| Leopold Tyrmand | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 16, 1920, Warsaw, Poland |
| Died | March 15, 1985, Fort Myers, Florida, USA |
| Language | Polish |
Leopold Tyrmand (May 16, 1920 in Warsaw, Poland – March 19, 1985) was a Polish novelist and editor. He studied architecture for a year at L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris before the war, and during the war was a resistance fighter in Poland, a waiter in Germany (an experience he wrote about in his semi-autobiographical novel "Filip"), and a prisoner in a Norwegian concentration camp. Before he returned to a devastated Poland, he worked with the Norwegian Red Cross. Leopold Tyrmand rose to prominence for his publication of anti-regime newspapers in Poland. In 1954, he wrote a diary, which he later edited and released in 1980 as "Dziennik 1954". The book, which gives a unique description of the daily life in Stalinist Poland, is now considered to be one of his greatest achievements. He emigrated to the United States in 1966.
In the United States, Tyrmand lived in New York City and New Canaan, Connecticut, until 1976, and regularly published essays in American periodicals such as The New Yorker and The New York Times, "Commentary" and "The American Scholar". He became the co-founder and vice-president of the Rockford Institute, a conservative foundation critical of American publishing values and their apparent bias toward liberal writers. He served as editor of Chronicles of Culture, an anti-communist journal.
His books included Kultura Essays, Explorations in Freedom, Notebooks of a Dilettante, On the Border of Jazz and Seven Long Voyages. His most famous novel was Zły (published in English as The Man With White Eyes). Tyrmand was instrumental in introducing jazz music to Poland, and is considered the "guru" of the Polish jazz movement. He started the first Polish jazz festival, which he named "Jazz Jamboree," in the 1950s; the festival, whose theme song he picked ("Swanee River") attracted notables of jazz from the West, and continues to this day. To Tyrmand, jazz was a declaration of freedom, and thus a political statement.
Tyrmand died of a heart attack in Fort Myers, Florida. He was 64 years old. He is survived by his wife, Mary Ellen, and his children, Matthew and Rebecca.