Aleksander Wat (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Tomas Venclova
- First Published: 1996
- Type of Work: Literary biography
- Time of Work: 1900-1967
- Setting: Warsaw, Poland, and exile in Kazakhstan, U.S.S.R, Berkeley, California, and Paris, France
- Principal Characters: Aleksander Wat, Paulina “Ola” Wat, Andrzej Wat, Joseph Stalin, Czesław Miłosz
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography
- Subjects: Communism or communists, Prisoners, Literature, World War II, Poetry or poets, Faith, Poland or Polish people, Judaism, Soviet Union
- Locales: Soviet Union, Paris, France, Berkeley, CA, Warsaw, Poland, Kazakhstan
The Polish writer Aleksander Wat is best known to English readers for his memoir of imprisonment and exile in the Soviet Union, Mój wiek: Pamiętnik mówieony (1977; My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual, 1988). Venclova’s critical biography makes it clear just how much his ordeal in the Communist hell was a piece with the whole of the poet’s life. It turns out that My Century, one of the great testaments to human endurance, was written by a tortured soul struggling constantly to escape the straitjacket of existence.
Wat was born on May 1,...
[The entire page is 2298 words long]
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