again.
Miroslaw Lipinski
A new herd of gusts advanced from the ravines, and set loose over snow-covered fields, they ploughed their enraged heads through the snowbanks. Raised from its soft bedding, the snow whirled in huge cyclones, bottomless funnels, slender whips, and, wrapping itself up in a hundredfold repeated whirlpool, sprayed out white, granular powder.
An early winter evening was coming on.
The blindingly white blizzard gradually changed to a bluish hue, the pearl-grey horizon turned a morose black. The snow fell continuously. Large, shaggy strands silently glided from somewhere above and layered the ground. Hay-like stacks rose up; a hundred white caps piled on top of each other. Snowy anthills, light like down, moved rhythmically with the wind, creating a pattern of slanting ridges. Where it blew stronger, precipitous snowdrifts swelled to a height of three peasants. Where the wind’s caustic tongue scraped everything up, an open, clod-frozen earth appeared.
Slowly the wind alleviated, and furling its tired wings, it warbled softly somewhere in the valley. The landscape settled and solidified in the night frost … .
Ozarski worked his way tirelessly down the middle of the road. Covered in a hooded greatcoat, wearing thick, knee-high boots, loaded down with surveying equipment, the young engineer moved with difficulty through the piles of snow blocking his way.
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