Chapter 5: Miłosz in the American Reading Room

Abstract

front of a microphone. The fact that such a development is possible is easy to see by observing in the march of the middle class such organizations as the Ku-Klux-Klan, the American Legion, veterans’ associations, and the Knights of Columbus. One look at their faces is enough to reach the conclusion that these people are strangers to any limits of sophisticated taste outlined by the mandarins, and that they are ready to throw at the stake both paintings of the communist Picasso, and books by the aristocrat Eliot. In this light, both the Bollingen Prize, and the fight against the poetic dictatorship of Eliot and his followers show their multi-layered nature.638