JAN BŁONSKI

Czesław Miłosz's seemingly accessible poetry has not revealed even a fraction of its riddles. The more intensely one reads "Three Winters" (1936), "Rescue" (1945), not to mention "Treatise on Poetry" (1956) and "From Where the Sun Rises" (1974), the richer and more enigmatic they seem. Surely the emigration of the poet … was not favorable to critical reflection. But even the earlier work is filled with contradictions and intimations that eloquently testify to the resistance which Miłosz's poetry presents to interpretation…. Homogeneous yet multiform, Miłosz's poetry puts a stop to tendencies whose sense eludes even the most sympathetic of readers. The writer worked against the principle which was gaining ascendancy in Poland at the beginning of this century: the principle of autonomous poetic language.

Hence the abundance of contradictory labels attached to Miłosz. Romantic magus? Lover of classical harmony? Prophet of destruction? Ironic skeptic? Only recently, rather late and ashamed, do we understand, and not without the help of the poet himself, the cohesion of intentions which he probably had right from the beginning, even if unconsciously. In other words, we grasp the concept of poetic language that he has elaborated. It is this which gives us the rules of a given reading and through this we get at his esthetic tastes, philosophical convictions and religious inspirations. And it is for this reason that everything that was once written about Miłosz is not very helpful to us today. It is better to treat the circumstances of the debut, the literary polemics and the political experiences parenthetically. (p. 387)

From its inception Miłosz's lyric is characterized by a preference for dialogue, or at least for polyphonic utterance. It reveals doubt, division; the motive behind the dialogue is the pressing search for an ever-retreating truth. In other words, the polyphony indicates a cognitive understanding of the function of poetry. What, after all, do words like cognizance, knowledge or rescue mean, words which in Miłosz are similar in meaning? Poetry for him is not a symbolic reaching into the essence of things; nor does he rely on the rational relationships of logical conclusions. It is understood instead as an unending discussion, a relentless and haughty (because it is not accessible to everyone) search which is at the same time full of anxiety because the truth is grim. Equal partners in this discussion seem to be the mind and the body, individual experiences and the recurrent patterns of history, fleeting occurrences and the reflections of philosophers.

In order to articulate his feelings and aspirations, the poet must express himself with many voices and call doubles into momentary being, doubles with whom he nonetheless does not entirely identify. Practically every statement, whether an entire poem or a part of it, is presented as if it were being quoted and is thereby supplied with a certain amount of credibility. Its meaning is rarely given outright. It is instead revealed in relationship to other statements: in order to understand what a given voice is really saying, we must remember its partners. But the personae themselves are not immutable, because each dialogue changes and shapes those taking part in it. Sometimes the same motifs appear in various guises, tinged with pathos or irony. One cannot penetrate this poetry by relying on symbols, topoi or key words. Their significance is always relative, as in a musical quartet where one cannot listen more carefully to the first violin than to the second, nor more to the cello than to the viola. But that is exactly how Miłosz is read—which, after all, should not surprise us. The Polish, Slavic and even continental lyric of those years was dominated by homophony, and the innovation of Miłosz's technique was not even apparent to him in the beginning. (p. 388)

Miłosz has moments of revelation and intoxication with nature, but not more frequently than moments of dread and insatiety. Is he not, in fact, amazed by civilization's every effort and by the difficulty of erecting a culture which is, as he claims, the actual content and motor of history?

The split that is doubt—and its accompaniment, the polyphony of expression—[runs] … within the idea of nature, the concept of history, and also within the concept of the poet. Proof of this is the fact that Miłosz's penchant for dialogue becomes stronger during and after the war, beginning with the lyric (where the poet yields to the voice of a clearly delineated protagonist), continuing with montages of quasi-dramatic monologues ("Voices of Poor People," 1943; "City Without a Name," 1969), lyrico-didactic tracts ("Treatise on Poetry," 1956) and finally, in a multi-voiced symphony ("From Where the Sun Rises," 1974). In the last of these the poet makes use of various forms from aphorism to ode, from lyrical carmen to genre scene. He weaves fragments of old chronicles or modern encyclopedias into the verse and incorporates several languages: Polish, Old Russian, Lithuanian, Latin. Miłosz often gives himself the role of a director who manipulates the speakers: the reader becomes the viewer, who is invited to draw his own independent conclusions. But Miłosz can, if need be, speak directly "from himself," or at any rate so direct the reading that the reader himself reconstructs the genuine or desired hierarchy of the polyphonic pronouncements.

Unlike his Polish contemporaries—and there were many outstanding ones—Miłosz rarely seeks to compress the meaning of his poem into the individual sentence. On the contrary, the basic components of the poem usually remain very clear, firmly fixed in tradition and easy to grasp…. The effect, or illusion, of neutrality [achieved in Miłosz's poetry] stems from the precedence which is accorded to the eye. Certain sequences of images occur that are … reminiscent of a movie, which relates events in a supposedly "objective" fashion—that is, as they appear to everyone. Many, and sometimes the majority, of Miłosz's loose pronouncements seem not to be poetically characterized at all: we might find them in any novel without expressing surprise or maybe even hear them from the mouth of a relatively educated person. The linguistic counterpart to cinematic "objectivity," therefore, is utilization of "methods used in prose writing," something which the young Miłosz awkwardly recommended to other poets. (pp. 388-89)

[Like "Voices of Poor People," "The Songs of Adrian Zielinski"] represent various responses—skeptical, cynical, esthetic—to the challenge of the Occupation's triumphant nihilism. The poet endorses none of these voices, he simply presents them, usually undercut by irony and somewhat distorted by a limitation (fear, self-interest, resignation) in the persona or in the circumstances. That is why an interpretation of "The Songs"—praise or condemnation of the internal freedom of the individual who will not accept the news of culture's doom—depends on one's understanding of "Voices" in its entirety: each "voice" makes the other relative by referring back to the poet's entire work, or at least to the full context of the dialogue….

[In the early poem, "Tranquil River,"] is a deep intimacy with nature, perhaps erotically colored … and it awakens not only a feeling of youth, strength and participation in life's great procession, but also the discovery of one's otherness, individuality, difference…. This is also a recognition of evil, for only man, because of his uniqueness, can evaluate the neutral processes of nature ethically…. In greeting the day of maturity, the hero will then see himself as being different from his own corporality—i.e., from all of nature. That is the sole message of the autobiographical novel "The Valley of Issa": "Thomas kept noticing that he himself was not only himself. There was one him inside that felt and another him on the outside, a bodily one, the one he was born into, and here nothing was his."

In this way is born the possibility—and necessity—of inner dialogue. At first it will take on the form of a dispute as to the calling of the artist. The alter ego of the protagonist, whose turn it is …, speaks distinctly about the semimythical prototypes of the Poet. (p. 389)

If one recalls the date of the poem, the combination of lyric and prophetic powers is chilling. Who in 1936 thought about white crags of crematoria? But ambivalent reflections on civilization can be traced throughout all of Miłosz's work up to the present day, and this alone steers one away from interpreting his catastrophism as the mere expression of fear in the face of impending war. (p. 390)

"Tranquil River" is, of course, the river of time, life, destiny. It allows us not so much to examine as to indicate themes in Miłosz's lyric: his understanding of nature, of his calling and, finally, of history itself. Visible everywhere is the Manichean split which cannot be mended with the poetico-religious expectation of the revelation of truth and eschatological epiphany. But it is this very split which makes possible the wealth of polyphonic statement, the creative originality of the poet.

Its deep sources are undoubtedly romantic. From romanticism comes the belief in the imagination, in the prophetic capabilities of the poet raised above the blind, unseeing masses, who are often treated with pitying scorn. But it is that scorn which, in turn, unsettles the conscience, because poetry was assigned the task (again, in the romantic tradition) of spiritual leadership, of having the "dark masses." What is also striking right from the very beginning in Miłosz's poetry is the perception of one's own fate and that of society in terms that are, if not always religious, then surely eschatological and metaphysical. Rarely in modern poetry were the awe of existence, fear and fascination with the unknown and, lastly, guilt and moral responsibility (more generally, the feeling of sacrum) more powerfully expressed.

In this light one could say that Miłosz's early lyric was the unexpected revenge of a century-old tradition on the esthetic optimism of the constructivist vanguard which dominated the young Polish poetry of the twenties. The Źagary poets saw in the work of the artist, and especially in the revival of the language, the fullest embodiment of productive work by means of which man could encompass and control the world. In contrast to this monolithic utopia, the inspirations of Miłosz and his contemporaries deeply diverged. The temptation of traditionalism on one side and political didacticism on the other could only be overcome by devising a poetic idiom that could creatively use these conflicts to its own advantage. This took place slowly in Miłosz's work, the turning point probably being 1943. From this point on, his word was not aiming for the characteristic autonomy of the avant-garde but for "integrity"—in other words, to achieve autonomy by absorbing so many idioms (as well as experiences) that, by contrast and comparison, one gained independence from everyday speech.

According to Miłosz, the poet is someone who knows how to speak in all tongues—not only the one with which he creates his own idiom. Hence the demand for roots in the past, in history, but also openness to the most various and sundry modern idioms, popular and scientific included. Hence the enormous significance assigned to irony and dramatic forms in poetry, which allow the poet to illuminate problems that normally escape the competence of a lyric poet. And hence the intellectualization of the statement as well as the war declared on the "new Latin," which too often has become the language of a poetry capable only of polishing the specific features of feelings and emotions; and, in addition, the overt identification of poetry with knowledge, the erasing of boundaries between the lyric, the essay and the treatise. Miłosz is, in fact, a much more difficult poet than avant-garde poets such as Przyboś, who for years has been reproached with unintelligibility. Miłosz requires efforts of interpretation on greater significant wholes. The power of the imagination is also, if not above all, a requisite of wisdom for Miłosz, and he wants to effect a renewal in the reader through a combination of reflection and emotion. (pp. 390-91)