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ARTISAN REVIEW
another tale to shock the bourgeoisie?
Through the years, it seemed to me that Kosinski's oral sagas were
altering, the Gypsy being replaced by the Jewish survivor of the
Holocaust. But in my view, he remained a loner, affiliated with no
group, without any shared history, descended from his own book,
The
Painted Bird,
unindebted to what is generally called the factual.
Now, he often acted as chairman, fundraiser and orator for charita–
ble events. He was effective as president of International PEN and on be–
half of Amnesty International; many a political prisoner might thank
him
for his freedom. Furthering Eastern European literature in America be–
came a mission, and just as once a dedicated socialist evoked the name of
Karl Marx, Kosinski called upon Bruno Schulz, the late Polish author
and victim of the Nazis. One evening, from my place in an auditorium, I
observed Kosinski on the podium, behind a microphone, delivering a
money-raising speech for liberated Czechoslovakia. His voice was rasping,
weaker, the words less staccato, but he appeared as stylish as ever. Yet
like a nimbus over his shoulder I saw a different figure : a Polish school–
boy, wearing an old-fashioned visored cap and an adult's overcoat several
sizes too large for him - from a pre-Holocaust photographic image
caught by Roman Vishnyac's camera. Images of the ghetto population
still unaware of its approaching fate, they break our hearts, and from our
safe niche in place and time, we want to scream to warn the innocents.
The vision of the schoolboy faded, and the renowned author stood
alone on the stage.
I read in
The New York Times
the account of Jerzy Kosinski's
macabre suicide. He was found dead lying in his bathtub, his head bound
inside a plastic shopping bag, his chosen implement for suffocation. I
vi–
sualized his dark face showing through the transparent material; and it
brought to mind the creations of the artist Christo; the bridges of the
Seine wrapped in plastic shrouds, while the stone gargoyles on the
Cathedral of Notre Dame survey the scene mutely. It was a shock to
learn, later, that this way of taking one's life was not a final demonic
gesture on the part of Jerzy Kosinski but the method recommended by
the Hemlock Society. What had triggered his death? I remembered being
told by a survivor that the burden of Holocaust memories never grows
lighter and may, at any moment, become too heavy to endure. That ar–
rogant presence who trod the ground so lightly, was he the product of
his own tricks and my fancy? Did I, as a Jew, wish to invest one of my
own kind with supernatural invincibility? During all those years had I
overlooked a human being? In any case, I am certain that Jerzy Kosinski
would have scorned compassion. I hasten to reread
The Painted Bird.
