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Enlightenment rather than the Age of Chivalry. Here is yet another
dream-to be the jester of one's times.
The jester, in Kolakowski's classic definition, is someone who moves
in elite social circles, but does not himself belong there. He speaks imper–
tinently, and questions everything that is taken for granted. A jester must
be drawn from outside the elite, must observe it from the sidelines in
order to proclaim the nonobvious of its obviousness and the nonneces–
sity of its necessity; at the same time, by moving in elite circles he knows
its revered leader and has the opportunity to speak
to
him in an imperti–
nent manner. So, a jester or a drawing-room scandalizer? Sorel or
Chlestakov? Harlequin or Diderot? A man of the Enlightenment, a fol–
lower of Voltaire, someone who jeers at the world around him.
Kott jeered in masterly fashion. He was often cruel to the journalists
on
Tygodnik Powszechny,
who were virtually gagged by the censors dur–
ing the 1940s: "An independent publication?" he sneered. "Independent
of whom? Archbishop Sapiecha and the church hierarchy?" He wrote
about Antoni Golubiew: "Talking about a return
to
the Middle Ages is
just a way of putting a pretty face on an attempt to return to a far more
recent and uglier age." He praised Stefan Kisielewski's book,
Sprzysieze–
nie [Conspiracy]
in the most backhanded manner: "painstaking observa–
tion, a completely secular intellectual climate, a determination to face
unpalatable issues, a healthy cynicism-these are the intellectual and
artistic predilections of Kisielewski, and I have to say that these are
predilections that I share." Nor did Kott spare his colleagues at
Kuznica:
"One reads Dygat's book with pleasure, while one puts it down with a
certain unease. One reads Brandys's book with a certain unease, while
one puts it down with pleasure, enormous pleasure."
In a report on the Soviet Union (February 1947), full of admiration
for the first workers' and peasants' state, Kott recounted an anecdote
about some American journalists who were visiting a Moscow school.
They came to a math class and asked the students:
"If
you buy shoes in
a store for 200 rubles and you sell them for 350, how much will you
get?" The kids start to calculate, and one of them raises his hand: "Two
years for speculation" was his answer. Was Kott playing the fool?
Reviewing Ewa Fisher's translation of Nazim Hikmet's fairy tales,
Kott wrote: "The translation is as dryas dust, as uneven as a camel's
hump, as fuzzy as quince, and as poor as a water-carrier in Istanbul."
He said the following about erotic life under Stalin:
Just last week a friend complained to me that he and his girlfriend,
with whom he's been living for a year, only get together twice a
