Czeslaw Milosz on the “Conspiracy of Silence”

“In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.” – dissident poet – and immigrant to America – Czeslaw Milosz, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

You can read more about Czeslaw Milosz’s extraordinary life, as well as read some of his poetry, on the official website of the Nobel Prize. His poetry is an extraordinary documentation of the terror of totalitarianism and the atomization of humanity under despotism. He fought it with words, but he was also a member of the underground resistance to Russian rule in Poland. He created an underground press that continued to publish works critical of the regime, continued to publish work by writers who were banned and forbidden.If you’re interested in reading more, I would say start with his collection The Captive Mind. It’s a collection of prose works, not poetry, but it is a classic examination of the mindset imposed by totalitarianism. For poetry, there is the gigantic collection: New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001, with foreword by Seamus Heaney. Milosz was a hero.

His 1969 poem “So Little” has haunted me ever since I first read it years ago.

So Little

I said so little.
Days were short.

Short days.
Short nights.
Short years.

I said so little.
I couldn’t keep up.

My heart grew weary
From joy,
Despair,
Ardor,
Hope.

The jaws of Leviathan
Were closing upon me.

Naked, I lay on the shores
Of desert islands.

The white whale of the world
Hauled me down to its pit.

And now I don’t know
What in all that was real.