Czeslaw Milosz and the Insufficiency of Lyric [Hardcover]

Donald Davie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 18, 1986

When a European poet becomes an expatriate living in America, what adjustments and sacrifices should he make? What should he resist? By the same token, how should English-speakers modify their expectations when they read his work? Donald Davie considers such questions and others in this first book on the 1980 Polish Nobel laureate who has been living in the United States for twenty-five years. According to Davie, Milosz holds to a conviction that the responsible poet today, whether under totalitarianism or in the free world, cannot afford to write only poetry that is lyrical, because to do so is to give up using language to change society. In this way he raises questions that have to do not only with himself as a Pole and with Polish literature specifically but with poetry generally, including its present status and its foreseeable future. His work, Davie argues, is more ambitious than American and British readers have yet realized and demands that they radically rethink many of their preconceptions.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Davie's "principal and governing insight" about Milosz's poetry is that the speakers in his poems adopt "flitting, changeable standpoints" rather than the traditional "fixed standpoint of the meditative lyrist." He relates this basic theme to a number of others: Milosz's "unlapidary," unmodernist sensibility; his various allegiances/nationalities (Lithuanian, Polish, American/Californian); his use of idyll and dithyramb; and "the insufficiency of the lyric mode for registering . . . the complexity of twentieth-century experience." While Davie surveys most of Milosz's work, this book, aside from its length, hardly gets beyond the level of a Sunday supplement book review. Davie, who teaches at Vanderbilt, has authored numerous books of poetry and criticism. Richard Kuczkowski, Dir., Continuing Education, Dominican Coll., Blauvelt, N.Y.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Book Description

When a European poet becomes an expatriate living in America, what adjustments and sacrifices should he make? What should he resist? By the same token, how should English-speakers modify their expectations when they read his work? Donald Davie considers such questions and others in this first book on the 1980 Polish Nobel laureate.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 92 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (September 18, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521322642
• ISBN-13: 978-0521322645
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,830,069 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.