Reading Izabella Czermak's Epigramy (Epigrams) Through the Lens of Polish Literary Criticism of the 1940s

The article discusses a collection of epigrams written during the Holocaust by a lesser-known Polish-Jewish poet Izabella Czermak, who survived the war on the"Aryan side" and participated in Polish literary life after the war (some of her epigrams were published in 1947). The article studies Czermak's epigrams in the light of several questions raised by Polish literary criticism of the time, such as poeticity, irony, realism, and surrealism. The article discovers close parallels between Czermak's poetry and her prose memoirs, and discusses Czermak's prewar friendship with Bruno Schulz.