CZESLAW MILOSZ
473
of the transition of the masses from oral culture to a culture inculcated
in school. The consumption of one's native literature as "national her–
itage." Confirmation of this in my own education. Professor
Chrzanowski's textbook of Polish literature was the most ordinary na–
tionalistic indoctrination.
What end do we who work in language serve? Is it inconceivable
that an aircraft carrier be named
Pl/shkin?
Or a submarine
Dostoevsky?
Or
a spaceship to conquer distant planets
Gogol?
Poor Gogol. He didn't
want that. He didn't know. And do we know how we will be used? ..
October
4, 1987.... Fascination with the duality of spirit and body, the
metaphysical side of twentieth-century poetry. The torment, the bitter
remorse expressed in it are most interesting; that is why it has outraced
theology and philosophy, which have lost the gift of touching on ulti–
mate things. Within this circle of poetry is meditation on time, the mys–
tery of time - the greatest of all mysteries according to Simone Weil.
Everything, probably, that makes poetry similar to pre-Socratic "naive"
seeking belongs here....
October 20,
1987. To look back and recall the titles of one's books,
which fill many shelves in their translations into various languages. Thus a
miser, often in an agitated state, counts and recounts his thalers.
Although, to be sure, "no one knows the paths to posterity" and one
must include one's mistakes in the reckoning. Voltaire valued his poetry
above everything he wrote, but who today connects his name with po–
etry? And Boetius, for example, writing his
De Consolatiorte
in prison, did
not know that he would be remembered centuries later because of this
writing that he did for himself alone. I do not know what will
"remain" after me, as the saying goes. For over thirty years I have been
watching the development of
The Captive Mind
into the status of a
"classic," helped, to be sure, by Jane's splendid English translation. For
me, it was a peripheral product, rather like the theological treatise of a
Reformation poet. The same with
The Land oj Ulro.
Whether it will last
or not is a matter of complete indifference to me, although on one
point - this critical test - I am not indifferent: Were we really struggling
against resistance or succumbing to a flabby dream? See Jeanne Hersch's
L'Etre etlaJorme.
Aside from that, the only important thing is the extent
to which a person has "acted up" in his field; I did a lot of splashing, I
think. "To yearn, to act, and to pass on; the rest is night."
The Captive Mind,
painful, written out of an inner compulsion, was
conceived in prayer. Were it not for my piety as a child raised in
