Jerzy Pietrkiewicz

Jerzy Pietrkiewicz or Peterkiewicz (29 September 1916 – 26 October 2007) was a Polish poet, novelist, translator, and literary critic who spent much of his life in British exile.

He was born in Fabianki, Poland, the son of a well-read peasant, Jan Pietrkiewicz, and a woman of aristocratic descent, Antonina Politowska, who was about fifty years old at his birth.

[1] The left-wing poet and literary critic Ignacy Fik (1904–1942), in his history of Polish literature during the Interbellum, will reserve a special mention for the "horrific poems of Pietrkiewicz", published in the "Prosto z mostu" magazine, in which the "national myth" receives its "racist" incarnation.

[2] His Wiersze o dzieciństwie ("Poems about Childhood"; 1935) did not receive any accolades from the critics in general; Kazimierz Andrzej Jaworski writing in the literary journal Kamena observed that the compositions included in the collection "bore the reader with their monotony", and if they have any value "it is only apparent to the author himself, for they ring hollow to others".

[11] In addition, in his autobiography, Pietrkiewicz reflected on his early beliefs and rhetoric: “I spent less than five years in Warsaw: during that time, I experienced not only the stupidities of youth, [but] the arrogance of ideologies picked up and quickly dropped.”[12] He began writing novels in English in 1953, reserving Polish for his poetical works.