Stanisław Jerzy Lec

Often mentioned among the greatest writers of post-war Poland, he was one of the most influential aphorists of the 20th century, known for lyric poetry and skeptical philosophical-moral aphorisms, often with a political subtext.

[1] Son of the Baron Benon de Tusch-Letz and Adela Safrin, he was born on 6 March 1909 in Lemberg, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Lviv) to a Jewish nobilitated family.

In 1927 he matriculated and begun studies at Lwów's Jan Kazimierz University in Polish language and law, which he graduated in 1933.

[2] Nor did his law-abiding image improve after he took part in the Convention of Culture Workers, a radical congress initiated by the international communist movement Popular Front in the same year.

In 1940 he joined the Union of Soviet Writers of Ukraine and became a member of the editorial board of “The Literary Almanac” in Lwów.

[2] On 19 November 1939 Lec signed a resolution calling for the incorporation of Polish Eastern Borderlands into the territory of the Soviet Union.

[10] After Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union he was imprisoned in a German work camp in Tarnopol (now Ternopil),[2] from which he made several attempts to escape.

[1] His notable poems such as Notatnik polowy (Field Notebook; 1946), Rękopis Jerozolimski (The Jerusalem Manuscript; 1950–1952, reedited in 1956 and 1957), and Do Kaina i Abla (To Cain and Abel; 1961) had a theme of exploring the world through irony, melancholy, and nostalgia.

[1] His later works, usually very short (aphorisms), through techniques such as wordplay, paradox, nonsense, abstract humor, and didacticism convey philosophical thoughts through single phrases and sentences.

[1] His work has been translated into a number of languages, including English, German, Slovak, Dutch, Italian, Serbian, Croatian, Swedish, Czech, Finnish, Bulgarian, Russian, Romanian[18] and Spanish.