He went on to earn his living from part-time and freelance jobs, including giving private lessons, occasional copy writing, and selling his stories for screenplays.
After his emigration in 1965, Tyrmand deposited the diary in the editorial office of the Paris-based polish magazine Kultura, returning to collect it four years later.
Introduction to the first edition included the following sentence: "Present book contains the entirety of the diary, unaffected by editorial considerations, moral quandaries, political necessities, social concessions."
The 1980 edition of Dziennik 1954 has been translated into English by Anita K. Shelton and A. J. Wrobel and published as Diary 1954 by Northwestern University Press (Chicago, 2014, ISBN 978-0-8101-2951-1).
Polish writer Józef Hen observed: "In the Diary, there is not a single word about the exiles, trials, Tito, Korea, spies, jail tortures".
[clarification needed] Diary contains a lot of personal criticism of both Tyrmand's acquaintances (their identities often hidden behind initials) as well as public figures.
The writer set store by showing his views' constancy over the numerous years, "This diary, written at full manhood, re-read at the twilight of midlife, gives me a feeling of self-loyalty – which always seemed to me as desirable and worthy of sacrifices."
A biographer Henryk Dasko notes that Diary 1954 would play a substantial role in autocreation of the legend of Tyrmand as an independent and unwavering creator.