Milosz Auf Deutsc

8/10/2019 Milosz Auf Deutsc

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And wide vistas open before me: a glimpse that our vision

of things is totally mythical, that we are terried by scarecrows

that we ourselves have fabricated, that our passions

are too often the fruit of illusions, that we refuse to see reality

as it is; but above all I can sense that I am able to

change that, to become aware of prejudices, conventions,

habits, mirages, of which I am the victim. It is in this power

to change my judgement of things that my liberty resides

milosz

A centurys witness

!nce banned, but now a hero in his native "oland, he has #nown a world of

political e$tremes including tsarism, revolution, %azi occupation, &'s

communism and ('s radicalism. )et this %obel prize*winning poet claims he

has never been a pessimist. %icholas +roe reports

hare -

inhare'

mail

%icholas +roe

%icholas +roe

/he 0uardian, aturday 1' %ovember 2''1

In 3ecember 145', a monument was unveiled at the 0dans# shipyard in

"oland, birthplace of the olidarity trade union, in memory of shipwor#ers

#illed by the security forces during riots a decade earlier. Inscribed on the

base was a line from "salm 24:11, translated into "olish by the poet 6zeslaw

7ilosz: 8/he 9ord will give strength unto his people.8 /he following year

7ilosz returned to "oland after -' years e$ile in the west. +hen he went to

view the 0dans# monument, members of olidarity unfurled a huge banner

bearing the message: 8/he "eople +ill 0ive trength nto /heir "oet.8


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In the immediate postwar years, 7ilosz actually wor#ed for the "eoples

epublic of "oland as a cultural attach< in America, but by 14&1 he had

bro#en with the regime, gone into e$ile in "aris, and his writing had been

banned in "oland. =owever, his wor# was widely circulated in samizdat

editions and he went on to become an almost mythical gure among the

dissident community. =is 14&- study of totalitarian ideology, /he 6aptive7ind, had dared to face up to both its subtle attractions as well as its

mechanisms of enslavement. In his poetry, particularly his autobiographical

wor#s, his depictions of an idealised and peaceful homeland provided solace

to a nation living in an uncertain world under foreign domination. =e was

awarded the %obel "rize for literature in !ctober 145' and following a highly

symbolic meeting with 9ech +alesa at the 6atholic university of 9ublin in

1451, his status as national bard was conrmed.

Also engraved on the 0dans# monument is the deant penultimate stanza

of 7iloszs poem )ou +ho +ronged: 83o not feel safe. /he poet remembers.

)ou can #ill one, but another is born. /he words are written down, the deed,

the date.8

7ilosz wrote these lines in 14&' when wor#ing in the "olish diplomatic

embassy in +ashington, and for some sections of the "olish opposition,

particularly the more nationalist tendencies whose chauvinism he had

attac#ed during the interwar years, his time wor#ing for the governmentmade him an unsuitable choice as a moral and cultural conscience. >ut for

most "oles, his lac# of ideological purity made him more representative of

the comple$ national e$perience.

/he nal, bitter stanza of )ou +ho +ronged * 8And youd have done better

with a winter dawn,?A rope, and a branch bowed beneath your weight8 *

leaves little doubt as to his profound and angry disillusionment with what

had become talinism, even though it was not a poem written for

publication. 8I was following the situation in "oland and I was @uitedesperate,8 he now says. 8>ut it was written for myself, for my drawer. It

had to wait -' years for its moment.8

7ilosz is now aged 4' and throughout his life and career he has often had to

wait for his moment. ven his triumphant 1451 return to "oland turned out

to be something of a false dawn. +ithin days of his visit the rst ocial

"olish publication of his poetry sold 1&',''' copies, only to be once again

banned and forced underground when martial law was imposed shortly

afterwards as part of a government attempt to crush the olidaritymovement.


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>ut 7iloszs game has always been a long one, and it is hard now to

comprehend the e$traordinary times he has lived through. =e was brought

up a "ole, in 9ithuania, under ussian tsarist rule, and as a child witnessed

the !ctober revolution and the rst world war. As an adult he lived throughthe wartime %azi occupation of +arsaw and then the oviet domination of

"oland. In e$ile, he navigated the choppy intellectual waters of 14&'s "aris

as an impoverished writer, and then the counter*cultural revolution of 14('s

6alifornia as a professor at >er#eley.

Bellow %obel prize*winning poet eamus =eaney described 7ilosz as,

8among those members of human#ind who have had the ambiguous

privilege of #nowing and standing more reality than the rest of us8. Another

%obel winner, Coseph >rods#y, said: 8I have no hesitation whatsoever instating that 6zeslaw 7ilosz is one of the greatest poets of our time, perhaps

the greatest.8

/his month sees the publication in >ritain of his 6ollected "oems. It contains

wor# written from 14-1 right up to earlier this year. Cerzy Carniewicz, a poet

and professor of nglish at the niversity of 9odz, says his impact on 2'th*

century "olish and world literature has been immense. 87iloszs poetry of

the -'s foreshadowed the cataclysm of the war. /hen, in 14D-, after the

+arsaw ghetto uprising, he was uni@ue as a "olish poet who witnessed,

responded to and articulated something that had been silent for decades in

"oland; the relationship between "oland and Cews, and the feeling of moral

guilt for what was going on. After the war, he helped open up "olish poetry

to many uropean and American poets. It was 7ilosz who made the rst

translation of /he +aste 9and, for e$ample.8

/he >ritish poet laureate Andrew 7otion says that 7iloszs inEuence

e$tended to the west. 8)ou cannot understand where /ed =ughess poem6row is coming from, formally, unless you understand its deep roots in

middle*uropean writing. 7ilosz was a part of that. veryone said when

6row came out that it was new, but, of course, it wasnt. It is idiomatically

and, in terms of its symbolic life, e$tremely inEuenced by middle*uropean

poetry which has a diFerent way of advertising its e$istence as symbolic

writing or allegory.8

>ut 7otion also ac#nowledges that 7iloszs use of "olish history and

literature as subject matter can be dicult for the uninitiated reader. 8I verymuch enjoy his wor#, but I recently read a volume of his poetry and I spent a


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lot of time thin#ing, I dont get this. It was having an interesting eFect on

me but I realised that I was missing so many of the references.8

obert =ass, the former poet laureate of the nited tates, has been the

primary translator of 7iloszs poetry from "olish into nglish. =e agrees that

the details of "olish artistic and cultural life sometimes found in the poetry

can seem 8almost li#e a soap opera youll never understand the whole plot

of. >ut also, when 6zeslaw deals with the details of his world, it is,

emotionally, some of his most powerful writing. +or#ing with 6zeslaw is li#e

reliving the whole of the 2'th century through this prism of great specicity.

It has been very important to him to remember e$actly how, say, wine was

stored in 14-'s wor#ing*class "aris, or the precise details of the elaborate

hairdo of his piano teacher in Gilno in 1421.8

6zeslaw 7ilosz was born in Cune 1411 in the 9ithuanian village of zetejnie.

/he family belonged to the "olish gentry, but while 7ilosz was be@ueathed

their culture, little was left of their wealth by the time he was born. =is

father was an engineer for the tsarist army during the rst world war and his

wor# too# him, and his family, all over ussia, repairing bridges and

highways. 7ilosz has one younger brother, Andrzej, who now lives in

+arsaw. 8=e is 5( and he doesnt #now how to wal# because he runs so

much,8 laughs 7ilosz. 8=e was a journalist and made lm documentaries but

he had a very dicult time in "oland in the &'s because I left the country. Iwas very sorry about that.8

7ilosz has been an American citizen since 14H', but was granted honorary

9ithuanian citizenship when he returned to the newly independent country

in 1442 after more than half a century away. /he barn at his childhood home

has been converted into a literary and cultural conference centre under the

name /he 6zeslaw 7ilosz >irthplace Boundation. As he shows photographs

of the newly renovated building, he points out the large, open plain in the

bac#ground. 8/here used to be three villages there, all with orchards,8 hee$plains. 8%ow it is #nown locally as aza#hstan because that is where the

population was forced to move to. /he villages and everything there were

destroyed.8

All this happened after 7ilosz had left zetejnie, and he remembers his

childhood there, returning after the chaos of war and the 141H revolution, as

an idyllic period. It is one he has returned to time and again in both his

poetry and his prose, most notably in his charming 14&& novel Issa Galley,

and his, very guarded 14&5 autobiography, %ative ealm.


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7ilosz attended both school and university in +ilno Jnow GilniusK and

remembers watching 6harlie 6haplin and 7ary "ic#ford lms. Although he

started out studying literature, he graduated in law in 14-D. 8/here were so

many girls studying literature it was called the marriage department. o Iswitched to law and I reluctantly passed my studies. >ut I never planned a

legal career.8

Ignacy wiec#ic#i, an engineer now living in "ennsylvania, is a friend from

his schooldays and remembers 7ilosz as 8always very busy with poetry and

literature. =e was not interested in sports, although he was in the boy

scouts, but he was a boy who displayed many talents and many people

e$pected a great future for him. =is diculty has been that he was trying to

combine his faith and tradition with ideas which were rather contrary to thesurroundings in which he was brought up.8

7ilosz received a strict 6atholic education but wrote as a young man that,

8in a oman 6atholic country intellectual freedom always goes hand in hand

with atheism8. =e later returned to the church, and learned =ebrew in order

to translate the "salms into "olish, but has said that while he is a 6atholic,

he is not a 6atholic writer. 8>ecause if you are branded as a 6atholic, you

are supposed to testify with every wor# of yours to following the line of the

6hurch, which is not necessarily my case.8

7iloszs rst published poems appeared in the +ilno university journal, and

in 14-1 he co*founded a literary group called Lagary, whose blea# political

outloo# and symbolism saw them dubbed the school of 8catastrophists8.

3uring the same year he made his rst trip to "aris, where he came under

the inEuence of a distant cousin, !scar 7ilosz, a Brench*9ithuanian writer

who had been a representative of independent 9ithuania at the 9eague of

%ations. 8!scar 7ilosz was a very important inEuence on my poetic life,particularly in the religious dimension,8 he says. 6zeslaw returned to "aris

for a year in 14-D when he won a scholarship to study at the Alliance

BranMais.

obert =ass says that in 7iloszs own hierarchy of his readership, "arisian

opinion remains important. 8"olish readership comes rst and then an

international readership of other writers that matter to him. >ut for many

"oles of his generation, the ultimate source of judgment was "aris and my

impression is that he is still very aware of the Brench response to his wor#.8


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After returning to +ilno, 7ilosz wor#ed for "olish adio there, but was

transferred to +arsaw in 14-H because of his leftist sympathies in general,

and his willingness to allow Cews to broadcast in particular. +hen 0ermany

invaded "oland in 14-4, he was brieEy sent to the frontline as a radioreporter before ma#ing his way bac# to +ilno. Bollowing the oviet invasion

of 9ithuania the following year, he made a dangerous journey across oviet

lines and returned to %azi*occupied +arsaw where he found a job as a

janitor at the university, ma#ing ends meet with some blac#*mar#et trading.

/hroughout this period, he wrote and edited for underground publications,

and even underground theatre, using his grandmothers maiden name, Can

yruc.

8It was a very strange time to translate the +aste 9and, in the middle of the0erman occupation,8 he now ac#nowledges, 8but it was all part of me

gradually ac@uiring self*awareness of how my road would be diFerent to

before the war.8 /he poems he wrote directly confronting the horror of what

was going on around him * 6ampo dei Biori and A "oor 6hristian 9oo#s at the

0hetto * have become some of his most famous and inEuential wor#s. >ut

7ilosz points to another poem written in the wa#e of the failed +arsaw

uprising of 14D-, /he +orld, which was published in 14D&, as e@ually

important to him and his move away from the catastrophism of his youth to

a more philosophical and transcendent faith in the future.

+hile he has directly engaged with enormous historical and intellectual

horrors, 7ilosz has done so not as a politician, but more as a theologian,

philosopher or mystic meditating on the nature of humanity and culture. 8I

lived through the horror of the e$termination of the Cewish population in

+arsaw,8 he says, 8and I wrote about that. >ut in the same year I wrote /he

+orld, which has nothing to do with the horror of the war but instead gives

an image of the world as it should be * a counterbalance and a restoring of

dignity to the world as it was. I didnt #now at the time that I was repeating

the procedure of >la#e, who had written ongs of $perience and ongs ofInnocence. It was very dicult to liberate myself from prewar patterns and

tastes and styles, but I #new when I wrote these poems that it was a turning

point in my poetry.8

3uring the +arsaw occupation, 7ilosz married Canina 3lus#a. /hey had met

in the late -'s when they both wor#ed for the radio station. /hey had two

sons who both still live in 6alifornia: Antoni, who was born in 14DH and is a

computer programmer; and "iotr, born 14&1, who is an anthropologist.

7ilosz has one grandchild, rin, who is in her third year of a joint medical

school "h3 in %ew )or# 6ity. Canina died in 145( after suFering from


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Alzheimers disease for 1' years . In 1442 7ilosz married 6arol /higpen, who

was associate dean of the 6ollege of Arts and ciences at mory niversity

in Atlanta, 0eorgia. /hey have a home in >er#eley but over the past few

years have spent most of their time in ra#ow. eeing 7ilosz in the city is to

glimpse his place in "olish life. "eople spontaneously come up to him to say

hello and ta#e his photograph. /he image of the dourly forbidding sage * heoften loo#s dar#ly brooding in photographs * regularly dissolves into a huge,

red*chee#ed smile and rich chuc#ling.

7ilosz rst came to ra#ow in 14DD after the failed +arsaw uprising. +hen

the war ended, he became a government attachut after the war I had a very ambiguous

attitude towards the changes that were underway. !n the one hand, the

country was completely dependent on 7oscow and it was obvious that is

was a new occupation. >ut on the other hand, there were some radical

reforms and that was good. Bor a time I had a hope that things would

develop as I wanted, but, in fact, for countries such as "oland and =ungary,

that initial period was just an introductory period of talinisation.8

In 14D(, 7ilosz began wor#ing at the "olish embassy in America and says

that while he always had political doubts about the regime, they werentcrystallised until he returned home in 14D4 and saw rst*hand the direction

the regime was ta#ing. =e attended a lavish evening function attended by

most of "olands ruling elite. !n his way home, at about four in the morning,

he has said that he came across some jeeps carrying newly arrested

prisoners. 8/he soldiers guarding them were wearing sheeps#in coats, but

the prisoners were in suit jac#ets with the collars turned up, shivering from

the cold. It was then that I realised what I was part of.8

As his increasing doubts became #nown, so he fell under ocial suspicionand when he made another trip home from +ashington in 3ecember 14&',

his passport was conscated. =owever, only eight wee#s later he was

allowed to travel to "aris, where he sought political asylum. !cial

connivance has long been suspected in his escape, but for many years

7ilosz has been reluctant to discuss the details. 8>ut now it is the remote

past so it can be told,8 he says. 8/he wife of the "olish foreign minister was

a ussian woman. he helped me but she said, in my opinion a poet should

stay with his country but the decision belongs to you. >ut if you decide

otherwise, remember that you have a duty to ght him NtalinO, the

e$ecutioner of ussia. Its a very romantic story, yesP8


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=as he ever thought that she was right and he should have stayedP 87any

times I wondered what would have happened. I have no answer because

one doesnt #now oneself enough to #now how one would behave in

diFerent circumstances. 7aybe I would have made a fool of myself, li#e the

friend I describe in the 6aptive 7ind, by writing what the party desired.8 In

/he 6aptive 7ind, 7ilosz wrote that ultimately his decision came, 8not fromthe functioning of the reasoning mind, but from a revolt of the stomach. A

man may persuade himself, by the most logical reasoning, that he will

greatly benet his health by swallowing live frogs; and, thus rationally

convinced, he may swallow a rst frog, then the second; but at the third his

stomach will revolt. In the same way, the growing inEuence of the doctrine

on my way of thin#ing came up against the resistance of my whole nature.8

7ilosz says that he doesnt li#e the word defect and prefers to say that he

bro#e with the regime. egardless, his move to "aris was physically,

politically and artistically dangerous. "arisian intellectual life was

overwhelmingly pro*communist and many of 7iloszs "arisian friends were

party members. 8It is very dicult to restore today the aura and climate of

politics at that time,8 he says, 8/oday, the division seems completely

mythical. >ut among intellectuals then there was great admiration for life in

the east. /hey were very dissatised by me and I was considered, at best, a

madman. I had left the world of the future for the world of the past. /hat

made my life in "aris very dicult.8

Among the few intellectuals to assist him was Albert 6amus, but most of his

old friends shunned him, including "ablo %eruda, who went on to become

the 14H1 %obel literature laureate. =e and 7ilosz had translated each

others wor# but %eruda denounced 7ilosz in an article entitled /he 7an

+ho an Away in the 6ommunist "arty newspaper. /hings were made even

more dicult by the fact that his family had remained in America and he

was denied a visa to join them because of his association with the

communist "olish government.

=owever, despite this, his early years in "aris were productive and he

published /he eizure of "ower, the rst of his two novels; /reatise on

"oetry, a vast, poetic overview of 2'th*century "olish poetry, only recently

translated into nglish; and /he 6aptive 7ind, in which he attempted to

e$plore 8the vulnerability of the 2'th*century mind to seduction by socio*

political doctrines and its readiness to accept totalitarian terror for the sa#e

of a hypothetical future8.


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7adeline 9evine, professor of lavic literatures at the niversity of %orth

6arolina, has been translating 7iloszs prose since the late 5's and says

that, starting with /he 6aptive 7ind, there is a remar#able coherence to his

vast prose output. he adds that he once claimed that the 2'th*century

novel would have to be capacious and include all the intellectual trends of

the century, and contends that 7iloszs subse@uent prose wor#, in afragmentary way, has, in eFect, been this novel as a wor# in progress. 8In

his writing there are so many people who almost become ctional

characters,8 she says. 8Its not that they are ctionalised, but they are as

vivid as characters in a novel. =e has measured the intellectual

engagements of these people against all the trends of the 2'th century. In

some ways it has been hermetic in ma#ing the passions of "olish culture and

literary life come alive, but it has also been engaged with wider intellectual

currents. It is about the attractions of communism and socialism, and so is

often about people much li#e himself, people whose attraction to

communism came from a principled rejection of capitalism at its worst.8

/he 6aptive 7ind was the rst of 7ilosvs wor# to ma#e a signicant impact

on the west, but it threw up two obstacles to his future career. 8It was

considered by anti*communists as suspect because I didnt attac# strongly

enough the communists,8 he recalls. 8I tried to understand the processes

and they didnt li#e that. And it also created the idea, particularly in the

west, that I was a political writer. /his was a misunderstanding because my

poetry was un#nown. I have never been a political writer and I wor#ed hard

to destroy this image of myself. I didnt try to get a teaching position in

political science. I went to America as a lecturer of literature.8

7ilosz started teaching at >er#eley in 14(' and was granted tenure a year

later as professor of lavic languages and literature. =e retired in 145D. At

the time of the >er#eley campus revolution in 14(5, when the students

began to assess their professors, he was proud to receive e$cellent grades.

/hat said, he found much of the ('s student radicalism depressingly short*

sighted and familiar. 8I was rather sad to see every stupidity I had

e$perienced before being re*enacted.8

=e says that the years at >er#eley were a time of solitude that was good for

his wor# but left him feeling lonely. Briends say he can have periods of

melancholy, but is generally a highly gregarious companion who is

enthusiastic about food, drin# and conversation.89iving in ra#ow, I have

plenty of friends, but in >er#eley, while I tal#ed to colleagues and students, I

had very few friends. I was in constant correspondence with good friends in

"aris, as my friendships were based upon my poetry.8 7ilosz has alwayswritten in "olish, and it was not until 14H- that a volume of his selected


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poetry was translated into nglish. =ass has said that during this time,

7ilosz was living in, 8intolerable obscurity and loneliness. =e had to invent

the idea that there was still somebody to read his poems.8

/he sign that his reputation had changed from political essayist to poet was

the award of the %eustadt International 9iterary "rize in 14H5 * described as

the introduction to the %obel because so many laureates have won it rst.

/wo years later he received a -am phone call at his >er#eley home from a

journalist in toc#holm, telling him he had won the %obel prize. 8/he ne$t

morning, all hell bro#e loose. I tried very hard not to change my habits and I

went to my class not to brea# the routine. I tried to save myself from too

much turmoil, but it was very hard. I am a private person and have resisted

being made a public one.8

7ilosz seems to have been content to occupy this public role in "oland, but

Cerzy Carniewicz says that he may be the last in a line of "olish poets who

have acted as a spo#esperson for their society. +hile he fullled an

important moral duty to bear witness, more recently younger poets have

rebelled against this idea. 8"oets who published their rst boo#s in the late

5's and 4's have largely rejected both the ocial culture and the

underground ethos,8 e$plains Carniewicz. 8/heirs is a poetry of enormous

scepticism and distrust. It goes in fear of anything that is pretentious and

prophetic, and so they have replaced communal e$perience * which is a #eyidea in 7ilosz, and in "olish poetry generally * and instead focused on what

is uni@ue and individual and personal. As one younger poet said, there is

nothing about me in the constitution.8

+hen 7iloszs poem about the siege of arajevo was published on the front

page of the biggest*selling "olish newspaper, it was also attac#ed for

attempting to deal with a contemporary issue in a diction that had become

anachronistic. =e has also been criticised for what is seen as an over*

romantic defence of "olish and uropean culture. 8=e has criticised westernurope for its secularisation and loss of metaphysical feeling,8 says

Carniewicz. 8/his is counterpointed by his e@ually strong belief that the

metaphysical is still alive in certain parts of eastern urope. 7any younger

poets loo# with great suspicion on this, but for 7ilosz it is something that is

very much alive.8

7ilosz says he is uneasy about trying to assess contemporary "oland * 8such

a big subject8 * but ac#nowledges that the country has changed in ways he

nds dicult to recognise. 8I as# myself about the country and I cant

e$plain it. Bor instance, isnt it parado$ical that a country where most people

go to church on unday should vote for the post*communistsP >ut although

the last election to the parliament had an anti*intelligentsia tinge, I have


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never been a pessimist. Bor instance, the boo# mar#et is e$tremely lively in

"oland and there is a lively cultural life. /here are many papers and

periodicals, and I collaborate with a wee#ly 6atholic magazine here in

ra#ow.8

=e also ta#es an indulgent delight in his wor# still being read by a young

readership. =is long 14&( poem, /reatise on "oetry, has recently been

translated into nglish for the rst time. 8It has been a great pleasure to see

my poem apparently not getting old,8 he smiles. 8It is really a history of

"olish poetry in the 2'th century, in connection to history and the problems

of so*called historical necessity. And I am proud of having written a poem

that deals with historical, political and aesthetic issues even though, of

course, I #now that for students, the parts of the poem where I deal with

=egelian philosophy and 7ar$ism are, for them, completely e$otic. /hey

have such short memories.8

9ife at a glance 6zeslaw 7ilosz

>orn: Cune -', 1411, zetejnie, 9ithuania.

ducation: Lygmunt August =igh chool, +ilno; tefan >atory niversity,

+ilno.

Bamily: 7arried Canina 3lus#a 14D- Jdied 145(K, two sons; married 6arol

/higpen 1442.

6areer: "olish %ational adio 14-&*-4; "olish cultural attache in America

14D(*&1; freelance writer 14&1*('; lecturer then professor, niversity of

6alifornia, >er#eley, 14('*5D.

ome poetry collections: "oem of the Brozen /ime 14--; escue 14D&; 9ight

of 3ay 14&-; 6ity +ithout a %ame 14(4; Brom the ising of the un 14HD;

Bacing the iver 144&; 6ollected "oems 2''1.

ome other boo#s: /he 6aptive 7ind 14&-; /he eizure of "ower 14&-;

%ative ealm 14&5; A )ear of the =unter 144D.

ome awards: %eustadt International 9iterary "rize 14H5; %obel "rize for

9iterature 145'.

Documents

Milosz Auf Deutsc