Chapter 6: Miłosz and Multi-Racial Society in the United States

Abstract

Reading translations of novels about American Indians was a component of the upbringing of boys among the Polish intelligentsia in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. When the country was partitioned under Russian, Prussian and Austrian rule, these novels were often read in an Aesopian way, where the red and white characters corresponded allegorically to the figures of patriots and invaders. Only after returning to Europe in 1950, when Miłosz reassessed his past experience, he reminisced on the books read in childhood in his work on the novels The Issa Valley and Native Realm. In The Issa Valley, the narrator says the following about Tomasz: