CZESLAW MI LO Z
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luck; but in ano ther way, it is a kind o f apprenti ceship that I share with
many poets allover th e world , and ce rtainly in thi s country.
Ladi es and gentl emen , Czeslaw Mil osz .
Czeslaw Milosz:
With a kind o f awe have I been the obj ect o f thi s fes tival.
But I can assure you all that I full y understand its impo rtance no t onl y for
me but fo r poetry and th e co-operati on of Ameri can and European poets.
Most of all, fo r me it was a feas t of fri e ndship, so I want to tell you some–
thing about my fi-iends who ga thered here. I begin w ith Professor R obert
Faggen, whose love o f poetry and exce ll ent kn owl edge of modern poe try
first bro ught me to C laremo nt- McKenna Coll ege. I have been invited by
him here twi ce, and have had th e chance to test hi s students, bo th here and
in Berkeley; I have di scovered that th ese students have an excell ent under–
standing of poetry, are ve ry sophi sti ca ted, and share a love of poetry with
Bob Fagge n . So Pro fessor Fagge n rea ll y started thi s proj ect befo re the idea
of thi s conference was bo rn . T he second fri end is Adam Mi chnik , wi th
whom we drank a lo t o f w in e and vodka in Warsaw. T hese two had the
idea of thi s fes tival, whi ch has bro ught togeth er my fri ends, poets, and crit–
ics from Ameri ca and Poland . So I had a strange feeling: only in the most
optimi sti c dreams ca n you have such an experi ence of kindness and
warmth amo ng peopl e of two languages. I wa nt to thank all of my fri ends
who gath ered here, and all wh o attended thi s fes tival. Perhaps I should say
that the li st of those who made it fin ancially possibl e is lo ng. I canno t
enumerate them all , but I wo uld espec ially like to thank Mrs. Dru e H einz
and the Lannan Foundati o n .
Now a few personal observa ti ons. Perhaps I would prefer to be judged
by my poems only. My fa te however was to appear successively as a poet, an
author of poli ti cal treati ses, a translato r, an escapee from poli tical sys tems, and
an immigrant. Furthermo re, I practi ce many Ii terary genres, so that an unde–
niably unitary striving underlying my various books is no t always cl ear, even
to myself. Fo r a long time, 1 was known in the Wes t only as the autho r of
TIle
C(/ptive Mind
and considered a po li tical wri ter. My poetry was not trans–
lated.
In
turn, thanks to translators, I became known in America as a poet and
as my dear fi-i end Pinsky sa id, especially to young American poets. O ther
fields of my activi
ty
remained rather opaque to Ameri can readers. Thus my
translati o ns fro ll1 the Dibl e into Poli sh , certainly a rather strange occupation
for an inhabitant of Berkeley, belong to a domain inaccessibl e to my
American fi-iends (Poli sh translati ons o f the Bibl e go back to the fifteenth
century) . The fac t that my poems in translati on have found American read–
ers and listeners fo r me is almos t a mjracl e_ I consider it a rare privil ege.
T he ve nture of translating m y poetry into En gli sh was unexpected
and continu es to as to ni sh me. Usuall y th e translato r struggles solitarily
