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PARTISAN REVIEW
functionary, who with sadistic pleasure dealt you a blow in the face,
the meaning of the essay by Rozanov, describing the most signifi–
cant conflict in European culture as the antagonism of the man who
wields the whip to the man who is whipped. And you will not explain
to him that your meeting is another incarnation of that antagonism.
You will not talk to him at all.
Today, if you shout at the functionaries, their pupils will reveal
a gleam of fear. This fear and uncertainty you will notice under their
helmets, through their uniforms, from behind the police shields
imported from Japan. And you will easily realize that this fear of the
functionary is for you a certificate of hope-of your hope .
It is over this that the battle is being waged: functionaries want
to squeeze out of us a declaration that we have abandoned hope . The
functionaries realize that he who declares his loyalty to the system of
lies and coercion rejects hope for a Poland in which lies and coercion
would be condemned. These declarations are supposed to transform
us into servile, base creatures who will not revolt in the name of free–
dom and dignity. But by refusing to engage in conversation with the
functionary, by refusing to cooperate, by rejecting the status of a col–
laborator and informer, by choosing the human condition of a politi–
cal prisoner, you are preserving hope. You throw this-your declara–
tion of hope-like a sealed bottle into the sea-from your prison into
the world, among people.
If
you tell at least one person, you have
won.
You know how keen is the feeling of desolation. You think that
you are helpless in the face of this police-an army machine that was
set in motion on a December's night. But you know, as you stand
alone, bound in handcuffs, with tear gas in your eyes, facing func–
tionaries waving their guns, you know-and you see this clearly
against the dark, starless nigh t-you know, thanks to your favorite
poet, that "the avalanche changes its course according to the stones
over which it flows." And you want to be that stone which will
change the course of events.
Even if it is to be but one of the stones thrown onto the
entrenchment.
