CZESLAW MILOSZ
475
Brie-Comte-Robert, and later in Montgeron - was always on the edge.
It
wasn't until 1960 that Berkeley guaranteed our stability. They, how–
ever, the dissidents, received honors, fellowships; most important, they
were accepted, not treated as lepers like me.
Singer started the series of Nobel Prizes for emigres. But when I
learned of my friends' efforts Oelenski, Kolakowski), I didn't take it all
too seriously because in the past emigres didn't stand a chance. Oust
once, long ago, Bunin.) Nonetheless, the awards have been raining
down: Milosz, Canetti, now Brodsky.
The pleasure that I derive from this memoir: along with myoId in–
clination to extract the essence (great events, currents, ideas), this time I
am yielding to a fabric woven of specific people, of old and new events,
which is, perhaps for this very reason, closer to the tonalities (to frag–
ments) of poetry...
November
2, 1987.... On the beach I read an internal German discus–
sion about the history of Germany and its responsibility for the crimes of
1933-1945. They are incapable of seeing themselves from the outside,
through the eyes of non-Germans. Thus, the eternal question: How
could it be possible? But if they turned into Poles or Russians for even a
moment (which they are prevented from doing by a lack of imagina–
tion), they would understand a great deal. For Hitlerism was not such an
obvious caesura. Both before and after Hitler they have been ruled by
contrasts: clean-dirty, respectable-not respectable, light-dark, high-low,
cultured-barbaric. The second half of these contrasting pairs began at
Germany's eastern border. And even the "final solution" must have
originated in their revulsion at Polish, or Eastern, Jews ....
November
17, 1987. I try to read contemporary American poetry consci–
entiously. It's understandable that where there are thousands of poets the
overwhelming majority cannot be worth very much, though they pro–
vide an incentive and nourishment for the few, just a handful; it's the
same everywhere. Something similar is happening in modern painting and
the results are similar, too, because the paintings afford little pleasure.
One can say about these poets that their technique is first-rate but
that they have nothing to write about. Their "life experience" shows
through every line of verse; it is the life of lecturers on university cam–
puses or in high schools, and what they describe most frequently is their
family life complications, their own or heard about in the neighborhood
bar.
It
is a common, monotonous reality, free of historical earthquakes;
at most, it includes one or two earthquakes in a literal sense. Nothing
