Road-side Dog [Paperback]

Czeslaw Milosz (Author), Robert Hass (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 29, 1999

"I went on a journey in order to acquaint myself with my province, in a two-horse wagon with a lot of fodder and a tin bucket rattling in the back. The bucket was required for the horses to drink from. I traveled through a country of hills and pine groves that gave way to woodlands, where swirls of smoke hovered over the roofs of houses, as if they were on fire, for they were chimneyless cabins; I crossed districts of fields and lakes. It was so interesting to be moving, to give the horses their rein, and wait until, in the next valley, a village slowly appeared, or a park with the white spot of a manor in it. And always we were barked at by a dog, assiduous in its duty. That was the beginning of the century; this is its . I have been thinking not only of the people who lived there once but also of the generations of dogs accompanying them in their everyday bustle, and one night-I don't know where it came from-in a pre-dawn sleep, that funny and tender phrase composed itself: a road-side dog." --Road-Side Dog

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The Nobel laureate's new book is a collection of reflections, a few dreams, some poems, and, best of all, "Subjects to Let" --ideas and plots that Milosz, at 87, feels he will never develop and presents for others to flesh out. Two themes recur in many of these little writings: the opposition of the inner life of the mind and emotions and the outer life of the body and communication; and the occasionally paradoxical nature of personality that, for instance, allows an aloof, disdainful young man to die heroically for a common cause. Milosz demonstrates, with considerable bemusement, that human beings are always more than they seem to be and that history is always far less than an accounting of what really happened. Those circumstances ultimately enable art, for they imply that there is always another story to be told and pondered. If this proves to be Milosz's valedictory, it is a fine one. Ray Olson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

The great poet explores a miscellany of topics in miniature pieces of finely crafted prose and poetry. Milosz, the Polish migr writer of The Captive Mind (1951) and many works of poetry, is now 87 years old. He was a professor of Slavic language and literature at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1961 until 1980, when a Nobel Prize for Literature freed him of the need to hold a steady job. His output of poetry and essays has been prodigious; Road-Side Dog is his 24th book in English, and we have reason to be grateful for it. The book, brief and pithy, is a pleasure. Milosz turns his agile mind to whatever crosses its path. The upshot is a wealth of insights on a variety of topics. The task of poetry and the standing of the poet are favorite themes here. Milosz is inclined away from the avant-garde and toward the classical, toward the honing of the language of his predecessors: ``I was perfectly aware of how little of the world is scooped up by the net of my clauses and phrases. Like a monk, sentencing himself to ascesis, tormented by erotic visions, I would take shelter in rhythm and the order of syntax, because I was afraid of my chaos.'' He is also concerned in this collection with old age and memory (``one can write a few truly good things only by paying with the deformation of one's life''), with history (``Images more terrible than those invented by the phantasy''), and with the fleeting pleasures of life. What will impress many readers, though, is probably the remarkable compression of much wisdom in these pages, a wisdom that is as unpretentious as it is authentic. Milosz has a gift for acute observation and the ability to formulate what he understands in simple and beautiful prose. Though a modest and understated work, the poet's generosity of spirit is unmistakable. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (November 29, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374526230
• ISBN-13: 978-0374526238
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,165,434 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #80 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Eastern European

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Musings of a master, August 1, 2005

By 

Philip Pogson (Ryde, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Road-side Dog (Paperback)

Milosz writes so sparingly, so effortlessly and with such whimsicality (one cover reviewer refers to Milosz' essential "elusiveness") that one is simply not aware of technique. I am reminded of the way that the notes of a Mozart symphony or Bach cantata seem to spring forth in perfect order yet with absolute spontaneity. Having recently read the novel "The Issa Valley" I was not disappointed in "The Road-side Dog" although the form is completely different. The latter consists of a collection of one paragraph to several page prose vignettes and similarly sparing poems. If a great short story writer takes the reader on a journey and communicates insights in in several pages, Milosz in this book does the same in no more than several paragraphs. Discovering Milosz in the last 12 months has made a wonderful impact on my literary life.

Philip Pogson

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Milosz is a reader's delight., April 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Road-Side Dog (Hardcover)

He is able to see into the human heart and condition from childhood to old age and then to describe its humor, wonderment, joy and sadness in poetry-like prose. Guaranteed to claim a permanent place in your reading "heart."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Either people's gratitude and respect or an embittered man's four walls.", April 19, 2010

By 

J from NY (New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Road-side Dog (Paperback)

Czeslaw Milosz's "Road Side Dog" is a somewhat uneven and mind numbingly powerful treatise from the Polish giant, counted "Righteous Among the Nations" for his resistance to the Nazi regime (which included attending underground lectures and getting Jews fake baptismal certificates) and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, written when he was 87. As wrought with doubt and agony as "Second Space", a perhaps lesser work, these 208 pages contain perhaps more wisdom concerning faith and life than a 1,000 page theological treatise by anyone writing today.

Despite being serious as cancer, Milosz is also hilarious. His hangman's humor, the best kind, emerges occasionally--a kind of world weariness borne of love. His epitaph for youthful narcissism: "To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life." "Learning", pg. 60 Who beyond a certain age cannot relate to this?

Milosz is adamant, despite being a believer's believer, puts a sharp emphasis upon the ignorance of human beings and our inability to know very much at all: "You have no idea what is going on in the heads of people who walk by you. Their ignorance is hard to imagine and it can be discovered only by accident. This does not mean you are wise and they are stupid: simply that everyone garners information up to a certain level only, and is unable to reach higher. Space is limited, and they be unaware of what is happening in the next street. Also, time is limited, and events, which for you happened yesterday, for them are sunken in the fog of an indefinite past. Thus TV, print can transform and alter as they please everything that is and has been. We should wonder not at the power of propaganda but at the modest amount of knowledge which somehow gets through." ( "You Don't Know",pg. 91) This little aphorism seems to me more pertinent today than ever, when people believe for instance that the President is a card carrying member of the Communist party when he passes a bill to assist the poor. How confused can we get?

His Christianity is not the product of stale dialectics or absurd Creationism. He believes because, not in spite of, the horrors he witnessed. "An atheist should accept the world as it is. But then whence comes our protest, our scream: "No!" Precisely this excludes us from Nature, determines our incomprehensible oddity, makes us a lonely species. Here, in a moral protest against the order of the world, in our asking ourselves where this scream the defense of the peculiar place of man begins." (pg. 103)

This is straight from the bleeding heart of a man also made of iron. Gold. Unreservedly recommended for all.