376
PARTISAN REVIEW
lengthy late-night discussions.. .it was more powerful than all the
contemporary plays of the decade. It spoke about our history and
about modern times....All of Poland is a gigantic stage, and the
young people, officer cadets and writers, patriots and traitors, are
the actors. Novosiltsov and his gang of thugs and spies, and
Bestuzhev with his hand held out....We need to say it as clearly
as possible. We are storming the communist heaven, and Mick–
iewicz is with us in our endeavor. Our "forefathers" are on the side
of revolution and those who are clamoring for justice.
Kott's use of "we" should be noted. "We" are the inheritors of the
Mickiewicz tradition, storming the communist heaven. But who are
"they"? "They" are the inhabitants of Ciemnogrod, both the long–
standing inhabitants and the newer arrivals. The title of Kott's review
was a quotation: "Why do you not wish to write about this, gentle–
men?" The people to whom the question was addressed-writers who
refused to acknowledge Polish truths-were also "them."
Of course, "they" were also those in power. In October
1956,
at the
moment of the Great Turning Point, Kott once more recalled Dejmek's
production of
Laznia:
Dejmek put Pobiedonosikov and all the others like him on a large
platform....This was a platform used to review the May Day
parade....They all sat in the front rows and clapped....Precisely
at this time Party comrades started referring to the leadership as
"them. " It's only this past week that we have begun talking about
"us."
A week earlier, Gomulka had become First Secretary of the PUWP Cen–
tral Committee. He embodied the hopes of the whole nation, including
the "comrades." For the previous ten years, the "nation" had referred
to the "comrades" as "them."
In October
1956,
Kott spoke to tens of thousands of people at an
enormous rally at the Warsaw Polytechnic. Several years later, he remi–
nisced: "When I had diphtheria just after the Warsaw Uprising, after
three days I spat out some tissue like the skin of a reptile. At that rally,
I had the feeling that I'd finally spat out the rest of this slimy tissue."
Did he start to speak freely? And what kind of face did he adopt in
his contest with the world? Once again, he is a follower of Voltaire, but
he is now a different kind of Voltairean, one more suited to the new
times. A post-Stalinist ,Voltairean, confronted with a new reading of
