My Dinner With Aleksander

In 1964 an important if somewhat obscure Polish writer and public intellectual named Aleksander Wat arrived at the University of California, Berkeley, and began the work that would eventually become My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual. First published in Polish in 1977 and released in an abridged English translation a decade later, it is one of the most remarkable literary memoirs of the last century. Thus a measure of gratitude is due to New York Review Books for the volume's reissue, which is bound to enlarge its audience beyond those who already consider it a masterpiece.

We should note that this masterpiece almost didn't happen: Things were not going well when Wat landed in the Bay Area. He had been invited by the Center for Slavic and East European Studies. Although they imposed no formal institutional obligations on him, Wat's hosts hoped that their guest would be able to use his time to add to his slim collections of poems and stories, which he'd been writing since the 1920s. But in spite of Wat's best intentions and ambitious plans, he was unable to write or, for that matter, to do much of anything. A stroke in 1953 had left him with excruciating bouts of pain in his face; crippling agony could be brought on by even momentary concentration. Concerned that no good would come of his visit, the center's director suggested that someone record conversations with Wat about his life and work, which might make a good foundation for an autobiography. Czeslaw Milosz, the future Nobel laureate and then-professor of Slavic literature, took up the task.

Milosz had been teaching at Berkeley for just a few years, and there must have been a consensus that, as a Polish intellectual eleven years Wat's junior, a fellow poet and a disillusioned defector from the Communist government he'd served, Milosz would have shared many points of reference with Wat. He did. Milosz met with Wat regularly and recorded their conversations until the summer of 1965, when he followed Wat to Paris and continued their sessions. In his foreword to this volume, Milosz attests that although at first "the aim was therapeutic," the younger poet could not help but find himself drawn in by Wat's sharp insights and reminiscences.

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