Skamander was a Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 group of experimental poets

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

 founded in 1918 by Julian Tuwim

Julian Tuwim

Julian Tuwim , sometimes used pseudonym "Oldlen" when writing song lyrics. He was a Polish poet, born in Łódź, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, of Jewish parents, and educated in Łódź and Warsaw where he studied law and philosophy at Warsaw University...

, Antoni Słonimski, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Kazimierz Wierzyński

Kazimierz Wierzynski

Kazimierz Wierzyński was a Polish poet and journalist.-Life:Kazimierz Wierzyński was born in Drohobycz, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, and died in London....

 and Jan Lechoń

Jan Lechon

Leszek Józef Serafinowicz was a Polish poet, literary and theater critic, diplomat, and co-founder of the Skamander literary movement and the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America.-Life:Lechoń studied Polish language and literature at Warsaw University, by...

.

Initially unnamed, in December 1919 it adopted the name Skamander, after the Scamander River

Karamenderes River

Karamenderes is the modern name of the river Scamander, along the lower course of which, according to the Iliad, the battles of the Trojan War were fought. It flows entirely within the Turkish province of Çanakkale....

 in Asia Minor

Asia Minor

Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

.

History

The group was initially closely related to the Pro Arte et Studio literary monthly and the Pod Picadorem (Picador

Picador

A picador is one of the pair of horsemen in a Spanish bullfight that jab the bull with a lance. They perform in the tercio de varas which is the first of the three stages in a Spanish bullfight.The picador has three main functions:...

) Café in Warsaw

Warsaw

Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

. In 1920 it created its own publication, the Skamander monthly, though its members also collaborated with Wiadomości Literackie (Literary News) and other newspapers.

The young poets were heavily influenced by Leopold Staff

Leopold Staff

Leopold Staff was a Polish poet and one of the greatest artists of European modernism honored two times by honorary degrees . He was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature...

 and other neoromantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 poets. Their main aims were to break the links between history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 and poetry and to end the nationalist and patriotic functions of Polish poetry. They also emphasized the need to restore poetry to the common people by returning to everyday-language usage in poetry, including colloquialism

Colloquialism

A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday, unconstrained conversation rather than in formal speech, academic writing, or paralinguistics. Dictionaries often display colloquial words and phrases with the abbreviation colloq. as an identifier...

s, neologisms and vulgarism

Vulgarism

A vulgarism , also called scurrility, is a colloquialism of an unpleasant action or unrefined character, which substitutes a coarse, indecorous word where the context might lead the reader to expect a more refined expression.-See also:*Euphemism*Grotesque body*Ribaldry, scatology, toilet...

s. Finally, the Skamandrites (Skamandryci) emphasized the beauty of everyday life and of all forms of life generally, including the biological side.

In contrast to the basic aims of the late-19th-century Young Poland

Young Poland

Young Poland is a modernist period in Polish visual arts, literature and music, covering roughly the years between 1890 and 1918. It was a result of strong aesthetic opposition to the ideas of Positivism...

 movement, Skamander's members eschewed semi-mythological heroes and protagonists, replacing them with common people. In contrast to the contemporary Awangarda Krakowska (Kraków Avant-Garde) movement, they saw themselves as continuers of Polish literary traditions, especially those of romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 and neoromanticism.

Apart from the movement's five chief members, several lesser-known poets and critics adhered to its principles. They included Stanisław Baliński

Stanisław Baliński

Stanisław Baliński was a Polish poet, writer and diplomat.-References:...

, Gabriel Michał Karski, Światopełk Karpiński

Światopełk Karpiński

Światopełk Karpiński was a Polish poet and satirist, brother of architect Zbigniew Karpiński. He graduated from the School of Political Sciences in Warsaw where he was trained as a diplomat...

, Jerzy Paczkowski, Karol Zawodziński and Wilam Horzyca.