Czeslaw Milosz Books

The world of Ferdydurke seems at first to be concocted out of equal parts of Kafka and Swift. There is the absurdity of Kakfa: events occur for no apparent reason, and the main character seems to be under some mysterious hypnotic spell. And there is the savage humor of Swift. Violent conflict erupts between the followers of two opposed and equally absurd and ridiculous systems of belief. But as the book progresses, it becomes clear that Gombrowicz has put his own special stamp on this world, and created a type of fiction that is totally unique.

The plot line is simple: a man of about 30 years of age is abducted by a priggish professor and finds himself, for reasons unexplained, transformed into an adolescent schoolboy. The novel consists of the "adventures" of this anti-hero in the world of adolescence, which he views with both fascination and disgust, and from which he remains detached, and yet at the same time with which he becomes intensely involved. (Ferdydurke is above all else a novel of unresolved contradictions.) Although the narrator is subjected to all the humiliations of an adolescent schoolboy (patronized by adults, frustrated by hopeless desire for a girl who disdains him, etc.), he also retains an adult outlook. In fact, it may be said that he is the only character who is adult (in the psychological sense of being self-aware) and who struggles, not always with success, to remain sane. Part of the genius of the book is that the adults in it seem crazy from the narrator's perspective as a youth, and the adolescents seem crazy from the narrator's perspective as an adult. In spite of its simple plot, Ferdydurke bursts with a dazzling exuberance of incidents, contradictions, characters, and digressions. Readers who demand strict linear plot development in a novel should probably look elsewhere.

Ferdydurke can be read at many levels. It is not surprising that a novel which features conflicts between two equally absurd systems should come out of 1930s Poland, beset as it was by two powerful opposed enemies, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Ferdydurke can also be read as an exploration of the fragility of the adult ego, of the fine line between "maturity" and "immaturity". The violent schoolboy quarrels which so fascinate and repel the narrator seem like absurdist, distorted parodies of very serious adult matters. And this novel is also about hidden, dark passageways in the human psyche. The narrator confesses to thoughts and behavior that most of us would never want to allow into the daylight of consciousness, much less to own up to.

Ferdydurke is not a difficult read, but it is quite digressive and very different from what most English-speakers expect a novel to be. Until this new translation, the first directly into English, it was effectively unavailable. This book is not for everyone. But it is a fascinating read for those who are seeking a multi-faceted, complex, and uncompromising (one noted critic has called it "Nietzchean") exploration of what it means to be a "mature adult", and who are not looking for easy answers or Hollywood endings.

Among the great works of Central Europe litterature, Ferdydurke had a profound influence in my life and my writings.

Witold gombrowicz's "alice in wonderland"-like trip takes the protagonist, who is 30 years old, back to his school days. There he battles again with the challenges of a teenager-alliances and cliques in the 1st part and sexual awakenings in the second. One thing is clear however; he has learned nothing from his earlier passing.

The story's underlying theme is one of maturity. What is it? Is it part of the aging process? Is it developed through life experiences? I never felt gombrowicz ever answers any of the questions unless the conclusion is that there is no maturity. None of the characters ever shows any level of it. That includes professors, school teachers, the landed gentry, or their peasants. Everyone is just simply self-destructive.

To further complicate things, the author throws in two somewhat unrelated short stories into the middle of the novel. They are just as silly as the novel itself, but are simply a distraction and really add nothing to it.

I also had problems with one aspect of the translation. The translators left in the polish word "pupa" which literally means buttocks. The author uses it in many different ways as you can imagine english would use the word ass. But I could not always follow his references. This made for frustrating reading since I knew something was there but couldn't get it.

The author himself probably puts it most succinctly at the very end of the novel when he says:

"It's the end, what a gas,
And who's read it is an ass!"

"Ferdydurke" by Witold Gombrowicz has finally been properly translated into English. Not that this is an event worth mentioning in general, but the point to be made is that the world of translation offers room for all kinds of mischief and sloppiness. Who would have thought that it were perfectly acceptable for publishers to allow translation from a second, and not native tongue? Imagine, for purposes of illustration, that a work of a classic British author translated into German not directly, but from Suahili, for this was the language the book was first translated into. Would you be satisfied with a product of this type? This was the fate of Gombrowicz, his native tongue was done away with, and the Anglo-Saxon world of bibliophiles had had no other choice but to read a lemon. Perhaps this is the revenge of the Heavens on the author himself, for never was there any other Polish author who had his native country in such a low regard as he did. In his "Trans-Atlantyk", Gombrowicz dared to ridicule everything a Pole holds dear, together with the whole idea of a nation as such. Were he to live today, he would embrace the idea of convergence and the global village of consumptionism, as opposed to Europe of Nations. That was one of the main reasons for Gombrowicz's emigration to Argentina, where he spent almost all of his literary career.

"Ferdydurke" is an early novel by this author, and it's never as crass as the aforementioned "Trans-Atlantyk". In fact, it constitutes part of a literary canon in Poland to this very day, and there is no educated Pole who hasn't read or at least heard of "Ferdydurke". Scenes from this book, gestures, and neologisms entered the mass vocabulary, and once you learn some of these expressions, you cannot unlearn them, for then there is no better way to express yourself, but to use the phrases coined by Gombrowicz. Whatever issues Poles have with this author, one thing is certain: we are grateful to him for augmenting our language. Gombrowicz created an archetype of a confused man, whose karma is to move back in time, back to school, with the mentality of an adult. I will even risk a claim that this fact alone lies at the very heart of science fiction - for how might that be possible, and what would happen if such occurence took place? How would that affect the object in queestion? Perhaps my perception of this problem is a bit skewed due to my occupational hazard of a scientist, but for me, "Ferdydurke" is a laboratory novel, where with a literary set of tools we analyze both the situation, and the object, in the vein of the medieval alchemist. This novel, hardly known in the English-speaking world, will be an exhilarating reading experience for you, provided that you will trust me and pick it up. The amusing analysis of the immature world the protagonist found himself in, mixed with elements from all literary forms, from plain mystery, via comedy, to sophisticated analysis of society, makes Ferdydurke an experimental novel of potential interest for all bibliophiles and lovers of the nonstandard.

You may well ask the above question, but you will never discover the answer, for there is no character, or thing, in this darkly comic masterpiece named Ferdydurke. It just appears to be some play on words, or a nonsense title to intrigue the potential reader. This book, written in Polish between the two world wars, is extremely capably translated, with a good use of slang and diminuitive terms which must have caused endless hours of trouble and frustration for the translator. It appears to be an indictment of the state of society as it existed in Poland in the 1930's, and may appear a bit dated since must of what is excoriated by the author no longer exists. There is particular emphasis upon the type of relationship which existed between the nobility (of a sort) and the peanant and serving classes. There is a lot about the threat of modernity in the country, and a great emphasis upon infantilism and immaturity. The work takes some getting used to by the reader, but read in the context of its time it is very well done, and should be read to be appreciated for what it has to say about the human condition.

It's amazing how beautifully Milosz's poetry translates into English. For those of us who are in love with poetry of nature, history, and love itself, this is the perfect addition to any library.

Milosz came highly recommended: by Anna Akhmatova, Irina Ratushinskaya and Joseph Brodsky! (I even think that I read that Pasternak was a fan late in life!)

The cover blurb says that he contains the twentieth century within himself like no other poet, and this certainly is true. But this is not primarily "historical" poetry. It covers deep issues, but remains intensely honest, open, personal, experiential and biblically spiritual. Having said all of that, I don't do Milosz's poetry justice. It is not there for anybody's encyclopedic curiosity of "honest Christian experience". It is a scalpel that cuts open his own heart, and mine. Repeatedly. Clearly. Without descending into the self-consciously avant-garde. He opens me in more ways than I sometimes think I want to be opened.

In the very last poem of this, the greatest collection of Milosz's works, he so lucidly begins.......

Late Ripeness by Czeslaw Milosz

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.........

******************

This wonderful collection spans a lush and lavish 70 long years; years magically molded in the hands of a cunning and capable and wise prophet of our times.
Milosz yearns for a 'tangible reality' to maintain the health of poetry. He is accessible even to the untrained ear.....for it is ultimately in the lack of illusion that his work shines and reverberates.

In his introduction, he concludes that "poetry has always been for me a participation in the humanly modulated time of my contemporaries."

And we see this simple humility reflected in the last verses of his final poem of this collection.
*************************

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago -
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef - they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.

**************************************

This rich collection will transport you back and forth in time with a gifted, yet humble master of distillation, distance and destiny!

It is difficult often to take to heart a poet in translation. It is difficult too for the modern reader to focus on a Poet who does not dwell in his own subjective consciousness, and does not have 'I' at the heart of his world of perception. For these reasons it took me time to 'get into' these poems but once I did I felt in the presence of a specially wonderful world of poetry, an especially rich and observant sensibility. The 'wake- up' poem for me was one of Milosz's most famous, 'Campo dei Fiori'. In this poem Milosz compares the square in Florence in which Giordano Bruno was burned with the square in Warsaw close to the burning Warsaw Ghetto. He richly details the life which goes on all around in the two squares, and the indifference of all to the great suffering.
"Someone will read as moral
that the people of Rome or Warsaw
haggle, laugh, make love
as they pass by martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
of the passing of things human,
of the oblivion
born before the flames have died."
In this same collection Milosz has a set of three small remarkable poems one on Hope, one on Faith, and one on Love.
"Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it from various ills-
A bird and a tree say to him. Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things,
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves.
Who serves best doesn't always understand.'

Milosz wrote poetry for seventy years, and his poems line by line do not cease to surprise. He shows an astonishing combination of intellect and feeling. His poems are rich with observations of the external world. Naming the things and the phenomena of the world seem in one way at the heart of his vision.
But it should not be forgotten that his poetry has a strong political and historical dimension. He was one who sympathized deeply with the victims of the Nazis, who fought against Communist oppression. His poems show a feeling for an understanding of freedom. They are also rich in religious feeling though this comes mediated by irony and questioning.
Milosz is too a Poet deeply in touch with the earth, who sees it in detail and from afar at once. In his Nobel Speech he quotes the writer Selma Lagerlof who said that the way of the Poet is to at once fly above reality and at the same time be down close observing it. This double - perception of seeing from afar and seeing from close- up pervades all those long- lined multi- stanzad poems so remote from what has been much poetry in our time.
Milosz's work is full of surprise and irony, and can suddenly wake the reader to a sense of revelation in delight.
I have not even in this review begun to hint at the riches of this incredibly wonderful book of poems - poems of a great poet indeed.

Few poets have as eloquently and profoundly mapped out the manic contours of the twentieth century as have Czeslaw Milosz. And even fewer poets have truly lived through what they wrote. In both categories, Milosz stands as a towering giant, a massive oak which has weathered the most savage of storms and the sweetest of sunshines. Anyone interested in walking along the trial and tribulation-filled path of the last century would be wise to pick up this ultimate testament to Milosz's life and work.

This tome covers the entire expanse of Milosz's writing career, from his early years in Lithuania, where he followed the Frnech symbolists in writing image-dense lyrics, to his twilight years in Berkeley and Krakow, where his majestic voice evolved into that of a prophet's. Each poem exudes the light and darkness of the various stations along his life. Young student in Vilnius, journalist in pre-war Warsaw, the contemplative and distanced survivor of the Warsaw Uprising, the awe-struck immigrant never quite at home in his new land. All of these stops are painted with a wry and mediatative hand. Milosz's work is that of the thinker. His mind soars above the peaks and abysses of his life, well-distanced from the churning seas of emotion. He never delves into the passion of the moment, into the realm of the subjective. Milosz spent his childhood years wanting to be a naturalist and his objective, scientist-like perspective dominates throughout his work. In the Miloszian world, we are all parts of a much greater whole, our individual tears and spurts of temporary joy matter little in the grand picture of things. And it is this global picture that Milosz attempts to put down on the canvas. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the physical world is Milosz's favorite backdrop, and even when it appears absent, it's scent is still traceable. His formative years spent in the wilds of Lithuania gave him a fatalistic faith in the indestructible permanence of things, that no doubt helped him endure the hell of WW II Poland.

While detachement is Milosz's telltale signature, our human presence in the machine of history is really what these poems attempt to divulge. Like his country, Milosz experienced firsthand two totalitarian beasts, that of Nazi Germany and of Soviet Russia. Yet, Milosz's credo is not one of naive heroism, as is much in Polish poetry. His message is far more universal with its 'human, all too human' colors. For him, the true heros were those who managed to survive, to exist and to stubbornly hold on to some semblance of human dignity whilst all around bestiality reigned. The boy on the barricades of Warsaw who died nameless and faceless, this is the best we can do. Milosz avoids pointing the finger at the big beasts themselves, but instead asks us to examine our hearts. 'Did you really need to plunge into an abyss, To compose systems rather than settling into the fairy tale.'

Milosz's later poems carry the weight of a life lived through extraordinary circumstances. A life neither excessively noble nor excessively evil. Milosz's writes of and for the survivor, for most of us, who reach life's end with a complex mesh of guilt and content. 'I feel relief thinking I was no better and no worse than many, and that together with them I wait for forgiveness.' Like Shakespeare before him, Milosz's lasting message is one of humility before our sad condition, before our sad history, and most of all, before our merciful Maker. The hardest of lessons, but also the most important.

Fierce. That about sums it up, whether she writes a zen like poem on love and loss("like an eye and an eyelid/united by a tear " in "Sad Lovers") or sex ("you come to me at night,you are an animal/a woman and an animal can be joined/by the night only" in "A Bitch." ) One of her finest poems, discussed by Roger Housden in one of his "Ten Poems" series is here as well, "Thank You,My Fate." She was a remarkable person, fighting in the Polish underground, a nurse in the Warsaw ghetto, once an hour away from execution. Her fierceness comes from her life, one lived fully and in the toughest of circumstances. Copper Canyon has done us a service in unearthing her work from the Polish.

What can I say. The world is lucky to have the work of Anna Swir. I read her book again and again. Each time, I feel renewed, more easily accepting my own journey.

Rare is the poet who can put so much into so little. Anna Swir is one such poet. She writes...I am filled with love...as a great tree with the wind...as a sponge with the ocean...as a great life with suffering...as time with death. So childishly simple. So matter-of-fact and straightforward. Yet, so very correct. So very rich. As is each and every verse within this magnificent collection.

For many years ignored in her native Poland, Anna Swir has become discovered anew for the rest of the world thanks to fellow Pole and poet, Czeslaw Milosz. Working alongside American poet Leonard Nathan, Milosz cut these gems of rare beauty and wisdom with an exacting knife. Anna's very unique voice comes across as piercing and original as if she had written these poems in English.

If Anna has a soulmate in verse it might be that other solitary siren of the female voice, Emily Dickinson. Whereas Emily explored the hidden corners of the spirit, Anna's subjects center around the body, especially the female one and most of all, what it means to traverse this life as a woman. While her topics range from her impoverished childhood in pre-war Poland to the unspeakable years between 1939 and 1945, Anna's main focus of attention is the examination of love, especially its physical component. Written in a style that is abrupt and yet abundant in both meaning and image, these poems celebrate the joys of the carnal. From a refreshingly female perspective. No roses here, no champagne glasses clinking in the distance, no pink hazes to suffocate on, these poems sketch a reality as it was experienced. For example, the poet praises her thigh as the prime reason for love in her life...It is only thanks to your good looks I can take part in the rites of love. Beware though, those looking for the strictly erotic would best look elsewhere. Anna Swir's world is a dualistic one, one of our crude and cruel instincts and also one of the spiritual promise sometimes found beyond them. The fragrance in the stench. The love in the gratification. The hope in the ruins. Of the act of lust, she writes in deadpan prose...You inseminated me and I gave birth to pearls...

Swir tries to shine light into those dark caverns where love is seemingly absent but isn't. Moreover, her poems strive to find a common denominator in all human experience irregardless of the moral element. Cynics might call this a quest for our common animality. I dare to call it a quest for our common humanity. That place where the sun shines with an equal intensity for both saint and sinner alike...She was an evil stepmother. She does not remember that she was evil. But she knows that she is cold.

With her deceptively simple style, Swir sometimes surprises the condescendant reader with stings of metaphoric (sometimes even aphoristic) brilliance that force one to stop and ponder. On her mother's death, she coldly muses...when it was over I was a corpse myself. Corpses do not cry. Or with brutal candor, she dissects the facade of romance...The greatest happiness you give me is that I don't love you. Freedom. Or about our very vain existence itself...You make among the trees a nest for our love. But look at the flowers you've crushed.

Each poem in this collection is a precious stone. Some more valuable than others, but each has its own sheen, shine and spirit. Anna Swir's voice is unparalleled in its uniqueness. Not only does she give a fresh insight into being a woman, but also an even fresher insight into being human. And for a better understanding of both, these poems are a great place to start.

It's rare that a poet stirs and excites me like this one did. I first came across Swir from the wonderful poetry anthology by Czeslaw Milosz, "A Book of Luminous Things" where she totally captured my attention. The poetry here is always raw, direct and authentic, deeply sensual, accessible, and with none of the self-conscious mannerism or affectation that dominates the academic poetry churned out by American graduates of MFA-programs who are forever trying to get published in dreary WASPish places like The New Yorker. A large part of that is likely due to the fact of Swir having grown up in the place and time that she did, rather than in politically correct, sexually repressed suburbian/middle America.

Anna Swir writes some of the most beautiful and deeply stirring poems I have ever read. It dives into the frailty AND the power of this womans spirit. Her poems paint pictures in your mind so real and tangible it is guranteed to leave you grasping for emotions and feelings that you may not have known existed within you. I say that it's a must read for women, and I know that coming from a man that is kind of a silly statement. But believe me, Anna writes from a unique and touchingly feminist point of view that in my humble opinion, all women would find both refreshing and inspirational. Here's a preview of her work I found to be beautiful: "THE GREATEST LOVE... She is sixty. She lives the greatest love of her life. She walks arm in arm with her dear one, her hair streams in the wind. Her dear one says, You have hair like pearls. Her children say, Old fool." Poems about old women are hard to find, as if they were taboo, or not worth mentioning in pretty prose. Anna Swir relates often to the matriarch as a symbol of timeless beauty and strength. One final: "THANK YOU MY FATE... Great humility fills me, great purity fills me, I make love with my dear as if I made love dying, as if I made love praying, tears pour over my arms and his arms. I don't understand what I feel, I'm crying, I'm crying, it's humility as if I were dead, gratitude, I thank you my fate, I'm unworthy, how beautiful this life." The book is also filled with some statements on her life, which after reading and understanding what she was surrunded by, leaves you in absolute awe every time you swim through her poems. Please, read these poems. You can thank me afterwards.

The cover says: Translated by the author and Robert Hass. In the case of a single poem, "Eyes," the translation is by Milosz and Renata Gorczynski. Milosz decided to teach at the University of California at Berkeley in 1960, won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980, and was still humble enough to have a professor of English help translate these poems into the current literary standard for English verse. It is easy to read, and 102 pages of poems is a short book. The concern with our culture spans more than centuries. I only knew a small part of his religious history before reading this book, which also made me curious about the importance of Adam Mickiewicz and "mystical lodges," as a footnote on page 94 delves into another "look for an esoteric interpretation of Christianity."

"Second Space" is a collection of thirty-two poems on religious themes by Czeslaw Milosz (1911 -- 2004) written when the poet was in his 90s. The poems are heavily autobiographical in tone, meditative, and reflective. They deal with Milosz' struggle for religious, and in particular Catholic, faith in a world of secularism, mechanism, and suffering. They also describe the conflict in Milosz' own life between the call to the religious life and the lure of the world, with its natural beauty, and human sexuality. Milosz tries to reconcile the tensions among these two polarities.

The book is dense and richly detailed with allusions to Polish poets, to Milosz' relatives, particularly to his cousin Oscar Milosz (1877-1939) a French poet and diplomat, and to the mystical thinkers Jacob Boehme and Emmanuel Swedenborg, who have deeply influenced Milosz and his approach to religious questions.

The book is divided into five parts. The first part consists of a series of short poems discussing the poet's struggle for religious meaning. In many of these poems, Milosz revisits and reflects upon his life. The title of the book "Second Space" derives from the first poem of the collection in which Milosz laments the difficulty of conceiving of a "second space" in our modern world -- the space of both heaven and hell. Milosz writes in a clear style with many striking figures and phrases. Thus, he concludes his poem, "The Old Women" with the benediction: "May the day of your death not be a day of hopelessness,/ but of trust in the light that shines through earthly forms."

The second part of the book is a series of eleven interior monologues by "Father Severinus," who describes himself in the first poem as "a priest without faith". In these poems, Father Severnus meditates on the importance, mystery, and difficulty of a spiritual life as he describes his own internal struggles and the struggles of some of the people who come to him for help.

The third part of the book is in Milosz' own voice and consists of 23 poems forming a "Treatise on Theology." These poems are in the voice of the layperson -- the poet himself -- rather than of Father Severnus, but the themes and preoccupations are the same. They are epitomized in the final poem of this group, "Beautiful Lady" in which Milosz describes his responses to the appearances of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes and Fatima.

The fourth part of the book, "Apprentice", is the poet's tribute to the work of his cousin, the French poet Oscar Milosz. This poem is richly personal and allusive, and Milosz accompanies it with extensive notes. I found it helpful to read the poem first with the notes followed by a reading straight through without the notes -- which tend to interfere with the text.

The book concludes with what to may mind is its best section, a brief retelling of the "Orpheus and Euridice" legend in modern garb with Milosz himself as the protagonist. Orpheus in this retelling struggles with the loss of religous conviction as much as with the loss of his beloved. There is an eloquent pasage in this poem in which Milosz describes the goal of his poetic endeavor:

"He sang the brightness of morning and green rivers,
He sang of smoking water in the rose-colored daybreaks,
Of colors: cinnabar, carmine, burnt sienna, blue,
Of the delight of swimming in the sea under marble cliffs,
Of feasting on a terrace above the tumult of a fishing port,
Of the tasts of wine, olive oil, almonds, mustard, salt.
Of the flight of the swallow, the falcon,
Of a dignified flock of pelicans above a bay,
Of the scene of an armful of lilacs in summer rain,
Of his having composed his words always against death
And of having made no rhyme in praise of nothingness."

"Second Space" is a moving valedictory volume by a great Twentieth Century poet.

Milosz is a master of the craft. This collection published posthumously reminds us all that he richly deserved the Nobel Prize. How many poets can we point to that were writing after the age of 90? Milosz is humble about his perceptions of the world but his horizon is vast--enough to take in both faith and doubt in the same work. Of very special note in the collection is the poem "Eyes."

"My most honorable eyes, you are not in the best of shape.
I receive from you an image less than sharp, . . . "

"Eyes" is a poem of depth and true insight, which tells us something about a way of looking at the world as one moves on in life, "away from the fairgrounds of the world." There is an inner life, a deep inner truth which takes in all. It is a vision at once mystical and secular.

Milosz is a master, straddling eras and cultures. What can a 90-plus-year-old poet tell us about sexuality and desire? Amazing things--revelations, truly. But don't expect the cheap sensuality of popular culture.

Milosz and his poems have endured throughout our lives and will remain with us for a very long time. In Second Space he opens up a space that is rich and exciting.

Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz'first collection of poetry publiblished since his death this past August continues to reveal the man as perhaps the 20th century's greatest poet. Students of literature familiar with his work marvel at the depth of his insight into the human conditions most challenging quandaries.His range of experience...in formative political, philosophical and religious movements of our modern-segueing-into-Post Modern age of Anxiety and violence...is nothing short of astounding. His artistic expression thereof,comprises genius.

SECOND SPACE resonates with profundity. Yet Milosz'art is astonishingly void of linguistic pyrotechnics or artifice. The erudition of Eliot...or Dante himself...is manifest without recourse to numbingly recondite metaphor,scholarship or ars- gratias-artist machinery.This"poet for all seasons"is startlingly straight-forward;lyrically"simple".Like reprise of St.Augustine's CONFESSIONS[or his own(1995)FACING the RIVER], Milosz directly states intention to remember with honor;and...in PRAYERful acknowledgement and humility...if possible, RECOVER the
source and ultimate respite of Mankind's humanity. TRUTH...peace and salvation; or condign damnation...is the province and provenance of THE SECOND SPACE.

Challenging the epigones(& tenth-rate homies of the PM Press)of Nietzsche and hack-Heideggerians,Milosz replies to the brazen, self-POSSESSED;self-apotheosizing nihilists foreseen by Dostoyevsky:
"IF THERE IS NO GOD,NOT EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED TO MAN/ HE IS STILL HIS BROTHER'S KEEPER/AND HE IS NOT PERMITTED TO SADDEN HIS BROTHER,BY SAYING THERE IS NO GOD(p.5)."

Spiritually luminous,lyrically elegant poem-after-poems rebuke: Scientism [p.25:"The beauty of nature is suspect/Oh yes,the splendor of flowers: SCIENCE is concerned to deprive us of illusions/Though why it is eager to do so is unclear..."].Rank materialism ["What have they left us?...Only the accountancy of a capitalist enterprise"].Pseudo-wisdom & the occult...WHEN THE SUN RISES/IT ILLUMINATES STUPIDITY AND GUILT.WHICH ARE HIDDEN IN THE NOOKS OF MEMORY/AND INVISIBLE AT NOON(p.34).
DESPAIR of the PM Sophists(who attack the Sacred...in the womb;the marriage bed and the TABERNACLE itself):"Hear me,Lord! Protect me from the day of dryness and impotence/When neither a swallow's flight nor peonies,daffodils and irises in the flower market are a sign of your glory/WHEN I WILL BE SURROUNDED BY SCOFFERS,AND UNABLE...AGAINST THEIR ARGUMENTS...TO REMEMBER ANY MIRACLE OF YOURS/When I will seem to myself an imposter and swindler because I take part in religious rites/When I accuse YOU of establishing the universal law of death/WHEN I AM READY AT LAST TO BOW DOWN TO NOTHINGNESS/AND CALL LIFE ON EARTH
A DEVIL'S VAUDVILLE/Hear me Lord,for I am a sinner/which means I have nothing except prayer!"(p.24)

Yet THIS POET does not lack wicked humor:"And Katie? She does not want to be saved/At the price of an innocent man...Her father kneels every Sunday at his church/Because what would you introduce in place of his religion?...Perhaps the idiotic rituals
of THE PARTY/ Or football games ending in a brawl(p.38)."
Nor does CZESLAW MILOSZ ever lack HOPE["May the day of your death...be of trust in the light that shines through earthly forms" p.12);"Yet I repeat,'I believe in God'."(p.20)

And in the End...which this heroic philosopher and poet went to on August 14,2004,Czeslaw Milosz(with ever able assistance of his friend,fellow poet-and-translator,Robert Hass)declares in ultimate, poetic testimony to God and Goodness: SUN.AND SKY./AND IN THE SKY WHITE CLOUDS/ONLY NOW EVERYTHING CRIED TO HIM/EURYDICE!...HOW WILL I LIVE WITHOUT YOU,MY CONSOLING ONE!
BUT THERE WAS A FRAGRANT SCENT OF HERBS/THE LOW HUMMING OF BEES(Winnie-the-Pooh is back in action!)/AND HE FELL ASLEEP WITH HIS CHEEK ON THE SUN-WARMED EARTH......(p.102)

Amen,Amen I say to you:TAKE AND READ!(20 stars)

What is striking about this collection of essays is their modernity. Nothing dated here. Each essay explores specific "legends" through which modern Man gradually painted himself into a corner. Each of the Legends carries a specific toxin. It's disturbing to sense the accuracy of Milosz's deductions about the insanity he was watching (WWII and the Gulags), not as blips, or abnormalities, but as the natural culmination of trends that began with the alleged liberation of Man from irrationality. The problem is that so little has substantially changed since the middle of the 20th century. These are long-term changes, and if this is an accurate analysis, very little stands in the way of further manifestations. Perhaps we should examine current events in a different light.

The letters between Milosz and Andrzejewski add the element of personal debate to the essays. The whole book, notes from an apocalypse, might be expected to bear a "historical" patina. Instead it testifies to how similar we are conceptually to the people of that era.

When Abbe Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes was asked what he did during the French revolution, he responded "J'ai vecu"--"I survived". For many, that was exactly their ambition when they found themselves in Nazi-occupied Warsaw between 1939 and 1944 and it often involved daily heroism. But today we admire those that joined the armed resistance, the couriers that kept the links with the Government- in-Exile, the teachers that taught in underground schools, and the intellectuals who sought to protect the Polish culture that, in the Nazi scheme of things, had no business existing.

"Legends of Modernity" is a collection of eight essays by Milosz and an exchange of nine essay-length letters between Milosz and Jerzy Andrzejewski written in 1942-43. For a reader who would not pay attention to where and when these essays were written, but who was merely interested in the history of European ideas and wanted to observe a keen intelligence at work, there is plenty here to keep him fascinated.

"The basic theme, threaded through numerous digressions, is an attempt to clear the field of convictions about man's natural impulses and also about the natural conditions of his life--not without the hope that by destroying the legends he creates about himself, it will be possible to locate the surest footing. The chapter about Daniel Dafoe is aimed against belief in natural goodness outside of civilization. The chapter about Balzac describes the evil spell cast by civilization conceived of as an automatic process subject to laws of natural evolution. The chapters about Stendhal and Andre Gide grapple with the position of an individual who identified the laws of nature with the laws of human society, and taking it further, arrived at a cult of power. The chapter about William James criticized the acceptance of fictions and legends as a normal condition that we cannot move beyond. The fragment from Tolstoy's "War and Peace" is used as an example of disillusionment with civilization and the miseries connected with this disillusionment. Marian Zdziechowski makes his appearance as a specimen of religion founded on the innate demands of the heart. The rather long sketch about Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz shines a light on metaphysical theories of art." (From Milosz's 1944 Preface)

While the essays are quite detached and calm, the letters to and from Andzejewski are less so. Their chief theme is the crisis of the Western Civilization and the role that the Catholic Church might have in rescuing it. The feeling of being affected by what was happening in the streets outside is somewhat easier to discern.

One can read this book to be dazzled by the display of critical wisdom by a 30-year old author. Or, one can remember that the writer was a simple laborer in 1942 when this book was written, and one could look at this book as an assertion of independence from the everyday reality, however horrible. In this sense, the book ought to be read alongside books such as Bartoszewski's "1859 Dni Warszawy" or Szarota's "Okupowanej Warszawy Dzien Powszedni".

Josif Brodsky saw Milosz as a 20th century Job. Nothing less.

(Originally written for the Polish Library in Washington DC)

Czeslaw Milosz, who won a Nobel Prize for literature in 1980, after becoming a professor at the University of California at Berkeley in 1960, lived in Warsaw when it was occupied by the Nazis during the winter of 1942-1943, and wrote the essays and letters now translated into English in LEGENDS OF MODERNITY during that winter. The book does not have an index, and the Contents on pages v-vi only includes the names of four Polish authors, one of whom (the Catholic writer Jerzy Andrzejewski 1909-1985) wrote four letters to Czeslaw Milosz which are included on pages 160-172, 187-201 (dated September 1, 1942), 213-225, and 239-244. Notes to the 1996 Polish Edition on pages 259-262 reveal that the letters were exchanged in a café in the center of Warsaw, a coffeehouse with two pianos where the bartender was film director Antoni Bohdziewicz. Though the Notes to the Essays on pages 263-266 include French, Dutch, and German writers, the only American cited in "The Boundaries of Art" might be Edgar Allan Poe (n.5, n. 6, and n. 7, p. 265). William James is mentioned in "Absolute Freedom" in connection with Nietzsche, André Gide, and breaking with "Platonism," the traditional understanding of good and evil. (p. 54). The fascist movements were the first examples to come to mind of man-God themes. (p. 55).

As a poet, Czeslaw Milosz has a very intellectual approach to political difficulties in historical times. Rather than attempting to locate the themes which I found interesting in the essays, I would prefer to adopt a bad analogy for the history of the twentieth century and attempt to apply thoughts from Milosz to explain the aspects of the analogy which relate to the contents of this book. Having just done a little research on videos that are currently available about Evel Knievel, I would like to apply his assertion that he was like a Roman general who believed that what was considered impossible would eventually be done. One famous stunt involved a motorcycle jump over the fountain at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. As I remember the video clip shown in the movie starring George Hamilton, Evel Knievel was flying prone over his motorcycle with his hands on the handlebars when the rear wheel of the cycle came down on the short side of the lip at the far edge of the fountain, bouncing the motorcycle up into the vulnerable underside of Evel Knievel's body, busting bones and rendering Knievel unconscious for a month. The stunt had a certain appeal because many people had seen the fountain at Caesar's Palace and were genuinely curious about what a motorcycle could do besides wheelies. Whatever terror Evel Knievel may have felt, he was clearly outnumbered by the crowd who wanted to see the stunt accomplished or the splatter that would result otherwise.

The first essay in Legends of Modernity, "The Legend of the Island," on Robinson Crusoe's island, is about being able to free "himself from the evil influences of the crowd," (p. 8). "The Legend of the Monster City" examines Balzac's celebration of "The observer, smiling benignly at the picture of mindless desires and mindless efforts, is like a child standing over an anthill. He inserts a stick and is delighted with the insects' chaotic scurrying. The crazier the actions of his victims, the more they lead to total infatuation" (pp. 22-23). The third essay, "The Legend of the Will," discusses THE RED AND THE BLACK by Stendhal. "Julien Sorel is totally consumed by ambition." (p. 36). "And he gave tit for tat, with hatred and contempt." (p. 44). As a fellow exile-to-be, Milosz shows great appreciation for "The matter of Stendhal's national defection (he considered himself spiritually a Milanese, not a Frenchman) demonstrates how much effort he invested in extracting himself from the authority of others' opinions, how painstakingly he selected his privileged position, a position on the sidelines." (p. 44).

Religion is the main topic considered from William James's THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE in "Beyond Truth and Falsehood." The same essay ventures into "a contradiction that was the driving force of Byron's creative work." (p. 68). Being able to identify the source of creative tension is like Evel Knievel's ability to conceive of stunts that people would like to see, however dangerously the actual experience might turn out to fall short of the perfect expectation. "Is this the inevitable consequence of the collision of several value systems appearing in a simplified form between the hour of history and the hour of religion? I think not." (p. 69). Dangerous myths include "the myth of labor or the myth of the dictatorship of the proletariat, propagated by the various branches of Marxism." (p. 72).

An essay, "The Experience of War," in which "we are condemned to self-examination" (p. 75), takes a stab at Pierre Bezukhov in Tolstoy's WAR AND PEACE in which, "A vague imperative, incomprehensible even to him, crystallizes into a bizarre decision: Pierre decides to stab Napoleon, the author of all his fatherland's woes." (p. 77). Similarly, "To be sure, there is no truth, no beauty, no goodness--but there is German truth, German beauty, and German goodness; and thus the void was filled, and within the confines of the new canon there was room for heroism, dedication, friendship, and so forth." (p. 82). The following essay, "Zdziechowski's Religiosity," considers flirtatiousness as adopting a particular mentalité totally lacking in the statement written in 1922 that, "We are a small part of Europe, we are linked with her fate, we are infected with the same diseases of communism and nationalism as she is, and together with her, biting at each other in a mad rage, we are rushing headlong into the abyss." (p. 91). Key to understanding the identity of dogma is that it "is constantly acquiring new forms, is continually realized anew, and by the very necessity of struggle in a changing historical environment, it profits from new ways of understanding the world." (p. 93).

Like just a handful of poets (Yeats comes instantly to mind), Czeslaw Milosz has surrendered none of his artistic powers to old age. Yet the poems collected here, which date back as far as 1936, indicate that the future Nobelist was playing at the top of his game from the beginning. The shorter lyrics, like "Ars Poetica?", are true marvels. And while the longer sequences can be a touch uneven, devolving into prose-like paragraphs, they remain object lessons for any poet in any language--and any intelligent reader.

In Bells in Winter, Milosz tells us he doesn't quite fit into our age with its 'chess games' of 'killing for the common good,' that 'like the mermaid from Andersen's tale, I tried to walk correctly but a thin pain reminded me that I was foolish to try to imitate people.' No other book connects Milosz's essays about the pain of living in our Blakean 'Land of Ulro' to his poetry as well as this, with its shocking poetic insights into how humans got themselves into this mess, often given in a single swift, double-edged metaphor, as in the Notes section: 'The tempter in the garden: A still-looking branch, both cold and living.' A ton of philosophy, sorrow, and hope in a crafty little phrase -- the quintessential Milosz.

Koudelka is an amazing photographer! Every young photographer must see these pictures.

In the past couple of weeks, with the war in Kosovo, I was reminded of these photographs...seeing the images of the refugees, Albanian Kosovars in exile, day after day on the news is a stunning experience...I'm curious as to how other people process these images, what kind of individuality they attribute to the people that make up the masses in flight....if they have any way of identifying with them or forming true sympathetic feelings. I remember that seeing these photographs by Koudelka was a lesson of sorts in processing this kind of experience that is impossible to imagine in any real way unless you ever find yourself in the middle of it. News photos don't do enough to bring the reality home...Koudelka's photos and poetry fill in the gaps.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature,Czeslaw Milosz here writes deftly
yet with the right amount of passion about the child,Thomas. What an inner
life,what thoughts,what dreams,this child has. He soars with Aurora.then
blends with the trees in his beloved Issa Valley. What poetry in writing..
I was enchanted as you will be,too.Let Mr. Milosz and the Issa Valley wrap you in it's gentle and mercurial embrace.
M.Baker

Renowned Polish-Lithuanian poet, Czeslaw Milosz crafts his poetry with prose-like clarity and his prose with flowing rhythm and sententious weight. His coming of age novel, 'The Issa Valley' is a stunning example of how the mediatative lyric can be woven into a novel.

The novel takes place in the wild forests of central Lithuania near to where Milosz spent his youthful summers at the manor houses of his grandparents. The central character, Thomas, an adolescent school-boy of an aristocratic Polish family is sent away to his grandparents for the summer. Grandfather Surkont is the model of noblisse oblige, a Polonized Lithuanian aristocrat who strives to keep his household and his villagers happy despite the violent changes which threaten to engulf this forgotten paradise. The time is just after the Great War, when the newly-formed Republic of Lithuania is struggling with its indepedence after centuries of foreign domination, by the Russians on a state level, by the Polish landowners on the local level. Polish 'pan,' Thomas, is abruptly thrown into a fresh and vibrant world completely foreign from the fast-paced city life he has known until now. Here in the villages and manors around the Issa River, the world is pagan and Lithuanian. Ancient spirits and gods dwell in the minds and souls of the Lithuanian peasants who people Thomas's new world. And most of all, Thomas meets up with his newest passion, that which teaches him more than any school-book ever could, the rich and primeval natural world.

More than anything, Milosz's novel is a giant mediatative prose poem on the shape and workings of nature. Sentence after sentence drips with near religious reverence for the water-lillied, cobalt-colored Issa, for the inpenetrable jungles of black pine, home to the bullet-headed snipe, siena-shaded mule deer, the fearsome black-bodied, red-hooded forest vipers whose lethal injection will put the strongest of men down before he can whisper, 'Holy Jesus, home to an infinite variety of bird and bug. Thomas is immediately captured by such an environment and sets out to become a 'naturalist.' In the Issa valley that means 'hunter.' Thomas soons attaches himself to the local hunter, Romauld, who initiates Thomas in the arts of tracking, waiting and dropping prey. Thomas hungers to learn this ancient art but fails dismally. Always a step behind, a little too hestitant to pull the trigger, he fails to make the big kill. Until the squirrel. Thomas' deliberate wounding of his unsuspecting and innocent victim causes a painful enlightenment. Through his tears of remorse and agonizing pang of guilt, Thomas grows up in a moment. He has taken life, thereby losing his Adam-like innocence. This two-page metaphor for the fall of man is in itself worth the whole book.

This seminal climax in Thomas' life underscores Milosz's central theme: we are all inextricably attached to our environment, slaves of the brutal and beautiful outside world that holds us in her hand. The natural world forms the backbone, muscle and tissue of this novel. The characters whom surround Thomas's microcosm are mere pawns of omnipotent nature and through them, Milosz makes his creed clear: accept your place in the nature of things or woe is your lot. Magdelena covets the village priest and finally gets her wish, but at a dire cost. Ostracized from her surroundings, she choses suicide and her ghost haunts the village until she finally finds her place again. Balthazar, the manor's forester, covets a life not his, more land, more money, a prettier wife. A dangerous desire. One which eventually leads to madness, mayhem and murder.

Milosz sketches these characters with a light brush. Milosz leaves out emotional depth for the sake of proving his teleology. Thus, the characters, Thomas included, often seem like indistinct shadows cast in the background. But Milosz's sun, the portrayal of nature in all its savage colors, nonetheless burns an indelible image on the brain if not the heart. 'The Issa Valley' is not only a vibrant and melancholy journey around that world that surrounds us but a detached, yet oddly moving, examination of those passions within us which hunger to connect with something greater. Those longing for such a journey would do well to pick up 'The Issa Valley.'

The test of a truly great book is when you long NOT to finish it. A hundred pages to the end, then fifty, and you slow your tempo down to a page-a-day, then a paragraph, and then finally, just a couple of sentences as to prolong the pain, the pleasure. Milosz's autobiography par excellence, Native Realm, is one such book. And much more than that. A modern Odyssey, it traces the tempestous voyages of one of this century's greatest poets, one of Europa's finest sons.

Subtitled 'A Search for Self-Definition,' Native Realm unfolds as a diary of one who lived through some of the twentieth century's bleakest moments, two world wars, the complete destruction of a city (Warsaw) and the near-complete extermination of a people (Poland's Jews). Milosz takes us step by step down into the inferno of his century, into the quagmire of his homeland. A sorrowful Virgil, Milosz guides us through each cavern of a very personal hell. Born in one of Europe's most forgotten and mystical corners, Lithuania, Milosz recounts the recipe of his own European-ness, a Lithuanian mother and a Polish father of Sorbian descent. His family was of one petty gentry and thus, young Milosz's youth was a cloudless one of innocent expeditions into the dense Baltic forests of pine and spruce. Milosz reminisces with a slight tinge of nostalgia, painting pictures of an Eden-like world where man and surroundings were linked in a symbosis of mutual respect and awe. Milosz's homeland was a ethnically heterogenous one where Lithuanian, Pole, Byelorussian and Jew lived in an amicable tension, each bringing precious ingredients to their common feast. The kitchen of this feast was the city that more than any other left its brand on Milosz's psyche: Wilno, known today as Vilnius, capital of the Lithuanian republic. Here, Milosz revels in his reveries through narrow cobble-stoned streets and over an equally bumpy Catholic education which also left its mark on the man. Conflicted with his deep love for Creation, Milosz never gave up his faith in and awe of the Creator. Smithing his own highly individualistic faith, Milosz remained skeptical of the new creed of salvation that spread the good news to depression-racked Europe: Communism.

One of this book's richest chapters focuses on Marxism and Milosz's cautious rejection of its monolithic message, and another one picks apart the nation that carried this evangel to its furthest extreme, Russia. Milosz analyzes Russia and her people much like Dostoevsky did with Poland and the Poles in House of the Dead, with a grudging respect and a candid admission of distaste. Pole and Rus, brothers who are separated by a spiritual fence and only too happy to stay on their perspective sides. Milosz embraces his Polish, Roman roots and draws a marked line in the sand between him and the Byzantine east. Yet, Milosz remains fair and does his best to present the all sides of the Russian bear, from the red-bearded, vodka-breathed soldier in the Tsarist army who befriended young Milosz to the 'kind-hearted' Red Army Ivans who shot their German captive so as to save him from the cruelties of a Russian winter.

The most gripping part of Milosz's story is his description of life in hell, that is of surviving the Sodom and Gomorrah of Nazi-occupied Poland. Milosz squeaked out an minimalist existence in the nightmare of Hans Frank's General Gouvernment, the Nazi-controlled part of Poland. Amidst the starvation and daily executions, Milosz kept his sanity and humanity intact by etching out his poems, all the while painfully aware that things were a whole lot worse over the ghetto wall. Milosz never tries to escape his culpability in not doing more. He remarks, 'To live with one's cowardice is bitter.' Bitter indeed, but the reader feels the hopelessness of the situation and asks himself/herself, 'Would we have done any different?' Milosz lets us stare at the answer.

Native Realm's secret not only lies in its almost hyponotic ability to sweep the reader along the tumultous waves of 20th century Eastern Europe, but most of all, in its captain's steerage. Milosz's prose beams with the simple elegance of his poems. Every word solid and right in its place. Every sentence either rings with near-Homeric concreteness---hiding in Warsaw's sewers during the Uprising, " The women closed the metal cover over us, and inside we immediately began to suffocate. It was quite theoretical: in the light from the electrical bulb I saw the mouths of fish thrown up on the sand and heads withering on stems of necks," or with aphoristic sting, "Westerners like to dwell in the empyrean of noble words about spirit and freedom, but it is not often that they ask someone whether he has enough money for lunch."

Such gems lie like amber on a beach. You reach one and you just want to sit, admire, examine and give blessings for the happiness burning in your hand. But all good things must come to an end, as does Milosz's eloquent tale of self-discovery. After the cauldron simmered down, Milosz escaped to America and found a fresh, new world where opportunity lay for the taking and nature smiled with the purity of Paradise. But his sojourn remained a tentative one as Europa beckoned constantly. Eventually, Milosz succumbed to his homesickness. "Europe herself gathered me in her warm embrace...Europe, after all, was home to me."

A fitting end to this eloquent dissection of what it means to be European, to 'become' European. Czeslaw Milosz has finally reached home, to that pantheon filled with those rare few who have succeeded in over-coming self, sect, and narrow nationhood to be worthy of the title, 'European.' Montaigne and Goethe, welcome home your brother to his rightful native realm.

If you want to better understand Europe and European history of the 20th century, this is a book to read. Milosz is a Nobel prize-winning poet and writer. This book is his autobiography. He was born in 1911 on the territory of the former Russian Empire. He comes from the Polish-Lithuanian family and is an ultimate Eastern European. He also knows America and Western Europe well.

His knowledge of the European history of the 20th century is nor from the books, but something he lived through himself. Milosz traveled to Siberia with his father. He survived both World wars. He studied in France before WW2 and spent the war in Warsaw, where he witnessed destruction of Warsaw after the upraising. Milosz seems very observant, honest, and has a tendency to self-reflection, which makes the narrative even more interesting.

He had many dangerous adventures during the war years and he remembers and describes them in great detail. Many of his remarks about Russia are right on target (as Russian I can confirm that). This is great and unique book of the ultimate Eastern European. Definitely worth reading if you are interested in the history of this part of the world.

I highly recommend this volume to anyone. Along with his recently published New and Collected Poems(Ecco Press), Milosz stands tall as one of the most accomplished writers in the modern era. This volume of essays is highly personal and eloquent. His prose style is immediate and vivid, capturing insights of history and the "poetic." His work on Jeffers is remarkable. This is a poet of our time--his thought triumphs over despair and the ills of the human condition. He has witnessed some of the most deliberate atrocities in world history--his essays evoke a wisdom based on personal remembrance-and there is no better vision of our predicament than what is offered here.

Czeslaw Milosz is a renowned writer of both poetry and prose. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980. In his long life, he has seen and written about many of the events of the Twentieth Century, including the Russian Revolution, the Holocaust, the Warsaw Uprising, and the rise and fall of communism. He served as a diplomat from Poland to the United States following WWII. Among his books is an incisive critique of communism titled "The Captive Mind".

"To begin where I am" is a selection of Milosz's essays published between 1942 and 1998, some written initially in English, but most written in Polish. The essays are wide-ranging in theme and capture a great deal of the scope of Milosz's passions. The good introduction to the book by Bogdana Carpenter and Madeline Levine point out that Milosz "has centered his writings on a few fundamental philosophical questions: the meaning of history; the existence of evil and suffering; the transience of all life; theascendance of a scientific worldview andthe decline of the religious imagination." The essays are well-arranged into four main sections.

The first group of essays titled "These Guests of Mine" is primarily historical and descriptive in character. I enjoyed particularly Milosz's description of Wilno(Vilna) in his "Dictionary of Wilno Streets."

For me the heart of the book is in the second and third parts, titled "On the Side of Man" and "Against Incomprehensible Poetry." We learn a great deal about a writer by his discussions of those who have influenced him. In this book,Miloscz's essays on the American poet Robinson Jeffers, on the Russian philospher Lev Shestov, and on the French theological thinker Simone Weil are highly thoughtful. They reveal a writer both struggling for a commitment to religion, to Catholicism in particular, in the face of a scientific and material worldview which he finds inconsistent with it, and a writer committed to humanism, to the best in man and culture. They are an inspiring and difficult set of commitments, and Milosz discusses them eloquently.

In Part 3 of the book, the centerpiece is the title essay "Against Incomprehensible Poetry". In this essay, Milosz develops insights from W.H. Auden and makes them his own. Auden had said "there is only one thing that all poetry must do,it must praise all it can for being and for happening." (p.381). This insight becomes the basis of a critique of much obscurantism in modern poetry. We are privileged to hear, in the book, a discussion of the continuing value of poetry and informed discussion of many poets worth knowing, from Whitman, Blake,and Jeffers to many of Milosz's Polish contempories. These latter writers are unknown to me, but Milosz makes one wish for them as companions through his discussions.

The fourth part of the book. "In Constant Amazement", is brief and consists of a collection of aphorisms. The aphorism I found most striking discusses the nature of human sexuality. It begins: "Men and women carry within their imagination an image of themselves and of others as sexual beings and often that is the only thing that humanizes them." (p. 436)

This book helped me with my own thinking and reflection. I hope it will help you with yours as well.