CZESLAW MILOSZ
367
2.
The Arcadian Myth
The arcadian or cytherean is a very old one. There is no need to seek
it only among ancient Greek poets or the writers and painters of the
Rococo period. Under whatever name we give to it, it has reappeared
for hundreds of generations. It is a dream about the happy life of the
human race. Sometimes that happiness is projected back in time to a
legendary golden age, as among the ancients. Sometimes, as among
Christians, it is postponed until the fulfillment of time and the coming
of the Savior, or until the moment of death. Maciej Kazimierz Sar–
biewski, our seventeenth-century Latin poet, displays a longing for his
"heavenly fatherland," which he penetrates during his lifetime by ris–
ing up to the clouds on a winged horse. (No one has written on "The
Obsession with Flight in Sarbiewski," about his viewing the earth from
above.) In Shakespeare, the golden age is situated in a forest on a mid–
summer's night, in the woods of Arden . For pseudo-shepherdesses
reading
Paul and Virginia,
the land of happiness was America's wilder–
ness. Socialism put off happiness until the future, anticipating its cre–
ation by new societies.
Faith in an arcadian myth is by no means a crime .
If
there were no
poets to repeat continuously that humankind ought to live in such a way
that it is possible to write,
"Nec suplex turba timebat /Iudicis ora sui,
sed erant sine vindice tuti,"
we would turn into a species of reptiles.
Kazimierz Wyka sees the sin of aestheticism in poets' attraction to the
arcadian myth. I do not think he is right. True, one can cite eras when
that aspiration was transposed into a fondness for idylls, into creating a
closed, imaginary state of magical spells. His condemnation would
appear directed at such aspirations . But even the happiness of primitive
peoples in Rousseau contained the dynamism of contrast; it struck a
blow at the spoiled society of the eighteenth century. Perhaps, then, it is
the "private entertainment" of the great patrons of pure poetry that riles
him? Here, too, to take the case of Rimbaud, for instance, it turns out
that his personal gamble in the name of happiness was actually a con–
test for the happiness of the human race. A true arcadian myth, if it is
rich enough, goes beyond one's personal state of bliss and is incapable
of imagining happiness otherwise than as a universal condition-of the
nation or of a ll people on earth. That is why one has to be careful with
the arcadian myth, because it can transform itse lf into a promethean
myth .
I am grateful to Wyka for drawing my attention to the dangers posed
by the arcadian element in my poetry. His proof was too weak, however,
to convince me . Take the ending of my poem "In Warsaw":
