In Helena Modjeska’s Web of Lies. Self-Censorship of Personal Documents

Helena Modjeska, the most outstanding Polish-American Shakespearean actress, came from a bourgeois family, was raised without a father, entered into a scandalous relationship with a married man and gave birth to two illegitimate children. The early years of her private life and stage career, carefully retouched by the artist, are still controversial among scholars. The aim of this article is to analyse Modjeska’s self-creative processes based on selected facts from her life, especially the self-censorship of selected personal documents, including several versions of the actress’s diaries, biographical texts, and press interviews. The research tools will be categories of lies classified according to the type, cause, purpose and thematic area to which they relate. The result of the research is to indicate why Modjeska lied, how, what it gave her and about what topic.