UNDER STANDINC "TH E WORLD"
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are di spersed, and sa fety is res tored. In a wo rld so constituted, the boar
becomes he-who-canno t- fri ghten-Mother, and the fo res t beas t him- fi·om–
whom-I-am-rescued-by- Father. Nothing is a detached sense-experience; in
the child 's global universe, everything-trees, sto ri es, Mo ther, Europe, love–
is incorporated into the phrase " th e world ."
Other great poems foll owed "The World" in Mil osz's writing life. But
as Milosz moved on , first in th e Poli sh diplomati c service and then , after
hi s break with th e reg ime, to France and to the Slavi c Department at
Berkel ey, hi s poe try never ceased to hark bac k to its ea rly pastoral:
"Riding in a ca rt, he looked back to retain as much as possibl e. / Which
means he knew what was needed for some ultimate moment / When he
would compose from fragments a world perfect at las t."
The dream o f res to rati on enacted in "The Wo rld" is bo th enabled by
language and fru strated by it. We are always conscious, in reading thi s cycle
of poems, that an adult is speaking in the style o f inn ocence. Finding that
innocent style is itself the act of experi ence, inve nting the art that conceals
art, the ultimate in sophi sti ca ti on . Geo rge H erbert and William Blake, our
Engli sh mas ters of th e artl ess voice, knew w hat power can be gained by such
a strict reining-in o f language. Mil osz, in turn, repea ts hi s small sto re of pre–
cious words over and over: wood, leaves, colo r, sky, copper, children , star,
path, light, world, dawn, field , window, region, bird, mo ther, shadow, beast,
bark, fath er, men, ea rth , steam , towers, citi es, fores ts, bl ue, house, garden,
moon, home, river, fl ower, ga te, peopl e, waves, darkness, sun. These words
chime often through the poem , mo re vi sibly in the Poli sh where allitera–
tive sound and line-placement often put th em into reli ef. Though the world
represented by th ese wo rds is as yet a bu coli c one, it promi ses-by the
prospective view o f Europe offered by the child 's fa ther- peaceful and ri ch
cosmopolitan travels to come. Instead, the travels of exil e claimed Milosz,
and poetry became hi s way o f preserving pas t space and time. Since he can–
not return, he must write: " N ever aga in will I knee l in my small country,
by a river, / So that what is stone in me would be di ssolved, / So that noth–
ing would remain but my tears, tea rs." In exil e, th e poet becomes "a sponge,
suffering because it cann o t sa turate itself; a river, suffering because refl ec–
tions of clouds and trees are no t clouds and trees." Writing is a stylization ,
a mirror of reali ty, no t reality itself "And whatever o nce entered a bolted
house of the five senses is now set in the brocade of a styl e."
And yet, aga inst such obse rva tions, Mil osz returns stubbornly to a
belief in the possibl e co rrespondence of language to rea li ty. T hi s belief has
for him a groundin g in th e aes th eti cs of medi eval philosophy: " [n 'The
World ,'" he once sa id in conversa ti on, " I wa nted to w rite a poetry of
scholas ti c reali sm"-that doctrin e, found espec iall y in T homas Aquinas,
whi ch Umberto Eco ca lls "a n
existelltial
o ntology":
