A POET REMEMBERED:

Czeslaw Milosz, Poet and Nobelist Who Wrote of Modern Cruelties, Dies at 93 (RAYMOND H. ANDERSON, 8/15/04, NY Times)

Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish émigré writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980, in part for a powerful pre-mortem dissection of Communism, in part for tragic, ironic poetry that set a standard for the world, died Saturday at his home in Krakow, his assistant, Agnieszka Kosinska, told The Associated Press. He was 93

An artist of extraordinary intellectual energy, Mr. Milosz was also an essayist, literary translator and scholar of the first rank. [...]

In his youth, Mr. Milosz had been drawn to some of the idealized aspects of Marxism but he rejected dictatorship. In large measure, he defected, he explained later, because of damage he saw inflicted on spiritual values and intellect by Communist dogma, which he scorned as the "New Faith." For Mr. Milosz, faith was something else, as he made clear in a 1985 poem under that title:

Faith is in you whenever you look

At a dewdrop or a floating leaf

And know that they are because they have to be.

Even if you close your eyes and dream up things

The world will remain as it has always been

And the leaf will be carried by the waters of the river.

Mr. Milosz detested Socialist Realism, the Soviet-contrived literary doctrine that distorted truth into propaganda to promote the political and ideological goals of the Communist Party.

Two years after defecting, Czeslaw Milosz, (pronounced CHESS-wahf MEE-wosh) published "The Captive Mind," a searing analysis of Stalinist tactics and their numbing effect on intellectuals. "The Captive Mind" was translated and published in many countries, becoming itself a historical document.

In it, Mr. Milosz wrote:

"The philosophy of history emanating from Moscow is not just an abstract theory; it is a material force that uses guns, tanks, planes and all the machines of war and oppression. All the crushing might of an armed state is hurled against any man who refuses to accept the New Faith.

"At the same time, Stalinism attacks him from within, saying his opposition is caused by his 'class consciousness,' just as psychoanalysts accuse their foes of wanting to preserve their complexes."

"Still," he added, prophetically, "it is not hard to imagine the day when millions of obedient followers of the New Faith may suddenly turn against it." [...]

By 1960, Mr. Milosz had tired of his life amid leftist intellectual squabbling in France. Years later he would speak with acerbity of those in Western Europe who continued to regard the Soviet Union as the hope of the future, particularly those "French intellectuals who considered that only a man who was insane could abandon his position of a writer in a people's democracy in order to choose the capitalistic, decadent West." He accepted a professorship in the Slavic Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

He became an American citizen and lived in the Berkeley hills in a modest house with a stunning view of San Francisco Bay. [...]

As his work won increasing attention and respect, Mr. Milosz developed close ties to many leading world intellectuals, writers, and political and religious leaders, especially to Pope John Paul II, his countryman and leader of his faith.

When he consulted on his plan to break with Communism, it was with no less a figure than Albert Einstein, who advised him during a talk at Princeton University that he should go home to Poland, not defect to the West to join the sad fate of exiles.

Mr. Milosz also knew Lech Walesa, the electrician who led the anti-Communist Solidarity movement and went on to become president of Poland. Lines from a verse by Mr. Milosz were put on a memorial in Gdansk to honor Mr. Walesa's fellow shipyard workers who were shot by the police in the early 1970's:

"You who harmed a simple man, do not feel secure: for a poet remembers."

When Communism was smashed in Poland, Mr. Milosz returned to what he called "the country of my first immigration." Arriving in Warsaw after an absence of three decades, he received a hero's welcome. Mr. Milosz was regarded as one of the world's literary immortals. When he chose, he walked and talked with the great men of his time, but he remained humble.

Folk would have us believe that the intellectuals have suddenly deserted the cause of liberty because of the personality of George W. Bush, it helps to recall that the French and Einstein and his ilk were idiotic about Communism just as surely as their modern counterparts are about Islamicism.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 15, 2004 3:17 PM