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PARTISAN REVIEW
men we did not talk about embarrassing things. Why, then? I con–
ducted a kind of investigation - not in order to write a book, but
simply to know. I asked people with whom I had good relations,
without any intent to humiliate them . Answers varied, but all were
untrue and shifty. I feel ill at ease in the role of the prosecutor; I
would rather be a defense counsel. I shall just say that in the case of
a trial- not the Gdansk trial, of course, but a trial in the court of
public opinion - my indictment would read as follows: the accused
a)acted
out of fear and ill-will; b)they acted out of pride which,
paradoxically, was the product of their fear;
c)they
acted out of
ulterior motives. These are terrible charges. The defense would re–
peat the claims of the accused: the interwar period was awful-a
kind of fascism. It is true that after the Marshall's death things
turned pretty nasty in Poland. I saw it as a high school student. I
was politically aware at that time, although I do not know what I
was . At first I was probably a Pilsudskiite . Later I joined the liberal
camp -liberal in a certain sense - and that's what I have remained
until today. A colleague sitting with me at the same desk was a com–
munist sympathizer. Because of him I read the
Communist Manifesto .
A rather well-written piece . There is a prophetic sentence there: «A
specter hovers over Europe . . .. " It is a good metaphor-a specter.
It is an unreal , spectral system, and therefore so difficult to fight. I
deny it any ontological status. My dearest friend Adam Michnik
asked me: Why didn't you resist? Because there was nobody to
polemicize with, and nothing to polemicize about. There was no
language . The language has been sold, twisted - just as in Hitler's
time. Well, let's not dwell on it any more .
JT:
Pure negativism ... this is the definition of Satan.
ZH:
Pure negativism ... this is also a theological problem.
If
God
is love, why did He allow evil
to
flourish? Let's return to our grave
charges: the fear, the ill will. Let us not be fool ed. Those who re–
turned from the Soviet Union could not claim ignorance .
JT:
The East had already been there twice.
ZH:
And they were the founders of the Writers' Union and the
architects of the new cultural policy . I believe that the subject of cul–
ture is important, but one has to mention more general circum–
stances . There was a visible gap, then , between the elite and the sen–
timents of the nation . These people believed that the nation is a
foolish crowd to be led by the enlightened few. Such are the begin–
nings of every fascist system: a self-appointed elite imposes upon the
rest its own vision of the radiant future . I am not speaking about the
