They will probably come just after the New Year.
As usual, early in the morning.
The forceps of the doorbell will pull you out by the head
from under the bedclothes, dazed as a newborn baby…
Our first Notebook of the New Year, and I’m trying to think positive thoughts. After all, though 2017 was turbulent, here we are in 2018, not at war, civil or otherwise (though 2017 was far from civil). The economy seems OK, the stock market’s up despite — or because of — the unfairness of our new tax bill. Even with President Trump, we and basically everyone we know (mostly old folks like us) are fine, doing whatever we’ve always done, including dying.
But why do we feel so anxious? I think it’s because we’re living in a cloud of “Fake News” led by a president who lies every day of his life, big lies, little lies and totally irrelevant lies. Rob Spillman, editor of Tin House, observes in its current issue that Americans are in a “permanent state of rage and resentment.”
I said this morning that it feels like living underwater, and this thought surprised me with a bright jolt of optimism, reminding me of a man who lived under Fake News before we had even heard the phrase. The Polish dissident poet Stanisław Baranczak handled a similar situation with grace and bravery and, subsequently coming to America, wrote a book called Breathing Under Water, and Other East European Essays.
We met Baranczak in Poznan, in 1979, where nobody believed a word in the newspapers, which were controlled by their Communist occupiers. When checking newspapers, Poles tended to stare at the photographs, asking “Who’s that woman talking to Gierek?” or “Why is the First Secretary wearing an overcoat?” When looking for truth instead of fake news, they turned to their artists, musicians, and writers, especially poets. All over Warsaw, citizens gathered in 5th-floor walk-up apartments for samizdat (underground) readings of contemporary poets like Czesław Miłosz (living in California), Zbigniew Herbert (Germany), and Baranczak, fired from his University professorship and under house arrest in Poznan.
Teaching at the University of Poznan that summer, poet Paul Vangelisti and I arrived at Baranczak’s house bringing some letters from my students in Warsaw, and a bottle of American whiskey. With some surprise, and perfect English, he welcomed us warmly, and a long and memorable discussion followed.
We commiserated with him for his difficult situation: unemployed, unable to travel or publish his work in his own country, restricted to his house in Poznan — basically a prisoner. Well, he said, peering at us genially through his owlish glasses, what’s your biggest problem in America? Time, we agreed. Not enough time to write; our jobs kept us busy full-time.
“I have all the time in the world,” he said, adding that his wife had a job, and there wasn’t much to buy in Poland, anyway. “What else bothers you?”
We told him, in so many words, that writing poetry in America was like punching a pillow: not much effect, not much interest, not a big audience, too big a ship to move.
“Here,” Baranczak said, “my friends take chances in smuggling my poems out of the country. They get it published — very nicely — in Paris, then smuggle it back. They can’t bring enough copies.” He sipped his whiskey. “It feels a little important.”
So there were Paul and I — free American poets who could go anywhere, write anything we want, and pretty easily publish everything we write — looking at each other and feeling jealous of this uncomplaining captive smiling slyly at us. What a lucky guy! Three years later, after Solidarity overthrew the Communists, Baranczak flew to America and taught at Harvard until he died peacefully in December of 2014.
…What is this myrhh, anyway,
you’ll have to finally look it up
someday. You’ll come
with us, sir. You’ll go
with them. Isn’t this a white snow.
Isn’t this a black Fiat.
Wasn’t this a vast world.
—Both quotes from “The Three Magi” by Stanisław Baranczak (1946-2014) from Polish Poetry of The Last Two Decades of Communist Rule, Northwestern University Press, 1991.
This article appears in Jan 11-18, 2018.
