58
PARTISAN REVIEW
those oaks close
to
my birthplace which remember my pagan ancestors...
[recalling] the presence of past generations."
At a conference at Adelphi University, Milosz said of memory: "We
have no other means of knowing about phases of our civilization, of our
time, of the nineteenth century, for instance, than through literature.
Literature fixes those certain phases. The function of poetry and of fiction's
memory is very important." Joseph Brodsky had died a few days before, and
Milosz let us print obituary remarks he was about to make at a memorial
service. He said of his friend that "by his
oeulJre
and by his life [Brodsky]
reminded us, against what today is so often proclaimed and written, that
hierarchy exists... that by living and writing, we affirm it every day anew..
. .[it] means respect for that which is elevated and unconcern, rather than
scorn, for that which is base." Brodsky, Milosz stated, was not directly "con–
cerned with the social and the ethical. Paradoxically, he developed his art
under the ultimate social and ethical pressure, that of the Soviet state, but he
was free, and he moved in his own realm. Why? Because he served the ele–
mental force of the Russian language." Another time, when speaking of
"The Writer and the University," Milosz noted that writing the history of
literature, for instance Polish literature, depends on who, when, and where
it is being written-whether it is being interpreted by a Pole living under
Marxist rule, or an American professor of Polish literature.
I first met Milosz at my Rutgers conference in 1992. William Phillips
moderated the first panel, whose participants were to be Joseph Brodsky, Saul
Bellow, and Ralph Ellison. When Brodsky didn't show up on time, Milosz
was a good sport and went on instead. After Brodsky arrived, he joined in, and
by the end of that session Milosz remarked that whenever he himself spoke of
Central Europe Brodsky wou ld say Western Asia-but that what unites the
countries of the zone between Germany and Russia is their turbulent past and
a common heritage that is displayed in, for instance, their architecture.
Brodsky, in his typically ironic manner, thought that "Eastern Europe" would
not be defined as a nostalgic realm between two empires, or as a leftover of the
Hapsburg Empire, but by its unpleasant econornic realities. They also differed
on the role of the church. Unlike their American listeners, many of whom still
lump both Poland and the Soviet Union among others into the countries
behind the Iron Curtain, they focused on the complexities and the differences,
and they respected one another enormously despite these rather small dis–
agreements. I think that's what probably cemented their friendship.
In
the session on "Intellectual's Notes from Underground," Milosz
focused on the difference between dissidence and resistance. Adam
Michnik, for instance, was a dissident while he was imprisoned, but he was
aware that there was a community of dissidents against the government
and thus he wasn't alone. Having a community, however small, for whom
