THE POLISH INTELLECTUALS
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vulgarity, prudishness, and chauvinism that was cultivated by Stalinism.
Internationalism, which Stalinism combated with pseudo-patriotic cli–
ches, is looked upon with just as much suspicion by the reactionary
chauvinists. Legal abortion and the spread of information on birth
control-the latter a necessity in a country as poor and as overpopu–
lated as Poland-were attacked, before Gomulka, in the name of a
Marxist anti-Malthusianism; today they are the targets of all the Catho–
lic forces. Yesterday erotic themes, and sexual realism
in
painting and
literature were forbidden by the censorshiJr-today, it is the public that
protests against them, in the name of a need to preserve "the dignity
of Polish mothers and fathers."
Mter the October revolution it looked as though the Polish writers
could abandon the political lampoon and the pamphlet, and devote
themselves to real literary work. At the last general assembly of Polish
writers, the poet Julian Przybos spoke eloquently of the need for writers
to commit themselves
in
the struggle against Stalinism, but at the same
time made it clear that he had no illusions about the literary value
of writing done with a militant end in view. The time had now come,
said Przybos, to distinguish between bold, honest journalism and
literature: "The poets will no longer be honored merely for telling the
brutal truth; that is the task of the journalists. Henceforward we must
demand of poetry ... more than rhymed manifestoes, we must demand
of the poets works more profound and more durable than all the]'
accuse
of the journalists, however powerful they may be. Poetry is more than
that, and more difficult. . . ." Not that literature should avoid con–
temporary problems, he said; but these problems must now be treated
in depth, and tackled on authentically creative grounds.
Has there been a renascence of Polish literature since the demise
of socialist realism? Some of the pre-war writers have gone back to
their former themes. Iwaszkiewicz has recently published a long novel,
which he must have written in the office he occupies as chairman of
the Polish Peace Partisans, locking up his manuscript in a drawer every
night before going home. The novel is sensitive, subtle, "Western," as
good as most of his pre-war work; but his recent experience does not
seem to have enriched him. Aleksander Wat, one of the rare intellectual
poets of Poland, analyzes himself and the world in terms of a poetic
Imaginary Museum. His work has features in common with Eliot and
Auden. Artur Sandauer has again become Poland's best literary critic;
he writes about the new Western literature, making use of a critical
method somewhat reminiscent of Edmund Wilson's.
