CZESLAW MILOSZ
481
uniqueness of the way good and evil is blended in each individual is
therefore all the more astonishing. Exploring my psychology will yield
nothing; in any event, I am unable
to
do it. Especially since there is, of
course, a link between
The Captive Mind
and my poem "To Myself in an
Album for the Year 1950."
February
24, 1988.
It
cannot be ruled out that our entire way of
thinking about the history of religion demands a fundamental change.
Centuries of burning faith uniting the peasant, the artisan, and the the–
ologian, of religious enthusiasm and dedication, may be, to a great ex–
tent, the creation of later retrospective imaginings.
In
many countries the
Christianity of the masses of people was dubious and the custom of at–
tending church did not mean that the faithful could have answered the
simplest catechism questions.
In
the sixteenth, and even in the seven–
teenth, century the Lithuanian countryside was Christian in name only.
But even France, which was converted to Christianity so much earlier,
had a large urban population in the eighteenth century consisting of
poor people who knew nothing about any kind of religion and whose
existence explains the fervor with which during the Revolution the heads
of the saints on cathedral portals were smashed. Mikhailovsky, criticizing
Dostoevsky for his belief in the profound piety of the Russian peasant,
argued that the Russian peasant was an atheist by nature. These examples,
the first that come to mind, lead to certain suspicions: the history of re–
ligion, like history in general, bears the mark of the "learned caste." The
splendor of architecture, painting, and music constructed an image of
Christian civilization that was to a certain degree above the heads of av–
erage people, who are usually preoccupied with their earthly affairs, and
it is impossible to draw any clear divisions here, just as one cannot isolate
the magnificent temples of Nara and Kyoto from the amazing mixture
of traditions that is called Japan.
It
is possible, then, that the various re–
straints that have hindered religion in the past (pagan customs, poverty,
illiteracy) find their counterpart today in other restraints, so that a gen–
eral reckoning would end up in a tie.
The "death of God," however, struck at the learned caste, and then
philosophy, science, and art went their own way, no longer concerned
with the opinions of theologians; and that is a fundamental difference.
It
is here, in this parting of the ways, that I see the chief problematic of
modern poetry.
Poetry in place of religion; summoned, that is, by the same needs
that turn man to religion. Such a formula would be accurate, but it is
too general and can embrace divergent tendencies. Mallarme is not the
