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responsible for the tribulations that Stalinism had brought
to
science
and culture. It was he who was accused of refusing to accept responsi–
bility, of passing moral judgment on Gomulka's associates, who were
far less virulent than he had been, of assigning responsibility to others,
and of appropriating to himself the role of leader of Polish emancipa–
tion, of wanting
to
lead the people whose self-expression he had once
ruthlessly stifled.
These accusations contained a substantial grain of truth and consid–
erable bitterness. Our hero-narrator and, no doubt, Kott as well, con–
sidered themselves victims of communism rather than its architects.
Others viewed them differently, and this is not surprising. Nevertheless,
they were attacked for their communism at the moment they broke with
it, and for this break they paid a price. There was, then, a settling of
accounts with people who were already opponents of communism,
although the nature of their opposition was not always clear.
"We are all a bit lost and are slowly finding our way," Kott wrote in
June
1954.
"We are undergoing shock therapy to cure us of the great
ideologies." This meant he had to look for another face to adopt in con–
test with the world and that he had to review his previous faces. As early
as
1954,
he wrote about the debate over Aleksander Fredro. He recalled
Goszczynski's brutal attack on the playwright for his antipathy toward
conspiracy and the romantic vision of the country, his imitation of for–
eign models, and his uncritical praise for the traditions of the nobility.
This attack was similar in tone
to
Kott's diatribes against other writers.
And he was honest enough
to
admit that then, in the nineteenth century,
it would have been easier for him to find a common language with
Goszczynski, a parochial and good-humored Jacobin, than with "that
embittered Count, who was incredibly intelligent but also incredibly
reactionary." Goszczynski, like Kott after him, wanted
to
destroy the
Poland of the nobility. He wanted a social revolution "with big words
and morals." None of this was to be found in Fredro, but it was Fredro
who "rescued Poland from widespread melancholy." These were
unusual thoughts in
1954.
Their conclusion was equally unusual :
Goszczynski and other critics had failed to recognize Fredro's intelligent
realism; their judgment had been "immature....But were all their opin–
ions unfair? I don't know.
If
I had been alive at that time, there's no
doubt I would have written about Fredro even more harshly. I would
have been mistaken. But I would have had my reasons ."
This article constituted a face-making contest with himself. Perhaps
also an act of tearing off his own mask. Four years later (November
1958),
Kott wrote about another great reactionary, Zygmunt Krasinski:
