Intellectuals' Notes
from the Underground
William Phillips :
This is the next to the last lap of our intellectual
marathon, and we are going to have a good program this morning. The
subject is a little more internal than some of our previous topics. The ti–
tle is taken , as you all know, from "Notes from the Underground," but
Dostoevsky is going to be somewhat more politicized than usual. The
first speaker is Czeslaw Milosz.
Czeslaw Milosz: I
have no paper, so I'm going to improvise. First, I
would say that a writer is a very vulnerable creature, to whom at least
one or two readers are essential. It's very difficult to write without
readers. And so, dissidence is largely a problem of a community of dissi–
dents. The difference between dissidence and resistance is very difficult to
establish. Let me use an example. After martial law was introduced in
Poland, Adam Michnik was a dissident and he spent several years in
prison, but there was a community of individuals who were against the
government. Adam Michnik was aware of that and could feel that he
wasn't alone, that there were others who thought alike. This is a
tremendous force that gives great hope . In my earlier remarks, I spoke
about dissidents in the West. Of course, the phenomenon can be de–
scribed briefly by what happened to Albert Camus, who was a dissident.
Jean - Paul Sartre, after Camus published
L'homme revolte (The Rebe0,
wrote: If you don't like Communism and capitalism, I know one place
for you, th e Galapagos Islands. That was the mood of the epoch. I my–
self, being a dissident in this respect, was not alone because I had a few
people for whom I could write, and having the approval of even one
friend is very important. As a poet completely isolated and not translated
into other languages , I relied upon the opinion of a few faithful friends.
In this way, there arises the phenomenon of a certain community in
dissidence. And there are many ambiguities connected with that.
In 1984 during martial law in Poland, I published an article entitled,
"Noble-mindedness, Alas ." Of course, I approved completely of the
dissidents' line of resistance in Poland, but, nevertheless, I felt that a
certain public opinion had already been formed and that all the writers
were subjected to the pressure of that opinion; they were compelled to
