Responsibility for the word.

A fragment of an interview with Zbigniew Herbert / Weekly Solidarity





Zbigniew Herbert: Jaruzelski in the hospital, Kiszczak after 2 strokes, a Colodziczyk, as you may suspect, will surely get funk. So I hope that in Drawsk they will hold another sitting and delegate any brave general to the execution.

Anna Poppek, Andrzej Gelberg: Very confident.


I have experience, I fought twice in my youth. erstwhile it was about a woman...

Your fiancée?

No, I didn't really know her, but in my presence, any kind insulted her. I had no choice but to challenge him to a duel.

Guns?

The choice of weapon was the enemy's, and this 1 demanded the swords. The secs agreed to fight to the 3rd blood. I was up all night. Not out of fear - I was afraid, I'll sleep. For we were to stumble at 6:00 in the morning in the Bielan Forest. He's caught me twice, but I almost chopped his ear off. As it turned out, he was a professional officer, while I held the saber in hand for the first time in my life, so that the consequence turned out to be not bad at all.

A duel is simply a substance of honor. present the word "honor" similarly, How the duel went completely out of fashion.

I was born and raised in the Second Republic. That 20 years (not only in matters of honor or duels) is for me a model period to which I mention all that happened later. due to the fact that life is simply a bit like knitting; the fresh thread must be tied to the remaining old bundle. erstwhile a man goes down to his grave, he should have his sweater finished. He must realize how life has woven which fragments are flawed and which are more successful. It is crucial that he has a full image of his own life, as well as the nation or society in which he spent it.


Conspiration

You're talking about the memory thread of the Second Republic. However, you have spent most of your adult life in PRL.

Then, I gotta admit, I had nothing. Something happened - it broke, it faded... So I began to think of something that imitated the thread to keep this life going. From the beginning I realized that this was another occupation: hard, heavy, rude, bloody. Those who did not odor the earlier russian power had idealistic visions that we would "liberators" cover with caps. It would take quite a few hats and the enemy would should be harmless. Then Radosław issued an unfortunate order to uncover himself. I was against it. Why would the conspiracy uncover itself to another enemy? I thought this decision was based on dangerous delusions that would lead to the death of tens of thousands of young people.

Did these delusions come from naivety or despair?

Of naivety. But most of all, the pride that we can manage is enough.

When did these delusions take off?

I don't know. I lost contact with those environments. I ran. They seem to have even looked for me as a deserter, but I was already in another well-armed army.


For 2 years, my contact with "bandits from the forest." I withdrew erstwhile I realized that the guerrilla would degenerate, that the better thought was the tupamaros (urban partisan). all man wants to justify his decisions, but to this day I felt respect for those who remained faithful to the end of the oath, in the woods, without hope.

The romanticist tradition of Irredenta was not so popular at the time.

Well, after defeat, Poles become highly pragmatic. It was then said: we vote for Nicholas, and even for PPS, which is simply a woman with traditions, due to the fact that a peasant in an alliance with a individual will blow everything. This chaotic story repents until today, although then it ended with the falsification of elections, and in addition PPS Cyrankiewicz had nothing to do with the organization of Ciolkosz.

Was socialist pragmatism visible before the union?

Before the war, any socialists had dealt with the commune. There's evidence of that. But they were margins. After Yalta, however, almost everyone felt that something could be won. Among pragmatists, any have awakened my specified human sympathy. Like Bolesław Drobner. I remember that before the 1947 elections there was a rally at the Mining Academy. First spoke Szwalbe, vice-president of the KRN, a large person. With the method of loud grunting, we completely stunned him. Then a small, feisty fellow jumped into the grandstand. He said: “With me it will not be so easy, before the war I showed up on May 1, the horse police charged, I was not afraid. Silence is not a method." He besides said, as it is now said, that Poland "is what it is", "the law is what it is," he made it clear that it does not rather agree with the fresh order, but does not see any political exit. He got his applause. So there were "organists."


"Miłosz wanted to join Poland in USSR"

At the time, the communists held a reprimand in 1 hand, but in the other, a tasty carrot...

Yes. For example, a large part of diplomatic institutions were cast by writers, specified as Przyboś, Miłosz, Pruszyński and others, although the second never hid that he was not a large amateur of communists, alternatively a margrave of Wielopolski. Before that, of course, they had to go through a "test of fire." Our Nobel laureate, for example, wrote columnaries in the regular press. Only fear can force a healthy man on the body and head to specified excesses, conformism and lies. I would advise against "Arce" publishing these texts. Arguments: Age, was my master. It's not forgotten - a debt of gratitude forever.

Is it in those Parisian alcohol fraternities Were you honest with me?

Not really. In fact, it is entangled in itself. His most crucial problem is his deficiency of identity. For this serious intellectual fever he found advice: he declared himself a citizen of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania or the Republic of Both Nations. It is good and very convenient, and at the same time it relieves all responsibilities towards the current reality. Like individual else, dissatisfied with the planet around him, could say, “I am an Athenian from the time of Pericles, and I don’t care about your disputes in chaotic northern Europe.” I could say that I am a citizen of Galicia and Lodomeria, and I am working on how to tie the beloved Galicia and Lodomeria to the beloved Emperor forever.

Love like mythical PROTEUS has a 1000 characters - it is simply a tree and a cloud, a stream and a rock. possibly this ability to metamorphose (also political) is simply a feature of prominent poets. possibly I uncertainty it. On the another hand, I agree with Miłosz that even during the fire it is possible and essential to describe sunsets, so that the arcadian story does not expire, so that we do not uncertainty that happiness is attainable.

But you're defending Mr. Nice.

All the problem was due to his character traits. He erstwhile told me: “You understand, I wanted and I want to serve... ". There truly are people like that. They feel that they must service individual or something with their work. It means to be needed (to think we are needed).

Then you met him in the U.S.


It was 1968 or 1969. He told me - soberly - that Poland should be joined by the russian Union. I said, "Hey, guys, let's get any cold ink and get a drink." I thought it was a gag or a provocation. But erstwhile he repeated it at dinner, where there were Americans who liked it a lot, I got up and talked out. You can't even say those things with a joke.

How'd you come up with specified ideas?

He is simply a torn man: with an indefinite national status, metaphysical, moral. “Gnoza was very busy, and so was I, until I realized that it was dangerous to bother. For I have not encountered absolute evil beyond the human race. However, I admit that the gnostic religion was very helpful in putting up with communism, but it besides put our activity to sleep: due to the fact that how to knock down Lucifer with 1 assassination and whether to fight the First Secretary in whom Satan joined makes sense. Kołakowski plays with it, possibly to suppress the remorse of his conscience, on which there are many.


End of Communism

Andrzej Gelberg, Anna Poppek: You erstwhile said that in those years you did not believe that you would live to see the end of communism. But past amazed us: 1989 came. However, it was not like in 1918 carmagnoli on the streets.

Zbigniew Herbert: I myself wondered why waking up all day with the awareness that I live in an independent country - I feel any discomfort. I think it's due to the fact that I didn't fight it. independency was given as a gift from history, we did not pay a single drop of blood for freedom. It was as if the communists had abruptly become wise and said: “We will no longer be doing all this filth, uh, there, let us go on vodka...” Like a Pole with a Pole. However, if individual truly fought for this independency it was the National Army for a long 5 years, whose effort was defined with the Warsaw Uprising as futile and politically wrong. And besides Polish troops fighting in the forests after "liberation". And the ones who died in the dungeons and the chaemats of security. I hope that sounded fascist enough.

At first there was no joy, and then it went crooked. Were we not prepared for freedom, or is communism a illness that follows us?

It is hard to be an analyst of your own madness, and the elites are primarily liable for it. At the time of the conspiracy, both in Stalinist and later years, there was no group of people who would wonder how to manage Poland after liberation. During the period of occupation, yes, professors, experts gathered and created precise concepts for rebuilding the future Republic. The superb architect Nowicki, for example, has developed a large urban plan for Warsaw ... And we were totally unprepared. We did not believe in victory, although somewhere in the soul there was a belief that we had to fight from time to time. But what to do after winning, how to treat a defeated opponent - nobody thought about it. And this unfortunate circular birth did not even end in an imperial cutting, but in the brain of the fetus. That's a terrible comparison. You're about to protest Bob, but there's something about it. I felt the force of these ticks on my own skull.

Only political elites, as you said, are liable for the current state, not prepared for governance, but besides intellectual elites. A fewer years ago, you set them heavy, prosecutorial charges that during the Stalinist period they were guided by fear, pride and interest. You besides stated that it was only then that these people went to the opposition that they were driven distant from the court of Gomulka, who did not like the intelligents. In the "Solidarity Week" published a year ago, just after the 19 September elections, you called the article "Reliability" times after 1989 a time of semantic collapse. It's another name for lying to a language you're talking about 10 years earlier.


Many of us thought that after 1989, although we would not immediately build a paradise on earth, we would at least shake off the old lie. It was not possible due to the fact that the elite people who explained their erstwhile attitudes with a Heglowski bite (it was alternatively a Berman bite) did not make the language of truth.

And yet the primary work of an intellectual is to think and tell the truth. That's what society pays them for. To think - it means to wonder what we are, who we are and what the surrounding reality is. This means, by all means, work for the word. present no 1 is liable for them in Poland. It came to the conclusion that no 1 was offended for anything; 1 could call Szczypiorski a monster of conformism and a master of the cliché, and after it flows, like after a dog, 1 can call Jaruzelski a hero with disinvolvement, and Kukliński a traitor. This is simply a decline after Marxism with its perverse dialectics and logic. conventional logic says: if p, then not q; in Marxism: if p, then p.

Dialectics was a large training for relativizing everything.

Yes, sir! A good Marxist, like a good sophistist, equally defended Helena's innocence and proved to be a whore. I've always been most curious in genesis and the finale, even books so I read that first I meet heroes and then I read the last page and see them in a coffin, in front of an altar or on a horse... The origin of the present semantic collapse dates back to the 1950s. So "faithful dialectics" are after good training. They do not pronounce intersubjective courts, but treat the language as defence or assault: ,,For Bierut I wrote it, for Gomulki something different" etc., but always in the rhythm of history, i.e. in the rhythm of the plenary resolutions. So: -the betrayal of language, the betrayal of the clarity of certain concepts. Those I criticize are very subtle, relativating, analyzing historical background and conditionality, and I, a simple man, simplify. I'm saying that first you gotta present things as simply as possible, without any conditional sentences, and then you gotta think about the negatives. Popper died recently, already as a very old man during the discussion, erstwhile individual did not usage the word "determinism" very precisely, he knocked with a stick and asked, "How did you usage this term?" 1 of the basic things we were taught in junior advanced school before the war was the principles of discussion. It was explained to us that this was not a fight on the bow, but an effort to clarify clearly the position that not authority but argument matter. Discuters are actually allies who search fact together.


Michnik

After an interview with Jack Trzenadel, your attacks began. Your friend, Adam Michnik, lamented that from the Olympic position - as in "The Power of Taste" - you went down to trivial clarity. Since then, the alleged centre of the left-wing secular opposition, present centered around the "Gazeta Wyborcza", clearly distances itself from your individual I to your work.


I was very good friends with Michnik. Now it's a closed communicative for me. Why is our relationship over? Well, I stopped knowing the meanders of his thinking, believed in his intellect, and besides in specified honesty - I was disappointed.

I don't realize why so many of my friends resent, anger, annoy Michnik. It is simply a classical example of the career of communist DYZMY. A sad communicative of a peculiarly talented, talented boy who reached the age erstwhile people insist on asking "What did he actually do with all his heroic youth?". And he rolls down the slope, into bitter activism. Cynicism worthy of the Admirator of the Prince and the most common nihilism. He's failed almost all of his friends, we know the confection. He inactive wears blujeans, as if to emphasize that he inactive has the virtue of poverty. He wrote a book on the Church and the Left and sketches about contemporary Polish literature; naive, passionate - appealing. Now he is only in his paper citadel surrounded by a group of keen followers and followers. I heard a "young" due to the fact that only a 40-year-old boy said he loved Michnik and would follow him into the fire. 40 years ago, I listened to another boy who loved Piasecki, the PAX leader. So a fresh dangerous scheme: a charismatic leader, blind believers.

What is the consequence of specified attitudes?

I think it's written in the genes...

So how do you explain the phenomenon that a formation contaminated with totalitarian protrusion in genes, present is mass liberalism? Is this an actual transformation or just another proof of a lie?

In America in the 1930s, liberals were actually communists and crypto-communists. present it seems to me that liberalism is the most banal and vulgar word from the modern Polish political dictionary, due to the fact that it justifies all lespherism: economical and moral. This is another runway for blurry concepts.

... C.D.N.



Written by Andrzej Gelberg,Anna Poppek
Source: Weekly Solidarity
Date: 29.10.2024 17:52





[100th birthday of Zbigniew Herbert] celebrated interview for TS Part 1: Michnik. Example of a Communist DYZMY career



Right Eye: "serious treatment of the meaning of words"