The Mountains of Parnassus

by Czeslaw Milosz

  The dominant realist conventions of science fiction allow Milosz to express this central theme perhaps more clearly than anywhere else in his oeuvre. Herein lies the value of The Mountains of Parnassus. In essence, the five chapters of the work—together with “Ephraim’s Liturgy”—present an interconnected set of thought experiments on broader themes from Milosz’s writings: the consequences of scientific or technological progress for the human sense of meaning; the democratization and decline of religion and art; the refinement of state techniques for totalitarian control; and the dangers inherent in the fantasy of human existence without death. The unfamiliar genre of science fiction allows Milosz to take these familiar themes in new directions, presenting the future as accomplished fact in a descriptive realist style, and thus bringing prophecy to life in an act of dystopian world creation.

  Despite its incompleteness, The Mountains of Parnassus remains Milosz’s most comprehensive vision of the future. The prognosis is bleak, though the apparent trajectory of the story’s planned development suggests that not all is lost. Amid darkness and decline, a glimmer of hope persists in a remote community of believers who have rebuilt their faith on the foundations of shared ritual and forms of rhythmic speech—the very essence and purpose of poetry, as Milosz understood it. In the fragments of a science fiction novel, Milosz expressed his fears for the future, but perhaps also a tenacious belief in the redemptive power of poetic language.

  NOTES

  1. For the chronology of Milosz’s work on the project, I have drawn on discussions with his son, Anthony Milosz, and on the research of Agnieszka Kosińska, presented in her Afterword to the Polish edition of Góry Parnasu. See Agnieszka Kosińska, “Prorok nowego Świata,” afterword to Czeslaw Milosz, Góry Parnasu (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej, 2012), 107–27.

  2. Jerzy Giedroyc and Czesław Miłosz, Listy 1964–1972, ed. Marek Kornat (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 2011), 517–21. All translations are my own unless otherwise specified.

  3. Czeslaw Milosz, “Beinecke Library,” trans. Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass, New and Collected Poems, 1931–2001 (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 523.

  4. Slawomir Sierakowski, “Przegrać dla ludzi,” appendix to Miłosz, Góry Parnasu, 132.

  5. Milosz, “Ars poetica?” trans. Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee, New and Collected Poems, 240.

  6. Czeslaw Milosz, “Science Fiction and the Coming of the Antichrist,” trans. Richard Lourie, Emperor of the Earth: Modes of Eccentric Vision (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 16.

  7. Sierakowski, “Przegrać dla ludzi,” 140.

  8. In Visions from San Francisco Bay, he describes this type of intellectual as “a politicized angel” bearing “all the markings of an inquisitor or servant of the Inquisition.” See Czeslaw Milosz, Visions from San Francisco Bay, trans. Richard Lourie (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1975), p. 196.

  A Note on the Translation

  Every translator has felt the temptation to improve the occasional phrase in even the most awe-inspiring work. This inclination grows stronger when the work at hand is a fragmentary typescript published after the author’s death, and without the benefit of his participation in a full editorial process. Most Polish readers have noted that certain sections of The Mountains of Parnassus fall below Milosz’s own exacting artistic standards, though there are also beautiful passages, especially in “The Cardinal’s Testament,” that call to mind his best writing. Other sections are somewhat obscure in meaning, mostly thanks to the fragmentary nature of the work, but sometimes due to minor glitches in the logical flow of ideas.

  In all but the most superficial cases, I have resisted the temptation to make stylistic or semantic renovations, since this would have required considerable guesswork as to the author’s intentions. Instead, I have attempted to render the work more or less as Milosz sent it to Jerzy Giedroyc in 1972. Accordingly, The Mountains of Parnassus is an imperfect recreation in English of Milosz’s imperfect experiment in the original Polish. Where I have tried to smooth out certain minor infelicities—on the basis that Milosz himself sometimes took the opportunity to make changes in the English versions of his poems—I have done so without altering the sense. Of course, I do not discount the possibility that my interventions have introduced wholly new imperfections into the text.

  The most challenging part of the work for the translator is “The Mass of the Catechumens,” from the appendix entitled “Ephraim’s Liturgy.” This text ostensibly transcribes the ceremony of a quasi-Christian ritual, apparently associated with the secret congregation in the Parnassus Mountains. The text includes passages from Ecclesiastes, the Gospel of Matthew, and Psalm 139, all translated by Milosz himself. The section from Ecclesiastes seems to have formed one of the starting points for his later more extensive work in biblical translation, as his rendition of 12: 1–8 does not differ in any way from the version he was to publish in 1982.

  Rather than translate from Milosz’s own translations of scripture, I have used the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition and the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, both of which are close in spirit to Milosz’s stated aims of modernizing the language while maintaining a “high, hieratic and liturgical” tone.1 The rest of the mass includes a series of ritual dialogues between “Deacon” and “Congregation,” and a “Sermon” in “rhythmic speech.” Milosz seems to have invented most of this material himself, though it is firmly based on the style of the Catholic Mass, with certain direct borrowings. In these passages, I have sought to reproduce the same “hieratic” though modern diction that Milosz sustains from his biblical translations.

  I thank Anthony Milosz for his generous engagement and helpful advice, Clare Cavanagh for her inspiration and encouragement, Jennifer Croft for her constructive and elegant suggestions, Tomek Bilczewski for fruitful discussions of certain passages, and my colleagues in the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge. Any missteps are my own.

  NOTE

  1. See Czeslaw Milosz, “Przedmowa tłumacza,” Księgi biblijne (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2003), 39.

  The Mountains of Parnassus

  Introductory Remarks

  To the curious reader of the future, I commend these chapters from a science fiction novel that will never be written. Why will it never be written? Because I don’t feel like writing it. Why don’t I feel like writing it? It’s a question that should be taken seriously. The reason is that the result would be (1) artistically dubious and (2) immoral.

  Re (1): In the second half of our century, the novel has become a thankless literary genre. It is a fact that language strives to capture reality, and that the means it employs to pursue this aim can become worn, faded, and conventional, hence our constant headlong flight toward new means of expression. And since the novel was first born of the desire to read “true” stories, even the most pleasing stylistic exercises seem incongruous, as they use devices that somehow break away from the world of things and human relations. Therefore the novelists’ quest is understandable, but their success is always suspect, as they seem to fall into the very trap they seek to avoid. The contemporary novel—schooled on stream of consciousness or internal monologue, and tortured by structuralist theories—has strayed so far afield that it little resembles what the novel was once understood to be. We might even say that it has begun to contradict its own essence, since the diabolical boredom emanating from such works is hostile to the very vocation of narrative. It seems that everything has gone awry in the discipline.

  The only good novels are those in which reality prevails (for surely the word “reality” still means something), when the reader forgets about language and its devices, and so perhaps I should say that it is not really a question of the means but rather of their new function. Science fiction continues to place its faith in an objective reality, because its creators must pour enormous effort into the construction of one future civilization or another from the ground up, so that the genre can still take
the form of an old-fashioned novel. Unfortunately, this type of novel is also internally riven by contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, we find the image of “how things will be,” and on the other, we encounter the pressure of modern demands, for we are no longer as good-natured as Jules Verne’s protagonists. When science fiction wishes to dispense with nineteenth-century habits in characterization, dialogue, etc., it begins to share the fate of the novel more generally, crossing the boundary beyond which literary fiction loses its significance, for instead of boring ourselves with it, we could just as easily choose to read essays, poems, or scientific works. Here we might take the example of Stanislaw Lem, who began with “naïve” short stories about the future, then later achieved an extraordinary balance with Solaris, before growing envious of “serious” novelists and destroying this balance.

  As for me, I prefer to admit that I am incapable of resolving the conundrum. Everything is fine as long as I merely show “how things will be,” but once I begin to sew the threads together, putting dialogues into people’s mouths, then I feel intensely embarrassed, as if—the horror!—I were writing a “novel from life,” merely shifting the action to the end of the twenty-first century. We have learned too much not to know all too well how this works. The author draws on his own experiences, depicts his acquaintances under altered names, and so on. I became aware of my disgust for these procedures upon the introduction of two female characters, Klaudia and Tesa, who do not appear in the chapters printed here. After all, are they really paying me to expose myself and other people in public? Outright indecency. And if I wished to avoid this unpleasant feeling, I would have to choose between settling for the simplified outlines of a novel for young adults and metamorphosing into a thoroughly post-Kafkan narrator, which does not appeal to me at all.

  In fact, the reader has the right to interpret these confessions as the grimaces of a fox pronouncing that the grapes were sour because they were too high up.

  Re (2): After sanguine beginnings, when people were still capable of believing that the discovery of a metal lighter than air could guarantee peace and happiness for humanity, science fiction has mainly consisted of gloomy prophecies. Even H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) does not exactly encourage travel into the future. Meanwhile, the events of recent decades have hardly been conducive to expectations of a joyful tomorrow. My chapters will give comfort to nobody, though it’s also worth noting that they purport to present the end of the era in which humanity has lost both hope and all sense of historical continuity. In the Parnassus Mountains, a small group of people has formed a kind of community, congregation, or order, and before long they are astonished to discover that similar communities have arisen simultaneously in many other places. Yet the ruling Union still has absolute power. So what will happen next? Of course, literature always fares awkwardly when it strives to depict good people and good intentions, while it portrays evil, cruelty, and failure with accuracy, expertise, and gusto. For this reason, my own novel would be overwhelmingly dark—though there is also another reason. In order to show where hope still lies, I would be forced to write a virtual historiosophical treatise, a task I am prevented from performing by my distaste for long-winded and indeterminate forms.

  The purpose of writing is not to terrify and depress people. We have grown weary of the frenzies of “artists” who over long decades have justified the superiority of Art, or the Word, over so-called life, and if we still talk a great deal about the intrinsic (enlightening?) virtues of artistic flights of fancy, then it is largely for fear of ideological servitude. Yet panic is poor counsel. In writing, we cannot help but wonder whether our work will help people or harm them. The truth can never harm. That is certain. Yet the truth always remains complex and multifaceted, and a wholly dark truth probably helps only at times when terrifying or depressing people might induce them to lead a fuller life. It strikes me that I am incapable of performing this task.

  Is it shameful to present mere fragments, while confessing that I will never muster the whole? Perhaps it isn’t. Who knows whether I might not even have stumbled upon an experimental genre in spite of myself? For here the reader’s imagination will receive no shortage of small stimuli, but also an expansive area in which it can freely glide—which perhaps is better than having everything spelled out and constrained by the twists and turns of the characters’ stories. For what hidden threads really link the Arsonists’ Association or the HBN with the Union? What kinds of people of both sexes have belonged to the Parnassus community apart from Karel, Ephraim, and Otim (that is, Martinez)? What tactics did the Union adopt when news first reached it (of course, the news had to reach it) of the spontaneous creation of such communities, just as on the planet Arguria? And, since not many people still knew how to use the microfilmed libraries, what did the few with access to old printed books make of the long dead era of the Second Romanticism? And so on and so forth.

  Finally, let us hope that the reader will deign to appreciate a certain triumph of the author worthy of imitation—namely, that instead of adding yet another novel to the surfeit of them assailing the shelves of the bookstores, he has managed to restrain himself in time.

  Describing Parnassus

  The Parnassus Mountains—so named by nineteenth-century travelers, people of a rather poetic disposition—are not especially high, and only three of their peaks are snowcapped in summer: three white pyramids rising at a distance of a few dozen miles from one another over the bluish verdure of the coniferous forest that imbues the tangle of hills, chasms, and valleys with the appearance of a plain. Perhaps Parnassus should have been the name of the highest mountain, the home not so much of the Muses as of the hordes of skiers who descended upon it all year round. Yet by the power of the geographers’ decree, it takes the name Tomak, while its two slightly lower companions bear witness to the languages of bygone tribes with the names Onwego and Kitwanga.

  On account of their inaccessibility, the forests of the entire mountain range escaped the plunder of the logging industry, and the whole area, spreading over many thousands of square miles, was preserved as a sizable province divided into three administrative units named after three rivers: the Sukunka, the Hominka, and the Barkena. Later, when the Botanists’ Union—reinforced by the enormous sums of money invested in it—went to war with the Astronauts’ Union, one of the phases of its short-lived preeminence found expression in the merging of the three units to form Parnassus National Park. Much like the other parks created at the time, it contributed to the outbreak of a guerrilla war within the Botanists’ Union between the opposing factions of the Naturalists and the Strategists. Since the Naturalists openly proclaimed that the excessive multiplication of the human race was a stain on the face of the Earth, they were in favor of the total closure of the parks, which in their view could form the only defense against the pressure of the vast numbers swarming across the lowlands like ants. The Strategists, on the other hand, taking into account the exigencies of politics and money, believed that it would be possible to limit the damage caused by the three to five million tourists who visited each year. The lovers of so-called nature appeared almost exclusively in the short summer months, if one didn’t count the skiers on Mount Tomak. Rain and snow on the ridges scared them off in spring and fall. Otherwise, they kept to the sparse roads and to the campsites densely packed along them. The few marked trails bypassed the areas most abundant in fauna. Stern prohibitions against wandering off these trails were accompanied by warnings of danger. On entering the park, each visitor received a brochure filled with accounts of the misadventures of the careless, who had lost their way and died of hunger or of wounds inflicted by bears. The Naturalists’ greatest triumph was the absence of trails along the lakes, on which it was also forbidden to use anything but a rowboat. The curious, wishing to discover what lay at the far end of the longest lake, Nukko, could take an old-fashioned pleasure cruise. Over several hours, they would admire the steep rocky slopes scattered with rings of pine trees rese
mbling the drawings of the Chinese masters, along with waterfalls and Alpine meadows, before the boat sailed into a perennially calm bay protected from the wind, and drew up to the wooden pier. There was not much to see on the shore. A path led to a pavilion filled with charts and photographs of rare tree species, and farther on to a forester’s house, where a fenced clearing held a few grazing horses, the only means of locomotion in those untamed parts. The place was not noticeably disrupted by the visitors, as beavers had even built their lodge under the planks of the pier. The Naturalists gnashed their teeth when they saw the main road into the park as clogged in July and August as the artery of a major city, as well as thousands of campfires. And they gnashed their teeth when they saw a tourist dragging a set of moose antlers behind him, clear evidence that he must have ventured into the inaccessible thicket, for a moose would surely not have shed its antlers on the open road. They would find consolation after half an hour’s march along a forest path, as the almost total wilderness reassured them of the lack of entrepreneurial spirit among the vacationers.

  The River Hominka has its beginnings in a glacier on Mount Onwego. Traveling from the source to its mouth must once have been no small journey, before concrete roads shortened it to a single day. To be precise, the expedition departs not from the source itself, but from the dam that widens the stream into Lake Molelo. A bleak basin at seven thousand feet is fringed by a sickly forest of half-withered firs overgrown with beards of moss. A narrow road, one of the least frequented in the park, drops sharply in hairpin turns along the river, which in turn flows through a winding canyon with such steep walls that the roots of the trees can scarcely cling onto them. The roar of the water echoes off the walls as it foams over the rocks. The canyon gradually becomes less steep, and the river less wild, running here and there into a pool of transparent water over a graceful cascade. In this part of the park, at five thousand feet, there has long been a modest settlement, so that every few miles one stumbles across an inn frequented by the fishermen who come here for the trout. A post office, an inn, and a shop selling everything an angler might need figure on maps as the little town of Onwego.