DARIUSZ TOLCZYK
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inseparable: the contemplation of beauty by the artist was an intuitive
contact with truth. For Olesha, the artist must choose between truth and
beauty. And this choice led him to his artistic self-destruction.
History was not particularly cruel to Olesha. Of course, he did not
play any important part in the official literature of his country, which up
to the 1950s kept the ladder of success inaccessible to him. What was left
him
was the role of a spectator who had played on the stage a long time
ago and who was remembered by few. Olesha later wrote quite a few
self-centered literary pieces in which he referred to the works of his
youth. After West Belorussia was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939,
Olesha had an opportunity to visit his parents in the town of Grodno.
He decided not to go: he had always wanted people in Grodno to no–
tice him on the street and to say, "This is the son of the Oleshas, a fa–
mous writer." It seemed to him that the time had not come yet. This
feeling probably never abandoned him.
Coming in
Partisan Review:
• Robert Wistrich:
Jewish Intellectuals in Vienna
• Elizabeth Dalton on Henry James
• Anatole Broyard:
A Memoir
• Irving Louis Horowitz on Morris R. Cohen
• Peter Shaw on
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Alexandre Etkind:
Trotsky and Psychoanalysis
• Dorothea Straus onJerzy Kosinski
• J. Anthony Lukas:
Integration in Boston
• Education Beyond Politics: A Symposium
