THE CAPTIVE MIND
65
description of the problem of German intellectuals.
In
other words, each of
us while we read this book felt like the ichthyologist who was just spoken
to by a fish, a rather specific fish. Milosz isn't a former prisoner of the gulag
describing the inhuman conditions on this earth. He isn't a Marxist intel–
lectual communist contrasting the theory and practice of communism like
Koestler, Silone, or Weissberg. He isn't someone who has survived a shock
and is now coming out and telling the whole truth.
In
the case of Milosz,
we can't speak of a lack of knowledge about the situation in the gulags nor
of a naive belief in conID1Ulust propaganda or identification with commu–
nist ideology. The author of
TI1e Captive Mind
knew all these things, and, in
spite of that, was subject to the bi te of Hegelianism. That is the place from
which Milosz tells the story. The narrator is a man who is tempted, but not
all the way, not seduced. And for that reason he was able to tell the story of
those who succumbed to temptation. But why should Milosz be subject to
temptation? These days this question is a bit embarrassing, since every child
knows that communism was some kind of terrible and idiotic thing. That is
the problem Poland has with Milosz.
It
can't write that he was right, since
every child knows that there was no captive nund in Poland, just a band of
traitors who served Stalin, and that all of Poland was just sitting there behind
the scenes and conspiring. But it also can't say that Milosz was not right
because Milosz is the bard and the holy trinity. Milosz quite accurately
describes the road to temptation-the decomposition, the decay of Weimar
civilization, Hitler in power in the thirties. The metaphor about the end of
the Roman Empire returns: one world is ending, the barbarians are conung.
In
Berkeley, I asked Milosz, "Czeslaw, did you expect the end of com–
munism?" "No. I learned of it not from Marx but from Witkacy." Actually,
Witkacy turned out to be an excellent guide to Poland under COnID1l1nism.
In the poem "Central Park," Milosz describes a strategy for the arrival of the
barbarians, and communism is the barbarian
Zeitgeist.
Spiritual emptiness is
its ally, the sense of the absurd, which brings forth the need for radical
change, for a new man. And the final bite, the tooth of Hegel, is the neces–
sity of lustory. Just as the Roman Empire fell, so does Western civilization
today. And the tempted replies, or the tempter: if we are to be in this hell of
barbarians it's better to be the devil that pushes that little soul into hell than
to be one of the little souls that is pushed down. For the narrator of
The
Captive Milld,
there was no other way of thinking. There was no way to cre–
ate Polish democracy, an enugre, or old Polish democracy.
In
TIle
Toast,
he
severely cri ticizes both the second Polish republic and the enugre world.
Finally, Milosz's narrator rejects ethnic nationalism as an alternative to com–
munism.
If
COllID1Unisl11 was for Lenin the rule of the Soviets and
electrification in rural areas, for Milosz it is a religious sect, a mafia. Both are
essential. Fanaticism and banditry distinguish the Bolshevik sect.
