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PARTISAN REV IEW
have become hi s boyhood hero who possesses th e mag ical gift of fli ght.
Just like Selma Lagerl of's Nil s, he " fli es above th e ea rth and looks at it
fi'om above but at th e same time sees it in eve ry detail." Aga in and again
Milosz returns in thi s j ournal to the task th at seems to obsess him: to reco rd
and interpret the poli ti cal and psyc hological temperature o f two cri tical
eras, the interwa r decades and the immedi ate pos twar yea rs. With its cas t
of hundreds (Ii terall y) and its fo rgivin g loose structure,
A Yenr
(!f
th e Hlillter
is like an intermittent novel teemin g with charac ters who are evoked fo r a
moment, only to vanish into the memo ri es from whi ch th ey are conjured .
Who are they'
T he central charac ter of Mil osz's prose writin gs is Mil osz himself. Hi s
vas t acquaintance over a lo ng life provides a link to almos t eve ryone men–
tio ned in the book who was alive during hi s lifetime. T he two main
exceptions to thi s rul e o f personal acquaintance are th e tyrants whose
reigns o f terror frame and defin e the century, Hitl er and Stalin . [n fa ct, if
an indi vidual is menti oned repea tedly o r at length in
Th eA
BC
Book
as well
as in
A Year of the Hlillter,
he (much less frequently,
she)
is central to Mil osz's
universe and hence to hi s evolving nove l. If we think o f
A
Year
(!f
the Hlillter
as the central text o f thi s hypo th eti cal novel of the century and
Th e A BC
Book
as a corrobora ti ng second pass at getting its sto ry to ld, thi s tes t makes
sense. T he evolving novel I am positing here fi ts the cri teria enumerated
by Mil osz in hi s descripti o n of th e idea l novel o f the century. It would have
to be an internatio nal novel, he said . Certainly the ac ti o n, the charac ters,
and th e references to hi sto ri cal events are internati o nal in scope, th ough
defini tely no t global. Europe, arranged along its Li thuanian - Po li sh-French
axis in th e shadow o f its Sovi et neighbo r, and No rth Ameri ca are its main
locales. Time is fluid , multi - laye red . Transience and simultaneity of
remembered time are important themes. Th e main twe nti eth -ce ntury hi s–
to rical peri ods are, as o ne would expec t, th e thirti es, the wartime
occupati on, the pos twa r yea rs o f hi gh Stalini sm- but, just as in the lyri c
poems, vivid memo ri es surface from th e earl y chil dhood yea rs. There are
pl enty of colo rful exceptional personaliti es, mos tl y writers and public
intell ectuals, but o nly a min o ri ty would be immedi atel y fa miliar to the
general reader: Sartre, Camu s, perhaps Simone Weil , Dwight Macdonald,
Mary McCa rthy. Mos t of th e charac ters are Po li sh but many o f them are
no doubt as unfa mili ar to mos t Poli sh readers today as to Ameri cans.
R.obespierre, the Byrski s, Nela and 130 leslaw Mi ciri ski , the shunned nov–
eli st J 6zef Mackiewicz-all with compli ca ted fates and painful cho ices
imposed by hi sto ry. If we have bee n reading Milosz's prose work fo r some
time all these littl e-known fi gure become familiar to us. Like charac ters in
a leisurely novel they appea r and reappea r, li ving th eir li ves o nl y on the
plane th eir autho r- narrator wi shes to explore. Th ey live th e life o f the
