Leopold Tyrmand

(1920–1985) – prose writer, publicist, populariser of jazz in Poland.

Leopold Tyrmand is a legendary figure – an icon of the Polish artistic world of the 1950s, associated with the “bikiniarze” subculture.

He was born into an assimilated Jewish family and started writing when he was at school. In 1938, he went to study in France, where he was first exposed to Western culture and jazz music; this had a great influence on his worldview and his work. From France, he sent jazz music reviews to the Polish national press.

When World War II broke out, he was in Warsaw. He left for Lviv, then continued to Vilnius. He was involved in resistance activities at the time, collaborating with the magazine “Za Naszą i Waszą Wolność” (For Our Freedom and Yours). In 1941, he was arrested by the NKVD and sentenced to eight years in prison. He escaped from a prison transport, returned to Vilnius, and there, fearing denunciation, he signed up for work in Germany. In 1944, he enlisted as a sailor on a German freighter bound for Gothenburg; he escaped in the Norwegian port of Stavanger, but was captured and imprisoned in a concentration camp near Oslo. He remained there until the end of the war. After Germany’s capitulation he stayed for a while in Oslo, returning to Poland in 1946.

He moved into the building of the Polish YMCA in Warsaw, which he later described vividly in his diary. Tyrmand collaborated with various publications, including “Express Wieczorny”, “Stolica” and “Słowo Powszechny”. He made his debut as a prose writer with the story “Niedziela w Stavanger” (Sunday in Stavanger) in the weekly “Przekrój”, and was a member of its editorial staff from 1947, as well as a regular contributor to “Tygodnik Powszechny”, where he ran the music and theatre reviews section. Thanks to his gripping articles and his prose debut, “Hotel Ansgar”, he quickly became a well-known and popular figure – however, his unconventional lifestyle and uncompromising views led to his removal from the editorial staff of “Przekrój”. During that time, as an unemployed writer, he started keeping a diary. “Dziennik 1954” (Diary 1954), covering three months, became his greatest work. It contains a panorama of places, times and human portraits, describing post-war Warsaw with its cultural life, the impact of regime restrictions on society, and the metamorphosis of the rebuilt capital. Tyrmand mercilessly mocks the absurdities of life in 1950s Poland. The pages of the diary contain many important figures from the literary scene of the time, although Tyrmand himself had little sympathy for the intellectual elites, considering them to be subservient to the regime. Nonetheless, “Dziennik 1954” remains an invaluable mine of knowledge about post-war Warsaw, a chronicle of social life, a manifestation of intellectual independence in an era when individualism was suppressed, and a defence of beauty and culture.

After finishing the diary – or, more accurately, after giving up writing it – Tyrmand started work on a new novel commissioned by the publishing house Czytelnik. “Zły” (The Man with the White Eyes) combined thriller, crime and romance themes. The main character is a mysterious avenger fighting against Warsaw’s criminal underworld. With its simplicity, humour and panache, the novel immediately gained unprecedented popularity, becoming a phenomenon on the literary market of the Polish People’s Republic. Although critics’ opinions were divided, the book still enjoys unwavering popularity. Nowadays, people consider the novel’s main character to be Warsaw itself, noting Tyrmand’s meticulous depictions of the city’s streets, squares, cafes and ruins, as well as the bustling life of the rebuilt capital.

After the success of “Zły”, Tyrmand published a collection of short stories, “Gorzki smak czekolady Lucullus” (The Bitter Taste of Lucullus Chocolate), and a book of essays, “U brzegów jazzu” (On the Border of Jazz). The latter was an expression of his great passion for music. Tyrmand was an expert, enthusiast and populariser of jazz music. He was active in the Jazz Club at the YMCA in Warsaw. He was also the organiser, artistic director and compère of jazz sessions in Warsaw and the first jazz concerts in Kraków, Łódź and Sopot, as well as directing the Jazz Jamboree festival. In “U brzegów jazzu” he examines jazz on three levels: as a musical style, a social and sociological phenomenon, and an aesthetic and emotional phenomenon.

Tyrmand spent the first half of the 1960s working on the novel “Życie towarzyskie i uczuciowe” (Social and Emotional Life). Unlike the apolitical “Zły”, his new book was firmly rooted in the realities of the Warsaw intelligentsia, aiming to highlight the group’s corruption and subordination to the regime. However, the typescript was detained at the publishing house, and Tyrmand, awaiting its publication, left Poland after receiving a passport. The book was finally published in 1967 at the Literary Institute in Paris.

After leaving Poland, Tyrmand travelled a lot. He spent time in Israel, then in the US, where he gave speeches, met many American writers and intellectuals, and eventually applied for permanent residence. He collaborated with the Parisian branch of “Kultura” and the London branch of “Wiadomości”. In 1968, in protest against the aggression of Warsaw Pact troops against Czechoslovakia, he renounced his Polish citizenship. From then on, he wrote in English for publications including “The New Yorker”, “The Reporter” and “The New York Times Magazine”. In the late 1960s, he settled in the US. After marrying Mary Ellen Fox and settling in Connecticut, he began preparing “Dziennik 1954” for publication in excerpts in “Wiadomości”.

Tyrmand, who until that time had identified as a dissident, changed his outlook after settling in the US. He transformed from a liberal into a conservative, and his texts reviled leftist tendencies and American culture. He was also keen to spread knowledge about the true face of communism from behind the Iron Curtain, but his book “Cywilizacja komunizmu” (The Civilisation of Communism) was rejected by “The New Yorker”.

Tyrmand received numerous awards, including the M. Grydzewski “Wiadomości” Award in 1974 and the Freedoms Foundation George Washington Honor Medal in 1981. The Sejm of the Republic of Poland of the 8th term decided in 2019 to declare 2020 the Year of Leopold Tyrmand.