THE TEACHER AND HIS STUDENTS
Robert Faggen:
Czeslaw Milosz, in addition to being a poet, an essayist, a nov–
elist, and translator, has been a professor at the Universi ty of California for
over two decades. As three of his former students will tell us, that was inter–
esting.
Bogdana Carpenter
is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures
at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor;
Mimi McKay
went on to study
at the Jagiellonian University and became a journalist; and
Richard Lourie
is a novelist and biographer and one of Milosz's translators.
Bogdana Carpenter:
"Like Proteus, I appear to people in different incar–
nations," said Milosz of himself. In his guise as professor, he often
expressed amazement: " I don't understand how
[,
without a Ph.D., have
become a professor," but he admi tted that he did not dislike the image of
the poet-scholar. "Being a professor is an ideal solution. You don't have to
write for the market. You can write what you want." The three of us at
this table will share with you our memories of Milosz the teacher. We
come from different backgrounds, followed different careers, represent dif–
ferent generations, and each of us took something different from the
classes in Dwinelle Hall in Berkeley. When [ started my graduate studies
in 1967, Milosz had been teaching in the Department of Slavic Languages
and Li teratures for seven years. For me he was a legendary figure, someone
whose name one whispered, a revered poet, but a poet whose poems 1
could not read in Poland. [ read them for the first time in 1963 when 1
came to Paris. 1 went to Milosz's lectures not so much out of interest in
Polish literature, at least at first, but to hear the great poet. [ remember my
first class when [ couldn't find the room in Dwinelle Hall and then saw
somebody walking ahead of me. At a certain moment the man, hearing my
steps, turned around, and I saw incredible eyebrows. That's all. 1 knew I
was on the right track.
After the first few lectures I was no longer sure whether [ was in the
classroom for the poet or for the professor. The lectures opened a whole
new world. They were not only (as the official descriptions claimed) about
Polish literature, but also about history, religion, philosophy, Freemasonry,
the Kabbalah, eighteenth-century mysticism, Swedenborg-things [ had
never heard about. The digressions often surpassed, both in terms of time
and interest, the subject itself. They also were a dialogue, even if most of
the time the only voice was that of the professor-who always watched our
faces, eager for our reactions. [n fact it was a double dialogue: Milosz con–
versed not only with his students, but with the writers about whom he
lectured. For him, writers were living people with whom he held a dis–
course, sometimes from a distance of several centuries. He communicated
a sense of closeness and involvement that [ rarely found ei ther in Poland
or in this country. His approach to literature was infectious.
