CZESLAW MILOSZ
169
city.
It
was my chapbook, issued under the pseudonym Jan Syruc, my
great-grandfather's family name. Antoni Bohdziewicz supplied the
paper and the duplicating machine, Janka sewed the books, and Jerzy
helped out. Right after that, a passion for reading Balzac. Against Con–
rad. That was when Jerl.y was editing a literary newsletter for circles of
readers, and I was his chief co-author, and when his short stories, which
he published in it, kept returning, with high dramatic intensity, to ulti–
mate questions. Janka was very sober-minded and inclined to irony, and
she did not care for the Conradian lyricism (Conrad translated by
Aniela Zagorska) she saw in Jerzy's work, as she would tell him frankly
during our vodka-drinking sessions at the Under the Rooster bar. There
is not a trace of romantic lyricism in Balzac's prose, and in her opinion
that author (i n Boy's tra nsla tions) supported her arguments.
My dearest shades, I cannot invite you
to
converse with me, for
behind us, as only we three know, lies our tragic life. Our conversation
would develop into a I:tment in three voices.
CHIAROMONTE,
Nicola. This name has always been linked in my
mind with thoughts about greatness. I have known many famous peo–
ple, but have carefully distinguished between fame and greatness.
Nicola was nor famous, and his name meant a lot only within his circle
of friends, because even his reportage and articles, scattered among var–
ious journals, were at most his enigmatic way of thinking. His thought,
shaped by Greek thinkers, always remained in the public sphere and
attempted to define the obligations of a humanist toward the
polis.
His
life is an example of engagement with political movements that repeat–
edly devolved into ideological servitude in our chaotic twentieth cen–
tury. Chiaromonte had a heightened sense of historicity and history, but
he rejected all ideologies. An opponent of Italian Fascism, he emigrated
from Italy. He participated in the war in Spain on the Republican side,
as a pilot in Malraux's squadron, but he did not side with the Commu–
nists. During his American years, hailed as a master and teacher by the
non-Communist left of Dwight Macdonald's and Mary McCarthy's
group, he published in
Partisan Review
and in
Politics.
After his return
to France and, finally, in
'953,
to Italy, he and Ignazio Silone edited the
journal
Tempo Presente,
which meant shouldering the obligation of
opposing public opinion, dominated as it was by the Communists and
their sympathizers.
Ignazio Silone, who had been at one time a Communist and a dele–
gate to the Comintern, elevated by the political "elevator" to the height
of fame for his novel
rOlltalllara,
broke with Communism on moral
