What is it about?
After the Second World War Brandys joined the Communist Party, became editor for a leading state-sponsored literary journal, and a devout socialist-realist defending communism in his writing. However through the 'thaw' of the mid-1950s his opinion shifted towards support for Revisionist critics of the régime.
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Why is it important?
This article considers two major works, Nierzeczywistosc (Polish Unreality, 1978) and Miesace (Warsaw Diaries, 1978-87), as detailed records of the inner life of the intellectual and creative community of post-war Poland. It sets Brandys's work in a specific Polish-Jewish literary-political context, and considers how his sense of 'otherness', of being an outsider at the margin of an acceptable Polish identity, permeates and informs his observations.
Perspectives
In spite of the anti-Semitic purges of 1959 and 1968, designed to break Revisionist opposition, Brandys decided to remain in Poland. By the mid-1970s he had resigned from all official positions, openly criticised the government and supported KOR; he turned his back on state publishers and began to publish underground and abroad.
Prof Carl Tighe
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This page is a summary of: Kazimierz Brandys's Warsaw Diaries, Contemporary European History, March 1998, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s096077730000477x.
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