Kings and Spirits in The Eastern European Tales [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 183-206]

190
BARBARA TORUNCZYK
The search for standards for spiritual life, an approach to life as if
it were an assignment, and a certain maximalist tenor to the demands placed
upon it-all probably explain why the cult of personality, so rarely encountered today in the West, is so prevalent in Eastern European countries.
What concerns us here is a peculiar respect for people who are thought
to represent not so much a certain way of life as a certain greatness of soul.
This has nothing to do with virtuousness. We are speaking instead of
something stalwart and fearless, virtue in the classical sense-the active
and unremitting display of certain moral qualities, their constant presence
in a state of heightened readiness. This is no cult of heroes, for heroic
virtues are not required. To the contrary, feats of courage and derring-do
have become noticeably discredited in common practice-for example,
among the Polish opposition. What counts are "ordinary," prosaic, humdrum virtues and longings. It is good form to begin a novel by confiding
your fear of being arrested.
The cult of personality is a cult of people. Their very existence points
to the "spiritual maximum" to which Brodsky refers. Particularly strong
feelings are aroused by those from the first, pioneering generations-powerful, maverick personalities-recalling somewhat the American veneration
for the Founding Fathers. To Venclova, Viktoras Petkus is such an exceptional figure, ever in the shadow of the gallows (in fact, he is serving yet
another 15-year term for the same offense-his unflagging and fearless
demand for human rights in Lithuania). For Michnik, an object of admiration himself, the same role is played by Sakharov and Havel. In Kundera,
we have the writers crushed by his nation's history-the tragic Holan, but
also the late Jini Lederer, unyielding, honest and gracious. Milosz has the
mythical figure of Oskar Milosz, uncle and shaman of spiritual initiations.
To Brodsky one can safely assign-and not just for the enormity of their
talent-Marina Tsvetaeva and Anna Akhmatova.
This cult of exceptional people, shorn of any of the characteristics
of the Nietzchean superman cult, is the best expression of the longing we
have spoken of-the longing for life within a fewllowship where the attainment of the "spiritual maximum" is the first and unquestioned goal, the
raison d'etre. One often gets the impression that this longing for greatness
in man and his spiritual life has begun to mold these people. "The most
important thing in history appears," writes Zagajewski, "-people who
forcefully exist" [S&S].
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The singular intensity of spiritual life, which imposes an absolutely
vertical direction of inquiry-an orientation towards values and a perpetual
hunger for them-quite naturally is accompanied by a thoughtful, evaluative