Born in
Warsaw in 1914 to a Jewish family, Kott was baptized into the Catholic Church at the age of five. He became a communist in the 1930s, and took part in the defense of Warsaw. In June 1939 he married Lidia Steinhaus, the daughter of the mathematician and educator
Hugo Steinhaus. In September 1939, Kott fought in the Polish army in its futile campaign against the German invasion and then, after a period in Lvov, returned to Nazi-occupied Warsaw. After
World War II he became known initially as the
editor-in-chief of the literary magazine
Kuźnica and as Poland's leading theorist of
Socialist realism. In 1949, as the communist authorities
tightened their control over all aspects of life, Kott obtained a position as a professor in Wrocław and moved away from political life. He praised Joseph Stalin, but mostly concentrated on theater. In 1951, during the darkest period of Soviet terror, Kott published an ideological manifesto about the role of theater, entitled "O teatr godny naszej epoki" (For theater worthy of our times), in which he demanded a "new" theater subservient to the Party and its ideology. Historian Teresa Wilniewczyc noted, that his zeal for totalitarian control over the world of Polish culture was "far more than was required". Only after the Stalin era came to an end, did he become its ardent critic (March 1956). He renounced his membership of the
communist party in 1957. The Polish authorities refused to extend his passport after three years, at which point he decided to defect. As a result, he was stripped of his professorship at Warsaw University. A poet, translator, and literary critic, he became one of the more prolific essayists of the Polish school in America. He died in
Santa Monica, California after a heart attack in 2001. As a theatrical reviewer, Kott received praise for his readings of the classics, and above all of
Shakespeare. In his influential volume
Shakespeare, Our Contemporary (1964), he interpreted the plays in the light of philosophical and
existential experiences of the 20th century, augmented with his own life's story. This autobiographical accent became a
hallmark of his criticism, as exemplified in his collection of essays on theater,
The Gender of Rosalind. Kott sought to juxtapose Shakespeare with
Eugène Ionesco and
Samuel Beckett, but his greatest insight came from the juxtaposition of Shakespeare with his own life. He took a similar approach to his reading of
Greek tragedy in
The Eating of the Gods. Reportedly,
Peter Brook's film
King Lear and
Roman Polanski's
Macbeth (both made in 1971) were influenced by Kott's view of Shakespearean high tragedy in relation to the 20th-century "nightmare of history". Another Kott collection of essays,
The Memory of the Body: Essays on Theatre and Death, extended his influence beyond theater in the English-speaking world. Kott wrote many books and articles published in American journals such as
The New Republic,
Partisan Review and
The New York Review of Books. Aside from Shakespeare and Greek tragedy, he also wrote about
theatre of Japan,
Tadeusz Kantor and
Jerzy Grotowski. He translated works by
Jean-Paul Sartre,
Denis Diderot,
Eugène Ionesco and
Molière into Polish and English. == References ==