The writer’s refuge was a summer house in the Varmia region of Bredynki near Biskupiec Rzeszelski, which exists to this day in an almost unchanged form (the artist’s prints are still hung there), where he rested and worked surrounded by his animals - the dog Ibis, the bitch Kluska, the cat Lokomotywka. His desk still is in the house. There is also a typewriter. During periods of writing, he would lock himself in his room, disappear, and his second wife Teresa (primo voto Świerzy, née Polkowska) would bring him sandwiches and empty full ashtrays.
From there, he wrote witty, romantic telegrams addressed to her, e.g. ‘Her Ladyship Iredyńska’, such as: ‘Geese saved Rome stop, but not me stop. Come today. [...]’. When he wrote, he did not drink. His presence at the cottage in Bredynki is still almost tangible, thanks to Teresa’s caring granddaughter, the actress Helena Marczewska, who, although born four years after Iredyński’s death, had been coming here for holidays since childhood.
Marczewska organises evenings devoted to Iredyński in Biskupiec, reads his works, and dreams of creating a small museum of Irek in one of Biskupiec’s rooms and an artistic barn where performance readings of his dramas could be held. ‘Irek is simply a part of our family,’ she wrote in the introduction to her bachelor’s thesis dedicated to him, written at the Faculty of Theatre Knowledge of the Warsaw Academy of Dramatic Arts (Ireneusz Iredyński. Życie po Śmierci, 2011). In Bredynki and Biskupiec the memory of Ireneusz Iredyński is alive, people considered him to be ‘their own’, a warm person, fond of children and animals, not a writer known from television. Here he took a break from Warsaw, where he had a reputation for being a scandalous man and a troublemaker.
‘He drank because he was bored by communism’, said Jadwiga Staniszkis on many occasions, with whom the writer was associated in the 1970s, after his release from prison. Although he came from the ‘Contemporary’ generation and worked alongside literary personalities such as Edward Stachura, Stanisław Grochowiak, Andrzej Bursa, Marek Nowakowski, he felt ‘separate’. In interviews, he emphasised that he lived and created on his own account. In writing, he valued professionalism, a sense of genre. He debuted very early, almost simultaneously in poetry, prose and drama. He was born on 4th June 1939 in Stanisławów. Raised by his aunts and grandmother, he waited for the return of his father, Antoni Iredyński, who was fighting in the Anders Army. His mother, Aleksandra née Ziołecka, left him in the care of her family and never returned. One hypothesis is that she was exterminated in a concentration camp. After the war, Irek left with his aunts and grandmother for Bochnia. Upon his return, his father introduced hard rules and discipline into the house and beat his son. At the age of 14, Iredyński left the family home and began his adult life in Kraków, or rather his ‘writing life’, which was full of myths and anecdotes, which he himself was also eager to create about himself. He used to say, among other things, that he was born in a castle in Podolia, or that ‘Iredyński’ was a pseudonym and his real name was ‘Kapusto’. From his early years, he was under surveillance by the security service. He used to say that he read three books a day, ‘in the morning, afternoon and evening’. As far as his favourite reads were concerned, he greatly appreciated, among others, Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano or Leopold Tyrmand’s Filip. Although he did not have a high school diploma, he was a truly erudite man. In the years 1946-47, he lived on the famous Krupnicza Street (at number 22), where, among others, Gałczyński also resided. As early as 1950, Gałczyński made the young, angry artist the prototype of a character from The Green Goose Theatre - Ireneusz Indyjski, an alienated poet who recites in the Theatre:
‘Autumn’
Fog flows among the woods
A lone ram bleats.
A true poet, Iredyński made his debut with a poem that appeared in the cultural supplement of Gazeta Krakowska journal in 1955, ending with the words:
Today we are short on bread,
Which is why I celebrate my youth.
In the same year, Dziennik Polski publishes his poem Podhale Zimą [Podhale in the Winter], considered his official debut.
Iredyński’s debut volume of poetry is tellingly entitled Wszystko jest Obok [Everything is Beside Me] (1959) and has been described as a conscious continuation of Tadeusz Różewicz’s legacy. Subsequent volumes of his poetry include: Moment Bitwy [The Moment of Battle] (1961) and Muzyka Konkretna [Concrete Music] (1971). His poetry has not aged; it has something of the evergreen, the protest song, the writing on the wall:
One day I saw
An angel disguised as Marquis de Sade
Crossing out the inscriptions on the spirals
most strongly - love