The poet's work : an introduction to Czeslaw Milosz
Leonard Nathan (Author),Arthur Quinn (Author),Stanisław Barańczak
Born eighty years ago in Lithuania, Czeslaw Milosz has been acclaimed “one of the greatest poets of our time, perhaps the greatest” (Joseph Brodsky). This self-described “connoisseur of heavens and abysses” has produced a corpus of poems, essays, memoirs, and fiction of such depth and range that the reader’s imagination is moved far beyond ordinary limits of consciousness. In The Poet’s Work Leonard Nathan and Arthur Quinn follow Milosz’s wanderings in exile from Poland to Paris to Berkeley as they chart the singular development of his art. Relating his life and works to the unfolding of his thought, they have crafted a lucid reading of Milosz that far surpasses anything yet written on this often enigmatic poet. The Poet’s Work is not only a solid introduction to Milosz; it is also a unique record of the poet’s own interpretations of his work. As colleagues of Milosz at Berkeley, Nathan and Quinn had long, detailed discussions with the poet. It is this spirit of collaboration that brings a sense of immediacy and authority to their seamless study. Nathan and Quinn reveal as never before why Milosz is a true visionary, a poet of ideas in history. And they show how the influence of Blake, Simone Weil, Dostoevsky, Lev Shestov, and Swedenborg together with Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg, and Robinson Jeffers ahs enriched his vision. Milosz’s lifelong experience of totalitarian regime that exalt science and technology over individual needs and aspirations; his acute sense of alienation as an émigré; and his humanistic zeal and belief in the primacy of living have brought a prismatic quality to his poetry. At seventy, Milosz spoke of himself as an “ecstatic pessimist.” In their sensitive mapping of his art, Nathan and Quinn skillfully demonstrate that Milosz’s global influence has been achieved by the ever-shifting balance he strikes between ecstasy and pessimism
Print Book,English, 1991
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1991
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xi, 178 pages ; 24 cm
9780674689695, 9780674689701, 9780685484777, 0674689690, 0674689704, 0685484777
23015782
Foreword by Stanislaw Baranczak
San Fansisco Bay
Poland
Paris
A magic mountain
The world, again
Milosz collected
Bibliography and abbreviations
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index