Is Czeslaw Milosz the greatest Polish poet? (poetry from Poland cycle)

Growing up in Poland in 1960s and 1970s and being interested in poetry I came across all the great names, including Zbigniew Herbert, but I never heard of Milosz. Then one day in 1977 I was invited to go to a poetry reading of "the greatest living Polish poet". I somehow assumed it would be Herbert. At the evening I heard two well known Polish actors reciting poems that were definitely not Herbert's, I knew his style well enough to realise that, but I couldn't recognise who it was. However, I had to agree - this was the best poetry I had heard so far. Only later I learned this was Czeslaw Milosz, a poet banned in Poland, which is why I had never heard of him. It all changed in 1980, when Milosz received the Nobel prize. Then he suddenly was published in his own country and became a national hero.

Czeslaw Milosz was born in Lithuania and would consider himself to be a Polish-speaking Lithuanian. Born when Lithuania was a part of the Russian Empire, he travelled around with his father – an engineer – and grew up bilingual, speaking Polish at home and Russian elsewhere. After the Soviet Revolution the family returned home. Poland has just regained its independence. So did Lithuania, but the Lithuanian nationalists wanted to eradicate the Polish language there, so the Polish-speaking part of the country (including the city of Vilnius) chose to join Poland rather than Lithuania. Milosz grew up in Vilnius, went to the university there and there published his first poems. During the Nazi occupation he lived in Warsaw, where he took part in the underground publishing movement. After the war at first he supported the new regime, but soon he was disillusioned and emigrated – first to France, later to the USA. For many years he taught Slavonic Literatures at the University of Berkeley in California. After the end of the communist rule Milosz returned to Poland and died in Cracow.

In the communist Poland his works were banned, the censors wouldn’t even let his name be mentioned. Some of the Polish anti-communist exiles wouldn’t accept him either because of his support for the regime during the first years after the war. Nevertheless he gained international recognition and in 1980 received the Nobel Prize. Everything changed after that – it was impossible to ignore him in Poland and the traditional exiles had to accept his great talent. After the end of communism in Poland he was treated as a national prophet.

During his life Milosz witnessed the indescribable inhumanity of the Nazi occupation, including the destruction of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto. He has consciously decided that his poetry will not reflect desperation, widespread in those years. There is enough evil, poetry should bring hope – this is what he tried to do all his life.

His poetry is often compared with that of Zbigniew Herbert, whom Milosz himself promoted in the English speaking world and whom some people consider even greater. I myself consider this competition "who is the greatest" a futile activity. I see most of all one big difference between them: where Herbert uses metaphor in his poems, Milosz uses metonymy most often. This is why I had no doubt the poems weren't Herbert's when I heard them for the first time.

Milosz himself translated his own poems into English (in collaboration with Robert Hass) and his translations are easily available. I, however, had audacity to write some of the poems in English again (so to speak), having been inspired by the Polish versions I read. Here they are:

MEDITATION

It is quite possible, O Lord, that people were wrong when they praised You.

You weren't the prince on a throne, to whom prayers and smoke of frankincense raise from the earth

The throne they imagined was empty and you smiled bitterly

When you saw them turning to you with hope

That you will save their crop from hail, their bodies from disease

That you will save them from pestilence, fire, famine war.

The traveller staying by the invisible waters

You kept alight the tiny flame in the surrounding darkness.

By that fire, deep in thoughts, you shook your head.

You really wanted to help them, glad whenever you could.

Full of sympathy, you forgave their mistake,

Their deceit, of which they were aware, though they pretended they didn't see it.

Even the ugliness, when they gathered in their churches.

My heart is filled with awe, O Lord, I want to talk to you,

Because I think you understand me, despite my contradictions.

I think I know now what it means to love people

And why loneliness, pity and anger are barriers to love.

It is enough to ponder about one life persistently and forcefully.

Of – for example – one woman, which is what I am doing now,

And a multitude of those weak creatures will manifest itself.

They can be just and patient till the end.

What more can I do, O Lord, but to remember it all

And bow before you in deep supplication

Imploring because for their heroism: admit us to Your glory.

BELATED MATURITY

Belatedly, when I am nearly ninety, the door inside me opened

and I entered the brightness of dawn.

I saw my earlier lives float away, like ships

One after another, together with their suffering.

Countries, cities, gardens, sea bays, they all suddenly appeared

Assigned to my pen, so I could describe them better than before.

I was not separated from the people, sadness and sympathy formed the bond between us

I said: We have forgotten thet we all are the children of the King.

Because we come from where the difference between yes and no doesn't exist

Or the difference between is, was and will be.

Woe to us, because we use less than a hundredth

Of the gift given to us for our long journey.

Moments of yesterday and of centuries gone: a strike of a sword,

Making up eyelashes before a mirror of polished metal,

Deadly shot of a musket, a sailing ship hitting a reef -

They all live in us and wiil have to be completed.

I always knew I would be a worker in a vinyard,

Just like all people living in my time,

Wheather they are aware of it on not.

IN CRACOW

On the border between this and the other world, in Cracow

Patter patter on worn floors of churches

One generation after another. There I understood

Something of the customs of my sisters and brothers.

Nakedness of a woman meets nakedness of a man

And completes itself with the other half

Corporal, or maybe divine.

It probably is the same,

As „Song of Solomon” tells us.

Isn't it true that everyone must hug the Ever Living?

His fragrance of apples, saffron, cinnamon, cloves, frankincense

Him, who is and who will come

With the light of the wax candles?

He, divisible, separate for everyone

Accepts him and her in an oblate, in their own flame.

They cover the light with the fabric of their misty velvet garments

They wear masks of silk, porcelain, brass and silver,

So the faces, which are common, wouldn't get mixed up.

Their graves will be adorned with crosses of marble.

If you would like to read these poems (and some more) on paper, 

You can get a printout of my book "POLISH INSPIRATIONS"