Boundaries of Poetry – an interview with Czeslaw Milosz, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Posted by Jarosław Mikołajewski

Do you perceive The Roman Triptych as a piece of poetry?

Young Czeslaw on the beach in Rehoboth over the Atlantic

Czeslaw Milosz: (...) Let's imagine that the Pope had published a volume of sonnets concerning the subject of beauty – it would be quite a different situation from the one we have now, when the Pope has published his Meditations. For this is the subtitle of The Roman Triptych – Meditations. Not a poem, but meditations. Taking all this into consideration, I pose a question: as The Triptych was published, to what extent are we forced to reflect upon the boundaries of poetry and upon this work as a very specific symptom of meditation on the verge of a poem. This question I pose to you as well.

I believe it is the author who decides on the genre of the work. In the subtitle, there is the author's term 'meditations'. When fragments of The Triptych appeared in the press before the publication of the whole work, some of them seemed to be reflections, the others – pieces of poetry, and an excellent one. As it is at the very beginning, where the Pope wrote, 'The undulating wood slopes down to the rhythm of mountain streams / this rhythm is revealing You to me...' For me, there is in this excerpt an unquestionable piece of poetry. Not only in the imagery, but also in the poetic way of cognition by moving the attention from the world of the visible to the deep meaning. The way I understand this passing from the poetic tone to meditations and vice versa is that at a certain point the meditations may lose their limits to, under the pressure of some excess, support themselves with the language of poetry. This crossing of the border is specific for the Polish literature. Also for you, not only for your last volume, Second Space.

Czeslaw Milosz: Exactly. It seems to me that we should keep in mind the tremendous evolution that the Polish poetry underwent in the 20th century. The Polish poetry has intensely explored the issue of life and death, and in an always more refined manner. We should remember there was Skamander, there was Norwid's unceasing presence, there was the searching of the poetry of meaning, and it was very explicit. In its exploration of ways to express the intellectual contents, philosophical or anthropological, the Polish poetry went much further than the Polish prose. As you have just mentioned, I also participated in the process of the evolution of the Polish poetry, as in the end pieces like A Treaty On Poetry were attempts of discourse, an attempt to describe the history of the world through the history of the Polish poetry. I continued this quest in Treaty On Theology, which is a part of Second Space. After Treaty On Theology has been published, I received a cordial letter from the Pope, and I know he read it. So The Roman Triptych is very interesting to me as a part of this evolution of the Polish poetry. But as for the frank question whether The Roman Triptych is an outstanding piece of poetry, or a meditation, I shall not try to answer it, as the boundary between meditation and a poem is extremely thin. We could say that in the contemporary poetry, or to be more precise the poetry of the older generation of poets, the poetry of Wisława Szymborska, Tadeusz Różewicz, or mine, there is a lot of philosophy, lots of reflections. Even too much. In this context the questions whether the Pope's poem can be read as meditations full of a very deep meaning, or to what degree they are poetry, are very difficult. As I say, the boundary between reflecting and poetry blurs nowadays, and reading The Roman Triptych, we are greatly impressed by its content itself.

And its author.

Czeslaw Milosz: That is true. It is hard to forget wrote this, because these words are full of Pope's great authority. However, this does not exclude one's reflection on the content, which can be treated as the Pope's work, but also as a unique great theological treaty, which undoubtedly is, all the time, very close to all dogmas of the Catholic faith. The first part is the meditation on the stream current, on the stream of time. This real presence of water running down, of a mountain stream, makes us conclude that everything that exists, passes, changes ceaselessly. It is only a human being, who can overcome this passing – by a moment of wonderment. A wonderment, which, as the ancients said, is the mother of philosophy. The author of The Triptych writes:

What are you saying to me, mountain stream?
Where, in which place, do we meet?
Do you meet me
who is also passing –
just like you...
But is it like you?

Czeslaw Milosz: And the answer to this question is 'no'. Because man is beyond the time. Man is the only creature put outside of the common passing, lifted out of it by his conscience. This is a very elevated place destined for the human being. I would say the whole poem is extremely anthropocentric. It's an appointment of the central place in the Universe the human being, an appointment of an exceptional position to our kind, and an interpretation of Genesis as a description primarily of the creation of the world and the human being. The creation understood in a way, that before the world was called into visible existence, everything had already been present in the Word, i.e. in Logos, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Everything existed in the Word as invisible. So the act of creation was a transformation of the invisible into the visible. The Pope writes:

...the eternal Word, as an invisible threshold
of all that has come into being, exists, or will exist.
As if the Word were the threshold.
The Threshold of the Word, in which everything was in an invisible way,
divine and eternal – beyond this threshold everything begins to happen!

'The beginning is invisible', writes John Paul II. Please note, that this is a language not normally used in theology. And just through the language we step beyond the standard theological terms. This probably is the very significance of the poetic devices used by John Paul.

A slit in the language uncovers also sensitive places in the system of faith...

Czeslaw Milosz: Quite so. Here come to mind some very strange reflections. If everything existed as invisible in the Word at first and became visible later, this makes us think of the world of archetypes, existing before the real world came into being. When we read in the Bible about the rebellion of angels, it could only happen in that invisible world, that of archetypes. The Pope's meditations falls within this very issue of 'visible – invisible'. This is one thing. Moreover, when John Paul II meditates at the Sistine Chapel on the Book of Genesis, he speaks exclusively about man. About Adam and Eve, about the original sin, and about the Judgement. However, the whole nature is left behind these meditations. Essential for this poem is that God, having created the world, saw and said that 'this was good'. And when he created the man, he said, 'this was very good'. But, as the author says, 'his seeing was different from ours', which in some way explains a lot.

What exactly?

Czeslaw Milosz: The fundamental fact that we, people, are always exposed to the temptation to think of the created world as of a world of suffering. Not only of human pain, but of the pain of all living creatures for millions of years. And Good's perception is a different perception. In the Pope, there is a clear accent of anti-Manichaeism. He opposes accusing the matter of pain and suffering. But, obviously, there still remains the issue of the original sin, and what it was – nobody knows. It is generally believed that it was a renunciation of happiness Adam and Eve lived in for the sake of their own ambition. In brief – for the sake of civilization. But it must have been such an awful sin, that it became that felix culpa, i.e. the happy fault, which brought redemption. The myth of Adam and Eve's sin is one of the most amazing places in The Bible. According to the myth, it entailed not only the fall of man, but also the fall of the whole nature and the appearance of death. The commonness of death was associated with the victory of the Devil. Maybe Martin Luther emphasised particularly this domination of the Devil's, but it is strongly present also in Catholicism. An old Christmas carol goes: 'You, who were born that night / to liberate us from the devil's power...

The fact that The Roman Triptych remains rather in the sphere of questions brings it closer to poetry.

Czeslaw Milosz: The Roman Triptych brings in a series of questions and many of them have to remain unanswered. It is significant that the Pope, a humanist, who many a time promoted the vast importance of art in the history of mankind, who wrote a moving letter to the artists, talks here about the frescos of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel, to which a key is the image and resemblance, thus the same problem again: invisible – visible, the problem of the invisible made visible by the artist. And that in this composition, in these meditations, the only quotation not from The Bible is the quotation from Horace, 'non omnis moriar', i.e. 'I shall not wholly die, my work shall remain after me.' This, first of all, rises in my mind in connection with the first and the second part of the poem.

To which questions cannot you most severely find answers in The Triptych?

Czesław Milosz: Firstly, the statement that everything was in the Word, in Logos, as the invisible, and became visible through the act of creation, assumes an existence of a pre-created world. An invisible world. The Old Testament spoke about the Wisdom that dwelt with God from the beginning, before the world's creation. Wisdom – Sophia. An equivalent of what the Catholic dogmatics calls Logos, following the Gospel of St. John. The Word. Admittedly, in some Orthodox icons Sophia appears as the fourth, next to God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I'll remind that the notion of the world which at first had existed as invisible before it was created may be found in the letter of the St. Paul to the Jews. Either way, in view of the statement about this Wisdom, a fundamental great question is the question of pain, of suffering, as the very matter of the world. And here, as I said, we have to believe that our perception is incorrect, because God's perception is different. The third part of The Roman Triptych – A Hill in the Land of Moria – attempts to answer, or rather indicate an answer, to this great question – the one concerning suffering.

Czesław Miłosz: Are you satisfied with this answer?

I have an impression that here we are dealing with a personal trusting in the wisdom arising from the history of Abraham. The Pope reaches this dramatic moment, the sacrifice, which Abraham is to make of his son, in a very suggestive manner:

Abraham: He who believed against hope.
In a moment he will build a sacrificial pile,
make fire, bind Isaacs hands –
and then – what? the pile will burst into flames....
Already he sees himself as the father of a dead son,
the son the Voice gave him and is now taking away?

And after these dramatic doubts, all of a sudden, with a great faith, the Pope teaches that one should not be afraid. He writes:

Here another Father will accept the Sacrifice of his Son.
Do not be afraid, Abraham, go on,
and do what you have to do. (...)
He will stop your hand,
when it is ready to strike that sacrificial blow...

Giving an answer to the question of human suffering, Pope firstly identifies himself with a man put to the test and then he fluently changes his position to the stance of a priest, the spokesman of God. I think that this is the fragment showing the bipolarity of The Tryptych in the most visible way – its conflict between poetry and meditation.

And Pope is of course entitled to this expression of his faith in the framework of this great meditation over the river of time, i.e. over the history of mankind, which his whole composition is. In his meditation over the river of time, understood as the individual passing of each man, as well as the passing of our kind. But here a question arises, why the Creator manifests himself to our kind so late. The third part says about the ascending of the true God, though. The true God, unlike the gods created by mankind before. About God's entering the history of mankind by the Covenant with Abraham. As it is known, the Church, Vatican, has recognised the scientific basis of evolution and agreed with them, thus we are even more entitled to ask what it is all like: concealed Providence, watching over evolution, manifests itself only at a given moment – beginning as late as with Abraham. There is plenty of mysteries in here. Maybe I shouldn't pose such questions. But, reading this work, these meditations, don't such questions pose themselves?

Is there anything that The Roman Triptych helped you to understand, come to terms with?

Czeslaw Milosz: It reminded me that our perception – the human perception – might be not the only perception, which of course is the content of the Book of Job.

Why did Pope, having at his disposal so many forms of utterance, choose poetry for such important investigations?

Czeslaw Milosz: As I said, I would like to consider these meditations – The Roman Triptych – as a case in the history of Polish poetry. And I would undoubtedly place it on the line of Norwid – it is easily felt that the author wanted to be faithful to Norwid in 'giving the thing an appropriate word'. But beside that, for me it is a line leading through the religious poems of Władysław Sebyła, the poetry of Czechowicz or Tadeusz Różewicz. Since in some ripping feeling of a tremendous abandonment, which we find in Różewicz's poetry, of the abandonment by God, there is a great religious load. As in the poems of Szymborska or of mine. In the poetry that scrutinises the fundamental matters regarding world outlook. For the poets brought up on postmodernism and following the postmodernist fashion, similarly as for the accompanying critics, such a poetry, including The Roman Triptych must be something totally wild. Yet, with its investigations into the most basic meanings, The Triptych overthrows their ways of thinking. (...) Using the Pope's terminology, The Triptych contains a sign of objection. Against certain tendencies found in art, also in the contemporary poetry. An attempt of rebellion. In any case, it is worth reminding that the religious poetry during the whole of the 20th century, also before the war, was considered as something minor. Those who turned to religious subjects in their poetry doomed themselves to be perceived as artists of a lower class. Though, recently a certain revaluation of the religious poetry has taken place. It is worth noting that there has appeared a whole branch of priests' poetry. Priests Twardowski, Pasierb, Szymik – some of their pieces are valuable and very interesting for me.

If The Roman Triptych is a provocation, then your poetry, especially The Theological Treaty and The Second Space may be considered a scandal.

Czeslaw Milosz: Naturally, in The Second Space there is a lot of objection, and even of disputatious sticking out of the tongue. A strongly emphasised view, that there are topics worth musing.

Why may something be deliberated only in the form of poetry and not in the form of a pastoral letter or an essay? What is the unique value, the principle of poetry?

Czeslaw Milosz: Amazement. The same amazement that in the first part of the Pope's poem takes us beyond time, excludes us from the passing. Poetry is amazement. And as a proof of this amazement, characteristic of the philosophical orientation of Polish poetry, I can recall the poem of Wisława Szymborska, about a little girl, who pulls off a table cloth which results in the breaking of everything that was on it. The child's discovery of the law of gravity, of the fact that if something falls, then it falls down, is the greatest and the most condensed depiction of the rudimentary amazement. And poetry, obviously on different levels, is such a childish amazement.

But poetry cannot deal with everything. Your poem Orpheus and Eurydice shows, for example, that poetry is helpless against loss.

Czeslaw Milosz: When a man has no direct expression he has to turn to a myth, just like I did in Orpheus and Eurydice. Myth has a great carrying capacity, because it objectivises us, approximates our experience to all, who suffered loss before us. Myth is a certain general situation, which concerns and affects all the people... I don't know which myths are referred to by the poets who believe that the only thing left to do for us is foolery. Foolery is also a common human fate of a sort, but it is characteristic only of a very transient epoch. Yes, it would probably be very interesting to see the foolish poets deconstruct The Roman Triptych, and expose it to derision. Anyway, I think that the author of The Triptych was aware of that risk, and took this possibility into account.

I fully agree that author's risk is a great gift of poetry, maybe the greatest one. But having written The Second Space, didn't you regret your generosity, i.e. the risk? Didn't you experience a feeling of losing community with the others, especially the young poets? After all, for The Theological Treaty you were attacked, and not only by the aforementioned postmodernists, but also – even more fiercely and stupidly – by the zealots. Among other things for – I quote, not mentioning the name – you are unfamiliar with 'the wisdom of the cross giving higher purpose to the earthly suffering', and that you treat 'the reality of faith naively'.

Czeslaw Milosz: You see, I've learned to live with this. I can honestly admit that I don't really understand how I wrote my Theological Treaty. I have a very strong feeling that I'm not responsible for it, that I'm not its author, that I wrote it under pressure. Under the pressure of a Daimonion, as I call it. End of story. (…)