The Witness of Poetry (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) (Paperback)

by Czeslaw Milosz (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Milosz is at all times direct, even simple. He has the ability to return the pleasure of poetry to ordinary readers, and in his prose, as here, he makes you suspect that the great intellectual sin of our time may be a fear of the obvious. (Vanity Fair )

[Milosz] speaks in The Witness of Poetry with the sort of quiet, preeminent brilliance that makes his defense [of poetry]…a classic for our time. (Saturday Review )

By the strength of its condensed and lucid exposition, The Witness of Poetry provides us with a key to Milosz's poetic historiosophy, philosophy, and aesthetics. OF course, Milosz's entire work offers one of the most profound responses to the dilemmas of our century. (New Criterion )

Product Description

Czeslaw Miosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature, reflects upon poetry's testimony to the events of our tumultuous time. From the special perspectives of "my corner of Europe," a classical and Catholic education, a serious encounter with Marxism, and a life marked by journeys and exiles, Milosz has developed a sensibility at once warm and detached, flooded with specific memory yet never hermetic or provincial.

Milosz addresses many of the major problems of contemporary poetry, beginning with the pessimism and negativism prompted by reductionist interpretations of man's animal origins. He examines the tendency of poets since Mallarmé to isolate themselves from society, and stresses the need for the poet to make himself part of the great human family. One chapter is devoted to the tension between classicism and realism; Milosz believes poetry should be "a passionate pursuit of the real." In "Ruins and Poetry" he looks at poems constructed from the wreckage of a civilization, specifically that of Poland after the horrors of World War II. Finally, he expresses optimism for the world, based on a hoped-for better understanding of the lessons of modern science, on the emerging recognition of humanity's oneness, and on mankind's growing awareness of its own history.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (January 1, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674953835
• ISBN-13: 978-0674953833
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #838,512 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #15 in

  Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( M ) > Milosz, Czeslaw

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bad News: It Witnesses Us, June 21, 2000

By	Jesse Airaudi (Waco,Texas) - See all my reviews

"I have titled this book _The Witness of Poetry_ notbecause we witness it, but because it witnesses us," Miloszsays. This Nobel Laureate who's been around the block is believable when he says it looks like we are in big trouble. That we are a loathsome and self-loathing, despairing, cruel race isn't really news, but Milosz goes further and tells us convincingly how we got to be such [people]. If you follow him this far, you'll want to read on to see what advice he offers before it all goes up the spout (or we simply turn into zombies). So.... either read this short "poetics" and then his tiny book _Road-Side Dog_, or read _Road-Side Dog_ (maybe start with "Beautiful Girl") and then read the _Witness of Poetry_. Pretty amazing guy. -- Oh, and I don't think there'll be a movie.