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The History of Polish Literature by Czesław Miłosz was an attempt to introduce Polish literature to English-speaking readers. The textbook was developed on the basis of the lectures given by Miłosz at the University of California, Berkeley. Miłosz proposed an approach to literary history that differed from the syntheses available up to that time. One of the author's goals was to take a critical look at the established judgments in literary studies about individual authors, works, and phenomena. He also sought to present the history of Polish literature in such a way as to interest the audience; to this end, he endeavoured to refer to issues familiar to them, for example, from within Anglo-Saxon culture. Miłosz's textbook received a rather critical reception among Polish reviewers; among other things, the author was accused of lacking objectivity, being too selective, simplifying certain issues, and even omitting important themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the work is the analysis of translations of Herbert's poems into English by Miłosz with a focus on preserving the so-called roughness of his style. This term encompasses non-obvious and awkward structures, which, according to Miłosz, were one of the most important elements of Herbert's style and, therefore, needed to be present in the English versions. The text contains a comparative analysis of two poems by Herbert: "Elegy of Fortinbras" and "Apollo and Marsyas," with their translations into English. The translations were compared with the originals, taking into account their general form, the vocabulary, and the syntax. The analysis of vocabulary and syntax showed that to maintain the style of the original, the translator changed places where literary roughness was present. The translations into English were also more conventional and rooted more in European culture (while Polish contexts were moved to the background). One can thus conclude that the idea of spreading Polish literature across other cultures was more important for Miłosz than the translation of literary roughness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

The article How I Fell in Love with Justine from On the Banks of the Niemen. Miłosz Reads Orzeszkowa is an attempt at an intertextual analysis of the poem Undressing Justine. The text, which comes from the 1994 volume Facing the River attracts attention for two reasons. First, the layout of the work itself is intriguing: apart from the poem itself it includes a prose Complement..., which performs the function of the author's commentary or footnote. Second, the title itself provokes the reader, offering various associations, of which the primary are erotic. However, intertextual analysis reveals a more serious senseand demonstrates that undressing is merely a pretext for a "philological undressing," which consists of baring conventions, styles, and traditions of the era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the work is the analysis of translations of Herbert's poems into English by Miłosz with a focus on preserving the so-called roughness of his style. This term encompasses non-obvious and awkward structures, which, according to Miłosz, were one of the most important elements of Herbert's style and, therefore, needed to be present in the English versions. The text contains a comparative analysis of two poems by Herbert: "Elegy of Fortinbras" and "Apollo and Marsyas," with their translations into English. The translations were compared with the originals, taking into account their general form, the vocabulary, and the syntax. The analysis of vocabulary and syntax showed that to maintain the style of the original, the translator changed places where literary roughness was present. The translations into English were also more conventional and rooted more in European culture (while Polish contexts were moved to the background). One can thus conclude that the idea of spreading Polish literature across other cultures was more important for Miłosz than the translation of literary roughness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article attempts to explore both theory and practice of Robinson Jeffers’ inhumanist nature poetry. Jeffers’ ideas (presented mostly on the basis Jeffers’ original preface to his 1948 volume of poetry The Double Axe) are placed in the context of Joseph Hillis Miller’s concept of “the poetry of reality.” Miller’s chief contention was that the poetry of reality embraced reality and focused on things as they are, which constituted a radical break from the nineteenth century forms and ideas, shaped by romantic dualism (mind vs. body, spirit vs matter, ego vs. the world). Since Miller emphasizes the ethical dimension of this way of writing, various controversies related to Jeffers’ moral position cannot be omitted from discussion. This problem will be discussed in the context of Czesław Miłosz’s critique of Jeffers’ poetry. The article discusses to what extent Jeffers’ nature poetry fulfills the criteria of Miller’s poetry of reality. I conclude that rather than write about nature without imposing any ideas on it, Jeffers creates a powerful myth which is clearly a projection of human desires.

The article discusses the references to Faust by Johann Wolfgang Goethe present in the works of Czesław Miłosz. They appear in his poems, as well as in essays and non-literary texts, e.g. interviews. The references to Goethe in Miłosz's work are also of interest, especially included in autobiographical statements. The article attempts to indicate certain regularities concerning the occurrence of intertextual references to Goethe's tragedy, related to the poet's worldview, his aesthetic choices and biographical context. The considerations included in the article lead to the conclusion that the hero of the tragedy symbolises the content which, after World War II, made it possible to name and understand the processes that led to the catastrophe of war and the rejection of humanity. Faust can be a tool for self-characterisation or an accusation against German culture and the cult of science and progress, leading to the alienation of the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates a religious and philosophical dialogue of Miłosz and Dostoevsky. The antinomic content of Miłosz's poem “Theological Treatise” is analyzed in the context of Dostoevsky's Christocentric worldview, as well as religious and heretical teachings of early Christianity, which aroused Milosz's interest throughout his career. In their works, Dostoev­sky and Miłosz explored the theological problem of apoсatastasis and offered their interpreta­tion of it. The paper also examines Miłosz’s contribution as an essayist to the comparative study of Dostoevsky's works (Dostoevsky — Mickiewicz and Dostoevsky — Swedenborg). The ideological basis of “Theological Treatise” is the dialectical relationship between faith and truth, which is associated with Miłosz's appeal to Dostoevsky's ‘creed’ from his famous letter to Fonvisina. Like Dostoevsky, Miłosz criticizes the natural-scientific concept of truth in its depersonalized and, therefore, dehumanized version, which seems to the author of “Theologi­cal Treatise” as an instrument of ‘devilish theology’. In a dialogue with the traditions of Rus­sian religious philosophy, and above all with Dostoevsky’s legacy, Miłosz turns to the Apoca­lypse, in which the most aesthetically significant the idea for him is that of ​​restoring paradisi­acal existence. However, unlike Dostoevsky, the concept of life after death in “Theological Treatise” is not free from pessimism and skepticism. Miłosz is inclined towards the ideological paradigm of the West, and the concept of “Theological Treatise” includes the ideas of Dosto­evsky's unbelieving heroes.

The article reconstructs the most important problem fields of Czesław Miłosz’s reflection on Slavism, which he conducted in dialogs with myths of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Central Europe. This theme gains further importance in the context of both Miłosz’s personal experiences and considerations about Poles’ modern cultural awareness, which Maria Janion discusses in her book Niesamowita Słowiańszczyzna. Would Miłosz agree with the interventionist thesis of the book? The article describes the possible fields of common reflection and polemics between Miłosz and Janion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an account of reception facts that demonstrate how the celebration of the anniversary of Miłosz's in Bulgaria in 2011 was not limited to one year only, but continued into the next. Such a long ‘anniversary celebration’ signals how well received Miłosz was in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian edition of Native Realm (Rodzinna Europa) and its publication can be found within the context of this prolonged commemoration. The translation of the title itself which focuses on the two metaphors describing Europe can lead to a critical investigation; native space and family. The article argues that Miłosz's autobiographical book shows the implications of Europe as a native space in terms of culture and nature.

[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.

Considerations about the human condition and humankind’s place in nature are a vital part of the works of Czesław Miłosz. Miłosz’s cosmological vision is based on a deeply dualistic structure. On the one hand, we have got the human and civilisation – which is a synonym of purposefulness and divine order; on the other hand, there is the wild, cruel and untameable nature, whose activity is full of chaos and is meaningless from the metaphysical point of view. There is a sort of inconsistency in this seemingly ordered structure of reality, which seems to constitute the principle of Miłosz’s anthropology. The human in his essence is a “paradoxical being”; it is difficult to classify him in an unambiguous way. He is considered as the only creature that is composed of God’s elements – immortal soul, consciousness, and intellect. These properties detach him from nature and bring him closer to God in the hierarchy. Still, he is a biological creature and that disgraceful fact is difficult to accept for Miłosz; therefore, an attempt to draw a clear line between man and nature is reflected so clearly in Miłosz’s works. The purpose of the article is to analyse a few works of Czesław Miłosz with regard to the issues mentioned above. Undeniably, the ideas presented by Miłosz are deeply rooted in Western philosophy.

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Śniedziewska examines Miłosz's relationship to animals - especially birds - as it can be reconstructed from Dolina Issy and some of his poems. Fascinated with both nature and hunting, Miłosz advocates for two contradictory positions. As soon as he enters the world of hunting - portryed by Schiller as a naive perspective - and begins to observe wild animals, he undergoes a radical change. Śniedziewska argues that Tomasz, the alter ego of the young Miłosz, whose perspective is influenced by the consciousness of the mature poet, never really attains real access to the wild birds' world. Miłosz's poems about birds, however, are part of his reflections on the essence of all living creatures. The place where his thoughts about birds intersect in his prose and poems are his remarks on the problem of classification: naming as appropriation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

The Lithuanian born, Polish poet and 1980 Nobel laureate, Czelaw Milosz, penned a classic work, The Captive Mind (1951), detailing the allurement and existential crises the intelligentsia faced under Soviet totalitarianism. For many in post-communist societies, social realism fits well with varying forms of democratic capitalism's privatization of faith. Consequently, little room remains for theological education beyond the limits of institutional religion. Reductionistic accounts of human personhood and views of God as absent are central to this social imaginary. The challenge for Christian theology is to address these matters creatively yet critically, communicating with charity an alternative narrative of human ontology. Hans Urs von Balthasar is one voice that does so through his theological personalism, rooted in the economic missio of Christ's trinitarian life. He offers a creative way of envisioning humanity as captivated and constituted by its dialogical encounter with God, being drawn into the theodrama of human society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A classicist with left-wing sensitivities and Marxist leanings, Rex Warner never was a Communist party member. In this, he closed ranks with such non-party and non-doctrinaire writers of the twentieth century as Ignazio Silone, George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, and Czesław Miłosz. Miłosz came all the way down from a young left-winger to a conservative and religious thinker and poet, although this never came at the expense of his liberal sensitivities. Like Warner, Miłosz was able to successfully accommodate his pivotal moral and political sensibilities never losing the grounds or betraying his belief, whether religious or secular, in human self-worth and dignity. Like Mikhail Bulgakov and Simone Weil, he had never accepted Christian/Augustinian or modern liberal concept of evil. Miłosz's self-confessed variety of modern Manichaeism, no matter if taken as an Eastern/Central European idiosyncrasy or as an aspect of totalitarian modernization of Eastern and Central Europe, calls for a separate study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Polish reception of Philip Larkin, one of the most influential 20th-century English poets, and focuses on Stanisław Barańczak’s selection 44 wiersze (44 Poems; 1991) and Jacek Dehnel’s presentation of Zebrane (The Collected; 2008). My analysis compares the translators’ artistic stances (their role in the intercultural transfer and their translations’ modulating function in the target culture) as well as their intellectual inspirations and interpretative contexts. Barańczak as the first “ambassador” of Philip Larkin is opposed by Dehnel, who concentrates on a meticulous, almost philological reconstruction of the source text. While Barańczak domesticates, Dehnel advertises his own texts as a remedy for such a model. Moreover, both translators have been influenced by the changing perception of Larkin’s poetry: Barańczak draws on the symbolical and thematic interpretations of his time as well as on critical essays by Seamus Heaney; Dehnel follows Jerzy Jarniewicz’s interpretations and, in general, the “new wave” of criticism after Larkin’s letters and biography by Motion were published. Thus, the Polish Larkin is shaped both by Barańczak’s metaphysical, brightened and metaphorical version and by Dehnel’s skeptical, ambivalent and concrete rendition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses all Polish translations of the well-known poem by Constantine P. Cavafy (1863– 1933), Ithaca (Ιθάκη). Comparing the beginnings of the first stanza and the last stanza, which are fundamental to the comprehension of the poem, I point to the main differences between the original and its Polish versions. In my analysis I concentrate on the idiosyncrasies of Cavafy’s language, so challenging to translators of this poetry. My parallel reading of the translations by Zygmunt Kubiak, Nikos Chadzinikolau, Czesław Miłosz and Antoni Libera reveals striking discrepancies between the original text and the proposed versions, most noticeably Libera’s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article undertakes a difficult and contradictory process of determining the national self-identity of the Polish Nobel-prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, a man born in multicultural Lithuania, in the 'off street yard of the empire', bound to emigration and life far away from his fatherland. His little fatherland -- Lithuanian country and Vilnius -- shaped his world outlook, which is frequently marked by critical reflection on controversial identification of the model notion of patriotism with the martyrdom of Lechites and Messiah. Devising his song of experience, the poet attempted to deconstruct his own national identity which made him create a universal approach to openness towards otherness, multiculturalism, multi-ethnicity, multilingualism, and multi-religiosity, which may lead to complex modernity. The Polish language was a sanctuary for the artist, to which he remained faithful -- the language in which infinity permeates finitude, giving the chance to multi-aspect depictions of human fate inscribed in History. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the impact of the thought of Stanisław Brzozowski (1878-1911) on several Polish emigré writers, including Józef Czapski and Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, but first of all Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004) and Aleksander Wat (1900-1967). Miłosz' approach oscillated between early fascination through an unjust rejection during the war, due to the 'appropriation' of Brzozowski's thought by the right wing publicists, to the new phase of fascination after the war, culminating in the publication of a book on Brzozowski ( A Man Among Scorpions, 1962) and prolonged in several important articles till the very end of his life. Wat's approach shifted from the communist practice of 'overcoming' Brzozowski through the affirmation of his criticism and rejection of catholic obscurantism to the process of the internalization of the catholic faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses Czesław Miłosz as a poet-translator of the poetry of his younger colleagues: Herbert, Różewicz and Szymborska. The comparative analysis focuses on such features largely neglected in translation studies as Polish-English linguistic asymmetries and the poetics of grammar, that is, the functions of definite, indefinite and zero articles, verbs and their aspects, personal pronouns as well as the auxillary verb jest/is. Whereas some of these items cannot be translated adequately, because they cause an aesthetic loss in any translation, others allow for adequate, sometimes even“optimal,” translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines selected historical contexts of Miłosz’s encounters with America.It demonstrates the conflicts, paradoxes and contrasts in the poet’s attitude towards the country where he spent many years of his adult and creative life. Miłosz’s early readings and passions for discovering the laws and secrets of nature as well as Romantic and modern literary traditions significantly influenced his perception of American landscapes and culture. They shaped his new internal landscapes. The speaker’s changes, a result of Miłosz’s experiences in the New World, allow us to understand how his characteristic spatial imagination developed. Moreover, the article outlines Miłosz’s pursuit of a remedy for his disintegrated imagination, and its religious dimension in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay probes Miłosz’s attitude to confessional poetry, or rather it examines his stance on confessionalism as a seemingly irremovable element of any poetic utterance. By means of such terms as decorum, the referentiality of poetic language and its usefulness, it demonstrates why Miłosz himself refrained from overtly confessional modes of poetic utterance, drawing too heavily on the poet’s own experiences, which may in turn result in blurred distinctions between biography and literature. One of the reasons why the poet so intensely disliked excessive confessionalism is its intention to describe the speaker’s emotions, while according to the Polish poet, the main task of poetry is to celebrate the dazzling beauty of the outside world, whose existence transcends and surpasses the insignificantly small inner world of a troubled psyche. Last but not least, the usefulness of poetry, as Miłosz understood it, is that which enables poems written in diverse countries and epochs to intensify the contemporary reader’s sense of belonging to the large family of the human race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Miłosz was an avant-garde poet who systematically realized his program of rejuvenating mid-twentieth-century Polish poetry: he chose the most appropriate methods and strategies to cure the maladies of Romantic and nationalistic discourses,whose extension seemed urgent in the post-war reality. Although finally he became very critical of avant-garde poetics, such as Ezra Pound’s, his initial, restoring impulse came from the Poundian source: the need to “make it new.” Miłosz’s poetry of the1970s developed Pound’s formal inventions, particularly the “ideogrammatic method,”generating meanings by contrasting the poem’s fragments. Although the Polish poet often commented critically on the achievements of the American avant-garde of the mid-twentieth century, in fact he admired their artistic freedom. However, he realized that he himself could not contradict the “poetics of salvation” he had been following for years. The world presented in Miłosz’s late poems is not obvious. Its most astonishing feature is the perspective from which the narrator addresses the reader: the almost mystical space, timeless and unspeakable, where the dead meet the living, has nothing to do with a picture of the world based on mimesis. Miłosz’s “second space” has a lot in common with the “real reality” designed by the surrealists, which John Ashbery evokes in his recent poems. Both poets reach a similar mystical point, where the word touches on the mystery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years A View of San Francisco Bay (1969) has proven itself essential both to Miłosz’s life and to his writings. It was here that he formulated, for the first time with such a force, the theses that would later regularly reappear in his essays and poetry. One vital aspect of the intellectual construction outlined in A View of San Francisco Bay was the concept of Nature. Miłosz proposed a “presentistic” approach arguing for the concept of Nature, which he expounded, as an indispensible element of contemporary thought. His reflections are restricted to selected motifs closely linked with his theses about Nature: Nature and beauty, human/animal relations, and the theory of evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The late 1980 Nobel Prize Czeslaw Milosz was recognized worldwide as one of the most prestigious 20th century poets. His poetry, with deep humanistic roots, enables modern readers an individual approach of our contemporaneous culture. The article sketches the most important topics of his poetics and the main features of his formal aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]