What have I learned from Irena Veisaitė?
1. That life is a mountain whose summit – whichever way you go and wherever you head – is only halfway up.
2. That the survivors want to dance, barefoot, never minding the celebrants of death outraged at the sight of the shoes, chafing as they should do, until you bleed.
3. „That in our lives we should not succumb to despair because of our errors and our sins, for the past in is never closed down and receives the meaning we give it by our subsequent acts”[if !supportFootnotes][1][endif].
4. That cheerfulness unfaithful to facts if further-sighted than despair faithful to the eye-witnessed nightmare.
5. That memory is the lover of future.
6. That nothing is more beautiful than ugliness brushed with light.
7. „That truth is a proof of freedom and that the sign of slavery is to lie.”
8. That the true master learns all life long but reaches mastery learning from his students.
9. That you can heal poisoned souls by taking their illness in, as only in this way, from the inside, the antibodies of evil-making are produced.
10. That you don’t change the world by being right but through the art of coexisting with others, even at the price of disavowing your rightness.
11. That the invisible bridge may be rebuilt only together with those who pulled it down.
12. That you follow you heart to leave the hell.
13. That you may love what belongs to others without hurting anybody.
14. That forginvess is god.
15. That love is possible.
Krzysztof Czyżewski
Translated by Magdalena Heydel and Antonia Lloyd-Jones
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[if !supportFootnotes][1][endif] Quotations from Czesław Miłosz’s poem What I have learned from Jeanne Hersh [from:] New and Collected Poems 1931-2001, NY, Ecco 2001, p. 711-12, trans. Czesław Miłosz and Robert Hass.