258
PARTISAN REVIEW
Among the younger writers, something is lacking. The well-behaved,
talented, and intelligent young men who came of age during the last
decade succumbed to temptation, as writers. They were encouraged by
the schools and universities, snatched up by the "editors and the state
publisher, and the shadow of socialist realism is present in their work,
even when they did not conform to the Zhdanov rules. But despite the
general grisaille of the captive literature, some of these men seemed
very gifted. What an excellent poet, this Rozewicz, one thought, if
only he were permitted to let himself go. In his choice of themes, in
the wealth of his imagery, his boldness seemed to border on heresy.
But his poems today are no better than they were under the Zhdanov
terror. He seems merely adaptable, eager for approval. Possibly his past
work spontaneously availed itself of that minuscule margin of freedom
that exists under any terror, even that of Zhdanov (for
if
a man can
write
spontaneously
in conformity with the demands of the moment, he
can also write to order). Or is it that Rozewicz, having tried for so
long to produce authentic poetry which would at the same time be
acceptable, is no longer capable of any other creative approach?
In the Polish literary press today, one is struck by the dullness of
the articles that denounce dullness, the banal language used to expose
banality, the dead seriousness with which the right to be humorous is
demanded. For all their disgust with literary grayness and mediocrity,
the young Polish writers seem still to be suffering from that very
malaise. Often their d':!nunciations are so well-mannered and so well–
written that one wonders whether they care about anything. Take any
young man who comes of age around 1949. He has talent-that is to
say, passions, a view of the world, and a taste for expressing himself.
But everything around him is bent on leveling his tastes. He is told that
what he would like to write springs from a petty-bourgeois mentality.
He stops loving what he loves. He no longer loves himself. Does he
love instead the dialectical construction which becomes the projection
of his personality, the didactic vision of the world he is told to express?
He does not. This may account for the deterioration of standards among
those who, by virtue of their amiable social qualities and their capacity
for adapting themselves, were the "good pupils" of the past period.
Strange as it may seem, the only young writers with anything like
a personal vision in Poland today are a few young maniacs-bad boys,
as it were, maladjusted, obsessed-who began to write without the least
hope of being published. There is the poet Miron Bialoszewski. He was
not made for the social world, let alone the "socialist" world. While
his contemporaries-he was only twenty in 1945-became "writers,"
