POETRY IN EXILE
589
metaphors to make it easier to swallow, was precisely what my audience
did want me to provide.
This paradoxical phenomenon accounts for the fact that the exiled
poet, writer or artist who is both genuinely original in his work as well
as popular with his audience of fellow exiles is such a rare bird, a
contra–
dictio i/l adiecto.
Of course, popularity does not go well with innovation
anywhere in art, but the literary life of an emigre community has its own
special rules and restrictions. People who, for whatever reasons, find
themselves cut off, possibly forever, from their homeland, tend to be in–
secure.
In
a foreign country they are doomed to suffer disrespect from
the natives; their national identity threatens to melt away, and they are
beset with a plethora of challenges, including having to communicate in
a language not their own. They do not want to be made fun of by their
own contemporary poets, writers, and artists, or to be exhorted to go
against what they perceive as their cultural traditions.
The examples of three great Polish authors who spent the best part
of their lives in exile, the novelist Witold Gombrowicz, the poet Kaz–
imierz Wierzynski, and the poet and essayist whom we all know, Czes–
law Milosz, serve to show us the consequences of not having given their
fellow emigres what they wanted. Gombrowicz was the
hete noire
to at
least a part of the emigre community because he refused to relinquish the
irreverence of his writing and was never afraid to make fun of his coun–
try's most beloved stereotypes. Wierzynski became a first-rate poet only
after he radically rejected his earlier traditional, patriotic style and de–
cided to be himself, even at the cost of diminished popularity. Milosz has
never shunned difficulty and intellectual complexity. As a result, before
1980 he had many more ardent followers in Poland itself than in the
emigre community, even though it was precisely in Poland that his books
were blacklisted.
If the simple act of following one's artistic credo puts the poet at
such odds with his fellow exiles, then what can be said about situations
that force him to take a public stance in regard to specific "political" is–
sues? Invariably, the poet's craving for the concrete, the tangible, the in–
dividual puts him on a collision course with the abstract, collective, and
generalization-prone attitude of a typical "politician" - unless the poet
chooses not to soil his hands with "politics" at all. I have a vivid mem–
ory from the first few weeks after the imposition of martial law in
Poland, when I chanced to encounter a prominent American political
scientist. We were discussing the situation in Poland, when
r
suddenly
realized that neither of us understood the other's train of thought.
AJ–
though we were both speaking English, Poland meant to me the people
whom
r
had left there and who were perhaps at that moment being shot
