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

194
BARBARA TORUNCZYK
Zagajewski's treatment of this theme is similar, indeed, he devotes a whole
book to it. [S&S]
This position unites them all, although Brodsky and Kundera use
the opportunity for sparring. In essence, this is a credo, and Kundera has
coined the maxim destined to become one of the first articles in the spiritual
constitution of Central Europe. He writes: "Never forget that only in opposing History as such can we resist the history of our own day. I would
love to engrave this sentence by Witold Gombrowicz above the entry gate
to Central Europe." [The Tragedy of Central Europe"]
It is not worth getting into the arguments about the understanding
of history contained in the quotations we have cited. These people have
testified that history is for them a sphere of human responsibility. There
is no need to legitimate them-they have already passed the test. The statements we have quoted document a problem of a different order of magnitude. They illustrate a longing for liberation from the tyranny of history,
for life outside its bounds.
The last of a great race, of sages, Mircea Eliade-a Rumanian with a
thoroughly Eastern European pedigree-gave this temptation a name: "I am
told that one must be in accord with the historical moment. Today we are
overshadowed by the social question-actually, the social question as defined by the Marxists. Therefore, one's work in some way must be a response
to the times in which one lives. I accept this. But I try to respond as Buddha
and Socrates did, by breaking out of my historical moment and creating
or preparing the way for others." [Fragments d'un journal, entry from
1947]
Eliade found his answer to the usurpations of time in a sensitivity
to the sacrum, in the gift of transforming everyday reality into myth-as
when transient episodes are illuminated by the quicksilver flash of significations and meanings hoarded in the legends of humanity. Goethe was
his ideal. "The miracle of this existence, which the suffering meted out
by 'history' could never consume. O to live fully without allowing oneself
to be devoured by 'time,' to live solely for the moment, immune to the
venom of the past and the stifling embrace of history." [ibid., entry from
1948]
Such an understanding of the world does not repeal history. It is
not an invitation to escapism, abstention, and washing one's hands of
responsibility. The question variously posed to us by Eastern European
intellectuals-Kundera and Brodsky, Gombrowicz and Milosz, Zagajewski
and Venclova-one of the most fundamental questions in their world view,
in Eliade's formulation sounds like this: "How can one live in history without betraying or negating it, and at the same time partake in a suprahistorical
reality?" And this is his answer: "Ultimately, the real problem is this: How
to recognize the real camouflaged in appearances." [Mircea Eliade, No
Souvenirs: Journal 195 7-1969, Harper & Row, 1977, p. 31]