The only thing simple and certain about the Polish writer Aleksander Wat is that he was born in Warsaw in 1900 and died in Paris in 1967. Although his fate, and the intellect he used to contemplate that fate, was highly convoluted, there is a basic theme and drama to Wat's life. Wat was one of those born with a hunger for meaning and for whom meaninglessness was an assault on his bodily health and sanity. Without order and faith, he was disconsolate. Hearty indifference was not an option for him. He required a purpose for everything in creation, from the inertness of minerals to the songs of he human mind.
That was Aleksander Wat, and, since character is destiny, that was also the story of his life, revealed when the foliage of detail is pushed aside. All his writings make additional sense when viewed in the context of the search for a glowing pattern of unity. But only for a moment can the foliage be pushed aside. Existence is an infinite pointillism of detail. The French even say God is in the details, though Wat would add, so then is the devil.
'Liberated Words'
In Wat's background was the greatest of Jewish mystics, Isaac Luria, but another Luria had converted to Catholicism and became a canon of Vienna. Ultimate faith and the changing of faith ran in the family. His own father was a man strange about religion. Deeply immersed in the Kabbalah and modern philosophy, Wat's father made no attempt to instruct - that is to convert - his children from the paganism of youth to the Judaism of their fathers. Some of that Judaism seeped in, of course, and in many ways of one could not imagine a more perfectly Jewish type than Aleksander Wat, with his insistent need for faith and his penchant for derision.
Fortunately for Polish literature, Wat came from a family that was wealthy enough to engage a live-in maid and general housekeeper. Typically, these were poor country women who had come to the city in search of a better living, and the Wats' maid, Anna Mikulak, was one of them. Still, in other regards she was not in the least typical. Her deep moral dignity could not be but acknowledged and, over time, she was bound by love and respect to the Wat family. She taught her curious charge country nonsense rhymes that would surface in the Dadaist/Futurist poetry he would write as a young man after the First World War. She also took young Aleksander with her to church. There his soul absorbed the many beauties of Catholicism.
Indeed it was an odd and eccentric household - the father home hunched over sacred Hebrew texts while his young son was in the local church entranced by candles and liturgy. This was not due to indifference on the father's part but to a libertarian spirit - faith was to be found, not imposed. That is another strong current in the family background, a taste for liberty and struggle - in the Polish uprising against Russian domination in 1863, one of Wat's relatives made weapons and another was killed. The family was deeply bound to Poland, its language, history, and ideals. Anna Mikulak only deepened that bond for the young Aleksander.
Here is a glimpse of the two of them together, the young Jewish prince of the mind and Anna, salt of the earth; "I was already a Darwinist by the time I was a six - or seven-year-old brat. I'd tease our maid and say there was no God and man was descended
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