AN INVISIBLE ROPE
19
Adam Michnik:
I
was part of the underground publishing house that first
printed Czeslaw Milosz. It was not a financial undertaking.
Jerzy
IIIg:
Because you worked for the wrong company!
Adam Michnik:
All one
could
earn were several weeks of prison. I'm saying
several weeks and not several years, because at that time the clictatorship in
Poland was, paraphrasing this in Spanish, not a
dicta dura
but a
dicta blanda.There
was some room between the penal code and the decision of the sentencer, and
the underground publishing houses
fi
t into this grace period between the two.
Also, underground publishing was trying to turn the opposition in Parliament
into a culture. I remember when I once was arrested the police found a box
of treatises by Milosz in my apartment. And during the interrogation the offi–
cer was saying, "Mr. Michnik, do you believe that with the help of this little
poetry you are going to win against Communism?" And we won.
Jerzy
IIIg: I
hope, Adam Michnik, that you will use your experience with a sur–
prise we've got: we have prepared some equipment of a Polish underground
press and each guest of the festival can print a souvenir poster in the way we
clid in the underground. I hope Adam wil l help the beginners.
Robert Faggen:
Please join me in thanking Jerzy Illg.
