CZESLAW MILOSZ
365
tempted to touch upon human matters which are not amenable to either
lyric or satiric treatment (and it appears that there are quite a few of
those). So I prefer Krasicki's
Myszeis
(The Mouse-iad), in which the
phrase "Sacred love of our beloved fatherland" appears on the occasion
of a war among mice.
Mixing together lyric and satire-a dose of lyric and a dose of satire
(romantic irony)-will not resolve anything either.
If
Polish critics and
poets treated their obligations seriously, they would convene a major
conference dedicated to the classical education of youth, because only a
good classical program could lend truth to Norwid's pronouncement
that "Neither a shield nor a sword, but a masterpiece, is the people's
weapon ." One should not trust today's pedagogical positivists. From
the point of view of literature, they are romantic arsonists . In their
hearts they are convinced that civilization dates from the nineteenth cen–
tury, and the rest is utter nonsense.
Given the present state of readers' interests and similar pressures on
poets themselves, it would be presumptuous to aim at taking a very
large step beyond the chalk circle. Despite this, we must make the
attempt, opening ourselves up to rather peculiar interpretations. Today's
reader, even a good reader of poetry, is sensitive to the so-called formal
values and likes to catch the author by his words, giving his psychoan–
alytic inclinations free rein . A grasp of the work's entirety, the concept
employed by the poet, escapes his notice.
If
the poet clearly signals by
shaking his head and winking, then his poem will ultimately be placed
among satirical or comic verse. Approval or satire. Nothing else.
"Objectivization" is a fashionable word nowadays. Are we free to
use it without having thoroughly discussed the entire complexity of the
author's attitude toward the lines of verse he has written?
If
it has a
Romantic, and not a classical, form, there is no complexity.
If
there is
no complexity, there is no objectivization-that is how I would put it.
When J6zef Weyssenhoff's novel
The Life and Ideas of Zygmunt Pod–
filipski
was published in 1898, the critics did not know what to think
about the book: was it in praise of Podfilipski or was it a satire on Pod–
Filipski? It may be that Weyssenhoff was simply a good writer and main–
tained a distance from his character. Let us also recall the arguments
over whether the heroes of Mickiewicz's
Pan Tadeusz
are swine or mod–
els of civic virtue.
It
does not discredit me that, having fine predecessors, I attempted to
introduce into poetry on my own modest scale some old, but today rev–
olutionary, principles, and that I met with misunderstanding. I wrote
"The World: A Na·ive Poem," "Voices of Poor People," and a host of
