Enrique Krauze
AN INTERVIEW WITH LESZEK KOLAKOWSKI
Following
nry
interview with Leszek Kolakowski in his
room at All Souls College, Sir Isaiah Berlin referred to an anecdote about the
well-known Polish philosopher. Berlin had asked, ''How are you?" To which
Kolakowski replied, "Well, you see, England is an island in Europe; Oxford is
an island in England, All Souls is an island in Oxford, and I am an island in
All Souls."
He must havefelt more isolated that winter. It was exactly ayear since the
Polish government had decided to crush Solidarity. Walesa was confined, and
the intellectuals of Kor, who were Kolakowski's friends, lived clandestinely or
were imprisoned. Once he himself had suffered persecution, but the end of the
Polish spring must have been particularly painful. None ofthe earlier liberation
uprisings in kidnapped Poland had given rise to such intense hopes.
This perhaps explains the somber tone of Kolakowski when I saw him.
But the tone did not obscure the clarity and the sharp irony of his thought. He
had Just published his book
Religion,
and the conversation went through re–
ligious byways. But he did not talk about his books,
The Keys of the Sky
or
his
Conversations with the Devil.
He talked ofthe night that brought about
the Polish night.
EK:
It
is often said that Marxism is now, not unlike Christianity
was in the Middle Ages, an intolerant and zealous faith, a
multistate and a church . To what extent do you think these
parallels are historically valid?
LK:
I think the parallel is valid only to a limited extent. The dif–
ferences are perhaps more important than the similarities. What I
have in mind is, first of all, that Marxism in its Leninist
ideological forms has always had a much larger ambition than the
Church, however intolerant it might have been. The principle of
the division between ecclesiastic and secular authorities has
always been admitted in the Church, even though there were
always disagreements in the Church about where exactly the line
between the two ran . The principle itself, of course , was based
Editor's Note: This interview first appeared in the April 1985, #101 , issue of
Vuelta.
