CZESLAW MILOSZ
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where he can write peacefully; while when I go through a crisis I
have to function normally."
RB:
In the commentary to your poem "The Hooks of a Corset" you
say: "I endow with a philosophical meaning the moment when I
helped her to undo the hooks of her corset." Can you conceive of en–
dowing meaning to that act while performing it?
eM:
The question of a certain duality between our consciousness
and our actions is a very interesting and a very tricky one. I know
people who are so literary-minded that any action of theirs, even
writing private letters, is done with the thought about the world of
art. We can also imagine various physiological functions that are
fulfIlled accompanied by thoughts about their philosophical mean–
ing. But going back to your quotation, I guess that if we are truly in
love we don't have these thoughts.
RB:
Can you conceive, for instance, of anyone contemplating a sex–
ual relationship in order to get another person closer to God?
eM:
I cannot see a conscious design of that sort.
RB:
An unconscious design?
eM:
Yes. There is a very interesting novel written by my cousin
Oscar Milosz, who was a French poet, entitled "Amorous Initiation,"
published in 1910. It is a story about love for a beautiful courtesan
which takes place in the eighteenth century in Venice. There is a
gradual realization by the narrator and the hero of the book that
physical profane love is a road towards the love of God.
RB:
In your book you say: "And when people cease to believe that
there is good and evil/Only beauty will call to them and save
them/So that they still know how to say: this is true and that is false."
Are we too weak to realize truth without the beauty of art?
eM:
An orthodox theologian by the name of Sergius Bulgakov used
to say that art is the theology of the future. I don't know if this is true.
I am not very fond of what I would call a religion of art. In the twen–
tieth century we have witnessed a general tendency towards a cer–
tain worship of art. Art enters as a substitute for religion, and I am
very skeptical about that. But, undoubtedly, there is something
which should be respected here - apart from snobbery, less lofty
motives, egoistic motives, or artists who make much hullabaloo
about their art - because in a world where there are no certainties or
strong foundations for values, people turn instinctively to art as
something divine, inspired maybe.
RB:
What time and place are you transcending in your poem "The
Hooks of a Corset?"
eM:
The poem is about young ladies at the beginning of the twen-
