I knew about Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz before I bought What light can do by Robert Hass a few months ago (I reviewed the book here), but I would be hard-pressed to recall where or when I first heard his name. I suspect I read his obituary in The New York Times in August 2004, and even of that I am not quite sure, since I was just settling in my new apartment and was about to start my new job when he died. Perhaps I came across this article about him, a month after he passed on.
When back in September I browsed through Hass's essays in the bookstore, though, and realized that he had not only translated many of Milosz's poems, but included a few essays about him in his book, I remembered I'd wanted to learn more about Milosz for some time - and I am glad I did remember, many years late.
Now that I have read Milosz's poems - spellbinding, inspirational, true gems - it occurs to me that his work in my case illustrates one of those hackneyed stories where what you need (call it spiritual nourishment as far as I'm concerned, or remembering what matters in an environment that conspires to box you in and make you small and bring you down) is right in front of you but it takes you forever to see it.
Milosz indeed belongs to my favorite kind of poets, those who bear witness and take a stance against totalitarianism, those who remind us of the duty to remember and make us think about the world we live in. While I also enjoy lighter poems or poems about quiet personal worlds such as those by Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon, good engaged poetry will always have my preference.
Others have expressed the essence of Milosz's work much more eloquently than I can, so I'll quote the words of a journalist in The Nation, writing at the time of the poet's death: "[A] witness to the Nazi devastation of Poland and the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, Milosz deals in his poetry with the central issues of our time: the impact of history upon moral being, the search for ways to survive spiritual ruin in a ruined world." Or, under the pen of a writer for Shambala Sun who discussed one of his poems in the November 2012 issue: "Czeslaw Milosz... was a poet of exile... In poem after poem, Milosz writes about how one might begin to heal after the spirit has been injured in a damaged world."
Hass actually refers to Milosz quite a few times throughout his book of essays, but I'll focus on "Milosz at eighty" and "Milosz at ninety-three", since the poet was the central figure of those. In contrast with some other pieces in the book, those are short essays - a few pages each - but while much about Milosz is available in the many biographical notices on the Nobel Prize website, various poetry websites, and his obituaries, Hass succeeds in giving us a novel glimpse into the mind and life of the poet.
What I found most fascinating about the first essay is that, according to Hass, Milosz wrote a letter to the New York Review of Books to protest a rave review he had been given. In Hass's words, "[t]he substance of Milosz's objection was that he was always being seen either through the lens of the Second World War or through the lens of his rejection of the Communist government of Poland and his exile... Having had to deal with what history inflicted on him, he then had to deal with being seen always in terms of it..."
I don't know how much the experience of working closely with Milosz influenced Hass's thinking, but I was reminded of his statement about Milosz when, about two hundred pages later in What Light Can Do, he mentions Russian poet Osip Mandelstam: "He was a tremendously moving figure. But I am made uneasy by our fascination with him for a couple of reasons. The first is the suspicion that our fascination exists because his martyrdom flatters us. One stubborn poet hunted to death like a wild animal... is a compelling image... There is something wrong in admiring the calamitous." (Please refer to the full paragraph on pp.372-373 of the hardcover edition for Hass's complete thoughts on the topic.) I wouldn't necessarily use the word "admiring", but I understand that what inspires us in those lives, what makes us attempt to live ours with a bit more courage, a bit more honor, a bit more dignity, might feel reductive to the people whose lives prompt us to standing taller. They were so much more than the feel-good parts we like to repeat about them.
"Milosz at ninety-three" was written shortly after the poet's death. How touching that Hass seems to forget at times that his friend has died. (Second sentence of the essay: "He revisits his childhood very often in his poetry...") This piece completes and extends the review of Milosz's life that had been begun in the previous essay, but is even shorter than its predecessor. Hass, a wonderful poet and essayist in his own right, clearly has no interest in letting himself be solely defined by his work relationship with Milosz. What he wrote was enough to make me buy an anthology of Milosz's work, though. As for Hass's poems themselves, I've enjoyed what I found in the Poets Laureate Anthology, especially "Meditation at Lagunitas", and look forward to buying The Apple Trees at Olema soon.
Now, on to Milosz's poems - or at least those in Selected and Last Poems (1931-2004), which is the book I have. The book starts with "Dawns", which is about memory of childhood and the aging of an old woman, and right there I knew I had made the right choice in buying the book, because the poem reminded me of someone I know and helped me feel compassion for that person - so many dashed dreams, lost hopes, memories of happy times that will never come again. When poems cast a new light or a forgotten one on your own life, you are always on the right track.
Other poems that I particularly enjoyed include the famous "Dedication" ("You whom I could not save / Listen to me..."), "Classmate" with its beautiful last line ("I don't even remember your first name"), "Six lectures in verse", "On parting with my wife, Janina", "A ninety-year old poet signing his books", "In Szetejnie" (which Hass quotes in the end of his second essay on Milosz), "Orpheus and Eurydice" and the last poem he ever wrote, "Goodness".
Most remarkable about "Goodness" is that Milosz finished working on it in December 2003, but only died in August of the following year. His son Anthony, who introduces the last poems in the book (and translated them), points out: "It was clear that he was quite deliberately preparing to depart." "Goodness" serves as a magnificent goodbye.
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