audience, for now, their potential works do not play any role, they have no effect on the environment, and they are not directly linked to the myth of intellectual life in the ghetto. Perhaps a survey among Polish writers would yield some bizarre results, but unfortunately we cannot at present [2] gather such material. Therefore, we have to make do without actual sources, and we only have third-hand data at our disposal. Even the little first-hand knowledge we have is unreliable.
There is more than enough excitement, more than enough topics, impressions, and experiences. Writers have nothing to complain about in this respect. But there are obstacles as well, and they are of such an essential nature that, despite the strong stimuli available to poets today, they inhibit and prevent any actual work. I am referring not only to censorship, but also to the absence of publishers, the ban on printing and publication, and the lack of books, magazines, and newspapers. For the stagnation and paralysis of publications, along with censorship and restrictions imposed on the subject and on freedom of expression, must impede the creative impulse, even one that is most intense and flourishing thanks to the pace, strength, and scope of today’s experiences. What is more, the terrible living conditions, the struggle for bread, housing, freedom of movement; the poverty, hunger, disease, death of relatives, resignation, and utter scepticism—they all paralyse the will, wither the brain, numb the heart, and drain the imagination. Not everyone, not even the truest poet, is able to respond to the sight of a corpse of a beggar starved to death on the street with an elegy or even a Promethean poem. Not every poet can create on an empty stomach, though there were hungry poets throughout history, even in times of peace. Finally, not every writer knows how to apply their talents and literary genre to the needs of the time and to find a form suitable for the changed conditions. We know such events formed the history of literature when great unhappiness, suffering, hunger, fear, despair, disease, and widespread disaster caused many a prolific writer to surrender their pen, although many others did not break under the same conditions, but produced the greatest of works. [3] Who knows, maybe there is a future fame hiding in the ghetto, some great poet of today’s captivity . . . Today, however, we know of no such person, there is no one who has the makings of one, at least in none of the people we know. Most likely—if there is to be one in any case—such a poet will be someone hitherto unknown, a young, talented newcomer, who, in better circumstances, will make his name famous
