My Century (New York Review Books Classics) [Paperback]

Aleksander Wat (Author), Richard Lourie (Translator), Czeslaw Milosz (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2003 | Series: New York Review Books Classics

In My Century the great Polish poet Aleksander Wat provides a spellbinding account of life in Eastern Europe in the midst of the terrible twentieth century. Based on interviews with Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, My Century describes the artistic, sexual, and political experimentation --in which Wat was a major participant-- that followed the end of World War I: an explosion of talent and ideas which, he argues, in some ways helped to open the door to the destruction that the Nazis and Bolsheviks soon visited upon the world. But Wat's book is at heart a story of spiritual struggle and conversion. He tells of his separation during World War II from his wife and young son, of his confinement in the Soviet prison system, of the night when the sound of far-off laughter brought on a vision of "the devil in history." "It was then," Wat writes, "that I began to be a believer."

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Published years after Wat's death, this remarkable transcription of his taped memoirs sears the imagination. Like Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn, Wat records the life of a political prisoner with agonizing precision, texturing his recall with comic and compassionate portraits of his fellow prisoners and their guards. But Wat's genius lies beyond memorable evocation of place or even portraiture. His work is subtitled an "odyssey," and its true force transpires through the political and spiritual implications of his journeys among 13 Polish and Russian prisons during the 1930s and 1940s. Wat begins as a Communist and Jew and ends as an anti-Communist and Christian who still affirms his Jewishness. Above all, he defends his inner life against monstrous efforts to reduce it to time and trivia. Arthur Waldhorn, City Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"As a document of historical witness, My Century is an extraordinary work. But more than that, it is a masterpiece of autobiography. Wat’s voice is irresistible, and he tells his story with such rigor and intelligence, such overpowering human warmth, that one is permanently altered by his words….It would be impossible for me to overstate my admiration for this book. It is a magnificent achievement, one of the most moving and powerful books I have ever read."— Paul Auster

"Illuminating….What Solzhenitsyn did for the camps, Wat has done for the prisons."— J.M. Cameron, New York Review of Books

"I couldn’t put it down…one reads it with an excitement only a great novel can elicit….No one has written so well on prison life, to my knowledge, since Dostoevsky."— Irving Howe

"A very remarkable book indeed….There is, at every stage, Aleksander Wat himself, with his keen intelligence, his powerful descriptive gifts and his moral insight….The whole book is an impressive act of witness. It deepens the reader’s response to life and lays bare a major tract of history."— John Gross, The New York Times

"Such a fascinating book to read, this spoken memoir by Aleksander Wat!….Aleksander Wat was a poet, and My Century is a work of art….[It] may be read as a spiritual biography of a generation of European intellectuals….I would put it on a shelf in the vicinity of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag, so compelling is its testimony and analysis."— Jan T. Gross, New York Times Book Review --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics; English Language Version edition (December 31, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590170652
• ISBN-13: 978-1590170656
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #64,399 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #37 in Books > History > Europe > Eastern
  • #97 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Irish

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars History as remembered, March 22, 2006

By 

Aleksandra Nita-Lazar (MD, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Century (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

Aleksander Wat created this exceptional memoir solely by talking to Czeslaw Milosz during one year in Berkeley in the sixties. The memories of Wat (at that time already ill and very depressed) together with questions put to him by Milosz, a Nobel Prize winning poet and novelist, formed a unique book (in Poland circulated illegally for a long time and extremely popular).

Both Wat and Milosz went through the communist system and opposed it at the end, but Milosz early on chose emigration, leaving Poland initially for France and then for the US, while Wat, initially believing in The Party and the power of the working class, suffered the full impact of the machine. He tells the story of his enthusiastic youth, describes his fellow poets and writers, then moves on to his arrest and moving through Soviet prisons, without a trial for a long time, recalling other inmates and their stories, the methods for survival, the thoughts and torments. Then, finally moved to the work camp, he depicts in acute detail the life of the families and their struggle for sanity.

The New York Review of Books edition contains also the memoir of Ola (Paulina) Wat, Aleksander's wife, who supported him throughout his ordeal.

Although there are many books of experiences of the communist camps and especially the tortures of the intellectuals, who were torn between the idea of communism and its soon obvious wrong, every witness has eyes of their own and Wat, with his Jewish background and the soul of a Polish artist, makes his own, original statement.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Keeping the Memory Green, January 28, 2004

By 

Buce (Palookaville) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Century (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

Andre Malraux wrote that only three books -- Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote and The Idiot--retained their truth for those who had seen prisons and concentration camps (see: Les Noys de l'Altenburg (Paris 1948)). It's an odd remark--what did he mean, "seen"? Suffered in? Or watched newsreel footage on the History Channel? One cannot escape the conviction that Malraux is trying to hype the aroma of glamour around his own life.

But this is a distraction. The question is: I wonder what he thinks of the extraordinary array of "witness literature" from Europe beginning, perhaps, with Dostoevsky's "House of the Dead" and ending (one may hope?) with Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago."

In this chorus, Aleksander Wat's "My Century" stands as a luminous example. Wat was a Pole: Jewish by background but at last a convert to Christianity. He was a poet and a "literary person" before and after World War II. Along the way, he spent time in 13 (or was it 14?) different prisons, all simply for being who he was."

His "memoir" is not precisely something he "wrote." Wat spent the year 1964-5 in Berkeley. There he fell in with Czeslaw Milosz, a great poet in his own right. Largely with the encouragement of Milosz, he "dictated" his story in a series of interviews which have been somewhat recast for this book. It's just as harrowing as you would expect it to be it has its uplifting side, driven by Wat's amazing inner resouurces: one thing about a good education, it gives you stuff to think about in Prison. And even at the worst, his sense of humor does not fail him. He recounts the story of the citizens of Bukhara, who surrendered to Ghengis Khan--only to have Ghengis Khan order their massacre. As Ghengis Khan explained to the elders:

"You must have sinned greatly against God if he sent Ghengis Khan down on you!"

Aside from Wat's own story, the NYRB edition includes an astonishing narrative by his wife, recounting a particularly dreadful chapter in her own prison years.

There is a promising-looking biography by Tomas Venclova, but I haven't read it. Wat died in 1967, I believe (though I can't seem to pin this down) a suicide.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Explanation of the Politcal Division in 20th Century Poland and Russia, November 15, 2007

By 

John Sledziewski (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Century (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

Though it is only one man's view, the book provides a good explanation for why communism never took off in popularity in Poland like it did in Russia. An interesting account of the political currents in independent Poland between the world wars. Also an interesting account of life in the gulags and the places people scattered to, like Khazikstan, when World War II broke out. There must be countless stories like this one, that will never be heard about. I also very much liked Milosz's Legends of Modernity, and Wat's experience truly augmented that read.