Customer Reviews

Milosz's ABC's

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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!

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

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.