[1] A leading proponent of Stalinism in Poland for nearly a decade after the Soviet takeover, Kott renounced his Communist Party membership in 1957 following the anti-Stalinist Polish October of 1956.

In September 1939, Kott fought in the Polish army in its futile campaign against the German invasion and then, after a period in Lvov, returned to Nazi-occupied Warsaw.

[5] After World War II he became known initially as the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Kuźnica and as Poland's leading theorist of Socialist realism.

In his influential volume Shakespeare, Our Contemporary (1964), he interpreted the plays in the light of philosophical and existential experiences of the 20th century, augmented with his own life's story.

Reportedly, Peter Brook's film King Lear and Roman Polanski's Macbeth (both made in 1971) were influenced by Kott's view of Shakespearean high tragedy in relation to the 20th-century "nightmare of history".

He translated works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Denis Diderot, Eugène Ionesco and Molière into Polish and English.