Tribute to a good and wise man

Alexandra von Maltzan remembers her father, literary giant Borislav Pekic, who suffered greatly under the Communists in Yugoslavia:

My father used to say that you can never blame others for their cowardice. Everyone has different considerations and aspects to worry about. Some worry about their jobs, some their very lives, some their sponsors. One can only look to oneself and stand upright for what you believe in.

My father was betrayed many times by close friends, in a totalitarian regime, but he always forgave them. He said that they had considerations of their livelihood, which he did not have to worry about. They had considerations for their very lives, which my father had given to the cause of freedom long ago. They had considerations of their families' wellbeing, which my father did not have (when he married my mother he made his position clear, and she understood that, when I came along I simply was not asked. Heh.)

He forgave them, not because they know not what they do, but because they have the normal human weaknesses and survival instincts which my father gave up for the cause of freedom.

C. S. Lewis once said that the virtue of courage is a prerequisite for the practice of all other virtues, because otherwise one is virtuous only when virtue has no cost. There are times when something needs to be done, and yet we know that if we step up and do this needful thing, we will pay a heavy personal price. Courage is the virtue that makes us willing to pay that price; cowardice makes us say, “The price is too high; I will not pay it.”

But courage isn’t the only virtue. Prudence is a virtue as well. Sometimes the price really is too high. When we applaud somebody’s behavior as courageous, we implicitly affirm his prudence; we say that the cost was not disproportionate to the needfulness. When we accuse somebody of cowardice, we also, I think, are implying not just that he should have paid the price, but that he knew that he ought to. For if he sincerely believed that the cost outweighed the usefulness, then our true complaint is with his judgment, not his courage.

But how do we weigh another’s cost? I know a husband, for example, who for years vainly advised his wife to ignore criticism from silly people. He was himself the sort of person who had no particular emotional investment in what other people – especially stupid or ignorant people – thought or said of him; and he could not comprehend that his wife was wired for the “words of affirmation” love language. She couldn’t help but care what other people thought of her. And therefore he constantly underestimated the true cost, to her, of taking any action that would invite foolish criticism; and tended to be frustrated by her “cowardice.” Only when he came to understand the difference in temperament, did he realize that instead of pushing her to take the criticism in stride, he ought to be acting so as to make sure that if anybody was going to be criticised, it would be him, not her – not because he was braver, but because the cost was so much lower for him. What was called for was not bravery, but prudence.

It is always hard, when we ourselves are willing to make sacrifices for what is right, to see others who don’t take their place beside us because they are not willing to match our courage. The greater the sacrifice we ourselves have made, the harder it is not to feel that we have earned the right to demand sacrifices of others, for our cause – that they owe it to us to pay the price we ourselves have been willing to pay. But Borislav Pekic saw too deeply and clearly into the human heart, to be taken in by that temptation. On the Cross, Jesus famously forgave His tormentors, “for they know not what they do.” Pekic forgave those who failed him for a different reason: he forgave them because he knew, all too well, that, “I know not what I ask them to do.”