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Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński (Tadeusz Kamil Marcjan Żeleński) [1874 – 1941] was a Polish gynecologist, writer, poet, critic—above all, translator of over 100 French literary classics into Polish.

A notable personality in the Young Poland movement, Boy was the enfant terrible of the Polish literary scene in the first half of the 20th century.

After Nazi Germany broke the Nazi-Soviet Alliance and attacked the USSR and the Soviet-held Polish Kresy, Boy remained in Lwów. The city was captured on the night of July 4, 1941, and he was arrested and taken to the Wulka hills, where he was murdered together with 45 other Polish professors, artists and intelligentsia in what became known as the massacre of Lviv professors.

Boy signing his books in "Wiadomości Literackie", Warsaw 1932:

When I got rid of grieving

And the glory I was seeking,

Which I had no business doing,

I was carried by dragons

Over countries, bays, and mountains,

By fate, or by what happens.

Oh yes, I wanted to be me.

I toasted mirrors weepily

And learned my own stupidity.

From nails, mucous membrane,

Lungs, liver, bowels, and spleen

Whose house is made? Mine.

So what else is new?

I am not my own friend.

Time cuts me in two.

Monuments covered with snow,

Accept my gift. I wandered;

And where, I don't know.

“City Without a Name” by Czeslaw Miłosz from The Collected Poems: 1931-1987.