To Begin Where I Am: Selected Essays (Paperback)

by Czeslaw Milosz (Author), Madeline Levine (Translator, Editor), Bogdana Carpenter (Translator, Editor) "WHO WAS I?..." (more)
Key Phrases: Simone Weil, World War, Simone Well (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
It would be difficult to overstate the brilliance and breadth of vision of this Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet and prose writer. This collection, spanning five decades, demonstrates an uncommon rigor, respect for truth and refusal to bend to intellectual fashion. While Milosz (The Captive Mind, etc.) an exile since 1951 and a professor of Slavic languages and literature at UC Berkeley has the trappings of a traditional European man of letters, he brings a unique modern perspective to topics of longstanding intellectual debate, including belief in God, poetry's social relevance and the limitations of Western liberalism. His adventurous, varied prose style calls upon different literary traditions: sketches, letters, aphorisms and philosophical essays. Underlying Milosz's writing is the constant, pained consciousness of having lived through WWII and the Holocaust, during which time he experienced a spiritual crisis as a Catholic which does not seem fully resolved (his favorite philosophers are the contradictory Simone Weil and Lev Shestov). From his harsh judgment of himself ("to preserve an untarnished image of [one]self is rarely possible") to his meditations on the nature of evil ("purely bestial sadism, naked and plain, occurs much more rarely than motivated sadism, equipped with all the arguments needed to make it into a noble and positive inclination"), Milosz's thoughts stem from the pressure that reality exerts on theory. Even in moments of relative levity ("America... has always suffered from a certain weakness in historical imagination... which is perhaps why in American films both ancient Romans and astronauts from the year 3000 look and act like boys from Kentucky"), a seriousness of purpose predominates. Seven of these pieces are translated into English for the first time, helping to make this indispensable reading.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Winner of the Nobel prize in literature in 1980, poet Milosz (Road-Side Dog, Milosz's ABC), has long made the experience of Poland in the past harsh century the keystone of his writing. In this collection of his essays and other prose, containing material spanning from 1942 to 1998, he writes of life in Wilno, Paris, Warsaw, and California with poignant insight and describes his friends in all these places sensitively and honestly. The difficult conditions of exile and the passage of time are constant themes in Milosz's work, along with considerations of the European mind, the Catholic faith, humanism, and the collective nature of humanity's struggles. He approaches these varied and rich subjects through personal memoirs, biographies of friends, and thoughts gained from philosophy, literature, and writing. The essays on Jerzy Andrzejewski, Robinson Jeffers, Simone Weil, Lev Shestov, and Polish poetry are major statements of this great writer's beliefs. Highly recommended for literature collections.
- Gene Shaw, NYPL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374528594
• ISBN-13: 978-0374528591
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #441,027 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Poet's Religious Humanism, December 15, 2001

By	Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: To Begin Where I Am: Selected Essays (Hardcover)

Czeslaw Milosz is a renowned writer of both poetry and prose. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980. In his long life, he has seen and written about many of the events of the Twentieth Century, including the Russian Revolution, the Holocaust, the Warsaw Uprising, and the rise and fall of communism. He served as a diplomat from Poland to the United States following WWII. Among his books is an incisive critique of communism titled "The Captive Mind".

"To begin where I am" is a selection of Milosz's essays published between 1942 and 1998, some written initially in English, but most written in Polish. The essays are wide-ranging in theme and capture a great deal of the scope of Milosz's passions. The good introduction to the book by Bogdana Carpenter and Madeline Levine point out that Milosz "has centered his writings on a few fundamental philosophical questions: the meaning of history; the existence of evil and suffering; the transience of all life; theascendance of a scientific worldview andthe decline of the religious imagination." The essays are well-arranged into four main sections.

The first group of essays titled "These Guests of Mine" is primarily historical and descriptive in character. I enjoyed particularly Milosz's description of Wilno(Vilna) in his "Dictionary of Wilno Streets."

For me the heart of the book is in the second and third parts, titled "On the Side of Man" and "Against Incomprehensible Poetry." We learn a great deal about a writer by his discussions of those who have influenced him. In this book,Miloscz's essays on the American poet Robinson Jeffers, on the Russian philospher Lev Shestov, and on the French theological thinker Simone Weil are highly thoughtful. They reveal a writer both struggling for a commitment to religion, to Catholicism in particular, in the face of a scientific and material worldview which he finds inconsistent with it, and a writer committed to humanism, to the best in man and culture. They are an inspiring and difficult set of commitments, and Milosz discusses them eloquently.

In Part 3 of the book, the centerpiece is the title essay "Against Incomprehensible Poetry". In this essay, Milosz develops insights from W.H. Auden and makes them his own. Auden had said "there is only one thing that all poetry must do,it must praise all it can for being and for happening." (p.381). This insight becomes the basis of a critique of much obscurantism in modern poetry. We are privileged to hear, in the book, a discussion of the continuing value of poetry and informed discussion of many poets worth knowing, from Whitman, Blake,and Jeffers to many of Milosz's Polish contempories. These latter writers are unknown to me, but Milosz makes one wish for them as companions through his discussions.

The fourth part of the book. "In Constant Amazement", is brief and consists of a collection of aphorisms. The aphorism I found most striking discusses the nature of human sexuality. It begins: "Men and women carry within their imagination an image of themselves and of others as sexual beings and often that is the only thing that humanizes them." (p. 436)

This book helped me with my own thinking and reflection. I hope it will help you with yours as well.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elegant and Sophisticated Prose, December 23, 2001

By	Flounder (Substitution Instance) - See all my reviews

This review is from: To Begin Where I Am: Selected Essays (Hardcover)

I highly recommend this volume to anyone. Along with his recently published New and Collected Poems(Ecco Press), Milosz stands tall as one of the most accomplished writers in the modern era. This volume of essays is highly personal and eloquent. His prose style is immediate and vivid, capturing insights of history and the "poetic." His work on Jeffers is remarkable. This is a poet of our time--his thought triumphs over despair and the ills of the human condition. He has witnessed some of the most deliberate atrocities in world history--his essays evoke a wisdom based on personal remembrance-and there is no better vision of our predicament than what is offered here.

4.0 out of 5 stars To Begin Where I Am, July 4, 2009

By	Timothy P. Monaghan "Tim Monaghan" (Maryland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: To Begin Where I Am: Selected Essays (Hardcover)

this book had some insightful essays by Milosz, like his poetry, his essays were engaging, interesting, an off-angle point of view