68
PARTISAN REVIEW
often stood up to a horrible situation after the second world war, which
was an unprecedented catastrophe. Actually, in each case, he looked for
character flaws to see why they succumbed to temptation. What moves us
is the combination of deep and intelligent analyses of the political system
and the fight for survival of people who couldn't win.
Adam Michnik: I
think we have to read this book along with Thomas
Mann's two novels,
The Magic Mountain
and
Doctor Faustus.
Robert Faggen:
Adam, at one point you clistinguished between the narrator
of
The Captive Mind
and Milosz. Could you clistinguish between Milosz's
rejection of the
Zeitgeist
and the vision of historical necessi ty underneath that
troubles him, while preserving some idea of history as a meaningful process?
Adam Michnik: I
think that the typical reader of the book is someone from
Western Europe or America who doesn't understand the experience of
communism or of Central and Eastern Europe. The narrator of
The
Captive Mind
is more direct than Milosz the poet, although the book con–
tains nothing that Milosz didn't write about earlier in his verse. To me it's
a novel, since there is no identification of the author wi th the narrator.
Since the war Poles spoke amongst themselves in code language. Twenty
years later, that code is illegible to strangers, and even to Poles.
The Capti/Ie
Mind
is the first book in which the story of those times is decoded.
Andrzej Walicki:
Adam, you minimized the difference between Herling–
Grudzmski and Milosz. You explained it away by saying that both writers
stood for primordial values against the
Zei(f?eist,
which still is crucial for both.
Adam Michnik:
Andrzej Walicki is a classical intellectual who listened to my
presentation without the decoder. Ifhe had it, he would know that my entire
presentation was fi.ll1damentally a polemic with Her]jng-Grudzmski. The for–
mulations about a book dreamed up at a desk are quotations from
Herling-Grudzmski in
Journal Written at Night.
I have spoken about this with
Herling many times. [ couldn't change his mind.
['m
one hundred percent on
the side of Milosz, and Grudzmski be]jeves that the fascination with
COI1ll11U–
nism can be explained by fear. I always asked him, "Who were you afraid of,
Gustaw, when you were conununizing before the war? Who were you afraid
of when participating in illegal communist affairs?"
[n
that sense I agree with
Andrzej Walicki. But the problem of many people is believing that what is
obvious for them should be obvious for the whole world. Since Gustaw
described the gulags, he thought anyone having anything to do with conU11U–
nism was either an idiot or a lout. He couldn't understand that it's possible to
