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PARTI SAN REVIEW
di stin ctive black and silver cover with burgundy lettering. Before he was a
world fi gure, Milosz was a vital fi gure for Ameri can poets. Why?
O ne answer goes like thi s: poe ts have found in thi s body of work a
huma n response to hi story, and hi sto ry dea lt with neither as a picture–
book fo r ideology (in th e old style o f de termini sm) no r as a
proving- ground for ironic skepticisms (in the current style of de termin–
ism). R ather, the poems o f Milosz seem to o ffer an intell ectual and
emo tional response
to
hi sto ri cal reali ty that is g ro unded somehow in the
precio us center of life; hi sto ry, no t as th e pas t no r as ingeni o us academi c
theories abo ut th e pas t, but as th e reality that inheres in the shape of a
plant , in the ges tures of a family having tea in the midst of a g reat infernal
train stati on, in the terri fY ing war fo r whi ch th e train stati on itself is a
blunted metonym y. Thi s underl ying hi stori cal reality, equally immanent in
that year of the wartime railway terminal and in thi s moment, to learn the
art of perceiving thi s reali ty-that is part of why young poets read Mil osz.
T he invaluabl e mys tery that aspiring poets seek in Mil osz's wo rk is
simply a form of attention : the abili ty to surpri se, yet to surpri se w ith what
turns out to make emo ti onal sense. When th ey turn
to
him fo r conscience,
he is concentrating o n the smell o f a gill yfl ower, th e mind o f Linnaeus, the
quali ty of bein g. T hi s, too, is hi sto ri cal, perhaps rel ated
to
th e adva ntage of
hailin g from th e cosmopolitan province of Wiln o, hi s home city, where
streams of Poli sh , Lithuanian, liturgical Latin , and the lea rned Jewi sh di s–
putations of th e "Jeru salem of the N o rth " all po ured into hi s soul-a soul
whi ch, in hi s poem
((Esse,"
Mil osz compares
to
"A sponge, suffering
because it canno t sa turate itself; a river, sufferin g beca use refl ec ti o ns o f
clouds and trees are no t clouds and trees."
T hat philosophical medi tati o n on the sheer bein g of a specifi c face, a
strange r in the Metro, is as mu ch a tribute to concrete reali ty as
" Incantati on," ano ther poem I love, is a tribute to the rea li ty o f ideas.
Imagine having the nerve to begin a poem as thi s o ne begin s: " Human rea–
son is beautiful and invin cibl e...." Seamus Hea ney has as ked how in the
wo rld thi s poem manages
to
work; as Hea ney co rrectly sugges ts, the answer
is som ewhere in the quality of co nvicti on, a quali ty that depends upon
experi ence, whi ch is to say, a hi sto ry. Just as refl ec ti o ns of clouds and trees
in the mind are not clouds and trees, in th e conve rse, chimerical
ideologies- rac ism , determini sm- that have underpinned the practi ce of
twentieth-century totali tari ani sm are no t ideas, " Incantati o n" maintains.
What might be call ed the idolatri es o f ideo logy are no t ideas. Conviction
underlies the poe ti c accompli shment that ca n present such focused works
as th ese two lyrics .
Working with Mr. Mil osz on th e Engli sh approx imatio n o f such works
has been in o ne way a special privil ege I treasure, a stro ke o f individual
