644
PARTISAN REVIEW
emerged from behind the former [ron Curtain arrives here without a
complicated publication history. Yet lacking a sleuth's wits, it's often diffi–
cult to find out much about these writers' histories and the draconian
measures they took to insure their work would appear in print, even in a
samizdat
edition. It's puzzling, too, that although several of the books dis–
cussed here were bestsellers in Europe, the reputations they've achieved
abroad have had a negligible effect on their cachet here. None has
achieved the fame, captured the reading public's attention, or caused the
commotion and notoriety that variously greeted them in their native lands
or native languages.
Perhaps the most underappreciated Polish writer in exile (where some
of the best Polish literature has been written) is Gustav Herling–
Grudzinski. Never prolific, the stateless, ailing and publicity-shy Herling
has published mostly in the Paris-based Polish monthly,
Kultura.
Two of
Herling's acclaimed masterworks flicker in and out of print in America.
Diary Written
by
Night,
considered by many to be his greatest and quirkiest
work, on a level of artistry and importance with Witold Gombrowicz's
own
Diary,
is available only in Polish
(Dz iellnik Pisal1Y Noca)
and French
Uournal Ecrit la Nuit),
although there are plans for its publication in
America next year. And
A World Apart: The Journal oj a Gulag Survivor
(published here in 1951 and in 1986) is once again lamentably out of print.
In
it, Herling, who was imprisoned in "the house of the dead" at the age
of twenty, captured the essence of Stalin's gulag camps as Primo Levi did
his internment in Auschwitz: he forgot nothing and rendered a first-per–
son account so shattering that its message, scenes, and moments of both
hope and terror are archetypal and unforgettable.
The spiritual torment and bedeviling isolation that plague Herling's
imprisoned and ailing companions in
A World Apart
reappear in each of
The Island's
religious allegories. Although his work is saturated with histo–
ry's mistakes and traumas, Herling's deepest sympathy lies with the soli–
tary sufferer and the intricate workings of the human heart as it grapples
with despair and the realization that "in a man's life only solitude can
bring him absolute inward peace and restore individuality."
Initially published in Polish in France, in 1960 and 1963, the first two
stories in
The island
were originally jointly titled "The Wings of the
Altar," while the third tale, "The Second Coming," takes its title from
the Yeats poem. (Oddly, there is no mention in the recent edition that
this is also
The island's
second coming in the English language; it was
previously published here in 1967.) The title story begins in 1950 and, like
a marioshka doll, opens up into another tale that leads us into an ancient
time eerily resembling the present. The island, "a three-hour boat ride
from Naples," served, we learn, during the Second World War as a shelter
