Critic and Experience

Abstract Almost from the very beginning of her career Jadwiga Maurer assumed the role of an authentic and outspoken literary critic. Since the early 1960s, she published book reviews and essays in journals and newspapers—most notably in the émigré Polish weekly Wiadomości—and engaged in various polemics. With the passage of time, however, her critical writings were increasingly overshadowed by her later literary and scholarly output. Her short stories about the postwar fate of Polish Jews in particular attracted the attention of readers and critics. This article attempts to bring back Maurer's literary criticism by focusing on some of its main features. It looks at how she understood critical practice, what books she reviewed, what issues she addressed, and what tools she used. It is stressed that Maurer was particularly preoccupied with those writers whose lives brought to mind her own experiences. Also, her ability to make use of literature in conducting polemics is shown by indicating her many remarks on the difficult subject of Polish-Jewish relations. Special attention is paid to the concept of “authenticity,” an important tool in Maurer's criticism, entailing the problems of realism, truth, reality, and experience. The article claims that for Maurer literature and life went hand in hand and did not constitute separate orders.