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PARTISAN REVIEW
other poems in a similar style, after which I was operated upon with the
psycho-socioanalytical method ("the poet, whether he means to or not,
says that....After all, it is clearly stated"). Here I could introduce
numerous examples from a couple of reviews. I will limit myself to one.
The poem "Waltz" is very simple: a lady who is dancing the waltz in the
year
1910
has, or could have had, a vision of the years of the Second
World War. Two epochs: the first, during which that which will destroy
the existing order is still developing, and the second, during which the
destruction is completed. The tragedy of ignorance of the future. When,
toward the end of the poem, I say to her,
Forget it. Nothing exists but this bright ballroom
And the waltz, the flowers, the lights, and the echoes
that is my compassionate irony placing a blindfold over her eyes. I feel
very sorry for her, because I know how it will end.
In his review, Kazimierz Wyka argues that what I say to her reveals
"a quest for autonomy in the name of beauty." That's interesting. Is it
because I tell her to keep on dancing the waltz? Undoubtedly, dancing
the waltz has more beauty in it than a vision of concentration camps.
But if she weren't dancing the waltz in her delightful ignorance, there
would be no dramatic conflict, there would be no poem. Was I really
obligated to add a commentary with more or less the following content:
"Ah, you pathetic creature, just wait, you'll get yours!"? I would never
add such a commentary, because it would express at most only a frac–
tion of my feelings toward this person.
Perhaps this is not really a journalistic verse. The real difficulty begins
when I happen to sketch certain types or individuals and to speak in
their name, as in my cycle "Voices of Poor People." I suspect that when
"The Poor Poet" or Adrian Zielinski begin to be treated as my own dis–
guises (not even roles), these poems will appear too simple, even primi–
tive, and that is how I explain why Wyka calls them "journalism," "an
eloquent document." I, however, consider them to be among the most
complex poems I have ever written, complex, at least, for a period when
poets rarely create situations and characters.
Wyka's review has given me so much grist for my mill that I would
feel uncomfortable if I did not write frankly about a phenomenon that
struck me: namely, the boundary line demarcated by the critics beyond
which the forbidden kingdom of journalistic writing begins. I think that
this boundary is no more real than the lines demarcating latitudes and
longitudes.
