“żeby nie widzieć oczu zapatrzonych w nic”. O twórczości Czesława Miłosza

Abstract

This book is devoted to Czesław Miłosz’s work which is described by using a range of antinomies in terms of which the poet perceived the condition of man and of the modern lyric. The chapters in the first part contain a thorough analysis of Miłosz’s manifesto texts: from List półprywatny o poezji [A Semi-Private Letter about Poetry] to the last “manifestos” of the 1990s: Przeciw poezji niezrozumiałej [Against Incomprehensible Poetry] and Postscriptum [Postscript]. A leading theme of these works are questions, which are by no means rhetorical, about Miłosz's Gnosticism, classicism, realism and anti-modernism. The second part presents a reconstruction of the poet's dialogs with Osip Mandelstam and Aleksander Wat. This book portrays the essence of choices and intentional omissions made by the author of Ocalenie [Rescue] against a broad background of the original poetics and dramatic lives of the authors of Ciemne świecidło [A Dark Light] and The Voronezh Notebooks. The choices and evaluations made by Miłosz, when interpreted in light of Mandelstam’s and Wat’s poetologic projects, strike the reader as consistent but also reveal topics which might make one willing to dispute with the master of the despair he was overcoming.