K.
A.
lelenski
THE DILEMMA Of THE
POLISH INTELLECTUALS
The Polish intelligentsia today is in a unique situation. Its re–
bellion, unlike that of the Hungarian intellectuals (the course of which
Fran~ois
Fejto analyzed in PR's Winter 1957 issue), has been successful,
it has become emancipated, but, as a result of a combination of excep–
tional circumstances, it has remained within the Communist bloc and
the Communist ideology. Polish writers and intellectuals have remained
Communists for "reasons of state" which the entire nation understands
instinctively, and now they are deciding what Communism is. Questions
are being raised, not just within their own narrow intellectual circles,
but in literary magazines, in cultural weeklies, and in public lectures;
out of the discussion a new phenomenon is emerging--Gomulkism.
The Polish writers rebelled against a factitious ideological com–
mitment. But they did not retreat into a literary Arcadia or into any
ivory tower of art for art's sake. For their rebellion was itself an ideo–
logical commitment- this time a sincere one, and one freely chosen.
"We lied, we pledged ourselves morally to a gigantic lie encompassing
the whole of life"-this is what the Polish writers must be saying to
themselves. The act of turning against this lie must also have bearing
upon the whole of life. The poets, novelists, essayists, and playwrights
who put their work at the service of a lie that contaminated all of
existence cannot return to their personal themes: they have become
moralists, sociologists, economists, political theorists. With a Central
Committee and a government busy solving a thousand urgent problems,
compelled to take a pragmatic attitude and suspicious of ideological
constructions that get in the way of action, the intellectuals in Poland
have again assumed their favorite role-that of transforming the in–
credible confusion of life into something legible and intelligible.
The Communists in control in the Soviet Union and the vassal
Communists of the West are watching this process with trepidation.
In their world, where everything, from a governmental decision to an
occasional verse printed in a provincial newspaper, has to fit into a
necessary, logical scheme, an interpretation of existence that admits of
multiplicity and divergences seems shocking.
