Stanisław Jerzy Lec (born Baron

Baron

Baron is a title of nobility. The word baron comes from Old French baron, itself from Old High German and Latin baro meaning " man, warrior"; it merged with cognate Old English beorn meaning "nobleman"...

 Stanisław Jerzy de Tusch-Letz) was a poet

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

 and aphorist of Polish

Poles

thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...

 and Jewish

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 noble origin. Often mentioned among the greatest writers of post-WW2 Poland, he was one of the most influential aphorists on the 20th century, known for lyrical poetry and sceptical philosophical-moral aphorisms, often with a political subtext.

Biography

He was born on 6 March 1909 in Lviv

Lviv

Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...

 (then Lemberg, Austro-Hungarian Empire), the son of the Baron Benon de Tusch-Letz and Adela Safrin; both were Jewish eccentrics who converted to Protestantism. The family moved to Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 at the onset of First World War

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, and Lec received his early education there. After the war the family returned to Lviv-Lemberg to continue his schooling at the Lemberg Evangelical School. In 1927 he matriculated at Lviv's Jan Kazimir University in jurisprudence and Polish.

As a result of his political activities – writing articles for socialist revolutionary periodicals, making speeches in the Technological Institute’s Yellow Hall – Lec had to leave his hometown Lviv for Warsaw

Warsaw

Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

. There his works quickly became popular, but the "literary cabaret" he founded in collaboration with Leon Pasternak

Leon Pasternak

Leon Pasternak was a Polish poet and satirist...

 (cousin to Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...

) was closed by the authorities after eight performances. Nor did his law-abiding image improve after he took part in a congress of cultural workers initiated by the Antifascist Popular Front.

Lec was in the Army at the onset of World War War Two and was imprisoned in a German concentration camp. He received a death sentence for his second attempt to escape, but managed to escape again after killing his guard with a shovel when taken to dig his own grave. This became the subject of his most famous poem.

According to Clifton Fadiman

Clifton Fadiman

Clifton P. "Kip" Fadiman was an American intellectual, author, editor, radio and television personality.-Literary career:...

's introduction to Lec's book Unkempt Thoughts (Myśli nieuczesane):

Lec has led the strange (to us), hunted, haunted life of thousands of Central European intellectuals, their experience inexorably shaped by war and revolution. At the outbreak of the war he was imprisoned in a German concentration camp. There he stayed until July 1943 when the camp was liquidated by mass executions. Escaping in a German uniform, he succeeded in reaching Warsaw where he joined the underground fighters. After the war he continued his writing, varying his career by brief service as cultural attache of the Polish Embassy in Vienna. He has also spent two years in Israel.

The Embassy was Communist during the period of Stalinism

Stalinism

Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...

 in Poland, when the diplomats were carefully selected and controlled. Lec was a press attaché in Vienna. After disagreeing with the Communist government he defected to Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 with his wife, son and daughter, but returned to Poland after two years in Israel. The Polish authorities punished him by taking away any rights to write or publish. He was, however, allowed to publish again in the late 1950s. He gained a massive popularity and despite his anti-Communist and anti-totalitarian aphorisms he was given an official state funeral in Warsaw when he died in 1966.

Lec's aphorisms

• Beyond each corner new directions lie in wait.
• The exit is usually where the entrance was.
• He who limps is still walking.
• In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.
• The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones.
• Even a glass eye can see its blindness.
• To whom should we marry Freedom, to make it multiply?
• I am against using death as a punishment. I am also against using it as a reward.
• You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories.
• Optimists and pessimists differ only on the date of the end of the world.
• Is it a progress if a cannibal is using knife and fork?
• If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky?
• No snowflake
  Snowflake
  Snowflakes are conglomerations of frozen ice crystals which fall through the Earth's atmosphere. They begin as snow crystals which develop when microscopic supercooled cloud droplets freeze. Snowflakes come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Complex shapes emerge as the flake moves through...
  
  in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
• All is in the hands of man. Therefore wash them often.
• Do not ask God the way to heaven; he will show you the hardest one.
• If you are not a psychiatrist, stay away from idiots. They are too stupid to pay a layman for his company.
• Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don't bite everybody.
• The first condition of immortality is death.
• Suppose you succeed in breaking the wall with your head. And what, then, will you do in the next cell?

Main works

• Barwy, poems (1933)
• Spacer cynika, satire and epigrams (1946)
• Notatnik polowy, poems (1946)
• Życie jest fraszką, satire and epigrams (1948)
• Nowe wiersze (1950)
• Rękopis jerozolimski (1956)
• Unkempt Thoughts (Myśli nieuczesane) (1957)
• Z tysiąca i jednej fraszki (1959)
• Kpię i pytam o drogę (1959)
• Do Abla i Kaina (1961)
• List gonczy (1963)
• More Unkempt Thoughts (Myśli nieuczesane nowe) (1964)
• Poema gotowe do skoku (1964)
• Fraszkobranie (1966)