Milosz's ABC's [Hardcover]

Czeslaw Milosz (Author), Madeline Levine (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2001

Perhaps my ABC's are instead of: instead of a novel, instead of an essay on the twentieth century, instead of a memoir. Each of the individuals remembered here sets into motion a network of mutual allusions and interdependencies linked to the facts of my century.

The ABC book is a Polish genre, a loose form composed of short, alphabetical entries. In Czeslaw Milosz's conception, the ABC book becomes a sort of hybrid autobiographical reference book, combining citations of characters from his earlier prose works and poems with references to real historical figures-like Camus, Cézanne, Edward Hopper, Arthur Koestler, and Mark Edelman; the Polish writers Gombrowicz and Herbert; and the poets Baudelaire and Frost-who were particularly influential during his formative years, to places, and to broader topics such as "The City," "Unhappiness," and "Money." Another fascinating entry in Milosz's bold opus, Milosz's ABC's is an engaging tribute to a brilliant mind.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Man has been given to understand/ that he lives only by the grace of those in power./ Let him therefore busy himself sipping coffee, catching butterflies." So muses Polish migr poet and Nobel laureate Milosz in one of his earlier poems, and such might be the principle guiding this most recent collection of his writings. Bits and pieces of memoir are ranged in alphabetical order, making up a curious glossary of a life lived in Poland and the United States and a literary career spanning six decades. Reminiscences of Poland before, during and after WWII occupy much of the volume. Even when Milosz is chronicling his life since he settled permanently in California in 1960, after a period of exile in France, his memories center on friends made in childhood at school in Wilno. Brief character sketches are intermixed with reflections on subjects like Milosz's sense of obligation to the Polish language and Polish literary tradition, his admiration of poets like Walt Whitman and Joseph Brodsky, and, more generally, on themes like curiosity, fame and terror. It is these sections that will engage American readers, who elsewhere are likely to flounder in a sea of names. The fragments of autobiography collected in this edition represent only a selection from the texts of two Polish ABCs, and readers will be grateful for the culling. It is difficult to escape the sense thatDlike butterflies in a dusty caseDthe scraps of memory affixed here have lost their living glitter. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The Nobel prize winner's thoughts and memoriesAin ABC format, a popular genre in his native Poland.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux; 1st edition (January 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374199779
• ISBN-13: 978-0374199777
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,316,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What I learned from this ABC book..., December 26, 2007

By 

slovakgirl5 (Cleveland, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Milosz's ABC's (Paperback)

Most entries in this alphabetized soup of cultural what's what and who's who are devoted to fellow Lithuanians and Poles--names that will be obscure to most readers. However, there are some exceptions. The late poet, Joseph Brodsky, merits his first admirable mention on page 8 when Milosz mentions Brodsky's resignation from the Academy of Arts & Letters. (He is mentioned again on pages 136 and 247). Did you know that Dosteovsky hated London, "the capital city of capitalism?" Milosz held major antipathy toward Simone de Beavoir--the woman and her writing. "I could not forgive her and Sartre their baseness in their joint attack on Camus" (apparently Camus was a lone ally of his at Gallimand Publishing). He's right on the money as he coins Berkeley's "anticonformists" in his "'Blasphemy" entry: "I became sufficiently acquainted with the herd thinking of leftists and its fruit in the form of political correctness." There are cruel, uncalled-for comments on Polish writer Maria Dabrowska. The first negative mention of writer Witold Gombrowicz is on page 22 when he declared that French is a superior language to Polish language; on page 215 Milosz even calls Gombrowica a "demon." Then I learned that Wilno was an important center of Jewish culture "...on a world scale." Milosz unwittingly writes a paen to Wilno in the Witold Hulewicz entry. Noticeably absent from the ABC's is the late writer Jerzy Kosinski who only earns a snide aside early on in the text. Milosz burns Arthur Koestler, albeit in a 5-page entry (one of the longest in the book); he burns him by basically saying that he suffers from Small Man Syndrome. Admiring words describe Polish Studies professor Manfred Kridl (you MUST read what happened to Kridl when appointed to Columbia University on p. 177). Milosz is complimentary to the works and personhood of poet/writer Denise Levertov. And the yukky Henry Miller? Milosz declares "If there were no Miller, there would probably be no Allen Ginsberg" (okay, I'll take my chances). He proposes that Darwin borrowed some philosophy from Schopenhauer. And did you know that American writer Jack London held socialist views? And was widely translated in Russian? My two fave entries in ABC's are "Obligations" and "Stupidity of the West." Within the former are his strident feelings about base Polish culture: he hates the peasant dances and he gets tired of Chopin getting drug out for every occasion. In the latter (Stupidity), he laments the lack of imagination in the West "...that Los Angelos should not even exist...it horrifies me." The Yalta tragedy comes up as does 1992 Bosnis with the West ignoring THAT holocaust. Apparently Carl Jung was skeptical of the Western mind's ability to grasp Eastern spirituality...and that's it folks. A few of the things I learned in Milosz's ABC's!

3.0 out of 5 stars Milosz ABC's, July 4, 2009

By 

Timothy P. Monaghan "Tim Monaghan" (Maryland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Milosz's ABC's (Paperback)

the book was a bit of a disappointment. I love his poems but so far this book, after some browsing just sit on the shelf

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More for the friends., November 15, 2002

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Milosz's ABC's (Paperback)

Autobiography in alphabetical form: the author remembers the friends (mostly) and the foes he met, and the places he lived in or visited during his long life.
I feel that this book is more written for the people he met themselves, or for their friends and descendants, rather than for outsiders like me, who don't know 80 to 90 % of the subjects or items treated; although some comments on, for instance, Amalrik, Henry Miller, Schopenhauer or Walt Whitman are worth-while reading.
On the other hand, some very well known names, like Witold Gombrowicz, are left out.
There is one big thread in the lives of all these commemorated people: war and revolution.
Only for insiders.