208
PARTISAN REVIEW
DM:
In
Midsummer,
you say: "No language is neutral." Could you expand a
little on this?
DW: Well, I think the surrounding text may help. Obviously, when you en–
ter language, you enter a kind of choice which contains in it the political his–
tory of the language, the imperial width of the language, the fact that you're
either subjugated by the language or you have had to dominate it. So lan–
guage is not a place of retreat, it's not a place of escape, it's not even a place
of resolution. It's a place of struggle.
DM:
So, particularly in colonial countries,
any
choice of words - this is an
exaggeration - is, in a sense, a political choice, or there is a stance involved?
DW:
Well, in a way, it's only the proportion of stress that matters. It's surely
more theatrical for people to say to what is called the third world: Well, you
have inherited this language and how do you feel
in
it, and that sort of non–
sense. But obviously in a country of tyranny, there is a political choice in–
volved. The next word you write could get you injail, really. You avoid the
next word or you put it down at the risk of whatever happened to all sorts
of poets in that totalitarian regime. And, in a sense, if you expand that and
intensify it within yourself, and you make yourself your own regime, when
you're as dictatorial and as threatening to yourself as you are, it's the defi–
ance of that inner regime that makes you choose, and not cower, in the
courage of using the right word.
If you use a political metaphor, I would say that every poet is impris–
oned in a system that is himself, that he is
jailed
in himself, and that that ef–
fort to get out of that jail is the struggle he has or the defiance he has in
having the guts to use the next word without the safety or the cliche of rep–
etition. And that inner political action of the choice of the next word, ifit were
broadened and taken out into a visible arena, is not any different from being
on the witness stand in front of a regime. And the regime that is rigid is the
one that says inside himself: Are you conforming to a tradition which is a
regime or being
outre
and fake revolutionary to astonish the regime, or are
you simply writing as honestly as you can without self-astonishment, without
self-congratulation, without self-heroism or even martyrdom, and continuing
by the process and the line that you think is true to the language that you are
working in? The inner prison that exists is one that's outside and yet is inside
the totalitarian regime. I consider that to be obvious in our time. And
whether it's Mandlestam or Herbert or Milosz or even Seamus Heaney in
the conflict in Ireland, there
is
an inner prison that one recognizes in oneself,
and one
is
both judge and prisoner. But you don't plead and you don't whine;
you state the condition.
DM:
And, in a sense, you're always guilty.
DW:
Well, guilty until the next time [laughter]. But, no, you don't stay in
guilt.
I really think that - not for the poet but obviously for the race in the twenti–
eth century - poetry has never been more urgent than it is now. What we
