A Letter to Picasso
Milosz, Czeslaw
This open letter to Picasso originally appeared in the June, 1956 issue of Preuves and is published with permission of both its author and the editors. This letter to you, Picasso, is not a...
...In 1949 or 1950 I recall an editor deleting the word "love" from one of my poems on the grounds that, "It is not love, but hate that we preach...
...You were right to take advantage of your privilege, but you seem to forget that is all it was...
...A year later all the children attending this art school were subjected to what was called ideological education...
...They were to be changed into ten year old adults, to portray in dull and drab colors tractors and May Day parades...
...IN WRITING THIS LETTER, I yield to a desire that has long haunted me...
...All she knew was that her husband was alive, in a camp near the Polar Circle...
...But are you absolutely sure that, because of this refusal, you did not rob some young painter of the joy contained in a life of creative fulfillment...
...At the same time, you scoffed at "socialist realism," thereby proving that certain artistic methods are valid only where the arm of the police is long enough...
...just as that moment—it was 1937—her husband was arrested and disappeared into the dark void of the concentration camp...
...a desire particularly strong at a time when you could have had me as a dinner table neighbor—for example, in 1948, in Poland, during the Congress for Peace...
...If you want to know the judgment rendered against the great names of the West by these men East of the Elba, here it is: Picasso, Sartre or Joliot-Curie—they have to be taken as they are...
...You are a genius, hence a part of our human commonwealth in the same way as beautiful structures of past ages, the paintings of the Louvre, or the sound of music transmitted through the centuries...
...She herself—please note this—could count on nobody's pity or help...
...You had dared to attempt more: to bring out the leader's soul, a fine fellow filled with love for humanity...
...In that period of cruelties and sufferings, all of you, free as you were to choose, chose the most prudent conformism...
...She even had to pretend that nothing had happened and to appear each morning at her office, smiling and satisfied...
...They were wonders of boldness and naive imagination...
...Why should you and so many others be exempted from obligations weighing upon all of us...
...In 1948, while I was in the United States as a cultural attache for the Polish "People's Democracy," I prepared an exhibition of gouaches painted by young children of my country...
...And to intimidate me, he added that I might be suspected of deviation because of this...
...Exception was taken to the following formulation: 'Poetry, in order to be true to itself, needs to join a dialogue with truth...
...Since you are unacquainted with the Central and Eastern European languages, I will translate a few passages for you...
...a story entrusted to me in deepest secrecy...
...I accuse you, Picasso, and not only you, but all the artists and intellectuals of the West who let themselves be trapped by words...
...Do you realize the ridiculousness of this...
...Such contempt seems to me unjust and, marked by that attitude of superiority which sufrance inspires...
...During the years when painting was systematically being destroyed in the USSR and the "people's democracies," you lent your name to manifestoes glorifying the regime of Stalin...
...No one can say what would have been the consequence of a categorical protest voiced by all of you against the official doctrine imposed upon art, or against the Rajk trial...
...It was also a providential accident that you did not belong to one of those racial or national groups destined to be destroyed, along with their potential Picassos...
...If you answer us by saying, "After all, Stalin wasn't that bad," you deny the testimony published in the press of the East by people who know of what they write...
...That you are alive among us is only an accident thanks to your fine constitution and the resistance of your arteries which have allowed you to reach a venerable age...
...This open letter to Picasso originally appeared in the June, 1956 issue of Preuves and is published with permission of both its author and the editors...
...Translated by HEDWIG PACHTER...
...This letter to you, Picasso, is not a personal letter...
...Such were the thoughts of one of those who, outwardly, showed you only politeness and enthusiasm...
...Our reasons may be good or bad, I said to myself then, but our choice lies between submission or exile...
...The persecution of critical thought at the beginning of the Renaissance and later on in the 17th and 18th centuries appears almost idyllic when compared with the time through which we have lived and which, we can say with relief, is on its way out...
...It doesn't matter when and where I met her...
...You did Stalin's portrait and it provoked the Party's disapproval because it did not conform to the rules of photographic resemblance...
...If the support you gave to terror counted, then your indignation would also have counted...
...She once lived in Moscow, where she studied at the University and worked in a state enterprise...
...Now imagine, Picasso, your biography containing the following passage: "At the height of Hitler's power, Picasso painted his portrait...
...In 1953 I published a poem, moderate in tone and full of tact, called "Truth and Poetry...
...As for "historical necessity," what's left of it if it served as a mask to the aberration who nearly handed Russia over to Hitler...
...She had married a young Communist whom she loved very much...
...This letter, then, comes some years late...
...Responsibility and knowledge of the facts are not their strong points...
...I can tell it to you now, Picasso, because the person in question can now speak aloud...
...somewhere in Eastern Europe...
...If there exists a solidarity between men for whom beauty is more than a subject of esthetic considerations, you refused it...
...if truth has already been revealed for eternity?' Another writer declared, "We are guilty of lying," and he asks himself: Were we really so completely cut off from all information about the deprivations and crimes of the period just passed that now, like those Germans who, after the arrival of the Allied troops, calmly said, "Auschwitz...
...Should they be considered a living confirmation of the thesis that history punishes the bourgeois by depriving them of their reason...
...Nonetheless, you share our passions and our errors...
...An eminent poet of Warsaw has told of his experiences...
...In the spring of 1956 a Warsaw writer wrote the following: The history of philosophy knows few eras in which intolerance was pushed so far as during these past few years...
...all Continued on page 439 Continued from page 340 the exuberance of pure color was in them...
...Now, you can, if you like, say that I am motivated by a natural villainy...
...We never heard of it until you told us about it," we have the right to say the same...
...Almost all that needs to be known about this is now being said in the East...
...She is a Russian woman, of a goodness and purity whose quality is rarely found among other peoples...
...Let me give you an example...
...their views, sympathies, antipathies are dictated by their restricted surroundings...
...but the evidence will not change...
...A child was born to them...
...But is it insane...
...It doesn't cost them a cent...
...Like each of us you are responsible for what happens on our planet and your particular responsibility is measured by the distance between your renown and the anonymity of ordinary citizens...
...Your achievement has transformed you into a symbol, but your preference for white or red wine, or for rare or well-done meat will quickly be forgotten...
...It is insane, isn't it, for me to associate your name with history's filth...
...It gave you—perhaps also your conscience—an air of men belonging to the side of progress...
...It is therefore just that your irresponsibility be pointed out so that your future biographers may not forget it...
...For had they known about her husband's arrest, they would have thrown her out—and there was the child...
...Or else "historical necessity" was invoked...
...But they, the Westerners, what drives them to act like buffoons...
...Or are you absolutely sure that geniuses are born only in civilized countries and not among the barbarians east of the Elbe...
...But in fact, your weight added to the balance and deprived of all hope, those in the East who did not want to submit to the absurd...
...Then followed year after year of vain hope...
...They are fooling around...
...But even a short time ago, in the political circles surrounding you, each denunciation of the Stalin regime was branded as the work of forgers, traitors and reactionaries...
...For years I have been carrying within me the story of a human heart...
...Count her days and nights, multiply them by 8, 10, 15 millions of similar human stories and you will know to what political use you have been putting your glory as a painter...
...But with what truth...
...I NEED HARDLY TELL You what your name, quite appropriately annexed by the Stalinists, has been used to cover up...
Vol. 3 • September 1956 • No. 4
