CONVERSATIONS IN WARSAW
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daughter, a pretty apple-cheeked girl, carne in for a moment, and
it was clear that her parents took great pride in her. Mother and
daughter spoke in French (the girl knew only a little English, and
Mme. Urban, whose English was better, preferred to speak French
with me), and they discussed a forthcoming vacation in the Black
Sea area in Russia. The girl was interested in mathematics and art,
and between her and her mother, it seemed, there was intellectual
conflic~.
To the mother's gentle dismay, the daughter had an intense
love for Picasso; the mother's taste was more classical. "Such is the
dialectic of the generations.
It had been a remarkable evening, the exchanges quick and
sharp. Urban had 'been frank about the growing intellectual re–
straints, and had not tried to deny or pettifog. Acknowledging the
facts, he had justified the new course simply on the ground of
necessity. At least I hadn't been subjected to slippery evasions. He
had spoken, almost, like a "disenchanted cardinal." Yet in these
strange, Brechtian days, disenchantment is a mask for belief.
