A Polish Laureate

...The Issa Valley tells the story of Thomas, a boy being raised by his grandparents in a remote village inhabited by an assortment of humans, ammals, and also legions of devils who dress in German styles of the 18th Century "It is possible," writes Milosz with characteristic irony, "that, knowing the superstitious awe in which Germans are held—their being people of commerce, inventions, and science—the devils seek to lend themselves an air of gravity by dressing up in the manner of Immanuel Kant of Komgsberg " He gravely concludes that the devils' sartorial habits show they are "on the side of progress"—a wry political commentary that says a good deal about the ambiguous role Germany played in Eastern Europe before World War II But Milosz' demons are mercurial creatures sometimes pagan imps, at other times Christian tempters inflicting tortuous allurements on the adolescent Thomas (the people of Issa Valley alternate between asking the advice of the local wizard and the Catholic priest) Devils are not the only phantasmagoric creatures lurking in this novel Ghosts and supernatural dreams play a prominent role too (reminding one of another mystic writer from Poland, Isaac Bashevis Singer) Magdalena, the priest's housekeeper and mistress, kills herself and comes back to haunt the village The men put an end to this by digging up her corpse, cutting off the head, and placing it beneath her feet to keep her from walking Nevertheless, she assumts a new life in Thomas' nightmares In one horrifying dramatization of the transience of flesh, she comes to him, wailing, "Why am I alive yet not alive—I who once lived, just once, from the beginning to the end of the world'' Oh the sky and sun will be still there when I am long gone Only these bones will be left Oh, nothing, nothing is mine " Magdalena takes possession of Thomas, and the recollection of her body and her pitiful story mold his development as much as do the living or the devils On its surface, the plot of The Issa Valley is slight Thomas grows from boyhood to adolescence with reluctance, demonstrates an inclination for the meditative life, feels an outsider, and finally departs for Poland with his mother The histories of his grandparents and many of the villagers are interwoven with his Fertile summers blossom out of brutal winters, every season having its pursuits and rites (Milosz can describe a pear or berry so vividly, the reader can actually taste it) At another level, a far more profound reality is invoked Layered through our memories, like geological strata, we find the natural and supernatural cohabiting, similarly, we can be both cruel and loving, happy and unhappy, devout and superstitious at the same time with no sense of contradiction Both Milosz' verse and his fiction are pervaded bv the deepest religious spirit—an awe at the mystery ot creation, a love for people and places as they are In this chaotic age, when honors and prizes are routinely heaped upon the heads of the meretricious, Czeslaw Milosz enriches the acclaim he is now receiving because he still utters words ot clantv and truth...

...On Poetry A POLISH LAUREATE BY PHOEBE PETTINGELL czeslaw Milosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature, has experienced firsthand the turmoils that have shaken 20-century European civilization to its foundations Born in 1911 to a Polish family in Lithuania, he traveled extensively throughout Russia and Poland as a child, even in the midst of the fighting of World War I As a student he was so repelled by the racist rhetoric accompanying the rise of nationalism that he inclined toward the seeming promise of Lenin's Communism Later, in Pans, he made the acquaintance of a distant relation, the visionary Oscar Wenceslas de Lubicz-Milosz (a Lithuanian diplomat who wrote French verse) This relationship hastened the young man's decision to become a poet It also bred in him a distrust of political movements During the Nazi occupation of Warsaw Milosz organized an underground writer's group, and after Poland's "liberation" by the Red Army he was sent as an envoy to Washington for several years (apparently on the assumption that his aristocratic background would immunize him against the middle-class blandishments of capitalism) He returned to his native country to break with the Communist Party, and in 1951 began a life of permanent exile—first in France, then in California where he is now Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Berkeley Milosz' recently revised Selected Poems (Ecco, 129 pp , $8 95) displays his obsession with the changing role of the poet in these troubled times "A Task" laments a sham, my own, and of my epoch We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons But pure and generous words were forbidden Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared pronounce one Considered himself as a lost man In his Nobel Lecture Milosz elaborated on this theme, distinguishing between Dante's political bamshment and that of a modern poet such as himself Today a writer can be expelled from his culture by virtue of "a relatively recent discovery that whoever wields power is also able to control language by changing the meaning of words " Milosz observes that by clever alterations in vocabulary "whole zones of reality ceased to exist " He further charges that when art becomes so divorced from society that it feeds only itself, it is an accomplice to the growth of totalitarianism On the other hand, "in a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot " But telling the truth can be a capital offense in an oppressive regime, forcing honest poets to choose between a vain martyrdom and "internal or external exile " Moreoften, poets shirk this dilemma and run the risk of having their song reduced to literary rhetoric—the tongue of dwarfs—or haunted by the depiction of violence—demons Ideally, Milosz would have poets contemplate the world's mysteries—why we are here, why things are as they are Yet because of their humanity, they are trapped in the paradox that to perceive accurately they must take on the irrationality of their time In a moving "Dedication" written in 1945 to those Poles killed by the Nazis, Milosz asks "What is poetry which does not save/Nations or people7" He apologizes to the dead because the experience that "strengthened me, for you was lethal " Milosz shares Shelley's belief that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, able to invent a new language to tell the truth when other words have grown stale or been suppressed But how can they help those already destroyed, whose deaths poison the memories of survivors with futility, guilt and loss7 In a heartbreaking image, Milosz attempts to exorcise these unhappy shades They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds I put this book here for you, who once lived So that you should visit us no more Along with the strongest poets of this century, Milosz is an ironist...

...In "Three Talks on Civilization," he mockingly inquires why we should regret our destruction of nature when "We created a second Nature in the image of the first " Before Adam's fall, creation may have shown a gentle face and the red-backed shrike Did not impale caterpillars on spikes of the blackthorn However, other than that moment, what we know of Nature Does not speak in its favor Ours is no worse So I beg you, no more of these lamentations That is not Milosz' true voice, of course He is parodying "Social Darwinism," and other doctrines that condone the harsh oppression of the weak by the strong in the name of evolutionary progress Were it not for the influence the tragic history of our century has had on his thinking, Milosz might have confined his attention to nature In his prose autobiography, Native Realm, inhiscelebratedvolumeofverse.Betem Winter,anA in Selected Poems, he braids his ideas and images around cherished landscapes the lakes and woodlands of his Lithuanian childhood, Vilna and Warsaw, Paris and California Despite his unflinching scrutiny of the moral predicaments we are compelled to live with, Milosz retains a sense of wonder about human nature in all its aspects His style can be difficult and austere, yet lyric beauty breaks through again and again "With Trumpets and Zithers," apoemof personal reminiscence, concludes with Milosz' vision of hope for himself and for everyone / wanted to be a judge but those whom I called "they" have changed into myself I was getting rid of my faith so as not to be better than men and women who are certain only of their unknowing And on the roads of my terrestial homeland turning round with the music of the spheres I thought that all I could do would be done better one day o ne of Milosz' two novels, The Issa Valley (translated from the Polish by Louis Inbarne, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 199 pp., $12.95) is appearing in English for the first time...

...Part Bildungsroman, part fairytale, it is the ideal introduction to his lyric manner The landscapes so lovingly evoked—meadows, woodlands and riverbanks of southern Lithuania—are the scene of Milosz' youth already familiar to readers of his poetry...