CZESLAW MILOSZ
259
human memories , or if it exists only in records which can be very
easily destroyed , then in fact all human beings and all the events
which happened fade into a kind of mist and have no consistence, no
existence at all . In order to imagine that the past is real and that
those people who died, for instance, in the horrible conditions dur–
ing the twentieth century existed , we have to assume a mind em–
bracing everything, every detail that was , that is, and that will be,
simultaneously . This means that Orwell , who was agnostic, kind of
searches for a solution, and the only solution is an objective reality
based on God.
RB:
What moved you to write your poem "The Garden of Earthly
Delights"?
CM:
I wrote this poem as a result of seeing in Prado, in Madrid, the
famous painting,
The Garden
oj
Earthly Delights
by Hieronymus Bosch.
I was surprised by the very enigmatic character of that painting.
What did the painter want to say? It is ambiguous. We do not know
whether it is praise of the earth , or praise of eroticism, or fear of eter–
nal damnation with a very ironic attitude towards earthly delights in
the spirit of the fifteenth century. My interest in that poem says a
great deal about my own ambiguity about the subject, and the pres–
ent ambiguity of the twentieth century about it as well . The past, the
Middle Ages for instance , had a very ascetic vision . But today we
are very ambiguous. We don't know.
RB:
In your book you say : "Do I love God? Or her? Or myself?
It
is
interesting to me that saints , for instance , express feelings about
their love for God so vividly in their writings. But I am puzzled by
what it means to love God, which I understand only through ac–
tions.
CM:
I understand this very well . It is a very old problem- how to
separate our love for created things, or for the world as it is accessi–
ble to us through our senses, from the idea of God who is separated
from the world . Isaac Singer is a kind of a pantheist and sees the
world and God as identified. I find this a rather difficult issue to cope
with.
RB:
Your poem "Father Chomski , Many Years Later . . . " which I
especially love, somehow speaks to that. You say that Father Chom–
ski refused to bow to the world and you ask: "Did I toil then against
the world/Or, without knowing , was I with it and its own?" Could
you talk about the difference between you and him?
eM:
We return to your first question . Father Chomski was an
ascetic and a fanatic . A man who could certainly be admired for his
inflexibility and his refusal to compromise with the world . I chose a
