2004 Anniversaries.

There seemed to be an unusual conglomeration of pertinent anniversaries during a short period late last year.

Czeslaw Milosz died in early August, 60 years (to the week) after the start of the 1944 Warsaw uprising, when he was writing for the previously underground press. At the news of his death in Krakow, I had just found and borrowed at the library Yitzkhak Zuckerman("Antek")'s book mentioned earlier (November, 2004). The book itself was one of 100 special 100th anniversary books of the University of California Press. As indicated by its (original) subtitle, "Those Seven Years: 1939-1946", it covers, i.a., the participation, under Antek's command, of the ZOB fighters who had survived the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The 1944 one was finally crushed in mid September, without serious interference from the Soviet army which had reached the eastern bank of the Vistula.

Last September 1st was the 65th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, and thus the start of my long march east, as part of the Czestochowa Kibbutz. Antek's (and my brother's) march, also mentioned earlier (Nov.30 entry), started about a week later.

Also last September was the 40th anniversary of the eruption of the Free Speech Movement, or FSM, at the University of California in Berkeley, where Milosz was teaching at the time. It gave rise or impetus to 1960-s student revolts all over, including Europe 1968, e.g. at the Sorbonne in Paris; where I happened to arrive the day it really got serious, on a charter flight booked 6 months earlier. At the time I was living in Berkeley on Dwight Way, a few blocks along Telegraph Avenue from Sproul Hall; where confrontations continued also after the FSM formally disbanded itself about December. Although not an active participant, I got the tear gas both from the battle of the the Paris Quartier Latin, then, a few weeks later, on/about Telegraph Avenue for an action in solidarity with the French students. It didn't smell the same, and it later turned out to be a new, possibly dangerous gas.

(I hope to elaborate on all those in later postings, with things like photos, including stereo slides; but most of those will probably not remain indefinitely. Also, I may want to do things like wonder, e.g:)

Did Antek and Milosz know one another? Did they meet?

Both having participated in the 1944 Warsaw revolt means there is a fair possibility, but not likelihood (just by itself). But they both also attended gymnasium in Polish interwar Wilno (Vilna, now Lithuanian capital Vilnius), Milosz also university there. In a telephone conversation (about 1970), Milosz told me that he knew well, and felt close to, the left Zionist youth outfits, and he was interested in details of my 3 months' stay in the 1939/40 winter at the Ha-Shomer Ha-Tzair Kibbutz there. In the 30-s Antek's He-kHalutz Ha-Tzair didn't amount to much in Vilna, but he played a leading role. So while I know of no positive evidence, a meeting at some point is not unlikely. There can be no doubt that eventually they knew of one another quite well.

Czeslaw Milosz or Arthur Hailey.

A Maclean's retrospective on VIP-s who died last year had an item on best selling author Arthur Hailey, but Czeslaw Milosz, far more significant a writer, was not considered worthy of mention. That's the sort of thing I might have expected in Time magazine rather than in Maclean's. As it turned out, Time skipped Hailey, but featured Milosz and even included part of a poem of his.

The only Haley novel I read was "Overload". It certainly fits in with his reputation for writing by a formula, with sex playing an exaggerated role. Every female in the book wants to be screwed by Nim, who uses his erectile automaton to oblige in the course of his functions as a top executive of the San Francisco based electric utility company. The "Pacific" (or P in PG&E) becomes "Golden Gate". By similar allusion, the evil villains are San Francisco headquartered environmental outfits like the Sequoia (for Sierra) Club tied to anti-PG&E terrorists through the Friends of Freedom (the Earth, a Sierra Club offshoot). These get their well deserved comeuppance at the dramatic happy end, but one unfortunate result is the suffocation of a quadriplegic beauty Nim had screwed earlier, before he gets to service her grieving sister who had come to her apartment.

To anyone living in the San Francisco Bay Area (like me then), the plot would have been too preposterous to sell (except the getting screwed by PG&E). I certainly had been unaware of the book when I went on a trip to Europe where it was the hit of the season in places like Switzerland and Sweden. The publishers must have known to keep the local launching very low key. When I checked later, it turned out that the (big) San Francisco Public Library did have one copy.

Czeslaw Milosz probably didn't make nearly as much money as Hailey from his writing (including the Nobel prize money) and teaching combined, but he is likely to be remembered long after Hailey is forgotten (and Maclean's if it can't do better); for giving expression to the soul of the great of a people in a period of exceptional trials. I'll have more to say about Milosz (probably next posting), but not on comparison with Hailey; here only a poem or two

FORGET
By Czeslaw
Milosz
Forget the sufferingYou caused others.Forget the
sufferingOthers
caused you.The waters run and run,Springs sparkle and are
done,You walk the
earth you are forgetting.
Sometimes you hear a distant
refrain.What does it
mean, you ask, who is singing?A childlike sun grows
warm.A grandson and a
great-grandson are born.You are led by the hand once
again.
The names of the
rivers remain with you.How endless those rivers
seem!Your fields lie fallow,The
city towers are not as they were.You stand
at the threshold mute.
(Translated from the Polish by Jessica Fisher and
Bozena Gilewska)

AN HONEST DESCRIPTION OF MYSELF WITH A GLASS OF
WHISKEY AT AN AIRPORT, LET US SAY, IN MINNEAPOLIS
By Czeslaw Milosz
My ears catch
less and less of conversations, and my eyes have weakened, though they are still
insatiable.
I see their legs in miniskirts, slacks, wavy fabrics.
Peep at
each one separately, at their buttocks and thighs, lulled by the imaginings of
porn.
Old lecher, it's time for you to the grave, not to the games and
amusements of youth.
But I do what I have always done: compose scenes of this
earth under orders from the erotic imagination.
It's not that I desire these
creatures precisely; I desire everything, and they are like a sign of ecstatic
union.
It's not my fault that we are made so, half from disinterested
contemplation, half from appetite.
If I should accede one day to Heaven, it
must be there as it is here, except that I will be rid of my dull senses and my
heavy bones.
Changed into pure seeing, I will absorb, as before, the
proportions of human bodies, the color of irises, a Paris street in June at
dawn, all of it incomprehensible, incomprehensible the multitude of visible
things.
(Translated from the Polish by Robert Hass and Czeslaw
Milosz)

Czeslaw Milosz
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1980/milosz.gif

It might be argued that as a Canadian magazine Maclean's ought to push Hailey's name because he is supposed to have started his writing career while in Canada. If that is what results from giving preference to Canadian content (extended to past transients), then maybe such preference should be re-evaluated.

Palestinian Elections

The Palestinian Authority well deserved the congratulations it received for conducting that credible a presidential election. The substantial majority won by Abu Mazen also was welcomed by all those who really count now. A superlative was used to describe the results by Yossi Beilin, former Israeli Minister of Justice. Let's hope that he counts for something now; and the other Israeli and Palestinian initiators of the Geneva Accord; and that their model solution of the problems in the way of a final peace can provide some ot the routes to follow if/when difficulties are encountered in the "road map" negotiations, which should now begin. I also hope the man in the slide below is well and got to vote.

HOW TO VIEW SUCH STEREOSCOPIC IMAGES (click here)

http://3dexpo.com/how.htm

I took this photo in early June of 1968, almost exactly a year after the 6 Day War, when East Jerusalem (as well as the Gaza Strip, the Jordan West Bank and parts of Syria and Egypt) was conquered by Israel's Haganah Army; but when most people still expected only a brief occupation. Seen in front is the Dome of the Rock (also known as the Mosque of Omar, although that khalif did not build it, and it does not serve as a mosque). The Al Aqsa Mosque is behind me and the Western ("Wailing") Wall to the left. We are standing on the "Haram el Sharif"; also the "Temple Mount", since the ancient Jewish Temple, destroyed by not yet Roman Emperor Titus, had stood somewhere up there. Sovereignty over the place has been one of the main obstacles to a final accord (tackled by the Geneva Accord). Underneath the dome is the rock from which, by a Moslem belief, the prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven.