Born 29 May 1924 in Lviv. Poet, prose writer, essayist, translator, and editor. He is called the „Prince of Polish metaphysical poets”.

During the war, he was a Home Army soldier and a lice feeder in the Weigl Institute for Spotted Typhus and Viruses in Lviv. He passed his secretly conducted Matura exams (secondary school final exams) and graduated from Polish Philology at the Jagiellonian University. He debuted in 1947 in „Dziennik Literacki” magazine („Literary Journal”). In the years 1950-1956, he resigned from literary life and publishing in protest against socialist realism. In 1957, he joined the „Życie Literackie” magazine team, from which he was expelled in 1971 after criticising W. Machejek's politics. In 1972-1977, he was the literary director of the “Bagatela” Theatre, from which he was removed after strikes in 1976 in Radom for signing a letter in defence of the workers. He co-created the first independent literary magazine „Pismo” (1980-1983). He is a founding member of the Polish Writers' Association. In 1966-1967, as part of the Creative Writing School, he gave lectures on Polish poetry at universities in Iowa; Berkeley, California; Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Texas, and others. He is a member of the Committee of the „ Niezłomnym w słowie” Medal (Invincible in Word). In 2009, he received the Gloria Artis Gold Medal. He was Zbigniew Herbert's closest friend.

Leszek Elektorowicz's steadfast attitude, combined with his interest in English literature, made it impossible to overestimate his contribution to the dissemination of knowledge, for he not only translated but also wrote about English and American literature, bringing it closer to a Polish reader.

Elektorowicz devoted four books to Western literature. Already in the first book, Zwierciadło w okruchach (“Shattered Mirror”, 1966), in his insightful sketches and essays, he introduces the figures and works of Henry James, William Faulkner, Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, William Saroyan, Herbert George Wells, and Truman Capote.

How cleverly the author „played” with the communist authorities can be proved by the title of one of the chapters devoted to Fitzgerald's prose: Diament wielki jak Ameryka (“A Diamond as Big as America”). Obvious, it would seem: the American continent is huge, but other meanings are hidden: America is a huge country, America is great, America is rich, America shines like a diamond - in contrast to our coarse socialism. Censorship did not notice this.

The insight into the world and literature of the West made it possible to compare what was happening on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Leszek Elektorowicz willingly used this possibility as a prose writer during the communist era. For example, in a short novel from 1974, Gwiazdy drwiące (“Mocking Stars”, the title comes from a poem by Juliusz Słowacki), the author creates the figure of Bernard - the son of a prisoner of the Dyhenfurth camp belonging to K.L. Gross-Rosen - who remained in the West after the war and settled in the United States, and now, he returns to Poland to visit his father's grave and the camp of which he was a prisoner. Such a device makes it possible to recall the terrible life in the camp, to show the then USA, and the grey reality of Poland. Under the guise of the criticism of American culture and Bernard's „small stability”, who conveniently settled in the States and attached himself to dollars, Elektorowicz exposes and criticises the People's Republic of Poland for lack of freedom of speech, economic and technological backwardness, party politics, common drunkenness, and so on.

We have a picture of supermarkets in Chicago full of material goods, efficient banks and telecommunications, which is contrasted with Polish reality, empty shop shelves, cars continuously breaking down, and not always friendly political commissars. The author, or rather the narrator, criticises the constantly complaining Bernard, who is apparently a bad, weak patriot, because he fell for these „American trinkets”, turned out to be petty, not ideological enough. The editors of the „Czytelnik” Publishing House at the time fell for such an attempt, believing that the previous books and the one, just given to readers in 1974, are „a challenge thrown at so-called small realists” - as Włodzimierz Maciąg wrote on the blurb. In fact, this book, extremely bitter, could inspire workers in Radom to strike or encourage highlanders from Podhale to go to America, to Avondale, to „Chikago”. The dialogues and camp memories, which, as Elektorowicz assured in his note From the Author, are authentic and not literary fiction, are poignant in this novel.

Leszek Elektorowicz played another game with the communist authorities in a fascinating historical novel entitled W lochu Ferrary („In the Dungeon of Ferrara”, 1980), the protagonist of which is the unjustly imprisoned Italian poet Torquato Tasso. The book was published on the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of Jerusalem Delivered. It came out at the end of 1980, but was put into print in January, so it is not difficult to guess that it was a voice in defence of repressed intellectuals and writers. Also, it is the question of whether we were liberated then, or whether we waited for liberation, and from whose yoke. It was (and is) not only a defence of Tasso, but also of the right to creative freedom, freedom of expression, with which we sometimes have problems today. It is also asking for freedom for oneself, because Leszek Elektorowicz is also a poet, primarily a poet, a student of Słowacki, a „ Prince of Polish metaphysical poets”.

– Sławomir Matusz

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Poetry

• Świat niestworzony, Cracow, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1957.
• Kontury, Cracow, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1962.
• Przedmowy do ciszy, Cracow, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1968.
• Całe kłamstwo świata, Cracow, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1983.
• Jeden znak, Cracow, Wyd. św. Stanisława, 1994.
• Czasy i chwile, Cracow, Baran i Suszczyński, 1998.
• Niektóre stronice, Cracow, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2004.
• Z(a)myślenia, Cracow, Arcana, 2006.
• Wiersze dla Marii, Cracow, Arcana, 2012.
• Juwenilia i Senilia, Cracow, Księgarnia Akademicka, 2013.
• Rąbek królestwa, Cracow, Arcana, 2017.

Prose

• Rejterada, Katowice, „Śląsk”, 1963.
• Przechadzki Sylena, Warsaw, Czytelnik, 1971.
• Przeklęty teatr, Cracow, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1977.
• Być i nie być, Cracow, Oficyna Literacka, 1993.
• Gwiazdy drwiące, Warsaw, Czytelnik, 1974.
• W lochu Ferrary, Cracow, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1980.
• Nienawiść, Cracow, Arcana, 2001.
• Mieć szczęście, Cracow, Arcana, 2009

Essays

• Zwierciadło w okruchach, Warsaw, Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy,1966.
• Z Londynu do Teksasu i dalej, Cracow, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1970.
• Motywy zachodnie, Cracow, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1973.
• Anglosaskie muzy, Cracow, Arcana, 1995.