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THE CAPTIVATED MIND: TWO STUDIES OF MLOSZ 197elsewhere, Nathan and Quinn stop just short of presenting those views as oracularutterances.Leonard Nathan's and Arthur Quinn's disposition toward their subject is notappreciably different from that of Aleksander Fiut, and, in a certain sense, representsa weakness shared by both books. Strangers for the most part to Polish culture,Nathan and Quinn happen to be colleagues of Milosz's at Berkeley and also claimthe distinction of having spent much time discussing his poetry with him and ofbeing "thoroughly familiar" with everything he has written. Leonard Nathan,moreover—as noted previously—is a cotranslator of a number of Milosz's poems,which necessarily brought him into very close contact with the poet. Fiut, too, hasspent considerable time talking with Miłosz and, as a sometime visiting professor inthe same department as Miłosz, has had the opportunity to acquire a firsthandknowledge of the American setting in which so much of Miłosz's poetry has beenwritten since he joined the University of California faculty in 1960. Both these studieswere written, in fact, by men who have been quite close to Miłosz, haveacquired an intimate knowledge of his works, and have enjoyed the privilege ofspending many hours discussing these works with him. The nature of their authorshipis in itself revealing, however unintentionally, and reflects on the status ofMilosz's recognition, at least in this country.Once secure in his faculty position at the University of California at Berkeleyand doubtless concerned about his reputation as a poet in his adopted country,Miłosz took on a direct role in the translation of his own poetry. The pattern for thishad already been established with the publication in 1965 of Postwar Polish Poetry,which Miłosz edited and translated himself. By the time the first slim volume of hisown poems in English {Selected Poems) appeared in 1973, Miłosz had already beenat Berkeley some thirteen years and had published several volumes of poetry andprose in Polish. Yet, to all intents and purposes, his international fame rested on asingle political work, The Captive Mind. Regarding himself above all as a poet andunderstandably anxious to alter his image as a political émigré renowned for awidely acclaimed "exposé" of the communist seduction of artists and intellectuals(The Captive Mind), Miłosz undertook a program of collaboration on translations ofhis poetry with Berkeley colleagues and students, as well as with poets elsewhere inthis country. Since he knows English well, and given his great concern withlanguage in general, such collaboration made sense.The positive outcome of such collaboration was the publication in the 1970s oftwo volumes of Milosz's poetry in good English translations. Miłosz the poet couldat last gain equal footing in the English-speaking world with Miłosz the prose writer(by this time four volumes of prose, together with The History of Polish Literatureand Postwar Polish Poetry, had already been published). The availability of thesevolumes of poetry in English, along with the prose works, clearly enhanced his candidacyfor the 1980 Nobel Prize in literature. The negative side to this collaboration,presided over by Miłosz himself, has been the emergence of a coterie of former students,colleagues, and others involved in the undeniably worthwhile project of makingMiłosz the writer as well known as possible in the anglophone community. It isfrom the ranks of this coterie that not only translations of Miłosz's poetry and prose