AN INVIS1J3LE ROPE
17
Bibliography of Reprints from the Literary Institute in Paris lists 153 book
editions of Milosz alone for the years 1977-1990. Numerous bibliographical
works regularly update this documentation. We know that, next to
TIle
Captive Mi/1d
(26 reprints), various selections of Milosz's poems (27 reprints)
were most popular. Then came
City Without a Name
(12),
Native Realm (10),
Treatise on Poetry and Treatise
011
Morality
(9), and
From the Rising
if
the Sun (9).
In reading the poems, people were convinced that they were reading the
greatest living poet. NOWa, the oldest and most important of Polish under–
ground publishers, first published a one-volume edition of "Treatise on
Poetry" and "Treatise on Morali ty" in 1978. Milosz cast that invisible rope
from his isolation on Grizzly Peak to Polish students, intellectuals, and even
workers scrambling for the sometimes almost unreadable but priceless edi–
tions of his poems. He remembered the people who enabled him to reach
his most important public. He expressed his gratitude by inviting his pub–
lishers-from Paris as well as from Warsaw-to the celebrations in
Stockholm and he dedicated a part of his acceptance speech to them.
Polish society accepted the Nobel Prize with joyful surprise as the second
miracle after the election of the Polish Pope. The birth of Solidarity occurred
simultaneously but had nothjng to do with them, although Communist pro–
paganda tried to make everyone believe it was the
result
of a plot aj.med at
socialism. Many people now heard of Milosz for the first time. The triumph
of the poet radically changed his relation to readers in his homeland and thus
turned him into a national bard, prophet, oracle, and conscience of the nation.
Milosz's poem "You Who Wronged" became the hymn of Poles
oppressed for decades; it was reprinted on Solidarity flyers, posters, calen–
dars, and pennants, and inscribed on the base of the Monument to Fallen
Shipyard Workers (killed during the protests in 1970) in Gdansk. When
Milosz brought flowers to place on the monument, which bears a fragment
from a psalm in Milosz's translation, "The Lord will give strength unto his
people," he was greeted by an enormous banner with the words, "The
People Will Give Strength Unto Their Poet," and the shipyard print shop
published a selection of Milosz's poems and essays under the same tide.
The first book officially published in Poland after the Nobel Prize,
From the Rising oj the Sun
(1980), was published by Znak in Krakow. In the
year 1981, PIW, Warsaw's publishing house, put out a small volume of
Selected Poems,
Czytelnik published an enormous
Poems,
and Wydawnictwo
Literackie published
The Issa V&/Iey
in an edition of one hundred thousand.
In the years that followed came
Lalld oj Ulro, The Man Among Scorpions,
Hy/ll/1
if
the Pearl,
and other works. Because certain ti des, such as
The
Captive Mi/1d
and
The Sciz ure oj POlllcr,
made party operatives choke, and
others, such as Czytelnik's edition of
Witlless to Poetry,
were so badly man–
gled by censorship, "the complete" Milosz was simultaneously appearing
