0 w w ---------- B 0 0 K S C -oE C 0 V E E X" Mind By Michael E. Moore The Land of Ulro By Czeslaw Milosz Farrer, Strauss, Giroux. $17.95 W HEN I learned, in 1982, that Czeslaw Milosz would teach a course the following winter, at the University of Michigan, I was prepared to meet the grim-faced old man, pinched hard by history, whom I had imagined and thought that I had seen in a photograph. To my amazement, however, there ap- peared a dignified gentleman, a lover of poetry as well as of good Bordeaux, whose eyes were lit with a deep, hard- won kindness. That he had been born in Lithuania (in 1911) seemed incredible-I studied the place in a historical atlas that evening, a place more deeply buried in Russian frost than Poland, a place with its own panoply of historical detail that had simply vanished. I could not help but see Milosz as though he were a spirit wandering the earth. Nevertheless, the man was there, having survived an upheaval which he compares to the collapse of Rome: "As a young man I was struck by the magnitude of what was occuring in my century, a magnitude equaling, perhaps even surpassing the decline and fall of antiquity..." The fact impressed upon me how any tradition can appear to have died, but suddenly spring to life in some un- foreseen quarter. The Land of Ulro is a difficult book, and fittingly begins with the warning that: "Dear reader, this book was not intended for you..." Published in Polish in 1977, it was destined only for a small circle of Polish readers, and hence it includes many names that are unfamiliar. Here one is helped by the excellent and enter- taining notes of the translator, Louis Irabarne. An even greater help is given by Milosz's book The History of Polish Literature, now reprinted (U. of C., 1983). The name Ulro is from Blake. It denotes that realm of spiritual pain such as is borne and must be borne by the crippled man. Blake himself was not one of its inhabitants, unlike the scientists, those proponents of Newtonian physics, the philosophers, and most other poets and artists of his day. And that goes for their descendants in the nineteenth and twentieth cen- turies, up to and including the present. The Land of Ulro describes the spiritual realm which has come to so predominate our century, the strong- handed rule that has come to be exer- cised in intellectual matters by science. If asked to tell simply and clearly what the book was about, I should answer in this way: it is about the rise of the modern-scientific viewpoint in the 18th century, and how various thinkers, poets and prophets attempted to com- bat its vision of the world, Milosz also seeks to show how the strategies of these thinkers failed, and endeavors to formulate the 'counter- vailing argument' which might succeed in their place. As he remarks, "the scientific truths fed me by civilization have never per- suaded me." These truths have persuaded most people, however, with the result that religion has been usurped. It is to restore the imaginative world within which Christianity can flourish and be believed in that Milosz has followed this intellectual quest. In fact, however, the book entails much more than this. As the author points out, the book is composed like a mosaic, of interrelated parts which do not stand on their own. It is possible to fault the book for its strange lack of form, though it has the character of a personal meditation, and it meanders with the dialectical purpose of a good conversation. One cannot abstract from the work what are its 'essential points,' since these points run throughout the book. It is a book of details, digressions; veritable alcoves, closets, and vestibules open up on every page. One must be prepared to study Blake, Dostoevsky, Swedenborg, and O.L. Milosz. The hunt is carried through an- cient gnosticism, cabalistic systems, as well as 19th century Romanticism and Goethe's attempt to guide science into a different track from that which it has followed in spite of him. "Who was I? Who am I now, years later. . . ?" These opening lines describe the autobiographical nature of the book, which traces the many in- fluences on Milosz's developement, the links in the hermetic tradition with which he cautiously identifies. This project is given an unusual twist by Milosz's antipathy toward memior- writing: But not everyone is fated to compile his memiors, least of all I. That is because mine is a pained, bruised, excoriated memory, and I am fearful of the past, as once I was fearful of a page in a natural-history book showing a gyena standing upright with its forepaws on a grave. This passage, numinous and grotesque, is followed by an extended passage concerning memory and the moment; and so the book proceeds. On the one hand, it is meant to stand as an intellectual biography, but it is one in which the author himself rarely appears. There is little direct personal statement, but a great deal of intellec- tual history. Certain of the themes which give shape to the work as a whole (the 'mosiac' viewed from a distance) can be traced through several other works as well. Foremost is the opposition of humanity and nature, a theme which appears in Visions From San Francisco Bay, and in The Witness of Poetry. That Blake and Swedenborg figure importantly in my intellectual life does not imply any radical reversal 1[b*" tide of the right By Steve Wise A N F-15 fighter plane recently sat on North Campus for a few days and no one seemed to care. Sure, a few people tried to raise a protest against what in past years might have been seen as a blatant - and clearly objec- tionable - military presence on cam- pus, but most students did, not even know about the jet. But it was more than just apathy working against the demonstrators. Students' political attitudes are changing. Protests are no longer a priority, social issues are losing their salience and students are apparently letting go of their liberalism. "They're becoming more conser- vative," said Gretchen Morris, co- coordinator of the Reagan-Bush cam- pus campaign. "That's not to say they're right wing, but it's becoming more acceptable to say your're Republican." Some signs of campus conservatism are clearer than just a lack of protestors. The local chapter of the Campus Republicans doubled its size last year and is planning meetings and a publicity drive soon to continue that growth and capitalize on political in- terest caused by the November elec- tion. "They're making a marketing effort to make sure old members know we're here and to pick up new members," said Morris, chairman of the College Republicans last year. The growth is a stark contrast to the College Republicans of the early 1970's, a time when the University established its reputation as one of the country's most liberal schools. In those years, the organization not only didn't grow, but it had trouble merely continuing to exist. "Back then. . ., if they had a meeting that was publicized, it was probably broken up by people who didn't like it," said Morris. "The organization itself was really falling apart," said Ann Arbor city councilman Jim Blow, vice chairman of the College Republicans in the 1970-71 school year. "We'd have a meeting and only eight or 10 people would show up. People found out there was no reason to disrupt the meetings because it would not cause any controversy." Another manifestation of the change in campus politics is the Michigan Review, which represents a "conser- vative, free market type of voice," ac- cording to former Review editor in chief Ted Barnett. Started two years ago, the Review has grown beyond it's original Republican stances, according to Barnett. "Some of it was started by Republican groups that wanted a Republican forum," said Barnett, one 'of the Review's original staffers. "Once they started thinking about it, they saw people didn't just want to tout party policy." Brent Haynes; current publisher of the Review, said the publication may go monthly soon, where before it had published sporadically, perhaps three to four times per year. Haynes says the number of people interested in working for the Review is growing, and more significantly, reactions to the publication itself have been positive. "The response is encouraging, even in people who don't have time to work," said Haynes. "We get comments from, 'Keep up the good work,' to 'we wanted something different.'" That response is one indication of perhaps the most crucial aspect of the conservative growth: the increasingly open acceptance of conservatives and Republicans by students. The ap- pearance of a conservative group in the fishbowl or at a recruiting event like Festifall hardly raises an eyebrow today. Years ago, according to Blow, such appearances regularly prompted "confrontations," including shouting matches and the occasional destruction of a Republican poster. "The reputation of the U. of M. cam- pus gave people a fear of being ostracized if you said you were Republican," said Morris. "Today they see that they have friends who join and are not ostracized and join them." "It's more vogue to be conservative," suggested Mary Rowland, former Haynes: 'Today's students inherit no legacy from "It's definitely true that conser- vatism and the desire for fiscal or financial security is pulling people into the conservative camp," said Har- tman. "They see, rightly or wrongly, that the Republicans will get them a job." Dr. Alexander Astin, who has been surveying student attitudes for 19 years, also said economic concerns are driving students in a new direction. But while his statistics show a growth in How would you characterize your political views? Milosz: Won Nobel Prize for poetry i of previous attachments. On the contrary, only now do I discern the thread joining the various phases of. . . my mind's progress: Catholicism, Stanislaw Brzozowski, Oscar Milosz, Hegelianism. . . Swedenborg, Simone Weil, Shestov, Blake. That thread is my an- thropocentrism and my bias against Nature. His allegience to the world of man, to his law, art, longing for God, is con- trasted with Nature, a world of deter- minism, devoid of meaning and dominated by biological necessity. The action of science, beginning with the 18th century, has been to bind the human imagination to a vision of the world as a mathematical structure, in which man is wholly contained. Spin- ning through a fathomless universe, mankind is not only insignificant, but can be viewed as little more than a biological machine, "as collections of genes"~ This point of view gave a challenge to orthodox Christianity which the Church could not meet. The hegemony of the scientific view has led to decadence, both in our spiritual life, and in literature, which has largely surrendered the field to science. It is this view that has caused Milosz to hunt for a 'countervailing argument' in the works of Blake, Swedenborg, and O.L. Milosz. This argument takes the form of a neomanichaean, apocalyptic Christian- ity, a traditin he finds in each of those writers. Of his mentor Simone Weil, he says Weil's Christianity, heavily laden with dualism, both in its Platonic and Manichaean versions, is by no means palatable to all, yet it gains enormously in importance as the exact opposite, as the counterbalan- ce to that new theology which prostrates itself before the world. An interesting comparison can be made between Milosz and St. Augustine, who ,was an enthusiastic member of the Manichaean faith in his youth. As Peter Brown says in his Augustine of Hippo, Only this group, Augustine thought, could answer the -question that had begun to 'torment' him as soon as his 'con- version' -to philosophy has caused him to think seriously: 'From what cause do we do evil.' Similarly, Milosz was led by this same question into an analogous position. Unde malum-wherefrom evil, or the old, all-embracing question of whether the world was Year 1975 ...... 1976 ...... 1977 ...... 1978 ...... 1979 ...... 1980 ...... 1981 ...... 1982 . . .. . 1983 ...... For Left 2.1 2.2 1.9 1.8 2.0 2.1 1.6 2.1 1.9 Liberal 28.8 25.6 25.1 23.6 22.5 19.6 18.1 18.9 19.2 Middle of the Road 53.3 56.0 56.6 57.8 57.9 60.0 59.6 59.8 69.3 Conservative 14.5 15.2 15.6 16.1 16.6 17.1 19.6 18.6 17.5 For Right .7 1.0 .8 .8 .9 1.2 1.1 1.0 1.2 materialis number developinE life was e tant as one students philosophy "Now n and de) philosophy charts, so "It may philosophy Forces c also leadi Morris s strongly in of today's "Our p traditiona to us," she of the '50s< Morris a parents a changes t current ge look at the "Theyv whole '60s from Gros: the same parents ar The fad another co conservati the draft harder to f seems to University "I remei was only Leachman Republicai history, wl age...we so young." While ti Nam fuele or liberal feels less Haynes sa their pr "legacy" feel they (protester B UT V stud S1 All numbers are percentages. Source: National Norms for Entering College Freshmen, published by Office of Research of the American Council on Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. Michigan Student Assembly president and currently local field coordinator for Senatro Carl Levin, "so people who are conservative are more active. . R OWLAND also supports what seems to be the most common ex- planation for the growth of conser- vatism. She believes students are put- ting money matters higher on their priority lists. "It's people becoming more concer- ned about their economic welfare," said Rowland. "Therefore they tend to have more conservative values which are less threatening to their economic standing.' Andrew Hartman, president of the College Democrats, agrees with Rowland. He said economic concerns make it more difficult for him to recruit members. conservatism and monetary motivation (see charts), the director of UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute said that new direction is not so much a political one. "The most important changes are in values, not in conservatism," Astin said. "Students are more materialistic than ever. They're more into making money and being in college to make money." Astin said he sees a parallel decline in students' social concern. Students are much less likely to go into social service careers like teaching, and much more likely to choose business, computer science and other financially rewarding careers than they were in years past. Astin also said the questions in his survey about reasons for attending college clearly illustrate students' 14 Weekend/Friday, October 12, 1984 Weekend/Friday