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The work aims to discuss the relationship between the vision of hope in Czesław Miłosz’s writing and the need for man to find meaning. The author realizes the theme based on the novel The Issa valley by the Polish Nobel Prize winner. The basic context in this sketch is the logotherapy project of Emanuel V. Frankl, professor of psychiatry and author of the bestseller Man in search of meaning. But another work by Frankl will be recalled here: The will of meaning, because in it the author included the assumptions of logotherapy. Other contexts introduced into this sketch are the cultural theory of emotions (Richard A. Shweder) and elements of the concept of subject (Michel Foucault). According to Miłosz – which results from the analysis of his novels – hope is necessary to find the meaning of existence. There is also an inverse relationship: the lack of hope has as its result a sense of meaningless existence, which can lead the hero of the novel to suicide. For Miłosz, finding the meaning of life, as well as not finding it, is a kind of mystery to which literature can make an approach. At the same time, literature can be something of a medium of meaning.

[full article and abstract in French; abstract in English and Lithuanian] Oscar Milosz, poète et écrivain français d’origine lituanienne, de 1920 à 1925 occupait le poste de Chargé d’Affaires de Lituanie en France et en tant que diplomate se rendit plusieurs fois en Lituanie. L’objet de cet article est le récit d’un voyage de Milosz en Lituanie, au cours du mois d‘août de 1922, en compagnie de Maurice Prozor, comme lui d’origine lituanienne, et de sa fille. Ce voyage est raconté par Greta Prozor, témoin oculaire. Le but de l’article est d’analyser le récit en faisant attention à quelques points : 1. l’image de Lituanie, telle qu’elle surgit au cours de la narration,2. la figure de Milosz comme son protagoniste. Summary The article analyzes the story of Oskaras Milašius’s journey to Lithuania which took place in August 1922. Accompanied by her father Maurice Prozor, the author of the story Greta Prozor is also the one who traveled alongside the poet and witnessed his journey first hand. As the analysis draws on the theoretical grounding for travel writing, the article seeks to define and interpret both the image of Lithuania and the figure of the protagonist of the story Milašius. The analysis comes to the conclusion that the author of the story reflectively foregrounds the geographical, historical, social, and cultural history of the country unknown to her before. It also comes to the realization that the “otherness” of Lithuania and its inherent “exotics” lie within the union between the past and the present. It is the union between the past full of life and the present times that determines the distinctive singularity of Lithuania in Europe, which the travelers seem to know well. During the cause of the story, the figure of Milašius is defined through the literary character of Don Quixote, the poet’s alter ego. His nostalgia-driven attempt at the reunion with the family’s past is, in fact, impossible; it cannot be accomplished in present reality. The real reunion with the past most yearned for is possible only throughout the oral and written story.

The article presents a close reading of Wisława Szymborska’s poem “Monolog dla Kasandry”, "Soliloquy for Cassandra". The view of Cassandra as expressed by the poet is compared with the corresponding motifs in Miłosz and more generally with examples from Polish and Eastern European literature and cultural history. It is argued that Szymborska does not agree with the common and traditional Polish image of Cassandra, but instead polemizes against it in a complex and contradictory manner.

The article discusses the issue of freedom in the work of Czesław Milosz. This problem is analyzed in relation to prose, poetry, essay writing, journalism, as well as numerous interviews that Milosz gave throughout his whole life. The author of the article is particularly interested in Milosz’s attitude to the sexual revolution of 1968, which he observed as a professor at Berkley. The poet was not an indifferent witness to this event. He often referred to it, often returned to it, as the author shows, not without ambivalence.

XXth century has become the age of scientific discoveries and social, cultural and political changes. While on the one half of the world democracy and capitalism were developing, on the other half totalitarian regimes like communism, fascism, Nazism were showing up. As a witness to all the chaos, pain and changes of that century, Czesław Miłosz was an artist who had so much to say. This article describes the perspective of Miłosz, who captures attention especially with the attitude to totalitarian regimes, on XXth century in light of his works and life story.