536
PARTISAN REVIEW
sheer improvisation which is necessary in coping with the social chaos
which their own countries are now undergoing.
It would be preposterous for American intellectuals to even
try
to tell
you how to think or write, but we
call,
I believe, suggest ways of dealing
with the social and psychological complexities that flow from chaotic
change. For on some level or the other, chaotic change has marked
every phase of our history as a nation.
Thus I believe that we can offer useful suggestions as to how Euro–
pean intellectuals might maintain hope in their national ideals while
dealing with such matters as the lack of food and materials that feed their
national economies. After all, we went through the Great Depression;
during which, thanks to the New Deal, the private foundations for the
arts and humanities, and so on, we not only endured, but emerged with
a more optimistic view of the future . But during the chaos created by
the Depression , the transcendent ideals on which this nation was founded
were operating
to
maintain a balance between our ideals and our reality.
And it was the tenacity of our belief in those ideals that allowed the in–
dividual citizen to make choices and give creative thrust to his energies.
That of course is the view of an inside-outsider who believes that
when you see those who exercise power in the country you love violat–
ing its ideals, you're obligated to criticize them and do whatever one
can to correct it. And when it works, it works. And when it doesn't,
you are obligated to inform your nation's leaders in as many and as elo–
quent ways as you can, and accept the punishment that goes with telling
the truth. For that, after all, is your role in society.
Qll estioll:
Mr. Milosz, as a high school student twenty-five years ago, I
read in a class your book
The Captive Milld,
and it made a very great im–
pression on all of us. It certainly was the first time I was introduced to
the problems of intellectuals in the Stalinist empire.
In
your remarks, you
spoke about the isolation you experienced as someone who was, in
effect, bringing bad news from the Stalinist empire rather than the myth
Western intellectuals wanted to hear. Specifically, what kind of reaction
in the West did your book get?
Czeslaw Milosz:
At that time I was in Paris, and I was considered
something between an insane man and an agent of American imperialism
who had been bought by the CIA. So I was caught between those two
versions, in the intellectual milieu. The reaction in America to my book
was very peculiar. Even Dwight Macdonald wondered in an article why
my book had sold three thousand copies.
